"I'm getting too old for this shit," I moaned and plopped into one of the Situation Room's ergonomically designed conference chairs. I massaged the sore spot on my shoulder and shifted and squirmed and as I searched for a less uncomfortable position. Nothing worked. I hurt in places I didn't even know I had.

The steaming mug of fresh brewed Colombian laced with the Sisterhood's brandy warmed my hands and took the edge away from the pain in my ass. Java and joy-juice will cure anything.

"Praise be for Martha," I sighed in revenant appreciation. The platter of venison steak and cheese sandwiches smelled delicious. The ever-thoughtful Queen of the Kitchen knew the magical power of food and beverage to lift the spirit and restore the soul.

I would rather have had an opportunity to chow down in the dining room, except Sheila's schedule didn't allow for it. She demanded that we present Recon One's findings without delay. The urgency was such my companion and I didn't even have a chance to shower and clean up. 

As I took a leisurely and grateful sip, Sheila tapped her gavel to stifle the buzz of excited conversation rising in the amphitheater in anticipation as they wait for the show to begin: the first images of the new world. One small step for man, one giant leap into chaos for mankind. Neil Armstrong had it easy.

"Belinda and Sky, we await your report. The floor belongs to you," Sheila said as she nodded and rubbed her lips.

"Thank you, Chief," Belinda replied with a smile as she climbed to her feet and motioned me to stand at her side.

"Our successful mission did not go unnoticed. We had an encounter with a couple of youthful sheriff's deputies," Frosty said as I handed the drone's memory card to the Society's leader.

"Wonderful!" the commander rolled her eyes and bent forward, "Pray tell, how did it turn out?"

"Not too badly, all things considered," I shrugged.

"Two junior members of the Meeker home guard detained us at gunpoint and wanted to bring us to Sherif Fitzwater's office for questioning," Belinda added as she brushed several strands of hair from her eyes.

"We declined their hospitality," I continued in a neutral voice. I had screwed-up by not keeping an adequate watch.

"Anyone injured?" Sheila's anxious eyes darted from mine to Frosty's. 

"No harm, other than pride. We jumped 'em when the returning drone distracted them. They surrendered without a struggle," Belinda replied with a pleasant smile.

"What of the young ones?" the Chief asked.

"We returned their weapons, minus firing pins, and sent them on their way. The remainder of the mission was uneventful," I said.

"Very well, please tell us what you observed, and share your mind," the leader slid the little drone's memory card into the desktop computer. A moment later, the chatter of talk ceased as the large ultra-sharp flat-screen television filled with a drone's eye view of the lands beyond Liberty Mountain.

A few moments later a collective gasp rose from the gathering as the charred and twisted ruins came into sight. Seeing is believing. I scrutinized the fearful eyes of the onlooking sisters as the aftershock settled in. Everything and nothing had changed. Yesterday's world was gone and we're still here. Now what?

As our flight replayed in exquisite detail, I couldn't shake a weird sense of déjà vu as I relived the real-time re-run of my virtual reality recollections. 

"Chief, can you go to freeze-frame?" I stood and walked over to the flat-screen. The amazingly clear and vivid still picture of the town was stunning in its clarity down to individual branches on the trees and children on the ground.

"This is a pretty representative overview and I think we're looking at something quite remarkable," I said and waited for my recon mate to join me.

"Yah, a local government that actually works," chuckles answered Belinda's laughter.

"In the month since the solar storms things have gone from bad to worse. From what the shortwave is telling us, governments are falling faster than autumn leaves," my companion said as she gestured toward the screen.

"But, not so in Meeker. While worldwide, communities are in turmoil, this place is not. In fact, it seems to be holding its own and then some." Belinda shook her head in disbelief.

"Rather than tell you our thoughts on what we're viewing, well let the video speak for itself. Thirty-seven sets of eyes are better than two," I swept my arms to encompass the chamber and pointed to my partner and myself. 

"Recon One, your video quality is exceptional. Very well done," Sheila said as she rose from her chair and joined us next to the large display.

"Thank you Sky and Belinda, I'll take it from here," the commander said as she gently guided us back to our seats. The bum's rush with kid gloves. I exchanged puzzled glances with my partner who shrugged in response.

"You've done us proud as the eyes of the Sisterhood. For that we owe you a debt of gratitude," the leader said with a smile as she began to clap her hands together. After a brief moment of hesitation, members of the council picked up the refrain and the women in the hall responded enthusiastically with a roar of approval.

Recognition is the coin of the realm in the Sisterhood's cashless society. I grinned like a wealthy man as I took my seat.

"Sisters!" she paused, "and brother," Sheila nodded in my direction as she turned to address the assembly.

"What has happened to the planet is an event as transformative as an asteroid strike, only without all the rocks," the Commander said in a calm and measured voice as she studied the faces of the woman in the Sisterhood.

"All that we once had is gone. SkyFire has marooned our high-tech Society in a low-tech world. Cities are in rubble. The grid is down. Forever. The Age of the Internet is over," she said with a sad shiver and paused for a moment before smiling. 

"In other words, we're precisely where we need to be. These are the times we've been preparing for. Our moment has arrived," Sheila's voice resonated with intensity as she scanned the assembly, challenging anyone to doubt her proclamation of certainty.

"There is no choice, if we are to survive, rebuild, and prosper, we must adapt and become one with the New Order of the ages," the Chief glanced and tilted her head at Martha who repeated the nod as she left her seat and headed for the kitchen.

"We are about to see and analyze about ninety minutes of raw video," Sheila said as she looked over her shoulder at the frozen image of a destroyed Meeker.

"But, before we do, we've got to be in the proper frame of mind." she smiled as she turned to face the assembly and spread her arms wide in welcome.

"We, my friends, you and I, are going on a vision quest. We will travel together to the origin of our life force. From there, the Mothers of Creation will show us the way forward," she said as Martha and a few women on the kitchen crew moved through the auditorium with trays piled high with marijuana spiked fudge brownies. The THC in the tribe's refined cannabis concentrates were off the charts.

"Limit two to a customer unless you are especially daring or foolish," she said with a chuckle.

I noticed most of the ladies took two squares of fudge while about a dozen went all-in with three. Belinda took five.

"I'm hungry," my partner said with a shrug as she stuffed a chunk of brownie into her mouth.

I lit my pipe and took two to be sociable.

"What with this vision quest thing?' I leaned over and murmured to Belinda who was busy polishing off her third treat.

"We've only done it once before when we won the lottery. Got as high as shit and let the group mind find the path forward. This place is the end result of that process." Belinda licked a few crumbs of chocolate from her sticky fingers as she reached for my pot pipe.

"All right, listen up!" Sheila shouted over the hubbub of conversations, "I'm moving this session to the Lake, follow me!" she said as she set out like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Like the fabled children of yore, we marched after as she opened the door to the stairway and descended into the underworld below the mountain.

"Really? We need to get stoned before we can review the results of the reconnaissance mission?" I grumbled to Sheila as we descended the winding metal staircase into the cavern underneath the cabin.

"Yes!" she laughed, "SkyFire was a control-alt-delete moment. A new reality is loose upon the land and the rules of the game have been rewritten, we need to reset our minds. Plenty of Peyote should do the trick."

"Mother nature bequeathed us with a marvelous array of mind-altering substances with which to explore the spiritual side of the universe. Tribes have been vision questing since the first elder nibbled on a magic mushroom," the commander intoned with the revenant voice of a priestess. For a long time, I had sensed she had a weird-ass version of religion hidden in her attic. I shivered as my musings were confirmed.

Even as a disciple of Athenia, Sheila was too sane to be crazy. Maybe she was onto something, not that I needed an excuse to get high. I had dropped a few tabs of acid in the sixties. 

I preferred to fly in a low-Earth orbit with enough altitude to see inside my mind while staying close enough to touch the ground. Psychedelics at my age? What the hell, why not? Reality is already a stormy shit-show. What's another outhouse in the wind?

At any rate, a trip to Dreamland might be an interesting excursion, as long as it wasn't a one-way ride. I took a puff from my blunt and offered a toke to Belinda behind me. Sharing is caring.

I couldn't keep from giggling as we followed Sheila's flashlight beam through the shadowy labyrinth of stalactites and stalagmites. The annoying narrator in my head was sarcastically singing off-key, the little-man work song with new words as he played reruns of Walt Disney's "Snowwhite and the Seven Dwarfs."

"Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, it's off to dream we go."

Soon enough, we stood at the water's edge of the vast underground lagoon at the back of the cavern. The distant shores were lost in gloom, and the surface of the pool was as smooth as glass and as black as the space between stars. It had a timeless and otherworldly feel about it.

"Make yourselves comfortable, we have a long journey ahead of us," Sheila said as she kindled a flame in the ancient soapstone oil lamp atop a crude granite altar. As the glow intensified she began to disrobe. Legend was that, as a transfer student, she acquired the artifact from a curator of antiquities at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens in exchange for a summer of sexual favors.

"Sky, you gotta be nude to get into dreamland. Get undressed," Starshine giggled as her fingers fumbled with my belt buckle. I gave Belinda a pleading look and mouthed the word, 'help'.

"Sure, glad to lend a hand," Frosty grinned as she pulled my pants to my ankles. That's the problem with going commando. There is no such thing as half-dressed. Oh, well, when in Rome... I discarded my shirt and shoes and kept my socks on. My concession to modesty. I have ugly toes.

The flickering flame of alter's lamp created a mellow-gold ring of light, strong enough to illuminate the naked bodies of the women around me as they swayed and chanted. I entered the amber radiance and joined the wordless song of the sisters with a soaring howl of my own. It is fun to cry like a wolf and hear the answering echo of my kin ringing from the dark granite walls of the grotto.

Waves of awareness washed over me as Martha's Enchanted brownie said hello to my mind. Wow! Weed with wallop. In the distance, I could see an approaching tsunami as the second helping greeted the first. 

"Gather around my children, it is time to dream," Sheila said as she loaded a massive pinch of peyote into a yard long peace pipe. And touched a burning taper to the bowl.

She took a long puff and blew a smoke ring into the air over my head as she placed the pipe in my hands.

"Don't let it go out, take some and move it along," StarShine whispered.

As I took a toke of the bitter vapor, Sheila's nude body appeared to shimmer and glow. My god, she was beautiful. Star kissed my lips as she slipped the smoking stick from my fingers.

To my right, a drum began a slow and steady beat. A moment later another answered in kind. Then another and another until the warm moist air of the cavern throbbed with the thunder of a beating heart.

With the second hit from the passing pipe, the notes of Brenda's bugle floated like butterflies in the air as Frosty's flute made love to the night.

By the next toke, I was listening to the tones of the colors reflecting from Belinda's chest. Starshine's nipples chirped like canaries and the beads of sweat gleaming on her skin sparkled like slay bells with the fire's reflected light. The heartbeat of the drums was dazzling bright pulses of paisley patterns in primary shades, no pastels allowed.

'"Our DNA is the diary of our soul's journey from the first moment of life. We carry inside us the genetic memory of every yesterday which has brought us to where we are today." Sheila's words glowed like a beacon as she guided me through an infinite kaleidoscope of previous incarnations. Moving ever rearward in time, I trace the double helix's pathway into the past. 

As I took my seventh deep drag of the earthy and nasty mescaline vapor the brilliant blackness of the cavern's eternal night dissolved into a dense jungle. My sisters are preparing sleeping nests high in the canopy of leafy foliage as I wrap my furry tail around a leafy branch and grasp it for balance. My nostrils flare wide as I sniff and peer into the twilight. The gloom is rich with the earthy scent of danger, decay, and growing things. The rainforest renews itself in an endless cycle of life feeding upon death.

The big cats like panthers and leopards are as bad as snakes, but the eagles are the worst. Without warning, they snatch the young from our midst and take them into the clouds. We are small, but we are many. My thread is unbroken.

Mountains rise and crumble around our wandering band. We have left our tails in the trees and now walk upright. Fortune favors the tall who better see the dangers lurking in the lush grasslands of the Serengeti plain. 

As we wander about, my tribe and I invent language as we assign meaning to the sounds our mouths make. 

"All life arises from the first mother," she sings in honor and thanksgiving of some nameless single-cell creature: the seed from which all life has evolved. Sheila's words blaze across the cavern's perpetual night as elders convene in tribal councils to ponder the wisdom of their eras.

Lifetimes flicker past too quickly to recall and too vivid to forget as I skip across the waters of eternity like a stone.

The helix's highway bends north across and around the great sea rising between my African home and the distant shore. My beautiful black skin is becoming lighter as we venture into the freezing realm of the long nights.

Pale and fair, my kin and I stand before a great white wall at the northern edge of the world. We can go no further. The gods are kind. Below the glaciers, game and mammoth are plentiful. 

While we hunt, we encounter others almost exactly like us except they are different. The small stocky strangers have adapted to life in the frosty shadows. Their angled cheekbones, prominent brow ridges and wide noses mark them as the other. Our clan mingles and we trade with the artists who adorn their cave dwellings with beautiful paintings. Sometimes we get naked and make babies together.

Even though they do not speak as we do, our new friends seemed to be thoughtful and kind. They have compassion for their old and ill, and they care for those who can no longer tend to themselves. From them, we learn to bury our dead and new methods to manufacture stone tools including fine flint blades and razor-sharp scrapers. 

They, like us, have also have mastered the art of fire and they bestow upon us their knowledge of crafting deadly hunting spears by attaching sharp stone points to polished wooden shafts. We have made friends with the wolves

Eons pass as one life blends into another and the mile-high mountains of winter gradually retreat before the southern winds of a changing climate. The age of ice is over and the Earth grows warmer. Our new friends have vanished with the glaciers. The oceans rise.

"Gather unto me my darling mind-travelers," Sheila said as she knelt and applied a flame to a handful of wood shavings at the base of a small teepee of tinder. A few seconds later the fuel beneath the firewood burned with defiance as it pushed the darkness away. The night was strong and the circle small as she called us into the light.

For a moment, I paused between lives and warmed my hands before the fire and tried to remember. I felt as though I was awakening from a sleep where I had been dreaming I was another man dreaming he was another man's dream. As I attempted to remember the stories of my past lives, the details retreated before me into the mist of the forgotten.

"My darlings, in the beginning, we were one," Sheila said as she moved about the circle, and caressed her breasts. She smiled and stroked her belly as she slowly turned to connect her gaze with each set of eyes.

"We have been together since the dawn of the first day. The threads of our lives are woven together and are thus so entwined," she said as she interlocked her fingers and crossed her legs, and coiled about herself like ivy on the vine.

The part of my mescaline soaked brain that thought it could still think pondered in amused amazement at the Commander's set of leadership skills.

I had dabbled in psychedelics back in my youth. Set and setting is everything. I was standing far enough back that I could see what she was doing. Mescaline illustrated her story of time as her hypnotic voice and carefully scripted words transformed the cave's sunless world into a playground for my mind.

"My fellow time-trekkers," Sheila said as she put a fresh log on the embers, "Within the flames, our mother's primal truth resides. We are family. None of us live our lives alone. We, you and I, are our sisters' and brothers' keepers, whether we want to be or not."

"One more toke for the road, our next stop is the day before tomorrow," Sheila said as she packed the pipe with peyote and passed it around.

Within my mind, as I stared into the flames, I can feel time-bending back upon itself as I trace my ribbon of life backward and ever deeper into the maze of memories. 

In the beginning, humanity is spread thin across the land, and our roaming band of hunters and gathers travels months without encountering others of our kind. 

Each existence is much like the one before, until we learn to grow plants and raise animals. Farming ties my group to the land and we settle near our fields and tend our flocks. The bounty is fruitful and our settlements grow as our numbers multiply. 

High walls rise around my city as war ravages the land. We no longer gather with the old and wise about the evening campfires to learn from them the holy ways of nature. I am compelled to pay homage to the deity of the day. My labor belongs to an endless stream of lords and ladies, priests and priestess. 

My trail through time is littered with carnage and unspeakable atrocities as uncounted millions are slaughtered at the hands of invading hordes, conquering armies, or the righteous of one faith or another. I was there when thousands of men, women, and children were tied to stakes and burned alive in the town square. 

As age after age of fleeting empires rose, I stepped to the side of my mind. Me, and the little guy in my head watched in despair as one dreary life after another trudged toward tomorrow. 

"Congratulations! I didn't think you could do it, but you did," a voice from behind me called. Mindful that talking to myself isn't a bad thing as long as I knew who was speaking, I turned to confront the stranger in my dream. 

"Congratulations for what?" I asked cataciously as I shook his extended hand. 

"Look around you," the other me said as he gestured toward the circle of naked women meditating around the fire. 

"Everyone except you is under her spell. You've transcended the trance and completed your quest. Tell me, what was your vision?"