"Come on," she groaned.

Damian stood for a moment, and suddenly it seemed as if he was seeing her from afar, a pitiable little creature, like a worm, writhing on her bed.

His drugs had transformed her, left her drowsy and disoriented and twisted with desire. They'd stripped her of all rational thought, leaving her a cripple, an animal.

Seeing her like this sickened him.

Back at the office that night, Damian pa.s.sed the security desk with barely a thought and glanced up at the painting of the company's founder: eighty-year-old Sterling D. Chancellor.

In the portrait he looked stern and uncompromising. The muscles in his shoulders were wasted, the flesh of his face sagging and wrinkled. Decrepit.

That is what Sterling Damian Chancellor had looked like six weeks ago, before he'd become the first human to test the new treatment. Damian realized that Asia had indeed seen him before, seen his dark eyes staring at her from that portrait.

Bright girl to remember me, to see through my youthful disguise.

He'd left her with her virginity in the end, though not her dignity. Yet he realized now that that her body was not what he'd wanted. As CEO, testing female employees for corporate fidelity was not part of Damian's ordinary job description. Yet he'd longed for Asia. Now he understood why.

Being the first of a new species is a lonely thing.

He'd wanted to take a companion into the future, a woman who was capable of thinking as he did.

Instead, he strode up to his office, leaving the apes of Manhattan to blink and gape from the shadows.

David Farland is the author of the best-selling Runelords series, which began with The Sum of All Men; the eighth and latest volume, Chaosbound, came out in 2010. Farland, whose real name is Dave Wolverton, has also written several novels using his real name as his byline, such as On My Way to Paradise, and a number of Star Wars novels such as The Courtship of Princess Leia and The Rising Force. His short fiction has appeared in Peter S. Bea gle's Immortal Unicorn, David Copperfield's Tales of the Impossible, Asimov's Science Fiction, Intergalactic Medicine Show, War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches, and in John Joseph Adams's anthology The Way of the Wizard. He is a Writers of the Future winner and a finalist for the Nebula Award and Philip K. d.i.c.k Award.

One problem with writing stories about mad scientists is creating a believable character. How many of us can really identify with obsessed geniuses h.e.l.l-bent on taking over the world?

Luckily, our next story gives us a mad scientist we can all understand. Sure, Ernest La.s.siter is a lot smarter than most people. He's got doctoral degrees in quantum mechanics, quantum physics and biology, and he can do crosswords in languages that have been dead for centuries. And yes, he's a little quirky, living on a diet of sprouts and veggies that he grows himself on his organic farm in a remote corner of Pennsylvania's Amish country. But under it all, Ernest is just like the rest of us: desperately yearning for love. He's been lonely a long, long time, and he's itching for some female companionship.

It's not easy to find Ms. Right when your standards are as high as Ernest's, though. With a little inspiration, and a lot of brilliance, he comes up with a way to bring the perfect woman into his world. She's hot; she's sa.s.sy; she's a dream come true.

But is he man enough for such a G.o.ddess?

ANCIENT EQUATIONS.

L. A. BANKS.

Ernest La.s.siter flipped over the funeral notice and drew on the back of it, sketching the symbols used in the Egyptian Book of the Dead to send a soul onto its everlasting voyage. He then added some symbols for reanimation used in Voodoo ceremonies, then the Cuneiform burial rites symbols. His years of poring over Cuneiform equations had finally begun to yield a pattern but what was he missing that connected them all? If he could just find the key, the Akashic records would open to him, and he'd have access to the entirety of human knowledge and the history of the cosmos.

A funeral! Did they really expect him to stop his research . . . for a funeral? They had to be out of their feral little minds to even bother him with something so mundane; he certainly couldn't spare time for it now, not when he was so close to a breakthrough.

Frustration stole his concentration. He flipped over the funeral notice again and stared at a photograph of his recently deceased uncle.

He'd tried to tell them- every single freakin' member of his family who later died of cancer or some abominable disease. Tried to explain that it was all an evil profit plot to keep people sick- because sick people made some sectors of industry gazillions of dollars . . . and this worldwide, diseased way of life was created by the food and drug cartel, who were in collusion with big pharma and the whole medical oligarchy. But, like frightened cattle, none of the family he'd once had would listen to him.

Rather than listen or do the hard thing- namely changing the bad habits forced on them by the constant battering of the alpha and beta waves in their brains by subliminal advertising- the people he loved chose to do the harder thing, which was to die a long and painful death due to a preventable disease.

And now they were all gone. Every single living relative that he had cared about.

His cousins were still around, but he considered them a waste of protoplasm, so they didn't count as family. All they did was eat, sleep, s.h.i.t, f.u.c.k, and consume. What was their true contribution to society? Did they do anything but breed more of themselves to buy more of the c.r.a.p that made other people rich?

The problem with knowing as much as Ernest did was that people thought you were a kook, a quack, or- at best- an eccentric. The problem was that people mislabel and misdiagnose you as a borderline idiot savant as a kid, until the ignorant people administering the tests realize- duh- you're a genius.

Ernest tossed aside the funeral notice with disdain and left the wide lab bench that doubled as his mail desk. He needed a cup of green tea.

He knew he could crack the code on reanimation- more importantly, on bringing intelligent life though the veil between worlds. It was all about energy. Nothing that was created could ever be destroyed. It had to still exist somewhere in some form- and if people created entire mythologies about superbeings, then they had to exist somewhere in some form . . . simply because thought was matter. It created matter.

So what the h.e.l.l were they thinking inviting him to some dead relative's funeral?

The purpose of said events was so pedestrian. If his family grieved the man so badly, then why not spend the time to figure out how to raise him or maybe to prevent his type of unnecessary death in the first place. As far as he was concerned, people died who didn't have to because they were constantly being poisoned to death by a toxic environment for profit. He hated the hypocrisy of attending such sentimental, superst.i.tious rubbish.

Uncle Fred's funeral was the last one he might feel obligated to attend, but in reality, he was distant enough to his uncle that, a no-show would be acceptable. Sending flowers and a sympathy card was out; it was part of the death profiteering system that he couldn't abide. Uncle Fred, if he was still living, would have understood. Now that he was gone, the point of his understanding was moot. And anybody else could kiss his a.s.s.

Off the grid was how he liked it. Ernest set his teapot on his wood-burning stove and leaned down to stoke the fire. Living this way was the only way to live, as far as he was concerned, and a primary reason he'd gone out to Lancaster County. The Amish had it right- live off the f.u.c.king grid. Solar panels on the roof, a generator in the garage, candles and lamps . . . Which is not to say he was without modern conveniences: flashlights and enough of ammo to start a small war were among his concessions.

He was living proof that it was feasible to grow your own food without being held hostage to the major seed corporations that had genetically altered every G.o.dd.a.m.ned plant in the land, and actually held a monopoly on seeds. Seeds! They cornered the market on seeds so that developing nations couldn't feed themselves without poisoning their land, because in order for the seeds to grow they had to buy special fertilizers and patented pesticides that wiped out vegetative scourges (and bee colonies right along with it) so that the evolutionary process of plant hybridization and strengthening just stopped dead in its tracks. Those motherf.u.c.kers had stopped species evolution!

Ernest held his head with both hands, threading his fingers through his dreadlocks, feeling an anxiety attack coming on. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, and then slowly lifted one bare foot to rest against his inner thigh in the yoga tree pose.

Yes, there were ways to combat the evil system. He had to stop stressing. One could compost from organic food sources, replenish the earth, grow your own s.h.i.t- literally and figuratively- and then eat food that hadn't been sprayed with pesticides. Well water- any water in the land now, truthfully- with acid rain and toxic runoff was a problem. The general public will be f.u.c.ked, but not Ernest; no he'd be fine, thanks to the mint he spent on water negative ionization systems. He'd read Dr. Masaru Emoto's work on infusing water with intentions to heal. It worked and he had b.u.mper crops. He'd been disciplined and followed the scientific wisdom in books like Back to Eden, and didn't eat flesh of any kind- not even fish, and now that they screwed up the Gulf with that ma.s.sive oil spill, he definitely wouldn't. But the water was already jacked up in the streams from strip-mining and city sludge before that even happened- no matter how pristine they looked.

And he wouldn't allow the mind-raping cartels to bore into his thoughts with the brain-rot of television. There were enough books in the world and he had all kinds of research to do, anyway. The only other partial compromise that he'd conceded to was that he had a retrofitted car that burned bio-fuels; still, one had to register it with the enemy state to be legal and not be ha.s.sled. Yes, he even paid taxes so the rat b.a.s.t.a.r.ds couldn't come and take his land. He had a cell phone, just in case, but n.o.body had the number. It was for dialing out only; he didn't want incoming calls. Had to have a P.O. box to get his book orders, which meant submitting to at least a debit card and a small bank account, but the rest of his earnings from inventions and selling crops, he immediately transferred into gold, which went in the bomb shelter.

All of his lab equipment he'd built from scratch, and he was proud of that. The corporate and university labs he'd worked in over the years had also seen their fair share of shrinkage because of him, but it was only reparations for all they stole from the general public, he reasoned- so his karma was okay with that. Hand-pumped well water came into his sinks and tub. Human refuse went into compost the old-fashioned way: from an in-house toilet with removable slop pot beneath. He only cooked enough to eat each day and jarred extra fruits and vegetables to hold him through the harsh winter. He ate mostly raw, sprouted legumes, and root vegetables of that season, anyway . . . it was all good.

Well, lonely, but it was mostly all good. At least they wouldn't get him like they'd gotten everybody else he had known. He wasn't a dumb consumer buying a lot of s.h.i.t he didn't need. He got everything natural or recycled.

Ernest came out of the tree pose and took his tea off the hot stove as the kettle sounded. He slowly began the process of filling another bamboo tea ball with loose green tea leaves- the authentic, the organic kind he got from the Master who ran the Dojo in town.

He was no longer the geek-nerd he'd been in college. At thirty-nine, he had a body of steel. Hours of manual labor on his small farm, attention to his yoga practice, and a daily hard run in the mountains or a ten-mile ride into town on his bike to get supplies left him with a body in peak physical condition. He was proud of his personal transformation; his seed wouldn't be a waste. His body was not only purified through excellent nutrition, but his mental capacity was stellar as well; he was living proof that nature trumped steroids and cosmetic surgery any day.

In addition to reshaping his body, he'd also learned how to defend himself in hand-to-hand combat. Just like he now knew how to make ammo and bombs. (The Internet was a beautiful thing.) His property- like his body and immune system- was well fortified in the event of the apocalypse.

When Ernest had allowed himself the indulgence of watching movies, one of his favorites had been The Fly, with Jeff Goldblum. He could relate to the scientist in the flick, who, in his opinion, was vastly misunderstood. That kind of natural power- gene spliced from a fruit fly and added to the human DNA spiral- was an awesome concept.

That was a remaining indulgence: he gave artists credit- those that were honest with their talent, anyway. Those that were sellouts could kiss his a.s.s just like his family, but he truly respected the ones that put in the effort to really create something noteworthy. Just like he gave other scientists (that weren't co-opted by corporations) kudos for their genius.

Revolution could happen through both science and art. All the rest was bulls.h.i.t, as far as he was concerned.

Adding a little bit of raw honey to his tea, Ernest moved to the seat beside the window in the front room of his s.p.a.cious log cabin and sat down watching the last of the fall leaves swirl in bright, dancing piles in the yard.

The tranquil scene was not enough to calm him, however. It still p.i.s.sed him off that, even though he opted out of the system, he'd had to use money from a temporarily co-opted existence to get the freedom he needed in order to get away from the clutches of the system. And yet they still controlled what wars got fought, who lived and died, who got services and who didn't, and it was all about power- power that didn't yield itself for anyone or anything. The Bildebergers and the Illuminati still ran the entire f.u.c.king world. They were the devil, and they got regular people to buy into being blind consumers, suckered them into debt, poisoned them for profit, made them so unhappy with their lives, their looks, their bodies, their families that they had to spend money- somehow, somewhere in the food chain of greed- to make themselves feel better.

Somebody needed to do something.

Somebody really smart could f.u.c.k up their decadent Roman orgy party forever.

He was smart enough. Ernest took a sip of his tea, slurping it. He wouldn't do something that would hurt common people. No. They were already hurting enough. Thing is, he wasn't sure of how to wrest power from the powerful without hurting the innocent in the process. If he shut down the power grid, the powerful still had bunkers and access to private planes and extraction teams.

Some poor grandmother or preemie baby would die when their ventilator stopped, not some rat b.a.s.t.a.r.d head of state. If he created an outbreak, those same powerful people at the top would get quarantined on some lush tropical island while the rest of the world, especially the urban areas, went into apocalyptic meltdown. If he sent a message in the form of a bomb, that would only give them a reason to spin the (controlled) media to get the frightened electorate to agree to even more civil liberties transgressions and fund more military spending- which would just make their a.s.ses even richer from all the military contracts.

There was nothing wrong with his mind and he was no extremist, no matter what the psychiatrists had said. He did not have a breakdown. Thinking differently than the zombified public did not mean he'd gone around the bend. He'd had an awakening on the job, is all . . . one that brought him clarity!

Ernest again slurped his hot tea. How could a man get a Ph.D. in quantum physics, quantum mechanics, and biology, with an in-depth knowledge of chemistry, botany, and genetics, all by the age of thirty-nine if he were crazy? Didn't happen. Couldn't happen. h.e.l.l, he could do crossword puzzles in dead languages and had virtually taught himself ancient text translations. Think a crazy man could manage that?

So, h.e.l.l no, he wasn't going to go to Philadelphia and walk past the dregs of society (that had been made dregs by the oligarchy) just to listen to some old choir hags sing "Amazing Grace" over a dead body. (And then serve dead flesh- fried chicken of all things- and act polite when they asked him if he had a job yet, or a woman. f.u.c.k that, if that's what they called tradition. That was medieval, Dark Ages s.h.i.t, if ever he heard it. He could better spend the day realigning his crystals and copper pyramids, in an attempt to establish a better connection to the Akashic records.

The records would tell him how to best use his mind to bring down the powerful evil that controlled the world. While he wanted that more than anything, deep down, however, what he really wished for was for the interdimensional beings who managed the Akashic records to also send him a soul mate. It was very difficult to find a female companion with the same level of intelligence he had- and he could not countenance an ignorant woman. He'd very clearly asked them for a woman who met the following criteria: (1) She has the same commitment of living off the grid as he does; (2) She hasn't succ.u.mbed to the false traditions or superst.i.tious religions of the zombified ma.s.ses; and (3) Her body is as a fine-tuned work of art as his was. That was another issue from The Fly to which he could relate . . . he'd been celibate a very long time, not wanting to compromise himself with human drama, and yet his physique was functioning like a well-maintained machine. By any standard, he was a Porsche with nowhere to run on the open road.

Ernest leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. Why was it so impossible sometimes to quell the urge to procreate? The Fly went though that, as well, but the gene splice made him that way. Still, there had to be a way to overcome that basic urge, just as there was a way to change one's eating habits and one's fondness for wasteful things like gas heat. That was one of the promises of mediation and yoga, that one could go outside of one's body to think away one's desires. But his body still ran regular diagnostics, giving him erections that begged for relief.

When he really thought back on it, his experiences with the opposite s.e.x were so fleeting and so unfulfilling that he wondered why he thought of them at all. By now the subject should have been dead to him. Thinking about s.e.x, or better stated, yearning for it, had to be some stupid DNA glitch in the medulla oblongata. The lizard brain- the reptilian center that just regulated heartbeat and other peristaltic functions. Procreation was necessarily a peristaltic function to ensure the continuation of the species. That's the only reason it remained on his mind because it sure couldn't have been from the one backseat fumbling attempt he'd had in high school when he wore c.o.ke-bottle gla.s.ses and braces.

Fat Reenie. d.a.m.n. Even to this day he couldn't shake the image. She was his cousin's girlfriend's fat sister. She had given him his first experience groping b.r.e.a.s.t.s. That was as far as he got, but he remembered how they changed under his palm and how she'd actually let him slip a hand under her sweater. Remembered how her thick nipples got hard and how that made him hump her leg like a pathetic, agonized puppy until she'd said, "Get off me," and pushed him away.

But he also remembered what was going on in the front seat, and recalled how it was clear that the same thing wasn't going to happen for him that night. Sad but true, the image still excited him. His cousin had scored, while he went home with blue b.a.l.l.s and jerked off. Then, to add insult to injury, he got ridiculed the next day for being in a "geek and fat girl" couple, so much so that poor Reenie couldn't take the pressure and decided to go get a thug to replace him.

That's when he'd learned the pecking order of the streets- a fat girl putting out could get a thug, even if the son of a b.i.t.c.h treated her badly. A nerd couldn't get squat, because all females run in a pack and need corroboration from the others that they'd picked a provider . . . so Neanderthal. He hated the inner city that had bred him and was so glad that he'd been smart enough to escape from it.

College didn't change that much; that was a rude awakening. Maybe the rudest of all, because they were supposed to be intelligent people at MIT. He'd been smart enough to get there on a full scholarship at sixteen. True, he was young, but he was old enough to pick up the game.

Ernest stared out the window and released a weary sigh. The jocks and guys with social savoir faire got laid. Guys in the lab didn't- unless they were going to be a medical doctor, which again linked the female perception of what const.i.tuted a good provider down the line.

In grad school, he'd finally found another geek like him that had showed him a little mercy. After a drunken night of shots at a project completion party, he finally got some at twenty-five years old. Ernest had shut his eyes tightly; just three strokes and he was done. She'd been so drunk that she rolled over and puked afterward. The next day in lab they both apologized and agreed that what had happened wasn't really a good idea, and it would never be discussed again.

Jennifer was a very nice person, but in the cold light of day he knew it had been the alcohol. That was the last time he'd tried to press for a mate. He figured if something was meant to be, it would happen naturally.

So, where was his queen? Where was that one, hot, smart, physically unstoppable, s.e.xually insatiable being, like him, ready to get it on rough and hard and without relent, and then take over the world?

Anger filled him as he set down his mug and let out another breath of frustration. He had to do better at controlling his thoughts. That was the problem of having an intense brain, it was so full that keeping parameters around it was nearly impossible. His idle wondering where his soul mate was had given him another early morning erection.

He stared down at the bulge in his lab scrubs, deciding. Maybe he should just break down and order a female orifice off the Internet. He could make one, he was sure, but the act of actually making one and putting so much time into that process would really be depressing- whereas if he just ordered something online, he could do that without really thinking about it again until the box arrived in the mail. But he couldn't force himself to not think. (And what ever they sent wouldn't be biodegradable.) Plus, if he stopped himself from thinking that would make him just like the blind ma.s.ses that consumed everything in a state of oblivion. He also didn't want to be played by the system that made money off other people's misery. Lastly, he didn't want the rat b.a.s.t.a.r.ds that ran the world to see that they were getting to him when they traced his life through his credit-card purchase and discovered that he'd ordered a female part like a man in prison might if he could. That would give them a good laugh at his expense, and that was the last thing he'd allow.

Rage filled him, this time more intensely than he'd felt in the years since he'd had an episode- what they called a breakdown- in his ex-employer's lab. The only benefit of that job had been that he now received disability income from it. Regardless, he hated them all and hated that his life had been relegated to this, all because he saw the truth and refused to be quiet about what they were doing in their poison factories abroad.

He needed more tea. Needed to get back to his jigsaw puzzle of formulas on his whiteboard.

But then a quiet thought entered his mind, almost as though it had tiptoed in through the back door of his brain. Call it an insight, or perhaps it was a download from the Akashic records, he wasn't sure. But it made him slow his process of standing up so he could pay attention to it.

What if his body-needs increasing were a sign? What if he was getting frustrated and turned on because it was time? What if he'd finally reached the peak of his mental, physical, and spiritual evolution, so that now was time for him to find that mate?

Or, perhaps, create her?

All this time he'd been trying to find the answers in the ancient knowledge of kings, when the answer was- literally-right in front of him all along.

Ernest abandoned his tea and rushed out of the living room. Running as if he was being chased, he went to his lab table and began routing through his esoteric texts on female deities and intelligent species that he'd collected over the years.

What if now, he thought, with his intellectual ac.u.men at full tilt, what if he could break the code on the ancient Sumerian texts or on the Cuneiform tablets that all spoke of releasing a female ent.i.ty that- to his mind- sounded like a more highly evolved alien species? Powerful females that began or ended the world as humans knew it . . . As men knew it. What if he married the funeral rites of men, of kings, but called a female ent.i.ty instead?

"Thank you for dying, Uncle Fred!" Ernest shook his head and laughed out loud. The death notice was a sign. It had to be a beautiful, gorgeous coincidence given to him by an intelligence beyond the veil.

The adjustment in the codexes would be simple. No wonder all the G.o.ddesses had been banned and removed from modern, paternalistic religious texts. They were the ones that could flow more easily between worlds! The information was right under his nose all along.

Ernest clutched his papers, giggling as tears formed in his eyes. This was the information that they wanted hidden from the general human population . . . so what better way to do that than to eradicate the G.o.ddess from all current religious thought?

His hands began to scribble a new ancient equation on the whiteboard behind his lab desk, taking careful pains to insert the feminine versus masculine in every symbol translation. The equation was a spell. He stared at it closely. It was a formula for the elements needed to raise the dead . . .

Women. It all hinged on women. The true creators and givers of life.

Every single culture spoke of them, whether as succubae, vampires, Lilith, Oshun, Kali . . . yes, like Kali- the black one, like him, Kali the G.o.ddess of annihilation, her name a.s.sociated with death, but also great benevolence. In Tantric beliefs, known as "the ultimate reality." s.e.xual.

"Kali . . ." he murmured. The consort of Shiva, who was known as "eternal time," while Kali herself was known as "the time."

It was definitely the time.

And if Einstein was right- and there was no reason to believe that he, a genius, was not- then matter could neither be created nor destroyed. Perhaps moved into another dimension, but it would still exist, regardless. Maybe it was made temporarily inanimate- but it was still there. And it only stood to reason that if there was such a deep human story-trail of these ancient G.o.ddesses, then it was possible that there was truth to the rumors that had lasted centuries. The one thing that all modern anthropologists had learned over the years was that lies and untruths within cultures tended to die out, whereas those things that continued to be handed down from a fragment of truth tended to live on.

What if ancient cultures simply didn't have the scientific vocabulary for bringing an energy being through the dimensional fabric to manifest in our world? What if these ent.i.ties occasionally did break through? What if angels and demons and such really did exist?

But one thing was for sure: all cultures generally agreed that whoever raised the deity would have power over it.

Ernest spun away from his whiteboard, opened an expensive text, and quickly turned the worn pages to the bare-breasted drawing of Kali. She was both horrible and gorgeous, with four arms and coal-black skin, long flowing hair, and a body that wouldn't stop. She could definitely be his woman, the woman that created the freakin' Kama Sutra, and could level mountains. What if an ent.i.ty like that was obligated to him for bringing her through the veil to experience the seduction of the mortal world again? And her appet.i.te for destruction could be unleashed on the powerful families and heads of corporations that were controlling (and poisoning) the world?

Oligarchies would crumble. She could blight the genetically engineered seeds and only true seeds that were natural and organic could grow. She could destroy the oil industry, making wells go dry, so as not to further damage the Earth by making it bleed black blood into the Gulf or anywhere else. That would make nations have to scramble to develop bio fuels and solar and wind technology, and he wouldn't have to wait on f.u.c.king Congress to vote beyond their own personal campaign interests. She could create a plague that would just kill all the genetically altered toxic animals on their way to slaughter, something so horrible and ma.s.sive that it couldn't be covered up and people would be too afraid- on their own- to eat from those diseased food sources. Then people would demand real change.

Oh, yeah, he could keep his G.o.ddess busy f.u.c.king up the world until the rich weren't rich and the poor woke up and got a clue. There would be anarchy, and she could stop armies while the ma.s.ses took over the reins of their towns again and planted organic food to feed their people from small community farms, and drummed out the a.s.sholes on Wall Street that created nothing but made billions by electronic transfers of paper. She could make the trading boards go black. That wouldn't hurt people like a blackout, but it would sure tank the global bulls.h.i.t market, just like what happened when someone supposedly keyed in a wrong amount for a trade and blue chip stocks went to zero for a few minutes. What if everything on the worldwide stock markets just went to zero and stayed there?

The more he thought about it, the better it sounded.

In a frenzy of hope and excitement, he ran to his library shelves and began yanking down every book he had on quantum physics and incantations. He needed to get the science right- that was what undergirded the magic of the spell, or as he liked to refer to it, the ancient equation.

Crystals amplified interdimensional contact. Copper and gold were highly conductive metals. The full moon was a high tide mark, when the Earth's electromagnetic pull was at an apex, hence there was more cosmic juice to get the signal to the energy residing in a different dimensions.

Chants, words, had a vibrational resonance, and any idiot knew vibration was the very foundation of the universe. Everything vibrated- atoms and every subatomic particle down to a quark vibrated.

Ancient cultures used all of these elements to create a confluence of events. Drums were simply vibration, like the chants, and getting a bunch of people in a tribe to all do it together just amplified the vibe out to the other side. Face paint and juju herbs were just theater. Maybe the folks needed to get a buzz on to totally suspend disbelief and to open up their access to parts of their brains that the normal human hadn't learned to use yet? Who knew, but he'd roll a joint from the plants he grew in his lab under UV lights to be sure not to allow his overa.n.a.lysis to create an intellectual block.