Peter - Chapter 13
Tiberius felt the cold wind that swept across Salisbury plane and was glad he wore the shorts his mother had given him beneath his metallic skirt. This country was a muddy cold island. Civilised mainland Europe had cut it adrift, a sensible choice. Stationed here last summer had appeared, initially, not too bad, considering the reports he'd heard from soldiers who had been stationed here before. It was a hand no one relished. As the emperor allocated who was leading which campaign of occupation he'd heard the sniggering. Branicus was clearly in favour of Rome. Again he was sent to the lands from where the emperors new religion had emerged. The change over, to which Tiberius was duty bound, was no difficulty. He'd not seen much evidence of the old gods anyway so expected very little now there was just one. Anyway, as a soldier such thoughts were out of his realm. To serve Rome. To return with tales of barbarian subjugation. To lead his men to victory over the armies of new domains. To conquer. To civilise. To die in battle leaving the stories of his achievements. That was a soldiers life. But this, here, in a boggy sludge of a country, with no decent warriors to fight, all his hopes, his noble dreams had been rendered absurd. There were odd lunatics who could kill a dozen of his men before being felled. Sometimes groups of twenty or thirty would cause massive damage. But they had no discipline. However strong and fearless they were, any Roman legion could send in wave after wave, incurring losses, but always the end was certain.
This climate would make any man depressed. Dissolution spread through his men. To live in this world of cold of rain of mud and fog, wine, and plenty of it, was essential. His mission directive had been to exterminate all pagan remnants, to brand Christianity on the land. An indelible marking. The empire wasn't what it had been. Word was his may be the final decade of occupation. The gains returned being of such rubbish it had become barely worth the expense invested in its occupation. But nights like this broke up the boredom. It helped to keep the men's spirits up.
Virtually all the natives now pledged Roman allegiance. Living standards had risen dramatically under Roman occupation. Young lads now saw Roman ways as the future. Their dads ways embarrassed them. The young slappers too spent more time trying to capture a Roman soldiers heart than breeding with their own. Others just liked the money and took as many on as they could. There were resistant enclaves. An underground movement that continued the Druidic ways. But most Druids had now been killed or had fled to the dirty, cold extreme outer places. Those who didn't actively court Roman approval by grassing up any remnants of the old beliefs could usually be tortured in to compliance. They'd been after the last two Druids of respect for quite a while now. Jack Black was known to be a nasty fucker. Few natives gave descriptions that matched. His appearance seemed to differ in every tale he heard of his activities. Four of his boys had spent a night drinking with a clown with painted face and bald head. Plying them with drink he'd performed comical enactments all evening. The mead had some sleeping herb in its fermentation. Woken that morning he'd followed his men to find all four. Their heads were the centre of a daisy pattern, pinned to the earth with sharpened oak stakes, driven through their mouths deep in to the ground. All limbs Black had skewered in similar fashion. Their eyes removed. A horror to witness and an insult too far. Telling his men to clear this up, bury the dead, he stomped back to his tent. It was his duty to record any such crimes so sitting at his desk he opened the small parchment chest. As he unrolled the sheet preparing to write, eight eyes, fixed with hawthorn pins looked back at him.
There were more stories. This time with long white beard, Black had seated three of his men around a canvas tent, all backed to the fabric wall. All looked forward to the native dancer, a slender girl of great beauty would perform. Indeed, the men were entranced. Outside their skulls must have presented three raised domes. Black drove an iron spike through each mans skull, one swift hammer blow driving them home in such quiet, the third was dead before any was aware.
Some forty of his men had been lost but Jack Black had not been caught. Good news came in the form of a messenger this morning. Titus Brock, a Druid whom Black was known to be aligned with, had been captured just today. A search party sent to gather suitable troublesome types that were stirring up anti Roman rebels north of Tiberius encampment. Avebury, much like this heap of rubble, attracted such types. The natives had largely come over to the new ways though these last few men of the old beliefs, still held a superstitious hold on some. By and large, this was yesterday's problem. Recent executions had proved to the natives that Druids had no powers. They were merely men who by trickery and deception, conjuring tricks and the like, had found an easy life. Supported by gifts their villages had sustained this hold on native minds by secrecy. He'd enjoy showing Druid bodies were the same meat as others.
What an awful night for it all. As the evening came, rain had begun. Light at first but now a steady downpour. Ordering his men to restock the braziers with more wood. Their heat soon increased, they warmed the centre area of the stone circle, lit up the area which was kept clear by his soldiers, pushing back the overly keen, a stage to perform the trial. If it was only a trial of run of the mill criminals he'd have postponed, but so many were now gathered around Stonehenge, he feared without sport the locals may riot. Though his men numbered fifty once the Avebury gang arrived, they were outnumbered ten to one, maybe more, he had no concern over their personal safety. Half were women and children. The local men weren't trained soldiers. But putting down a riot would mean killing many. Bad for publicity. Their occupation was dependent on support. Their purpose was to civilise. Bring these heathens under the wing of the empire.
Not so much as a roof! Tiberius cursed this basic architecture. If only he could show what could be achieved by man through division of skill. A soldier became perfected by applying himself solely to military training. Farmers could fine tune their talents. Architects focus on imagining structure, drawing out plans. Slave workers, separated in to specialities could find foremen, stone workers and labourers, working through command chains, achieve the wonders built back in Rome. Looking at his scarred hands he saw natures law. Gods way. Fingers of differing strengths, one thumb to command. These people were all the same finger. Like a singular mind. Roman society allowed the individual to find pride in their unique role.
Jack had felt Brock in his mind for some time now. A tickle of thought at first, but growing over this last hour till something of a telepathic dialogue had played between the two. As the crowd had parted for the new arrivals. Sorry looking creatures, screaming and crying. Offering up names of Druids. Acting out shameful performances to focus the mob fury onto Titus. Brock himself looked unperturbed. His journey into the future, enabled by the Peruvian shamans, had shown that this was not his day to return to the earth. Black and Brock continued their conversation careful not to catch eyes. Both knew where each other was and they had a few ideas to test the Romans religious faith. Both had been in worse positions. Jack was now fully in line with the psylocibin forces that channelled through him.
Tiberius had planned to try the criminals first, saving the Druid for the final act. Such theatre techniques had become a fine art at the arenas back home. Something had enlivened tonight's crowd, though. Bright summer trials drew similar crowds, but such a large and passionate mob was rare this time of year. He took a drink from his cup. Thank god they'd brought wine, the local hop and barley brews didn't agree with him. Silencing the crowd as he stood, it was time he took charge of proceedings. His right hand man stepped through the crowd that had opened a path for the returning posse. The warmth of welcome filled him as they clasped wrists, a bump of chests and brief embrace clarified the two soldiers bond. Salutes from the soldiers were acknowledged by a nod of his head. All looked proud in being the men to capture Titus Brock. Lesser outlaws delivered slender rewards but the bonus for a Druid, a higher Drulord like Brock, ensured they'd receive ample coin.
Grantus, his lieutenant had been with Tiberius on all of his major campaigns. His loyalty and bravery, beyond military duty had found them brothers. In company, both studiously maintained appropriate interaction relative to rank, but in private, Tiberius treated Grantus as his equal. Through Gaul they'd stood together developing warrior skill. Military generalship, battle craft could be explained but only by confronting the enemy could a soldier know himself. Many were the valiant hero in their tavern stories, warriors in wine, secure in safe company. Grantus was quiet in drink, leaving others to tell of his war stories. On Bavarian soil their unity was forged. Sent to quash a Gallic uprising, with poor intelligence and inadequate numbers, Tiberius found Gaul and Pict alliance had formed a formidable foe. Together, dressed in local rags they'd led a scouting expedition. In tree cover from a high ridge they'd studied the encampment. Below their vantage point the land dropped to a flat plane, the ridge a horseshoe of cliff faces topped with thick woodland. Two days and nights learning the routine and habits. The routes and exits, the daily reconnaissance troups schedule, supply delivery patterns.
Tiberius and Grantus agreed, with such disparity of numbers only one plan made sense. The Romans would divide into three groups. Under cover of night, one group would spread their men in line along the ridge. Descending to form a semi circle positioned at the cliffs base. The second would form three shielded rectangular blocks, closing the horseshoes opening, the access route of the encampment. Third would move in at dawn as the camp still slept. Clearly most of these would find glory in martyrdom. Their job to move in stealth with a singular purpose of getting to the bigger tented central zone where the leaders slept. Kill as many as they could until the camp realised there was something wrong. Once the barbarians knew they were under attack, the Romans would do their best to escape. Many would die fighting to get out, their objective to appear uncoordinated and chaotic in withdrawal. Running to draw the Gallic Picts in reflective disorganised rage, dismissive of the small bunch as an attack unknowing of the encampments size. A retreat in shock at the magnitude of the Roman misreading of the situation. As the enemy's response assembled into an arrowhead toward the retreat, the soldiers at the cliff bottom would move in from the rear. Following paths like wheel spokes toward the hub where they would regroup to finish off the damaged leaders zone. Once the central body were dead, the unit would move as one to the rear of the enemy's counterattack. Thus sandwiching them. With gods will, they would now work from both sides destroying the foe. From here, the leaderless stragglers could be left. The Roman systematic rolling retreat ensured no more would die. These uprisings invariably had a leadership council, a core group of professional soldiers forming no more than a quarter of the army, the others were farmers, masons, carpenters, leaving their trades to help the cause. Tiberius and Grantus plan aimed to destroy the leadership leaving the rest to return home.
Both men knew one must lead the sacrificial stab. Grantus dare not trust anyone but himself. Both knew better plans had failed. Both cursed the emperor for risking their lives in committing so few men to such a crucial campaign. Explaining to the men under his command, the gods that had protected all Roman soldiers were no more, that this new God was to be asked for support. This had undermined his authority. Weakened the army. Now this. Roman soldiers could only return in victory. All would die if a moments hesitance in fear or confusion crossed the mind of the man leading the dart of incision. Tiberius had all watch points mapped in his memory, Grantus had memorised the encampments central zone. There would be no time to think, only by moving to the pattern of tent arrangement, stored in his mind, without question, could the chieftains tents be located, their occupants dispatched. Both friends embraced, knowing they may not see each other again. Grantus selected only men of proven fighting skills and fearless heart. A dozen, any more could become clumsy. All may be lost in the plans execution, and they were short handed already.
As dawn approached the Romans were in position. Tiberius organised the surgical removal of the night watch. Once confirmation was reported, Grantus, without prayer nor hesitation, led his elite squad in swift, silent accuracy. Three isolated men, early risers or woken with full bladders, had no time to act as their throats were opened, bodies stuffed quickly in shadow.
Reaching their leadership central tent area, Grantus, pointed in silence, pairing the men, allocating each their target. Six tents were hit in a synchronous moment. Most found two or three sleeping figures, despatching them efficiently. A second wave should cause sufficient damage and alarm, each pair took another tent. Grantus slit three throats, two more died by the Roman at his side. But the cries from others tents as this second wave unfolded less smoothly. Shouting and screams. Sounds of sword on sword. Fighting was breaking out in tents all around. Leaving the dead behind, Grantus ran out into the open, shouting his order for all to retreat. They'd known from the start this was the point from which it was each for himself. Confused faces poked from tents as the alarm was raised. He could not tell whether twelve were following or less, but he led their screaming exit, hacking and slaying, lost in a murderous frenzy, his group now a singular animal of hell, killing a path of escape. How many men he slaughtered in this suicidal sprint, he had not a clue. In the red haze of battle frenzy they cut a passage through waking warriors, still sleep befuddles, few in comparable fury. He saw some of his chosen fall but there could be no loss of focus to try help the already lost. Running from the heathen temporary town, he saw they were now just six. Fifty feet behind the enemy were a seething animal mob hungry to kill this impudence. Turning once to scream back at his pursuers, "Come on then, you dirty fucking scum! Come on!"
And this they did. Plucking off two more of his men. Falling to the mass of boot, club and steel. Torn to shreds in seconds. Two made it at Grantus side to the Roman tight formation, grabbed into the shielded block as the battle exploded. The fighting was fierce and their formation began to rupture at the sheer anarchic velocity of Gallic mob blood frenzy. Tiberius caught Grantus, raising him from the deck. A wall of dead and wounded were crushed underfoot. The shouted order saw the Roman line step back in unison. But odd cracks began as the least disciplined forgot training. Maintenance of self control was key to Roman war craft. Any soldier abandoning their composure to fury fell first, worse, they brought danger to the rest as the chink left was the opening for the enemies crazed assault. Where the fuck were the rear guard? Tiberius knew a minute longer and their formation would dissolve, becoming a mass of individuals just like the opposition. Once they broke rank, numerical odds left a singular conclusion.
His heart felt a moment of calm silence. The face of his father, his mother, his dear wife, dead now ten years. Theology was not his specialism. Maybe all gods were one. His life had been dutiful. This was the end. Then a cry of the home tongue returned him to the moment. In unison, many men had yelled together. They'd fucking done it! Back in to motion he shouted honour into his men. For Rome. For one. Pacing along the front line, pulling out the broken, shoving replacements sealing the line. Infusing the flagging with spirit and pride.
The massed ranks of barbarians now losing direction looked behind to see what was happening. Each turned head became an opening for Roman swords. Without leadership or focus every man had only his own direction. The chaos of individual madmen were simple to overcome as the three Roman battalions worked in unison with the tight formation now assembled at the other side of the battlefield. Fear for personal safety spread through the enemy with the leadership nowhere to be seen. Those of mercenary motives saw the paymasters gone and looked for escape. Tiberius took no emotional thrill in this slaughter. Professional pride in neat conclusion was enough. Shouting a declaration of amnesty for any now opting to leave the battle, saw the remnants flee. Systematically killing any wounded enemy, recovering their own casualties. The battle was over. The uprising snuffed out. The centurions gathered their soldiers into linear formation. Losses tallied to expectations. Job done.
Once back in Rome the campaigns success validated the emperors delegation of manpower. In military circles, Tiberius and Grantus became men of legend. But this saw little reflection in their treatment. Tiberius had angry words with the emperor. His reward, this muddy island.
These memories, standing together again with Grantus brought Tiberius into a better mood. After these official duties they would retire together, drink into the night. Brothers.
The soldiers looked drunk. Slapping the captives, mocking them, one using a club caught his eye. Calmly ordering the lad to desist. It always angered Tiberius. These were common criminals not terrorists, resistance fighters. There must be a sliding scale of punishments. If you tortured a thief what was left to use as a deterrent for higher crimes? These boys barely deserves to be called soldiers. Few had been on campaigns like him and Grantus. In front of a native mob there was no way he would discipline them as he must. But in private, he would have to clarify a few issues. How the hell had he become a provincial governor? A career like his warranted military placement. Sadly there seemed few places able to summon up any real challenge. Still, duty and all that.
Each of those on trial were brought before him by the men Grantus had arrived with. His position warranted he sit in judgement. Grantus stood to one side, reading out the charge sheet. Four brutish soldiers dispensing punishment. A cattle thief first. Pleading to the crowd he looked pitiful. Tiberius job fulfilled several purposes. The locals must feel the occupation was of collusion. Roman modernity, here to help the betterment of civilisation. Thus his sentencing must please the people. Certainly on these minor crimes. But the Druid. That was more political. He must be humiliated. Revealed as a charlatan. The superstitious influence his kind still held over the people must be ruthlessly driven out. Druidic trickery must be revealed as trickery, their powers shown fake. The Christian God shown to be the truth. There was theatrical artistry to a trial. Tiberius would play the crowd. Rising its crescendo, gathering the mob together in solidarity. Sick puppets, they were.
The cattle thieves hands brought collective shrieks from the mob as each sword blow cut through his wrist. As the man fainted, the soldier through his hand to the cheering mass as they fought, like starving dogs hungry for meat, to win this gruesome trophy.
The bonded over the gang raping of a whore who, reputedly was a persistent clipper. Taking coin before disappearing. Once underway, this spectacle continued, occupying much of the male spectators whilst the trials continued concurrently. Two murderers, one domestic the other some random act of violent robbery, saw much interplay with the crowd. He enjoyed to ask their opinion, there involvement a validation of the collaboration. Justice dispensed in accord to the offence. Both would obviously be executed, it was method and prior indignities that were the discussion. Most were in accord but he enjoyed bringing in the extreme poles of opinion. Letting a competitive division develop as passions erupted in to minor crowd skirmishes. But all of this was the support act. A building up of the cruelty of the natives. Readying for them to compete for Roman approval in vocal displays of Christian allegiance. How brave they were in a mob, with Romans to do the dirty work. Whatever his personal beliefs, the Druid Brock stood out to him as by some measure the the man of dignity. Tiberius had been quietly studying the strange chap between the goings on. He barely looked worried. Focused, yes, but in self possession. All around, his people abandoned any self respect, eager to be on the winning side. Grantus presence, maybe that, but he recalled that moment when they fought the Gallic Pict uprising. The moment when he saw his time had come. That calm he had experienced. Knowing his life was in the hands of, what? The gods? Fate? Titus Brock reminded him of himself. Such was life's poverty of meaning. His duty now, to rulers he no longer respected, in what he must now do to a man that if life had been different, may have been a brother. Brock too, must be watching his countrymen in such degradation. There was no god. Not if this could be.
Tiberius called Titus Brock before him. The soldiers that tried steer him were flicked off in a dismissive shrug. Chest proud, head held high, Brock folded his arms and locked eyes with the Roman leader.
Moving to the front, Jack Black was now deep in Liberty caps transcendence. The dimension they were in was blending into another as fractal light patterns shifted and coalesced in mandalas that illuminated the points where the membrane between the two dimensions was thin. He felt a warmth stretch out to his freind.
Grantus: "This man is Titus Brock. A well known and high ranked priest of the Druid religion. A close associate of the serial murderer Jack Black. The charges against him are so numerous it would waste everyone's time where I to list them all. So I offer a few examples to clarify the individuals nature. He is known to openly insult the one true Christian God, the new religion of the Roman Empire. He is known to conspire with dark forces, to commune with spirits. All such practice is now regarded as alliance to Satan. His life has been spent in support of the devil. If the court requires, I can go further."
Tiberius: "That sounds crime enough for any man. Clearly, he has trusted in the Devils greater powers. No doubt, his spirits, demons, who knows? Satan himself will surely come to save him. Let us hear his defence. Before his powers save him from gods agents."
Brock: "You seem a knowledgeable man. Somewhat confused regarding my nature. But this God of yours certainly sounds great. Before you put me to death, I'm sure everybody here would enjoy seeing his majesty. When faced with such wonder, i feel certain that I will convert, before you kill me."
Tiberius: "Our God is no trifle. It is you and yours on trial. Show yours and, if they appear, I will gladly reveal ours."
A man now leaned from the crowd, very keen to see the Druid put to test.
Black: "I have met this fellow. The accusations are true. Not two nights back, he came past my house. He said Tiberius was a soft cock weazle. Further, he said Romans can't hold their drink. He named Grantus and Tiberius as poor drinkers. Indeed, I was ashamed to hear his words. All gathered here know, the Romans can drink Druids under the table. Their wine makes our ale look like weak piss. But he insisted. He called both Romans, respected by all, a pair of knob jockies. His pride has brought shame on us all."
Tiberius: "Is this so? Bit of a drinker, are you then? We could have some fun before he shows us his scary ghosts."
Brock: "The man lies! I never claimed such a trifle. I said Tiberius and Grantus were far worse than that. Not only could I drink double of both men. Furthermore, they feared any competition of drink, knowing I would shame them. So confident, in fact, that I would gamble anything on it. I must correct the terminology this man uses. I called them arsepipe tunnellers. Two Italian wankboxes."
By now the crowd were caught up in hysterical laughter. Tiberius couldn't help but smile at this comedic insult. Clearly he hoped to anger his captors into escaping torture and a swift execution. But, he remembered Grantus had a flask of distilled wine, plundered from French villages. Opting to call his bluff, he raised his hands. Bringing the blood thirsty mob to quiet composure.
Tiberius: "Big drinker, eh? How humble to be in the presence of a booze master."
Grantus was now laughing. This would be an enjoyable diversion. Once returned to his place in drink, he'd be exposed as a spiritual fraud, then killed. Tiberius winked to his freind who slipped away then returned with the potent spirit.
The excited man shouted again. "In his bag, he has the ale he claims trumps the finest of Italian wines!"
This was just absurd. Even the nationalists recognised they had nothing to compare. Waving him forth, Tiberius opened Brocks bag and lifted out the flask within. The crowd were in hysterics as Tiberius, opened the cap, took a sniff, then gave a theatrical choke. He could smell this brew was foul, but his nose was confident the alcoholic content was minimal.
Tiberius: "Okay. Let it not be said Romans shy from a competition. Me, Grantus and all our soldiers here, we will all down a pint of this foul beverage. But, Mr Druid must drink a pint of ours. In respect of our grace in accepting the Druids challenge, we ask he humbly accepts our test of his magic."
The Romans knew they had the Druid. The French spirit was so potent, a pint could lay down three men. A display was made in lining out the beakers. Tiberius poured out the Druids crap as Grantus poured the pint for Brock.
The crowd were hypnotised in excitement. The Romans chuckled to each other in quiet confidence. Titus Brock, though, to all people watching, with the exception of Jack Black, took on the appearance of a trickster out tricked. He became shifty, twitching nervously, looking all around in animal fear. He had been caught out. Tiberius caught his eyes and knew Brock had been bluffing.
Tiberius: "Ready men, Druid big drinking hero? Down in one!"
Titus instantly knew this was strong spirits. He would be intoxicated. The Romans downed the Peruvian brew in one, all pulling faces of disgust. After a minute, they relaxed. A tiny sensation but nothing to scare them. Brock, however, was stumbling about. Reaching out for support from any point of fixture. The world span, but it was superficial.
Jack smiled as his freind submitted to the Romans mockery. Stood around him in a circle, pushing his drunk body from one to another. After falling, they'd kick him. Stand, mighty drinker.
Ten minutes passed before Tiberius decided to bring this to a close. Brock looked a mess. A flickering sound seemed to be growing in volume. Looking around he saw nothing.
Tiberius: "So! Maybe Mr Brock over estimated himself. Still, drink is nothing. Surely his spirits will beat our God."
Grantus: "Bring him. His. His......"
The Roman looked perplexed. Tiberius could see something in him he'd not noticed before. An oddness he'd never been aware of. His men also seemed strange. His eyes moved onto the Druid. Titus Brock was now steady. More than that, he was utterly self composed. His feet set apart. Arms crossed, shoulders back, eyes fixed on his. He tried to hold his stare, but like dark pits he felt the Druids vision, so strong, unblinking, entering his mind.
Around him the soldiers reached out, touching things only visible to them. Brock now had grown, twice their size. Tiberius looked up to him but couldn't hold his stare. Arms crossed, he looked upon them with such disdain, such disgust, like they were some cock roaches he'd just discovered in his pantry.
Stumbling to the ground, trying to hide behind his seat, whilst the Druids eyes scoured their souls, burning their minds. Grantus was scurrying his way, pleading to this god like power. The crowd had begun to back away, unsure of what was taking place. First one decided to flee. Then others. Soon all the natives were running for their lives, tripping over each other, desperate to escape.
Stonehenge now a circle surrounding the Giants feet. The outline of Brocks figure contained darkness, like the clearest moonless night, stars and comets of all colours, flared from pinpoints, glowing till exploding in cascades of shooting lights. Around him the space he occupied began shifting, surging, tendrils of rootlike growth, span out in vast speed, intertwining in cords that entered the earth.
This creature unfolded his arms, holding out his palms, each had a central glow that burned in astral anger. Twisting cables, churning bolts of lightening slithered out like electricity snakes, seeking out all the Romans. These skewered into all orifices as Titus Brock now spoke.
Brock: "Show me your God!"
Tiberius was no longer able to keep his bodily functions in check. Vomit spewed from his mouth, urine ran down his leg and shit spat gushes of liquid from his arse. Clawing the soil in desperation to try burrow any escape. Grantus bit his ear, tearing it free, then tried to eat himself into Tiberius stomach.
But there was no where to run. His soldiers entered an orgy of self mutilation, anything to destroy their being, killing themselves in vicious self hatred. Again, that voice, echoing across space, down through history, an earthquake shattering reality.
Brock: "Show me you God!"
The figure now towered skywards, the roots and tendrils rupturing the land, a jungle of Brock from where there was no exit. The dark black gaze of unforgiveness saw the two brothers, huddled in each other's arms, like children.
Two hands reached from the heavens holding one Roman in each Palm. Lifting them close to study. A curious pity examined them for a few moments till, bored and unimpressed, Brock crushed both the Romans skulls effortlessly with his thumbs. Then cast them aside, like broken dolls. Brock bothered not look back at the Roman corpse heap.
Instead he embraced Jack Black. Salisbury plain was very quiet. The rain had blown over and just at the horizon the glow of the rising moon. A pleasant night, all told. They set off walking, west. North west. Neither spoke for a mile or so, then Titus remembered. Felt his bag.
Brock: "All ok Jack?"
Black: "Yeah mate. Not much to tell. Looks like we'll be travelling together after all."
Brock: "Suits me. I've got to tell you about these two guys from Peru I met. Sounds blokes. Still got some of their special brew left."
Black: "Another night maybe."
Brock: "Yep, sound."
And the two Druids began their journey towards the Welsh borders. Clun sounded a nice place. Give that a try.
Sent from my iPad
Wednesday 27 January 2016
Tuesday 26 January 2016
Peter - Chapter 12. Bunsen Burner
Peter - Chapter 12. Bunsen Burner
Didn't it sadden him? Of course it bloody did. Lady Harrington had hit a nerve. Of prime concern was who had squeeled? Those who bought tickets also signed contracts. Sworn to secrecy. Any of loose lip should know, if and when word got back, death would follow. His organisation had agents of loyalty to the Noah project, in all circles. Major governments. Royal families. Aristocratic networks. Business collectives. Davos. And far darker global elites. Anyone could be found and terminated. His phone had an app able to set such a process in motion.
Not only sadden him but the projects success depended on those included talking about it only to other passengers. A few generations back these problems would never have happened. A Lord or Duke no more chose his birth than a peasant of the field. God chose the ruling class. And their common loyalty was beyond question. Man could not hope to understand the Lord Gods mysterious ways. Of course those born into poverty must feel some jealousy along with their admiration for their betters. But they only had themselves to blame. To regard gods scheme unfair was of such arrogance. No man could know the mind of God. His ancestors humbly accepted the position God had placed upon them. And with good grace, lesser folk accepted his just selection.
His generation shared this sense of entitlement, indeed, Rupert Bunsen was a believer. God helped the good. These last few decades had seen great changes. Lady Harrington still had her title, the farm house and it's dozen workers cottages, the London house, the Paris town house too. But Harrington Hall and much of her family's estate had to be sold. Her father struggled with the family business. Enjoyed the casino, the horses, well respected for his whoring too. On inheriting the place she discovered the severity of his debts. It took a hefty chunk out of the accounts to pay off. What irritated her beyond measure were those of simple needs. The lower ranks could never imagine the burden of a stately home, they could never endure such suffering, the maintenance costs, staff wages, animal feed. The stable hands alone cost over a thousand a month. But she was of sterner stuff. The twelve million it sold for doubled her funds. An artist. A northerner had bought it. But good breeding saw her head held high. She still got invites to the parties of her class. Over champers on the lawn at Ruperts last summer they'd discussed changing times. Rupert had begun with less than her but invested well. It was the fault of that damned Darwin fellow. Survival of the fittest. The gates were ajar. Broadly speaking the same families ruled the roost. But some had slipped. Lesser folk replacing them. Russian oligarchs, Arabian oil sheiks. Rupert assured her these gate crashers weren't loved. Uncouth, embarrassing purchases, no conception of understatement. Inept in correct cutlery sequence. Nevertheless, Rupert had a furrowed brow, he took no pleasure in refusing her a ticket. But she must understand his position. It was an embarrassment to them both that she didn't have the required funds, even once all her property was sold. He nodded in sympathy as her explanation and promises of further funds she might access continued. But his mind had drifted off. Now she knew she'd have to be silenced. The thought of another American taking her seat was far more unsettling.
Still, if God was an illusion, it meant his vast financial port folio was down to animal laws. Of course all felt concerned by famine overseas. Deeply concerned. But natures course left weaker organisms extinct, as the finest blossomed. The markets had become free to follow Darwinian determinism. Wealth drifted towards the cream of humanity. His personal opinions counted for nothing. Indeed, such was his concern over the famine footage that featured on TV news he would often have to turn it off. The world could be a dreadful place. Still, no point worrying over problems you couldn't solve.
Harrington, however, had a point. The Noah project was eating up money. Their network had first offers, but they could only buy half the hundred or so places. These Russian oligarchs were a troublesome necessity. Most had been KGB thugs. Before other Russians had grasped market economics, their small number had divided the nations riches. Arabs too. Primitives born in the oil fields. But titles weren't sufficient. This project took serious funding. It had taken fifty years to engineer this situation. Sixty percent of the planets wealth owned by one hundred people. And, what's more, in the nick of time. Such vast finance accumulation took difficult decisions. They'd had to not let emotion get in the way. They'd had the wisdom to use all available resources to fund this. For a time, as climate change became evident, as the biodepletion began to destabilise planetary systems, they'd invested a lot of money in scientific research disproving climate change. But, after a while, even the most gullible could see. The flooding, storms, hurricanes, monsoons, after two decades without snow, even the dumbest Englishman had to admit things had changed. The planets population had doubled in Ruperts life. Everyone knew it was going to become uninhabitable in many regions.
Thinking back he remembered the meetings, business leaders, government heads, people of power. Those who knew. Some tried forcing agreements on emissions. But anyone with a brain who'd played cards knew someone would always cheat. This could not be stopped now. So after such emission targets signing summits, after the righteous had flown home, there'd be the regulars, still chatting at the bar. Together deals were struck. Hands shaken. If the world was going down, if the resource race had begun, they best be in the running. The super super rich. Now an international elite of just one hundred great men.
Bunsen had invested in space tourism. Rich people paid a pretty penny for a swift jump above the atmosphere, an hour to look into the dark depths, to look back in wonder at this beautiful planet. This brought in money but had further purpose. The technologies that were being tested had other objectives.
His secret summit, attended by the planets elite, was a historic moment. All who were invited felt like gods. The history of evolution had led to this point. Planet Earth. The host body had aligned all resources for a single goal. The host was only the systems means of refining every mineral, every gene, everything, refined and used to reach this single point. The host would die having distilled all humanity to the finest few. As the host died, her seeds would be shot out in to space. Bunsens Noah space craft. The culmination of human ingenuity. The greatest scientific minds, the centuries of learning, technology leading to mans ultimate creation. A spaceship of light speed capacity. All history led to this. Civilisation from Ancient Greece, mans destiny. It's winning hundred clapped, many in tears, hugging new equals, nationalities, religions, cultures no longer mattered. Inclusion in this select circle, the hundred that were earths zenith. Together, in Noah, they would bravely cast off. The planet burning below, natures rejects dying together, as they looked to the stars. To find the new planet. A virgin place. The new Eden.
Rupert Bunsen would have to clear up this glitch. Harrington, his workers would persuade her to tell who had snitched. They'd find him. He would disappear. Of course she would have to go too. Anyone else that shouldn't know. He'd call them together, another summit. Of course it was exciting. The most exciting event in history. But for it to go smoothly to plan, each and everyone of this sealed group, must be patient. Their loyalty now was to each other. Family, friends, children, anyone who was not coming on their journey, these were no longer important. They would be dying together. The function in this magnificent process, fulfilled. But only the bravest, humanities finest, could dismiss sentimental notions, infantile emotions must be mastered, to step together, from men of earth, beyond, to higher beings. Supermen. To not look back at our animal past, but forward to the stars.
Returning his phone to his pocket, this leek had his operatives already in action. He'd asked that once Lady Harrington had informed all details that she be humanely put out. Great men shouldered a heavy burden. Their greater perspective was what defined them. Bit of a chore, she could be if he was honest, she would soon be free of her self pity.
She'd reminded him of his strange journey. As children they had played. Hide and seek at Highgrove, fond memories. He'd begun to feel a stirring of lust for her in those final months of childhood. His parents, like others of his class, we're so loving they'd put their personal self interest away, overcome emotions to send their offspring to boarding schools. The high born boys deserved the best education money could buy.
He could only have been eight or nine, when they waved him off. In his mind he could still see from the rollers back window, Mamar, Dear Pater, waving for a moment then walking indoors as Chivers drove him off. He'd felt a tear trickle down his cheek as they neared the school. Chivers spotted his worry in the rear view mirror so pulled into a layby. Remember your station, the driver insisted. Slapping his cheeks to return the boys composure.
"Any boy sees that snivelling, and you'll find they'll all have license to do what they want. There's no shame in being ones mentors fag, but don't be the school buggery boy."
Chivers warning was valuable as the new years intake were assembled. The Masters assigned each an older boy as mentor. Any problems they were to go straight to their mentor who would help them out. If the problem was beyond his scope, he'd report it to the form master.
The early years were the making of him. A journey from boy to man, when they would leave Eton. Their bonds made for life. Family businesses linked up. Political groupings that would last a lifetime. Indeed, all boys schools had a downside. The sexual awakening, in a male only environment, soon clarified the mentoring system. But those days of sore bottom were soon over and he was buggering his own fag.
By only admitting boys of specific parental means, the financial nucleus of the nation was preserved. The connections they made ensured the preservation of the status quo where money remained within the tight knit upper class network of families.
But Rupert had always been something of a tairaway. He had an eye for the future. Society was changing. His hair smart but a good half inch longer than most. The fifties were a hard time. The war had left the country broke. Only the topper most families felt no pinch. Ruperts school friends knew not to show off their wealth. People were all in it together. Rubbing the serfs noses in it was undignified. He'd met uncles who'd returned from the wars. The lower class, before the war, were little understood. Oddities in filthy rags, the curious could find photos in the anthropology section of the library. Their dialects virtually impenetrable. Of course they knew these rough fellows worked damned hard to keep the boat afloat. Short lives spent down mines, digging coal to power the industries their family wealth depended on. Building ships that had been crucial in creation of the empire for them. They never met but knew they had pride in their contribution.
The wars change everything. His uncles, his father too, had seen service. Officer class, leading these fellows into battle. For both tribes this meeting was something of an illumination. Both found the other was brave. Officers died leading futile attacks. Privates, corporals laid down their lives for the nation.
On return his father and uncles told him stories. These brave creatures, living miles underground, in total darkness, dying young. And war tales of mad little fellows. Couldn't understand a word but charging fearlessly, shooting and bayonetting krauts. And other differences, the singing of tribal song. A unity. An innocence. An equality. They'd receive letters from home, openly cry, whilst a buddy would hold him like a child. An almost animal lack of inhibition. Puppets of their emotions. Acting in direct response to situations. Quite unlike their kind. Disciplined, in control. Any new situation, stop, keep a poker face, think it through, then deliver a considered response. Such differences.
This curiosity infected Rupert.
Following the war, the Earth flexed sending a ripple of pagan force through America and Britain. They were poor but proud. They'd pulled off a task of historic proportion. This spiritual boost came as response to the pagan darkness they had defeated. A clash of opposite gods. Nazism, a twisted Darwinian misreading. Barbaric nationalism. The deification of the fictitious people. Mythical ideas of blood purity. Eugenics. Racist evil under a pretend science. Cloaked in righteous historic redress of imagined persecution, the Germanic people's tried to rule the world. The cancerous philosophy drew those of weak identity, into its drive. Turning the poor majority against aliens, any minority it could demonise. A murder machine. Killing gypsy, Jew, artist and gay.
Frances leaders allowed occupation. It's heroes fought back in hidden pockets of resistance. For a while Britain stood alone. In delusions of military superiority the nazis attacked Russia. Russia fought back. America finally entered. Together, this evil was destroyed.
The victors had little left. Just freedom and pride. A poor boy in the Deep South of North America, raised on gospel, felt the animal spirit channeled through his body. His twin, invested with even greater power, buried alive. His story I've written as Skree and Lipton found his empire.
Above him, his twin, in demonic girations, channeled the serpentine earth powers, a sexual rhythm that swept western civilisation. Others feeling this magic picked up guitars. Rock and roll. Music for the poor. Simple, stripped down animal yells, a primal scream of the hormonal rush of teenage feelings.
Young men in England's broken cities, heard the call from over the ocean. The war had linked America back to its previously rejected parent. A revolution of animal feelings. None verbal, or tribal words, to a pagan beat. And a generation could feel it within, without restraint or shame, abandoned reason, to dance. This explosion of animal hunger, confused the establishment and older generation. Only the hormonal injection of early teens, in response to music, elevated in dance. A pagan dawn. Music of instinct and innocence. Spiritual in essence, not of the intellect, straight from the heart, from the crotch. An emotive yell, a rebellion of the soul.
These young men were shifting serious units. Rupert caught on quick. Travelling to dark northern towns. Hidden in raincoat. He'd enter clubs, stand at the back, and study. Much like film he'd seen in anthropology class of African tribes, drumming and dancing themselves into some sort of trance. Taking notes, impressed by a power invisible to him. Simplistic rhythms, music of basic structure but passion. His taste was more Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Wagner and Bach. Symphonic complexity that stimulated the mind. And these young men found female adoration. They spoke and joked as though with mates in the common room, after the school masters were out of earshot. One weekend, asking Ginger Fortesque to cover for him, Bunsen slipped away. Taking the Windsor train into town, then a short taxi ride before the long journey to Liverpool .
As the Home Counties slipped past and night fell, leaving the places he knew so well, into theses strange new worlds. In biology they had learned there was no detectable differences yet found to seperate people of his class from the working class. True, scientific leaps were being made each day, any time the gene or brain structure that clarified the intuitive. But as yet, all appeared one. In the dorm, his friends often scoffed at him for believing such bunkum. Some qualities were obviously there, like the affection a boy has for his fag, but, if they could be discovered as some gland, the new money, outsiders who were increasingly slipping through, could have then surgically inserted.
He thought of George Orwell. A boy who had brought shame upon the school by living amongst the lower ranks. But amongst some of the more modern boys, of which he felt one, he was something of a hero. His books were banned, but with Mayfair, Penthouse they were circulated secretly. Battered copies, hidden under the mattress where Matron wouldn't find them. He'd read Animal Farm. All animals were equal. These northern pigs every bit as equal as the fine thorough bred stallions like himself.
Tonight he hoped to see girls at play. Of course he knew about girls, his sister was one. Before school he'd played with them. From eight to eighteen, he'd be boarding, but these years would shoot by. Mayfair, the fags readying him for interactions in later life.
As Rupert entered the Cavern he imagined he was with earthy folk, going down a mine to gather coal. The sound was deafening. A tribal frenzy of young men and girls, lost in trance, dancing as a singular mass. Leaning against the back wall he met a young fellow who claimed to be their manager. Not one had classical training, instead they'd bought and stole instruments, left school and worked in Germany for years, refining this beat sound. He thought of his clarinet lessons. Curious of the figures involved, he grilled this fellow, Brian his name was. The maths quickly formed into figure patterns. These boys could be very rich. Brian far more so.
With his dorm chums he formed a band. They applied their love of Brahms, Tchaikovsky, to the format, their music tuition gave them a head start.
His father was deeply concerned to see his hair grown long. The seventies had arrived and new prog rock bands. Like Maroon Underpants, his own band, Python inspired. Not the short fast animal music he'd heard up north. Their audience would sit in serious contemplation. Their longer works, twenty minute pieces, journeys of the mind. The rock and roll sexual thrill was the rough inspiration, but the crowds they drew had not been schooled with girls. The long hair, a quiet wisdom and cannabis smoke, the girls they slept with need not be listened to. They were gurus. Forty minute drum solos displayed the percussive genius, synth experiments, conceptual stories that took three LPs to follow.
He'd first met Mike Oldpasture at a party held at Lord Baths place, Longleat. The set up their went on to launch Glastonbury. A festival that Arabella Churchill, Eavis and others grew to make fortunes from. The free festivals where poor folk gathered, leaving the towns in old vans and buses focussed annually at Stonehenge. In the eighties the police closed it down leaving a gap in the market. Michael Eavis was swift out of the stocks. Inviting all to Glastonbury for £20 each. For the early years the travellers were given free passage as the solstice celebration was theirs. Soon, young and old from all over the country were coming down. The travellers had served their purpose and were told to go and don't come back. A vast wall, inspired by Eavis travels to Israel, sealed the party off. The price increased to keep out the unworthy. Millions of pounds were made. The New Age travellers he'd known all those years ago were rooted out by police. Heroin and alcohol destroying any remnants.
But back in 71, at Longleat, Bunsen was sat with other long haired ex public schoolboys. All knew who had been to where but these unspoken bonds were connections any strays who'd entered weren't to know. Oldpasture spoke of a musical work he'd recorded, all instruments played himself, no vocals, just a single piece. Prog perfection. After reciting a few Python sketches, Bunsen agreed to visit him at the studio his parents had built for him on their grounds.
The music he heard was Bunsens epiphany. Stripped entirely of the tribal energy of rock and roll. This was ethereal, celibate, intellectual perfection. Music to sit in silence, candles burning, joss sticks scenting the air. Oldpasture told him the piece was called the Tuberous Bellend.
Bunsen was straight on the phone to father. Reluctant at first, but hearing the enthusiasm in young Ruperts voice, his financial acumen opened to the possibilities. Rupert knew the rise of the genius was often hard. The Beatles had spent five years, playing clubs in England and Germany before their first hit. This reflected the hard journey he had fought through, pleading with father for over half an hour before he agreed to help. Buying him a studio and small record label, a shop in London and offices to run the corporate side. Employing staff to run things. Any business starting from scratch was tough. Despite these difficulties, obstacles that would have seen most give up, take their seat on the board of their fathers business, Rupert Bunsen arrived. Racing the length and breadth of the Home Counties, ferrying Oldpastures from TV studio to hotel, buying interviews with top broadcasters. The Tuberous Bellend launched Bunsens label with a bang. The album became one of the all time best sellers, staying in the top 40 for three years, Bunsen buying bulk orders during sales lulls to keep it in the charts.
There were less successful releases, Tarquins Pig sold very few copies. The public school prog bubble delivered fewer quality acts than he'd hoped. Aubergine Sandles, Beef Wellington, Clementine Hosiery, Velvet Pomegranate, Aubreys Toadstool, Crispin and the Sausages of Pluto, Turquoise Plumworm, Babbingtons Carrot, all recorded multi disc masterworks that sailed way over the heads of most music fans. Many became cult heroes, their rare albums discovered like lost treasure in second hand vinyl emporia in Cambridge, Oxford and Winchester. Played in the dormitory mid night tuck feasts. Joints smoked, volume low so as not to disturb matron.
Prejudice from the lower ranks found Bunsen releases tainted with class. Prog was not everyone's cup of earl grey. In a master stroke, Rupert reconnected to the people by taming the most feared band in the land. EMI, A&M records had signed and sacked the Pis Sextals, a band of street urchins, collected by a freind who was schooled at Harrow. Malcontent MacLalley had got his boys to get into trouble as publicity to sell their album. But they'd overdone it. No one dared release their record. Rupert made him an offer. The money was tiny, but their moment of notoriety wouldn't last. Ignore the Balls sold like hot cakes. Feeding the bass player drugs on Bunsens advice proved genius. Malcontent rang Bunsen, bursting with excitement, he'd botched together a new album of out takes, split the band so all royalties would go to Rupert and Mal, and, to crown it all, he'd got the bass player to murder his girlfriend. Rupert knew this was great news. Talking into the night they agreed, Rupert would have the record printed, however poor it was, Mal would make sure his lad committed suicide to time itself for the records release.
From here Rupert Bunsen moved in to airplane transport, trains, mobile phone networks, so many projects. His fortune grew year on year. The planets problems saw him buying private islands. But as conditions got worse, the Noah projects engineers began its early planning.
The islands cove hid a bay, a timber and steel jetty stretched towards the sea. The cliff face that rose steeply above, had a doorway, disguised in rock veneer, invisible until stood two metres close. Inside a tunnel had been dug, a stairway fitted leading into the basement of the islands main house. A modernist cubic building with large glass faces facing out to the ocean. A cluster of yachts formed two neat lines. The outermost vessels were in regular use by the various guests and some super rich clients that hired out the handful of dwellings that had been built at various points across the island. The inner cluster of luxury vessels were fixtures disguising a subterranian, sub aqua centre of operations. James Bond, in his many escapades of earth saving heroics, would have been impressed. The interior was twice the size of the island itself. The technological development workshops and chemical laboratories beneath the island was a hive of activity. The CERN particle accelerator had a comparable atmosphere. A meeting point for the select brains, drawn from across the globe, an international centre of cutting edge science. The work taking place at cern was beyond the understanding of the majority though it was open and most regarded it as of common value. Bunsen Island, however, was funded far more, private investiture from the Noah elite. The scientific minds took blood oathes of silence, the reward to work on projects financed without limit. But, the arrow point of human technology drew few of materialist motivation. Nowhere on earth offered an opportunity like this. Limitless financial support to realise the extremeties of their imagination. Einsteins theoretical space time theories could now be explored in practice through engineering technologies. A hotspot more potent than the desperation of the wars where leaps took place in weeks and days, that peacetime change took decades to produce. Cosmic distances, once revealed, placed astral voyage firmly in dreams and science fantasy. Hawkings speculations on black holes could now be tested. Wormholes linking points in space light years apart. Gravitational forces revealed a dimension, invisible to man, where space time densitys could be measured. This new topography of curve and flow, undulation, parabolic envelopes where linear distance could be overcome through locations of apparent separation, when approached from the other angle, close neighbours. Propulsion systems of quantum form. Material from flesh to steel, encoded to molecular particles, recreated light years away meant man could be summed up as a formula or collection of data, stored, shipped then summoned back into existence in galaxies far away.
Beyond the corridors of laboratories, test zones, engineering workshops, design studios and fabrication rooms was an open plan leisure space. A cafeteria with eating areas, upholstered furnishings, exercise contraptions. Small groups sat eating lunch, discussing breakthroughs or picking the minds of experts in other fields. Others, more relaxed enjoyed an ambience, less pressured where speculation grew. Some working out to balance the intellectual endeavour with cardio vascular work. Odd figures lay horizontal, grabbing forty winks to reboot tired heads. Each wall a singular screen, holographic synthetic windows of tropical beaches or rain forest scenes. The space beneath the island continued the length again twice, reaching out below the fixed yacht shield and beyond below the sea. Access from the leisure zone was restricted by security guards, policing two doors. It was here the conclusion to the Noah project sat. Glass walls either side and above created a terrarium. The undersea world around, a fascinating view as coral sea bed, seaweeds and plants, all manner of crustacean, sponge, shoals of fish shifting in pattern like starling murmurations, sweeping rays, predatory creatures, sharks hunting isolated fish, an unusual subs train of conger eel more vicious than the Sharks, lobsters crawling, sea anemone, prawn, shrimp, urchin. Rupert would spend hours, lost in fascination at the ecosystems beauty. A sanctuary from his business appointments. The interplay of ocean life was such a wonder of nature, Rupert thought to himself. Such a fragile harmony.
Turning away to look to the centre of this vast submerged glass box, he saw a far greater wonder. Tapping an app on his phone brought the hidden sound system alive. The Tuberous Bellend still sounded perfect. A mirror finish on the bodywork reflected his bearded smile. Here sat the Ark. Her curvaceous flanks of titanium alloy. The elegance of her tail. The power of her rocket propulsion. The quantum particle dissimulator. The culmination of all human engineering. From Flint axe to this. Pride flooded his being. Moments of wonder that were the mystical rest points all humans felt throughout life, when the trivia of mental chatter, the countless niggles and concerns were swept away for brief windows. Moments where the raw transcendent oddness of being clears all else revealing the sublimity of life. A swallow in flight. A hind with fawn, unaware you're watching, drinking from a pond at dawn. Such feelings of common man were a piss in the ocean of personal pride he felt. Life on Earth, from amoeba, single cell organisms, evolution, a pyramid growing from the primordial soup to the top point, Rupert Bunsen. And here he stood. By the side of the Ark. The journey of western civilisation, from Ancient Greece, through Christianity, into the enlightenment, the birth of reason, the scientific method, the hidden forces of the universe, submitting to mans genius, their secrets revealed, technological innovation, concluding in this vehicle. His chariot, his steed. Everything that had gone before had led to this moment, when earth ejaculated the refined distillation of all life. A hundred people to find the new world.
As his mind wallowed in self glory, the vibrations from his mobile disturbed his upper thigh.
Bunsen: "Bunsen Securities?"
Operative: "The Ladies Mantle has been uprooted."
Bunsen: "What?"
Operative: "The flower bed has been weeded."
Bunsen: "eh."
Operative: "The Harrington jacket is back in the wardrobe."
Bunsen: "Look, here. Talk sense man!"
Operative: "Lady Harringtons now dead, sir."
Bunsen: "How many times? Not on the phone!"
Rupert Bunsen smiled. Loose lips sink ships. Harrington would now be at rest. Walking the sea floor in concrete wellies. Two years from now he pictured himself far across the galaxy. No mere island but a continent for each of the pioneers. A planet of sumptuous life. An untouched garden of Eden. On an evening, as the star set and both moons rose, a meal of new meats and vegetables settling in his belly. Perhaps he'd sit outdoors with a cigar and brandy. He'd look through his telescope, figuring out which of the stars was the sun his planet of birth orbited. And as those left behind saw humanity drawing to a close, they'd look back, telling stories of his Ark that they'd all contributed toward. These days of waiting were like a chrysalis. The people of earth caterpillars. His hundred passengers, butterflies, floating away from their past. Rupert felt exceedingly good.
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Didn't it sadden him? Of course it bloody did. Lady Harrington had hit a nerve. Of prime concern was who had squeeled? Those who bought tickets also signed contracts. Sworn to secrecy. Any of loose lip should know, if and when word got back, death would follow. His organisation had agents of loyalty to the Noah project, in all circles. Major governments. Royal families. Aristocratic networks. Business collectives. Davos. And far darker global elites. Anyone could be found and terminated. His phone had an app able to set such a process in motion.
Not only sadden him but the projects success depended on those included talking about it only to other passengers. A few generations back these problems would never have happened. A Lord or Duke no more chose his birth than a peasant of the field. God chose the ruling class. And their common loyalty was beyond question. Man could not hope to understand the Lord Gods mysterious ways. Of course those born into poverty must feel some jealousy along with their admiration for their betters. But they only had themselves to blame. To regard gods scheme unfair was of such arrogance. No man could know the mind of God. His ancestors humbly accepted the position God had placed upon them. And with good grace, lesser folk accepted his just selection.
His generation shared this sense of entitlement, indeed, Rupert Bunsen was a believer. God helped the good. These last few decades had seen great changes. Lady Harrington still had her title, the farm house and it's dozen workers cottages, the London house, the Paris town house too. But Harrington Hall and much of her family's estate had to be sold. Her father struggled with the family business. Enjoyed the casino, the horses, well respected for his whoring too. On inheriting the place she discovered the severity of his debts. It took a hefty chunk out of the accounts to pay off. What irritated her beyond measure were those of simple needs. The lower ranks could never imagine the burden of a stately home, they could never endure such suffering, the maintenance costs, staff wages, animal feed. The stable hands alone cost over a thousand a month. But she was of sterner stuff. The twelve million it sold for doubled her funds. An artist. A northerner had bought it. But good breeding saw her head held high. She still got invites to the parties of her class. Over champers on the lawn at Ruperts last summer they'd discussed changing times. Rupert had begun with less than her but invested well. It was the fault of that damned Darwin fellow. Survival of the fittest. The gates were ajar. Broadly speaking the same families ruled the roost. But some had slipped. Lesser folk replacing them. Russian oligarchs, Arabian oil sheiks. Rupert assured her these gate crashers weren't loved. Uncouth, embarrassing purchases, no conception of understatement. Inept in correct cutlery sequence. Nevertheless, Rupert had a furrowed brow, he took no pleasure in refusing her a ticket. But she must understand his position. It was an embarrassment to them both that she didn't have the required funds, even once all her property was sold. He nodded in sympathy as her explanation and promises of further funds she might access continued. But his mind had drifted off. Now she knew she'd have to be silenced. The thought of another American taking her seat was far more unsettling.
Still, if God was an illusion, it meant his vast financial port folio was down to animal laws. Of course all felt concerned by famine overseas. Deeply concerned. But natures course left weaker organisms extinct, as the finest blossomed. The markets had become free to follow Darwinian determinism. Wealth drifted towards the cream of humanity. His personal opinions counted for nothing. Indeed, such was his concern over the famine footage that featured on TV news he would often have to turn it off. The world could be a dreadful place. Still, no point worrying over problems you couldn't solve.
Harrington, however, had a point. The Noah project was eating up money. Their network had first offers, but they could only buy half the hundred or so places. These Russian oligarchs were a troublesome necessity. Most had been KGB thugs. Before other Russians had grasped market economics, their small number had divided the nations riches. Arabs too. Primitives born in the oil fields. But titles weren't sufficient. This project took serious funding. It had taken fifty years to engineer this situation. Sixty percent of the planets wealth owned by one hundred people. And, what's more, in the nick of time. Such vast finance accumulation took difficult decisions. They'd had to not let emotion get in the way. They'd had the wisdom to use all available resources to fund this. For a time, as climate change became evident, as the biodepletion began to destabilise planetary systems, they'd invested a lot of money in scientific research disproving climate change. But, after a while, even the most gullible could see. The flooding, storms, hurricanes, monsoons, after two decades without snow, even the dumbest Englishman had to admit things had changed. The planets population had doubled in Ruperts life. Everyone knew it was going to become uninhabitable in many regions.
Thinking back he remembered the meetings, business leaders, government heads, people of power. Those who knew. Some tried forcing agreements on emissions. But anyone with a brain who'd played cards knew someone would always cheat. This could not be stopped now. So after such emission targets signing summits, after the righteous had flown home, there'd be the regulars, still chatting at the bar. Together deals were struck. Hands shaken. If the world was going down, if the resource race had begun, they best be in the running. The super super rich. Now an international elite of just one hundred great men.
Bunsen had invested in space tourism. Rich people paid a pretty penny for a swift jump above the atmosphere, an hour to look into the dark depths, to look back in wonder at this beautiful planet. This brought in money but had further purpose. The technologies that were being tested had other objectives.
His secret summit, attended by the planets elite, was a historic moment. All who were invited felt like gods. The history of evolution had led to this point. Planet Earth. The host body had aligned all resources for a single goal. The host was only the systems means of refining every mineral, every gene, everything, refined and used to reach this single point. The host would die having distilled all humanity to the finest few. As the host died, her seeds would be shot out in to space. Bunsens Noah space craft. The culmination of human ingenuity. The greatest scientific minds, the centuries of learning, technology leading to mans ultimate creation. A spaceship of light speed capacity. All history led to this. Civilisation from Ancient Greece, mans destiny. It's winning hundred clapped, many in tears, hugging new equals, nationalities, religions, cultures no longer mattered. Inclusion in this select circle, the hundred that were earths zenith. Together, in Noah, they would bravely cast off. The planet burning below, natures rejects dying together, as they looked to the stars. To find the new planet. A virgin place. The new Eden.
Rupert Bunsen would have to clear up this glitch. Harrington, his workers would persuade her to tell who had snitched. They'd find him. He would disappear. Of course she would have to go too. Anyone else that shouldn't know. He'd call them together, another summit. Of course it was exciting. The most exciting event in history. But for it to go smoothly to plan, each and everyone of this sealed group, must be patient. Their loyalty now was to each other. Family, friends, children, anyone who was not coming on their journey, these were no longer important. They would be dying together. The function in this magnificent process, fulfilled. But only the bravest, humanities finest, could dismiss sentimental notions, infantile emotions must be mastered, to step together, from men of earth, beyond, to higher beings. Supermen. To not look back at our animal past, but forward to the stars.
Returning his phone to his pocket, this leek had his operatives already in action. He'd asked that once Lady Harrington had informed all details that she be humanely put out. Great men shouldered a heavy burden. Their greater perspective was what defined them. Bit of a chore, she could be if he was honest, she would soon be free of her self pity.
She'd reminded him of his strange journey. As children they had played. Hide and seek at Highgrove, fond memories. He'd begun to feel a stirring of lust for her in those final months of childhood. His parents, like others of his class, we're so loving they'd put their personal self interest away, overcome emotions to send their offspring to boarding schools. The high born boys deserved the best education money could buy.
He could only have been eight or nine, when they waved him off. In his mind he could still see from the rollers back window, Mamar, Dear Pater, waving for a moment then walking indoors as Chivers drove him off. He'd felt a tear trickle down his cheek as they neared the school. Chivers spotted his worry in the rear view mirror so pulled into a layby. Remember your station, the driver insisted. Slapping his cheeks to return the boys composure.
"Any boy sees that snivelling, and you'll find they'll all have license to do what they want. There's no shame in being ones mentors fag, but don't be the school buggery boy."
Chivers warning was valuable as the new years intake were assembled. The Masters assigned each an older boy as mentor. Any problems they were to go straight to their mentor who would help them out. If the problem was beyond his scope, he'd report it to the form master.
The early years were the making of him. A journey from boy to man, when they would leave Eton. Their bonds made for life. Family businesses linked up. Political groupings that would last a lifetime. Indeed, all boys schools had a downside. The sexual awakening, in a male only environment, soon clarified the mentoring system. But those days of sore bottom were soon over and he was buggering his own fag.
By only admitting boys of specific parental means, the financial nucleus of the nation was preserved. The connections they made ensured the preservation of the status quo where money remained within the tight knit upper class network of families.
But Rupert had always been something of a tairaway. He had an eye for the future. Society was changing. His hair smart but a good half inch longer than most. The fifties were a hard time. The war had left the country broke. Only the topper most families felt no pinch. Ruperts school friends knew not to show off their wealth. People were all in it together. Rubbing the serfs noses in it was undignified. He'd met uncles who'd returned from the wars. The lower class, before the war, were little understood. Oddities in filthy rags, the curious could find photos in the anthropology section of the library. Their dialects virtually impenetrable. Of course they knew these rough fellows worked damned hard to keep the boat afloat. Short lives spent down mines, digging coal to power the industries their family wealth depended on. Building ships that had been crucial in creation of the empire for them. They never met but knew they had pride in their contribution.
The wars change everything. His uncles, his father too, had seen service. Officer class, leading these fellows into battle. For both tribes this meeting was something of an illumination. Both found the other was brave. Officers died leading futile attacks. Privates, corporals laid down their lives for the nation.
On return his father and uncles told him stories. These brave creatures, living miles underground, in total darkness, dying young. And war tales of mad little fellows. Couldn't understand a word but charging fearlessly, shooting and bayonetting krauts. And other differences, the singing of tribal song. A unity. An innocence. An equality. They'd receive letters from home, openly cry, whilst a buddy would hold him like a child. An almost animal lack of inhibition. Puppets of their emotions. Acting in direct response to situations. Quite unlike their kind. Disciplined, in control. Any new situation, stop, keep a poker face, think it through, then deliver a considered response. Such differences.
This curiosity infected Rupert.
Following the war, the Earth flexed sending a ripple of pagan force through America and Britain. They were poor but proud. They'd pulled off a task of historic proportion. This spiritual boost came as response to the pagan darkness they had defeated. A clash of opposite gods. Nazism, a twisted Darwinian misreading. Barbaric nationalism. The deification of the fictitious people. Mythical ideas of blood purity. Eugenics. Racist evil under a pretend science. Cloaked in righteous historic redress of imagined persecution, the Germanic people's tried to rule the world. The cancerous philosophy drew those of weak identity, into its drive. Turning the poor majority against aliens, any minority it could demonise. A murder machine. Killing gypsy, Jew, artist and gay.
Frances leaders allowed occupation. It's heroes fought back in hidden pockets of resistance. For a while Britain stood alone. In delusions of military superiority the nazis attacked Russia. Russia fought back. America finally entered. Together, this evil was destroyed.
The victors had little left. Just freedom and pride. A poor boy in the Deep South of North America, raised on gospel, felt the animal spirit channeled through his body. His twin, invested with even greater power, buried alive. His story I've written as Skree and Lipton found his empire.
Above him, his twin, in demonic girations, channeled the serpentine earth powers, a sexual rhythm that swept western civilisation. Others feeling this magic picked up guitars. Rock and roll. Music for the poor. Simple, stripped down animal yells, a primal scream of the hormonal rush of teenage feelings.
Young men in England's broken cities, heard the call from over the ocean. The war had linked America back to its previously rejected parent. A revolution of animal feelings. None verbal, or tribal words, to a pagan beat. And a generation could feel it within, without restraint or shame, abandoned reason, to dance. This explosion of animal hunger, confused the establishment and older generation. Only the hormonal injection of early teens, in response to music, elevated in dance. A pagan dawn. Music of instinct and innocence. Spiritual in essence, not of the intellect, straight from the heart, from the crotch. An emotive yell, a rebellion of the soul.
These young men were shifting serious units. Rupert caught on quick. Travelling to dark northern towns. Hidden in raincoat. He'd enter clubs, stand at the back, and study. Much like film he'd seen in anthropology class of African tribes, drumming and dancing themselves into some sort of trance. Taking notes, impressed by a power invisible to him. Simplistic rhythms, music of basic structure but passion. His taste was more Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Wagner and Bach. Symphonic complexity that stimulated the mind. And these young men found female adoration. They spoke and joked as though with mates in the common room, after the school masters were out of earshot. One weekend, asking Ginger Fortesque to cover for him, Bunsen slipped away. Taking the Windsor train into town, then a short taxi ride before the long journey to Liverpool .
As the Home Counties slipped past and night fell, leaving the places he knew so well, into theses strange new worlds. In biology they had learned there was no detectable differences yet found to seperate people of his class from the working class. True, scientific leaps were being made each day, any time the gene or brain structure that clarified the intuitive. But as yet, all appeared one. In the dorm, his friends often scoffed at him for believing such bunkum. Some qualities were obviously there, like the affection a boy has for his fag, but, if they could be discovered as some gland, the new money, outsiders who were increasingly slipping through, could have then surgically inserted.
He thought of George Orwell. A boy who had brought shame upon the school by living amongst the lower ranks. But amongst some of the more modern boys, of which he felt one, he was something of a hero. His books were banned, but with Mayfair, Penthouse they were circulated secretly. Battered copies, hidden under the mattress where Matron wouldn't find them. He'd read Animal Farm. All animals were equal. These northern pigs every bit as equal as the fine thorough bred stallions like himself.
Tonight he hoped to see girls at play. Of course he knew about girls, his sister was one. Before school he'd played with them. From eight to eighteen, he'd be boarding, but these years would shoot by. Mayfair, the fags readying him for interactions in later life.
As Rupert entered the Cavern he imagined he was with earthy folk, going down a mine to gather coal. The sound was deafening. A tribal frenzy of young men and girls, lost in trance, dancing as a singular mass. Leaning against the back wall he met a young fellow who claimed to be their manager. Not one had classical training, instead they'd bought and stole instruments, left school and worked in Germany for years, refining this beat sound. He thought of his clarinet lessons. Curious of the figures involved, he grilled this fellow, Brian his name was. The maths quickly formed into figure patterns. These boys could be very rich. Brian far more so.
With his dorm chums he formed a band. They applied their love of Brahms, Tchaikovsky, to the format, their music tuition gave them a head start.
His father was deeply concerned to see his hair grown long. The seventies had arrived and new prog rock bands. Like Maroon Underpants, his own band, Python inspired. Not the short fast animal music he'd heard up north. Their audience would sit in serious contemplation. Their longer works, twenty minute pieces, journeys of the mind. The rock and roll sexual thrill was the rough inspiration, but the crowds they drew had not been schooled with girls. The long hair, a quiet wisdom and cannabis smoke, the girls they slept with need not be listened to. They were gurus. Forty minute drum solos displayed the percussive genius, synth experiments, conceptual stories that took three LPs to follow.
He'd first met Mike Oldpasture at a party held at Lord Baths place, Longleat. The set up their went on to launch Glastonbury. A festival that Arabella Churchill, Eavis and others grew to make fortunes from. The free festivals where poor folk gathered, leaving the towns in old vans and buses focussed annually at Stonehenge. In the eighties the police closed it down leaving a gap in the market. Michael Eavis was swift out of the stocks. Inviting all to Glastonbury for £20 each. For the early years the travellers were given free passage as the solstice celebration was theirs. Soon, young and old from all over the country were coming down. The travellers had served their purpose and were told to go and don't come back. A vast wall, inspired by Eavis travels to Israel, sealed the party off. The price increased to keep out the unworthy. Millions of pounds were made. The New Age travellers he'd known all those years ago were rooted out by police. Heroin and alcohol destroying any remnants.
But back in 71, at Longleat, Bunsen was sat with other long haired ex public schoolboys. All knew who had been to where but these unspoken bonds were connections any strays who'd entered weren't to know. Oldpasture spoke of a musical work he'd recorded, all instruments played himself, no vocals, just a single piece. Prog perfection. After reciting a few Python sketches, Bunsen agreed to visit him at the studio his parents had built for him on their grounds.
The music he heard was Bunsens epiphany. Stripped entirely of the tribal energy of rock and roll. This was ethereal, celibate, intellectual perfection. Music to sit in silence, candles burning, joss sticks scenting the air. Oldpasture told him the piece was called the Tuberous Bellend.
Bunsen was straight on the phone to father. Reluctant at first, but hearing the enthusiasm in young Ruperts voice, his financial acumen opened to the possibilities. Rupert knew the rise of the genius was often hard. The Beatles had spent five years, playing clubs in England and Germany before their first hit. This reflected the hard journey he had fought through, pleading with father for over half an hour before he agreed to help. Buying him a studio and small record label, a shop in London and offices to run the corporate side. Employing staff to run things. Any business starting from scratch was tough. Despite these difficulties, obstacles that would have seen most give up, take their seat on the board of their fathers business, Rupert Bunsen arrived. Racing the length and breadth of the Home Counties, ferrying Oldpastures from TV studio to hotel, buying interviews with top broadcasters. The Tuberous Bellend launched Bunsens label with a bang. The album became one of the all time best sellers, staying in the top 40 for three years, Bunsen buying bulk orders during sales lulls to keep it in the charts.
There were less successful releases, Tarquins Pig sold very few copies. The public school prog bubble delivered fewer quality acts than he'd hoped. Aubergine Sandles, Beef Wellington, Clementine Hosiery, Velvet Pomegranate, Aubreys Toadstool, Crispin and the Sausages of Pluto, Turquoise Plumworm, Babbingtons Carrot, all recorded multi disc masterworks that sailed way over the heads of most music fans. Many became cult heroes, their rare albums discovered like lost treasure in second hand vinyl emporia in Cambridge, Oxford and Winchester. Played in the dormitory mid night tuck feasts. Joints smoked, volume low so as not to disturb matron.
Prejudice from the lower ranks found Bunsen releases tainted with class. Prog was not everyone's cup of earl grey. In a master stroke, Rupert reconnected to the people by taming the most feared band in the land. EMI, A&M records had signed and sacked the Pis Sextals, a band of street urchins, collected by a freind who was schooled at Harrow. Malcontent MacLalley had got his boys to get into trouble as publicity to sell their album. But they'd overdone it. No one dared release their record. Rupert made him an offer. The money was tiny, but their moment of notoriety wouldn't last. Ignore the Balls sold like hot cakes. Feeding the bass player drugs on Bunsens advice proved genius. Malcontent rang Bunsen, bursting with excitement, he'd botched together a new album of out takes, split the band so all royalties would go to Rupert and Mal, and, to crown it all, he'd got the bass player to murder his girlfriend. Rupert knew this was great news. Talking into the night they agreed, Rupert would have the record printed, however poor it was, Mal would make sure his lad committed suicide to time itself for the records release.
From here Rupert Bunsen moved in to airplane transport, trains, mobile phone networks, so many projects. His fortune grew year on year. The planets problems saw him buying private islands. But as conditions got worse, the Noah projects engineers began its early planning.
The islands cove hid a bay, a timber and steel jetty stretched towards the sea. The cliff face that rose steeply above, had a doorway, disguised in rock veneer, invisible until stood two metres close. Inside a tunnel had been dug, a stairway fitted leading into the basement of the islands main house. A modernist cubic building with large glass faces facing out to the ocean. A cluster of yachts formed two neat lines. The outermost vessels were in regular use by the various guests and some super rich clients that hired out the handful of dwellings that had been built at various points across the island. The inner cluster of luxury vessels were fixtures disguising a subterranian, sub aqua centre of operations. James Bond, in his many escapades of earth saving heroics, would have been impressed. The interior was twice the size of the island itself. The technological development workshops and chemical laboratories beneath the island was a hive of activity. The CERN particle accelerator had a comparable atmosphere. A meeting point for the select brains, drawn from across the globe, an international centre of cutting edge science. The work taking place at cern was beyond the understanding of the majority though it was open and most regarded it as of common value. Bunsen Island, however, was funded far more, private investiture from the Noah elite. The scientific minds took blood oathes of silence, the reward to work on projects financed without limit. But, the arrow point of human technology drew few of materialist motivation. Nowhere on earth offered an opportunity like this. Limitless financial support to realise the extremeties of their imagination. Einsteins theoretical space time theories could now be explored in practice through engineering technologies. A hotspot more potent than the desperation of the wars where leaps took place in weeks and days, that peacetime change took decades to produce. Cosmic distances, once revealed, placed astral voyage firmly in dreams and science fantasy. Hawkings speculations on black holes could now be tested. Wormholes linking points in space light years apart. Gravitational forces revealed a dimension, invisible to man, where space time densitys could be measured. This new topography of curve and flow, undulation, parabolic envelopes where linear distance could be overcome through locations of apparent separation, when approached from the other angle, close neighbours. Propulsion systems of quantum form. Material from flesh to steel, encoded to molecular particles, recreated light years away meant man could be summed up as a formula or collection of data, stored, shipped then summoned back into existence in galaxies far away.
Beyond the corridors of laboratories, test zones, engineering workshops, design studios and fabrication rooms was an open plan leisure space. A cafeteria with eating areas, upholstered furnishings, exercise contraptions. Small groups sat eating lunch, discussing breakthroughs or picking the minds of experts in other fields. Others, more relaxed enjoyed an ambience, less pressured where speculation grew. Some working out to balance the intellectual endeavour with cardio vascular work. Odd figures lay horizontal, grabbing forty winks to reboot tired heads. Each wall a singular screen, holographic synthetic windows of tropical beaches or rain forest scenes. The space beneath the island continued the length again twice, reaching out below the fixed yacht shield and beyond below the sea. Access from the leisure zone was restricted by security guards, policing two doors. It was here the conclusion to the Noah project sat. Glass walls either side and above created a terrarium. The undersea world around, a fascinating view as coral sea bed, seaweeds and plants, all manner of crustacean, sponge, shoals of fish shifting in pattern like starling murmurations, sweeping rays, predatory creatures, sharks hunting isolated fish, an unusual subs train of conger eel more vicious than the Sharks, lobsters crawling, sea anemone, prawn, shrimp, urchin. Rupert would spend hours, lost in fascination at the ecosystems beauty. A sanctuary from his business appointments. The interplay of ocean life was such a wonder of nature, Rupert thought to himself. Such a fragile harmony.
Turning away to look to the centre of this vast submerged glass box, he saw a far greater wonder. Tapping an app on his phone brought the hidden sound system alive. The Tuberous Bellend still sounded perfect. A mirror finish on the bodywork reflected his bearded smile. Here sat the Ark. Her curvaceous flanks of titanium alloy. The elegance of her tail. The power of her rocket propulsion. The quantum particle dissimulator. The culmination of all human engineering. From Flint axe to this. Pride flooded his being. Moments of wonder that were the mystical rest points all humans felt throughout life, when the trivia of mental chatter, the countless niggles and concerns were swept away for brief windows. Moments where the raw transcendent oddness of being clears all else revealing the sublimity of life. A swallow in flight. A hind with fawn, unaware you're watching, drinking from a pond at dawn. Such feelings of common man were a piss in the ocean of personal pride he felt. Life on Earth, from amoeba, single cell organisms, evolution, a pyramid growing from the primordial soup to the top point, Rupert Bunsen. And here he stood. By the side of the Ark. The journey of western civilisation, from Ancient Greece, through Christianity, into the enlightenment, the birth of reason, the scientific method, the hidden forces of the universe, submitting to mans genius, their secrets revealed, technological innovation, concluding in this vehicle. His chariot, his steed. Everything that had gone before had led to this moment, when earth ejaculated the refined distillation of all life. A hundred people to find the new world.
As his mind wallowed in self glory, the vibrations from his mobile disturbed his upper thigh.
Bunsen: "Bunsen Securities?"
Operative: "The Ladies Mantle has been uprooted."
Bunsen: "What?"
Operative: "The flower bed has been weeded."
Bunsen: "eh."
Operative: "The Harrington jacket is back in the wardrobe."
Bunsen: "Look, here. Talk sense man!"
Operative: "Lady Harringtons now dead, sir."
Bunsen: "How many times? Not on the phone!"
Rupert Bunsen smiled. Loose lips sink ships. Harrington would now be at rest. Walking the sea floor in concrete wellies. Two years from now he pictured himself far across the galaxy. No mere island but a continent for each of the pioneers. A planet of sumptuous life. An untouched garden of Eden. On an evening, as the star set and both moons rose, a meal of new meats and vegetables settling in his belly. Perhaps he'd sit outdoors with a cigar and brandy. He'd look through his telescope, figuring out which of the stars was the sun his planet of birth orbited. And as those left behind saw humanity drawing to a close, they'd look back, telling stories of his Ark that they'd all contributed toward. These days of waiting were like a chrysalis. The people of earth caterpillars. His hundred passengers, butterflies, floating away from their past. Rupert felt exceedingly good.
Sent from my iPad
Sunday 24 January 2016
Peter - Chapter 11
Peter - Chapter 11
Lipton could see light ahead. The higher most trees were thinning out and the lower burrow of the hill fort was visible. Having been under leaf cover for nearly two hours, breaking out from the woods into bright sun light at the hill fort edge, felt revelatory. A rebirth. The woodland womb had been a steep march in cool, dark canopy. Peters story about the Clun Coven had killed the time but now they were delivered from the trees into the light.
Peter: "Some hill fort, eh?" Peters pride in showing this hidden treasure of British history.
Lipton:"You can see how secure it would have been. You'd see any attackers a good three hours before they arrived."
Both looked down across the green fields below, stretching out, up towards Church Stretton, the nearest land of comparable height. A five bar gate delivered a point of rest and wonder after the long uphill hike. Slowly reoxigenating their blood as adrenalin fell to allow a natural flood of endorphins. The experience was something both Lipton and Peter had forgotten during their heroin use. Turning eyes from the view to look at each other, brotherly smiles spoke beyond words scope. The opiate addiction that had softened and spoiled, in equal measure, so many years, the lives of both, was over. Their neuro systems returning to normal. This was the stipulation Jesse had insisted on. Both had long known that shamans needed pure systems to read the reality around. The complex interconnection of life, bacterial, animal, vegetable, fungoid, viral, spirit essence and the vast array of trans dimensional entities, was of such fine harmonic balance, shamans must have their own multiple mental, spiritual and bodily systems equally balanced to be at one. For it is a single organism of which we are an aspect. The shaman, the Druid, people of all lands, as consciousness evolved, had individuals that retained this sensitivity to the environment. Pagan spirituality invariably was the initial system of understanding. These select individuals were of crucial importance to the tribes survival. Their abilities to recognise the underlying roots of invisible dangers. Disease, madness, spiritual disharmony, weather, the numerous forces affecting the groups, forces beyond human control, invisible to the majority, were only understood by the shaman. Each culture had differing, independent metaphors to describe this other parallel world. Their many roles, medicine man, priest, philosopher, rendered them respected and protected. Without one, a tribe would die off. They maintained the connection to the earth. The bridge or channel for humanity's communion with the one. Animals intuitively react to the changing conditions, changing direction in harmonic turbulence. Mans evolution built on his specialism, came at a cost.
Lipton: "That story you were telling on our climb. Don't sound the actions of the shamans I'm aware of. Those demon eel fish, burrowing into arsitovag, eating a hollow flesh tube linking twat and mouth. Most I've met don't cross dark dimensional demons with fish. Are the Clun coven freind or foe? These suicides. Is this another similar thing? Another spiteful curse? I'd always thought the pursuit of money and status was as much a pitfall as heroin. Worse, in fact. If you break a leg up here, you'd prefer some gear. Money can't help when away from civilisation. Leave them to it, I say."
Peter: "That story is regarded as true. However, it was 1200ad. It was not written down for 400 more years. It's sculpture or evolution each telling must have favoured details the story teller knew would bring in a shilling when he passed round his hat. It wasn't done in spite or jealousy of aristocratic greed, they'd seen a gene line developing, evident in the torture and persecution those posh families dished out. They nipped it in the bud for all, not themselves. It's a shame no Bavarian Druids ended the gene pattern that led to hitler. More of importance is how it serves as a tool to understand how the Drulords, in Orcadia, Eire, Wales, Cornwall and Ireland see the Clun. They are revered as the purest line. Untainted nor diluted since the Roman genocide. Their persecution was systematic. The others found places where no outsider could find them. Though this lot escaped to Clun. Perched on offas dyke. Roman Christian England one side, Welsh independence the other. A perch from where they could watch the virus of the mind Roman invasion brought, yet they could have run into Wales if the bullying turned to full on genocide. There they sat out Roman occupation. They were never popular. The locals had turned to Christianity. The brutality they endured could be exaggerated. But, whatever happened, it changed them. Shamans as we know them serve the community. The Clun are psychologically disturbed. They work for the common good though man is less respected by them than all other animals. They consider the other groups of Druids collaborators. Gaia, all wildlife has a virtue beyond their fellow man. To bring man down. Establishment man. Mainstream man. Only by the culling of vast numbers do they see possible rebalance. We hate straight folks. But not like them."
Lipton:"Could be its they who are right. True, the story had a relish in the horror. The gnashing of the vaginal meat of the ruling class, it reminds me of Robin Hood. All people who grow up in England with a class system that ensures the wealth is in the hands of a few. A royal family that derives power, not from having fine minds, not by vote, but by birth. Inbred idiots. Humanity's worst, given the power. An unassailable system none can enter. Robin Hood rights these wrongs. The crash of Dianna too. The snob princess. Killed by her own vanity. Her love of the camera and self adoration, brought to its ultimate conclusion. Moral tales. To give hope. But in truth, life isn't like that."
Peter: "I don't doubt it. But they have grown to believe it is too late. The environmental damage too severe. We feel time is short. Permanent change is here. We've talked many times on this. But man is an animal. Anything he does is natural. We don't think of Gaia as dying in mans control. We have hope. No man, Druid or not, can stop what is to occur."
Lipton: "To think mankind has the power to destroy all life is a continuation of mans self deification. As delusional as thinking he can stop the climate change he has caused. This plague of human over population will be cut down. Gaia has systems of self regulation. This extinction man initiated is horrific. I can see the Clun coven view. Western civilisation was a project of unmitigated self centred stupidity. I can feel it. You must too. This point, the failure of science and reason has left man alone, with no god. His project in tatters. Humiliated and scared. They are stood in their suits, looking at the horizon, wondering what method of population reduction it will be. Plague, pestilence, famine. But it is in the post."
Peter:"Don't you know it. The others I have spoken to are content. They knew it would happen right at its start. The point of their hidden pockets was to preserve the craft, the connection to the earth, waiting for this to work its way through. Most are looking forward, knowing their grand children, or theirs are going to be there. To take up the baton. Ready to return the craft to the small groups who survive this human decimation."
Lipton: "Don't the Clun lot feel the same?"
Peter: "Who knows? I guess they must. But each walker goes missing I'm the hills. These suicides. They have achieved an incredible feat. A few more years and all they despise will be gone. Just a century more. Patience for a last few generations. We need them to hold out. If this suicide epidemic goes noticed as some Clun nutters perverted weirdo witchcraft, all that waiting. Year on year, from Roman invasion till now, will all be for nowt if the coven are split up in to jails and nuthouses. They need saving from themselves!"
Lipton: "I see you point."
Peter: "I'm not sure why we've been drawn here. Why the twenty remaining Druids aren't intervening. From what I was told in Orkney, their agreement when the Roman genocide killed off the majority, was to form the five covens, independent from each other. They have stuck to this rigidly. If one group had been rooted out, under torture, they wouldn't know where the other groups were. None of them guessed all five would still be here. The Cornish lot are gentle folk. They operate within mainstream society. Obviously they keep their nature secret, you wouldn't guess to see them. Some inter breeding over the years has diluted the blood. But their still plenty pure enough. Never met the Irish, nor the deep Welsh. The Orcadians, well, I'll talk of them another time. They're all aware the change has begun. The storms and floods have them readied."
Lipton: "So how do they see things panning out from here?"
Peter: "Well, I can only tell you the Orcadians vision and the Cornish. Climate change is at tipping point. The trickle we are seeing soon becomes a downpour. Remaining rainforest where the earths finest shamans live is secure. Warmth increases. Once ice caps melt the oil industry find new hidden reserves. From now till 2150 or so, mankind has a technological super growth. The polar oil renders the Middle East unimportant. Religious wars leave Syriam Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon further into Turkey, Russia even Easter Europe one desolate radioactive dessert. Earths ingenuity will no doubt find a way that life forms can use the toxins but that's way distant. The polar ice caps gone ushering in the serious chaos. Weather conditions beyond our conception. 90% of all life will become extinct. The planet will go through a desolation similar to earlier ice ages though this will be a liquid soup. Already we've entered the bacterial period. Plague when it comes wipes out continents of people in a few short years. Viral mutations become the earths dominant life form. Till the host pool is gone. Western Europe becomes a fungoid jungle. After the bacterial period the fungoid era follows. Human numbers drop into the thousands. Near extinction. Once planetary re stabilisation returns, humans return to about half a billion. This figure stays. The isolated pockets of humanity are aware of the others but never communicate. Their history lesson dictates a new humility. In time, each of the few ares of human habitation evolve into separate species. Five new animals. All of different ability, nature, mind. It is for them the Druid preserved the gnosis. Shamanic or Druidic man continues. Hidden away whilst the western project works its way to its own destruction, then continues after they are done."
Lipton: "Fucking hell. The Druidic time tunnel."
Peter: "That's my brief synthesis of Cornish and Orcadian Druidic prophecy. But how many prophecies come to pass? Not many. Both covens had these stories, passed down to them. There was a romantic feel, like Greek or Norse mythology. But, to be fair. Given they'd not met in two millennia, the similarities were uncanny. The fungoid euro jungle, ace!"
Lipton: "I can see a lot of it myself. The warm moist winters we have have meant rat populations grow massive. Last winter it felt like a Petri dish."
Peter: "I know what you're saying. It's a bacteriological heaven. A huge population of host bodies to infect. Germs, infections and viruses must feel their time has come. Conditions are perfect. Western Europeans have over used their anti biopics. No shield remains. The 2015 migration of Syrians, afghanis and Somalians, all bringing in germs they're immune to but carrying. Plague is inevitable."
Lipton looked invigorated by the prospect. Punching the air, kicking at imaginary enemies with karate moves. "Fucking ace! I hope it's a zombie apocalypse. Like the walking dead. All the city shoe shiners in derelict office blocks. Us travellers would be the only ones ready. Slashing through the rotting fuckers. Down you cunt!" as he thrust an invisible sharpened steel pike through an imaginary zombie before him.
Peter laughed at Liptons glee, "why wait? They're already zombies in my eyes."
Both enjoyed the moment. These fuckers had it coming. Mainstream society were cattle, obliviously walking to the slaughter house.
Lipton: "You'll have to tell us about when you were in Cornwall. You've never said what you did in the Orkney Islands either."
Peter: "Yes mate. They were weird times."
With this jumble of thoughts spinning round their minds, they turned from the gate, calling the dogs back from the woods where they'd been running about, and walked toward the hill fort entrance path.
Humans were a bit of an oddity of evolution. Physically awkward, inferior to most in speed on both land and water, inept at negotiating the terrain. Vulnerable as pray and struggled in most environmental conditions, all had been gambled on the intelligence. Through trickery and deception, the use of tools, a cruelty beyond all others, enjoying killing for pleasure. Man found himself top of the heap. Consciousness enjoyed by all animals reached increasing levels. The amygdala, the brain organ controlling unconscious bodily functions in animals, is covered by the neo cortex that cloaks the animal sub brain. This organ does the thinking, conscious stuff. Through evolutionary drift, the human neo cortex ballooned in grotesque disproportion, crushed and folding, as its surface area increased, the restriction of the skull meant a folding of its outer skin. Man became conscious of being conscious. One step beyond. Able to reflect on themselves, to explore the wonder of being, wallow in their greatness. The stories they told, to themselves and others, became their defining ability. This self reflection delivered the illusion of seperation. It felt as though they were spirits, occupying a body. Illness may suggest animal common laws, brain damage also pointed to the mind being dependent on a working brain. But awareness of self, individuated, looking objectively on reality, gave man a feeling of superiority. Animals were forever in the moment, no self consciousness means full embrasure of the now. Man floated about, worrying about the future, recalling the past, rarely here, unable to join the dance of life other than as an enbarasing dad dancer. Much later, the feelings of being a spiritual being, the pilot of a flesh vehicle which they thought of as there body, a seperate temporary device to carry the spirit, grew to be normal. Even those who knew of evolution still lived like those who liked the infantile stories that made sense of their being. Benevolent creators, rewarding the good, punishing the bad. The illusion grew to a common acceptance, their spiritual natures were confirmed by the discovery of a superior being. This made sense. It did seem odd that all this was chance, that we were mere animals. Man knew all along he was special so this super beings discovery reassured them. In a gift of true love, this great being sent his only son to earth to explain how he'd made all there was. His favourite work was man. He said we were his favourite. His son was sent to man so they knew. Everything else he made would die but they were all there as a background for the humans. Humans were a bit like him. Not gods but half way. They had to use what was around them as an experiment. He explained that man alone had a transcendent spirit. The earth and all its species didn't matter, use them up creatively. But, to get to heaven after your body dies, he explained, you must believe in me and love me. Asking them to close their eyes and count to ten, whoosh, he was gone. Hiding himself. Once Christ left, God kept hidden but he was still watching.
Human consciousness began mans drift away from the environment. Spirits being eternal and not material showed that they were the important part, all the rest was of little worth. A support system to the flesh journey, the test man must qualify to go on, free of body, into heaven.
The shaman, a physical reminder of mans animal nature, his line of communion with the earth, survived in few places. In rain forest. In hidden tribes. Shamans of many types, continued their communion with the planet. Quietly embarrassed as the rest of mankind became delusional and pompous. Christianity may be the height of anthropocentric beliefs but the abrahamic religions share the focus on self importance to the divine, evident in mans singular gift of consciousness. The resultant opening of moral decision, something animals appear not to have, is mans responsibility. This 'gift' sees human life as a test of moral choices. The pinnacle being the test of faith. The gift of reason, presented by the divine absence, must overcome itself to believe despite evidence. Shamanic connectivity has no similar concept. The world is evident, she offers entheogens that permit communion and clearing of a veil that hides the many other dimensions. The Christian mindset holds of a single divinity, a single outer reality of which humans perceive to degrees of accuracy. The divine abscence being the only true other, renders any spiritual vision delusional. The shamanic mindset sees all life inter connective. Each living a different personal reality. Consciousness projecting its own, individual worlds.
Self consciousness had problematic effects on mans peculiar divergence from the other animals. Whilst engaged in one activity, they were able to think of another. Through story man could carry out horrific acts whilst creating a dialogue of reasoning that could reverse the true nature. No action was of itself of any specific morality. Context in the story delivered an acts virtue. Other animals were trapped by reality. Other apes used similar skills, but none so extremely as humans. Story would, in times fullness, permit man to walk blindly in to his own destruction. By a collective belief in our greatness of mind, though the planet appeared to be changing, flood and storm, tsunami and plague, all dismissed in a collusion to look away. Like in all mans great stories, it was when all seemed lost that the hero would snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. A lion would kill to eat. A man could kill to eat, but also he could kill and make it good, to save others from a murderer, to appease imaginary beings. He could rape a neighbour for the good of all, by explaining to the community he had seen his victim plotting with a demon to bring disease on them all, his duty, a selfless act for the common good would see his stature grow. The less gifted in mind could see this man must be exceptional as normal rape was obviously wrong. The rapist being of noble birth must have higher wisdom. Pride in his deception revealed his goodness. The superficial hid deeper truth. The story mattered, not the action. Thus, it may seem wrong to catch a monkey, open its skull to insert wires connected to an electrical box. The shocks may look like a grotesque torture. But this was science. Intelligent men were learning how to prevent future suffering.
One very special mans life story serves to explain how things would go. Yes, he had killed, but it had come to him his victim was on a mission to kill the others in the special mans group. This he knew from divine gnosis. He wasn't a murderer, but a hero who had just saved them all. He must be in touch with a higher being. Informing the villagers of this unique connection, they gave him pride of place. Further requests from above became more frequent. Reporting the higher beings instructions to the group, he would gather the things this being needed. By offering the being these gifts, this would ensure the special man could prevent the invisible being spoiling their harvest. Though seemingly strange the requests were understandable only to the special man to whom the higher being had explained all. Lower minds must not be angered, for they could not hope to understand. The being was wiser beyond their simple minds. Fools may not understand why their daughters required cleansing through the special mans phallus, nor why each must donate gifts to him. By lowering their heads, clasping hands, and closing their eyes they may, if sufficient work was applied, be given some of the special mans advanced talent. Those who could not see felt ashamed. This being was invisible to them but by cunning pretence they were able to find acceptance within the special mans inner circle. Singing songs of praise loudest. Most enthusiastic in the burning of apostates. As the being took more of the special mans time he found less to harvest his crops. Speaking to the group he explained he must let them down. His piety was indeed, beyond question, yet even the purist of soul, still had to eat. He shrugged, said he was sorry, but what could he do? If he starved, they'd all have no access to the higher being. The being might bring storms but he simply could not talk to the being and do his work. The village gathered to discuss this problem. The special man was of deep generosity. After much begging from the people, the special man showed he could bend to help them out. He would give up joys they shared, working in the field, carrying the water, clearing the bottom soil. But he could only be able to give his life for the common good if all the people brought him a portion of their food. Everyone now happy, he would talk with the higher being all week, locked in his large house, discussing the beings requirements to ensure there was no famine or pestilence. On Sunday, he would report back, explaining what was needed. As the being explained his secrets, placing them in the special mans mind, just as other common folk experienced their simple ideas. Writing these teachings down in a book to be handed to his son. There were always going to be the odd idiot. Some men, of deep arrogance argued that because their weaker eyes could not see the beings greatness, he wasn't there. They spread heretical lies. Claiming the special man was not at all special. They refused his kind offers to purify their daughters. How angry were the tribe as, inevitably the years crops were devastated by the beings decision to allow the weather to do as it wanted. These atheists, in their selfish pride had spoiled it for everyone. The special man reluctantly accepted responsibility the being had chosen him alone for, he'd see what the higher being would accept in way of apology and try put right the harm the atheists had caused. Being a pure and caring man, it hurt him more than them as they burned at the stake. But this was the higher beings decision, he was just the messenger. He was forgiving and good. It was late, but, out of great kindness, he agreed to see the daughters. Great joy spread amongst them as the special man agreed to purify them. The girls knew he had purified many, this good work had left him tired and limp of cock, yet with soothing oils they were able to massage his divine phallus, back to life. All were grateful as he neglected not one, all enjoying the purification. But his duty was to the group, not to one man. Another regular problem came about through madness. Being the sole chosen line of communication to the higher being, only he could have mystical revelations. Most years one or two heretics would have visions. Such madness was permissible but, if the loony claimed he had congress with the higher being the special man explained it was him who invariably got a bollocking. He'd report this to his community on Sunday explaining that these apostates had to be excorsized. All knew the pain he endured. No man, let alone one so special, could see others suffer. Even heretics. Normally, to clarify to the group the heretic would be tested. Any culture should permit the man a trial. If they were telling the truth, the being would intervene. So, by a number of creative methods the special man was offered from the higher being, fire, chopping of bodily parts, dunking in water, even simply beating the heretic with sticks could get to the truth of the matter. Most confessed their lies after losing a limb or two, but extreme cases saw such deep insanity, men and women would lie until death. This finality an unquestionable confirmation of heretic lies.
Becoming each day more special, the work he must undertake became hard to shoulder. There was also a king. The tribes richest and strongest man. To clear up any issues regarding the Kings status, the special man accepted a large chest of gold coins. This gave him space to discuss the Kings position with the higher being. Reporting back, he could proudly reveal, the king was the beings ruler of choice. He rarely changed his mind but there were a few leaks in the special mans roof, a place where all gathered to hear his reports from above. Being now close mates, the special man informed the king that, if he helped pay for the houses upkeep, he'd make sure the being would continue to sanction the Kings status. To be fair, of late the king had been round the village, making sure all residents felt safe. His burly group of freinds would always look out for them, given his subjects helped pay for the lost wages the burly fellows incurred whilst unable to work due to protective duties. The king and the special man became very close. After delivering some barrels of mead to the special man, the king was pleased to hear the higher being had informed the special man, stretched by the tribes growth, that the royal cock had now been officially sanctified. Another tool of the divine to purify the many young girls now coming of age. Passers by often heard the sounds of holy cleansing. The burly Kings freinds would bring the girls to the special man, where, together with the king, taking sustenance for this holy work in flagons of mead, both would share this pious duty.
As the village grew, gods support saw it blossom to a town. The king and other business men whose practice confused the more simple of mind, sought his unique stamp of godly support. The details, placed out of context could appear exploitative but, by investment in his church his official sanctification absolved the men, clearing the issues for those who had misunderstood.
So many were the beings needs these days, even the special man tired. One Sunday, he asked his flock to show gracious thanks by initiating their first boys, as gifts to his service. Such an accolade marked the purity of a family. These boys would work with the special man, tending his needs, helping him in his essential work without which all would be at risk.
Witnessing the poorer people, those whose pitiful offerings met a sadness in his eyes, both aware there was little he could do. There weren't all that many seats at gods table. He would comfort them. The meek would inherit the earth. Buried in soil, indeed they would rot away. Those who gave more generously would leave them to the earth, rotting as they ascended in to heaven.
The boys handed over to the special man, could help support the poors case. The special man would argue for them with the divine, explain their financial situation, putting in a good word for them. But he couldn't promise anything. Few stood much chance of entering his kingdom. Gods love saw his chosen rise in life. Money was the mark of having had divine support. Poverty, despite their familiar cries of denial, spoke more eloquently than words. God quite clearly did not like them. He was all seeing, rewarding his devout. Still, the good church he built had an open mind. If they had no money, the special man could find use for their boys, even the younger wives were an acceptable offering. His choir grew. The fornication of the poor had grown problematic. Sinful, animal breeding. The animal underclass were an embarrassment. In communion with the higher being, he'd asked for clarity. Men had souls. Women did not, like animals, mans to use, though, best not let them know.
Having amassed a choir of many young boys, he found he was ready to lead by example. Stood before his people he took a vow of celibacy. Thus he was able to stand on high ground, purity intact. Purifying the girls no longer. The pious, who could show their depth of faith by significant contribution, were sanctified. Authorised to perform the holy act. Those most holy gave most money through which the special man gave the authority to purify. His choir sang in angelic voice, but temptation rose within his heart. Seeking divine councel, his mind was put to rest. The being had a rival. Not as powerful, in fact, should he desire, his higher being could squash this rival. But, in the kindness of his gift of consciousness man now must choose to love him. The dark rival would place temptations, hither and yon. A veritable minefield to negotiate. Being special did not render him free of dark temptation, but, smiling at his favourite the higher being promised if evil entered the boys, if they became his rivals agents, the special mans work had amounted such vast deposits, any trifling matter of being tempted would be counterbalanced. Indeed, even if he let each and every boy use his evil to try sully his purity, he would be forgiven. Such was the special mans relief he set about his campaign of ritual purification with an enthusiasm beyond all his holy work before his vow. The boys temptation found him duty bound to purify. His phallus, because of his celibacy, was now free to cleanse all of his boys. The devil rendered their bottoms a tempting fruit, and in kindness the special man would, through the holy phallus, purify his choir. In holy buggery the special man showed his deep piety. On occasion, as the Holy Spirit took him over, some boys were broken. But never once did he fail to bless the child's soul as it slipped aloft. His heart could not but pity them, for sinners they surely were.
By now, any thought of living without the special mans unique access to the higher being, was terrifying. All now knew, without his love and protection, they would be open to immense varieties of danger. Not only famine, disease, poisoned water and storms were held at bay by the special man, but far worse. The higher being had educated his special man of concerns so deep there implications stretched in to time without end. For centuries before the higher being chose the man to speak to the people, the shamans had been hiding the truth. The higher being had explained to him why he knew of how special he was, even before his revelations. The tribe were no animals. Far from it. Most of the old beliefs had long ago left this place. The shamans recognised The disease early on. It's pattern inevitable, it could play out its destiny, without them. To remote isolated clusters they ran. Preserving the knowledge. In safe storage for when the curse had destroyed itself, in hope enough was left to rebuild from. The few of shaman beliefs who had stayed, stood on that Sunday morning, as the common people learned that they too were special, not like the special man. But more special than animals. The special man told them all how they shamans had fooled them. Those of shamanic knowledge felt the special gaze fall upon them. He smiled and looked at the rage of his people, angry at such long term trickery and its effect. And to those who he knew would soon be killed he asked, "forgive them, now they know what to do," his love did not stretch to the beasts.
The special man was very nearly a God. Deep down he'd always felt he was special. The confusion was lifted and he now saw what had confounded his mind, all slipped into place. Just as his mother had told him, breast feeding him into puberty whilst mothers of lesser boys, rejected their suckling at only three. She had told him just how special a boy he was. He'd long forgotten that he had invented the higher being. His freinds had been cruel, blind to his special attributes. After he told them all about the being, how it had seen how special he was. The attention delivered all he had wanted. This was all now forgotten. With everyone now of devout faith, there was no doubt. The reality they all lived coalesced, any anomaly dissolved by the acid of the communal mind. The higher being, the one true God, had chosen him through divine wisdom as his agent. His divinity manifest in human form, the true prophet. His piety so deep, all would concur, free of personal vice, a man so holy he had now suppressed all ego, all self, giving his flesh over to God. He could not fix a point when the being spoke to him, and he spoke to the people. A translator. To now. A man of God. The Holy Spirit had entered, animated his body, the words from his mouth, were no longer of man. When his lips now moved, it was God speaking. His deification saw him walk in majestic movement. The Kings burly group, ready to smash any sinner who caused him offence.
His people, though shadows of his special glory, listened to these revelations. Through worship, money and submission, their earthly pain was to be endured. Through rejection of physical pleasure, worship and cash. Their faith would be tested by gods abscence. By belief despite evidence, through war, famine, strife, heaven was guaranteed. If mystical visions distracted the weak, they were to be dismissed as madness, the Devils temptation. Only the one true invisible God could secure safe passage.
The others, through his work could now be told the hidden truth. All would survive death. The shamanic conspiracy restraining man from his destiny had enslaved all of them. Fooling all in to thinking they were animals. That this earth was a whole system, man a mere aspect. The new God freed man from all this. Earth was just a backdrop, animals without soul, man was gods love. As this revelation spread, man became free. Liberated from the lies of animal limits, life became just a stage, souls the true unit, spirit beings. The environment no longer a sustenance and host, to be loved as each other, could now be stripped back, farmed so we could breed more. Man stepped free.
The king and his clan, with divine permission, now cleared the wild lands. The special man recalled how things once were. The hunters would thank the animals spirit for giving them its life. Never killing more than sufficient. How this must have angered his God. Idolatry, this beast worship. The wild was tamed, mans civilised world. The people many. The beasts killed and driven away.
But he had grown an old man, special yet tired. The people knew the higher being was reaching down to gather up his child to heaven. How they sang and cheered, grateful his good work was to be rewarded. He lay on his deathbed. People looked on. His mind flickered, now, readying him for ascension. A niggleing memory, tickled away. A small fib, told when he was young. What had it been? He could not bring it to mind. Looking out at his people, all who had grown so much. Pride brought tears. And stood there, quietly watching. Not singing like the rest. This man he knew. The shaman. His boyhood friend. Why had he come? The white light would come soon. He'd been promised this. But, it felt odd. It was like night time. Much more so. A nothingness. No god calling him forth, just dark, empty............
The entrance to the hill fort was far more clear than the time softened shapes of most. Walking through, up and onto the hills top, the core of the village, both Lipton and Peter felt a warmth. The land seemed to recognise them. As though their arrival was awaited with love. And, in reflection both felt affinity to this land. The magnitude of the engineering, built my hand, stick and horn, was utterly humbling. At this height, over many years, many generations, a people of a common mind, most would be aware it's completion would be long after the children of their children had died. The earth moving and shaping into the series of defensive ridges, that alone must represent decades of labour. Their imagination had to recreate the wooden fences, the pikes and timber gates, all long decayed. From all sides the view was open. To the south was Hereford, Ludlow. North, craven arms, church Stretton. East, prime farm land, then on to leintwardine, clungunford. West was Wales. Darker hills. Tougher farming.
Peter: "Whoever built this knew that dark times were ahead. The mindset must have been looking far into some inevitable future. No one would build something so consumptive of time on mere worry. They must have been certain. Their people were at threat. It wasn't the builders lives at risk but their future, multiple generations ahead. Nobody thinks like that now. No one begins a work they know they won't see finished."
Lipton: "It's a striking feature of all the ancient works. Stonehenge took many thousand years. Generations must have come and gone, talking it through, planning possibilities. A millennium of combined thought before any work began. Imagine, from the death of Christ, till today, in the same number of years, Stonehenge wasn't halfway to completion."
Peter: "Steadies the mind, eh? What keeps repeating to me is how different those people saw themselves. They can't have felt seperated as we do. They were singular men of one mind. The scope was collective. Each person an aspect of a far greater whole. To spend lives in hard labour, many born, living and dying, offering their entire life's energy for a project, a goal that the vast majority would never reap any personal benefit. The project of western civilisation, in its many details, has led to a reverence for the individual. It's conclusion leaving us all seperated, on personal journeys. All now confused, disillusioned, alone. Through reason and science, we thought we would become enlightened as to the true nature of our existence. The result was the complete opposite. The universe became not our special place, but a vastness beyond the human minds ability to imagine. Earth. A lost dot in impartial infinity. Physical laws, directional forces with purpose have now been revealed as random, impartial. As our measuring developed a shifting reality, drifting into temporary patterns existent in that one place under those conditions, before turbulent drift saw the patterns slide. Time and space, of substance we can't grasp never mind see. Trapped in a subjective point, equipped with sensory limitations, sense data the brain deciphers creating a picture, a reality existent only in our minds, nothing close to what we know is there. No hope of ever knowing a single truth. That is the conclusion. And to cap it all, we've caused such damage to our planet. Initiated an extinction of so many species. And we may still die along with the animals who died as collateral cost for the project."
On reflection, the Clun coven had a point. But if they strike out again, like in 1200, summoning up serpents, demonic eels that ate out babies brains. Further still, when fully grown ate a vicious tube linking the vagina and mouth of aristocratic ladies. The authorities would destroy all they had worked towards.
Lipton: "We have to check them out. If this suicide epidemic is the preparations of some dark act, we must reason with them. Find a way to keep everyone of the old belief onside."
The dogs were ahead of them. In a hollow, layed in a heap. They'd sleep here.
Dropping the rucksacks from their shoulders, the two men, archangels of Jesse, shamans of natures selection looked around. This hollow had been the bed of many over the years. The land formed to a protective pocket, hidden from the winds. It felt as though their prescence here had been expected, the inevitable conclusion in a complex pattern of time and molecular physics. It felt right. Both looked to the sky, together something had drawn their eyes. Three Eagles, high up, circled. Their majesty of sublime quality. Both men were knowledgable on wildlife. Lipton a hunter and man of the wilderness. Peter had been raised by a naturalist father, evolutions wonders were his earliest memories. These were golden eagles. A pair had nested in a secret Cumbrian location in recent years, otherwise only seen in remote Scottish highlands. Spotting an isolated eagle in the Welsh borders would be an extremely unusual and remote possibility. Three, without question, a vision. Peruvian shamans see Eagles as spiritual entities, of mystical qualities. Messengers able to fly between dimensions. Seeing an eagle under any circumstances has significance. Entranced, the two visionaries entered into mystical reverence. Understanding beyond any linguistic reduction flooded them both. This revelation gathered the confusion of all pieces they'd accumulated since their recent meeting. Liptons suicide attempt, Peters spiritual disturbance, the urges and impulses, the instinctual pattern of their journey, the multitude of sensory warnings, the spirit messages from benevolent allies from other dimensions, all coalesced into a whole. A jigsaw of the unconscious. A planetary alignment. So many inexplicable fears had plagued them. Without any spiritual framework both assumed the psychiatrists were right. Psychosis, paranoia, smothered in desperation by heroin and alcohol. So many of their brothers who began their shamanic journey had died. Others institutionalised, zombified with anti psychotics. Their minds the receiver of countless voices. Messengers from multiple dimensions, unable to materialise but reaching out in desperation to any remaining aspects of their dying breed. Shamanic perception, once as common as smell or sight, had been driven out as civilisation developed. Communal consciousness that the native Britains shared, a species group mind, that had driven them to build this hill fort. Stonehenge, evidence of how this unity of spirit brought all into a singular purpose. A collective being. Every person aspects of the one. First step through divine selection man left other animals behind, second step vanity in human intelligence rendered the infinite knowable, third step individuals chose themselves over the species. The countless sensations, voices, irrational fears, visions and impulsions, in twentieth century Britain, materialist reality, stripped of spiritual dimension, saw Peter, Lipton, others still able to sense none material entities that shared the world, with no where to turn. No shamans or spiritual guides to help. Only psychiatrists. Abandoning belief in a spiritual dimension had left all phenomena of material cause. Both had been diagnosed schizoid, manic, other delusional conditions of neurological imbalance. This moment, beneath the circling Eagles, the completion of their shamanisation marked by the hard fought gnosis. The warmth of illumination filled both, a golden spherical glow surrounded them, the dome above connecting to the skies, the dome beneath them connection to the earth.
After the sun sank and day became dusk, the two men and three dogs, in the sanctuary of the hill fort, watched the dancing ghosts, flames flickering from the fire. The day had brought closure on dark years of confusion. Passengers in a delusional society, a bus driven by a blindfolded drunk, foot to the floor. Terrified as they sped towards death, the passengers around read papers, chatted on phones, or slept oblivious to the situation. Trying to make sense of it all by reason alone was an arrogant misunderstanding of human potential. Neither spoke, no words could express, no words needed, as all now was clear. Western civilisation was growing at an impossible speed. Environmental changes to feed the growth. Technologies developing in blind expansion, their long term effects unknown, spurting from pandoras box. Systems of biodiversity of complex interdependence, cleared away before their purpose was understood. The rain forests, the planets lungs, cut away. Polar ice caps, cooling systems melting, temperature rising without restraint. Too late to stop now, change was underway. The warnings from dimensions man now denied. Voices screaming from beings whose existence was deemed a superstition. The planetary organism in realignment. The dinosaurs fossil record stops at a single point. The mass extinction from what man never learned, had ended their reign. The earth retracting growth in frozen self preservation. The dessert of ice, an age of clearance before the next growth spurt, humanity the conclusion. The biodiversity, the harmonic balance that allowed us to flourish, interdependent systems of interwoven necessity. By the year 2000, anyone open to their sensory perception, anyone listening could hear the changes underway. Peter and Lipton, joined by a shared view, shouted out to the reality around. And it had replied. Their panic, tingling senses that alerted their minds, their instinctual awareness of mans period of planetary custodianship was in its final days. All the essences, beings, spirits and other entities modern man could no longer see, hear, smell or taste, in chaos and despair, screaming and nudgeing, appealing to the blind and dumb species. Now all was clear. Both men had blocked it all out, as mental health experts diagnosed their madness, alcohol and heroin, taking more as the volume increased. This spiritual repression had destroyed the others leaving just two. They'd navigated the storms that took their freinds, till the controls were ripped away, the weather taking them where it chose. Free from volition, driftwood abandoned to the waves. This conclusion to their realisation delivered awe and wonder, the scape of the new reality they had worked hard at, opening their minds, allowing anything through, now accepted through conceptual frameworks devised from many years of discipline. The truths brought the reassurance, the confirmation of their beliefs, defiantly preserved through many battles. To finally know they'd been right all along, brought inner peace.
Peter had an angle that allowed their gnosis. Knowledge of academia was not truth, information passed from person to person. From a position outside a system, through study, observation, experimentation, discussion with fellow students, man gathered information and theoretical hypotheses. History was creations of imagination, frameworks that positioned remains, fragments in to patterns of aesthetic sense. Always a guess. New discoveries, usually could be squeezed into open spaces. Till a chunk would be unearthed that had no gap it could be squashed into. New historians reshuffled the pieces again, forming a new pattern, the chunk now included. And science was even worse. A history of theoretical frameworks, mental constructions able to contain the data available. These metaphorical structures, existing only in minds, were much the same. New data would be squeezed in, anomalies rejected, thrown aside. In time this pile of uncomfortable rejected parts would grow too big to hide. A leap to a new paradigm, another structure of the mind, able to contain all the data. Standing for a perfect moment, then new data again would gather, the cyclic process an eternal series of falsifiable hypothetical conjectures, all suggestions of the reality we were forever separate from, further still, unable to see, smell, hear, taste nor touch. This final realisation of scientific limits, meant the religious superstitions so scorned by early scientific hope, we're just other paradigms, other mental structures with no more confirmation than any other.
But what Peter brought was his trade. As a wood craftsman he knew knowledge had two types. The objectivity of science, looking upon a system, positioned outside, measuring in cold cognition. Knowledge stored in the mind. Reducible to language or numbers. Things either known or not. He had suspicions it could be imaginary. Dancing as watched from the disco wall. 'Knowing that' had a sister called 'knowing how.' Know how was tacit knowledge. Somatic knowledge. Physical knowledge, in the body, not reducible to language or numeric formula. Knowledge only knowable from within. Subjective, participatory, expressed through the body. Dancing. Craft skills, tacit knowledge, know how, a knowledge without end. The knowledge of the musician, dancer, painter, warrior, craftsman. Through practice it could develop. The religion as he was taught at school was like history, facts, names, stored in the mind. Shamanic knowledge came from experience and practice. Know how. A skill. Western man had elevated objective study, the academic knowledge, being of the mind more valuable than tacit knowledge. The poor worked with the body, service to the higher classes whose knowledge of mind was superior. Physicality, touch, interaction with material reality, the working class trades, their physical nature connected to animals. Tacit knowledge is the knowledge of animals, the swallow and swift in flight is a beauty to behold. The wing and body of masterful subtle shiftings, responsive directly and without thought or reason to the infinite diversity of air pressures, currents, a dimension of constant animation, turbulence of air is in constant change, the bird hasn't time to consider then act, it must become a responsive reflection. Craft skill has to be learned through practice. Mans journey from animal origin, into consciousness, the higher importance of the spirit, the mind, our distinction from animals of no spirit or mind, only body. Thus, work of the body marked a persons lower status, the higher classes displayed their superiority by distancing themselves from physical interactions with material reality. The muscle atrophied, skin softened, reminders of any animal nature hidden from the self and others. Becoming seperated from the material world meant distance was desire able. Religions had origins of mystical experiences, epiphany delivering gnosis. These instances of divine intervention were jealously claimed. Churches with hierarchical preisthoods, authorised monopolistic singular access to the divine by their ancestral or familial connection to these epiphanies. Having sole authorisation, other mystical experiences were rigidly policed. Their unlicensed nature meant they were apostate States, delusions of insanity or demonic possession. The church preserved sole authority through murder, torture and imprisonment. Faith despite no mystical illumination suited the drift toward separation and objectivity. Religions of historical knowledge.
The atheism of Peters youth cleared through experience. Mystical States, experiences delivering gnosis. Not objective theory but participatory skill. The learning took years of practice. Sacramental entheogens brought visionary States. Allowed entry to different dimensions as real as his home. With time the body becomes attuned to reality around. Sensing its topographic diversity, the weather of spiritual change. Stripping away the barriers, the cultural indoctrinations, the unconscious denials, tribal prejudices, till, on the hill fort with Lipton, as Eagles circled to affirm his intuitions. Finally both became as responsive to the realities and dimensional diversity, the spiritual climate, as responsive as swifts in the wind, released from reason and the displacement it delivers. Animal again. Shamans. This condition of being hasn't been a choice. Men entered the priesthood, women entered nunnerys, an inner calling to become closer to God. Lipton and Peter had set out from home, kicked out at sixteen, to explore and seek out adventure. Did Gaia steer them or was the genetic make up, combined to early life experience, a fluke combination to set a path to the sacrament of the native pagan, the liberty cap mushroom. A powerful entheogen, its historic use stretching in to depths beyond measure. Generations could pass, shifting habits change, then as though the planet wished to speak, small groups would rediscover its use. An inbuilt system that kicked in times of planetary imbalance. A safety valve of spiritual injection. There are scientists who think that man is the first basic shoots of grow where the particles of matter that form the universe, have formed to a pattern that exhibits evidence of the universe becoming aware of itself. Lipton and Peters discovery of Liberty caps may or not have been a volitional act of the planets conscious intent, or an unconscious arrangement of particles that, be it them or others of like mind, combined to discovery of the entheogen, was a periodical flowering. Many dispute the concept of Gaia, the interdependence of biodiversity, seen as a single organism, all life seen as aspects of a greater, singular whole. But the knock on effects of damage to seemingly unrelated systems, points towards a harmonic and diverse organism. The temperature stabilising ice caps, the oxygenating, carbon dioxide digesting, rain forests, show protective or life support systems. Yet, inadvertent shamanification rendered them messengers or tools to help the planet. The project of western civilisation had brought about the global depletion, ushered in climate change, before anyone thought through the inherent problems of population growth. She was closing down. A period of less life. In time, earth would stabilise, new climates where new species would evolve. They both knew man could no more stop this than he was aware of the conclusion most likely in his delusional journey as spirit beings, above natural law. Lipton and Peter were never political types. Greens were nice but infantile. Free will was an illusion. Humans acted out predictable lives their genetic make up and cultural context decreed. However, both knew the Druidic project. Their bloodlines pitched forward in time, waiting out the Promethean projects conclusion, ready to return the craft to mankind, whatever traces remained. The deviant growth in the Clun line was a magnet, drawing them in. That much seemed likely. But what their role was neither had a clue. Today's awakening was a liberation from reason. Their animal natures restored, they would do what felt right. No plan. Yet a notion both felt, was what they were, how they had become, was a part of some natural planetary process of which they were no more understanding than a gene. Their emergence from the planetary life patterns would by the specific coalescence of forces and molecular arrangement, find them unable to do anything other than act out the role for which they had come in to being. They could not do anything but be the agent for which the earths bio complexity positioned them in the sequence of its cycle. Just as chemical messengers, neuro transmitters are triggered by dangers to the human system, an automatic communicative system to protect the greater whole. A God like overview was always beyond human understanding, not even an awareness of their relevance, was needed. They would perform their function.
And with this peace of mind, free of questioning the voices in their heads, now clear and certain. Any response they had would be right. They were not mad. Fire light formed a golden bubble of warmth and light, around the two men and three dogs. Here, hidden from everything but the stars. This was home. A sanctuary that was theirs. Together drifting into sleep. The depths of space above. The earth below, holding itself up to form this hill, like two hands cradling them before the heavens.
A crackle in the fire, some resin pocket bursting, a miniature blow torch, flipped Peter awake. The moons drift meant four hours had passed since he fell asleep. Dook, his husky cross was snoring, tight to his belly. Across the fire Lipton was awake.
Lipton: "Bar the obvious, what did you notice about yesterday?"
So much had happened he knew not what to pick.
Lipton: "Neither of us mentioned drugs once."
Then sleep reclaimed him.
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Lipton could see light ahead. The higher most trees were thinning out and the lower burrow of the hill fort was visible. Having been under leaf cover for nearly two hours, breaking out from the woods into bright sun light at the hill fort edge, felt revelatory. A rebirth. The woodland womb had been a steep march in cool, dark canopy. Peters story about the Clun Coven had killed the time but now they were delivered from the trees into the light.
Peter: "Some hill fort, eh?" Peters pride in showing this hidden treasure of British history.
Lipton:"You can see how secure it would have been. You'd see any attackers a good three hours before they arrived."
Both looked down across the green fields below, stretching out, up towards Church Stretton, the nearest land of comparable height. A five bar gate delivered a point of rest and wonder after the long uphill hike. Slowly reoxigenating their blood as adrenalin fell to allow a natural flood of endorphins. The experience was something both Lipton and Peter had forgotten during their heroin use. Turning eyes from the view to look at each other, brotherly smiles spoke beyond words scope. The opiate addiction that had softened and spoiled, in equal measure, so many years, the lives of both, was over. Their neuro systems returning to normal. This was the stipulation Jesse had insisted on. Both had long known that shamans needed pure systems to read the reality around. The complex interconnection of life, bacterial, animal, vegetable, fungoid, viral, spirit essence and the vast array of trans dimensional entities, was of such fine harmonic balance, shamans must have their own multiple mental, spiritual and bodily systems equally balanced to be at one. For it is a single organism of which we are an aspect. The shaman, the Druid, people of all lands, as consciousness evolved, had individuals that retained this sensitivity to the environment. Pagan spirituality invariably was the initial system of understanding. These select individuals were of crucial importance to the tribes survival. Their abilities to recognise the underlying roots of invisible dangers. Disease, madness, spiritual disharmony, weather, the numerous forces affecting the groups, forces beyond human control, invisible to the majority, were only understood by the shaman. Each culture had differing, independent metaphors to describe this other parallel world. Their many roles, medicine man, priest, philosopher, rendered them respected and protected. Without one, a tribe would die off. They maintained the connection to the earth. The bridge or channel for humanity's communion with the one. Animals intuitively react to the changing conditions, changing direction in harmonic turbulence. Mans evolution built on his specialism, came at a cost.
Lipton: "That story you were telling on our climb. Don't sound the actions of the shamans I'm aware of. Those demon eel fish, burrowing into arsitovag, eating a hollow flesh tube linking twat and mouth. Most I've met don't cross dark dimensional demons with fish. Are the Clun coven freind or foe? These suicides. Is this another similar thing? Another spiteful curse? I'd always thought the pursuit of money and status was as much a pitfall as heroin. Worse, in fact. If you break a leg up here, you'd prefer some gear. Money can't help when away from civilisation. Leave them to it, I say."
Peter: "That story is regarded as true. However, it was 1200ad. It was not written down for 400 more years. It's sculpture or evolution each telling must have favoured details the story teller knew would bring in a shilling when he passed round his hat. It wasn't done in spite or jealousy of aristocratic greed, they'd seen a gene line developing, evident in the torture and persecution those posh families dished out. They nipped it in the bud for all, not themselves. It's a shame no Bavarian Druids ended the gene pattern that led to hitler. More of importance is how it serves as a tool to understand how the Drulords, in Orcadia, Eire, Wales, Cornwall and Ireland see the Clun. They are revered as the purest line. Untainted nor diluted since the Roman genocide. Their persecution was systematic. The others found places where no outsider could find them. Though this lot escaped to Clun. Perched on offas dyke. Roman Christian England one side, Welsh independence the other. A perch from where they could watch the virus of the mind Roman invasion brought, yet they could have run into Wales if the bullying turned to full on genocide. There they sat out Roman occupation. They were never popular. The locals had turned to Christianity. The brutality they endured could be exaggerated. But, whatever happened, it changed them. Shamans as we know them serve the community. The Clun are psychologically disturbed. They work for the common good though man is less respected by them than all other animals. They consider the other groups of Druids collaborators. Gaia, all wildlife has a virtue beyond their fellow man. To bring man down. Establishment man. Mainstream man. Only by the culling of vast numbers do they see possible rebalance. We hate straight folks. But not like them."
Lipton:"Could be its they who are right. True, the story had a relish in the horror. The gnashing of the vaginal meat of the ruling class, it reminds me of Robin Hood. All people who grow up in England with a class system that ensures the wealth is in the hands of a few. A royal family that derives power, not from having fine minds, not by vote, but by birth. Inbred idiots. Humanity's worst, given the power. An unassailable system none can enter. Robin Hood rights these wrongs. The crash of Dianna too. The snob princess. Killed by her own vanity. Her love of the camera and self adoration, brought to its ultimate conclusion. Moral tales. To give hope. But in truth, life isn't like that."
Peter: "I don't doubt it. But they have grown to believe it is too late. The environmental damage too severe. We feel time is short. Permanent change is here. We've talked many times on this. But man is an animal. Anything he does is natural. We don't think of Gaia as dying in mans control. We have hope. No man, Druid or not, can stop what is to occur."
Lipton: "To think mankind has the power to destroy all life is a continuation of mans self deification. As delusional as thinking he can stop the climate change he has caused. This plague of human over population will be cut down. Gaia has systems of self regulation. This extinction man initiated is horrific. I can see the Clun coven view. Western civilisation was a project of unmitigated self centred stupidity. I can feel it. You must too. This point, the failure of science and reason has left man alone, with no god. His project in tatters. Humiliated and scared. They are stood in their suits, looking at the horizon, wondering what method of population reduction it will be. Plague, pestilence, famine. But it is in the post."
Peter:"Don't you know it. The others I have spoken to are content. They knew it would happen right at its start. The point of their hidden pockets was to preserve the craft, the connection to the earth, waiting for this to work its way through. Most are looking forward, knowing their grand children, or theirs are going to be there. To take up the baton. Ready to return the craft to the small groups who survive this human decimation."
Lipton: "Don't the Clun lot feel the same?"
Peter: "Who knows? I guess they must. But each walker goes missing I'm the hills. These suicides. They have achieved an incredible feat. A few more years and all they despise will be gone. Just a century more. Patience for a last few generations. We need them to hold out. If this suicide epidemic goes noticed as some Clun nutters perverted weirdo witchcraft, all that waiting. Year on year, from Roman invasion till now, will all be for nowt if the coven are split up in to jails and nuthouses. They need saving from themselves!"
Lipton: "I see you point."
Peter: "I'm not sure why we've been drawn here. Why the twenty remaining Druids aren't intervening. From what I was told in Orkney, their agreement when the Roman genocide killed off the majority, was to form the five covens, independent from each other. They have stuck to this rigidly. If one group had been rooted out, under torture, they wouldn't know where the other groups were. None of them guessed all five would still be here. The Cornish lot are gentle folk. They operate within mainstream society. Obviously they keep their nature secret, you wouldn't guess to see them. Some inter breeding over the years has diluted the blood. But their still plenty pure enough. Never met the Irish, nor the deep Welsh. The Orcadians, well, I'll talk of them another time. They're all aware the change has begun. The storms and floods have them readied."
Lipton: "So how do they see things panning out from here?"
Peter: "Well, I can only tell you the Orcadians vision and the Cornish. Climate change is at tipping point. The trickle we are seeing soon becomes a downpour. Remaining rainforest where the earths finest shamans live is secure. Warmth increases. Once ice caps melt the oil industry find new hidden reserves. From now till 2150 or so, mankind has a technological super growth. The polar oil renders the Middle East unimportant. Religious wars leave Syriam Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon further into Turkey, Russia even Easter Europe one desolate radioactive dessert. Earths ingenuity will no doubt find a way that life forms can use the toxins but that's way distant. The polar ice caps gone ushering in the serious chaos. Weather conditions beyond our conception. 90% of all life will become extinct. The planet will go through a desolation similar to earlier ice ages though this will be a liquid soup. Already we've entered the bacterial period. Plague when it comes wipes out continents of people in a few short years. Viral mutations become the earths dominant life form. Till the host pool is gone. Western Europe becomes a fungoid jungle. After the bacterial period the fungoid era follows. Human numbers drop into the thousands. Near extinction. Once planetary re stabilisation returns, humans return to about half a billion. This figure stays. The isolated pockets of humanity are aware of the others but never communicate. Their history lesson dictates a new humility. In time, each of the few ares of human habitation evolve into separate species. Five new animals. All of different ability, nature, mind. It is for them the Druid preserved the gnosis. Shamanic or Druidic man continues. Hidden away whilst the western project works its way to its own destruction, then continues after they are done."
Lipton: "Fucking hell. The Druidic time tunnel."
Peter: "That's my brief synthesis of Cornish and Orcadian Druidic prophecy. But how many prophecies come to pass? Not many. Both covens had these stories, passed down to them. There was a romantic feel, like Greek or Norse mythology. But, to be fair. Given they'd not met in two millennia, the similarities were uncanny. The fungoid euro jungle, ace!"
Lipton: "I can see a lot of it myself. The warm moist winters we have have meant rat populations grow massive. Last winter it felt like a Petri dish."
Peter: "I know what you're saying. It's a bacteriological heaven. A huge population of host bodies to infect. Germs, infections and viruses must feel their time has come. Conditions are perfect. Western Europeans have over used their anti biopics. No shield remains. The 2015 migration of Syrians, afghanis and Somalians, all bringing in germs they're immune to but carrying. Plague is inevitable."
Lipton looked invigorated by the prospect. Punching the air, kicking at imaginary enemies with karate moves. "Fucking ace! I hope it's a zombie apocalypse. Like the walking dead. All the city shoe shiners in derelict office blocks. Us travellers would be the only ones ready. Slashing through the rotting fuckers. Down you cunt!" as he thrust an invisible sharpened steel pike through an imaginary zombie before him.
Peter laughed at Liptons glee, "why wait? They're already zombies in my eyes."
Both enjoyed the moment. These fuckers had it coming. Mainstream society were cattle, obliviously walking to the slaughter house.
Lipton: "You'll have to tell us about when you were in Cornwall. You've never said what you did in the Orkney Islands either."
Peter: "Yes mate. They were weird times."
With this jumble of thoughts spinning round their minds, they turned from the gate, calling the dogs back from the woods where they'd been running about, and walked toward the hill fort entrance path.
Humans were a bit of an oddity of evolution. Physically awkward, inferior to most in speed on both land and water, inept at negotiating the terrain. Vulnerable as pray and struggled in most environmental conditions, all had been gambled on the intelligence. Through trickery and deception, the use of tools, a cruelty beyond all others, enjoying killing for pleasure. Man found himself top of the heap. Consciousness enjoyed by all animals reached increasing levels. The amygdala, the brain organ controlling unconscious bodily functions in animals, is covered by the neo cortex that cloaks the animal sub brain. This organ does the thinking, conscious stuff. Through evolutionary drift, the human neo cortex ballooned in grotesque disproportion, crushed and folding, as its surface area increased, the restriction of the skull meant a folding of its outer skin. Man became conscious of being conscious. One step beyond. Able to reflect on themselves, to explore the wonder of being, wallow in their greatness. The stories they told, to themselves and others, became their defining ability. This self reflection delivered the illusion of seperation. It felt as though they were spirits, occupying a body. Illness may suggest animal common laws, brain damage also pointed to the mind being dependent on a working brain. But awareness of self, individuated, looking objectively on reality, gave man a feeling of superiority. Animals were forever in the moment, no self consciousness means full embrasure of the now. Man floated about, worrying about the future, recalling the past, rarely here, unable to join the dance of life other than as an enbarasing dad dancer. Much later, the feelings of being a spiritual being, the pilot of a flesh vehicle which they thought of as there body, a seperate temporary device to carry the spirit, grew to be normal. Even those who knew of evolution still lived like those who liked the infantile stories that made sense of their being. Benevolent creators, rewarding the good, punishing the bad. The illusion grew to a common acceptance, their spiritual natures were confirmed by the discovery of a superior being. This made sense. It did seem odd that all this was chance, that we were mere animals. Man knew all along he was special so this super beings discovery reassured them. In a gift of true love, this great being sent his only son to earth to explain how he'd made all there was. His favourite work was man. He said we were his favourite. His son was sent to man so they knew. Everything else he made would die but they were all there as a background for the humans. Humans were a bit like him. Not gods but half way. They had to use what was around them as an experiment. He explained that man alone had a transcendent spirit. The earth and all its species didn't matter, use them up creatively. But, to get to heaven after your body dies, he explained, you must believe in me and love me. Asking them to close their eyes and count to ten, whoosh, he was gone. Hiding himself. Once Christ left, God kept hidden but he was still watching.
Human consciousness began mans drift away from the environment. Spirits being eternal and not material showed that they were the important part, all the rest was of little worth. A support system to the flesh journey, the test man must qualify to go on, free of body, into heaven.
The shaman, a physical reminder of mans animal nature, his line of communion with the earth, survived in few places. In rain forest. In hidden tribes. Shamans of many types, continued their communion with the planet. Quietly embarrassed as the rest of mankind became delusional and pompous. Christianity may be the height of anthropocentric beliefs but the abrahamic religions share the focus on self importance to the divine, evident in mans singular gift of consciousness. The resultant opening of moral decision, something animals appear not to have, is mans responsibility. This 'gift' sees human life as a test of moral choices. The pinnacle being the test of faith. The gift of reason, presented by the divine absence, must overcome itself to believe despite evidence. Shamanic connectivity has no similar concept. The world is evident, she offers entheogens that permit communion and clearing of a veil that hides the many other dimensions. The Christian mindset holds of a single divinity, a single outer reality of which humans perceive to degrees of accuracy. The divine abscence being the only true other, renders any spiritual vision delusional. The shamanic mindset sees all life inter connective. Each living a different personal reality. Consciousness projecting its own, individual worlds.
Self consciousness had problematic effects on mans peculiar divergence from the other animals. Whilst engaged in one activity, they were able to think of another. Through story man could carry out horrific acts whilst creating a dialogue of reasoning that could reverse the true nature. No action was of itself of any specific morality. Context in the story delivered an acts virtue. Other animals were trapped by reality. Other apes used similar skills, but none so extremely as humans. Story would, in times fullness, permit man to walk blindly in to his own destruction. By a collective belief in our greatness of mind, though the planet appeared to be changing, flood and storm, tsunami and plague, all dismissed in a collusion to look away. Like in all mans great stories, it was when all seemed lost that the hero would snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. A lion would kill to eat. A man could kill to eat, but also he could kill and make it good, to save others from a murderer, to appease imaginary beings. He could rape a neighbour for the good of all, by explaining to the community he had seen his victim plotting with a demon to bring disease on them all, his duty, a selfless act for the common good would see his stature grow. The less gifted in mind could see this man must be exceptional as normal rape was obviously wrong. The rapist being of noble birth must have higher wisdom. Pride in his deception revealed his goodness. The superficial hid deeper truth. The story mattered, not the action. Thus, it may seem wrong to catch a monkey, open its skull to insert wires connected to an electrical box. The shocks may look like a grotesque torture. But this was science. Intelligent men were learning how to prevent future suffering.
One very special mans life story serves to explain how things would go. Yes, he had killed, but it had come to him his victim was on a mission to kill the others in the special mans group. This he knew from divine gnosis. He wasn't a murderer, but a hero who had just saved them all. He must be in touch with a higher being. Informing the villagers of this unique connection, they gave him pride of place. Further requests from above became more frequent. Reporting the higher beings instructions to the group, he would gather the things this being needed. By offering the being these gifts, this would ensure the special man could prevent the invisible being spoiling their harvest. Though seemingly strange the requests were understandable only to the special man to whom the higher being had explained all. Lower minds must not be angered, for they could not hope to understand. The being was wiser beyond their simple minds. Fools may not understand why their daughters required cleansing through the special mans phallus, nor why each must donate gifts to him. By lowering their heads, clasping hands, and closing their eyes they may, if sufficient work was applied, be given some of the special mans advanced talent. Those who could not see felt ashamed. This being was invisible to them but by cunning pretence they were able to find acceptance within the special mans inner circle. Singing songs of praise loudest. Most enthusiastic in the burning of apostates. As the being took more of the special mans time he found less to harvest his crops. Speaking to the group he explained he must let them down. His piety was indeed, beyond question, yet even the purist of soul, still had to eat. He shrugged, said he was sorry, but what could he do? If he starved, they'd all have no access to the higher being. The being might bring storms but he simply could not talk to the being and do his work. The village gathered to discuss this problem. The special man was of deep generosity. After much begging from the people, the special man showed he could bend to help them out. He would give up joys they shared, working in the field, carrying the water, clearing the bottom soil. But he could only be able to give his life for the common good if all the people brought him a portion of their food. Everyone now happy, he would talk with the higher being all week, locked in his large house, discussing the beings requirements to ensure there was no famine or pestilence. On Sunday, he would report back, explaining what was needed. As the being explained his secrets, placing them in the special mans mind, just as other common folk experienced their simple ideas. Writing these teachings down in a book to be handed to his son. There were always going to be the odd idiot. Some men, of deep arrogance argued that because their weaker eyes could not see the beings greatness, he wasn't there. They spread heretical lies. Claiming the special man was not at all special. They refused his kind offers to purify their daughters. How angry were the tribe as, inevitably the years crops were devastated by the beings decision to allow the weather to do as it wanted. These atheists, in their selfish pride had spoiled it for everyone. The special man reluctantly accepted responsibility the being had chosen him alone for, he'd see what the higher being would accept in way of apology and try put right the harm the atheists had caused. Being a pure and caring man, it hurt him more than them as they burned at the stake. But this was the higher beings decision, he was just the messenger. He was forgiving and good. It was late, but, out of great kindness, he agreed to see the daughters. Great joy spread amongst them as the special man agreed to purify them. The girls knew he had purified many, this good work had left him tired and limp of cock, yet with soothing oils they were able to massage his divine phallus, back to life. All were grateful as he neglected not one, all enjoying the purification. But his duty was to the group, not to one man. Another regular problem came about through madness. Being the sole chosen line of communication to the higher being, only he could have mystical revelations. Most years one or two heretics would have visions. Such madness was permissible but, if the loony claimed he had congress with the higher being the special man explained it was him who invariably got a bollocking. He'd report this to his community on Sunday explaining that these apostates had to be excorsized. All knew the pain he endured. No man, let alone one so special, could see others suffer. Even heretics. Normally, to clarify to the group the heretic would be tested. Any culture should permit the man a trial. If they were telling the truth, the being would intervene. So, by a number of creative methods the special man was offered from the higher being, fire, chopping of bodily parts, dunking in water, even simply beating the heretic with sticks could get to the truth of the matter. Most confessed their lies after losing a limb or two, but extreme cases saw such deep insanity, men and women would lie until death. This finality an unquestionable confirmation of heretic lies.
Becoming each day more special, the work he must undertake became hard to shoulder. There was also a king. The tribes richest and strongest man. To clear up any issues regarding the Kings status, the special man accepted a large chest of gold coins. This gave him space to discuss the Kings position with the higher being. Reporting back, he could proudly reveal, the king was the beings ruler of choice. He rarely changed his mind but there were a few leaks in the special mans roof, a place where all gathered to hear his reports from above. Being now close mates, the special man informed the king that, if he helped pay for the houses upkeep, he'd make sure the being would continue to sanction the Kings status. To be fair, of late the king had been round the village, making sure all residents felt safe. His burly group of freinds would always look out for them, given his subjects helped pay for the lost wages the burly fellows incurred whilst unable to work due to protective duties. The king and the special man became very close. After delivering some barrels of mead to the special man, the king was pleased to hear the higher being had informed the special man, stretched by the tribes growth, that the royal cock had now been officially sanctified. Another tool of the divine to purify the many young girls now coming of age. Passers by often heard the sounds of holy cleansing. The burly Kings freinds would bring the girls to the special man, where, together with the king, taking sustenance for this holy work in flagons of mead, both would share this pious duty.
As the village grew, gods support saw it blossom to a town. The king and other business men whose practice confused the more simple of mind, sought his unique stamp of godly support. The details, placed out of context could appear exploitative but, by investment in his church his official sanctification absolved the men, clearing the issues for those who had misunderstood.
So many were the beings needs these days, even the special man tired. One Sunday, he asked his flock to show gracious thanks by initiating their first boys, as gifts to his service. Such an accolade marked the purity of a family. These boys would work with the special man, tending his needs, helping him in his essential work without which all would be at risk.
Witnessing the poorer people, those whose pitiful offerings met a sadness in his eyes, both aware there was little he could do. There weren't all that many seats at gods table. He would comfort them. The meek would inherit the earth. Buried in soil, indeed they would rot away. Those who gave more generously would leave them to the earth, rotting as they ascended in to heaven.
The boys handed over to the special man, could help support the poors case. The special man would argue for them with the divine, explain their financial situation, putting in a good word for them. But he couldn't promise anything. Few stood much chance of entering his kingdom. Gods love saw his chosen rise in life. Money was the mark of having had divine support. Poverty, despite their familiar cries of denial, spoke more eloquently than words. God quite clearly did not like them. He was all seeing, rewarding his devout. Still, the good church he built had an open mind. If they had no money, the special man could find use for their boys, even the younger wives were an acceptable offering. His choir grew. The fornication of the poor had grown problematic. Sinful, animal breeding. The animal underclass were an embarrassment. In communion with the higher being, he'd asked for clarity. Men had souls. Women did not, like animals, mans to use, though, best not let them know.
Having amassed a choir of many young boys, he found he was ready to lead by example. Stood before his people he took a vow of celibacy. Thus he was able to stand on high ground, purity intact. Purifying the girls no longer. The pious, who could show their depth of faith by significant contribution, were sanctified. Authorised to perform the holy act. Those most holy gave most money through which the special man gave the authority to purify. His choir sang in angelic voice, but temptation rose within his heart. Seeking divine councel, his mind was put to rest. The being had a rival. Not as powerful, in fact, should he desire, his higher being could squash this rival. But, in the kindness of his gift of consciousness man now must choose to love him. The dark rival would place temptations, hither and yon. A veritable minefield to negotiate. Being special did not render him free of dark temptation, but, smiling at his favourite the higher being promised if evil entered the boys, if they became his rivals agents, the special mans work had amounted such vast deposits, any trifling matter of being tempted would be counterbalanced. Indeed, even if he let each and every boy use his evil to try sully his purity, he would be forgiven. Such was the special mans relief he set about his campaign of ritual purification with an enthusiasm beyond all his holy work before his vow. The boys temptation found him duty bound to purify. His phallus, because of his celibacy, was now free to cleanse all of his boys. The devil rendered their bottoms a tempting fruit, and in kindness the special man would, through the holy phallus, purify his choir. In holy buggery the special man showed his deep piety. On occasion, as the Holy Spirit took him over, some boys were broken. But never once did he fail to bless the child's soul as it slipped aloft. His heart could not but pity them, for sinners they surely were.
By now, any thought of living without the special mans unique access to the higher being, was terrifying. All now knew, without his love and protection, they would be open to immense varieties of danger. Not only famine, disease, poisoned water and storms were held at bay by the special man, but far worse. The higher being had educated his special man of concerns so deep there implications stretched in to time without end. For centuries before the higher being chose the man to speak to the people, the shamans had been hiding the truth. The higher being had explained to him why he knew of how special he was, even before his revelations. The tribe were no animals. Far from it. Most of the old beliefs had long ago left this place. The shamans recognised The disease early on. It's pattern inevitable, it could play out its destiny, without them. To remote isolated clusters they ran. Preserving the knowledge. In safe storage for when the curse had destroyed itself, in hope enough was left to rebuild from. The few of shaman beliefs who had stayed, stood on that Sunday morning, as the common people learned that they too were special, not like the special man. But more special than animals. The special man told them all how they shamans had fooled them. Those of shamanic knowledge felt the special gaze fall upon them. He smiled and looked at the rage of his people, angry at such long term trickery and its effect. And to those who he knew would soon be killed he asked, "forgive them, now they know what to do," his love did not stretch to the beasts.
The special man was very nearly a God. Deep down he'd always felt he was special. The confusion was lifted and he now saw what had confounded his mind, all slipped into place. Just as his mother had told him, breast feeding him into puberty whilst mothers of lesser boys, rejected their suckling at only three. She had told him just how special a boy he was. He'd long forgotten that he had invented the higher being. His freinds had been cruel, blind to his special attributes. After he told them all about the being, how it had seen how special he was. The attention delivered all he had wanted. This was all now forgotten. With everyone now of devout faith, there was no doubt. The reality they all lived coalesced, any anomaly dissolved by the acid of the communal mind. The higher being, the one true God, had chosen him through divine wisdom as his agent. His divinity manifest in human form, the true prophet. His piety so deep, all would concur, free of personal vice, a man so holy he had now suppressed all ego, all self, giving his flesh over to God. He could not fix a point when the being spoke to him, and he spoke to the people. A translator. To now. A man of God. The Holy Spirit had entered, animated his body, the words from his mouth, were no longer of man. When his lips now moved, it was God speaking. His deification saw him walk in majestic movement. The Kings burly group, ready to smash any sinner who caused him offence.
His people, though shadows of his special glory, listened to these revelations. Through worship, money and submission, their earthly pain was to be endured. Through rejection of physical pleasure, worship and cash. Their faith would be tested by gods abscence. By belief despite evidence, through war, famine, strife, heaven was guaranteed. If mystical visions distracted the weak, they were to be dismissed as madness, the Devils temptation. Only the one true invisible God could secure safe passage.
The others, through his work could now be told the hidden truth. All would survive death. The shamanic conspiracy restraining man from his destiny had enslaved all of them. Fooling all in to thinking they were animals. That this earth was a whole system, man a mere aspect. The new God freed man from all this. Earth was just a backdrop, animals without soul, man was gods love. As this revelation spread, man became free. Liberated from the lies of animal limits, life became just a stage, souls the true unit, spirit beings. The environment no longer a sustenance and host, to be loved as each other, could now be stripped back, farmed so we could breed more. Man stepped free.
The king and his clan, with divine permission, now cleared the wild lands. The special man recalled how things once were. The hunters would thank the animals spirit for giving them its life. Never killing more than sufficient. How this must have angered his God. Idolatry, this beast worship. The wild was tamed, mans civilised world. The people many. The beasts killed and driven away.
But he had grown an old man, special yet tired. The people knew the higher being was reaching down to gather up his child to heaven. How they sang and cheered, grateful his good work was to be rewarded. He lay on his deathbed. People looked on. His mind flickered, now, readying him for ascension. A niggleing memory, tickled away. A small fib, told when he was young. What had it been? He could not bring it to mind. Looking out at his people, all who had grown so much. Pride brought tears. And stood there, quietly watching. Not singing like the rest. This man he knew. The shaman. His boyhood friend. Why had he come? The white light would come soon. He'd been promised this. But, it felt odd. It was like night time. Much more so. A nothingness. No god calling him forth, just dark, empty............
The entrance to the hill fort was far more clear than the time softened shapes of most. Walking through, up and onto the hills top, the core of the village, both Lipton and Peter felt a warmth. The land seemed to recognise them. As though their arrival was awaited with love. And, in reflection both felt affinity to this land. The magnitude of the engineering, built my hand, stick and horn, was utterly humbling. At this height, over many years, many generations, a people of a common mind, most would be aware it's completion would be long after the children of their children had died. The earth moving and shaping into the series of defensive ridges, that alone must represent decades of labour. Their imagination had to recreate the wooden fences, the pikes and timber gates, all long decayed. From all sides the view was open. To the south was Hereford, Ludlow. North, craven arms, church Stretton. East, prime farm land, then on to leintwardine, clungunford. West was Wales. Darker hills. Tougher farming.
Peter: "Whoever built this knew that dark times were ahead. The mindset must have been looking far into some inevitable future. No one would build something so consumptive of time on mere worry. They must have been certain. Their people were at threat. It wasn't the builders lives at risk but their future, multiple generations ahead. Nobody thinks like that now. No one begins a work they know they won't see finished."
Lipton: "It's a striking feature of all the ancient works. Stonehenge took many thousand years. Generations must have come and gone, talking it through, planning possibilities. A millennium of combined thought before any work began. Imagine, from the death of Christ, till today, in the same number of years, Stonehenge wasn't halfway to completion."
Peter: "Steadies the mind, eh? What keeps repeating to me is how different those people saw themselves. They can't have felt seperated as we do. They were singular men of one mind. The scope was collective. Each person an aspect of a far greater whole. To spend lives in hard labour, many born, living and dying, offering their entire life's energy for a project, a goal that the vast majority would never reap any personal benefit. The project of western civilisation, in its many details, has led to a reverence for the individual. It's conclusion leaving us all seperated, on personal journeys. All now confused, disillusioned, alone. Through reason and science, we thought we would become enlightened as to the true nature of our existence. The result was the complete opposite. The universe became not our special place, but a vastness beyond the human minds ability to imagine. Earth. A lost dot in impartial infinity. Physical laws, directional forces with purpose have now been revealed as random, impartial. As our measuring developed a shifting reality, drifting into temporary patterns existent in that one place under those conditions, before turbulent drift saw the patterns slide. Time and space, of substance we can't grasp never mind see. Trapped in a subjective point, equipped with sensory limitations, sense data the brain deciphers creating a picture, a reality existent only in our minds, nothing close to what we know is there. No hope of ever knowing a single truth. That is the conclusion. And to cap it all, we've caused such damage to our planet. Initiated an extinction of so many species. And we may still die along with the animals who died as collateral cost for the project."
On reflection, the Clun coven had a point. But if they strike out again, like in 1200, summoning up serpents, demonic eels that ate out babies brains. Further still, when fully grown ate a vicious tube linking the vagina and mouth of aristocratic ladies. The authorities would destroy all they had worked towards.
Lipton: "We have to check them out. If this suicide epidemic is the preparations of some dark act, we must reason with them. Find a way to keep everyone of the old belief onside."
The dogs were ahead of them. In a hollow, layed in a heap. They'd sleep here.
Dropping the rucksacks from their shoulders, the two men, archangels of Jesse, shamans of natures selection looked around. This hollow had been the bed of many over the years. The land formed to a protective pocket, hidden from the winds. It felt as though their prescence here had been expected, the inevitable conclusion in a complex pattern of time and molecular physics. It felt right. Both looked to the sky, together something had drawn their eyes. Three Eagles, high up, circled. Their majesty of sublime quality. Both men were knowledgable on wildlife. Lipton a hunter and man of the wilderness. Peter had been raised by a naturalist father, evolutions wonders were his earliest memories. These were golden eagles. A pair had nested in a secret Cumbrian location in recent years, otherwise only seen in remote Scottish highlands. Spotting an isolated eagle in the Welsh borders would be an extremely unusual and remote possibility. Three, without question, a vision. Peruvian shamans see Eagles as spiritual entities, of mystical qualities. Messengers able to fly between dimensions. Seeing an eagle under any circumstances has significance. Entranced, the two visionaries entered into mystical reverence. Understanding beyond any linguistic reduction flooded them both. This revelation gathered the confusion of all pieces they'd accumulated since their recent meeting. Liptons suicide attempt, Peters spiritual disturbance, the urges and impulses, the instinctual pattern of their journey, the multitude of sensory warnings, the spirit messages from benevolent allies from other dimensions, all coalesced into a whole. A jigsaw of the unconscious. A planetary alignment. So many inexplicable fears had plagued them. Without any spiritual framework both assumed the psychiatrists were right. Psychosis, paranoia, smothered in desperation by heroin and alcohol. So many of their brothers who began their shamanic journey had died. Others institutionalised, zombified with anti psychotics. Their minds the receiver of countless voices. Messengers from multiple dimensions, unable to materialise but reaching out in desperation to any remaining aspects of their dying breed. Shamanic perception, once as common as smell or sight, had been driven out as civilisation developed. Communal consciousness that the native Britains shared, a species group mind, that had driven them to build this hill fort. Stonehenge, evidence of how this unity of spirit brought all into a singular purpose. A collective being. Every person aspects of the one. First step through divine selection man left other animals behind, second step vanity in human intelligence rendered the infinite knowable, third step individuals chose themselves over the species. The countless sensations, voices, irrational fears, visions and impulsions, in twentieth century Britain, materialist reality, stripped of spiritual dimension, saw Peter, Lipton, others still able to sense none material entities that shared the world, with no where to turn. No shamans or spiritual guides to help. Only psychiatrists. Abandoning belief in a spiritual dimension had left all phenomena of material cause. Both had been diagnosed schizoid, manic, other delusional conditions of neurological imbalance. This moment, beneath the circling Eagles, the completion of their shamanisation marked by the hard fought gnosis. The warmth of illumination filled both, a golden spherical glow surrounded them, the dome above connecting to the skies, the dome beneath them connection to the earth.
After the sun sank and day became dusk, the two men and three dogs, in the sanctuary of the hill fort, watched the dancing ghosts, flames flickering from the fire. The day had brought closure on dark years of confusion. Passengers in a delusional society, a bus driven by a blindfolded drunk, foot to the floor. Terrified as they sped towards death, the passengers around read papers, chatted on phones, or slept oblivious to the situation. Trying to make sense of it all by reason alone was an arrogant misunderstanding of human potential. Neither spoke, no words could express, no words needed, as all now was clear. Western civilisation was growing at an impossible speed. Environmental changes to feed the growth. Technologies developing in blind expansion, their long term effects unknown, spurting from pandoras box. Systems of biodiversity of complex interdependence, cleared away before their purpose was understood. The rain forests, the planets lungs, cut away. Polar ice caps, cooling systems melting, temperature rising without restraint. Too late to stop now, change was underway. The warnings from dimensions man now denied. Voices screaming from beings whose existence was deemed a superstition. The planetary organism in realignment. The dinosaurs fossil record stops at a single point. The mass extinction from what man never learned, had ended their reign. The earth retracting growth in frozen self preservation. The dessert of ice, an age of clearance before the next growth spurt, humanity the conclusion. The biodiversity, the harmonic balance that allowed us to flourish, interdependent systems of interwoven necessity. By the year 2000, anyone open to their sensory perception, anyone listening could hear the changes underway. Peter and Lipton, joined by a shared view, shouted out to the reality around. And it had replied. Their panic, tingling senses that alerted their minds, their instinctual awareness of mans period of planetary custodianship was in its final days. All the essences, beings, spirits and other entities modern man could no longer see, hear, smell or taste, in chaos and despair, screaming and nudgeing, appealing to the blind and dumb species. Now all was clear. Both men had blocked it all out, as mental health experts diagnosed their madness, alcohol and heroin, taking more as the volume increased. This spiritual repression had destroyed the others leaving just two. They'd navigated the storms that took their freinds, till the controls were ripped away, the weather taking them where it chose. Free from volition, driftwood abandoned to the waves. This conclusion to their realisation delivered awe and wonder, the scape of the new reality they had worked hard at, opening their minds, allowing anything through, now accepted through conceptual frameworks devised from many years of discipline. The truths brought the reassurance, the confirmation of their beliefs, defiantly preserved through many battles. To finally know they'd been right all along, brought inner peace.
Peter had an angle that allowed their gnosis. Knowledge of academia was not truth, information passed from person to person. From a position outside a system, through study, observation, experimentation, discussion with fellow students, man gathered information and theoretical hypotheses. History was creations of imagination, frameworks that positioned remains, fragments in to patterns of aesthetic sense. Always a guess. New discoveries, usually could be squeezed into open spaces. Till a chunk would be unearthed that had no gap it could be squashed into. New historians reshuffled the pieces again, forming a new pattern, the chunk now included. And science was even worse. A history of theoretical frameworks, mental constructions able to contain the data available. These metaphorical structures, existing only in minds, were much the same. New data would be squeezed in, anomalies rejected, thrown aside. In time this pile of uncomfortable rejected parts would grow too big to hide. A leap to a new paradigm, another structure of the mind, able to contain all the data. Standing for a perfect moment, then new data again would gather, the cyclic process an eternal series of falsifiable hypothetical conjectures, all suggestions of the reality we were forever separate from, further still, unable to see, smell, hear, taste nor touch. This final realisation of scientific limits, meant the religious superstitions so scorned by early scientific hope, we're just other paradigms, other mental structures with no more confirmation than any other.
But what Peter brought was his trade. As a wood craftsman he knew knowledge had two types. The objectivity of science, looking upon a system, positioned outside, measuring in cold cognition. Knowledge stored in the mind. Reducible to language or numbers. Things either known or not. He had suspicions it could be imaginary. Dancing as watched from the disco wall. 'Knowing that' had a sister called 'knowing how.' Know how was tacit knowledge. Somatic knowledge. Physical knowledge, in the body, not reducible to language or numeric formula. Knowledge only knowable from within. Subjective, participatory, expressed through the body. Dancing. Craft skills, tacit knowledge, know how, a knowledge without end. The knowledge of the musician, dancer, painter, warrior, craftsman. Through practice it could develop. The religion as he was taught at school was like history, facts, names, stored in the mind. Shamanic knowledge came from experience and practice. Know how. A skill. Western man had elevated objective study, the academic knowledge, being of the mind more valuable than tacit knowledge. The poor worked with the body, service to the higher classes whose knowledge of mind was superior. Physicality, touch, interaction with material reality, the working class trades, their physical nature connected to animals. Tacit knowledge is the knowledge of animals, the swallow and swift in flight is a beauty to behold. The wing and body of masterful subtle shiftings, responsive directly and without thought or reason to the infinite diversity of air pressures, currents, a dimension of constant animation, turbulence of air is in constant change, the bird hasn't time to consider then act, it must become a responsive reflection. Craft skill has to be learned through practice. Mans journey from animal origin, into consciousness, the higher importance of the spirit, the mind, our distinction from animals of no spirit or mind, only body. Thus, work of the body marked a persons lower status, the higher classes displayed their superiority by distancing themselves from physical interactions with material reality. The muscle atrophied, skin softened, reminders of any animal nature hidden from the self and others. Becoming seperated from the material world meant distance was desire able. Religions had origins of mystical experiences, epiphany delivering gnosis. These instances of divine intervention were jealously claimed. Churches with hierarchical preisthoods, authorised monopolistic singular access to the divine by their ancestral or familial connection to these epiphanies. Having sole authorisation, other mystical experiences were rigidly policed. Their unlicensed nature meant they were apostate States, delusions of insanity or demonic possession. The church preserved sole authority through murder, torture and imprisonment. Faith despite no mystical illumination suited the drift toward separation and objectivity. Religions of historical knowledge.
The atheism of Peters youth cleared through experience. Mystical States, experiences delivering gnosis. Not objective theory but participatory skill. The learning took years of practice. Sacramental entheogens brought visionary States. Allowed entry to different dimensions as real as his home. With time the body becomes attuned to reality around. Sensing its topographic diversity, the weather of spiritual change. Stripping away the barriers, the cultural indoctrinations, the unconscious denials, tribal prejudices, till, on the hill fort with Lipton, as Eagles circled to affirm his intuitions. Finally both became as responsive to the realities and dimensional diversity, the spiritual climate, as responsive as swifts in the wind, released from reason and the displacement it delivers. Animal again. Shamans. This condition of being hasn't been a choice. Men entered the priesthood, women entered nunnerys, an inner calling to become closer to God. Lipton and Peter had set out from home, kicked out at sixteen, to explore and seek out adventure. Did Gaia steer them or was the genetic make up, combined to early life experience, a fluke combination to set a path to the sacrament of the native pagan, the liberty cap mushroom. A powerful entheogen, its historic use stretching in to depths beyond measure. Generations could pass, shifting habits change, then as though the planet wished to speak, small groups would rediscover its use. An inbuilt system that kicked in times of planetary imbalance. A safety valve of spiritual injection. There are scientists who think that man is the first basic shoots of grow where the particles of matter that form the universe, have formed to a pattern that exhibits evidence of the universe becoming aware of itself. Lipton and Peters discovery of Liberty caps may or not have been a volitional act of the planets conscious intent, or an unconscious arrangement of particles that, be it them or others of like mind, combined to discovery of the entheogen, was a periodical flowering. Many dispute the concept of Gaia, the interdependence of biodiversity, seen as a single organism, all life seen as aspects of a greater, singular whole. But the knock on effects of damage to seemingly unrelated systems, points towards a harmonic and diverse organism. The temperature stabilising ice caps, the oxygenating, carbon dioxide digesting, rain forests, show protective or life support systems. Yet, inadvertent shamanification rendered them messengers or tools to help the planet. The project of western civilisation had brought about the global depletion, ushered in climate change, before anyone thought through the inherent problems of population growth. She was closing down. A period of less life. In time, earth would stabilise, new climates where new species would evolve. They both knew man could no more stop this than he was aware of the conclusion most likely in his delusional journey as spirit beings, above natural law. Lipton and Peter were never political types. Greens were nice but infantile. Free will was an illusion. Humans acted out predictable lives their genetic make up and cultural context decreed. However, both knew the Druidic project. Their bloodlines pitched forward in time, waiting out the Promethean projects conclusion, ready to return the craft to mankind, whatever traces remained. The deviant growth in the Clun line was a magnet, drawing them in. That much seemed likely. But what their role was neither had a clue. Today's awakening was a liberation from reason. Their animal natures restored, they would do what felt right. No plan. Yet a notion both felt, was what they were, how they had become, was a part of some natural planetary process of which they were no more understanding than a gene. Their emergence from the planetary life patterns would by the specific coalescence of forces and molecular arrangement, find them unable to do anything other than act out the role for which they had come in to being. They could not do anything but be the agent for which the earths bio complexity positioned them in the sequence of its cycle. Just as chemical messengers, neuro transmitters are triggered by dangers to the human system, an automatic communicative system to protect the greater whole. A God like overview was always beyond human understanding, not even an awareness of their relevance, was needed. They would perform their function.
And with this peace of mind, free of questioning the voices in their heads, now clear and certain. Any response they had would be right. They were not mad. Fire light formed a golden bubble of warmth and light, around the two men and three dogs. Here, hidden from everything but the stars. This was home. A sanctuary that was theirs. Together drifting into sleep. The depths of space above. The earth below, holding itself up to form this hill, like two hands cradling them before the heavens.
A crackle in the fire, some resin pocket bursting, a miniature blow torch, flipped Peter awake. The moons drift meant four hours had passed since he fell asleep. Dook, his husky cross was snoring, tight to his belly. Across the fire Lipton was awake.
Lipton: "Bar the obvious, what did you notice about yesterday?"
So much had happened he knew not what to pick.
Lipton: "Neither of us mentioned drugs once."
Then sleep reclaimed him.
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