Virtual Eternity (the Serialized Novel) Episode 40 - The Iowa Commune

This is Episode 40 of the serialized version of the novel, Virtual Eternity: An Epic 90s Retro Florida Techo-Pro-Life Love Story and Conversion Journey. These 52 episodes are presented here free for you every Friday. You can buy the paperback version from Mike Church’s Crusade Channel Store or at  Amazon.

Or you can start reading at the Table of Contents: here

Chapter 3: Power over the World - By Knowledge

The Iowa Commune

In which Jonathan’s new conviction about CREATIVE PURPOSE is challenged by the modern temptation to wield human-centered knowledge about how the world works and why, which allows us to easily overcome our unrelenting fear of things not succeeding as we wish

For four more days, I drove in to the short fenced-in building, through sliding snowy roads and flakes smearing up my windshield.

I leaned back in the chair in another cubicle, a thousand-plus miles away from my first cubicle, again with little work to do. Here I was not disturbed by anyone. No idle chatter of workers hindered me. I slept. I searched through file systems for information on the games and The Shroud and 986 chips. Nothing.

Nearly all the other desks were unoccupied. Most people performed their work in labs full of wires, chips, and screens. Also, half of the workers who inhabited the empty desks had been fired last fall. Vincula severed them from its teats to recover the tremendous costs of developing Magic Theater, to which the fired researchers had contributed.

Maureen and I spoke twice. Pain laced her voice when she mentioned the option of selling the grove for real estate.

I called Mason about the upcoming Saturday meeting. She scolded me that the meeting was actually set for the following Saturday.

On Friday evening, at 5 pm, when no one else at the facility had left yet, I began my drive south to the utopian commune in Iowa.

The third blizzard in three weeks hampered my drive. A hundred miles outside one of the cities, I stopped for a meal. In a tiny diner, four people bundled in down-jackets bent over the counter. Their stares toward me were direct and stupid. I sat in a booth. Waitresses ignored me. Eventually, I placed an order. At least one of those people always glared at me during my entire rushed dinner.

Finding lodging proved more difficult. I inquired at five motels at two different highway exits. Neon signs in front of all five stated that they had vacancy, but none answered my knocks. At the third exit, I found another. The lady who tended the counter questioned my motives for passing through their part of the highway. She gave me keys to one of her rooms, which I found unlocked and dirtied. Exhaustion overcame my disgust, and I slept.

The next morning, I continued to direct my car southward. I longed to turn north to Curcio. I sped past several cars. Nearly all the occupants scowled at me, as if I was an invader of their peace and misery.

Their faces resembled those to whom I had preached at the trade show. They had entered the Place in gloom, then I had cheered them and elevated them. Their eyes dilated, and they smiled. But the ones I saw leaving the Place always returned to their malaise.

Maybe the utopian’s farm was occupied by lively humans instead of zombies. More likely, I would need to find Curcio to meet someone here with moral feeling.

In the late afternoon, I turned the car off the main highway. I slid down several empty two-lane roads, then down two tractor roads. At the end of the last road stood a two-story house. The fields of the commune were barren, except for snow, and a few stripped trees and brown rabbits. I checked and re-checked my directions. I had not seen a single man or woman in three hours. No one stirred inside the house when I slammed my car door. The silent gray solitude of this place unnerved me. But had I not wanted to be alone with my reflections? Or had I only wanted to flee the cubicles, the scientists, and their secret knowledge?

“Mr. Hannah?” a voice said as I neared the door.

“Hello? Where are you?”

The door opened. Fourteen faces looked out at me. Blankets enveloped them all. Woolen hats wrapped their heads. Their faces were drawn and bony.

“Hey man, we’re glad you could come,” said the voice of the bearded utopian. His head urged its way into view. “Welcome to our village.”

“Village? It looks more like a concentration camp.” None of the idealists laughed, but neither did they protest.

“Come in,” one of the women said as her words formed puffs of fog. “Why? It feels warmer outside.” I entered. They sat on wooden stools. Wind seeped in through any opening in the porous house and re-formed into a frozen squall inside.

“Join our circle, Jonathan,” the utopian said. “Let me apologize. We don’t have any heat. We’ve refused to cut down trees for fire. Our natural gas furnaces have been cut off since last month.”

“Why?”

“We couldn’t meet our bills,” one said. “They still require money in this society. We’re determined to survive, however. If only the fusion sources would be developed. Or the solar cells.”

“My company requires money also. Didn’t you say you’d buy my equipment? And no one will put down cable outside without payment.”

“We’ll buy. I’m afraid we can’t use money, though. What we’ll use is worth more.”

“I’m sure it is, but my company would disagree.”

“Jonathan, listen to him,” the woman next to me said as she grabbed my arm. “Please. We need you.”

“I’m starting to sense that you dislike our lifestyle,” the utopian said.

“Somehow, it seems you disagree with our methods. Do you wonder how I know that?”

“Maybe because I’m getting up to leave?”

“No, no. Please, sit down. We’ve disabled your car anyway, man.”

“You what?”

“Yes, but you still wish to leave. Do you wonder how I know that?”

“Maybe because I’m opening the door to leave?”

“Don’t bother, Mr. Hannah. You’d freeze. Anyway, I know it because I can see your energy field. For example, I noticed immediately that you were sexually attracted to the stewardess on our flight from the south.”

“Who wasn’t? Her blouse opened a bit too far.”

“I also noticed your attraction to Mira here.” He nodded to the short woman hidden beneath three blankets and a stocking cap. Her eyes and nose peeked out.

“Because I thought she might be your method of payment. But I can hardly see her.”

“Unconsciously, you emitted energy toward her. This is critical, man. You’re fondling her with your mind. This is all foreseen by that wise Aztec in ‘The Parchment.’ He said we’d stop sacrificing people to the gods, then seven hundred years later, we’d be able to discern one another’s energies. We’d also learn not to compete with one another for these matterless energies. We’d find the spirit in another source: the technology you bring us.”

Several of them managed to smile. “Ah yes, that Thirty-Eighth

Discernment,’” one said.

“Yeah, man. You bring us that technology, and we’ll pay you with what you actually need.”

“A sandwich?”

“Knowledge, of how to view and shape your view of the physical world,” the utopian said.

“We will teach you what ‘The Parchment’ has talked about,” Mira said between chattering teeth. “We await the day when the world economic system will be vastly simplified. We trust ‘The Parchment’s’ predictions as stated in the ‘Ninth through the Thirteenth Discernments.’ It says that soon all our material needs will be accommodated. In fact, according to our calculations, it should’ve happened two years ago. A discerning astronomer is re-estimating this. When this happens, technology will automate everything.”

“So machines will devise faster computer chips,” I said. “Robots will plan new solar-powered cars. Mechanical arms will correct toothaches. Automation will analyze the neurotic and abused. That could happen.”

The utopian looked at me intensely. “Um, right. No one will need to work, but no one will be lazy or hedonistic either. I told my former boss to cut down on my labor hours according to ‘The Parchment,’ and he did. He freed me to work wherever I wanted, so I searched for the final ‘Discernment.’ Not an easy task.”

The shivering people around him nodded as he spoke. The man had somehow learned charisma, but his skills fell far behind Xavier’s, of course. The utopian led with duplicities he actually believed.

“Most people today don’t spend their leisure time lounging about,” I said facetiously. “No one can consider playing Magic Theater games laziness.”

“Terrific, man,” the utopian said, shaking a fist. “You do understand ‘The Parchment.’ You see, soon, people will be paid for their insights. You’ll pay us for helping you see spirit fields. You’ll pay with your technology.”

“That’ll certainly be worth tens of thousands of dollars of equipment,” I said with more lost sarcasm. “Could you throw in a sandwich? Actually, you should impress a solar cell manufacturer with your skills instead.”

“This all follows from ‘The Nineteenth Discernment,’” the utopian said.

“No, ‘The Nineteenth’ decrees us to eat organically-grown vegetables and chew them well,” Mira said. “It is the ‘Twenty-third’ you speak of.”

“Oh yes. Thank you for that tidbit of knowledge, Mira. I owe you an ear of corn. Jonathan, soon everyone will be paid according to his need. Everyone will pay according to his ability.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“Yes, ‘The Parchment’ correctly prophesied those words would be stated in the Bill of Rights. Our nation has not met that promise in these 220 years. But soon, humankind will overcome its fear of scarcity. Everyone will do as they feel they’re directed, not for survival, but for increasing their discernment. They’ll follow their intuitions. Since we’re all one with nature, and nature is by definition good, we accord with nature by doing whatever we want.”

“I shouldn’t worry about the shortage of sandwiches here?”

“Right,” the utopian said. “We’ll trade wisdom for what we need. Those who have the most money obviously need the most insights. Those who have the most insights will need the most material goods. It’s a balance. Everyone will have equal happiness and equal material fulfillment. It’s a perfect ‘we-topia.’ We do not need to be good or to attempt to be good. If only communism had worked!”

“Certainly those with money and without insight will be happy to listen to your words of wisdom.” My scoffing was again lost on them. “Can’t you see that there’ll always be trade for real goods, and salesmen? People will need to market the ideas they’re selling. Also, if everyone one day has your immense wisdom, who’ll need insight? And who’ll have the material goods to pay you for this wisdom they no longer need?”

The utopian again looked at me intensely. “You still don’t understand, do you?”

“Do you?” I answered. “This is a bit flawed for a utopia.”

The blue-faced utopians looked at one another. One shrugged.

“We still have the young to teach!” one shouted.

“I’m sure they’ll reward you with barns full of vegetables.”

“Jonathan, we won’t need that many vegetables anyway. We won’t be as populous.”

“Yes,” I said. “You should allow only a few people to enjoy life in this utopia.”

“Exactly,” the utopian said. “And because of our methods, which we will now re-direct the lecture to show you, our vegetables will grow one-third more and have 25% more vitamins in them.”

“And how is that?”

“I’ll start from the beginning. You should now be able to see the colors of nature more intensely.”

“Why should I?”

“Because you’ve been near us for a while. Look out at that group of trees. Their shapes should be more defined. Do you see?”

“No. They all look dead.”

“Of course,” Mira said. “But if this was an old-growth forest, and it wasn’t winter, you would see it. Humans planted those trees for profit, so they’re less energy-laden.”

“Why? They’ll live, won’t they?”

“But they’re not the old-growth forests of South America,” the utopian said. “We now know that trees have a class structure. The goal of the human race will be to increase the number of these trees. The trees in Peru are the elite.”

“That may be, but the ones here can still appear as beautiful, especially in the spring.”

“Beauty, man, is nothing but a continuum of spirit,” the utopian said.

“You can measure beauty?”

“Those of us who can perceive energy and spirit can measure beauty by the intensity of color and the size of the fields. In fact, I’ve determined that indeed most canyons are not beautiful. People in the future will realize that. Everything’s dead there. Rocks have no energy fields. People have interesting energy fields. Can you see it yet? Look at some of us.”

“Yes.” I lied. “It’s like, colors and stuff.”

“Exactly! Oh, this is wonderful. You will see the fields and grant us your technology. I’m certain of it, man.”

“And I must say that Mira has many colorful whirls projected at you,” I said.

“What?” Mira said, covering her mouth. “Sorry.”

“We can all tell what kind of person someone is,” the utopian said. “We can see their mood and their immediate future.”

“I can see that guy distrusts me,” I said as I pointed to the hooded man glowering at me from the back of the room.

“Correct!” the utopian said. “You noticed the navy-blue energy field he emits. Good. Do you see the advantages of this? You can measure beauty. Beauty exists in people or things with the most pink, yellow, or green fields. You can know all about people, and ‘The Parchment’ tells us how. You can see who dominates who. You can identify their neuroses developed in childhood, which fall nicely into three distinct categories.”

“I could see that already,” I said.

“Yes, it’s wonderful to have this knowledge.” The utopian misinterpreted. “Now, come out back to our carefully planned garden to see our experiments.”

The group clung together and followed us through the house. Outside, three men sat cross legged on the snow, staring intensely at a ten-foot square plot of dirt.

“Do you see the energies they’re projecting at the corn stalks?” the utopian asked.

“What stalks? How long do they do this?”

“We’re trying to discover the amount of time for which the returns are the greatest. To make each plant grow the most and have the most vitamins, each needs fourteen hours a day of projection, not counting two hours to swat the insects away.”

“For each stalk? That’s a lot of time.”

“Yeah, man. That’s why we need more people for our village, before we de-populate, of course.”

“Of course. Wouldn’t it work better to project a little fertilizer and pesticide on them?”

The shrieks of horror took me aback.

“That was a joke. I’m sorry, I can see how you feel. I can really see how you feel.”

“Jonathan, we’re a bit sensitive. People come around all the time and get uptight because of our ways. Scientists. We’re trying to prove our theories. Until we disprove them ourselves, they have no right to come here and tell us we’re wrong.”

“Do they try to disprove your theory of coincidence too? Your entire cosmos seems to be built on it. No one can possibly falsify it. Ever.”

“Oh, but that’s the argument they use to disprove it,” he said. “What kind of argument is that?”

The wind gusted around us. The utopians clutched their blankets and stared at me.

“Jonathan, the energy has moved to you,” the utopian said.

“What?”

“It’s your turn to speak.”

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t see. My photoreceptors were slacking off. Anyway, the scientists’ argument leads to the next questions: What purpose does coincidence serve? How do we know coincidences are the universe acting? Is everything directed?”

“Yes,” Mira said. “No unplanned events occur.”

“Then what are you witnessing? You can’t conclude that God or the grand unified energy field exists because of everyday acts. What makes these acts of the universe, coincidences, so special?”

“We feel it,” the utopian said. “Can’t you tell they’re special?”

“Actually, no. They’re only special if you assume the universe is natural and you assume they’re supernatural acts. But your coincidences aren’t miracles. They’re normal events. They’re nature. So science can explain your coincidences. You can’t prove a God exists simply because something trivial happens.”

“Not God,” the utopian said. “The evolving universe. And your self, which is your reactions to the evolving universe. That response is all that matters. Listen to your self breathe and evolve too. Focus on your self.”

“So, selfishness.”

“You’re much different from the other guides I’ve found in search of ‘The Discernments.’ They’re always identical. You sound like an agent of the churchmen, not the deliverer of the ‘Thirty-Eighth Discernment.’ You shouldn’t doubt ‘The Parchment.’ We cannot have conflict. We can enjoy life only when we have harmony. Harmony pervades the world.”

“That is the answer to the fears that overwhelm you and everyone you know,” Mira said.

“What fears?”

“For example, the fears of being defeated,” the utopian said. “The material world is critically important, and always will be. We win it over by rising above it, by accepting the coincidences and fate. It’s the fear of being defeated by every part of this world that seems to be working against what you want. It’s the fear of not being a success, of forgetting to do something correctly or at the right time. Your comfort is so much tied to being able to perform, whether at your job, in bed, in everything. But when you understand how to harmonize, just breathe, and listen only to your own inner workings, you’ll never feel that fear again. To stop these fears, learn how to merge with the world, to let the world develop and evolve by itself, and accept fate, with that great whole you came from. The world simply flows back to its origins, then flows out again.”

“How can you see harmony on this earth?” I asked. “It’s all decay. I had harmony once when I was a child. My parents put an end to that. And my heroes in sports became gamblers, addicts, and murderers. We have blizzards, hurricanes, earthquakes, and panics over global warming. We have random murders, bureaucrats, fatherless babies, drug use, and, what’s worse, people going to prison for decades because of drug use. We have lawyers and psychologists and terrorists. We don’t have wars anymore, but we do seem to long for them again. Loved ones get sick and die. We suffer in this world. How can you say harmony pervades the world?”

“Your mind is closed to the truth!” Mira screeched. She ran off across the snow, slipped, spread out on the snow, and ran again.

“Jonathan, now you can choose the life of a greater knowledge of how the world works, our ability to train your mind to accept, and even control, the outside world.”

I shook my head and shivered.

“No, man,” I said. “Your religion of mindfulness and making peace with the present, listening to our breathing and trying to see energy fields is deluding ourselves, making us something greater than we are, or inventing a comprehensive whole that doesn’t exist. God is the first creator, from nothing. He’s the ultimate cause and enabler of everything, including the eternal forms and their design, hidden behind everything – so we can’t avoid His divine will or merge into it, no matter how hard we try; we ourselves choose, most of the time unwisely, and learn to fail and suffer.”

“Can’t you see, man?” the utopian said. “You stop your suffering by focusing on your breathing, on your inner workings, on your spirit. The greatest human minds couldn’t find the path to harmony for thousands of years. The truth is here in this 38-page paper written by the Aztec. Without having this paper, I can’t imagine what we would believe in. It took me twelve days to go from a bitter social worker to a possessor of all knowledge of the world. I should write a prophetic novel on this celestial experience.”

“Great. But you think it culminates in the Phase 4, the Magic Theater? I just spent the last week with our engineers. They said they’ll make the users leave their bodies, that thing you want to focus on. So why do you think Magic Theater is your final answer?”

“We don’t think,” the utopian said. “We intuit. ‘The Parchment’ is clear about that. Because we were seated next to one another on that plane, I know that your technology is the final peace. We’ll spend our days watching one another evolve to pure spirit, and vibrate on a new level.”

“What?”

“None of us knew what that meant either, until we learned of the Magic Theater. We focus on the body. But that’s merely the interim step, in order to nullify it. So join us. We’ll be able to see the ways of the universe’s higher energy and behold the energies and anti-energies of other people. We’ll observe nature, tell stories, and intuit exactly what the universe is trying to tell us. And, most important, we’ll use your Magic Theater.”

“But that’s not what The Shroud will do.”

I stared at their smiles for a minute, but soon they turned to scowls.

As I ran to my car, I heard screams from the bundled-up utopians.

My car started. The utopians were so incompetent with machines, that they could not cripple a car. I spun down the barren road. They chased me until their energy depleted.

Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted

May your will be done

Next week: Episode 41 - The Minneapolis Hotel Episode One

Copyright © 2022 Christopher Rogers.

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