Firebolt

by R. M. Galloway

  “I’m not offended,” I said. “Just tired.”

  “Well, humor me anyway. We’re drinking wine, so it only seems right that we should discuss something interesting.”

  I sat back down, let him refill my wine glass, and took a sip.

  “What do you want to talk about?” I asked. “Back in Hennington, you had all these obsessions. Different moods you would cycle through. Alchemy one week, prophesy the next.”

  “I only have one obsession at the moment, and that is the Quod Corporation.”

  “So tell me this,” I said. “Why Quod? What does the name mean, if anything?”

  “It’s an abbreviation of the phrase Quantum Chöd, the combination of the most cutting-edge science with the ancient traditions of Buddhist mysticism.”

  “Quantum Chöd.”

  “Yes.”

  “So what is Chöd?” I asked him.

  “Chöd is a Tibetan Tantric practice in which the aspiring practitioner meditates in a graveyard or haunted house, using the emotion of horror to annihilate the ego and achieve enlightenment.”

  “Death Metal Buddhism,” I said.

  “It’s even spelled with an umlaut.” He smiled.

  “Why in the world would the emotion of horror help anyone to achieve enlightenment?”

  “Because the ego is slippery, too slippery for the mind to grasp it. It retreats ahead of you and you never catch up with it, rendering normal meditative systems largely ineffective while often giving the false impression that the ego has been tamed when it has not. But when is ego most apparent, most naked and undisguised?”

  “When you’re afraid for your life,” I said, suddenly appreciating the brilliance of Chöd.

  “Not bad, Gavin. Not bad. I see you have grasped the essence of it. The fear of evil, the terror of mortality found in a graveyard or among wild beasts – these things are like bear-traps, fixing the ego at the forefront of the mind. With the ego trapped, the practitioner can make rapid spiritual progress.”

  “But most of what the Quod Corporation does is strictly materialistic,” I pointed out.

  “Most of what the Quod Corporation does is to impress the rubes,” he said, confirming my earlier impressions with the casual nonchalance of a true psychopath. “I keep all those projects understaffed and underfunded, not only because I am simply not interested in them but because I do not have the resources to bring them to market. The Quod Glasses, among the upstairs projects, are the only real thing the Quod Corporation does.”

  “So they must have something to do with Chöd, then.”

  “Indeed they do. Chöd, like all Tantric systems, is an initiatory lineage...”

  “Hold on,” I said. “Tantric? You mean, like sacred sexuality?”

  “Sacred sexuality? No. That puerile example of American decadence has nothing to do with genuine Tantric practice. Tantric rituals include sex on rare occasions, but with the goal of destroying its sacredness, not embracing it.”

  “Why would anyone want to do that?” I asked.

  “Because what is sacred is taboo, and taboos are mental illusions created by society. They prevent enlightenment, binding the mind with the chains of the ego. If you break your taboos, the result is extraordinarily rapid spiritual progress. Or a descent into madness, of course, accompanied by the acquisition of fearsome powers of destructive magic.”

  Well then. I wondered if that was what had happened to Vitalius, in that long-ago time when he was not yet Father.

  “So the sex in Tantra is for enlightenment only?”

  “That’s correct. Along with drinking alcohol, eating meat, or exposing yourself to the uncleanness of death and blood.”

  “Like Chöd,” I said.

  “Like Chöd. But as I was saying, Chöd is strictly an initiatory lineage. It’s not for everyone, and the Tibetan masters would never have allowed the masses to study it. The Quod Glasses will, initiating every person who buys and uses them. Imagine it, Holder! A new era of spiritual enlightenment all around the world, putting an end to the Kali Yuga once and for all!”

  “How are the Quod Glasses going to do that?” I asked.

  “Through the streaming content powered by the Quod Corporation satellite, of course. That’s why the project is so expensive, because we’ll have to launch our own satellite into orbit. A satellite programmed to scan the world as it flies over, picking up video from thousands upon thousands of street cameras and other sources - and rapidly selecting the right sort of content as it does so. We’re testing it now, using the security cameras mounted in the abandoned ranch nearby to create the test content. Of course, that means they really only show the outside of our own headquarters at the moment. But just think of the future! Through the extraordinarily immersive experience the Quod Glasses will make possible, meditators will be able to experience atrocities and disasters happening all over the world - massacres, firing squads, plague outbreaks, earthquakes - all the horror in the world! In real time as if they were there in the flesh.”

  Chapter 20

  When he said the words “in the flesh,” Vitalius Kohl gave me a ghoulish smile. He liked the sound of those words.

  “That seems likely to be psychologically unhealthy, to say the least,” I said. I took another large gulp of wine, because I needed it. “Won’t you just give everyone PTSD?”

  “Some people will certainly develop PTSD and other psychological disorders,” he conceded. This obviously wasn’t something that bothered him in the slightest. “Chöd is dangerous too, that’s the reason the Tibetan masters were so tragically cautious about who they taught it to. They were worried that it would make a less experienced meditator become unhinged, neglecting the rapid progress their entire tradition could have made if they had simply been willing to take their chances and teach the techniques as widely as possible. But for those who can handle it, the horrors presented by the Quod Glasses will do something very similar to traditional Chöd. By exposing people to all the horror of the world, the glasses will help them get over their useless and counterproductive feelings of empathy, making them far more dominant and successful in all aspects of life. Much as the Baron von Ungern-Sternberg was.”

  Unsurprisingly, Vitalius Kohl’s interpretation of Buddhism seemed somewhat divergent from traditional teachings. It was kind of like a Goth version of The Secret.

  “You really think people will keep using the glasses after the first time?” I said. “It’s bound to be upsetting.”

  “They won’t be able to help themselves. They’ll watch and watch. Faces of Death grossed $35 million dollars worldwide, and that’s just in ticket sales. It doesn’t even include the video rentals.”

  I had seen that movie, years and years ago in the apartment of my bassist Kelley. One scene after another of violent deaths and depraved rituals, and somebody eating a monkey’s brain if I recall correctly. It didn’t give me any sort of enlightenment experience, though. It just made me sick. It even made Popov Pete sick.

  “Okay, so maybe they’ll watch it,” I said, remembering that Kelley had seen the movie at least three times. “But what does the Ja Lama think of this plan?”

  “It was his idea. The Ja Lama’s one dream is to see the fulfillment of Chöd’s true potential, because it is the one form of Buddhism appropriate for this degenerate age. He shares his name and title with an earlier lama, a warrior monk of Mongolia who knew Ungern-Sternberg. It was said that the original Ja Lama sacrificed his prisoners of war to Mahakala, tearing their hearts out of their bodies with his bare hands.”

  “Is that Chöd too?”

  “It certainly isn’t traditional Chöd,” he admitted. “Like most other Buddhists, the masters who first created Chöd – although spiritual geniuses – were deluded by an overly narrow interpretation of the Mahayana emphasis on compassion. But the Baron von Ungern-Sternberg was not so deluded. The Baron’s acts of torture and mass murder were acts of compassion, correctly understood. They instantly cleansed his victims of bad karma and prope
lled them straight into enlightenment. Although the Chöd masters themselves would not have accepted it, the Baron’s atrocities were, in effect, an advanced practice of Chöd through skillful means. The Ja Lama will back me up on this.”

  Every time I thought I was getting a handle on how bizarre and evil Father really was, he found some way make it clear that he was even weirder and wickeder than that.

  “I have to give it to you, Vitalius,” I said. “You truly are not like anyone else.”

  “Oh, that’s not true at all,” he said. “I’m really quite similar to Ciro Annunchiarico.”

  “Uhhh, who?” I asked.

  “Ciro Annunchiarico, the leader of the Decided Ones of Jupiter the Thunderer. Italian bandit army from the nineteenth century. More like a cult really. Ciro himself was a defrocked priest, possessed by the pagan god Jupiter after he murdered a man whose wife he had seduced. He went on to slaughter around a dozen of the man’s family members, then fled to the mountains and assumed control of all the bandits. Some of them objected to his impertinence of course, but it didn’t matter. Being possessed by a god, Ciro was naturally impervious to weapons. The Decided Ones marched beneath a death’s head banner, marked with their slogan: Sadness, Mourning, Terror and Death.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “You really are kind of like him. But how can you be like Ciro and the Bloody White Baron at the same time?”

  “I’m not. I’m like Ciro. I am the Baron.”

  “I see.”

  And with that final point, the novelty of telling me all about his planned atrocities and apocalyptic conspiracies suddenly seemed to fade, and Father gestured for me to finish my wine and go to bed.

  Chapter 21

  One thing was clear. I needed to know more about the Ja Lama - as much as I could find out about him. I had considered him an afterthought, although certainly frightening in his own right. I had speculated about the source of his wealth. For some unclear reason, most likely because he was a Buddhist monk, I hadn’t thought of him as equally dangerous to Vitalius Kohl. I was going to have to reassess that, because it sounded like he was a partner in all of Kohl’s schemes and maybe even the real brains behind them.

  Instead of going to bed, I wandered over to Kumar’s room and knocked on the door. He opened up, and swallowed heavily.

  “Hi, Gavin.”

  “Bad time?” I asked.

  “No, of course not. Of course not. Come on in.”

  “Why don’t you get the chess board out?” I asked, and sat down at his little folding table. He got the board, and we set up the pieces in anxious silence.

  “Would you like something to drink?” he asked me.

  “I just had… yeah, okay.”

  He got out a bottle of spiced rum and two glasses, then poured a splash in each. The game began, and I tried to apply the little bit of chess strategy I knew. It didn’t matter. Kumar had seen it all before, and he had an answer for every gambit. When he took my queen, he let out a little sigh.

  “You weren’t kidding,” he said.

  “I wasn’t. I’m not very good at this game.”

  “It’s not that you’re bad, it’s more like you don’t know anything about the game except the rules.”

  “I know a few strategies!”

  “Is that what you call them?” he said with a chuckle.

  “It’s good to see you relaxing a little,” I replied. We had met in the cafeteria, shortly after I had started working for Kohl. Kumar heard me saying something sarcastic to Jesse Spindrift and laughed along, earning himself an instant enemy and an instant friend at the same time. He’d been after me to play chess with him ever since, although I had always protested that I wasn’t good at it.

  “Relaxing. Yeah, okay, although that’s probably the rum as much as the chess. I’ve been anxious for days.”

  “No reason for you to be nervous,” I said. “Nobody thinks you’re a spy.”

  “Too much of a nerd?” he said.

  “Pretty much. No offense, Kumar. You just don’t seem like the type.”

  “I’m not offended. I’m relieved. The, uh, corporate culture here is more like Stalinist Russia than Google. Check.”

  “Oh, crap.” I moved my king, although it was obvious I wouldn’t be able to keep moving it for long. “So, Kumar – let me ask you something.”

  “Uh huh?” Tense again. This guy had a serious anxiety problem. “What do you want to know?”

  “I was wondering if there was any way to do an Internet search from inside the bunker without the company knowing about it. You know, my laptop is probably monitored and it would be kind of embarrassing to look up certain topics if the boss is going to find out all about it later.”

  The only good thing about his response to this was that he was about to checkmate me with his next move. Instead he dropped his queen onto the board from about six inches up. The game exploded, chess pieces flying in every direction. One of them shot across the room and disappeared under Kumar’s desk.

  “That’s technically a draw,” I said, but he wasn’t laughing.

  “Please don’t fuck with me,” he said. “I just can’t take it. If you want to arrest me, go ahead and arrest me, just stop fucking with my head…”

  He started retching suddenly, then stood up so fast his chair fell over. Running to the bathroom, he just barely reached it in time before he started vomiting. I was starting to get the idea that this was something more than simple anxiety. Even though that was obvious, I figured it would be better to keep playing dumb for another minute.

  “Jesus, Kumar! You need to calm down, man! I didn’t come here to arrest you – I’m not the law anymore, but you’re not in trouble anyway. I just wanted to play a game of chess and ask you some advice about how to browse for porn with a little privacy!”

  He had finished puking, but he was resting his head against the doorway like he didn’t have the strength to stand up.

  “You’re a fucking bastard. I may be a coward. I know I’m a coward. But I can do this much. I can tell you you’re a bastard to your lying fucking face.”

  “My god, Kumar. You’re okay, man. Nobody here suspects you of anything. I’m your friend. Or at least your work buddy. Calm down, okay?”

  “Calm down? How the hell can I calm down? You know all about me, and you’re such a sadistic piece of garbage that you’re just sitting here in my room deliberately toying with me. Just go ahead and kill me, Holder. I don’t know anything you can torture out of me.”

  “I’ll tell you this,” I said, pouring him a glass of water in his little kitchen. I handed it over, though his hand was shaking when he took it from me. “You’re not the sort of person who could resist torture. You just gave yourself up out of sheer terror when I wasn’t even trying to interrogate you.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked me. He took a sip, then spilled half the glass down his T-shirt trying to gulp the rest.

  “I know you’re a spy, but I didn’t know that until you lost your shit. I didn’t even suspect it twenty minutes ago.”

  “Huh. Maybe I did better than I thought I did. It doesn’t matter, though. You know now.”

  “It matters more than you think. Come sit down.”

  Chapter 22

  Kumar poured himself another rum, much more than a splash this time. I did the same.

  “So yeah. I’m the spy you’re looking for,” he said. His hand was still shaking as he drank the rum. “I’m not cut out for it, but I had the technical skills needed to get the job here, so…”

  “Are you ever planning to answer my question?” I asked.

  “What question?”

  “The Internet. How do I get on the Internet without Kohl knowing about it?”

  “That was a real question? I just assumed you were toying with me, letting me know you knew what I was up to.”

  “Not at all. I need to know this.”

  “Before or after the goon squad gets here?”

  “The goon squad d
oesn’t work for me. I have no goon squad. I only have a bunch of semi-professional bodyguards. They can barely even do the job we pay them for, so using them as a goon squad on top of that would be counterproductive.”

  “Then you’re not… exposing me? Handing me over to be interrogated?”

  “I already told you that.”

  “But why? You work for Mr. Kohl!”

  “Indeed I do. And I don’t really feel like explaining myself right now. But if you work for the people I think you work for, you must know all about me anyway.”

  “I don’t work for anybody. That’s not what it’s like. And yeah, I’ve heard of you. But that doesn’t mean much. I assumed you had switched sides and gone to work for Father. Why would I assume anything else?”

  “That’s reasonable enough. Now are you going to tell me how to get on the Internet securely?”

  “Oh… sure. I can help you do it, even. I wouldn’t dare try it myself, not after a close call like this one.”

  He got up and went over to his bed. He crouched down and reached under and from this less than brilliant hiding place, he pulled out a sleek little laptop and a power cord. Returning to the table, he put the computer down in front of me.

  “I use this to access the network here without being ‘seen.’ When you boot up the laptop, don’t just go on the Internet. Connect through the VPN.”

  “The VPN?” I asked.

  “Virtual Private Network. It disguises your activity on the Internet. But this isn’t foolproof, Holder. Depending on how much attention the boss is paying, he might see that someone is using a VPN. He might even have configured his system to warn him immediately whenever that happens. He won’t be able to see what you’re up to, but he’s obviously going to assume it’s the spy if he sees the VPN, so… don’t do it often, don’t do it from your own room, and try to be as quick as possible when you have to do it.”