Sunrise over the mountains by Simon Berger.
She was up before Mari and saw pink on the coastal cumulus clouds. She worked in the garden as her love lay snug and snoring.
Towards the end of the day Mari suggested a channeling session. Aedgar came through and they’d already been talking for an hour—covering fearsome territory—when Nerida felt compelled to ask one more thing. ‘Years ago,’ she began, ‘when we moved to a mining town to work—’
‘Yes.’ Aedgar encouraged her.
‘M’Hoq Toq said that there was a conscious virus being dug up out of the ground—‘
‘Yes.’
‘Which could cause something beyond a plague, or pestilence.’ Her voice shook.
‘Yeah. There are quite a few of them.’
Nerida repressed a sigh. She was afraid to ask. ‘So, it’s not just this one that’s been created? That was just a taste?’
‘Yeah, that’s just a tiny, tiny hint.’
Now her chest lifted in a deep, weary sigh. Outside she heard the magpies warbling. Talking about viruses—more viruses!—weighed on her.
Aedgar spoke with equanimity. ‘You understand that there’s a lot out there on the planet you live on. It was never touched before. Or it was frozen over, heated up, frozen over, heated up, dried out, to stop it. It was in places you would call ‘safe’ because no one ever went there. ‘
‘Stable.’ She thought of the geological stability of the island she lived on. Australia, before the large-scale mining and fracking.
Aedgar was on the same track: ‘Then someone discovers something. Testing for whatever that was.’ He used an oafish voice, “Oh, something magnetic out there.” And then they go for it. They dig it up. In areas where no one ever lived. And they ship it all over the world. Because it’s all about quantity. Paper with numbers on it. Prestige or power.
‘They dig up other things with it. There are—used to be—dense forests on this planet, that had their task to do. Maintaining climate, keeping things fertile, all of these things. No one ever went there.’
Nerida felt a cry inside her for the immense trees the Europeans felled when they came to Australia, to the Americas. For the burning Amazon. She thought of the forest peoples, small, sturdy and smart.
‘Some people lived there that were very well adapted,’ Aedgar said.
Survival Day Protest, January 2021. Photo courtesy Stewart Munro.
‘But then others came. Started cutting it down. Quantity. Paper with numbers on it. Prestige. Power.
‘Of course, as they move in further and further, they take things out with it that they can’t see.
‘Once they realise, they might say,”Oh, we dug something up. It’s quite bad.” Once they realise what they really dug up, because finally they have something that makes it possible for them to see or to measure it, it will be too late.
Nerida understood. M’Hoq Toq had spoken about viruses and bacteria in the deep earth. In 2013 Aedgar told her (she didn’t want to know) about a kind of noxiousness—maybe a kind of radioactivity or something like a gas—that people couldn’t measure yet. A senior Aboriginal man in the mining town they stayed at in 2013 and 14 talked about the place as ‘sickness country’ and obsessively drew skull-headed cannibal beings and thick, black poisonous snakes coming out of mine sights. He sat at the local art centre, occupying the deck between shipping container offices, like the Ancient Mariner, grabbing the attention of anyone who passed, determined to tell his story. She loved that man but was afraid of becoming that person.
‘Plenty of people have already died,’ Aedgar said, his mind still in the devastated forests, “One of the trees fell on its head.” That’s how they talk about the human, you know? It’s not always true. Maybe that person was too weak in the first place. Was not adapted to the climate. Should not have gone to this area, ever. Ended up there. Stunned by something.
‘Everybody says, “Oh yeah, he got hit by a tree.”
‘We’re sure that happens now and then,’ he conceded.
Rainforest tree stump. Photo by James Stamler.
‘But most of the time they died from something else. Are their employers going to tell the world? They’re going for power and prestige and all of that. They’re not going to tell the world. We can hear them thinking. “Some people in there died of a disease that we can’t name. We don’t know how it works. We don’t know how to deal with it.” Will they ever tell the rest of the world? Probably not.
‘But, if these things get dug up, people will find out. Sooner or later. In this case, maybe not so much later.
‘These things have consciousness. “Oh, we found the perfect host.” “Go for it.” Consciousness can mean communication. Trees communicate. So why does anyone think viruses can’t? Or bacteria for that matter?
‘There’s a whole load of bacteria out there.’ There was darkness in his voice. ‘You get in touch with that? Game over. We can tell you that.’
Nerida heard birds chirping in the trees outside. The golden light of the afternoon was intensifying.
Aedgar continued. ‘So, do humans have to go to the end of the world for greed, prestige, power? We don’t think so.
‘Do you have to go back to living in caves? Why would you?’
She felt an easing in her chest, a light of hope.
But he knitted Mari’s brow. ‘But do you think you’ll take your destruction and go to interfere with the moon because you’ve destroyed the planet you live on? Or you’re looking for other planets? Don’t. Don’t.
‘You will interfere with much more than your little brains can think of.
‘There will be things you can’t measure. You don’t know how. It’s going to hit back at you. You have no idea. You think there’s no harm there. Because you, at the current moment in time, can’t see it or you can’t measure it. Doesn’t mean it’s not there. We can promise you, it is.’
Darkly, he reassured her of Spirit’s continuing sabotage of space mining, ‘As we’ve said before, we will always make sure there’s that tiny bit missing that you would need to conquer, as you call it, other planets.
Photo from Kennedy Space Center by Brian McGowan.
‘You don’t get to mess up this planet and think, “That one’s done. I can’t get more prestige, paper with numbers or power out of it. I just go somewhere else.”
‘You are not alone in this universe.’ He paused and lightened the tone a shade. ‘Your first mistake is that you talk about it as a Universe. It’s not. Even ‘multiverse’ can’t describe it.
‘You understand.’
Nerida nodded slowly. ‘I appreciate the good work you do,’ she said. She was conscious of his presence, a being who moved worlds, who saw things on a larger scale than she could comprehend. She felt loved and respected, despite his frustration with some powerful people.
‘There will be a lot of humans out there who read or listen to our words, who will say, “That was a waste of time.”
‘All of them should be very glad that for us it’s not a waste of time, using our friend’s shell to communicate and paying attention to you all in other ways.’ Nerida thought about a bird she saw that morning, who seemed to talk to her.
‘—trying to give you little hints, information to enable you to survive. Nourish that hope. It’s out there.’
‘I understand.’ She chose her words. ‘To nourish that hope, given that the present trajectory is so frightening, and dismal, can we talk about some of the ways to cultivate our own minds?’ She was thinking, How do I stay calm with awareness of this knowledge?
‘Are you trying to get us to say all these nice things?’
‘Yes.’
‘So we can make you feel better? Even though you just look out the window and you can see it’s not?’
She laughed with cry in her voice. ‘Yes.’
‘See, there are a lot of young ones out there.’ His voice was tender now. ‘We appreciate them. These adults, some with the brain of a child, they belittle them: “These are only children. They don’t even know what they’re talking about.”
‘To the children, I can say, “You startle them, you make them think, then they feel like they have to belittle you. A lot of you young ones act out of fear of the future. Don’t act out of fear. Because you are right.
‘Don’t fear those old men and women that tell you you are “just children.”
‘Think about different solutions. Because one day you will be old enough to take over. And then you might go and stuff them into “nursing homes.” They can experience first hand what they created for the older people that did not have enough power, status or paper with numbers on it.
Children playing in Ukraine. Photo by Artem Kniaz.
‘You’re on the right track. Keep working on it. You don’t need to create mass demonstrations, putting yourself and others at risk. But keep your networking up. Listen to ideas. Try to study all these things that you need to know.
‘You’re on the right track. You are right. Those are wrong.”
‘Was that enough my dear?’
Nerida felt a glow. ‘That was beautiful. Thank you.’
‘Keep going, young ones.’ The ancient spirit said, ‘Keep networking but try to get some holidays off your devices. This is not the whole solution. Stay in touch with the person right next to you.’
The room was quiet. Out on the street, cars hummed by like waves.
‘Is there anything else, my dear?’
Nerida smiled. ‘I would like to call you wise’.
‘It’s a bit much.’ Aedgar sighed. ‘I mean, you are a human being and you’re calling us wise? Thank you, anyway.’
Nerida laughed. ‘Thank you for your wisdom. And thank you for coming and sharing it with us.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘And thank you for looking after the love of my life.’ She was grateful for the way Spirit cared for Mari’s body. The first quarter hour of the session dedicated to moving energy, flexing her body, restoring circulation in her leg, taking pain from her neck.
‘You’re welcome,’ Aedgar repeated. ‘So. I’ll be talking to you another time, then.’
‘Yes, please’.
‘Thank you, my dear.’
Over a long minute, Mari returned, blinking sleepily.
‘Hey, darling,’ Nerida said.
‘Hey.’
‘It’s dark.’
Mari peered out the window. The moon was rising behind the trees. ‘Yeah, I just realised that.’
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Salutations,
Miki Mitayn