The Home Front

by Margaret Vandenburg

  Think of me not as your guide but as a fellow sojourner on the path to truth.

  Close your eyes and listen to the voice within: The Source.

  Rose closed her eyes. A chorus of panpipes floated over the voice. Their hollow timbre amplified the rich fullness of Tashi’s intonation of the Seven Principles of the Universe.

  Thoughts are the most powerful force in the universe, the author of everything.

  Nothing negative can happen when we think positive thoughts.

  What we resist persists.

  Disease is a state of mind; every illness of the body can be healed by healthy thoughts.

  Lack and scarcity are illusions; the universe is infinitely abundant.

  Gratitude manifests things to be grateful for.

  Perfection, prosperity, and peace are the divine birthright of collective consciousness.

  Open your eyes.

  Several icons appeared on the screen, including the eye of Horus, yin-yang, and ⇔, the symbol for the Law of Infinite Return. Rose clicked on ⇔ and the voice started reciting the Seven Principles all over again. It could have been conjugating Latin verbs for all she cared. Tashi’s website was a living, breathing thing. The word made flesh. Her voice inhabited the home page the way oracles inhabited Delphi. One click of the mouse and the mysteries of the universe would unfold, one galaxy after another, all of them underscored by what sounded like the harmony of the spheres. Her voice. It was all about Tashi’s voice.

  A vast network of links was designed to either soothe or inspire, depending on the heart-centered intention of the acolyte. Rose gravitated toward the former in the wake of her discouraging Floortime session with Max. She clicked on the rod of Asclepius, the icon corresponding to the Fourth Principle. Disease is a state of mind. A river appeared, winding through a landscape of astounding fecundity. Healing thoughts eddied in its currents. With the help of time-lapse photography, a brilliant sun rose over its placid waters. A list of payment plans rose with it.

  For a flat fee, pilgrims could consult their oracle as often as they wished. Celestial membership included enrollment in weekly webinars. For an additional $200 a month, Higher Power members received a pass code authorizing direct contact with Tashi herself via e-mail. The most expensive option, the Cosmic Consciousness Club, granted access to her cell phone number. Less exalted members could purchase telephone time at reasonable rates beginning at $75 per call. No one, not even the CCC, ever met with Tashi in person. Not unlike God, her invisibility enhanced her mystique. Rose clicked on MasterCard and opted for the Introductory Plan, which included a complimentary five-minute phone conversation. Just hearing Tashi’s voice would be worth the price of admission: $79.99.

  Navigating the website was like taking a virtual tour of the natural wonders of the world. Every trackless beach and desert was backlit by a brilliant sunset. Every towering peak was caressed by rays of light reaching like the hand of God from the firmament. The site’s resources were as inexhaustible as truth itself, with more links than the Great Chain of Being. There were links to mantras and meditations and visualization exercises. Links to daily, even hourly aphorisms, hailing from antiquity to the newest of New Age practices. The core beliefs of an amazing array of prophets, mystics, and philosophers of the soul were distilled into pithy slogans you could contemplate on your way to the supermarket or while getting your hair done. Tashi understood that spirituality needed to keep pace with tweets and sound bites, and she tailored her teachings accordingly. The Source was a practice, like naturopathy and yoga, a way to live more mindfully every minute of every day.

  The scope of the World Wide Web paled in comparison with the vision of the Source, which encompassed the entire universe. But on that very first day, prior to her unforeseen cosmic conversion, Rose was focused on one little boy trapped in the confines of his own mind. She returned to the main menu and clicked on the rod of Asclepius once again. This time the link ushered her into a world free of disease, where pathology was more a state of mind than an actual affliction.

  Visualizing health will manifest well-being.

  Illness is, above all, a failure of the imagination.

  A preliminary disclaimer acknowledged that genetics and heredity could potentially figure into the etiology of disease. But inherited tendencies were activated by lack of spiritual and cognitive integrity, the ultimate cause of everything from cancer to the common cold. The Source provided a lengthy list of so-called diseases, each with its own link. More often than not, they reflected unresolved emotional issues. Adultonset diabetes was rooted in self-hatred, often exacerbated by parental or marital rejection. Autoimmune disorders were a physical manifestation of spiritual suicide. Hemorrhoids were a nagging reminder of chronic rage. A second disclaimer dismissed the belief that the power of positive thinking could cure anything and everything, something rival philosophies liked to claim. Truth be told, there was nothing to cure to begin with. Disease models of medicine predisposed patients to manifest symptoms. Diagnoses were like magnets, attracting rather than preventing illness.

  Rose was conflicted. In spite of Dr. Dillard’s woeful negativity, his diagnosis had provided a kind of relief. It gave her something to fight against, an adversary she could overwhelm with the help of modern medicine. A part of her believed that setting up Max’s treatment guaranteed a cure. The more elaborate the treatment, the more quickly he would progress toward normalcy. But dozens of tests and procedures and hundreds of therapy sessions later, Max was pretty much where he started, smack in the middle of the spectrum. She couldn’t bear the thought of another nine months of the same, especially when adjusting her thoughts promised to change things instantaneously and forever. At the very least, the Source promised to transform desperation into hope. She clicked on Autism, fully expecting the miracle that had eluded her thus far.

  Autism consists of superficial neurological impairment on the one hand and profoundly enhanced powers of intuition and cognition on the other.

  This spectrum of abilities proves that children on the spectrum are genetically predisposed to both autism and spirituality.

  By spirituality we mean heightened cognitive capacities, as follows:

  Contemporary culture overemphasizes left-brain functions, thereby undermining capacities related to the right brain, including intuition, spontaneity, creativity, and varieties of spiritual experience valued more highly in ancient and Eastern realms less infatuated with the cult of reason.

  Spirituality and transcendence are only possible when we strike a balance between right- and left-brain functioning, connecting the two hemispheres through heightened neural activity.

  Our souls are hungry for this balance.

  Children with autism choose to tolerate heightened brain activity in order to elevate humanity to higher levels of spiritual expression.

  The value of a spiritual view of autism is that it transforms limitation and helplessness into a sense of purpose and meaning.

  We should be listening to the voice of autism rather than silencing it.

  Autism is prophetic.

  Rose had never thought much about spirituality. When they were first married, she and Todd had gone to church a few times, mostly for show. His first commanding officer was a born-again Christian. But even the prospect of promotion paled in comparison with Sunday mornings in bed. The body was infinitely more important than the soul, especially in those early days before the kids were born. In retrospect, her spiritual indifference corroborated the idea that flesh and spirit had, in fact, been sundered by the same misguided cultural forces that pathologized her son. No one, least of all doctors and ministers, ever considered the possibility that we might be naturally healthy and intrinsically whole. The doctrine of genetic predisposition was no different than the theory of original sin. The focus was always on what was wrong rather than what was right.

  An overwhelming sense of relief washed over what must have been Rose’s soul. Without realizing it, she had blamed herself for her son
’s condition. She was too protective a mother to do otherwise. Never mind the fact that Maureen was a perfectly normal kid. Her success with her daughter was more an accusation than a comfort, further evidence of her failure with Max. Within minutes, the Source assuaged her guilt. The website employed a kind of logical inevitability that appealed to Rose’s rational side, paving the way, step by step, for insights she had never thought possible. She, of all people, had been trapped in a web of negativity, treating autism as though it were an illness rather than an opportunity. By the time she logged off the site, hours later, she understood that no one was to blame for Max’s condition. No one was to blame for anything. Seen from an enlightened perspective, everything was as it should be in the universe.

  * * *

  The best place is Daddy’s closet. Everything is orderly. Everything smells the same, like leather, unless he buries his nose in the shirts. They all hang facing the same direction, smelling like laundry detergent. There are three flight suits and one dress uniform with gold buttons that shine even when the door is almost closed. He always leaves it open a crack because Daddy does. Otherwise someone might notice and find him in there.

  He isn’t hiding. He’s protecting himself. In the back, behind a row of sweaters, there’s room to sit all curled up in a ball, the way he wishes they’d let him sit at the dinner table. He never gets to do what he wants except in the closet. Or at night when they’re all asleep. He wants to be left alone. To be safe.

  Belts pose the only real threat. Daddy keeps messing them up, hanging short ones next to long ones. There are five hooks and nine belts. Ten counting the one Daddy wears to work. Sometimes three hang together, crowding one hook and leaving another one empty. Two belts per hook are fine, as long as they’re both the same color and the same length. He sorts them out before climbing onto his shelf. Black with black and brown with brown. He gives the widest belt its own hook.

  He’s taking a chance. Daddy keeps track of things and might notice. But sitting in a closet with belts hanging every which way is unthinkable. No better than the living room or even his bedroom, ever since they dismantled the lock. Someone is always barging in. Something is always out of place. Out of control. He takes comfort where he can find it. Daddy’s closet is safe.

  ~ III ~

  Everything was business as usual after the civilian casualty episode. Captain Frick carried out Colonel Trumble’s order to commend Brown for following orders. Otherwise, nobody ever mentioned it again. Day in and day out, the most serious threat in the trailer was boredom. The US Air Force had developed an arsenal of amphetamines to fend off battle fatigue. Since Chair Force drone pilots weren’t technically on combat duty, they had to rely on caffeine. Todd was the only coffee drinker. According to his calculations, this said a lot about the demographics of the squad. The drug of choice was Mountain Dew. The recycling bin was overflowing with cans by noon, especially on Mondays. Weekend warriors one and all. Presumably their bins at home were just as jammed with beer bottles.

  Business as usual meant everybody was in surveillance mode. A flick of a switch could catapult any one of the drones into kill mode. This simple fact convinced bad guys thousands of miles away to lay low for weeks at a time. What the Pentagon called the Panopticon Effect supposedly saved lives and money. A single Predator drone could paralyze an entire region with paranoia, even in North Waziristan. That was the good news. The bad news was that it made war boring as hell. No wonder guys had itchy trigger fingers. Anything to break the monotony.

  Every pilot had his own SO, a sensor operator tasked with tracking targets with the drone’s million dollar eye in the sky. The sensor was always in motion, rotating and swiveling and zooming its way into the secret recesses of enemy territory. Even though pilots actually pulled the trigger in combat mode, they had to rely on their sidekicks to steer laser-guided bombs home to mama. They worked as a team, surrounded by more than a dozen monitors transmitting electro-optical digital images, radar scans, full-motion video streams, and 3-D terrain mapping. The sheer volume of information at their fingertips was mind-numbing. In the spirit of professional multitaskers, they alleviated the anaesthetizing effects of overstimulation with yet more stimulation, inventing interactive games to play with each other, the more juvenile the better. Their favorite was an unmanned aerial vehicle version of Slug Bug.

  “Read ’em and weep, fellas,” Brown said. “A bona fide Volkswagen.”

  “A bug?”

  “A Jedi.”

  “You mean Jetta,” said Gomez.

  Gomez wasn’t really correcting Brown. They were thinking together, as usual. He had actually spotted the VW even before Brown did, smack in the middle of one of their shared screens. But good SOs never stole their pilot’s thunder. Batman and Robin. The Lone Ranger and Tonto. Brown and Gomez.

  “Jedi. Jetta. Good for a point, one way or the other.”

  “Hold your horses,” Kucher said. The senior member of the squad, he resented the fact that Brown was so cocky. “Sedans don’t count.”

  “It’s red.”

  “Red as a fairy’s cherry.”

  “Big deal.”

  “Green and red are wild cards.”

  “Since when?”

  “Last week.”

  “Says who?”

  “Ask Franklin.”

  “Fair ball,” said Franklin. “Chalk one up for Brown.”

  Captain Franklin was the scorekeeper. The rules were so complicated, he used a spreadsheet to tally up points. He also acted as referee when sightings were disputed, almost always by Kucher. Franklin inherited a kind of gravitas from his father, a Seattle judge who still couldn’t believe his son had joined the air force. The odds were certainly against it from a socioeconomic point of view. Franklin was the only white collar son in the trailer.

  “Who’s winning?” Poindexter asked. He knew perfectly well that Brown was in the lead, but he couldn’t resist the chance to rub Kucher’s face in it. Everyone was sick and tired of hearing the old guy bitch and moan. Almost inconceivably, Kucher was born before Pac-Man was invented, when kids still played foosball. Anyone over thirty was considered obsolete in the digital age.

  With the exception of Todd and Captain Frick, who had both trained at the academy, Kucher was the only member of the squad who wished they were flying F-15s and 16s rather than Reapers and Predators. Back in the day, there was reason to believe that exceptional drone operators might eventually qualify for redeployment as traditional combat pilots. A decade later, guys like him were more trouble than they were worth. What the air force really needed was recruits accustomed to spending every waking hour staring at handheld devices and computer screens. They never pined for actual combat duty because simulation felt more real than the real thing.

  “Don’t be such a sore loser,” Poindexter said.

  “Not so fast,” Kucher said. “Ring me up. Five big ones.”

  “An SUV?”

  “A jackal.”

  Half the time, they cruised over regions too remote or too poor to offer much in the way of cars, let alone SUVs. Locals were more apt to ride donkeys or yaks. So they developed an elaborate system of equivalencies. American cars, which were relatively rare in Afghanistan, were worth ten points. So were wild goats and ibex, which had been hunted almost to extinction. Grey wolves and striped hyenas were worth nine points, along with limousines and high-end sports cars. They usually played to 100, which could take either hours or days, depending on flight patterns. There had only been one sighting of the ever elusive Beetle, an automatic game winner. Judging from the ensuing ruckus, Todd thought they’d spotted Osama bin Laden himself barreling down the Karakoram Highway. The entire trailer went bananas.

  When they got tired of Slug Bug, they played Scavenger Hunt or Burqa Bingo. The same kind of squabbles broke out, no matter what game they played. They sounded more like kids in backseats than pilots in cockpits. Todd felt like the grumpy dad, always on the verge of telling them to knock it off. But he knew bette
r than to feed into this dynamic. It was a losing battle. Discipline for the sake of discipline, the bread and butter of the old air force, was counterproductive with this new breed of pilots. Every time he intervened, the whole squad lapsed into sullen silence. Besides, they actually performed better when they were horsing around. The camaraderie of troops in the field was sadly lacking among drone pilots, who bunked in bachelor pads rather than with each other. Slug Bug did wonders for their morale.

  Lieutenant Farley was the only spoilsport. He was way too focused to indulge in fun and games. At first Todd chalked it up to maturity. Then he realized something wasn’t quite right upstairs. Farley’s attention span was preternatural. For hours at a time, his eyes never strayed from his monitors. He executed his maneuvers with robotic precision, as though he himself were a drone. It got to the point where Todd actually wished he would start farting around, if only to prove he was still human. There was a point beyond which detachment was a liability rather than an asset. Todd notified Colonel Trumble, requesting a medical evaluation that resulted in a clean bill of health. Given the exigencies of supply and demand, post-traumatic stress diagnoses were increasingly rare, especially for guys like Farley who had never stepped foot on a battlefield. The air force couldn’t train officers fast enough to keep up with the proliferation of remotely piloted aircraft deployed in the war on terror.

  Todd knew damned good and well that his RPA squad was at least as prone to PTSD as combat pilots, possibly even more so. They worked longer hours, day in and day out, with no better way to blow off steam than playing Slug Bug. They rarely got the chance to pull the trigger, which is why most men joined the armed forces in the first place. Adrenaline rushes were the real drug of choice, not Mountain Dew. Even when they did see action, the aftermath was gruesome rather than heroic. Drone pilots were expected to verify the accuracy of their strikes, flying back and forth until the dust settled to assess the damage. SOs zoomed into ground zero, and pilots filed the reports. Whatever satisfaction they derived from missions accomplished was always tempered by high-resolution pictures of wreckage strewn with body parts, something Todd had never witnessed during his three tours of active duty overseas. This had been Farley’s undoing. He liked dropping bombs as well as the next guy. He just didn’t have the stomach for what Colonel Trumble euphemistically called the paperwork.