by John Nelson
There was a long pause at the other end. “We’ve been thinking much the same ourselves, but didn’t want to … bias your take on it.”
I didn’t respond, feeling it was better to play off him than offer any more insights.
Musgrave continued, “What did she say about Brenda’s reaction, or how it undermined her neural processor? I assumed you broached the subject.”
Since I had the call on video as well as speaker-phone for Emma to overhear, she stepped back and shook her head. I agreed not to tell him Maria’s suspicions about behavior modifications.
“Fria said the energy’s supposed to compensate, so people don’t get overwhelmed by an outpouring of repressed feelings or emotions, but it also depends on the person’s cooperation at all levels.”
There was a catch in his voice. “So she’s seen this happen before?”
“Yes, all her healers have witnessed it.”
“And nobody warns people ahead of time?” Musgrave asked rather skeptically.
“At the services someone says that the energy will affect modern neural processors, but since they’re made of one’s own brain tissue, it should compensate but depends on people’s willingness to work with it.”
“Okay, at the next service, have Emma get a healing, and the two of you head back to Phoenix for a checkup.”
“You’re back?” I asked.
“Yeah, we want to get another reading on how it affects … more integrated people—I think is the term Klaus uses—and then we’ll decide if or how to approach her.”
“You’re still thinking the double agent ploy will work, despite the fact that I don’t think she’s got that kind of agenda.”
“Well, whatever her agenda, one of her healers did a number on the secretary of commerce and his wife, and they’re in the same psyche ward as Jean.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Alan, I know you’ve got … close to her, and that’s part of the assignment and why we chose you, but there’s a lot more going on here than you’ve assumed.”
“I guess so,” I said, and actually felt rather perplexed by this disclosure.
This seemed to have the effect on me that Musgrave was hoping to elicit. “Alan, play it by the book, and Emma goes home and you get a leg up on some real power brokering.”
“Okay. They’ve been holding services on Sundays, so that may be the soonest we can get her in.”
“Well, they’ve just posted a Thursday service this week, so attend that and we’ll expect you on Friday.”
I hesitated. This dance was going much too fast.
“Any problems with that, Alan?”
“No, of course not. We’ll go forward as planned,” I said.
“Good. And no more … excursions unless they’re approved by me in advance. Got that?”
“Sure.”
“Friday then.” He ended the call.
I looked over at Emma.
“He’s definitely suspicious,” she said, “and I bet he’s monitoring the traffic going in and out of Jerome.”
I nodded my head. “Well, we’re just scoping this out as best we can, and Sedona was a real key to the puzzle.”
Emma nodded her head. “What do you think Maria’s going to come back to us with?”
I felt my way through my response. “That’s just it. She’s not logic-based but intuitive, and it’s hard to assess her in … customary ways.”
“Then use your own intuition,” Emma insisted.
I shook my head. “I can’t just tap into her like she does with others, but something will come to me.”
Since the stress of it all had pretty well wiped us out, we took a nap and later we went shopping. Emma fixed us dinner in the small kitchenette in my room. But we decided that it was best to maintain our previous sleeping arrangement and cover, or at least for most of the residents, so Emma went back to her room. We resumed our normal routine of me writing at the Iguana Café, and Emma doing research at the library and us conferring on the book. I felt that this outside focus would keep our minds settled and allow our subconscious mind or our intuition to feed us its insights more readily. At some point I realized that my real allegiance, as Maria had asked, was if not with her and her group, with this greater unfolding; and that once I decided to be of service to it, the path would open. I told Emma my thoughts and she agreed, and we made a kind of pact. It all sounded rather naïve, like teenage sleuths, but Emma thought the purity of that image was appropriate.
Thursday we attended the healing service, and Emma stood in line and received hers. Interestingly enough, Maria didn’t do greetings on the church steps afterward, but we had good eye contact at one point in the service, and I didn’t feel any tension on her part. While Emma had downplayed the possible effect on her, she was greatly moved by the energy and given that it was a night service, she wanted to return to our hotel and get some alone time. On our walk back, I could see that she wasn’t agitated, but then neither was Jean at first, so I asked for her room key—in case she fell asleep—to check up on her later. I actually fell off to sleep myself and when I woke up, I went to Emma’s room and found her sitting up in bed in a meditative posture.
“How goes it?”
“Just amazing. I can feel this energy running through my body like gangbusters. It feels like I’m going to jump out of my skin at any moment.”
I stepped over, sat on the bed, and took her hand. The body contact seemed to work like a ground wire and the energy surged back into me. I closed my eyes as it spread out through my body. When I opened them, Emma had stripped down and told me to do the same. I lay on the bed while she mounted me and we made love, slowing down at times so as not to get too aroused. Then the flow of the sexual energy just reversed itself and sped up our spines and exploded in our heads, and we had a deep ecstatic melding like neither of us had ever experienced. At some point Emma rolled off and lay next to me. We held each other’s hands and just allowed this energy to continue to race through our bodies and apparently align not only our chakras, but amazingly enough our neural processors as well, or so it seemed to us. Eventually we fell asleep lying next to each other. It wasn’t a deep sleep and I felt conscious most of the time, but there was this nagging certainty that our rendezvous in Phoenix the following day, wouldn’t be as elevated an experience.
Chapter Fourteen
40.
We rose early the next morning and packed for our trip to Phoenix. I suggested to Emma that we both flush our neural processors so at least these records couldn’t be used against us. They hold about two week’s worth of data: conversations, what we read, write and view, but not our thought processes, or at least not yet or not that I was aware of. Since we’d been hashing out our suspicions about this mission over the last couple of weeks, we didn’t want them privy to it.
“And our reasons?” Emma asked.
“If it comes down to that, we’ll say we’ve been sleeping with each other and didn’t want them to know.”
“So you’re thinking this is going to get hostile?”
“Actually, more invasive than hostile, as they try to figure out the effects of this energy on our processors, but given the level of deception going on here, I really don’t know what to expect.”
Emma sat down on the edge of the bed to check her own feelings and intuitions on our prospects. “You know, we never went back to Maria and got her feedback.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking it’s best to leave her out of this and just go it alone for now.”
Emma looked up at me. “You really care about her?”
This gave me pause. “Well, not in any romantic sense, but more like a mentor or revered teacher.”
Emma reached out and took my hand. “That’s what I meant, Alan.”
It was my turn to get a good sense of her. “You know, you could just … drop out again.”
“And leave you hanging in the wind?” She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
We ate breakfast in Prescot
t, at a diner I had frequented with Brenda. The waitress seemed to make note of the switch. After she poured our coffee and walked away, I mentioned this to Emma.
She laughed. “Boy, aren’t we paranoid today. I doubt if Musgrave is staking out diners along the way.”
I nodded my head, sat back in the booth.
“Relax, Alan. It is what it is, and I’ll trade one ecstatic coupling like last night’s for … whatever awaits us.”
We headed out. It was a clear sunny day, and we were both just mesmerized by the desert drive and the sheer beauty of the natural world around us and the energy that emanated from it. When my remote buzzed, it really jolted us. It was Musgrave. He was directing us to the Air Force base, where the military doctor had earlier tried to extract Jean’s neural processor.
“They have better facilities for an in-depth debrief,” he told me.
I just went along with him. After I clicked off, neither of us said anything for a moment.
“So, you’re thinking this isn’t a good sign?” Emma finally asked.
“Well, they’d have invasive interrogation capability, and electronic brain scan equipment and whatnot.”
“Alan, why set up a worst case scenario? As far as they know, we’ve been following through on our mission, despite our own private reservations, unless we tell them otherwise.”
“Or are ‘forced’ to tell them otherwise.”
Emma reached over and took my hand but didn’t say anything. We drove on and reached the base about forty-five minutes later. We were directed to a parking space, and walked inside the main building where a military grunt escorted us down several hallways, to a conference room with armed guards outside. Musgrave and Klaus were waiting inside for us.
Seeing Klaus was a surprise. “I didn’t think you liked the sun,” I told him as Musgrave pointed to our seats across from them.
“Well, everybody needs to come in from the dark eventually,” he replied rather cryptically. I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just smiled.
Musgrave now added, “Let me explain your debrief. First, the two of us want to go over your general impressions of Maria Fria and her group, then we’ll have both of your neural processors checked out. You’ll be given a series of tests, and Dr. Klaus will conduct an in-depth with Alan.”
Since Musgrave was looking at me and treating Emma more like an add-on to the mission, I nodded my head in agreement.
“Good. Alan, after three months, you still believe that Fria is just a healer and doesn’t have an anti-government agenda?”
“Yes, but then the results of their healings could be threatening and she may be … aware of that.”
Klaus nodded his head. “Good. Threatening, how?” he asked.
“Well, from my own personal experience, as I’ve said, it seems like the neural processors, while bestowing added intelligence, do create a kind of schism in the psyche that represses … the feeling function, I believe you called it, Dr. Klaus.”
“And?”
“These healings—and possibly not just hers but this whole arena of holistic healing—might ‘adjust’ the processors to allow more integration of feelings and intuitions, which will make …”
Musgrave held up his hand. “Alan, it seems like we’re moving into an area of speculation that I’d rather Emma not be privy to … or to our feedback, since you’ve no doubt discussed this amongst yourselves.” He turned to Emma. “Why don’t we just do your checkup now?” Musgrave stood up and escorted Emma out of the room. I didn’t try to catch her eye, which might have given away too much.
“So, do we wait for Musgrave to return?”
“Yes, he does get cranky if he’s left out,” Klaus said with a wry smile.
Momentarily, Musgrave returned and took his seat. “You were saying.”
“That the integration of repressed feelings might make people more integrated and less subject to manipulation at all levels.”
“Very astute of you, Alan,” Klaus added. “So, you feel more … integrated and able to better fend off outside manipulation, electronic and otherwise?”
I took a deep breath so not to overreact. “After my healing with Fria, I felt less driven and on-edge and I seem to see things more … objectively.”
“A development that, while helpful for a few … overseers, we wouldn’t want to generally encourage,” Klaus said.
This was rather revealing, but I didn’t comment. However, he must have detected a telltale micro expression or facial reaction on my part.
“In so far as,” Klaus added hastily, “the social dynamics of our rather compromised ecological system dictates the need for … continued oversight.”
“I understand.”
“Good, Alan. So you agree with us?” Musgrave asked.
I could almost feel the walls of the room leaning closer to better hear my response. “In what way?”
“That what Fria and her healers are facilitating needs to be … countered,” Musgrave added, with a rather nasty grin.
“Well, if it were just Fria and her troupe, we’d be lucky, but since they and others are drawing on the earth’s energy, seems like we’d be like the little Dutch boy, trying to plug the holes in the dike.”
Musgrave sat back in his chair. He turned to Klaus. “I told you. He’s definitely been turned.”
“But you and I just talked about this energy being earth-based,” I hurriedly added.
It was Klaus’ turn to raise his hand. “While we agree that the energy affecting neural processors isn’t entirely … etheric, as you’ve pointed out, she and her ‘troupe’ are facilitators and for now we deal with it at this level.”
“If that’s what you’ve decided,” I replied.
“Tell me, Alan,” Musgrave added. “Have you had this discussion with Fria, and know that you’re being remotely screened for lie detection?”
If there was ever a time to pull in my emotions, this was it. I struggled not to overreact. “I have, in a general sense, trying to explore the nature of this healing energy and its effect on me, which led to speculation about its general effect on the population at large.”
Musgrave was looking down at the computer monitor embedded in his table. “Bullshit.”
“Is that what your readings are telling you or what you surmise?” I asked evenhandedly. My calm and unruffled response seemed to somewhat unhinge him.
Klaus stood up before Musgrave could respond with another angry retort. “Okay, this … inquiry has gone far enough. Let me say, Alan. I think you were well within your right to explore this with her. So let’s check out your processor and test your various quotients, then you and I will explore this line of questioning further.”
I stood up while Musgrave remained seated. It was obvious who was running the show, but I wondered if I was safer with Musgrave and his gut reaction to things, than Klaus and his many-level approach to manipulation.
41.
They ran me through the same battery of tests that I had undergone after my first healing with Maria: IQ tests, emotional response tests and a more extensive intuitive or psychic test. I could tell from the conductor’s reaction that this last one was off the scale. Again, and even more so this time, they had trouble separating the feedback loops from my neural processor and the neocortex since, I would imagine, it was even more integrated than earlier. Finally they just gave up trying, or that’s what it seemed to me. I found that this time I could almost monitor these feedback loops myself and could sense the problem they were experiencing.
Again, I was allowed to rest for a couple of hours and afterward was escorted to the cafeteria for lunch. I was hoping to catch up with Emma there, or at least see her, if they were keeping us separated, but she wasn’t in the cafeteria. I asked my military escort, but he didn’t have any information on her whereabouts or disposition, which I should’ve expected. There was a fenced-in exercise yard that we headed for and he allowed me to walk around for half an hour. While the yard was empty and there weren’
t any orange-suited prisoners getting their outside time, the correlation to a prison was the obvious and probably the intended effect. I was sure this was Klaus’ idea. I did some yoga stretching exercises as a counter strategy and was soon whisked away to an interrogation room. Unlike last time, this was being conducted with military or police protocol: no conference table and bottled water, just an iron table and two wooden chairs.
Klaus stepped into the room after making me sweat it out for half an hour. He sat down across from me and placed his file folder on the table between us, and just stared at me for a long moment. Then he opened the folder and pulled out a picture of several nondescript buildings located in a desert setting and slid it across the table to me. “Alan, given your test results, we want to try something new. Look at these buildings, or get a feel for them, and tell me what’s going on there.”
I looked back rather flabbergasted. “What’s this?”
“Please, just work with me and I’ll clarify our protocol.”
I stared at the main building and after about twenty seconds got the distinct impression that it was a munitions assembly plant—I didn’t actually see people building bombs, but that was my impression. “Seems like it’s a bomb factory or something along that line.”
Klaus nodded his head; he slid a photo of a woman across the desk to me, along with another photo of a beach with palm trees and waves lapping the shore. “I’d first like you to focus on the beach scene, and then look at the woman and try to send her this picture.”
I got it. “This is a remote viewing or psychic projection test?”
Klaus just smiled wryly. “Just do it, Alan.”
I wasn’t sure if succeeding was in my best interest, but I went along with the test and was actually interested in the results myself. Had I become that … psychic? I stared at the photo and then at the woman. I could feel a kind of energy transference, or something in me reaching out to her. It was all very interesting. After I broke the connection, Klaus gathered the three photos and put them back in his file and closed it. Hopefully, this was the end of the testing. A moment later, a military grunt opened the door and passed a note to Dr. Klaus. He read it without reaction and placed it into the folder. Apparently no electronic communications were allowed—no doubt thinking I could remote-hack it.