Two Gals in a Van
Michael
Genevieve is in the passenger seat and she fiddles with the radio; as the van speeds north, away from the friendly confines of the Bay Area, the stations feature less pop and more country (and Jesus). Viv looks out the passenger window at the rock formations and pine trees of the landscape. She takes a look at Jo's profile as Jo drives, sighs, and speaks up finally after nearly an hour of relative silence.
"Shasta is really an incredible place. This whole area, in fact—Mendocino, Humboldt, Shasta, Trinity — they're all just sort of … generally wild, metaphysically. There's that sickness in the American psyche, men, pioneers always looking for a frontier to tame, a home to hew out of the land, you know? But this is it. That frontier, the last pocket of it. This is the last place they haven't chased the magic out of. It's basically here, and the deserts. And one day I'm sure even those will mapped, dragged out of terra incognita, measured, gridded … shrunk down onto a computer chip."
Leonard
"You have no idea," says Jocasta, returning a sigh. "The things I've seen about the future some people want, Viv … It's a world that's just drained of magic. Not of power … there's plenty of that. It's just all … accounted for. It's inside somebody's system, not outside of it. It can be accessed without risk. It's like...ordering things from a catalogue." She pauses, lifting her foot off the gas as the traffic gets heavy outside of Sacramento.
"But I don't think they can ever take it away completely, no matter how much they quantify and segment it. It's too deep. It's in the land and the water, and it will be there even if we spoil it. It's in the blood that's seeped into the ground." Her mind filled with a strange peace she hasn't felt in a while, crowding up against the uncertainty and fear that takes up the whole of her waking hours, she continues.
"I used to hike up Mt. Tam with my dad, when I was a kid. I could feel it then, even though I didn't know … I had no idea I had, had these gifts. But I could feel it," she recalls. "The Bay Area is a place of conjuring. Something about coasts, old and wild and right between the spots where man's influence and nature's dominance both end, makes it that way. Despite all the people, and all the things we're doing, there are still secret places, hidden and powerful. Even the place names have magic. My dad said the old country was like that, the islands. He said when he was a kid he could feel the ghost of every boat that ever passed through them, when the wind was right." She lights a cigarette and cracks one of the side vent windows.
"China Camp. Vallejo. Corte Madera, Tiburon, Hetch Hetchy," she says in a rush, almost singing the words to herself. "Power words. Anyway … " she says, seeming to snap back into the world and remembering she's in a conversation. "I don't know if you can stop magic. It seems like new forms are appearing all the time, all different kinds. It's happened, Viv, in me. But just the new magic … it's not enough. Just the old magic, either. I think they need each other." She pauses. "I just wish I knew what I meant by that," she finishes, laughing.
Michael
"That's so beautiful, Jo, the story about your dad. The unfortunately-named 'racial memory,' it's real and it's beautiful. And he was right, too. Liminal spaces in our world mirror the ones in the spirit world. Of course it's all the same tapestry, just depends on whether we're looking at one side or the other." At this Genevieve rubs her temples, takes off her coke-bottle glasses and looks at Jo. "I didn't used to have this kind of doubt. What did you see, that night we tripped with Archie? I've been turning over what I saw before the disassociation sunk in, over and over again." At this point Viv gives an abridged version of her trip.
"It's natural I'd experience disassociation after traveling to a past life where I was … apparently the Lady of the Lake, a water nymph, a distributed consciousness, some kind of … organic computer? The one who helped come up with the plan to hatch the Ontoclysm? A rebel Irruptor? … although I suppose I wouldn't have been an Irruptor when everything was History B."
"And then suddenly, it's like I touched my higher self for the last time. Like the Monad found me — the real me, the higher me that's been the constant through all my incarnations — wanting. As if I wasn't up to being that hero again, in this time and place. Charley's visions into her past lives … they're the key to understanding all this. Were we the circle that freed humanity from the Anunnakku, Jo? Was the St. Francis a literal dress rehearsal for what we really need to do? My senses have been telling me that this weekend is going to provide answers on that front. But I'm … I'm not even sure if I'm up to it anymore. Genevieve Abeille, at a loss for words, a loss of confidence." Viv laughs with no real mirth. "I never used to believe there were punishments for hubris … speaking of ancient Greece. I used to believe that idea was a tool that men had written into the mythspace, meant to keep us all cowed and compliant and away from True Magic but now … now I don't know anymore. Maybe our fates aren't escapable."
Leonard
"Some of these new people, these philosophers coming out of France … I find them too obsessed with language, too cynical about metaphysics to really give too much credence to, but I remember one of them said that we are all bound by destiny, that an inevitable fate is written into the path every atom," Jo responds quietly.
"But it doesn't matter, he said, because we can never see or know the path of every atom. We don't have free will, or karma, or anything, just an inescapable fate … but since we can never predict or understand it, we might as well act as if we do have free will." Jocasta relays the story of her trip as well as she can remember it, placing special emphasis on the fact that the room was truly and blessedly free of any element of History B, and that she was able to see auras for the first time and that Viv's was a switchboard of connected minds and spirits.
"A beautiful thing, Genevieve, that's what it was," she says. "Thousands of lights, all individual, all blinking on and off in this timed binary, but managing to make a sequence of color and movement that made it seem like a moving picture. Completely made of people you've touched."
"I don't know how the cosmos works. Hell, I don't know how my dishwasher works. I can't begin to fathom the forces at play and how they interrelate, even though it's part of my job. I'm beginning to see the barest outlines of it, the shape," Jo confesses. "Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe Marshall … " She seems to look briefly down a mental corridor, and then decide not to walk any further. "Never mind. The point is, I don't see things the way Mitch does. I don't understand his visions, although I believe they're real. Maybe when he looks at you, he sees something different from that incredible field of stars. But that's what I see."
"And the thing is … I don't know if we had anything to do with driving back the Red Kings in the first place, or if that's just another collective memory. I don't know why there are people in SANDMAN who want to imprint this future on is, or even if it's our job to fight them, or when or how or even if this war ends. Maybe it never does. Maybe it does, and then we have to face the million other problems that humanity created for itself, without the Anunnaki’s help."
"But I still believe that fate is working, even invisibly," she says with what she means to be reassurance, but may carry a small, unkillable hint of dread. "And, you know, those kids at the St. Francis … like a lot of kids now, the kids who are growing up with so many stories being pitched at them, the kids who are being born into Archie's 'meme complex' … I think it's teaching them the idea that a hero has to be a hero all the time. And sometimes the world doesn't need you to be a hero, or only needs you to be one once. Maybe it'll call you back if you're needed again — that's part of the myth cycle too, I suppose. But maybe it knows that you have a track record of heroism, a lifetime of making the lives of people you meet better for it. Maybe that's enough, and if someone has the right eyes, they can see it."
Michael
"First of all," Genevieve says to Jocasta with a tone of semi-awed tenderness, "thank you. I had this strange feeling you'd be the right person to talk to about all this. I felt … somehow you'd be the person who'd understand what happened to me. And not just because it has to do with the awareness and contact that's effected by the mushrooms, but somehow that … that you'd have the right perspective. A giving, generous, caring, yet not at all solicitous, perspective."
"It's funny, I was thinking about my writing this morning when I woke up. The book tour. But not just the tour. I was wondering if now that my higher self is … well, differently connected, if I could still write like I used to. And I had another stab of dissociative fear. But then I meditated on it, and went deeper, and realized that even that writing was my higher self … hiding something from my consciousness. The metaphors, the weird visions, the ideas of Kinarchy … somehow there was some hurt deep in all that for my higher self. But the value of what I've written, what it teaches, how it influences … it's all still powerful and meaningful and right. Even if I never wrote another word, those ideas would be out there."
"You've gotten me thinking about those kids, and the influence my writing has had on them. There used to be part of me that felt like my 'fans' were something owed to me, that it was natural for me to have these people hanging on my every word. I'd never have confessed that out loud of course. But spending the past few weeks in the stacks, learning about how the, er, Enemy thinks about us... it makes me wary of those kind of feelings. Especially since it appears I've been doing real, untrained magic in my writing and therapy all these years."
"Even this compulsion to understand that I've been exhibiting, rather than just to be in it … I never used to think about things in those terms! But I do need to understand. Even if my perspective and belief changes the reality I experience on a quantum level … I embrace ambiguity in all its forms, but I want an ambiguity that serves the Universe, and serves that universal love. Selfishness, ego, identity, power for power's sake … no. But being that incidental hero, who makes that small choice at the right time to heal and to bring together … that's the role I want now. I am big … but I am also small."
Leonard
"Being a healer, a uniter, a channeler that others are drawn to and through … that would be more than enough, Viv, even if it were all you'd ever done, and you know damn well it isn't," Jo responds. "So many people go through life never knowing about the battles for their souls, the ones taking place above and below and inside. They just get by. And that's fine! That's what people should do! It's what we're fighting for. But just ever doing one thing … it's so big. And we both know what people have to give up, have to sacrifice, for that. At the very least, it means never sleeping, never closing certain channels. Always staying aware, even of thoughts you'd rather not have." She takes a glance in the rear view mirror, not at traffic but at the loads of weapons, gadgets, and gear that fill up the back of the van. "All that stuff I brought along. Seems ridiculous. Some of the guys probably thought … well, same old Jocasta." She smiles.
"Maybe we won't need any of it. I hope so. But we'll need you, Viv. I know that."
Michael
"We won't need any of it," Genevieve says. "That I'm sure of. Whatever happens the next few days will happen on levels far above the material. I mean, I can't see forward … but I can see around. Mitch is right about one thing: the bond you have … I'm sorry. The bond we have. It's inviolable." Viv clears her throat self-consciously.
"I just wish Mitch weren't so literal about that bond sometimes. The interests of 'the club' … it's not quite as simple as he lays it out. This is not going to be the kind of story where one of us ends up being a Judas. That was what the enemy wanted us to think. To get us suspecting each other, at each other's throats, doing their work for them. Just like the feds with political activists. The fact is … our fates are all intertwined."
"Ever since the St. Francis, Jo, I can see fate. I can see bonds of love, of destiny, connections material and spiritual between people, places, things. The club is bigger than Mitch knows. Sure, there is definitely something different about me, and Andy, and your lost lamb Sophie. But that's ultimately immaterial. What's important is who's going to stick with us through thick and thin." Jo can sense, from Empathy and from her body language, that Viv is holding something back.
Leonard
"Like I said, Viv, I don't understand what Mitch sees. But I know what he means, and one thing I think we all decided is, we don't keep secrets. Not anymore." Her eyes stay focused on the road, but her voice is plain as day about how serious she is. "I asked you a while back to read my file. What I mean by that was, you should know everything everyone else knows about me. Who I am, what made me like this, and … what I've done. Whether you did or not, you know I've put it all on the table for you. I hope you'll trust me enough to do the same."
Michael
Viv quite suddenly asks, "Would you let one of our teammates die if it meant, well, saving the world?"
Leonard
Jocasta can't help but smile wryly. "Speaking of Mitch," she half-laughs. "Yeah, Viv, I would. I'd kill them myself, if that's what it really meant. I've already almost done it once. But this doesn't feel like a hypothetical question."
Michael
"I was partially thinking about the roof of the St. Francis, yeah." Viv pauses. "But I was also thinking about what I saw when I started thinking about the mountain, about Mount Shasta, and how the six of us from URIEL who are going this weekend were connected to it, with my newfound power, you know?"
"I saw six lifelines entering but one of those lifelines in a... quantum state of uncertainty once we got there."
"My power's not refined enough to pinpoint who or how. And it doesn't feel like physical danger, hence my comment about the guns and explosives. More like … ontological danger. Do we know what we're walking into? Does Mitch? Because all my research has told me is that for a hundred years this place has been producing mystics and frauds in equal measure. It's holy? Sure. To the Indians at the very least, and I tend to respect longstanding indigenous wisdom over, heh, Victorian scifi writers and cult leaders. But nothing in any of those tales is there anything about a threat to people's or timelines' existences."
Leonard
Jo wrinkles her eyes a bit, a habit when she's trying to get her mind around something. "Okay, I'm with you so far. One of us, our...nature, our existence, our essence...our reality is in danger there," she says speculatively. "But why do you feel there might be something as big as the world at stake? Why would it mean letting someone die?" She pauses. "Is this about … the other Mitch?"
Michael
"What I know about the 'other Mitch' you could inscribe on the head of a pin, Jo. So maybe? If there is a doppelgänger who is shadowing Mitch's lifeline, maybe it's he who's in danger. I dunno, Jo, I happen to believe the six people on this trip — and Marshall, of course — are integral to the future path of the world. So is every other of the four billion people on this planet, of course, but if one of us were wiped from history, think about how different the world would be. Even right now, think about it: if you'd never existed, would the Kings have won at the St. Francis? Would Mitch have gotten to use that coin? What about the other missions you've been on for SANDMAN? Any number of them would have ended, could have ended differently. If Archie had never existed, what would URIEL have looked like for the past five years? If I'd never been born, the ripple effects... I can't even think about them now, possessing this power. A whole different history. A different reality. We know it can happen."
Leonard
"Whew," Jocasta says. "I mean, I don't mean to dismiss that feeling. I'm the last person to be able to say you're letting yourself run away with potentialities. But, and you don't need to tell me this — what if it's true? How do we know? If we're that crucial to the fates, or if we're not, we're still no more able to decide the right path than anyone, without some guidance. Everyone from the new physicists to the old mystics say there are these divergences, these moments, these other worlds...maybe just a few, maybe as many as there are moments. But unless we have prophecy — and I'm not saying we don't — we can't see them until after they've happened."
"Do you know what combat paralysis is?" She asks. "It happens to the most courageous, the most experience, the most battle-worn soldiers, same as it happens to kids right off the farm. You're in the fire zone, and your mind becomes paralyzed with the thought of every potential action you might take, and every possible outcome of that action, to the point that you just...freeze up. I think it happens outside of combat too."
Michael
"Well, I agreed to come, even after having this vision, didn't I? It seems like we end up talking a lot about free will around here. More than I ever did as a stoned beatnik at the Caffe Med back in the Fifties." Viv smiles. "No, we can't live frozen in fear, for fear of treading on the wrong butterfly or making the wrong choice. That's not living, and that's certainly not what the universe wants from us. Even post-dissociation me knows that. Maybe if one of us gets zapped from history, the universe heals the historical wound, ensures its own continuation. I can't imagine that a universe fungible enough to be nudged or pushed into new configurations by the mystically powerful would be so fragile as to fall apart if and when it happens. The universe is robust, it birthed us all, it has a tendency towards increased complexity and life and love. If I start thinking the world will end if I die or if I suddenly do not exist, well, I'm no better than Ayn Fucking Rand, am I?" Viv's sparkling laughter fills the van.
Leonard
"Never that," Jo says, laughing along with her. "Whatever else is real or not real, I'm glad you're along."