As library outlines faded into darkness, Carven found himself on an open terrace, staring down at a giant city beneath. The enormous estate behind him was now immersed in greenery and packed with marble statues, trees trimmed into abstract animal figures, oversized vases filled with decorative glass beads, and massive ceramic pots with blooming exotic flowers. A small playground furnished with swing sets and a sandpit hid in the shadows of centurion pine trees.
Cluttered city tiles below floated for miles into the tainted skyline. Split by streams and rivers of stirring lights, they grabbed onto remote tips of darkness and drowned in indiscernible ocean far beyond the horizon.
Thousands of villas, condos and apartment blocks lay scattered in the valley. Two skyscraper clusters stood tall and proud in the middle of this giant lagoon of alien suburbia, resembling a magic glowing carpet in Wonderland South-Central.
South Central… That notion stuck in his mind for a moment, only to reinforce the feeling of being home again.
«Los Angeles!» he diffused «The Hills!» Tristan had spent his youth up here and remembered the panorama well. However, he had a hard time understanding why this was shown to him now in such burlesque array of visions that switched directly from Xibalba and into his immediate past. The significance of it all remained unclear at this point…
«Shhhhhh» Victoria whispered somewhere nearby «wait for the vision to populate«
A UFO-shaped swimming pool appeared on the lower terrace. Lit from within by dynamic sets of disco spotlights, it randomly changed tints, illuminating the mosaic bottom with sizzling shades of blue, red, violet and a hundred other indiscriminate rainbow palettes. The glittering carpet of La-La-Land spread in all its blazing glory right behind the trees that surrounded this Olympic-size incandescent hydro craft.
He approached the railing ahead and took a deep breath of warm summer air. The decadent City of Angels was always an incredibly sexy sight from up here, he remembered, but right now it was smoking hot!
As he looked closer towards the city, effervescent colours jumped into picture right out of surrounding shadows, painting further and wilder details onto the spherical visionary tract . Darker areas of the garden indistinguishable until now began to colonize with trees and critters, as his mind adjusted the picture settings and completed the missing landscape with increasingly vibrant visual features.
Fluorescent grids appeared in dark corners of oasis below, and everywhere else where illumination slacked on the job.
As he moved swiftly and effortlessly through the pulsating matrix, there was music all around him, subliminal tunes he could not necessarily hear but simply feel, smell, see and touch. It was inside him; it filled the space around with tranquil harmony and divine vibration, as dynamic melodies made their way through sporadic fabrics of enveloping space.
Faint music slowly but persistently invaded the stage. It alternated from 9th symphony to Goa trance, and eventually filled the arena with vibrant jungle sequences that knitted a barely perceptible reality-wide web of resonating tribal echoes. Intricately blended melodies and animal howls mixed by a shaman DJ seemed to emanate from all sides, penetrating the skin and sending shivers down the spine with every new crescendo.
As one beat climaxed, another entered the invisible stage and took the lead in endless culmination of thumping beacons, glimmering bass and refined pinnacles of squealing sonar ricochets. Intensely consuming cyber tunes re-sampled and interlocked with ethnic chanting, didgeridoo and wild roars of genetically engineered fairytale beasts.
He was a deity studying this simple world from a heavenly lounge right beneath the star gates. He swallowed thick air in deep gulps and exhaled with unfathomable pleasure, as his lungs expanded with intoxicating freedom and his head twirled in a familiar oxygen rush.
He turned around to find Victoria, glimpsed up at the heavens, and froze in utter bewilderment. The formerly pitch black sky dome was now sprinkled with billions of pulsating sparkles. Remote constellations, star clusters and outlines of super massive black holes shone brightly above his head, as persistent digital cobwebs traced the Zodiac figures into existence.
Aquarius stood tall and proud, pouring his sparkling ale out of a golden amphora. Sagittarius stretching his bow, Gemini hugging one another, and Ophiuchus wrestling the snake. Scorpio, Libra, Pisces, and the others leisurely gathered in centre stage for the forthcoming show.
He could practically touch the Milky Way, his mind soaking in the beauty of this astounding moment. His eyes feasted on the wild visual cacophony that now solidly interlocked with ambient beats inside this mind boggling cartoon. His entire body throbbed with every new second of untamed imaginarium that unrolled right before his eyes, as breathtaking euphoria submerged him from within.
The hanging tree branches above them merged into a star gate, as heavenly clouds obscured their vision of immediate environment, while music blasted through the ears, carrying them further away into the night. Herds of miniscule unipods roamed around crackling, singing, dancing and leaving sparkling dust residue in the air, as the pale apricot walls of the pool house beneath shimmered with nacreous yellowish glisters.
This was definitely the most spiritually liberating experience he has ever lived until now. He attempted to recall another day when he had felt so fine before, and the more he thought of it, the more he realised how hard the comparison would be to make. In fact, no other occasion in his rebel biography came even close to this! Apart, perhaps, from the day he lost his virginity…
This naughty thought inspired Tristan even more. “What better feeling is there than knowing that you are finally MAN”, he wondered. “Maybe a birth of a true love child… or, perhaps, walking barefoot on the moon?” He had never experienced either of the above, yet he was sure it would be extremely hard, if not impossible, to beat this current flood of overwhelmingly positive sensations.
Victoria’s shamanic mind candy had blown him off his feet and onto an ecstatic cloud of utter tranquillity, love and joy. For the first time since a long while he felt truly alive, at peace with himself and with the entire world around him. In fact, he felt more alive than ever before in his entire life!
He gathered focus and looked down towards the city. A glowing cloud swayed gently above the metropolis, illumined by the lights from beneath. Airplanes pierced through it, slowly finding their way in and out of darkness. His eyes soaked in each photon, each micro particle and let gentle hands of invisible gurus adjust the brightness settings inside the cinemascope of his thundering mind.
Suddenly, as he relaxed his eyes , the visual intensity increased tenfold, merging the lights into one radiant blur. There were no more moving cars, no more clouds above the skyscrapers, and no more airplanes. The guardians of his sanity capitulated in effortless surrender and opened the floodgates of his consciousness to the raging psychotropic cataclysm.
A gigantic space harbour filled with thousands of interstellar vessels now spread far and wide, as effervescent landscapes before him progressively mutated into a scene from an ultra high budget sci-fi movie. Skyscraper clusters now turned to massive mother ships, prevalently bestriding above the glittering harbour. The cloud above them transformed to a massive star gate for the freshly arriving visitors from parallel worlds.
As he let his eyes devour the dazzling space marina view, he felt Victoria approach from behind. She silently drifted to the rail and put her hands on his shoulders.
“What is this place?” he diffused.
«This is home…» she smiled mystifyingly.
As they both turned to face the majestic view, the city welcomed their attention and lit up ever more.
“Where do we go from here, I wonder…” Carven exclaimed in most prodigious of voices “What’s next?” he asked rhetorically, addressing his words to the winds of change.
Victoria stayed silent and still beside him for a moment, then slowly reached inside her sleeve and extracted a small packet.
«Gum?» she beamed.
«Gum!? Here?!»
«You can have anything you want here, so why not start with gum?» she giggled. Her eyes sparkled with beauty and marvel, resembling two black diamonds and overflowing with blissful wonder. Her long charcoal hair swayed in the gentle breeze.
Carven was truly lost by now but accepted the gum anyway. He inserted the stick into his mouth and found it unbelievably delicious.
After a long confused pause he finally produced: “What flavour is this gum anyway?”
A question so unexpected sent Vicky into a fit of adorable giggles.
“I really wouldn’t know” she passed the pack to him for further inspection.
Enthralling melodies continued to fill the space with transcendent jungle beats, as dream weaver DJ threw more sonic firewood into the surround sound furnace of Tristan’s internal jukebox. Hundreds of laser-sharp echoes besieged the terrace, stridently rattling and buzzing with culminating vigour, as a choir of magnificent fantasy creatures murmured and growled in the background, anticipating a great feast.
Crunching and crackling sounds rumbled through the patio, as the ranting commotion stretched through the cosmic continuum, storming the night with invincible fury, assailing all senses and deftly maneuvering among the levitating critters.
Multivoiced passages shimmered blindingly across the reverbs of incoherent echoing sensations. Infinite string patterns and cyclic resonances interlaced with invisible melody sources deep inside the rainbow-wrapped darkness, soaking them in, enveloping, mystifying and compelling.
…Reckless and wild they poured through the turns,
Their prowess was potent and secretly stern…
Long forgotten lyrics of youth invaded his ears …
«Cake?» He addressed Victoria «how do you know I like Cake?»
«I don’t. But your subconscious mind does»
«My mind is playing this music?!»
«Your mind is painting this entire panorama, Tristan. All you need is a conscious intent; all you get is its materialization»
As they speed through the finish the flags go down.
The fans get up, and get out of town.
The arena is empty except for one man,
Still driving and striving as fast as he can…
…Tristan was that man now; blinded and speechless in a palpitating celestial arena… He was finally free, ultimately certain of where he belonged…
The sun has gone down and the moon has come up,
And long ago somebody left with the cup,
But he’s driving and striving and hugging the turns,
And thinking of someone for whom he still burns…
A new, stronger wave of energies invaded him. His body twitched, welcoming the pleasant electromagnetic rush, as it sent roaring digital tsunamis up and down his spinal neurotransmitters. His head quivered helplessly from side to side accumulating sufficient thrust for a much expected outbreak of cosmic consciousness.
His tongue swelled up and his vision blurred evermore, as he continued to contemplate the raging celestial inferno. The stars now wrapped into morphing fluorescent frameworks, elegantly danced and gently hummed to galvanising rock tunes streaming from his inner amp. The whole picture of the heavens seemed to be painted on a massive globular dome of a new age Notre Dame, lined with gleaming green strokes, purple streaks and dazzling multicolour speckles.
In addition and to his utter surprise, his physical body now felt very material, almost real… Almost human…
Victoria made a circle of reverence around Tristan and lay down beside him, as their ascension continued with newly found momentum. It gained force with every second, every breath and every heart beat, sneaking up when they least expected that fresh psychic ricochet.
Tristan crossed his arms on the chest, closed his eyes, and welcomed new recoils of mounting delusional gusto, as his mind raced further into the sky. Pacing thoughts and dazzling tunes pushed the vibrant tempo, applying physically imperceptible, but subjectively distinguishable pressure to unfolding realities.
Every single breath, every intricate tune, every glimpse of light or touch to the skin felt utterly divine, as he continued to permeate the vivid spiritual delirium, marinating in fantasy, immersing into the world sublime.
He plunged to the deepest of trenches, escorted by playful dolphins and imposing manta rays, and emerged on sunny beaches beneath coconut trees only to fly again cross the oceans accompanied by rainbow flamingos.
Free. Unbounded. Pure…
Suddenly, as he opened his eyes again, the star-filled cathedral collapsed right upon him; the music faded and the lights went dim. The entire space around was now inundated with ultimate freedom, reverberant wizardry, and unleashed alchemic forces that blended and mingled with mystifying darkness, catering to all his senses, home-delivering their delicious spiritual desserts.
There was no more Tristan, no more Victoria, and no more Beverly Hills. But only for a split moment, only to gather more thrust and come back with a greater force, only to welcome the subsequent spiralling climax of incoming torsion undercurrents…
Uncontainable, truly cataclysmic fit of laughter seized control over Tristan. It penetrated his operating system, buried deep beneath the smouldering transistors of his overloaded CPU, domineeringly prevailing above all perception capabilities, as he tuned deeper into the sounds of Goa.
His entire physical being rippled with warm stupefying peaks of vivacious felicity, sending sweet tears down his cheeks. Compelling ticks of minute muscle contractions rushed through his face and neck, as he began rocking and rolling on the tiles, unable to manage his functions. He couldn’t stop laughing or crying, as autocratic but overwhelmingly gracious and intelligent force seized absolute control over enveloping shards of remaining reality, if such had ever existed.
”This is not funny anymore!” he crackled with inhuman tint to his voice “What movie tickets? What Hollywood productions?! Forget it, Vic! I’m in open space! I’m riding the lightning!” he diffused louder “Bring out your magic tricks, Great Warlock, lets mingle!!!”
«Do not succumb to emotion Tristan!» Victoria diffused gently «You need to use your intent, concentrate! Are you sure you’re ok?«
“I am… I’m just fabulously obliterated Vic!» Tristan lowered his tone, realising how creepy he must have appeared from the side «And by this, I have said nothing, because there is nothing I can say that would describe how I feel right now, as perfectly as it deserves… Thank you for this” he whispered and hugged her.
“You’re welcome” Vicky hugged him back with utter sincerity.
“I remember being here when I was nineteen, you know. This was Alan’s house — a good buddy of mine back then. Some crazy parties we had… We laughed way too hard, acted too immature, and often forgot to use protection under influence» he sniggered «But you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way! This was the life, right here! This is how everyone should feel at all times!”
“Indeed» Victoria agreed «I’m gonna get me a drink. You want anything?”
“Yes please! A slice of starberry pie and a cup of warm midsummer night’s dream. Easy on the moon dust, though” he chuckled “oh, and no Milky Way cream! Shaken, not stirred, of course”
“Yes, Mr. Bond, right away sir. A straw perhaps?” Victoria played along. She slowly produced two shimmering glasses filled to the top with unknown pink extract that resembled both clouds, rainbow and sunshine at once «Drink this» she whispered and passed one glass to Tristan.
He accepted her gift and made a few sips of the heavenly potion. It tasted mellow and sweet, with a touch of strawberry and peach.
«I thank you, princess» he whispered «From the bottom of my heart I thank you for this experience…»
«Don’t thank me yet, we have only just begun» she chuckled and gave him a another warm hug «lay back now, it’s time for you to meet someone…»
He followed her lead and lay down again, his entire being trembling with incoming energies.
«What is this? He muttered incoherently without expecting an answer «Who am I?!»
Unexpectedly, the answer exploded right into his face. Memories of early childhood, failed relationships, his parents, Damien, and a number of others materialized and paraded in his inner vision. They were deliberately focused upon, lined in order of importance and meaning to his personal growth. These were the biggest lessons of his current incarnation, the side notes of his latest life. A life that seemed so full of itself, and yet translated only into a split-second energo-informational package deal, loaded with reminiscence and wrapped in pure emotion, sent from his low density ego to its hyper dimensional harvester on the next differential frontier.
He was carefully and methodically prompted through visions that made him cry with joy and grind his jaws in barely contained anger. He experienced several situations per each nanobit of every microsecond that passed by. He lived them directly, viewed them from the side as observer, assessed them, derived conclusions, and implemented the wisdom they delivered all at once. Needless to say, time was inexistent at this point, it was only a vague and distant frame of indistinguishable reference.
He was shown a way to come to terms with factors that weighed upon him in lower density planes. Factors like guilt, dread, unanswered love, broken promises, anger, jealousy, unfounded judgment, envy, and any and all other derivatives of fear that a Freudian model of human psyche could cough up on any given Sunday.
And they consequently affected parallel nexus lines that needed a short correction before he signed out of this particular user session. These were his karmic weights, not necessarily dangerous, but merely unfinished tasks he had still to fulfil in this life.
When suddenly, a giant armageddonous flood of pure universal knowledge and existential metadata swiped his membrane receptors clean again. An all-blending, thought-dissolving, hyper-intelligent whirlpool of DNA secrets, practical technology insights, biomechanical and bioacoustic mechanisms of creation paraded with reverent awe . Digital waves and particles, glimpses of thinner planes and sacred methods of matter infusion with vibrant consciousness rushed in from all sides, coded into luminous pulsating Inca symbols. Imprints of multi-dimensional snowflakes invaded the sight and physically pulled on the fabrics of space-time, stretching them into undecipherable vantage sheets. They were fertile and objective, crisp an vivid, signalling the revelations ahead.
They obliterated all existing epistemologies*; proved wrong a million theories, and infected the operating system to the core within seconds.
*epistemology – or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. Wiki.
Despite his receivers evidently lacking vigour, the connection was clearly established. Terabytes of inbound data packets incoherently scrambled inside a 56 k modem, restlessly struggling to get through to the receiving end, to step into restricted and objective reality out of absolute physical vacuum; to emerge from the roaring rivers of limitless Void through the keyhole of human awareness.
Ideas dominantly pushed each-other to the side, desperately attempting to get through. Pinging, phishing, spoofing, fighting furiously to be noticed and recorded by the vigilant keepers of Carven’s subconscious watchtowers. Like subliminal advertising, they melted deeply into the core of his mind, installing themselves at the root, requesting to update from an existing database. They had always been stored in his memory on genetic levels, but remained inaccessible till this day in absence of appropriate password generators.
Much like a TV set showing all stations at once, millions of visual channels simultaneously attempted to broadcast their celestial insider intel through a vibrant collection of endless archetypes. They built up mind-numbing noise and established a dominant regime of chaotic interference with coordination and balance functions. Their operating systems and program components were now being upgraded from a limited demo version to a licensed corporate edition.
And they accelerated, as if knowing the gate is to close soon; as if the sudden explosion of awareness was now to fade and vanish again into bottomless shadows, leaving only subjective, indescribable traces on their overburdened grey matter hard drives.
Blood rushed to the temple, building and sustaining additional inner pressure.
Thrusts of unconditional affection and loyalty filled them, as terabytes of empyrean enlightenment rushed in at hyper light speeds, making it impossible for any human memory to assimilate its totality. Carven’s processor could no longer cope, it seemed, as it desperately attempted to concentrate on one single coherent application inside this digital cacophony.
Attempting to focus on a single thought was as productive and rewarding, as driving a Ferrari on sand dunes… in zero gravity… Or like trying to contain a nuclear explosion with bare hands.
They gazed up at the stars in helpless marvel, while their unified spirits travelled faster than light into the distant galaxies, penetrating vast boundaries of oscillating space, emerging in most isolated clusters of the cosmos, drenched in emotion and carrying the glorious aurora of wisdom to the unsuspecting inhabitants of secluded celestial planes.
They cruised over millions of suns, planets and asteroid belts, flying through blazing nebulae, clouds of spellbinding dust and shimmering plasma formations; observing emerging worlds and ancient civilisations filled with sparkling life forms and cast on magnificent pillars of divine creation, as solar winds propelled them further into sublime vortexes of rippling astral projections.
Pyramids and star gods materialized and vanished into darkness, as they hovered speechless under the pumping pressure of staggering visual blasts inside this supersonic extraterrestrial delirium. Local manifestations of pure Unbounded Consciousness slowly crystallized into one unified piece of all-embracing cosmic perception, leisurely fusing into an idyllic luminous singularity with interstellar mesh of consolidated omniscient energy, as invisible forces gently enveloped and guided them beyond the vibrant frontiers of physical matter reality.
The concepts of time and space long faded away, as they journeyed in comet trails on the wings of pulsating wholesome starlight. Sporadic download of dazzling data parcels persisted, as their minds plugged directly into the hidden Asymmetric Divine Subscriber Line — an unlimited fibre optic connection to All There Is.
The entire history of human race flashed before them in a split instant, revealing forgotten secrets of ancient empires and the true nature of immortal souls, as indiscernible brushes of ubiquitous wizards painted larger realities over existing generic meta-environments.
Unlimited oceans of enigmatic thought — wisdom encoded in ancient symbols and pulsating grid formations — flooded the neural network micro pipes, redundantly jamming all stimuli receptors. It reduced the brain impulse shipping-and-handling capacity to practical zero. It declared an oxygen siege on the cerebrum, clouding vision, dimming sound, and gradually debilitating the “logical” think centres, in whichever hemisphere they may have been located at this point. And yet it all seemed very light and overly comprehensive through natural intuitive perception – the “illogical” back-up CPU on the opposite side of the ego complex.
It did not matter though; they were now above material reality and physical existence, above all time and space, above history and science. These notions simply seized to exist! They were GODS, creators of infinite cosmos, omnipotent rulers of timeless trans-dimensional conglomerates!
They were the undisputed bearers of esoteric knowledge and higher meaning, supreme architects of immaculately arcane existence, sovereign emperors of cryptic macrocosm, invincible generators of unconditional love, clairvoyant masters of infinite Hyperspace realities!
This unparalleled phantasmagoria was more real than life itself, as it infiltrated the core of their spiritual substance and multiplied their certainty that they were now beyond the memory of yesterday and the dream of tomorrow!
This was truly home and it welcomed them back with conventional hospitality, like a father welcomes his son back home after a war – warmly and sincerely.
They were nothing but pure unbounded consciousness hallucinating material reality, their egos dissolving into the unfolding Multiverse.
As the next wave of cannonading enchantment subsided, Carven sat up and embraced Victoria.
“Holly mother of god!” he said “Are you feeling this?”
«I am indeed» she smiled and embraced him. Slowly but surely their lips gravitated together and released an immense discharge of energy that immediately brought the entire surroundings back to subjective normality, back to the LA scene, leaving only the sensation of being pulled up inside a giant vacuum cleaner.
“What does all this mean?» Tristan looked straight in her bottomless black eyes «Are we ever coming back? Who are we? Is this world just an illusion!?”
“Our lives are just an illusion, Tristan» Victoria diffused softly «You and I are creators of all this. We are Gods, my dear… but so is every other human that ever lived…»
«What do you mean?» he inquired hesitantly a split moment before the answer appeared at the core of his very subconscious. It was not a dream or hallucination. It was not a product of wild imagination fuelled by DMT and amplified by adrenaline. They have been here before. This was home. And it made them whole. It cleared their minds of material junk. It made them laser sharp.
This feeling was more familiar than life itself; more inspiring, potent, genuine and invading than a million human lives could ever be. They were outside their physical bodies. Pure information, intelligence and knowledge became them. Untainted, fearless, and serene…