Chapter 61 George Mackenzie

Tuesday 17th August

After the others had left Bodhiisha, Shingetsu had begun thinking about George Mackenzie. This was because Sam had asked him to make whatever enquiries about George that he was in a position to undertake.

Shingetsu recalled that he had enjoyed George’s company when they had been together in the summer of twenty-twelve at the Balapuspika Monastery in Tibet. Shingetsu had then thought of George as a spiritual individual, which seemed at odds with his current research into the weaponisation of spiritual phenomena.

In more recent times, his periodic contacts with George, before the closure of the rehabilitation unit, had been pleasant enough, but their relationship had never again developed beyond the level of casual acquaintance. George seemed to have changed since Tibet in a way that Shingetsu could not quite define.

Sam’s request had prompted Shingetsu to use this uncommitted day to make contact with past friends and acquaintances who might have had knowledge of George Mackenzie.

Shingetsu had already engaged in several pleasant but uninformative conversations with old contacts before he rang Jane Winchester. Shingetsu, then Eric Twike, had met Jane in Tibet, where she had been a tour guide. She had been the person who had arranged for George Mackenzie to spend a period at Balapuspika. Jane was currently visiting her mother in the UK and had been very pleased to hear from Shingetsu.

Balapuspika came up very early in the conversation, and Jane had made the shocking revelation that the monastery had been destroyed.

‘Destroyed,’ repeated Shingetsu. ‘I never saw anything on the news about that.’

‘Yes, destroyed,’ Jane confirmed. ‘I occasionally encounter a Nepalese goat herder called Dhyansh when I’m in that area. He sent me a text about two weeks ago saying the monastery was no longer there. It had apparently been destroyed by a very powerful explosion.’

‘He sent you a text?’

‘Even Nepalese goat herders have phones these days – and solar chargers to go with them.’

‘What caused the explosion?’

‘Those on the ground seem to think a missile attack’s the most likely explanation.’

Shingetsu was shocked. ‘Why would anyone wipe out the entire monastery?’

‘I asked Dhyansh about that. He used to visit the monastery from time to time and talk with the monks. It seems there was some kind of secret Chinese laboratory set up there two or three years ago. I haven’t been there for a while, so I knew nothing about that.’

Jane and Shingetsu continued to speak about the monastery and Nepal. ‘Of course, I first met you when you brought George Mackenzie to Balapuspika,’ said Shingetsu when a good opportunity arose to steer the conversation towards George.

‘Yes. You probably don’t know that he and I lived together in Katmandu for about a year after he left Balapuspika. Do you see him these days?’

Shingetsu explained his contact with George Mackenzie in relation to Bodhiisha. ‘I saw him quite frequently when he worked at the rehabilitation unit. Our relationship was rather like work colleagues, though, and I never thought to get his address before the unit closed and he finally left. I don’t know where he lives at the moment.’

‘I do,’ Jane volunteered. ‘He’s staying in Folkestone. I’ll let you have his address. He probably doesn’t realise you don’t know how to contact him. I’m not seeing him this trip, but we talk on the phone a couple of times a year. Unfortunately, the phone number I have for him just gives a number-unobtainable message now. I tried to ring him yesterday. He must be using a new number.’

‘I’d appreciate his address. It’d be good to get in touch again. He seemed a rather spiritual person when I knew him at Balapuspika,’ Shingetsu ventured. ‘I’m surprised that he joined the military. I never got the chance to talk to him about that while he was here.’

‘I was surprised too about his move to the MOD. He hasn’t said much to me about that. He wanted to become a spiritual teacher when he left Katmandu. I always imagined he’d join a monastery rather than the MOD. He knew that increasing numbers of people were awakening and he’d a vision that the world could become a paradise if enough people could be encouraged to follow them.’

Jane and Shingetsu talked for a further half-hour before saying goodbye.

Shingetsu’s next call would be to Sam to relay his conversation with Jane – including the current address of George Mackenzie.

Chapter 62 Fishing

Tuesday 17th August

‘Transmigration,’ said Ben with disbelief as Sam, Sahadeva and Sue finished describing the events that had occurred while Ben had been shopping. ‘I know that must happen after death, but is it possible between two living creatures?’

Sam looked at Ben. ‘It’s not a huge logical leap from the dissociation of awareness to the relocation of that awareness within another human or animal form. There are numerous examples in the mythologies of any tradition you can name.’

Sahadeva nodded his head. ‘I don’t know anybody who’s ever tried it, mind you … until now.’ He glanced at Sam. ‘Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t be a very ethical thing to do.’

‘Do we think,’ asked Sue, ‘that Sam’s experience was an unintended effect of Teterodat, or whether transmigration is core to Starchild?’

Ben smiled. ‘I think they used to call that the sixty-four thousand dollar question.’

‘I need to see John Henson,’ said Sam. ‘He’s the only one to whom we’ve got easy access who might know more about this. I’ve brought his possessions with me from the unit, so I’ve still got an excuse to visit him.’

‘You don’t think remote viewing of Shorncliffe might tell us anything?’ Ben questioned.

Sam shook her head. ‘I’d like to leave that option for the moment. Remote viewing can be inaccurate, and seeing things doesn’t necessarily explain them. Also, I’m frightened to dissociate over any distance again for the time being – with or without Teterodat. I really thought my awareness wasn’t going to return to this body.’ She smiled. ‘I don’t want to find myself diving for fish in the English Channel with no way back.’

Sahadeva smiled at Sam’s joke. Ben and Sue thought it might be a little too close to the truth to be funny.

Sue looked at Sam. ‘So your body was in the same state as John’s, Al’s and Joe’s. Your awareness was with that seagull and your thoughts and feelings remained with your physical body.’

‘Thoughts, feelings and sense perceptions,’ Sam replied, ‘arise within your physical body. In some traditions, they’re called the “subtle body”. Your consciousness is part of the Universal Consciousness. In the manner it’s reflected within the limitations of a body-form, it’s sometimes referred to as the “atman”.’

‘I guess,’ added Sahadeva, ‘that during the seagull incident, your awareness was sufficiently in contact with your subtle body to initially relay messages, but it was becoming increasingly associated with its new form. Maybe after a while, there wouldn’t have been a way back.’

‘If I’d have stayed a few more minutes, I felt my awareness might have transitioned to that seagull in much the same manner as occurs with rebirth after death.’

‘Weird though this is,’ said Sue, ‘that model makes sense. It makes it clearer to me what Al, Joe and John might have meant in saying that a part of themselves – a part that they couldn’t quite define – had somehow gone missing.’

‘Yes,’ said Ben, wondering about where the awarenesses of Al, Joe and John might now be, ‘and although we don’t know the precise objectives of Starchild, transmigration would be one hell of a weapon. You could literally become anyone on Earth.’

Chapter 63 Breaking and entering

Wednesday 18th August

Ben carefully inspected the walls of the building as he and Sue stood in the small, paved backyard. ‘There don’t appear to be any alarm boxes.’

‘I guess it’s a rented property rather than his own home – so he’d be near the Shorncliffe Camp. You wouldn’t expect alarm systems on a cheap rent. It’s good that Eric discovered where Mackenzie was living, otherwise we’d have been half a mile away and would never have known.’

‘His flat’s on the ground floor, so this must be one of its windows.’ Ben moved closer to the glass and peered through. ‘This is a kitchen, but I can’t see anything useful.’

Sue also looked through the glass. ‘It was a good idea to do a reconnaissance, given that Eric provided the address, but it’d be better if we could actually get inside. That’s particularly true as we can assume Mackenzie’s not in right now. Nobody answered when I rang the doorbell. Unfortunately, breaking and entering’s not a skill I’ve ever learned.’

‘Watch this.’ Ben took the suction mount from his pocket that usually secured his satnav to the windscreen of his car.

The kitchen window had a single-glazed metal frame that divided the glass into small rectangles. Ben fixed the suction mount onto one of the panels near the point where the window catch was visible on the other side of the glass. He then took a glass cutter from his pocket and incised the glass along the edges of the rectangle.

Ben held the mount, tapped the glass and lifted away the section. He then released the catch, opened the window and began to climb through.

‘That was neat,’ said Sue when she had followed him through the window. ‘Have you had much practice in this sort of thing?’

‘I actually saw Tom Cruise do it in one of the Mission Impossible films. We’re on our own with any baddies from here on, mind you. I’ve not arranged for a helicopter gunship to lift us out, the way Tom had.’

‘Thanks for warning me.’ Sue glanced around the kitchen. ‘What are we looking for?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps we’ll know when we find it. If you want to start in here, I’ll pick another room.’

Ben left the kitchen and Sue began to look through cupboards. She had no expectation of finding significant military secrets among the tins of vegetables, but she was careful to methodically consider everything she looked at without making assumptions. This was part of the attention to detail that had led her to be such a good chemist and subsequently a doctor.

It was “Heinz 57 varietees” that took her attention. She had owned a can just like it when she had been a student. At the time, she had thought a secret safe disguised as a baked bean tin would be a good idea. The only problem was that the tin and label had been mass-produced in China and varieties has been spelt incorrectly. Sue recalled how the can with the wrong spelling had probably sold better than if there had been no error, at least to her student friends, as everybody had wanted one for the fun of it. In any event, this wasn’t a tin of baked beans.

She removed the tin from the cupboard and automatically twisted its bottom – left, right and left again – to disengage the lock in the way she had done many times in her student days.

The tin opened, and she emptied the contents onto the kitchen table.

Ben came back into the kitchen at that moment. ‘Any luck?’

Sue held up the empty can.

‘Everybody had one of those when I was at university,’ said Ben. ‘Does it have varieties spelt wrong?’

‘It does.’

‘I used to keep money in mine. I reasoned that everybody knew it was supposed to be a safe, and wasn’t, so nobody would think that anyone would hide anything in it. I even used to leave it half open, so it was even more obviously a fake.’

‘So, you kept valuables in one because everybody knew it wasn’t secure, and therefore a thief would think you wouldn’t leave valuables in it.’

‘I decided not to do my dissertation on that particular psychological theory.’

‘I think that may have been wise.’

Ben walked up to the kitchen table, and they both looked at the memory stick that had fallen from the tin.

‘Shall we take it?’ asked Sue.

Ben picked it up and put it in his pocket. ‘We might as well. Even when he discovers it’s gone, there’s no link to us. Anything on the stick is probably encrypted, but we might get lucky.’

‘Did you find anything in the other rooms?’

‘Not yet. There’s a bedroom with a bathroom attached and a main room. Do you want to help me search them? You seem quite good at this – a lost box of Teterodat and now a mysterious USB stick.’

A further hour of searching, with care to disguise the activity, revealed nothing more.

‘What about the windowpane?’ said Sue as they stood once more in the backyard. Ben had closed and latched the window, but the missing glass was obvious.

Ben put his hand in his pocket and removed a small tube. ‘Superglue,’ he said as he removed the top from the tube. He then applied the glue to the edge of the glass and slotted it back into place with the help of the suction mount.

‘You wouldn’t know the glass had been taken out,’ said Sue with admiration. ‘Did Tom Cruise do it that way?’

‘No, he blew the house up with a missile from the helicopter, but I thought we ought to be a bit more understated in Folkestone.’

Chapter 64 John Henson

Wednesday 18th August

Sam had once again arrived at Southampton in good time. As previously, she had made an early start due to uncertainties about traffic on the way.

Saving further time for her, there was even a parking space opposite the home of Stephen Henson in exactly the same place she had parked four days earlier.

The exceptionally fine summer continued, and Sam decided to walk a few hundred metres to a local park and enjoy the gardens until the agreed time to call upon John.

Sam spent a quarter of an hour wandering the park’s paths and admiring the borders. She then sat down on a bench and began to mentally review the interview strategy she had discussed with the others that morning in Sandgate.

As she was reflecting, she idly glanced upwards at the comet and then down towards the small duck pond that occupied the centre of the park.

John Henson was feeding the ducks.

Sam watched him for a long time. Nothing seemed odd or unusual about his behaviour, but Sam felt there to be something unexpected about the scene. Nevertheless, she could not progress from that feeling to an explanation for it.

She continued to watch as John emptied the last dust from his bag of duck food onto the surface of the pond. He then put the bag into his pocket, turned and followed the path that ran along the far side of the park, back towards the entrance.

Sam glanced at her watch. Once John had disappeared from sight, it would be time to follow him to Stephen’s house for their meeting.

Ten minutes later, Sam arrived back at Ben’s car to collect John’s belongings before walking across the road to the house. During the walk from the park, her mind had been unsuccessfully trying to fathom what it was that had seemed unusual about John at the pond. As she unlocked the car, she briefly reflected on the fact that he had not noticed her and, in that moment, she suddenly realised what had been surprising about the encounter. She had noticed him.

Sam saw no reason why she should be more able than anyone else to notice someone for whom functional invisibility had been caused by a dissociation of awareness. She had not been expecting John to be feeding ducks at the park, so probably she should not have been able to see him. Sam suspected that he had reconnected with his underlying awareness – or possibly another awareness.

Ten minutes later, Sam was sitting with John in the front room of Stephen Henson’s house. Stephen was apparently at work. John had fetched some tea and biscuits for them both, and they had exchanged some initial pleasantries.

Sam handed to John the box that contained his possessions.

‘Thank you very much, Miss Martin, for taking the trouble to return these things. It’s very kind of you.’

‘My pleasure, John, and please call me Sam. I must confess, however, that I’ve another motive for visiting you, and I must apologise for not briefing you about that in advance.’

‘What else is on your mind?’

‘I work for the British government.’

John did not look particularly surprised. It was not that he had expected his guest to be some kind of government agent, it was more that involvement with the MOD and the experiments at the unit had accustomed him to complex intrigues. ‘MI5?’

‘I’d rather not be specific. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you anything that would cause you to contravene the Official Secrets Act. I am nevertheless here about Starchild and what will happen on the fourth of September. I’ll also be talking to Peter Rogers and George Mackenzie.’

The fact that Sam could immediately cite the two leading players in the Starchild Project gave weight to her assertion that she had special status. John raised his eyebrows. ‘I can’t tell you anything they can’t, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘I don’t even know the significance of the fourth of September. I overheard George mention it once in a telephone conversation. It seemed to be some kind of deadline.’

The core of Sam’s interview strategy was to imply she knew hugely more than John about Starchild. He might thus make unguarded comments and show agreement to accurate speculations.

‘I know at least as much as you about Starchild,’ Sam said in direct pursuit of that strategy, ‘including why the fourth of September is important, so I’m not really concerned about that.’

John seemed to be reassured that Sam was not a foreign spy. There was also something about her which made him feel inclined to trust her. ‘Does it all worry you?’ he asked candidly.

‘To be frank, yes,’ Sam replied, reasoning that John’s question arose from his own concerns about the Starchild Project.

John seemed further reassured. The secrecy surrounding Starchild and his role at Diss had allowed no opportunity to discuss his personal reservations about what he had been engaged in. It was a relief to be able to talk to someone who was well enough informed to understand. ‘It’s like science fiction. Initially, I thought we were just looking at ways to influence the thoughts and feelings of individuals who were in mental distress.’

‘Using Starchild technology and Teterodat in combination,’ Sam guessed.

Sam looked at John and sensed that her comment had opened another door. It had confirmed to John that Sam really knew what had gone on at the Bodhiisha Rehabilitation Unit, and he was not being covertly interrogated for classified information. He visibly relaxed further and became more unguarded in his comments. ‘As I said, at first I thought the work at Bodhiisha was solely therapeutic. It seemed possible to not just work with people with PTSD but to literally get inside their heads. Starchild with Teterodat allowed many of those ex-combatants to recover very quickly. I recognised, of course, that the same mind reprogramming techniques might be used to gain information from foreign agents or to enhance the psychological state of special forces personnel, but that didn’t seem too different, in principle at least, from what the MOD had always done before.

‘The important thing was that we seemed able to manage disturbances in the flow of thoughts and feelings in a way that the patients couldn’t do for themselves. They didn’t even have to be particularly good subjects for therapy. A combination of Teterodat and Starchild’s bombardment of the temporoparietal junctions with modulated magnetic pulses made almost every subject susceptible. There were only around thirty who didn’t respond.’

‘You were very successful with the other hundred and seventy.’

‘It depends what you mean by successful. George certainly succeeded in linking the computer-based AI neural networks to the brains of the subjects. He could manage their thoughts and feelings as only experienced meditators can do for themselves. That appeared to cause improvements – their symptoms reduced – but after the classified experiments began, self-evaluations highlighted that something had often changed about the internal experiences of the subjects. Some talked about feeling as if something inside them had gone away.

‘George used the term “soul” to refer to what seemed to be no longer there. Some souls came back within ten minutes, and the subjects then reported out-of-body experiences with very accurate remote viewing. Others souls took much longer to return, and some never came back at all. For security, of course, all the subjects had sub-ego imperatives implanted which meant they were subsequently unable to recall the classified experiments they were involved in.’

Sam chose to bet on her guess about John’s soul having returned. ‘I’m pleased your soul’s returned, John. It must have been very difficult living with the feeling that a part of yourself was missing – a part that you couldn’t even define.’

John appeared surprised. ‘You clearly do know a lot. I’ve not described that experience to anyone. How did you know I felt that way, and how did you know that my soul returned late last night?’

‘It seemed the most likely explanation for how you presented in Norfolk compared to how you seem now.’ Sam focused the conversation back upon John’s experience. ‘You must have been aware of the dangers of Teterodat, and yet you chanced it. It must have been something very important that led you to take that risk.’

‘After the unit was closed, I was the only one there. The Starchild equipment was still in place and operational, and I knew how to use it. I activated the Starchild system on the first occasion I injected Teterodat. After that experience, I realised that my soul hadn’t returned. Unfortunately, the equipment was due to be removed early on the following day, and I had no opportunity to use it again. Nevertheless, I still had some Teterodat.

‘As you’re aware, either Teterodat or the Starchild equipment can independently facilitate dissociation or transmigration for some subjects without need of the other – unlike channelling which, as you’ll also be aware, requires both in tandem.’

Sam briefly paused to take in the very large amount of information that had been contained in John's last sentences. It appeared that dissociation for remote viewing and transmigration had been two outcomes of the project. She wondered what channelling might mean. ‘So you subsequently took Teterodat on its own.’

‘In the experiments at the rehabilitation unit, souls sometimes returned after a second dose of Teterodat. In desperation, I tried it. I don’t remember what happened after that. That’s what caused my hospital admission.’

‘May I ask why you wanted to dissociate in the first place?’

‘I tried to see my estranged daughter and grandchildren in the US. Related memories have come to me since my soul returned last night. I think I saw them, but I didn’t collect any verification data.’

‘So, it could have been a confabulated OBE,’ said Sam, relieved to finally make a statement that was not based on speculation. Those words also helpfully reinforced her credentials in the area of remote viewing.

‘I find it hard to make sense of the new memories. They seem very fragmented and disjointed.’ John looked at Sam with urgency and desperation. ‘Can you help me understand what happened to me?’

‘I shouldn’t really comment, but I might be able to help you to piece together parts of your experience. Did you dream last night?’

‘Nothing very coherent. I can’t really remember.’

‘Did you dream about any people or animals?’

‘Now you mention it,’ John paused to think, ‘there was a bear in my dream, and I felt very sad. What’s that got to do with all of this?’

Sam sensed a mixture of strong and conflicting emotions rising in John. ‘I wonder if you experienced a transmigration. It’s possible that your soul might have been residing in that bear.’ An intuition came to Sam. ‘Your bear died, didn’t it?’

John put his head into his hands as the detail of his dream began to return. He started to cry. ‘I was the bear. Alexandra shot me.’ John looked up at Sam. ‘Was that real?’

Sam heard the sound of a birdcall outside the window and briefly imagined herself hovering on a sea breeze. ‘Yes, I think it probably was. What did your experience feel like in your body while your soul was away?’

‘In retrospect, it seemed exactly like what the patients at Diss described. My mood was very variable. I didn’t seem to know who I was – if that makes any sense.’

‘Yes, it does. What about the experience of your soul with the bear?’

John thought for a long time as his recollections consolidated. ‘I wasn’t controlling the bear, but my inclination to see Alexandra and the children from as close as possible caused the bear’s behaviour to change to accommodate that. The bear also never had any intent to hurt them. There were clearly sub-ego imperatives being induced by my soul, which drove the bear’s behaviours. I hadn’t targeted the bear for an HT, a hostile transmigration, but that must have been what happened.’

Further pieces of the jigsaw fell into place for Sam, although the final image was anything but clear. John had mentioned three things that Starchild could do. Firstly, it could facilitate the dissociation of awareness for remote viewing. Secondly, it could facilitate hostile transmigrations – souls taking over other body-minds. Thirdly, it could facilitate channelling, although Sam was still unaware of what that meant.

As she sat quietly with John, she also pondered on his comments about the subjects at Diss and his own experience of transmigration. It seemed that a soul that transmigrated might have a problem returning to its original body unless the return was rapid or the new host body died. Sam reflected that this matched her experience with the seagull.

‘Maybe you can get to see Alexandra and your grandchildren one day, now you’ve positively located her and the children.’

‘Maybe.’

‘You said you were worried about the implications of all this,’ Sam added, hoping to encourage John to expand on his thoughts once again.

‘It’s this ability to control the behaviour of others at a distance that I feel very uneasy about. Hostile transmigration is scary enough with the potential for any world leader or key individual to be taken over by a hostile soul, but channelling takes it all to another level again.’

‘It certainly does,’ said Sam, hoping that her encouragement might finally lead to an explanation of what channelling was.

‘I don’t know when Mackenzie and Rogers realised that by combining Starchild technology and Teterodat, some subjects could become channellers. They could channel Starchild brain wave profiles to anyone, anywhere. In effect, they could remotely control the thoughts and behaviours of large numbers of people at any distance without transmigrations.

‘The quantum computers do all the targeting. Channelled multi-target sub-ego imperatives, or CMTSEIs, affect everybody within a defined geographical area. The channellers just act as an interface between the AI and the collective unconscious of all those people.’

‘It is very scary,’ said Sam, simply expressing her genuine feeling as she suddenly grasped what had been discovered.

Sam would have liked to ask John about many more things. She wondered how George Mackenzie and the team had generated those weaponised brain wave profiles, for example. She also wondered about the attitude of George Mackenzie to the ethics of mind control and also to the unanticipated loss of souls. The information Sam had gained from Shingetsu about Mackenzie indicated that he should be coming at this from a hugely more enlightened direction.

Sam’s thoughts returned to the current interview. She realised that the illusion she had created of her superior knowledge precluded questions to which John might assume her to already know the answers. To do so might break the spell. Also, John was clearly still distressed.

‘Thank you, John. You’ve been through a difficult time, and what I wanted to talk to you about wasn’t that important. Let’s leave it for now. Would you mind if I rang you in due course?’

‘Yes, that’s fine. I’d rather not talk too much more now anyway. I’d also very much appreciate it if what I’ve just said stayed between us. Although you knew it all anyway, I shouldn’t have talked about the project in such detail.’

‘That’s no problem at all, John. This conversation can be our secret.’

As Sam walked back to Ben’s car, she reflected on what she had learned from John. The team led by Peter Rogers and George Mackenzie had found a way to link human brains to advanced AI neural networks generated by quantum computers. This made the dissociation of souls a straightforward process. Dissociation facilitated remote viewing and could also facilitate hostile transmigrations.

The Diss experiments had helped some PTSD patients but had also caused harm. Dissociated souls had sometimes not been able to return, leaving their host body-minds with a sense that part of them was missing.

The most startling discovery had been that some subjects could function as what John Henson called channellers. These channellers could facilitate the implanting of Starchild brainwave profiles, and hence thoughts and behaviours, in everybody within a defined geographical area. Those targets would not require Teterodat or direct contact with the Starchild hardware.

The theoretical possibility of this did not surprise Sam. It would have capitalised on the fact that every soul was deeply related to the Universal Consciousness and so any soul had the potential to communicate with all others. The fact that this had been achieved in practice to the point of controlling other body-minds, however, was both astounding and terrifying.

The implications of these effects as weapons had obviously been clear to the military. Sam reflected, however, that the implications for Underlying Reality and the fabric of the material world may well not have been so obvious to non-spiritual, military minds.

Chapter 65 Once upon another lifetime

Thursday 19th August

Ernest Ball sat in a secluded alcove at the Cheshire Cheese public house in Fleet Street. His friend Robert Watson sat beside him. Outside hung dense fog – the now-infamous blanket of thick, yellowish, polluted London air. There had already been more pea-soupers in eighteen ninety-eight than either man could recall from any previous year.

Ernest and Robert were both in their early fifties, although either could have been taken for ten years older. Their travels in Tibet and China had weathered their faces, darkened their skins and contributed to the greying of the hair on their heads.

Ernest took a draft of ale and then placed his pewter tankard on the uneven wooden table. ‘I find it hard to visualise how more than a very small handful of pilgrims can be awakened. The prevailing interpretation of Christianity leads people to imagine the Absolute as a king in a heavenly castle – with pilgrims as his subjects. It’s a fundamentally misleading analogy, and it keeps people on the wrong track.’

‘I thought Theosophy might move us forward,’ Robert admitted. ‘From my conversations with Helena Blavatsky before she died, however, it was quite clear that knowledge she gained from Eastern sages hadn’t led to her awakening. Like most of those who relay the teachings of prophets, she’d embroidered her embryonic understanding with her own mystical imaginings and confused experience with metaphor. Since her death, the Society’s been in disarray.’

‘There’s nothing we can do, then?’

‘I hope we can contribute to the Final Awakening, but I fear it will neither be here, nor will it be now.’

‘Are you implying that it won’t occur in this lifetime?’

‘I am. We can but sail with the tides and winds of history, and this is not our time. Also, I believe that I may not remain engaged with this life for very much longer.’

‘Your article in the Times?’

‘I felt that I must detail the errors the Church is making, in the hope that some people might think more broadly. Unfortunately, many Christians took umbrage. I might have expected that, but I have also received a number of written death threats – some of which I am inclined to take very seriously.’

‘You have a premonition?’

‘Sadly, I do. Are you available tomorrow evening, Ernest?’

‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

‘We may not be together much longer, but if the Last Master’s prophesy is correct, we may still have a role in some future Final Awakening. It might be wise to consider how we might find each other once again when the coming storms have blown us to destinations that are currently known only by the Lord. Come to my apartments tomorrow at five in the afternoon.’

‘I’ve brought you a cup of tea.’ Sahadeva’s voice drowned out the sounds of conversation and drinking in the Cheshire Cheese and brought Sam’s attention back from nineteenth-century London to twenty-first-century Sandgate.

‘Oh thanks, Sahadeva.’ Sam sat up in bed.

‘You’ve slept quite late. I expect you were tired after the trip to Southampton yesterday.’

Sam took a sip of the tea. ‘I was having one of those dreams again. I was in the Cheshire Cheese in London, talking to Robert Watson.’

‘Were you Ernest Ball again?’

‘Yes. I’m sure he was a genuine earlier incarnation. The uncertainty I have is about which elements of these dreams are akashic memories and which are confabulations.’

‘Have you any memories of that incarnation that are independent of your dreams?’

‘No. The only recollections I have from that life have appeared in my dreams during the past couple of years. As I told you, I pieced together enough details about Ernest Ball to confirm that he really lived in London in the late nineteenth century. I’ve visited some of the places I saw in the dreams and confirmed details that I couldn’t have known unless I’d been to those places previously.’

‘Was there any new information in the dream I just woke you from?’

‘There was quite a lot actually. Even some things I could check. Robert knew Helena Blavatsky, for example. Interestingly, I concentrated on Robert’s face this time, and he was the person who was shot in the dream I had while in the back of Peter Rogers’ car.’ Sam pondered for a moment. ‘What time is it?’

‘Ten thirty in the morning.’

‘I think I’d better get up.’

Fifteen minutes later, Sam walked into the lounge area of the bungalow.

Ben was talking to Sue and Sahadeva. ‘I can’t even see if the data’s encrypted. The stick needs a password to begin with.’

‘Are you checking the USB stick you recovered yesterday?’ said Sam, moving to the kitchen table where Ben was looking at the screen of his laptop.

‘Yes. I don’t suppose you’ve any intuition about the sort of password Mackenzie might use?’

‘Sorry,’ Sam replied. ‘I don’t even know where to start.’