by

Dario Ciriello

I'd been asleep less than an hour when the phone rang. I knocked over a glass of water as I fumbled in the dark, and cursed. By the third ring I'd managed to drag the receiver to my ear. "Yes?"

"John, am I glad you're there!" It was Izzy, the station's news editor. "We're in deep shit. How soon can you get here?"

"Um -- twenty, thirty minutes, maybe. What's going on?"

"Okay, but shave and get some pants on, will you? You're going on air. George can't do it."

I sat up. "What do you mean, he can't do it? What about Helen?" George was the evening anchor, Helen his number two. I do the early mornings.

"Look, just get your ass down here, will you? Some kind of breakdown. Don't you watch your own damn station? They flaked on the early news. You're on in forty-nine minutes." Click.

* * *

The studio clock read ten fifty-one as I entered. Angie, the make-up girl, was on me in a second. Izzy hovered anxiously. "So what happened to George and Helen?" I asked.

"I sent George home," he said. "Helen's under sedation."

"Under sedation?"

"Still, please," said Angie, as she made up my face.

George moved around to face me directly. "They took her to Central to keep her under observation.

"Izzy, I don't get it. What happened to them?"

"Didn't you listen to the news on the way in?"

"I don't have a car radio anymore. I got tired of having them stolen."

Izzy looked frayed. "George started on the headlines, read the lead story, did fine. He glanced nervously at the studio clock. I was going on in four minutes. "Look hurry it up, will you?" he said to Angie.

"Almost done."

"Anyway, he starts in on the story about the massacres in Mali, and his voice cracks. He glances up at me in the booth, I tell him keep going. John, I'm sitting, looking at the guy and he starts crying. I mean, blubbering like a baby."

Angie finished and dusted me off. Izzy shooed me over to the desk, watching the big wall clock as we went. "Three minutes."

"George?" I couldn't figure it. George was a real pro. "Is he having problems at home?"

"Fuck should I know?"

"So what'd you do?"

"I cut to Helen. So she picks up the story while we hustle him off and a moment later she's making like a Jacuzzi too.

"Two minutes, Izzy," the booth cut in.

"I thought George would get over it, or I'd have called you earlier." Izzy slapped me on the back. "Okay, Johnny, it's all yours. Don't let me down, all right?"

I shook my head. "Relax, Izzy. No problem."

My stomach fluttered while they counted me in, but as soon as I began on the lead, instinct took over. Whatever had happened to George and Helen was a fluke. Still, it was strange that both of them should crack up on the same day, over the same item. The Mali story had been going for weeks and the death count was actually on the way down. Nuts to it. I finished the lead, paused a second, and began:

"Red Cross officials in Mali today reported that several dozen more refugees..." A chill passed through me. I cleared my throat. "...Several dozen more refugees..."

"Johnny!" Izzy's anxious voice in my earpiece. "Keep going, kid, you're doing fine!"

The hell I was. My hands were shaking and a baseball had lodged in my throat. "...Were massacred in a camp near..." I heard my words trail away. Horrified as I was, what was happening inside me at some other level was far more compelling. Distantly, I heard Izzy tell the techs to cut me off.

The studio had gone, and I was standing on bare, dusty earth. Flies buzzed under an unflinching sun. I was looking down at the butchered corpse of a man whose belly had been slashed and his guts spread for some distance along the ground. Flies and ants clustered so thick upon the strewn entrails that they seemed alive. The man's pants had been pulled down to his knees, and there was nothing but a raw, crawling wound where his genitals should have been. His eyes looked heavenward for a God that never came. I looked away.

In every direction, there were mutilated bodies and blood-caked dirt. Worst were the children...

The smell hit me then, and I gagged. My stomach heaved, but there was nothing to bring up. I looked down at my emaciated body, and screamed.

* * *

I came out of sedation the following afternoon. After answering the hospital shrink's questions and promising to check in with a counselor, I discharged myself.

By the time I got home, the sun had plunged to a gory death. My voicemail's LED was blinking nine. Ignoring it, I poured myself a beer and turned on the TV.

All the news stations were carrying the same story. Anchors and newsreaders all over the world had cracked up. Print journalists too. Whenever someone tried to read or write an item directly concerning human misery, they broke down. Some stations had tried to use meteorologists, sports anchors, even actors to fill in, with the same results. They all did fine on stories about the economy, politics and sports, but as soon as anyone tried to cover a death-and-mayhem item, they lost it. Weird.

I checked my messages.

My folks. My ex-wife. Izzy. Ernesto, my producer. My brother Alan. George, drunk. My folks again. My friend Farid. Helen.

Izzy was apologetic about not having warned me. They'd known for hours that news anchors everywhere were breaking down. "I just wanted to give you a clean shot at it, Johnny," he said. Sure.

I called Helen.

"John!" she said. "Are you okay? I spoke to Izzy..."

Yeah. I Had an unscheduled nap, just like you. Care to talk about it?"

Her experience proved similar to mine. She'd been bending over a heap of bodies, searching for her father. Her sigh shuddered down the line at me. "I was just a kid."

"It's okay. Interesting that we can talk about it, huh? Has anyone tried going back on air after they recovered?"

"Yeah, Sam Wendell at CBS, and he's in a psych ward now. I heard a rumor there've been some suicides as well. Forget it."

I thanked her and made a vague suggestion we go out for a drink in a week or two.

"I'd like that," she replied.

I cracked another beer, found a fresh notepad, and spent the next hour on the phone. Nobody knew anything. I went online. The website of every religious organization in the world, from the Vatican to the United Disciples of Goofy, was trumpeting that the end (or, in most cases, the new beginning) had come. Christ had arisen, the prophecies were being fulfilled, Judgment day was nigh, we were going to burn in hell or be saved. There would be no more of man's sinning allowed.

I thought about that.

On my notepad, I made a list of suspects

1. A God, or supernatural, or extraterrestrial agency

2. A human agency

3. A natural, but unknown, force or energy

4. A biological or mutagenic trigger (even a virus?)

5. I am dreaming, or suffering delusions

6. The whole world is dreaming, or suffering delusions

I stared at this for a while. I decided to rule out five and six right away, since they were essentially unhelpful. Any dream this concrete was, effectively, reality.

Possibility one required that I open a whole new can of worms by adding an extra layer of unproved speculation to a reality which already pushed belief. Why complicate matters beyond what the evidence required? I put a line through that one as well.

That left me two, three and four. I sort of liked number four -- a biological cause -- but couldn't see how such a trigger could cut in so synchronously everywhere. Cross it off.

Three? A natural, but unknown force? Hmm. That sailed kind of close to possibility number one, but I tried to focus on the "natural" clause. Which didn't actually help at all, but I'd keep an open mind on this one. Which left me with number two.

Given the mischief that human beings cause, I liked this possibility best of all. All I needed was a who, a how, and a why. I put some coffee on, despite the lateness of the hour.

* * *

I went to bed around dawn, slept four hours and got back to work. By early afternoon I'd contacted every major news organization that I knew of worldwide, called in several favors, and generally bugged a whole bunch of people. I had a headache, too. I also had a locus.

After making allowances for local time differences, dissemination patterns, station procedures, agency feeds, news network protocols, and all kinds of other variables, I began to see a pattern to the spread of the psychosis. It had begun as early as 0230 GMT in parts of northern India and taken as much as three hours before manifesting in areas of Mexico and the central US. Of course there were plenty of blips and standouts, but the overall pattern was there. The locus, close as I could make it, was around Haryana state, north of Delhi.

Haryana. That name brought some answering echo, a little sonar ping! from subconscious depths, but nothing I could bring to the surface. Leave it. If it was important, it would come up in its own good time.

A few moments later, I was on the phone to one of the senior editors at All India Radio. Mr. Naramal chuckled when I'd finished my little speech. "Oh yes, you are quite correct, but you are not the first person to establish this fact. No, indeed. Actually, we have quite a lot of international interest focused on our area right now."

"Really?" It figured. Why should I be the only smart one?

"Oh yes. And not only from the media, either. A high-level investigative team from your country has been here for some hours, and is working closely with our own experts."

"What are they doing?"

"Mostly asking questions. But I can tell you an AWACS has just arrived at the military airport here, and a US Air Cavalry unit is already in the area. Beyond that, I know nothing.

"Air Cavalry? AWACS? Why?"

"They probably suspect some sort of mad scientist plot masterminded by an Asiatic fiend like Dr. No, or perhaps Fu Manchu. Likely they are trying to detect weird electronic emanations from his laboratory. Excuse me."

A brief snatch of muffled conversation, then, "Actually, I've just been handed a D-notice. . ."

"I'm sorry, a what?"

"A D-notice. One of the less enviable legacies of the British Raj. Of course, you don't have them there. Lucky you. A D-notice," Mr. Naramal continued cheerfully, "is a banning order which forbids us from publishing the item, under threat of immediate closure and possibly imprisonment. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

* * *

A late lunch at the counter at Slim's Café de Bohême. In the silence between audio tracks, I could hear muffled yells from the shuntheads wetjacked into their games and feelies in the VR parlor above, and the occasional thump as one of them hit the floor.

Vasili, an ancient Russian émigré who spent every afternoon at Slim's playing chess against anyone who'd give him a game, came and sat next to me. "Have you seen the paper today?" He slapped a copy on the counter. I glanced at it. 'Mystery deepens' was the headline, backed up by a syndicated piece about plummeting media stocks. The sidebar informed of a number of human-interest stories inside. Dull stuff.

Vasili grunted. "Like the old Pravda, only more boring."

Amy brought my order then, a cottage cheese salad and a cappuccino. She put her hands on the counter and leaned forward. With her ample bust and the low necklines she favored, the action never failed to unsettle me. She did it on purpose. "You wouldn't believe what it does for my tips, honey," she'd told me once, though I always believed her motives to be far more philanthropic. Amy just liked to spread a little joy in the world. I winked at her. She grinned back.

"The news ain't the same without you, honey," she cooed. "When will we see your pretty blue eyes on that screen again?"

"The news isn't the same, that's for sure."

"Exactly!" snapped Vasili, "and you know what I think?" He thrust his chin out at me.

I caught Amy's look, which said we were going to find out whether we wanted to or not. I suppressed a smile. Spearing a cherry tomato with my fork, I said to the old man, "No. What do you think, Vas?"

"Ha!" He slapped his palm down on the paper. "I think it's exactly what they want, that's what I think."

"They?"

"Yes, they! The despots, the dictators, the iron men of the world. Anyone who wants to mount a pogrom, a massacre, an ethnic cleansing -- this is his time. Now, they can do anything. Anything!"

Amy looked at me. The old man was right. Public opinion was no longer an issue. "Can't argue with you, Vas," I said. "Wouldn't surprise me if it's happening right now, everywhere."

"Ha!"

Amy came to the rescue. "Don't you think there's a teeny chance people might just be nice to one another for a change? I mean, if we can't read about bad things, or see them on TV, then..." She shrugged and spread her hands.

Vas frowned at her. "Ah! Amy, she's going mystical on us, John," He wagged a finger at her. "I saw you wearing that crystal pendant the other day. Ha! I may be old, but I know about these new ages. Astrology, alien --"

Amy waved a hand. "That was my birthstone, silly. Men are always such pessimists. That's why we have all these wars and violence. "Now," she wagged a finger at us and leaned way forward to make the point. I almost choked on my cappuccino. "If women ran things -- "

Vasili couldn't resist that line, and so -- the place being otherwise empty -- they were off. I sat and ate quietly, happy to let them chatter. Besides, the conversation had jogged my memory.

The interview had taken place in a coffee house in the Village some fifteen years previously. I was in my final year of college, had already sold a couple of short pieces, and was keen to sell more. It wasn't long after Waco, and anything that smelt of cultism found an eager audience.

The girl called herself Veena. I doubt she was even twenty, but her poise and restraint made her seem older. Burning dark eyes and a cascade of black curls lent a hypnotic intensity to everything she said; later, removed from her spell, I decided she was nuts and consigned my notes to the trashcan.

"Tell your readers Baba will bring peace to this troubled world," she said.

Without admitting that I didn't have any readers for the piece yet, I said, "And who is 'Baba'?"

She looked at me in that slightly pitying way that converts often do. She spoke as if the first letter of every word were capitalized. "Baba is The One, The Bringer of Peace. He is here, now, on Earth, and he will bring an end to human suffering."

"And you're a disciple of his? Can I meet him?"

She lowered her eyes. Yes, she was and no, I could not meet him. For now, he must shun the world; but soon after the millenium, his message of peace would spread from a tiny Ashram in Haryana state to the rest of the Earth, and humankind would enter the long-awaited Golden Age.

"John-ny? Hal-lo?" Amy's sing-song broke my reverie. "Something wrong with the salad?"

* * *

It took me the rest of the afternoon to track down Josh, my old college roomie who'd introduced me to Veena. He'd had it real bad for her for a while and I was hoping he might have kept in touch. After some chitchat, I asked the question.

"Veena?" He whistled. "Boy, she was something, huh? No, I haven't heard from her for -- oh, jeez, maybe eleven, twelve years now. Last I heard she was in India. I think she was going into one of those, uh, whaddyacallems -- "

"Ashrams?"

"Yeah, right, an Ashram." His tone sharpened abruptly. "Why do you want to know?"

"It's real important for a story I'm working on. Following up on that interview you fixed up for me once. Do you have an address?"

"You told me she was nuts. Said you'd wasted an afternoon and I owed you a six-pack."

"I might have been wrong. Besides, I never got the six-pack. Do you have an address or a number?"

"I'm not sure there was one, but I got the letter filed away. I always keep correspondence. Lemme see. . ."

He came back few moments later. "Yeah, I got it. No phone, but a poste restante at a village. Got a pen?"

* * *

The evening news was a little strange but I could tell the newsroom was starting to get a feel for the limits now and were pushing the envelope as far as they could. I knew George well enough to tell that he was having a tough time with the job, despite probably having fortified himself with a drink or two beforehand. He looked sick. Reading between the lines, I surmised that the Golden Age hadn't quite dawned yet.

"All electronic communications in the Korean peninsula and as far away as the Japanese island of Kyushu have been disrupted. Seoul Radio and SeoulNet appear to be down . . ."

"The Turkish government has asked foreign airlines to suspend all flights to from the country. Western travel agencies assured relatives of holidaymakers..."

"The White House today denied reports of large-scale troop mobilization. Nonetheless, sources in Fayetteville, North Carolina, close to Fort Bragg, reported a dramatic increase in military air traffic. . ."

Wars and rumors of wars.

* * *

I poured more coffee and reviewed my notes. All I really had was a bizarre phenomenon; a logical but highly subjective assumption that a human agency was responsible; a fifteen year-old conversation with a strange girl in a badly-lit coffee house; an even more dubious assumption; and an address in northern India. Maybe enough evidence for one of the tabloids to work up a cover, but I wasn't about to go to the CIA with it. That kind of behavior could put a quick end to a media career -- if I still had a career when this mess was over.

And that was another assumption. What if the psychosis, or syndrome, or whatever the hell it was, didn't go away? What if no one in the media could ever again report on anything that involved brutality and suffering? And since the level of suffering appeared -- as far as anyone could tell -- to be rapidly escalating, who was benefiting from the phenomenon? How many coups and land grabs and assassinations would it take before someone threw a nuke, if they hadn't already? The communications shutdown in Korea suggested that the latter might indeed be the case.

I could think these thoughts; I could talk to people one-on-one about humanity's woes, as I had with Helen after my beauty sleep in the hospital. But none of us could write or broadcast the truth of what was going on out there.

This was the Golden Age?

* * *

Izzy was just a little put out when I told him I needed to take a few more days' leave, my absence being only a minor hassle in the context of his recent woes. "Make it a week," he said, "and I hope we're still in business when you get back. Actually, things are looking up; did you hear?"

"I don't think so. Hear what?"

"Jesus, Johnny, don't you ever watch the news? The psychosis, that's what. I think it's beginning to ease up."

I left my car in long-term parking at the airport, took a shuttle to the terminal and checked my one bag. The TVs in the departure lounge were tuned to CNN. I saw what Izzy meant. A little grit was coming back into the copy, though I could tell that both the anchor and the correspondents were sweating it. What they were able to tell was ugly. It looked as though a shooting war had started in the Korean peninsula, with a small nuke detonated in a high airburst north of Seoul. The situation was obviously bad, but no one was giving details.

I changed planes in London and boarded an Air India flight direct to Delhi. I had the name of the village, which lay about sixty miles northwest of Delhi. My game plan was necessarily vague. I would arrive there and start making inquiries among the locals. I guessed that the Ashram of a holy man and his followers, probably mostly westerners, would be known among the inhabitants of a small village.

Delhi was awash with security. Everyone entering the country was getting the third degree at immigration. I said I was taking a holiday and gave the Delhi Hilton as my address, praying there was one. They let me through.

Soldiers with automatic weapons were posted at every corner around the city center, as well as at the airport and railway station. I couldn't imagine what they were looking for. It was possible there'd been some incidents, terrorism, or who-knew-what. Unless it was connected with the search for the cause of the psychosis.

The heat, smells, and chaos of India proved an immediate and very physical assault on all the senses. I wondered why I was chasing wild geese at my own expense, and reminded myself not to make it a habit.

Journeying first by train, then in an ancient taxi which bounced me the last dozen miles through the torpor of the dusty afternoon, I finally emerged, a mess of sweat and time zones, in the central square of the village.

I doused my thirst in a small teahouse which also served as general store and post office, and settled my stomach with a little boiled rice and dhal. The owner was a jovial fellow with a quick smile and rough, though enthusiastic, English. Did he know, I inquired, of an Ashram close by?

"Troo village. Up hill, vun kilometer." He held up his first finger. "Big house, you vill find. Very quiet. There is sadhu and many people."

A sadhu. An Indian holy man. "Have you seen this sadhu?"

"Never see. Only sometime Americans like you come here. Vun, two... buy little rice or gram. Sadhu stay, alvays. Never see."

* * *

I found the place. It was right on the dirt trail that wound from the village up into the hills, a rambling, sag-roofed old place with wooden-shuttered windows with one large and several smaller outbuildings in a bare field behind. A goat munching idly on a low shrub turned a yellow stare on me as I approached. Despite the dog-eared appearance of the main house, the small path that led to the front door was well-tended and bordered with flowers.

The door opened before I could knock. To my astonishment, it was her -- Veena. There were others behind her in the hallway, but I could only focus on her. She'd hardly changed. She looked radiant.

"John! Come in. You're expected."

"I . . . am?"

She led me into the main hall, where all the followers were gathered for some kind of evening prayer. My head felt light. She knocked on a narrow door. At once, a rich, very present voice said "Come," and we entered.

The study was bathed in soft, yellow light from a floor lamp set by a well-used, uphholstered armchair. Before me was a rather plain pedestal desk on which lay some papers and a satellite laptop. On the other side of the desk was Baba.

He was a thin man -- an ascetic type, -- and his height surprised me, as did his age: no more than forty, at a guess.

He circled the desk and shook my hand in both of his. "So glad you came, John," he said. His warm smile caught me off guard. The man was truly genial: charismatic, even. Of course. "Please be seated." He indicated the armchair, and leaned back, most ungurulike, against the edge of the desk.

"Thank you. Ah . . ."

"You expected someone more like Ghandi, am I right?"

He chuckled. "In any case, you have found me."

"Yes. How did you know I was coming?"

"You were expected. "

So it was going to be like that. Okay. Briefly, I explained who I was, and what I'd come to find out.

He smiled and nodded. "I know why you came."

"So, uh, why are you doing this -- and how?"

He turned the laptop to face me and tapped a few keys. The screen filled with what looked like a half walnut infected with raging polychrome primaries, something that might have been signed by Warhol.

"EPI. An echo-planar MRI scan. A real-time picture of the brain of a normal individual showing only normal functions." More keystrokes, and a second walnut appeared beside the first. Whereas the original was pretty much evenly divided into red, yellow, blue and green areas, the new image showed noticeably more red-orange in parts.

"Veena's brain, at rest." He brought up another display, a dozen thumbnail scans more or less like Veena's arranged along the top of the screen. "My other students," he said.

I shook my head. "Excuse me, but how do I know that I'm looking at scans of your students? Where do you get access to this kind of technology out here?"

Baba shrugged. " We have our own EPI and MEG equipment in the old barn. You can see it if you wish."

"Your own . . . " I took a deep breath. Evidently, some of the students came with money.

"The red areas show increased blood flow to the part of the frontal lobes where compassion and empathy occur."

"Ah. Noble feelings. Though I don't see how that explains anything."

"What if I spoke of empathic projection?"

I shook my head. "So, uh, you were just born with this ability?"

Baba laughed. "Just born with it? Oh, no. Goodness, no! My lineage goes back to a time before Greece, before the pyramids. I am the final result of a three-thousand year experiment in genetic engineering. The last. The printout." He chuckled. "My ancestors' tradition always held it would happen here, in Haryana, at this time; but until these last days, I didn't understand the how."

I stared. If this was a put-on, it was a grand one. Three thousand years?

"These 'noble feelings', as you called them, have arguably kept us from wiping ourselves out. Even as the first great city-states rose and fell along the Tigris and Euphrates, there were learned men who saw this truth. While some simply preached compassion, others banded together and began what we would today call a research program. A very long-term selective breeding program using humans. And they were every bit as methodical and scientific as any modern research facility. They scoured the near and Middle East for young people who met their standards of compassion and humanity. And when they found them, they took them into the sect. They interbred. They -- "

"Wait," I said, interrupting him, "I'm sorry, but compassion, empathy -- these feelings aren't inherited, they're learned."

"Are you so sure of that? With the same research tools which produced these scans, your science has proved that mental skills are both inherited and learned. The offspring of a lab rat which has learned to navigate a complex maze learns that same maze much faster than a control animal; and scans of big-city taxi drivers' brains show more brain mass devoted to spatial awareness than do scans of ordinary people."

"But your followers weren't the result of a breeding program! How did they learn?"

"I chose them for their empathic qualities. And then I heard of these." From the pocket of his robe, Baba pulled out a small black rectangle. A VR shunt. He turned his head and lifted the hair just above his right ear to reveal the tiny, golden gleam of a VR port. "I was fascinated by the notion. I began to wonder if we could use this technology to set up a sort of shared circuit. We hired a programmer, and in little over a year I had what I wanted: a crude, radio-linked neural network. We experimented with the ability."

He tapped his keyboard again and a fresh line of walnuts appeared directly below the earlier thumbnails. The new images positively flared with hot color.

"The power grew stronger and stronger, until we could actually project emotion a considerable distance. And I could project to many individuals at once."

"A few weeks ago, I had a waking dream -- a vision, you might call it. I knew, at last, how I could use this power to bring quiet to this troubled world. I would start with the media. After all, you people are so powerful. I thought that perhaps if reporters and journalists felt the true human horror of the stories they were covering, they would convey that to their listeners and readers, and the public might begin to take an interest in the suffering of their fellow man. I see now that this was a very simplistic notion."

"You mean that you were broadcasting those feelings . . . to every newsman and reporter in the world at once?"

"No, not at all. That would have been an impossible task. Actually, it works more like a feedback circuit, growing stronger with every cycle. It spreads from a center like ripples on a pond. After a few hours it seems the field encircled the world. We focused our intent on media people. We put you in the victim's shoes, and took away your defenses."

I remembered how I'd felt the agony of the Mali massacre. I'd been in that camp, known the horror of it; and I'd been totally defenseless. The memory of it was still raw.

"But how could you be so naïve?" I cried, all professional restraint gone. "My God! It's like global censorship -- every tyrant's dream!"

He sighed, gazing at the VR shunt in his hand. "It was naïve. Not only that, but it worked too well -- I hadn't realized just how strong the empathy we could project would be. We stopped on the first day; but the effect took time to dissipate."

I was aghast, as much at his matter-of-fact tone as his words. "But do you have any idea what happened out there? Do you know what your little experiment did? People died, damn it! Thousands of them. There was a nuclear attack in Korea!"

Quiet, unmoving, Baba watched me. Stillness blanketed the room. In that vacuum, I couldn't keep my anger going.

His words, when they came, were soft, precise. "And can you say this would not have happened otherwise?"

I thought about that over several deep breaths. He waited like a mountain. I gave up on that track. Instead I asked, "You said I was expected: what did you mean?"

"You will tell the world what passes here tonight. It will be good to have someone not of my circle." His left hand moved to above his right ear, parting the hair in a practiced motion as his right attached the shunt. "Come," he said.

* * *

He led me back into the main hall, where the followers were gathered. They sat cross-legged on pillows around the room as we entered, their hands in their laps. Veena, seated near the door, smiled at me.

Baba motioned me to take my place near her. Sitting, I returned my attention to Baba. He seemed about to say something, then changed his mind. He bowed his head slightly. The room became very still.

There was a sound from outside, swelling in seconds to an unmistakable, window-rattling roar. I knew those sounds. Everyone in the room began to shout, and several of Baba's followers jumped up. Lights danced outside the windows.

Holding up his hands and shouting to make himself heard over the din, Baba cried, "Quiet!" in a voice so clear it cut through the place like a sword. Everyone froze.

Veena shouted, "What -- "

"Helicopter, " I yelled back, "military! Stay still!"

The noise doubled outside as another one came in.

"Baba!" screamed a tall, wiry woman, "What's happening?"

"Do not fear. Our moment is coming -- do not waste it. Be present!" He turned to face the door.

The whole house was rattling now and it seemed there must be choppers everywhere over the village, though it was probably just two or three. The rhythms had changed, though: one of the choppers had landed.

"I tell you, remain still!", Baba called. Amazingly, they obeyed him and he turned again to the door.

I heard urgent voices, crisp, commanding. Had I been followed? Had I led them here, coming so openly and asking questions?

The door burst open and four special-ops troops were suddenly in the room, guns leveled. Others were at the windows.

Everything froze.

A figure stood in the middle of the room. Baba. But --

He was wearing a fedora and a double-breasted suit.

Chewing on a cigar.

Cradling a Thompson gun in his arms.

The frozen silence crawled on a second longer. Then, as if to order, time resumed, merciless. The room exploded with gunfire, and Baba dropped.

Searing pain in my head as the world went dark.

An explosion of images -- no, more than that, far more, whole experiences -- engulfed me. Even more terrifying than their content was their simultaneity. A hundred brutal deaths, a thousand, a million; and each and every one of them, mine.

In that appalling, eternal instant I died every violent death there has ever been.

I was a father falling in an alleyway to a mugger's knife; a child killed by kidnappers who lost their nerve; another Jew shot in the camps after digging my own grave; a German boy dying before the Reichstag; I was at the back of a bus full of schoolchildren hit by a suicide bomber; I was Crazy Sally screaming at the stake as the flames devoured me in the Lord's name; I was Kennedy with Jackie at my side as the bullet burst my skull; I was Christ under the burning sun on Golgotha. I was Baba.

I lay on my left side, staring sideways across the floor. The others, some alone, some heaped together, were scattered where they had fallen. A gun barrel poked at a funny angle from the clump of soldiers sprawled together in the doorway. Flames lit the night behind them, and the air stank of burning rubber and seared flesh.

We rose by degrees, in ones and twos, horror in every gaze.

One of the soldiers looked at his hands and began to scream. Others, weaponless, filed in through the open door, their faces masks of shock. I saw Veena, death-pale, as we all converged on the spot where Baba lay in a spreading pool of blood.

* * *

"John, John!" Izzy cried, clapping his hands to his head, "are you out of your mind? You know how many innocent people bought it because of this nut? And you want to put it out he was some kind of Messiah? The guy was the fuckin' antichrist, is what!" He turned to Veena. "Sorry, lady," he said.

It was useless trying to argue with him; instead, I allowed the wave of my hurt and sadness to reach him.

He flapped a hand in front of his face, like someone trying to clear a cobweb. "Okay, so your Baba had something, I'm not arguing that, and it rubbed off on you. Nice trick. I hope you find it useful."

"Not just me, Izzy. There are a whole bunch of us spreading out now. Soon, there'll be more. Besides, I never said he was any kind of Messiah. I said -- "

"Yeah, yeah, I read it: 'a blind instrument of our incomprehensible destiny,' you said. 'A herald of the next stage of human evolution.'" He rounded on me, red-faced, furious. "So what the fuck good's it gonna do, huh?" he shouted. "You know how many people died when your Baba broadcast his death directly into the mind of every last human on the fuckin' planet? Huh? Maybe sixty, seventy, eighty thousand, that's how many! The numbers are still coming in. Old folks with creaky hearts, innocent motorists, pilots negotiating landings -- "

"Izzy, I know. I know! It was nuts, I agree." I held up my hands to head off his comeback. "But we've been through it with the military investigators, theirs and ours, and they're satisfied. That ought to be enough for you, too. Let me ask you one thing, though: what's the homicide rate since Baba died?"

Izzy rolled his eyes. "The homicide rate? Which homicide rate? Where? What's that got to do with it?"

"It's been six days now, Izzy. You had any violence to report?" I felt a warm glow brush the edge of my mind, and turned to find Veena smiling. Each of us was developing an individual style, a flourish, to our way of using the power.

"Stop that, will you!" said Izzy, banging his forehead with the heel of his hand as though trying to dislodge something. "Okay, so there’ve been no murders, no muggings, no wars for six days. No surprise either, since everyone's so fuckin' traumatized that even the shrinks are seeing shrinks. Everything's paralyzed, Johnny! You only got back 'cause the military flew you back." He held up my copy again and brandished it like a process server. "I can't let this go out, John. No way."

"You know how much CNN's offering me for the story, Izzy? I'm giving it to you."

"But what's it going to accomplish? This guy killed -- killed -- eighty thousand people, Johnny! Do you hear what I'm saying?"

"He didn't kill them," said Veena softly, "they died. It happened. We all grieve. Now we must move through it. The power will spread itself whether we like it or not -- in fact, it's already happening. There's no stopping it now. Baba was the first, but only that. With that pulse of power when he died, Baba opened a gate into our next stage of evolution as a species. With each empathic contact a person receives, they become more sensitive; soon, that person also becomes an empath. Eventually maybe a full telepath. And once that ability becomes widespread, how can any of us hurt another human being ever again?"

Izzy looked from Veena to me in despair.

"It's happened, Izzy, and it can't be undone. The world can never be the same. He gave everything he could, and left us to pass it on. I'm not saying it's an unqualified good, but we're stuck with it. We can only go forward."

Izzy scowled at me. I pointed at my copy in his hands.

"I'm just reporting the facts, Izzy, nothing more. People have a right to know the truth about what happened."

He stared at me. He turned to Veena, then back again. Watching him, I saw it before he even spoke: a mellowing of color in the air around him, a sweetness I could almost smell. A wave of something like love swept the room; it had Veena's signature on it. No way Izzy couldn't have felt that.

"You son of a bitch," he said, "I'd smack you right in the mouth except I'm afraid I'd feel it just as much as you." He handed me back my copy and began to laugh, a little wild. "Sure, go on, air it. I mean, what can they -- what can anyone -- do to us . . . now?"