The looping threads of oscillating notes and beats were still echoing in Tom’s ears as the murmur of men’s voices reached him from the other end of the house. Tom and Xander had spent the remainder of the previous night in the studio, listening to DJX’s latest tracks and experimenting with ways to integrate various electrical patterns and riffs with the Theremin and Ominsphere, blasting weird ululations at decibels that literally raised the hair on their arms. After Xander had turned in for the night, Tom carefully unlatched the Rife generator and used headphones to secretly sample its mesmerizing modulations. The device itself was quaintly primitive, but the four-hundred-page instruction manual stored in the machine’s carrying case, with its meticulously indexed menu of mind-altering frequencies and recipes on how to manage and mix them, was a gold mine. Tom now had all the components he needed for a full-scale deployment of zeph.r. He could hardly wait for a chance to fine-tune zeph.r’s turbo-charged capability to fuse words and music into electromagnetic commands.
Tom pulled on shorts and a shirt, poured himself some coffee, and padded barefoot out to the terrace. Xander was basking in the late morning light in a white caftan, having toast and coconut water with a man in faded jeans and expensive-looking cowboy boots. The visitor’s plaid Western-style shirt was partially unbuttoned, a navy bandana knotted around his neck. His longish hair was streaked with silver and his aviator Ray-Bans reflected the mesas and buttes of the Verde Valley with polarized precision.
“Ah, good, you’re up,” Xander said as Tom emerged from the house blinking. “Tom, meet Travis B. Marlow. Travis, this is my best friend and creative partner, Tom Ayana.”
“Nice to meet you,” Marlow said with the slightest tinge of a Western drawl. He raised his lip at Tom but didn’t offer his hand. “Tom Ayana,” Marlow intoned. “Interesting.”
“What’s interesting?”
“It’s just that in Sanskrit, ayana means …”
“I know what it means,” Tom said.
“Travis is going to be our guide to the Hopi nation,” Xander offered. “He says we’re very lucky to be allowed to join the ceremony tonight. It’s a gathering of the tribal elders, Indian shamans. Outsiders usually aren’t allowed.”
“It’s only because I told them you were friends of Ryan’s,” Marlow said. “They love his movies.”
“The Hopis watch movies?” Tom asked.
“Yes, they do,” Marlow said, staring at Tom with a look that said, Dear Lord, spare me from these clueless city slickers. “The Hopi are old souls, but they’re not Luddites,” he said sternly. “They have DVD-R and satellite Wi-Fi and MacBook Pros. Some of them even went to college.”
Tom shrugged. “I’m not from around here.”
“No kidding. So where are you from, son?”
“Austin.”
“Well, that explains a lot,” Marlow said with a chuckle. “You guys killed all your Indians a long time ago. I’m surprised you even know what they look like, except for what you’ve seen in the movies, of course.”
A gust of wind blew Xander’s napkin off the terrace, and they watched it flutter into the canyon like a startled dove. “I’ve gotta say, I expected more from someone whose name means ‘voyager, the one who follows the path.’”
“The path to what?” Xander asked.
Marlow tilted his head toward Tom. “Only your buddy can answer that question.”
Xander was nonplussed. “Tommy, you never told me.”
“It’s just a name,” Tom said.
“The ceremony tonight is in the Hopi village of Old Oraibi, not far from a petroglyph called Prophecy Rock,” Marlow continued. “I thought we’d swing by there first, get you guys oriented.”
“What’s a petroglyph?” Xander asked.
“It’s a series of drawings etched into the rock,” Marlow answered. “Think you guys could be ready to go in an hour? A jacket, sunglasses, and hiking shoes are all you’ll need. The Hopi and the desert will provide the rest.”
During the ride to Prophecy Rock, Marlow became more relaxed, pointing out various landmarks and talking about his upbringing as the son of a fighter jet test pilot at Warren Air Force base, near Laramie, Wyoming. The technicians on the base had taken young Travis under their wing, teaching him basic computer programming and introducing him to a network of linked computers that was being developed by the military to provide fail-safe communication in case of a nuclear attack. It was called ARPANET, short for advanced research project agency network, and it was designed to avoid sabotage or destruction by allowing messages to seek their own path from point A to point B across the global computer grid. Long before the Defense Department decided to open up ARPANET for commercial use by the public, Marlow was smitten by the notion of a digitized Internet that increased in power exponentially with each computer that joined it. To Marlow, the untracked borders of the World Wide Web were the final frontier, an untamed territory with limitless vistas to be mapped and explored.
“It didn’t take me long to figure out that computers, once they were linked together in sufficient numbers, behaved more like organisms than machines,” Marlow explained. “This turned out to be an idea that people would pay me to talk about. Before I got out, I worked as a consultant for Gates and Jobs and just about every technology company you ever heard of—and quite a few you never did … or will.”
“So why did you stop?” Xander asked.
Marlow chuckled grimly. “Well, in the beginning, cyberspace was the most interesting place in human history. The World Wide Web was untamed territory, and everybody in it had unlimited freedom. You could be anybody, do anything, and the only speed limit was your imagination—terra incognita, the final frontier. For a while, it operated as a kind of boundless, victimless Manifest Destiny. But then the settlers moved in and staked out their little plots of html, and their little plots of mind, and they furnished their cyber suburbs with all the familiar baggage. And soon enough, the cyber bordellos opened up, followed by the neon storefronts and banner ads for five cents a click, and everybody was back to the same old tricks. Like Joni said, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
“What about AI?” Xander asked, “You know, uploading our brains into the cloud, the singularity?”
For a few seconds, the only sound was the engine and the thrum of wheels on packed earth. “Maybe,” Marlow allowed, “but computers won’t be as smart as people until they’re capable of building humans who are smarter and faster than they are.”
“Wouldn’t that make them God?” Xander asked.
“Or the opposite.”
They drove for a while through forests of wind-carved hoodoos and flat-topped mesas lording over flat playas of silicon. The stark landscape was interrupted now and again by fleeting views of unadorned ranches and adobe huts. This was a vision of the West minus steam engines, strutting cowboys, or whiskey-soaked saloons. No Lone Rangers and Tontos, no Pale Riders, Tom mused. There was nothing Hollywood-esque about this reservation, and Tom wondered if the Hopi watched Westerns when they logged on to Netflix on long, lonely nights.
“What if you could find another place like the early Web,” Tom asked, “a place that was still full of open space and possibility? What if the Internet wasn’t the final frontier? What if there was another human dimension still waiting to be explored?”
Marlow peered at Tom though the rearview mirror as if to get a better look at him. “Why in the hell,” he said with a sly grin, “do you think I’m here? You see, this is the original sharing economy. And when city people are renting out their toasters and washing machines because they lost their job to a new algorithm, the eternal lessons learned in places like this will come in real handy.”
The SUV arrived at the foot of a craggy butte. They got out of the car, and Marlow led the way beyond a jumble of boulders toward a series of red-walled bluffs. They passed a cypress pine so tortured by the wind that it had coiled completely around its neighbor. “An arboreal love story or fratricide?” Marlow muttered. “Take your pick.”
He halted in front of a large stone slab inscribed with a series of interlocking drawings. At the lower left corner, a stick figure held a vertical line that forked into two secondary vectors flowing to the right. The top path was adorned by three human figures before turning into a jagged staircase that seemed to lead nowhere. The lower path was decorated with cornstalks. Three circles intersected with the lower path, and a second vertical line connected the two horizontal paths on the right.
“The Hopi believe that the world of men has been destroyed three times,” Marlow began. “We are currently in the Fourth World, which the Hopi believe is about to end.”
Marlow pointed to the human figure on the bottom line. “The great spirit presides over a thousand-year timeline and the two choices facing mankind. The top line is the path of materialism and technology. The zigzags at the end show that this path becomes unstable and ends in destruction. The other path is the path of life, which is the path of spirituality and coexistence. The Hopi believe that we still have a choice. We can take the path of greed and materialism, which will trigger the great purification and the end of our existence. Or we can reconnect with nature and pursue the path of the Great Awakening and emerge into the Fifth World.”
“How will we know when the Fifth World arrives?” Xander asked.
“According to the prophecy, the end of the Fourth World will be signaled when the Blue Star Kachina removes his mask during the ceremonial dance and reveals himself to the children. The unmasking of the Blue Star Kachina and the appearance of a blue star will signal the beginning of a time of great turmoil and transformation. The survivors will enter a new era of spiritual rebirth and global consciousness.”
Marlow glanced at the shadows elongating on the rocks. “The ceremony of elders will be starting soon. We should go.”
The old Oraibi village was a cluster of crumbling brick houses and newer shacks perched on the edge of the first three mesas that overlooked the Hopilands, a twenty-five-hundred-square-mile tribal homeland with its own government and time zone. Off in the distance, a dome of thunderheads dragged a dark veil of rain behind it. A delegation of children and dogs greeted the SUV and followed it to a compound of one-story structures on the ridge. A few minutes later, one of the villagers approached the driver’s window and spoke to Marlow in a language that Tom didn’t recognize. The man had a weathered face and was wearing jeans and a battered brown leather jacket.
The man left, and Marlow shifted in his seat to face them. “They want us to wait.”
“Wait for what?” Xander asked.
Marlow reached under his seat and extracted a bottle of tequila. “I’m not sure,” he said, taking a swig and passing it along. “But we could be here for a while, so we might as well make ourselves comfortable.” From time to time, a villager would pass near the SUV and shoot a furtive glance in their direction. The bottle was half gone when the man came back and spoke to Marlow again. After a few minutes of conversation, they solemnly shook hands, and Marlow started the engine.
“So what’s happening?” Xander asked.
“Nothing, not anymore,” Marlow replied. “The tribal council has canceled the public ceremony.”
“Why?”
“We’ve still got some tequila, don’t we?”
“Sure do.” Xander handed him the bottle, and they watched as he drank and drove with one hand on the wheel. It was getting dark when Marlow finally broke the silence.
“The tribal elders are spooked,” he said. “One of them saw the Blue Star Kachina dance in his dreams last night. They didn’t let us stay because they thought we were part of the elder’s dream.”
“We were in the elder’s dream?” Xander repeated. “How cool is that?”
Marlow shook his head. “It’s not cool,” he said. “In the elder’s dream, the Blue Kachina removed his mask during the tribal dance and the dancing stopped; the children cried because it was the sign of the reckoning, the end of the Fourth Sun and the beginning of the great purification.”
Marlow took another swig of tequila before continuing. “The elders decided to mark the vision with prayers and stories so the people would understand what has happened and to explain the visit of the brothers.”
“What brothers?”
“The Blue Kachina signals that the world we know is dying. It’s a sign that a war is coming. Columns of smoke will rise from the cities; mind will fight matter. The prophecy also says that in the final days, the Hopi will witness the return of two brothers, one from the East and one from the West. The brothers’ arrival will herald the return of the blue star. One brother will live, and one will die. That’s when the Fifth World will emerge.”
Marlow waved the bottle in their direction. “I think they were talking about the two of you. The elders think you are the two brothers from the prophesy.”
Xander craned his neck to look at Tom in the backseat. “That’s crazy shit, man. They don’t know anything about us. Besides, we’re not even brothers.”
“Not brothers of the womb, maybe,” Marlow countered, “but what about brothers of the mind and spirit, the drum and song? Which one of you is from the East?”
“We’re both from the West,” Tom replied.
Xander seemed rattled. “I was born in Maryland,” he confessed abruptly. “My folks moved to Austin when I was two. Tom, I never told you because there was no point. I mean, I’m ninety-nine percent Texan.”
Tom turned his attention back to Marlow. “Which one dies?”
Marlow chuckled and rocked in his seat, though he didn’t seem the least bit drunk. “Even if I knew,” Marlow said, his face a featureless black mask in the car, “why would I tell you?”
Nobody spoke during the rest of the ride home.
They were almost at the house when Marlow’s mood suddenly brightened. “Guys, I’m sorry if I freaked you out with those Indian fables,” he said. “The Hopi can get a little intense sometimes. The elders are storytellers. They speak to their people in metaphors. I wouldn’t take it personally.”
“So you don’t think the world’s actually going to end?” Xander asked.
“Hell if I know!”
“But that stuff about the two brothers and the elders knowing I wasn’t from Texas. How do you explain that?”
“I can’t,” Marlow said flatly, “because I’m not Hopi.”
“But you subscribe to their philosophy.”
Marlow waited for the red gate to open and drove through it before picking up the thread. “Some would say that the only real difference between guys and the opposite sex is dicks and broad shoulders, but I’m among those of us who harbor a suspicion that there’s a reason men exist beyond fucking and lifting heavy objects,” he said. “Maybe, just maybe, part of our job is to carry the burden of discerning cycles of destruction and rebirth and accepting responsibility for them. If that’s what you mean by philosophy, then I guess you can count me in.”
Marlow kept the engine running as they got out. “Look, believe whatever you want,” he said. “I personally am going to go home and spend some time with my wife and kids. Cuidense.”
Marlow’s last words kept Tom from sleeping that night. At the first inkling of dawn, he grabbed a flashlight and his jacket and hiked up the trail behind the house until he reached the rim of the canyon. He watched the sun rise through a cataract of milky periwinkle and magenta. Then he descended back to the house and searched for paper and something to write with. The light on the rocks was already fierce when Xander found him hunched over the dining table, working intently on a series of drawings and diagrams.
Xander grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and was halfway through it before curiosity got the best of him. “Okay, I give up.”
“It’s a polyhedron, in this case a three-sided pyramid made from four equilateral triangles that all meet at their vertices. The tetrahedron is one of the five Platonic solids, which are believed to have mystical healing powers and the ability to resonate and interact with other Platonic shapes across the universe. As it turns out, these shapes are repeated at the molecular level, and some believe that they can channel and amplify human brain waves.”
“Okay, thanks for the science lesson, Mr. Wizard, but is there any particular reason why you got up at dawn to draw three-sided pyramids?”
“What Marlow talked about last night, taking responsibility for our actions, I think I know a way for us to do that. Look, if you stack the pyramids at their vertices and revolve them at their central axes, they form an X.”
“So?”
“The X is a point of conversion, a crossroads, an hourglass of transformation that can be seen from three perspectives at the same time, especially if we light it up from the inside.”
“Why would we light it up? And what’s that thing that looks like a spaceship in the middle of the Xs?”
“That’s the DJ booth.”
Xander turned away and dumped the beer can into the recycling bin. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No.”
“Tom, I already told you, I’m done with live gigs!”
“Hang on, Xan. Just hear me out.”
“I’m not listening.”
“You were in the car last night. You heard about the Hopi belief that one world is ending and a new one is being born, about the two brothers who help create a new consciousness.”
“C’mon, Tommy, get a grip. It’s a religious fable.”
“How did the Hopi elder know you were from the East, something that not even I knew?”
“It doesn’t matter how,” Xander said, reaching into the fridge for another beer.
“You’re quitting what you love because you’re afraid of being blamed,” Tom said. “That just makes it look like you ran off to your desert bunker to escape your own guilt.”
“So what do you want me to do, Tom? Spin my greatest hits and save the world?”
Xander stalked out to the terrace, and Tom followed him. “Let’s do a concert, Xan, one last show, a free concert, a benefit for the victims of Governor’s Island, a demonstration against division and hate. Do it for them, do it for yourself, do it for us.”
“A free concert and a benefit,” Xander said mockingly. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“We’ll use crowd funding,” Tom persisted. “If we don’t raise a million dollars for charity and at least two million more for the concert itself, then everybody walks away, no harm done. But if the money comes, then everybody who’s there is a co-owner. It won’t be a commercial venture. We won’t make a penny of profit, if that makes you feel better.”
“Tom, this is all very noble, but raves have been outlawed in twenty-five states. You’ll never Get a permit for a gig that size.”
“Then we’ll do it in one of the other states, like New York or Pennsylvania. There are some pastures outside of Philadelphia where we could fit thirty thousand, maybe more. We’ll donate another million to the state so they’ll let us do it. We’ll even hire our own security to make sure nothing bad happens.”
Xander looked dubious, but his resistance was waning. “You crazy motherfucker—you’re actually serious, aren’t you?”
“The X will be illuminated from the inside, with the speakers embedded in the extremities,” Tom said. “We’ll drop virtual walls of water, a giant replica of your hydro-architecture, from the edges of the stage and shoot bolts of electricity and fireworks from the top. It’ll be cutting-edge sound and lighting effects. We’ll get the guys from Berlin to help us build the X.”
“X, as in X-pensive,” Xander deadpanned.
“X, as in X-istence,” Tom countered. “Dancing in the moment—forever.”
“X-isting together”—Xander hoisted his beer—“one last time!”
“Xan, that’s what we’ll call it: X-ist—and DJX marks the spot!”
“Hang on, Tommy. I need you to hear me.” Xander laid his hands on Tom’s shoulders and stared into his eyes. “I’m willing to give it a shot, but if we don’t raise four million dollars within twenty-eight days, then X-ist is off and we never talk about it again. Agreed?”
“You have my word, brother.”
Xander ran his hand over the drawings, and Tom knew he was imagining the real thing, a mighty translucent totem of communal celebration, the greatest EDM sight-and-sound system ever built, surrounded by thousands of cavorting collaborators. Xander’s finger loitered on the fifty-foot X with its revolving DJ control module.
“We should make it bigger,” he said.