Introduction
“They have fought fights. . .upheld strifes . . .done evil. . . created hostilities. . . made slaughter. . . caused trouble and oppression. . . I am going to blot out everything which I have made. This earth shall enter into the watery abyss by means of a raging flood and will become even as it was in primeval time.”
“Destruction came in the form of torrential rain and floods. The mountains disappeared and men were transformed into fish.”
“. . .prior to the present creation there had been four earlier races of men on earth. Each. . .was more advanced than the one that followed it. And each, at the appointed hour, had been ‘swallowed up’ in a geological cataclysm.”
“. . .there was once an inundation which wiped out almost all of mankind. It was survived by only two human beings who put to sea in a boat. . .”
“The first world was destroyed as a punishment for human misdemeanors, by an all-consuming fire that came from above and below. The second world ended when the terrestrial globe toppled from its axis and everything was covered with ice. The third world ended in a universal flood. The present world is the fourth. Its fate will depend on whether or not its inhabitants behave. . .”
None of the Great Flood and Noah tales quoted above are from the Bible! All, without exception, pre-date the Bible by thousands of years— and all of the ancient cultures from which these come, plus scores of others, predicted yet another deserved destruction of our mistreated world. One due to befall us— in our forseeable future. Mayans pinned it down to December 23, 2012, but Egyptians’ calculations have us checking out as early as May 5, 1997! Hopi, Incas and assorted others, vary all around the in-between of that.
Don’t know about any of you— but I wouldn’t put money on those tales and timetables all being wrong. ‘Specially seeing how our current mankind has outdone all of his predecessors for cruelty, injustice, greed and wasting all he was given! No woman (untrained by man) would do or order to be done all that is going on in the world today, which is more of, and worse than, what went on in the last few millennia. I’m frankly pretty pissed at our having to do time for our blind “date’s” destruction of all the places he’s taken us to since he took charge of things. His brawling and thieving and depravity should result in his once and for all being stripped of supremacy and authority— all significance in re “humanity” save our use of him for procreation, anyhow— until we can do it completely without him. And that’s close now, if not here already.
This is what the literary world calls a “cautionary tale.” I have set it in the “now” in which I begin it, simply for simplicity’s sake. Making up a series of supposed current events around which to begin the story would take much time and imaginative energy— I would rather expend those on the more important subject of what can come “next.” And so I’ve only embroidered our then present with “could’ves” to lead it into my foreseen near-future. Since the “cautionary” tale is meant to warn its readers to change their ways— or else— this story really does not belong in that category. Why? Because I truly believe the “or else” has already been pronounced, and we simply await the imminent carrying out of our judge’s fair and all-too-well-earned sentence. What is soon to come— sooner, I feel, than most of our antecedents’ estimates— won’t be just a flood or just an ice age, fire storm or single meteor hit. If “humanity” is to finally get what it deserves for it unrepentantly inhumane behavior, its punishment will be— all of the above. This book is meant for those few who may be unfortunate enough to survive.
This time, if there is to be another “this time,” everything must be done differently than ever before. The belief that “those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it” has been the very reason it was always repeated! I, too, believed in the concept that knowledge of evil would forewarn and protect against it. I was wrong. Studying our pasts and what the results of remembering our human history have always been, allowed me to see our great mistake. By teaching about the pasts
misbehavings, we simply taught the next generations “how” to do the same things! And do them, they did. Over and over and over again. The proof is right in our history books, friends— and on any TV newscast, all over the front page of any newspaper.
This time, if some of us are doomed to live after the devastation to come, we must NOT let any of our next generations know about how evil mankind has been— and can be— but instead, just teach them how good it is possible to be! In that way, we can test our race for any inherent goodness we may possess, our inborn badness having been amply proven by those who brought about their own extinction. This time all must be done completely in reverse of all the times before. Think about it— good is the reverse of evil, life of death, reward of punishment. It’s so simple. Simple, itself, is the reverse of complex. Our lust for complexity is what got us into this mess, isn’t it? Some couldn’t let well enough alone. And everything that was fancied up and made “easier” was, sooner or later, turned into something else to kill with.
I say we need to go back to “simple.” K.I.S.S.! (Keep It Simple, Stupid!) Do it, and we just might make life into something decent next time around. Maybe then we’ll deserve it for a change and find out how long forever can be. Come with me into an it’s-possible “next/this time” to see what it can be like. If those who're sent into it do what I’m convinced they are meant to, that is. If instead, they do the same stupid things as last time and all the times before, well— then I guess the goodness-factor I like to believe exists in us, doesn’t. Can’t say I’d be surprised. Sad, disappointed, disgusted, certainly. But not surprised. We’ll soon see, because somehow, I know this book will be published in time for those who’ll need it, but— just in time.
maia
The Pas, Manitoba, Canada
5 August 1996
[Footnote— Sources of the flood tales (only 5 of over 200!), from the top: From the Moon God Thoth, ch. CLXXV “Egyptian Book of the Dead”; Aztec mythology— end of the 4th Sun (our sun = the 5th & last!); oral traditions of ancient Greece— 800BC by Hesiod (ours also = 5th & last); Samoan belief (& Hawaiian); Hopi Indian— "creation myth"]
Prologue
THE HOPI knew. Their ancient ones foretold it— or, as may soon be proven, simply reported what they were told and, considering the source, had to believe. And, so-believing, they passed the warning on down, generation to generation, till it should reach those for whom it was meant. It was meant… for us.
But doomsday did not come to pass on May 5, 2005, as most who’d interpreted the legend’s forecast believed it would. By their calculations, it happened seven years early. Thus, exactly “as” if not “when” they had predicted, the Fourth World of humankind was completely destroyed. Earthquake, fire, wind, ice and water—all the elemental forces of our own world administered the sentence imposed by an outraged Mother Earth. Her long held patience once again stretched past breaking, by man’s never-ending attempts to pervert her perfection of all life forces into those of destruction & death, she loosed her fury on the unrelentingly unrepentant culprits— and the Fourth World was no more.
PART ONE: COUNTDOWN
Endday minus 500: A bright and cloudless day. Another in a long, seemingly endless string of them, Lord Lytton’s (& Woodstock’s) “dark and stormy night” might just be welcome about now, the woman thought. Flies were fighting over her watermelon rinds and the rest of the food-type garbage she habitually put out for animals of all kinds. It was first-come, first-served, but no matter whether the flies and bees got first dibs or not, pride isn’t in a desert-dweller’s best interests and nothing would remain in the shallow pit come morning, to show who’d finished it off. Going into the house for a lid to keep strays out of her Diet Coke, she stopped to check the altimeter. It showed just short of 1,000 feet above sea level.
“Damn! I should’ve checked it down in town yesterday,” she scolded.
The best part of living alone, away from people, she mused, is having no one to blame but yourself for things forgotten, overlooked, done wrong and such. Since she and herself were on good terms, no arguments ensued— forgiveness was instant. It was too bad no two people seemed capable of liking and accepting each other so easily. In over half a century of living and loving, she’d had only two lovers who might’ve fit that standard but one had died and the other self-destructed his part in the relationship before the verdict was in. Of her two former husbands, neither was even close to contender status.
Settled comfortably back in her deck chair sans deck, she watched the first friend she’d made up there enjoying the donated rind’s still-cool, sweet and juicy crunch till a passing truck scared the little ground squirrel back into his burrow sub-division two smoke trees farther along the ridge from where she and her house were parked.
“Now, how can I figure how much of an elevation differential there is between the river and me?” she asked no one in particular. “Without knowing the level of the river— I guess it’s got to be at least 200 feet— which should be enough at first, anyway,” she rambled, “and then, I can still grab another 30 to 50 feet maybe, by hightailing it up to the old ranch site. Trouble is, I think it’s all downhill from there— even to just get onto the higher ground beyond. Damn! Damn, damn, DAMN!” she swore, looking past the smoke trees and up the road that swerved around them.
“Well, Mama Nature— please don’t be too previous with your next object lesson for humanity, ‘cause I guess I’ll have to find me a better place to wait things out. Okay?”
2
All this wasn’t just the silent thoughts one would expect from a person without even a pet to talk to— it was spoken right out loud in a perfectly normally modulated tone of voice, as if conversing with a companion. In a way she was, because she firmly believed one’s very best friend should be oneself. And this woman was one human being who practiced what she’d preach, if anyone would listen— with a vengeance! Her view was that if everyone talked out loud to themselves, instead of keeping thoughts locked up in their skulls where they just go ‘round and ‘round, they’d hear what they were thinking. And most of the time, would probably recognize it was all a bunch of bushwa. Besides, she’d concluded, that way at least you can always be sure that what you have to say will reach an attentive audience.
Describing herself (even to herself) as over-the-hill, overweight and out of shape, the woman had no idea— not even a wild guess— why for the past months, she’d turned into a “Nature Girl of the Golden West.” This was a broad, she’d confess to anyone, to whom “roughing it’ meant a suite at the Hilton. Any Hilton. The late Connie and son Barron’s empire outposts never came close to her acceptable levels of hotel-keeping, the grandest of the world’s grand hotels being, in her opinion, the oldest— with traditions like no-black-tie = no din-din! Tourist class on plane or cruise ship were the roughest form of roughing it she could imagine. Outhouses? Or the great outdoors without benefit of well-furnished terrace or balcony? Forget it!
So— who could explain her decision to “go #1” outside to save water and holding tank space? Or explain her leaving a luxurious, 5-level, park-girded townhouse to her 18-year-old daughter, replete with lynx, mink, diamonds, sapphires, artwork, antiques, and even precious antiquities, to go off and live in a 9’x29’ road-abode in the middle of nowheres everywhere! Go figure.
Her home away from it all began life as an ordinary Jayco C-Class RV (a recreational vehicle, to the uninitiated). So ordinary, from the outside, that one day a guy at the next gas pump said he was surprised to see her put premium gas in and then, before she could defend herself, caught himself and asked if she owned it. Told it was all hers, he reversed his first opinion re wasting money and agreed the “best” is the only gas to use in one’s own engine and explained he’d first thought it was a rental, like most of that model he saw on the road. That was good news to one on the lam. She’d smiled as she thanked herself for unknowingly choosing an anonymous get-away-from-it-all getaway vehicle. Saved the expense she’d planned to incur for painting it, too, since with so many rentals on the roads all looking like hers, it was better to blend in out in the open, than to try a disguise. The lady’s residence was doing duty as “The Purloined Letter,’ with thanks due to Edgar Allen Poe.
Nothing about the inside was ordinary. Not by a long shot. Where others all had a passenger seat complete with swivel recliner options, hers was fitted with a bookshelf/table combo and bins of cassettes for the radio’s tape deck stashed under. An Indian pueblo ladder leaned over all and gave access to cab-over storage area, which had been intended by its makers to provide extra sleeping space. The ladder was authentic. She came upon the pieces scattered all about a campsite on the John Day River between Oregon and Washington, where an Indian village had thrived hundreds of years earlier. One wooden post “spoke’ to her for days, until she gave in and went to fetch it. On her way back to the ‘house” a neighboring camper asked what she would do with it and as, “Haven’t a clue yet,” was on its way out, her eyes landed on three perfect rungs lying on the ground not 3’ from where she stood.
“It was a ladder once,” came out instead, “and I guess I’m supposed to put it back together. Someone must’ve known I need a way up to the cab deck.’ So, rather than leading up out of a tribal kiva or to the roof of a hogan, it now traveled across the lands of many tribes— spanned the centuries of its existence. Still useful. Useful to a Brownie Scout dropout, no less. Another unfathomable.
Too bad people weren’t content to be useful to something or someone else, she’d thought that day as she finished tying the last rung. But no, they had to be better than anything or anyone else, instead. That made them worse than useless, in her estimation. Destroying usefulness everywhere they went, in favor of superiority, which would always prove to be an exercise in futility. Nothing could improve on Nature’s designs, as most “primitive” peoples knew and civilized ones ignored. “Civilized” man, demanding perfection of all, ultimately finished himself off every single time. Somehow she knew that to survive the next slap of an angry Mother Earth, she had to learn Her ways— those of the earliest humans. From the times long-forgotten, when women were in charge and they nurtured life, rather than inventing ways to destroy it, as man has done ever since he took over.
A series of too many strange happenings to ignore had pulled the woman from a more or less ordinary, comfortable life and sent her out to discover what “living” was really all about. Taking only those of her many hundreds of books that “something” compelled her to, for nine months— the same period of time it took to grow a child inside her— she had roamed the lands where man had not yet left his mark, studying, seeing, listening and learning. Was what she learned, ever to be taught? Mad as it seemed, she felt as if she was to pass on her new-found knowledge to some who would survive. Poor Mama Earth, she thought. Couldn’t she find anyone better than an almost-old ex-hedonist? If some last minute chance to start over & get it right next time was to be offered— why offer it to her?
Crazier still— what on earth made her think she could do it!? Or wanted to? From all she had learned so far, the lady considered the whole exercise futile to the point of ridiculousness. Humans, she was sure, would never be any better. Not as currently designed and assembled, anyway. On that subject, discoveries she’d made had led her to theories she could be committed for— if allowed to live, by those her theories concerned. A moot point, however, since the Fourth World’s doomsday was approaching faster than anyone— even she— realized.
Endday minus 400:
By spring of ‘97 earthquakes had tripled in number over the established norm, almost doubled in average strength; volcanic activity was picking up all over the place; storms raged in unprecedented ferocity practically nonstop— even in normally calm areas of the globe. The snowstorms much of the U.S. had been digging out from under all winter hadn’t stopped just ‘cause the calendar showed spring had sprung. Floods covered practically the whole midwest. Blizzards in New England, rather than the usual dogwood blooms, frosted trees struggling to don their own Easter Sunday finery. On April 15, America had a lot more to worry about than paying income tax. Good news: the IRS won’t confiscate your property for failure to ante up. Bad news: because soon there’d be nothing to confiscate, no one to grab it, nor anyone to celebrate getting away with tax evasion.
But, as usual, the rest of the world took their planet’s not-so-subtle hints more seriously than did the newest kid on the block. In their race to excel and to best the lands of their forebears, Americans had subverted their own native
intelligence, such as it was, into a passion for unpleasant-truths-evasion any ostrich would envy. As a result, while Europe and Asia flew into a controlled frenzy of “What can we do?” activities and Africans took advantage of the situation by escalating their favorite pastimes of coups and carnage to new depths of depravity, in the good ol’ US of A it was business as usual.
Did the guys in charge know? Well, look at FDR and Pearl Harbor, Kennedy and Cuba, plus two or three of them and Viet Nam, for ample historical precedent of presidents’ cold-blooded manipulation of disaster for personal or party advantage, and then consider that Clinton had had a race for his political life in progress only months before. While all the signs were building up into an inescapable picture of the cataclysm to come, he’d been campaigning. After all, who’d give a shit about an election, if they knew they were facing extinction? And don’t forget big business. A doomsday panic would sure put the kibosh on buying— anything but survival stuff, that is.
National stupidity aside, the woman was surprisingly far from alone in her oddly acquired conviction that the human race was in for one hell of a wallop. Every time she’d had to put into the civilized world for one reason or another, she’d run into someone else who had a notion that things were headed for a showdown. There was that Negro meat and seafood salesman who’d given up teaching Government History to head for Alaska; a young, WASPy bank teller, who understood without words, why the woman was converting all her investments into cash and taking it with her; a Navajo WWII vet who’d fixed her ailing engine and a Hopi woman she gave a ride to, who’d then honored the German/Irish/ Italian/Sicilian-mix by asking “what tribe” she was. Even a teenaged Apache hitchhiker and his Navajo girlfriend understood their time was short. Like the women— both young and not-at-all-young— she came across on her three recent, amazingly impulsive trips ‘round the world, all seemed to know without knowing why.
How many more were living apparently “normal” lives while hiding what most would consider “crazy” notions of the end of the world? Not enough to make any difference in their fellow humans’ need to ignore the coming disaster, she figured, so it didn’t make any sense to try and “collect” them into an active body of some kind. Besides, what was there that anyone could do? If others went to places of optimum survivability, as she had been prompted to do, they’d meet when they were supposed to. If any were to survive and get a fresh start, they would. If not. . . She didn’t worry about it. She couldn’t see that anyone deserved another shot at life on this poor misused planet.
“Inhumanity” isn’t any such thing, she believed. “Humanity’s” inherent nature is and has always been exactly that which it has labeled “in-human” in denial of man’s kinship with all other predators. Denying also, his ability to exceed their most ravenous and cannibalistic butchery, their most “bestial” behaviors. She saw that what man calls “humanity” is what remains foreign to his nature— that which must be taught and can be learned only by a few, who through the millennia, continually failed to affix it permanently in the human psyche. The woman knew that “the Beast” is not “among” us— it is us. And what deadly disease would kill itself off to save its host? As is, a dying host, gathering the strength of a will to survive, rejects the lethal microbes and casts them from its system. Exactly what Gaia, the earth herself, was about to do.
Endday minus 300:
For the third time in its months of wandering, the Arizona desert was front, back, and side yards to the Jayco. Having criss-crossed twelve western states, from Washington to the Mexico border along the Pacific, Wyoming to Texas’ Rio Grande on the eastern flank, plus much of what lay between, it had returned to the scene of a crime. The crime? One of a legally non-criminal nature, actually. Having stripped the vehicle of almost all the frills and furbelows normally found in those homes on wheels, the owner had then very reluctantly and in direct contradiction to the Spartan ambience so carefully achieved, added not only a color TV set, but on her first arrival in Lake Havasu City, had purchased and installed— a satellite dish! The convert to nature’s ways definitely considered that to be criminal. But in deference to unknown forces that seemed to be playing her like a chesspiece, she gave in to the logic that keeping tabs on the countdown, by watching CNN’s ongoing litany of bad and sad tidings on a regular basis, would give her ample warning to do something or other. What that would be, she assumed would be revealed in some-one or thing’s own good time.
When addressed by name at all, the someone/something was tagged “Mother” or “Mama” or some such— in reference to Mother Earth, since no god-entity was recognized by this longtime agnostic. She’d almost leaned more toward full-fledged atheist, due in part to the influx of bad-to-awful news she couldn’t miss, thanks to all those satellites that kept the stars company. Mass child-murders; ecological pillage and plunder of all sorts; genocide in several colors on behalf of several versions of Lord, God Almighty; individual rape, torture and killing incidents; plus wars of all sizes leaving countless victims of all sizes— all of it left her wishing for more earthquakes, storms, volcanic eruptions and holes in the ozone layer. A serious axis shift would be okay, too.
“Avenge them while I’m around to see it,” she pleaded to whoever was in charge. “Turn this friggin’ world upside down and inside out and shake us all off like flies tossed by a dying road kill’s last twitch!” She desperately wanted to see her own species be made to pay for their crimes. Even if it meant she’d go with them. Upping anchor yet again, with a safe haven still to be found, the covered wagon-cum-gypsy caravan headed down out of the hills overlooking the Colorado & its manmade lake.
“That’s the whole damn problem,” she muttered, as the blue waters of Lake Havasu came into full view. “Man and his damn dams all over the place.” In full voice now, she bitched as she drove— S.O.P. “Why can’t you bastards ever leave well enough alone? Look at that river down there and then take a real look at what you did to it. It knew what to do, where to go! It doesn’t, anymore, thanks to you guys— and now it’s damn near dead!”
Nature follows the path of least resistance. Water does. Roots do. Fire and air currents, too. Man (the male of our species) seems to be the only living creature that when faced with an obstacle or an easy path is just as, or more likely to choose a challenge over the practical. Why? The thrill of it? Then what gives the thrill? Proving superiority? If so, superiority over the obstacle, or to compete with others? Others of his own kind? Other species? To win a female, to dominate others, his own environment, the obstacle itself? Most likely, all of the above.
From a female point of view, the woman was sure the easy path alone made sense. Anything else was a waste of time. It wasted energy, was childish, foolish and unproductive and that typically male kind of pride was definitely not a desired trait in an ideal mate. Only the practical adaptation of one’s environment to fill life’s needs is important to those who create that life within themselves. So, this gal figured, even if some few survived what was to happen, if any men made it, they’d just make a new world as much of a damn challenge to their “manhood” as they’d done all the previous ones— wrecking it, too. What in whatever’s name was the point, she wondered?
Though male archeologists and anthropologists were loathe to admit it, she knew ample proof existed that the first “gods” were women. Women had been, in the beginning, in charge of things. Even in the legends and oral histories of aboriginal peoples, women were the deities and, as in the earliest times of “Indian” tribes, matriarchical & matrilinear societies were the norm. That is, until at some point men took over by superior physical strength and/or the uncontrolled brutality of their basic nature.
The idea niggled in the back of her brain that those aboriginal peoples who remained in the world were basically non-aggressive, which would equate primitive with peaceful. The other side of that coin, of course, is the conclusion that civilization has to be accompanied by a combative spirit— aggression leads to civilization? Or vice versa? Chicken or egg, the result doesn’t change any, does it? Whatever the scientific differences are, the Ainu of Japan, Australia’s Abos, African Bushmen and maybe even the Inuit of the frozen north are not the same type of humans as the other so-called Indian-types, at least as far as killing other humans goes. Aborigines being people who more or less stay put where they start out, it follows that they must live in places no one else would want. What’s more, they must not have anything anyone else wants or could use. Nothing to fight over. So those who have the least, expect no more and are content with the status quo— unless others with more, introduce them to greed. Those other— civilized— ones have much more, thus they want more, need more, then take more. And are not at all content with their status quo, or any other guy’s.
If this was what being civilized meant, she thought she would hold out for as close to primeval as she could get. Giving up all her supposedly valuable worldly goods made a hell of a lot of sense when confronting that kind of rationale. Most of her fellow earth-dwellers wouldn't be so cheerful about it, even if they got to live, while losing all.
Endday minus 100 :
A red cow was born in Jerusalem— very few knew of it. Not too long after the FBI’s fourth annual bungled attempt to put down civil insurrection by what they called “right-wing extremists,” all the little splinter groups of “patriots” and “skinheads” and assorted other we-are-God’s-chosen cults finally got together, as had been feared in the establishment’s worst nightmares. April 19, 1997 was the fourth anniversary of Waco and, practically speaking, a reminder of Oklahoma City’s unearned avenging blow, as well as of the Weaver family’s loss. And though a second standoff in Montana, didn’t, like the ones on Ruby Ridge and at Waco end in tragedy, nor did the “Texas is a country!” nuts’ little brouhaha, when Tim McVeigh got slapped with a death sentence after only 6 or 8 hours of the jury’s deliberation, all those little simmering pots boiled over. Obviously it was our government idiots who set the stage for the mess, with heads still puffed from their prior calm ending to the first Freeman seige. Or else, they stupidly thought they could nip them and all the other dissidents in the bud by a show of force.
Swooping down from Montana, a bunch of Freemen attempted to break McVeigh out of his fancy digs in the Federal Court Building— & failed. Losing only two of their number, in contrast to the dozen Feds who went down, they retreated back to whence they came, with G-men, T-men, cops, National Guard & assorted others in hot pursuit. Another siege, the inevitable result. When the insanely timed raid on the re-established freemen’s enclave went unbelievably (or deliberately?) into assault mode, it was no surprise to those of even minimum intellect, when first hundreds, then thousands of kindred spirits joined in. As heavily-armed civilian troops entered the fray, pouring into the quiet Montana hills from as far away as Georgia and southern California, the outcome was fixed. The KKK mobilized side by side with the Aryan Brotherhood, assorted free-lance Neo-Nazi skinheads, Texas separatists, Weathermen, and a melange of
psuedo-religious Armies for Christ/Allah/ the great Poohbah, whatever. Bloodshed followed bloodshed. Citizen’s revenge followed official manslaughter of the somewhat-less-than-innocent; less-than-discriminate military retaliation followed; followed next by martial law; then riots; anarchy; chaos. No big surprise. Not to anyone but poor Billy-Boy Clinton, that is. At least it took the heat off him and Hillary (too bad it left Paula Jones with little hope left of any settlement).
What could our mother earth ever come up with that would be any worse than what we can do to ourselves? Astrophysicists said that the universe began with chaos. And so our world was destined to end. But this time amid a chaos of our own making, to accompany the execution we’d already been sentenced to face.
Man certainly isn’t an animal to go down without a struggle. Or quietly. With a roar or a whimper, he has to let everyone and everything know that he counts more than all the rest. Has to be the most important thing in the universe, even when on his way out. Though most didn’t know they were on their way out yet (as a form of life, that is), few seemed to be destined to go on alone, anyway. The old John Wayne spirit was alive and kicking, each man determined to take as many with him as he could. Soon anyone with a grudge against anyone, or any group of anyones, was lighting fires, blowing up buildings, taking potshots at each other and generally acting like the bunch of baboons they always were. Baboons being vicious beasts, as well as not too bright— thus, the ape we must have descended from, rather than the more intelligent chimp or gentler gorilla.
The women mostly stood aside, hand-wringing and hanky-dabbing, “hoping” it would all go away—those who weren’t out there beside their men, loading the guns and lighting their cigars and otherwise being loving, loyal helpmates, per their wedding vows. The kids did what kids always do. They cowered in corners to avoid getting caught in the crossfire, holding their painfilled bellies that would have been filled with food, if all that noisy fighting wasn’t taking the place of a good, nourishing, peaceful family meal. Those had gone by the wayside a ways back anyhow, stressed-out, short-on-grocery-$, single moms being the norm by then.
Newscasters and government officials wrung their hands and wrung tears from their audiences, bemoaning the situation. Religious leaders prayed— and prayed for everybody else to pray, just like they always did. Just like always, to no avail. The nation’s leaders led the way to the nearest exit. Half the Senate and two-thirds of the House resigned in sheer desperation. Having no way to answer to their constituents’ demands to, “Do something to stop this madness” they had no wish to be drummed out of office if there was ever to be another election, so chose to run, instead of ever having to “run” again. By the time that dish of last week’s leftover vanilla tapioca should have been cranking up his second term into high gear, the country was clanking down to a falling-apart, full stop. And the real bad stuff hadn’t even started yet.
Her satellite dish brought all the sound and fury right into the woman’s bed-sized bedroom. Thanks to a dependable generator and her quickly-developed skill (or luck) at aiming the dish, no matter where in the nowhere she was parked, she missed none of the mishaps and mayhem of that other world. The one that she constantly blessed her unknown benefactor for dragging her out of. Still not sure of who/what “moved” her, or exactly why, she no longer cared. It was enough to be out of that “real” world in which reason and logic no longer functioned. If they ever had.
The rest of the world, for all its scattered concern about the state of its physical health, was no less turmoil-torn. The open, countrywide violence erupting in America was simply its belated catching up to the rest. Europe, Africa and Asia still had wars and depravity of all sorts in all corners, hidden and overt. One God still competed with another for top billing, His fans of one stripe knocking off those of the other, while Pope prayed for peace (with Catholics still bombing Protestants and Moslems) and Ayatollah prayed for Jihad (Death to all infidels!). The odd oddball cloned and now, almost daily, unaffiliated arsonists and gunmen burned up and mowed down dozens of kids in discos and schoolrooms, as suicide bombers plied their short-lived trade in shopping malls, subways, temples, mosques and churches alike, looking to achieve maximum body count rather than religious impact. Making a fashion statement became a matter of what color plastique looked best with one’s funeral duds. Going out in style no longer referred to nightclub hopping in the latest designer rags. The elite did it with bravado— a bullet to the brain following a massacre of innocents, while the less discriminating went down gasping with a busload or trainload of fellow lethal gas-inhalers. CNN couldn’t keep up.
How much could be attributed to the suicidal impulses of those who sensed they were soon to die anyway, is debatable. Given that the same slew of deadly games had been played nonstop for generations before this final one, the woman wouldn’t give the perps the benefit of a doubt. In her mind, there was no doubt. Mankind loved to kill— that was all there was to it. Plus ca change, plus reste la meme. The more things change, the more they stay the same. What difference would yet another object lesson of universal death along with civilization’s end make? About as much as the last one, and the one before, and before that. The First World was destroyed by fire, said the Hopi. The Second World by ice and the Third World, as the Bible and 284 other folk tales tell it, by flood. Assuming, as signs indicated, that the Fourth World was to receive the full wrath of its own habitat and all the means of punishment at her disposal, plus possibly some pissed-off higher power’s, the woman figured this time would be a real doozy!
As summer began to heat up the already overheated atmosphere, troposphere and so on, enlarging ozone-layer holes near to the point of merging, things down below were coming to a boil. Sparks had been flying between North & South Korea; China & Taiwan; England & Ireland; Israel & anyone who shared its borders; Bosnia & all its former component parts; and countless other countries, factions, neighborhoods around the orb, even before everyone’s future started to look equally grim. But as the damning evidence mounted, with the added impetus of global disaster looming, guess what? Yep! Each quasi-combatant thought it was just a perfect, god-given opportunity to steal a base or two, which naturally, did not go unchallenged, leading to an international scene that resembled nothing so much as a World Cup soccer crowd in Brazil after being told the home team sold out to the challengers. Everyone fought everyone else & no one was left to “peacekeep,” not that that endeavor ever achieved even a modicum of actual peacefulness anywhere.
The human race was approaching critical mass— and not only in number. Meltdown from the heat of man’s hatred for each other was more deadly than any nuclear reactor’s. The fallout from either was more than capable of erasing all life from the planet and the planet itself was in shit shape, as all well knew. Past the point of any possible recovery with man at the controls, it was on the verge of suicide, driven there by a century of his callous mistreatment that he proudly called scientific and technological “progress.” Only a drastic purging of its own life systems might prevent total obliteration. Hitler’s, Stalin’s and Mao’s purges combined, were to pale in comparison.
Endday minus sixty:
Israeli news sources finally announced to the world, that the red cow had been born in Jerusalem. At once, worries were voiced that this could be “the flint to set the simmering hatred between all Arabs and Jews aflame.” Hyperbole and mixed-metaphor aside, if it was so, the woman knew it could set fire to the entire world, As Jewish history and biblical verse had it, the Jews could not regain their holiest of holies, the Temple Mount, until a red cow (supposedly rarer than a flying pig) was born in Jerusalem. The reason being that only after such a red cow is burned as a sacrifice to God, and its ashes spread over the faithful, can they go again to the place they’d lost to the Moslems, who now claim it— and use it— as their most holy spot in all Jerusalem, which they also claim as their holy city. Christians, Jews and Arabs all had a serious stake in the ragged little town. The same tiny bit of it doing triple duty as sacred ground.
Immediately, the Palestinians, already fighting the Jews’ forcing more Jewish housing upon them in a place they’d been promised, made it clear that any attempt to take their mosque and turn it into a temple would be the first shot of all-out war. Then added that they considered the United States’ (read Pres. Clinton’s) support of Israel’s breach of the Peace Accord to be tantamount to joining the Israelis’ side in said possible/probable war. All of which meant, of course, that we would be a primary target along with Tel Aviv, when nukes started boppin’ around our poor innocent globe. It was apparent the Iraquis had some stashed away, as they’d just refused to submit to inspection of some key sites. If no one else seemed to view it all as something more inevitable than ominous, the woman’s inner sense set off all kinds of bells and whistles every time she heard a news item about that red cow.
The Fourth Of July was the day Hong Kong got reabsorbed by China. All the hopeful, nonsensical political mumblings notwithstanding, it was pretty obvious Mao’s heirs weren’t about to let freedom ring. Despite a record batch of Queen E’s knighthood handouts to local bigwigs on her birthday in June, the ones she’d most hoped to get a nod from were afraid to even accept. Live steam was starting to leak all over the place in the Far East. The Middle East’s boiler was in the red zone. Europe’s middle was bulging and Africa was a pressure cooker left on high. The pipes couldn’t hold much longer. When they blew, the woman wanted to be in the one place she thought just might escape the blast.
Endday minus four:
Around the globe, the fires of mankind’s insanity raged on. In the U.S. — in the wilds of New Mexico, to be exact— a short, slightly round, just-beginning-to-gray lady with enough tan aiding her olive skin so she’d pass for a member of any tribe, pulled the last chock from under a double wheel and tossed it aside. Stowing the wood blocks plus several large stones she used to hold down the satellite dish into a storage compartment, she locked it tight, climbed into the cab and started up the engine. Cussing mildly, she tapped the altimeter and gave the gyrocompass a gentle flick, frowning at readings which, refusing to budge, still showed due North and an elevation of only 250 feet. An early morning sun, shining blindingly straight into the windshield, gave proof the compass lied. The altimeter had been glued to 250 for the past week, even when crossing more-than-mile-high mountain passes.
“Damn and double damn!” was prompted by a glance at the gas gauge needle that hovered just a hair above the E. With a peevish snatch, she took the top map from a pile at her side. Folded out and over, it showed the Four Corners area where New Mexico’s border met Arizona’s, Utah’s and Colorado’s in perfect right angles. Using an index finger as a crude distance marker, she measured off the mileage between a circled “x” highlighted in neon green and 2 others a few inches away. The marks occupied an almost bare area of the map. Just about the barest part, if lack of towns or highways was any clue. A rough triangle with Mesa Verde circled at the top, Flagstaff and Albuquerque marked at either end of the base, enclosed the green symbols. They were almost dead center, vertically, and evenly spaced from one edge of the triangle to the other. Chaco Canyon was easternmost, Canyon de Chelly the middle and the three Hopi mesas nudged the western edge.
No one knew that in only 96 hours, state or country borders, fences and walls would all cease to have any meaning in this world that had not learned to function without them. Hopi history keepers did know that Turtle Woman (their version of the earth mother), would once again cleanse herself of deadly impurities— humankind— some time near the end of this second millennium, in others’ reckoned time. Not needing an exact date, as white men always do, they were content with the knowledge that a “Great Purification” would soon leave the few who were to continue in the Fifth World, where lessons learned in the preceding ones might finally produce a human creature fit to inhabit it. They would have some warning, for they’d been told “three days of darkness will signal the beginning of the great purification.” The real kachinas had told them this. These were “spirit people” from far off stars and planets. They were the ones who taught “always keep the door on top of your head open” and who awaited “messages of need” from their Hopi charges, on the San Francisco Peaks behind Flagstaff.
The Fourth World was, without question, evil’s greatest victory yet. Without knowing how the previous ones had failed, the woman had no doubt that her own time surpassed all the others not only in humans’ scientific achievements, but also in what those had led to— horrors of unparallelled magnitude. Sheer badness had triumphed over the few pitiful trickles of good like tsunamis passing over an indolent shore. “Good,” she realized, was a passive thing, while “evil” raged and rampaged. Always active. It never just waited to happen— it caused itself! Until those who would have goodness rose up from their knees where they only hoped, wished and prayed for it, the war would always be lost. The fast-approaching fifth world would have to be no different, if those who survived to begin again did not understand this.
There were others like her. She wondered if it explained her strange and wholly unexpected return to Greece some months earlier that brought about connections with a woman in Denmark, another in the Philippines, others in Israel, and such far-removed places as Mykonos, New Jersey, Italy, Brazil, and Canada. They all knew— or sensed— that what must come for the human race would take place in the very near future. Kept in contact with them by a sister, who apart from her youngest daughter, was her sole contact with the world, she’d found company in her delusions. She’d not been alone, knowing of an endday soon to come. Nor in her resolve to face it with the will to make a next time— if there was to be one— work. Here and there, in little pockets of the world’s far-distant corners, others too, had been making ready.
Endday minus 3:
The Hopi knew the time had come when their sacred tribal land went dark at midday. Ironically— or perhaps fatefully— the immediate cause was the Navajo Power Plant. From the most ancient times, a lazy, land-grabbing enemy of the peaceful Hopi, the Navajos had thrived after their hard-working neighbors unwillingly provided the latecomers with sheep and other necessities they’d found were easier to steal than to raise. Now occupying only the smallest part of their original land and even that surrounded by millions of acres of Navajo holdings, the people of peace today thrived only in their need. Had their messages to the kachina been heard? Would the Fifth World be their chance to begin again? And, if so, could peace ever be stronger than greed? All who saw those blacker-than-night clouds quickly erase the noontime sun knew that answers to these questions would soon be made known. But would any be left alive to comprehend them?
The Jayco was laboring hard, fighting to gain a tirehold on the shifting gravel of a much too-steep hill, when something caught the woman’s eye and dragged it to the driver’s-side window. There was a smudge growing on the otherwise-clear blue sky. Far to the west, the smudge grew even as she glanced at it. It was growing fast. In the time it took her to battle the last hundred yards of rough track, gain the top of the mesa and pull to a stop on the nearest patch of hardpan, the sun had been overtaken, its eye-squinting brightness given way to an eerie semi-twilight. With her V-8 noisily cranking away in low gear and the motor home quaking and shaking itself like a dog with a chew toy, she couldn’t have noticed what was going on in the earth beneath her all the while she fought the road.
The motion she’d felt hadn’t all been from the road’s poor grading. It, and everything around it for a hundred miles in all directions, had quivered and shivered and bucked. Only luck had put her on the one section of that road that wasn’t subject to rockfalls. Otherwise, the lady and her house on wheels would’ve been back down at the bottom where they’d started their steep climb, instead of on top, with her looking back in shocked awe at all the minor avalanches coming to a dust cloud-shrouded stop.
Was it only luck? That flashed through her mind just before practical things took over. She shut off the motor to see if her body’s all-over palsy would also stop. It didn’t. But then, neither did everything around her. A steady vibration, like someone with a case of St. Vitus’ Dance, was making anything she looked at be just a little out of focus— blurred, from an almost imperceptible motor-like movement that continued long after she switched off the ignition. Holding her hands out, level with her eyes, she expected to see them trembling as well. The brush she’d just had with death was apparent. A call that close was enough to give anyone the shakes. Instead, not only were her hands steady, but an deep inner calm seemed to flow throughout her entire being. Mind and body alike were in neutral. It was only her surroundings that moved.
As the fluttering subsided to a gentle cat’s purr, the sky continued to darken. “Three days of darkness,” The Hopi legend had promised. There was no doubt in the woman’s mind that this is what was taking place. An over-whelming wave of triumph passed through her— it was beginning! All those unredeemingly blind, care-for-nothing enemies of this gloriously beautiful planet she felt privileged to have known so intimately, were about to get their comeuppance. Where such a certainty would have produced paralyzing fear in most of her fellow humans, she was filled now with awe. And something else— gratitude. Stepping down from the cab of her driveable house, into the fast-growing daytime-gloom, the woman stood with her arms flung out and head thrown back, seeing what was, to this particular human, a welcome sight.
“Yes! Yes, Mother! Oh yes, let it be now… they’ve had too long already,” she shouted. She stood there, feeling the pulse of the earth’s life under her feet, and welcomed imminent death. On behalf of the whole, inhuman race, she accepted the ultimate penalty for all the unspeakable crimes they’d ever committed. As close to praying as she’d ever come, the woman thanked the mother of all, or whatever power was responsible, and asked it to spare no one. While tears drew lines down her dusty face, she smiled at the sun showing its silhouette so weakly through billows of black and a full, from-the-gut roll of laughter suddenly took the place of words.
Perched at the northwestern corner of the Navajo Indian Reservation, the power plant bearing the tribe’s name had been a coal-burning ecological threat, then for a time was only a minor part of Glen Canyon Dam’s transforming and power distribution network. When fossil fuels became acceptable again, due to the rising cost of alternatives, it went right back into its old habit of black-cloud-belching. What rapidly covered all the sky within sight, though, couldn’t have been just its smokestacks’ output, by any stretch of even the wildest imagination. Day became the dead of a moonless night in no time at all. Only the barest almost-glow remained toward what the woman could only guess was the east, having lost all sense of direction in the velvet-wrapped gloom. What the kachinas had told the little people of peace was true. Endday was now only 72 hours away. And, true to their word, the star beings returned to give them aid in their greatest hour of need.
outline notes on Fifth World:
~go on and do endday 2 and 1 and then switch to italics (?) for description of upheaval
~have the woman in some place that legend said was safe, but accepting her demise-- the Hopi mesas or Chaco???
~then the switch
~then discovering V was “redeposited” also? or below in journal?
~after the cataclysm go to maia’s journal— she doesn’t know how she survived but surmises why
~figure out “sisters” (the good other beings) and their part in things plus connection with the others (not good-ones) whose leaving added to cataclysm
***adjust journal (or add in some other way) to include “right-living guide” for survivors, written by woman as “directed to” by whatever power it was that influenced her to leave all behind and do all that led her to surviving endday
maia’s journal
Day??? my name is maia i don’t know why i am still alive— well, not for sure, anyway the only idea i have is too screwy to believe i don’t know how i could have survived what was taking place— the whole earth around me and as far as i could see started to go haywire i was just waiting to get tossed up into the air and smashed back down like the pieces of rubbish we all are— i didn’t mind, figure we all deserve the worst we can get— the house was rocking and rolling all over the place and things started clanging on the roof ... flying rocks, i guess
then the last thing i remember is a flash of light so bright it should’ve burned— but it felt cool— it sort of flowed over the whole RV like some liquid would— and i don’t remember anything at all after that just that bluish bright light and a feeling like being in a nice, safe, comfy bed, just as you’re falling sleep
all i know is that I’m here now and everything’s calm again— the sky’s not black any more it’s the most beautiful, sunny-clear and peaceful shade of blue I’ve ever seen but all the land around me looks different somehow— not like it looked before...
i can’t even be sure I’m in the same place i was when. . . well, i have to put all this down on paper right away, i think if i can read it, maybe i can believe what I’m writing— and maybe somebody will need to know what happened— and what happens now i don’t even know yet if anybody else is still around, do i? it doesn’t really matter I’ll keep track of whatever goes on, just in case it feels like I’m supposed to
why else would this friggin’ computer still have battery juice left, huh??? and my gas tank’s almost full, too, so the generator can run this even after the battery gives out— after that? good ol’ pen and paper— got stacks of pads and my stash of fat pens and refills— enough for. . . hell, I’m almost 60 already— how long can i last? There’s more than enough for me to tell it all— it’d be nice if i knew there’d be someone around to read it, though
(in progress)
== intersperse journal entries with narration throughout rest of book
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