Big news! Our band is almost ready to go. We talked Doc into financing the instruments. Guitars, drums, keyboards, samplers; the whole works. All he said was, ‘You’re right, we should have more music around here’, and told Kate to dole out the cash. Fortunately, Doc loves music.
Of course Kate was against the idea, saying we could spend the money on all kinds of more useful things, but all I said was, ‘Hey!’ right in front of everyone too, ‘Me and Bubba. We know,’ I reminded her, and then, I pointed directly at her. ‘This woman is a Control Freak!’
‘I’m not a control freak, Ethan’.
‘Then why do you think it’s your place to decide where Doc’s money goes?’
‘Because, I run the finances, for one’.
‘Control Freak!’
‘And we have aging equipment which requires replacement for another,’ she kept up.
‘Control Freak!’
‘And I don’t know how I’m going to pay the bills at the end of the month as it is’.
By now, she should have known the argument was over. All her flimsy excuses. I didn’t even have to accuse her of being a control freak anymore.
Doc decided to end the whole thing, as it was becoming a little uncomfortable for the rest of us. ‘It’s okay Kate,’ he says. ‘Think of it this way. The extra purchase of this music equipment will require extreme finesse to navigate through our financial waters. You get to be in control of all that’.
‘But Doc’!
‘Now Kate,’ he said in his soothing doctor tone. ‘You don’t get to have all the fun. Leave a little for us.’
She looked at us with that look of hers like she can’t believe we’re capable of wiping our own asses. And then she blurts out, ‘I hate you people! Especially you Ethan’.
‘Yes. Yes,’ the Doc said soothingly. ‘A degree of hostility is to be expected with obsessive compulsiveness. It will be alright Kate. Are you remembering to do your breathing exercises’?
Anyway, as I mentioned, none of us in the band actually know how to play an instrument, but we’ve been getting people who already have instruments to show us a few licks. Right now I’m learning the intro to ‘Stairway to Heaven’. I’m pretty good. Maybe a little slow, but pretty good. We’re going into town next week to pick out our gear. I’ll probably blow everyone away at the music store.
Another thing that happened recently is I went to see Tara a few days ago. What’s been bugging me is she’s remained casually formal towards me, especially since she appeared in my Ayahuasca ceremony at the Potlatch. Now I know it’s my Tara. Even in a quest, I’m not that far removed from the spirit world not to know what’s going on in my hallucinations.
All I’m getting from her is passing chitchat. Like the other day, ‘Morning Ethan,’ she says as she dumps some scrambled eggs into a serving tray. She doesn’t even stop. She just dumps the eggs, and makes her way back into the kitchen. That’s all I’m getting from her. You know, we’re comrades of sorts. We did work together on creating a rapture like transcendence for the entire world population. I expect more from her.
‘Well Ethan,’ she says once I cornered her and forced her to have a coffee with me, ‘I’m sure you see all kinds of things during an Ayahuasca trip, but aren’t they just manifestations of your subconscious? Random associations by your brain to make sense of things?’
‘No.’
‘I think this is something you should talk over with Doc, not me.’
‘I’m not crazy, and I know you’re Tara’.
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‘I am Tara. Just not this mythical one you made up in your mind. Listen to yourself,’ she continued. ‘You’re saying I’m some kind of harbinger of transcendence. It's a ridiculous fantasy’.
‘You appeared to me when I took my animal form’.
‘So?’
‘So, why would you be there? Of all the things for me to see, it’s you’.
‘Because it was a hallucination! There was probably a pink elephant right beside me.
‘You know darn well, in three years I will come back in time and you use me to usher in the Enlightenment’.
‘So, now you’re saying you’re from the future?’
‘That’s right’.
‘Seriously Ethan. This is something you should be talking to Doc about’.
‘I’m from the future. You know I am’.
‘Oh, I know,’ she says, getting up to leave. ‘and it’s all very exciting, but I have to get back to work’.
‘I am,’ I insisted, but she was ignoring me now. ‘I’m from the future, and you know it!’ I yelled.
‘Ethan!’ she said sternly and loud enough for others in the canteen to hear, who were already eavesdropping, because I was being so loud. ‘I feel you’re invading my personal space, and you should leave now’.
Of course you leave when someone tells you you’re invading their personal space, especially on a commune. It’s all about personal space and self-discovery here. Everyone sitting at the canteen heard Tara, and made gestures like they were going to get up to assist her, if I didn’t leave on my own. Of course I left. I’m from the future, not some kind of mad man.
Raising a scene in the canteen wasn’t enough for Tara. She goes and tells Doc I’m bothering her all the time, and she’s starting to be concerned for her safety. The Doc told me, on no uncertain terms, am I to bother her again. Period! Well played Tara. Well played.
A lot of you have been messaging me asking about what the next six years are going to be like as we head into the event horizon of Singularity. Progressive misery is what they’re going to be like. Progressive misery until you are forced to discover your collective consciousness and use it to manage the New World. The climate crisis will get progressively worse. Ideological wars will get progressively worse. Economic disparity will get progressively worse.
Don’t forget, in your world, your trajectory is only recognizably heading towards the singularity, not the Enlightenment. If it’s just the singularity we come to in six years, it’s most likely AI will be the very thing that kills you. It’s all in the trajectory. The trajectory is that a very small minority is controlling AI’s coming of age, and like I say, your world is not filled with the cream of the crop when it comes to doing the right thing, especially when they’re driven by a corrupted market economy.
Me and the boys are starting to keep a closer eye on Tasha seeing as we figure she’s probably trying to kill us, and in the event she might try to kill one of us again. Let’s just say, we’re a little more attentive when she’s around. We’re also kind of stalking her, and following her wherever she goes. We want to see if what happened with me and Jason were isolated events, or if she tries to kill people on a regular basis.
Following her is pretty easy. Most mornings she has breakfast with me, Bubba, Leita and Kate. Afterwards, we all go our separate ways. She’s found a little shack she wants to tear down and rebuild into her home. It’s a nice location. Shaded by trees. There’s a calming little brook off to the side. After breakfast she likes to work on the shack for a few hours.
The shack itself is too decrepit to save, but there’s a concrete foundation that will serve her new home well. I think electricity has even been run out there. Raven is keeping an eye on her during this time. At first he tried to help her, but she wants to do it all herself, and in her own rammy way.
Rather than get one of the guys to run in there with the backhoe and knock the shack over, she’s chopping it apart with one of her axes. There’s no apparent plan or reason as to how she goes about doing it either. One day she might be inside knocking down a cupboard, the next outside chopping away at a wall. Raven says she’s chipping away at the shack’s spirit until it collapses on its own.
The big concern is the damn thing might collapse while she’s inside it. She’s already knocked out one of the interior support beams. Raven had to go over and show her how she’s weakened the structure, and now she doesn’t work inside anymore. She’s going at it only from the outside. Raven says there’s a high probability the shack will collapse some night soon when Tasha’s sleeping.
Tasha usually spends her afternoons hanging out in the shed with us. She has her little section on the couch where she sits doing stuff on her phone. She’s so chill, we hardly notice her, and that’s kind of got us thinking, maybe we’re wrong about her? You know, maybe those two instances against me and Jason are explainable. Maybe she was so focused on her target on the tree, she really didn’t see me when she threw the axe? I suppose that could happen. And with Jason, if you had to live around him, no-one would blame you for trying to get him to stick his dick in a meat grinder.
We’re still watching her, but so far, it’s starting to look like maybe we’re wrong. Honestly, if you’ve ever seen her face, you would think we’re idiots. There’s not a more innocent looking face in the world. Cute as a button too. If you saw Tasha, you’d ask how we could even think such a thing about her, but don’t forget we know her. So far it’s been, you piss her off, you pay.