ON THE ARRIVAL OF THE MACHINE AND ITS MODE OF OPERATION, by Roger Williamson

Originally published in 2003.

A guided meditation into the adventure zone

I

On this particular morning I felt perfect calm and cohesion with the universe. I took my walk along a tree lined path leading down to a park infrequently visited by the local population. In this solitude, the power zones within my body reached out with prehensile outgrowths to mesh with their counterpart selves in the larger universe outside of myself. At this moment, I and the universe functioned as one organism. We were linked by subtle girders of electromagnetic pulse waves that resonated the fabric of my being in a euphoric symphony performed by the harmony of nature’s philharmonic.

While in this state, I arrived at the lower end of the path where it opened out into a small tree enclosed area. There had once been a gate here, and although the gate itself had gone, the gnarled and rotted wooden posts still remained. As I put my arm out to lean on one of them, my hand brushed against something that felt like a piece of stiff cloth. Idly, I looked down to confirm my first impression that it was a piece of old fabric, but was sharply taken aback by the realization that it was an animal. Closer examination revealed that it was a dead bat nailed head down to the wooden post. Instinctively, I quickly lowered my hand and rubbed it against my trouser leg to remove any visible or invisible contamination.

My calm mood shaken, I gazed across the park. There was a mist that hovered several feet off the ground and parallel with it, giving the impression that the world was divided into that which was above and that which was below. Beneath, there was the vivid green grass, moist and over shadowed by the grayish tones of the mist. Through the haze, just above the tree line crowning the scene like a regent through the glazed luminosity of this mist frosted morning, the sun hovered like a dead orange thing. Traversing these two worlds, in the trees deep within the mist, crows called to their companions in invisible habitats.

As I gazed upon the apparent chaos of nature’s flora in the surrounding trees, the leaves, branches and spaces in-between began to assume terrifying zoomorphic images in combinations that ebbed and flowed in and out of each other, from image to image. Wave upon wave of original random figures rose and washed over me to challenge my reasoning faculty’s ability to comprehend them.

How long I remained in this mood, I don’t know, but what seemed like hours was probably only seconds. I was pulled out of my other worldly mood when a movement from across the park caught my eye. As I took closer note of the distraction, I observed a young woman standing alongside a small shrub. Because of the mist, she assumed the dream like astral qualities of a pre-raphalite maiden: soft, delicate and one able to cause hallucination in her beholders. From where I stood, it was difficult to be sure of her age. Her hair was dark and full, falling in curls and tendrils like vines across her shoulders. She was very tall, I deduced, probably over six feet. After registering her height, what was most striking about her was the way she was dressed, for her apparel was far removed from the usual daytime conformity of suburbia. She wore a dress that had the appearance of being manufactured from a material of fluorescent aluminum foil. It wasn’t so much that she wore the dress as it was that it was an apparition, like a holographic image, that hovered over her. It was then that I was suddenly taken aback realizing that she was the woman I had met over lunch several weeks previously in the Bell and Cannon. I wondered if she recognized me since she appeared to be keenly staring in my direction. As we continued to observe each other, she moved a hand to the back of her neck. She must have unclasped her dress, for it fell to the ground, leaving her entirely naked. Actually, now that I think about it, it wasn’t so much that it fell, it was more like it disintegrated. Taken aback by this startling action, I at first looked away out of embarrassment. Looking into the powerful tangled undergrowth, I perceived a hare observing me with erect anticipating ears. We locked eyes as though in hypnotic trance until I made a nervous movement of my head, and so, quite suddenly, the hare turned and jumped off to become an invisible component in the world of the unseen.

Hesitantly, I returned my attention to the young woman. Her body had taken on the qualities of her dress, like an apparition created to conceal something beneath. What was beneath I couldn’t determine, but I was inclined to believe it was not human, and possibly not even of this earth. The feral undulating movements of what was underneath her skin was akin to the ebbing and flowing of the primordial zoomorphic images I had witnessed earlier in the trees. As I continued to gaze upon her, the curves of her body, animated by the wild surging of what ever was within her, acted like the divine names on a medieval talisman charming the actions of my body like they would a spirit in magical evocation, and animated me into motion. I involuntarily ventured to walk in her direction, and as I did so, I discerned that her relationship to me maintained its initial distance. Therefore, as I approached the point where I had first cast eyes upon her, she had moved behind the bush and was hidden from my sight. I quickened my pace. When I arrived at the spot where I had last seen her before she became hidden by the bush, she was gone. I looked all around. Neither she nor the dress was anywhere to be seen, and I was left to wonder if she had ever existed.

I looked around the bush and then back across the park from where my walk had originated, but I couldn’t see her, or any evidence that she had ever been there.

It was then that something caught my eye lying on the ground.

It was a disk about ten inches in diameter. Picking it up, I found it to be very light and thought it to be constructed out of a cardboard like material. I assumed that the item was a mask because of a length of cord which was attached to either side. The construction however, denied the fact because of the omission of eye, nose and mouth apertures.

The outward image on the face of the mask was of a badly drawn, yet intriguing, goat’s head. The primitive execution of its scrawled, broken crayon lines was tantalizing and hypnotic. It subconsciously encouraged me to make a deeper examination beyond what the outward artistic workmanship warranted. With closer scrutiny, I discerned that the face was actually the geometric figure of the pentagram. The lowermost point was the goat’s beard, the two lower horizontal points its ears, the top two points its horns. As I casually fingered the mask, I felt drawn to turn it over and examine the inside. Here, upon a gray background, was an arrangement of circles and crescents in gold, red, blue, green, purple and yellow.

As I gazed upon the circles, they began to move and intermesh like gears in a machine. The figure took on a vampire like personality, sucking me into the heart of its being, impelling me to put the mask over my face.

II

When I emerged from the machine’s embrace, it was dark. The night sky hung heavy with an overwhelming cacophony of stars that violently impelled themselves like a raging juggernaut into my fragile consciousness. Vainly, I tried to draw coherence out of these celestial chaotic abnormalities in an effort to afford me some relationship to the cosmos. However, the nightmare of discord continued to maintain its suffocating anomaly, and the infinite possibilities offered by the stars gave no resolution to my questing cognizance.

How long I was subjected to this condition, I don’t know. I do recall, that quite unexpectedly, the sequined black colossus that was the night sky melted like gelatin in water. The denizens of another dimension, as though entering by way of a back door, moved into and melded with my mind as unknown and uninvited guests.

At first, I assumed that the gate of the other dimension was in the sky, but now having had the time to reflect on the situation, I realize that my own inner turmoil, caused by the images on the inside of the mask, was the catalyst that opened the gate, breaching time and space. For an instant, as a star gate opened, the universe was folded and a leap of unfathomable proportion was achieved.

Further examination of the experience has made me realize that I am not the person I was; I am less, and yet, I am more. The part of me that passed through the threshold is lost, but what came out through the aperture, I have gained. There has been an exchange. Some form of other dimension consciousness has been spliced, or absorbed into my own, making me a hybrid. Since this occurrence, I have been afflicted by feelings of alienation. I am sure that these sensations originate from the alien intrusion and its feeling of disassociation in my consciousness. Therefore, the grafting of this intelligence into my own has not yet been fully accomplished, and we coexist as a dual personality. When I experience feelings of anxiety, I know that the entity or substance, or what ever it might be, is communicating with me in an endeavor to align my own sense of perspective with its own. It is pushing me into unfamiliar territory. It is endeavoring to get me to think like it. What for me is anxiety, is to it frustration at my lack of enterprise and daring when confronted by original and challenging situations. It is hungry for experience, adventure and growth; for, this is what feeds it. Does this now make me the unwitting host of a species incubating in me, waiting for its time to break out and populate our dimension; or, have I been uniquely bequeathed a gift of higher intelligence that will allow me to make a leap in consciousness. Is there a difference?