The Merkaba (7)

Into the sixteenth breath a spinning disk formed around her spine extending over 55 feet in diameter. It was wobbling in the energy matrix and the surrounding disappeared.

Grass carpeted the courtyard in vibrant green in the month of August. The sky above was bright blue with few clouds. She stood pinpointed under the conical dome wearing nothing. Just about a kilometre over the hill from Tsaghkadzor, in the village of Makravan, this 13^th century church dedicated to Surb Astvatsatsin – Holy Mother of God. Her mind was pure, her soul cleansed…the light was bright. If someone saw her posture at this moment, she was elevated forty feet above ground. It took her nearly three months of preparation and not a single vape.

In nine-tenths the speed of light it stabilised the rotating field, every electron in the body revolved around every atom in the seventeenth breath and…exhale…

In the eighteenth breath Maria vanished into the Merkaba.

In a dreary village by the Tunguska River, Tyler was exiled to a camp dissolved from the map in recent times where political prisoners were kept until 1960 in Turukhansk. There were some of them still left in a small community of folks who spoke different tongues. It took three days to chase the wild Yenisei River in harsh nature and meanders. Clay cut shores, grey wooden huts, spars stunted fir trees and the spillage of water in the tundra-forest – its horror and beauty of its own kind. There was no horizon to define the sky and earth – an endless abyss of bitterness – having drunk it so early.

Turukhansk comprised a couple of shops with canned food and vodka, a small school, a local paper and a mail service in the summer but he was not permitted to write a letter. Tyler should report to the local department office every ten days and sign a book. He fell on his knees at the door realising that death was on his shoulder.

The indigenous folks and their attitudes could not be invented. There wasn’t a door he knocked he was not refused. Peasants lived an ordinary life and drunken women wearing little red skirts and cotton panties swear in drunken voices. Among former prisoners he met a few Germans and a Russian priest, a Eurasian migrant and a convict. Those stories of death, torture, rape and forced labour in the camps run by the Gulag were alarming.

A lot of them were writers; those who expressed their opinions. There wasn’t any profession much hated as journalism. He came to learn about one such poet still alive – Ariadne Sergeevna Efron – of alleged espionage for the French Secret Police she spent over a decade in prison and exile. She was tortured, raped and interrogated until she confessed against her own father and in the Russian formula of Justice she made the ‘Queen of Evidence’ in order to have her punishment reduced.

Tyler’s job was cutting log in the hummocks and taiga shrunk to grow smaller trees. He had to earn a ruble to eat and keep warm. Their mode of transport done on sledges and fluffy laikas. If he couldn’t earn he wouldn’t survive this earth and those labour camps that offered generous stay had been long abolished.

He drank water from under the driftwood and jumped into the Yenisei in a fearless insanity of courage. At his age he was merely coping and forgotten to breathe from his nostrils. Sometime in the evolving future a snout would become needless and scent an extinct sense.

In the height of the short summer, potatoes not bloom, berries and mushrooms not ripen, nothing else was there. It was cold and only the stove kept them warm. Mosquitoes and midges in masses roamed. In the white nights he thought about his family at home.

In August, Tyler joined a steamer heading to the permafrost in the Arctic Circle to the icy cold. It was full moon, bright and red, and under an unblinking moon-like northern sun. There were still incredible winds, blizzards and in severe frost great difficulty to overcome.

Back in Turukhansk, he could remember it was 18^th of August, he made into the taiga at midday. Out of the blue he caught a bright white star bigger than a tennis ball that looked like a stellar plate and branched to form a dendrite. It blew off to its nucleus and then there was nothing in the sky.

Coincidentally, he saw a figure of a white woman standing vertically elevated some yards above ground. It looked like a snow statue with bluish shadows and her lips dark-toned blue. Then a waft caught around her hips and growing bigger into a whirlwind like a spherical disk. She was thin, long and unclothed, her hair short. Those laikas long forgotten their instinct to bark began to make noises and howl. Suddenly, the spectre of the cold front disappeared in a blink of an eye.

Early settlers of the Mangazeya called this ‘Angel Zhelaniya’ – a phenomenal occurrence often sighted in the barren tundra…and then there was Baba Yaga.

Tyler knew she’d always be there. The height of her spirit was equal in strength to the height of her talent to achieve the High Priestess.

Winter grew harsh and tedious. He could sledge into emptiness miles and miles out in the frozen mighty Yenisei. A long story shortened here.

Tyler came across several sightings and wrote a book out of it. One hopeless nasty day he was digging for fish when he saw a frosty pillar beaming towards the sky out in the dark cold mist.

This winter he began to teach mathematics and English at the school. There was no such language barrier with an intention to teach.

Samvel Salazar knew Tyler was in a Gulag camp near Turukhansk from Maria’s psychic readings. He had studied the contents of photography Tyler left with her and assumed they could help solve his case. He wired to New York several times but received no response.

Then in 1965 a high-profile influential political leader was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR. This person codenamed ‘Sledge’ was born in a tiny little village called Mamati in the district of Guria on 25^th January 1928.

Salazar learnt from trustworthy sources that he could be the only person to bring Tyler out of Siberia but he had no connection or resources constrained to limit. It was in the first quarter of 1966 Salazar was ushered to an office at Tbilisi for a five-minute appointment after a one-hour wait. He told the minister, “Mr Friesen is in the Gulag camp near Turukhansk.”

“There are no Gulag now!” spoke Sledge in a soft voice, “They have been abolished since 1960.”

“Take my word,” assured Salazar, “I have certain sources to apprise, he’s in Turukhansk.”

Sledge perused through the contents and passed the five-minute marker. He was a Board Member of TAM Aviation Group. “Interesting…very interesting…” At this point he wasn’t aware of Macedon Air entering operation phase in the coming month. Sledge gave his word, “I will look into the matter personally.”

In mid 1966 TAM discovered Alexey involved in the operation of Macedon Air in Skopje. In October some urgency wired to Turukhansk demanding Tyler Friesen to return to Georgia immediately.

It was a happy day he arrived at Makhachkala on his last leg to Georgia. He could feel the air of freedom as he stood by the shore looking out into the blue and a thin layer of mist as far as the shores could reach. Tyler knew it was a land-locked sea. He wasn’t given a chance to make a call and still under military watch. Soon they’d take him to a flight to Tbilisi.

Tyler heard a loud aircraft engine and suddenly out of the misty blue it appeared – a huge beast. He had not seen a flying machine as huge as this. It skimmed the waves…in a corrected visual it cruised ten metres above the surface of the Caspian Sea. He watched the mammoth aircraft pass him and out of his eyeshot.

The ‘Korabl Maket’ was one of the first prototypes of the ekranoplan – ground effect vehicle – built by Central Hydrofoil Design Bureau at Red Sormovo plant in Gorky, Nizhniy Novgorod. At the time of its launch it was the largest and heaviest aircraft in the world with a height of 21.8 m, length of 92 m and wingspan of 32.6 m. This beast could cruise at a maximum speed of 500 km/h. She had a pay load of a ship and speed of a plane driven by ten pylon-housed Dobrynin VD-7 turbojets.

On this day, 16^th October 1966, it occurred to be a test flight in the outer waters of Kaspiysk and its very own designer, Ristislav Alexeyev, captained the ship. CIA satellites caught this enormous craft in the Caspian Sea in 1967 and dubbed the ‘Kaspian Monster’ linking to the letters ‘KM’ visible on its body and nobody knew what the hell it was. Later it became known more commonly in the English term as the ‘Caspian Sea Monster’.