Perilous times? It sure seems that way! Just yesterday, a major hurricane invaded a part of the state of Louisiana where family members live and I pray they got through it safely. Just a week or so ago, a war that the US never should have gotten involved with in the first place, ended in a strange and somewhat infamous fashion as have so many other wars in this country have ended since the times of Alexander the Great! So-called “pandemics” which seem to have been created for nefarious purposes as if we’re living in a sci-fi or a dystopian thriller scenario. Child, adult, human, sex, whatever trafficking under the guise of ‘immigration,’ and not just in the US, either, but worldwide mostly for profit or other evil purposes. Earthquakes, typhoons, tsunamis, volcano eruptions, fires across northern California and Russia…as desert-mountain far west Texas hasn’t seen this much rain and flooding since 2004! Okay, okay, 2017…. Corrupt governments that only a criminal psychopath could love. And more….and will everyone soon be required to get ‘your papers, please’ just to travel to see loved ones or work or go to school or whatever?
And speaking of ‘your papers, please’….
The second novel of The Prodigal Band Trilogy, The Prophesied Band, goes into this ‘papers please’ notion. This novel, as stated in a previous post on ‘how’ the trilogy was written and why, was completed around the time that many thought was indeed perilous, that time of government actions against so-called ‘right-wing militias’ and other ‘rebellious’ groups such as the Branch Davidians. This mid- and late-90s period was when various alternative media organs warned against globalism and their so-called ‘new world order’ (mentioned by former president George HW Bush in one of his speeches) run mostly by ‘one-world-government’ organs like the United Nations. Perilous? Some Christian groups even believed that the ‘end times’ were coming quickly, and, further, various evangelical types began harping on ‘the rapture,’ including the authors of a fictional novel series called ‘Left Behind.’
That was then, but this is now, with a new paradigm called ‘the Great Reset.’ Do I even need to regurgitate the saying about owning nothing and being happy? (And is this saying copyrighted? Bwahahahahahahaha!). So that whether it is ‘pandemics’ or screwed-up economics or political skullduggery or wars and rumors of wars or crazy weather or earth-shattering events, these do seem like perilous times. ‘Papers, please’ or not.
Onto the snippet. Chapter Eight of The Prophesied Band has a snippet featuring the narrator, pop-culture pundit Jay Elliot, witnessing a very strange event as he is heading to an opulent gala hosted by new age guru Cole Blessing, a fake ‘healer’ who now heads the cultist Church of the Circle of Unity (founded by the evil, now supposedly dead, Swami Negran) at his estate at St. Xenos near the fictitious Bay area city of Richmont, which features an Ashram and a hidden basement for his evil rituals. And when he arrives, the strangeness continues as he heads into the gala. He was invited to the gala as a guest of band singer Erik. As for the song by the prodigal band that is featured in the snippet: the notion of ‘foot on your face’ resembles a line from Orwell’s 1984; UN ‘global-cops’ wear blue uniforms; and do I even need to mention the meaning of the ‘mark’?
One night in a strange, cold California spring in perilous times, late May, 2000
I drove my car south from my house to St. Xenos for the most important opulent soiree the year witnessed, thinking this might be the last grand party ever.
Up ahead I saw red brake lights from a long line of cars going through one of the several checkpoints on the highway. This was my second such stop.
Screeeeeech!
I heard from at least two cars’ stereo speakers a monster mega-hit from the recent past, on a night and in times like these. A song of jack-booted beat, vicious undertone of bass and sinister metallic strings—Sound Unltd’s ‘Blue Division.’
The global cops come in ‘peace’ to take us away.
A foot in your face, a deadly embrace.
When they inject your ‘mark,’
They eject your rights.
Then they’ll own your soul.
And never once did you put up a fight
Against the Blue Division.
A blue-uniformed law enforcer with a strange insignia on his shoulder patch stopped my car to check my driver’s license. I turned my stereo down.
“Driver license, plis.” The young man had a Russian accent.
I had it ready to show him. Held it out. He took it over to the nearby scanner to inspect the thumb-print, bar code, and national ID number all American driver’s licenses now contained. The card also had a retinal print, a voice print, and all identifying info anyone could possibly want. A national ID card.
He came back. “Are you US citizen, plis?”
“Absolutely, I’m an American.”
“Okay,” he said with a small wave on. “Rock all night.” He laughed.
I did not drive away. “Huh? What was that?”
“Rock all night.” Short laugh. “You know, the song. ‘Rock all day, rock all night, ‘til you get a heart attack’.”
“Oh, yeah, the song. A biggie. You like Sound Unltd?”
“Yes, I got all their CDs.”
Who knows? I might be able to use this line to get this guy to let me through on the way back. “Listen, I’m going to the bash at St. Xenos tonight. Erik Manning’s gonna be there. I’ll get his autograph for you.”
“Really? You do that?”
“Yeah. You can have it if I get to drive through here on the way home. And all the other checkpoints. Okay?”
“I’ll try. Okay?”
I was waved through the next two checkpoints.
At the last one, I saw an unmarked windowless bus parked off to the left side of the checkpoint. A line of people chained ankle to ankle were being loaded onto it.
The global cops come in ‘peace’ to take us away.
I arrived at Cole Blessing’s thirty-thousand square foot palace two miles from his Ashram. All lit up, including statues of Mother Nature as Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water guarding his forty-foot-high wrought iron fence and gates. As this late arrival drove along the palm tree-lined terracotta driveway, I saw blue-uniformed security guards on both sides every hundred feet. But their patches were not the ones the check-point guards wore. They were marked by the Corionic Cross.
When I drove up to the wide sidewalk I was greeted by bulky carhops wearing the same blue uniforms. I left the keys in the ignition and stepped out showing one of them my invitation.
“Go right in, sir. The party is through the second set of double doors.”
I’d entered a long hallway from the outside and was immediately visually assaulted by a painting a story high and at least thirty feet wide of the Earth as seen from outer space. A fragile ecosystem, a view like that from the moon. It’s all we have, a moon-shot photograph had once announced. But this mural spoke of godlike proportions.
Here I am, folks. Mother Earth, Mother Nature, Gaia.
Swami Negran had preached that Mother Earth, as goddess, was the wife of the god Corion. Negran began this particular religious community back in 1984. Blessing supposedly became Swami’s student a couple of years later, but left to form his own natural healing settlement in Florida in 1992.
In little time Blessing built up his healer’s reputation by treating cancers of the high and mighty. Many of them later felt obliged to partake in his religious commune twice a year.
As I stated earlier, events of the 90s influenced this particular scenario I put into the novel. (Note: In the original OmegaBooks-published paperback The Prophesied Band, the time frame was called ‘the present,’ because it was published in 1998. When I redid the novel for the trilogy three-books-in-one, I changed the timeframe to 2000.) The notion of a ‘national ID card’ was just coming into play at the time. Then, the driver’s license was considered the closest thing to a ‘national ID card’ because (with the government’s narrative anyway) you couldn’t drive without one, plus it had a picture of the holder on it, date of birth, address, eye color, height, and classifications of restrictions based on results of vision test. But the notions of ‘retinal scans’ and fingerprints on a national ID card for the future made sense to me back then and I had a funny feeling this sort of the card could happen in the future.
And why did the man that stopped Elliot have a Russian accent? Because back then anyway, the model for totalitarian societies had been the Soviet Union. If the novel was being published these days, the man would more likely have an Asian accent if you know what I mean. Need I mention the country?
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The Prodigal Band Trilogy © 2019 by Deborah Lagarde, Battle of the Band © 1996 by Deborah Lagarde, The Prophesied Band © 1998 by Deborah Lagarde and The Prodigal Band © 2018 by Deborah Lagarde. Permission needed to copy any materials off this page.
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