The Quiet Before the Storm

Thumbnail photo ‘Heading Home Before the Storm’ by Juliane Liebermann.

Nerida and Mari were in quarantine after they travelled from an Australian state where the virus had a higher incidence, to another with stringent restrictions. Nerida, as a doctor, was an essential worker.

When Mari decided to channel, M’Hoq Toq came. They discussed COVID-19 restrictions.

‘So, do we need to keep our distance from each other for a long time?’ Nerida asked. She was an affectionate person and missed having easy physical contact with others, including her patients. Without Mari’s solid companionship, she might have died, she felt.
M’Hoq Toq’s tone was deep. ‘It would be advisable. But the ones that have only one thing in their minds: how to ‘prosper’ in the wrong way—‘
‘Yes.’
‘—they are eventually going to tell you that it’s all fine.’
‘They’re doing it already,’ she agreed.
‘It is not.’ He spoke with finality. ‘We would think—we are not very good with time—but some time from now it will go dormant. Not completely, but mostly. That’s why we said it’s the quiet before the storm here.
‘Others are still in it: the first little storm.’
She thought of poor bloody America and England. How could he speak that way? ‘There’s much worse coming?’ she asked.
‘Yeah. It could be worse, what’s coming,’ he said.

Poignant burial of deceased COVID-19 victim, Ukraine. Photo by Mstyslav Chernov.

Her chest felt tight and her throat dried.
He continued, ‘We think it’s still about the state of humanity— those who want to go back to where they came from.’
‘Ah. You mean they want nothing but to go back to the way everything was before the virus?’
He made a brief nod. ‘Once that’s changing people could see improvement in many places on this planet,’ he said.
She was processing the idea that changing minds and thoughts would change reality. We have to let go of wanting things to go back to the way they were. It wasn’t good enough, she reflected.
He was sombre. ‘But for now, they decide not to look at the improvements. They look at other things.’
‘So many things have got better.’ Nerida rallied. She thought of the view of northern China from space she’d seen after the first ten days of lock-down there. ‘The air is cleaner, the seas are quieter.’ She hoped the whales had felt some relief from the 24-7 noise of ocean traffic.

Reduction in Nitrogen Dioxide emissions over Northern China during COVID shutdown. NASA images via CNN.

M’Hoq Toq was stern. ‘This is not what is wanted to be put out in this world. You understand?’
She didn’t understand.
‘You will lose control. You start talking about all the good developments and all the good things that come out of this situation, you’re going to lose your grip on power. So you show the world nothing but bad things.’
‘Ah.’ He’s talking about the ruling classes again, she thought.
‘And it will be constant, everywhere, for a long time,’ he went on. ‘It has been already. They will always find that point, that area where it is the worst. They want you to be afraid of what’s coming.
‘They’re telling you: they are the ones keeping you safe, taking care of you. And they have everything under control.’
He took a breath. ‘It has always been like that.’
‘Yes.’
‘There will be a lot of blame being pushed back and forth.’
She was seeing that, an escalating ideological war building on the trade war between the American bourgeoisie and the Chinese oligarchs.
‘But it’s not the right ones, where it’s being pushed back and forth.’ He paused, looking, then said intensely, ‘Someone else is sitting in a corner giggling while others fight.’
Nerida was very quiet. Is he going to name them? The ones who created the virus?
M’Hoq Toq went on, ‘Many say ‘Attack is the best defence.’ So they attack each other. They are afraid of each other. They wanna take advantage of the pandemic.’

Assyrian relief of an attack on a town, created about 730 BCE. Photo by Mary Harrsch.

He shrugged Mari’s shoulders in a tiny philosophical gesture. ‘Everybody wants to take advantage of something. Somehow, of course, they know that they all think the same way. So where’s it gonna start? Where will it end if everybody wants the advantage?
She saw that. Competition between the nations’ rulers is like a pair of dogs snapping at any part of each other, and chasing their own tails.
He moved Mari’s hands gracefully, making slits in the air. ‘And if I want an advantage and you want an advantage, we are attacking each other just a bit more. While someone else is doing things quietly.’
‘Mhmm.’ Nerida murmured.

She was not ready to ask directly who that someone was. There was a pregnant silence. She asked, ‘Are they releasing more of that disease in the world or have they stopped?’
M’Hoq Toq had a look inside. When he spoke he maintained his lofty air. ‘We would say there has been another incident not that long ago. They might do it again. At the moment they are kinda scared. They’re still watching from a distance. Because the virus was not conveyed to the areas where they wanted it to go.’

Nerida puzzled. The biological weapon is in places the criminals did not intend it to go?
‘Those people don’t get around very much,’ he explained. ‘So, they didn’t quite understand how far and how quickly it could be taken to other places. They had some idea but they did not get the full picture.’
Nerida imagined the virus spreading out of airports, out of ships. ‘Yes. Do they have any conscience about how many people have died?’
‘They don’t care,’ he replied. ‘They are a little bit scared that someone might find out. That’s all.
‘They don’t care.’
She felt him go to that dark place where he looked into the consciousness of crooks.
‘They think that the rest of the world doesn’t care what happens to them,’ M’Hoq Toq said. ‘So why should they care for the rest of the world?’
‘But even their own people are going to get hurt,’ she protested.
‘Yes.’
‘They don’t care about their own people either?’ Her eyes flashed.
M’Hoq Toq sighed. ‘Somehow, they do. But somehow they’re kept in a different state of mind.’
Nerida was at a loss. ‘They think they’re not part of this planet with the rest of us?’
‘They feel excluded,’ he told her. ‘They have been going hungry for decades.’
‘Yes.’ Through his energy, she felt the ache of prolonged deprivation and suffering. Must be hard even for a spirit to look at.
‘The world did not care,’ he said. ‘People had an idea? They got killed. The world didn’t care. You understand?’
‘I do.’ So it is a place of starvation and repression of independent minds, she thought, feeling compassion for the people.
‘So why should they care for anyone else? They’ve been trained into the mindset, of the survival of the fittest. You understand? That’s how they think of their own people, too.’
‘That’s how starving people think,’ she concluded.
‘Yes.’

Hungry wolves surrounding a traveller. From White Fang by Jack London, Charles Livingston Bruce [Public Domain].

The refrigerator compressor intruded into the silence. Glass bowls with tomatoes, avocados, bananas and apples were on the counter beside Mari’s form, relaxed and poised, M’Hoq Toq’s vehicle. The pantry had bags of rice, chia seeds and quinoa. There was meat in the fridge.
M’Hoq Toq said, ‘They think people who are not able to produce or fight if they have to, don’t deserve the food. They eat the food that someone else could eat—someone more productive. Do you understand?’
Nerida nodded, ‘I do.’ She envisioned a Spartan society of soldiers and toilers. It was enough. She was not ready to ask for more specific detail. The knowledge she already had weighed on her.

So she nudged him a little then, asking ’Is there anything else that you’d like to tell our readers about this situation at the moment?’
‘This is not the end of the world,’ he said warmly. She felt his broad, loving perspective in her forehead and chest. She took a deep breath, reaching for her water bottle.

Photo by Clay Banks, North Carolina, USA early 2020.

‘There is hope,’ he said. ‘There is always hope, otherwise, we would not come to talk to you.
‘We just try to give you little ideas: a little bit of turning your heads so you can look in a slightly different direction.’ He extended Mari’s hands, describing a five- or ten-degree branch from a narrow road.
‘You need to understand that most of the time the things you see are the results of something else. People say ‘seeing is believing’. That’s wrong.
‘Because you see what you want to see, or what you are meant to see, to make you believe that it’s true what you see.
‘Yes.’ Nerida said, He’s talking about the narrowness and manipulation of our news services, she thought.
‘This is the bigger picture,’ he said, opening Mari’s hands out as if there was a broad vista before them. ‘So, open your eyes. Try to see the real cause of things.’
‘The seeds, so to speak,’ she suggested.
‘Yes.’
‘The roots.’
‘Yes.’
She thought briefly of hungry people and roots: mountains of sweet potatoes and yams. ‘I like that,’ she said.

Roots and seeds. Photo form Jakarta by Eka Sariwati.

This is an extract from the first novel in the Aedgar Wisdom series, The Conscious Virus. If you would like to know when it's coming out, please join our email list.