Authors: Margaret Vandenburg
“Don’t be such a sore loser,” Poindexter said.
“Not so fast,” Kucher said. “Ring me up. Five big ones.”
“An SUV?”
“A jackal.”
Half the time, they cruised over regions too remote or too poor to offer much in the way of cars, let alone SUVs. Locals were more apt to ride donkeys or yaks. So they developed an elaborate system of equivalencies. American cars, which were relatively rare in Afghanistan, were worth ten points. So were wild goats and ibex, which had been hunted almost to extinction. Grey wolves and striped hyenas were worth nine points, along with limousines and high-end sports cars. They usually played to 100, which could take either hours or days, depending on flight patterns. There had only been one sighting of the ever elusive Beetle, an automatic game winner. Judging from the ensuing ruckus, Todd thought they’d spotted Osama bin Laden himself barreling down the Karakoram Highway. The entire trailer went bananas.
When they got tired of Slug Bug, they played Scavenger Hunt or Burqa Bingo. The same kind of squabbles broke out, no matter what game they played. They sounded more like kids in backseats than pilots in cockpits. Todd felt like the grumpy dad, always on the verge of telling them to knock it off. But he knew better than to feed into this dynamic. It was a losing battle. Discipline for the sake of discipline, the bread and butter of the old air force, was counterproductive with this new breed of pilots. Every time he intervened, the whole squad lapsed into sullen silence. Besides, they actually performed better when they were horsing around. The camaraderie of troops in the field was sadly lacking among drone pilots, who bunked in bachelor pads rather than with each other. Slug Bug did wonders for their morale.
Lieutenant Farley was the only spoilsport. He was way too focused to indulge in fun and games. At first Todd chalked it up to maturity. Then he realized something wasn’t quite right upstairs. Farley’s attention span was preternatural. For hours at a time, his eyes never strayed from his monitors. He executed his maneuvers with robotic precision, as though he himself were a drone. It got to the point where Todd actually wished he would start farting around, if only to prove he was still human. There was a point beyond which detachment was a liability rather than an asset. Todd notified Colonel Trumble, requesting a medical evaluation that resulted in a clean bill of health. Given the exigencies of supply and demand, post-traumatic stress diagnoses were increasingly rare, especially for guys like Farley who had never stepped foot on a battlefield. The air force couldn’t train officers fast enough to keep up with the proliferation of remotely piloted aircraft deployed in the war on terror.
Todd knew damned good and well that his RPA squad was at least as prone to PTSD as combat pilots, possibly even more so. They worked longer hours, day in and day out, with no better way to blow off steam than playing Slug Bug. They rarely got the chance to pull the trigger, which is why most men joined the armed forces in the first place. Adrenaline rushes were the real drug of choice, not Mountain Dew. Even when they did see action, the aftermath was gruesome rather than heroic. Drone pilots were expected to verify the accuracy of their strikes, flying back and forth until the dust settled to assess the damage. SOs zoomed into ground zero, and pilots filed the reports. Whatever satisfaction they derived from missions accomplished was always tempered by high-resolution pictures of wreckage strewn with body parts, something Todd had never witnessed during his three tours of active duty overseas. This had been Farley’s undoing. He liked dropping bombs as well as the next guy. He just didn’t have the stomach for what Colonel Trumble euphemistically called the paperwork.
Todd monitored Farley’s missions much more closely than anyone else’s on the squad. For over a month he had been tasked with surveilling the same compound, which was either a hotel or a terrorist cell or both. He had gotten to know the proprietors, an old couple whose grandchildren visited on weekends. Their routines had become his routines. The old guy snuck cigarettes out behind his work shed. His wife was always prowling around trying to catch him in the act. When she went to bed he smoked brazenly on the porch with their customers, mostly middle-aged men traveling alone, either businessmen or al Qaeda operatives or both.
Todd watched Farley watching everyone’s every move in and out of the hotel. He developed a certain fondness for the couple, whose volatility spiced up many a dull day in the trailer. They were always throwing up their hands or storming off in a huff. Todd could tell from their body language that their fights aroused them. An hour later, all was miraculously forgiven. No wonder guys like Farley disappeared down the rabbit hole. It was one thing to bomb total strangers, quite another to waste the familiar faces of an elderly couple still very much in love. Judging from his expression, Farley was oblivious to the domestic drama unfolding on his screens. But the way he white-knuckled his joystick told a different story. He gripped it like a man dangling over a precipice only he could see. Letting go required a grasp of another reality, the actual life he no longer lived outside the trailer.
Farley was the first to arrive every morning and the last to leave. He lingered at his station even after a relief pilot took his place at the controls, still mesmerized by his monitors. The rest of the squad was halfway home by the time he finally wandered out to the parking lot. Nobody carpooled even though they all drove the same arrow-straight highway through the desert. They needed the time alone to decompress. Almost every single day, they commuted thousands of miles from the greater Middle East to Las Vegas, a distance Farley was too traumatized to travel. He was always in either Afghanistan or Pakistan, depending on the mission. And the mission was never ending.
* * *
Rose dragged a lawn chair out into the middle of the yard. She studied the position of the sun, trying to gauge what the Source called the daily equinox. The idea was to sit facing the precise place the solar arc would peak that afternoon, to maximize her receptivity. As with everything, it was reciprocal. The more energy she absorbed, the more she would emit, giving Tashi the cosmic connection she needed to conduct a productive session. Unlike old-fashioned psychics, who relied on face-to-face contact, Tashi had access to the energetic equivalent of Verizon wireless. As long as initiates aligned their solar quadrants, she could hear them loud and clear.
When Rose made the appointment, the website manifested a long list of instructions. A great deal could be accomplished during her complimentary five-minute phone conversation, provided telekinetic channels were wide open. Rose kicked off her sandals and dug her toes into the grass. She took off her sweater to expose her skin to the elements. She started meditating with eyes wide open, orienting outward rather than inward to erase the boundary between herself and the world. The goal was to launch her astral body before she even picked up the phone. Since everything happened for a reason, nothing was left to chance. She waited until the third ring. The number three embodied a union of body, mind, and spirit in the circle of eternity where past, present, and future coalesced in the now.
“Rose Barron?”
“Speaking.”
“Please hold.”
Rose was deeply disappointed. Though she had only recently discovered the Source, she had been waiting for this moment for what seemed like a lifetime. The prospect of hearing Tashi’s voice on the phone had sustained her over the course of a particularly difficult weekend. Maureen had sprained her ankle practicing for cheerleader tryouts. Todd was outraged that grade schools even had cheerleaders, let alone the fact that his daughter thought she was old enough to join the squad. His response was disproportionate, a clear indication that something he wasn’t at liberty to discuss was bugging him at work. Then there was Max, who seemed to regress even further on days when his father was home. Every chance she got, Rose slipped into the study to log on to the website. She hadn’t realized how desperately she needed refuge, a place where everything wrong was made right by the mere sound of Tashi’s voice. The moment of truth had finally arrived, and an automated operator had put her on hold. Panpipes serenaded her as she waited yet another lifetime before the epiphany of Tashi herself.
“Rose?”
“Tashi?”
“I would introduce myself, but I feel like we’re already old friends.”
“I can barely hear you,” Rose said.
Tashi’s voice seemed a million miles away. In spite of Rose’s efforts to live in the here and now, she almost wished she were back online so she could turn up the volume. The extent to which the Source relied on technology seemed to undermine its spiritual credibility. Then Tashi performed her first miracle.
“Turn ever so slightly toward the sun,” Tashi said. “You’re off-kilter.”
Rose shifted in her chair.
“Not that way. To the left.”
Rose moved an inch or two the other way.
“There,” Tashi said. “Now we’re perfectly aligned.”
Her voice came through crystal clear. It seemed to emanate not from Rose’s cell phone but from some place deep within. Words scarcely seemed necessary. The timbre of the voice was what mattered, vibrating at a frequency that made Rose listen as she had never listened before, to herself as well as to Tashi. So this was cosmic consciousness, she thought, and the idea traveled like a seismic wave rippling through the oceanic depths of a universal mind.
“Breathe,” the voice said.
Rose inhaled into her solar plexus, the way the online yoga tutorial had taught her to breathe. She kept the phone receiver as close as possible to her mouth so Tashi could hear the air passing in and out. Psychics claimed they could read palms and tea leaves, not to mention varicose vein patterns and even moles, especially ones with hairs growing from their roots. Tashi specialized in deciphering the far more eloquent language of what she called cosmic winds, which blew with each breath, cleansing the body of toxins and the soul of secret fears.
“Don’t worry,” Tashi said.
“About what?”
“About anything. Let go of fear and doubt and regrets.”
“I’m trying.”
“No need to try. Just relax and breathe.”
Tashi breathed with her as precious seconds ticked by. Rose tried not to think of time and space and the $79.99 package deal, including a complimentary five-minute conversation consisting primarily of breathing. There would be hell to pay if Todd found the charge on their monthly statement. Good thing he was too busy at work to find time to pay the bills.
“I understand your concern,” Tashi said. “But thinking negative thoughts will manifest negative outcomes.”
Had she been thinking negative thoughts? Tashi seemed more aware of what was streaming through Rose’s mind than she was. It occurred to her that she seldom paid close attention to the random clutter of ideas between her ears. Rather than harnessing their energy, she stumbled through life almost entirely unconscious of the power of consciousness. She tried to reorient her thoughts, which seemed hopelessly trivial, if not negative. At the very least, she tried to avoid dwelling on the $79.99.
“I can hear him trying to comfort you,” the voice said.
“Him?”
“Your son.”
“Did you read my profile online?”
“Why bother? Your energy is telling me everything I need to know. Can you feel the current connecting us?”
Rose felt nothing beyond an overwhelming urge to lie about feeling nothing. A lot of good it would do since Tashi would probably intuit the lie anyway. Rose closed her eyes to concentrate and then opened them again. She was supposed to orient herself outward, not inward. She tried harder, focusing her attention on the telepathic vibrations of the voice itself. Then she remembered that this, too, was a mistake. Cosmic connections relied on relinquishing rather than exercising will power. She tried to stop trying altogether, something problem solvers always found counterintuitive. Rather than forcing what couldn’t be forced, she needed to let go.
“I’m sorry. I’m fairly new at this—”
“No need to be sorry, Rose. Everything is as it should be in the universe.”
“What about Max?”
“Especially Max. That’s what he’s trying to tell you. Worrying about him is blocking your ability to hear him.”
“What’s he saying?” Rose asked.
“If you listen carefully, you can hear him too.”
Rose listened. She heard the wind in her lungs and in the trees, strumming a distant chime. She heard a car alarm, honking incessantly. A lawn mower, possibly a weed whacker, coughed and sputtered. A siren wailed louder and louder, drowning out everything else until it passed. She blamed the siren for her inability to hear Max. The cacophony of the material world was deafening.
“What do you hear?” Tashi asked.
“Sirens. A car alarm.”
“You’re stuck on a temporal plane. Max is communicating on a much higher level.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your son is a shaman, Rose.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s speaking a universal language, channeling the energy of our time.”
Of course. All the pieces, which had been scattered by Max’s diagnosis, fell into place. Prior to discovering the Source, Rose would have been hard-pressed to define the word
shaman
, let alone apply it to her very own son. Over the past week, she had learned dozens of words that completely altered the way she interpreted the world.
Monism
.
Mandala
.
Chakra
.
Bodhisattva
. In retrospect, the paucity of her spiritual vocabulary was shocking. She scarcely had language to describe the transcendental beauty of the natural world, let alone Max’s transcendent nature. His diagnosis was equally impoverished.
Autism
. The word was intrinsically pathological, a self-fulfilling prophecy that hindered rather than helped her son express his full potential.
“You mean he’s gifted, not sick.”
“Seers are often misunderstood.”
“I knew it!” Rose said.
“Of course you did. You’re his mother.”
Rose started crying for the first time since Max’s diagnosis. She hadn’t dared to let her guard down before, for fear of falling apart. Now she felt protected enough to acknowledge the tremendous burden she felt as the parent of a child with autism. Medical science had stopped blaming mothers exclusively, but the history of the disease still referenced Bettelheim’s infamous refrigerator theory. Starved for attention by frigid mothers, children withdrew in self-defense. It didn’t help that Max was more sensitive to her touch than anyone else’s, as though maternal intimacy were threatening rather than comforting. His claustrophobia made sense now. He was more, not less, in touch with her. He was more in tune rather than out of touch with the world.