BIT-STRING ENTRY #11
One cannot have peaks without valleys. Sometimes you must stumble downward into the deep, dank abyss to find the raw elements needed to scrub away the detritus of your past – to scrape clean those foul burdens and detours that only serve to block the stairway to heaven.
I’m sure my metaphor has fallen upon deaf ears as Jeremiah shuffles around my basement supply room like a beaten dog, eyeing the inventory of cleansers, brooms, mops, buckets, sponges, window scrappers, urinal cakes, paper towels and toilet seat protectors.
Has he ever heard the ole saying “Cleanliness is next to Godliness?” He throws me a nod with the requisite eye roll.
Cleanliness just takes a bit of elbow grease, I tell him. Godliness? Well, that requires a fire in the heart. A subatomic fire that can fuel his essential life force.
And the combustible element, the kindling for this heart fire is the inherent STARDUST at the core of his BEING. Yes, the same cosmic particles that rained down on Planet Earth like manna from heaven and provided the building blocks for sentient DNA.
And the match that lights this celestial fire within? It’s called MEANING. Without meaning Jeremiah’s consciousness will not, cannot expand. And without this expansion, access to the Unified Field will be denied and that embedded enslavement malware will continue to keep a choke-hold on his psyche, his life.
I can see he’s still raw from the near-drowning. Fragile. Best to back off. Let’s face it, lecturing never works with post-suicidal subjects. Switching gears, I hand him a pair of maintenance overalls and a small cash advance. It’ll have to do until I can “officially” hack him onto the University payroll.
Next, I hand him a clipboard that shows the maintenance duty rotation for the next day – every floor, restroom, classroom and lab that will need to be cleaned and resupplied. The fact that the marked territory is in the Neuroscience Building catches his attention. Bright boy. Yes, there is a subversive reason as to why I picked this location for a complete scrub down.
IT’S CALLED CUSTODIAL ESPIONAGE.
Access is everything and along this integrated network of corridors, classrooms and labs, all matters related to the mind-body connection are clinically researched and dissected. Jeremiah runs a finger down the list of floors: Neurochemistry; Neuro-Anatomy; Neuro-Genetics; Psychobiology; Pyschedemia. Suffice it to say, this building is the central nerve center of ongoing study that might offer up the evidence needed to unmask THE PROGRAM.
I steer Jeremiah out of the basement and we take the elevator up to the top floor. From there we move along a hidden catwalk to an observatory tower in the Life Sciences library, one that affords us a panorama of the entire campus. The sun has started to set. It’s peaceful here.
“Why me?” he finally asks. “I mean, why did you follow me in the first place?”
“I liked your aura,” I reply. “You’ve got a silver lining, Jeremiah. It deserves to be amplified.”
He doesn’t know how to respond to that. Mostly because he doesn’t have anywhere else to go and his blood sugar has tanked. The kid is toast.
“By the way,” I tell him, “the job comes with student housing and a campus meal card.”
“Seriously?”
“Always,” I say, opening a small double-locked service door on the west side of the tower. He peeks inside to discover a small studio apartment, one that could’ve been decorated by a Benedictine Monk. No digital distractions in here.
It’s clean. It’s quiet. And best of all, it’s free,” I tell him.
He looks at me, stunned and grateful.
“So… you hungry? How does a pizza sound?”
“Um-yeah. Sounds good.”
“Thick crust or thin crust?”
“Thick.”
Of course. Dumb question.
All you Humans are thick crust.
Which is why we Custodians keep chipping away, chipping away…