Chapter 6

The immediate back yard was defined partly by Second Home’s shape, and partly by a picket fence and gate that wouldn’t hold a dog or cat. A goat might get its head stuck, and there were goats, and sheep, but not near. There was a clothes line and articles of clothing hanging in the sun, caressed by breezes. Just beyond the fence was the garden, and in all the years Jon had been here, it had never been so rich. Alish had given it color and depth and a variety that was beyond him. A synergistic system that helped the whole of it thrive. A typical American, he could name maybe five vegetables, a dozen fruits, but there was much, much more to be seen and eaten. He couldn’t name half the meals that were served him, because others had taken over the cooking. The local animals, rabbits and squirrels, they kept out of the garden as if on agreement, with the exception of a few helper animals, taken on by Alish to help her maintain the shape and flow. The further inland you went from second home, the more trees you encountered until you hit the forest proper. From design, the only trees growing on Bliss were fruit bearing trees, or trees with eatable nuts and seeds. In the scattering of trees between forest and house were some new trees, specifically pine trees. Fersia wanted Christmas trees. She now had Christmas trees. And, Jon grudgingly admitted, his world sorely lacked pinecones. Even the squirrels were missing pinecones.

      One path led down to the beach, the other went to the other side of the house and up along cliff to its peak, allowing to see the cove, the natural arch of stone that at certain tide levels churned waves, or held a shiny, reflective pool, or darkened sand. Loxy took Jon’s arms, they climbed the gentle slope until they reached the peak where they could see beyond the tapering green waters, clear enough to see the sea floor, to darker blues, to black water. Further out at sea, a huge rock jutted up and out of the ocean, and looked more as if it was planted there than was naturally formed, but it was natural in formation, but clearly manipulated by intelligence so that a person could step off a boat and walk a corkscrewed path to the top, or take a lift from the base up, and at the top was an old castle converted to a light house. Jon blinked, taking it in, and its history was suddenly all there for him, but he was pretty sure, this was new. His world was changing because he had invited others to live here.

      “Esfir’s place is sure coming along,” Loxy noted.

      “Yeah it is,” Jon said.

      Loxy tugged on his arm, telling him to sit without telling him to sit, and she sat Indian style, facing him, her knees touching his. She took both his hands in each of her and beamed a smile into his face. There was a pleasant breeze against them, tempering the sun.

      “This is going to be fun. Close your eyes,” Loxy said.

      “I’d rather look at your face,” Jon said.

      “That would be a distraction,” Loxy said.

      “Distract me,” Jon said, playfully.

      “Umm, how far will you let me take that?” Loxy asked.       Jon frowned, and closed his eyes.

      “Well, this is not the way to do remote viewing. I am going to have to train you in short hand, so that you write down initial impressions without your consciousness getting in the way, but I just want to explore a little with you, because it’s my opinion, you and I already have this

part down,” Loxy said. “Now, I have a flower in my pocket…”       Jon opened his eyes. “I thought you didn’t want to distract me?”

      “Not that flower,” Loxy said. “It’s a location, on a paper. Technically, it’s a location with a temporal component, because you really can’t have a place without time…”       “You have a target destination,” Jon said.

      “Target is so harsh,” Loxy said. “I don’t want to kill anything.”

      Jon considered, and he agreed that even though target could be a neutral word, his foundational American paradigm pushed ‘target’ towards having a charged connotation. “Flower is not neutral,” he said. “In fact, I am now channeling Georgia and sex…”       “You want to have sex to clear your head?” Loxy asked.

      Jon bit his lip. “Yes, but I am going to decline,” Jon said.

      “Are you going to tell me about that?” Loxy asked.

“Remind me to wrap my explanation up in a Christmas present so that you can have it in the future,” Jon said.

      “Oh, that’s lovely,” Loxy said. “Yes, I know flower is not neutral, and I hear it will likely influence you in a sexual way, but don’t you want to bring love and light to the universe, and so if we’re going to explore, let’s go with flowers!”

      “Okay,” Jon said. He closed his eyes again. He frowned.

      “What?” Loxy asked.

      “I can’t get off your flower,” Jon said.

      “You could get off to my flower,” Loxy said. “Try focusing… Oh, yes, that feels great.”       He frowned deeper, and opened his eyes. “This is not going to work.”       “It was for me,” Loxy said.

      “The sex part is going to get in the way of any true work,” Jon said.

      “Oh, Jon, the sex part is what makes any true work ‘work,’” Loxy said. “Even your go to guy Napoeon Hill is referenced saying that all the great leaders and experts had one thing in common, a hyper-inflated libido and that sexual energy was channeled into their work. You have that energy, you’re just not focused.

      “I was pretty focused,” Jon said.

      “Oh, I know, I felt it,” Loxy said. She kissed him. “It’s okay, Jon. We’re practicing.

We’re going to have some misses. That’s okay. I mean, Babe Ruth had lots of misses.”       “Mistresses?” Jon asked.

      “Probably that, too, I don’t know, not really a statistic I am tracking. People put too much emphasis on the hook up. Most everyone hooks up, and that is so not the measure of a human’s essence, that’s just life,” Loxy said. She squeezed his hands. “Here, let’s put a binding spell on. For the purposes of our protection, and the protection of others, with the expectation of proliferating only love and kindness, any and all sexual experiences during remote viewing exercises, astral traveling, regular dreaming, and or lucid dreaming will only be consensual. If you go there, you were invited by other because they needed magical intimacy. How’s that?”

      “I like that,” Jon said. “So, it’s okay to answer the call.”

      “Yep, so close your eyes;” Jon obeyed. “Feel the pressure of my hand holding yours. Notice as I alternate the amount of pressure from hand to hand. Now, on the count of three, shift… Where are you?”

      Jon opened his eyes, surprised.

      “That’s interesting…”

      “No! Don’t think about it. Don’t think, just answer my question,” Loxy said. “What primary color did you see?”       “Green,” Jon said.

      “Oh, cool. Tell me something else, one word,” Loxy said.       “Grass,” Jon said. “But Loxy, I was in a park.”       “You’re jumping ahead,” Loxy said.

      “But I have a question,” Jon said.

      “Okay,” Loxy said.

      “I am clearly here, my eyes are here, but I was in a park, and I have perspective, like I could see a bench near a pond, and there was person sitting on the bench, his back to me, which means I had position and location in the park,” Jon said. “But my eyes are here, so it begs the question, what I am seeing with?”

      Loxy thought about it. “I don’t know.”

      “Do psychic spies have eyes?” Jon asked.

      “I don’t know. Maybe it could be one of our research questions,” Loxy said, mused. “Tell me more about the guy on the bench.”

      Jon blinked. “He is wearing a coat, a patch on the right elbow. Oh, he’s smoking,” he said.

      “Close your eyes, go closer,” Loxy said. “Go where you can see the front of him.”       Jon closed his eyes. He suddenly gripped Loxy’s hands. “What?”       “I think he sees me!” Jon said.

      “Open your eyes,” Loxy said.

      “How can he see me? I am not there,” Jon said, not opening his eyes. “He’s speaking. It’s English.”

      “What’s he saying?” Loxy asked.

      “He wants me to come closer,” Jon said.

      “Is he scary?” Loxy asked.       “I am scared,” Jon said.

      “Is he scary?” Loxy asked.

      “No,” Jon said. “OMG, he’s getting up and coming closer. He’s coming right at me… No, I am not Russian. Why would you ask me that?”       “I didn’t ask you that,” Loxy said.

“No he’s asking me that,” Jon said. “I am speaking to Loxy. No, she’s not an agent. She’s a graduate student.”

      “He’s asking about me?” Loxy asked. “Jon?”

      Jon found himself immersed in ‘park land.’ The man was looking at him sideways, blowing smoke at him. When he looked sideways, the smoke seemed to outline an invisible ‘Jon.’ When he spoke, he spoke low, as if not wanting to let others know he was talking to himself. Jon became aware of others in the park. They were duller in appearance. In fact, he tried to focus on them, they were colorless, like looking at people in a ‘black and white’ movie. It was if the world was colorized, except for the people, minus the man who was smoking, who was perfectly normal in color and perspective.

      “So, you’re both students? Exploring hypnotic suggestions of psychic exploration?” the man asked. “What university?”

      “Safe Haven,” Jon said.

      “I’m not understanding that,” he said. “What’s your name?”       “Jon,” Jon said.

      “What’s my name?” he asked.

      “I don’t know your name,” Jon said.

      “You’re the psychic spy, guess,” the man said.

      “Mother goose,” Jon said.

      “Do I look like Carry Grant?” the man asked.

      “Sort of,” Jon said.

      “Where do you get mother goose?” the man asked.

      “You asked me your name, I see a white goose,” Jon said. “I suppose it could be a duck, but it doesn’t really look like a duck, it’s neck it’s too long.”

      “How about a swan?” the man asked.

      “Why I would I envision a swan?” Jon asked.

      “Because my name is Ingo Swann,” the man said.

      “Oh, I know you!” Jon said.

      “How do you know me?” Swann asked.

      “I read your books,” Jon said. “Loxy, it’s Ingo Swann. This is really cool!”

      “I wrote books?” Swann asked.

      “Oh, maybe I shouldn’t be talking to you at this juncture,” Jon said, and found himself suddenly back with Loxy. “Show me your flower.”

      “Okay!” Loxy said, reaching for the button on her skorts.

      “No, not that flower,” Jon said.

      “Oh, yeah,” Loxy said, and pulled an envelope out of a pocket. She opened it, clearly the first time. “A random park, Earth, 1976. Duck, duck, goose. Love Janet.”       “That’s funny,” Loxy said.

      “You didn’t know?” Jon asked.

      “No,” Loxy said. “I asked Keera to write down a location, nonspecific, and put it in an envelope and bring it back to me, and so she went away and came back with the flower, and said she asked someone else to do it, because she was afraid she might contaminate the experiment…”

      “Loxy,” Jon interrupted. “Hypothetically, if everyone is psychic, how will we ever eliminate observer-expectancy effect?”       “I don’t think we can,” Loxy said.

      Jon stood, offered Loxy a hand to help her up, and they headed back, Jon leading, holding her hand. “We’re going to have to put an arch up here.”

निनमित

The Library at second home was mid cliff level, outside window flat with the cliff side overlooking the beach, while the opposite end was carved out of the cliff rock itself, in a very carefully precise way as to maintain the natural feel of a cave. The cliff rock was basalt, a kilometer of basaltic prisms, and so some of the walls maintained the columns, and where there was a shelf cut into the rock, you had hexagonal square pattern that one automatically assumed it was intelligently made, but indeed, was just a natural formation of lava cooling into some really cool patterns. The excavated material was removed in such a way as to leave tables and chairs, and shelves, and natural curves, so that you weren’t going straight back, but you curved into the cliff, as if following a meandering path that was carved by wind and water over eons. The cave was definitely cut, and if asked, Jon denied doing it, and if pressed, he would offer the idea that Jedi Squirrels with Lightsabers performed the work. Some nanite technology was used to ‘line’ the hexagonal patterns to give them a luminescent edge, and if just the boundaries of the hexagon were lit, you might think this was once a beehive made by cat sized bees. The only natural light came from the large window looking out over the cove, but there was light throughout the artificial cavern, yet, there was no obvious light source, and there were no shadows. The no shadow thing made the library seem unreal, and the uninitiated were always uneasy until they had an explanation. Most people don’t notice the lack of shadows, but the brain does because it uses shadows to navigate.

The deepest part of the library ended in a narrow, where one had to turn sideways, which was fun and scary, because it got narrower before it opened back up into a spiral staircase that proceeded down to the ‘secret’ vault, which really wasn’t a secret, and the vault itself, went even further into the earth, going deeper, with levels and sections requiring greater and greater security. Loxy thought maybe they were about to go into the vault, which was always fun, because there were different things to find and explore, and every time they descended, something new was obvious, but he began running his fingers over titles, just beyond the narrow.

“You do know, there is a better way to organize books,” Loxy said.

Jon paused. “I like my system,” he said.

“You’re system is as chaotic as a coffee book store which was shelved by blind volunteers and random, coffee drinkers moving stuff,” Loxy said.

“Ha ha,” Jon said. “I always know where things are, unless someone moved them…” “You accuse people of moving them, but really, you just misplaced them,” Loxy said. “More often than not, people move things and don’t put them back,” Jon said. “And this library has had a lot of hands shifting it lately, and Lester has been trying to impose his own

system on my system, and I am getting pretty annoyed with him.” “Oh, he is just trying to help,” Loxy said.

“It should be here!” Jon said. “Who would know enough to even come to this section…”

“Jon, you probably just forget where it is,” Loxy said. She pushed against the books.

“Books are tight, so nothing is missing…”

Jon sat on the floor to reach the bottom shelves. Loxy sat with him, her back to his shelf, his back to the other shelf. She touched his face. He smiled. “Yes! I know it was here,” he said excitedly. He pulled out a book and handed it to her.

‘Penetration,’ was the title. “Oh, I’m game…” she said.

“Ha ha. It’s about aliens living amongst us. California is full of them. So is Texas, oddly enough. Dallas is like a hub,” Jon said.

‘Psychic sexuality,’ was another title, Loxy pulled it off the shelf, and said: “See, I told you that you can’t separate sex from being psychic, and spying is always about sex, that’s why you can’t have a spy movie without someone having sex. It’s about intrigue and exploration

and…”

“Why do we always talk about sex?” Jon asked.

“You love sex,” Loxy pointed out.

“I do,” Jon said, musing for a moment before forcing himself to pull the next book out. Loxy accepted ‘Star Fire’ with a bemused look. “Do you have ‘Men Who Stare at Goats?” Loxy asked.

“Yeah, but it’s history mostly, no real insight into the mechanics of the thing, or how to do it,” Jon said.

“That book, ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain,’ that’s the how to book,” Loxy said. Jon stopped his search. “You know about this stuff?”

“Well, I don’t know these people like you do, though they’re contained in my memory somewhere, because of the echo of your memories, but I have been doing magic a while, and I know it’s a right brain activity, at least, on the physical level. We need to rethink that metaphor. The brain is just the filtering system for the mind while we’re incarnate,” Loxy said. “Ummm. I don’t like the metaphor at all. I have to go with the whole, everything is energy, consciousness, and our relationship to external data has to have a context, and present context is us as us, but we aren’t limited to this context, and so remote viewing is made possible by your flexibility in perspective and context.”

Jon took the books from her and put them back into their place. “We’re not going to read them together?” Loxy asked.

“I am not sure it will be helpful after that, and besides, I have read them, which means you’ve read them, and maybe it’s better you come at it intuitively, because you’re right brain,” Jon said.

Loxy leaned in and hugged him and kissed him. “Jon, I love you, so much” Loxy said. “I wish you could see all the things about you that I see.”

“I want to see what you see,” Jon said. “I love you and I am sorry if I don’t say it enough.”

“You say it every day, with every breath, every look, with every little thing you do,”

Loxy said. “Come on.”       

Chapter 7

That night, after a magical dinner out as a group off world, specifically Korean BBQ with Asian folks dressed as their favorite manga characters doing Karaoke in the background. They paid for food they had to cooked for themselves in the middle of the table, distributing the samples amongst everyone, and then they wrapped meats in leaves like lettuce topped with slices of pepper and raw garlic. They drank, they laughed, though Jon didn’t find himself really rising to full laughter, but he was there, as if he were a witness to a level of joy that was just beyond him. He was content with his people, and yet, he also found himself visiting all the other patrons mentally, and he seemed indifferent to whether other females were with someone or not, by the end of the evening, he had ranked everyone in order of preference, daydreamed longingly about several, practically raped the waitress, who wasn’t Korean, but Asian enough that in his dream she simply submitted without any evidence she cared either way, like the Japanese porn where the men are ghost and they’re doing the anchor woman who continues to give the news even as she’s being molested. Loxy was kind enough to touch him and bring him back to their reality anytime he was away too long. He was grateful, but at the same time, embarrassed he needed so much help. In private, she would remind him this was only evidence of his need to connect with others, exasperated by a society that had limited connection and only allowed males one form of intimacy and no emotions. He wondered about his brokenness, and he wondered if this thing tonight was exasperated by having been compelled not to engage in sex at all, even with his companions, and he had wished he had just stayed home, except the group had insisted he join and they were too powerful alone to resist, so the group was something entirely greater. They returned back to Second Home, and began to the wind down for bed. Jon had way too much energy to sleep, so he retired to the living room with a book.

      The book got as far as being opened. The words hadn’t he even finished arranging themselves on the page when Keera, in an almost knee long t-shirt, plopped herself beside him.

      “Not coming to bed?” Keera asked.

      “Umm, not yet,” Jon said.

      “You’re being really weird, you know?” Keera said.

      “Being Jon,” Loxy said, suddenly in front of him wearing a three layer nighty, bringing a glass of tea. “Passiflora incarnate. It will help you relax.”

      Jon looked skeptically at her, but accepted the mug. Without speaking, she got him to move over towards the middle of the couch by inserting herself on the other side of him, which also forced Keera to shift, but she didn’t shift as much as he would have liked for his present level of comfort, and together Loxy and Keera had Jon boxed between them fairly well. Loxy took the book and set it on the coffee table under lamp, on top of the partially eaten dark chocolate. She turned sideways, bringing her knees up, leaning into him. Fersia came bounding happily into the room, a one piece pajama that encapsulated her feet and had a hoodie, and was so tight you had to wonder if it were painted on. She came to stop, her mood shifting to suddenly mad.

      “What? You didn’t invite me play?” Fersia said.