not your private unconscious or the architecture of your neural programming, but it is in fact a kind of intellecti, a king of being, a kind of Gaian mind. Once you sever from this matrix of meaning, what James Joyce called ‘the mama matrix most mysterious,’ once you sever yourself from this, all you have is rationalism, ego, male dominance to guide you, and that’s what’s led us into the nightmarish labyrinth of technical civilization, all the ills of modernity. We must import into straight society almost as a Trojan horse the idea that these psychedelic compounds and plants are not aberrational, they are not pathological, they are not some minor subset of the human possibility that only freaks and weirdos get involved with but rather the catalyst that called forth humanness from animal nature. That’s the call I’m making.”
The audience applauded as the volume of the recording faded out.
“Where the fuck do you get this stuff?” Emily asked.
“Interesting,” Hal allowed. “If nothing else, it’s a good highbrow excuse to get wasted.”
“That’s not the point. We’re not ‘getting wasted.’ This isn’t a party.”
“Sure,” Hal said. “We’re widening the lens.”
“Exactly,” Jason said, rising from the desk to pass them each their dish. “We’re taking what he calls the ‘heroic dose.’ The dose where you can’t be scared anymore because there’s no ego left to be frightened.”
The shrooms had a stringy, dirt-like texture that made Nate gag. The Brita was passed around and it took them a glass of water each to swallow down the bitter mush. Ingestion complete, Jason slipped on some panic-retarding French pop, all mild falsetto and ethereal synth. The night’s opening gesture made, they recommenced their lounging. Half an hour or so passed as the disco scrim luffed in the air about them.
“One day,” Hal said idly to Jason, “I think you’ll run a cult. Not in a bad way, at least not at first. We’ll read about you on an island with lots of women and children, all of you awaiting some astral bus. My career will be over by then, at twenty-eight or-nine, and I’ll wonder if I should join you.”
“Listen,” Jason said, “here’s a public service announcement, okay? The free-association thing—it can be a problem. I mean, ‘astral bus’? That’s the kind of thing someone could just catch on, and before you know it, we’re lost. Think of it like meditation. The thought comes and the thought goes. You’re not the thought.”
“I’m just saying I think you’ll run a cult.”
“Okay,” Jason replied, “okay.”
Heavy liquid began to pool at the back of Nate’s skull. He lay down beside Emily and closed his eyes, the afterimage of the ceiling lamp burning like an eclipsed sun on the backs of his lids.
“Shit,” Emily said to no one in particular.
The music came in waves now, cresting in the middle of the room, sloshing against the walls, and dripping onto the floor before rising once more above their heads.
“Dinner’s almost ready, guys.”
Seeing Mrs. Holland standing in the doorway, the four of them came to shocked attention. “Why don’t you clean this place up, Jason? Your friends don’t have to put up with your laundry, do they?”
She wore a white rayon dress belted with snakeskin and sipped a clear liquid from a tumbler held firmly in both hands.
From across the room, her son glared at her.
Smiling vaguely at the other three, she laughed, as if to say, Isn’t he a card? and then turned away, leaving the door open behind her.
“Now that,” Hal said, “is the mama matrix most mysterious.”
“Save it,” Jason snapped, rising to close the door. With his back to it, he made as if to address them, though as he parted his lips to speak, something on the carpet hauled his attention off, and like a general trying not to evidence distress before his troops he had to master himself anew before speaking “We’ve got a situation,” he announced. “There’s less time than I thought. We need to get down there and we need to consume some of that food in an orderly fashion. You understand? It’s early going. We can handle it. We just need to act quickly.”
Hal stood, tightened the belt of his bathrobe, and shouted, “I’m ready.”
“This is a very bad idea,” Emily said.
But Jason was already out the door and they were following him down the curving staircase.
THE HOLLANDS’ KITCHEN appeared roughly the size of a tennis court. Seeking a base of operations amidst this vastness, they made for a distressed farmhouse table on