Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow (4 page)

Tharcia
merely shrugs. She knows nothing about chakra treatments, but has always been comfortable with nudity, at least around other women.

“
I use healing lubricants to increase the energy manipulation. So while your chakras are being balanced you will have realizations of pleasant feeling.” A warm smile, secret, woman to woman.

They sip tea in silence. Tharcia is thinking she likes Althea’s eyes
. Nearly a week since she’s gone clubbing and she’s horny. What will this naked touching be like? Althea is not
that
old, possibly not totally straight. After some shared breathing exercises, the psychic is ready.

“
Take everything off. Lie here on the massage table. On your back. Cover your body with this.” She gestures toward a light Indian bedspread folded on the white table drape. Althea exits the space. Tharcia soon reclines beneath the light cloth, Althea rejoins her, sits at her head. The psychic manipulates Tharcia’s temples. Her voice is soft in the scented hush.

“
The chakras, and their interconnections, are part of the framework which the Healer manipulates in reshaping your response to emotional impact. From your mother’s death you have grief, anger and frustration, perhaps some guilt. With chakra massage, you can release the lock-up without reliving the original experience.

“
We have looked at your past and fully understand what you are questioning. We have looked at your future to see what is to come and I will assist you forward through Spirit. Now Tharcia dear, I will begin with healing oil. With your permission, I shall remove your drape. Then I shall do the chakra manipulations.”

Tharcia says nothing.
Her eyes remain closed. A sensation of coolness as the light fabric tickles its way down her body. Althea’s eyes travel the hairless flesh. She reaches for a vial, pours warm oil into her palm, just a few drops. She intends to begin with the girl’s
Anahata-puri
, the heart chakra, but before her fingers touch Tharcia’s skin, she encounters resistance. Her fingers make no contact. Although she feels something warm, springy, an inch of clear air separates fingers from skin. Althea steadies herself. Moves downward to Tharcia’s
Manipura
, the solar plexus chakra. Touches nothing. As hard as she dares to press, her fingers never contact the girl’s belly.

A contented sigh
from the table. “Feels good,” Tharcia says sleepily.

“Like it?”
Althea’s voice trembles.

Tharcia nods yes.
Althea is right next door to freaking out. Moving her fingers over Tharcia’s belly, she touches nothing, yet feels an invisible, yielding warmth. Then come sensations of hard eyes on her, sees herself starkly revealed. Something unseen in the room regards her as fraud, carny fortune teller with neon sign in window, dabbling occult and body science to ego-stroke bored housewives. Never has anyone returned for so many expensive visits, each time bringing such intensity of purpose. And now this.

“Althea.”
Serene on the massage table, eyes softly closed, Tharcia whispers. “Althea.”

“Yes my dear?”
Fingers tremble, voice unsure.

“The light, Althea. Angels are here.
” Blissful smile on the lovely face.

The p
sychic looks around. A wash of cold fear pierces her heart.
Something is here.
Hastily she covers the slender form on the table.

“Meditate on your angel
s, Tharcia dear. I’ll ring a bell when it’s time for you to get up.” Althea escapes to her living room, a place of cool sanity. Sits fretfully, studies her fingers, touches her arm, normal human flesh that does not repel her touch. A deep shudder. A stain of regret, taking the girl’s money all these months. Looks nervously toward the studio door.
Something happened in there.

On the table
, Tharcia drifts. Althea’s touching had brought a bliss of peace. After her mom died, she believed for a time she’d gone straight to acceptance. Knows now how wrong. Realizes she’s locked in grip of dark anger. Has not tried bargaining, never believed in it.
What a crock. Me, make a bargain with God?
Steadies her mind, follows her breathing. In. Out. Meditation helps some, though hard to focus, know when she has it right. Her practice not yet steady.

Images
come, her whale dream. She longs for them.
What did they mean?
A pod, a tribe, thousands of whales in vast society, she as one of them, plunging into a recorded history of deep time. Becoming one with all past and future meaning. So connected, unthinkable. Recalling how the dream-knowledge melted away, the loss grips her hard.

Two clear chimes from the
outer room. Tharcia begins to dress.

They sit in Althea’s
fragrant garden, where Tharcia has never been. Althea has reached a decision. Sees Tharcia was crying. The girl deserves the real article, something Althea admits she cannot provide. There is one thing, a true thing, she can suggest. The psychic does indeed see Tharcia’s future, her very near future. Revealed there are dark forces the psychic cannot imagine. And danger. Danger in the night, a presence in the hills. Fire. This girl must find her higher teacher, and soon.

Althea speaks with serene smile, eyes closed. “There’s been a revelation, Tharcia.”

“There has?”

“
Listen, my dear. We are born nearly without ego. As we mature, and learn to survive in the world, we become socialized in patterns of perception and behavior. These patterns form ego structures which disconnect us from Spirit. Your ego forms barricades around each void. You have to find and explore these voids.”

“How do I do that?”

“Continue your meditation. Meditate on approaching Spirit as you would a person, a friend. Interact with deity in a personal way, see Spirit not as deity but as shared consciousness, know that your life matters to deity, you share a oneness in Spirit, of which you are a beloved part. Look on the moon always, she is your secret twin, the goddess of feminine culture. This goddess. Is she an individual being who lives somewhere? No. More mystical. Feminine spirit of antiquity that enfolds all, men as well as women. Your New Moon.”

Althea opens her eyes, raises her smiling face
to Tharcia, who stares back in wonder at what she has just heard. Althea continues. “You need to find your higher teacher, your good teacher. We are at New Moon today, my dear. The first step on your journey to experience Spirit directly.” Smiles, gets up. “I have a gift for you.”

As they say goodbye, Althea places in
Tharcia’s hands something soft wrapped in tissue, something of cloth. The girl reaches out for a hug. “It sounds like I’m not supposed to see you.”

Althea shakes her head, no. “
You have done your work. It is good work. You’re ready now to find your higher teacher. Be safe.”

Tharcia
floors the little Mazda down the curves of Highway 9, heading for Santa Cruz. Meditation and better teachers are fine, but Tharcia is resolute in her own higher purpose. To confront her departed mother and kick her sorry ass straight to hell.

Strand paces his cramped temporary office, in the swing space reserved for the Pentagon during the remodeling project begun in 1992. Nearly a million square feet of offices in nearby suburbs Rosslyn and Crystal City fail to contain the exodus from seven times that space at the Pentagon itself. It is bedlam.

Quiet for months, the swing
buildings all now packed. Heavy thumps through walls, the corridor outside noisy, people coming and going, terse conversation. On his laptop a chat window still open although his team has gone quiet, needing time to work and make sense of events.

The
most recent chat session had been Strand with employees Sami, Gary, Carl, Jerry. Talk of data trees, pointers, trends, traces, all centered around stray data sets that sparked up in the wake of the Annetka murder. A text from an ambulance driver. Voice messages among NYC homicide detectives. Web searches from police IP addresses that hint at details of the superstar’s apartment. And there is the single photograph captured from a personal email. Some overworked official’s hasty blunder, sending such an image on an insecure coffee shop Wi-Fi.

It
is a face. It is only a face. It is a face flawlessly removed from its skull. Lips, eyelids and lashes, ears, strands of long hair from the scalp. It is Annetka’s face, devoid of everything that had made her alive, the mere covering from her perfectly-formed skull. It is Annetka’s face, stapled to a wall in her Park Avenue apartment, so nicely placed that even with blood trailing down it forms perfect composition with a small Renoir oil and a Dali pen-and-ink.

The rest of the apartment
conjures a horrific movie set, where human bodies have been diced by whirling blades and sprayed through giant nozzles, as fertilizer. Every wall, every window, each piece of furniture, sink, bathtub, shower, doorknob, kitchen appliance… all carpets, Oriental rugs, magazines, chairs and tables are covered with a slippery red substance which on a fishing boat would be called
chum
.

No one outside the apartment heard anything, no one
saw strangers come or go, security videos reveal nothing. The camera net inside her apartment had ceased to function. Neither the doorman nor the five building security agents staffed 24/7 saw the slightest hint of anything wrong, until Annetka’s manager used her passkey to open the door, and ran screaming.

Skeletal parts
, remarkably, are undamaged though all flesh had been cleanly removed. Forensic experts carefully wrap the bones and spirit them away to a morgue annex for autopsy. DNA testing is underway.

Strand
knows this murder will hit the streets and tweets as the new bogeyman in the closet. Details close-held at this moment will be everywhere within hours, will feed a fresh epidemic of worldwide fear. The common fallacy: whatever happened to Annetka can happen to anyone anywhere. Fearful egos will ignore the facts, such as the superstar’s glamour, fame, money, incredible voice, voluptuous body and sexual allure. Even now, friends of the singer, friends of friends of friends, acquaintances of people who had known her only marginally, are being queued up for talk shows, two-hour marathons with rotating hosts. The horror is beyond imagining, and all the world wants a taste of it. Privacy? Hell, it’s show biz.

The
crime scene details will leak, Strand knows there is too much quiet money itching to pry things open. Who can resist a story about four people whose body parts are so intermingled it’s not possible to tell who from who? One homicide cop called it
The Blender Murders
. Tweet and search traffic on the term now accelerates. The savage icon is the image of Annetka’s face, stapled to the wall, perfect. An eyeless gape of horror.

Fantasia Records
has already filed suit against Next History. Merely because Strand’s computer models provided no warning of the superstar’s impending death. Annetka’s contribution to Fantasia was half a billion annually. They are after Strand for eight times that.

The police have no workable theories. Zip. A team of forensic psychologists, after two of them finish puking and swear they’ll never eat meat again, can match this with nothing they have known. Not the methodology, not the means, no psychological profile in all of forensic history can explain what happened to the angel-voiced singer and her three companions.

Or in particular,
why?

He does not know why he was summoned here. If human, he would be a tower of seething white rage. He is possessed of surpassing intellect, clarity of mind, and physical grandeur. Standing six and a half feet, his physique echoes the best traits of bodybuilder and endurance swimmer. He is a very fast runner, powerful, and blindingly quick to move. Supreme confidence, self-assured calm.

The change of location was a shock to him, but he endured it gracefully. In the long millennia, he has felt many
such, surprised by few. Always matter-of-fact, he works to keeps his ego boundaries fluid. It must never again cloud his judgment.

To be on Earth is a pleasant surprise. He had been forbidden to come here since that disagreement over the Creator’s design. He knows that events will unfold as they will, outside
of his control. Mindful that there is but a single spell that can summon him, he uses this time to be conscious, hold himself in the present. He allows thoughts and judgments to arise and fade on their own. His mind is clear. But he cannot deny the welcome scent of hope.

Again they are hailing him via loudspeakers. Verbal orders to lie face down, put his hands behind his head. There are also threats. He has no reason to obey these commands, or to respond. Ignoring the smoky hissing objects that hurry toward him through the air, he waits with focus for whoever commanded him. It is unusual that the
petitioner is not here, willing and eager to get started. Hidden, why? But that mortal will come, and when it does he will take utter vengeance, free himself, and be gone. If he wore a slogan on a shirt, it would read,
Don’t Get Angry Just Slay Them
. And when he extricates himself from this age-old prison, he will at last go searching. For Her.