This is part 7. See previous posts for parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.
Elliot wasn't at the secret office when Mira arrived for work the following Monday. She spent the day transcribing audio files, as usual, and went by Elliot's apartment when she was done. If he was there, he wasn't answering his door. Returning home, Mira felt frustrated, because Elliot was the only person she could talk to about her friend Kim's worrisome interest in Hearken, and he was nowhere to be found.
The next day, Elliot again didn't meet Mira at the office. To distract herself from the stress of her missing boss, Mira spent a couple of hours reviewing everything she could find on Grant Fisher. He was a quasi-celebrity, important in New Age subculture, who spent most of his time touring. None of Fisher's videos online mentioned his connection to Hearken, though his website advertised the cult.
Curious, Mira powered on Elliot's computer and found his personal notes on top Hearken figures. "Recruitment and financing," said Elliot's note on Fisher. "Rarely visits Appleton. Strange that he doesn't promote Hearken more. Possible contact."
Elliot came in just in time to see Mira sneaking a look at his computer. "What did you find?" he asked, apparently unperturbed.
"I'm looking up Grant Fisher," said Mira. "My friend Kim is suddenly interested in The Pattern and wants me to go see Fisher with her. What do you mean here by 'possible contact'?"
"Of all of Hearken's ascendants, he's the one I think could most easily be approached," said Elliot. "What if you go to his performance and get noticed by him? That could help our project, long term."
Mira hadn't been expecting that. "Do you even have an end game, or are you just making it up as you go along?" she asked in a teasing tone.
"I'm not sure I even know anymore," sighed Elliot. "My contract with the security company ends at the end of the month and I'm not renewing. We're just not turning up the evidence I thought we would."
"But what about the Dirty Three?" asked Mira, in reference to the three Hearken ascendants responsible for several incidents of sexual harassment that their undercover agent Sarah had been privy to.
"Even if all of the victims came forward about it, and they won't, it's not enough to sink the ship," said Elliot.
"Do you ... blame them for your parents' death?" asked Mira.
"No, but I blame them for the misery in my parents' lives," said Elliot. "And I blame them for convincing me that the deaths were a good thing when they first told me about them. And when Hearken first came to ask me for money, they told me they had damaging information about my family, which they'd publicly leak if I didn't pay. I blame them for that, too."
"But isn't that blackmail?" asked Mira.
"Yes, but it wasn't legally provable, hence all of this," said Elliot, gesturing around the office.
Mira tried to imagine what it would like to be so obsessive. At the same time, she worried that her fantastically weird job might be in jeopardy. "You're thinking about it wrong," she heard herself say. "You want to rock them to their foundations, right? Show them that actions have consequences? There's more than enough here to get that ball rolling."
"What are you suggesting?" asked Elliot.
What was Mira suggesting? "Something I saw work to take down another cult," she said. "A three pronged approach. Legal. Media. And interpersonal. For the one I'm talking about, they made a documentary about the cult's weird sex stuff and actual branding and slavery. In this room alone, there's enough for a documentary."
"Hmm," said Elliot, considering. "And that's something you'd be willing to work on? It doesn't scare you?"
"Hearken is no different than a corrupt church," said Mira. "Scares me more to let them keep operating than it does to go after them. I'm totally in. This is the most interesting job I've ever had!"
"Alright, alright," said Elliot, pulling a flash drive from his pocket. "So tell me, what do you make of this?"
Mira watched the hour-long video file on the drive while Elliot busied himself elsewhere. Without saying anything, Mira got up and left, taking a walk around the block to clear her head and process what she'd just seen. "Where did you get that?" she asked upon returning.
"From the first ascendant ever to leave Hearken," said Elliot. "Virginia Waters. I met her outside Appleton and helped her make that video. That's where I disappeared to."
"Is she alright?" asked Mira. "Like, mental health wise?"
"Unknown," said Elliot. "At this point, her reliability is definitely in question. I gave her five thousand dollars and she promised to help in any investigation or legal proceeding. But what did you think? Did you find her testimony compelling?"
"The part about the financial abuse, for sure," said Mira. "That's exactly what the recordings say is happening. The stuff about the lavish lives of the ascendants tracks, too. But when she starts talking about the Pattern Keepers and alien ooze and the Great Conjunction, she totally loses me."
"Yeah," said Elliot.
"All I can think is that it might be a sex thing she's describing with mystical language," said Mira.
"Possible," said Elliot.
"But the Great Conjunction is a public ceremony, isn't it," recalled Mira. "They do it on winter solstice, don't they? I think that's on their Wikipedia page."
"Neptune and the ascendants go out on a frozen lake while the adepts lead groups of neophytes in special meditation," said Elliot. "They meditate on merging with insect-like spiritual entities, said to be sent backwards through time from a future dominated by artificial intelligence. But the Waters video is the first description of what the ascendants are doing while everyone else is doing this weird meditation."
"But what she said can't be true," said Mira. "A spherical creature made entirely of mechanical tendrils? Merging with Neptune? That they all hallucinate together?"
"Well, when you say it like that it does sound strange," joked Elliot.
(Feature image from Pixabay.)
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