And so it ends.Thank you for following this story — and it’s meant a lot to me to see that some people have even parted with their hard-earned cash for the ebook/audiobook versions of APOCALYPSE ROCK 🖤 🙏 🖤I wanted to give The Beachcomber the last word, delivering the epilogue to APOCALYPSE ROCK. She is an odd, and to me, endearing character. Along with her obvious personal eccentricities, she is sharp, curious, persistent. Valuable and inspiring qualities, I think.Indeed, The Beachcomber knows that no story ever really ends… And so, for you, o subscribed reader, I do hope the Sternum Island universe will persist, strangely, curiously, irregularly… And there are several more stories set in the Sternum Island universe that I have been developing. More on that soon 👀I would be remiss to not mention that you can buy APOCALYPSE ROCK as an audiobook through Audible (CA/UK/US) and the ebook on Kindle (CA/UK/US)Bon voyage, happy trails, safe journeys, fare thee well 🐾A FAMILIAR MONTAGE of aerial shots of different shorelines passed by, filmed using a variety of cameras and recording technology from over the past century: tropical beaches shot in old warbling video, grainy 16mm film footage shows a speedboat cutting a white line across Biscayne Bay in Miami, a series of massive breakers pummel the rocky shores of some dark, treeless and wind-blown Atlantic island, in super-sharp flatness a fisherman in a tiny dinghy waves up at a drone flying across the placid lagoon of a South Pacific atoll, and others.“The Beachcomber,” title comes up in shimmering golden 3D letters. A digital wave of oily water crests and crashes down over the title, submerging it in lurid, frothy blue and green fluid.The ersatz tide pulls back to reveal numerous brightly colored running shoes, covered in black seaweed and encrusted with bone white barnacles.“Ahoy there,” the screen cut to The Beachcomber, standing stiffly on a moss-covered bluff over a choppy grey sea in the background. Dressed in her signature navy blue sailor’s cap and coat, and heavy hiking boots, she stares into the camera as she’s baffled by a strong wind.After a long moment, she finally speaks in her stilted rhythm, “Last episode we were on our way to Sternum Island in the Pacific Northwest. We were to join our investigative crew as they tried to get to the bottom of a mystery. A mystery of dismembered body parts. A mystery of a special school with a dark past, for special kids with troubled lives. A community under a mysterious threat. A mystery with some special, sinister characters…”The screen zoomed in to The Beachcomber’s face, making her nearly transparently pale skin almost glow against the grey seascape behind, her unblinking pale blue eyes widening as if to hypnotize her viewers.“But, that had to be canceled,” The Beachcomber continued, finally blinking her eyes in a slow, purposeful manner. “There was an incendiary event of still unknown origins that seemingly caused a telecommunications blackout, as well as the cancellation of all transportation. We attempted to hire a seaplane, but even air travel had been banned. For safety reasons.”The screen cut to The Beachcomber walking along the bluff, hopping over rocks and logs as she continued.“In the sea, everything is connected. Nothing is separate.”She stopped next to a twisted Arbutus tree and pondered it, raising her hand and touching its thin-skinned blistering bark.The Beachcomber turned back to the camera, “Our team embedded on Sternum Island has yet to report back. We’ll have to wait until telecommunications are restored.”The grainy nighttime image of a speedboat came onto the screen. There were what looked like a dozen figures hunched in it, about to depart from a pier in the rough seas. Animated red circles drew themselves around two of the little, blurry faces as the screen zoomed in.“But before the storm knocked out signal, we received this from our team. It is Brian Bozmann aka David Dorchester aka Gavin Gregory aka Mr Grey. He’s escaping from Sternum Island’s Leek Point facility in the stormy early hours of last Sunday morning. In the boat with him is the hitherto missing Constable Sweetland…”The screen zoomed in to show a fuzzy image of Sweetland’s disfigured and bandaged face.“… He seems to have suffered a terrible injury. Alongside them are a number of soldiers who are armed to the teeth. Our team managed to attach a homing beacon to the boat before it left. And we traced their journey all night and all day. And that’s why we’re here now…”The screen cut back to The Beachcomber, now standing next to a chainlink fence topped with razor-wire, running down the mossy bluff, across the massive craggy rocks of the shore, and into the waves. That line was continued out into the sea by a series of small orange buoys bobbing in the water. Little red lights mounted on their top gave out an occasional blink.Silently and slowly, The Beachcomber pointed to a sign on the fence: the black silhouette of a person with their arms jerking out, a large thunderbolt running through their body.Still pointing, she continued, “We’ve come north to Blubber Bay. Specifically, to the military base here. Notoriously, this has been the home to all manner of experiments on sea mammals. Beluga whales, dolphins, seals and more. All in an apparent attempt to weaponize these poor creatures for kamikaze missions, or to retrieve lost torpedoes, or other espionage. Our team has also tracked tidal flows and identified Blubber Bay as one very likely departure point for many of the detached feet found across the Salish Sea. The same feet that we have now discovered contains a virulent strain of rabies. The same Blubber Bay where the shady Brian Bozmann aka David Dorchester aka Gavin Gregory aka Mr Grey escaped to after using the small community of Sternum Island for some illicit brainwashing experiments… Allegedly… Now that’s a bucketful of dark.”The Beachcomber was still pointing at the sign on the fence of the person being electrocuted. She stared into the camera intensely and put her index finger over her lips in a soundless shushing gesture.The video cut to a close-up of her emotionless face. Her voice spoke but her lips stayed shut, still crossed with her index finger in a shush: “I’m The Beachcomber. Let’s see what’s washed ashore.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit apocalypserock.substack.com

Things are coming to a close for Doug and his friends — it’s been a long and strange journey for everyone! Now, after all the changes — the ingratiating new age retreat and their piles of tech corporation cash, missing pets and people, packs of rabid and feral dogs roaming the island, children living out in the woods, and everything else — things seem to have calmed. But, as ever on Sternum Island, things aren’t ever what they seem…If you’d like to get a complete copy of APOCALYPSE ROCK you can buy the audiobook through Audible (CA/UK/US) and the ebook on Kindle (CA/UK/US) 🚨Hit play above to listen or scroll down to read. Please rate and/or review the story wherever you’ve found it, and share with any friends who you think might like it!“THERE’S THE HOPPER now. Late as usual…” Officer Singh said.Sunlight dappled through Doug’s eyelids, reflections coming off water.He inhaled fresh, salty air. Seagulls squawked in the distance. Somewhere behind him the buzz of a weed whacker echoed, and then a dog barked. Familiar sounds in a familiar landscape. A Reassuring boredom.A blast of a ship’s horn rolled in from the ocean and Doug opened his eyes. It was a sunny day with only a few, small fluffy clouds in the sky. He was down at the Sternum Island Village Marina, facing out toward the calm and radiant sea. Doug was slumped in a wheelchair. A blanket loosely covered his legs, his right hand tucked under it, cradled in his lap. His head drooped to one side, his jaw slack and mouth slightly open. He felt some drool drip down his chin. A gruff wipe of a cloth jiggled his jaw.“No stress, buddy. You’re gonna be in good hands.” Doug recognized Dr Hubble’s voice coming from just over his shoulder. “They’ll get you back to wherever you belong.”“He’s opened his eyes again?” This time it was Officer Singh. “Hopefully Terminal PD can communicate with him.”“They have to take it easy with our boy in the woods,” Hubble replied. “He’s goddamn innocent until proven guilty! He needs to recover properly. Who knows how long that’ll take. Then there’s that weird strain of rabies he got out there, somehow, not to mention the cocktail of meds in his blood. No surprise he’s a goddamn vegetable. It’s a miracle he managed to get to the main road in his condition.”Across from Doug was the marina noticeboard. He could just make out scraps of yellow and bright pink bits of paper, tiny silver staples pinning little colored wedges on the board — the corners of July’s missing posters, the ads for “No Job Too Small!” — all of them had been torn down.“He’ll have ample time to recover. Besides, the fingerprints on the gas cans from July’s shed are enough for us to hold him. And that other house in the central valley? The partials from the explosion up Costo? All over the place.”“Like he was squatting everywhere.”“Or like he was trying to burn the island down.”“Oh, whatever. The Terminal squad can just sit on their asses and wait until he gets better.”Try as he might, Doug couldn’t make a sound, let alone move his mouth.“Speak of the devil… Hey, July! How’re you doin’?”“Morning, you two! What great weather. How’s our mystery man today?”“Ah, some more signs of life,” Hubble replied. “He just opened his eyes again. And the infection where the wrist was severed has cleared up.”“Oh good to hear…” July kneeled down in front of Doug, and peered at him. He could see the deep lines of concern on her face, her sharp nose almost pointing at him, her scrupulous eyes probing. Even with his head drooped to the side, he saw her pupils dilate slightly in the emerald green of her irises. As if she recognized him.“It’s lucky we found him when we did,” Hubble continued. “Woulda had to take it off at the elbow myself…”“Good morning, mystery man,” July whispered to Doug, smiling. “Now I can see your eyes. That’s good. We’re all so interested to find out just who you are, and how you ended up wandering through the woods like that.”There was a whine and Ramses plonked his massive head onto Doug’s lap, and nuzzled him affectionately.“I just can’t get over it,” July remarked to Hubble and Singh. “Ramses really likes him. He’s usually so suspicious of strangers.”Doug wanted to scream. But all he could do was move his eyes from side to side.“I’ve come bearing gifts,” July stood up. “For the officials, donuts. Freshly baked. Shining Wind’s trying out some new recipes.” There was the ruffle of a paper bag. Hubble and Singh laughed appreciatively.“What would we do without him?” Hubble garbled through a mouthful of donut.They all laughed. Doug could see Ramses’s black eyes staring up at him from his lap.“And for our boy in the woods,” July bent down again and held up a small parcel wrapped in plain brown paper. “It’s the book I read to you for the past few days. You seemed to like it. So you can take it. Maybe it’ll help stir up some memories.” July wedged it snugly between the wheelchair’s side and Doug’s thigh. She lifted up Dora’s umbrella to show Doug — the clear plastic one he’d loaned her last week. “I thought you might need this if it rains, just in case you have to wait for the ambulance on the other side.” She hung it on the back of the wheelchair.Doug felt July’s hand on his upper arm. “Just promise you don’t come back and burn more houses down.”Hubble laughed. “You’re a saint, July. I’d wring his neck if it was my place.”“What’s done is done. Anyway, we still don’t know for certain it was him, do we?” replied July.Officer Singh cleared his throat. “Well, his fingerprints all over the gas cans from your shed are pretty compelling. It still doesn’t help identify who he actually is. But the prints are a definite match.”“Funny. Most of that stuff’s been there for years and years,” July replied, still looking into Doug’s eyes. “I can’t remember the last time I went in there. Maybe when our boy in the woods here was still an actual boy.”“You know what’s spooky?” Singh continued. “Terminal Crime Lab got back this morning about some of the other partials I found at your place and on Costo. Those prints are way older. I’m amazed they were still there after all these years. But they think those partials might belong to someone called Stanley Gerber. He was held at Leek Point. He was in their violent offender’s rehabilitation program. He escaped and was never seen or heard from again. But here’s the strange part: all that was over seventy years ago… He’d be well into his eighties by now.”“Wow,” exclaimed July, still looking at Doug. Her face had gone cold, her eyes staring dead straight into Doug’s. “Yet another boy in the woods, it seems.”“I’d be amazed if an old fart like that could survive out there for this long. What’d that one do to get himself into Leek Point anyway?”“He thought he could speak with animals,” Singh explained. “He was obviously suffering from schizophrenia. He claimed he could actually take on the thoughts and memories of other beings — by eating them. There wasn’t a pet left inside a mile radius of where he lived. Dogs, cats, birds. Goldfish, even. He ate ‘em all… then they found him with a neighbor’s baby…”“Goddamn!” Hubble exclaimed through a mouthful of donut.“Oh yeah. It’s not nice.”July nodded along, her eyes locked with Doug’s as Singh continued. “It was a big scandal at the time. His dad was a high-up in the health authority. Dr Walter Gerber. Turned out that he used to run some experimental CIA department in the Cold War.”“How interesting,” July replied.“He could’ve pulled some strings to get his kid out. But instead he just abandoned him at Leek Point. The kid’s mom lost it. Left Terminal for some place out on Broken Islands, and that was that.”Doug’s wheelchair wobbled, his slack jaw jiggling along with it. He could see the white froth of the sea churning up. It was the Island Hopper docking. The ramp lowered and foot passengers started disembarking. Through the crowd, Doug could make out two familiar figures: Bear and Brandi, dressed in colorful hiking gear, looking around with vacant smiles, chatting happily, as if this was their first time visiting Sternum.Further up the dock an empty blue bus pulled up. Written its side in large, yellow cartoon-font writing were the words, “ENDLESS WELLNESS @LEEK_POINT_SPA” Gus stepped out of the bus. It was Gus. He had a t-shirt on, one that Doug recognized from the past weekend’s open day at the Golden Years retreat, “I’m Official: Ask Me Anything!”Bear and Brandi greeted Gus, shaking hands, as if it was the first time they’d ever encountered each other. Doug heard Brandi ask Gus, “We really need a coffee!”“Oh, I know just the place,” Gus smiled at Brandi politely. “The Shining Wind Cafe is just up the road. We can stop on our way.”“There’s a lot of tourists today,” observed Hubble.“Leek Point’s had a lot of good reviews on TripAdvisor lately,” July replied.“This must be him,” Singh motioned toward the ramp.Lumbering at the back of the disembarking crowd was the unmistakeable figure of Sweetland. A zig-zag of stitches ran across his puncture-marked face, a black eyepatch on. Instead of his police outfit, he was now dressed in the garb of a hospital orderly, that was at least a couple sizes too small and stretched across his barrel-like torso.“Wow, goddamn it,” Hubble whispered. “Hope he didn’t make the Hopper lop-sided. I’d clear out to the other end of the ship if I saw him.”The three laughed uneasily.As Sweetland loomed closer, Doug tried to scream, but only a small gurgle came up, along with some foamy bile. Another stream of drool seeped from his mouth.“I am here to take charge of this man,” Sweetland’s remaining black eye burned down at Doug. Ramses twitched and a deep growl vibrated through the blanket against Doug’s lanky legs.“Is this dog under control?” Sweetland’s eye widened. “You know there’s been several cases of rabies, recently.”“He’s mine,” July replied tersely, holding onto Ramses’s collar. “And he certainly does not have rabies, thank you very much.”Cars and trucks started to exit the ferry, driving up through Sternum Island Village.“Once the ferry has unloaded, I will take charge of this man.”Singh, Hubble and Sweetland proceeded to swap paperwork. “He will be well-cared for in our facilities,” Sweetland remarked at one point, absentmindedly and to no one in particular it seemed.The offloading cars slowed. In a light blue four-door sedan sat Dora and Irene, their mother, Siobhan was driving. Doug gurgled violently, his eyes jerking around, the only part of him that could move. They’d pop out if he’d give anymore pressure.“Are you sure this man is fit to travel?” Sweetland asked. “He seems to be having some kind of seizure.”As the line of cars started moving again, Dora looked out her window, right at Doug. Without a glimmer of recognition, she looked past him, then returned her attention to something in the car.Foamy bile was now seeping from both corners of Doug’s mouth. He felt hot tears stream down his face. He wanted to scream, to explode, to die.“Oh dear, maybe it’s all a bit too much!” July squatted down in front of Doug, and wiped the tears and bile from his face. “Once you’re on the Hopper you’ll be out of the sun and wind. You’ll be just fine.”July kept daubing Doug’s slack face. She leaned in close, as if paying extra attention to some particularly sticky bit of effluence from Doug’s eye. “I’m sorry it had to be this way,” she whispered. “You were the only one who could make it through. It’s going to be just fine. I promise, Dougy… They won’t hurt you. Once the cylinder is off the island, I’ll be able to get things back under control.” She patted his upper forearm through the blanket.Doug closed his eyes. Underneath the blanket he tried to clench his bandaged right hand into a fist. The stinging sensation was gone, in fact all sensation was gone. He thought he was moving his fingers. He was only imagining he had a hand. Deep inside the flesh of his arm, wedged between muscle and bone, Doug could feel the little glass cylinder pulsing slowly, as cold as ice. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit apocalypserock.substack.com

It’s the morning after the day before, the storm has passed and everything’s peaceful, calm… Well, most everything… If you’d like to listen and/or read all the way to the conclusion of APOCALYPSE ROCK you can buy the audiobook through Audible (CA/UK/US) and the ebook on Kindle (CA/UK/US) 🚨Hit play above to listen or scroll down to read. Please rate and/or review the story wherever you’ve found it, and share with any friends who you think might like it!“… TELL YOU WHY? Why I don’t like Mondays? Ok. Let me tell you why!” the deep-fried voice of the DJ sang out of all the radios and digital receivers tuned to 107.7 Horizon FM.“You know exactly why I don’t like Mondays. It’s the same reason you don’t like Mondays. Why none of us like Mondays. Because that’s official pretend-you-like-your-shitty-job day! Pretend-you-respect-your-smiling-stupid-incompetent-boss day!” The long sound of a flatulent rasp rippled out moistly from all the speakers.“And to top off that big ole crap pile, Mondays also mean back to reality. Back to… the news,” the DJ carried on in a grim tone. “Oh, God help us: the news. But do stay tuned. Because after the dread call of the heralds, we’ll return with more golden oldies for all you folks out there hanging onto Horizon FM. Next up it’s country music hour!” A horse whinnying sound effect was followed by the sharp crack of a whip. “And we’re kicking it off with a classic Monday-morning-feels track: Johnny Paycheck’s Take Your Job And Shove It! Stay tuned…”A brassy, triumphant call of trumpets was followed by the nasal voice of a newscaster: “Reports of a large fire on one of the Border Islands is the source of much local interest. And to top it off, Sternum Island,  population circa 5,000, has gone silent since Saturday evening, with all telecommunications down and ferry connections suspended due to the weekend’s stormy weather. Residents from islands close to Sternum are talking, though, and they report a large fire visible on Sternum Island’s north side in the early morning hours…”The newscaster paused and there came a barely audible murmuring from the background.“Excuse me, folks… This just in: Terminal City Police Chief John Stonkrin has called an extraordinary press meeting to address new and breaking developments around the recent exponential increase in human foot discoveries around the Salish Sea region. Tammy Way reports.”There was the sound of cameras clicking and people shouting. Tammy Way’s voice spoke rapidly above the noise, “Only two days ago, Chief Stonkrin was forced to make a public announcement due to increased concern around the recent detached human foot discoveries. Now, after numerous rumors across social media about infections being related to the grim discoveries, and a series of protests around the region, Chief Stonkrin has been forced to call another conference.”A voice called people’s attention, then hushing and some coughing, then relative silence, apart from the clicking of camera shutters.“Ladies and gentlemen of the press, and the general public, I thank you for attending on such short notice,” said a flat, emotionless voice. “I wanted to inform the general public about some important developments surrounding the recent increase in human foot discoveries around the Salish Sea region. As you all know, we have been pursuing with haste and relentless energy to find the owners of each foot. As you also know, time and again with these discoveries, they have all been found to the result of tragic accidents or suicide. But, just this morning a medical health issue has arisen. I’ll hand the conference over to Sandra… Uh, Dr Sandra Bernchuck, Lead Health Officer for Terminal City and the surrounding region…”Some coughs and care shutters clicking.“It’s my duty to inform the public that tests have revealed a strain of rabies in several of the detached feet that were discovered last week. From initial results, this is a hitherto unknown form of rabies. It is still predominantly spread by dogs. Indeed, how this strain of rabies was discovered resulted from a dog ingesting part of one of the recently detached feet discovered, before the dog’s owner could stop it. The infected dog has since been destroyed, but not before it lost control and spread that rabies to the rest of the owner’s family. We have no idea how infectious this strain is, but we will update the public as and when we know more. In the meantime, we ask all dog owners across the Salish Sea region to keep their dogs leashed at all times, and specifically avoid visiting the beach with them. We must ask all of you to remain vigilant around these human foot discoveries and report any sightings of unleashed dogs on beaches or dogs acting violently, or in an otherwise hostile manner. As I said, we will update everyone as and when we know more. Thank you…”Questions erupted from the crowd, then the voice of Chief Stonkrin.“Okay folks, settle down. We have time for a couple of questions…”There was a wave of shouts.“Okay, Tammy,” Chief Stonkrin called out.“Thank you for the update, Chief Stonkrin,” the reporter replied. “There was a groundswell of protests online and in-person around the Salish Sea region yesterday. For example, the large protest at the Blubber Bay military base. Those have been fuelled by rumors of a coverup by the military and local government. Can you respond to those allegations?”Chief Stonkrin barely contained an exasperated chuckle. “Well, Tammy, thanks for that question. Now, the good people camped outside Blubber Bay rarely need a reason to protest…”There were a few laughs from the audience.“That said, I need to reiterate that these discoveries and this strain of rabies have yet to be officially linked. Just because some of the feet are infected doesn’t mean all of them are. It could also be some sea-born bacteria causing the infection. And as we have reiterated time and again, these feet we keep finding are simply a tragic result of our unique seascape.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit apocalypserock.substack.com

Doug has escaped the murderous clutches of Gavin and his mercenaries, as well as the attention of the remaining new age acolytes. Into the dark forest, to Arbiter’s Perch, and to meet a kindred spirit, of sorts…If you’d like to listen and/or read all the way to the conclusion of APOCALYPSE ROCK you can buy the audiobook through Audible (CA/UK/US) and the ebook on Kindle (CA/UK/US) 🚨Hit play above to listen or scroll down to read. Please rate and/or review the story wherever you’ve found it, and share with any friends who you think might like it!HE STUMBLED THROUGH the forest, dragging the weight of his heavy clump-arm along with him, his hand crushed inside by the bronzed cylinders. The voices in his head had slowed to a more hypnotic pace, fading in volume and intensity. “Moon… Regret… Ancient… Hungry…”As he passed a bluff, on one side the downward slope was clear of trees and he could see the server building below in the distance, glowing, and getting smaller as he traveled further through the undergrowth. Just before it left his view, there came a flickering of shadows, of bodies in front of light, cast up against the translucent walls.He hobbled past Cassandra Lake, the black pool mirror-still, even in the gales. His limbs felt like they were flapping about, becoming ever more weak and disjointed. Above, the powerful winds cleared away the remaining scrappy clouds, the cold stars twinkling up in the vastness.He pushed into the pitch-black forest, the low branches of the evergreens whipping against him. He struggled up over the soft stump of a tree so rotted that it must’ve died a hundred years ago. He slipped down the other side, the clump of cylinders on his hand clinking as he landed hard on his backside. He stifled a yelp. Moisture seeped through the bottom of his trousers, soaking cold on his buttocks. He leaned back against the fallen tree in exhaustion, and looked up. Through a gap in the canopy, the stars slid and spiraled about, cutting long traces across outer space. They sparkled behind the black-on-black silhouettes of heavy branches that twisted like a kaleidoscope, tails flitting and maws chomping. He closed his eyes and the blackness took on radiant depths. The nervous force which had carried him thus far was failing. He was lost.After a while, he opened his eyes. The moon had moved close to the western horizon, and shone a little metallic light through the trees. He was in the middle of a clearing, around him loomed rocky mounds covered in ferns and moss. Bits of jagged, rusted metal stuck out from the undergrowth, old car doors and vulcanized tires, the remains of ancient spring mattresses, motors, wires, and tubing. A locking-style fridge door from the 1950s rose up from a mound to his left, like a standing stone, its chrome handle wrapped in dead, thorny blackberry vines. Only a few flakey patches of the original white paint left after so many decades. He was in the old dump.“Hello?” He called out.After creeping onwards for several minutes, his good hand hit cold rock. It was the sheer stone wall of Arbiter’s Perch. He felt along the surface of the boulder. He could only hear his breathing, and his heart beating loudly in his ears. He would soon pass out from exhaustion.In a hollow at the boulder’s base he squeezed his long body into the small crevice where the stone met the earth. His gangly limbs contracting and releasing, burrowing into the soft soil. His clump hand lay on the ground just outside the hollow, burning inside with excruciating pain. He let his head go limp and closed his eyes.He remembered once being told that focusing on breathing would help after fight or flight reflexes took over. Breathe and then think, he told himself. Breathe then think. Think. Think.His phone vibrated. With his good hand he pulled it out and held it close. Two bars of signal, a small miracle up here.A message had been sent through to his Sternumcoin app. He opened it.“Dear Douglas, I am Stanley, a friend of July’s. I will help you get rid of the voices now…”Doug squinted at the rest of the message, and then tapped the microphone icon.“Moon,” he whispered. The clump on his hand blinked dimly with some bronze and emerald light.“Regret… Ancient… Hungry…” he repeated each word as the voices in his head chanted them. With each whispered word, the clump pulsed with light, a large green checkmark popped up on his screen, and his phone vibrated lightly.He recited the last word in the sequence, “… Kingdom…” then his phone vibrated and a grid of blurry thumbnail images popped up on the screen: “Verify that you’re a human: tap each image with a fire hydrant in it. Then press ‘Next.’”He squinted his bleary eyes and tapped each square that showed a fire hydrant, then pressed “Next.”A message popped up on his screen: “Timeout error. Please email [email protected] to report.”Above, the stars swirled in the clear night sky. The thick branches of evergreens shifted about in the occasional gust, making the stars seem to flick on and off. He could feel himself fading again. But it was silent now. The chanting in his thoughts had stopped, his clump-encased hand had numbed.Then there was the stench. “I’ve been waiting for you, Douglas…” Decaying guts in a stew of maggots and shit, old wet dog farts, half dried urine, and rancid dead-mouth halitosis. The Boy In The Wood’s mouth wreaking so close that Doug could feel the small hairs on his ear tickle at each word.“… Is that you?” Doug sputtered. “From the woods?” He still couldn’t see a thing. “July said you would help me.”The boy continued in his phlegmy prepubescent voice as if he hadn’t heard Doug, “Translated roughly, it’s called Apocalypse Rock. The white men named it Arbiter’s Perch. But you can’t judge anything from up there, really. Can’t see the forest for the trees,” he giggled.Distant gunfire echoed through the woods.“That’s what they’re all here for. The end times of the old times all to start the new times. They can’t have it. No one can,” the child continued. “But where are they, Douglas? Where did you hide them?”“My hand…” Doug tried to shift the weighty clump. It tinkled a bit in the dark.The Boy In The Woods giggled again, “Good, Douglas. You did so well!”Doug thought he was going to vomit from the stench. The child’s hand passed over him and lightly stroked his forearm, up to the clump and then back to the soft skin of the elbow joint, then back again, and again.“Let go of it. Your hand, Douglas, try to let go.”“I can’t, I think it’s stuck in there.”“No. It’s all in your mind, Douglas. Just let go…”There was a tinkling sound, and a shimmer of light from the cylinders. Then everything went black. Doug’s hand, now free, felt the cold air hit it. Then more pain.“Just breathe, Douglas. I’ll help you, but it might hurt.”The Boy In The Woods gently unraveled the bandage from Doug’s hand. The dim dirty green light  of the cylinder reappeared. Doug could see the indistinct and crushed lump of flesh that his hand had become.The Boy In The Woods held the cylinder in his palm, gently caressing it with his fingers. But rather than the hands of a child, his hands were gnarled, veiny, calloused. The hands of someone older than the hills. At every caress, the cylinder pulsated. It hovered in front of him, a bioluminescent creature in the deep sea.A dog barked. More distant gunfire.“Who are you?” Doug asked.“Don’t worry, Douglas,” the boy’s voice continued. “No one will ever know what you did. No one will know you ever came up here. It’s like the mountain. You can’t take it. It takes you. Them? They want to make a kingdom here, but it only goes one way. We’ll let them in, but there’s a price to pay.” He giggled.The dim glow from the cylinder in the gnarled hands came closer. In it, Doug saw swirling stars, constellations of dust as deep as galaxies. His hand throbbed quicker and quicker, like it might explode.More gunfire echoed through the woods. Ramses barked.“Moon. Regret. Ancient. Hungry…” the boy’s voice recited. “Refuse. Actor. Witness. Dolphin…”The sound of people shouting through the woods.“Myth. Bomb. Never. Witch. Collapse…”A searing pain ran up his arm. He watched the cylinder as the gnarled hands of The Boy In The Woods pushed it into the open flesh of what was once Doug’s hand. Slowly further and further in. Until it disappeared.“… Practice. Feed. Shame. Open. Despair. Creek. Road. Again. Ice. Least. Kingdom…”•••Doug is inside the glass cylinder, surrounded by millions of silvery star-like speckles, the infinite expanse of the universe in a pack of gum, in a tube of lipstick. Under him froths a briney green sea. Upwards, out of the choppy waters, a craggy mountain, like a tower rises into the starry night sky. On top of the mountain, a luminous fortress of elemental shapes comes into being — glowing, fundaments, pulsing around Doug quicker and quicker, then passing on by him. Now, Doug falls into the shapes, now travelling at the speed of light, now shooting through the wondrous cosmos. Rings of energy exploding around him. In front of him, out of the frothy green sea there comes a donut, a donut the size of a galaxy, its syrup nebulae, its colored stars fizzing miniscule candies and sugared speckles. Doug rockets through the massive black hole in its middle. Beyond him, in infinite regress, reflecting out into eternity, are more perfectly exploding donuts of beautiful energy. Doug passes through them, he’s an atomic spark, an infinitesimally small grain in the infinitely expanding feedback of everything. Through the black donut holes came faces with gaping mouths open through which emerge more faces: Shining Wind, Marcus, Bruno, July, Bear, Brandi, Gus, Sharynne, Gavin, Charlene, Siobhan, Dora, Irene, Mike, Stan, Farleece and so on and on and on down through his life. A procession of endless faces coming up in the throats of more faces. Finally, the sleek black head of Ramses emerges from a wet throat, his snout opens wide too. Inside, behind his bloody red tongue and looming over the massive sucking whirlpool of his gullet, a new mountain rises up. Upon that, a fortress of clouds and lines, shapes and wind, from which came flocks of birds shrieking, seagulls and geese squawking then herds of deer running, packs of dogs howling. Out of Ramses’s mouth comes a smooth and round boulder. It just pops out, then sparks and sputters little embers. It explodes into the night, sending up a riot of colored fireworks over the island. Now it’s engulfed in flames that reach up and lick at the sky over Sternum, like a snake’s tongue. Then two yellowed eyes, eyes of an old man but with the voice of a young boy, a child’s voice, “See? Apocalypse Rock.”The haggard face of an old man, jagged folds of grey wrinkles, windblown and craggy, dried skin flaking. The old man smiles, his teeth glow green, little cylinders plunged into infected gums. And the stench again.“… The Kingdom… I built it after I escaped from prison. I built it for my friends in the forest. A place to keep all the things that I found, all the things that I made my own. This is where you where born, Douglas. This is where you will live.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit apocalypserock.substack.com

This week, everything comes to a boil — and, as the title hints at, it’s not for the squeamish, so consumer beware, there’s some violence and gore herein — Doug’s head is still swimming with voices, and Ramses the Great Dane has reappeared. But now everything that the new age retreat has been working on is about to be exposed…If you’d like to listen and/or read all the way to the conclusion of APOCALYPSE ROCK you can buy the audiobook through Audible (CA/UK/US) and the ebook on Kindle (CA/UK/US) 🚨Hit play above to listen or scroll down to read. Please rate and/or review the story wherever you’ve found it, and share with any friends who you think might like it!INSIDE THE TECHNOLOGY Thing, Doug was immersed in the reassuring hum of server and crypto-miner cooling fans. A constant warm breeze flowed around him as he crept through the darkness. The machines blinked red and green like little stars.The words chanted through his thoughts: “… Myth. Bomb. Never. Witch. Collapse. Practice. Feed. Shame…”Ramses was gone, but ahead Doug could see the central space. Light glowed through the ringed hedge of bushes, succulents and small palm trees. Some voices murmured out under the drone of the cooling fans. Doug thought he saw movement through the ring of plants. Keeping to the shadows of the server shelves, Doug snuck up behind one particularly thick cluster of bushes.“… Open. Despair. Creek. Road. Again. Ice. Least. Kingdom…”“… But at least it worked where it needed to…” a voice came through the foliage. It was Marcus.Doug crouched, taking care to hold the heavy clump of cylinders in his pocket. He pushed aside a large, veiny leaf.Marcus was sitting at one of the desks, a laptop open in front of her. Strapped to her back was what looked like to Doug a sheathed sword. Shining Wind sat facing Marcus, his back to Doug. Sitting perched on a desktop to the left was Bruno.In the middle, where everyone’s attention was focused, a holographic image of Tiberius Organ glowed. As Organ spoke, Doug saw that the three dimensional rendering of the businessman-guru from the performance had been replaced by a flattened image. A cartoonish thought bubble rose out of Organ’s frozen smile, “Hey! Due to restricted and/or reduced bandwidth, I’ve been replaced by an avatar :/ I’ll be back to life as soon as possible. Sorry!”“We’ll only know for certain after they wake up,” Organ replied to Marcus from his frozen smile. Doug thought his voice sounded worried, tired.“It’s going to be a long night,” Bruno sighed.Shining Wind was hunched forward in his chair, head drooped and shoulders stooped as if he was scrolling through his phone.“… Maybe only another hour until it wears off,” Marcus continued. “Maybe we can start early…” Marcus was holding up something in her palm and peering into it: a dirty green glass cylinder, the same as Doug’s.“Not yet,” Organ interrupted. “They’ll be confused and groggy, the debriefs need to happen after they’re completely rested. We all want want to get over the finish line, but we can’t risk another Blubber Bay.”“Well, where is she, then?” Bruno replied. “We’ve been waiting for an hour now. Government workers are all the same.”Organ scoffed, “Maybe she’s out looking for her dog?”“Here boy!” Bruno laughed, then patted Shining Wind on the back, making the young man wobble in his chair.This made everyone laugh. Shining Wind stayed motionless apart from the slow rise and fall of his breathing.Heavy footsteps came from behind Doug. He felt his heartbeat increase, and his vision narrow. He shoved his lanky body further into the mass of plants around him, then tried to keep as still as possible, like a scarecrow trying to hide in an open field.Someone passed close by to Doug, then pushed through the wall of leaves and into the central space. Marcus, Bruno and the holographic Organ turned.Standing in her muddy hiking boots at the edge of the space, was July Straitemore.“She has arrived!” Bruno greeted July with a theatrical sweep of his arm. “We’ve been waiting in anticipation.”Doug tried to shift his angle to see more clearly, but his toe knocked a plant pot, and the clump of cylinders in his pocket produced a tiny but sharp clink. It sounded explosive to Doug, but no one seemed to notice.“I was occupied elsewhere,” July told the group, her voice lower and flattened in a way that Doug didn’t recognize.“If there’s no majority consciousness inside the next forty-five minutes, we need to initiate the waking protocol,” the frozen-smiled Organ replied. “Everyone has to be home before 3am. Or else things could get messy.”“I know,” replied July. “From the reports at the start of the evening, all the tests were conclusive and reproducible. So we’re on track.”“It’s the sequence we’re worried about now,” replied Organ. “We need to have control over the waking time window. We didn’t expect such a successful turnout.” He chuckled.“There’s not so much to do around here on the weekends,” July sighed.The Golden Years founders all laughed softly.“What’s with him?” July pointed at the hunched figure of Shining Wind.The three founders stopped smiling.“We had to help him focus,” Bruno replied. “He became a bit… vague.”“He was upset about not being told of Mr Grey’s involvement,” Organ explained. “Mr Grey will be arriving imminently, and we didn’t want any embarrassing complications. Maybe we put a little bit too much on Mr Wind’s plate.”Though she tried to hide it, a flash of concern crossed July’s face. But she quickly returned her attention to the founders.“Where is Mr Grey?” July asked.“Right here.” Standing at the far side of the central space, opposite July, in a cluster of spiky cacti, was Gavin, the school counselor. He wore a black rain jacket over his still-muddied grey suit. “We’ve had to implement phase three earlier than anticipated. Water supply and food chain are now active.”Gavin stepped over the planter pots, “We had to neutralize another local. He was having some kind of episode in the employment kiosk. He attacked one of the animal dancers. But I don’t think he knows anything, really,” Gavin continued. “He responded well to the treatment, anyways. But just to be safe, he’s been stored in the mindfulness shed, together with the couple we caught snooping at Leek Point last night.”Out of the darkness, from the ersatz jungle emerged a dozen lithe figures, armed with large machine guns — the kind that Doug always saw on news reports about mass shootings. The mercenaries wore Thai fisherman’s trousers and hemp t-shirts with “I’m Official: Ask Me Anything!” in a child’s handwriting stretched over bulging body armour. Though their helmets partially obscured their gaunt and bearded faces, Doug realized that they all looked identical, with uncanny, clone-like similarity to the man who he saw driving Bear’s car earlier: Christopher McCandless aka Alexander Supertramp.The Supertramps quickly formed a semi-circle behind Gavin, facing the Golden Years founders, and July.Doug shuddered when he saw the grey, hulking mass of Constable Sweetland lumber out from the plants. Casting his attention about in nervous jerks like a threatened reptile, the zombified police officer knocked over a palm tree as he lurched toward Gavin. Sweetland’s black eyes were ringed with dark, hollow patches. His Mountie uniform was in tatters, torn, covered in mud and blood. Patches of his pale, putrid skin showed through the rips in his clothing. A stream of yellowish, foamy bile dribbled from his mouth. Sweetland took his place behind Gavin, swaying in a stupor.Following Sweetland and the mercenaries, Sharynne popped out from the leaves of a large monstera plant. She was still wearing her ridiculously plump, fuzzy red “Special Guest” sweater from the day before.“Hiya,” Sharynne squeaked, giving a smile and a sheepish little wave at the group. She looked as if she hadn’t slept for days.July narrowed her eyes. Shining Wind remained hunched and motionless.“Why did you initiate phase three?” Organ demanded. “You know we shouldn’t accelerate this. We have no idea what might happen if the seed phrases haven’t been implanted properly. A misstep now could be very dangerous.”Gavin gave a mirthless smile. “Apologies. Orders from above.” He snapped his fingers. The soldiers behind him came to attention. “Where’s the forget-me-bot? The controller bot… The, uh, y’know, what do you call it? The keystone? The thing that controls all the rest of them.”Doug could see the Golden Years founders tense up.“That is not part of the arrangement,” Organ seethed from his frozen smile. “That is proprietary technology. You know full well that we will not hand it over. Not to anyone.”Doug could see Marcus slowly close her hand around the cylinder, into a fist, and lower it just out of Gavin’s line of sight.“You will hand it over. The mission has changed. There’s been too many mistakes now.”“That was all taken care of. Ms Straitmore successfully swapped out the real one for a replacement.”“Oh did she now?” Gavin replied sarcastically.“Yes. The asset has no idea. The threat is neutralized.”Gavin shook his head. “You might say so, but why is the asset nowhere to be found?”“He’s in the sweat lodge with everyone else,” Organ replied. “Further, it is clearly stipulated in the scope of work and contract that the keystone remains our property. It was developed for a different project, and so will remain with us.”Gavin narrowed his eyes. “I don’t give a fuck about any contract. It’s a security issue now and I cannot extend further trust.”“The keystone is in a safe place, I assure you,” Marcus interjected, closing her hand into a fist.“And how sure are you that it’s even the real one?” Gavin glanced from Marcus to July, and then back to Marcus’s hand. “It could easily have been replaced itself. And now the slaved forget-me-bots are gone. There have been too many mistakes!”“The slaved bots should be in the sweat lodge.”“We just came from there. They are gone.”“We need to check the footage.”“The forget-me-bots shorted out the cameras,” explained Marcus. “There is no footage.”Gavin scoffed, “I’ve watched Endless Wellness get subcontracted out into a mess of other corporations. But this is too much. It’s now compromising my business. And so, as ever, I will need to limit damage and prevent any further fraudulent activity…”The soldiers behind Gavin raised their weapons, a soft cluster of clicks emanated from the safety catches.“This is a misunderstanding. I assure you we will recover the missing forget-me-bots and control any compromised assets.”“I’ve already made my decision. We now need to secure the project,” Gavin nodded to Sharynne, who coyly stepped out of the cacti perimeter, and walked toward Marcus.In Sharynne’s path stood the holographic Organ. Sharynne stopped when she came to him, looking up at his frozen smile. “You’re overreacting and making a terrible mistake. You do not have the authority to do this.”“I have the right to protect my business,” Gavin barked, then gestured at Sharynne. “Go through him.”Sharynne hesitantly stepped through the flickering Organ. She held her hand out to Marcus, straining to give a weak, apologetic smile. Marcus raised her head and stared out into the ersatz jungle. Doug could have sworn that their eyes met. A faint smile briefly crossed her sharp and delicate features.In one swift motion Marcus raised her left hand and flicked the glass cylinder into the bushes, in Doug’s direction. At the same time her right hand reached over her shoulder and unsheathed her sword — it was the same blade that had just recently featured as a hologram in the tent. In a graceful downward arc, Marcus sliced clean through Sharynne’s outstretched forearm, just below her elbow. The limb made a wet plop when it hit the ground, its fingers clawing outward. There was a brief moment of shocked silence as blood erupted from Sharynne’s stump, in little pulses, spraying all over the front of her sweater, splattering “Special Guest” in crimson.The mercenaries opened fire. Bruno was the first to fall, his shoulder exploded, he desperately scrambled on all fours toward the planted perimeter. He dove headfirst into a pile of potted plants, his body jerked in violent spasms from a hail of bullets that eviscerated his torso.Shining Wind remained hunched over, motionless. A bullet disintegrated his ear, spraying blood toward Doug. A piece of ear gristle landed on the glossy leaf that Doug was hiding behind. He watched the little lump slowly slide down the plant.In a split-second, Marcus closed in on the right side of the mercenaries. In one running sweep from behind, she decapitated three of them, their helmeted heads hit the floor in rhythmic succession, each making a hollow thump. Marcus kept her grisly momentum toward the next trio of mercenaries, simultaneously crouching and pivoting. Sword held in both hands, she disemboweled them, their guts spilling onto the floor.Marcus stopped and faced Gavin. She raised her sword up in a defensive position, with the exact symmetry that Doug had seen before, in the tent, in the paintings.Sweetland lurched in between her and Gavin. He let out a muted and nasal bellow, like a tortured whale, then ran headfirst at Marcus, arms whirling about stupidly in a windmill fashion. Marcus lunged inward and brought the blade down across Sweetland’s face, carving through his left eye, across the bridge of his nose and into his right cheek. Sweetland’s fist clomped Marcus with a powerful uppercut, sending her flying backward.Like an acrobatic routine, Marcus gracefully turned her backward flight into a reverse somersault, then landed beside a clump of luscious bushes and palm trees. It had taken less than five seconds, but she had eliminated half of Gavin’s mercenaries.Gavin retreated behind the jungle perimeter as the remaining mercenaries gave cover. They raised their weapons and opened fire on Marcus. It was like her body was being pummelled with invisible jackhammers. Her sword shattered from several bursts, a piece snapping off into her eye. Whatever  ammunition the mercenaries were using, it effectively tore Marcus to shreds, ripping off chunks of flesh, her right elbow exploded and sent her forearm spinning off behind her. The top of her head turned in a wet puff of pink mist. Bloody bone and exposed muscles went flying. When the squad had finished, Marcus was a heap of gore on the pebbly ground, slopped over the succulents around her.Sweetland was howling, his opened face gushing blood. He lurched toward July, who was standing over Sharynne and her dismembered forearm. A stray explosive round must have hit Sharynne and caused her fuzzy sweater to catch fire. July was trying to slap out the growing flames. She looked up when she heard Sweetland’s plodding footsteps approach.There was growling, a scrape of claws on hardwood floor, and then a fearsome bark. A black shadow flew over Doug, over the cacti between July, and landed on top of the mutilated mountie. It was Ramses. He bit into Sweetland’s face, over and over.Sweetland’s screams might have filled the vast space had Ramses’s rapid gnawing not muffled them into wet gurgles. Sweetland, who managed to stay standing even with the Great Dane latched to his torso, staggered around the central area like a strange mythic beast, gurgling in pain.“Stop!” July shouted. “Ramses! Enough! Down, boy!”There was a whine, then claws back on the hard floor. Sweetland stumbled into the foliage, rejoining Gavin and his mercenaries. At the same time, on the opposite end of the central space, July had abandoned Sharynne’s limp body – the flames of her fuzzy sweater having erupted into a raging fireball – and jumped into the bushes. Ramses followed her. More shots rang out.“… Ice. Least. Kingdom. Moon. Regret. Ancient. Hungry. Refuse…” Doug’s ears were ringing from the gunfire, but the voices continued chanting loud and clear through his mind.Out in the central space, Doug saw the holographic Tiberius Organ glowing and still, as if no longer inhabited by its owner. Next to Organ, Bruno lay face down, mutilated corpse twitching. What had been Marcus was piled to the other side of Organ’s avatar. Shining Wind was still hunched in his chair, blood dripping down from the mess of his former ear, the slow rise and fall of his breathing stayed constant. Across the space, growing pools of blood spread around the guts of Gavin’s felled mercenaries.“… Witness. Dolphin. Myth. Bomb…”In front of Doug, gleaming in the moist soil under a verdant monstera plant, was the glass cylinder that Marcus had thrown toward him. Etched across its tiny equator was the flawlessly sharp and straight line. Inscribed on either side of that was the cuneiform script that had been on the original glass cylinder he had found several days previous.“… Never. Witch. Collapse. Practice…”Doug whispered the words that chanted through his brain. The tiny cylinder –  ancient and modern – pulsed from the soil with a dim and dirty green light at each word. Strangely, the pulsations comforted Doug.Organ’s voice shouted out through the air. “If the seed phrases are misapplied, then we lose everything… and that’s your loss too, Mr Grey.”“It’s too late,” Gavin shouted from behind a bush. “Your actions force us to begin asset liquidation.”Above Doug, the roof of the structure rippled violently in the wind. As Gavin and Organ shouted back and forth, Doug reached out and clutched the tiny glass cylinder in the grimy folds of his bandaged hand. Its burning cold surface hit a nerve and Doug bit into the sides of his cheeks, into his tongue. The clump of bronze cylinders abruptly tore through the fabric of his jacket. Like a swarm of predatory insects they lunged around Doug’s closed fist, covering it like bees on a hive. Slowly they pressed in around his closed hand, crushing the bones and flesh of his hand around the green cylinder inside. Blood filled his mouth. Tears welled up. He swallowed his screams.Doug forced himself up, slumping out of the ring of plants, and into the starry darkness of the server rows, his hand weighed down with the magnetized clump of cylinders.“… Open. Despair. Creek. Road…”A wave of dizziness hit him. He steadied himself against a shelf. Blood dribbled from his mouth and down his front, dripping onto the floor. All the server lights abruptly stopped blinking, and turned solid red.July looked at Doug from across the row, motionless in the red light. Ramses was curled around her feet, looking at Doug inquisitively.“… Again. Ice. Least. Kingdom…”Some shouts and moans came from the central space.July leaned in, then smiled. “Dougy, you’re high as a kite. All that crap Hubble prescribed actually worked.” She chuckled and shook her head. “He’s fucking incompetent, but at least he got this right. I’m really happy to see you., Dougy.”“… Moon. Regret. Ancient. Hungry…”Doug blinked vacantly at the glowing red July in front of him. He tried to lift his clumped hand, but it was too heavy.“I’m so sorry you got mixed up in this. It wasn’t my intention at all.”Doug was about to say something, but July jerked her finger up to her lips. She leaned in closer, her nose almost touching his. “Mr Grey is a psychopath. He’ll kill everyone. I need to stop him. And there’s only one way to do that. I’m afraid to say it’s not going to get much better for you. At least for now. But stay brave. Stay strong. I’ll make sure Dora and Irene are safe, and I’ll get you back to them as soon as possible.”Doug opened his mouth, but July hushed him again.“You’re not crazy, Dougy. The words are just part of it. The important thing is to get up to Arbiter’s Perch, now,” July motioned to the clump of cylinders. “He’ll help you. Just do what he says. He’s waiting for you up there.”“… Myth. Bomb. Never. Witch…”“I don’t understand…” Doug had started crying.July’s face softened. “Don’t worry, Dougy. You don’t need to understand. Like I said. It’s not about the words. It’s how you put ‘em.”“… Ice. Least. Kingdom. Moon. Regret. Ancient. Hungry. Refuse…”A scream was followed by a rapid blast of gunfire. Whoever might have been left alive out there previously was now likely another pile of gore. Doug crouched and put his face into his hands, panic freezing him up. July yanked at him. He could smell Ramses’s warm dog breath. July pulled Doug’s hands from his face, and shook him angrily. She motioned toward the exit, then pointed up in the direction of Arbiter’s Perch, “Go! Now! Do what he says!” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit apocalypserock.substack.com

Doug awakes to find all humans and beasts asleep in the sweat lodge — and meets an old friend who he hitherto thought was lost…If you’d like to listen and/or read all the way to the conclusion of APOCALYPSE ROCK you can buy the audiobook through Audible (CA/UK/US) and the ebook on Kindle (CA/UK/US) 🚨Hit play above to listen or scroll down to read. Please rate and/or review the story wherever you’ve found it, and share with any friends who you think might like it!“AGAIN…”Doug gagged on the frothy kombucha gurgling up his throat. A mouthful of fizzy green bile spewed down his shirt and jacket. Doug rolled over and finished vomiting out the contents of his stomach.“Moon. Regret. Ancient…” The words chanted through his thoughts.After the nausea passed, he rolled onto his back. Above him, the tent roof flapped in the strong mountain wind. Through cracks in the billowing textile, Doug could see that the sky had turned violet, and the first stars of the evening were twinkling through.“Refuse. Actor. Witness…”He sat up and wiped a small bit of vomit from the side of his face. He looked out through the gloom at the slumbering mass of bodies, humans and dogs nuzzled in cozy piles across the floor. The herd of deer had passed out as well, creating a low, brown-haired and antlered wall around everyone.By the stage lay the passed-out figures of the red-robed and orange-suited cohorts. Among them, Bacon snored loudly. Mayor Mike, treasurer Stan, Dr Hubble and Osmar, had collapsed against each other, forming a propped-up pyramid of snoozing figures. Cuddled up with them were a few scraggly lapdogs.“Myth. Bomb. Never. Myth. Bomb. Never…”The wind intensified and the roof shuddered, letting in a chilly gasp of cold air that made Doug shiver. Across the tent, on the small stage, Doug could see all the little bronze cylinders gleaming on the appendages of the contraption. They stirred a bit, and jangled like a crystal chandelier. He felt his jacket pocket rise, as if something was pulling it up. He looked down. Protruding through the fabric was the shape of Doug’s glass cylinder, pointing toward the other cylinders on the contraption, like a magnet.“Collapse. Practice. Feed…”In a stupor, Doug navigated through the crowd of sleeping animals and humans, toward the contraption, his jacket pocket sticking out in front of him, leading the way. He circled around the contraption several times, the cylinder in his pocket jerking from side to side as it passed each appendage. The bronze cluster rattled with the movement, attracted back toward Doug’s cylinder. The hairs on the back of his neck tingled — he could feel an intrusive hum coming from the bronze cylinders, one that he imagined something highly radioactive might give out. But also entrancing, enticing.He reached out. The shock of an icy burn ran up his fingers. He stifled a yelp.“Fuck it,” Doug whispered. If these were so valuable to Golden Years, he reasoned, he might be able to use them as leverage to get his friends back. To try and get rid of Golden Years, and all the other crazies and freakish things that had washed up on Sternum.He adjusted the grimy bandage on his hand, widening it out to form a ragged glove-like padding. Holding his jacket pocket open with his other hand, piece by piece Doug knocked each bronzed cylinders from its appendage. They flew into his pocket. When finished, Doug’s jacket bulged with the bronze clump, now encompassing his dirty green cylinder.Tip-toeing through the slumberers, Doug had to jump over a couple sleeping deer, the cylinders clinked slightly in his pocket. One of the deer snorted, nuzzled its snout into a nearby human’s armpit, then settled again.Inside the tunnel leaving the tent, it was pitch black and the wind roared outside.“Despair. Creek. Road…” the chanting voices in his head stayed strong.A blasting cold wind greeted him outside, chilling the perspiration that covered his body. The driftwood kiosks sat empty, some of the structures had been knocked over by the powerful winds, the woven branches and boughs that had decorated them and the surrounding buildings had all but completely been torn off by the wind. A missing poster of July blew past, its bright pink paper fluttering off over the roof of a nearby prefab.“Again. Ice. Least. Kingdom…”Further into the canton, from deep inside the structure that housed the Golden Years servers and crypto miners, a glow of warm light diffused through its translucent covering. The sign reading “Technology Thing” had come loose in the wind. Dangling from one end, it knocked against the entrance doorframe. A whining came through the wind. One of the doors was open. Just inside in the dark sat Ramses, looking back at Doug.“Ramses!” Doug whispered. He started toward the dog, his movement making the heavy clump in his jacket tinkle.The Great Dane’s ears pricked up, and he rose from his haunches, growling, white fangs gleaming through the darkness. Doug froze.“Ramses! Good boy! It’s me… Dougy,” He whispered again.Ramses stopped growling and looked at Doug, tilting his head to one side.“Ramses… Where’s mommy? Where’s July?”Ramses let out another short whine and then disappeared back into the building.Doug followed. Above, the stars twisting over dark trees that jerked violently in the wind. From the blackness of the surrounding forest lunged writhing shapes — he was still high from the kombucha, or affected by the cylinders, or something else, he thought. Doug was now jogging toward the soft glow of the building, away from the threatening trees, cradling the clump in his jacket pocket.“Moon… Regret… Ancient… Least…” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit apocalypserock.substack.com

And now, the ritual begins… If you’d like to listen and/or read all the way to the conclusion of APOCALYPSE ROCK you can buy the audiobook through Audible (CA/UK/US) and the ebook on Kindle (CA/UK/US) 🚨Hit play above to listen or scroll down to read. Please rate and/or review the story wherever you’ve found it, and share with any friends who you think might like it!DOUG’S BLISSFULNESS MEANDERED along pleasantly with the droning voices of the crowd. He began shivering feverishly as the temperature in the tent rose. Around him, people were in various stages of stupor, laughing and smiling as if high. Most people had stripped down to their underwear, or just got naked. Apart from Doug, whose thoroughly drenched clothes stuck to his clammy skin under his jacket.A gong sounded and the crowd went silent as Farleece and her dancers returned to the stage in a graceful flutter of lunges and pirouettes. The dancers too had shed their costumes, now naked apart from their face masks and makeup. Farleece, the slim and pale raven, twirled naked through the crowd. Above her she swung an ornately decorated silver turibulum, suspended on a glittering chain. Thick plumes of incense billowed out from the squat censer’s holes, its heavy smoke wafting over the audience, muting the burned clover smell with the earthy, balsamic pine scent of an orthodox church.All those around Doug were captivated by the naked dancers, expressions of tense wonder on their faces, like they were watching a high-wire circus act.The vocal drone intensified, and a procession of several dozen red-robed figures entered the tent from either side of the stage. Hoods obscuring their faces, they each carried a small silk pillow in their white-gloved hands. Resting on each pillow was a small cylinder — similar to the one Doug had, but all had a dulled bronze sheen. As the robed figures circled the stage, Farleece and the dancers wound around them in a serpentine motion. The robed figures slowly swayed from side to side.A group of five figures emerged from behind the stage. Wearing thick black sleeping masks over their eyes, they were all dressed in the same collarless suits as Bruno and Tiberius wore, but these colored in a dusty tumeric orange. Their heads had been freshly shaved down to the scalp. Each carried an assortment of wood, metal and glass parts — incongruous junk held like some holy relics. In a neatly choreographed series of movements, they stepped through the swaying red-robed figures and naked dancers, onto the stage. In unison, and still apparently blinded, they assembled a tripod structure out of the junk. Atop this tripod they placed a cylindrical glass object resembling the beacon of a lighthouse. From the base of that beacon jutted out numerous metal arms with clasps on the ends. At various places across this contraption were words printed in a Cyrillic script. It looked like an an old box camera to Doug, but one that had collided with a 1950s Soviet satellite, and crashed down to Earth. The orange-suited figures stepped back from their completed contraption.The red-robed figures filed one-by-one up onto the stage, each in turn securing their bronze cylinders onto a clasp. When finished, they filed off to the front of the stage and sat down.The beacon started rotating, its multi-faceted surface shooting out beams of light that refracted through the cylinders, projecting colorful abstract shapes across the tent’s interior.Doug felt nauseous. The audience became immersed in a pallid light, their faces blurred in the pulsing glow; a nose contorted across a face, ears flapped over eyes, arms twisted around torsos, rubbery legs lifted up over heads and flailed as if in some storm that Doug was excluded from.He closed his eyes and put his head between his knees. There, in foetal position, came visions of a mesh of trees before the blackened blue sky, of rolling clouds, a rocky beach strewn with thousands of small glass cylinders, running shoes floating atop a stormy sea, of yellowed eyes without a face, haloed nebulae in deep space, a shimmering donut spinning at the speed of light, screaming toward Doug over an endless grey sea.The contraption on the stage let out a howling glissando. Then the harsh punctuation of a handclap cut through the aetheric wail. Doug looked back up to the stage.“Behold the illuminations! Harken to the song!” The pale-faced Bacon had reappeared on stage and was bellowing out again.“You are all now in the zone…” He stooped below the contraption and fiddled with the metal appendages that held the glowing bronze cylinders, scrutinising each small adjustment with a squint. “Feeling the vibrations…” With every movement the spinning rainbow of abstract shapes on the tent roof were reduced in color spectrum, toward a verdant blueish green hue. Accordingly, with each small reduction in spectrum, the howling siren became less and less alarming, and began to take on an almost pleasant tone.“In its song we can hear the voices of souls from across the millenia. And this afternoon it sounds like the souls are singing in a minor key,” Bacon declared. “In its light we can read the inscription of those souls’s memories, the hallowed hollow where angels hibernate until the words call them back into life.”The red-robed figures at the front of the stage clapped twice in unison; the sound cutting through the air like gunshots. The howling siren became muddied with layers of single notes so close they hummed against one another, causing Mayor Mike, treasurer Stan, Dr Hubble and Osmar to seemingly vibrate in the thickening sound.“The Omnitemporal Everpresent Hyperstition State is an invoked condition that forms a central socialising activity in Golden Years’s tribal lifestyle,” Bacon continued babbling through the thick noise.“The methods of entering this state have been developed and refined over millennia. As Tiberius Organ himself explained, the most recent rediscovery of the ancient records of brain glass under the Pinnacle Point golf resort is revolutionary. Each fragment constitutes the mind of a person who passed in a blazing instant, all their memories, thoughts and feelings immortalized into volcanic brain glass. Here, we decipher all that information stored in the minds of our preserved ancestors — for your delight, and entertainment, and education…”Francis gestured toward the contraption and its bronzed cylinder appendages like a stage magician, one bent arm pointing upwards and the other with palm open toward the contraption.“We name this Voyager. Using Voyager properly we become capable of placing one foot into the realm of death, the afterlife, thus we are reunited with the multiversal fields that course through us all. They connect us. In this reunified consciousness, in this Omnitemporal Everpresent Hyperstitionary State, we are thus able to progress toward the New Atlantis. The arcadia that awaits us all, if we so choose.”Two more thunderous claps from the red-robed figures cut through the whirling spectral noise. The orange-suited figures each struck their limbs akimbo in different postures, as if spelling out some word or phrase.“The bodily runic casting you see before you was one such previous innovation, developed in the 19th century,” Bacon explained, “Using the ancient technologies of yogic casting and magical rune throwing, they reveal to us a solar system, and prepare us for further travels.”The red-robed figures clapped again, and the orange-suited figures replied with an array of new poses.“This technology was developed in Russia during a revolutionary blossoming of visionary avant-garde culture, another short season where Golden Years was present.”The orange-suited cohort crossed their arms and stood straight to attention. In each hand they held small wooden mallets with a ball of white cloth tied to the heads.“Some call this a musical instrument, but it is more than that. It is an ectoplasmic transmedia machine that captures and broadcasts the invisible migrations of the spirit. But, the provisionality of categories aside, we know it is yet another addition to our cosmic realization, a way through death and into immortality. A way to the fortress on the mount. The kingdom.”The orange-suit cohort circled around the contraption, their shadows cast around the tent walls, warped and flickering. They crouched down, reached out their arms, and in unison began to tenderly tap each bronzed cylinder, like playing a xylophone. They rang out with clean, happy notes that skipped over the purpley drone.“This machine we call the Voyager, when properly incanted together with runic casting, it opens up our minds to the true nature of our cosmos. It brings our dreams back into the world.”The images cast on the tent ceiling spun faster. The now all-encompassing noise field separated into further, microtonal layers. As the orange-suited cohort continued to blindly tap out cascades of bright notes, the metal appendages began to shift around the beacon of their own accord, the cylinders like planets careering around the sun.In the blurry, fractal mess projected onto the tent ceiling, faces appeared. Then animals, landscapes, buildings, like meaning found in clouds. Kingdoms on frozen mountains, fundaments emanating out and dissolving into space, into people and more animals. At the base of a kingdom on a mountain, a figure was drawn. It was Marcus, her hair down and flowing in the wind. Above her she held a sword in two hands, as if preparing for battle, a halo around the blade and her head. She brought the sword down and everything exploded into a shower of crimson stars.Another howling glissando blasted up from the contraption, then faded out in a wailing gasp. The red-robed figures started to clap rapidly, each plosive shaking the tent walls, letting in gasps of cold mountain air and the luminescent golden light of a sun that was going down into an early evening.“Moon!” a choir of voices chanted on the plosive of a handclap. Now it was everyone in the audience, naked and sweating, chanting.“Regret!” They chanted again, the drone floating under their voices.“Ancient! Hungry! Refuse! Actor!”Doug’s stomach was churning, his eyes welling up with tears from the flickering lights and haze of smoke. He’d peaked his high and was now coasting in a relatively ambivalent mood.The light grew dimmer. Doug wanted to pass out before he started coming down.Then another howl. This one distant, bloody. Clear through the fog of the music, the tent, the crowd, there came several more howls. Closer and closer. Then some barking, some scratches against the tent walls, panting and whining, then the sound of fabric tearing, ripped by claws.The chanting continued. “Witness! Dolphin! Myth! Bomb! Never!”The shadowy shapes of hundreds of dogs of all sizes and colors appeared around the edges of the tent. It was a pack swarming in. Following behind them came a herd of deer, led by stags, their strong and proud chests puffed out and charging. The deer encircled the perimeter of the tent. The dogs started to wander through the crowd, sniffing and licking at the prone, naked bodies of the audience. No one screamed or made any fuss. Everyone lay still, crossing over the borderline into sleep.“Shame!” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit apocalypserock.substack.com

Doug — and seemingly the rest of the Sternum Island population — are cozy in the New Atlantis Sweat Lodge. Now who should show up but Tiberius Organ himself — new age guru and CEO of InnovoSol (among other things), and even though he’s a busy man, he’s got a lot to say… If you’d like to listen and/or read all the way to the conclusion of APOCALYPSE ROCK you can buy the audiobook through Audible (CA/UK/US) and the ebook on Kindle (CA/UK/US) 🚨Hit play above to listen or scroll down to read. Please rate and/or review the story wherever you’ve found it, and share with any friends who you think might like it!THE STORM OUTSIDE was growing. Along the base of the tent, the textile ruffled in the wind, making flashes of brilliant daylight flicker in, lighting up the hazy air. A low-pitched, pulsating drone started rumbling throughout the tent. The drone intensified, rising like the string section of a symphony orchestra. Doug rose blissfully with it.A holographic figure of a man flickered into life, glowing out from the middle of the tent. It hovered above the crowd. Perched on a holographic stool, he was smiling with an open, welcoming expression. Trim and dressed in a grey collarless suit jacket over matching trousers, a white t-shirt underneath, moccasins on his feet. He had a five o’clock shadow, its stubble a soft, hazy white against his dark skin, a sparkling upside-down halo. The luminescent figure emanated success.“Hey folks,” he said. “My name is Tiberius but all my friends call me Ti. Since you’ve been generous enough to come along today, I’d like to think we’re all friends. So please call me Ti.”“Hello, Ti!” a few of the audience members called out, groggy sounding from the heat.“I wanted to join you in person today. But, I got delayed. And now, with all the hoo-ha around the storm, I can’t make it, I’m afraid. That said, I’ll be coming up to visit regularly, and so hopefully I’ll see you there soon, we can all grab a coffee in the village sometime…”The hologram of Tiberius shimmered a bit. Doug suppressed a giggle.“… Anyhow, I’m here to tell you a bit about Golden Years. I’ll try and leave out all the boring parts. There’s more than enough material in our archives, if you’re interested in hearing more.”A large image lit up on the main stage’s backdrop. It was an historical painting, like the ones from old National Geographic magazines. In dark, moody swirls the painting depicted a beach. Stormy grey waves frothed out to the horizon. Far in the distance, a large volcano erupted plumes of black smoke and veins of red magma. On the beach, in the foreground, was a small group of prehistoric humans, filthy and dressed in ragged animal skins. They were huddled together, their faces grimacing in terror at the ashy flakes falling over them.“Now, there’s a wolf in our midst,” Tiberius said. “A shark in the shallows where we wade. You hear stories about it. A hunter is out trekking for weeks. They sense they’re being followed, but only ever on the cusp of their consciousness. Then, when they finally see the wolf, when the wolf allows its presence to enter the consciousness of the hunter, it’s too late. The hunter has been got.”The spectral Tiberius stood up and started to pace back and forth above the audience, a worried look on his glowing face.“I’ll get back to the wolf shortly. But, fear not intrepid audience. It’s a presence we can actually do something about.”A warm smile returned. “If you know anything about me, then you’ll know I love science. I love its processes, I love its history, and I love how it never ends. The kind of truth that science creates is always just our best guess at the time. From the perceived facts at hand, of course. But it’s contingent. Science tries to cast light onto things, and expel the dark ghosts of ignorance. Kill the beasts that stalk us, banish the…”A gust of wind shook the tent violently. Tiberius flickered, and several distorted lines coursed through his body from head to toe. The noisy lines sputtered with colorful static, little pops and sparks of green, blue, red and white falling off him. His entire body warbled in a rainbow, then snapped right back to well-postured form.“Science can also create ghosts,” Tiberius continued. “After all, it’s a deeply human pursuit, despite what some people might claim. And us humans do tend to haunt our world with our own hopes, fears and desires.”The image on the screen cut to a close-up of the prehistoric humans on the beach. Three dirty and terrified faces forming a triangle of dismay, horror and resignation.“But the enlightenment of science aside, not so much has changed since the times of early humans. We might now have a dazzling amount of creature comforts, especially compared to our forebears. But the cosmos is yet a terrifying place. Just now, it’s terrifying in new, and different ways.”Tiberius nodded, and gave off some more bright little sparks as he passed over mayor Mike, Stan, Dr Hubble and Osmar, all still swaying and humming.“These wretched looking beings, trapped between a volcanic eruption and the stormy sea, are scared witless. And let’s face it: this does not look good for them. Indeed, from our luxurious vantage point, we know they’re not long for this world.” Tiberius paused and threw his hands up in the air. “Some things never change!” He dropped his arms and shrugged, chuckling as he looked around the crowd.Tiberius turned back toward the image. “This is an artist’s interpretation of the Toba Supervolcanic eruption which took place about seventy-five thousand years ago, give or take. It happened on the island of Sumatra, in present-day Indonesia. The eruption spewed out around seven hundred cubic miles of magma, and then covered the entire expanse of South Asia in about fifteen centimeters of ash. Now, there’s a theory that says it started a ten-year volcanic winter, in which the Earth’s climate fell by about fifteen degrees centigrade. A deep freeze whose effects would linger for a thousand years. That theory also holds that much animal and plant life was decimated, including the human population. Some people think that we were reduced to about ten thousand reproducing pairs. And so, those survivors, would be our ancestors.”The image on the screen cross-dissolved into an animated cluster of purple, root-like lines. Creeping upwards, they multiplied into a blossoming mass against the black of outer space. The lines contracted into a focused ball of violet fire.“Now, that’s a theory scientists call a genetic bottleneck,” Tiberius explained. “That happens when a population is greatly reduced, and their diversity is limited. Like, way back seventy-five thousand years ago at Toba — that is, if you follow that theory. But whatever, from a tiny acorn grows a giant tree. And the roots spread as far as they can.”The image on the screen had grown into a vast, plasmatic accumulation of interconnected lines, its tendrils spiralling around each other so tightly that they became one again, their end-points twinkling like those of fiber-optic cables.“Now, you might be asking, ‘what the hell is this guy blabbin’ about?!’ Well, besides being something that I’m just kinda interested in — y’know, like how it speaks to our shared history of migration, expansion, catastrophe and on and on and on — it’s also directly relevant to the history of Golden Years.”An animated map of the planet appeared, then a glowing, blurry counter rapidly ticked through billions of years. Continents shifted, collided, fractured, then slowed its countdown, showing verdant patches of green around the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, Indus, and Nile. Blinking blue dots appeared around the rivers, marking the location of cities built by early civilizations; Eridu and Babylon, Harappa, Thebes.Tiberius nodded gravely. “Golden Years’s oral and written histories are older than ancient. Back to the first dynasty of Egypt, and before that, back to Sumer and the Indus Valley. Right back to our friends huddling on the shores, cowering under the erupting Mount Toba. The history of Golden Years is told in numerous languages and scripts. It’s a diaspora. It’s a history that meanders, like a serpentine river through human history. Our oral traditions tell us that our history precedes written language. It’s in our blood.”The screen now showed dozens of people, of all colors, creeds, ages and genders: a shaman in furs, a Nubian priestess in gold and purple, a Buddhist monk in orange, a North American Native in feathered headdress.“Members of the Golden Years tribe have always been present. We know this through our secret scriptures. Through the histories of our host civilizations. Indeed, we like to flatter ourselves in thinking that wherever we have travelled, language and civilization have followed. But so much has remained hidden, even to us. Time passed so quickly, and so much was so very urgent all the time. Before writing appears, the world is dark. Full of noise.”The screen showed a series of caves dotting a rocky cliff over a beach, their jagged openings gaping out over crashing waves.“Ongoing research into our beginnings leads us ever further back. Back through forgotten civilizations, back to what you see here. Sites PP13B, PP9, and PP5–6 Upper and Lower, as our palaeoanthropologists friends call them. Or, if you’re a tourist, you’d call this Pinnacle Point in South Africa… It’s right next to a fantastic golf course and spa, if you’re into that kind of stuff,” Tiberius winked and a flicker of glowing static shot from his eyelashes. The trail of sparks reached out into the middle of the tent, lighting up the sweaty, half-naked audience. Doug’s eyes were stinging from the beads dripping down his forehead.“Early modern humans inhabited these caves from approximately one hundred thousand years ago. And up through the supervolcanic event in Toba. In fact, scientists have found ashes from Toba across South Africa, including this site. Yet, counter to the volcanic winter hypothesis I mentioned earlier, life flourished at Pinnacle Point, during and after those catastrophic years. In our tribe’s stories that have been passed down through millennia, Golden Years finds its origins here. Right here. Our Garden of Eden. Arcadia. A paradise of caves on the shore…” Tiberius paused and a wry look crossed his sparkling face. “All that hope, right under a golf course!”A  lazy wave of laughter passed through the audience.“So. The wolf in our midst.”The map of the continents returned. Their speed greatly accelerated. Sequence after sequence of tectonic plates shifting, colliding and rupturing, billions of years into the future.“We are not eternal. We all know that.”The blue dots took over the world, then reshaped into vectoral slices and wedges across the globe, the cities were growing into superstructures, consuming vast swathes of the Earth, leaving only some areas untouched.“But there are things that remain, relatively speaking, constant.”The continents had sped up so fast, and the overlays of blue vectors mutated so rapidly, that the screen was now a blur. Gradually, out of the mess emerged the silhouette of a dark craggy peak rocketing up into the sky over a beach. The three wretched prehistoric humans from the apocalyptic painting, were now sitting with their backs to the audience, gazing out over a calm ocean, and up at the looming peak.“Our souls are eternal. The tower of Babel too. Our rich world of incomprehensibility. It sings. How wonderful it is that our little planet is full of so many different universes. And ignorance of those universes need not be as scary as one thinks. With the correct mindset, it can be wondrous. We die, but our souls are an eternal language. Our souls are language… Hey, but, you might say, ’Ti, languages die out, don’t they?’ Yes. But when inscribed, they live on forever. They live forever. Take Sumerian, for instance. Take Egyptian. Take Latin. They die and their timely world with them. But not their spirit! Inscription is eternity, so long as eternity is human, earthly, cosmic. So the soul is inscription. The spirit in the written word, once breathed out and now encrypted in some graphos. But we must breathe life back into the soul. We must! So many souls have been entrapped in the past hundred years. It’s terrifying. But through our research, Golden Years have discovered this powerful link between inscribed language and the soul. And we now know how to unlock the power held within, the power that will push our world out from its doldrum… A transformation of the spirit — that which the soul enacts, the soul’s expression, its spirit of love and empathy. Exploding outward in an apocalypse that ends the mute and dumb world, and sets the soul free. But here is where our wolf has been lurking. And quite rightly, as this is where true power resides.”An image appeared of Marcus, Bruno and Tiberius. They were in a cave, dressed in spelunking outfits, helmets, and headlamps.“Our research led us to Pinnacle Point. And we were able to excavate, beyond the salted caves on the shore, deep under the golf course, through earth that hadn’t been stirred in millenia. And there, we found the bones of our long dead ancestors. But not only that…”An image showed a cluster of dark glass shards among neatly piled bones.“These shards here were buried alongside the people. They’re not simply curios or talismans, or some other ritual object. Analysis showed that these are all, in fact, human minds that were once, long ago, superheated into volcanic glass. And there are no volcanoes anywhere near Pinnacle Point. These shards were carried there, purposefully. The results of our tests puts the ages of these shards across various points in time, thousands of years apart, from one hundred thousand to ten thousand years ago. And all this tallies with the most ancient lore of the Golden Years liturgy.”The image zoomed in to microscopic detail on one of the shards, revealing a jeweled complex of tendrils, like the rivers of a vast delta, seen from outer space.Tiberius continued. “Inscribed memories. Streams of thought. Impressions, feelings cut into matter. Rivers waiting to be travelled down, with us like pharaohs on our ship, surveying our empire. Here are pictographs and hieroglyphs, cuneiform and runes. These rivulets of thought are there to be interpreted. Luckily, we have a Rosetta Stone, an index of the eternal soul. One that has been part of our rituals since Golden Years left Pinnacle Point many tens of thousands of years ago. When we began our long journey up Africa, to Asia and Europe and the Americas. Wherever we travelled, we left behind traces, under the silver moon…”At the sound of the last word a grunt emanated from the audience, a harmonious wave across the space.“… Written in numerous scripts, but always bearing the trace of our tribe, our mission: to ignite souls that lay dormant, to propel the ones we find aflame, to inscribe everywhere, so as to never regret…”More harmonious grunts floated up around the spectral Tiberius.“We are the humble keepers of the ancient human hand inscribing. The hungry soul-filled graph which encases the breath of human life, and will always refuse to end. The lines that extend that breath beyond the mouth, the actor beyond the space it speaks into, and gives witness to that breath inscribed into sand and dirt, rock, clay, wood, paper, metal, plastic, light. Whatever matter, whatever energy is at hand…”The grunts this time held, steadying into a deep, warbling drone as dank as the light in the tent.“The soul is the act of inscription. Encryption. The act of decryption. Rinse and repeat. The never ending cycle. Preserve the encasement, but cherish the decryption above all else, for that creative act is life itself, and energy attuned. Decryption is interpretation, and freedom, and liberation! That is our mission. The kingdom on the mount, a fortress of a tongue that we shall teach the world and everything in it, to speak with.”The warbling drone raised in pitch, and stuttered slightly. From somewhere behind the stage came a delicate wash of arpeggiated sweeps on a harp, and then the modulated stonking of an old electric organ staggered in. A harsh gust of wind rattled the tent structure, nearly tearing it apart.The image of the delta dissolved back to the faces of the prehistoric humans on the beach. But now their faces were clean, smiling, the skies behind them turned blue and clear. A dolphin leapt from the calm sea. A speech bubble came from its snout, with a large “Thank you!” blinking in it.“Now, I need to leave you with my trusty colleagues,” Tiberius’s voice struggled to carry across the wind. “I have urgent business. But, I have set the stage for our wolf. Let’s try our luck. Just don’t let it bite you. Farewell my fellow travellers. We’ll meet again soon.”At that, the avatar of Tiberius Organ spluttered out in a rainbow of sparkling noise. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit apocalypserock.substack.com

This week, Doug finds himself herded into the so-called New Atlantis Sweat Lodge, and things are about to get… dramatic.If you’d like to listen and/or read all the way to the conclusion of APOCALYPSE ROCK you can buy the audiobook through Audible (CA/UK/US) and the ebook on Kindle (CA/UK/US) 🚨Hit play above to listen or scroll down to read. Please rate and/or review the story wherever you’ve found it, and share with any friends who you think might like it!THERE WERE SEVERAL hundred people inside the tent. There was a dim, warm sepia light, the color of sand. A hodge-podge of old woven carpets had been laid about the space. Hundreds of large pillows were scattered about the floor, upon which numerous people already reclined. Adults and children relaxed and chatted in the dusky light. Over the musk of bodies, and gasps of mountain air, hung the heavy scent of burning clove.The mugginess increased as people continued to pour in. Beads of sweat dripped down Doug’s forehead. He settled down on a mound of pillows and stared up at the tent’s roof. The light from outside flickered and reflected through the space in a way that pleased Doug. The warm feeling in his stomach had spread through his body. Despite the crush of the crowd, he felt calm, almost better than he’d ever felt before. The paranoid feeling of being surrounded and forced to enter the tent was completely gone. His wounded hand wasn’t throbbing anymore. His arms and legs tingled with numbness, but it felt pleasant. He had an urge to giggle.“Woe betide!” A rotund, pasty-skinned man with dyed, jet-black hair and a goatee was precariously perched atop a ladder rising up from a circular stage at the center of the space. He was wearing a Tudor costume of heavy red fabric, a white, lacy silk ruff around his neck. He wore a headset microphone which amplified his raspy voice around the tent so loud it was hard for Doug to think.“Woe betide! I am Francis Bacon! Esteemed philosopher and statesman. And I say again: Woe betide those who stray from the path of their own heart!” It was DJ Bacon, now bellowing in a hammy, fake English accent. “And scorn for those who let their minds drift into ill-thinking and poor process.”The same sword that had been hovering above the tent outside, now descended through the roof. Bacon reached up and grabbed it. He waved the blade around at the crowd, motioning for them to sit. “True success is all in the ghosts one chooses to honor…”At the base of the ladder, right below Bacon, sat Dr Hubble in his Jedi costume, next to mayor Mike Dobson and treasurer Stan Brakhage. They where dressed in purple robes with golden trim that gleamed against the velvety fabric. With them sat a burly man, a head of bushy black hair, and a beard to match, his eyes hidden behind opaque, wraparound sunglasses. It was Osmar Elian Prullansky, cult film director, and Siobhan’s current boss.The group swayed from side to side, humming along with each other in a meditative state. Around them were more robed island locals, swaying and humming in unison. As the temperature inside the tent increased, people in the audience started to strip clothes off.Bacon continued to ramble loudly from the ladder. His hand clasped to the illuminated sword, as if he was dangling from it. The sweat-beaded furrows of his brow, the oddly gaunt chub of his pallid jowls. Doug could see them in surprisingly clear detail, the man’s heavy theatrical makeup highlighting the distinctive crow’s feet that spread out from Bacon’s eyes. Doug’s stomach froth rose higher, travelling up his gullet, tingeing his mouth with a rank, bitter taste.“Beloved travelers,” Bacon shouted across the audience. “Before we begin, I must ask you to switch off all cellphones, cameras, and any recording device of any type. It will help preserve the integrity, and the  enjoyment of tonight for everyone.”There was a flutter of distraction around the tent, while Bacon waited awaited the audience. When calm returned, he proclaimed, “Prepare to begin a journey. A life-changing story!” Dozens of ushers had appeared out of the folds in the tent walls, all wearing t-shirts with “I’m Official: Ask Me Anything!” written across their chests. They wandered through the crowd, blowing out candles and collecting empty cups.A troupe of dancers emerged from under the stage, writhing slowly, as if growing out of the ground, creeping up toward Bacon. It was the dancers who had corralled Doug earlier, dressed in their skimpy leotards and animal masks: the fox, lion and wolf, a snake, an alligator, the deer, and then the hare, one of its floppy ears missing. They all circled around one dancer in black leotards — eyes masked in black makeup, a black beak protruding off her nose. It was Farleece Goggins, the fire chief’s daughter.“Through our muddy moon of pre-history, we tell the story of humankind, without regret, and such as it is: ancient, hungry…”A smoke machine spewed out thick clouds. From somewhere in the roof above Bacon a constellation of multicolored lazers shot out, rotating at a frenetic speed. They shimmered around the tent and started drawing geometrical shapes on the roof. Square, circle, triangle were followed by mountains, a sun, trees. Then the lazers drew mutating, shifting structures on the mountain, they drew stars above it all.“The human is a good actor, and a true witness to the childish, frolicking dolphin we call the delta, our history; a happy and wondrous myth, humankind — from the the big bang, to the atomic bomb blast and beyond —  our nature is generous and open, loving and decent.”The lazers redrew the sword in Bacon’s clenched hand, adding more jewels and decorative inscriptions to it. It shimmered and wobbled — an image beamed from somewhere far away.“Never wilfully destructive, only ever led down the wrong path by demon, or witch, or malevolent spirit whose only desire is complete and total collapse.”Farleece and her troupe of dancing animals flailed their arms up past Bacon, toward the roof and the glowing shapes and mountainscape. The lazer beams descended and coursed over the dancers, drawing more elemental shapes on them, overlapping and intersecting. It was the same scene as in the paintings at Bruno’s art exhibition, the small figures intersecting with structures.“Golden Years witnessed the beginnings of the practice of agriculture, hydro-culture and animal husbandry. This miracle of ingenuity, to feed us all.”Some in the audience responded to Bacon, chanting in a hoarse whisper: “Practice… Feed…”“Golden Years was there at the first Caesarian birth. We dispelled the pious shame of science; the realization of the hitherto open wound of infection, the discovery of cures for despair.The chants from the audience continued: “Shame… Open… Despair…”“The cleansing of cold, fresh mountain glacier water from a peaceful creek, the empathy of stranger for stranger who meet traveling opposite directions on the same road…”“Creek… Road…”Farleece and the dancers climbed up the ladder. Bacon’s sword was still raised up, lazers crackling out of its silver blade, shooting millions of blinding flashes around the tent.“Across ages, we attended the fountainhead of all sacred arts. We have patronized true divinity for millennia, whether temperate or an Ice Age…”“Ice! Ice! Ice! Ice!”“… Yet never turning our noses up. The greatest lifting up the weak whom had been cursed with the least strength.”“Least! Least! Least! Least!”“To Golden Years, eternal! The fortress on the mountain! The last leap from the Earth’s last step into eternity! Our kingdom!”The chanting stuck on the last word, repeating it over and over again like a broken record: “Kingdom! Kingdom! Kingdom! Kingdom! Kingdom! Kingdom!”A small explosion cracked over the stage. A ball of smoke consumed DJ Bacon and the dancers. Dozen of white doves fluttered out from the small mushroom cloud and flapped over the audience. As the smoke cleared, the birds’s light downy feathers drifted down around the empty ladder. Bacon, Farleece, and her dancers had disappeared.The audience gasped. Hovering above them was Bacon’s sword, glowing in a haze of smoke, its  jewel-encrusted hilt in a rainbow of color. The sword twirled around, as if taking in the view from above. Then it rocketed up through the tent’s roof, and vanished.“Kingdom! Kingdom! Kingdom! Kingdom! Kingdom! Kingdom!” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit apocalypserock.substack.com

Doug’s on his own now, pushed ever further by throngs of visitors to the new age retreat’s open day. His kombucha gets spilled, there’s gibberish in the air, and holograms…If you’d like to listen and/or read all the way to the conclusion of APOCALYPSE ROCK you can buy the audiobook through Audible (CA/UK/US) and the ebook on Kindle (CA/UK/US) 🚨Hit play above to listen or scroll down to read. Please rate and/or review the story wherever you’ve found it, and share with any friends who you think might like it!ANOTHER WAVE OF people pushed up against Doug, making him spill frothy kombucha over his bandaged hand. The fermented tea soaked through quickly, stinging his wound. He stifled a yelp. Doug squinted in the harsh sun. He sipped down the last of his kombucha, and then gulped down Gus’s as well.“I’ll take care of that,” a smiling young woman plucked the empty cups out of Doug’s hands. Written across her raw hemp t-shirt was, “I’m Official: Ask Me Anything!” in a child-like scrawl.Doug’s stomach bubbled warmly as he was slowly swept further along by the crowd. Like he was drifting down a slow river, he could lift his feet up, then just float with everyone else.In the distance, he spotted the top of a structure poking up above the prefab roofs. White sails billowed about in the mountain breeze, striking against the brilliant blue sky, as if about to rip loose and fly off into the Earth’s atmosphere. Another surge of the crowd, and Doug saw the large tent blossom into view. It was shapeless, like a cloud, sheets of super-light tarpaulin fluttered over an invisible skeleton, keeping the bones of the structure itself always just out of view. Plumes of white smoke or steam puffed out from cracks hidden deep in the tarp, making it seem even more otherworldly.At the center of the rippling walls was a dark tunnel, people streaming into it. As the crowd pushed Doug toward the entrance, a gust of wind ran over the structure, making the sheets whip even harder. Plumes of steam puffed out, a blast of tepid air exhaled from the tunnel’s mouth, making Doug’s face feel sticky. Pink pieces of paper fluttered out from the gaping maw — it was the missing poster of July. Inside the tunnel, Doug could make out hundreds more of July’s face smiling in the darkness.There was an electric crackle over the tent. Doug looked up to see the moon had already appeared, making its way toward the western horizon. Cast over the silvery disc was a sword, its jewel-encrusted hilt sparkling, hovering high up in the air on its own as if by magic. It was the sword that Doug had seen in the paintings at the art exhibition. For a second the sword shimmered and wobbled slightly, like the tracking distortion from an old video tape. It was a hologram, somehow projected atop the tent, glowing and sputtering in the rising steam.“All soul-carrying phenomena welcome!” the DJ’s amplified voice carried above the wind, and echoed across the canton. “The bones will sing… in a good way! The mountain will burn… in a good way! How’s that for a Saturday night?! The New Atlantis Sweat Lodge welcomes you, phenomena… in a good way!” The DJ was now practically screaming, his voice forcing its way deep into Doug’s ears. The warmth in Doug’s stomach grew, the lightness of it lifting his mood against the DJ’s intrusion.A song blasted from the loudspeakers: the pip-pip-pip sound of a metronome followed by an elephant-like trumpet call, then a familiar, airless voice sang a cappella and lonesome through the blustering wind: “Me llamo es moon con regret, as kept ancient zen tree hungry. At con refuse actor watashi wa witness, men el dolphin para myth bomb never.”Everyone flowed into the darkness of the tunnel. Doug’s stomach frothed along with them. As their feet trod over thousands of empty kombucha cups, July smiling all around them, the voice sang on: “Tu refuse un actor con fall witness, Il Sono Dolphin to Myth Bomb Never, alla witch, shining stiffer, scheduled collapse, practice con beef… I con feed, shame tut open, despair upside con creek.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit apocalypserock.substack.com