Gob

First Draft




Gob
By Bill Gallagher
14455 Words



     Rhode Island Autumn.  Super coolness, and exploding foliage; multiple sensations of color surprise the eyes.  Blood red and burnt orange and bright yellow seem abrupt, kind of like green after winter, but not all happy like green after winter.  Not rebirth.  The other.  Autumn colors are the antithesis of green.

     Pretty dregs. 

     The coming of the white.

     The colors of Fall are even brighter against a clear blue sky, one of which was manifest over St. Innocents Newport Orphanage this late September day in 1982; cloudless and bright blue was that sky, like the finest Apache turquoise, twinkling even.  The air was cold, and that meant  there would be snow soon.  Snow is something that can be predicted with better than fair reliability in Rhode Island.  

     The janitors at the orphanage were busier than usual, stowing summer gear, and retrieving winters things.   There was a lot of both.  Most of the outdoor physical education equipment went into storage, as did the tools and supplies from the greenhouse/garden areas.   Around the school building some smaller trees and bushes were being pruned to fit in little wooden houses made to keep the snow out. The snow houses were some of the things being taken Out of storage; they were really just big sandwich boards that heavy canvas tarps hung on.  Each ornamental plant had its own house.   Larger trees went dormant over the winter and were left alone except for some pre-winter pruning, and the inevitable raking of the leaves, once they all fell, crisp and brown, down to the ground. 

     The front of the school was busy busy busy, and there was that ancient excitement in the air too, emanating from the cellular level.  Hammered out on the glacial anvil over many thousands of years, this was the genetically remembered harvest season, the smell of wood smoke, first sight of blood on snow.  The Red And White.  Shared body heat and rest from the fields.  The Holy days.  The Holidays.  A time of long nights around the fire.  A time to put on some fat.

    Sister Garellas fourth grade class was in the midst of modeling playdough during all this, and because of the nature of that occupation all of those fourth graders were pretty oblivious to any other activities happening around them.  Concentration reigned at the work tables, and many of the sculptors and sculptresses wore furrowed expressions on their little foreheads, or possessed raised eyebrows, or both: a few even had their tongues protruding from their mouths in varying degrees.  One or two squinted. These expressions all indicated deep thoughtfulness and artistic will, of course. 

     They had made the playdough themselves, too.  From flour and water and a few other things.  Cassie, the little blond with pigtails and big glasses used her newest favorite expression to describe the situation: Verrry koo-wool.

     This session at the worktables, this sculpting of the Autumn day playdough, was also the day when the boy, one Michael Sheehan by name, became introduced to certain powers of the world, and his mind, though the reality of it, the actuality, would not become clear for many years.  This was the first time he saw it, but not the last time. 

     Through observation people actually create their world, its just that most are observing other observers, or what others have already observed, so the world tends to get in ruts; the wagon of reality wears grooves in the road of time, entraining most other wagons which travel there.  Almost all the wagons of reality are loathe to start new roads, because it is so much easier to stay in the ruts.  New roads are very difficult in the making.   New roads come about because some people observe a different world than that which is taught to them.  People like Michael Sheehan.  They are not many.   That might be a good thing.   It is probably a good thing.

        A major saving grace that all people have going for them is this:  the first time is usually the most difficult in any endeavor.  People get better at things they try, with practice.  That is a given.

     Michael Sheehan was the only fourth grade sculptor with raised eyebrows, a wrinkled forehead, AND with his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth.  He just about had the shape he wanted.  It needed a little something here, and that made it need a little something there...he stuck the last chunk of dough on the sculpture, and it suddenly rose from the work table in what can only be called a violent manner, then blasted right off through the roof of the schoolhouse with a very loud bang.

     The loud bang was the playdough breaking the sound barrier. 

     Pieces of ceiling rained down, and it was time to duck and cover.  Everyone knew the drill, it was under the worktables quickly. Most of the debris had thankfully followed the missile out, sucked into its wake, as it were, during the playdough sculptures escape from the school house, then the atmosphere.

     Miraculously know one was hurt.

     This all had to do with the shape of Michael's sculpture; he'd created some kind of highly specialized form that became a gravity engine and a force field all in one.  The force field was an intrinsic by-product, allowing the dough to hold its aspect no matter what, once it had been achieved.

     Consider a roundish lump of hard plastic.   Attach a motor to it, stick it in water, not much happens, some bubbles, a bit of vapor maybe.  But take the time to shape it right, so it makes maximum use of the water as a medium, make a propellor, a vortex generator, and you have a very different thing, an engine of high power born strictly from its shape.  Michael Sheehan had made a gravity propellor, and though it was just a byproduct of what he was, there was no one competent to see what he was, really, not even himself.  As yet he did not possess the wherewithal to understand himself as a force of nature.  That would come quite a bit later, but it would come.

     Everyone is a force of nature.  That is what he learned, eventually.   And intensity of that force is a matter of Need.

     Some said the happening was strictly an accident, but time proved them wrong.  Michael was a lot more than he seemed, though life needed to have its way with him, like it does with most people, before anyone, even Michael himself, realized just what was up.

     No one saw the playdough sculpture leave the atmosphere, but it did, and it kept right on going until it left the gravity well of the planet from which it had been born, Planet Earth.   Michael's sculpture then became the immediate property of the Sun.  All that was left behind as evidence of this occurrence was a softball sized hole in the roof at St. Innocents, with nice clean edges.  The bright  Autumn sun shined through it, winking, twinkling, uncaring as to what had made it, and what that meant.

     The event scared the boy immensely, and it also frightened his schoolmates and teacher in a very big way.  The entire academy of St. Innocents was in an uproar, truth be told.  When asked what happened Michael Sheehan tearfully told Sister Garrella that Gob made it happen.  Gob being God, because of a slight speech impediment which everyone figured Michael would outgrow sooner or later.

     The good sister could see the child was severely upset, so she did not press it.  This was not an act of violence, the little boy had not thrown the play-dough through the ceiling, that was for sure;  then, as sometimes happens during times of stress, she thought giddily that if he had thrown it through the ceiling, brother Pablo needed to know, for his baseball team.  She shook her head to clear it of these ridiculous thoughts.

     The janitorial staff needed more work on this day like it needed turpentine enemas.  That was head janitor Gordon Trudells feeling overall, though he wisely kept the thought to himself.   Truthfully,  it was a good thing the janitors had plenty of work to do:  it would keep them busy, keep their minds occupied;  distract them from the too weird reports of what had REALLY happened in the fourth grade arts and crafts class. 

     They had been told officially that something had come in through the ceiling, causing the hole,  though there was no projectile in evidence, not even a tree limb.  The lower level gossip pertained to an event the exact opposite of that:  it was being said in a hush-hush kind of way among some of the adults on the periphery that something had gone OUT through the ceiling; those reports were hard to believe though, nonsensical.

     Real news, from the Sisters themselves, was sketchy, and quite a bit less than forthcoming, but one thing was easy to see: the faces of everyone around were filled with angst, wonder, and fear.  The children had been dismissed back to their dormitory and told to pray.   Gordie Trudell thought it might be a good idea if those kids prayed HARD.  He  had never seen the Mother Superior look anything but stern, she now had a worried and distracted look on her face; worse than that she kept dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, and that could only mean one thing.   Ultra total weirdness.  It made him think he did not really WANT to know what had gone on here. 

      The hammers above beat out their rhythm, background sounds within humankind's never ending song of repair.  Maintenance Concerto 1333, Percussion.  Just then an electric saw fired up, sounding like one more instrument in Trudells Repairing Janitors Band.  Gordie decided he was needed up there, on the roof, and proceeded to make himself scarce.  Even though it was not a Friday he felt a trip to Flanagans Bar was in order as soon as this day ended.


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      That night Cassie came to sit on the edge of his bed to talk.  The girls room was right down the hall and she stopped on her way back from a pee run.  He felt the mattress depress slightly as she sat on the edge of it.  She wore a full pajama suit, with the feet and everything.  The lights were all off but there was light from the hallway.

     The hall lights made funny reflections on the waxed floor, she thought.  Without her glasses there was a lot of that. 

     It reminded her of home, but she pushed those thoughts away.  This was home now.  That other place was all gone, erased forever in a few seconds of carnage on the freeway.  Both her parents had died.  She had been in school that day, the first grade.  And nothing was ever the same again.

     "Michael?"

     "Go away Cassie."  A book he had been reading at lights out lay open on the floor, just under the bed; Cassie picked it up.  Alfred Hitchcocks Three Investigators.  Boy stuff.  She closed it and placed it back under the bed.

     She knew he would still be awake, almost everyone was. Even the older kids.  Especially the older kids.

     "I won't go away, that's not what friends do Michael, and we are friends, you said so yourself."

     Michael remembered the conversation, he had said the friend word first in fact.  He rolled over and sat up, his back against the pipes that served as headboard on the institutions beds.

     "OK.  If you're going to ask what happened with my playdough, I don't know," he stated flatly.  "I was trying to make a certain shape, and I almost had it, so I put one little piece more on, and that's when it took off.  I'm just glad my head wasn't in the way!"

     He looked exasperated.

     "What shape were you trying to make?"

     He hesitated, almost embarrassed.

     "Flipper."

     All the kids in the orphanage knew Flipper, they watched night time reruns on UHF when they were allowed. Sometimes on Saturdays too.

     Cassie changed the subject:

     "Sister Gorilla was freaking out."  That's what the kids called their teacher between themselves.   Get it in the knuckles with the good Sisters ruler once or twicet, you would too.

     "Just about everyone was freaking out," she added half heartedly.

     Michael thought that if Cassie was trying to make him feel better, it wasn't working.  At all.  He did not vocalize these emotions though.  He was being stoic.  What was one more little cross to bear? 

    She reached over and put her hand on his arm, "Well if you need to talk about it, or anything, find me, ok?"  She looked into his eyes, smiled.

     Tentatively, Michael smiled back.

    
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     After this the tone at the school changed for awhile, there were more enjoyments, more Flipper episodes on TV, even Roadrunner cartoons every once in a while.  Many of the Sisters considered the slapstick violence of The Roadrunner Cartoons unsavory, but St. Innocents Physical Education Coach -- Brother Pablo -- loved the Roadrunner; he would sit and watch the cartoons on Saturday mornings with the kids, and laugh and laugh.  Everyone loved it.

     There was not a lot of sculpting with playdough anymore, though.

     There were really two miracles that occurred that fateful day at St. Innocents in Newport, Rhode Island, both related to little Michael Sheehans Flipper sculpture.   No one wanted to classify the event itself as a miracle, in that world little boys didn't do miracles.

      The first miracle had to do with zero injuries during the entire fiasco.  That was almost unbelievable, and the Sisters and Brothers (And the janitors too) felt Gods protection intimately thereafter.
    
     A close second in believability, the second miracle, was that no one talked about this happening for a long time, not to their associates or even their spouses, it was like a school secret.   The Air Force only heard about it through bad luck and serendipity, and because the Air Force is supremely nosy when it comes to stuff like this.  They have many many people specially trained to spy on others, even to terrorize enemies of the state in clandestine ways.  They learned it from Russia.

     The Air Force eventually heard about the happening at the school from a temporary janitor who had worked at St. Innocents once.  It happened in a bar. The man was near being in his cups.  An astute spotter reported it.  Follow up out of Griffiss happened on GP.

     Plain Clothes Investigators met strong resistance at the school, no one admitted anything, though the feeling was that something had happened because their questions scared the people, indicating it was out of the ordinary.   What ever had happened, it was something everyone was trying hard to forget.  A name, Michael, was enough to correlate the identity of the boy from government rosters, but that was the only lead, and that by accident.

     These Catholics, the Catholics of St. Innocents, were truly Catholic in the strictest sense, meaning tolerant, that's what the word Catholic means.  Look it up, the older the dictionary the better. 

     There was a strong distrust of the government at St. Innocents, too,   because some Catholics, like these, actually detest war.  Which is as it should be.  War-like Catholics are living a lie, like that other religion called Mormonism.  Mormons supposedly profess religious based pacifism -- non-violence -- Conscientiously Objecting to War, but the money of the military was just too much to pass up so they invented clauses, dispensations for themselves, SANTA Clauses, so they could get some of the taxpayers treasure chest, as much as possible in fact.   The Mormon drug of choice is money.  They are addicted to it.  There are aircraft carriers named after Mormons, engines of vast destruction.

     There are more Catholics in the military and police forces though, by virtue of the Catholic group being a lot bigger than the Mormons.  Mormons supposedly abstain from casual drug use including alcohol.  Catholics usually do not.  Those are the major differences, other than theological, philosophical, and geographical.  Catholics who are war-like are not really Catholic, as the word is defined.   Mormons who are war-like are not really following their doctrine either.

       $imple technicalitie$, obviou$ly.

     In the real world there must be outlets for the animal, these things do happen, boys become men, girls become women, lots of strange drugs are created by our bodies during that time, and those drugs are injected into us from within, its the program, and its ongoing throughout all of adult life.  History, as everyone knows it, is largely a result of this "Calling" of the Wild, these drugs we are on, that our bodies MAKE, because even though our animalistic sides play a larger than life part in what we are, its denied, like a bad alcoholic denying they have a problem.  This is a full Racial Denial, which does not foster growth, but hinders it badly.

     So.

     Based on the rumors, and the observations of the primary Air Force investigators, closer watch was kept on Michael Sheehan,  his being the name which came up several times during these queries.   There were numerous organizations within government monitoring the population at large, a lot of money is spent on keeping an eye on the mob total.  One of these departments was known as the Aviary, and it took control of the situation, because it was the most local. 

     A file was begun, but no other weirdness transpired during the rest of Michael's time at St. Innocents.  The event involving the playdough was forgotten by everyone at the school, one might even say the memories were consciously repressed.   Michael grew out of his speech impediment  as expected,  and he grew taller as well.  He had been a pudgy faced irish kid with reddish hair and lot of freckles, and though he still had some of the freckles, his hair had darkened to a deep brown, and his countenance began to take on its adult aspects.  He began to tend toward thin, and his face drew out from top to bottom somewhat.  His nose had not yet taken on its strongest irish character, but soon.

     Michael and Cassie remained friends except for one uneasy time when they were both 13, and Michael felt odd because it was fairly evident that Cassie had a crush on him.  Things were not the same between him and his friend for awhile.  He tried to be supportive, but was unable to give emotionally.  It made him very nervous.  Michael had been orphaned at birth, he never knew anything about his parents, and wouldn't know anything for many years to come.  It would never really mean much to him, when he did find out.  Another tragedy, the ways of the world.  The orphanage of St. Innocents, with its spired stone church in the woods, and the large field with its Jungle Jim and big swing set, and its greenhouse, that was his home.  The Sisters and Brothers and his fellow orphans and even the Monsignor were his family.  He knew nothing else.  There were others like him there, too.

     After the passing of Cassies crush, her little infatuation, that embarrassing affection, things went back to normal, as much as possible.  They were just beginning The Reproductive Drug Trip, which happens to everyone whether they like it or not, from the time they are 12 or 13 until they die.   Or until they develop conditions somehow precluding it, whichever comes first.

     During Junior High School Michael read a lot of science fiction.  He had done all the mythology in the Library by time he had hit 5th grade, then came names like Arthur C. Clark, and Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein and Orson Scott Card.  Harlan Ellison.   High School came and went.  He and Cassie remained friends but hardly saw each other anymore.  They were in different worlds now.

     Michael was steered to military service after High School by Brother Pablo, who had been an Airman before his career as a Brother.  He highly recommended the Air Force for active duty.

     "You could do a lot worse Michael," He had said. "Whatever you do though, don't join the Army or the Marines, they are the front liners, the real warriors, its better to be a tech head if you can, learn a good trade,  Air Force is best,  believe me.  The Navy is ok as far as tech goes, but there is a lot of ship time, and that's not too much fun unless you are born to it.  The food is better in the Air Force too, and that's a big deal."

     Michael ended up in the United States Air Force on a four year enlistment.  One thing he would always remember later.   That time went fast.   

       Basic Training at Lackland AFB was not fun.  Debasement as prelude to restructuring certain aspects of the psyche.  Learning your place.  Learning about rank.  He got through it though, and was glad. 

     Then came technical training at Sheppard AFB, Wichita Falls Texas.  Michael was going to be an Air Cargo specialist,  loading and unloading aircraft.   The tech school was eight weeks shortened to six, which is about how fast the Air Force can process assignments.  Air Cargo operations are highly technical, and a good career to know for work on the outside;  there are Air Cargo specialists at every airport, in good numbers.  And Air Cargo possesses many facets.  Most of Michael's real training would take place at his first base of assignment.  Its where he would get flight line licensed, and certified on many vehicles.  OJT, On the Job Training. The real thing.  Two Way Usefulness.  And LOTS of it.

    Wichita Falls was a lot more fun than Lackland in San Antonio.  But dreary in February and March.   Wichita Falls is also where Michael learned to drink beer.  Many changes took place after that, some good, some not.  The beer was just one more chemical in the mix of his body, a mind altering chemical, along with everything else, all the Air Force chow, and whatever he picked up in passing, from the air, the water.  He had heard somewhere, and it made sense, that when you showered or especially when you swam, you absorbed a huge amount of water through your skin.    People are like filters, he thought, and he also began thinking about water as a very special substance,  even magical.  Water as solvent supreme.  A conveyor of things.  He had not yet learned about water as a conveyor of information but he would.  He was on the right track, as far as water was concerned.

     Michael was seeing Many new things, and a lot of it was because of his time on the computers at work, the air cargo terminals, and because of his personal computer, a TRS80 he had in his room at the bachelors quarters on base.  The Bachelors Quarters meant dormitory, it was him, its what he knew. 

     He had taught himself to program the TRS80 to do things he wanted to do, like type letters, and calculate numbers.  He could save his work on floppy discs.  He had also begun to toy with the idea that all aspects of life, from the smallest to the largest,  were each a separate and distinct self adjusting program of water.  It was leading his mind in interesting directions.    Water and computing were his two main spheres of interest at this time.  That changed regularly though.  He had read Les Miserables, but not Holy Blood Holy Grail.  That came in a few years.  He read Tom Robbins’ Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, and went from that to Skinny Legs and All.  He had the rest to finish and was actively seeking them out.  Even funnier than Vonnegut.  He was very much looking forward to Still Life With Woodpecker, he had read an excerpt, in Playboy, of all places.

      He started to realize that information was a product just like any other consumable, and  most times you got what you paid for, but not always.  And sometimes you found treasure just laying out, free for the picking up.  He met an old soldier at a flea market selling pamphlets, a retired newspaper guy selling how-to's, the guy told Michael everything he knew about information as a real viable product, it took about 1/2 hour and some of the stuff didn't hit Michael's reality until years later.   

     The price of books was going through the ceiling, that was for sure.  Everyone was looking forward to the coming of the net, but it was still years away from being anything usable, maybe 20 years.  2010, maybe 2012, by then something of value.  The building of it as an information source had not begun yet.  No one even had a clue what was a PDF, yo.

       It was also at Sheppard in Wichita Falls, during tech school early 1992,  when  Michael tried marijuana for the first time.  His room mate Freddie Dalton, a black guy from Baton Rouge (Bah tone roo shuh) Louisiana, loved the stuff, and turned Michael onto it. There's a good little bit of marijuana all over Texas, but the closer you get to the southern border the greater the quantities encountered.   Michael liked it a lot.  He called it Mind Grease, he loved the channels of thought he experienced when he was under the influence of the plant, new ways, other ways, natural ways.    

     Finally, Wichita Falls was where Michael learned to make, and became addicted to, blender smoothies.  These were a direct result of some hangover cure attempts.  They developed into one of his favorite things forever after, with fruit and ice cream and even some drugs like alcohol added on Fridays, big gnarly wink, and later were more exotic ingredients too.
 
     Certain pills had interesting effects.  They had to be soaked until soft then just blend them right in. 

     Ah life in the military.  Michael would never be the same, but there would be days later where he was supremely glad he had been exposed to military service.  More than once some knowledge he had picked up in his service actually saved his life.

     After leaving boot camp and technical training Michael headed right to the big P.I.,  the big pee eye, Clark AFB in the Phillipines, The Phillipine Islands, the P I.  Clark is where he stayed for the rest of his enlistment.  Huge Air Cargo Base, c130s, c141s, lots and lots of C5A Galaxies, plus all kinds of civilian contraptions.  Whenever there was leave he traveled from Clark, hitching rides on military flights, a perq.  He became a Loadmaster and was certified in weight and balance on nearly a dozen large aircraft.  He learned to drive gigantic forklifts to unload the planes, and large flat bed loaders that were rollerized on their decks to facilitate movement of metal containers weighing in excess of 10,000 pounds sometimes.  Boxes of ammo were the heaviest things.  He became fairly well known among certain groups who fly cargo in the worldwide theater, especially the Pacific areas.   Those would be the government pilots, or contractors to the government, and they are many.  He was well known and well liked.  An important distinction to be made.

     Michael saw Hong Kong, Thailand, Cambodia, Northern Australia, and even Japan.  He satisfied his wander lust, and many other lusts during this time.  The reproductive drug trip was really kicking in for him, it was an experimental period, and because things overseas are a lot less rigid and ruled than they are "Back Home",  great experimentation is usually pursued by most GI's, Government Issues, when they are let loose in the orient, or even Europe.   Especially the single guys, but there were a lot of married men who didn't let that slow them down none podner.  Michael met some of the best people he ever met in the Air Force, and he met some of the worst.  It seems reality wishes to balance itself, achieve equilibrium.  No extremes except as they are matched by equal and opposite extremes.  There is a lesson there.  Heed it, if you are able.

      There are local industries in any air base town which live off the air base clientele.  Young men find their way to certain areas, certain activities in their off times, and the girls are there, to teach and satisfy and take the money.  And hopefully not pass anything of a biological nature around.  While at Clark AFB young Mr. Sheehan received many inoculations, and more than once for antibiotic to control sexually transmitted disease.  That was a big part of reality in the P I.  His shot record was truly something to behold;  most military people have prodigious shot records, especially if they have been out of the country at all.

     Michael smoked a lot of pot at Clark AFB, it was very prevalent there, not so much as Vietnam had been, but close.  Michael had missed 'nam by three decades and felt lucky, especially considering things he had heard, and some of the vets he had met.  Pot was the least of the problem in Vietnam, alcohol was much worse, and many GIs came back full blown heroin addicts. The government picked up the tab for a lot of rehab during all that, methadone clinics, and more, corn fed government pork to keep the insiders getting richer and richer.

     A lot of those addicts never got their heads right after all that.  Many did what they were supposed to do as good soldiers, they finally lay down and died.

      A lot of GIs in Michael's time smoked tobacco cigarettes.  Michael also felt fortunate to have avoided tobacco. His cigarette allotments were worth cash every payday, to smokers who would deal in cigarettes to the Phillipinos on and off base.  One Phillipino scam was to take the tobacco out of the American cigarettes, and restuff the tubes with really fine marijuana powder, then sell them back to the GI's that way, $50 a carton, 200 marijuana cigarettes.  A pretty good deal.  They got the American tobacco and could disguise weed dealing on base.  Smart those Phillipinos.  Oh yes, there were lots of cigarette cartons being passed around at Clark AFB all the time.  Like a type of money.  Eventually tobacco would be highly frowned upon in the military, and totally disallowed in all government buildings and on government property, but not for a decade yet.  The price of cigarettes was rising quickly though, in the middle and late 90s, and would only get worse from then on, tobacco was being phased out of society.  

     Michael's immediate supervisor was named Hector Rivera.  A short Puerto Rican who was always spiffed as much as he could get, hated even a hair out of place.  After using the mens room he would take a paper towel and reshine his chorofram shoes, just to be on the safe side.  Hector was cool though, Michael thought,  he loved chess, and swore he had been able to kick the tobacco habit with the Phillipino weed ciggies.  Most of that weed was from Thailand actually, and it was just some bad ass marijuana.  That's all there was to it.  Pow.  Right in the kisser.

     Hector liked to tell stories from his days at Dover, when they brought the Jonestown bodies back, a really bad cia experiment  in mind control gone really really really bad.    He said it changed him.  Michael didn’t wonder it did.  Hector always got the best and freshest Quaaludes.  It was what he liked. 

     There were no more odd happenings in Michael's life while he was in the Air Force, either.  Nothing like the playdough sculpture of his childhood, the one Gob had grabbed ahold of and pulled right through the friggin' roof.  Michael was still glad, even gladder in fact, as time went on, that his head hadn't been in the way.    There were some things that Michael did during his everyday life, things with his mind or his other senses, that he thought everyone did; he did not have any idea he was special in some ways.   So it is to say that nothing overtly observable had happened during his time in the service.  Just everyday stuff.   All good.  

     During his time in the Air Force his reading habits changed radically, he binged, getting a book after no reading for awhile, and if it was good just reading it nonstop even at work, until he was done with it.  Then reread it a time or two if it was that good.  He was running out of Science Fiction, he had become addicted to Frank Herbert late, and began re-reading the Dune trilogy  before he knew that Heretics and Chapterhouse Dune were even written. He also devoured Anne McCaffrey, and Ursula K. Leguin.   The word for world is forest.  He was also reading a lot of instructional stuff too, plus the perpetual training courses of the Air Force.

     Going through their files one day, the guys at The Aviary began to think the thing at the school which they had investigated was youthful poltergeist activity, fairly common.  Young children, as they near puberty, sometimes  exhibit so-called mind over matter activity, telekinesis, where things get violently moved around or even thrown with no visible source doing it.    About 99.999999%  of all kids who experience this,  who are exposed to these powers of the world and their minds, grow out of it.    There has not been one who has not grown out of it, or taught away from it, for a long time.
   
     Unfortunately Michael lived during a time when electronic eavesdropping technology was becoming available in many new forms,  high tech stuff, cheap, and as a matter of course, a matter of the new order within the government and the military. 

     Most modern government personnel have had something done to them along these lines: the government says cyber-soldier, includes things like radio frequency tracking and ID chips which go in on hypodermics, or some other things.  Like dissonance creators, chips known as DBIs, Direct Brain Influencers, stuff for the teeth.

     Voice To Skull via a freak affect of microwave energy is well known, and low frequency entrainment through the spine has reached huge proportions since GWEN and HAARP.  Yes, there are many weirdnesses.

     Michael received his first chips as dental fillings done while he was in the Air Force.  These were chips for remote vocal monitoring, already in their 7th generation of development in 1995.  Highly Classified.  These active chips allowed certain parties within world government to monitor a persons conversations 24-7 if need be,  by being there inside the mouth, by tuning into the chips with specialized equipment.   Perfect audio.   It goes in the filling.   Costs pennies.   The slick techster jokester spooks of the government get their jollies a lot of time listening to people during sex.   All kinds of things come out during sex.  Just another part of Post Cold War America.   Comrades.

     The listening equipment used by guys like those in the Aviary served a dual purpose of drawing energy from the target area, basically a reverse engineered Tesla remote viewing device as described by Tom Bearden of Alabama, which the world government had come up with since Tesla.  This drawing of energy from living things causes many kinds of physical distress, different people react differently, but they all react.   These peoples actions were sometimes engineered into media shows of violence, which in themselves were purposeful distraction from other things, things the leaders were doing, say.

     For anyone with a file on them, the agenda is always to try to turn the subject, you, into the opposite of what you naturally are.  This disruption, this clandestine malice and assault, works even if the subject only changes 10 or 20 degrees from themselves, they do not have to do a complete 180, that's not actually optimum in most cases, really, that's just the goal.  Anything away from the natural state is considered successful mind control.   Half spectrum.  Many millions of people in the United States alone are chipped or otherwise identified with tracking capabilities in multi-tiered ways.  The technology is legitimized one way in the medical industry as monitoring of patients' vital signs with cell phones. 

     As justification among themselves the agents talk about the tweaked ones, the ones they had hampered and spied upon, the ones they used energy on especially, in this total information awareness program, and the duress made the subject clairvoyant, or upped their extrasensory perceptions to noticeable levels.  Was that not worthy shit?  Hmmmmm?  

     They were careful not to talk of the telekinetics who were put down out of hand as soon as they were detected, another product of this program. Especially the ones they irradiated with all kinds of different energy, to see how they would react.  A funny little datum.  The human as Duracell. 

     Many of the government agents sensed they were playing with Godlike things, and not too few saw themselves as Creators, artists even, with evolution as their medium.  

     There was the one case no investigator ever forgot though, the one who almost got away.  There were some films of it somewhere.  That could have been the end of the world.  For everyone.  These next level Humans, these altered types,  have very odd attributes that come along with the telekinesis, different in every subject, this guy developed physical speed which almost cost the investigators their lives.  It was like he was using other dimensions to bypass normal time.   With all kinds of solid matter flying around in the air the whole while,  chairs, tools, debris, all in a big hurricane, nay, cyclone within the warehouse.  The madder the dude got,  the worse it became. Finally, Bang.  Gotcha.  But close, too close.  If one of them ever developed a force field that repelled bullets along with the telekinetic properties, everyone was in big trouble.  The guys at the Aviary talked about it, smiling, while eating their sandwiches and drinking their coffee.

     There'd been deaths among the investigators too, deaths from weirdness, too much weirdness.   The director of the group was hardly ever around, and the researchers were glad of that, he was off studying Thanatology somewhere, it was his main degree.  He was a specialist in death.  Some said he believed biological living and spiritual living were two parts of the same thing, he actually professed the thought among them that there was not really death, ever.  It just appeared that way.  It is transition. 

      So we are all a part of some gigantic science experiment, government funded of course, your taxes at work, with the Aviary and its type the ring masters in this dark carnival.  They would be meeting a new thing in a few years.  Gobs revenge.  Or maybe just Gob itself using someones body as a portal for a few seconds. 

     These programs of electronic coercion used by The Aviary and the departments like them, were pioneered and perfected in the USSR.  Psychotronic Golgotha.  Once world government became a reality, everything from every country was used by the royalty and their militaries against the populace at large.  Because the internet was coming, and intelligence people knew what that meant.  Things would become known then, who killed Kennedy,  the history of the Federal Reserve.  History since Willy The Conqueror in 1066.   Putin as the head of the Stasi in East Germany, who was moved out in time, but the Stasi left behind were hunted down and summarily executed by the people they had been harassing.   This was the end of the so called Cold War, the reuniting of Germany.  They moved the Stasi to America.

      As the net kicked in Michael started reading conspiracy stuff from Trine Day Press, and from other sources.  He was truly curious.  He particularly liked Spooks: The Haunting Of America, by Jim Hougan, but there were many more, Dr. Marys Monkey was a total classic and almost too wild to talk about, and The Bilderbergs by Estulin.  The Underground Empire was hard cold facts, James Mills.  Barry and the Boys, by Hopsicker, was not to be missed either, if you could find a copy.  And the online book called Devilvision.  Say it like television.  Its posted around by various parties.

     For fun and for the second time Michael read A Canticle For Leibowitz, but still didn't get it.  He would eventually.  On the third read it would become a lot more clear.  Some more time needed to pass in his life first. 

     That was not a book the Good Sisters would approve, he was sure, but it rang of truth, perhaps stank of truth.  All in all very interesting times.  Music had turned to grunge, Seattle was a bright light in the back closet of America.  He liked to listen to Alice In Chains, or Soundgarden LOUD, even The Stone Temple Pilots, with his headphones on, writing letters or logs on his PC, which had turned into an Apple IIC with Printer. 

     He had begun to name his smoothies, and was feeling good for several reasons, especially because it was a Blackberry Froth kind of day, his current favorite.   AIC kicked off The Rooster.  More Vietnam influence...Yeah, here they come to kill The Rooster, yeh yeahhhhh....classic grunge, Alice in Chains invented Grunge, he thought.   He still bought cerium cassette tapes there in 1996, some people had CD players but they were notoriously undependable, and expensive too.  There was a strict law concerning laser in the eyes which scared everyone just to death, and that fear, plus ease of use (A big deal in the retail manufacturing market) affected cd playing technology adversely. 

     There were little plastic locks on the cd player covers, trips, which would disallow any laser activity, shut down the player, when the top opened.  Early, this was a protruding plastic peg which activated a switch in a hole in the player. This broke often, it was a weak point, and it looked like it was made to do that.   Once it broke the CD player stopped doing anything.  Landfills are full of throw away electronic stuff because no one fixes things anymore, cheaper to buy a new one.

      If you didn’t want to grow the landfills then you had to defeat the safety switch by cutting the wires on both sides of the switch, then solder them back together by color, removing the switch from the circuit. Unlike the breaking of the cutoff peg, the manufacturers did not make defeating this weak point easy, either.  People who defeat this safety switch set up must remember to keep their eyes clear of any laser sources.  Got Brains?

      Finally came tray type CD players with a better reliability, used in early computers to transfer information, which was after the cerium oxide 3.25" and 3.75 " floppy discs.  By the time the tray type CD players came into vogue though, they were already obsolete.

     Michael was also feeling good as he listened to the music loud through his headphones, sipping his Blackberry Froth, there in the Bachelors Quarters at Clark AFB PI, because he was going home.  His enlistment was over, so for him it was back to Newport within the week, to start chasing down a job at the Navy base, or failing that, an Air Freight company somewhere near it.   Goodbye Phillipines, Hello Rhode Island.

---------------------------------------------


     He arrived back in Newport at high summer, some of the local girls even had sun tans.  He had laid up a little cash while living on Clark, and it was not difficult for him to find an apartment, and eventually transport, a used F150 pickup truck. He had changed a lot, Michael had, but not so Newport.  There were constant upgrades and maintenance, but buildings remained the same almost everywhere, though a few paint schemes deviated.  His one room apartment was near The Viking Tower, a very nice neighborhood. 

     Michael was well on his way to his physical prime, it was 1997, and he was intent on finding work in Air Cargo.  He liked Air Cargo, the whole field, being on the flight line mostly though.  Driving the big vehicles.  The office workings were very important, for shipment tracking, and also communications, another big part of Air Cargo Ops.  He headed out to the Naval Base, there was an airfield there.  Over the next week he filled out four or five applications and got the process started, he spent a lot of time on the computer in his apartment, getting things marshalled together, and in making his place comfortable for himself, which was not too hard.  He was easy.   Comfort to him was music and smoothies and something good to read.   He was neat, he had good habits,  second nature from the orphanage and the military.

     He invented Raspberry Velvet Smoothies, and his Creamsicle line, which became his personal favorite for years.

     No one he knew had internet service yet.  In some places service was just starting, but there were not even real search engines in 1997, not to speak of anyway.  He was one of the first to get internet, and that was still a year away.  He was one of the early users, not too interested in programming or development, or gaming, but making great use of his computer as a memory extension, so he could have a lot of his facts and pictures at his fingertips, and someday music, lots of music he hoped.  He could write more easily, and soon the computer would be a communications terminal, too.

      If he had been able to understand that using the internet was going to make him some heavy enemies, he would have done it differently, but he already had some heavy enemies, and didn’t know it, so both were exposed and dealt with, better than them lurking  in the dark, overall.  Things do work out.

     He read a biography of Michael Faraday, His Life And Work,  which he had found used at an old bookstore, published in 1898, tattered but cheap, and quite readable.  It was a changing point in his life.  It wasn't so much the electrical theory, or the way Faraday himself was --  a nice guy who belonged to an odd sect of Christianity; he was a major freak of nature too -- but Michael Faraday had an uncommon grasp of the root workings of things.  He always felt, for his whole life, that light and magnetism and electricity were all intimately intertwined with gravity.  Something that Michael Sheehan liked to think about in his most secret of hearts.

     He stopped by the Orphanage, his childhood home, visited with the janitors, hugged Sister Gorilla.  She only cringed a little, high esteem.  Brother Pablo said "Well look at YOU!" and they had a good long talk during a short game of one-on-one out on the outdoor basketball courts, and Michael almost won, a very rare thing.   These basketball courts were new, they had not been there in Michaels time.   For basketball he and his class had to go into the gym and use movable basketball hoops on poles which had been cemented into tires as their base.  If you hit the top too hard with the basketball it caused the whole thing to wobble and many a shot was lost that way.  It was like a 4 or 5D kind of basketball.

      Pablo was truly cool.  He loved hearing about Clark AFB, the big PI, and the traveling Michael did while he was there.  He had been in Australia once, and thought he might retire there someday.  Very different, Australia.  Michael left St. Innocents feeling refreshed, and promised Brother Pablo he would stay in  touch. 

      On the way back to his apartment he stopped along the Wharf to enjoy the day, it was exceptional, and he strolled alone down the sidewalks of the town, looking in windows, thinking about a glass of beer.   There was an art shop up ahead,  the sign was in the shape of a horses head, no, a Unicorn.  The White Unicorn.  He looked in the window as he strode by and stopped to take a longer look; a young woman with strawberry blond hair wore  tight jeans and a pretty sweater blouse which showed her form nicely.  She was dusting paintings with her entire back to the front window.  "Oh Babe..." Michael thought.

     Then the young woman turned around suddenly, and caught him gawking.  She had seen him in the glass of the frames she was dusting.  They looked at each other for a second, then with surprise they recognized each other at the same time.  It was Cassie.  His friend Cassie.  He made his way inside, said:

     "My God.  Cassie.  So nice to see you."  She blushed, then stepped up and hugged him quickly.  The top of her head just touched his chin.  Stepping back she looked him in the eye, smiling, said:

      "Michael.  Its been a long time."  Her voice was much different than he remembered, well modulated, cultivated.  Almost Husky.

     "Yes, it has been.  Too long."

     Just then a customer came into the shop who she had to attend to.  Michael looked around.  Lots of local paintings here, mostly sea scenes, some forest, a sunset here and there, watercolors, oils; some were quite pricey.  An occasional stone sculpture stood about, probably from local serpentines and soapstones, one bowl was nicely done.  Very reasonably priced too.   Stone cutting was something he had picked up at the base hobby shop, on Clark, he liked to do it when there was time.

      Cassie came back to him as the customer left, and noticed his attention on the bowl.  This was made from a local marble, she said, by Guy Delacourte, one of the stone carvers living up by the marble quarry.  Michael had never heard of the marble quarry.  She asked him if he would like to see it on Saturday, she was off and it would give them a chance to catch up, a field trip.  He said he would love to see the marble quarry and to catch up, they finished with arrangements for him to pick her up at 9am on Saturday morning.  He warned her it was a duty truck, and she said that was perfect. 

     He bought the marble bowl for his apartment. 

---------------------------------------------------------

     He vacuumed the truck and bought a fresh deodorizer for it, he was not phobic about things like that, just neat. WD the dash and the tires, he had bought a cover for the bench seat first thing on getting the truck, right after the locking gas cap.  All born of service related trainings, motor pool stuff, and old habits from the orphanage.    Michael packed a cooler with some drinks and yogurt cups, fruit.  He really looked forward to hearing  what Cassie had been up to while he was on the other side of the world.  He already picked up that she was an employee of the shop, it was owned by an older woman who was there sometimes, but had helpers doing most of the work now. 

      He arrived a few minutes early at her apartment house on Saturday morning, Cassie was out front all ready.  She looked beautiful, it was the only word he had for it.  She smiled getting into the truck, and they left, with her directing him.  The quarry was about 25 miles out of town, so they headed across the Jamestown Bridge.

     It was as he remembered, the bay and sound were dark winking blue, looking like nickel sized ice chips scattered thickly across a dark blue beach towel.   There was a fair chop, tide about mid-way in.  Out on the bridge the air was somewhat more clear.   The odor of the oceans. 

     “This bridge always makes me nervous” He said.  She looked at him, said “Me too”.   Truthfully any driving made Cassie nervous but she did her best to deal with it.  She knew what the consequences could be.  Driving was a potentially fatal undertaking, and most people do not understand that at all.  She told him this.

     “You’re right” he said, “driving should make people nervous enough to at least pay attention to what they are doing.”  He did not like to see all the talking on the phone and driving, which had developed while he was overseas, the technology had been introduced and become part of society, though it was not there before he left, and because of that, he noticed it, as most others would not really consciously put time frames to the things they took for granted, things that grew on them slowly, in steps. 

     He touched on some of the more memorable things he had seen with the really big equipment at Clark, aircraft set on their tails because of unlocked pallets and a load shift, or weight and balance mistakes, many things, emergency landings, and big gasoline fires.  Big big airport.  Her eyes held curiosity when he looked back over to her. 

       “So what happened to the glasses Cass?”

     “Contacts” she said, brightening, smiling sweetly.  “They are a true relief, these contact lenses.”

     Cassie was pretty, he thought.  He had heard the word many times, but had never really seen it, until he met her again, as adults.   She even smelled pretty, a light feminine accent of perfume.   It would be a true pleasure to see where this went. 

     The listeners from the Aviary rubbed their collective paws together.  Finally, they might find out what had happened at that school so long ago.  The vocal eavesdropping became total over Michael, though it took him awhile to realize it was happening at all.  Because the technology is so advanced and so secret most people will not believe the government is capable of doing what it is capable of doing.  Many people believe their government would not hurt them. 

     The marble mine was huge.  She showed him a path that went to the top of a mountain on the edge of the mine.  He went first.  At the top he pulled her up onto the last big rock, and they stayed holding hands, looking around at the countryside from a long way up above it.   They remained that way for a few minutes, quietly, taking it all in, feeling it, then, because the day was starting to heat up already, they made their way back to the woods by the truck, where it was cooler, and there was a stream nearby.    Chattering like chipmunks the whole time.  Still holding hands.

     She wasn’t seeing anyone, a couple of what she thought were serious relationships just crashed and burned out of nowhere, so she was taking time out, it had been awhile.  She was devoting herself to Her work, art, and singing.  Ah, he knew it,  the developed voice, he remembered she sang in choir at St. Innocents.

     She sang in a band now!  They got gigs, and made extra money, enough to pay for better equipment, a little at a time.  The band was named Innocent X, which was at least a three way play on words.  The Real Innocent X, Innocent The Tenth, was a Pope during medieval times, one of many.  And people did refer to this present generation, their generation, as the X’ers, and then there were ties to St. Innocents, 3 of the band members came from there.  Her next gig was in a week, and he was invited.  She had a very distinct twinkle in her eye, and he loved it.

     They talked and talked and talked.  Had waters and bananas twice, apples, yogurt cups, more waters, then it was getting dark.  It was the best day either of them had spent in a long time.  On the way home Michael decided quick food was in order, he was pretty hungry,  though the Mom and Pop place actually cooked a very  good hamburger and fries.  Not like fast food at all.  Cassie had fish and chips and ate it all.

     He kissed her goodnight at her front door, and promised to call.   Which he did the next day.  The following night they ended up at his apartment.  He made smoothies.   It was love.  Chocolate Raspberry Relish.  That caused her to blink. 

      He always had a hard time believing she picked him.  She had never really gotten over her crush on him from way back, so she said.  He was mortified that this thought brought out feelings of nervousness again, just like before.

     The concert was excellent, even stimulating; Cassies voice was truly developed well and intriguing, fun to hear, produced from training at the orphanage, which did its best to give all its children what they could, in ways that strengthened each child.    Cassie  had an ease with her voice and love of singing,  she had been working at it for a long time now.    Throaty, clear, and her band complimented her well, they were very proficient musicians, even inspired.  She wrote most of her own lyrics, except on covers of older songs, or when other people helped. 

     The Aviary was there too, and towards the end of the concert there was some electronically induced dissonance caused by them, which the inside crowd would always subconsciously associate with the newcomer, Michael Sheehan.  This is how psyops work, and the people that commit them are of consummate skill.  These electronic feelings were suggested to the mass within the club at well below the conscious level,  to everyone there it was another night onstage or in the club, dancing drinking having a good time.   Flashing lights, loud music, alcohol being consumed, a perfect place to employ and test directed energy weapons, pulse, laser, EMP, flash -- the spine is an antenna, it is sensitive to standing waves and the like, it can be entrained or overloaded easily.  One of the major sub-agendae of these government groups is to discourage gatherings among most people.  Lots of active auroral coercion going on where people are meeting, especially people doing commerce.

      Michael had a lot of fun, he felt like a VIP backstage and all, kissing the singer and all.  He and Cassie ended up on the beach afterwards.  Something was happening between them, and neither of them wanted it to stop. 

     Michael got a call from the LOGAIR section on the Naval Base within just a few days, they needed another warehouse and flightline worker for the daily L188 supply plane, and any C130s, 141s, or C5s that came in on his shift.  A nine to five kind of job, the LOGAIR flight was scheduled in the morning, and it was the main flight, on a schedule, what the job was really all about.    Any other birds popped in from different places delivering this that and the other thing,  he would hear about them in relation to the LOGAIR mission, other sections on base could handle some of the load, the extra missions were not to interfere with LOGAIR. 

      LOGAIR meant Logistics Air Command.  Government contractors flying commercial aircraft in circuitous routes to 5 or 6 bases over the course of a day.  Five or six days a week. There were lots of problems with aircraft break downs, but most of the flightline and warehouse work ran smoothly.   Aircraft breakdowns meant overtime.

     Michael further applied as he was directed, and got the job.  It was a lot like some of the stuff he did at Clark in the PI.   Except it was 50K a year to start, with regular advancement.  Michael liked it, it was doing something he knew well, and something he did well, and it paid well.  He did like being around the aircraft too, so big.

     It is the world of earplugs, and headsets, and codes flashed with arms and hands and fingers.    A world of large chains and hydraulics and ratchet straps.  Oil smells, burning fuel.  Steel toed boots.  In this world you always look both ways before crossing anything.  Its a  world with no jewelry,  wear nothing that could catch on a fast moving 10,000 pound pallet and snatch a finger or arm off, or even a head.  The moral of this story is try to be aware of the dangers in any particular environment you find yourself in.  It stacks the odds in your favor, stacks the odds for your survival.  Michael was well trained and had seen all the pictures.  Gross.

     He was really still following the plan laid down by Brother Pablo back when he was in High School.  He was adhering to it as closely as possible and it was working out just fine.  Get the training, then get out and go civil service if you can.  Retire from there as young as possible and try to get something else going on the side while you collect a pension.   Better advice than most.

       He remembered the generous old duck selling pamphlets, and the guy sold many pamphlets.  As he was quick to point out, his overhead was probably lower than any other product out there, though it was probably the most valuable product out there, in the long run.  “Information”.  He said it like some people say “Gold”.

     Michael and Cassie got married and lived happily ever after.    Michael got rich selling high grade information on the internet.  Cassie managed her own music company online, promoting her original work, and the original work of some other artists as well.   Things were starting to pick up.   They were thinking about kids.

     Except, thats not what really happened, because of that little thing called The Aviary. 

     Michael and Cassie eventually did get married, and lived their  lives as one for the rest of their days, and those days were many.   Among other things they suffered together, in the beginning especially.    There was joy too, but suffering was not something that would have happened naturally to them, it was done to them, they were targets and didn’t know it.  Wrong place at the wrong time.  

     They experienced stolen time.  Many people did, especially in America.

     It was a time of mass human experimentation across the entire country.  Many people were not just suffering, they were dying.   People who had been speaking out on things like hemp laws, and a lot of the indians and homeless were targeted for major ill treatment, the ones that could see it coming, the year 2000, hauled their behinds out of the country if they could, South America, Amsterdam.    Michael was doing nothing of the sort but had the initial bad luck of an unexplained  experience in childhood that put electro-leeches on his mind and body.  He was already in the chute.

     Now, The Internet was kicking in, and the royalty, the people who oppose the truth, were screaming and crying as a bunch of their lies nurtured over 1000 years just went up in smoke.   Big petroleum was already maddened beyond belief over the amount of fuel the internet saves yearly.

     The wealthy of the world consider anyone using the net other than themselves to be the enemy, and treats them as such.   In many instances no expenses are spared to shut down seemingly innocuous endeavors.   Its principle.  No more good will.

     There were no children in the Sheehan household, that might have been different too, but The Aviary, The Aviary.  The electronics they experimented on people with,  to tweak and disrupt the ways Americans think, even across many square miles at once, are active auroral technologies, and these can sterilize people too.

      They were constantly trying to up the energy,  seeing how much people could realistically absorb.  They never did discover what had happened at St. Innocents with Michael Sheehan, they had some bad luck for a change, and it was good luck for Michael;  though he had already become a full blown non consenting test subject just because. 

     If they thought for an instant that there had been even a possibility of a true telekinetic incident it would have gotten a lot worse.  Quickly.  And even though it was not, technically, a telekinetic incident, the lil birdies of The Aviary  would most likely interpret it as such.

     He was hounded and harassed and surveilled and kept back at every opportunity, he was targeted, one of many people targeted,  but he did not seem to notice, his work and his mind took him to other places.  Part of him noticed, the biggest part of him, but we do not access that part consciously except maybe during sex or duress, or some drugs.  Full accounting was made though, by the biggest part of him, but his conscious part didn’t even know that the biggest part was there.  Yet. 

     It was a time of emergency, 911, and large condemned buildings being demolished with airplanes, and everyone trying hard to get that behind them, as far behind them as possible.  That was certainly an attack on America, but not by the people everyone was led to believe.

      Michael and Cassie kept a shop and a library room in the house they bought in Jamestown.  Most of Michaels interests lay there.  He liked to read a lot of work now about crustal displacements, and the ending of the ice ages.   Charles Hapgood, Flem-ath, Wilson.  Hancock.  He continued to study water, and the properties of Ice, and water under extreme pressures, like 20,000 atmospheres of pressure.  At that amount of pressure four new types of ice crystals form in quick succession,  and nobody knows why.  Michael thought it might have something to do with conductivity, as water is a pretty good conductor, except in its crystalline form.  Ice as we know it, as it exists at one atmospheres pressure below 32 Fahrenheit aka 0 degrees Centigrade, is a very good insulator.   It would be interesting to study the various types of ice and the effects electricity has on them, he thought.

     After Faraday, he never saw light the same again.  Or electricity/magnetism.   It was Michael Sheehans feeling that Michael Faraday had been over exposed to mercury many times throughout his life causing the symptoms which he suffered in later life.  No doubt these early experimenters were over-exposed to many detrimental chemicals.   Some researchers of immortality, particularly in very early China, mixed mercury in concoctions that were then swallowed.  These generally had the opposite effect of immortality, but mercury was considered magical because it was liquid metal. 

     Tesla came after Faraday, and more revelations.  While studying Tesla Michael started really looking at patent documents available online.  It was amazing.  He learned to search patents, a good thing to know.

     And Michael was still learning about water too.  He wanted a jewelers torch, a browns gas generator is what it is, it separates water into H and O versus H2 and O2, as the items usually occur in nature.  As well, these Browns gas torches possess alchemical properties, with seemingly low heat melting the impossible, putting holes in anything, probably a very old technology, rediscovered. 

     Even more important to Michaels ideas, this is the only way to erase waters memory.  Not many people realize this.  All water has memory intact, some older than others, depending on source, but natural wiping of waters memory very rarely, if ever, occurs.  It takes intervention to render molecular elements  to the monatomic state.   Vortex energy does things to mass quantities of water as far as purification and energizing is concerned, as does the formation of ices, but the only way to truly wipe the memory of water is to take it down to H and O and then recombine from the mono-atomic state as H2O.  That “New” or “Clean” water can be programmed for singular purposes.  Real Holy Water.  Everlasting Life.

     He was thinking it out, and reading a lot, met a guy named Tony Sutton on the early net, corresponded with him, he was very much into water, he ran a very expensive newsletter for associates about water in general and what was going on with it at any given time, updates on esoteric researches.  Cold fusion is water tech.  Tony Sutton died right after Jim Keith.  What a fiasco.  Ongoing, never ending. 

     Michael really loved his wife.   And they got along fabulously in the bedroom, spent a lot of time there.  Cassie with no clothes on was the most perfect thing he had ever seen.  It was worship.

     Cassie showed him ALL of God, all of it, and God was not a He or a She, God definitely was an It.   BOTH male and female together,  all that can possibly be at all times.  Now that they lived together like this, as one, they were only half when apart.  They realized the entirety now,  they were diminished, yet endowed too.  People only get half of God when they come here to this world, this world whose entrance, whose doorway, for everyone, is a Vagina.  

     Emulation of God by people only takes place in the coming together of the two halves of God, male and female, female and male.   It is the only way, still, that perpetuation of the form can take place.  Its how the code gets carried on, and revivified.  

       Is that not  a fearful thought?  One so full of power it makes the strongest quake in their boots?  Well, maybe.  Some people are too ignorant to grasp the nuances in these expressions.  The order of mind and what it is a part of, what it represents, what it is a portal for, is definitely huge, and quite possibly beyond the normal comprehension of anyone.

     Over the years Michael became more adept with pursuits he practiced, one of them was drawing.  He found it invaluable to be able to draw even rough representations when visualizing something for a job.  He once found some of his notes gone through, messily at that, hand drawn things for inventions he was playing with.  He stopped keeping notes on paper, all in his head from then on, and not on the computer either.  It was not Cassie, if Cassie had done it everything would have been put back in perfect order, and she would have told him what she was looking for.   This was disdain, or perhaps someone was surprised during their search. 

     The thought chilled him.  He started thinking about other things.  Observations of minute things coming together, long term patterns.  Throwing the net.  He felt outward with his mind, questing, searching.   He thought everyone did it.  That was what woke him up to the fact that eventually led him to the Aviary.  

     He found the place right away by following a hit he had made on someone near the house who did not know they were made.  It took him a while to find out what the place was, but it all cascaded at once eventually.   A lot became clear all at once.  That was about the time things started breaking up between Cassie and him, he was getting mauled with Aviary energy weapons, The Aviary had grown into some kind of malignant command post since 911, the entire population was being “Managed”,  their perceptions and other aspects of their lives were being “Handled”.  Subconscious stuff, no one really saw it for a long time.  Fusion centers, some of these places were called.  Many TVs had cameras built right in so cable allowed in house spying by law enforcement.  People thought they were watching TV, it was watching THEM.

        Michael was on a program of being pumped up with energy at this particular time, he was hit by multiple stalkers and modes as often as possible.  Many people were undergoing this predation.  Cold War Stasi stuff with techno twists.  One morning during that time he became alarmed to see his right pupil larger than the pupil in his left eye.    When he grabbed doorknobs or went to to touch any metal, long bright sparks jumped unbelievable distances from his hand to the object.   There was a lot of general pain.  He was still a little ways away from figuring out the sugar connection.

     Cassie and Michael had lived together for 10 years, it was 2008 and they were doing pretty well financially,  though their health was suffering, and nothing seemed right.  They did not know why but sensed change was in order.   Michael had looked into many things,  he knew a lot now, and was learning more all the time.

      Cassie was put up across town for awhile, in a basement apartment which he enjoyed visiting when he could, because of Cassie, and because a lot of the electronic pressure stopped down there in the subterranean places.  Mass tended to block electronic smog and direct fields or beams, even active auroral stuff.  Some mass worked better than others, metal screen and metal plate was good, reinforced concrete;  future blocking will be panels of circuitry which react with any incoming electronic field, and simulate a perfect background, melding with everything around it, reflecting the same readings as the local materials, creating invisibility to most sensors.

     A main point of chipping people is so they can be tuned in, attacked in a crowd, perfect identification and targeting.   Picked out.   Satellites, active auroral, handheld, drive by, drones, any aircraft are easily outfitted with electronic weaponry.  One 2 star General lamented that they already have unlimited power, since the 80s, because of ram attributes during flight, just not the technology to cool the operation yet.  Burns itself right up.

     Cassies body had been doing funny things too, after they split up a lot of the symptoms disappeared for both of them, but only Michael knew what was happening.  He made it known to her, graphically -- she was his other half for real -- but he eased her into it.  A lot of what the government is doing, and why, is hard to understand.  Basically its a reinstitution of royalty across the entire world, and America is certainly a special case.  America was created to abolish royalty, if possible.

       Michael unleashed his mind on the internet and quickly located a lot of information, even about The Aviary.  He had begun  by searching addresses near the building he had tailed the person to. 

      Ah, The Aviary.  John Alexanders rogue outfit, Gods own little programmers of evolution.  He put it together that The Aviary was where he had driven that day following the clown who did not know he was followed.  He didn't even have to return there to find it, knew right where it was.

      He concentrated on developing his own personal invisibility.  He never realized it but when he was in that mode of concentration,  he truly went invisible to peoples eyes, although cameras picked him up.    He was worried about the cameras anyway, so he never knew about his personal invisibility among people, or not for a long time.  It didn’t come up much, and he just worked on avoiding cameras, or even possible cameras.  It was not easy.  They are everywhere in the city.   Hooded jackets and ball caps and strategic use of lighting in different modes kept him busy for a week or so.  He then gained a type of machine invisibility, which was actually more valuable than his true invisibility which he didn’t know about anyway.

      He needed a weapon.  A  weapon would do it.   They would not expect a weapon.  Especially like the one he was thinking of.  He could get away then.  He and Cassie, out west, then Mexico maybe. It was his need which called forth the weapon, but he was only just beginning to see these things, and the need took precedence, his single minded preoccupation with satisfying the need. 

     This caused him to observe reality differently, but it was not different to him, it was just what he knew.  Its how the mind interfaces with the overmind.  That's what Professor of Death John Alexander would say.   John Alexander happened to be there on the day when Michael erased his personal file at The Aviary, and everything attached to it.  John Alexander was not among the survivors because there were no survivors.  All were translated from their biological aspect to....to somewhere else.

     Michael instinctively knew that if odd powers were to manifest from anywhere near him, Flipper missiles and the like, alarms would go off quickly.  He had to be devious.  Cunning.  Quick. 

      He put the house up for sale.  He had to decline a first offer because he still needed time in the house for certain projects, and to pack everything.

     Michaels first test was rudimentary, at night out near the marble mine, with a pipe and a vise and a hammer, with handmade corundum and optical quartz parts, hand silvered with polished silver dime blanks, and one lens was even gold foiled right before the firing.  Striking the plunger with the hammer caused a whitish red bolt of light to silently flash out, into the rock of the cliff, and less than a second later burned out at the top of said cliff on its other side, and was then gone into space.  The experiment was good.  Better yet, he had lost his tail on the way here and no one saw this happen.  His luck was holding out.  His next test would be the final one, then it was time to erase his Aviary file.

     He had contacted a buddy online, who he’d corresponded with for a long time, they met on an artificial intelligence chat board, which was even before ebay.   They arranged a meetup for coffee, Michael needed some information.  Ended up, the guy could talk the horns off a goat, and Michael soaked it up for some hours, buying lunch, then eventually shaking the dude loose over by that old house on the cliff, the one they used to make the serial Dark Shadows programs in.

      With a quick thanks and a 50 dollar handshake, Michael turned on the pathway and went back the way he had come.  Real spook  stuff he thought.  It took his buddy a minute to realize he was being ditched, but he had enjoyed their visit, especially the 50 bucks.   He would contact Michael later on email. 

     The talker had told Michael what he needed to know and Michael had only to lead him in a direction and get out of the way, the dude was like atomic powered chattery teeth, but worthy goods, needed info.   

     He learned of the real directed energy stuff, The Radiant Arsenal, and Psychotronic Golgotha, a book by  a Russian,   N. Anismov from the Nineteen TWENTIES.  And the military chippings, and also the governments seemingly peculiar affinity for orphanages.  He had two or three other books to look up, Jim Keiths Mind Control World Control,  and Black Helicopters Over America.....also  Jerry Smiths book on HAARP, supposedly the best info on the active auroral technologies, high quality.   And it was time to move on the weapon as well.

     The biggest heartburn to building his weapon was timing.  The actual bolt of energy was highly coherent light released in a burst as the lenses were destructively ignited, kind of like a Lucifer match reaction but a lot better;  the bolt had to be directed with great care.  He created a large sized pistol, a laser bolt cannon, with four chambers, it could hold four charges.    The screw type action as the charge behind the first lens was blown caused it to spin violently into the lens in front of it, both silvered  one side each at around 70%, opposing.   This set up maximum resonance before lasing, while also taking into consideration the frosting and its effect at the boundary of corundum and polished optical quartz parts.  Instead of a chemical ignition initiated by friction, as in a  Lucifer match, this friction supplies the needed burst of light which can efficiently, or even over-efficiently harvest raw energy  from the crystalline structure of the corundum lens. 

       The gun was mounted on a small but stable tripod.  A horizontal traverse was programmed into the tripod workings, which was really the hardest part.  One traverse per bolt, forward backward forward backward with no time in between each.    The little tripod and the laser gun it held fit in a Samsonite with the controls. 

     The upward movements as the traverse alternated, the gaining in altitude of the next shot, was also programmed in.  The point was this:  a single bolt of energy straight through the building might not even get noticed, but any sideways movement would be a cutting action for as long as the bolt fired.  If all shots fired at 12 inch altitude intervals, with the first at 12” and the last at 48” and two in between at 24” and 36 “  across 2 or 3 seconds each, why, the entire building would probably fall right in on itself and implode.

     Which is pretty much how it happened.  The caps of the lenses being electronically ignited to make each laser bolt were the only sounds,  like firecrackers.  Pop pop pop pop.  Just like that.  The twisting of the tripod had a metal machine sound, but he was the only one close enough to hear that. 

     The area was mercifully clear of passers by, Michael had set up a barrier around the building with his mind, though he did not realize it.  Just as he did not realize he was literally invisible to any passers by, he did not realize that there were none because anyone coming near felt the barrier, they avoided the barrier.   Mind Things. 

     The cameras on the building had all been identified and he was out of their sight.  He was set up in an alley, partially blocked from view by a dumpster, it took less than 10 seconds.

     He heard guttural cries and hoarse screams from within, because he was listening for them, lil birdies getting they feets cut off, then cutoff at they knees, then...all the lil birdies in The Aviary gonna gonna gonna be hummin’birdies oh yeahhhhhh...it was truly an Elvis moment, may he rest in peace.

     The building sandwiched down, sliding forward slightly as it imploded.   This demolition was less  symmetric than the buildings on 911, but a lot cheaper.  Here at The Aviary gas lines were spewing pressurized explosive juice high up into the air, and electricity was arcing out in large sparks seemingly everywhere...there....the first fire....the small briefcase was already packed.

     He walked away.  No one saw a thing.

     It boils down, in this world of natural forces, to what can you do?  And will you do it when the time comes?    And will it work?


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     She told him on the way to New Mexico she had contracted a weird kind of cancer, it was eating up some of her organs, they said,  the doctors said, she didn't have long to live.   Michael was horrified.  Oh Babe Oh Babe.  He held her hand.  

     “Get ready for some special smoothies,” he told her.  No more processed sugar for either of them now.  It appeared to him that a lot of things that ate people were actually eating the sugar in people.  And in America sugar is rife.  It is hard to go no sugar in America.  One really has to try. 

     He wanted to get to a place and work, get something done about this, read.    Make the water, first and foremost.  Find the program to make the clean water into a specific for anti-aging, would amniotic fluid program the water?  No doubt but what would be the outcome?  Would known homeopathic remedies program clean water in useful ways?  Shots to the human program...stronger  treatments?  How will the body respond over time to these shots of clean water, new water, will there be a residual programming effect?  Will uniform order be introduced with these shots of information in the bodies own programming language?

      One thing was certain:  his need was tangible.

       Michael was betting on certain plants, combinations maybe, and fungi, a true pharmacopeia available to program clean water and create a new programming, a program of regeneration.  Reishi mushroom resets the bodies internal measuring system he knew, he had used it many times.  Learned of it in the PI, during the time of hangover cures, during the birth of smoothies.  “The water will have no other information within it, except for what is put in it by me”, he thought.  Whatever it touches will imbue it with information.  He remembered jade then, he needed to make some jade vessels for storing the clean water.  He could not remember where he heard or read that, but he remembered it was important. 

     He needed to get with Mullet over there in Thonotosassa, woodworker, cue maker, dog lover, and all around anti-cancer dude from hell, another internet contact.  

     Michael and Cassie  were two days from destination, some land they wanted to look at between Lordsburg and Silver City.   There was a place for sale when they got there, recently vacated, they paid cash and owned it.  The water was good.  Michael let it be known his wife was convalescing, and they were allowed to keep to themselves for the most part.  The neighbors were not many and they had their own lives to attend to.  The view towards California was awesome, and to the north was nothing but wild open Indian country.  Lordsburg lay down below, at the bottom of the mountain, and had three entrance/exits for I-10 along its short length.   A triple money sieve.  Like a giant gold drywasher.

    Up the road north of them was White Signal, and above that was part of the gargantuan Santa Rita Copper Mine, then Silver City, Cliff,  all the way to Gallup and the Navajo and Zuni Reservations.

     Michael set up his computer, a new laptop, and had most of his information on two large thumb drives from his old set up which had been shredded.  He’d watched it happen.  He was very security conscious now and did not like to go on the internet from the house.  There was a lot of signal in town, and a cheap laptop from ebay was dedicated to the truck,  to be used to grab info from wireless networks on the fly; the home computer was not even capable of wireless.   It was double metal shielded.

     Michael tracked down a decent used Sea Container for a Subterranean office and workshop with controlled air in and out,  part would be a clean room.   He ordered the best Chinese Jewelers Torch he could find, the Chinese use Browns Gas in their navy, and were the only real developers of the technology at this point.  George Wiseman from the internet put him onto the group,  Fed Ex would bring it when it arrived. 

     Michael found some local work at small airfields for cash, he, like many people in the west, preferred to remain as anonymous as possible where the government was concerned.  He washed small aircraft for a fee, and helped twice a week at tri-county when a small feeder plane for several air freight carriers dropped loads to the local contract carrier.  He knew all the paperwork procedures for all air cargo, even hazmat, that made him valuable in some instances.   He also knew a shortcut to the airfield which saved about 20 miles one way, 40 miles roundtrip, and though the road was not paved it was pretty decent. 

     Cassie liked the west a lot, the climate suited them both as they headed away from thirty something toward the big four oh. 40.  Another world altogether.  The second life.  In the old days most people died before that time, so it truly was the second of maybe four lives enjoyed by modern people, except the last one kind of sucks because you become a frail piece of withered thing always in pain.  The winter of life.  Worse than basic training.  Mankind has all its wars and intrigues and money circus, but does not have the ability to fight real problems.

     They were getting their diet right, which is what its all about really, with no processed sugar whatsoever, and she was on a regimen of Bloodroot capsules.  Very strong anti-cancer material.  Sanguinaria canidensis.  Balm of Gilead.   Has been known for a long long time.  And chaparrel grew wild on their 5 acres.  They both drank it in fresh tea at least twice a week, it was nice once you developed a taste for it.  She was gaining weight and looking more full of vitality than he had seen her in a long time. 

     Michael knew he was getting his elixir, when his hair started darkening on its own, losing the little grey that had been  developing, and his teeth were doing funny things, getting stronger.  Somehow regenerating.  He lost two fillings but there was no pain, and the teeth grew right over the cavities and took their full form as perfect normal dentition.  Quickly too.  He felt more lithe, coordinated.   A  high order engine of force within nature.  There were other things, balance.  He was achieving the satisfaction of his need. 

      This didn’t mean he couldn’t get smashed dead by a mac truck or an airplane, or get it in the head by a meteor.  It just meant that he would stay young in body forever, until something happened to violently wrench him away, and there was a lot he could do to safeguard against that happening.  And to prepare for that happening if it came.  Quality living time is wealth.  He was now the wealthiest person in the world.  

     He brought the smoothie to where she sat on the couch with her legs pulled up under her, looking out the picture window down the mountainside at the fireball of the setting sun.   It was plain yogurt and banana and cream smoothly blended with a dose of his regeneration elixir.  Delightful. 

     “Drink up Babe, a new smoothie, just for you”, he said. 

     “What are you calling this one then?” she looked up at him slyly, sipping.  “MMMMmmmm...good”,  licking her lips.

    The setting sun made everything orange and red and brown and yellow, except for the sky, which was deep blue, like fine Apache turquoise.  Twinkling. 

      “This one, my beloved, I call Gob Smoothie.    Its just for us,  I’ll show you how later.”

       He bent  and kissed her. 




fin