Crystals

a short story

“Larimar, the sky blue semi-precious stone, tears of the goddess fallen from Heaven and solidified, hidden in the jungle for eons, waiting to be found by those destined to do so.” He scrolled. “You can’t buy your way into bliss. You’ve got to go out and find it. The search is part of the process, deep in nature. It’s out there for you to discover. Stones tumbled and polished by the Gods can be only be found in stream gravel in The Dominican Republic. You find it. You set it how you like, and you manifest your best life. Channel your ancestors, become one with nature. Develop your Qi Gong, your Tao, your you!”
	Chase stared at his phone, dumbfounded. Was this the answer? Was this what would pull him out of his three-year funk? His life had been stagnant for too long. He needed something to lift him up and get him moving again. 
	He clicked on the influencer’s profile and watched the next reel. Chi_Lar was meditating and wearing a large sky-blue pendant on a necklace of copper wire. His face had an infectious look of bliss. Though he was a man and Chase was straight, he found the influencer strangely attractive, magnetic in a non-sexual way. Chase couldn’t help but to watch, and listen, and to think about what he was saying, and doing. The soundtrack was otherworldly, like bubbles of birdsong and waterfall and music, spellbinding and more captivating than anything he had ever heard. 
	As soon as the reel ended, Chase scrolled to the next. Chi_Lar explained briefly how he channeled his ancestors, and they gave him priceless advice, because they were fourth-dimensional beings and had access to all their memory from all their past lives. “My larimar necklace is the key to the contact, and the contact is the key to bliss.”
	Chase took a moment to look up larimar. He found that it was a form of the more common mineral pectolite, and while other forms of pectolite could be found worldwide, the blue variety, larimar, was indeed only found in the Dominican Republic. It was absolutely beautiful, the color and character of the Caribbean Sea in a stone. 
	He searched around and went down the rabbit hole that included the geological significance of larimar, The Dominican Republic, hippie philosophy of crystals of all sorts, and one sight that discussed some odd properties of larimar relating to both Newtonian and quantum physics. He followed as far as he could but took away that larimar, in a vacuum and in zero-G, might act as a sort of superconductor the likes of which mankind had not seen. Rumor was that Space Brother was testing it for something. He left the sight more intrigued than ever. 
	He opened a new tab and looked up flights to the Dominican Republic and places to stay, but his mind pulled him back to Chi_Lar’s profile and he scrolled to the next reel. He was discussing channeling the spirits of the volcano that produced the larimar in order to make the jewelry that would bring bliss to the wearer. 
	Chase watched a few more reels, then checked his calendar, looked at tickets again. Was this stupid? He stopped and thought about it, but decided doing nothing and grinding away at his life as he had been for the past ten years since graduation was the stupid thing to do. His life was stuck on the rails of mediocrity and needed direction. Anything to pull him out of the rut would be an improvement and well worth risking a bit of time and money. After all, seeking happiness was far from stupid. 
	He pulled the trigger and bought the tickets. A week later, he was at the airport waiting at the gate for a flight to the Dominican Republic. He was seated and scrolling through Chi_Lar’s reels when he heard a young woman’s voice behind him, close to his ear.
	“You follow him too,” she said.
	Chase was a bit startled, but more than that, he felt the thrill of proximity to whoever owned that voice. He turned and beheld the beautiful face of a woman with long brown hair braided into a pony tail wearing a crystal necklace and feather earrings. 
	“Me too,” she said. When Chase looked confused, she sat next to him. “I follow him too. that’s why I’m going to the Dominican Republic.”
	“You’re looking for larimar!” Chase said. She nodded and smiled. “That’s why I’m going.”	
	“I had a dream about a necklace, and I’m going to make it.”
	“What does it look like?” Chase said.
	“It’s got 27 pieces of larimar, all of them smooth and rounded, and it makes a complete circle around my head. It’s going to create a vibration that will give me a connection to my ancestors.”
	“Wow, that’s so cool,” Chase said.
	“What are you going to make?”
	“I didn’t have a dream like that. I’m just going to find a piece, then sit in meditation until inspiration comes to me.”
	“Just like Chi says,” she said.
	He nodded. “My name is Chase.”
	“I’m Angel.”
	“It’s so cool to meet you, with us on the same mission. Are you going to Barajona?”
	“I’m waiting for inspiration.”
	“You don’t have anything booked?”
	“No.”
	“I’ve got a car reserved and a place in Maniel Viejo, in Barajona. It’s right on a river, and it’s got two bedrooms. You could join me, if you like.”
	“I think that’s just the inspiration I was waiting for. Destiny.”
	On the plane, she had an empty seat next to her, so Chase moved and sat with her. They talked about Chi_Lar and debated his teachings. They talked about what they hoped to find in the Dominican Republic’s stream beds. They talked about what they wanted to do with their lives and who they wanted to become. Chase couldn’t remember the last time he talked about or even thought about these things and to do so on a plane to the Caribbean with a beautiful woman gave him exactly the sense of joy he had hoped to find when he bought the tickets. The trip was getting off to a great start.
	Chase and Angel agreed that everyone was depressed primarily because the modern world was so detached from nature and no one had contact with their ancestors, as the primitive cultures did. Everyone in modern society was cut off from the Tao. They were both determined to rebuild this connection, and the larimar was the key.
	His destiny was changing before his eyes, and he liked what he saw.
	“Look,” she said peering out the window. Chase leaned over, his chest touching her shoulder, and saw the green island rising out of the blue sea.
	“It’s beautiful,” she said, and Chase agreed. This was clearly a different world than the one he had lived in up until this point. He suddenly wondered if he would go back, and when the plane touched down, he felt like he had arrived home with his soulmate.
	They were both surprised to see a local selling necklaces with uncut blue stones set in copper wire outside the airport. They looked like crude copies of Chi_Lar’s necklace. 
	“You find bliss in deez. Bliss for you. Real larimar necklace. Only twenty dollars.”
	“It doesn’t work unless you make your own,” Angel told the man. Chase just shook his head. But the encounter gave him a sense of foreboding. Was the larimar already being commercialized? This was supposed to be a mission of search, discovery, and creation to bring them insights and bliss. The idea that someone had already cheapened it was disheartening.
	Angel comforted him. “They’ve been making larimar jewelry here since the seventies. It’s part of their culture. And it’s going to be part of ours too.”
	They took a taxi to the car rental place and climbed into a tiny Daihatsu 4X4 with a two-liter diesel motor. Three hours later, they were at the place Chase had already rented for a month. It was right on the river, but when they got there, they were both surprised to see a bunch of tourists in the water picking through stones. A local on the bank was selling food from a barbeque cart. Music was coming from two different places, making a cacophony instead of the cool reggae it should have been. 
	“We can hike up the river until we find a peaceful spot,” Angel suggested. Chase agreed. they were both anxious to start hunting, and they got right to it. But the day was already late, and they found the river to be spotted with rock hunters in both directions. But they stopped and talked to a few of them, and were happy with whom they met. Everyone seemed to be on the same mission. 
	They bought some grilled chicken and ate while the sun set behind the hills. Tomorrow, they agreed, they would begin in earnest.
	The next day, they set out early and hiked until they were deep in the jungle, way upstream from the little town where they were staying. Exotic birdsong filled the oxygen-rich air and the jungle smelled like dirt and fruit, some ripe, some rotten, like life and death. The amount of green was staggering. Vines climbed and dangled from tall trees. Roots hung down looking for soil. Strange arboreal plants hung like hitchhikers in the trees and some sported huge red flowers. It was all so different, and so welcoming.
	They searched through the stones on the bank, and in the water, and finally, while swimming under a little waterfall, Chase found a blue stone about the size of his thumb. He held it up to the sky and thanked the Tao for guiding him, just as Chi_Lar suggested.	
	Angel found a round hole cut in the bedrock of the stream where stones had gathered and been naturally tumbled smooth. She dug in the hole and found three small blue stones. 
	They sat on the bank and meditated, holding their stones to their chests. 
	Chase spent the next day contemplating his necklace, waiting for inspiration. Angel continued hunting. She needed many more stones to make the necklace she had envisioned. 

All over the island, hippies, new-agers, the depressed, the spiritually deprived, and others just seeking a new beginning had become rock-hounds, scouring the streambeds and caves and cliffs, the volcanic debris, old quarries, gravel pits, and anywhere else a stone might be thought to hide. What was just months ago a mineral only known to geologists and local artisans had become a worldwide craze. And it was not just for jewelry, it was all part of a cultural movement started and nurtured by Chi_Lar. 
	On their second week on the island, as they sat on the porch looking over the river, scrolling on their phones, bejeweled with larimar, Angel squealed with delight.
	“What is it?” Chase said.
	“A festival! A larimar festival, and it’s here! Check Chi’s profile. It looks awesome!”
	Chase pulled up Chi_Lar’s page and the festival announcement. It was to be in the Parque Nacional Jaragua in the Southwest of the Dominican Republic, not far from where they were already. “Three days and nights of music, meditation, and manifestation.”
	“We’re going,” Angel said with unnecessary finality.
	“For sure,” Chase said.
	The following week they stood in line at the gate to the festival. The line moved swiftly. There were neither tickets to show nor money to pay. At the gate in the shade of a thick canvass suspended from the trees stood a tall and pale man wearing a leather vest decorated with bits of shell, bone, and broken mirror. He had long feathers in his hair, white cotton pants, and a belt that looked like it was made of alligator skin with a bronze buckle tarnished green. His movements were gangly and reminded Chase of the way a toddler moves, when everything is new. 
	Chase showed his thumb-size sky-blue pendant and Angel leaned her head back and gestured to her necklace of 27 pieces of bright blue stone. The man smiled and waved them in. 
	“That guy was creepy,” Chase said.
	“Do you think he was an albino?” Angel said.
	“Something. Yeah. That might be it.”
	Inside were thousands of people, all united by Chi_Lar and their newfound fascination with larimar. The jungle surrounded them and the Caribbean Sea, the same color as the stones which had bewitched these people, was visible through the trees. Everyone was decked out in their blue jewelry with larimar earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings, multiple necklaces, clothes with larimar studs, nose rings and more. It was a larimar festival, and it looked like it. 
	Chase expected rows of vendors, but there were none. Instead, there was one enormous tent handing out free plates of beans and rice. They stood in line, got their plates, and sat in the grass facing a stage where a young dreadlocked woman with a guitar sang a song about peace and love and the beauty of nature. 
	The sun was setting behind the green mountains when she finished her set. She spoke to the crowd and told them about the night’s main event, a group meditation. Everyone was needed so the full force of their group meditation could, through the power of the larimar they all wore, call down the spirits of their ancestors. This was something Chi himself had been setting up for the past five years. 
	“Acid or shrooms?” Chase turned to see another tall gangly and pale white man with a broad smile.
	“What?”
	“Acid or shrooms? It’s free. Courtesy of Chi. For the ceremony. Which would you prefer?” He smiled big and showed all his white and perfectly straight teeth.
	Chase looked at Angel and shrugged. “Acid for me,” Angel said. “I guess I’ll try the acid,” Chase said. 
	“Stick out your tongues,” the man said, and they did, and he took out a brown glass bottle and eyedropper and dropped a drop of liquid, presumably LSD, on each of their tongues. He moved on to the next couple. “Acid or shrooms?”
	Several other tall skinny and pale men and women moved about the crowd doing the same. All of them looked to Chase as if their skin had never seen the sun. 
	The warm colors in the sky cooled and darkened and a DJ took the stage, playing music that flowed like water, wavered, climbed, bubbled, and dripped and Chase’s mind followed suit. 
	“If everyone will remain silent for the duration of the meditation session, we can begin,” the voice of Chi_Lar said on the sound system. Chase and Angle looked at the stage. 
	“Where is he?” Angel said.
	“That’s his voice, but I don’t see him anywhere.”
	The voice of Chi_Lar went on to explain that they were all going to call down the spirits of their ancestors through deep meditation. Special surprise guests were coming with a trippy lightshow and sound system. This was going to help everyone get in the right headspace, and that hopefully everyone had taken advantage of the free psychedelics. If not, they were still available at the food tent. They helped users see the fourth dimension. He explained that hallucinations were the result of the mind trying to interpret what it had previously been unable to understand. But with the help of the larimar crystals everyone wore, they would be able to interpret, for the first time, the fourth dimension. 
	The jungle sounds filled the air as the people fell silent. Birds chirped and hooted. Insects buzzed and beeped. Frogs croaked and peeped. A million leaves rustled. Tree branches rubbed against each other. A cat screeched. Monkeys howled. Chase could hear everything and he pictured the individual animals and branches and leaves making the sounds. He could hear the ocean and the waves and the bubbles the waves left behind. He could hear shells moving on the beach. He could hear more than he had ever imagined possible. 
	Everyone was tripping when the incredible lights descended from the sky and filled the circle before them. The sound system was as ethereal as promised and Chase, already tripping, slipped further into the abyss. It was the biggest, wildest, craziest sound system he had ever seen, even more incredible than the most outrageous of those he had seen in reels from Burning Man. A door in the thing opened and a plank descended. The special guest, he remembered, as promised. He hugged Angel and pointed. They both wore smiled that stretched the skin on their faces and bared all their teeth. 
	The special guests who came out of the sound system and walked gangly and pale down the plank reminded him of the man at the gate and the acid/shroom guy, but somehow inhuman, alien. Chase wanted to speak but he couldn’t. He wanted to stand, but he remained seated. The special guests moved among the crowd, slithering and blurred and now much more inhuman than he previously suspected. He wanted to shield Angel from them, but he was paralyzed, and he suspected everyone else was to, for no one moved. His boundless joy and enthusiasm from moments before shifted to fear. This is where his memory ended.

He woke up the next day to the sunrise and sounds of lamentation. People all around him were waking up, still seated around the circle, confused. Chase sensed something missing and his hand clutched at his chest. The pendant was gone. He looked at Angel, who was sitting next to him looking around. Her necklace was gone. Everyone was grasping at where their larimar jewelry once was, and nobody had it. There was no larimar to be seen anywhere.
	He tried to remember the lights and sound and alien-looking people and what happened next, but his memory just stopped. 
	People were crying, lamenting, shouting. Some were trying to justify and rationalize what had happened. Chase brought out his phone. He tried to pull up Chi_Lar’s profile, but it no longer existed. 
	“What happened?” Angel said.
	“We’ve been duped,” Chase said.
	She grasped at her unadorned neck. “It’s gone!” 
	“Everyone’s larimar is gone. They took it. They tricked us with social media, got us to gather up something they wanted, convinced us to all come here and sit in a circle like a bunch of tripping fools, came down and harvested it right off our necks. Free labor. That’s all we were.”
	“Who were they?” Angel asked. But she knew. Everyone knew, but few were willing to admit it.