[00:13] Snow is falling heavily outside the mountain cabin I have rented to get away from it all. Millennium Fever is sweeping the globe, but up here, apparently protected by glacier-coated peaks on all sides, it could be any silent night in the predawn of humanity. Even my friends the bears have withdrawn into their winter refuges, enjoying their annual oblivion from human evils and follies. If terrorists strike, if Apocalypse is now, if Armageddon is here, if the End-of-the-World descends, I’d be the last to know.

Just moments ago, Raminothna gave me the last mystical experience of the last century, perhaps of my life. As usual, it was in the form of an answer to a question, and my question was what had haunted me for years: “Is our Earth destined to integratively transcend and live, or self-destruct and die?”

After dusk had fallen, Raminothna said to me, “Go into the cave on the hillside behind the cabin. Build a simple pyramid by means of five boulders, with four as the base and one as the apex. Write on a piece of paper the following words: ‘The Earth will surely die.’ Crush the paper into a ball, and have it inserted into the pyramid. If the Earth is destined to live, then, before the strike of midnight, a cosmic hand of destiny will reduce the paper ball to ashes. If not, the Earth shall die.”

I did as instructed.

Needless to say, it was the longest evening of my life, except the evening of February 20, 1993 of course. I sat in the dark against the back wall of the room-sized cave, trying to keep warm and awake with the thermos of coffee at my side. As the minutes crept inexorably towards the moment of reckoning, scenes of the past replayed themselves before my mind’s eye.

The May 17 “traditional hunt” of Yabis, the female juvenile grey whale, by the Makah with their .50 calibre gun from their power boat, before my tear-veiled eyes, in spite of all I’ve done to help save her from that terrible fate, which has branded me, along with other anti-whaling activists such as Paul Watson, Susan Hudgens, Dian Hardy, Jim Robertson, Dan Spomer, Barbara Stanton…, in the CERTAIN website of pro-whaling native Americans, as “racist”, which in this case I wear like a badge of honour. I relived again seeing her blowing explosively upon the entry of the Makah’s ceremonial harpoons into her body, followed by her corkscrewing in the foaming watera, winding the ropes attached to the harpoons around and around herself, and the repeated slapping of her tail upon the waves, and how, having been towed back to shore by the motorcraft, how she was irreverently used as a launch pad by jubilant Makah doing their cannonballs.

I thought of my abject failure, during and after the August meeting in WCWC’s boardroom between WCWC and Tiger Trust, in which Paul, Adriane, Pradeep and I participated, to persuade WCWC to remove Tiger Trust as partner, and my bitter separation from WCWC days afterwards, and my founding of Heal Our Planet Earth Global Environmental Organization - HOPE-GEO – one month later.

I thought of all the lady loves I’ve lost to my passionate, almost obsessive, devotion to Raminothna, whom none took seriously, and to OMNI-SCIENCE, which none seemed to think much of.

Finally, and most of all, I thought of the person I love most in this world, who is now eleven years of age, whom I haven’t seen since his age of four, and whom I may never see again. His name, too, is Christopher.

I fell on my knees and prayed, and prayed with all my heart, for cosmic providence to bestow fortune upon this our precious Earth, and upon Christopher, the precious child of my spirit, to which Raminothna said, as if totally off-topic, “Tell me, have you heard of the earthquake in South America?”

“Which earthquake?”

“The one in which people crowded into a church to pray for safety, which then collapsed on top of them when an aftershock struck.”

“What are you telling me? That prayers don’t work?”

“The meaning of prayer.”

“What about it?”

“Pray not for fortune...”

“Pray not for fortune?”

“… but for courage to face potential or real misfortune.”

“Is this your way of saying that the Earth won’t make it?”

“It is not in my place to tell you one way or the other. Only the Cosmic Hand of Destiny can do that.”

The cave in my mind returned to silence again. I poured the rest of the coffee into my cup.

When the cup had run dry, I flicked on the flashlight to check my watch for the Nth time, it read 11:39. I shone the flashlight into the pyramid, and saw the paper ball lying there still, intact. My heart, which had been sinking by the minute, scraped rock bottom.

But as this eleventh hour dwindled to its last lingering minutes, and as the last minute dwindled to the last seconds of this fateful night, a cosmic hand of destiny did reach into the pyramid and, by means of a flaring match, set the paper ball afire, reducing it within heartbeats to ashes. In the light of its flickering flame, I regarded this hand, which was my own.

“Congratulations, Homo Sapiens, and happy new millennium. May your Earth transcendentally integrate itself amongst the stars, as you wish.”

“Thank you, Raminothna,” I said, my voice shuddering from more than the cold.

After I had returned to the cabin, and slipped exhausted under the cover, Raminothna said to me, “Tell me one more time. What is the Way of the Cosmos, the Tao, and therefore the optimal ‘Way of Man’?”

“Transcendental Integration, or Integrative Transcendence, if you will.”

“Thus, the ‘Inconceivable’ has been conceived.”

“Yes, I believe it has.”

“And have you spoken it to anyone?”

“Yes, to about thirty scientists of five universities in the 80s, and to Faiyaz Khudsar, Anne Wittman and Christopher Lindstrom earlier this year, as well as to a few thousand readers of the Capitol Times and a few other newspapers around the world a few days ago.”

“So, the ‘Unspeakable’ has been spoken.”

“Yes, though I have just begun in this, it has.”

“Then, my dearly beloved Homo Sapiens of Earth, the time has come for me to bid you farewell. Other worlds beckon, and I must go to them, as I heeded your world’s beckoning and came to you. In your sleep tonight, I will steal away. Even so, I will be thinking of you, as you will be thinking of Christopher, always. May the Tao be with you, Homo sapiens of Earth. I will forever remain, the Fortunate and the Called upon, at your service.”

I did not say goodbye. Instead, I tried to stay awake, but after one of my blinks, I glanced at the window, and saw that dawn had broken.

“Good morning, Raminothna,” I said, as I’ve done for years upon every awakening.

There was no reply.

“Raminothna!”

No reply still.

“RAMINOTHNA!!!”

An eternal silence ensued.

Goodbye, Raminothna.

Hello, Third Millennium.