Colonel Crystal's Parallel Universe

by Hufferd, James;

  But he’d no more than gotten the greeting penned when the phone rang. It was his main mentor and Air Force superior, retired General A. Franklin Montmoracy, who, he learned, was in Ocala and would be driving down that afternoon with his wife, Pat.

  Well! Well… that would work out, because Felicia, his own wife, had emailed earlier to say she would be gone a couple more days to go on a “shopping safari” with her maiden aunt of the same age, Sally Fox. She would not be there to remonstrate loudly against him and General “Call me Frank” and Pat, that “flirty God-awful lady” and all the awful dissidence and treason they were bound to bandy about. Felicia, he mused, was not good at restraining what he lovingly called (privately, to himself) her “ignorant side." Retired General Montmoracy, his personal hero, or close to, was coming to see him all the way from Sioux Falls! He longed to make the case for his new home territory and digs, especially given the severe weather in the north. But he wondered how he was going to make any sense of his newly-bandaged neck in accordance with that.

  * * *

  They finally arrived late that night, after their budget rental car sprung an oil leak and caused a serious delay. All three laughingly saluted each other as of old, back in the mists of time in the U.S. Imperial Near East. And it turned out that all the large, handsome, oddly beardless man with a majestic white mane and watery blue eyes, seemed to want to talk about was the theory of Peter Novak and no doubt others, about the soul and spirit splitting asunder at death, leading to a diminished and hopelessly disabled, spirited, though tragically subconscious eternal slumber.

  Montmorecy, it emerged, had become a great acolyte of Novak’s separation-at-death doctrine, because, as nearly as Colonel Crystal could figure, it effectively blurred and fuzzed up the loathed “pie-in-the sky” doctrine which, on no empirical grounds, all the churches pedaled. And it did have that effect, despite its leading to the apparent drawback attached of spending an eternity as a cognizant vegetable – “a pretty damn gloomy future!” to quote the ex-General.

  But how to counter this notion without succumbing to the almost equally dreaded “sugar-coating”? “Do you mean to tell me,” Colonel Alva asked his brilliant guest and perhaps most-valued friend, “that those who come back following what is called a “near-death experience," supposedly having witnessed and documented the results of such a split, if such there be, themselves, are forever as they live anew back on earth, likewise saddled with consequences by which they can’t plan or act or experience anything new? Or, could there be, alternatively, some built-in mechanism that kicks back in as they re-enter their bodies, returning from the ante-room of death they describe, that conveniently re-unites the two immortal parts of them, the soul and the spirit, permitting them to pursue natural extended lives without the dreaded limitation you insist on?”

  “Well, I guess I’ll have to think about that one. If you’re sure they’re really on the level.”

  Pat frowned and nodded, characteristically sympathetic to both.

  But Colonel Crystal was ready, after months of pondering this proposition himself, prompted by a note from the General, to pursue his argument rejecting Novak’s implications with finality.

  “No,” he said, following a pause, “I think of it more like turning off a light, if such an extinguishment were to take place following death. When you switch off a light, if such an extinguishment were to take place at that point, that is, when you do switch off a light in a room in real life, you are not exactly destroying the light. Because the potential is still there, ready to stage a full re-appearance the instant the circuit is re-connected by turning the light on again. I think it’s more like that, if anything. The conscious element, in fact, remains, because the soul and spirit are actually inseparable aspects, and the conscious element remains latent until a new embodiment occurs, reactivating it.”

  The good ex-General slowly shook his head and sighed deeply, again having to take his friend’s new argument under further consideration.

  “Even if the great minds who passed over through the ages found they had to creatively rig up something for themselves in response, it just wouldn’t be like creative nature to passively destroy, or rig for destruction, its probable crown jewel, active consciousness.” Colonel Alva concluded. “And again, what would be the mechanism that would affect such a separation of integral aspects?” He waited for an answer that was not immediately forthcoming. And at this new, further suggestion, both the ex-General and Pat sat straight up, eyes open wide, but a little blood-shot from their long journey, their minds processing the suggestion, before conceding that the matter indeed deserved further thought and a good night’s sleep.

  XXI

  Prelude to Insubordination Most Foul

  So then, finally, around 3:00 in the morning, they all went off to bed, the couple in the “bridal chamber” and he in his lordly hammock on the screened porch.

  In late morning, after sharing fresh mango slices, coffee, and toast, the three usual in-effect voluntary barboys and rum-runners brought the papers of the day that they’d picked up someplace around and sped off in Kit’s truck. The indomitable General Frank and Pat – who had apparently discussed the matter for most of what remained of the night – were, amazingly, primed and eager to resume the discussion of the alleged separation of soul from spirit at death, claiming such to be empirically verified any number of times by testimony of innumerable “Near-Death Experiences” sub-terminated in what were called the “nether realms."

  This point Colonel Crystal countered by stating that the experience over a lifetime of perhaps billions of earthly souls had affirmed sufficiently, he thought, the existence of a positive “grace” readily present for all, of both whatever and no creed, when called upon or appealed to. And this, he said, attested to the continuity of life and experience as the norm or standard, reasonably precluding anyone’s life experience being systematically debilitated or coldly ended. End of story,

  And, in consequence, he affirmed – perhaps most surprisingly for himself, no theist, exactly – that anyone who had the experience of providence and sustenance must surely reject such a suggestion of a fatal split as a universal, programmed-in fate.

  The good ex-General, unable to counter this proposition forthrightly, perhaps lacking awareness of said widely-shared subjective experience himself, stated that he supposed that they would just have to disagree on the matter at present.

  * * *

  After a light lunch of crispy fish croquettes that Ludmilla put together, Colonel Alva managed to switch the conversation to his secondary obsession of late, with the case of Will Goldsby. He asked his mentor if he considered his suspicion plausible, that the seemingly tailor-made sexual accusations against the man who had rained on the establishment’s parade might be the result of a near-flawless hit job.

  “Oh, good god, yes!” the ex-General all but exploded. “The man may be as guilty as sin – very likely, he is. But you can’t expect establishment operatives, in what you most fittingly call the ‘FIB’, or in other significant posts, to take such a drubbing as Goldsby playing Cliff Honeycutt dealt to the bill of goods they long and very cleverly and expensively sold to the public about the overall dissoluteness of blacks, without courting the ‘respectable establishment’s’ fury at some point. And the only reason Goldsby escaped this far with his life could be to set him up for a quite different role that was being planned, as an object of perception-altering humiliation and scorn. They play the long game.”

  He continued. “It seems most likely to me that such an elaborate frame-up could have been the handiwork of some surviving apprentice, or disciple, of old J. Edgar, the FIB’s master of low realpolitik. No two ways about it. The troglodyte bloodline survives.”

  Pat shook her head at his suggestion and frowned, this time disapproving – expressing a rare point of disagreement. Her husband plunged on regardless, banging a fist on the table, rattling the silver. “So, as you see it, is there any way that Goldsby wasn’t at al
l guilty of the actions he is charged with?” ex-Colonel Crystal asked his guest.

  “Well, he may have done it once – bad enough. Twice? and I’ll even concede that – maybe on a bet or something. Maybe more. 49 times 3, leaving himself wide-open to multiple lawsuits and certain headaches? I don’t think so. For what? I mean, that sort of beggars the imagination, don’t you think? I mean, if he could do it, he could do it. No imaginable need to repeat it over and over and over. Especially since he could have gotten all of that sort of quasi-intimate satiation he could handle without courting all the fuss. Of course, maybe he’s a dare-devil! But no one’s claiming he’s obsessive- or excessive-compulsive, it seems. I agree with you – it doesn’t quite add up. Except as a plan to bring him, with his sterling reputation, crashing down – which it most certainly has done. Then again, just maybe he did do it all – you never know! Do you have a plan for investigating and possibly bringing it out?”

  “No, not yet. I do have a few sources to check to try to ferret it out. But it’s more likely the real PI’s would break it open, if anybody.”

  “Please keep me posted.”

  “I will.”

  “You know,” ex-General Montmoracy brought up, “it’s been damn hard being what some consider a radical dissident, about the wars, I mean – even if I don’t, or didn’t, push it very far – as a prominent member of the retired and active corps of commanding officers. They seem to look at me as some kind of Benedict Arnold, just for daring to voice my opinion. Seriously. I think I’m being bugged 24/7 – as are you, probably right now, for expressing what we both know is right.

  “And that’s the reason I came all the way down here, along with it being good to see you – because I know you at least have a lick of sense and the mind of a sane and persistent observer, and surely do understand.”

  “Thank you. Yes, I know. You bet I do! That’s why I moved down here, to this forgotten, but cozy, little corner of the planet.

  Come on out, y’all, and let me show you both around this place that I’ve hacked out of the cypress and sawgrass-choked shore of the Gulf.”

  They got up and followed him out the curtained door at the far end of his rustic main room into a slightly unkempt yard fenced by split rails laid end-to-end.

  “Well, you do have Gulf frontage and a hell of a view here, don’t you? Even if it’s looking out over a few million acres of swamp! Honestly, though, this is breathtaking, Al!”

  “Yes, it certainly is!” Pat preened.

  “That’s Florida!” Colonel Alva beamed. “You, too, can own a little piece of it, still half-wild.” He watched closely, his eyes widening, as the General moved to park his foot up on a fallen log, ten or twelve feet from the house.

  “General – Franklin – stop! Don’t move!! Now, back up. That’s it, as slowly as you can! Easy… That’s it! Easy…”

  The faces of both the General and his wife turned ashen and assumed identical expressions of horror.

  “Crocodile, and he’s a beaut!” Colonel Alva exclaimed in an excited whisper. “I’ve never heard of one up this side of St. Pete before! Let’s get ourselves back in the house for now,” he commanded, feeling the stinging, nearly-choking, scorching heat under the bandaging on his neck impinge on his wind-pipe again.

  XXII

  Maximum Creativity – Opposing the Official Line

  Before his departure, the great General A. F. Montmoracy (in effect the Gurdjieff to Colonel Crystal’s Ouspensky) compared notes with his host as to why the two of them stood alone far distant from their peers, at least outwardly, in interpreting the sequence of events in the current world.

  A significant small contingent of their semi-elite circle lambasted and condemned their “radical, close to treasonous” bent in discourse, accusing them – though not publicly yet – of reckless stupidity and calumny; the rest politely abstained, for the moment. They were forced to ask themselves: could their maligners be right in some incisive, better understanding way?

  Together, they laughed bitterly and pooh-poohed such a vagrant suggestion, heartily agreeing that the vast holes in their select military comrades’ fawning interpretation of the world were due not to their inability to reason or process plain facts, but to a determined mass refusal to do so, bowing to worldly incentives and, in particular, to dire disincentives.

  In other words, by being bought or coerced by an establishment displaying only scorn for judgment independent of its own or its mentors’, of any stripe, unfortunately, did not fall outside their view of ethics or what passed for humanity. If they had to, in order to avoid ostracism and personal downfall, the fall-in-liners would readily enough agree with the powers-that-be that a scruffy overgrown troll on dialysis hunkered in a cave on the other side of the earth, commanding an even scruffier cast of lackeys, all provably members of a pseudo-organization of functionaries recruited and coddled by U.S.military intel lacking even rooky-level aeronautical skills, brought down three massive high-rise buildings standing like strong but slender needles, lost in the midst of a sea of Manhattan skyscrapers, with precisely two unlikely (to say the least) precise head-on hits by hijacked jumbo jet airliners flown at supersonic speed.

  And they also apparently crashed another such, roughly 211 foot-wide aircraft, leaving only a 16-foot-wide hole in the Pentagon, it would seem, and no significant or in any way identifiable wreckage, after performing an impossible 300-plus-degree descent in a matter of seconds. And they would, no doubt, if required by higher command, also steadfastly insist that since the moon was round and cheese was round, the moon was pure 100% Grade A Swiss – look at the holes!

  And, no doubt, it never occurred to any of them that they were in the utterly foreign Middle East busting guts and heads and lives and rousting fine people out of their bombshell-obliterated ancestral homes and shooting them in the street, or inside if they wouldn’t come out, shaking with fear, regardless of age or gender, not for the benefit somehow of three hundred million-plus ordinary Americans or to protect the territorial integrity of the United States. No, they were there to further raise the fat bottom lines of a dozen-to-three-dozen or a few more gargantuan mega-companies and top-grade financiers, paid for by every other American’s considerable manifold financial and lifestyle sacrifice.

  As these two retired rogue officers talked in that vein and started to vent, the anger and shock of being two lone outspoken heretics continued to mount, at finding virtually zero backup or give among their fellows. Even though they were suggesting the military’s rejection and disablement of a policy of what amounted to systematic piracy on an immense scale backed by scurrilous intrigue, lies, and disdain for others, a policy to destabilize and topple, using deception to buy a degree of international acquiescence and tepid partnership from sovereign governments beyond our own. In the process, the daily narrative was mangled, with no regard for the truth or even the domestic and foreign patrons’ intelligence, while effective control was extended, announced and unannounced, over a hundred countries beyond our borders, at the astronomical expense of completely clueless “patriotic” U.S. taxpayers.

  The legitimate military mission of the U.S., the two agreed, is clear: to protect the country’s shores and borders and land-mass and the American citizenry within from foreign invasion and insurrection, if only by a show of unassailable strength – which was quite possible to do. The Constitution said that. The Constitutionally-mandated mission was never to choose sides in fratricidal conflicts overseas, some of them centuries old, some conjured, or to endeavor to brutishly and preemptively pacify and remake the whole earth to suit a foreign policy elite mainly in one distant polity, the United States.

  And so, the two resolved to make a list, which they mutually believed would be regarded as rebellious and high treasonous, and scorned, at least initially, by all the others in their cadre of former officers, and certainly by the shakers and movers at the top – that is, a list of their chief grievances to be addressed, all enormously substantial, against the dan
gerously evolved policy governing the application of U.S. military power and its presumed role. That was quite a lot, but it was precisely what they resolved to achieve.

  XXIII

  Plotting the Unsinkable

  The two high ex-officers determined, at the outset, that since they would not be divulging and privileged information, they would not need or strive to justify their stated manifold opposition to the official and related sorts of acts involving the U.S. military. Because, the right to stand in judgment was already enshrined for all, of high or low standing, and for all time, by the First Amendment.

  Instead of resisting criticism per se, the original plan of the Founders was that the country’s establishment when widely challenged is to be held accountable to its citizens for grievances – and such was, in fact, these friends of liberty and patriots’ fondest hope for indulgence and support from the ordinary, run-of-the-mill citizenry.

  So, the question was, how to most effectively mount their plea in this case for the address of their grievances? It was not an easy problem to confront. First, citizens must be clearly and adequately informed – contrary, where necessary, to long decades of disinformation, to even centuries-old widespread propaganda. Then they must come to an agreement or understanding between themselves as to the particular nature of their grievances, and petition the government, inviting others to join them, in a thoughtful, persuasive, and accurate manner. But, what if they find that the government is sold out to others, so as to in effect avoid and reject the means of redress originally provided? Such, they agreed, was probably the case, and if it was, it would become an even thornier problem. Still, pressure on elected officials could prevail, and the ultimate result they were seeking was not hard in itself to grasp: a “Defense Only Military."