By Erik Nielsen (erikred@cc.kochi-u.ac.jp)
We chatted about old times, about old friends and old acquaintances. I'd kept up with more of the old gang than he had, but he had the occasional bit of news that I hadn't yet heard. I told him about my work with a small but secure software firm, and he regaled me with harrowing tales of some of the adventures he'd found down there. Pretty soon it was approaching midnight; we'd drank several more beers, and I was starting to yawn. I told Roger he was welcome to camp out on my couch; he agreed, and we turned in. And that should have been that for the night.
Around two, though, I suddenly awoke, tense and alert, the last vestiges of whatever strange dream I'd had vanishing as I became aware that something, somewhere in the house, was not right. If I'd still been living in L.A. or Oakland, this wouldn't have been unusual, but my neighborhood in Encinitas is safer than either of those two towns. I got up quietly, without turning on a light, and threw on a pair of jeans, then, just as quietly, made my way out of my room and down the hall to the living room. As I came in view of the couch, I noticed that Roger was nowhere to be seen. Then, through the heavy glass on the door, I caught the silhouette of someone standing on the porch. Crouching down, I slowly made my way towards the door. As I passed the couch, Roger tapped me on the shoulder, nearly giving me a heart attack. He was lying on the floor behind the couch, and he motioned for me to be quiet and come nearer.
"What the hell?" I hissed, joining him on the floor.
"I was afraid this might happen," he whispered back.
"People you know or should I call the police?" I asked quietly. For some reason I remained remarkably calm.
"The police would probably ask more questions than these guys would," he muttered.
"Quick question, Rog."
"Yeah?"
"Are we in any danger?"
As if in answer, some broke in one of the panes on the door with a crowbar, sending broken glass onto the floor. A gloved hand reached clumsily through the hole and pawed around for the lock.
Roger and I backed away from the couch quickly, without another word, and headed for the kitchen door. Looking through the curtains, I couldn't see anyone out there, and I told Roger as much. He quickly unbolted the door and sprang outside, me right behind him. As we lept over my neighbor's fence, I heard the sound of someone breaking the chain off my door. We skipped through my neighbor's yard out into the street. Miraculously, a cab was just then going by. We flagged it down and hopped in.
"Where ya headed?" asked the cabbie.
"Chula Vista," said Roger, and the we took off.
"Lucky you caught me," said the cabbie. "We don't too many cabs 'round here this time of night."
Roger smiled. "Yeah, lucky. Say, could you turn on the radio?"
The cabbie complied, and soon strains of easy-listening music were soothing my nerves.
"All right, Roger," I said in a low voice after I'd calmed down a bit, "What's going on?"
"Well," said Roger, "it all started when a priest I know gave me a copy of a manuscript and asked me to get it out of the country...."
Soon after this book hit the stands, however, Technocratic monitors have picked up a peculiar trend. Some of the people who read this book (though not all, and certainly not most) move from the vague mysticism described therein to more specific varieties of mysticism, incorporating, say, Buddhist breathing exercises with the theories of energy control espoused in the book. An alarming number of these seemingly spontaneous mystics then Awaken in a limited fashion, although their paradigms seem entirely regulated by the book and the Insights it purports to reveal.
If this were simply a Luddite Awakening movement, the Technocratic council would have little hesitation in simply discrediting and destroying this group entirely. Unfortunately, there is evidence to suggest that the book was originally generated as part of the $yndicate's attempt to take over the metaphysical publishing market; certain elements at the end of the book suggest that its followers should pay those people who give them insights and enlightening ideas, thereby ensuring that more metaphysical funds will be funneled into the economy at large. Also, the book is not at all anti-technology. On the contrary, the book thoroughly supports technological progress. Some Technocrats believe that this could be the bridge between Sleepers and Technocracy they've been waiting for, that this could be the key to the next step of becoming transhuman. Others, of course, see it as mystical nonsense that threatens the foundations of the Technocracy itself. The argument continues to rage.
In the meantime, the Celestines (as they call themselves) are at liberty to pursue their own peculiar brand of mysticism. This mysticism involves Nine Insights, although some hold out for the Tenth Insight, which the author hinted at broadly in the last few pages of the book. Those first Nine Insights include the following: history is a progression leading from savagery to our present civilization and the coming millenium, coincidences are meaningful, all living things possess energy fields that can be manipulated by will, one is the synthesis of one's parents and one must come to understand their struggles in order to understand one's own struggles, the ideal life involves living in a state of constant awareness of this energy and the coincidences that occur because of it, all human beings will come to this realization on their own, and, when one achieves the right level of energy, one will transcend this plane entirely. The energy involved can be gained through other people, they say, but it is better if this energy is gained from the environment through a kind of meditation that deals with appreciating the ambient beauty. Once infused with this energy, all things become effortless to the Celestine, as one follows one's own destiny perfectly.
The Celestines are a Craft composed almost entirely of the spontaneously awakened. They are not taken very seriously by the more traditional mages because their metaphysic seems to run rather shallow.