“How?”
“By injecting the exact same amount of DMT into the body.”
“So you propose that we give Cody and Cameron another injection of DMT?”
Dr Drecker nodded. “I wanted to try it with the death row prisoners. But that MKULTRA agent tricked me. He lured me into giving one of the prisoners poison instead, the same poison he later used to kill them all.”
“Have you ever considered asking what I want?” Cameron asked.
“No,” Dr Drecker replied bluntly. “I have only been thinking about how I can save my own son, Cody. I assume it may be different for you though. You are the second generation of DMT. It was your father that was injected with DMT, not you. So I don’t really know how to turn off your gene, or whether there is even any point in trying. But at least I now know what I need to do to save Cody. And thus also stop him from hunting you.”
“If you’re correct, and I’m not saying you are, but if you are, why do all humans carry this gene? What’s the point of having it?”
“Look at the condition of our planet. We are outgrowing it. We pollute and exhaust all our resources at an alarming rate. Yes, we constantly come up with small fixes. We repair what we break. We clogged the hole in the ozone layer, we are taking measures to stop global warming. But at some stage we are going to be too late to the party. We are going to realise that we have caused so much damage that there are no fixes left. And then the only way to ensure the survival of our species is to conquer other galaxies.”
“That won’t be possible. They are too far away,” Hugo interjected.
“Don’t you think that’s exactly what people told Columbus when he set sail for America? Humans have always survived by being conquerors. And we will most likely do so again. But we won’t be travelling the way we used to. We will be travelling through our minds.”
“By DMT you mean?”
“Correct. If the gene is hidden inside all of us, then it will theoretically allow all of us to produce sufficient DMT to experience a new world.”
“None of this makes any sense. Your body stays right here when you take DMT, it doesn’t travel anywhere. So how is our species going to be able to escape a doomed Earth if our bodies, our physical bodies, are stuck here?”
“Think about what happened to the death row prisoners, Dr Kovacks, the janitor and my son. They all died and resurrected after three days, and then they repeated the process after day forty-nine.”
“But still, on day fifty, they were still stuck here.”
“Day fifty. That’s the problem isn’t it? They were still here on day fifty. But what if they weren’t?”
48
Alejandro was sitting at his office desk in the bunker. He had finished packing his belongings an hour earlier, and he was now just waiting for the transport team to arrive. Cody was still missing. Before she was executed, Nurse Shawna had admitted that her cousin had smuggled Cody out of camp. Alejandro regretted having been so sloppy with the staff. Someone had committed a cardinal mistake by allowing family members to work together at the compound. The whole point of Codyism was to rid yourself of the feeling of self. There was no room for family – the loyalty to Codyism superseded everything.
It was too late to do anything about that now though. It would just be one of those mistakes Alejandro would have to learn from.
He glanced at the screen of his laptop. He was attempting to record some of the experiences of his DMT trip while it was still fresh in his mind. It hadn’t been anything like he had expected. He had never asked Cody too many questions, for fear of him getting suspicious, so he had always assumed that the trip would be a bit like with most of the other psychedelics he had tried – strong colours, feelings of love and happiness. Instead it had been dark, very dark.
The feeling had been almost instant. He had emptied the syringe into his arm and lain back on the freezing cold metal table. He had been lying there, naked, staring at the ceiling, unsure what to expect, when this loud vibrating sound had started throbbing inside his head.
And then it had been as if his whole head had exploded.
When he woke up, because that was what it had felt like, waking up – he had found himself in a new world. It hadn’t looked too different from the world he usually resided in, just more real, many times more real. He had been there as an observer. And he had observed.
He had truly observed.
He knew he had only been there for three days, the number of days his body had been inside the freezer, but it felt like he had been there for months. He felt like he had learnt more about life in those three days than he had during his entire life up until then.
And to think that he had never believed Cody. Cody had just been a pawn in his little plan to create a religion, because religions were the powerhouses of the new world.
But when he had experienced it himself he had finally understood. He had understood that it had all been fate. He was the chosen one.
The one chosen to end the world we lived in.
A world in darkness.
A world lost.
49
“Are you sure?” Cody asked.
Guzman nodded. “Shawna is dead. Alejandro killed her the day you left. He’s been tracking down other family members too. Only the ones that were affiliated with Codyism though. He hasn’t touched anyone outside the compound.”
“Have you notified the police?”
“Shawna’s brother did. The problem is that Codyism is clouded in secrecy. The leaders claim that Shawna has travelled to Uruguay, to help set up the new chapter. They have even provided a letter she has supposedly written. The police say there is nothing they can do if she has left the country.”
“So he’s cleansed out the people who were loyal to me, and he’s taken my position.”
“That about sums it up, Master Cody.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss, Guzman.”
“It’s not your fault, Master Cody. If I had known Alejandro was holding you prisoner I would have taken action a lot sooner. Let’s just be glad we got you out.”
“I guess so.”
“Now, you have a lot of followers around here. But right now it is difficult to know what lies Alejandro has been spreading about you, and where their loyalty lies. So I think we might be best off staying low for a few more days before deciding where to go from here.”
“Have you heard anything? What has Alejandro been saying?”
“Nothing, Master Cody. They’re just lies.”
“Tell me, Guzman. Tell me.”
Guzman hesitated. He was visibly reluctant to tell Cody what he had heard.
“Please, Guzman,” Cody begged.
“He’s been saying you are a False Prophet.”
Cody laughed. “You’ve seen me heal people, Guzman. You know that’s not true.”
“I do, Master Cody. But many followers have never seen you, and there have been rumours of a true miracle at the compound.”
“What true miracle?”
“The same miracle that happened to you, Master Cody. Alejandro died and resurrected three days later.”
“What?”
“He died. He walked into the compound’s freezer just after you disappeared. He asked the guards to lock the door behind him. It is minus eighteen degrees Celsius in there. Nobody could survive more than an hour. Yet the rumour is that he walked out of the freezer, naked and alive, three days later. Just as he had prophesied.”
Cody kicked the chair in front of him. His worst fears had just come true. Alejandro had somehow been able to acquire enough DMT to inject himself with a dosage of Phi. Who knew what he would be capable of doing now?
“You need to do me a massive favour, Guzman.”
“Anything, Master Cody.”
“You need to find out the exact time Alejandro entered that freezer, and the exact time he exited.”
“I can try, Master Cody. But why do you need this information?”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you, Guzman. Just trust me when I say that it is of utmost importance that the times are as accurate as possible.”
“Was there anything else, Master Cody?”
“There is one more thing. I need to post something on a Reddit forum. It has to be from a computer that can’t be traced.”
“No problem. I can organise that for you.”
50
James Carter carved through the fat eye fillet on the plate in front of him. It was like carving through butter. The meat was so tender that the bottom of the plate was instantly covered in juicy blood. The chef hadn’t let the steak rest long enough, Carter thought, as he watched the stream of blood mingle with the vegetables on his plate. Carter’s wife always nagged him about eating unhealthy. If it had been up to her he might as well have jumped straight into the casket. She could be such a killjoy. He had quit smoking five years ago, also on her orders, and that would have to do. He didn’t care if his blood pressure was too elevated for his doctor’s liking, and whether his pancreas didn’t appreciate his affection for aged whiskey. He had no plans to rot away in an old age home. He would live life like he always had. He wouldn’t ask for permission for anything - he would take what he wanted.
Occasionally, in particularly weak moments, he had considered what could happen if he ever injected himself with DMT. He was getting old, sixty-nine this year, and if he had been employed in the CIA instead of MKULTRA he would probably have been forced to retire by now. Humans had increased longevity so much that working laws hadn’t been able to keep up. Why on earth should one be forced to leave a job just because one had reached a particular age? It wasn’t uncommon to live to a hundred these days, and in another couple of decades it wouldn’t be uncommon to live to one hundred and twenty, maybe even one hundred and thirty. James Carter was one of the few people still alive who knew the secret of DMT. How it, in addition to being a possible gate to other worlds and the doom of humanity, also could be the answer to longevity and immortality. Carter had always been fiercely loyal to his country; he had served it through more presidents than any other government official he knew. But his country hadn’t always been loyal to him. It hadn’t always been grateful either. The thought that he could risk being prosecuted for being loyal, for being a patriot, had never even crossed his mind in the past. But if one listened to the arguments of the Democratic presidential candidate that scenario could very well become a reality in the not-so-distant future. Carter switched off the TV in the hotel room. He had just watched the Q&A with the Democratic presidential candidate, where the candidate had repeated his promise to reduce military funding and create more transparency around what Government funds were being spent on. All Black-Ops would be shut down immediately, he had promised.
No exceptions.
Carter laughed. Was that his plan? The presidential candidate had no idea what minefield he was stepping into. Who was going to be the one to explain to the American people that they didn’t have to worry about Al-Qaeda or Daesh anymore? Because there were much greater threats out there: We weren’t alone in the universe. There were other worlds, other worlds ready to attack us, ready to destroy us. All we had to do was to open the gates. And that was frighteningly easy to do.
One could do it from one’s own home.
With a needle and some psychedelics.
No, even though the thought had occurred to Carter, injecting DMT into his veins and becoming an immortal had never been anything he had seriously considered. Carter still believed in God, he still believed in Jesus and salvation. It was just that it all got harder now that he was almost at life’s end. Old friends kept dropping like flies, friends who had been a lot healthier and more fit than he was.
It was said that nearly fifty percent of the American population were God-fearing Christians, but Carter often wondered what the real number was.
MKULTRA had conducted their own assessments for the last few decades. It didn’t matter whether the president of the United States proclaimed he believed in God. That was something everyone had to do in order to have a realistic chance of getting elected president. The worrying matter was that out of the ten presidents since MKULTRA was founded in 1964, MKULTRA had assessed that only half of them had actually been true believers; the others had most likely been atheists.
What was the true state of the rest of the population when one couldn’t even believe the president when he proclaimed he believed in God?
The problem was of course Western society and the American dream. Americans believed in individualism, that one was responsible for one’s own life.
Religion was better suited to the Asian and Arab cultures. In essence religion was designed to make people feel part of something greater than them. It was designed to alleviate the feeling of loneliness, and ensure that one didn’t have to become envious of people who were more successful or wealthy. It was after all part of God’s plan.
Everything was part of God’s plan.
The Prophet Mohammed had understood this better than most. Islam was a perfectly designed religion. Even though it was now a mature religion it had the potential to take over the world. It had all the things Christianity lacked.
Maybe Codyism wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe it was the only thing that could stop Islam?
It couldn’t hurt that Islam lost some of its followers, that was for sure.
Carter bit through the tender meat as he considered where to start searching for Dr Drecker and the others. There couldn’t be that many places they could be hiding. He had people monitoring all of Adam’s close relations, everything from previous clients in his personal training business to old army friends. But so far his agents had come up emptyhanded.
Dr Drecker.
Of course – Dr Drecker.
Carter had assumed that Dr Drecker was in a vegetative state - that he was still in a coma. He hadn’t considered the possibility that Cameron could possess the same abilities as her dad and Cody. If that was the case then Dr Drecker’s state could have improved drastically since he was kidnapped. Maybe he was conscious even? If so, it would change everything.