Extremely Short Story, A Field Trip!

A drone from an alien race far, far away comes across earth and does it's job reconnoitering the third planet from this galaxy's sun finding it to be barren of any lifeforms whatsoever. In nearby galaxy where the aliens have a science station, one of their astro-archaeologists gets the transmission from the drone that includes among other information a photograph of Mount Rushmore.

She shares the photo of Mount Rushmore with her co worker and asks, “from that dead Galaxy XW42753, this the third planet from the sun, what do you think?”

After a moment, the co worker responds, “clearly wasn't always dead and if any of them were to have had life, likely would have been this one - vaguely humanoid. I say you and I go take a look, get the hell out of here," smiling broadly. "Wholly unnecessary but who doesn't love a field trip!”

“By the scale of what we have here, obviously going to be another case of a high tech self destruction pretty much the same developmental place as usual, guessing … but, I agree let's get the hell out of here!” She, also smiling broadly.

It was a true miracle that never ceased to astound her that their people had somehow made it past this extinction zone in sentient, planetary evolution. Anyway, she could only agree - who doesn't love a field trip.

Following the Mushroom Path - The Beginning

Voice Phenomenon - very interested to hear (no pun intended) other experiences with this? 

I read somewhere once that full auditory hallucination happens more with lower doses and that certainly was true for me happening three times all on fairly low dosage as I was titrating up at the beginning of my own work with psilocybin for healing. These three episodes happening on three consecutive weekends.

1) Three grams dried cubensis on a Sunday mid day alone my two bedroom rambler. It was a late fall day and fairly warm so I recall right after actually eating the three grams going all through the house and opening all the windows to let in as much fresh air as possible. (I stayed inside wasn't sure how I would be reacting and in a fairly conservative suburban neighborhood in the city - this was my first try with them) Sitting down in chair kicked back just in quiet, I felt them coming on and thought it felt like I recalled LSD trips coming on many years earlier when I had tripped a lot in my youth. It felt like a roller coasting easing up to the very top just before cascading down the big run and suddenly with eyes closed I had a vision of myself as if looking down from above watching a videotape of myself going through the house a few minutes earlier opening all the windows and as I am seeing this, a voice as if someone sitting right next to me says clearly, "you inhabit your body the way your body inhabits this house" ... and that was it and I felt myself come right down as if the roller coaster had come to the bottom and just stopped - time to get out.

It seemed as if that is all that this experience was meant to "do" for me?

2) The next weekend similar as above same chair quiet Sunday mid-morning this time 3.2 grams and similar feeling going up with a sense of peaking in fact thought, "O here we go" just a strong sense that "this is it" and again I hear plain and clear as if someone were sitting right next to me, "Light is God". I should note here that I kind of interpreted this "statement" in a manner that would become common later when another type of voice phenomena kicked in. Somehow I "knew" that what (they) meant was, "the closest thing to what you humans think of as a 'God', is light". Again, a quick almost complete comedown again as if this was the "point" of the whole experience. This also while I didn't realize it at the time introduced me to the later form of voice phenomenon that lasted for months without even taking psilocybin in the manner of the voice being very succinct need me to fill out the full meaning, often. I should note that in all case the voice/s (never was clear if singular or plural) were alien to me and not something arising from my own unconscious.

3) The very next weekend, same set, now 3.6 grams and as this comes on feels considerably stronger than before and I have clear sense that this will "do it" - although, must admit that was not quite clear what "doing it" would entail? To be clear, I was not expecting to hear a voice with this at all and in this case even though I had heard this voice the past two times, still was not expecting that to happen. But I hear that same voice again clear as if someone were sitting right next to me say, "you haven't crossed over yet" and again that strange sense of starting to peak then just coming right down but this time I am smiling from ear to ear and thinking, "YES! So you CAN cross over!" and I felt ecstatic with hope. Unfortunately, due to some problems in the grow room, as it were, I was out of ammo and went on to have several more "crop failures" so that it was a couple months before I could continue my efforts.

These were the only times I heard any kind of auditory hallucination. After my breakthrough experience with five grams, I went into a state of mania lasting five days during which time I did not sleep at all. By the end of these five days, as you might imagine - working long hours the whole time this being Monday through Friday - I was getting pretty punchy. I did lay down for three hours and quiet my mind as best I could each night laying in a kind of light meditative state. This whole time I had a strange feeling in the left top side of my head with a feeling as if a beam of energy were constantly beaming into my head right there. It was a visceral feeling and at times was like I could almost hear a sizzling sound. I was sitting at my desk in despair on Friday evening having told no one about this having done it all alone for security reasons with my head in my hands thinking, "holy fuck I have broke my fucking head, man. I really did it. What the hell is going ON HERE!?"

Then a thought "spoke" to me in my head but this was like nothing that had ever happened to me before I can tell you that. I like to think that I was a reasonably intelligent and sane person if having been suffering from severe depression for most of my adult life now 47. All I can say is this "thought" was clearly not my own thought. It seemed clearly to come from the same source as the auditory voice I had heard months earlier on the lower dosages. It seemed to be responding to my heartfelt head in hands question as to what the hell was going on with me since this trip by stating, "I am the New Creature. I am here to save the biosphere".

Mother of God was something of my response to this. Then nothing else I had no idea what this meant but afterward for months a thought-voice in my mind interacted with me only one other time making what I would call a universal statement like this one but otherwise directing itself to my personal emotional and spiritual growth constantly interacting with me and my own thoughts in the most loving, compassionate, wise manner I could imagine showing me more love than I had ever experienced in my entire life and helping me over this time become my own friend within the confines of my mind instead of my worst detractor.

The Machine - short Essay

Maybe at the very core of the fantastic mind control exercised upon especially it seems the American people for at least decades is this unshakable belief that once every four years we the people get to assert ourselves by electing a savior figure who we seem to believe with blatantly unfounded certainty will then act as our champion and right the wrongs we feel are set upon us. It's metronomic , man, you can hear it coming if you put your ear down right upon the railroad tracks. The rigid form of it all and repetitive nature hint at the fact that what our collective selves have become now is not a nation but actually a machine. Perhaps it is better to say that the machine has become us but either way we are the nuts and bolts of this gargantuan metal thing that now spans the wide world with its most obvious manifestation being the military covering now the surface of the earth and under the surface of the earth, the vast oceans of the earth and under the oceans and the air above the earth even into space. But the machine is as subtle as it is rigid not subject to the human weakness of cognitive dissonance so spreads itself out through the land in every direction taking the form of roads, wires, above and underground cables and connections of all kinds while also, of course, lighting up digital networks of unfathomable complexity and most profoundly and insidiously perhaps this machine we have become reaches seamlessly across time and space via the nearly invisible pathways of our own minds humming and chirping with power some of us hear it constantly calling this phenomenon, tinnitus. I try to resist the inexorable machinations but if truth be told it is the machine itself that types these words as much as “I” do so. Like characters in a science fiction movie wherein some other worldly intelligence infects humanity like a virus this machine the manifestation of what has been called the trans-humanist agenda thought erroneously to be off somewhere in the near future moves through us now with all the cheerful alacrity of a meme.

 

Burning Bridges - short-short story

The three of them sit watching impassively through a ghostly fog the long, winding tail of some ancient, defeated army in straggling retreat tattered white flags flagging limply overhead in the still, cold air. No one says a word heads mostly bowed as light but steady drizzle falls. It is their army after all and at this point what is there left to say of this sad parade?

When the last of it has passed and crossed the bridge, the pessimistic, craggy faced commander of their most unholy trinity says, “here we go again”, spitting without much conviction into the mud. “Check the powder,” he tells the optimistic youngest of the three, getting up slowly from the old tree stump they are sitting on.

“Why bother,” says the middle one, “it's either wet, or it's dry”, still seated, “and if it's wet, nothing much to be done about it”.

“If it's wet,” the youngest says heading over to the wagon, “then we might as well just follow on and forget about this bridge”.

The commander stretching grandly yawns loudly then tells the middle one to go move the horses who are too skeletal to eat at this point over to another patch of ground with a few fronds of river grass sticking up from the desolate earth. The middle one does so without complaint for he knows the horses are at least as hungry as they are, poor bastards. Plus they are needed or else the three of them would have to pull the damn wagon themselves.

“Boss,” says the middle one, “maybe we should be eating this river grass ourselves” only half serious, laughing and then coughing.

“Goddamn miracle, powders dry” announces the optimistic one, glint in his green eyes glowing slightly in the diffused evening light of the fog. He stands next to the wagon, tall and thin anyway but as skeletal now as the two horses with his sharp high cheek bones very well chiseled by the hardships of near starvation and defeat. He grabs a net out of the wagon and follows the commander down to the river bank where the commander throws in fishing line baited with worms they had picked up earlier off of the surface of the sodden earth.

The commander baits their one hook and tosses it out into the dark, slow moving water while the middle one joins the optimistic one below where the commander has his line to have their first go with the net, a two man job. The middle ones hands are shaking a little, his short, thick fingers, and he knows not why as the optimistic one joins him and they spread the net then heave it out as far and wide as they both can manage in one, practiced grunt. He's a head shorter than the optimistic one but his squat, big boned body is perhaps more powerful than the two others put together.

“May God give us some fish tonight,” the middle one says as the net settles and they begin to pull.

“At least we have some potatoes and some of that scallion I found the other night left,” says the optimistic one pulling.

The commander quietly watches and feels his line keeping his prayers to himself. He looks over to see the first cast of the net come up empty and watches the two move a little ways down river to heave another toss.

Dusk finds the commander back at the wagon starting a small fire next to the wagon to cook some dinner of potato, scallion and four goodly sized fish gathered by net. The fire is no easy task even though the drizzle has abated with the world so thoroughly soaked from the early Winter rains now upon them for the last week.

“Why don't we have any security with us?” the middle one asks the commander, “it's a little spooky here all by ourselves”.

“The general doesn't think they're dogging us any longer,” the commander answers.

“I trust he's right,” the optimistic one says, “or if he's not right, I hope at least that no one slays us until after we eat”.

“If no one is dogging us,” the middle one asks, “then why are we bothering to burn the bridge still, I thought that was the general's point to slow down their pursuit?”

“The general's not taking any chances is why” the commander explains. After blowing a small fire to life, the commander says, “good news is this is the last bridge to burn and we'll be on home ground… bad news is, the way things are looking, we may be here a week before we get a dry enough spell to get the job done.'

They all three look over to the bridge a bit wistfully where they can see only the first third or so of it due to the combination of the fog and the quickly settling dusk falling around them.

“We're expendable,” the optimistic one says thoughtfully, “I mean … I guess that's how he looks at it. Just the three of us if worse comes to worst.”

“Three men, sure,” confirms the commander, “we're expendable”.

Failed Trip Report

Trinity Site, New Mexico
By David Sky

New Mexico? Where to even start this story? Such a weird place overall just gives off these Alien vibes, this very strange energy. If a flying saucer were to rise up over a craggy, red rock cliff, would almost seem like it belonged there ... hard to explain but you stand around alone out in that high desert for a while and you might see what I mean.

So I'll start here kind of zoom in past wilderness areas mostly in the high mountains as sublimely beautiful as any location on earth to the south central area of the state a vast high desert with nothing much standing higher than sagebrush and where to this very day there are precious few humans as you drive for hours sometimes before noticing a driveway leading to a ranch. The mountains here are treeless and barren in their beauty. Six to nine inches of rain per year is all that stands between life in death for the entire ecosystem. While for sure possessing a rugged beauty, the landscape yet wore on me in ways I never would have anticipated. Walking out anywhere meant coming into contact with a flora and fauna always to me appearing on the verge of dying from thirst and I found that this just made me uptight constantly setting off the alarm of that unfortunate childhood gift, “hyper-vigilance”. It made me look up at the sky expectantly even though I knew that it had not rained in a month or more and likely wouldn't be raining for another month or more. The constant clear blue sky such a sharp electric blue that it almost hurt my eyes to look at actually began to get on my nerves after a while.

“Dammit man, hang in here, Everybody, it's got to rain eventually” I'd often mutter aloud, a nervous tic and a kind of incantation - “Everybody” being an inclusive handle covering a lot of ground like every barely living thing out there.

But I made some peace by buying a place up at 7,000 feet on the eastern side of the 12,000 Sierra Blanca mountain on a steep mountainside surrounded by pine forest this oasis of green on the edge of the million acre Lincoln National Forest only 130 miles north of the Mexican border. The various mountain ranges rise up like little islands of green punctuating the vast sea of near-death high desert nothingness that dominates so much of this state, the 5th largest by landmass in the USA.

My ex wife now read about how the historic Trinity Site a national monument to the first test of an atomic bomb (only in America) has an open house for visitors only twice per year and it was coming up the following weekend. My first thought was, No. Hell no. But then a plan blossomed up from the desert of my unconscious rising up verdant and beautiful to me like the high mountain forests of New Mexico and I said, “O yes that sounds interesting”. It was only about a two hour drive to the northwest of where we lived in the little vacation village of Ruidoso.

The next Sunday we were off on a very interesting trip winding down out of the high mountains through the Lincoln National Forest – home of the real Smokey the Bear. Driving northwest away from the 12,000 Sierra Blanca that involved losing 3000 vertical feet in elevation over about twenty miles and when you look back up to the mountains above, it looks to me like something worthy of worship under the nearly always bright auspices of a New Mexico sun. Here in the flatland down below some hedonists maniacs with tons of cash had built a sprawling suburban infrastructure of paved streets with street lights and infrastructure of electricity, water wells and septic areas all on twenty acre plots out literally in the middle of nowhere with a green golf course in the middle of it appearing about as out of place as I feel most of the time trying to sell the lots for preposterous sums this land that the BLM can't honestly give away. There were exactly two rather large homes within the huge development all visible since there is not a solitary tree in sight.

“You get a 20 acre lot!” a sign bragged. 20 acres all practically gasping their last gasp, I thought. No thank you never was much into golf it's a bourgeois sport.

About 15 minutes out from the gate into this Trinity Site Nuclear National Monument, I take out of my shirt pocket 3 dried grams of Psilocybin Cubensis mushrooms that I had grown myself – this a strain called Amazonian – and begin chewing on them.

“Seriously?” my wife asks, shaking her head, never a fan of my mushroom experiments.

“I told you about this last week. It's a dirty job but by God it's got to be done. We'll be at the gate in fifteen minutes and I won't start tripping for 40 minutes and it's a small dose, anyway, so it's not like I'll be getting out of hand. I'm sure a lot of people marvel religiously at this wondrous monument. I anticipate this being a highly internal process. Not like I'll flip out and embarrass you,” I promise as reassuringly as I could trying to exude confidence reassuringly , never an easy thing for me.

“So what then you can through some psychic alchemy or something, you were saying transform the negative energy from the bomb into positive energy? … it's that fantasy you we're talking about, just to be clear? Jesus I thought you were joking. I should have known by now you weren't,” she says with practiced incredulity.

“That's the one.” I insisted a little indignantly, “It's an honest plan of noble intent”.

So I chew the three grams slowly allowing them to dissolve as much as I can in my mouth as Jana' drives on toward the gate. The government only opens this monument twice a year for public visitation of the site.

When the gate finally comes into view, she says, “you know you're insane, right”. It isn't a question and I ignore it.

I am now starting to feel excited about the plan and look forward to channeling the power of an atomic blast, praying silently for strength and protection. “This is not insane. This is history we are making, you should be psyched”.

Then we drive up to the gate to find it closed and locked not a soul in sight, a drab outbuilding inside the high, barb wire topped fencing a couple hundred yards away with a lone car that appeared to have government plates parked outside. Big Signs in enormous block letters have very intimidating warnings about trespassing.

“Damn,” Jana' says. “ Apparently, the open house was Saturday, not Sunday”. She looks at me laughing. “I'm kind of relieved, I have to admit. Sorry though. Can you draw your psychotic energy from out here?”

I ignore the psychotic energy remark but it is kind of funny looking around at nothing realizing that this really and truly is the middle of nowhere and back when the bomb was exploded in 1945, was no doubt even more so. I think, of course, of Oppenheimer's, “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds” and how he got that from the Bhagavad Gita and the thought strikes me that this wasn't likely the first hydrogen bomb exploded on earth – and the mushrooms aren't even coming on yet. One thing the mushrooms had already taught me is that everything always happens for some good reason even if I can't fathom what that might be so I shrug it off.

“Let's go down to that restaurant near 25 by the Rio Grande that has the micro-brews on draft, what do you think?”

“Sure,” she says, turning around in the dry dust of nowhere, “it's only another 50 miles or so.” Distance in New Mexico is a relative thing for sure.

The three grams hits me about half way to the restaurant a lot harder than I had anticipated and I make a mental note to nail the opening day at this Trinity Site next year and give this another shot.

But I don't.

1. The mushroom voice I heard after the breakthrough experience of 2/25/07 said, "everything that ever was, ever will be or is right now is perfect" and that really blew my mind. I knew that it was true but only as a matter of faith because I believe everything that I heard in my own head. It was like finally finding someone who I could really trust. This may be the opposite of how most people who react to hearing voices in their heads? I don't know. This took the form of an alien strain of thought in my own mind not as an auditory hallucination but as a thought in my own mind that I immediately and instantly recognized as not my own - believe me, it stands out! 
2. This lead to what I call the "wolf eating the caribou alive conundrum" wherein I try to grasp how the caribou could possibly find being eaten alive by wolves to be in an way "perfect"? This makes me happy in a real way because I went ahead and believed this perfection to be true so clearly have now a "belief" since I cannot prove it. So kind of it's a religion then way I see so I have religion again in some small way - hey, didn't see that coming. 
3. A mushroom inspired religion straight up no getting around it. I don't want to call it a religion though so I'll say an individual faith because the last thing this world needs is any more religions. Can I get an AMEN?!
4. God bless you. 
5. When you've fallen down and you can't get up, it's hard to grasp how it is perfect? When your heart is shattered so badly around you that you can't take one step without slicing open your foot on the shards, it's a hard thing to take hold of, you know? When we loose a loved one to death and hell just all the world of pain that squats upon us all how am I to believe that this is somehow "perfect"?
6. Faith. It takes a busload of faith to get by 

On Following the Mushroom Path

I have become a vagabond of body, mind and soul not exactly by choice but definitely with collusion. There is always this knowing that the others would not understand even if I thought I could articulate what it is that I am “doing” with my life. It seems so very much as if I am doing nothing but the truth of the matter is entirely the opposite of its appearance for the truth of the matter is that in fact what I am doing is nothing.

See, that's the best I can do? My life's work is obscure even to me.

I now understand how this rather bizarre life course I follow could have come to be - this “mushroom path” that came only after that food of the gods turned everything forever inside out. This path actually has nothing to do with mushrooms at this point having been a spiritual catalyst and in fact it is no path at all. It is not to be found on the ground. There are no visible signs for it. This path is the following of my own heart literally over my own head. So when I assess this world I do not think about it so much as feel about it. The feeling I think is like some kind of radar sensing system and any thoughts spring from the feeling state reaction to the environment and the thoughts are verbal articulation of the feeling state, if that makes any sense? So following the mushroom path is about disconnecting myself from all human systems physical, mental, emotional, religious and so on even ever so much as I can from the intellectual. Surely, it sounds like insanity to some? But being right is way down upon my list of desires in this life. I just don't really care about this so called reality or most of it no more so than I really care about football. Phenomenology is the philosophy that comes to mind and it is a hard one for thinkers but comes naturally for feelers as each thing is taken for how it feels at the moment so that's approaching everything from about as little in the way of preconceived notions as one can, I think?

This is why when the folks wave their flags and cheer their favorite candidate it has no more meaning to me than a reality TV show, maybe less, for instance, I love Les on Survivorman. He kills me. While I have zero interest in American politics and actually do not believe in “America” because I know that it is merely a holographic image this whole Norman Rockwell “America” is merely a mask covering the face of a monstrous beast. I cannot by fooled by the crude illusions of this world. But this world is merely one detail only a blip on the radar of the universe, one passing thought in the Mind of God, not something that really matters like love or any other thing precious to my heart like the reflection of a lake in a dragonfly's eye.

So I'll follow the mushroom path and my deepest feeling in life is that everyone is feeling, thinking and doing exactly what they are suppose to be feeling, thinking and doing and literally require no input from me. I just am trying to articulate my own place in it all. Follow Jesus or Buddha, Hillary or Trump, whatever one is drawn to do is my strong suspicion exactly what is right for one to do no matter how it may effect me even. My only faith is that everything – everything! - happens for a reason known only to the Mind of God to which I am not entirely privy for whatever reason. The way the mushrooms put it is, “everything that ever was, is right now or will be, is perfect”. I think of it as "the wolves eating the caribou alive conundrum" since logically I admit that I cannot fathom how for the caribou being eaten alive is in any way "perfect" - so I guess this one constitutes a "Belief" which I do try to keep to an absolute minimum but O well no one is perfect.   

They also said, “the only power you possess is the power to love” - meaning that all other power no matter how “real” it may seem is an illusion.This one I feel like I understand just fine doesn't require belief. Love here being used as a verb, of course.