Thursday was just a buffer until Friday, thought Harry.
He and Lester worked as though there had been no strangeness the night before, minding the fractional differences of machines that lost their calibration, even if by tenths, and checking dispenser valves to make sure there was no corrosion that weakened seals or allowed seepage. Their conversation appeared banal the spare times Janet tuned them in over her labored breaths, sitting across the office much like a bloated, living piece of furniture for the OSE. The coexistence of departments in the shared space, while harmonious, was more a function of decorum than of genuine pleasantness. They efficiently ignored her, Martha, and Vlad much as they returned the favor, and only though the repetition of encountering them would it even register how fat Janet was, or the ugliness of the other, and the air of swishy-ness of the gangly Russian.
Lester was sedate on account of his lack of rest, and the adrenaline which carried him back to his car and Harry’s place was pegged at E. He had participated in a study years back testing endurance and sleep deprivation, and came out far better than most of the other test subjects, so he was used to bottoming out and operating in a diminished, conservational capacity. There was plenty of new information that he needed to process, but whether it was the weight of all those potentially intertwined thoughts just or sheer fatigue, sorting it out was not possible, and he was more or less functioning on auto-pilot. Tonight, he would sleep hard – barring any other odd interruptions. Harry, on the other hand, would continue to sleep with difficulty.
Weird shit was not his favorite part of the job, and whenever there was an assignment that was the stuff of the fantastic, it drained him. All agents of The Department surrendered to a battery of psychological testing and examination entering their program, and it was not only tough individuals who could handle the mental rigors of the tasks they would be asked to perform, but ones who were generally skeptical but unflappable. Harry didn’t take the time to ask, “gee, why am I putting steroids in an athlete’s drink without them knowing” or “am I really driving around a clone of the president?” He just did it, and didn’t ask why cancer cures were not being immediately revealed to the public or verifying the truths of alien encounter abductees. It was not his place, he felt, to question the reasoning, but rather his duty to facilitate that which was being done for “the greater good” of society and the world. But in that manner, that level of denial, or at least disassociation, took a toll which cost him the restful sanctuary of sleep, especially when his clandestine world became contaminated with the bizarre.
Worse, his thoughts of Angie made the odd nature of this assignment harder to block out. That Lester had possibly ended up with Ahern’s sheath gave brought back the faint memory of her after the night’s dream, which he could not recall beyond the suggestion of her presence. He would not find sleep easily tonight, almost subconsciously avoiding it just to rid himself of the chance that she would intrude again. Her unexplainable disappearance never sat well with him, not only because he doubted he’d ever have the chance to be assigned to assist her, but that it had been months since the episode and no further developments had come across the wire. It was customary to not speak of past work, but even when agents had been lost on the job, others still talked or shared stories. But with Angie, it was like she was literally lost, and there was no funeral, no follow up, and no mention. Harry didn’t worry that should something as strange ever befall him, would anybody bother to try and find out what happened – it was that there was the chance it could happen.
He and Lester worked as though there had been no strangeness the night before, minding the fractional differences of machines that lost their calibration, even if by tenths, and checking dispenser valves to make sure there was no corrosion that weakened seals or allowed seepage. Their conversation appeared banal the spare times Janet tuned them in over her labored breaths, sitting across the office much like a bloated, living piece of furniture for the OSE. The coexistence of departments in the shared space, while harmonious, was more a function of decorum than of genuine pleasantness. They efficiently ignored her, Martha, and Vlad much as they returned the favor, and only though the repetition of encountering them would it even register how fat Janet was, or the ugliness of the other, and the air of swishy-ness of the gangly Russian.
Lester was sedate on account of his lack of rest, and the adrenaline which carried him back to his car and Harry’s place was pegged at E. He had participated in a study years back testing endurance and sleep deprivation, and came out far better than most of the other test subjects, so he was used to bottoming out and operating in a diminished, conservational capacity. There was plenty of new information that he needed to process, but whether it was the weight of all those potentially intertwined thoughts just or sheer fatigue, sorting it out was not possible, and he was more or less functioning on auto-pilot. Tonight, he would sleep hard – barring any other odd interruptions. Harry, on the other hand, would continue to sleep with difficulty.
Weird shit was not his favorite part of the job, and whenever there was an assignment that was the stuff of the fantastic, it drained him. All agents of The Department surrendered to a battery of psychological testing and examination entering their program, and it was not only tough individuals who could handle the mental rigors of the tasks they would be asked to perform, but ones who were generally skeptical but unflappable. Harry didn’t take the time to ask, “gee, why am I putting steroids in an athlete’s drink without them knowing” or “am I really driving around a clone of the president?” He just did it, and didn’t ask why cancer cures were not being immediately revealed to the public or verifying the truths of alien encounter abductees. It was not his place, he felt, to question the reasoning, but rather his duty to facilitate that which was being done for “the greater good” of society and the world. But in that manner, that level of denial, or at least disassociation, took a toll which cost him the restful sanctuary of sleep, especially when his clandestine world became contaminated with the bizarre.
Worse, his thoughts of Angie made the odd nature of this assignment harder to block out. That Lester had possibly ended up with Ahern’s sheath gave brought back the faint memory of her after the night’s dream, which he could not recall beyond the suggestion of her presence. He would not find sleep easily tonight, almost subconsciously avoiding it just to rid himself of the chance that she would intrude again. Her unexplainable disappearance never sat well with him, not only because he doubted he’d ever have the chance to be assigned to assist her, but that it had been months since the episode and no further developments had come across the wire. It was customary to not speak of past work, but even when agents had been lost on the job, others still talked or shared stories. But with Angie, it was like she was literally lost, and there was no funeral, no follow up, and no mention. Harry didn’t worry that should something as strange ever befall him, would anybody bother to try and find out what happened – it was that there was the chance it could happen.
- - -
At 6:42pm, Brother Dave arrived at SCANTV for his anticipated show. Pam was always there before him, dressing the set and making sure there were no loose ends prior to broadcast. They had spoke only briefly the day before, enough for Dave to tell her that he was going to be meditating most of the day and calling off their usual war room session in the evening. At first it worried Pam, but with no guests to pre-interview, phone conferences to set up, or last minute ideas to cater to from Dave, she happily accepted being off her leash and gave no second thought to his intensity and worries before about the program going well. It was one of those rare shows that it was going to be surprise for her as much as it would be for the audience – and she was one of the closest people to him.
She didn’t bother asking what he’d done yesterday, and as usual, Dave was only thinking of the show when he arrived, keeping mostly to himself. Karen, a student beautician from the Wanda Trussler School of Beauty gave him a light base of make up in the opposite end the studio, while Pam and Missy were sitting with the two cameramen, Jonas and Brendan chatting about nothing of consequence. He closed his eyes and looked almost asleep in the chair, and Karen, with her model height and looks knew that he wasn’t going to open them and peer flirtatiously down her loose blouse. It was another silent application that caused some insecurity, since the older male hosts sized her up for dirty intentions and Dave couldn’t care less. He had been looking forward to taking a full show to talk about the things that he’d been told, and the conversations he’d had. It was like a yoke that would finally be lifted like so much baggage from his years.
A few minutes before the show aired at eight, Lester and Harry showed up at SCANTV. Missy came to the locked door, and spoke through the intercom as they buzzed the bell.
“Yeah?”
“Uh, we’re here for your show, ‘The Word,” Harry said. “We’re here to watch.”
“We don’t shoot that before an audience,” she replied, and started away from the door. Lester buzzed the ringer again, calling her back over. He leaned into the thin pane of glass that framed the metal door, so she could see him and to make sure she was actually coming back.
“Sweetie,” he said, “you’re gonna have to make an exception and let us in.”
He flipped open his wallet and pushed his badge up to the window, which she leaned over to see, made an unimpressed face, and disappeared back behind the door.
She hit the intercom and spoke. “I’m gonna need to talk with my producer. Sweetie.”
Lester was starting to protest, hitting the com button, but Missy was already walking back to the studio. She came upon Pam, who was in the broadcast nest, cueing up the intro, and had a look of loathing on her face.
“These two guys,” she said with a hint of sass at the word guys, “want to be in the studio for the taping. One of them had a badge, but it’s not a cop badge.”
“Finish scrubbing the cart back to the cue and I’ll go see what they want.”
They switched places and Pam attended to the men at the door. Dave drew his share of oddballs, and in addition to her dozen other functions, she had to be security screener and fan control.
“Guys”, she said apologetically, “we don’t allow for in-house audiences. Station regulations. Show will be on live soon, but we’ll be re-broadcasting and there will be links in case you don’t get home in time and miss some. Sorry…”
Harry tried again.
“I understand, but you’re going to need to let us in. We’d like to speak with David Bullock.”
He pulled out his own badge, and put it against the window, which caused Pam to point towards the mail slot in the door. He fed it through and she examined it. His Federal Inspector badge and photo laminate were satisfactory for Pam, although government workers other than mail carriers at the door was not a good thing in her mind. She opened the door gingerly to let them in.
“You can’t talk with him until he’s done with the broadcast, okay,” Pam started. “He won’t see you anyway…he’s on set and ready to go, and you don’t want him spending the next hour talking about two Feds who disrupted his show. They’re be a whole crowd of people outside this door waiting for you when it’s over.”
“I’d hate to get in-between the fan club and our boy,” Lester said, deflecting her implied threat.
“No, that’s fine,” interrupted Harry, playing the diplomat. “We’ll talk with him after the show. Agent Cohen and I just have a few questions for Mr. Bullock. He’s not in trouble, we just want to speak with him.”
Pam relaxed a little. She wasn’t going to tell Dave of the visitors until after they were done, but figured he was telling the truth.
“Okay Mr. Hardy”, she said, looking at the ID and handing it back to Harry. “You’ll have to watch from the conference room, but afterwards I’ll come and get you.”
She escorted them down the hall and opened the door for them. There was a large flat screen mounted on the wall, and a oval shaped table for eight in the center of the room. Pam gestured to the back wall and pointed out coffee, water and a few (warm) cans of soda, along with a fairly decimated basket of fruit and snacks. Public television had little in the way of craft service, especially by the end of the week.
“Thanks, we’ll be fine,” Harry told her, as they sat down to wait. The last minutes of the re-airing of Howard Buell’s Eat Seattle was playing.
When Pam was gone, Lester turned to Harry and complained, “Chilly reception from those two.”
“What exactly were you expecting?”
“I don’t know…I just felt like we were interrupting their quiet time by candlelight with some wine and a Joan Baez album.”
Harry laughed, and the screen went dark. The show was about to begin.
- - -
From the blackness, the slow build of horns sounded. Bom-didi-bom bom-bom-bom bom-bom bom-bom-bom, they went, as the image of soaring past stars in space faded in. The theme from the Superman movie built up momentum, as a superimposed shot of Brother Dave entered from the bottom of the screen. He floated, legs crossed in the lotus position until he reached the center, eyes opening wide as the music hit the familiar refrain, and a warm voice like a movie trailer said “The Word”. In a whisper, another voice echoed, “The Word”, and the theme played on. Brother Dave appeared to rotate around and hover off the top of the screen, the expanse of space still moving. The image faded out, and Pam counted down with her fingers…three…two…one, and pointed to Dave, who was sitting cross-legged on a pile of pillows, elevated on a yard long cube draped in a colorful sheet. Gone was the standard chair that would have been opposite him on the riser that was their stage, but to his right was an antique dark wooden side table, which has some candles and incense issuing dim light and strings of smoke. The house lights were dim, but soft floor lighting at either end of the stage cast enough light on Dave for the cameras but maintained the moody ambience.
“Good evening friends,” he spoke, turning his hands out in a welcoming manner, “and thank you for joining me this evening. I am your brother, Dave, and we are all family here, when we discuss…THE WORD!”
Jonas drew in closer, centering Dave for his opening words. Brendan had him at a 45 degree angle, but was holding a wider shot for Pam, who liked to overlap the images in a crossfade.
“Tonight, we have a very special show, but don’t have any guests, and I won’t be taking your calls tonight. Instead, I’d like to explore deeper so things we’ve touched on in the past. Of course, there’s going to be a lot of confusion and questions, and many of you will need to let what I tell you settle in for a while, but that’s okay. We fear what we do not understand, and what we do not understand becomes that which must be mastered. Our fear of that which must be mastered is what stands between us growing into the people we are destined to be and those we are forced to become. As always, I would like to begin this show with a moment of reflection, for all of us to take time to release those thoughts and feelings that are holding us back from focusing on what is truly important…and that is…THE WORD.”
A harp strummed lightly in the background to punctuate his completion of the words, and the cameras switched back and forth as Brother Dave took in deep breaths and rocked slowly forwards and back with his eyes closed for almost half a minute.
“I don’t know if I could sit through a full hour of this”, Lester said rubbing his forehead. Harry didn’t have any response, and kept watching.
Brother Dave opened his eyes and smiled.
“As long as one person lives in darkness then it seems to be a responsibility to tell other people. And so I tell you this - we have difficult times ahead of us.”
All eyes in the studio were on Dave, including those of girl who managed to get in through the locked front door and resign herself to the shadows of the adjacent hallway that led into the studio. Even if the darkness wasn’t her shroud, the long strands of her midnight hair obscured her face. Her petite form was shapeless under layers of long skirt, tunic, and overcoat, but nothing obscured those green eyes from training on Brother Dave. Ivy noted that he was nearly hypnotic the way he was speaking, and while there was some hint of that in the past, tonight he had seemed to ditch the manic turns between excitement and combative questioning for a more repressed and tranquil tone. It was like a serenade, a faint siren song that, now that she was seeing it up close, was so loud and clear that it turned everything else into static.
“Now, you have heard me tell you some things in previous shows that, I will admit, are incredibly hard to digest, especially for you folks who believe you think rationally. Do vampires walk among us in our fair city? Oh, that was quite a little stir when we talked about that. And the psychics we’ve had on this program have certainly left us stuck on what to believe and discount. I have brought you tales of ancient shamans, and discussed at length the theocratic dogma that is more a prison than a platform for us. You have been patient and attentive and humored my as much as I have humored you. What can you really believe? Should I have medicated myself to feel normal, and silenced the voices that are as clear to me as my own voice?”
He glanced over at Pam, who was rapt with attention, and Missy, who stood behind her equally transfixed.
“For all you know, I’m schizophrenic. Am I?”.
He paused, giving everyone time to make a decision. He smiled.
“The universe is an intelligence test.”
There was another pause, and then he continued.
“I have mentioned the concept of angels and demons to you, and read Vedic and Sumerian scripture. All you good little girls and boys who went to Sunday school and read your testaments have had fun trying to connect the dots with the hints I have given you. I have translated Hebrew texts and debated clerics and scholars across the spectrum, but what I’m sharing with you is nothing that I have studied, but experienced.
When I was young, I was awaked to a world, a realm of possibility that I did not ever believe could exist. If you stand in the sun and look over your shoulder, you’ll see your negative, your shadow. But imagine looking at yourself from the reverse, as the shadow, the opposite. Even in the 10-dimensional space of existence, there is something…more.”
He reached over to the table to pick up a ribbon of paper, which he gave a gentle twist and shaped into a möbius strip.
“I acknowledge the privilege of being alive in a human body at this moment, endowed with senses, memories, emotions, thoughts, and the space of mind in its wisdom aspect. We are unbroken like this.”
”Yes,” Ivy whispered.
“The concept of a soul is easy to understand, but as it is both intangible yet inherently part of your being, so are the Host. To be a vessel is both a privilege and sacrifice. At times, you feel fusion instead of union, but there is also a disconnect where a part of you is missing, and that void is as real as any piece of you that you can touch.”
Lester was looking out the window, watching the gales bend the trees in the twilight. The last amber and indigo hues were being swallowed by night, but also by a dense body of bloated grey clouds. The storm system should have cleared out for the weekend, but the gusts must have pushed them inland again, he thought.
“We know things in abstracts and binary terms. There are concepts like good, and evil, and we determine this from our perspective. But you have to consider all the angles before you can truly have a proper view. I speak to you the name Ru, one of three, and the three are of 17. They are seven and seven and three in-between, the observers…the judges. While the farthest reaches of time and space are in the chaotic throws of battle, we are relatively unscathed, but for how long is unclear. The Mayans dated it in 2012, and other cultures have their listings, but don’t think it’s going to be marked on a calendar when the barrier is fully breached. That day time will stop.”
Harry asked, “Do you think that he believes this?”
Lester nodded. “I really do. I just wish he’d tie it into something…discordianism, Elder Gods, the law of fives, the 23 principle – this is just a lot of cognitive dissonance.”
An incredible rumble cut through the air as the clouds collided. Even in the reinforced acoustics of the studio the thunder was evident. Brother Dave glanced upward as though his words had been heard by disapproving skies.
“A circle is the reflection of eternity. It has no beginning and it has no end - and if you put several circles over each other, then you get a spiral.”
Another monster rumble broke, this one even louder and shaking the building. Brother Dave closed his eyes and bowed his head down. Ivy watched attentively waiting for his next words, but they never came. The loudest roar yet jarred the building, and suddenly a forked bolt of purple and white lightening punched through the roof striking the infinity wall in the corner of the room. The wind swept through the gash in the roof and howled like an angry, wounded beast. Another luminous bolt split the roof further, bringing a sheet of rain through behind it. The electrical blast jumped around the room, reflecting off walls and diving through equipment, which shorted and caused a cascade of sparks. The thunder clapped again, and there was a moment of stillness. Then, a loud creak followed by a high pitched whine was heard, and the rest of the roof bent and fell into the studio. Pam ducked into the cubicle-like nest for shelter, but Missy was hardly as agile. A ceiling beam slammed into her head with such force that it nearly knocked it from her body. It was held on only by her spine, which had anchored it to the body as much as it slowed the velocity of the head from being plucked like a flower and stem.
The shorted equipment gave it’s last glowing burst of spark before faltering and plunging the studio into darkness. Harry and Lester ran though the hallway and in to the studio. They pushed through the collapsed roof and wreckage to Dave, who sported a nasty bruise on his forehead, and his clothes where tattered.
“It’s gone,” he whispered. “I can’t feel it anymore…”
Gone too was Ivy, disappeared into the rainy night and untouched by the crumbling building, guided by the Host.
“Tonight, we have a very special show, but don’t have any guests, and I won’t be taking your calls tonight. Instead, I’d like to explore deeper so things we’ve touched on in the past. Of course, there’s going to be a lot of confusion and questions, and many of you will need to let what I tell you settle in for a while, but that’s okay. We fear what we do not understand, and what we do not understand becomes that which must be mastered. Our fear of that which must be mastered is what stands between us growing into the people we are destined to be and those we are forced to become. As always, I would like to begin this show with a moment of reflection, for all of us to take time to release those thoughts and feelings that are holding us back from focusing on what is truly important…and that is…THE WORD.”
A harp strummed lightly in the background to punctuate his completion of the words, and the cameras switched back and forth as Brother Dave took in deep breaths and rocked slowly forwards and back with his eyes closed for almost half a minute.
“I don’t know if I could sit through a full hour of this”, Lester said rubbing his forehead. Harry didn’t have any response, and kept watching.
Brother Dave opened his eyes and smiled.
“As long as one person lives in darkness then it seems to be a responsibility to tell other people. And so I tell you this - we have difficult times ahead of us.”
All eyes in the studio were on Dave, including those of girl who managed to get in through the locked front door and resign herself to the shadows of the adjacent hallway that led into the studio. Even if the darkness wasn’t her shroud, the long strands of her midnight hair obscured her face. Her petite form was shapeless under layers of long skirt, tunic, and overcoat, but nothing obscured those green eyes from training on Brother Dave. Ivy noted that he was nearly hypnotic the way he was speaking, and while there was some hint of that in the past, tonight he had seemed to ditch the manic turns between excitement and combative questioning for a more repressed and tranquil tone. It was like a serenade, a faint siren song that, now that she was seeing it up close, was so loud and clear that it turned everything else into static.
“Now, you have heard me tell you some things in previous shows that, I will admit, are incredibly hard to digest, especially for you folks who believe you think rationally. Do vampires walk among us in our fair city? Oh, that was quite a little stir when we talked about that. And the psychics we’ve had on this program have certainly left us stuck on what to believe and discount. I have brought you tales of ancient shamans, and discussed at length the theocratic dogma that is more a prison than a platform for us. You have been patient and attentive and humored my as much as I have humored you. What can you really believe? Should I have medicated myself to feel normal, and silenced the voices that are as clear to me as my own voice?”
He glanced over at Pam, who was rapt with attention, and Missy, who stood behind her equally transfixed.
“For all you know, I’m schizophrenic. Am I?”.
He paused, giving everyone time to make a decision. He smiled.
“The universe is an intelligence test.”
There was another pause, and then he continued.
“I have mentioned the concept of angels and demons to you, and read Vedic and Sumerian scripture. All you good little girls and boys who went to Sunday school and read your testaments have had fun trying to connect the dots with the hints I have given you. I have translated Hebrew texts and debated clerics and scholars across the spectrum, but what I’m sharing with you is nothing that I have studied, but experienced.
When I was young, I was awaked to a world, a realm of possibility that I did not ever believe could exist. If you stand in the sun and look over your shoulder, you’ll see your negative, your shadow. But imagine looking at yourself from the reverse, as the shadow, the opposite. Even in the 10-dimensional space of existence, there is something…more.”
He reached over to the table to pick up a ribbon of paper, which he gave a gentle twist and shaped into a möbius strip.
“I acknowledge the privilege of being alive in a human body at this moment, endowed with senses, memories, emotions, thoughts, and the space of mind in its wisdom aspect. We are unbroken like this.”
”Yes,” Ivy whispered.
“The concept of a soul is easy to understand, but as it is both intangible yet inherently part of your being, so are the Host. To be a vessel is both a privilege and sacrifice. At times, you feel fusion instead of union, but there is also a disconnect where a part of you is missing, and that void is as real as any piece of you that you can touch.”
Lester was looking out the window, watching the gales bend the trees in the twilight. The last amber and indigo hues were being swallowed by night, but also by a dense body of bloated grey clouds. The storm system should have cleared out for the weekend, but the gusts must have pushed them inland again, he thought.
“We know things in abstracts and binary terms. There are concepts like good, and evil, and we determine this from our perspective. But you have to consider all the angles before you can truly have a proper view. I speak to you the name Ru, one of three, and the three are of 17. They are seven and seven and three in-between, the observers…the judges. While the farthest reaches of time and space are in the chaotic throws of battle, we are relatively unscathed, but for how long is unclear. The Mayans dated it in 2012, and other cultures have their listings, but don’t think it’s going to be marked on a calendar when the barrier is fully breached. That day time will stop.”
Harry asked, “Do you think that he believes this?”
Lester nodded. “I really do. I just wish he’d tie it into something…discordianism, Elder Gods, the law of fives, the 23 principle – this is just a lot of cognitive dissonance.”
An incredible rumble cut through the air as the clouds collided. Even in the reinforced acoustics of the studio the thunder was evident. Brother Dave glanced upward as though his words had been heard by disapproving skies.
“A circle is the reflection of eternity. It has no beginning and it has no end - and if you put several circles over each other, then you get a spiral.”
Another monster rumble broke, this one even louder and shaking the building. Brother Dave closed his eyes and bowed his head down. Ivy watched attentively waiting for his next words, but they never came. The loudest roar yet jarred the building, and suddenly a forked bolt of purple and white lightening punched through the roof striking the infinity wall in the corner of the room. The wind swept through the gash in the roof and howled like an angry, wounded beast. Another luminous bolt split the roof further, bringing a sheet of rain through behind it. The electrical blast jumped around the room, reflecting off walls and diving through equipment, which shorted and caused a cascade of sparks. The thunder clapped again, and there was a moment of stillness. Then, a loud creak followed by a high pitched whine was heard, and the rest of the roof bent and fell into the studio. Pam ducked into the cubicle-like nest for shelter, but Missy was hardly as agile. A ceiling beam slammed into her head with such force that it nearly knocked it from her body. It was held on only by her spine, which had anchored it to the body as much as it slowed the velocity of the head from being plucked like a flower and stem.
The shorted equipment gave it’s last glowing burst of spark before faltering and plunging the studio into darkness. Harry and Lester ran though the hallway and in to the studio. They pushed through the collapsed roof and wreckage to Dave, who sported a nasty bruise on his forehead, and his clothes where tattered.
“It’s gone,” he whispered. “I can’t feel it anymore…”
Gone too was Ivy, disappeared into the rainy night and untouched by the crumbling building, guided by the Host.
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1 comment:
I'm a killer. Unrepentant too.
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