BOOK 2: Crossed Wires

CATHETER HAD TOLD CASSIUS CROON, one dark and dreary night, that over there in Holland there was a man whose skin was green as moss and the scientists were mystified as to how it happened. The man was a Ukrainian but he had fell Dutchward when the EU expanded east and now he was making it as something of a comedian. Cas Croon heard Mr Catheter give his piece and then thought aloud: <<So what? there are freaks born every minute. What's this got to do with national security?>> It was a dark and dreary night, and Croon had plenty of other dark and dreary things to do.

Chapter 7: Brane Storming

A NIPPON AIRLINES SKYBUS STREAKED ACROSS THE SOUTH CHINA SEA FAST AS A BOLT OF LIGHTNING, AS TERRIBLE AS A VERITABLE split of nature. Above it and around, the predawn sky was bejeweled by a sprinkling of stars burning like gemstones -- a veritable treasure-trove. But when the flight passed over the lush islands of Indonesia, the sky brightened and took on a tarnished silver hue, the first hint of daylight. Soon the sun would appear in the east, and another long, hot day would begin in the tropics (who was in power in those delectable Spice Islands below? what racial atrocities were being committed?) A Nippon Airlines Skybus ripped up the Asian firmament like some kind of celestial earthquake, splitting the sky in two. This is simply how it was.

In the presidential section Hana Isomura, a slim, darkhaired girl in her late preteens, served a breakfast of miso soup and rice. As she wheeled the breakfast cart down the aisle she observed that some of the passengers were dozing in their shindai style skybeds while others were checking their itineraries or the latest bulletins from the Tokyo Stock Exchange, or simply taking forlorn last looks at the fading stars.

When she came to the somewhat handsome man in the goldstreaked Vuitton suit she put on her best smile and took special care in arranging his tray. Hana-chan had been told that he was Dr Ichiro Sato, but she didn't need any advice - Sato was a legend in Japan, and every teenager knew of his relentless zeal for space. One day there would be Nipponese colonies on the moon, and tunnels deep into the fifth dimension (the so called Parallel Branes Project) - Ichiro was the guiding light behind all of them, the wind in the sail. Everybody knew Sensei, he was more famous than baseball players. So Hana-chan put on her best smile when she came to the somewhat handsome and slightly greying man in the goldstreaked Vuitton suit and Gucci shoes, as if she was serving the Emperor. This is simply, undeniably how it happened.

---

THE TERMINAL OF THE Medan International Airport was supposed to look like a traditional Batak longhouse, the type favored by the local race when they were at the headhunting phase of their evolution. A couple of metallic buffalo horns notwithstanding, however, the whole thing looked like any other international airport terminal that Sato had ever visited. The astrophysics professor was one of the world's foremost experts on the search for intelligent life, but he couldn't see much of the Batak in this postmo(der)nstrosity. There were Nipponese influences everywhere, of course, and American - McDonald's restaurants on every floor, Dunkin' Donuts, karaoke bars and Starbucks Coffee. But Sato just couldn't see the Malay Primitive. Whatever - he wasn't in the mood for architecture. Sato was the world's foremost expert on astrophysics, and he had been summoned to Indonesia to investigate the recent discovery of strange signals from Outer Space. Was it the Final Proof of Life Beyond, or was it just another quaser? Sato bit his lip. He was too old for another disappointment!

Hotman Madison, SETI's top man in Indonesia, was waiting for Sato in the arrivals lounge. That was SETI short for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and Madison looked as Batak traditional as this goddamned airport terminal. He was waiting in the airport lounge wearing a Nike baseball cap, Fila shell jacket (despite the suffocating heat outside) and Adidas shoes.... how's that for cross dressing! Sato, though he prided himself on his liberation from Japan's strict social codes, found the lack of suit and tie somewhat disconcerting. What kind of operation were they running down here in Indonesia anyway? And why the hell hadn't he heard a god-damned thing about this Sumatran radio telescope? Painfully, reluctantly, Sato bowed to the clown.

The seats embraced him, rather than submitted to be sat upon (Time Machine reference!)

<<Sensei>> Hotman, said, addressing Sato as "teacher". <<I heard you lived in America, is this true? Is it the wonderland it is toted to be, or just another fascist state?>>

Chapter 6: Tunnel Vision

A CATERPILLAR TURNING INTO a butterfly, the successive melding and permutation of gamete to zygote to our primitive and original embryonic form... that was Willem Boonzajer's concept of the fifth dimension. Everyone's take was different. For Cassius Croon, his impression of the fifth dimension was inexorably tied to space... his words couldn't describe the space...

He was on the Tube one night when he had his first glimpse. He was playing that old Tube game of avoiding the gaze of his fellow travelers, and had settled his eyes on a Burger King ad on the opposite side of the carriage. He was thinking of the Nothing, and remembered a Channel Four documentary he'd seen the night before: scientists had confirmed there was a black hole in the centre of the galaxy, a point of runaway gravity. One scientist had suggested that it was the gravity of this black hole which held the galaxy together. And he thought: Is there a black hole in the heart of me?

Thinking this, the Burger King ad suddenly expanded, as if he was looking at it through his Inspector Gadget magnifying glass. It eventually filled at least two thirds of his visual field. This spooked Croon, especially as he was a McDonald's convert, so he looked instead at a London Underground map further down the carriage. This time, the map got smaller, as if it was receding from him. And there was so much space between them.

Croon wondered whether he was having a flashback. He'd taken enough drugs in his time, however, to know this effect wasn't chemical. The space, he thought, awe-struck. I've never noticed the space.

He was now genuinely freaked, so he looked at his fellow passengers for a bit of a reality anchor. Unfortunately, this only made things worse. His visual field broke into multiple two dimensional panels, all seemingly pressed up against his eyeballs. He made the mistake of looking a woman in the eyes, and instantly her being was divided into Cubist perspectives, like a Picasso painting.

The sense of intimacy was terrifying.

Suddenly he got the horrible feeling that the whole carriage was collapsing into him. He groaned, covered his mouth, closed his eyes... but his mind was more claustrophobic than any carriage. The walls are closing in... need air...

"I'm losing my mind," he thought.

Just then the train pulled into a station, probably Waterloo. Croon bolted out the door, praying that a bit of fresh air might chill him out. Even as he walked up the stairs he worried that if he wasn't careful his body would collapse, and he would be dissolved into the vast empty world which now surrounded him. Thankfully, whether it was from the air or a CIA mantra he was repeating in his mind, he did mellow when he hit the outside. After a few deep breaths he was back to a reasonable level of coherence.

Hey, he thought, I am an initiate. Maybe this is one of those higher states.

After that he spent the rest of the night wandering London, just checking things out. He found his way to the banks of the Thames, under a near full moon, and sat down to gaze down on the water. This was a rather perilous thing to do with the water looking like it was about two inches from the bridge of his nose, and he got concerned that he might fall in. He looked up at the moon instead.

Then 280,000 kilometres of space were compressed into a centimetre of lunar awe.

---

JULIAN WOKE GROGGY AND confused. For a moment he couldn't remember where he was, or what had happened. Julian woke groggy and confused, and for a second he couldn't even remember his name. He lay supine on a swaying rope-litter carried by two men, and there was a piece of fur lying on top of him. A storm-torn sky darkened and spun dizzily above, intermixed with glimpses of leaping flame torches, penquins, and an array of peeling, curious faces. Julian woke groggy and confused -- what the fuck was going on? Then he remembered the awful race with Dean, the crevice and the slide -- a second descent into The Deep. People pushed and shoved, ignoring shouts to stand aside -- this is how it happened. Julian shifted his weight -- his arms were pinned beneath him -- and struggled to sit up.

Chapter 19: New Canton

THERE (OFF to the right somewhere in the pixelated gloom, the white noise of cyberspace) -- over there on the right stretches the Zhu Jiang or Pearl River leading down to Hong Kong (Xianggang -- Scent Harbour). We are looking directly east now (but what do directions actually mean in this Brett Weir electronic world? in cyberspace the only direction is in!) We are looking due east, and the water before us is only one branch of the Canton or Pearl River. The land on the right of the steamer is an island five or six miles long, and beyond it is another broad affluent of the Canton River. That island on the right bank is densely populated and forms an important suburb to the city of Canton, which lies on the north bank and extends several miles in every direction from our point of view (but what do directions actually mean in cyberspace -- really!)

 WATCHING a replay of the commotion on hotel TV, Croon turned to his minders with a decidedly pale expression. "I'm not facing that!" "Get it, pussy?" one of the minders sneered. The term "prison rationalisation" still chills many humanitarians...

---

Puffing up with mock umbrage, Croon leapt across the partition, made himself comfortable in the seat next to her. He even took a sip from her coffee. <<Baby, let me tell you about emancipation. Saudi hostage crisis, 2006. 122 people rescued. The context: I was there. I infiltrated the prison, disabled the security from within, and then led the rescue operation.>>

Tyson spat his mouthguard on to the canvas and said, “More like Queen B. Get it? get it?”

The bells were rung, the referee backed off, and Tyson rushed forward swinging around like a Tasmanian Devil. Croon copped three blows to the head before the bells had stopped ringing (or maybe they were ringing in his head). He retreated to the ropes, threw back a few punches, concentrated mainly on maintaining his defences. It wasn’t part of his contract to win, merely to survive at least five rounds. In fact, a dramatic knock-out was preferred because of its media appeal, especially if it led to brain damage. Croon didn’t want to lose any grey matter, and after several minutes of relentless pounding he began to grow concerned. Fuck this, he thought, I’m getting hurt here. “Fight me, pussy,” Tyson said, “fucking pussy.”

Swelling with an uncontrollable rage, Meen E shoved Tyson back, climbed on to the ropes and did a wrestling [jump]. The move was technically illegal and caught Tyson by surprise, with the two of them collapsing to the canvas. The referee rushed in to seperate them but Meen pushed him away, straddled the rapist’s chest and pummeled him from above.

More rage swelled through him, with a savagery which was worrying. Croon felt his entire body surging with hatred, his muscles actually expanding with it. He was doing an Incredible Hulk! His fists burst through his gloves, then Croon looked down and saw little razor blades burst from the synthetic skin. No! he screamed. She had permed her hair blonde and looked the full faded 70s safari star. <<But surely there's a physical difference?>>

<<Ah none, none that you can see. It's all... it's all internal with birds.

She stared him in the eye, threw him a gleam. <<Isn't that odd.>>

LATER THAT afternoon Croon went out to have a kick and Frieda withdrew confused into a little fold-out pyramid. She breathed in, breathed out, repeated in that order about 35 times and slowly began to chill out. When she was relaxed enough, she dissolved her individuality in the great I AM and connected with the hivemind of her kind.

"Frieda, sweet servant," Coco was saying across an Atlantic of astral space, "what message have you come to bring? You seem perplexed."

"I am perplexed," Frieda said. The entire school were with her, and they were sitting in an astral counterpart of Coco's studio. Of course, not all of them were conscious of the meeting, but they were there all the same. The solemnity of this gesture suddenly reminded Frieda of the magnitude of her mission, and she felt stupid, bothering everybody with her emotional shortfalls. Meanwhile, Babel was missing, and they still didn't have any clue where she was being held! "I've failed," she blurted, starting to cry. "I let you down."

"Honey," Coco said, "you haven't let down anyone. We had to follow every lead. Through your work, we have moved that bit closer to the truth."

"But Cas doesn't know where she is!" she said, starting a fresh onset of tears (emotional sensitivity is always vastly enhanced on the astral plane.) "He was just a pawn, I can sense it."

"Then he's a pawn, but even a pawn can kill a queen," Coco said.

"You don't understand. He's on our side. I can feel it."

Now it was Coco's turn to look perplexed. "What are you talking about, girl?"

Frieda highlighted Croon's recent remarks about art terrorism, the Zero realisation and his (albeit brief) foray into the fifth dimension. "Well, that's something, I must confess," Coco said. "But human consciousness is lifting, and people are becoming enlightened every day. It means nothing, except that he's perceptive. After all, he is 'the fucking detective'!" "I just feel that... well, you know, that he could be The One." Coco turned away, obviously affected. Frieda thought: She suspects it too! "Those issues," Coco said coldly, "are beyond your powers to discern. Anywa, you're biased - you've fallen in love with him!"

No I haven't, Frieda thought, but it was hopeless: her emotions gave it away! So she said, with great strain: "Don't you want me to keep an eye on him, just to make sure?"

Coco waved her hand, and the room started to dissolve. "Certainly not. Return to LA at once. If he is The One, he'll come after you. Nature abhors a vacuum."

Frieda felt her awareness being dragged back into the world of form. She opened her eyes to find her cheeks mottled with tears. And suddenly she remembered her thoughts that day in McDonalds, and it gave her a bittersweet sense of calm: I suppose they don’t call him Cassius Croon for nothing. No wonder Babel fell for him! With that, she broke down into a fit of uncontrollable sobbing.

---

In U2's Zoo Station

It sounds racist, but Slavic men shouldn't wear leather if they don't want to look suspicious (that's what Thorsten would say at least). There was a hint of a scarf around his neck too, perhaps some Caucasus soccer team, striped black and white... he saw a straw-headed lad coming up from the S-Bahn wearing the same coloured scarf and in his excitement nearly kicked over his briefcase. He made eye-contact with the boy, the boy came back with a blank North European look and the man in the leather jacket realised it was probably a coincidence. The newspaper went up again.



Chapter 21: Gamallah and I

MAGDA MARIA MET Gamallah Ali Gamallah at an Oakland cafe about a month before Halloween. She seduced him with a compliment on his hair. From then, it was a logical progression to poetry and harem sex.

"Hey, nice look," she said, as they were waiting in the cake queue. "It's kinda reptilian, but not as ghoulish as those punks down on Haight-Ashbury. I like it."

Gamallah thought, I'd like you too, if you gave me half a chance.

---

GAMALLAH HAD a business card which described him as a fakir, a wandering mystic. He invited Magda to a lecture he was giving at Berkeley University.

"I'd come to the talk," she said, "but I'm too much of an 00s woman. You're not going to imprison me in a black veil or cut my fucking clit out!" "Islam," he said in a voice which recalled heyday Omar Sharif (and it's messianic qualities were just as devastating), "Islam isn't fundamentalism, Islam isn't empty ritual. I preach a new kind of Islam, an 00s Islam, a mystifying, self-glorifying third millennium brand of Islam."

That was cool, because exploring Gamallah's role in this new religious movement was the whole point of Magda's mission. Arising from the high-rise ghettos and nightclubs of the Middle East, a fiery collision of disillusioned youth and satellite TV, New Islam sought a radical redefinition of the Muslim life. Many followers had turned to ancient subversive cults like the Sufi; some even delved into pre-Mohammedan beliefs. Naturally, such versatility did not gel well with the established leaders of arguably the most conservative religion in the world. That most Muslim nations were now fundamentalist only made things worse. The authorities saw the cults as proof of a social breakdown and cracked down on them; the cults saw the crackdowns as proof of a repressive regime and tried even harder to rebel. A spiral of contortion and control, so the media described it. Anyone's guess where it would all end up.

But the phenomenon wasn't confined to the Middle East. In the early 00s Muslim students introduced the cult to the west and it became the latest religious fad. People were jaded with the insipid Buddhism of New Age spirituality and wanted something harder. With its politically incorrect connotations and militant undertones, Islam was the perfect choice.

"Okay," Magda said, "I'll come."

---

"OKAY," SHE SAID SQUATTING over his dainty tongue four hours later, "I'll come." She arched backwards into the rose incense and lute-plucked haze, in inverse Muslim prayer, awaiting Holy Rapture. But for some reason he wriggled out from under her and started reciting a Rilkes poem: "I am the lute. To make my body rise
out of your words, its strips' fine curvature
speak of me as you would of some mature
upcurving fig. And overemphasise
the dark you see in me. That darkness there
was Tullia's own. Not in her shyest nook was there so much, and her illumined hair was like a lighted hall. At times she took a little sound from outside of me into her face and sang. Then I'd bestir and stretch myself against her frailty, till all I had within me was her.

---

THEIR RELATIONSHIP WAS LIKE that, a heady mix of sex and spirituality. Gamallah had appropriated the old idea that sexual excess was one path to mystic truth. The universe was basically the story of masculine and feminine energies coming together in an orgy of creation, so Gamallah said. And to think Magda was worried about losing her clit!

His lectures were hardly conventional either. About 20 people attended his first Berkeley talk, the usual crowd of starry-eyed tie-dyed student chicks, effeminate men and disillusioned housewives. But there was none of your usual white guilt or middle class angst here! Instead Gamallah put on some godawful Arabian opera and asked everyone to spin around on the spot, in the Sufi whirling dervish style. The dance was meant to put you into a trance in which "all ego boundaries dissolved into the empty majesty of the Nothing". However, to avoid falling in a queasy heap you had to keep your eyes permanently focused on your outstretched right hand.

As his students revolved like spinning tops Gamallah said, "My friends, I bid you welcome to the mystery of Sufi. This is a personal, non-official path to union with God, so feel honored. Many Arabs have been denied access to this technology. Even this particular dance, the whirling dervish, has been banned in certain Islamic countries. They'd rather good Muslims were in the mosque, I suppose. But in all their reactionary fervour the mullahs and ayatollahs have missed the hidden point of this dance: it is a metaphor for life. Life is spinning, it is endless cycles. The spinning rapture of the whirling dervish will teach you this."

"I often feel life's a big hurdy-gurdy," a slightly giddy businessman said. "Like stuck in traffic on the way to work, feeling like I'm just going round and round and round." "Look closely at your lives," Gamallah said. "See the cycles in your histories. Life is meant to be a spiral, not a circle. If there are events you repeat, repeat, the old story you are reliving again, again, you might have an imbalance in your spin. It is what some of you New Age converts might call karma." "How's my karma?" a student chick asked, and Gamallah stopped to appraise her spin. This made Magda feel oddly curious so she glanced over at them to see what was happening. Instantly, she was knocked sideways by a massive wave of dizziness, and crashed to the floor. Suddenly it was the room which spinning round and round and round, not her. She threw up.

"All right," Gamallah said. "That's enough. Now we read some passages from the Koran."

He guillotined the applause with his hands, sniffled, turned to camera two. "In America, many divorce" he said. "No good! Chucky Poong say no good! Husbands must love their wife."

Chapter 10: Trick of the Eye

. SON CARRIAD KNEW ALMOST EVERYTHING ABOUT the sky he was looking up at (though it was dilated through a prism, channeled through a thousand kilometers of crystals from the Antarctic surface to their deep subterranean vault.) With nearly five billion years of life experiences, and telepathic access to all of the accumulated knowledge of the LifeForce, he could give a detailed description of each of the star systems whose light pierced the icy darkness above him. Hell, he had been to half of them at some time or another -- either personally or via the vast tentacles of the HiveMind. With all of this knowledge you'd think Carriad would have found a more exciting hobby than slumping over the periscope eyepiece in his lonely rock salon, just gazing at all those stars. Son Carriad could download 10 billion years of sensory pleasures to get his kicks, pleasures and leisures of every conceivable decadence and dimension (hissing lizard sex on a sulfur-grained beach). But he had more important things to do. Like gazing up at those aforementioned stars.

It's true he thought bleakly one afternoon, it was just before the Irruption. My eyes are always focused outward, into Space, away from the Source.

The center of Carriad's attention was the Menagerie 09, a new space station launched by the humanoids.

---

BY THEIR fourth week together Magda was virtually living in Gamallah's place. She'd always considered herself a New Age Madonna when it came to sleeping to the top, a sexual guerrilla ambushing male frailties to advance the interests of her kind. This time, however, she'd excelled. And to think she had only been with the Splice Girls for three months! Gamallah was the prey, and she was the hunter!

But in their fifth week Gamallah announced he would transform his house into a temporary khanagah, a mystic monastery. He got about 30 people to move in for a three week long retreat. While it was a big villa with pool, sauna and Mediterranean gardens there were not enough rooms for everyone, so half the group (guess which half) were assigned to Gamallah's bedroom. The room ended up looking like the harem from Istanbul's Topkapi Palace, with a little bit of Emperor Ming's chambers from Flash Gordon thrown in for good measure. Magda was annoyed. She was used to having Gamallah to herself and didn't want to share him with a bunch of girl guides.

"Just remember, I'm his girl, yeah," she said on night one. "If you want to express your devotion to the master, do it through your fucking whirling."

Night three, however. she was woken by a strange rustling and opened her eyes to see one the student chicks performing a belly-dance for some guy who was smoking a hash pipe on the other side of the room. She was going to fling a cushion at them and tell them to keep the noise down when she realised who was smoking the pipe... Gamallah! He clapped twice, the chick dropped her flimsy dress and plopped into his lap.

Bastard she thought. And you call yourself a holy man!

---

BEDROOM POLITICS aside, Magda's adjustment to retreat conditions progressed fairly smoothly. She liked his lectures the most. Gamallah spoke about the early days of Islam, how the authorities fucked up the pure word of Mohammed and turned a religion of emancipation into an engine of social control. He based this theory on his study of the ijma, a doctrine introduced in the 8th century AD to standardise Islamic legal theory. By this time individual and regional differences had arisen in the interpretation of the Koran and the Hadith, a collection of Mohammed's sayings. While standardising interpretation the ijma also prohibited new interpretations of these holy books. Consequently, Gamallah said, Islam had become stuck in the Middle Ages. When the lectures were over Gamallah would get out his lute or a book or Persian poetry or his stereo and there would be singing, dancing, whirling, after a while the odd ethereal state of mind. Gamallah emptied his crew of untruth, and then he plugged them full of truth. They smoked hash, drank wine deep into the night, ran naked under the stars. Then select members of the order would retreat to Gamallah's harem - Magda's bedroom - and devotional activities would fever up a notch. All up he slept with eight women and three men, some more regularly than others. Magda complained about it once but Gamallah said her jealousy was caused by an ego-driven attachment to the world. Only by letting go of her urge to possess, by submitting to the whims of the universe, could she hope to find eternal peace. She complained about it again a few days later and his response was decidedly more angry.

"That's what Islam means, submission," he said. "Your old ideas, your Judeo-Christian ideas, they don't mean a damn in here.

"I love you, I want to be with you," she said.

"Magda, listen to me, monogamy doesn't mean a thing in here. What did you think this room was about. It's a fucking harem! You know how the Muslim man is entitled to a harem."

"I know," I said, "I know it's stupid. But I can't help feeling this way..." He sighed, put his arm around her. "Not many people know the real meaning of the harem. They just think it's for the Muslim man to get all the woman he wants. The real reason is more profound: it's a metaphor for life. Life is the story of an active masculine force, the elemental day, infusing the passive feminine potential, the archetypal night. I am the dawn, and you are the cold mists of night. I am the seed, and you are the soil. But you can't have a garden without soil and seed. So if you think you are the seed go off and sow your own patch of khanagah. But you followed me here, that says something. You are my disciples. That, I'm afraid, is the truth."

Magda's heart was pounding so much it was ready to come out of her chest, she was flushed with anger, but she had to concede he was making sense. She suddenly felt very embarrassed. What was this, love? It's juts a complication of the sex, she thought. An emotional complication. She had to focus on the mission. She had to find the one they called The One.

---

GAMALLAH OFTEN said the noblest Sufi aim was extinguishment of the self in the "rapture of the divine". This was a concept they called fana - annihilation. It could be achieved by a variety of means, for example by living in poverty and denying material possessions, or by spinning around on the spot all day. Gamallah said each Sufi order had their own path to fana, which they called their dervish. Whirling dervishes transcended the world by spinning; howling dervishes did it by chanting. For his dervish, Gamallah said, he had decided on an especially unusual technique. "We will kill ourselves," he said. "Yes, that's it: we'll kill ourselves! We will all commit ritual suicide for the glory of God, and we'll do it on Halloween." MAGDA FELT like she had been kicked in the stomach. She thought it was a joke, but the mad look in Gamallah's eyes suggested otherwise. It was like her whole world collapsed.

If this announcement stressed Magda, who was only there as a spy, imagine how it reacted on the true believers. Half of them just walked out. Gamallah was waiting at the gate to berate them.

"Where do you think you're going?" "It's over, Musty," one of the student chicks said. "I'm not necking myself for you." He replied with a quote from the Koran, surah 99:

"On the day when the earth is convulsed in an earthquake and the earth casts forth her burdens and men say: 'What has befallen her?' - on that day will the earth publish her storied past, the tale of all that was, as her Lord inspires her to tell. On that day shall mankind come forth in manifold diversity, to be shown their deeds. He who has wrought even an atom's weight of good shall see it and he who has done an atom's weight of evil shall see it..."

"I don't care," the student chick said. "I'll take my chances when the Last Day comes."

"Lucia," he said, sinking to his knees: "You have to stay. I can't leave without you, you know I can't."

There were tears in his eyes. This gave Magda with such a strange feeling of, well, presence that she actually had a peak experience. Energy spiralled up her spine, rent an almost painful hole in her crown chakra. It must have affected the student chick too, because she dropped her bags and hugged Gamallah passionately.

"Okay," she said. "I'll come." Not everyone in the khanagah was so compliant. By late November 16 members had made for the hills. Everytime someone left Gamallah repeated his Last Day passage and the need to submit. Even though she had no intention of killing herself Magda spent the month in a blissed-out cosmic state, more aware of everything - the bees in the garden, the smell of the surf, the tender bedroom embraces - than she'd ever been before. Her only problem was that Gamallah would soon be leaving and she still had strong feelings for him. I must be strong, she thought, I've got a mission to fulfil. Through meditation, prayer and devotional dance, she subdued her emotional body.

Finally All Hallows Eve came, the night of Halloween. Kids were knocking at the door for trick or treat. For the 14 devotees inside, Gamallah had prepared a treat of brandy mixed with arsenic.

They all sat cross-legged on mats around the room, some chanting to ward off fear, one girl clutching a teddy bear. These were the only manifestations of attachment. Gamallah spoke a few sacred words, some of the devotees joked nervously about "whether they'd left the iron on". A disillusioned housewife said she was ready to embrace Allah but she didn't sound convincing. Then everyone toasted their glasses and slowly, one by one, downed their shots. Magda held the glass to her lips, pretending to drink. She struggled to maintain a semblance of rationality in the midst of this holocaust. Shit, I'm going to need heavy therapy after this! she thought. Finally her feelings got too much for her, and she smashed her glass on the floor: a small, pathetic gesture. "You can go through with this!" she said. "You're all a bunch of fucking idiots!" Someone called her a selfish bitch. Another woman gave her such a callous look Magda thought she was going to assault her. "You were willing to become the Master's bride," she snarled, "you were willing to plunder the benefits of his bed. But now you won't sacrifice yourself for him!" Magda was ready to punch her in the face when Gamallah stood up and said, "Shut up, all of you. Nobody's going to sacrifice themselves. That drink wasn't poison, it was only dog piss." Most of the class gagged, as if urine was far more distasteful than arsenic. "Magda's right, you're all idiots," Gamallah said. "Did you really think I'd want to kill myself, when everything I do is for the pursuit of worldly pleasure? You Americans, I can't believe you're so gullible. Khomeni was right. You call yourselves warriors but you're sheep, all of you. Every single one of you."

"All except me," Magda said. "I didn't drink the poison. I didn't fall for your little trick." "You fell for me, though," Gamallah said. "Get out, all of you. I hate the sight of you."  AHHHHH, SPIDER SILK: it seemed everyone was wearing it in the crowded streets and elevated walkways of NewCanton. They should have been, because spider silk was the third most important force driving the economy here. Dulled into the respectable Calvin Klein blues and greys of the financial district's Metro stops, dazzling with its native sheen in the strobeclubs... spider silk was the wonder fabric of the 00s, and Guangzhou processed about 90 per cent of the global trade. It permeated the very structure of the SuperCity, its profits stringing out miles of monorails and fibre optics into the countryside, and from above Guangzhou had even begun to resemble a spider's web: delicate but strong, beautiful but a crueler peasant trap than ever was.

Chapter 28: Suicidal Tendencies

THE VICTIM looked like a child who had toppled over in prayer. His skull was crushed, flattened, and blood pooled out from the enormous fissure like holiday ribbons on a cake. All around the charred remains of his body lay pools of blood, severed limbs, twisted steel, ball bearings and nails -- the calling cards of modern terrorism. The victim looked like a child who had toppled over in prayer, and death flowered from the centre of his form. Gunther Gross grimaced as he lifted the dimpled sheet of newspaper someone had draped over the head, and examined the find. He was shaking. The Moon has its American flag stiffened by metal into a permanent salute; for the Antarctic, protected by conquest by international treaty, colonialists required a more subtle form of cat piss. The embryonic Antarctican culture, with its smattering of slang words and dazed psychology, had become Murdoch's brave new shore.

---

THE RESTAURANT WAS TYPICAL SINGAPOREAN FARE: MURALS OF DRAGONS ON THE WALLS, WAITERS BUZZING AROUND LIKE MOONS. HOEBBARD WIPED HIS MOUTH, SAID AS IF HE WAS DELIVERING A SERMON:

Plot a course to the second planet, then; it might only be an ancient, strayed craft, but we have to examine every lead."

Engines in the stomach of the Enterprise indicated a shift in direction. After a babble of digital information from the console, Starx reported: "Analysis of the signal is complete. While it is not the standard distress signal, it is curious nonetheless. It is composed of two blips, silence, six blips, silence, one blip, silence, eight blibs, silence. The figure 2618, in other words. The current year, under the old Gregorian calendar." "The old calendar is best!" Kirk snapped. "And the old calendar is the one we will continue to use on this mission. I'll have no more references to the Federation Reckoning, is that clear? There is nothing wrong with the ways of humanity." "Yes sir; sorry sir," Starx said, and his his embarassment behind guiding the Enterprise towards the brightening orb growing in the viewscreen sky. "Do you think it's the Mnemosyne?" Spock asked at length. "It's possible," Kirk said. "But I can't understand how it wandered this far off course." SOME THREE hours later the Enterprise swung into a temporary orbit around the obscure planet, which currently bore the ignoble name of TKU 3139B, Federation Reckoning. The world was Earth-sized, moonless and shrouded with thick white masses of cloud punctuated here and there by stretches of ocean and land. "Have you pinpointed the ground beacon yet?" Kirk said. But even as he'd said these words the Enterprise was knocked sideways by a tremendous blast, and he was thrown to the floor. "What the..." Starz scrambling back into his seat, his temple gleaming. "Captain," he said, "our orbit is decaying." "Activate auxiliary engines!" Kirk said. Then there was a second blast, and half of the control room collapsed. Clutching on to a railing, Kirk said, "Prepare life-rafts!" and the remaining half of the control room disintegrated into a a fiery mess.

---

KIRK WOKE from an empty sleep to a dizzy head and an almost sickening sensation of confusion. His first thought was that he was aboard the Enterprise, waking to a normal day of interstellar flight. Only when he turned on his side and felt the pain in his legs did he remember: a projectile of metal and glass plunging into the atmosphere of an unknown planet, clouds outside thicker than steam. He opened his eyes and attempted to rise.

Cybernesia. Kirk vainly searched his memories for such a room, but there were none to be found. Where was he? His first response was horrifying: it was the afterlife. Surely nothing could survive that fiery dive into the clouds. But was Heaven this lonely? A door chimed out of nowhere and slid gently open. Kirk retreated under his bunk, hand moving instinctively to a patch of white jumpsuit where his gun should have been. He squinted at the doorway, saw a figure there: female, young and as white as he was. And she was beautiful. She stepped forward, and the door sealed the space behind her. "My name is Lisa," she said, advancing a little further. "You have no reason to be afraid. Your crew is perfectly safe, in the best of hands..."

"My crew? Where are they?"

"You were the last to awaken," she said, taking another step. "Your crew recovered earlier today, and are relaxing in the lounge downstairs. I can take you there." "Wouldn't you rather like to know where you are?" she counter-questioned. Before Kirk could respond she said expansively: "Welcome to Eden!" "Eden!" Kirk gasped, his worst fears confirming. "This is Heaven?" Lisa laughed, automatically. "Hardly, although there are similarities. No, I welcome you to Eden, second planet of the TKU 3139 system, and to the outpost manned by my husband Michael and myself." "Private outpost... Eden..." Kirk stumbled, obfuscation overcoming any fear of the stranger. "I remember climbing into an escape craft as my vessel crashed into the atmosphere, but our vectors were wrong, it was all too quick. I can't understand how I could have survived that kind of descent." "But you did, and so did your companions. We were alerted to your distress signal and caught your escape pod in a gravity net. The deacceleration shock must have rendered you unconscious. But you have recovered now. Come." She turned methodically and marched out the room. Kirk, curious but not completely sure, followed her down two flights of stairs, into a bright plastic chamber. As they passed a grotesque sculpture of twisted black metal Kirk saw his huddled crew ascend from a long white couch. "Kirk, you're alive!" x said, gliding across the room to embrace him in a warm hug. "Now we're all together," Lisa said, "let's proceed to the dining room." The dining room was panelled with wooden walls (not imitation, Kirk deduced), several sparkling chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and a long table set for a meal. At the head of the table was a tall, lanky man with black hair and eyes of similar hue. A queer humanoid robot stood by his side; like his master, he was as motionless as rock. "My guests, sit please, and welcome to Eden," the man began crisply, and it became obvious to the five visitors it was Michael who had thus spoken. They collapsed to their chairs following his example, but all lacked the courage to utter a single word. Finally Kirk, clearing his throat hesitantly, said, "As Captain of the Enterprise I extend my gratitude for the hospitality you have offered, but forgive me my ignorance..." "Your ignorance is understandable," Michael replied bluntly. "And forgive me the mysteriosuness of your reception. We had to, let us say quarantine you for a short period, to determine if you were friend or foe." "And as part of this quarantine," Kirk said, "you had to confiscate our weapons?" "You have no use for your weapons in here, I assure you. If you would allow us to explain, you would understand the dilemma we now face. But first to the meal - I'm sure your hunger is immense." Indeed it was, Kirk thought as the mute robot served up a plate of a delicious but unrecognisable meal. For the next five minutes everybody ate, nobody spoke. At last Michael, finishing the repast, leaned back in his chair and signalled the robot to collect his plate. "A most gratifying meal," Spock said, swallowing his last morsel. "A recipe I have never encountered before..."

"Indeed you have not!" Lisa said suddenly. "It is a recipe known only to the two who dwell on this planet. It is mostly composed of a heavily mutated aquatic hana plant grafted from a specimen we obtained off the coast of this continent, about three thousand kilometres south of here." "The hana plant," Michael said, "can be best described as an extremely large seaweed with an extremely long lifespan: the parent of this specimen is estimated to be at least 200,000 years old, with a size of about 80,000 square kilometres." Kirk felt his stomach churn. "Do you mean that thing we ate was a plant? It tasted like chicken." "Anyway, enough talk about food!" Michael said. "As I said before, I bid you welcome to the planet Eden, second world of the TKU 3139 system. I doubt you have heard about this world before. It is off the beaten track, you might say, an obscure planet lit by a dying sun, but harbouring a remarkable jewel." "I remember receiving a mass of life signals as we were dragged into the atmosphere," Starx said. "From what I could deduce, it seemed like a tropical paradise, a planet-wide Amazon of life, but for such an exundant world to escape exploration..." "And the scourge of colonisation that would follow," Michael said. "The occasional probe ventures into this system, but they never stay long. It is best for the welfare of this planet."

"Why are you here then, if you disdain colonisation?" Spock asked. "What point is there for an Adam and Eve in Eden, if there is going to be no Cain and Abel?"

"We operate as the guardians of Eden," Lisa replied. "We arrived here five years ago, fleeing the decadance of Lemurian Earth, and erected this outpost to complete a study of local lifestreams before they collapsed with the parent star's demise. Quite an obdurate task for two and their robotic staff to undertake, but dedication and enthusiasm - they have been our great allies. While our work is far from complete, we have built up a worthwhile database. The fruits of our research are at your disposal. We'll arrange a tour of the labs, later." "I'd be very honoured," Spock said. Something about Lisa's use of the word "operate" unnerved Kirk, so he said: "Later - listen, there's not going to be much of a later. I'm afraid we're on a very important mission. We'll have to locate the Enterprise immediately, and begin repairs." "Salvage will be impossible, I'm afraid," Lisa said. "As far as we know, your craft plummeted into the forest approximately 8000 kilometres to the north-west. Given its velocity, I assume it was vapourised on impact." Kirk felt his heart go cold. "I see," he said. "Well, we'll have to contact the outpost on Randslav IV, and organise a rescue." "You know I can't allow you to do that." "Our existence here is a secret," Lisa said. "We refuse to venture anything which would jeopardise that secret." "Why then, pray, did you sacrifice the energy to save us?" Kirk asked. "Was it because a craft lost in your system would attract too much undo attention?" "We acted according to our principles." Michael said stoutly. "And in doing so, we did not expect ungratefulness for our effort. It is a cruel world outside, though we call it paradise; perhaps you might like to pass the rest of your stay outdoors." Kirk turned red with anger, then released (or supressed) it, chanting a Buddhist mantra in his mind. "I apologise. It's been a rather bewildering day." "I understand," Michael agreed, in a gentler tone. "It should be us apologising; I'm sorry for the inconvenience of this situation. But, as I was going to say, there is an alternative to a distress signal. We have in our posession a small but spaceworthy cruiser, capable of limited warp. We could take you to the next system and leave you there, so long as you claim to maintain our secret and our disguise. That way, you obtain your freedom, and we preserve ours." "The matter bears some consideration," Kirk said sullenly.

Gross Misconduct

Gross and Luszeit investigate the serial killings in Los Angeles.

"THERE IS something decidedly wrong here," Kirk told his crew about an hour later. They were sitting in their sleeping quarters, a modified lounge decorated with art works and multimedia installations. The hosts of Eden had vanished about 20 minutes earlier, "tending to a few odds and ends before the commencement of the tour". The Captain was hugely unimpressed; their behaviour was far from proper. "And their eyes," he said, "did you notice their eyes? They looked as if they'd just popped a vial of sasoyd pills! How dare they forbid us from contacting Randslav IV." "I can understand their predicament," [woman] said. "We're the ones who intruded on their private garden, their paradise. Who are we to start making demands?" "In any case," Spock said, "what demands can we make, when this facility is our only sanctuary on a pirs of eyes turned towards him in startled expectation. "What do you mean?" Spock asked, exasperated. "Well, nobody remembers anything beyond our jetison from the Enterprise," Kirk said. "By that time we were still at a considerable height - high enough to be plucked by a sub-orbital craft. It sounds improbable, but far more likely than the claim we were captured in a gravity net and siphoned down to the surface." "A single outpost," Spock said, "alone on a medium-sized planet, in exactly the right position to open yet glimpsed the world beyond these walls?" Kirk had scarcely said these words when a sudden darkness enveloped the room. The luminous ceiling was gone, and so rapidly that their eyes received a painful impression. They remained mute, not stirring, and not knowing what surprise awaited them, whether agreeable or disagreeable. A sliding noise was heard: one would have said the walls were peeling away "It is the end of the end!" x said.

Suddenly light broke at each side of the lounge, through two oblong windows. Kirk flinched momentarily, overcome with fear. But curiousity being the stronger force, he looked out the openings thus created - and was overcome by wonder. The world beyond the window was indeed alien, there was no doubt about that. A forest of tubular trees seethed for at least 100 kilometres before slowly merging into an angry orange sky. Kirk struggled to understand as he looked why they called it Eden. It was a planet which had long gone beyond the limits of attraction; it might well have been an abundant paradise in its youth, but it had since overheated into a sauna of steam and severity. After draining the landscape of knowledge, and finding beauty only in its severity, Kirk said, "So, this is the garden under our hosts' dominion. A strange forest: the trees remind me of tentacles, swaying like anemoe in the tide. A most peculiar form of life." Even as he spoke it seemed like every limb in the jungle was rent by some unseen force; out of the tears gushed vast clouds of yellow gunk, swelling the land in a rising pastel fog. The windows slowly lost their transparancy. "Great gods!" x muttered. "What in the name of man was that?" "The daily emission of rartoin spores," Lisa said. "Well, it happens every 25 hours, so it's as close to a day as you get here. A Terran day, that is." Kirk smiled bleakly. "I hope," Lisa continued, "you're sufficiently rested to commence the tour. Depending on the weather conditions, we may be able to take you on a flight to Mount Esvalva, a volcano about 5000 kilometres south of here. And after that, possibly a forest walk." "Our stay here must be short," Kirk interjected. "I appreciate the effort, but we are on a very important mission. I wish to leave tomorrow, whatever the arrangements." "Tomorrow is about 150 days away," Lisa said. "Terran Reckoning, that is."

Chapter 17: Zha Zha And Gabor

 22 Green-Out "UP!" GLACIAL prospects shot through with fluorescent light: the catatonia of white-out. Julian struggled to maintain his focus on an aurora australis shimmering against the dawning sky, wished on it like some polar rainbow, but the figure in the doorway was too insistent. "Up," he said. Millard again, looming again; he smelt of steak and stale beer. "Don't mind him," he said, "a bit slow on the old up-take." Julian saw who he was talking to; suddenly he had an incentive to fully wake up. "Flora," she said extending her hand. "She's transfered here," Millard said. in his 1958 book "The Earth's Shifting Crust." According to Hapgood, the theory suggests that the Earth's lithosphere (the rigid outer layer of the Earth) can undergo sudden and large-scale movements, which can result in the displacement of entire continents and changes to the Earth's geography. Hapgood proposed that these movements were caused by the redistribution of the Earth's mass, either by the accumulation of ice at the poles or by the movement of magma beneath the Earth's surface. He argued that these events could cause the Earth's lithosphere to "slip" or "shift" over the underlying layers, resulting in sudden and significant changes to the Earth's geography.

THE NORMALLY monolithic New Age spirituality movement has been splintered by a debate on the hazards of so-called sacred technology. Some respected New Age theorists believe the proliferation of DIY self-help manuals are endangering public spiritual health. Brent Neelson from the US-based Wholistic Health Alliance said recently, "Self-administering once sacred rituals and substances is like treating yourself for cancer or a serious motor accident. Or its like giving yourself chemotherapy when there's nothing substantially wrong with you. Either way, the side effects can be disastrous." More left-wing spiritual theorists claim the self-help movement may lead to the downfall of the entire religion. They say people are creating unnecessary stress through their ignorant use of powerful technology. In particular, they argue the fixation with mystical states of consciousness are over-stimulating the third eye and crown chakras, creating a dangerous top-heaviness in the astral body... - The Irish Times, October 12 2008. "IT MUST definitely get to you," Flora told Julian in the mid-morning mess. "What do they call it: A Factor?"

"Not quite: A Factor's more of a winter thing; there's no real term for the general gloom of living here. I suppose there is a term: nulled out," Julian said. "It doesn't get used that much these days." "Nulled out," smiling at him with an intensity of presence which nearly floored him, "I kinda like the sound of that." THE PROLIFERATION of mobile phone networks across developed countries might be reawakening long-dormant clairvoyant abilities, New Age guru Josh Varanasi said last week. The controversial Hindu-American writer has released a study linking mobile phone waves with an upsurge in reported ESP cases. Varanasi reckons phone radiation, especially that generated by mobile phone towers, is triggering sensor cells in the human brain associated with the mythical third eye. "Wouldn't it be ironic if telecommunication companies ushered in their own demise by reawakening our native telepathy?" Varanasi said. - Vietnam News, October 12 2008. "THEY MADE me watch White-Out before I came here." "Mudochian bullshit," Julian said. "I know, I know," she said. "It wasn't even a proper word before that show came out," Julian said. "It gets used now; I use it mainly in an ironic sense, like the cultural white-out of the Australian government. The other guys here, though, they've pretty much adopted it." "Like liquid paper," Flora said. IT SOUNDS pedantic arguing about the use of words, but ownership, culture and control - these were the things which concerned Julian the most. Even here on Hoth. Especially here on Hoth. Because here, between the glaciers, even though he hated it so much, Julian had the feeling he was pioneering something new... an extraordinary, most final Great Southern Land. A Great Southern Land, come to think of it, which might be already pioneered.

He saw them mainly in his dreams. The night after Flora arrived, for example, he dreamt he was surveying the interior when he stumbled upon a verdant oasis tended by women with uncommonly long necks and men wearing penis sheaves. A few nights later he had a dream which started in the mural cave.

He was sitting in a circle of about 20 people of indeterminate hue; he figured they were waiting for someone. The first thing he noticed about his peers was their unusually androgynous look: the men were an almost feminine lot with their long limbs and Nubian eyes; the women were just as feminine but maintained somewhat of a boyish look, like they'd just trimmed their hair for Eton. It's a parliament, he thought, a parliament of elves. Someone passed him a strange-smelling goblet; he refused. Someone else down the line, two people - he couldn't tell their gender - two people were having sex. The boy-man next to him tried to pass him the goblet again; again he refused. This seemed to upset everyone. "I don't drink," Julian said, "I'm not a redneck." Something started crying behind him so he turned around to see this penquin getting slit open with a sharpened stone, its still-beating heart squirting globes of blood into a rich goblet.

"Jesus Christ," Julian said. "Not quite," the boy-man said.

---

FLORA WENT to Antarctica to finally apply years of research in polar habitats and remote human living in hostile climate conditions. Both were skills urgently required at Tuggera, but probably more beneficial were her feminine charms (although they'd never put that on her job description!) Morale had been falling at the bloke-heavy outpost; a fresh breeze was desperately needed to clear the locker-roomed air. Preferably, Millard reasoned, the breeze should be scented with jasmine, heart-leaf, and eucalyptus. Although she would be based outdoors for most of her assignment, working on accommodation nodules for the various survey teams, Flora was assigned to Julian for the first two weeks "to get a general feel for the place". This infuriated the other young men of the station, many of whom had not been laid for at up to a year. Julian only scored the job because he was recovering from his ice sled accident and had plenty of spare time. "This whole mining deal," he told her one day on some scraggy igneous crag, "it pisses me off so much. This continent could have been the world's largest national park." She turned away, borderline gasfaced, and Julian suspected he'd said something wrong. "Don't feel so bad, I'm just as guilty. Sometimes I feel I've sold my soul to the devil." A few days later he took her on a tour of his favourite installation: the conservatory. She plucked a peach from a tree rooted in authentic Antarctic soil, bit through the fuzz, juice dribbling down her cheek. "Imagine if," Julian said, "imagine if there are permanent settlements here one day, cities, playing fields." Their eyes locked, juice meanwhile dripping from her chin. Julian was struck by an overwhelming desire to kiss her. He wiped her chin with a diffident finger instead. She started laughing. "Playing fields?" Julian remembered it as their honeymoon phase. His life was stalled with them, like an endless tennis game never rallied beyond the call of "fault". The inevitable umpire's call came in the second week. "She's fucking lush, isn't she? That Flora," Coombes said one night in the showers. "She's all right," Julian conceded. "She's a bit of an all right, more like it. I'm asking her on a date." Julian felt McInroe-intensity anger. If he was McInroe and it was a tennis game he would have thrown his racket across the court. As he was a wimp in a communal shower he grimaced and said, "Like where are you going to take her? The local drive-in?" "I'll just take her to bed," Coombes said. 

Chapter 23: Mock Croc

AHHH, CROCODILE skin: it seemed everyone was wearing it in the air-con malls and smoky pubs of Greater Darwin. It should have been, because crocodile skin was the fourth most important force driving the economy there. Sewn into nimble shoes and handbags for the lucrative Asian market, flaunting its Jim Morrison charms on the catwalks and at all the suburban rodeos... crocodile leather was the fashion statement of 00s, and Darwin processed about 40 per cent of the global trade. "Northern Australia rides on the cock of a freshwater croc," that's what the locals said, and the outskirts of Darwin were pregnant with reptile farms.

Everyone was wearing crocodile hide... well, everyone except Franz Hoebbard. He was dead against animal exploitation, despite what he did at work. He did keep bees though, thousands of them. He was relaxing with them one afternoon in his garden when the Order of the Gilded Saints came around to talk. Hoebbard noticed an inflation in the hum of his bees, looked over to see an Asian man with his hand in a hive like an underworld Winnie the Pooh. “Hey,” Hoebbard yelled, sick of mafia intrusions. “This is private property. You'll get hurt.”

“He loves honey,” another man said, and Hoebbard spun around to see two henchmen standing right behind him. They were both dressed in canary-yellow suits; one wore a crocodile teeth dog collar.

“Don't get up on our account, Mr Hoebbard,” the older gangster said. They sat down at the table beside him. “Please, chill...” “You don't scare me,” the engineer said, although a certain amount of fear showed in his voice. “I want you to know I'm with a very important company. They're all the protection I need.”

The lead guy smiled, a face full of gold teeth. “A very important company, huh?” He said something to his comrade in Cantonese, and they laughed uproariously. Then a wave of realisation swept through Hoebbard, and he remembered who he was talking to... “Wait,” he said, “Jacky Tung! Dynasty Ltd. Fibre optics, offshore mining, Indian sweatshops. You're one of the most powerful tycoons in the world.” Tung shrugged, with typical Chinese modesty. “Hey, I do what I can. And hey, I'm sorry about that little jab to your belly. Bruisy punch-ups isn't typically saintly behaviour. Let's blame it on the stars.” Hoebbard shifted uncomfortably in his chair. While he was pissed off about the trashing of his house and equally fearful of a bodily trashing, he couldn't help but feel awed by Tung's presence. The world's sixth richest man, in his garden? “Let me guess,” he said, “you want to offer me a job?” "Check out the brain on Brad!" Tung said, and he made a hand-slapping motion modelled on African-American ghetto humour. "But the job’s not for me, surprisingly. In this instance I am acting only as an advocate. A talent scout, you could say." "More like a boy scout," Hoebbard said. "I don't care who you are. But if you wanted to impress me, you shouldn't have wrecked my house. Besides, I have no interest in developing China's first superman."

"Nor do I," said the glitter-mouthed Tung, "nor do I. I have no interest in humanity, period. Our days are numbered, and our life-cycle is drawing to a close. I am more interested in the next phase of life on earth, the post-human world. I want you to join us in our glorious experiment."

“Piss off,” Hoebbard said. And he stood up as if to leave.

Tung's associate grabbed him by the wrist and, squeezing a pressure point, sagged him into the chair. "Do you like pain?" he said. "Would you like to feel some more?" The third Chinaman was still clowning around near the bee-hives, up to God-knows-what. Hoebbard whistled softly and like a liquid dog the bees lunged into attack. They swarmed around the gangster, stinging furiously. He swung his hands at the air and screamed. "What are you doing?" Tung said. "You'll kill him!" "I speak to them," Hoebbard said. "Now clear off before I set them on you!" Tung looked like he was about to say something, thought better of it, and smashed his fist into the Australian's face instead. CROON KNEW he would use those fold-out boxing gloves for something: as soon as the door opened he hit the punch button and one came out flying out of his jacket like a god-damn jack-in-the-box. It must have had a reasonable amount of punch, too, because it knocked Mr Catheter a few meters down the hall and split the capillaries in his nose. Croon folded the fist back into his waist, advanced down the hall.

But the old devil had some jack-in-the-box strategies of his own. Before Croon reached him he somersaulted to his feet, landing in a defensive kung fu posture. It was a monkey posture.

Croon whistled, impressed. “Hell, old man,” he said, “didn't know you had it in you.” “I would have whipped your behind before,” he said, “but for the fact I’m a gentleman.” Well, Croon thought, I’m a rogue. He leapt into attack screaming furiously, clawing the air like a cat. Mr Catheter grabbed an umbrella hanging on the wall and opened it just in time, like a giant shield. “Look bastard, I want some answers,” Croon said. “My girl just left me; what the fuck's going on?” As he said these words an image sprung into his mind: a river snaking through the dawn-dewed fields, the flickering lights of the airport... He banished the image, concentrated on the job at hand. “My dear sir,” Mr Catheter said, “if you feel rejected, maybe you should see a psychologist.” He lowered the umbrella enough to offer Croon a cheesy grin; Croon also saw the remnants of two black eyes. Then he pushed a button and sharp spikes punched out from the vertices of the umbrella. Spinning quickly, he started tunnelling down the hall. “You’re involved in this, I know it,” Croon said as he retreated to the front foor. “I don’t know if you put her up to it directly, but you know something.” “Only as much as you do. Like you, we surmise she was a friend of Babel. A colleague of some kind.”

Mr Catheter had Croon pressed against the door. Just as he was about to bore into his guts Croon triggered the springs in his shoes and grasping a light fixture in the roof, swung clear over his head. “You know as much as me?" he said when he landed. "What, have you bugged my fucking house?” “Sorry about that - standard procedure," Mr Catheter said. "Some members of the board still think you’re in league with Babel’s abductors. When Frieda appeared on the scene, these suspicions intensified. You see, she was once arrested for bombing a vivisection clinic in her native California." Mr Catheter smiled. "Hear me: she’s not even English! She sure fooled you.” This comment was designed to push Croon into an emotional and hasty attack. The nigger didn’t fall for it. He paused instead to take in Catheter’s revelations, to consider the implications. An outline of intent was already forming in his mind. Confused by the response, Mr Catheter launched into attack himself, again using his umbrella as a weapon. Croon undonned his grey Inspector Gadget jacket and used it like a matador’s cape to dodge the spinning umbrella. And he thought: Frieda, an anti-vivisection bomber? I always knew she had a bit of a spunk! The fight could have gone on for hours, and Croon didn’t expect to get much more information from his rival. He decided on a new tactic: mock surrender. He masterminded a fall on Mr Catheter’s hallway rug. The aforementioned stood over him, folded his umbrella, then pushed another button - a 30 centimetre long bladed protruded from the tip, stopping against Croon's neck. “Give,” Croon said. “Of course,” Mr Catheter said, “the one million Euro offer still holds.” “I can’t take any cases, I’m too depressed. Don’t you understand me: my girl just left me.” “Seems to be a pattern with you,” Mr Catheter said. Croon pinched his nose with one hand. With the other, he twisted his Mi5 reject cufflinks. "This seems like a pattern with you," he said. WHEN HE came to Hoebbard was lying with his face against the window of a car... no, it was a sub-orbital passenger jet. He looked out blearily and saw, through the fog, a dreamy pastel world: a river snaking through dawn-dewed fields, the flickering lights of the airport and, in the distance, a skyline so precise it could only have been Monolithic Guangzhou. Only the tops of the tallest buildings could be seen from this groggy vantage-point, then the big Lear jet swung into an approach pattern and a sheet of city opened up beneath him. Over-passes were already clogged with traffic. Token patches of parks and gardens - bold squares and triangles against the subequatorial sprawl - got larger and bolder as the plane was guided down to land. The "fasten seatbelt" sign came on.

The it hit Hoebbard, broke him out of his reverie: he was in Asia and if this was a Tuesday, he had an important meeting to attend. "What's going on?" he said, struggling in his seat-belt. "What are you doing to me?" “Sssh!” a brown man said beside him... it was Jacky Tung. He pressed a loaded syringe against his arm. The jet skidded on to the tarmac of the Joseph [African] international airport. "Welcome to China," the golden grin said. An hour later Felix was seated in a small office in the airport used by the Department of Immigration. Superconductor air-conditioning fissures were having a tough time converting the hectic morning heat. An Indian woman sat on the other side of a table studying various official-looking forms. After an Asian length of time she looked up at Hoebbard and said, "Welcome to the People's Republic of China and the Olympic city of New Canton. Your working visa has been processed."

"Working visa?" Hoebbard said, the syringe still suspiciously close to his neck. "Look, I don't want no fuck-arsed visa. I want to go home." Tung twisted his cuff-links and stared, dismayed, at the roof. “Valid for,” the bureaucrat said, “three months, effective from today. I remind you: change your address from that specified on this document, and this Department must be notified within five working days. Failure to do so will incur an incremental fine.” “Fine... what the fuck are you talking about?” If it wasn't for that needle Hoebbard would have flung her table across the room. “I want to speak to my embassy.” “It closed,” the Indian woman said, smiling bleakly. “This is kidnapping. You could start an incident doing shit like this." Tung couldn't suppress his rage any longer. “Mr Hoebbard, I don't give a damn about your "incidents". This is the South China, we are building a new civilisation. And this great civilisation is under threat. To safeguard the interests of our people we are willing to jeopardise any confrontation... no risk is too small.” “This is fuck,” Hoebbard said.

The bureaucrat handed him his visa. "Have a pleasent stay," she said.  But that was Thr0w-Back, the landslide was his essence. What mattered to this 200lb bulk was not who performed the perfect somersault or even who impressed the ladies; this was all about making the biggest splash. He had this paradoxic mix of Aquarian sensitivity and brute animal force. His first encounter with Cassius Croon in a New York hotel lobby was another case in point.

It was 2002, and Croon was in the Big Apple to infiltrate a rogue Hamas cell. Thr0w-Back was there to buy cocaine. Croon was reading The New York Times or something when he heard the ape-man ask a waiter for a chilli-flavoured milkshake. Son of fuck? Croon thought. Spicy milk! He was even more perturbed when, after one sip of the requested beverage, Thr0w-Back launched the glass at a marble sculpture in the middle of the foyer. (King Kong was Thr0w-Back's totem.) "Hey, man, what's your problem?" the waiter said. "If you can't handle the heat, don't go burning me." He was coming to the grim conclusion that Americans couldn't play (and these were god-damned actors!) when Thr0w-Back came up and made a complete goose of himself (Hindenburg was his archetype). Spotting Croon alone at his table and being taken by his flex he ambled over, pulled up a chair and said completely out of context, "Do you work out?" Yes! Croon thought. Here was an obvious fuck-up, a clear victory. Freed from the game he changed texts, hoping Thr0w-Back was fast enough to follow, "Cletus, Cletus, I know in the past I may have done you wrong, right? But I promise I will never, ever do you wrong again." "Why, you don't say," Thr0w-Back said, "Cas Croon!" "At your service," the aforementioned said. Thr0w-Back slapped his back like a pizza-maker pressing dough, literally squeezed the breath out of him, rambled something about four years... you said you were going to write... how the fuck's your ass... "I'm taking care of it," Croon said, desperate for release. You see, while Croon's appearance changed every four weeks, Thr0w-Back had dedicated his adult life to a single design: a Neathandal Man replica complete with stooped forehead and hairy back. "So, you heard it was Boogie Nights?" the ape-man said. "But who the fuck invited you? You should have told me you'd be in town." "It was all rather sudden - like your conception," Croon said. "Dude, we've got to talk. We've got a chance to make mega, mega bucks..." "Dude," Throw-Back said, "we are mega, mega bucks. Let's play first, huh? I got a few people you'd love to meet." LONG AFTER sunset Croon and the ape-man were jammed in an outdoor spa smoking cigars and talking about the good old days, their missions to Algeria and Angola, various chemical experiences and endless nights in casinos and opium dens. Croon was still wearing his hat; there was some girl dressed in nought but a snorkel beside him. "Great party, man," he said. "I see you haven't lost your style. Nor your capacity to afford that style, might I add." "Man, I'm doing what I can. The coke trade hasn't been the same for years, ever since Murdoch shunted half of Hollywood down to Mexico. I'm afraid martial arts and the porn industry's become my primary market." "Well that's what I'm here to talk to you about: new business opportunities. And martial arts." The girl with the snorkel came to the surface, and Croon introduced himself. "Scubagirl," she said, then plunged back underwater. CROON AND Thr0w-Back had it all worked out: they were going up to K2's club on Friday night to catch one of his shows, and then they were going to sign him up for a UK tour. That gave Croon two days to kill. He wanted to do some more research on the kid and also on the two men who'd hired him, because he still couldn't work out why they wanetd him so badly. After six hours on the Net rummaging all of his faithful search engines, however, he was even more uncertain. Sure, Dirk had a homepage and sure, it was full of his philosophies and links to rewind sites. Sure, there were also recordings of some of his juvenile recordings and sure they were jamming. But it wasn't enough to explain why two Texan ex-pat billionaires were willing to fork out eight million Euros just to see him play. Like if the kid was that remunerative, why didn't he have a record deal? The Web search was getting nowhere, so Thr0w-Back suggested something to take their minds off things: a trip to their favourite theme park, a legend on the adventurer's circuit: LA's Magic Mountain. THE MAIN attraction in the McDonald's pavilion was a VR network called Greed Works. It was a corporate strategy game in which players had to advance their interests without violating the set parameters of their character. Because he was the king of the simulcra, Croon expected to whip Thr0w-Back's ass. "Hey, I've got more subtlety than you give credit for," Thr0w-Back genuinely offended. Croon looked at his friend's ape-like profile, the tufts of hair piling out of his death metal singlet, and couldn't help but cackle. "All right, let's make it interesting then," he said. "$5000," Thr0w-Back said, and started clambering into his extra large smartsuit. Croon followed suit, they pulled on video helmets, a "disbelief suspender" punched through his skin and the pair were transported into the electronic world of McSpace. After a short narcotic shock Croon recovered his wits and noticed the following proclamation scrolling down his inner view:  THAT NIGHT Thr0w-Back went out to score and Croon relaxed with a bar fridge and the ape-man's three-metre wide digital TV. It was hooked up to cable, satellite and the Net, and all up had about 5000 channels. If that wasn't enough to keep him entertained, there was also access to a 100,000 title movie library. I really do, Croon thought, miss southern California! He was ready to sit through the classic clone episode of Melrose Place when a sudden whim overcame him, and he called up a search engine. He typed in Kurt Cobain Nirvana suicide time travel Quantum Leap event horizon Duff, crossed his fingers and hit the enter key.

Seconds later the best match came up: Doctor Who and the Gates of Nirvana. Interesting, but it wasn't what Croon was after. He called up the complete Quantum Leap anthology and scanned through them 20 at a time in little windows on the TV, but none of them compared with what he'd seen in Berlin. Well, he thought, maybe I saw was a special edition made for German TV. So he hooked up with a German search engine and repeated the process... still no luck. This was fucking wierd. It was getting late, and he didn't want to spend his whole night screwing around with search engines. He downloaded that Dr Who episode, cracked open another beer and relaxed into his armchair. The program opened with the old chromatone theme tune of the Tom Baker period. How odd, Croon thought - he was a Bakerphile but he'd never seen this installment. Even more surprising was the first shot of the TARDIS control room: Jane garbed in a spider silk gown and fluro muslim veil, K9 bursting hip-hop from speakers in his sides. Spider silk and hip-hop! Croon thought. They put Baker out of commission in the 70s. Then the Doctor appeared from behind the console, a mass of scarf and thick brown curls. "Well," he said, "we ought to be arriving on Gamelon soon. We stand to make a tidy fortune, the way my luck's been going." "Are you sure you're appropriately dressed?" Jane said. "I thought you said this was a funky-assed casino planet?" The Doctor draped a fat gold chain around his neck and stuck a cigar in his mouth. "Now I'm ready," he said. But even as he said these words the TARDIS was knocked sideways by a massive jolt, and the Doctor was thrown to the floor. "What happened?" Jane screamed, to which the Doctor replied, "For God's sake, stay down!" He punched a series of buttons on the console, hurriedly scanned a read-out. "My god," he said at length. "Doctor, what's going on?" "An unprecedented rift in the time-space continuum. It could only mean..." "Doctor, mean what?" "Shhh! We're materialising." The TARDIS wheezed slowly into the world of form. The Doctor turned on the scanner, and the three beheld the outside view: it looked like the inside of a house. There was a window in the distance, framing grey sky and sea. "Is it Gamelon?" asked Jane, who couldn't see because the veil had slipped over her eyes. "Hardly," the Doctor studying a few more read-outs. "According to these coordinates, this is the Earth. We must have been knocked off course. I'm going outside to investigate." "Don't leave me behind!" Jane found the Doctor in the outside room studying a framed poster on the wall. It was adorned with the large letters Nirvana but the Time Lord was more interested in the frame. "Hmmm," he said, tapping the glass. "Late 20th century, 1990s I'd say." He then walked to the window and took in its broad panorama, the boats in the sound, the style of surrounding architecture. "North America, Pacific sea-board," he said. "I'd say Portland... no, Seattle." There was a rustling sound from the next room, and K9's ears pricked up. "Armed humanoid approaching," he said. A door crashed open, and out came a scruffy-looking fellow with straw-tinted hair. Kurt Cobain, doped the eyeballs on heroin, advanced with a pistol levelled on the alien intruders. And he said, "What the fuck's going on here?" The Doctor didn't freak out or put up his hands or anything so reflex. Instead he said with perfect aplomb, "Ah, glad to see I haven't missed the fireworks." He casually walked over Cobain, pulled a brown paper bag from his pocket. "Jelly babies?" Cobain threw the bag on the floor, shoved his barrel into the Doctor's head. "I ought to blow your brains out right now!" he said. 

Chapter 28: Encino Man

TO SAY Croon was shocked by this development was an understatement. He hit the save button on the remote, planning to dump the rest of the episode on to Thr0w-Back's hard-drive. As soon as he started recording, however, the connection dropped out, and the screen reverted to the clone pash scene from Melrose Place. He'd been withheld! Sitting in riled silence on Thr0w-Back's lounge, Cobain's threat still reverberating in his ears, Croon thought: All right, you guys want to play ball. I play stronger than any man!  30 Flirt: Part IV "I FEEL disgusting," Fatma said. "I just don't know what to do." "I thought you'd cut your contact with him?" Ishmael said. Fatma sighed, turning over in bed to reveal the nape of her neck, the devastating smooth of her back. "He writes, he tells me things. Stupid little things. He sends me presents." "Do you love him?" Ishmael was being cruel here. "Maybe, maybe I love him." But she pointed her finger at Ishmael smoking on the windowsill of her apartment, said, "I swear to God I love you more!" It was little consolation to our Palestinian: while he was a New Age man he was nonetheless an Arab, and he felt uncomfortable letting women take the lead in anything. Even this recent habit of sleeping in her apartment unsettled him. But as he hated the idea of oppression even more he said with as much concord as possible: "What time's your flight leaving?" "Seven," she said. "Is he going to pick you up at the airport?" "Yes." "What are you going to tell him?" "What do you want me to tell him?" "Huh?" "It all depends on you," she said. "I want you to tell me if there's a future, a future between you and me. Yes or no, is there a future?" "I can't see the future," Ishmael said. "You don't have to see the future if it's there. Yes or no!" Fatma was an Arab too, and she felt just as uncomfortable as Ishmael about the concept of the "equal relationship". The little voice inside of her was doubtless saying: Please, please tell me to stay. And doubtless Ishmael could hear that little voice. But things never being so simple in love and war, he needed more time to consider. He needed time to decide. "What time's your flight to LA?" "Seven," she said. "All right, I'll drive you to the airport. I'll be back at 5.30pm." "Where are you going?" "I'm going to see the future," he said. DECEMBER 2011 in Cairo, and everyone was talking about the Mosque of Al-Aqsa. The siege was into its fifth month, with no diplomatic settlement in sight. Even moderate Egyptians were now conceding that war was the only viable solution. Middle-aged men were being called up for duty, while gas-masks and plastic sheeting were joining all the usual disaster items in the shops on Midan Tahrir. Like everyone else, Ishmael had been thinking a lot about the war: namely, what role he was going to play if and when it broke out. Yassar Arafat had called on all Palestinians, men and women, to return to PLO-controlled territories for one final hurrah against Zionist persecution. That sounded reasonable, but Ishmael didn't want to end his days as a foot solider fighting house-to-house skirmishes in the suburbs of Ramallah. There was more to war than that! If this was going to be the last war in human history he wanted the mother of all posts: you know, like assassinating the president of Israel or something. Hijacking a cargo plane and crashing into the heart of Tel Aviv. He wanted to go out in style.

Needless to say, falling in love with Fatma Fahni was the worst possible thing he could have done at such a time. They had been together now for three months, and she was just about to leave to the US for a two month business trip. But in two months time, Cairo could be Africa's first Hiroshima. Ishmael couldn't leave the Middle East at so critical a time, no matter how much he yearned to be with her. He could ask her to stay, but dirty religious wars had little space for pampered millionaires. Not unless they paid for the weapons, of course. In his desperation, he went around to see his old buddies MK and Mustafa Hasan. He phoned them first to organise a meeting at the old Wimpies burger joint. Mohammad was the one who answered the phone. "They're busy now," Mohammad said, "they've got a lot of work to do. They haven't got the time to get mixed up with the likes of you!" "What's that supposed to mean?" a teenage boy in a basketball cap was banging on the side of the phonebox, waving a phonecard earnestly in the air. "You know what I mean? I find it disgusting." (And this was from the guy Ishmael sprung having gay sex in the toilets at Misr el-Qadimah!) "Why don't you just go back to that woman." "She's a patriot," Ishmael opening the booth's door to swing a kick at the rambunctious teenager. "Imshee x x !" "She's a leech!" Mohammad said. "Your problems are trivial," Mustafa said. It was about 46 minutes later at that renovated Wimpies joint, Ishmael having convinced the Fatimids to give him one last chance. "Why don't you just go back to that condominium?" "Mustafa, you're the one who introduced me to decadence," Ishmael said. "Our decadence is subversive!" Mustafa hissed. Ishmael noticed he was wearing a gun... and this time around it didn't look like a cap gun. "You have to understand I didn't go there for the easy life, to spend Gaddafi's money," Ishmael said. He had never seen The Blues Brother, so he didn't hear the irony of his words: "I was on a mission from God." Mustafa had seen The Blues Brothers, so he burst out laughing. "Bullshit," he said. "You just wanted a sugar mommy." Ishmael leaned back in his seat, exasperated. Imagine his confusion! Torn one way by love and the other by his dedication to the cause, he desperately sought a Middle Path. What he found was the Zero. "Don't think," MK said, "we don't recognise the tactical benefits of your predicament. We appreciate them very much. You may be in the jaws of the dragon, but at least the skin is softer there." "The Devil seduces with his lies," Mustafa said, "but every lie has a kernel of truth. Discern the truth, and you shall have a role in our Holy War!" "What... what do you mean?" Ishmael said. Mustafa removed the pistol from his holster and held his arms aloft in a hugging gesture. Ishmael instinctively entered the embrace. "Go, go to America," Mustafa said softly. His arms folding around Ishmael's back, the cold press of steel on his cheek... When Ishmael came to it was the terrorism ward of the Cairo American Hospital. A busload of Canadian tourists were in the next room, groaning through the aftermath of a Giza mortar attack. Ishmael opened his eyes to see the blurry figures of nurses around him, a doctor dribbling liquid out of a syringe. "Are you allergic to Novocaine?" the doctor said. "Huh?" Ishmael said, then winced at the pain. "Your entire upper lip is in three pieces," the doctor said. "Oh God," Ishmael squirming on his stretcher. "I'm going to have to inject the entire injection directly into the wound," the doctor said. "Keep still!" As the doctor advanced on him a pretty Nubian nurse said, "You have to think about something to take your mind off the pain. Think about something pleasant, to take your mind off things." About a second later she said: "What are you thinking about?" "Jews," Ishmael said. This caught the doctor by surprise, and he paused with his needle hanging in the air. "Good, good," said the nurse, equally perplexed. "What in particular about Jews?" Visions filled Ishmael's mind, swelling with the pain: Al-Aqsa... the Temple... a burning in the sky. "Crowds, I see crowds," he said. "They're cheering him." His inner view suddenly rose from ground level, morphed into an archtectural blue-print of Jerusalem, hatcheted in the deconstructionalist style. The pain was terrific. Through throbbing lips he said, "A New Earth. Al-Quds. The bride..." "He's delirious," the doctor said. Looking down at the blueprint beneath him, Ishmael located the golden dome of Al-Aqsa. There seemed to be a huge crowd around it, a thicket of pencilled heads. Suddenly they all looked up. Ishmael thought for a moment they were looking at him, and even raised his hand to offer them a feeble wave. But they weren't looking at him TO COMPREHEND Thr0w-Back and the whole Rewind phenomenon you must consider the nihilism of 00s thought. On every conceivable level society was groaning towards collapse. Global warming had gone from speculation to fact but despite the hype, world governments couldn't implement a solution. The human population was rising at an almost hyperbolic rate, and the environment was struggling to cope. Whether they believed in it or not, most people had read Revelations and knew the Mayan calendar expired in the year 2012. Reprints of the centuries of Nostradamus were selling heavily across the developed world. It was, in the words of the tabloids, the biblical "End Days". The decay was reflected on every concievable level of society. In Europe it had led to the dominance of sampling, the belief that the only innovation could come from the reconstitution of the past. In the Middle East, futureshock was taken to its logical extreme through institutionalised fundamentalism. Asia was awash with apocalyptic cults who thought that since the world was about to end, they could indulge in a bit of mass murder and destruction in the meantime. And in mainstream North America you had the pinhead nostalgia of the revivals movement. This was on the surface, of course - there was always an underground. Rewind was the big underground movement in California. Like classic movements it arose spontaneously when a number of thinkers independently arrived at the same conclusion: humanity was fucked. Thr0w-Back came to this conclusion about 2001, just before his first major foray into crime. He was watching TV with a few of his buddies and this program came on about Homo Erectus, a chilled-out cousin species of man which inhabited southern Africa two million years ago. The program followed a Homo Erectus pioneer who left the security of his tribe to venture into the wilderness, kind of like a wandering mystic. He got lost, ended up in the desert and was eventually clubbed to death by a band of Homo Sapiens. Before he died, however, he stumbled on an outcrop of mushrooms and hungrily devoured them. About an hour later and it was like The Flintstones on DMT, the brother having visions of the miracle of fire, how to use tools and the virtues of vegetarianism. Before he could actualise any of those realisations, however, he was clubbed to death by that band of marauding Homo Sapiens. What impressed Thr0w-Back was not the tragedy of the story, which had obviously been given the Hollywood treatment, but rather the way it affected his buddies. When the dude left his tribe, for instance, they dissed him with calls of "Loser!" and "Where the fuck's your woman?" When he walked into the desert, they threw corn-chips and nuts at his ass. When he was clubbed to death, they actually applauded. Thr0w-Back's buddies were not normally so callous, and he got the uncomfortable feeling they had either been possessed or were channeling... like some primeval human groupmind. Or maybe they were just reflecting the inbuilt aggression of their species. The aggression which had extinquished the spiritual race of Homo Erectus, and was now threatening to extinquish every other life-form on earth. Other stoned Croon ideas: 1. Ishmael becomes confused by his growing sense of love and a divinity which he can't reconcile with his more traditional Islamic belief. In a sense, Ishmael is the leader of a new religion, but I have to depict the journey in emotional terms. In other words, I have to develop a decent story out of Ishmael's conversion to his new religion, I can't just rely on one heroin induced vision, which is what I have done so far. Naturally, this could take some time. But if Croon is serialised over what could well be a longer time-frame than first intended, what's the rush. Let's allow this novel to expand gradually: this is the Divine Plan!! Other note: Mention theory of Rennaissance in Book III centred on Ishmael, when I get up to Book III! (It could be a while!) Ishmael as a guru (through italic book reference, Dune-style) relates the story of a person he was healing being a Roman guard in a past life (that's why he constantly went to Israel). Nature attacking this house because people who live here attack it! Technology of the future will use perceptual motion, utilising natural phenomena.

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