Note from ART-- dated If you, the reader, are up to date on this Document you have probably already read those files, which we have by now translated and posted into chronological order and included within Chapters 2, 13, 15, 20, 27, 32, 42, 45.
Transcribed from dictation, WALLACE / DAWALASAT narrating-- events up till Tuesday, 10th of March I'd a been hidin’ out in Da-Zinta-hat's chambers long 'nuff that it was drivin me plumb crazy, I needed to get out and do somethin, so when he told me: "Dawalasat, you'd better hide somewhere else for a few days, Da-starda-hat will be coming to Shamballah Central for a meeting with his Faction, so he'll be staying here in the Palace and would probably sense your presence." I reckoned that Da-starda-hat might also "sense" that his rusty old Colt .45 was missing along with both boxes of bullets and instigate a search of the whole Palace, incudin’ Da-zinta-hat's chambers, so I better put it in a safer place than a few hundred feets away, altho I don' really like to carry a gun around with me; tends to make a feller way too brave and there was only one critter I could justify shooting with it anyways. So I made rill sure there was nothin of mine left behind, no li’l clue that I'da been there. There wasn't nothin’ I could do about lollygaggin aura-traces of my recent presence that a psychic master like Da-starda-hat might be able to "smell" even after I'd gone, but Da-zinta-hat said he'd wipe that stuff away. "In fact," he sez to me, "it would be wisest for you to not be in Shamballah Central for a while, the Starda Faction has spies and they've noticed you." Like I’s said afore, when a wise man tells you what's wisest, you'd best listen up, but going out wandering loose 'mongst them highest Himalaya Mountains is a purty effective way to freeze to death. Good thing he also sez, "If you go to Shamballah North, where your fellow humans are, they'll take care of you." I s'pose Tibetan monks are technically "fellow humans" to an American White Man like I useta be, but that just shows how Nokhons kinda lump all NohhSos into the same pile, no regard for all the cultural and linguistic differences that make us so "not-fellows". "But won’t the Starda Faction be lookin’ for me there too?" I asks. "Oh yes, but they won't find you if you follow instructions." So I skedaddled into the middle of the night with all my stuff in my shoulder-bag, that pistol and all those bullets swingin kinda extra-heavy. I wuz wearing my Tibetan monk's disguise-costume, but me bein a lone NokhSo in Nokhon territiory I still needed to sneak thru the city around the Palace, until I got to down where the tunnel complex begins. I found a good hiding place down in the tunnels and put the pistol under a rock so's I didn't hafta worry 'bout it for a while.
My first time in Shambllah North I'd a gone to an Apothecary for some vinegar and steel wool, skesk-stuff you just can't get anywhere in the Nokhon culture, I remember wonderin just how the they could have such stuff on supply, there bein no roads through that part of the Himalayas. I'd managed to read "made in India" on some labels, so there had to be some kinda supply system. I asked Da-zinta-hat what he knew ‘bout that, since he seems to know just ‘bout ever-thing anyway. Sure 'nuff, he said there's a rumor 'bout a truck service that runs back and forth through a secret underground highway that connects Shamballah with some NokhSo town. I speculats if'n maybe I could finally use our telephone from that town: report in to our friends in Monroe, Washington USA that we wuz still alive and still workin on the Starda Faction problem. We's been out of contact for some months now,so I also has 5-6 mp3 reports backed up in the phone, which I could maybe send. But that would depend upon if I could do it without giving away my location. I had been warned that Adam's Nokhon Nation Project suspected that their e-mail was being monitored by all sortsa potential enemies: the lumber cartels, scandal newspapers, the US Government and some secret enemy Senator somewhere in Washington DC; seems there’s a long list of potential scallywags. I'm not s'posta say what country we’s in, that's a secret, 'specially to the Chinse government. I sorta knew the way to Shamballah North, where the human kind of monks had a temple complex. On my first (and only so far), visit I had reckoned they wuz Buddhist monks, like in most of Tibet, but Da-zinta-hat had 'splained to me that they were devotees of Bön, which wuz a lots earlier religion, shamanistic and animistic, which made more sense since they wuz ‘sociatin’ with the Yetis of Shamballah, or Nokhons, who follow the even older teachin’s of Atli. To get there I hadda go down into the tunnel system under the Himalayas. That wuz the kinda risky, part ‘cause I could run into Starda Faction soldiers, but even more ‘cause I could get myself real lost real easy; it's like a maze down there. But I had paid attention the first time, when followin’ that mesmerized guard who'd led the way. Took a half day's trekkin, I could guess at time from day’s light,‘cause them ancient illumination rods reach all the way down there to let some sunshine in, or these tunnels would be nothin’ but the blackest dark. Guess my battered old brain may be worn out and feeble, but it ain't quite broke yet, because it got me there. Just afore I begins to panic ‘caus a bein’ lost. Alla sudden I wuz out of those tunnels and under an open sky. It wuz jus’ gettin to be night, stars but no moon. Kinda cold, tho, my thin monk's robe not 'specially warm and snuggly. It’d been a long walk and a long day, so I wuz gonna find one o’ those abandoned caves at the bottom o’ the temple mountain where I could get some shut-eye. But jus’ as I comes to the outer-skirts of the temple town, I got s’prised to see my young guide from last time, Aaravi from India, waitin’ for me. I knows this can't be no coincidence, and sure 'nuff he tells me the Elder Johnsumma sent him meet me. I don’ bother even askin how he knows I'd be there at that time; all these ultra-wise old gurus ‘round here doin their telepathic tomfoolery, always kinda showin’ off. At my age, you'd think I'd be one of them myself, but no, not yet. Aaravi was friendly 'nuff, ‘siderin that we could barely understand each other's dialect o’ English. Altho it seemed to go a little better this time: either he'd learned to decode my English or I'd learned his; brains do that, y'know. Once 'gain, he took me to that same monastery barracks where we'd stayed before, offerin’ cots for us to sleep on and blankets, for which I wuz grateful. But even better there wuz warm food and a nice hot blaze in the fireplace-- which you almost NEVER get with Nokhons ('xcept with my woman, Mazaza, and Dabronat and Malasna, for whom I useta smuggle boxes o’ matches). It wuz so cozy that Aaravi and I even tried to have a real conversation, and that went purty good. Small talk, y'know, sometimes it's just what ya need. All the other monks spoke only Tibetan and no one but me spoke Nokhontli, so I couldn't even small-talk with them.
Next day-- glorious sunshine, bluest sky way up there 'bove those big white mountaintops --we goes up the hill to visit Johmsumma, up to the 9th level of the temple building. Me, I been busy being lazy and layin low in the Palace so long that I'm not as spry as normal and start huffing and puffing right 'bout level 6. But, hey, I'm still in better form than Aaravi, even if I am 100 years older than him. Johmsumma was his usual holier-than-any-other-guru self, friendly 'nuff, but distracted, like he was conversing with you and God at the same time. "Hello again, Mister Wallace Forest, how nice to see you anew. I trust you have renovated that rusty old pistol so that you can shoot Da-starda-hat when the time is come?" "I ain't so sure I want to shoot no one..." I sez, sounding like an idiot: of course I'd shoot that polecat if'n I got the chance. "No, of course not," he sez, "You’re not ready yet. First you need to go upon a journey, which we have arranged. As you have observed, we have access to some materiel necessities normally quite difficult to obtain..." "Yep, as in your Apothecary. You got some kinda supply route?" "...exactly. But it’s quite secret, since we need to keep the entire Shamballah complex remaining unknown to the general world. For obvious reasons... "Like the Chinese occupation of Tibet?" "Among other things. So you shall be made privy to a sacred secret, but we need your promise to protect it. Knowing that you have already done so regarding the secret city of Aket, we feel certain we can trust you in this. But I must have your promise." "You got it." "Very well. If you go somewhat deeper into the underground tunnel system you shall find our supply depot. We have an old British lorry that shuttles between here and our supply station in an unnamed frontier town. This town is unknown to the world, public or governmental (especially Chinese) and must remain that way. You shall go there for a while, until the Starda Faction gives up looking for you here. From there you can communicate by telephone or Internet, so be sure to take your cell phone with you."
Aaravi took me down to the lowest level of the tunnel complex under Shamballah North. We took an ancient hand-cranked cargo elevator. It went down a ways, deeper than the tunnels I'd followed from Central last time. Down there wuz an even older warehouse and loading terminal. The old lorry had just been unloaded, the only cargo onboard was something I recognized from my own trading days: small bags of golden nuggets, hand-panned from mountain streams. Payment for the next load of supplies and fuel to operate. The lorry driver, altho Tibetan, wuz not a monk, but a sherpa. He had a rifle in his truck, so he wuz definitely not a monk, but I wondered what he needed to defend himself against down here. Aaravi told me: the driver wuz skeerd o’ Yetis. Which meant that he knew nothing of the Shamballa complex all around us, he had never even been upstairs in Shamballah . But there was no danger of me sayin too much, since he only spoke Tibetan. The lorry itself was a wonder to see; a well-worn but still healthy 1939 Vauxhall. Green, long elegant snout, square box cabin, dropsider model. They just don't make 'em like that no more, by crackee. Looked like the only thing ever changed wuz the tires, not 'xactly new but like I said, healthy. I remember the old Vauxhalls from my time spent as a "Yank GI" in London, even tho I ain't never been back there since 1944. Good looking motor vehicles back then, before all the new-fangled models got so ugly. The truck loaded, we set out into a long, dark tunnel that wuz only lit up by our 1931 headlights, so after we got up to top speed of about 70 mph we just held it there. The tunnel seemed straight as a string and clean of fallen rocks, but wuz dark as Hell. There warn’t no illumination rods to light up the dark ‘long the way, 'ceptin’ for at a few intersections to a few other tunnel branches. Notherwise we wuz jus’ a'floatin in the dark with the hum of the motor the only entertainment at all. Nobody wuz talking neither. I figgered out why the driver wuz scared 'nuff to want a rifle. It wuz damn spooky just ridin’ on and on into that darkness forever, under all those heavy mountains, no sign of where we wuz goin nor wherever we'd been. No other traffic, just an endless narrow, featureless, dark tunnel, nothing else. Ya get to dreamin' up scary stuff. Maybe just to keep from thinkin; what if the motor goes kaput? Or we gets a flat tire-- is there a spare? If'n we get stuck down here, how far we gonna hafta walk in that godawful dark? That went on for 'bout 6 hours non-stop. I could tell time on my cell phone, what shows time & date on a nice bright lit-up screen. Factually, it wuz impressive: we must've driven 'bout 420 miles in a almos’ perfect straight line, passin’ under the most unpassable mountain chain in the world. The driver made some few steerin adjustments ever now 'n then, but mostly he just held it going straight ahead all the way. Gots to wonder: who made these tunnels and how? And when? It wuz technology we don't got today. Finally we comes to some lights, but they's electric light bulbs, not thousand year-old illumination rods. So we pull into another cargo terminal, not much more modern than the one we'da left behind us: purty rustic, unpainted wood and rusty metal, but solid-seemin’ anyway. The driver swings the lorry' round an' backs in to a ramp an' turns off the motor, lettin' out a big sigh. After neither sayin a word for all that time we nods to each other, both glad that trip was over with. It looked to me like the tunnel went on even farther. Gotta wonder where it ends-- or IF'N it ends? India? Australia? I sure don't wanna find out if'n it means drivin all alone thru endless dark like that. We ain't alone at that terminal, there's two sherpas who load our bags of gold into a wheelbarrow. It ain't a lot but it’s heavy anyway. The driver points me to a door that gets us into an elevator, which is an old rattletrap but electric, so we ain't in Shamballah-land no more.
We come up to daylight, a welcome view after that too-dark ride, and into a strange town...or maybe just an outpost. There’s only a few buildings, none of them so big or nothin. But I couldn' help a-noticin the solid-lookin old wall wrapped all the way around the whole township, sorta like the garrison forts cowboys used to hold off Wild Apache Injuns on the warpath. I didn't have a notion of where we wuz, and my first look didn't change that. The whole outpost wuz just as rustic as the terminal: bare wood, raw cement, rocks, nothing modern, no signs advertisin stuff, dirt streets, no cars. There wuz a few folks walkin 'round the streets, but I noticed that they wuz of all sortsa different human races. Not just Sherpas or Tibetans or Hindus, like you'd 'spect. No Yetis here, none. But there wuz Negroes, Latinos, Asians, even some Whiteys like me. I hadn't seen a mix like that since leaving America. The driver leads me to a ramshackle 2-story wooden house, points upstairs to let me know I's s’posta go up there, then he wanders off on his way. So I goes up. From where I can see over the wall, this outpost is situated in the middle of a wide valley, all green with some kinda crop growin’ in the fields, and only one lonesome tarmac road that cuts through the fields and ends here. In the other direction a ways off in the distance, there's mountains, gotta be the Himalayas. There's a door, I goes inside, to where I gets a kinda surprise. Inside the house are 6-7 men sitting around computer screens, 'bout as modern and hi-tech as ya can get. They's all wearin western culture clothes; t-shirts and cowboy britches, fancy sports shoes. Me, still in my Tibetan monk duds and lookin mighty outta place. A very tan man notices me an’ sez somethin in a lingo I don't parley, Italiano I finds out later. They looks discombobulated that I'm there. I reckon it’s all Top Secret an' here this 111-year-old white monk shows up. After most of them try to ask me stuff in languages I don't understand: Tibetan; Mongol; Hindi; ‘til I finally sez "English?" This young fellow (40-50?) comes over to me an’ asks "Who are you?" I dunno who they wants me to be, not sure if I'm in trouble here. But I knows a top-secret-facility when I sees it, from my WWII days, and guess they think I'm some kinda spy. So I sez in my best military jargon, "Wallace Forest reporting, Johmsumma sent me." "Oh, okay, we've been expecting you, just not dressed up like a Shamballan monk. You're to stay with us for a few days then we'll send you back, if that's all right with you." It wuz a pleasure to hear such well-spoken English (much better than my own). The young man wuz from New Zealand. All the others is also foreigners, 'ceptin for one native Tibetan. I learns that this "Outpost" is the only support station for Shamballah North, that ancient underground tunnelway making possible the transport o’ supplies and monastery monks directly into the middle of the Himalayas. This Outpost has been used for hundreds a years an ‘ventually grew into this small corporate town, only workers and their families-- 'bout a 100 folk, all sworn to secrecy and paid with gold. Secrecy because this place's been avoiding outside interference since way afore the Chinese Communists occupies Tibet. Official-ish, this nowhere town ain’t really here neither. The New Zealand guy takes me to the one and only hotel in town. It ain't a real hotel, bein' for free an’ all, but it’s got overnight rooms for whoever comes here to be shuttled to Shamballah North. Mostly Tibetan monks I 'spose, don't think no Yetis get to come this way. The town is real: the NZ guy shows me a street with a little grocery shop and a hardware store, a library, a bakery. Even a little movie house. There’s women-folk in them shops, maybe wives to the men who run the Outpost. None o’ the folk seems like civilians, they’s more like company-store employees. There’s a canteen where everyone can eat for free. Mostly Chinese food, purty good. Some of the people that works here are locals, Tibetans, Mongols, but most o' the high-tech folk are from modern lands: Europeans, Asians (but nary a Chinaman). They stay for 10-20 years, gets paid good money and keeps their mouths shut 'bout "Shangri-La" when they gets home again. Factually, they's never let into Shamballah, that’s secret from them too. Their most important duty is to keep the Chinese Nationalists never finding the tunnel.
I sees that they has “Wi-Fi” an uses the “Internet” for their work, so I asks if'n I kin send some e-mails to USA. Told them I needed to keep my location anonymous, an they sez all their stuff is too. I tell them I had all these "mp4 files" stacked up on my "smart phone" and they comprehended xactly what I wuz talkin 'bout, even tho I don't. So I's sending 'em now, Tuesday, March 10, 7 o'clock pm local time. Eight recordin’s spread out over the last half a year, sorry I could'na get them to ya earlier. We hadn't never planned for the Shamballa Mission to be goin’ on for so long, and we ain't even done yet.
|