Pralaya (An Anticipatory Story) 1:7
SEASON 1, EPISODE 7
Courtesy of the Creative Commons license. No changes were made.
From Christopher L. Fici, Ph.D
Aveon DeSormeaux was not quite everything they said he was. He wasn’t a venture capital shark or tech guru, but he looked the part. There was Harvard Business School and later “Skull and Bones” at Yale during his doctoral studies. Aveon was very beguiling, very Mediterranean, with the kind of neck line and cut-suit which screamed Illuminati. But he wasn’t that simple or complex. His Ph.D was an anvil hanging around his neck. The Academy was a shitshow of deformed egos and shiny happy neoliberal people building shiny happy towers with shiny happy offices for all the new shiny happy vice presidents of This and That! He had to pivot fast from all that in his early forties and he did well after a lot of weeping and gnashing. Consulting gigs concerning our climate catastrophe became a slippery slope into bioengineering, geoengineering, hedge-funds, and stranded assets Whatever this damn Pralaya was, there were still a lot of stranded assets indeed. Climate change was not going away, even after some early hopes and very strange ecological events in the weeks and months after the Pralaya. There was still a lot of carbon in the air, over 400 ppm again, despite the collapse of all that neoliberal architecture into regional co-ops and encryption and tribal warfare.
Whatever else so many people experienced during the Pralaya, Aveon did not partake of it. He never really told anyone what happened to him that day because he did not honestly remember. He certainly didn’t feel some kind of ongoing enlightenment as so many people continue to insist upon years later. One former close associate said it felt like Earth fucked him and all of a sudden it made sense. What made sense? Aveon also heard from some associates that there were many people like him who couldn’t remember what happened that day. Someone, somewhere, on some dark web Tik Tok, had described these people as The Dense.
“Who were these people to call us Dense?” Aveon inwardly raged every time he came across it. He had been pretty damn apolitical in the years before the Pralaya. He tended to pride himself on acting like a lawyer (he failed out of law school). Just represent the client. Take your own views out of the situation. It will only make things more complex. Nevertheless, Aveon always had a pet-peeve about self-righteousness. He had been raised to be humble, to be invisible, to be a trustworthy cog in the machine. Tamp down your self as the only way to self-improvement. So these “woke” kids, who became somehow someway even MORE “woke” after the Pralaya, stomped on Aveon’s last nerve. It was almost enough for him to subscribe to the ideology of his clients. It would make his job easier.
There was a network of these people known The Anticipators, whom Aveon was particularly concerned with. The kids who were blowing up the fucking pipelines. Taking advantage of the chaos. Despite his annoyances at their social media insouciance and the cocksure conficdence of their manifestos, Aveon could appreciate their sentiment and the techniques. Courageous fucking kids, but the stranded assets had to be extracted.
This was Aveon’s primary duty, working as a consultant for the remaining coalition of fourteen fossil-fuel companies still operational after the Pralaya. After all, what else would The Dense do after such apocalyptica other than reassemble the drills? They called us Eichmanns too, but Aveon knew his Arendt and considered himself much too respectable and sophisticated and cultured and intentional and at times quite merciless to be just a button-pusher. Perhaps that was the devious element. The Eichmanns of the Climate Catastrophe are real savvy motherfuckers, full of crypto and synthetic substances and a paucity of ethics.
His phone rings, on the double-encrypted line, where the quanta have been exponentially doubled for security. Essentially only his supervisor can reach him on this phone, especially in cases of emergency.
“Aveon, we have a lock on their location. Near Edinburgh.”
Aveon didn’t know if it was bold, stupid, reckless, daring and/or all of the above that they were hiding in such plain sight, considering what he knew of the main team, the ones that developed the farm out there and who were raising all kinds of eco-anarchist hell in Edinburgh.
Hiding in plain sight always presumes some sense of confidence in some not-so-obvious factor. Aveon made a note to tell his strike team to activate the extraordinary protocols. They had to get these kids and the people who support them. The damage they were doing was now beginning to cripple the market in a way that even the great Om or whatever it fucking was couldn’t do.
“We’ll have the team ready to go within six hours.”
“We need half that. You know they have an intel operation and we have reason to believe we have been infiltrated.”
Aveon sighed. These upper-management landlord officer types were the real Dense. Infiltrated? Anyway, that was above his pay grade. For Aveon, if he was to be really honest, this was a sport. He knows how that would sound if he told most people in his life. After all, he had orders to kill six individuals who were teenagers. Yet according to the remnants of international trade law, along with the otherwise concurrent mercenary-vigilante-tribal atmosphere, this meant that if these kids were going to continue to do what they were going to do then they had to be terminated.
Otherwise the assets would stay stranded and the market would soon collapse. Half the world now was actively rooting for this and attempting to make it happen. Those damn children of the Pralaya with their farms and encrypted web and those damn Tik Toks.
Aveon was a systems man. There were still opportunities here. There was still freedom, he liked to think, to do and act as one shall will. Those bedrock foundations of democracy and free will and individuality he so cherished. For Aveon, his choice was to rebuild the system as it was before. He especially wanted to build the massive geoengineering systems he truly believed was necessary to ward off the worst effects of climate change. He didn’t think some artificial, quasi-mystical “end of the world” was going to cut it
They said people like him, the Dense, only cared about themselves. Aveon felt he was following the Seven Generations principle better than most, better even than these Anticipators.
But to do his work he had to kill these kids, these eco-terrorists. These young people had made their choice to break the law and attack the assets. No ethic was going to stop Aveon, besides the ethic of his own self-interest, which had gotten him so far already. He did not believe in any kind of divinity or hereafter. The dirt would judge him.
“We can do it in 2.5. I have to go to the Phase Three protocols. There’s gonna be a lot of collateral damage,” he told his supervisor
“Everyone in those damn Highlands can burn as far as I’m concerned. They do not get to decide our fates. If we can get the package from Russia, we may soon be able to actually burn them away.”
Aveon understood this to mean that efforts to buy another set of tactical nuclear weapons in the Dank Web were becoming fruitful. Again, above his pay grade, although he would be the consultant in charge of setting them off.
“Let’s just get these kids first so we may not have to go that route.”
The call ended. Aveon moved quickly. They would attack the farm right now.
***
We drove the Land Rover to the Moor just north of Hyndford Bridge and then hit the off-beaten path. Julia knew exactly where to stop on the incline so as not to trip the security wires.
We go out into the Highlands mist and Julia shoots the special green flare they have given us for this exact scenario. We wait for a few minutes in the ambience. Julia has been into somatic breathwork recently-so she is taking deep, measured breaths, to a slow and steady rhythm. “We’re gonna need all the help we can get,” she says to me when her breathing stops. She looks up so I look up. The same green flare meets us in response. Within seconds, the nearby tree-lines begin to rustle. Five individuals in green hoods and monk’s frocks emerge, accompanied by a rather large but rather silent drone overhead. Behind them is an older gentleman in the same outfit but with the addition of a samurai sword and what looks like the remote control for the drone. This is Elmore, the head of the camp.
Nodding at the Land Rover he says to us, “we can take that inside. If you don’t mind, I would like to drive.”
Elmore gets into the driver’s seat with Julia in front and myself in the back. The monk-ninjas melt back into the forest as quietly as they emerged. So does the drone too.
“The cloaking tech?” asks Julia. It’s not just a simple question for her. After being so mindful of her breathing, she is nearly breathless after just seeing the display of the monk-ninjas and their drone. She’s reacting as if she is seeing a long-lost beloved one after a very long time
“You will see when we arrive,” Elmore says. Julia and Elmore share a completely inscrutable look which nevertheless translates as some kind of mutual pride between them at cracking an equally inscrutable equation.
We move slowly into the underbrush. There is a way a Land Rover creaks and groans along such a “path” that you know the automobile is actually pleased to endeavor so hard. It is the dharma of the Rover after all. Elmore is silent initially, but Julia and I know he is measuring what he has to say. It’s the special kind of intentional silence which is inherent to Elmore’s Scottish blood.
He stops the Rover for a moment and points to a small clearing to the south.
“That is where we are going to plant the Sequoia trees.”
The last time we were with him, Elmore was telling us about his visit to Northern California, where he became mesmerized by the native sequoia and redwood trees. A local botanist convinced him he could grow sequoia trees in the Highlands. Or what it that Elmore convinced the botanist? It was always a tad oblique when it came time for Elmore to engage with the contents of his memory.
A quarter-mile in and we begin to see drones of all shapes and sizes which make up the fleet. Julia and I exchange a look and she decides to dive in.
“Elmore, we just want to make sure you know that…”
Elmore hums to itself, almost Om-ing to himself. He responds
“Yes, we know just as well. We have intelligence that this is fairly imminent. You will see when we get to the camp.”
We drive by a drone which seems to be shimmering and melting into the forest. Julia gasps to herself and I can see tears welling up in her eyes.
“You finally figured out the diffraction?!!” I’ve never heard Julia so enthusiastic. She is damn near ecstatic
Elmore smiles. It’s like a supernova when a stoic like him smiles.
“It was just the very equation you suggested. It’s not perfect yet, but we can’t wait for perfect right now.”
We pull into the camp. Everywhere we see drones and tents and antennas and more drones and portable artillery and organic regenerative gardens and kitted-out Rovers with jamming tech and the kitchen and the library and a few more drones uncannily shimmering in and out of the trees.
Immediately after we stop George, Elmore’s top lieutenant, is at our doors.
“Chief, we have activated the defenses.”
I feel a hot flash work its way up from my root chakra to my pituitary gland. I feel both terrified and relieved. Terrified because this means that the Assets are indeed finally attacking us after a year of innuendos. Relieved because I know that if anyone can stop them, or at least damage them enough to give them second thoughts, it’s Elmore and the monk-ninjas.
Elmore stands stock-still as the small army he commands whirls like a F-3 tornado around him. We stand stock-still with him. If there is anything we have learned working with Elmore, it is, especially when the shit hits the fan, very important to do exactly as he does and says.
Ten seconds go on for ten minutes. Some of the drones begin to take off, manned and unmanned, immediately flashing into the quantum vacuum and disappearing from our eyes. Julia is visibly emotional at seeing what her research has produced (“I always feared getting sucked into the academic-military-industrial complex, but for this cause, I’ll donate my brain matter to murder machines.”) Elmore, as if sensing emotion has entered such a rigidly focused arena of action, turns instantly towards us.
“Usually I’m the first one to go up. The custom is that the general leads the charges. But if you’re here for this, we will come up from behind.”
I notice that my neck and shoulders collapse from being held in tension ever since Julia told me they has confirmed the Assets’ movement less than 24 mere hours before. I’m not sure why I’m relaxing exactly as the shit is hitting the fan. There is a strange calm amongst the chaos. A calm born of confidence in experience, a confidence in the battle-tested tactics about to be used, and a calm born of the element of surprise everyone here carried in their pocket like a lucky charm. I'm not calm because I’ve “been here before.” I wouldn’t call what I did to get from Petworth to the Highlands “combat” after the Pralaya, but it was hairy enough. Nevertheless actual combat…no, I’m just an academic.
Elmore strides over to a rather kitted-out Jeep and gets in the passenger seat. He’s not especially waiting for us. One could sense he would rather keep the ones not trained in monk-ninja arts back here at camp. We have to make a choice whether or not to go with him. He didn’t even bother to look back to see if we followed him. He didn’t even bother to open the back door of the Jeep…
Before I know it, Julia has also strode with random precision to the backdoor of the Jeep. I have to jog over rather quickly, lightly pulling my quad in the process (so dehydrated I seem to be all the time). Inside the Jeep, the driver, a Scotsman who by no small feat appears older than Elmore, immediately hits a cavalcade of buttons.
“Chief, we’re ready.”
With the slightest nod, Elmore gives the go-ahead. It’s hard to describe the next few moments (its even harder than to describe the experience of the Pralaya). Do you know when you experience deja vu? Or when you experience sleep paralysis or a night terror? Or when you experience that falling sensation in a dream? Or when you experience trying to run in a dream but you are running really slowly? Well, it felt like all of that once. Julia must’ve noticed I was getting nauseous.
“Doc, it’s the cloaking…”
I could be wrong but the walls of the Jeep just started to dissolve into the background…
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“Solarized Ninja” from chrishusein
Courtesy of the Creative Commons license. No changes were made.
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“Over Viperhead, we are 12km out. Beacons detect no interference.”
No interference, my ass. We know these guys have cloaking tech. We just don’t know how advanced it is. It’s kind of insulting that our officers can’t be honest about this in the briefings. Even the classified ones.
“Hey A-15, we have to go in low. The fog will help.”
Code for we have to go low because there’s less chance we will be blindsided by drones we can’t see until we’re dead. I don’t know why we have to hide the fact that we know this from our superiors even over our own radio comms.
“Copy A-13. Will be right behind you.”
The copter next to me waggles from left to right in response. I never like this part of the protocol, the last 12km to the target. The way my mind works, it’s always time for second guessing. To be honest, when I heard we had to hit this camp, my stomach sank. I knew what it meant. Kill the kids. If they ever injected me with truth-serum, I would pretty clearly argue in favor of everything they were doing. I didn’t expect when I renewed my contract for five years with the RSAF that I would have to kill climate justice activists. I was once one of them. I didn’t know the world was gonna end and the world was gonna enter our minds and change some people so strangely…while so many of us just went on as before. It reminds me of one of my favorite books from my childhood, Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke.
“A-15 commence Phase 3 protocols.”
Great, we actually are going to drop a tactical nuke on them?! I wonder who’s carrying it. I might be carrying it for all I know! It was enough that we were going to napalm them first, but I suppose the superiors really want the job done for good this time.
“Alpha Centauri please be advised of any anomalies as we enter into the battlespace.”
That’s Aveon. Of course he has to be the one to “break the news.” I resist the urge to demand the exact anomalous nature of these anomalies. I’ll give Aveon some respect for being at least obliquely truthful with us.
Aveon is on the horn again. “Alpha Centauri please be advised the UV radar has just picked up…”
In no time at all (it was like reverse time, like a negative feedback loop, like when you’re dreaming and you can’t run fast enough) a drone materializes in front of me. It’s shimmering in and out of the sky in front of me Some kind of ray emanates out from the front and now I’m experiencing deja vu. I take a deep breath, ready to die, when it occurs to me that I’m being gently placed on the ground.
In seconds, I’m surrounded by a couple of jeeps which have also emerged like magick from the Highlands. I’m dragged out at gunpoint and marched over to a Jeep at the rear. I’m utterly gobsmacked to be right in front of the legend himself, Elmore Criatharach aka the Marauder aka the Monk-Ninja aka Aran.
Before I can even mutter a hello, the man himself is raising some kind of scepter over my head and….
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“2 of Force: Ideology” from Anders Sandberg
Courtesy of the Creative Commons license.
No changes were made.
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Tenyan was sitting in quiet vipassana meditation when he began to sense the Asset copters getting closer and closer. Some of the other pipeline kids never understood why he meditated so much, especially right before a spot of conflict. Teenagers couldn’t necessarily be expected to understand much more than the desire right in front of them. Thankfully, for these kids, rather than a cyborg-esque symbiotic relationship with their IPhone, their immediate desire was how to blow up as many pipelines as possible to preserve some semblance of their future. It probably helped that the phones no longer work the way they do and that we have limited access to some of the encrypted systems here, by design. So one had to utilize whatever tech was indigenous to the spirit.
Tenyan was concerned at the outset of the project that some of his comrades did not experience anything during the Pralaya. “The Dense,” as they were called on the encrypted message boards. He thought that was rather insulting, as there was nothing dense about any of these kids so committed to doing such dangerous things. They were so committed to being chased almost all of the time by the truly dense, who could not even begin to understand what had changed and how profound that change was. Tenyan was always conscious of a kind of “spiritual apartheid” between those who experienced the Pralaya in the full degree and those who experienced it in lesser and lesser degrees. He never wanted anyone to feel like they were unworthy, for all were Buddhas to come no matter who you are. Nevertheless, if the changes they desired were to be made and to be everlasting against the inevitable counterrevolution, a little bit of basic competence in spirituality would be very helpful.
These climate justice kids can be so obtuse about spirituality. Even as Tenyan constantly tries to teach them (his little Sunday seminars) that unless you understand how religion, for lack of a better word, infects everything that everyone does, you will never be able to diagnose a solution. What to speak of even beginning to understand what the holy hell spirituality is.
What he could never seem to get across to his comrades was that while vipassana is certainly meant, like all methods of meditation, to calm and focus the whole body/mind/spirit matrix, it was also about “perspicacity, or perceiving things as they actually are.” It was rather crude to style his meditation as a “form of radar”, as Dalon called it, but it’s not entirely untrue. Meditation should be metaphysical AND practical! How useless was the whole endeavour if you can’t actually apply it to your own life.
Tenyan had been meditating since he was four years old. Some said he was the illegitimate child of the one of the most illustrious lamas in exile in Northern India. Tenyan never liked that rumour. He thought it was very disrespectful to the particular lama they referenced, even as he yearned to know whoever his actual father was. Tenyan liked to pride himself as being beyond “daddy issues,” but he knew that he had them anyway.
(Inhale) As long as space remains, as long as sentient beings remain, until then, may I too remain and dispel the miseries of the world.
(Exhale) “The copters are now just 20km out”
It’s not that he could necessarily see or visualize the copters coming closer during his vipassana. It’s a feeling, something supersensory, something about the “vibes”, as the kids still say. He also senses some movement in front of him. Tenyan opens his eyes. Dalon sneaks towards him.
“I can tell just by how you and move and breathe…” Dalon looks at him.
Tenyan smiles to himself. Dalon looks and sometimes acts as the radiant child incarnate (he intentionally styles his dreads after Basquiat). Dalon is a little different. He listens. He doesn’t always fuck off with the rest of them to spliffs and the local pub when the spirituality talk starts.
“15 km out now,” Tenyan says.
Dalon stands and nods to the cardinal directions. “You have to teach me how to do that,” he says to Tenyan.
Finally! The dharma has finally struck him! The immediate environment begins to shimmer as Dalon nods north-east-south-west. Tenyan always gets a brief nausea when this happens, then that unmistakable sense of deja vu. Fifteen of their comrades suddenly appear out of the shimmer with various combinations of grenade-launchers-duct-taped-to-good ol’ fashioned bayonets. Three new attack-drones also hover twenty feet above. Dalon nods to the cardinal directions again and after deja-vu nausea in reverse, they are gone.
Tenyan stands up with a hand from Dalon. “You have to teach me how to do that!” he says to Dalon. Dalon has his own cryptic knowing smile.
“You thought we were always fucking off to the Peat and Mole. Well, yes, but we had to make time for the exchange. We didn’t hide it from you intentionally. It was just protocols.” So it was Dalon who had been the liaison between our camp and Elmore’s camp
Tenyan couldn’t have cared less about being included or not. He was an introvert to the core, so being not included sometimes hurt but solitude was generally his go-to. Tenyan was simply delighted we now had these capacities to protect us. That everyone had them now. No wonder we hid in plain sight.
“But we need you now too. So this is going to be a quick initiation…” Dalon takes out his transference device and touches it to Tenyan’s shoulder. The deja-vu-nausea is momentarily 100X worse, then it is like a dream. Everything shimmering. Just like the Pralaya. The unmistakable truth that Earth is on our side…