The flip side of Jonathan's euphoria is that he doesn't know who he is.
''Oh fuck! Oh fuck!'' Jonathan screams.
Sabrina moves to touch him, but Dan holds her back. ''Let him go,'' the leader warns, "he's got to get through it.''
Just then Andy, a musician who lives downstairs, barges in. ''Fuck! This new sampler just erased my entire drum machine's memory! That's all my samples! All my patterns! Weeks ... months of work!'' Dan quickly gets Andy out, but the synchronicity is not lost on the members of the circle.
''Jonathan, are you okay?'' Dan asks gently. The tripper stares up at him from the floor. "Jonathan?''
Jonathan suddenly sits up. ''I'm your creation, aren't I?''
''What do you mean?''
''You made me, didn't you? I'm only here when you're on DMT. Otherwise I don't exist, do I?'' Jonathan stares cynically at his creator. "And you gave me this drug now, because it was time for me to know, right?''
Sabrina is worried. She's been attracted to the boy for some time and would hate to lose him now. ''Jonathan?'' she says, putting her hand on his back.
Jonathan lurches forward as if he's been stabbed. He breathes heavily, holding his head in his hands, crying intensely and then suddenly stopping.
Hours later, after everyone else has their chance to try the new drug, Jonathan explains what happened to him when Sabrina touched his back. ''I had forgotten who I was. I had no identity other than being Dan's creation. Then, all of a sudden I heard my name – Jonathan. And I remembered my last name, and my mom, and I went, `Wait a minute.' It was as if all the fragments of my life had been blown apart and I was sticking them back in my body. I was eagerly grabbing the information; I wanted this illusion of my life. I was eagerly pasting it back on me. I was willingly accepting this illusion.''
Sabrina feeds Jonathan chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen as life at Horizon hums back to normal. Dan watches Jonathan out of the corner of his eye.
''There's still this conversation going on in my head saying–'We're sorry you had to find out this way,''' Jonathan says.
''You still think you're a DMT creation of Dan's?'' Sabrina asks.
''No. Jonathan is just a role I'm playing! It's as if the whole search of life is not to obtain some kind of knowledge, but trying to remember what you lost at birth. 'We're sorry you had to find out this way. Such a shock to you. But now you know ... you're not Jonathan.'''
Sabrina frowns. She was hoping that the cyberian truth wouldn't be so depressing.
Jonathan reads her instantly and takes her hand. ''It was a good experience, Sabrina, don't you see? Whatever God is, we're all one thing. We're all part of the same thing. We've got no identity of our own. 5 MAO DMT is like when you die. Life is like this dream, and when you die you go, `Oh wow! It was so real!' And then discovering that higher level – it's not like `Oh my god I'm that higher self?' It's more like discovering `I'm not that back there. I thought I was Jonathan – how silly!'''
Dan smiles and quietly moves out of the room. The download has been successful.
Straight and Stoned
It's hard to know whether these people are touching the next reality or simply frying their brains. Transformation, no doubt, is occurring in either case. But no matter how much permanent damage may be taking place, there is substantial evidence that these voyagers are experiencing something at least as revelatory as in any other mystical tradition. The growing numbers of normal-seeming Americans who are enjoying DMT on a regular basis attests, at least, to the fact that even the most extremely disorienting DMT adventures need not hamper one's ability to lead a ''productive'' life.
World sharing and discovery of parallel realities fills the DMT afternoons of ''Gracie and Zarkov,'' she a published anthropologist, he an established and successful investment analyst. Sex swingers in the 1970s, they became psychedelic voyagers in the 1980s and self-published their findings in Notes from Underground: A Gracie and Zarkov Reader out of their East Bay home.
A cross between an opium den and a sex chamber, their bedroom takes up at least half of their house. While most people's parties end up in the kitchen, Gracie and Zarkov's end up here in the bedroom, which is equipped with an elaborate lighting system hidden behind translucent sheets on the walls and in the ceiling panels, a remote control sound system, and several cabinets filled with straps, studs, and belly-dancing gear.
Their writings on psychedelics are a detailed and well-thought-out cross between the Physician's Desk Reference and a wine-tasting guide; in describing the drug 2CB they point out details such as ''there is a long, low-level tail to the trip.'' They've become regular Mondo 2000 contributors, avid heavy-metal fans, and frequent DMT travellers. They spend their free hours experimenting with new types of psychedelics and new combinations of old ones. Gracie occasionally manifests the spirit of a female goddess, most often Kali, and the two indulge in hyperhedonism on an order unimaginable by others in their professional fields – hence the pseudonyms. But Zarkov's practical, rationalist Wall Street sensibilities shine through his storytelling about psychedelics. To Zarkov, it's all a question of hardware and software.
''Tryptamines are a real phenomenon. If you take a high dose of tryptamines you see certain things. I am a believer that you are not a blank slate when you're born. You're a long complicated product of genetic engineering by the Goddess, under all sorts of selection criteria. And there's a hell of a lot of hardware and wetware, so that DMT's not going to change everybody, or everybody positively. That has to do with how you're wired up, and how you're raised. Now, my experiences have been extremely positive, but several of my closest friends are dead as a result of psychedelic drugs. If you're not up to handling heavy equipment, DMT is a very dangerous, very powerful hallucinogen. It's extremely strong.''
Gracie and Zarkov can be considered designer beings. They use their DMT experiences to consciously recreate their identities in their professional worlds.
''Gracie and I have developed the ability to write some software to become significantly different people. That is a big advantage in terms of being able to run our lives.'' They sometimes like to think of themselves as anthropologists from another dimension, merely observing the interactions and concerns of human beings.
Zarkov makes practical use out of the sublime DMT state to redesign the personality he uses in real life. He enjoys his DMT experience, then downloads it in order to devise new business strategies or even new sexual techniques – but he does not take any of it too seriously. Zarkov remains convinced that our reality is not making a wholesale leap out of history. His views sharply contrast those of his good friend Terence McKenna.
''I don't buy Terence's whole package. I just say that right out. On the other hand, Terence is on to a lot of very important things. Does that mean that the world's going to come to an end in 2012? Does that mean that there's going to be a major bifurcation? I don't see it that way. A drug is a tool, like a microscope, a telescope, or a radio. Is it some godlike metaphysical entity? Where I part company with Terence is where he talks about the drug as a metaphysical entity which looks, smells, tastes, and acts like God. I don't believe in God.''
Terence attributes Zarkov's obstinacy to an inability to translate the experience of the infinite, egoless reality into a model that can jive with his experience of daily, straight life. Zarkov is great at downloading useful information, but, still attached to his personality, he is not equipped to deal with the most crushing nonpersonal cyberian conclusions. It's a question of his ability to download threatening material.