Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow Read Online Free PDF Page A

the girl’s money all these months. Looks nervously toward the studio door. Something happened in there.
    On the table , Tharcia drifts. Althea’s touching had brought a bliss of peace. After her mom died, she believed for a time she’d gone straight to acceptance. Knows now how wrong. Realizes she’s locked in grip of dark anger. Has not tried bargaining, never believed in it. What a crock. Me, make a bargain with God? Steadies her mind, follows her breathing. In. Out. Meditation helps some, though hard to focus, know when she has it right. Her practice not yet steady.
    Images come, her whale dream. She longs for them. What did they mean? A pod, a tribe, thousands of whales in vast society, she as one of them, plunging into a recorded history of deep time. Becoming one with all past and future meaning. So connected, unthinkable. Recalling how the dream-knowledge melted away, the loss grips her hard.
    Two clear chimes from the outer room. Tharcia begins to dress.
    They sit in Althea’s fragrant garden, where Tharcia has never been. Althea has reached a decision. Sees Tharcia was crying. The girl deserves the real article, something Althea admits she cannot provide. There is one thing, a true thing, she can suggest. The psychic does indeed see Tharcia’s future, her very near future. Revealed there are dark forces the psychic cannot imagine. And danger. Danger in the night, a presence in the hills. Fire. This girl must find her higher teacher, and soon.
    Althea speaks with serene smile, eyes closed. “There’s been a revelation, Tharcia.”
    “There has?”
    “ Listen, my dear. We are born nearly without ego. As we mature, and learn to survive in the world, we become socialized in patterns of perception and behavior. These patterns form ego structures which disconnect us from Spirit. Your ego forms barricades around each void. You have to find and explore these voids.”
    “How do I do that?”
    “Continue your meditation. Meditate on approaching Spirit as you would a person, a friend. Interact with deity in a personal way, see Spirit not as deity but as shared consciousness, know that your life matters to deity, you share a oneness in Spirit, of which you are a beloved part. Look on the moon always, she is your secret twin, the goddess of feminine culture. This goddess. Is she an individual being who lives somewhere? No. More mystical. Feminine spirit of antiquity that enfolds all, men as well as women. Your New Moon.”
    Althea opens her eyes, raises her smiling face to Tharcia, who stares back in wonder at what she has just heard. Althea continues. “You need to find your higher teacher, your good teacher. We are at New Moon today, my dear. The first step on your journey to experience Spirit directly.” Smiles, gets up. “I have a gift for you.”
    As they say goodbye, Althea places in Tharcia’s hands something soft wrapped in tissue, something of cloth. The girl reaches out for a hug. “It sounds like I’m not supposed to see you.”
    Althea shakes her head, no. “ You have done your work. It is good work. You’re ready now to find your higher teacher. Be safe.”
    Tharcia floors the little Mazda down the curves of Highway 9, heading for Santa Cruz. Meditation and better teachers are fine, but Tharcia is resolute in her own higher purpose. To confront her departed mother and kick her sorry ass straight to hell.

The Blender Murders
    Strand paces his cramped temporary office, in the swing space reserved for the Pentagon during the remodeling project begun in 1992. Nearly a million square feet of offices in nearby suburbs Rosslyn and Crystal City fail to contain the exodus from seven times that space at the Pentagon itself. It is bedlam.
    Quiet for months, the swing buildings all now packed. Heavy thumps through walls, the corridor outside noisy, people coming and going, terse conversation. On his laptop a chat window still open although his team has gone quiet, needing time to work and make sense of