Resurrection

Chapter 34: The Gatherer

In the words of the preacher "All is vanity".

While this beautiful earth could linger on into eternity, each human life in all its vanity considers itself the very centre of the cosmos, the bright shining star that the universe revolves around. Despite mankind's efforts to destroy it, the earth will continue to thrive, and each human virus will eventually be cleansed and be relatively forgotten by most of the known universe surrounding this blue planet. These were the last coherent thoughts that went through my head after I bit into the slice of very American apple pie.

As the drugs started to take hold, there were no bats in my belfry or purple rhinos. The drug induced awakenings of the evolved such as myself transcend those of the ordinary people. Initially there were no explosions of colour. Instead this hallucination was started by a crescendo of feeling. What was once a bitter frost of alpine morning breeze had transpired into warm currents that speared through my host and slid through my being like warm treacle with the enormous gravity of joy that would bypass most humans in their quintessential misery and existence of apathy.

The sensory cataclysm of my 'trip' continued as I felt the pronounced hum of my host's heart beat, the thump-thump of the blood pumping was met with supersonic sounds as I could hear everything within my surroundings. The cacophony of cicadas, muted scratching of ants and the fleeting waves of grass blades swished through the air as each molecule of oxygen danced along with it in a waltz of homeostasis. As the circle of life continued, I began to feel tremors in the force as each pulse in the natural world around me swarmed my conscious. I could feel the pulses of all the respective animals cohabiting the forest – A sleeping bat, the anxious heartbeat of a white-tailed deer as it sensed the black bear in the distance, and the musings of a rattlesnake lying under a log desperately hoping for the sun to heat up the earth quickly so it could uncoil and chase a bothersome ground squirrel. In the distance, I could sense the entire mob of 32 humans sent out by the Father to edge me along this path of enlightenment. Their heartbeats strummed in a frenzy as they stared at my wandering, shifty figure staggering through the woods, nervous with anticipation for my reactions to the sacrificial apple pie.

We were connected in anticipation, the heavy breathing and swirls of frostbitten cold breaths vaporised around them and I could feel their innermost thoughts for the briefest of time spans. The follower called Ned was concentrating on whether he would measure up to the Father and also on the question of was I a promising prodigy? Also, why was he sexually aroused by my torture? What if his wife of nineteen years were to go though his internet search history? Would she have questions for him?

Another follower known as Beth was excited just to be a part of the inner circle, and who was this mysterious Abraham? Were we being too hard on him? She remembered her time walking the path and becoming hysterically lost, crying like a child and wetting herself at the same time. This warm undercurrent of empathy danced in the air before wafting over to my conscious.

These were just some of the thoughts and feelings that washed around this microcosm of madness. Each emotional state of mind and feeling stacked upon itself, building into a maelstrom of energy that enveloped me like a thick fog and just like the warm currents that preceded it, started to pierce through my core. I was overcome by the swarm of emotion that enveloped me, a myriad of thoughts and feelings ranging from one extreme to the next.

For a moment of tender weakness I had lost all sense of stature or the desire of ambivalent ambition. At this moment in the shifting plains of space and time, we were all connected and we were the icons of all creation. Each atom that morphed, died and resurfaced, linked together to form the oneness of being. All emotions ever created through the weakness of evolutionary consciousness were now felt simultaneously in an existential waterfall that sought to tweak my host into a frenzy of the little death.