Skyfire

SKYFIRE

DOUG VOSSEN

Copyright © 2015 Douglas Vossen

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 0-692-59559-7

ISBN-13: 978-0-692-59559-6

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to all of the people, both positive and negative, that have shaped me into the man I am today.  You are the sum of your experiences.  If you love yourself, you cannot regret anything from your past because it has all made you into the person you are today.  Learn and grow every day.  Be nice to people and don’t be an asshole.

“Harness your demon.”

-Emma Hughes

JACK

"All men dream, but not equally.  Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence (188
8
– 1935)

PROLOGUE: East Paktika, Afghanistan, 09 September 2009, 2130 hours.

Captain Jack Rugerman was a Battalion Intelligence Officer with the 1
st
Battalion of the 509
th
Parachute Infantry Regiment.  He was on his fourth deployment in six years, with no end in sight to what those in charge referred to as the United States’ “Global War on Terror.”  His dedication to duty had always been unwavering, but his trust in leadership, both military and political, was now virtually nonexistent. 
How in the fuck do people not see the writing on the wall?  How arrogant are we as a nation?  Why would we ever put ourselves in this position? Over 300 patrols this tour, 400 enemy KIA, 43 people detained – for what?  So we can tell the families of those killed that their sons “died fighting for America’s freedom?” 
It all seemed like such a tragic misuse of the intentions of young people.

One of Jack’s best friends in the battalion was the surgeon, Captain Steven Wells.  They often sat outside the aid station when things quieted down and enjoyed cigars as the sun set. 

“Dude, I can’t wait to get home, man,” said Jack one evening.  “I don’t have a lot of this in me anymore. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to keep going with this
Army nonsense
when I get back...  Originally I wanted to try for a brigade position, or maybe even a command in the Special Troops Battalion, but I don’t know.  Today is especially fucking not great for me, man…” Jack took a puff on his dry Dominican cigar. His grandmother back in New York had sent it to him.

“Man, I’m just doing this shit to pay for medical school,” Steve said.  “I’m out of here after this.  They’ll kick me back to Walter Reed and I’ll be eating a steak at Jackie’s as soon as humanly possible.  You should come out for a few weeks when you get settled in.”

“I need to know why,” said Jack.

“Why what?”

“What is this? Why are we even here?”

“Well, in 2001 there was this thing where some middle easterners crashed planes into a bunch of shit and fucked up our life plans for like ten to fifteen years,” said Steve.

“Fuck you man, you know what I mean,” snapped Jack.

“Speaking of which, Abdul got that thing we were talking about when he went home on leave to see his family along the Silk Road…”               Abdul-Latif was a local national interpreter who had been hired by the coalition at the beginning of the war.  He lived on the American base. Every two months he went home for about a week to visit family a few hundred miles northwest.  This had been his reality for the duration of the war.  Ironically enough, his name meant “servant of the kind” in his native tongue. 

“Yeah? Is it real?” asked Jack. “How much did he bring back? How did he get it back onto the Forward Operating Base (FOB)?  Wait, no. Don’t tell me the details.” Jack was nervous, scared and excited, all at once.  It was similar to the first time he went out on patrol as a platoon leader during his three year stint as an infantry officer, before his branch detail ended. 
Holy shit, am I ready for this? Once I do this there’s no turning back…

Steve was a good friend. He knew how to calm Jack when Jack got too deep inside his own head. “Dude, it’s fucking fine.  Those fucking POGs (People Other than Grunts) like my stupid ass searching people at the gate are more complacent and incompetent than you can possibly imagine.  He got A LOT and I know exactly how to prepare it for maximum impact.  I just need a day and you need to get into the right head space, and make sure to pick the best time and place available in this shithole,” explained Wells.

Dimethyltryptamine. DMT.  Holy shit.  I’m going to do this and there’s no turning back.
The reality was setting in for Jack
.
“OK, talk to me like I’m five and explain how we’re doing this,” Jack said.

Steve scoffed.  “Dude, relax, you look like how I imagine you looking the night before you started Ranger School! This is a good thing, but it’s OK be nervous.  In fact, it’s good to see you’re taking it seriously.  OK, as you know, dimethyltryptamine is naturally produced by the human body at the time of death.  This isn’t a drug in the traditional ‘you’re a piece of shit for doing this’ sense.  This is one of the few natural things in this world that forces you to confront yourself as you really are, to make the changes necessary to get your life right!  I can’t explain the experience to you in words. It’ll sound like I’m being fake. What I can tell you is the following: you won’t piss hot and ruin your career, and you will likely plant seedlings in your mind for the meaning of existence and the universe.  It is a completely loving and mind opening experience if you submit to it. Ask it to teach you what you need to know.  Treat it the way you want to be treated and it will love you.”

“Steve, not going to lie, my hippie bullshit radar is going off the charts. But if anything you’ve said or that I’ve researched is even a little true, I can’t
not
do it.”

“Trust me man, I wouldn’t have suggested this six months ago if I didn’t see you would benefit from it.  This will help a lot of what you struggle with in your mind on a daily basis.  All will be revealed in due time.  Worst case scenario, you waste an hour of your life and you’re no worse off than you were before.

“OK, how do we do this?” said Jack.

At midnight of the following evening, Jack brought his favorite fold-out canvas chair to Wells’s room.  Wells lived in a spacious five-hundred square foot aluminum trailer adjacent to the aid station. It was one of the nicer accommodations on the FOB.  Jack plopped his chair down next to the IV stand, which Wells had positioned near a makeshift couch made of construction materials, blankets, and cushions.  Steve sat on the couch and Jack on the chair.

“Are you ready?” asked Steve, looking eager to begin.

“No. I just…Do I…?”

“Just relax and submit.  Trust me, man. Take a few minutes to breathe. Think about what you want to learn the most one more time.  When you get there, if the experience turns out to be different from what you were expecting, just go with it.  Just relax.”

Steve expertly swabbed Jack’s arm with disinfectant and injected the IV with the valve switched off.  Nothing flowed yet.  Jack’s heart pounded more furiously than the first time he’d been shot at by the enemy.  He was scared. 
Shit, don’t be scared.  Be calm.  Be calm. FUCK!

“Dude, you’re a mess. Relax,” said Steve, once again speaking in a knowing voice that calmed his friend.   “No one is looking for you right now.  You have nothing else you need to get done until the morning.  Just relax.  Breathe with me.  In through your nose, out through your mouth.  Press your tongue up to the roof of your mouth.  Focus on just that feeling and the sensation of your breaths.  Slow and deliberate.  Don’t think about the war.  Don’t think about Afghanistan.  Don’t think about 1
st
of the 509
th
.  This is YOUR time.  Your time to learn and grow.  In this IV bag there’s about 200 milligrams of dimethyltryptamine.  This is what most people would call ‘a lot.’

“Wait, why so much?” Jack spoke quickly, still clearly nervous. “How much do most people take?”

“Well, here’s the thing.  The first two times I did this in medical school, it was this feeling like I got ripped out of this beautiful place right before the answers were about to start coming to me. This was after smoking about 40 milligrams.  Then the girl from my class I was dating explained to me that the most efficient way to achieve the desired effect is to slowly release it into your body at a rate that perpetuates the experience for the desired duration.  You mix it with typical saline IV fluid and get about one consistent hour of a pretty intense experience.  Please, make the most of this.”

“Fuck, man.”

“Breathe,” instructed Steve. 

Jack slowly inhaled through his nose, feeling the extra-fine Afghani dust ascend his nostrils.  He exhaled through his mouth.  Slowly and deliberately, Jack breathed. 

Steve saw that his friend was calming down. “Good luck, dude.  See you on the back end.”

Jack felt a warm sensation in his right arm. It spread through his abdomen and up through his esophagus,  meandered around his midsection till it was in the middle of his back, then traveled upward along his spine.  It felt quite relaxing, settling deep down into what felt like the middle of his brain.  Reality seemed to disassemble before him.  The last physical sensation Jack remembered was his head tilting back as he looked up at the rough, unfinished ceiling. 
Why do I smell oranges?

Steve watched intently as Jack drifted off onto his journey.  Finally, his good friend was going to find a piece of what he’d been searching for all these years. 

The hour passed relatively quickly. Steve remained on the couch, reading a book.

“Holy shit!” Jack suddenly snapped awake from his experience.  He shook his head in disbelief, tried to reclaim his bearings. 

“See?” asked Steve.

“Oh my God, this needs to fucking stop. All of it, fucking now!”

“Yep,” said Steve, as if that was the reaction he’d expected.

“Dude.  I just … I can’t.  Wow.”

“It helps to talk about it before it goes away.  Take this pad. Start writing and drawing, whatever you need to do. Talk to me about everything.  I’ll take notes too.”

“What the fuck?” said Jack. “Draw, talk, write!? How do you draw that … that place?”

“Dude, listen to me.  If you don’t start doing this in the next thirty seconds it’ll be like morning fog lifting before the afternoon.  You need to get as much of this shit down as possible so we can analyze it.  More so that YOU can do it, but I’ll be here to help any way I can.  It’s a very personal experience.”

“OK, OK.  First, I saw the most brilliant colors.  They were pulsating in a very distinct rhythm, rotating into different never-ending geometric shapes.  I mean it was like a kaleidoscope talking to my brain…  Not even talking but conveying unspoken ideas and emotions…  There was a weird pattern that almost looked like an eye or a whirlpool at the center of it.  For some weird reason it introduced itself as a resident of the dark star.  To be honest, I was a little scared at first.  What the fuck is a dark star?”

“I have no idea.  I never got any dark star feelings or references.  Did the shapes that were constantly shifting in color and size look like variations of this?” Steve held out a printout of a spiral.

“What the fuck? Yeah, they did.  But not like that, it was… more… What is that?  Is that a Fibonacci sequence from school?”

“It is indeed the golden ratio found almost everywhere in nature,” Steve said.

“Fuck, OK.  Um, it started with these shapes pulsating for what felt like forever and nothing was happening.  I felt warm and safe for a while, but then I had the conscious thought of ‘Oh my god, I’m doing drugs in a war zone.  I could lose my career!’ I started to freak out a little.  As soon as these thoughts popped into my brain the brilliant colors became darker and darker, until they settled on a brownish green that pulsated at an uncomfortably fast pace. That agitated me a little.  Then I remembered what you said and fucking BOOM, man.”

“What then?” asked Steve.

“Well, the colors instantaneously shifted back to warm and comfortable and I was catapulted into the distance at a rate of speed faster than I can describe.  It was like flying through a light tunnel.  It didn’t really feel like a dark… anything.”

“Did you feel any physical sensations while this was going on?”

“It was the weirdest thing man, kind of… but not really all at the same time.  You ever see one of those photos where there is a picture of something, but in the picture of that one thing is the very same picture you’re looking at? And it gets smaller and smaller until you can’t tell what it is anymore?” asked Jack.

“Yeah.”

“Well, it was like that.  I kept going to this point in the distance within these countless spirals within spirals, and then it stopped.  I asked, ‘Where am I?’  Then I realized I was asking the wrong question.  I wasn’t supposed to be asking ‘where am I,’ but ‘WHERE am I’.

Steve nodded.  “I know what you mean but try to put a finer point on it.”

Jack began scribbling on the notepad like a madman.  “It’s what I started to think.  I mean, like, where are my fucking legs?  Then I realized that I didn’t have legs any more, man.  I wasn’t just in the place with the colors and the fractal spirals, I WAS the place with the colors and the spirals.”

“What else?”

“I got a message - no, not a message.  It was a feeling that overwhelmed my senses. It was like it wasn’t just me that was the shapes and colors, it was everyone that had ever existed. Including you.  In the distance I saw various clouds forming into a geometric formation with a slightly lighter hue than the surrounding fractals.  I can’t explain it; I felt that these ‘clouds’ loved me.  They wanted to show me something.  I guess that was the whole point of me taking this trip to their world,” explained Jack.