Monday (Armageddon)
Tuesday (Revelations)
Wednesday (The Malevolence)
Thursday (Third Eye)
Friday (The Human System)
Saturday (Epilogue)
Author
Chapter One
Monday
(Armageddon)
‘Come on, Margaret! Remember, no pain, no gain!’
The septuagenarian grimaced at Russell and began pumping her arms back and forth like the pistons of a steam locomotive.
Russell Tebb, of Russell Tebb Aerobics, nodded his approval and moved on to appraise the other members of his class. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ he enthused, pumping his fist in time to the music. ‘Nice thrusting, Joyce! Let’s see if we can’t shake those new hips loose!’
‘You’re killing us, Russell!’
Russell turned, ready to bawl-out his complainant but a movement in the corner of his eye distracted him; his secretary, Meg, stood at the office door, mouthing the word “urgent” as she brandished a phone receiver in the air. This was followed by a shrug. Obviously the caller thought it was important, but Meg wasn’t so sure. He batted her away and returned his attention to the class.
‘That’s good, Stephen, one hundred and ten percent! We tolerate nothing less here!’
Eventually the song ended, much to the relief of everyone except Russell, who frowned menacingly at his class. He set up the next track but then glanced back at his office. Maybe he should take that call; give this lot a break before one of them keels over. ‘Five minutes, everyone… but I’ll be back,’ he said, with a wink at Margaret.
‘What’s this urgent call, Meg?’
‘Dunno, someone called Michael. Claims you need to call him back asap,’ replied Meg, with little interest.
Did he know any Michaels? Probably, but no close friends or business associates sprang to mind. He sighed loudly. ‘Well did you ask what it was about!?’
‘He wouldn’t say, just that–’
‘–it was urgent. It’s probably just spam.’ Russell regarded his class through the office window. They were exhausted for this session, anyway. ‘What the hell, give me the phone!’
‘Hello, this is Russell Tebb, am I speaking to “Michael”?’ A few electronic clicks and splutters followed suggesting he was about to be put through to a call centre. Russell dabbed sweat away from his eyes and waited, temper rising...
‘Hello, Russell, thanks for returning my call,’ came the polite English voice. ‘We met during your recent visit to Ayahuasca.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘We met during your recent visit to Ayahuasca.’
What the hell was this guy talking about? He’d not stepped outside of London for over a year! But then the penny dropped, and he thought he knew who this person must be. This “visit to Ayahuasca” was the caller’s glib way of saying “ayahuasca trip”:
About six months earlier Russell had come to hear of a visiting Brazilian shaman who was running an ayahuasca-based workshop in Hammersmith. The controversy surrounding this had received some publicity and Russell began to take an interest in the story when it was reported that drug addicts had been able to kick their habits after only one session with the shaman and his powerful hallucinogen. Some friends of his then suggested he try it himself – for his own cocaine dependency. Russell was somewhat affronted by this, and sceptical, but he was willing to give it a try, since nothing else had worked, and he did want to be clean. He booked himself a rather expensive session with the shaman.
‘This your first time?’ the long-haired eco-warrior type had enquired, as he joined Russell in a waiting area.
‘Yeah, first and only probably… got a bit of a coke issue.’
The man nodded. ‘If you’re looking to break a drug addiction, this will certainly help, it’s very good at that – as long as you have a shaman along to prepare everything and guide you through the ritual.’
‘Ritual!?’
‘Yeah, but don’t worry, man, this guy’s good. One of the most celebrated shamans in the world!’
‘Well, that would account for the cost,’ replied Russell, with a nervous laugh. The crusty scrutinized him closely, but did not reply.
‘Have you done this before?’ Russell asked.
‘Yep, this’ll be my fourth trip on A,’ replied the man, with some pride.
‘What, so it didn’t work first time for you?’
Russell’s new scruffy friend grunted a laugh and replied rather grandly: ‘I’m not here to deal with any drug or mental-health issues, I’m here to “commune”.’ Russell stared blankly at the man, who then pointed up: ‘With ET.’
No mental-health issues, right? But Russell’s companion picked up on his scepticism.
‘Oh, they’re real, man. They’re called the Sponsors, and they’ve been involved in human affairs for a very long time.’
Russell had wanted to end this conversation and was even thinking of leaving, but the man persisted: ‘Every aspect of human affairs is run, err, guided, by the Sponsors.
Only with ayahuasca do you get to deal with them on equal terms.’
‘Are they friendly, these aliens?’
For the first time the man looked pensive, ‘Not really–’
It was at this point that Russell, his new chum and about eight others had been ushered through to the main hall and instructed to drink from a communal bowl of milky sludge. Not long after, the whole ghastly business began...
‘Hello? Russell? Are you still there?’
Russell glared at the phone receiver. If this “Michael” thought he’d be interested in another dalliance with ayahuasca he could shove it!
‘Michael!! That “visit to ayahuasca” was utterly horrifying,’ Russell bellowed down the phone, to the shock of Meg who jumped back, ‘I was completely off my head!!’ ‘Yes, haha, you were talking nonsense most of the time. It was very funny!’
‘Funny!!??’
‘Yes, anyway, I want to talk to you about the Sponsors. We’ve looked into the matter and there is, as you pointed out, a serious issue here.’
Oh, God... ‘Listen, Michael… wait a minute, you told me about the bloody
Sponsors.’
The caller persisted, ‘We need to meet right now.’
‘I know shit about any of this, Michael, so why don’t you go and take a running jump, …into the Thames, preferably!?’
‘What would be the point of that?’
Russell was lost for words. He really didn’t need this; the ayahuasca was something he thought he’d put behind him, but it sounded as though Michael had persisted with the drug, finally becoming addled enough to believe that all this alien conspiracy crap had originated from him!
‘You need help, Michael.’
‘Yes, help from you, Russell. I’m outside your studio now.’
This was starting to take a somewhat sinister turn. Russell did not recall telling this person anything about himself nor where he worked, and yet… here he was. He peered out of his office window down to the busy street below but was unable to see anyone obviously loitering. No sign of the crusty. He briefly considered calling the police but then decided he really needed to deal with this himself.
‘You’re outside now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very well, I’ll see you briefly but I’m running a class at the moment, so you’ve only got a few minutes, and if you start any trouble, I should warn you I’m–’
The phone line went dead just as the front door buzzed several times. Urgent bastard, Russell thought, as he put down the phone and wondered how to proceed. His class had almost finished their session and would no doubt be grateful if let off a little early, but he didn’t want this geezer entering the premises and bothering them, or Meg.
He’d release the class and deal with Michael at the front door.
‘What on earth was all that about?’ enquired Meg.
Russell smiled and shook his head, ‘Nothing much, just some rubbish, I’ll deal with it now. Could you inform the class that their session is over?’ ‘Sure,’ replied Meg, frowning.
Russell departed from the office with Meg and paused briefly at the dance-floor door to check there were no complaints about the early finish. As he’d hoped, there were none. He headed down the stairs and braced himself for a potentially difficult confrontation. He paused at the front door, inhaled to puff himself up and opened it.
‘Hi, I’m Michael. We met during your recent visit to Ayahuasca.’
It wasn’t the crusty guy after all, but Michael was correct, they had already met:
The ayahuasca trip turned out to be a chaotic, delirious nightmare set in some fetid jungle swamp. Everything around him was alive and stinking: plants, insects, things in the water… Worst of all was that damned spider! The oversized tarantula kept approaching him from the undergrowth, or from the trees. He would try to kick it away but it would always evade him with its lightning-fast reactions. Then it would be back. Sometimes it was literally on his back. He’d struggle frantically to grab it and wrench it free, but again it would dodge him and be lost to the jungle – only to reappear again shortly thereafter.
During a partially lucid moment – one in which he knew himself to be tripping, but was still nonetheless stuck in the jungle – he remembered the man and his blissful communing with aliens. So Russell closed his eyes, deliberately steadied his nerves and his breathing; he ignored the sounds and smells of his surroundings and thought only about flying saucers and shit. But when he again opened his eyes, the spider would be standing directly ahead, mere inches away: black and lustrous, the size of a dog, its multiple eyes blazing an iridescent green. And then it would dart away again. At least it never bit him.
And so the nightmare continued – for hour after torturous hour. When he did finally begin to straighten out he felt terribly, terribly ill and the nausea that had accompanied the trip persisted for weeks afterwards; ironically it was that that finally got him off the coke.
The giant spider from the jungle swamp extended a forepaw and Russell instinctively shook it. ‘Can we come in? Thanks.’ Without waiting for a reply the spider pushed past Russell and scuttled up the stairs; behind it strode a statuesque woman, and behind her came a fat tomcat. The cat glared at him as it sauntered in. In a moment all three were out of sight.
Russell was stunned. Seconds later his dance class came down the steps.
‘See you next week, Russell,’ said Margaret, with a wink. The others smiled; everyone seemed to be in good cheer.
‘Great workout!’ said one old chap, Russell couldn’t remember his name.
Meg followed, putting on her coat.
‘See you later, Russell,’ she said, with a smile.
Russell grabbed her arm, ‘Did you just see what came up there!?’
‘Was that your phone call?’
‘Huh?’ Russell was about to describe exactly what he’d just seen but then it occurred to him that all of this could just be some kind of flashback. No point advertising the fact to Meg, so he just said: ‘Yes.’
Meg shrugged, ‘See ya later!’ and she was gone, closing the front door behind her.
The aerobics studio should be empty now, apart from the visitors, but were they real? Christ, he hoped not, although that would imply he was seriously delusional. Better that than Mike the spider! He dashed up the stairs and onto the dance floor.
He was not alone. The three manifestations of his “flashback” were present also, but spread out across the large room. The tall woman stood near him by the front door, the tomcat paced back and forth on the low stage Russell normally occupied during dance classes and “Michael” was stationary by his office door. All of them were staring at him. He decided to start with the woman and regarded her closely for the first time:
She had short, wavy-brown hair, and wore a simple, black, knee-length dress. She was well proportioned, athletic even, with clear muscle definition to her arms and legs. At well over six feet in height she towered over Russell. Her eyes, a vivid blue/green surrounding small, penetrating pupils, focused hard on Russell. Was that a shotgun over her shoulder? The woman leant against a wall so it was not easy to tell; the meat cleaver held in a calf holster was in stark view, however. She seemed to be very tooled up. And there was a smell, what was that? Raspberries? The woman’s full red lips pursed as they sucked languidly on... something. Russell stared, hypnotized.
At that instant the woman suddenly spat out the contents of her mouth and Russell felt something adhere to his forehead; he wrenched it off and inspected a red boiled sweet. He heard sniggering and quickly turned around. The cat and the spider were still gawping at him but the cat had stopped pacing. As Russell tentatively approached, it squared up to him in a classic come-and-have-a-go-if-you-think-you’re-hard-enough stance. With its Mike-Tyson head, muscular, thick-set body and gunmetal grey pelt – more like that of a seal than a cat – it certainly looked dangerous. If the woman had the demeanour of a gangster boss then this cat was the hard-man enforcer. Russell stopped, he wasn’t going to step any closer to it.
And so that left Mike. Odd that in this company only the gigantic tarantula appeared to be the approachable one. Well, it did have a pleasant phone manner.
‘Alright, Michael,’ said Russell, approaching the spider slowly, ‘You want to talk about the Sponsors?’ but the spider moved away to its right without replying. Hmm, surreal though this experience was it completely lacked the chaos of the original ayahuasca trip. An obvious thought occurred:
‘Are you the Sponsors?’ he asked, but the spider kept moving away to its right without answering. Russell continued approaching realizing that he was walking towards the stage, and the angry tomcat, but the cat had also moved away to its right. He glanced back at the woman and saw that she too had begun to circle in the same direction. Russell continued to advance on the spider as it retreated right, but as the pace quickened he suddenly realized that the three things were not just circling, they were in fact spiralling in towards him. He stopped abruptly.
‘Halt!’ he shouted, and the three things obliged; all were suddenly motionless, now just a few feet away, surrounding him. He made ready to bolt. The exit door! But something new had caught his eye. ‘Is that a blackboard?’ An old-style wooden blackboard, made lighter and shinier from years of overuse, now stood in the centre of the room...
And then the room seemed to swim as he found himself standing directly before the blackboard. The woman stood next to him brandishing a piece of hard, flinty chalk under his nose; she then deliberately placed it on the board and pressed hard, causing the tip to splinter.
‘Brace yourself, Russell,’ said the spider, finally breaking the intolerable silence, ‘at least this will be quicker than your visit to Ayahuasca.’
But Russell barely heard it. The tall, glamorous woman smiled a sort of ear-to-ear sneer as she began to drag the reluctant chalk down the blackboard. The high-pitched, ear-shattering screech was utterly unbearable. Russell primal screamed.
***
Alan Dosogne began to think about lunch; he fancied sushi. He was confident there would be no delays today as this meeting was progressing well.
‘And you want us to divest out of all of these?’ asked Al Nasa.
‘Yes,’ replied Alan, ‘and you should follow the schedule marked out… here,’ he handed the UAE citizen, distant cousin to the Sheik, another sheet of A4, ‘…to ensure the other investors don’t get spooked and drag the prices down.’
‘Indeed,’ the Arab chortled. He would be confident that Alan’s advice was correct, just like all the other advice he had provided over the years. To Al Nasa and the other investors, Alan Dosogne of Global Finance Sponsorship was a financial genius, a savant, a divvy. Everything always panned out as predicted, allowing Al Nasa and his associates to steadily convert billions into tens of billions.
‘And what about the cash pile that will result? Have you found me a football club yet, Alan?’ Al Nasa half-joked.
Alan laughed, ‘no, not yet, but for the time being you should just sit on the cash, there will be a correction in the markets shortly, but after that we should have some very interesting morsels with which to tempt you.’ His thoughts returned to lunch… ‘What about gold?’ asked Al Nasa.
‘No,’ replied Alan, casually, ‘it will continue to drift sideways. You could consider government bonds?’
‘Nah, too cumbersome, too visible,’ replied Al Nasa, just as Alan knew he would. Alan sat back and patiently waited for Al Nasa to ask his remaining questions.
Twenty minutes later and the meeting concluded with the shaking of hands and much hugging and back slapping. Al Nasa and his people were happy, Alan was happy. No doubt his reputation as a miracle worker would be further enhanced by these transactions, assuming Al Nasa did as he was told, and why wouldn’t he?
But in truth Alan knew next to nothing about high finance, his only skills were in handling the rich and powerful, being diplomatic and always being able to read the mood of the room. The investment details were handed down to him by his boss, who probably understood more, but not that much more. It was the system that really called the shots, the system set up and controlled by the Sponsors. High finance deals were just a small part of it. Manipulating politicians was more important but Alan, at only 0.3 percent Sponsor, as measured by genome, was too human to be allowed near all that. Pity, it looked like fun.
With the morning’s business completed he grabbed his jacket and made ready to leave his office. Out in the open-plan section of the department he spied his boss addressing one of the secretaries. Bruce, at 0.8 percent Sponsor, had Sponsor characteristics to his personality, unlike Alan, who merely boasted the few alien ‘apps’ that gave him his negotiating skills. Bruce was a humourless workaholic who demanded the same from all his underlings. He would not be happy seeing Alan sloping off for an extended lunch. Too late, he’d been spotted, and Bruce was beckoning him over. Shit, the dickhead was probably telepathic. Shit, he must stop thinking these thoughts, and he must stop referring to Bruce as a dickhead.
‘Alan, quick word please.’ Bruce led Alan into his office and closed the door behind him. Whether or not he’d heard Alan’s thoughts was not clear. It never was, but it was doubtful he really cared, as long as the work got done.
‘Wassup?’ asked Alan, knowing such a jocular manner sailed right over Bruce’s head.
‘The division supervisor will be paying this department a visit this afternoon to discuss how we’ll handle the recession.’
‘What recession? Oh, you mean the one that’s planned for September 16th.’ Alan felt queasy, not about the recession – but about meeting the division head. At 1.9 percent Sponsor he was as good as alien as far as Alan was concerned. Fully telepathic, he’d pick up on all of Alan’s disloyal musings. However, it wasn’t as if any aspect of himself remained hidden from the Sponsors, they simply wouldn’t care what he thought as long as he did his job. Alan imagined the Sponsors viewed him as a farmer might a temperamental sheepdog: who cared what the dog thought as long as the sheep ended up in the pen? Still, this news had put him off his sushi.
***
Russell became aware of his surroundings; he was sitting in his office chair and was apparently alone, but within seconds Michael suddenly emerged from around the side of his desk to place several of its legs over his. Russell involuntarily jerked.
‘Cup of tea?’
Russell nodded weakly and the spider dashed off only to instantly return with a steaming mug. ‘Careful, it’s hot.’
‘Thanks,’ said Russell, taking the mug and placing it carefully on his desk. Michael scrutinized him from a distance of inches; clearly this oversized arachnid didn’t care much about personal space.
‘How are you feeling? Bit shaky?’ Michael asked.
‘Hmm,’ offered Russell, reaching out for his tea. He sipped it and gave an appreciative nod to the spider. He placed the mug back on his desk. ‘What just happened, Michael?’ But he didn’t need to ask. For once everything was crystal clear. He had been made aware of the facts, almost all facts.
‘You were shown The Truth, Russell. Drug effects, delirium, perception filters, mind control, madness, you name it – they all reside to the right of your sense of reality, only The Truth lies to the left… Not literally, of course.’
Russell knew exactly what Michael meant but now that his awareness had degraded back to “reality” a lot of the detail was becoming hard to grasp. However, the main theme remained shockingly vivid. He glanced out of the office window towards the dance hall. The woman and the cat were both standing at his stage, but their attention had shifted to his sound equipment. The cat in particular appeared to be fascinated by it. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘Yes you can.’
‘I mean… those two, ...and you! I can’t believe…’
‘You can’t believe that we’re here in your studio?’ The spider chuckled. ‘Yes, I