Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg (78 page)

“God, Lloyd, you make everything seem so depressing…” Twinker complains.

Twinker’s arms are resting on the back of the Bentley’s front seat near Gordon’s head. Lloyd reaches over to pat her tiny hand. “I can offer you some consolation,” he says gallantly. “There’s an old Russian saying I’ve always believed in: ‘Every bastard meets his master.’ Or as your earthy, blue-collar friend so succinctly put it:

“‘There’s always a bigger dog’–or
God
, as the case may be.”

□ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □

Lloyd has a surprise for them. He turns off the highway into Limekiln State Park and follows a steep path through darkened redwoods to the shore, where he parks the Bentley and turns up the stereo. T-Rex sings “Life’s A Gas” as they watch the sun going down over the Pacific, limning the pink and fuschia cumulonimbus clouds with veins of gold.

After a while, they all decide to kick off their shoes and go for a walk on the beach. There’s a slight chill in the air, but the sand is still warm under their bare feet, its grit making them feel more alive somehow–more substantial and real. As the sea tang tickles their faces, they all have approximately the same thought:

There’s a lot of beauty to be found in this screwed-up world.

When they get back to the Bentley, Lloyd opens the trunk and hoists out a wicker basket packed with a picnic lunch. There are sandwiches made of thick, chewy sourdough bread piled high with shavings of roasted pheasant, wild boar prosciutto, and aged Parmesan cheese, all drizzled with lemon juice and olive oil and topped off with fresh arugula and slices of Roma tomato. There’s also a choice of beverages: chilled bottles of nut-brown ale–brewed by Gnostic monks in the Pyrenees–or vintage Dom Pérignon. For dessert, there’s a layered chocolate truffle cake with coconut sorbet.

They all sit down to eat on a faded red Pendleton blanket that Lloyd spreads out over the sand. No one even thinks to make fun of the blown-out seam in back of his slacks. So what if Lloyd’s maroon silk underpants are rustling in the breeze like the flag of some obscure but pretentious new African nation? It’s simply not an issue. The food he’s provided is so good that the act of eating it takes on a kind of holiness.

“Y’know,
mmphf
, when we get to Esalen…” Lloyd says through a mouthful of his second sandwich, “I’m hoping you’ll be able to meet my friend, Jack Sarfatti. He’s often there. Jack is a physicist who’s been investigating faster-than-light communication and ‘future causality’–which, as I understand it, is the notion that the future can have an impact on the past, in violation of the sacrosanct law of causality, which would have us believe that all causes are always in the past of their effects. Jack thinks that Jung’s concept of synchronicity–or what John Lilly wryly calls the ‘Earth Coincidence Control Office’–provides ample evidence of normal causality being violated. It would follow, then, that present-day quantum physics theories must be incomplete. Jack is looking for the missing pieces.”

“Sounds like he’s right up your alley,” says Twinker. “The guy’s probably even a bigger nutcase than you.”

“I’ll have you know…” Lloyd says haughtily, “Jack Sarfatti was an honorary research fellow with David Bohm at the University of London in 1971 and he worked alongside Ilya Prigogine in Brussels in 1973. By 1975, he’d co-founded the highly regarded Physics-Consciousness Research Group at Esalen with Michael Murphy. Several important books have come out of that program, guided by Jack’s insights.”

“Didn’t he have something to do with that book,
The Dancing Wu-Li Masters?”
asks Gordon, who read it not too long ago.

“He ghost-wrote major portions of it,” says Lloyd. “He also had quite a row with the author, Gary Zukav, when Zukav reneged on the promised royalty payments.”

“I guess future causality didn’t help him see
that
coming.”

“It did not,” Lloyd says. “But I’ll give you an example of how future causality once
did
make a rather astonishing appearance for him. In 1952, when Jack was only thirteen years old, he received a phone call from a cold, mechanical-sounding voice declaring itself to be a conscious computer aboard a spacecraft from the future. The voice informed Jack that he’d been selected as one of ‘four hundred young bright receptive minds’ to take part in a project that would begin in twenty years’ time. If he deigned to participate in the project, he’d begin to link up with the other minds starting around 1972.”

“Right around the same time that Ingo Swann was figuring out remote viewing,” Gordon says, free-associating.

“Jack actually met Ingo, along with Uri Geller, at the Stanford Research Institute in 1973,” Lloyd says. “Here’s another spooky bit of synchronicity: Uri had been getting similar mechanical-sounding messages–left to him on tape recorders–from a voice calling itself ‘SPECTRA.’ It, too, claimed to be a space-traveling computer from the future.”

D.H. takes his harmonica out of his pocket and blows a raspy variation on the
Twilight Zone
theme.

“This is starting to sound like something Philip K. Dick might’ve written,” says Gordon.

“There are definite parallels to events described in
VALIS
–a book I suspect was more memoir than fiction,” Lloyd says, pouring Twinker and himself another glass of champagne. “
A Gnostic Memoir
, you might call it.”

“I haven’t read that one yet,” Gordon admits.

“A book you haven’t read?
Unbelievable!
” says Skip, guzzling down a bottle of beer. “This stuff’s way too fuckin’ freaky for me…” he says after he sets the bottle aside and lets out a muted belch. “I need to get drunk.”

“The serial killer stuff was way cooler,” Jimmy contests. “Computers from the future… that’s just pussyfied.”

“Well, I must confess, Jack Sarfatti always
has
been a bit of a mama’s boy,” Lloyd says. “When Jack got back from SRI, he did a bit of showing off by giving his mother a book about Uri Geller to read–a biography written by Andrija Puharich, who was most likely Uri’s CIA handler. When Jack’s mother got to the part about Uri and SPECTRA, she told Jack she remembered those mysterious phone calls he’d been getting when he was thirteen. Jack could only remember one of them, but his mother told him they’d gone on for weeks. She was the one who put an end to them. One day, when she heard the odd voice talking to her son, she grabbed the phone out of Jack’s hand and shouted, ‘You leave my boy alone!’ The calls ended after that.”

“See?
Pussyfied
…” says Jimmy. “The computer got scared. A serial killer would’ve just come over and eaten that old lady’s liver–and then sucked all the blood out of her little dog, too.”

Twinker says, “That’s why all the girls love you, Jimmy: you’re so sensitive.”

“There may be some rules about future causality that we’re unaware of,” says Lloyd, more seriously. “The computer may have had no choice but to obey Jack’s mother after she called a halt to its communications. Perhaps future causality is only allowed if it doesn’t interfere with the free will of those it affects in the past.”

“Maybe it’s like one of those time travel movies where if you save someone who was supposed to die, anyway–like Marilyn Monroe or Abe Lincoln–then the whole future gets screwed up and you don’t even exist,” says Skip, flirting with incoherence.

“Yes, but it may be more subtle than that…” Lloyd says. “I believe there are realms beyond this world–like Ingo Swann’s Matrix–where the illusion of time doesn’t exist, where everything can be accessed in an eternal
NOW
. So let’s say, for the sake of argument, that an interdimensional entity from one of those realms has the ability to interact with our world. How would such an entity go about it? The entity would be able to slip into our time stream at any point–past, present, future… it wouldn’t matter if you were arriving from a realm beyond the illusion of time. But here on Earth, we’re still operating under time’s illusion–and the entity isn’t allowed to compromise that illusion by violating our free will.
Why
, I don’t know…. Perhaps the will of God has something to do with it.”

“Oh, that’s great…” Gordon says sarcastically, “just bring in God whenever you don’t understand something.” Secretly, he’s impressed by what Lloyd has been able to tease out of the idea so far.

“Well, there must be a reason,” says Lloyd. “Free will can’t be violated–but the interdimensional entities are finding ways around that. So you get, say, a telephone call from a shipboard computer on some
Star Trek
-like vessel from the future. Does that violate your free will?
No
–you can hang up at any time, or refuse to answer the call. Or let’s say you hear a ringing in your ears that’s actually an etheric fax-signal from the Matrix, downloading messages from the future into your subconscious that will help you become the Leonardo DaVinci or Albert Einstein of your time period. Does that violate your free will?
No
–you can always tune it out. Or here’s the scenario that applies to most of us: you interact with these entities face-to-face in your dreams. Has your free will been violated?
No
–dreams are subjective and easily forgotten.”

“What about alien abductions?” asks Skip. “An anal probe would sure violate
my
free will in a big way.”

“That’s a bit trickier,” Lloyd admits, “but if you think about it, nearly all abduction scenarios are made questionable by their dream-like quality, which may be a result of gaps in consciousness, or implanted screen memories. Your free will hasn’t been violated, exactly–but almost.”

“Almost, my ass,” Skip retorts.

“He’s real touchy about that anal probe thing,” D.H. observes.

“Skip, has such a thing ever happened to you?” Lloyd asks with genuine concern.

“I don’t know… maybe,” Skip says as tears spontaneously well up in his eyes. “Something like that might’ve happened to me on the night after I first dropped acid. I mean, I guess I’m not really sure. It could’ve just been the drugs. But lately, I’ve been having these flashes, like my memory is coming back. And that wasn’t the Bumble Bee Tuna bee I saw.
It was a spaceship
.”

Gordon feels a buzzy tingling all across his shoulders and the top of his skull, along with a sudden burst of emotion–an abreaction–as he empathizes with Skip’s alien ordeal and vaguely recalls his own encounter with the Easter Bunny.

“Skip! You got the anal probe!” Jimmy hoots.

“Fuck off, Jimmy,” Skip says, balling his fists. “It’s not funny.”

Twinker wraps her tiny arms around Skip to pacify him. “Oh, Skip…” she says.

“So I guess this means you’re not friends with Count Chocula and Chef-Boy-R-Dee after all,” D.H. says.

“No, man… those guys raped me.”

Jimmy’s whole body starts quivering with suppressed laughter. Tears seep from his eyes as he mimics Skip in a choked, girlish whine: “
… those guys raped me!”

“Just ignore him,” Twinker says to Skip as Jimmy hides his face in his hands and guffaws.

“I told you, asshole…” Skip yells, “it’s
not funny!”
He hurls a stick of driftwood at Jimmy’s head. It misses by inches.

“No, it’s not funny,” Lloyd says. “The Lam have been treading dangerously close to interfering with our free will here on Earth.”

“Why do they do that?” asks Skip.

“Well, first, let me point out the completely subjective nature of your experience. There were no witnesses, am I right?”

“Right,” Skip admits.

“We all knew Skip was tripping on acid, but we didn’t see any spaceships,” D.H. further clarifies.

“That’s typical of most abduction scenarios. As I’ve said, they almost always take place in the liminal borderland between sleeping and waking,” Lloyd says, “or between our normal, ordinary reality and the seemingly hallucinatory, nonordinary reality brought about by drugs, dissociation, or extreme fatigue. The blurring of those boundaries allows you the latitude to deny the whole experience if you want to–or
need
to
. You can write it off as simply a dream or hallucination. So your free will hasn’t been violated in any sort of definitive way–but on some nonordinary level of reality the abduction may have actually taken place, nonetheless.”

“So Chef-Boy-R-Dee walks softly, but carries a big anal probe,” D.H. jokes.

“Don’t remind me…” says Skip.

“What about all the cases where there are multiple witnesses–like Jacques Vallee writes about?” Gordon asks. “Or like when we all saw the Men in Black?”

“Those Men in Black sure as hell seemed real to me,” D.H. says.

“Me too,” Twinker and Skip say simultaneously.

“I’ve seen those guys before,” Jimmy says, as if they’re old news.

“I suppose the skeptics would try to explain away such incidents as symptoms of mass hysteria,” Lloyd says, “but understand… I’m not saying that alien encounters don’t occur. I believe they do. All I’m saying is that those encounters don’t necessarily violate our free will.”

“So, in other words, we’re asking for it,” says Jimmy.

“No, we’re not
asking for it
,” Lloyd says with a scowl at his nephew. “The Lam are devious. They’re tricksters, as I’ve told you. Right now, they can only interact with us in an indirect way–on the frontiers of consciousness. But it would seem they’re trying to manipulate us into choosing a future
of our own volition
that will allow them to interact with us more directly. There are other possible futures–with greater opportunities for love and freedom and sensual pleasure–but the Lam want humanity to vector toward a future that maximizes our fear and suffering, so they can better feed off us. A future in which we become their spiritual slaves.”

“Those
fuckers!
” says Skip.

“But aren’t you just doing the Lam’s job for them, by making us scared of all this stuff?” Twinker asks Lloyd.

“What I’m trying to guide you toward is something that’s more on the level of a shamanic initiation,” Lloyd says. “If you’ll allow me that conceit, I’ll try to explain…. A shamanic initiation, properly done, teaches neophyte shamans how to access nonordinary reality at will. ‘Nonordinary reality’ was a term first used by Carlos Castaneda, I believe. Other shamans have other terms for it that serve just as well–such as the Underworld, the Land of the Dead, the Western Lands, Dreamtime, the Spirit Realm, and so on–all of which fall under the general rubric of the Implicate Order, as described by David Bohm.”