1 The Age of Certain Catastrophe
Unseen forces ruled my world. I was as clueless as a mime in a house of mirrors, a question mark looking for an answer. My chakras were out of alignment, and my karma needed a tuneup. This was Sedona, after all, home of paranormal mysteries and powerful energies that seemed to influence everything in our high desert paradise, even the stale jokes of the tour guides.
Tourists by the millions flock to this cozy little village to gaze upon mind-bending red rock formations, to soak up the powerful vibrations from alleged energy vortexes, to bask in the mysterious milieu of unexplained incidents and fateful meetings too whacky to write off as mere coincidence. Sedona is ground zero for New Age pilgrims and practitioners. Stories of UFO sightings are common and acceptable in ordinary conversation. Hairless, large-headed gray aliens supposedly lurk around hiking trails. Psychics, healers, and channelers roam freely among the town’s permanent population.
Maybe that was my problem: I had been in Sedona too long. Maybe I had been contaminated by random particles of cosmic dust, runoff from overheated vortexes.
It was all too much. Strange days and crazy nights, haunted by bizarre dreams; and yet I believed that my brilliant mind could sort it all out and keep my fragile relationships together. Yes, there was a lot on my mind on that ominous day. Indeed.
Orbs, orbs, and more orbs, for openers. Dreams of orbs, flashbacks of orbs. Alien presence. I know what I saw out there on Bell Rock. It wasn’t right, it didn’t fit my Reality template. I thought of my wife, who was more like a stranger every day. I thought of my ex-girlfriend, a close friend of my wife, who had lit my fire not too long ago.
But it wasn’t just me, it was a case of collective anxiety. The ongoing environmental crisis, worse every day, was affecting every conscious being on the planet. And, yeah: I had the feeling that somehow the whole freakin’ circus was spinning madly out of control. The natural order of things seemed crazily unnatural.
We all were living in, let’s face it, the Age of Certain Catastrophe. We had gone too far in our quest for eternity. There were too many of us. We had soiled our nest. Mother Nature seemed poised to bite us all in the butt and rid herself of the human virus that was poisoning her party.
And so it was on such a day, a bright and strangely brilliant kind of day, a day heavy with anticipation and dread, that the wife and I decided to take a trip to the higher elevations of Flagstaff, twenty-six miles distant, twenty degrees lower in temperature, and a world away in terms of attitude and ambience. We had been arguing most of the morning, although arguing is not the right word. One does not argue with a telepath. She knows what you are thinking before the thought materializes. It is like arguing with yourself—it’s a no-win situation.
The wife is one Leela Powers, famous psychic and clairvoyant, occasional covert ops agent for the U.S. government, a ravishing and slender beauty with long dark hair and penetrating green eyes. She had just returned from an assignment for the State Department in god-knows-where Eurasia, some kind of enviro-conference. Of course my wife can’t tell me about her work for the government. It’s rated Top Secret.
None of my beeswax, right?
Yes and no. That’s what our “discussion” had been about that morning, as in, where do we draw the line? I don’t pry into her private business. Leela is the telepath in our family. Not me, I’m square: non-psi. My wife can read my thoughts, but I can’t read hers. C'est la vie.
But I was concerned for her safety. I had the creepy feeling that Leela was in over her head and had grown a little cocky with her string of successes. Plus I had a sinking feeling that she was having a fling with her State Department controller, a dude she called only “Mr. Anderson.”
“It’s not that at all, Marty,” she said as I dried the breakfast dishes and put them away, my mind running at full speed, as usual. “It’s strictly business with him. Oops!”
“Damn it, Leela!” I exploded. “Can’t a man have any privacy inside his own head?” Not really, I thought, when a man is married to a very gifted psychic.
“I’m sorry, Marty, I didn’t mean to invade your privacy. Sometimes I forget and scan you out of habit.” She snuggled up to me from behind, thrusting those solid, perfect breasts into my back and encircling my waist with powerful arms. I turned around, pulled her into me, and kissed her so passionately that we were both breathing heavily when I finally released her.
My erotic thought forms must have set off alarms throughout the astral plane. “Not now, dear,” she said, gently pushing me away and escaping to her bathroom. That was another issue: our sex life, which had ranged from hot to hotter over our many years together, had cooled considerably in the past few months.
We met in a Tantra workshop at a commune in India years ago, and I’ve been hooked on her ever since. We hung out for years, lived together, traveled the world, got married on a lark, saved the planet from economic collapse (Leela’s work), and settled in the mystical environs of Sedona, where, supposedly, there was a psychic or a healer on every corner. It has been a mad, mad love affair, based on trust, respect, and, you know, yin-yang. Female-male stuff.
But things have changed, as the world has changed. Leela has taken a leap into another dimension. I felt like she had left me behind. Me? I’m just plain ol’ Marty Powers, a forty-something retired Internet millionaire with not a whole lot to do—just watching the planet’s downward spiral while I put my search for enlightenment on hold.
So we decided that contentious morning to escape our irreconcilable differences as well as the stifling August heat of Sedona, to take a hike in Flagstaff on one of those cool, inviting trails around the San Francisco Peaks, at about eight thousand feet. The higher the better, I thought. Something had gone sour in our relationship, and we both wanted to blow out the negative energy.
Our vehicle for the Flagstaff run, twenty-seven miles of nearly unspeakable grandeur via Oak Creek Canyon, was my souped-up, turbocharged 1200 cc Harley Sportster. Leela loves riding on the back of a motorcycle, digs speed and danger, but usually keeps her eyes tightly closed. Maybe she keeps her third eye open, I’m not sure. For this ride we were wearing lightweight helmets with built-in comm sets so we could talk to each other. On the Harley, we communicate the old-fashioned way.
We zipped out of overheated Sedona as quickly as possible, creeping through the tourist-infested Uptown shopping ghetto, across the Midgley Bridge (a popular venue for suicides), and into the canyon itself.
It is always an adrenaline rush to enter the winding, twisting, deliciously dangerous two-lane road that whisks you through an incredible wonderland into the high country. To the left, the red rocks stay with us for about eight miles—steep, swooping columns of sandstone, etched and sculpted for three hundred million years by the skillful hands of Mother Nature.
To the right, Oak Creek meanders lazily along, a narrow, burbling, silver stream riding a garden of rocks. And above: the canopy of thirsty cottonwood and sturdy oak trees, dappling and shaping the view from the driver’s seat.
Our bickering energy seemed to dissolve in a deluge of beauty so profound that it triggers endorphins. Near the entrance to Slide Rock State Park, about five miles into the canyon, two things happened almost simultaneously:
First I got a whiff, then a visual, in the middle of the road, of the first dead skunk on our journey; and a millisecond I noticed that we were being followed by two bike riders on foreign-looking machines; behind the mysterious pair was a huge black Mercedes, the car that S.S. officers drove back in the 20th Century. Not a familiar sight in the canyon.
I clicked on my comm set by blowing hard on the sensor. “Yo, Leela,” I said, “got your ears on?”
“Roger that, Marty,” she said, giving me a squeeze. “Got my ears on and all three eyes. And I have a very strong feeling that some people are following us.”
“I’ve got the same strong feeling,” I said, as my h
and twisted the throttle and pumped the bike up to seventy mph, swerving around two turtle-like SUV drivers blocking our path. “Hang on, honeybuns!” I shouted into the comm. “Let’s see if we can lose these jokers.”
Silence from Leela, but a tighter grip around my belly. Sailing around the curves of Oak Creek Canyon at high speeds, weaving in and out of cars, is not my idea of a good time, and probably not hers either. But something in my blood caught fire and I felt like a little excitement on this stifling Sedona day.
At about sixteen miles out of Uptown, a transitional zone where the tall Ponderosa pines have taken over the landscape, the bikes were still right behind us, way too close for comfort.
I looked in the rear view mirror. “Ducatis,” I said.
“Do what?” answered my wife.
“Ducatis. Italian bikes. Pretty rare in these parts. Racing bikes. Monsters. They could have most Japanese bikes for lunch. Not my Harley. And the two dudes riding the things look pretty sinister.” The pair tailing us wore the giant-size helmets that completely obscure the face and create the appearance of giant mutant insects. They wore black leather from neck to toe. Their heads were bent forward as they pursued us.
“Leela,” I said suspiciously, “any idea who our friends might be? You’ve been hanging out with some pretty suspicious characters lately.”
“Who, me?” she said, pseudo-innocently “Don’t know what you’re talking about, Marty.” Sometimes my dear wife likes to run little mind games, playing coy, and at this point in time, very annoying.
The winding canyon road suddenly becomes the dreaded switchbacks—two miles of extreme hairpin curves—with a posted speed limit of 20 mph. I downshifted just as we leaned into the first sharp curve; the two Ducatis caught up with our bike and tried to force us off the road. “Leela,” I gasped, “hang on real tight. This could get hairy!”
I kicked up the rpm and our speed to about sixty as we zipped around the tight curves, nearly laying the bike down a couple of times. At the top of the switchbacks you come to a plateau where you can look over the side into a canyon that is more than two thousand feet to the bottom. There is a guardrail, but it’s flimsy.
The two Ducatis had us sandwiched, boxed in. A look behind, and…what! The big black Mercedes was right behind us, half a foot from the rear tire of the Harley, close enough to send shock waves through my heart chambers.
“Leela, Leela! I shouted. I was freaking out and pissed off, simultaneously. “They’re trying to push us over the cliff! It’s a long way down, damnit!”
Over the comm I could hear Leela’s deep breathing for about three seconds. “Just relax, Marty. I know what they’re trying to do. I think I know who they are.”
“Great. I know what they’re trying to do, and I don’t give a shit who they are,” I snapped. “We’re almost to the edge and they’ve got us completely hemmed in! We are up shit creek, Leela!”
“No, we’re up Oak Creek, dear,” she cooed. “Just leave it to me, Marty. Maybe you should close your eyes and let me take over.”
“What?” I screeched. “Look out, we’re going over the—”
I must have blacked out for a few seconds, because all I remember is this: We were headed right for the lip of the canyon and the flimsy guardrail, being nudged in that direction by two sleek Italian motorcycles from the sides and a huge black Mercedes from the rear. Suddenly I felt the bike take flight—literally—and float up and away from the guardrail.
I opened my eyes as the Harley gently touched down, then jerked my head to the right just in time to see this: The two Ducatis crashing through the guardrail and plunging over the side of the cliff, followed by the Mercedes! I heard screaming. Then, a few seconds later, the eerie sound of metal objects falling through trees, then hitting the ground with a soft crash. Then the even stranger sound of a large metal object banging into rocks as it tumbled to the canyon bottom.
I braked the Harley to a halt.
Leela dismounted and so did I. We both ripped off our helmets.
“Marty, quick, look down in the canyon. In just a second or two….”
I jacked up the bike and hustled to the broken guardrail. Just in time to see the black Mercedes hit the bottom on its roof and explode with a huge pop. In an instant it was engulfed in a giant fireball. The Ducatis and their occupants were nowhere in sight. A fire suddenly erupted among the towering Ponderosa pine trees on the canyon floor.
“Fire!” I yelled. “Leela, the goddamn forest is on fire!”
“Don’t worry about it, Marty,” said Leela, soothingly. “Just leave it to me. Let’s get back on the bike and finish our adventure.”
She was amazingly calm. I shrugged and kick-started the Harley. Nearby I heard the whirring sound of helicopter blades. I turned around quickly as we sped off and saw two black choppers hovering over the fire.
Later, as we snacked silently on our PB&J sandwiches, sitting on a huge granite boulder about two miles into the easy dirt trail, enjoying the cool air at eight thousand feet, the silence was palpable. Leela avoided my gaze. Finally I had to speak up.
“Leela, two things I’d like to discuss with you? One, those thugs just tried to kill us. You know, fucking run us off the edge of the canyon? And now they’re toast. What’s up with that?
“And two, would you care to tell me what happened back there? We were headed right for that guard rail and my bike suddenly sprouted wings! Can you move objects with your mind now? I know, I know, you teleported from Tibet to India once, big deal. But can you really do, what, telekinesis or psychokinesis?”
“They’re the same thing, Marty, and yeah, I can do that and a lot of other stuff that may surprise you. But forget that for now. We are really—and I mean it, all of us—are in serious danger.”
“I knew you were into some serious shit, sweetheart,” I said, “this is just what I was afraid of!”
“Marty, listen to me now. I know who those guys are…or were. I did meet some sinister characters at that environmental summit in Moscow last month, mainly guys from Georgia or Ukraine, thugs with Russian roots. Organized crime. There were these four who were into what I call eco-blackmail. Never mind the details. I saw through their scheme and had ’em busted. All four were arrested and locked away by Interpol. These guys tailing us could have been related to that bunch.”
“Oh,” I muttered, humbled by my lowly status in the superhero rankings. I looked over at my wife as we set out again on the trail, surrounded by aspens and Ponderosa pines, squirrels chattering endlessly, birds calling secret messages to each other.
She was wearing denim shorts and her Reebok cross-trainers, topped off by a skimpy tank top with one of my blue denim shirts over it. Damn, she was still sexy as hell. Slim but curvy, great ass, shapely long legs, champagne shoulders….And seemingly unavailable, on the physical plane. I reached for her shoulders and spun her around so we were eye to eye. We stopped walking, temporarily frozen in time.
“What about that explosion, Leela! And the freakin’ fire! Who’s gonna put out the fire?”
“Don’t worry, the fire’s already out,” she said confidently. “Just call it an intervention. I took care of it.” She wriggled away from my grasp.
There wasn’t anything more to say. Or do. Except proceed down the well-trod dirt trail, breathing in the delicious, highly oxygenated forest air.
I was wondering who—or what—I was married to.
In the distance I could hear the rumble of thunder.