Chapter Eight

1

He had these little yellow pills that made you see God, and God tended to look a lot like L. Ron.

        “…and this one time we were really, fucking, out-of-our-minds high – right? – and L. Ron starts believing all those things he’s saying, and He starts talking and we just can’t get him to shut up.  And some other guy sits up and just says, ‘Like cool it, you know?’ and then L. Ron staggers up on four legs and explains it like this:

        “I am the Way and the Life.  If ye would be saved, follow Me.  And follow no other.

       “For I have seen the legions that gathered there, at the far side of the universe, I have witnessed their a-massing, and indeed My Anger was kindled against them.

        “For they did gather up the number of My faithful; yeah, even the Thetans all, and did imprison each and every one of them in a mountain, held fast within the Earth.

        “And they transgressed further still, for in the midst of all those Thetans they unleashed the power of many suns, so that the Thetans were all incinerated, and their likenesses were not to be found upon this or any other Earth.

        “But the spirits of the Thetans, even these my faithful Thetans, were preserved in my sight, and their unseen and unseeable selves did mingle with the primordial stuff of the Earth, even unto the present age, so that you are all cursed with their murder, and suffer greatly for it.”

        “But we couldn’t figure out if he was a god then, and the boat was swaying back and forth in the waves, and the little yellow pills were making us all seasick, and he looked like, you know, terrible when he said that, and I thought that he might kill somebody, or else throw one of us off the boat.  

You never knew what he might do, and I feared that at any moment he would call you to his quarters, and that I would be set adrift again, to wait for your return, just as The Other did, silent and out of view.”

2

A telephone call again, as I am trying to write.  She is always doing this to me.  Disturbing me when I am trying to concentrate.  It is never enough for her to have me the rest of the time.  Nothing is ever enough.

        But no, maybe I’m being selfish.  I mean, I wasn’t really writing this.

3

Recent evidence suggests that the ruins of Atlantis are to be found in Spain, north of Cadiz.  This evidence contradicts previous claims that Atlantis was located in the Bermuda Triangle.  While some still maintain that Atlantis was (and is) to be found in the Caribbean, the evidence pointing towards Cadiz is held in greater favor by most scholars.

Walking among the ruins today, one finds little to suggest the splendor of the Atlantean kingdom at its height.  We must remember, however, that many millennia separate the modern world from that of Atlantis, and that the destruction wrought upon the Atlanteans by their extraterrestrial foes was indeed comprehensive.  Little would have remained of the mighty city, and many prominent psychics have suggested that entire sections of the city were removed and relocated to the dark side of the moon.  

Edgar Cayce, in his studies of the vast Atlantean libraries, may have been aware of this fact, but chose not to speak of it.  It is well known that alien beings still observe us from the lunar surface, and that the more outspoken proponents of this hypothesis have either fallen victim to “accidents,” or else vanished entirely.

        It has been established in the previous chapter that Man, then a mere scavenger and forager at the close of the Ice Age, was instructed in the arts of civilization by the Atlanteans.  He was taught to farm, to domesticate animals, and even to form armies along Atlantean lines.  This was done in order to prepare mankind for the coming extraterrestrial threat, for even though the Atlanteans knew that they could not avert the destruction of their own civilization, they realized that within the burgeoning ranks of humankind lay a last line of defense between the Earth and global annihilation.  

        It is also well known that the creature commonly known as “the Yeti” or “Bigfoot” was in frequent communication with the Atlanteans, and that this creature often appeared among our primitive ancestors as a kind of oracle.  This large, hairy being was actually an immigrant from the Alpha Centauri system, and was sent here to preserve the harmony of our earthly communities against the hostile intentions of our enemies.

4

Can’t seem to get comfortable.  I’m holding the laptop while I type, but to do so I have to put my feet up and then after ten minutes or so I begin to lose the feeling in my legs.  My daughters keep walking by the open door which I am too lazy to shut.  They want to talk to me and tell me about their day.  So many demands upon one’s time, but only when one is self-absorbed in the typing of words.  Or else I am not typing this at all.  I am instead writing it within a notebook, with her eyes in the back of my head.

5

“Whatever you do I know that you are a liar.  You are a liar because I have made you so.  I tell you that I want your honesty, but this is never an honesty I can accept.  Your hunger for exploration is antithetical to my desire for sameness.  I want to put you inside a box.  I want to preserve you, the way you are, forever.  I do not want to be surprised.

        “This prophet who rants in the corner of the room.  Pills.  Always the pills.  I take one thing and I am choking on eternity.  I take another thing and I am so small that I cannot even find myself.  He is laughing at you.  He wants to fuck you.  He is laughing.”

6

He had these little yellow pills.  But I wish I could just smoke some grass.  I am morose when stoned and violent when drunk, and I don’t want my mind opened any further.  I would rather remain ignorant of things that I should not know anyway.  All of these billions of light years looking backward.  He is the one moving the camera.  He is the one deciding when to zoom in and pan out.  He is the director, and the cinematographer.  He is the one writing the script.  He is producing the whole thing himself, and if he doesn’t quite have enough money to finish the production he can’t be blamed for it.  Some of the special effects are shoddily done.  I can see a matte painting behind the tiny spaceships, and the planets don’t turn the way they ought to.

        L. Ron shows me through a door.  On the other side of the door I see a shining Arcadian city upon a hill, wherein pleasure domes undecreed by Kublai Khan reside within view of a turbulent ocean - where fish play.  I see a noble race in robes, existing in a kind of unambitious unmotivated peace that wills itself across every future age.  They hold their conversations in agoras and beneath the pillared likenesses of Roman splendor.  They enhance technologies that have yet to be discovered.  

Yet over everything they do there is a shadow cast, a malignancy from another star.  Over everything they do there is the mark of Lucifer, of Xolotl, of that bright star which may originate in mourning.  The empire of the distant star has sent its probing eyes earthward, and the Atlanteans are too pure to defend themselves, too inflexible in their equanimity.  They know that the end is nigh, but they are a people too close to nature.  The passing of their season is not a thing they can struggle against forever.  In the end they will lay down their arms before it.  In the end they will be undone, with only myths to guess the answer.

        A mote passes through their midst.  Inside the mote I see two future selves, scrambling over their controls.  This was a past they could not control for.

        And if I look close enough I can see that all of the starfighters are made of paper, and the entirety of space is just a backdrop that you are holding up, a backdrop hung heaving over your perfect breasts.  He will have you tonight.  I know it.  He will have you and I will not bear it, I cannot bear it.

“I am the Way and the Life.  If ye would be saved, follow Me.”