Jennifer got up from her seat and peered past the bushes at the sidewalk in front of Open Secret.  The others heard a man's voice, then her reply: "Oh, it's okay, officer ~ my friends and I are just having a private chat."  She returned to the table and said, "It's deserted except for the guards.  So the Kirtan is still going on."

     "Really?" said Kirk.  He looked at his watch and said, "My God, we've been here barely forty minutes.  It seemed like hours ~ years ~ centuries."

     "We warned you about the altered state," said Gavin.

     "Oh, I'm not complaining," said Kirk.  "What an incredible experience!"

     "Can we talk about it more right now?" asked Jennifer.

     "Unfortunately, no," said Gavin.  "We have urgent business back in Soul Haven."

     "Okay, so when would you like to get together again?  I'd be happy to invite you to my place ~ it's right up the street."

     "That's kind of you," said Aurora, "but we were hoping you both might want to come up and visit us.  That way you could meet the rest of the family, and see in person what you already scoped out from above through the viewer."

     Jennifer sucked in a fearful breath.  Kirk saw her distress and said, "I'd honestly love to do that, but we both have, er, trepidations about going to Sonoma County."

     "That's perfectly understandable," said Gavin, "it's hazardous turf up our way.  But of course we'll send you an escort, like we do for our other friends who visit us from the Green Zone."

     "Oh," said Jennifer, "that sounds good!"

     "We have a set protocol," said Gavin.  He took a card from his wallet and handed it to Kirk.  "This is an official U.S. Government pass to visit friends or relatives in Sonoma County.  It's not legally required, but it makes things a lot easier at the Marin checkpoint.  Then you can just pull into the secure parking lot on the Sonoma side, and our folks will be there waiting for you.  You'll have the option to leave your car there and ride with them, or drive in convoy with their vehicle ~ or possibly two vehicles, depending on the day's scouting reports of what might be going on in the vicinity."

     "It still sounds kind of scary," said Jennifer, "but I'm willing to go for it."

     "Hurray!" said Aurora. "I can hardly wait to have you there and show you around an' everything.  There's some folks there I just know you're gonna love."

     This effusive response reminded Jennifer of her nascent feelings for Gavin, which she was not able to sort out on the spot.  She wished she could be alone with him just for a couple of minutes.  She glanced at him and found herself in eye contact.  He said, "There's another security measure we can take, but it's strictly for last-ditch emergency situations.  Would you be interested in something like that?"

     "Wow, I sure would!"

     "Okay.  Do you have a smart phone?"  

      "Yes," she said, and took it out of her purse. 

     "I can give you an app," said Gavin, "which will enable you to signal for help.  The caveat is that it activates such a dire protocol that there are always consequences from its use ~ not for you, necessarily, but for us."

     "Sounds heavy," said Kirk.  "Are you sure it's a good idea?"

     "As long as you and Jennifer understand this aspect of it, and hold it in reserve only for possible life-or-death circumstances, it'll be well within the Dharma.  But nothing like that will arise in our usual procedure of meeting and escorting people from the checkpoint.  It's only a hedge against the most unlikely probabilities."

     "And to make me feel better," said Jen.  "Right?"

     Gavin gave her a heart-warming smile and said, "Of course."

     "I accept," she said, "and I really appreciate your concern and willingness to do this.  Can we download the app online?"

     "No.  I'll have to upload it to your phone from a special device, which by good luck I brought with me.  It's in our truck, parked right around the corner.  Would you like to stroll over there with me?" 

     "Why, sure!" she said.  Then suddenly she realized that this whole conversation had occurred after she had felt an urge to be alone with Gavin.  Gee, it's almost like he read my mind, she thought.

2. Behold the Man

     Gavin and Jennifer stepped from the alcove and found that this time there was a smattering of people in front of Open Secret.  They walked over and saw that the double door was wide open, though the metal detector was still set up.  They could hear chanting from inside ~ Kirtan was still in progress.  "Gee, it's going on a long time," said Jen.

     A woman said to her, "Kalianna had to take a break after the Q&A ~ she was gone over half an hour."

     Jennifer thanked her, then said to Gavin: "That explains it ~ she was offstage longer than she expected."  The chanting suddenly got louder, an occurrence Jen recognized from her past participation in it ~ everyone was getting swept up into ecstatic egoloss.  She could feel it from here, sweet tendrils of joy, the Kali Loka beckoning her, the surrounding space brightening with ethereal light.

     She felt a tap on her arm, and the ambience vanished ~ she was standing on a dark street next to Gavin.  "Oops," she said, "I guess I was getting into the Kirtan."

     "Perhaps you'd like to go inside," he said.

     "You mean with you?"

     "No.  As I said, Aurora and I have to be getting on home."

     "Yes, of course.  What was I thinking?  Let's go to your truck ~ I'm sorry to be delaying things."

     "It's okay," he said with a smile; "it's back that way."  They went past the alcove again, and Jennifer noticed that Kirk and Aurora were absorbed in a lively conversation.  They continued down the block and turned onto Third Street, which looked empty and foreboding to Jennifer.  Gavin put his arm through hers, saying, "Is this okay?"

     "Yes, by all means!" she said.  Now as they walked she felt enveloped by a positive radiance ~ in fact she could see traces of color in Gavin's aura, each hue with a distinct feeling-tone.  Yow, she thought, one touch of this dude and I'm getting psychic again!

     "Here we are," said Gavin.  His "truck" turned out to be a huge SUV.  Jen could see that it was armored, though the plates were contoured over the body and covered with an elegantly detailed paint job.  As he manually unlocked the passenger door, she noticed three men hanging out a short ways up the street, and caught a pungent whiff of some substance she could not identify.  The men were looking at them, and talking in muffled voices.  Gavin saw them as he opened the door.  He took a deep breath and focused his eyes upward, then exhaled.  With the next breath he drew himself up and thrust out his shoulders.  This caused a sphere of light to emanate from his body and expand.  The nimbus spread down the street, and when it encompassed the men they seemed to freeze wide-eyed, like deer in headlights.  The next moment they began to back away, then turned around and walked swiftly in the opposite direction.  One of them stumbled slightly as they turned the corner and disappeared.  The light gradually faded out.

     "Wow," said Jennifer, "I can see that nobody messes with you!"  He lifted his eyebrows in an amused questioning look, as if he couldn't imagine what she was talking about.  He gestured toward the passenger seat, but suddenly seemed to be taken aback.  Something new flamed in his eyes.  She didn't recognize what it was until he looked her up and down, slowly and intently.

     She felt abashed and ravished, naked and exposed; she felt as if a blush had gone down her entire body along the path of his glance.  And for the first time in her life, she reflexively tried to cover herself from a man's gaze.  In the tangled uprush flooding her mind, one absurd thought rose to the surface: My God, how did I suddenly get so modest?

     "You're very beautiful," said Gavin.

     How many times had she heard these words from a man?  It seemed like a thousand times, a million times.  But now she was stupefied to realize that she didn't know what to say in response.  Replies she had made in the past cascaded through her mind: "Yes, I know."  "How nice of you to notice."  "You're pretty good-lookin' yourself, dude."  "Yep, and I'm hot to trot ~ how about you?"  "Yep, but it's not gonna do any good for the likes of you."  "Flake off, creep!"  And many was the time she had replied with deathly silence or a haughty stare.

     At last she grasped that not a single item in her repertoire fit this incredible moment.  She released her grip on something deep in her viscera, then lowered her eyes and said in a soft voice: "Thank you."  And she felt herself blushing again.

     Gavin said, "I wonder if you feel a mutual attraction for me?"

     Again she was speechless.  It seemed that he could read her so well, perhaps her very thoughts and certainly her feelings ~ she felt like an open book to him.  Surely he sensed her desire for him, yet he insisted on a verbal response that seemed redundant and foolish.  Feeling as if she were trapped in a play and had to act the part, she stammered: "Y-y-yes, I do."

     She nervously closed her eyes, expecting him to make a move ~ to touch her, to caress her, to initiate something.  Nothing happened.  She opened her eyes and saw him standing before her with open arms ~ not wide open, but at a downward angle.  He was looking at her with endearment, with luscious invitation, but evidently he wanted her to take the first step, to come into his arms of her own accord.  Of my own free will, she thought almost ruefully.  Even his inviting gesture was ambivalent ~ he could be just silently saying "look at me".  There popped into her mind a saying she had read somewhere, perhaps in college: "Behold the man."  She couldn't remember the text in which this statement had appeared ~ was it ancient history?  It also seemed important to place the man of whom it was said: her mind raced madly trying to remember, but in vain.

     It became pellucidly clear to her heightened senses that Gavin was radiating a force of erotic attraction, belying his stolid stubborness ~ he truly wanted her to come into his arms.  Yet she had to be the one to take the step.  She felt herself on the edge of a precipice: despite the intensity of her own desire, she had the power to say no, to step back, to decline.  But in the pith of her marrow she knew with absolute certainty that once she had entered his embrace, there would be no turning back.

3. The Art of Love

     After Gavin and Jennifer left the table in the little alcove, Kirk looked at Aurora and went through an inner somersault at realizing that he was now alone with this incredibly attractive young woman.  His moment of groping uncertainty was instantly alleviated by her bright, warm smile.  She said, "Did you get grounded okay from all that pellucid viewing?  I mean, it's kind of like a roller coaster ride in the metasphere." 

     Kirk relaxed from whatever residual tension he might've felt, and said, "Oh yeah, I feel fine.  How about you?"

     "Well, I'm used to it.  I've done it a lot, even sometimes without a viewer."

     "What, you mean you actually fly in the metasphere somehow?  Like. . . like astral projection?"

     Her laugh was so ingenuous that Kirk felt enchanted.  She said, "That's the classic term for it."

     "Wow.  Is it hard to learn to do that?"

     "I have good teachers."

     Kirk was feeling a little out of his depth in this arcane subject-matter.  He said, "This Thule place where you live sounds more and more amazing.  What do you do there yourself?"

     "Oh, lots of stuff.  I'm always busy, like everybody else.  Sometimes it's hard to keep up, but we always find time to unwind together, and then it really gets good."

     "Sounds cool.  But I meant, like, what do you do in particular ~ do you have a job or career?"

     "Yes.  I practice the art of love."

     For a moment Kirk's mind could make no sense of what he had just heard.  When the meaning dawned and the implications unfolded, he was too flabbergasted to say anything but "Really?"

     She must've sensed his perplexity because she said, "For us it's a completely honorable profession, like a doctor, for instance.  And in fact it involves a lot of deep healing and therapy."

     "I see," said Kirk, still at a loss for words. But he could almost recall something that seemed to fit the description she had given, something obscure, perhaps from classical studies.  And then he had it.  "So you're like... a hetaera?"

     "Wow," she said, her features breaking out in sheer delight, "that's so cool that you know one of the words for it!  Hardly anybody does out here in the Matrix.  Usually they only know the dirty words.  But yes, the hetaerae were the love-priestesses of ancient Greece."

     Kirk felt almost heroic, but he was still cautious.  He said, "And is that actually the word you use for it?"

     "Only occasionally.  Mostly we use the Hindu word Shakti."

     "Ah ~ I think I've heard that from Jen.  A little while ago she was talking about Shaktipat."

     "Yes, a good Shakti can always give her lovers Shaktipat.  It's a divine service, which the word conveys ~ Shakti is the wife of the God Shiva, and in some branches of Hinduism she's the first and most primordial Goddess, who co-created the world with her husband."

     "I didn't know that," said Kirk.  "So, um, how did you get into being a Shakti?"

     "I was born into it, like most true Shaktis.  The requirements have a big genetic component ~ or metagenetic, as we say, because we know that the genes simply imprint the dharma of the soul."

     "Yow, this is kind of mind-blowing.  What do you have to be born with in order to become a Shakti?"

     "It's pretty specific: a strong combination of Vril, which I mentioned before, and yin."

     "Huh!  It's almost starting to make sense to me, even though it's like a whole new language.  So you have to be a highly-charged gal who is very feminine, and. . . um. . . ."

     "Erotically inclined."

     "Right, that's what I was thinking, I just wasn't sure how to put it."

     "That's very good ~ you got it, you worked it all out!"  After a pause she said, "How about you ~ what do you do?"

     "Oh, just the most humdrum, ordinary job on Earth ~ an IT engineer."

     "Sounds like you're not happy with it."

     "It would be okay if it weren't for all the rest of the crap going on in the world, like the breakdown of civilization, of which we just got a Godseye view, and. . . well. . . ."

     "Are you in a relationship?  I thought maybe you and Jennifer were, but you spoke of it in the past tense."

     "You're very attentive."

     "It's part of my spiritual discipline ~ and my art."

     Kirk digested this for a moment, and became more attentive himself.  He drank in Aurora's presence and appearance, letting the impressions sink in.  She was auburn-blonde and rosy-cheeked with full lips and no apparent make-up.  Her twinkling eyes were green as the sea and twice as deep.  She had generous breasts modestly displayed in a loose patterned blouse; she had a knee-length skirt, flat shoes, and bare legs.  His mindful attention rewarded him with an erotic rush, and the first tingle of an erection.  "No, I'm not in a relationship," he said.

     "Would you like to be?  I mean, is that part of the reason why you're unhappy?"

     Whoa!, he thought, this gal doesn't beat around the bush!  "Well, um, yeah ~ but why are you asking?"

     "Things are crazy-bad in the Matrix for everybody, but especially so for men.  Most guys don't even realize how unnatural the relationship between the sexes has become.  I'll bet if you spent some time with us in Thule it would open your eyes and maybe give you a fresh approach to love and sexual relating."

     Kirk was bewildered.  He said, "I guess you're right about the first part, because I hardly even know what you're talking about.  Well, I've studied history, so I know a little about how it used to be, but it doesn't seem like it was very good for anyone, men or women."

     "In Thule we don't live in the past," she said, "and are not resurrecting the old version of sexual pathology ~ but we've liberated ourselves from the new version, which is even worse."

     "All right, you've got me really curious, and I'm looking forward to visiting your place."

     "Would you like to get a little preview?"

     "Sure ~ what have you got in mind?"

     She slid her chair next to his, put her hands on his shoulders, and looked into his eyes.  He was pleasantly astonished, and there could be no mistaking what he saw in her soulful gaze.  He instinctively reached out and caressed her, and felt as if an electrical circuit had closed ~ his whole body was awash in erotic sensation.  She responded fluidly, and they hugged and nuzzled.  The next moment his mouth was on hers, and they kissed.

4. The Microcosmic Orbit

     Gavin stood before Jennifer with open arms, barely a step away.  She discovered in herself an unwavering will to take that step, and did.  She felt it to be a footfall onto the far turf of a different world, and another absurd thought crossed her mind: One small step for a woman, one giant leap for womankind.  And then she was in his arms.

     He embraced her, and she felt like she was being enfolded by God or Leviathan, a man of steel with a delicate touch, an iron vise nicely padded with feather-down.  Her own arms closed around him of their own accord, and traveled up and down his torso, worming their way under his shirt and gliding around to his chest.  She tried to kiss his lips but he turned them away, so she sucked on his cheeks and neck and earlobes like a baby at the breast, drinking a mysterious substance that thrilled her like nectar or amaranth.

     She felt his hands stroking her back like a harpsichord, each new touch eliciting distinct notes of delight.  With his left hand he took hold of her hair at the nape of her neck and pulled her head back slightly, forcing her to look up into his eyes.  With his right hand he grabbed hold of a mound of her left nether cheek, gripping it firmly through the thin designer denim.  With both arms he held her tight against him; she felt seamlessly bound like a bug wrapped by a spider in its webbing, utterly helpless, at his mercy.

     She felt a finger press turgidly upon the base of her spine, and now at last he brought his lips to hers.  The first flickering kisses were exquisite, like a butterfly stroking her rose petals.  Then his tongue penetrated her mouth like a plug into a socket, sending currents of ecstasy rippling into her and cascading down through her body.  Her own tongue played with his, twining around and snuggling together, generating incredible pleasure.