“God, Obie. It’s all so … I don’t know … so clinical, somehow. So cold.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” answered Obie.
“How so?”
“As far as I can make out, the major controversy right now between the alive ones, the Angels, and some of the other observer groups, is whether to let things run their course or to actually step in and kill us off before we destroy everything else. Not everybody is happy with the fact that our little human experiment in extreme disconnection is taking the majority of life-forms on the planet down with us.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“Of course it’s that bad. It’s worse than that bad. You don’t need to ask me. Check your own heart. It’s the biggest shared secret of our time. Go up to any American on the street and mention how we’re destroying the planet and the vast majority of them will say ‘Oh, I know….’ You should hear the conversations I have at the shelter.”
“But I thought—”
“You thought you’d be the President who would finally come in and make everything right. Stop climate change. Get us off ‘foreign oil.’ Put us all in electric cars. Get the economy back in order. Put the bad guys in jail. Noble goals, perhaps, within the assumptions of the dominant worldview, but ignorant of the reality of the situation, and certainly shortsighted with respect to the evolution of consciousness.”
Linda blushed with embarrassment. She had harbored such fantasies. And yet she’d known, in some deep and unacknowledged fold of her being, that they were fantasies, and that she’d not yet fully faced into the truth of the global situation. Obie had simply reached into her soul and extracted that lump of denial and was holding it out in his hand for her to examine. She squirmed at the sight of it, swallowed reflexively, and nodded her head, urging him to continue, as though he were an oncologist delivering the worst possible news.
Obie raised a hand. “It’s no fault of your own. Believe me, I was in the same place once. I know the prison we’re all born into. I know how hard it is to break out. But here’s the thing, Mrs. President: the door’s unlocked. Always has been. You ready to step through?”
Linda rubbed at her short nap of hair, a stark reminder of the changes she’d already come through. An image of Grace asleep in her bed with Minnie Mouse hugged tightly to her chest flitted across Linda’s mind and her heart broke wide open. Love like mother bears growled through her veins and arteries, calling her body to fierce readiness. She remembered her dream. Walking. Always walking. With a crowd of others following, and that corner to turn. She’d hoped that Cole would be walking with her. Apparently that was not to be. But Grace remained. And Emily. And Iain. And the hundreds of millions of people she’d promised to serve. She had no clear idea what Obie was talking about, where she’d end up after ‘stepping through.’ But she knew that she would take that step. She drained the rest of the water in her glass and looked at the man sitting on the stool before her. He said he was here to help her. Her eyes filled with gratitude. With Obie’s help, she could go on. She cleared her throat. “Tell me what I need to hear,” she said.
Obie smiled. “Ask me what you need to know.”
Linda leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment to think, then looked out the window, noting the late hour and the coming dusk. She looked at Obie. “You said you’re here to help me do what I have to do. I need to know what that is. Am I supposed to stop Rice? The aliens? Or something else altogether? What am I here to do?”
“Lots of questions again,” said Obie with a grin.
“Start with the hardest one first.”
“Okay. So make yourself comfortable and close your eyes.”
Linda raised a quizzical eyebrow, then lay down on her right side. Her bandaged, splinted hand extended out over the futon’s edge. She closed her eyes and Obie began to speak.
“You’re walking. Walking through a city with lots of people. The streets of D.C.”
Linda opened her eyes in alarm. “Jesus, are you reading my mind? This is my dream!”
“Shhh. I know. Just close your eyes and walk with me.”
“Okay.” Linda closed her eyes again and breathed deeply to calm her pounding heart.
Obie took Linda’s fractured hand in his own and continued. “You’re walking. Around the Mall. The Congress. Through the city streets. A few people join you as you walk. And then more. And more. Following. Walking with you. Quietly, with great respect. And you keep going. Through the city and then out of it. Through the countryside. Through woods and farms. More and more people following quietly. Following you. Because you’re headed somewhere. Because you’re looking for something. Following you because they want to go where you’re going. Because you know how to get there. You’re walking. Back in the city. Traffic and noise and people everywhere. And up ahead the sidewalk turns a corner. You come to the corner and stop. The people following stop as well. They wait. They’re waiting for you, Linda. So take another step. Step around that corner. Don’t be afraid. All that awaits you is the truth of what is. And you’re ready for that now. You can handle it. You can take it in and not be undone.” He paused for a moment, and then continued. “Step around that corner, Mrs. President. Step around and tell me what you see.”
Obie stopped and sat quietly. Linda had started shaking as he spoke and there were tears wetting her cheeks and dripping onto the futon. She sighed deeply, a shuddering, quaking, sobbing sigh that resonated with the deep and fundamental vibrations of the Earth beneath her. Obie stroked her bandaged fingers, as though soothing an agitated mare.
Linda’s breathing calmed. “It’s all going to unravel,” she whispered, eyes still closed. “The world we know….”
“Yes it is,” answered Obie, gravely.
“It can’t keep going like it has been,” she said.
“No it can’t.”
“There’s no saving it.”
“You’re right. There’s no saving it.”
Linda opened her eyes and looked at Obie, tears spilling forth to see his gentle smile and laughing eyes. “It’s going to be very hard, isn’t it?”
Obie nodded. “For the survivors, yes. Very hard. But maybe you can bring some meaning to that unraveling. Maybe you can help us learn what we need to learn. Maybe you can help further the evolution of human consciousness. Maybe you should look at your hand.” Obie stood abruptly and walked toward the kitchen. “You want more tea?”
It took a moment for Linda to realize what Obie had said. Ignoring his question, she rolled onto her back and pulled at her bandage, unraveling the gauze and tape to reveal the fingers Rice had shattered, probably with a length of iron pipe. The swelling was gone, as was the bruising. The sharp, throbbing pain had vanished. Holding her hand up into the sun, she slowly flexed her fingers. They’d been so damaged. The bones had been busted to pieces. Yet now her fingers looked and felt completely normal. “Jesus!” she whispered, with awe and relief. She wiped at the tears on her cheek with her sleeve.
Linda rolled back onto her side and craned her neck to look toward the kitchen. Obie stood behind the bar, watching her, a slight, crooked smile on his face. He flashed his eyebrows with amusement. “I don’t know how to thank you,” said the President, her voice trembling with gratitude. She remembered what Obie had said earlier and gestured to the sky with her eyes. “Or whomever,” she added.
“You’ll think of something,” answered Obie with a twitch of his nose. He turned and started slamming through the cupboards until he found a box of tea bags, then filled the teapot and put it on the stove. “Hungry?” he asked, glancing back at Linda with a knowing smile.
Linda closed her eyes, checking in with her body. She looked back up at Obie. “I guess I could eat something.”
Obie scrounged through the refrigerator. “We got some cheese here. Cheddar, it looks like. Or Colby. A bag of nasty-ass looking carrots. The rest of our stew from breakfast.” He stood up and headed back to the cupboards by the sink. “And I saw some crackers in
here.” He pulled out a box of saltines, turned to Linda and grinned. “Cheese and crackers, Madam President?”
“That’ll be fine,” she said with a fragile smile.
Linda pushed herself up onto her elbow and looked about the mobile home. Though now gone, the grating pains from Rice’s torture had taken a toll on her soul. The waning sunlight of approaching dusk cast a gray, hazy glow on the faded white siding of the home next door, offering no warmth at all to soothe her heart. The wind, though diminished somewhat, continued to batter their trailer, rattling Linda’s nerves as it rattled the windows. The remains of her dream still pulsed through her bloodstream.
She sat up, watched as Obie sliced the cheese and arranged the saltines on a platter. The kettle sang and he poured two mugs of steaming tea. It was not all gray and cold. She was safe, for now. Her body was whole again. Whatever it was Rice had left inside her was gone. A Specter, Obie had called it. The black hole had receded. Linda pushed her fingers against the futon cushion to test them further, then rose and stretched her weary muscles. She’d been ready to die, down there in that cell. She’d fallen from the cliffs of hopefulness and sunk deep into the ocean of despair that lay beneath them. But instead of drowning and death, there had come rescue. Healing. Aid. Apparently her despair had been premature. She had help. Rice could be thwarted. Who knew what else was possible?
But Cole was still dead, and she was left to carry on without him. Even with his brother here to take Cole’s place, the path before her remained unclear. She sighed, stepping into the kitchen to help Obie carry everything back to the living room. She switched on the floor lamp, to brighten the place against the gloaming. Sitting on either end of the futon with the platter between them, they sipped their tea, neither wishing to break the spell of the normal.
“It was a long, steep slope downhill,” said Linda at last, looking Obie in the eye. Her voice was heavy with memory. “Like a street in San Francisco, but it went on forever. As I walked, the buildings changed. Windows were boarded over or broken. Then the walls started to crumble. The streets filled with garbage and began to buckle. There were fires and storms. Lightning. Heavy rain. The buildings collapsed and the sky turned yellow and gray. Hot. Hard and brittle and sharp. A little tree growing on a street corner shriveled and burst into flame as I passed. And as I walked I noticed that things were getting blurry, shifting and shimmering like in a desert haze. The road turned to gravel and then dust. And those people that had been following, they started down the slope with me. But as we neared the bottom I turned around and … most of them had disappeared.”
Linda stopped and stared out the window, absently picking up a cracker and cheese but not taking a bite. She looked at Obie. “I guess I’ve known this for a long, long time,” she said.
“I think that’s true for a great many of us,” answered Obie.
“It’s really going to happen, isn’t it?”
Obie’s eyes narrowed. “It’s happening, Mrs. President. It’s the ‘why’ behind everything you see, the reason the Strangers stepped it up back in the forties, the reason those in power created the Plan.” Obie’s voice grew more and more emphatic as he spoke, as if Linda’s affirmation of his sense of things had ignited resentment rather than relief. “We’ve already pushed the climate past the point of no return; global temperatures are now on their way to levels associated with the great mass extinctions of the past, during which most of the species on the planet at the time died out. Our ability to extract oil is in serious decline, and fossil fuels are what powered the last few centuries’ tremendous growth in population, food production, and economic growth. Surely you know this. Take away the oil and you get wars and food riots and economic meltdowns, which we’ve been seeing all over the planet for years.”
Obie was on the futon’s edge now, marking off points on his fingers like an evangelist delivering a well-practiced sermon. “The forests are dying off in huge swaths. The oceans are seriously fucked. Species are dropping like flies. And most of our attempts to ‘fix’ this are only making things worse. Our efforts to keep things going as they are just keep in place the very things that are killing us. Our culture has gone mad. Our leaders are mostly psychopaths. We all carry ego-structures so stiff and damaged it’s a wonder most of us can get up in the morning. There’s no combination of energies and technologies and resources that can maintain and support a species that insists on unending growth, and on taking more than it gives back. It’s an impossibility in the physical bands. The parameters of these levels have limits that cannot be broken without consequences. We’re looking at a die-off event the likes of which we cannot begin to imagine.”
Linda’s brow had creased as Obie ranted, as though her teacher had betrayed her by mocking her ignorance. Obie stopped sharply, inhaling deeply. He looked down at his hands. “So what am I supposed to do?” asked Linda, defiance pushing her chin forward.
Obie lifted his head and met her gaze, frown for frown and chin for chin. “You tell me, Prez.”
Linda closed her eyes, breathing through her reaction to Obie’s challenging tone. Her heart pounded wildly. Maybe he was right to challenge her: she was the one who had campaigned for the job of leading the nation. She searched her heart and mind for the answer that Obie seemed certain was there. She saw herself walking again, down the slope, saw the people falling away, one by one and many by many, saw the buildings turn to dust and sift away. A thin, soughing breath rose from her like smoke from a cabin chimney, taking her back through the years. She saw herself as a child playing in the front yard, saw the shiny silver disc in the sky and the strange little man at their screen door, saw Spud standing next to a large, parabolic screen, saw the Earth burn to cinders, saw the oceans boil away and her own family dying. Spud was saying something about a long, dark tunnel, and how she would help hold the torch. Linda opened her eyes to find Obie waiting for her response, one eyebrow raised in skeptical defiance. “My job is to help lead the human race through the collapse of civilization,” she said, her voice softened with hesitancy, as though she were speaking a foreign tongue.
Obie nodded and pursed his lips, as though pondering her answer. “Sounds like good work for a President of the United States,” he said. “A sane one, at least.” He relaxed a bit back into the futon. “Anything else?”
Linda reached up to caress her scalp, as if she could not believe her wounds were healed. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “It’s like … these aliens … this whole Universe … like … at the same time we walk down that slope, somehow we have to find some way to reach up to the stars, you know?” She smiled weakly. “I mean, there’s this whole big … something … out there. Or in here,” she put a hand over her heart, “or somewhere. All of these other dimensions. And maybe we have a place in it. But it seems we’re going to have to prove that we belong there. Or here. And I have to help us do that.”
Obie nodded sharply, as though she’d passed a test. “Not bad for a farm girl, Mrs. President,” he said, smiling softly.
14.7
A knot of anxiety had taken hold deep inside Linda’s soul and was mounting with every moment. The crackers and cheese sat queasily in her stomach. The growing darkness outside didn’t help. Who knew what dangers the night might hide? She could feel eyes peering in from all directions, even though Obie had closed the blinds. It was all she could do to resist turning off the light, to hide herself. With a deep sigh she collected her thoughts enough to speak.
“Nothing is clear,” she said. “I mean, I still don’t understand why the aliens have gone along with Rice and the People. I’m not clear what they’re doing here. I don’t see how they’re helping. I don’t have a clue what to do next.”
“Maybe we can tie it all together now,” offered Obie.
“That’d be nice.”
Obie placed the platter on the floor and crossed his legs, shifting to find the point of greatest stability and comfort. “It might help to know that the Strangers are probably as confused as
we are. They have a hell of a task, as all parents and teachers do, trying to figure out how much to help, how much to hold back, when to let the child fall, when to hold her tight. I get the sense that they made what they consider some major mistakes in our deep past, mistakes that have left them feeling unsure of themselves, even guilty in some way. They’re doing the best they can.”
“Okay.”
“The whole modern UFO experience – all the flaps, all the sightings, the absurdity, the sleight of hand – it’s all had one purpose: to erode our faith in our scientific-materialist paradigm, as Jacque Vallee put it; to make plain the bankrupt nature of our culture and its assumptions. When the power elite took hold of the ‘truth,’ the Strangers simply played along, showing up as just who Rice and his gang imagined them to be, reflecting back our own hunger for control, our avarice, our trauma, our fear. And the psychopaths in charge, with the People sitting at the center of that web, just looked into that mirror and primped. They’ve taken this culture to its logical extreme, creating a vast and powerful organization that’s now using mind control and remote viewing, electronic surveillance, drugs and hypnosis and genetic modification, abductions and torture and mutilations and assassinations, to solidify its sense of control and amass the power and wealth they tell themselves is the meaning of it all.”
“It’s as though, in our collective cultural misery, separated from the Sacred Cosmos, from the Earth, from ourselves and each other, separated from the magic and miracle of spirit, the only way out that we could see was to hit bottom so hard that we either evolve or die. The Strangers thought to go along with that, to help us use our own darkness to break free. That’s the trajectory we’ve been on for some good long time. We’re falling very quickly now. The ground is rushing up to meet us as we speak.”
All of the Above Page 34
