Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2)

by Timothy Scott Bennett

  RUMI'S FIELD

  Timothy Scott Bennett

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2017 by Timothy Scott Bennett

  Published by: Blue Hag Books, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a database or other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means now existing or later discovered, including without limitation mechanical, electronic, photographic or otherwise, in this time or any other time, past or future, in this realm or any other layer of reality, physical or otherwise, by any form of sentient being, without the express prior written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-936879-05-2

  First Kindle Edition: January 2017

  Table of Contents

  Author's Preface

  What Has Gone Before (or) All of the Above in Seven Minutes or Less

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  About the Author

  Connect With the Author

  An Excerpt from Imbolc

  Smashwords Interview

  Acknowledgements

  Endnote

  Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

  there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

  When the soul lies down in that grass,

  the world is too full to talk about.

  Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

  doesn’t make any sense.

  Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī

  (translated by Coleman Barks)

  There are none so blind as those who will not see.

  John Heywood

  I’m just a poor wayfarin’ stranger,

  While travelin’ through this world below.

  Yet there’s no sickness, no toil, nor danger,

  In that bright land to which I go.

  -Wayfaring Stranger, Traditional

  Alas, my love, you do me wrong,

  To cast me off discourteously.

  For I have loved you well and long,

  Delighting in your company.

  -Greensleeves, Traditional English Folk Song

  For Rocco. Take most precious care, my friend.

  Author’s Preface

  I find it fairly easy to write a story set in what is commonly known as “the real world,” the time and culture which we all now share. I just take what I know and use it as the backdrop in front of which my characters speak their lines. It’s also fairly easy, I find, to write a story set in what is commonly known as “the post-apocalyptic world,” because when we travel together that far down “the energy curve,” we end up in a whole new place. All I need do is concoct a few basic rules – no electricity or petroleum; decimated population; fast, slow, or no zombies, etc. – and go from there. It’s almost like starting from scratch, and that’s as easy for me as starting from the known.

  But it’s much more difficult, I find, to write a story set in a time between our present world and a future dystopia; a world that’s fallen a few steps down the staircase of societal collapse but which has a ways to go before it hits bottom; a world that is, in Linda Travis’s words, “in free fall.” And yet it’s in just such a world that the story of Rumi’s Field unfolds. More than three years have passed since the events that took place in All of the Above, and the world has stumbled a few steps down the stairs.

  Things are all a-jumble in Rumi’s Field. We’re about sixteen months past the global economic event known as the “Christmas Crash,” in which unfathomable amounts of money disappeared almost overnight, putting huge corporations, small businesses, and individual families out of business. Governments toppled or were overthrown. People, as the old song said, lost their jobs, wives, homes, cars, kids, and lives. Riots spread like wildfires, wildfires burned like pandemics, pandemics raged like hungry mobs, hungry mobs stormed the land like floods and droughts, and floods and droughts came and went like rich bankers and corporate personhoods, doing their damage and then absconding for someplace better, leaving devastation in their wake.

  Even so, it was not the total, monolithic “collapse” that many had feared, a one-time mega-event that would instantly transform the structures and institutions of civilized society into vast heaps of bodies and dusty plains devoid of life, though both could be found easily enough if one looked for them. It was a big old world, after all, and it very much mattered where one was. Some countries fared better than others, as appears to be the case with Canada as compared to the United States. Some governments maintained their integrity and continued to function fairly well, taking actions to mitigate the worst effects of the Crash and finding ways to keep at least a portion of their societies intact, as did the Travis administration. Some corporations managed to hold together as their competitors were torn to pieces, and some even prospered in the new world order. There was enough left in place that many people could still find work-arounds and substitutions and alternatives enough to meet their needs. The mobs and wildfires and pandemics settled down after a year or so, or were brought under some measure of control. “We are down,” said Linda Travis, “but we are not out.” Nobody knew whether it would last, but they appreciated the chance to take a breather.

  Post Crash, world governments reserved most of their fossil fuels for military and agricultural uses, and for maintaining the electrical infrastructure. While some portions of the grid were completely out, many areas still had electricity, at least part of the time. In the United States, as in many other countries, huge camps and shelters were put into operation, and great numbers of folks moved into them, or close by, in search of the food, water, warmth, and shelter they needed, not to mention the sense of safety and belonging and order they expected to get from their leaders. The rich remained in their fortresses, enclaves, castles, keeps, and holds, as far as anybody knew. The rest stuck it out in their homes, or hit the road, or formed their own communities (and even their own sovereign nations), brewing their own biodiesel, generating their own power from solar panels or stored fuels, and growing and hunting and gathering the food they needed to stay alive.

  If you were lucky enough to work for the federal government in Augusta, Maine, you lived inside the Capitol City Green Zone, into which were imported the supplies which made life there feel almost normal, and around which bristled a military cordon hell-bent on maintaining order and safety for their Commander-in-Chief. If you were luckier still, the daughter of one of the secret rulers of the planet, say, you might not notice much change at all on your small, private college campus in Montreal. If your luck had run out, you might be sleeping on a cot in a gymnasium next to hundreds of others, working in the food line serving soup to nuts and watching the constant stream of news and entertainments on the Jumbotrons that looked down from where the basketball hoops once hung. If your luck had run out even further, you might be dead, murdered by a group of punks intent on stealing your blankets. Some, of course, would consider the dead the lucky ones.


  It mattered where you were, how well you had planned, and how resourceful (or wealthy, or both) you were when the markets were closed for good. Whether you drank coffee, tea, or stale tap water, whether you could grow lettuce or artichokes or just weeds in dust, whether you slept on a hardwood floor, beneath an underpass, or in the comfy confines of your private island mansion’s master bedroom, the range of conditions a human might encounter as the world unwound was great, and your personal situation depended as much on being at the right place at the right time as it did your own efforts to decide your fate. In that, perhaps, the world had not changed as much as most people seemed to think.

  The world was a-jumble. The world was all-of-the-above. It’s into this world that we now proceed.

  What Has Gone Before

  (or)

  All of the Above in Seven Minutes or Less

  President Linda Travis gets a briefing from the psychopathic Agent Rice. The hidden human elites are in league with mysterious aliens and they want to bring her in. Seems most everybody in her government is part of the cabal. But Linda says fuck this shit, escapes her handlers, steals a car, and drives north through the night, hoping to find her old friend Keeley and expose the secret. In Vermont, she has an accident and goes off the road, breaking her leg. That’s her meet-cute with Cole Thomas.

  Linda points a gun at Cole and demands that he take her to his house. Cole is, like, overwhelmed, and complies. Linda drinks whisky and Cole reluctantly cowboys the broken bones back into place. Linda gets some sleep. Rice meanwhile, with his minions Mary and Bob, search for their escaped President via the Astral realm. Evil, but cool.

  Cole’s three kids come home from school. They all have a chill time together, eating burgers and dogs, reading kids’ books, and answering crank calls from aliens. Eventually the kids crash and Linda tells Cole what the heck is going on. The briefing. The cabal. How she met Spud, the alien ambassador. Crazy. The woods around his house light up like a WalMart parking lot. There’s little teeny people scampering amongst the trees and big red eyes at the window. Cole and Linda conk out for a bit. When they awaken, Linda’s leg is healed and now she and Cole are digging each other. Linda drags Cole outside to look at the night sky. My God, it’s full of UFOs!

  So, Cole wants to help Linda reach her friend. But there’s those kids. What to do? Cole’s youngest, Grace, keeps falling asleep. The family dog, Dennis, has gone missing. Both have gone into the Astral to help protect Cole and Linda, though nobody knows about that but them. But for sure there’s strange aliens following Linda. And evil Agent Rice. Seems the thing to do is draw attention away from the kids. So Cole and Linda take the kids to Grandpa Ben, kiss and hug and promise to come back, and then hightail it out of there. They come to a roadblock; the POPOs have found POTUS’s stolen Buick. And Agent Rice is right there, checking cars! Linda’s hiding in the back under a blanket, so Rice passes them through, but not before finger-painting a weird symbol on Cole’s windshield. Because who knows why?

  They make it to Keeley’s house. Meet her husband Pooch. More chillin’. More googly eyes between Cole and Linda. Keeley tells Linda how the aliens used to abduct them when they were kids, a fact Linda had been happy to forget. Damn them all to hell. Linda has a plan: get to Ottawa, where she knows an MP who can get her on Canadian TV. She’ll expose the cabal. Teach those suckers a lesson. So Keeley helps Linda with a disguise, then hangs up on a weird wrong number from some guy named Obie. Linda and Cole get into Pooch’s van. Keeley’s Canadian husband will drive them over the border to meet his friend Elly.

  Except that damned Agent Rice is at the border crossing. Pooch hits the gas and they speed into the night and rain. But then there’s Rice again, standing in the middle of the road with a gun! WTF? Rice shoots. Pooch dies. Van runs over Rice and crashes into the ditch, which makes two ditch crashes for Linda Travis in less than 48 hours. No broken bones this time. Cole and Linda extricate themselves from the wreckage. There’s Elly, landing in a helicopter of course. Cole and Linda hop aboard and they fly away.

  Elly helps Cole and Linda catch the train to Ottawa. This gives them time to rest. And to fall more in love. Which is nice. Until another symbol like the one Rice drew on the windshield appears on the train. The bad guys are right on their heels. Grace and Dennis meet some allies in the Astral realm. This ragtag group opposes Rice’s minions and slows the bad guys down a bit.

  Cole and Linda make it to Ottawa. The Canadian MP, Legrand? Turns out that bastard is part of the cabal too. Rice appears yet again, pointing a gun. Cole’s like “screw you” and Rice is like “take this!” and the gun is like “blam blam” and Cole’s like “aarrggghhh!” and Linda’s like “nooooo!!!!” Cole’s dead. Rice tosses Linda into an alien lodge underneath the city. The aliens, having skipped town when Linda escaped, are no longer using it. Rice pulls the whole solitary confinement, drugs, and torture thing on the President, trying to force her cooperation. But before he succeeds, that Obie guy from the wrong number? Who turns out to be Cole’s brother? He shows up in the darkness and rescues Linda. They escape in an alien ship, a wok, which Obie knows how to fly, because he used to work for Agent Rice. I know, right? Meanwhile, Mary, another of Rice’s colleagues, quits her day job in disgust over Rice’s evil deeds.

  Obie thinks maybe Cole isn’t really dead because, you know, aliens. So they go find his body in one of the cabal’s front organizations, then fly way up above the Arctic circle to catch their breath. Obie and Linda get out of the wok. The wok sinks into the ice with Cole’s body. Nobody saw that one coming.

  Obie and Linda get rescued by some fur-clad Inuit rebels who offer them a warm mobile home to hang out in. They spend the next day talking, while Obie uses his woo to heal Linda’s wounds. Obie explains about their Inuit saviors, and how shit’s about to hit the fan on Planet Earth, and how the aliens are rooting for the evolution of consciousness, and that the future of humanity rests on Linda’s shoulders, which is all a bit of a head trip, especially for somebody who was just tortured.

  Then Cole’s living body shows up at the door, having been repaired and detailed in the aliens’ chop shop. The lights are on, but nobody’s home. The Inuit drag everybody out onto the ice, light a ritual bonfire, and attempt to reconnect Cole’s spirit with his body. Obie and the Inuit warriors close their eyes and fly into the Astral realm, where they meet Grace and Dennis and their new friends. And a bunch of animals. Together, they fight the agents of the cabal and free Cole’s spirit to find its way back home, which it does.

  Meanwhile, back in the physical world, real life cabal soldiers shoot Ben and abduct Cole’s two eldest (Grace having been put in the hospital with her coma) and take them to Rice in D.C. Rice then sends the soldiers up north. They find the bonfire about the time Cole gets saved and manage to kill a few Inuit before a great mythic force rises up to stop them. Monster mash.

  Linda and Cole, all healed and reanimated and still in love, head back to D.C. as quickly as they can, to confront Rice and rescue the kids. Back in D.C., the children have befriended Alice, a hybrid child who’s also decided to quit Rice’s team and join the Light Side. They escape and meet up with Mary, who takes them to safety. Grace, in the Astral, follows them all, doing Astral stuff.

  Cole, Linda, Obie, and Mary surprise Agent Rice in the alien lodge underneath the nation’s capitol. Linda makes a deal with Rice: let’s be friends and run this cabal together, dude. Rice agrees, cuz there’s, like, a gun pointed at him? Having learned that the now-absent aliens have set their lodge to self-destruct, the group quickly evacuates the facility. At the last moment, Rice betrays them, surprising nobody and attacking Mary in order to escape in a wok. He throws a small controlled black hole at Linda. Obie grabs Rice and steps into the path of the black hole, which swallows them both. Zip. No more bad guy. But no more Obie too. Linda, Cole, and the others escape in the wok just before the lodge implodes. Whew.

  Cole and Linda get Mary to a hospital, rescue Cole’s two oldest, then return, along wi
th Alice, to his home in Vermont, where Grace and Ben are both in the hospital. The news reports that underground alien lodges have imploded all around the planet, leaving huge sinkholes. Most of D.C. has collapsed. Alice goes into the Astral to help Grace reconnect with her body. Ben will be okay.

  All together now in the physical, the family recuperates from their adventures, and mourns their dead. Linda meets some trusted colleagues so they can start rooting out the conspirators. Then she goes on national television to tell the truth of the alien presence on Earth. She decides not to rebuild Washington D.C., and instead moves in with Cole and his children, so they can make a life together. After a mysterious midnight call from the Fisherman, a member of a deeper layer of the hidden cabal, they go into hiding. From there, Linda re-establishes control over her government. Alice disappears, off to do some mysterious hybrid stuff with her alien dad. All is well, except that the strange symbol shows up one last time, just so they’d all know that the story isn’t finished yet.

  Rumi's Field

  Chapter One

  1.1

  I stop at the curb and glance up at the crosswalk signal. There are no other pedestrians in sight. The signal changes and I step out into the street. The tall, thin, red-haired man behind me lurches forward. He bumps my right elbow as he hurries past, glances back over his shoulder, and nods. My heart pounds. I know that face, though I do not remember how.