1 Pesky and Me

You know, every once in a while you meet someone and you know that you will have some kind of a relationship with that person. You don't always really register the fact in your mind but you'll remember that moment later when you find yourself mixing it up with that person. That's how it was for me when I first met Pesky. He was visiting a friend of mine when I first met him in October, 1985. I dropped in on this friend for a moment and Pesky was there. We didn't say much at the time but I remember when I first looked at him that it registered on my mind that we would be mixing it up somehow or other. I didn't see Pesky again for several months and in fact can't remember how we again met but sure enough, it turned out that six months later we were classic "buddies". I don't have a whole lot of close friends, being a drifter and all, but Pesky and I are more like close brothers than friends. I'm not sure I'd even know how to be a friend if it came right down to it.

There wasn't much that Pesky and I didn't share even from the beginning except for "The Crazy Secret". More about that later. We became Risk fanatics and would spend entire nights playing the board game till the sun was up and it was time to go to work. I'm a major appliance repair-man by trade and this makes it possible for me to move about a lot and it's just as well since I'm cursed with this suspicion of any one who shows me too much friendship. I guess it worked with Pesky because he didn't try. We just met and sized each other up and said to ourselves, "Yup, okay, sure, he's my buddy."

I should tell you, he has a real name which it's none of your business, but for some reason that I don't really remember I started calling him Pesky and the moniker stuck to him. My real name's Peter Someone-it-makes-no-difference-who but Pesky took to calling me "Festus" after the grubby character out of Gunsmoke because I shave only when I feel like it, dress only for comfort, (I'm kind of intimidated by your average North American woman and am not at all inclined to solicit their attention) and am often described, quite accurately, as a moderate slob. I also wear this Australian bush type hat that people always accuse of being a cowboy hat (I hate that! I ain't no stupid cowboy.). I was twenty-three, Pesky was twenty-five back then when we were playing Risk in my ten foot fiberglass holiday trailer where I lived; parked inside a rented garage for the winter in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; surrounded by tools and semi-assembled washers and dryers. Pesky had bought an old one bedroom shack on 7th Avenue, with dead lawn and wavy floors. My trailer, old but functional, was warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.

I tend not to ask a lot of questions about people; not that I lack curiosity but because usually when you ask questions like that it's expected that you'll reciprocate in kind. So it wasn't till we'd been mixing it up for about four months that I got around to asking him what he did for a living, and then only because it was obvious that he had no schedules that limited him and never talked about his work but seemed to always have a vague involvement that took precedence over any other concern. I knew that he was a roofer by trade and would put an ad in the paper every summer and get a few contracts but he wasn't a driver for jobs, he only seemed to do them to give himself something to do. He's also quite a handy carpenter and would take those "little-old-lady's-picket-fence" jobs that no other carpenters would touch. I seldom saw him making any money at those jobs; he'd inevitably end up doing them for cost and afternoon tea and home-made crumpets since the little old ladies would always threaten cardiac arrest when they began to realize the cost of their "little jobs".

But Pesky never lacked for money. I mean, he wasn't an acquisitive person at all, a trait we share, and couldn't be bothered to spend money on fancy housing or clothes, and he drove a rusty old GMC quarter ton with bald tires that he was always tinkering with to keep it going. But we'd be in the middle of a game of Risk at three in the morning and he'd out of the blue look up and say, "Oh, by the way, I have to go to Taiwan (or Swaziland or Timbuktu or Bolivia or Boise, Idaho) tomorrow. Can you give me a lift to the airport?" and I'd take him and watch him pull out the old Visa and let them punch up fifteen hundred dollars for full fare. Then he'd be off without so much as a change of underwear. Four or five days later he'd arrive back at my shop with a new T-shirt and one for me and full of tales of what he'd seen, but never a mention of what the hell he was doing there in the first place. Well, I mean, how long could I go without asking, eh? When I finally did ask him one day, all he said was, "Aw, I just get these urges to be places. Come on, let's go get a donair." So I didn't ask again, but damn, it was hard not to. Then in December, '86; December 10th in fact; business was slow and I was tight for cash and Pesky arrives at the shop with coffees and Chinese take-out. We get to talking and he says, "Hey, want to go to Belgrade with me for a couple days? Won't cost you anything, I'll cover it."

"Get out a town!" I says.

"No, really Fest." he says, "Come on. It'll be a blast!"

"Whad'ja talkin 'bout, jya idjit?" sez I, "I gotta work for a living ya know. When you going?"

"Tomorrow, if you can. Next day at the latest. Come on! You got no work! It's December for Pete's sake. Nobody spends money on repairs in December; you know that."

Back and forth, back and forth, and be damn if he doesn't talk me into it. And off we go the next day. Well, that was some trip. Only my second time out of Canada. The last time was when I went to my sister's funeral in the States three years earlier, so luckily I still had a valid passport. Took us two days to get there, we stayed about thirty hours and then three days to get back including an eighteen hour stop-over in London. On that trip was where I first saw Pesky perform his real function in life and "The Crazy Secret" really began to come out while on that trip. Another thing I discovered was why they say of Air Canada, "Fly Air Canada; See What You'll Be Missing!". One small back-pack. That's all I asked them to load. The last time I saw that back-pack and the underwear and socks in it was as it disappeared into the black hole leading into the fifth dimension behind the ticket agent at the Air Canada counter. Even in service, compared to other international carriers like British Airways and even Aeroflot, Air Canuck sucks, man.

But anyway, Pesky sure enough bought me a new undies and socks and a toothbrush, and even a nifty new sack to carry it all in, at Heathrow. Didn't need a comb; like my father and two older brothers I was practically bald by the time I was twenty-five and I buzz what's left every couple weeks.

We watched that movie, "When Maud Meets Harry", or something like that; a real yawner; between Saskatoon and Toronto then on to British Air and another yawner that I ended up watching all the way through because I kept waiting for the blood and guts. Who would have thought Arnold Schwartzeneger would ever play a gentle, peace-loving brother to Danny Devito! The guy has no respect for his public image, that's what I think. Pesky isn't a movie slut like I am though and doesn't just watch any 'ol movie, so we occupied ourselves between naps and meals by making up new scenarios for the new "Star Trek Second Generation" series which we both love but seldom see. Then at Heathrow we transferred over to Aeroflot and slept all the way to Belgrade.

2: The Crazy Secret

2 The Crazy Secret

It was early in the evening when we disembarked and it was at the security clearance desk that Pesky started to show the indications of his "search". I guess you need to declare why you are going to Russia, where you will be, and how long you intend to be at each location before you can even get a ticket to arrive. Seems Pesky had known that and made all the arrangements prior. But when you arrive they make you repeat it all over again. The officer asked first why we had come to Belgrade and I just shrugged my shoulders and looked at Pesky. He looked that officer right in the eye and said, "I have to be behind the bakery in Zemun, a village thirty kilometers North of here, at seven-twenty-one tomorrow evening to see someone; I don't know who or why and if you want to escort me or send twenty armed soldiers to watch I don't mind but I need to be there." I felt something hit my knees and looked down and there was my bottom jaw. Then I looked at the officer and his bottom jaw was gone too. Pesky just stood there like an angel and waited for what came next.

Well, four hours later and several interviews later Pesky had not been able to tell them much more than that. All he had added to that initial simple statement was that he just knew that he had to be behind that bakery on that day and that time because it had occurred to him specifically and strongly that he had to. When had it occurred to him? About half an hour before he had come to see me in my shop. Had he ever been inspired to be other places? Yes, many times. Were there ever any persons or events or predisposing or post-disposing or zacta-fracta-stizing anythings in common with all these inspiring whatzits? Only a sense of satisfaction when the inspirational urge had been satisfied, and the fact that there was always a person or persons involved.

That's all. That's the sum total they got from him. Zip else. Cool as a cucumber and answering as patient as a robot, that sumana-itch. Me they couldn't get anything from cause I knew nuthin' anyway and had just used the toilet before landing else they'd have gotten a load, I was that scared.

End result is they verified with the agents who sold him the tickets that he had told them he wanted to "...go to Zemun, North of Belgrade, for one day." and that in so far as it went, the story had not changed. Finally they put us in a car, drove us to the village and stayed right in the hotel room with us; we weren't allowed to leave; and Pesky had to pay for the room and meals for ourselves and the two guys in the room with us and the other three guys in the next room as well. Pesky, well he just sat and stared out the window. It was like he was another person or something. Was I pissed? Like a dozen warm beers, man. But I didn't have a word to say with those two hard-nosed Russians sitting by the door. Somehow I slept and when I woke around nine o'clock next morning Pesky was still at the window and Darryl and Darryl were still at the door. All day we sat in that room and all day Pesky sat at the window. The Hardy Brothers wouldn't even let us close the toilet door to piss; and I had to do more than that. Eventually it was six-forty-five PM and all five of the Cossack cousins suddenly herded us out the door and into the street. Pesky and I were escorted ten blocks then down an alley and the smell of fresh bread hit me like a welcome brick; it meant this nightmare was coming to an end.

There was a pile of rags laying there. When Pesky saw it he stopped and the rest of us piled up behind him. Man, those five Russian peptic ulcers were nervous. But not like me, man. They fanned out and Pesky started to slowly walk towards the pile of rags and I found myself pissing battery acid all by myself in the middle of that alley and not knowing which way to turn. All of a sudden a man opened a door from the back of the bakery and with only a glance at Pesky walked over to the pile of rags which turned out to be another man. I don't know what the five GI Joeskis behind me were doing with their guns, they'd had their hands in their jackets since we'd entered that alley, but I was glued there watching the soap opera in front of me.

The guy from the bakery hunkers down beside the rag-man and they start to talk. Every once in a while one or the other looks at us like to say, "...what's your problems? Move off, you weirdoes!" but their conversation was so intense that they for the most part ignored us. Something really dramatic was happening between them. Suddenly the rag-man started weeping, like really sobbing from right down inside. The other guy wrapped his arms around him and muttered what must have been the Russian version of "...all right, all right. Everything is going to be okay."

Then I looked at Pesky and the man was like, I don't know, glowing, and having an epileptic spell or something; he's standing there quaking with his arms sticking straight out like a couple of sticks and a look of absolute ecstasy on his face, kind of vibrating all over. Well, to make a long story short, the body-guards from hell didn't know what to make of it all and the two guys in the alley; we never did find out what they were talking about; went back inside the bakery and we were escorted back to our hotel. Our tickets out of the country were for late that night so they simply ended up taking us back to the airport and seeing us off on the next plane out of their country. I'll never know what they made of it all and there really wasn't a whole lot I could have cared less about at that moment. I was never so damn glad as I was when we touched down in Heathrow again and stepped off that Russian plane. And Pesky was completely back to his normal self again immediately after that epileptic-like event in the alley.

Well, I thought I'd never forgive that sumana-itch, but you know what? On the way back to London aboard that Aeroflot he told me what it was all about and why he had brought me along. Here's what he told me as best I can remember it and I'm going to tell you 'cause I gotta tell someone, and because it doesn't matter whether you believe me or not. I'm going to pass this story off as a science fiction story anyway and you're going to believe me cause you have no way of understanding any of it if it isn't a science fiction story. So there. Nya-nya-nya-nya-nya!

"Okay Festus." he said, (I wouldn't even look at him yet, just sat there with a 'You-like-to-travel?-You-like-sex?-Well-I-have-a-s uggestion-for-you,-ya-jerk.' look on my face till half way through the explanation). "I'm going to tell you a little story and its going to explain what that was all about. I know you're mad as hell and have a right to be, but once you've heard this you'll understand why I couldn't have told you before. You'd never have believed without experiencing something of it yourself, even second-hand. And I need someone to understand Festus, and you're the only close friend I've ever had."

He shifted around and resettled himself in his seat, bringing his face closer to my ear and affording us more privacy. "I grew up in foster homes in Ottawa. Never had anybody close to me to explain how things should have been, so when I was thirteen one night I was traipsing about late at night along the river, stoned on good weed. I passed out. Anyway, Fest, when I woke up, it was early dawn. Man, I've never even been able to explain this even to myself, but I knew something had been done to me."

Pesky was getting kind of animated in his speech now. Out of character for him.

He went on, "I don't mean like I'd been molested or anything, but something had been done to me, like a surgery or something. But no pain, no scars, and no memory other than a vague sense of knowing but not knowing that something was different and hidden from me. I can't explain it any better than that. Never have been able to."

I could see he was frustrated and straining to articulate something and feeling like a total failure in the attempt.

"All I can tell you is that I know, and I don't know how I know, I just do, and I believe, that was what changed my life and initiated what I call my "crazy secret". A few years later I'd forgotten all about it and was then seventeen. I'd left the last foster home I'd been in and was basically a street kid, except that I had a full-time job with a contractor who thought I was nineteen. I've never touched pot again since that night by the way. I know that the pot had nothing to do with it but somehow I just lost interest. I think that whatever happened to me that night caused an awful lot of wise-ing up awfully fast. Anyway, one day we're on this contract putting up a house on this small farm near Carlton Place; you know those Nelson Homes? Well, like those, all pre-built like a jig-saw puzzle, only not a Nelson. I'm nailing down plywood on the floor and suddenly I'm standing beside a decorative stream in a Japanese garden in Los Angeles. I mean, I'm not really there but I am somehow. I know the date and time of day and its two weeks away yet from the time of the me who is kneeling on the deck of that house. I know exactly where I am and I know that in exactly two minutes something extraordinary is going to happen and I'm going to be there to witness it. I don't know what that something is, I just know I'm going to see it. Then suddenly, I'm back on the job site holding my hammer suspended over the nail I'd only driven half in. Now, I can't begin to explain this, but I knew I'd been there. I knew that what I'd just experienced was not a hallucination or a flashback or anything like that. Man, I had been there, in the future I had been there at that scene; and I knew that I had to get myself there. The image was so real and so compelling and so stunning. I begged off sick for the rest of the day and as it turned out never went back, even for my pay. Guy still owes me 'bout two fifty and interest. I couldn't shake the image and finally I decided that I'd hitch-hike my way to LA to see what happened; to see if indeed it was a real thing I'd seen. Well, I went to the bank to take out my seventy-five dollars that I'd saved up, and lo and behold, there was a balance of seven hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in there!"

Suddenly, Pesky had my attention.

"I had no idea at all where that money had come from," he continued, "but rather than question fate, I just took out five thousand, grabbed my check book, and bought a ticket to LA. I booked into the Holiday Inn and waited. I kept expecting the police to arrive asking me to return the money that the bank must have inadvertently put into my account, but it didn't happen. In the week and a half till the big day I must have walked through that Japanese garden thirty times or more, looking for some sign of what it was I was going to witness. I gotta tell you, man, I was spooked and I was really beginning to believe that I'd had a revelation from God or something. I mean, that garden was exactly as I'd seen it in my vision and right where I'd known it would be. It's a public garden at the Japanese Cultural Center there in LA."

Yeah, I was definitely interested in this narration now. Somewhere along the way I'd forgotten that I was trying to be pissed off. Pesky never noticed though. He was lost in the telling of his story.

He went on, "Well, the day finally arrived and I got myself to the exact spot as in my vision. By the way, it's important that I tell you before I go any further that the weather was different than in my vision and there were three people in view that hadn't been there in the vision, too. I'll get into why that's important later."

Don't you hate it when people do that in the middle of a story?

"Anyway," Pesky sez, "at the exact moment that I'd known something would happen, a man sitting on a bench not thirty feet from me looked up at the sky and concentrated for about thirty seconds, then closed the book he'd been reading, got up and walked away. That's all. No earthquakes, no fireworks, nothing."

He was looking at me like he was expecting an argument. When I just sat there staring at him and drooling with my mouth hanging open he went on.

"Yet the effect that it had on me was nothing short of a total body and emotional rush, all at once and more intensely that any other experience I've ever had in my entire life. It was like having about thirty instantaneous and simultaneous orgasms, coupled with the most profound sense of peace, contentment, illumination and raw, un-focused satisfaction. I can only describe it very inaccurately as a deep, deep religious experience. The initial rush lasted only about thirty seconds I think, but the after-affect lasted for months."

He heaved a sigh and some of the tenseness dissolved. He resettled himself sideways again in his plane seat and went on then.

"Now, I tell you Festus, having once experienced that rush, I was and remain absolutely incapable of resisting any hinted potential for the recurrence of that rush. I am an absolute addict, there is no doubt in my mind about that. And ever since that time I've had an average of three each year of what I call "directives" to be at specific places at specific times. There's usually a single person at the focus of my attention and always the rush, as raw and profound as the first one and always, always with the power to take me completely by surprise, it's that intense. Other than that I don't understand it one bit."

He flopped back in his seat and closed his eyes for a few seconds, and I thought that was the end of it, but then he started again. "The only thing more I can say about it is that it is not natural; I know this for two reasons, and just in case you thought that this story was weird up to now, listen to this."

Naww… I hadn't been thinking it was weird at all!

He sez, "The reason that I know it's not a natural happening is because of the differences that I told you about earlier between the vision and the actual time and place of the event. Things like the weather and surroundings being different in subtle or even profound ways. Occasionally when I've received the "directive" the weather has been notable. Like the time I saw a rainstorm in one of my visions about a place in Iran, out on a back-water road in the South of that country. After the actual event a couple of days, I realized that it had been a perfectly dry and warm sunny day when I'd been at the actual scene. I did a bit of research and sure as farts follow beans, on the day that I'd had the "directive" it had been raining and cold in that area, which was unusual weather for that area I was told. Since then I've been writing down all the details I can remember after each directive and checking these out later. I've been able to determine that to within a minute; the things I see in my visions are actual real-time events."

Real-time events? What was he saying; that he had astral traveled or something? But I was still vaguely trying to stay pissed-off with him so I didn't say anything and he went on.

"Once I saw a fire truck pulling up to a building and was able to direct my view to be able to identify that building later; and I did so with great difficulty as though I was fighting against the will of whatever or whoever was choreographing that vision. After the vision I checked my watch and wrote down the time. Later I checked it out and was able to determine to the minute that what I'd seen in my vision was actually happening at the time that I "visioned" it. The bizarre thing is, I don't have a body during those visions. Sometimes my view is as high as ten or twelve feet off the ground and at other times I seem to be looking up at a scene from a few feet below the ground, as though the ground was made of glass or something, yet at the same time I can see that the ground is there. A really weird sensation, I tell you."

What did he mean, "...the bizarre thing is...", the whole story was bizarre.

"But Festus, the other reason that I know these visions are being directed by someone somehow; and the most convincing reason by far; is the money. Every month one hundred thousand dollars appears in my account and every time I have another directive, my bank account shows another two hundred thousand dollars! No indications where it comes from and even the bank can't explain it. When I've asked them to find out where it comes from they end up shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders. They tell me that as far as they can tell, there is some anonymous depositor somewhere. Anyway, I've quit asking about it. Hell, it's there, it's legally mine, and it pays for any traveling and living costs I'm able to rack up in pursuit of my rushes. Over the years I've given away and wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars and I still have something over seven million in one simple checking account."

Oh, wow! Do I need to tell you that he had my undivided attention now?

"Every once in a while someone from the government writes and tells me I owe them some bloody great amount in taxes or some other excuse and they take half or more of my account. But there's always lots left. And like any other junky I'm not at all interested in cutting the throat of my sugar daddy so I don't try to understand it any more. I just wait for my next directive and amuse myself in the meantime."

He laid his head back in his seat again and looked straight ahead. There was a long silence and I was beginning to think I'd have to say something to jump-start the conversation again. But then he said without looking at me, "Festus, I've never told anyone what I've just told you. I've been carrying this weirdness around like my own private Jones now for eight years. It cuts me out from the mainstream and leaves me all alone in a world I can't share with anyone. I need to talk about this with someone, Festus. I'm hurting bad and I need someone to listen and understand, or at least try to understand, or at the very least to try to empathize and not just write me off as a nut-case." He turned just his head then, and said in just above a whisper, "Don't cut me out, Festus. I need you, man, and I think you can give me some believe if you'll just try. You have nothing to loose by cutting me some space. And you have a mind that can stretch around this weirdness. I've seen you stretch that mind. So, what do you say, man, are we quits or do you want to try to grock this thing with me?"

You can imagine that I was no longer the disinterested and pissed off ex-partner. Now, you have to know Pesky to understand why I believed him; well, believed that he believed it anyway. Pesky and I, we don't talk personal like as a rule and when we do, there's no head-games. It's either real or it's not there. We're straight with each other. So I knew that I was hearing something that touched a deep and sensitive area in him and the trust and faith in our friendship that he was displaying by sharing it with me was not lost on me. But it's true that If I hadn't witnessed some of it in all its weirdness myself, well, I wouldn't have bought it, you know. But,...Aw, hell,...

"Grock it?" I asked.

"You know; remember Stranger in a Strange Land? Heinlein? Grock; not just to understand, but to consume understanding so totally as to become one with the subject of examination. Grock!"

"Uh...yeah. Grock." I was feeling a little stunned, you can imagine.

" ? " he sez with just a look.

"Huh? Oh. Yeah. I'm in.", sez I, "Just...just give me a minute to think about what I've just committed myself to, 'kay?"

"'Kay."

[silence]

"Makes us foma in a gran-falloon I guess, eh?" he said.

"Awwww-Cut it OUT, Will Ya! You already wrecked a really great pissed-off you know." I sez; and he had too. I'd really been enjoying that one.

"Aw-rite aw-ready. Ex-squeeze me!", sez he, acting all insulted.

[silence]

"Ice Nine, no, Cat's Cradle; Kirt Vonnaget Jr., right?" I asked.

"Cat's Cradle." he said.

So you see, that's how Pesky and I became the Bean Team. Our job, should we chose to accept it, was to get into Pesky's bean and de-bug the bugger.

 

 

3: The Bean Team

3 The Bean Team

So two months later I'd closed up shop and Pesky and I had walked away from our habitats and took up residence together in a good used fifteen foot Triple-E camper that Pesky bought.

Basically, we just tripped around, going to movies, playing Risk whenever we felt like it (we soon got bored with it. For a really fine game you need at least four players) and lived off Pesky's bank account. But really, I was studying Pesky. I mean, he knew it of course, but we had agreed that I would watch for indications of weirdness or whatever. Try to pinpoint any unusual anythings that he might not be aware of. But in all that two months I'd seen nothing to indicate that he wasn't as sane as I was myself (some may shudder). Then one day, March eleventh in fact, we were driving from Prince George, BC out to Vanderhoof to see an old acquaintance of Pesky's who might have and might not have still been there, and we were singing along to an old Bob Dylan tune on the waves when I noticed that Pesky wasn't singing and I looked at him. He was sitting there, driving the van, and his lips were still moving but, no sound. And there was this 'nobody home' look about him. It lasted all of three seconds maybe, then his voice kind of popped back in place and he was normal again. Then it was him who turned to see why I wasn't singing and that was the real beginning of our investigation. Yeah. From that point on we realized that what had started out almost as a lark had become a deadly serious and vitally important investigation.

To make it brief, here's what happened. We pulled over to the side of the road and we began to talk about what had just happened. At first Pesky tried to deny that anything at all had happened. He had no memory at all of any blank spots. But the seriousness with which I was taking this convinced him that he had better at least consider the possibility that something had happened. Over the next half an hour it seemed to slowly come to him that in fact, if he really thought about it, something odd seemed to have transpired all right. Slowly and painfully, with me prodding him and both of us singing that old Dylan tune again (Well, I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more,...da-da..da-da..da-daaa...) he began to piece together a memory shred of someone stepping into his head, shoving him aside and taking a look at the world for a few seconds, then stepping out again and letting Pesky pop back into place again. He said it was almost like being shut off for a second except that instead of shutting off, he had only been dimmed out almost to obscurity for a second, but not completely. He also said it didn't feel like an unusual event. The more we talked about it the more convinced he became that it happened to him a lot, but he'd never really realized it till then.

So, where do you go from there? We didn't know, so we just documented it all (that was when we started to seriously keep notes) and started out again. But we never did get to Vanderhoof. About ten miles further on we decided to avail ourselves of the assistance of a medium, and the best place in Canada to go to find the 'off-the-wall' types is Victoria, BC. So we turned around right there and then and headed back South. It was already late so we stopped for the night about an hour South of Prince George and were heating up some beans when I looked up and saw someone standing about three feet away and looking at me. I mean, it was Pesky, but it wasn't; ya know? And then all of a sudden it was Pesky again. He said something normal (I forget what) as though nothing had happened. Then he noticed my face and realized something had happened and without me saying anything, he pieced it together and squeezed that memory back into the light. It seemed that, having realized what was going on, it was easier to remember it happening. This time, the memory fresh, he was able to say that the person who shoved him aside was a very real and very separate entity from himself, but that it (he, she) was so much like Pesky that it seemed to fit somehow, which was why it was so easy for Pesky to not notice it happening.

Well, now that we knew what we were looking for we began to see it a lot more than either of us would have thought possible without our having noticed it before. Pesky began to realize that it happened about three times a week and sometimes several times in one day. Over the next three weeks we basically sat in Victoria and waited for those intrusions to happen, and then we would analyze and document them. We never did find a medium or witch or psychic who knew their nose from a doorknob. In fact without fail the only ones we were able to find were crackpot old hippies stuck in the sixties, warped on weird drugs and bloated with egos.

Pesky began to develop a split second of recognition just before one of those weird episodes would happen. Then, on April the eighteenth, our big break came. That was the day we met the intruder. Pesky and I had talked about the possibility of him 'maneuvering' himself while having one of those intrusions, such as to be able to 'look' at the 'pseudo-Pesky', as we had come to call it. That day Pesky felt one coming on and did a quick mental maneuver, and damned if he didn't find himself 'looking' into one end of a 'channel' and the pseudo-Pesky looking out past him. And, you know what? Pesky found that of the two of them, he was the stronger.

It all happened while I was out of the van and I arrived back about an hour after the event to find Pesky sitting gripping the table and staring wide-eyed at nothing. I didn't know what the hell was going on and I kind of over-reacted I suppose. I grabbed Pesky and began shouting at him. Slowly he seemed to come back a bit and once he was enough in control he pushed me away and growled at me not to rush him. Later these events would become much easier for Pesky to deal with but this was the first time for him and he was afraid of loosing his hold on the entity in his head. But he had the channel anchored well open, and was busy having a heart to heart with the entity we came to know as R2-D2, and later, Ardy. Pesky later described that meeting to me like this; he said,

"The pseudo-Pesky seemed to jump with surprise as it realized I was there and it tried to close the channel. But somehow, instinctively, I don't know, I kind of 'grabbed on' to the pseudo-Pesky and held it there. This is kind of like trying to describe a rainbow to a blind man but here is what it was like; sort of.", and he hunkers into his story telling mode. "Imagine you have gloves on, covered with grease, and you're trying to hold onto the end of a nylon fishing line with a steelhead on the hook. The line feels like its slipping out of your hands and the steelhead is jerking your arm all over the place, but there's absolutely nothing you can do except hold on and hope. Then you realize that there's a small knot in the end of the line and you watch as it slowly slides towards the back of your fist, and you know that if that knot doesn't stop in your hand, well, you've lost him. And be damned if it doesn't snag on a seam of your greasy glove. You don't know if it will hold or not but there's still nothing you can do about it so again you just hang on and pray. Then, all of a sudden, you realize that there's no gloves, no grease, and no fishing line. You've had your fist solidly planted in that fish's gills all along and never were in danger of loosing him; he'd just been playing with your mind, trying to make you open your fist. Once you realize that, you lift the sucker out of the stream and hang him on your belt and that's all there is to that! He's your supper!" Pesky slapped the table and beamed with satisfaction.

4: Ardy and the Bugs

4 Ardy and the Bugs

I guess because Ardy was never expected to have to deal with battling against his host's will, he had not been supplied with whatever it would have taken to do so. All it seemed to take was for Pesky to be aware of what was happening and suddenly Pesky had complete control over what went on in his head. Maybe that's a rule of nature or something, I don't know. Seems it's not possible to dissemble or lie in that connectedness that Pesky shares with Ardy. But it is possible to withhold information. However, once Ardy realized that he was committed to the relationship he seemed to relax into it and make the best of it. I really believe that he'd quickly come to like us a lot and took our side in the events which followed. Least wise, once we really began getting to know each other he sure was eager to talk and became something of a pest for Pesky. Ardy started wanting to come out all the time and of course Pesky had his own life to live. But Ardy was so isolated and lonely that Pesky would pre-arrange a few times each day when either I alone or Pesky and I would visit with him. Once Pesky was aware of Ardy's incursions into his mind Ardy could only, as it were, knock on the door, but it was Pesky who opened or didn't open the channel for him. Pesky learned amazingly quickly how to use and control the channel. It was almost as if it was a natural skill that he had just never known he had before. Within a week Pesky could not only keep Ardy out, but could as easily yank him in whenever Pesky wanted. But Pesky was never able to jump into Ardy's mind and look out the other way. For some reason it was a one-way valve only. In later explanations Ardy would say (and you may be able to make sense of this answer but I can't) that this was because he (Ardy) was essentially a machine and had nowhere for Pesky to jump into; no place in terms of a soul I guess he must mean, or something like that. But anyway see, the roles kind of got reversed; Ardy became Pesky's genie. By the end of the month in fact, Ardy and Pesky could both be in Pesky's head and we could hold a three-way conversation.

There was immediately a kind of narcissistic relationship between Pesky and Ardy who is an entity specifically created and designed to be a link with Pesky. I'll get into who created him a bit later, but first let me tell you about Ardy himself. During the next couple of weeks I had opportunities to visit with him myself; Pesky would sometimes offer to step aside and let Ardy through for a visit. I guess it was kind of neat to sit back and listen to Ardy and me visit. Pesky says it's kind of like visiting with me himself without having to do any of the thinking work; see, Ardy is essentially a copy of Pesky. Ardy really likes the concept of playing Risk and would pester us to play with him. He and Pesky would share Pesky's head back and forth so as not to be able to anticipate each other. All in all it turns out to be a nice thing for Pesky to have another himself to talk to whenever he wants. And I just gotta say, that for all that he is somehow shallow, or shadowy may be a better word for it, Ardy does have one good sensk-a-ha-ha about himself.

Ardy is an actual physical being; if you can call a lump of nerve tissue cultured in an artificial life support mechanism a physical being. He had been cultured from a single nerve cell stolen from Pesky that night Pesky had passed out. Actually Pesky had been knocked out by the psychic powers of Ardy's creators. Ardy was grown and then linked to Pesky by the application of a psychic link and Pesky's personality was laid over Ardy such that Ardy was like a picture of Pesky. But you know, as I talked with Ardy I noticed that I was always reaching for something intangible that was always just out of reach. I finally twigged onto what it was. Ardy is like a two-dimensional picture of Pesky, having all the outward form of Pesky but none of the substance. That's why I say Ardy is kind of shallow, I don't mean that he is unfeeling or anything, just, well, shallow damn it. All of Pesky's personality is represented there but of course, none of the actual experiences or physical or mental scars are there, only the outline of them. So when you'r talking to him it's like trying to make love to a very provocative and interactive hologram. No matter how exiting things get, you just can't make that contact that scratches the itch. But as a tool, Ardy is a fantastic item. He is, in the terms of his creators, the equivalent of what a robot would be to us. It seems that Ardy's creators are so completely alien to us that they have no way at all of relating to us; no common ground such as mathematics or physics. Even the concept of individuality is alien to them. See, they, or rather it, is the composite consciousness of a whole pile of things that could be insects or crustaceans or arachnids; probably none of the above since they are from a whole different place than Earth. These things connect psychically and, while individually they have no conscious thought, in combination they grow in consciousness with their numbers and with evolutionary development. On the planet where they come from, whole populations of these bugs form huge consciousness' and Ardy says that at some point they attain continental consciousness. Then eventually these become strong enough to link up into planetary consciousness. Apparently there is a proximity element to the link up that limits them till they evolve past a critical point, at which they; the collective that is; suddenly finds itself able to link up with other collectives at distances unbridgeable before. These bugs are at this time essentially a planetary consciousness, and are instinctively looking to procreate themselves on other planets to eventually join up into collectives on a solar system level or larger I guess.

When Pesky and I asked Ardy how he knows all this he explained that he is like a building with two rooms but no connecting door, just an intercom between them. On one side is Ardy the human thought-matrix, and on the other is an Ardy of the bug thought-matrix. He was really built to educate the bug side about us, but it works the other way too.

Anyway, back to the point; Ardy says that when a group of these bugs gets in proximity with another they have no choice but to join the collective consciousness. That's not to say that they are 'captured' because the collective consciousness may choose to reject that group as not bringing a healthy or helpful element to the composite. That's how they grow and evolve I guess. Each group is always on the lookout to collect or to join up with other collectives that are healthier, stronger, more psychic, etc. There is some critical relationship between size of the collective and the overall quality of its psychic "flavors" such that just bigger is not always better. If these bugs try to get bigger than their evolved psyche can support, then the whole collective starts to fall apart into small, primary groups again. Also, the collective can send out a chunk of itself as an agent of itself. However, once away from the relative vicinity of the collective, that chunk becomes self directed and may choose for reasons of its own not to return to the collective, or to try to join another collective. Seems these critters have a whole template of emotions and thought processes that we don't have, and they lack a lot of what we have. They don't have the ability to think in linear terms for instance. They also don't have personality as such; they have a kind of mental texture instead. To them the concept of time takes on a whole new meaning, yet they can't seem to get a handle on the concept of termination of consciousness in the temporal sense; i.e.: death. To them, the concept of valuing an individual and trying to heal an injured member is right off the wall. They'd eat 'im. As far as what we would call the sciences go, well, the closest they get to anything we would recognize as science is genetic manipulation and this they do through some very complex and sophisticated mental processes apparently. Aw, hell! I guess I might just as well say it. From what Ardy says it seems that these bugs use magic and have no concept of science at all. They manipulate reality through mental processes. That's magic isn't it? Well, anyway, according to Ardy, these kinds of critters are by far the norm in all of creation and we, or critters like us, are a very, VEry, VEry; no, VERY rare commodity; and very much valued. More about that later.

Well, so, the ultimate question, right? "Why ME?" We got to the point of asking Ardy that and the answer was not at all simple, yet it was. First the simple answer. The bugs were here to harvest something that grows here on the Earth and they chose Pesky, by the purest of chance; virtually like throwing a dart at the Earth repeatedly till it hit someone, anyone; they chose him as their harvesting machine.

That was the simple answer, now for the complicated one. And, no matter how this is told, it will not really describe the reality since the reality is a reality that is beyond the human experience and therefore we don't have the words or concepts to describe it. But here goes. Just try to extrapolate on this a bit, okay? Okay. It took Ardy a long time and a lot of agonizing to help us to understand too.

5: Life, the Universe, and Something or Other

5 Life, the Universe, and Something or Other

It seems that the universe is filled with beings that are sentient only when a sufficient number of the critters of which they are composed get together and even then it takes evolutionary time for intelligence and knowledge to grow together. Without fail these beings are invested with a natural and instinctive skill. There is a particle, one which all of our science is unable to detect; a sub-atomic particle; which has some very unique qualities. One of these is that it has absolutely no mass and no energy. Another is that it is the very first and most primitive form of existence. By this I mean that this particle is the enzyme, the enabling agent, which makes it possible for all of the rest of the real universe around us to exist. Let me try that again. Seems the universe is only able to exist because of the fact that these particles pop into existence once in a while. Somehow or other, in the act of popping into existence, these particles make it possible for another huge volume of space-time to exist. One of these particles enables an incredibly large volume to exist, something in the magnitude of; now get this; all the space, time, matter, and energy that would be included in the volume of a ball, the outer surface of which is defined by and includes five galaxies of average size and an average distance apart from each other. But not to suppose that these galaxies never existed before; somehow once allowed to exist, they always did exist. See? I told you it was hard. But to continue; all of this enabling business happens instantly at the moment that the particle pops into existence. After that the particle just sort of drifts off and doesn't really have any function anymore; at least, not without some help from our friends, the bugs and their like. These particles are popping into existence all the time throughout the physical universe. That's why the universe seems to be always expanding. It is always expanding, like a balloon. In all directions at once. And the reason that within that expanding universe it seems there is no edge is because of that little thing I mentioned before about the things that are enabled to exist suddenly existing and having always existed.

Oh, Man! This always gives me a ripping headache!

Anyway, those beings that are in the majority in the universe are able to detect and use those expended particles. Say one of those particles pops into existence in Kindersley, Saskatchewan. Having no mass or energy, it's not held by the Earth but tends to drift off because the Earth with its rotation and orbits and everything else is always changing its momentum and vectors and like that. The little bugger drifts around and one day comes into close proximity (in the order of one-and-a-half light years distance) with a planet on which the beings have evolved to a high enough level that they can sense its presence and also get it together enough to "call" the particle to them. This is instinct with them once highly enough evolved. Once they get their psychic mitts on one of these particles; WOW; they can do some real amazifying things with it! The particle seems to have some left-over creative power yet, but that power can't be released into the universe outside. However, these critters, they can cause the particle to allow a space/reality to exist inside itself, as big or as small as they want within the limitations of mass, energy, and size of those five galaxies, and governed by whatever natural laws can be imagined. Also the smaller the space/reality, the more versatile the bugs can be, like for instance the easier it is to manipulate the natural laws and the position in real time/space of the particle itself. Yet from the outside, that particle still has no mass or energy of its own, so in effect, that particle becomes the doorway to another "pocket dimension" altogether. They can determine by their powers of psychic manipulation of the particle, what that space/reality will be like. Having done that, they are able to "put" either themselves or other things inside of that space by somehow willing it to be so. For instance, they may want a place to dispose of nuclear waste. They'd take one of these particles and create a space/reality inside it that can't abide the existence of nuclear activity and then any nuclear active material that gets dumped into that space/reality is destroyed or rearranged or something, according to the natural laws that govern that space/reality. Problem is though that once a space/reality is made to exist inside that particle, it can't be made to not exist again. Well, you can see that it's just a matter of how imaginative you want to be and how many particles you can get your mitts on, right?

Right-arm!

Farm-out!

Trouble is, those kinds of critters, they don'ts gots much in the way of imaginaters! So it's all just plain, hard old, blood-sweat-and-tears work for them to come up with new and improved ways of using the particles. Ardy tells us that it would take the bugs, even starting as advanced as they are now, several thousands of years of hard work to start from scratch and come up with the concept of a bicycle, and there would have to be a stimulating need to keep them at it.

Some of the smart ones have discovered that they can make a space inside of the particles that is habitable for their particular kinds of needs. Then they can put themselves inside of these particles. Maybe they create a space that is a micro-version of their home planet, and they use this particle for a laboratory or something. Then one day the collective inside discovers that while inside the particle, he/she/it is able to decide, "Hmmm, I don't want the particle I'm inside of to be here any more, I want it to be over there." and sure enough, the particle; because it has no mass or energy and is subject only to that special will that these critters have; suddenly the particle, with them inside it, is no longer there, now its over here. With no time taken for passage through space and no energy expended other than whatever it takes them critters to generate the will-stuff to make it happen. So, you know what they have? I'll tell you what they got, man! They got real cheap to operate, indestructible, self-contained space ships! Dig it!

Indelibly farm-out!

Now, you want more particles? Well, why wait for spring? Instead of sitting and waiting for them to drift by, go to the place where they're popping into existence and catch them as they do so!

And that's what they're doing here.

And Pesky is their catcher's mitt.

6: But, What's Happenin' Down Here, Man?

6 But, What's Happenin' Down Here, Man?

Trouble for them though, is that we are so alien from those critters that they are absolutely repulsed by us and our mental "flavor". We are like some kind of obscenity on the face of reality to them. They can't get within a light years of us without becoming psychically sickened to the point of puking up their last attitude. Being as sensitive as they are to the psychic energies around them; about us there is a vacancy as if our presence sucks up all the psychic energy leaving a nauseating nothingness, a psychic black hole that they don't dare come near.

So, why not go elsewhere for your particles? Because Earth; or Earth-type beings, us humans that is; are the source of the particles. It's something about us that generates the creation of the particles. And, like I said before, critters like us, critters with personal egos, are an invaluable and uber-rarity in the extreme in the big wide universe. Kind-a makes up for that "puke" business a bit, doesn't it.

So, what they do is, they create an interface device, a robot, to communicate with their "harvester" host for them. This interface device has to be able to think and interact like one of us and at the same time, like one of them so that it can interpret back and forth. However, it must not have any psychic reality unto itself or it would be "sucked dry" by our psychic presence like they are. So they build it so it is able to translate input from one side of its intelligence to the other side through a mental wall that protects each from the other. That's Ardy. Then you park your robot close enough to Earth so that Ardy, with some enhanced powers, can be in touch with Pesky, yet you don't get the psychic heaves.

But first they have to use up one of their precious particles, but the ultimate payoff will make it worth the cost. In a person, in this case Pesky, they implant a robot, more primitive than the "Ardy" type; something more like a specialized "Particle-Sucker-Upper-Vacuum-Cum-Pilot" robot; which travels via a particle of its own which it is enabled to "drive". This really small robot parks itself inside of Pesky and grabs a nerve cell for culturing the "Ardy" robot. It carries the cell back to the "Laboratory-Warehouse-Space-Station" particle and then comes back and waits to collect and transport the particles that it will suck up. Once the Ardy robot is built and everything is set, the implanted robot proceeds to "suck up" any other particles Pesky carries it into the immediate vicinity of. It just needs for Pesky to be within, oh let's say 150 meters of the action when a particle is being created, then it sucks up the expended particle once it's popped into being and done it's "creative" thing. Ardy is set up in the space-station particle outside of our "Zone of Vacancy". He's left to hover there where the bugs can come occasionally and collect the particles. His job is to monitor the Earth for imminent "particle poppings" and motivate Pesky to get close when and where it's going to be generated. Apparently, because Ardy is a virtual clone of Pesky there's a very powerful psychic connection that is just barely functional through our psychic vacuum. After Pesky has gathered up a load of particles the implanted robot carries them up to Ardy and downloads the cargo for the bugs to pick up. Ardy told us at that time that Pesky was already carrying a virtual fortune of fortunes, nineteen virgin particles, but wasn't due to be unloaded for awhile yet. Another ten to fifteen years, he said. The reason the robot doesn't just trans-locate itself to wherever a particle is due to be born instead of using a host like Pesky is that in our "Zone of Vacancy" even their robots have a hard time functioning. It's all they can do just to get on and off the planet, and then it's easier if they use a known "parking spot", like inside their host.

How does Ardy know where and when a particle will be created? Apparently, being a particle somewhat outside of the normal boundaries of nature, it has a tendency to forecast it's presence before it pops into being. I guess that's because it's somewhat outside of the limits of time as well, time being a facet of the same cube as space, all of which these particles generate from nothingness. Anyway, Ardy is set up to be able to pinpoint the increasing vibrations or whatever that forecast the appearance of a particle. Then he would show some videos in Pesky's head or do whatever it was he needed to do to get Pesky to go there. I guess diddling with computers, like in the banks that hold Pesky's account is child's play for the kind of science these critters deal in. Essentially magic I'd say. So that's how Ardy makes it possible for Pesky to be able to do the travelling he needs to do, and to stay independent. Enough money will buy anything.

I guess it took awhile to culture and develop Ardy, then more time for Ardy to absorb Pesky's personality and make the link to the "bug" side of his consciousness. Then time to study the situation and come up with the strategy for motivating Pesky. The bugs couldn't do that, they had to leave it to Ardy. That was why the time lag between when Pesky was waylaid when he was 13 and his first "trip".

Okay, I know what your thinking. Despite this amazing story and all the repercussions that it implies, your thinking to yourself, "Man, if that Ardy could put money in bank accounts, they should have got him to put a few million extra in both their accounts and then they could give to lots and lots in charities, and buy this and that and..." etc. etc.. Am I right? Of course I am. Now, don't you feel small and shallow? Well, cheer up. I asked Ardy to do exactly that. He answered quite reasonably that to do so would require tampering with such noticeable results that it would draw unhealthy attention. Fifty to a hundred thousand dollars here or there every month would not be noticed, but much more than that would only cause us trouble.

Anyway, that's the gist of what Ardy could tell us about the bugs.

So, we'd sat about in Victoria in our mobile home for three weeks, getting to know Ardy and discovering quite an amazing knowledge about the world around us. Thinking back it seems to me that we should have stuck out like sore thumbs. But you know its amazing how adaptable and adjustable the human psyche is. In fact, that's one of the things that makes the bugs crazy around us. It seemed like no matter what we learned from Ardy, within minutes we would shrug our shoulders and say to ourselves, "Okay, I've just adjusted the color, tint and angle of my view on life, and it still makes as little sense as it ever did, so what the hey. What's next?" Around about then Ardy announced another incoming particle; in Russia again no less. Up in a little backwater fishing village in the Kamchatka province or region or whatever those people have. About three-hundred kilometers from Alaska. Damn.

I'm gonna tell you a little something about Pesky now that may surprise you. It did me, anyway. He's got his chopper's license. That's right. He has a private pilot's license and helicopter endorsement. I guess he did that a few years ago just for the fun of it. So what we do is, we phone ahead and rent a chopper out of a place called Nome, Alaska, and then we secretly contract for some fuel to be deposited at certain places along the way. Believe it or not, it's easier than you'd think. Nothin' to this spy business. Then a few days later we flies up to Nome, picks up our hunting licenses (camouflage) and heads out for Russia again. I gotta admit, I was defecating ceramic building blocks the whole week. But not Pesky. You'd think we was going for a walk in the woods. Bear infested mind you, but just the woods. So we arrives, flying low, at this little Eskimo fishing town called something or other like "Mack-too-lick". Sounded like a cross between clearing your throat and highland Scottish. Anyway, if you're interested in looking on a map, it's not shown, but it's on the North-Eastern shore of a kind of fiord, East of a place called Vankarem.

Man, I could write a whole book about that adventure! We comes in low, lands in the middle of town, climbs out and all these Eskimo-type folks come running to see what's up. Pesky just stands there in that stupid way he has when close to a "rush" and I'm left to try and make some conversation with Russian speaking Eskimos. Sometimes Pesky really pisses me off. All of a sudden Pesky goes into his epileptic-like spell and all the superstitious Ruskies go running in all directions. Five minutes later we're high-tailing it back to Alaska, probably with some Russian jets on their way to intercept us. As pre-arranged we fly straight down the West coast of Alaska, refueling along the way, and finally land at a place called Akulurak and change to a small, fast plane. Then we break wind to Prince Rupert, BC back in Canada and load onto a commercial flight back to the motor home in Victoria.

God, I can't believe we really did those things! That was so stupid!

But, Pesky got his particle.

Now, you're wondering "What? How? Why?" we humans generate these particles.

7: The Particle

7 The Particle

You might want to stop reading now 'cause I'm going to say a dirty word; one that makes a lot of "trendy" or "modern" people turn sour in the stomach. See, these days we can, are expected to, and are considered Victorian if we don't, talk openly and blatantly about shallow things like sex, politics, sex, money, sex, buying things, sex, musical styles, sex, clothing styles, sex, and etc. But let someone mention this terrible word and all the beautiful people smile knowingly and chuckle condescendingly, then clap you on the back and say something urbane and trendy like, "I'm sorry, I'm an agnostic and I don't believe in organized _ ." And yes, that terrible, disgustingly intimate and embarrassing (not like sex) word is RELIGION !

The bugs, and critters like them, have aspirations towards an esoteric existence of some sort that is impossible for Ardy to translate into terms that Pesky and I can understand, except to say that in the long view it is the equivalent to them of religion to us. The point of their religious history is to encourage and teach them to strive and reach for the greater expression of what are their natural inclinations. In other words, what they are is what they should be more of. We on the other hand, and all critters in the cosmos that generate particles, are products of a nature that inclines us towards chaos, and the point of religion is to teach us to strive against our natural inclinations. I mean, if there is a famine and I have two loaves of bread and you have none, my natural inclination is to keep both loaves against the famine. But religion, any legitimate religion that is, will tell me that I must strive to train myself to give you one of my loaves without any regard whatever for my own future, trusting only in God, by whatever name, to reward such faithful generosity with abundance. In other words, our type of religion teaches us to strive against our inherent nature. Need another example? 'Kay, we'll try this one. My natural instinct is to become as strong and as feared by everyone else as I possibly can, then my needs will be looked after, even if someone else has to suffer for it, which doesn't matter to me. And in lieu of that, my instinct is to ingratiate and attach myself to the strongest and most powerful person I can find and make myself indispensable to him, for the same protection. But it is the intention of religious thought to convince me to detach myself from all such desire and instead to proceed through life totally dependant on and content with the will of God and His (Her? It's?) wish to provide for me out of His mercy and generosity. So, it is the clashing of our nature against our religious endeavor which generates the particles. They are the sparks that result from that clashing, so to speak. This striving generates a potential that builds up and builds up around the world, like an electric charge, until a critical "mass" of potential is accumulated and then, -POP-, a baby particle pops into being. And that's how it's done.

Now listen. Don't blame me. I know this sounds like a bad science fiction plot and in fact that's exactly what I'm passing this tale off as so if anything, it's appropriate. Besides, that's what Ardy told us and I can't change that fact.

If I was you, about now I'd be asking myself, "I wonder what his point is in writing this tale. Obviously no one is going to believe him, yet he seems to be writing it as if it's true and he wants someone to believe him, even though he holds no hope that it will be believed, so he's passing it off as fiction. What kind of stupid, self-defeating jerk is this guy anyway?"

Were you thinking that? Aw, come on, you can tell me. Were you? Eh?

Okay, okay. So it doesn't end with "and they all lived happily ever after" at this point. In actual fact, there is a point to all of this. Read on.

8: So, Where Does That Leave Us?

8 So, Where Does That Leave Us?

Remember please, that as much as this arrangement with Pesky and the bugs paid off in a big way for Pesky, and despite the fact that we both like Ardy and consider him a close friend (in Pesky's case, is that an understatement or what, eh?) and despite the fact that Pesky really likes his rushes, you have to realize that the whole thing is an imposition on Pesky's life and it cuts him out of ever knowing a normal life or even a normal relationship with anyone. Look who he has to resort to for friends for example. Pesky wanted out!

We broached this subject with Ardy and he actually understood Pesky's feelings on the subject. Blew me away completely, I can tell you. I didn't expect any kind of favorable reaction from Ardy, and in fact fully expected him to react by showing his true colors as an agent of the bugs. But Pesky was just as sure that Ardy would understand and talked me into agreeing to try the tactic of total honesty and openness. Bizarre tactic! What a concept! Well, Pesky was right.

The three of us started to brainstorm for ideas on how to approach the bugs with the idea of a co-operative approach instead of total manipulation and exploitation. You see, to them we aren't even a true life form since by their definition, any life form that doesn't show some evidence of psychic ability is down around the vegetable kingdom or lower. And I'm sorry to tell all of you West coast "alternatives" types and you California-style philosophers that for all that you wish to pretend otherwise, for all practical purposes, we human beans ain't psychic enough to beat the bug's carrots. In the view of the bugs, what they are doing in their exploitation of us, and specifically Pesky, is about the equivalent of what we are doing when we strip mine without regard for the feelings of the land, or cut trees with no regard for the happiness of the forest. Except that in their way, they are wiser than we since they aren't destroying the source of their own wealth, they are just not considering the possibility that they might owe something in return for what they are taking away. So, you see our next mission is simply stated. We need to open communications with someone who can't even conceive that we exist, let alone are able to talk. Next we have to tell them that we want to be left alone, or at least a compromise made in the way they harvest the fruits of our broken hearts. We have to make this demand knowing full well that we have no mechanism for enforcing any agreement, and knowing that what the exploiters are harvesting is both of absolutely no value to us and absolutely essential to them. And, we don't just want them to let Pesky go, we don't want them doing this to anyone else either. At least not without asking, and not without a negotiated recompense.

Don't say it! All the money in the world couldn't pay for the time they had already stolen from Pesky's life.

We talked long with Ardy about it and finally he told us to leave him alone for a few days while he consulted closely with his "bug" side. So we left him alone and for the next thirteen days and four hours Pesky withheld from breaking in on Ardy. It was getting almighty hard to resist any longer, I can tell you, when all of a sudden, one day, in the middle of lunch at the White Spot in Banff (yeah, we'd tired of the West Coast and were heading back East to Quebec. I'd never been there and we...what the hell am I doing? Back to the main story) Pesky jerks upright, banging the table with his knee and knocking half the stuff off the table, the whole go'dam restaurant and half the parking lot is looking at us like we got crabs or B. O. or something; he grabs my arm and yells at the top of his lungs, "Holy shit, man, it's Ardy! He's back! Move your ass, man! To the Bat-Van so we can talk to him!"

Really, sometimes that Pesky reeeeeally pisses me off.

And to make it worse, the news was all bad news. Remember I told you that the bugs don't have imagination? Well, I guess poor old Ardy spent that two weeks trying to make his own bug side comprehend that it was dealing with sentient creatures who wanted to talk. But the problem was that communication is itself a psychic phenomenon with them and without some stimulating need to drive it, the bug mind couldn't make the intuitive leap from one conception of us to another. The best that Ardy was able to tell us was that we needed to find a way to interrupt the programmed harvest of the particles. That would get their attention and create a need to understand what was happening to their program. Here were our limitations; Pesky was totally and helplessly addicted and powerless to resist a rush if it was offered. Ardy was essentially a mechanism and was not able to withhold himself from performing his programmed function which was to lead Pesky by the nose to any particle birthing that were forthcoming. Thus we were stalemated for about seven years.

9: The Grass

9 The Grass

We'd bought a farm down near Riviere-du-Loup in Quebec, by a little town called St-Pascal. We'd turned kind of hermit, I guess. The locals all thought we were gays. Don't matter. We was only just playing at being farmers really. We sure weren't making any money from it anyway. More and more we were drifting away from the rest of the world and all its concerns. Pesky for obvious reasons and me, well, I guess I've never been that proud of being a member of the human race anyway. Me ol' da used to say, "The Human race? We may be loosing, but at least it's our race!" as if that was supposed to mean anything. Jerk.

Usually I'd go with Pesky on his particle gatherings but not always. For all that it was only a distraction and a financial flop anyway, we took a lot of pride and satisfaction out of our little vegetable and maple syrup farm. Usually we'd hire locals to look after things for us while we were away, but sometimes I'd stay and keep the weeds from the door, so to speak, while Pesky and Ardy went hunting. Those sure were lonely times though. I'll tell you straight; by then we all three felt like aliens in the world and it was kind of scary to be alone.

One day in the first year that we were there Ardy announced that Pesky would be unloaded of his cargo that night. In the morning neither of us noticed anything different, and Pesky hadn't felt anything, but Ardy confirmed that during the night the travelling robot had unloaded Pesky of fifty-two particles. So what.

It was late August of 1995 when one day Ardy wakes up Pesky from a dead sleep with some news that changed everything. Another type of critter had just arrived in the vicinity of Earth, aboard a particle of their own. So far as Ardy knew, if he was able to make contact with it, it would be the first contact that the bugs would ever have made with another "sentient" like themselves. So as we spoke, Ardy was trying to make contact with the other particle's inhabitants via his bug self's psych. And he did.

Now, I'm not going to give you blow-by-blow of what happened because it happened between beings that I can't comprehend and in ways that make no sense to a human being. But here is how it came to us. This new composite being was in affect, a field of grass. Each blade was a unit of the composite intelligence. Notwithstanding, it was a much more highly evolved being than the bugs and was very much more powerful, psychically speaking. It also was here in search of particles and had traced the trail of one back over a seven thousand year drift. In their terms, Earth has only just begun to generate particles. They harvest planets that have been producing for millions of years apparently. Thing about the grass is, it's bordering on being a galactic size composite intelligence. It covers about two-thirds of our galaxy and includes many thousands of different...I don't know what to call them; races? It includes swarms of bug-likes, bird-likes, fish-likes, all kinds of different animal-types, and also a lot of things that don't even fit into those classifications. It included many varieties of sentient plant-like life-forms as well. It's a weird old world out there man, I'm telling you. Anyway, it considers the bugs to be their equivalent of club wielding, cave dwelling Neanderthals. It's not the least interested in having the bugs join its group intelligence. But it is interested in letting the bugs evolve so that eventually the bug composite intelligence can join and enhance the larger composite. Like I said, their concept of time is almost Californian.

But what really excited Ardy was that the grass thing was so highly evolved that it was able to very dimly, but significantly, comprehend the reality of us generator-type life forms as self-identifying beings. That near galactic sized composite, of which the grass thing was a part, was able to understand at least that there was something about us types that it didn't understand.

Now we are talking here about a sentient that can, through the operation of its will, cause stars to move about in the heavens. It can gather together material to create a star or a black hole, or it can dispense with a star or a black hole. It can, through the operation of its will cause a dead planet to explode into life-forming activity. It can "smell" other galactic composites and, although it can't merge yet, it can and does chat in a neighborly fashion with other galaxies. Hell, maybe it's on a first name basis with God, I don't know. But it is just barely able to recognize the fact that we are unique, individual, deaf, dumb and blind entities who are lonely and reaching out for friends.

So this vast and all-knowing grass-entity told the bugs, "You have a robot there which is in desperate need of being able to function autonomously and dictate to you how you will harvest that planet. If you don't give it this power you will not be allowed to harvest here and we will take over, thank you very much." Then it said to Ardy, "Here you are robot..." and ZZZZZZZIT, it waved its collective magic wand and "...now you are no longer committed to your function for the sake of the bugs only, now you are committed to helping the generator-type critters (us) to market their product equitably. But the bugs still get to be the principle buyers. Bye now." and it collectively buggered off.

10: Now, Let's Cut Us A Deal!

10 Now, Let's Cut Us A Deal!

Well now, in that five-minute conversation the grass had revolutionized the future of the human race. Suddenly Pesky and I were enabled to set conditions on the harvesting of Earth's particles. Maybe the grass was just lucky or maybe there is a God out there somewhere looking out for everyone after all. Whatever the case, it's a damn good thing it was Pesky and me that received this power 'cause if it had been a politician or a lawyer, well, God have mercy on the Human race. But, it wasn't a politician or lawyer, it was two low-class, uneducated, looser, loner, red-neck hillbillies who have no outside agenda, and aren't committed to any movement or ideology. Couple of lame-brained, trailer-trash know-nothings. Best choice conceivable for a planetary ambassador/salesman.

How hard then, do we squeeze the bugs? Ardy cautioned us that if we squeezed too hard the grass would come back and take away the options that it had just laid on us. But what medium of exchange can there be? The bugs don't have any technology that is in our realm of science and if we simply ask that they dump diamonds on us, well, this arrangement is for ever essentially; how many diamonds can we collect before the Earth is saturated with diamonds? We had to come up with a cost that would be of value at any time in the future and which could build up as an account that could be dipped into later. See, we have no intention of revealing to the human world what we are involved in here. The world isn't ready for it yet. At least, that's our opinion and since it's our baseball, we get to set the rules for the game; right? But we want the value of what we are selling to bank for us so that in the future, when Man is ready to make intelligent use of it, Man will collectively profit by it. Not just one powerful little Hitler or some twisted guru. The three of us spent long days over the winter of 1995 / 1996 discussing this because it dawned on us that the choice we made could well be the standard for ever between humans and the bugs. Also, the arrangement had to be set so that some unbiased agent would always be overseeing the process. This way at no time in the future could one person get control of and abuse the wealth. Ardy will live forever, basically unchanging and self-repairing.

It will take the bugs several hundred-thousands of years to be able to comprehend us as sentient entities, so in the meantime, they see the situation this way; Ardy is a rogue robot who has hijacked their harvesting program and is demanding a portion of the profits for himself, and there's dick all they can do about it. Actually, Ardy will just be our accountant, keeping book for us in the sky. For every four particles that the bugs collect, they will be indebted to Ardy for one particle with the future provision of a robot to be the operator of that particle. Those robots (we're talking Ardy-type robots here) will be matched to a human Ardy chooses at the time of the robot's creation. Ardy-types can delete a persona when the person dies, and re-format with another person's personality you see, so one robot is all a particle will ever need for a pilot. This price is retroactive to when the bugs first started harvesting us. It will be banked and can be called on at any time in the future; and in the meantime any use that the bugs make of our banked particles will be charged interest at the rate of eight virgin particles returned per half-century of Earth time, or portion thereof, for every seven borrowed.

Ardy will be responsible for contacting and negotiating with a world-embracing and stable Earth government when and if humanity ever gets it together to evolve socially to the point where there is peace and harmony in the world. At that time Ardy will present to them the banked particles and explain their potential. See, once a person is given a particle with a robot to operate and form it, that robot can then create a specified space inside the particle and bring people in or out of it at will, the way the Bugs would take "stuff" in or out of a particle. Then the human partner essentially becomes the pilot/Captain and the robot becomes the machinery that runs it. This will open the heavens to mankind. But this won't happen until Man is ready for it from Ardy's perspective. Don't worry, Pesky and therefore Ardy has a very clear and healthy perspective. At the very worst Ardy will only allow ineffectual people to be paired with a robot, but he will never allow a potential Jim Jones or Ede Amin, or Richard Nixon to be paired. He'll negotiate with the appropriate people at that time, but Ardy alone has the final say on who first gets paired with a particle's robot. After that it's up to the robot itself to negotiate for its future partners. And as a last resort there will sit Ardy; forever the master and able to shut down any of the other robots if things get out of hand.

We three decided to give ourselves till March twenty first, the spring equinox of 1996 to think it all out and make the pitch we'd be springing on the bugs. Ardy felt that the arrangement would work and that the bugs would go for it. And so they did.

11: Back to Pesky and Me

11 Back to Pesky and Me

So, the future is set for humanity. Mankind doesn't know it yet, but there it is. But that still leaves Pesky and me. Two years have passed and we are still farming our little maple syrup and vegetable plot here in Quebec. I've finally mastered the language (believe me, it ain't French; I took French in high-school on the prairies and this ain't French). Pesky and I have continued to drift away from the world like as if our spirits are a couple of particles themselves. These days when I go to town for anything, I look at the people on the streets and I talk to them and I laugh with them; but they look and sound like an alien race to me. Pesky and me, somehow we lost it all in the final analysis. Ardy has cultured a copy of himself. This robot, Ardy2, will be given a particle and Pesky and I are going to disappear. Ardy will stay and act as humanity's agent and will oversee the establishing of another collector/agent for the bugs to replace Pesky. He says he is going to try selling "the lifestyle" to the next agent he recruits, instead of using addiction like Pesky's rush. When we're ready to leave Ardy is going to do something to Pesky's mind to erase the addiction.

Our little spaceship will contain a planet about five-sixths the size of Earth (any larger than that Ardy tells us, and it will start getting unwieldy for the robot to maneuver) with a clear meadow for our farm beside a clear flowing river surrounded by a vibrant living forest of both hard and soft woods. There will be all the various terrain with all the bugs and birds and animals that you would expect to find in the similar landscape of Earth. We even kept the mosquito, only in our world nothing will be inclined to bite, eat or hunt us beyond protecting themselves. Ardy says we'll be recognized as unpalatable to everything else that lives there, yet everything will be inclined to like, ignore or tolerate our company so long as we aren't unduly mean to them. We'll have horses. I've always wanted a horse. Sheep too I think. I like mutton. Ardy says he'll fix the environment to kill off any deadly bacteria or viruses or such, but we'll keep things like mild flus and colds and non-lethal illnesses. We'd get weak without some hardships.

Overhead will be a beautiful blue sky and our own little pseudo-sun that will not only energize and warm our planet, but will also have healing and restorative effect on humans. We'll live forever, even age backwards to our mid-twenties, until we become weary of life and choose to leave it. At night our sky will be a window looking out of our particle at the big old starry universe around us, plus a little moon that will look and act just like Earth's. A day and a night will be twenty four hours long and their respective length will vary with the season, as will the temperature; though we will live where it's a bit more temperate than we get in Southern Quebec. The weather and the seasons will vary just as they do on Earth. Our Ardy2 will retain some control over environment and weather, but basically, it will be set to Earth standards. We'll build ourselves a guest house in case we ever get lonely and invite some aliens for a sleep-over. Any supplies we need we'll gather just before leaving by materializing inside a Zellers or Canadian Tire or something at night. I think the world owes us that much. Besides, we'll leave checks on Pesky's bank account. We've decided against any fuel burning machines but we'll set up a little generator in our river for electricity. We plan to seek out other planets of particle-generators like us Earthlings. Maybe we'll find some technologies among them that we'll incorporate into our little world, who knows. Ardy2 will keep us informed of and steer us clear of the proximity of any particle-collector type civilizations so we don't sicken anyone.

In another three weeks it'll be August 30th, 1997, the third anniversary of our contractual handshake with the bugs. We're going to disappear on that day.

So this is our good-bye to you, Mankind, from Pesky and me, Festus. Good-bye to a world that never did feel like home. We leave no one behind who cares that we are gone. Maybe we'll come back some day, maybe we won't. If we die and haven't given it away to someone else, our robot will bring our particle home to Ardy for you.

It will be a long time I think, before humanity is ready to receive its inheritance from us. Maybe you'll all kill each other off by then and it'll all revert to the bugs. This little tale of mine is all the warning you're going to get. Good-bye. Be excellent to each other.

 

The End