The Animistic Stance part 1
Beginning a new book
When I wrote The Saugatuck Cosmology with Bill Gore, I adopted the paradigm of animism to tell my story without really thinking it through. Starting a new project with Bill, I have brought animism to the center of a new tale: one that doubles down on multiple realities and the extension of social life beyond the human tribe.
For the basic setup, I was inspired by a famous sci-fi series where interstellar aliens and humans meet in a tavern that is mostly isolated from the rest of Earth. Those stories, in turn, riffed on the old joke tradition where different characters “go into a bar” and something funny ensues. Mine are adventurers who get together in an exotic location and explore matters that they could not tackle in their regular lives. Matters such as alternate realities and animism. If a publisher asks you, the genre is contemporary science fantasy with a side of exposition. So, it’s like most news stories today, but more interesting and hopeful.
Here’s how it starts …
— Ted
Nepal:
The Meeting
This ravine, her last, was worse than all the others. Steep and wet, the rocks sharper. It would hurt more to fall on them, but wouldn't they stick together better, be less likely to slide and take her down? A week ago she would have been too scared to try this one, but, after a while you get used to the risk and take bigger steps.
The drone buzzed high above. She had no choice but to follow it. High-altitude drones capable of overflying the Himalayan foothills cost too much to lose. It was a smart drone trained to deal with rogue wind shear. But how smart is a smart thing anyway, and — light and floaty as it had to be — it could only do so much. If it crashed or went into radio shadow then she would need to find it. Or sell her truck when she got home.
Her stint as a cryptid biologist was ending today, with no Yeti bagged. She did get some lovely video of a snow leopard pair. That was a treat since the cats were dwindling, maybe because they couldn't figure out where warming had moved their prey. Nobody had expected them to do a polar bear, but that's where they were headed.
But, oh for video of a stink ape! That would solve all her professional problems and lead to a newer, nicer life. So far, no biologist or explorer who had seen a Yeti could follow it or see it again. Clear, provably unfaked video would do wonders.
A big boulder loomed near. The hiss of the zigzagging drone made her look up. It was still in the mountain's shadow but it lit up, kind of sparkled, and then -- gone! Her 10,000-dollar deposit would go with it.
It must have fallen. The boulder was climbable. She could get a better view. As she circled to the uphill side she noticed that the boulder was smoother, browner, and somehow older than the surrounding rocks, with an unlikely dwarf tree rooted in a crack. Adrenaline made her shaky as she started the scramble. She remembered the local official: “We discourage solo trekking, Mizz.” No guarantee of rescue, or even being found. “Take no chances, please.”
Making a tricky move at the top. Another sparkle: this time like an ocular migraine, but with vertigo. Her blood rushed; a fall now would be
...
A face close to hers: nice brown eyes and swarthy, faintly lined skin. She felt warm, stiff. Sitting up.
"The first time we are coming out sleepy. Not to worry, Mizz. We just need to mark your spot, so you can go back, you know."
The smallish, seemingly local, man wore pricey outfitter's gear like her and he smiled a lot. Perhaps shy. He stacked two cairns, one on each side of her. Then he grinned wider, pulled out a spray can, and used it to draw a blue circle on the ground around her, blocking with his hand to keep it off her clothes.
Her eyes adjusted to the brightness. She sat on a red dirt trail with lush, tall green growth on either side. The sky was dark blue, like the Himalayan, but the air was mild, with no altitude bite. She tested her legs, found them steady. "Where are we?” she asked. She would get on with whatever story she'd dropped into. But, no answer, just that smile.
He led her to a meadow. Adjacent to a copse, a crude structure was half-made, on a mix of natural and made materials. Mud and debris ruined the natural beauty nearby, but the wider view was stunning. Her host busied himself preparing her a plate of raw fruits and nuts, then poured a foamy drink into a bamboo-like cup.
"When do I get to know what happened and all that?"
The story Sridar told Beth seemed preposterous, snce it was about instantaneous travel back and forth to the unknown.
…
“Do I think this place — this transition — should be kept a secret?” she said. “Emphatically yes. Do you think there are others to be found?”
“I am having two reasons to think so. First, nature doesn’t do one-offs. Any natural pattern or process will exist in multiple instances, usually very numerous ones.”
“You talk like a scientist.”
“I am not one as such, but maybe wishing I had been. My second reason also involves science. My researcher nephew has a way of getting access to protected data. He has been collating extreme multispectral satellite data for rare patterns. He is looking for any like the one at the boulder where you entered the passageway, the portal to this place. He thinks he might have found one in Costa Rica. A location where secure access would be easier than here.”
“You want time to study this … thing, whatever it is, without outside public knowledge and interference?”
“I do. I have access to some independent financial means. You could think of it as a sponsor.”
“You'll need to build a team while maintaining confidentiality. The team will need plausible reasons to be together in a remote location. A field biologist would fit right into most such situations. I just lost an expensive research tool and probably my associateship. Can you and your sponsor …”
“Yes. I will want to research your background first, but I can advance you some recovery and living expenses while I check out the Costa Rican anomaly.”
Costa Rica:
The Path of Regrettably Unavoidable Danger
(A youngish man, long-haired and bandy-legged, strides down a jungle path, barefoot where anyone of sense would be wearing snake boots, and overshadowed by a backpack that’s at least 70 liters. He leaps over a living river of leafcutter ants and after five paces hops the same shivering river again. He passes a sign saying beware poisonous snakes and spiders, with crude but convincing portraits of the same in colored brushwork. Further on, a sign with a medical cross advises that no evacuation is possible.
The trail is fainter next to a notice in dripping white on black and in three languages that the way is closed, no admittance, forbidden, dangerous area, predators animal & human, and so on. At its bottom are some scratches cartooning the silhouette of an AK-47. Below the sign, a dark stain has covered the greenery and pooled, like a gallon of old blood, over the bare ground and a couple of longish bones.
He hitches his shoulders and tugs the straps to shift the pack. Then, like a conjurer, he twists left and obliquely disappears into the bush, brushing by the warning sign. An observer would think the man was doubly insane, both ignoring the warnings and doing so when the sun was making its tropical plunge into night. Sridar, not afraid at all, is just ferrying supplies to a place that he calls Elsewhere.)
Encrypted voice chat: Sridar’s Revelation
(Sridar is in Costa Rica, one foot figuratively in the real world, and another in the Unknown. Beth has been in adjunct professor limbo, waiting for him to rescue her, living in her pickup, and bereft of sympathy for her witless students. She wonders whether the last 13 months would have been better if she and Sridar had become a couple. The attraction was there, at least on her side.)
S: We are needing a cover. The old hotel is perfect: isolated, rustic to a fault, and within walking distance. It was abandoned, but I am fixing it up enough to be legitimate and yet, hopefully, not too popular. Also, we need some security features. And the road could be just a bit better.
B: Are you paying for this yourself?
S: No, the Sponsor. But it is in my name, helping grease the local wheels. It’s hard to get work done here. Reminds me of home in that way. Cash is important. I would worry about having it around, but the locals are reliable, sweet-natured people. And the cartels are way off where they can exploit international shipping.
B: Still, that kind of money must have strings. Also, any serious exploring is going to be hard to conceal. Won’t we need help?
S: Right now I am thinking that the exploring will be more about ideas than territory.
B: Huh?
S: The way I am seeing it: being in an impossible place helps you understand other impossibilities. I want to use Elsewhere — that’s what I call it now — as a kind of retreat. The fact that some strange place exists says to me that many other things, ones that we dismiss as superstition, need to be re-considered.
B: WTFF Sridar? Is there other woo-ey business on the table?
S: No, no: I am still quite a rational being. My uncle though, he made a living curing people, predicting the future, and fighting evil spirits. With, you know, just a drum, chanting, some smoke, and herbs. And so many others all over the world, for so many years, have believed things that I dismissed when I became old enough to leave the village.
B: So you are what — un-disillusioned? Why should that keep us from studying what appears to be a whole new world, unknown to science?
S: I have had some experiences. Elsewhere, and the one in Nepal, if it’s the same place — they are eerie. I have been frightened. I think we need to move carefully. These may well be places that even witches and shamans visit at some peril, relying on hard-won, time-tested knowledge to keep them safe. Maybe they actually go there, or maybe just visit in their minds? We can’t just go barging in. That’s a word, right: barging?
B: Maybe I had better get another research biology job while my credentials are still fresh. I mean, why me? How can I fit into this quest of yours?
S: I think of it as a message from —I don’t know — but Elsewhere to me is a metaphor for all this baggage that Western civ has never resolved. Look, you read all this stuff out there about some ‘new animism.’ That we are, have been, creating new forms of life: corporations, AI’s, various collective things whose parts are multiple human minds. Maybe. But we can’t understand those things unless we understand our living planet first. I am tasked to assemble a group to look at the traditional wisdom with fresh eyes. It could be very important. And the quietness, the isolation, the privacy would be liberating.
B: I’m a biologist …
S: And so much more. Look at how we met and tell me it wasn’t meant to be. I need you, Beth. You are perfect for this.
B: Have your sponsor make me an offer. I need a package to help me get restarted when this thing ends. I’m not being crass here. It’s just that the system, the science establishment, does not look after its own. OMFG, when has anyone ever said I’m perfect and they need me?
S: That will be done, Beth. Thanks for taking me seriously.