Today, Earth Girl and other members of her Foxy Seven are busy remodeling the new basement home of the Smart Bar. Toys and trinkets are everywhere. In one corner sits a six-foot geodesic dome lined with pink fur and foam, dubbed the Space Pussy. The soft being inside, who believes he's a direct descendant of the magical ''Shee'' beings, is Green Fire, an impish and androgynous twenty-something-year-old whose Peter Pan gestures belie the gravity with which he approaches his mission: to save the planet by bringing back the Shee, the ancient fairie race that originally inhabited Ireland before the planet was overrun with the "Naziish alien energy'' that has been directing human activity for the past few millenia.
Green Fire believes we are fast approaching a kind of spiritual dawn. ''There is more light now than ever before. Even Joe Blow now is starting to experience a little bit of magic through technology.'' Green Fire is a seamless blend between the magic of the ancients and the technology of the future. "High technology and high magic are the same thing. They both use tools from inner resources and outer resources. Magic from the ancient past and technology from the future are really both one. That is how we are creating the present; we're speeding up things, we are quickening our energies; time and space are not as rigid as they used to be; the belief system isn't there. Those who did control it have left the plane; they have been forced out because it no longer is their time. Those of us who know how to work through time and space are using our abilities to bend time and space into a reality that will benefit people the most.''
So, like house music and its ability to ''condense'' time through juxtaposition of historical "bytes,'' Green Fire's witchery gives him an active role in the creation of the moment. The ancients call forward in time to the present, giving Green Fire the techniques of sorcery, while the light from the future calls back in time through computer technology.
Earth Girl joins us in the Space Pussy to make sure Green Fire is presenting himself in the best possible light. Diana, from Toon Town, follows her in. Diana has come to the Smart Lounge as an emissary of peace. The subtext never reaches the surface, but Diana's presence is threefold: first, to understand exactly why Earth Girl left Toon Town for Big Heart City; second, to gather as many facts as possible about Heley's competition; and third, and most apparently, to make sure everyone stays friends. No matter how stiff the competition and how hot the tempers, everyone is in this thing together. There's only one galactic beam.
Giving the gift of vulnerability as a peace offering, Diana mentions Heley's ''bad'' trip last night at Toon Town.
"He doesn't have the tools to be traveling that far out,'' Earth Girl responds in a genuinely caring tone.
No one says anything for a while. The Space Pussy, too, is silent, itself an emblem of Earth Girl's betrayal of Toon Town and her ex-boyfriend, Heley. Diana shifts uncomfortably: Why would he leave her for me? Earth Girl, knowing she's being stared at, fingers the lace on her flowing satin dress – a striking contrast to Diana's tomboyish overalls and baseball cap.
Diana lights a cigarette and laughs. They all pretend the moment of silence was spent contemplating Mark's weird Syrian Rue adventure. ''He doesn't feel bad today. He even thinks he may have touched the ability to shape-shift.
"We humans are all shape-shifters,'' Green Fire comments, getting the conversation back on track. "We just need to learn to access our DNA codes. It's very computer-oriented. We are computers; our minds are computers; our little cells are computers. We are bio-organic computers. We are crystals. We are made out of crystals. I even put powdered crystals into the smart drinks.''
Green Fire's words seem a little hollow given the emotional reality of Diana and Earth Girl's conflict, so the two girls leave. But despite its inability to tackle everyday, real-world strife, Green Fire's cyber pagan cosmology beautifully demonstrates the particular eclecticism of the new spirituality. It is not an everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink grab bag of religious generalizations, but a synthesis of old and new ideas whose organization is based on a postquantum notion of time. The juxtaposition of magic and computers, shape-shifting and DNA, crystals and pharmaceuticals, is itself indicative of a time compression preceding the great leap into hyperspace, or timelessness.
But until that leap, the realities of romance and business still shape the experiences of cyberians. Diana and Earth Girl must still cope with the fact that they're in the same business and have shared the same boyfriend. Green Fire must cope with the fact that his goddess, Earth Girl, will eventually realize the futility of her comicbook-style leadership, dissolve the Foxy Seven, and go into business for herself.
But in the Space Pussy, for the time being, all is quite well. In the safety of his cocooned emotional playground, Green Fire is free to take daring leaps into interdimensional zones that a parent, professional, or reality-based adult would not. Instead of using Heley's psychedelics and house music, or a hacker's home computer and modem, he practices his magic using techniques from the Celtic shamanic traditions. (Unless, of course, he just happens upon a fairie ring of mushrooms in the forest.)
He'll begin with a purification ritual and an herbal bath, then some breathing techniques and chanting for an hour or so, which brings him into a kind of psychedelic clarity.
"Everything mundane leaves so I know I'm in the trance. I'll cast the circle and invoke the elements. Sometimes I'll have to do a dance to help tap in to some of the Celtic energies. Then I will begin the journey down. Now, that's just like – that's something close to mushrooms, LSD, or DMT.''
Green Fire's fairie realm is also very close to the computer experience. His description of this space, his iconic presence, the way he moves through the space, as well as the hypertext quality of his experiences make it sound like a cyber space fantasy game.
"They'll take me inside. Sometimes I feel like I'm falling or flying. Sometimes I just whoosh, and I'm there. Depends on what kind of passage it is. Then I'm there, and it's a real place. Usually once I get there my body is still in this dimension. I've gone through my cells, my DNA, and I've opened a doorway and I've gone to that other dimension. So I will need to have an archetype there. It's a dreamlike state, but it's also very physical. This is the strange part. I can feel stuff there through that body. I can smell, I can taste, I can touch, and I can hear. My guides will be there, my totems – and they usually guide me to certain cities I need to go to.''
Just as I was guided through virtual reality by gentle Bryan Hughes, Green Fire is guided by his fairies through Celtic Cyberia. This is a virtual world! Each doorway is another screen. Each totem allows him to ''load'' more "worlds.'' Through an archetypal virtual suit, he can see and feel his hyperdimensional reality. And, like Mark Heley in the shamanic fractal, or me in the Intel virtual reality demo program, he must prove he is a worthy interdimensional traveler. As McKenna would say, thoughts are ''beheld.'' As Heley would say, "bliss is a rigorous master.''
"Whatever I think becomes real. Just to even get there I have to be very clear. My emotions and my thoughts steer me. Really, instead of me moving, the place moves. I think something, and then I'm kind of like, there. So if I start feeling dark and weird, I find myself in the dark places of that land. And there are dark places.''
Things get eerie. Green Fire describes how realities ''scroll'' by as on a computer screen, and it's as if he's describing the thickest places in the "ice'' in William Gibson's Neuromancer, where a hacker/cowboy can lose his soul. Green Fire moves through the fairie matrix like a hacker through the network, from system to system, always leaving a back door open. But Green Fire is making his systems breaches without the protection of David Troup's Bodyguard program. Instead, he must depend on his mental discipline. He's in the ultimate designer reality, where his thoughts become what's real, whether he likes it or not.