Ghostwritten Read Free Page B

my inner eyes. Tourists from the mainland toured the souvenir shops, buying boxes of tat that nobody ever really wants. The usual foreigners selling watches and cheap jewelry on the pavements, without licenses. I walked through the games arcades where the poisoned children congregate after school, gazing at screens where evil cyborgs, phantoms, and zombies do battle. The same shops as anywhere else … Burger King, Benetton, Nike … High streets are becoming the same all over the world, I suppose. I walked through backstreets, where housewives put out futons to air, living the same year sixty times. I watched a potter with a pocked face, bent over a wheel. A dying man, coughingwithout removing his cigarette, repaired a child’s tricycle on a bottom step. A woman without any teeth put fresh flowers in a vase beneath a family shrine. I went to the old Ryukyu palace one afternoon. There were drinks machines in the courtyard, and a shop called The Holy Swordsman that sold nothing but key rings and camera film. The ancient ramparts were swarming with high school kids from Tokyo. The boys look like girls, with long hair and pierced ears and plucked eyebrows. The girls laugh like spider monkeys into their pocket phones. Hate them and you have to hate the world, Quasar.
    Very well, Quasar. Let us hate the world.
    The only peaceful place in Naha was the port. I watched boats, islanders, tourists, and mighty cargo ships. I’ve always enjoyed the sea. My biological uncle used to take me to the harbor at Yokohama. We used to take a pocket atlas to look up the ships’ ports and countries of origin.
    Of course, that was a lifetime ago. Before my true father called me home.
    Coming out of an alpha trance one day after my noon cleansing, a spoked shadow congealed into a spider. I was going to flush it down the toilet when, to my amazement, it transmitted an alpha message! Of course, His Serendipity was using it to speak with me. The Guru has an impish sense of humor.
    “Courage, Quasar, my chosen. Courage, and strength. This is your destiny.”
    I knelt before the spider. “I knew You wouldn’t forget me, Lord,” I answered, and let the spider wander over my body. Then I put him in a little jar. I resolved to buy some flypaper to catch flies, so I could feed my little brother. We are both His Serendipity’s messengers.
    Speculation about the “doomsday cult” continues. How it annoys me! The Fellowship stands for life, not for doom. The Fellowship is not a “cult.” Cults enslave. The Fellowship liberates. Leaders of cults are fork-tongued swindlers with private harems of whores and fleets of Rolls-Royces behind the stage set. I have been privileged to glimpse life in the Guru’s inner circle—not one girl insight! His Serendipity is free of the sticky web of sex. His Serendipity’s wife was chosen merely to bear His children. The younger sons of Cabinet members and favored disciples are permitted to attend to the Guru’s modest domestic needs. These fortunates are clad only in meditation loincloths so they are ready to assume
çaçen
alpha positioning whenever the Master condescends to bestow his blessing. And in the whole of Sanctuary there are only three Cadillacs—His Serendipity well knows when to exorcise the demons of materialism that possess the unclean, and when to exploit this obsession as a Trojan Horse, to penetrate the mire of the world outside.
    To deflect suspicion from the Fellowship, His Serendipity allowed some journalists into Sanctuary to film brothers and sisters during alpha enrichment. Our chemical facilities were also inspected. The minister of science explained that we were making fertilizer. Being vegetarians, he joked, the Fellowship needs to grow a lot of cucumbers! I recognized my brothers and sisters. They gave telepathic messages of encouragement to their brother Quasar through their screen images. I laughed aloud. The unclean TV news hyenas were trying to incriminate the Fellowship, not