A woman against a wall, her face exploding in a shower of bone and gore, gunsmoke drifting into view. The blond man, the man with different coloured eyes, sitting alone with a map. With a book. A history of the future.
Chapter 25
'History is the shock wave of eschatology'
- Terence McKenna
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Pokaran, Rajasthani Desert, India
Drop down over the desert, drift across the sand, the wind blowing galaxy-shaped sand swirls as you pass. A quizzical-looking camel meanders by, farting and spitting as he goes. Patches of green. A dessicated tree. A dung beetle pushes a ball of camel crap ahead of him, toiling, straining at the effort. A foot comes down from above, stops, momentarily looms over the bettle, steps over him and keeps walking.
A man, dark brown skin, brown eyes, two days stubble. White t-shirt, brown shorts and crushed, flat sandals. Holding a red and yellow pennant, he marches across the sand, the cloth flapping in the early morning breeze behind him. Following him comes a woman, a violently purple dress wrapping her body. Her face shimmers under a wave of silver chains, linking from her right ear to a piercing on her nose. She carries another pennant, snapping in the wind.
Ten metres behind them come two children, giddy, giggling, trying to march in time, their shorter legs struggling to keep up. Further back we look and see more coming, down over the dunes, flags flying a riot of colours, strips of a rainbow emerging from the bleached sepia sands. More and more of them. Dozens, hundreds coming from all directions, swarming down towards the highway. Reaching the road, the groups get larger. From hundreds of kilometeres away they have come, from towns and villages they have walked, day after day, night after night. Dodging the cattle and kamikaze motorbike drivers, avoiding the thuddering trucks, the hay carriers packed to the point of looking like an exploding loaf of bread travelling at 60 miles an hour, careering buses with blasting horns and the seemingly never-ending army of wild dogs who swarm around the procession looking for a scrap of sustenance.
Trudging and drudging, marching and laughing they come in their thousands. Towards the village they go, the rising sun pushing at their backs, closer now, the smiles growing broader, the laughs louder. Hindu, Sikh, Muslim in a sea of swirling colours. And, deep in the midsts of the throng, a woman appears. At first, no-one notices her arrive. Black hair. Blue dress. Pale skin. A scar on her face.
She drinks from a water bottle, breathes deeply. Men stare. But not for long. A short look from her is enough to make them glance elsewhere. She looks around, taking in the scence. Stretches her back. She spots a circular thatch house at the edge of the village. Glancing down at a pocketwatch, she nods to herself, satisfied that she's found the place she is looking for. Nearby, a group of three small Rajasthani girls stare at her and laugh. She looks at them, their giggles falling silent. She smiles at them. There's a moment's indecision where they look at each other. Eventually, the smallest girl smiles back. A pair of huge brown eyes, glittering in a round brown face fix on her. Amused, the woman takes her bag down from her shoulders and produces a large peach. She holds it out in her hand. Two of the girls look at each other, unsure of themselves. The third, the smallest girl with the big eyes and smile moves closer.
'Namaste' the woman says, stretching her hand out towards the girl.
'Namaste' comes the reply in a sing-song voice. The girl takes the peach, another smile lighting her face up as she scurries back to her companions.
The woman walks on, shouldering her bag, moving to the entrance of the small circular house. She enters.
Giving her eyes a few moments to adjust, she sees the old man sitting on his heels. He laughs a little, nodding his head. He smiles at her. She smiles back.
'Namaste' he says, a look of genuine relief overcoming him. He gestures for her to sit down.
'Namaste' she says.
He reaches behind him, lifts an old leather suitcase and sets it down. With reverential care, he opens the case and removes a box. Producing a small key from within his robes, he sets about unlocking the box. He holds up a sheaf of papers held together with strings.
'Thankyou' she says with a bow of the head.
'Chai?' he asks, pouring a small cup of liquid.
She takes the cup and sniffs at it. A look of quizzical disbelief comes over her face.
'Chai?' she asks him.
The man erupts into laughter. She laughs back.
'Chai' he says.
She nods, enjoying the joke. She takes a deep breath, thinking, evaluating. She looks at him again.
'Okay then' she says, necking it in one gulp.
He smiles again.
The man moves across the space, moving cushions to a position behind her.
'Please' he says, indicating with a hand that she should make herself comfortable. 'Safe' he says with another gesture of the hand, indicating the camp around them.
She nods again, feeling the first effects of the brew beginning to whisper in her blood. Slowly, taking her time to control the coming nausea, she lies herself down. The man drapes a soft linen sheet over her.
'Thankyou' she says.
He nods his head and smiles again, re-taking his seat.
'Stay' he says, pointing a finger at his chest.
'Please' she says.
He nods. Closes his eyes. Tilts his head backwards and takes a deep breath. Breathes out. Breathes in. She breathes in with him. In. Out. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. In. Out. Slowly, slowly, the vertabrae of the spine opening. He raises a hand on the end of a breath, and starts: panting. Panting furiously. In, out, in, out. She matches his breathing, her chest heaving under the linen. And stop. Slowly, in, out, in, out. In through the nose, out through the mouth. It starts - the electric tingling in the chest, the rib-cage opening. In and out, in and out. Synapses fire as the drug starts to take hold. In and out and then back again. Panting, pushing, pushing the breathing as hard as he can. She keeps pace, pushing with him, the fire starting to burn up from inside herself. She can feel it coming now, the rush in the blood, the white heat starting between her legs, radiating out from her. And back to slow. Deep breathing, slow breathing. In and out. In and out. Slowly, slowly. Twenty seconds a time, he brings her up and back down. Up and down. One final push. Breathe, breathe, push, push and then it happens: as the tingling in the muscles reaches fever-pitch, colours and swirls slosh around inside her eyes. She tries to concentrate on the spot between her eyes - the centre of her head. Struggling to control it now, hotter and hotter, faster and faster the swirls come. One sticks. A small pin-point of light in her innervision. It spins, reflects a light she can't see. And explodes. Into the future.
A fractal shatters open in front of her, a thousand images at once moving at the speed of thought and frozen in time at the same instant. Swarming up at her, she fights for control of the stream - each one is a story, an instance, a person, a history. She knows she only need nudge her attention towards one to access it, to open it like a book, to dive into the fabric of the moment. She scans, scans, down deeper into the fractal which shimmers open, each piece tethered to the next, to every other with invisible threads. She holds, an instant catching her attention. An army in bible-black uniform. A child's face behind a wire-mesh fence. A woman running for a border, panting up a hill, a bullet taking half her head off as she collpases to the ground in a broken heap. And another. A smiling man, surrounded by crowds of onlookers. The same man speaking, ranting in a boardroom. Blustering and convincing, impassioned words in important rooms with haggard expectant faces hanging on his every word. Mr. White, beside him, grinning so hard, it almost tears his face. Michael, alone and wounded, hunted. Tied to a chair, his head hanging, a trickle of blood dripping to the floor. She sees a child. Roma. Rajasthani genes, the brown eyes. The man again. Blond hair, a blue eye and a green eye. The same man, now a small boy; a child pulling insects apart in quiet study whilst the sound of a woman's crying drifts from another room. A pile of rubble. The ribcage of a shattered building, a floor collapsing in a cloud of dust and groaning girders. Archaeologists of the future, digging through layers of dirt, a foot sticking out from a dirt pile, the trowel carefully moving the earth away from the bones. The dessicated body of a woman cradling her dead child, empty eye-sockets. Michael, running. Blood on his hands, crawling. A hand grabbing him under the shoulder and hauling him up. Two spirals connecting and exploding. A woman against a wall, her face exploding in a shower of bone and gore, gunsmoke drifting into view. The blond man, the man with different coloured eyes, sitting alone with a map. With a book. A history of the future.
'Oh God no' she screams. 'Oh Jesus Fucking Christ no' she screams, her head pushing at the arms of the old man who is now holding her, making soothing sounds, trying to get water to her mouth.
'Oh God no. Not again. Oh God no'.
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