Everyone here in the Hacienda has been very much concerned that our mysterious syssk attack might resume at any time, us having no idea of what had caused it or how. We met for breakfast this morning, politely asking: "How are Adam and Melly today, anybody slobbering?" or "Hey Felix and Peter, are you guys locked and loaded yet?" We tried to make light of it, since we all wished it to be over with. The Sinsleys had stayed overnight after our crisis conference, something that occasionally happens after a kha-rat (yes, yes, because they're not quite finished swapping wives yet), but this was not an erotic sleep-over so Felix and Sarah slept in the guest room. Pokey and Maki had been staying there but gallantly moved out and into the band's tour bus, since the nights were still a bit too cold to be living in their teepee. Peter got the living room sofa. I took Melly's room, her spending the night with Adam and Lissandra (his other two squatchettes sequestered out in the woods because they were just getting ripe with shyøma, a full moon just two nights away. No one seemed to be especially worried about their syssks coming back again, but we were all definitely thinking about it. Tuesday's syssk onslaught had begun quite early (5:40 PM) in the morning, and I think most of us were half-awake at that time that Friday morning, paying extra attention to any strange noises from the various bedrooms, to make sure it wasn't happening all over again. But the night passed without incident and we congratulated ourselves with a jolly breakfast party. Adam had considered a quick trip to Aket to ask the Elders what had happened, knowing some of them were in telepathic contact with Shamballah, but realized the journey would be a waste of time. It would take him at least a whole day just to get there, even driving part-way with his trusty Squatchmobile, and by then we'd already be hosting our local kha-rat right here in the Mother's Meadow. So Aket was effectively coming to us Saturday evening and surely some of the guests would have relevant information. That suited everyone just fine, the band had been working on writing and rehearsing some new songs before going on their Stateside tour, which had been coming along quite well until they lost three days to the syssk episode. So the band went back to their studio chores in the Mead Hall, the Sinsleys went home, at least until Saturday evening's kha-rat. Art and Elaine went back to bed; with a kha-rat coming the next day it was only smart to get ahead on their sleep; or maybe there were some early whiffs of shyøma drifting around. I went back to my paper war against the lumber cartels. A nasty job, but somebody's got to do it.
I mentioned that Aket would effectively be coming to us, which became so Saturday noon. Big fat Dambaraggan came lumbering into our back yard, along with a young Nokhon couple who had helped by dragging him along to get from Aket to here in record time: a day and a half, which is definitely pushing the envelope for anyone of Dambaraggan's bulk. To be in time for the kha-rat, yes, but more important to announce a rather staggering news headline: "Da-starda-hat, wicked despot of the Ultimate Nine Elders of Shamballah, has been killed." Followed up by an innocent question: "Say, you guys haven't had any problems with some of his old syssks, by any chance?" That was all the news we could get at that point, Dambaraggan didn't know any more yet, except to mention that in the last few days there had been a mini-epidemic of former loyalists to the Starda Faction suddenly becoming ultra-loyal fanatics again, only to revert just as suddenly at the moment corresponding with Da-starda-hat's demise. This only opened up for a barrage of questions: who killed Da-starda-hat? Was it our friends in Shamballah? Are they still alive? Had they succeeded in also overthrowing his Starda Faction dictatorship? What about the Ultimate Nine Elders, was there a new Nokhon Government? But Dambaraggan had no answers for us, he'd only heard the headline on his way out of town. "But maybe we can find out at the kha-rat tonight," he reminded us, "when we share the telepathic link with all Nokhons."
Other guests began arriving, from noon onward. Old Dannat came with three females, Malla and Mawa (Adam's aunt) as always, plus a first-time guest named Mazaza. She was quite mature (meaning old but attractive anyway) and very nice, so we were delighted to learn that she is Old Uncle Wallace's squatch mate/wife, whom we'd heard of but never met before. We had other first-timers joining us: the young Nokhon couple who had assisted portly Dambaraggan were eager to experience our infamous Nokhon Nation Project for the first time. They had heard of this place where Nokhons were free of Atli and skesk was permitted, if they so chose. But they were also shy and unsure of the right and wrong of such things. At least they dared to see for themselves, most squatches don't. A couple of Nokhon guys who had studied language with us for a while, come back for a visit. I could never remember their names (but that's okay, they never really learned English either). They brought along a young female for her first kha-rat (sure fire way to score a chick: take her to an orgy). She looked a little bit scared, so Masnia took her under her wing. Personally, I was glad to see Matillsma and Maminkiwa show up: two of Magga's prettiest female friends, with whom she had studied "Woman's Ways" in Aket. Fun chicks to have along for a bacchanalia. We had a few human guests too: the Sinsleys; Dave the Hippie Mailman; only regulars, we don't invite strangers. And our usual Hacienda crew: Art & Elaine, Melly & Lissandra, Pokey & Maki, and of course, myself. Although untraditional by Nokhon standards, our kha-rats have a fan following. I think what make us most popular is the generous serving of drinks and snacks, which is hardly a Nokhon tradition but they've learned to like it. That and playing live music, another break with squatch tradition. It is turning into a crisp, clear, full moon night, but still a bit too cold for ass-naked humans. But we've learned to cheat with Scandinavian-style eiderdowns and fluffy mattresses.
I assume that any reader this far into our Document already has a pretty good idea about what goes on at a kha-rat, so we can dispense with all the titillating pornography. It is what it is, and yes, we still participate in all the cheeky sex, but we're really most interested in the social aspect (okay, okay, the sex is a lot of fun too). But actually, both aspects are quite relevant: the only way to know what's going on in the entire Nokhon world is by attending a kha-rat and sharing the psychic connection between all Nokhonts everywhere on the planet. But to be receptive to the telepathy one must perform a physical attuning, a psychic warm-up, achieved by the acceptance and surrender of the group love-making. And the magic mushrooms, it's all part of the ritual. So consider this a kind of world-wide "Nokhon News TV", usually boring local stuff, but occasionally... for example, tonight ...breaking news. We were hoping for a message from the Elders of Shamballah. I'll try to tell what I got out of the telepathic episode, reminding you that I'm not a real Nokhon and my perceptions are those of a middle-aged American White Man, because the two races don't necessarily comprehend telepathic messages the same way. For one thing, we don't actually "see images", not with our eyes, which tend to be closed for a séance. It's more like "remembering" how something once looked. So it's kind of slippery and hard to be sure of what you're visualizing, but at the same time you "just know" so much about the subject; background info, immediate history, cultural significance, the whole story at once. But I'm sure that we all shared the extremely graphic picture of Da-starda-hat's dead body lying on the floor of his private chamber, with a perfectly centered bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. A clean shot, very tidy. I had to wonder if our very own Uncle Wallace really did that: we know he'd swiped back that rusty old Colt .45 from Da-starda-hat, that he was most likely the only one in town who knew how to use a gun at all, even though last time had been all the way back in WWII, almost a century ago. Did that little old coot really have the nerve to face the most dangerous Yeti in the world and place one perfect shot exactly where and when it would save all of human civilization? But nowhere in that telepathic presentation was there a clue or suggestion as to who the killer might be. In fact, it was hard to determine if Nokhons consider this killing as a murder or an act of war. A criminal act or a justified necessity? As initially suspected, we learned that our own syssk re-infections had indeed been caused by Da-starda-hat. But it seems that it had not been intentional, but rather the accidental result of an unexpected and uncontrolled expansion of his innate psychic abilities. That his power of psychic domination had suddenly been magnified by a world-spanning quantum was probably as much a surprise to himself as to anyone else. Our four friends here in the Pacific Northwest were hardly the only victims of the event, the same thing happened simultaneously to an unknown number of (mostly) Nokhons scattered around the planet; hundreds, maybe thousands. Hard to tell since squatches are no good at counting things. Evidence suggests that once Da-starda-hat comprehended the new power that was suddenly at his disposal, he tried to implement a world-wide EMP. It's long been known that he wished to destroy the human race's technological civilization, preferably in one grand gesture. But this attempt appears to have been a rash impulse rather than any well-considered plan. Although he did manage to affect a large portion of the planet's electromagnetic field, it appears unlikely it would ever have achieved the critical mass necessary to generate a semi-permanent EMP to fry all electronic circuitry in the world for years to come, as was his intention. But we'll never know because he was killed before the process was finished, death occurring at 7:07 in the evening our local time. And it seems that all of his newly-activated syssks around the world also zeroed out at that exact same instant. Immersed in the telepathic togetherness, I sensed a collective sigh of relief. Nokhons don't fight wars and cannot understand why anyone would. Da-starda-hat took advantage of that naivety in his personal quest for power, being probably the only Nokhon who conceived of armed violence as an acceptable way to attain his goals. The kha-rat took us on a brief telepathic tour past the hundred-odd years of his life, showing how Da-starda-hat had developed and misused his almost magical power of psychic domination, establishing the Starda Faction as his political justification. Even though many murders had been committed at his instigation, even though his syssks had enslaved many and his cruelty had destroyed lives, the Nokhons regarded him with a respect for the Strong Leader, even as humans tend to do the same for dictators. Unfortunately. But now, fortunately, it was over. The impact of all those evil machinations ending in a mortal instant had yet to be comprehended. Most of his political cronies had been so subject to his domination that they now presented little threat without him to tell them what to do. Those unqualified Elders who had muscled into the Ultimate Nine had so unbalanced the authority of the once-noble assemblage that it no longer functioned at all, they had long been unable to convene and become the One Mind. There followed a chain of images about the Ultimate Nine Elders of Shamballah, as they had once been before five Elders had been murdered and replaced by the Starda Faction, leaving only four of the actually enlightened Elders remaining. One of them, a grey old guru named Da-zinta-hat (Hey, I know about him, from Uncle Wallace's reports!) zoomed in to us and began to speak. "Now that wicked Da-starda-hat is gone and his Starda Faction along with him, we can restore the balance of our Ultimate Nine Elders. We shall find five new Elders, applications will be accepted and there will be tryouts. Our intention is to re-establish harmony to the resulting One Mind and a good government for the Nokhon people." Telepathic images flickered through my brain; four old Nokhon gurus up on a balcony on the palace, smiling and waving; an underground temple-city full of jolly Yetis; a sensation that a war had just ended; an exterior view of some big mountains obviously in the Himalayas, flowers growing beside mini-canals of sparkling clean water, a real tourist-office production. Then I caught a glimpse of three familiar faces; Dagrolyt, Daklakht and little old Uncle Wallace, up on that podium with the Elders, waving to the crowd. They were alive! And by the look of it, regarded as heroes. I heard reactions from others around me, also sharing in this psychic experience: Masnia give a little happy sob at seeing her father looking alive and well. Misma and Mrølla cheered for their mate/husband, Adam and Pokey too, for their friend. Our new guest, the mature Mazaza, uttered a mature but heartfelt cry of joy for her little old NokhSo Trader. Me too, for all of them. Then the telepathway-tour ended, but we were all satisfied. At least until the shyøma hit us again.
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