Glastafari

By now, quite a few people had returned from the wasteland with fantastic tales of invisible force fields. You could easily spot them throughout the site, in the Healing Field and Crafts Field and Jazz Field, miming away with outstretched palms and sweeping gestures. Their ‘You had to be there’ eyes imploring crowds of puzzled on-lookers. And you really did have to be there, because mere talk of invisible force fields just wasn’t enough, and photos of invisible force fields, which quite a few had tried to take with their smart phones, were proving impossible to verify on such tiny screens.

Beavis was still smarting from his snubbing at the cop shop. He desperately needed to get a handle on things, to get an angle on the prevailing mood on site. But getting about incognito was a truly tricky business. Everyone seemed to want his head on a paper plate. But he somehow managed to make his way across the site, first stopping by the Tipi Field, where a massive Pow Wow was in progress in the Drumming Circle.

The Tipi Field was a tough crowd, known for throwing up the most remarkable obstacles and perplexing problems. You didn’t take words like ‘common sense’ into your dealings with these folk, you took a shaman. People saw things differently. Sometimes it all seemed to hinge on the way someone was holding their rain stick.

Ariadne had finally woken from a powerful dream and left her tipi to pass on a vital message to the large gathering.

“Princess Diana came to me last night, and everything became crystal clear,” she began, regrettably. Because if there is one thing you can say for certain about New Agers and crystals, nothing is ever that clear. Crystals are like clouds. The one person seeing a rabbit, while the next guy sees the mother ship. As for channeling famous dead people? This was the sort of tough crowd where every other person claimed to have someone far out and groovy on their books - a Janis Joplin, or a Nefertiti.

Unfortunately, no-one was particularly impressed by Ariadne’s claim. She may just as well have been reading out a letter from the council.

“It’s true,” said Star, backing up her account.

Everyone laughed. Ariadne frowned. Sometimes, you just had to be there.

“We must leave this place immediately, and go to Glastonbury Tor,” Ariadne said, pointing eastwards.

No exodus in human history hadn’t had at least the one person pointing the way and shouting, “It’s going to be worth it”. Ariadne was trying to be that person. But it took a lot to convince people to move when just staying put and waiting seemed to be the most sensible option. Relocating the entire tipi field to Glastonbury Tor, was a tall order. Quite literally. How to actually move those heavy poles and bulky canvases on an empty stomach? Noah must have had a similar problem. People only really switching on to his whole ark project when the water was already up to their armpits.

“Relocate to the Green Future’s Field, perhaps,” said Sweat Lodge Bob. “Why on earth would we want to drag everything over to the Tor? It just doesn’t make sense.”

“What do you mean by ‘sense’, friend?” said Dollop, leader of a breakaway faction from the original Rainbow Circle. He and Sweaty Bob, like pretty much everyone else in the Tipi Field, had ‘history’.

“The only way to make sense of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance,” he said, unleashing his fire sign.

“Not if some of us dance like the village idiot,” chuckled Sweaty Bob, forcing everyone to either hoot with delight, or howl with derision.

Beavis looked across at Ariadne, whom he’d known for some years. She looked sad. Her wonderfully elaborate fire labyrinth in the Sacred Field, like so many other things that year had been completely ruined by the weather. As Sweat Lodge Bob and Dollop continued to take swipes at one another, she seemed resigned to endure yet another clash of brash macho energy. She so wanted to pass on her crucial message to the world, but, as had happened so many times in the past, her words, like Princess Diana’s, were being brushed aside by the male ego.

Diana had told Ariadne everything about the Drakos, and their sick reality TV show. Also, about how the entire House of Windsor had Drako blue blood coursing through its veins and was one of thirteen families worldwide who controlled everything. It even turned out that her former husband, King Charles, was a direct descendant of that top Drako shape-shifter himself, Count Dracula.

“We must go to Glastonbury Tor,” said Ariadne, giving it one last go. “We must face the dragon race that holds us all in its terrible grip.”

“Puff the Magic Dragon.” sang Sweaty Bob, trying his best to dampen Ariadne’s fire.

“I’m talking about a technologically superior alien race!” Ariadne finally snapped. “They are known as the Drako, and we have become their slaves.”

The fact is that no-one was really listening. Everyone was too wired and tired to take in anything anymore. Especially anything remotely dungeons and dragons. Princess Diana really hadn’t done Ariadne any favours with all this extraordinary insight. It all sounded so farfetched. As indeed it was. Fetched from millions of light years away and dumped on a bunch of unsuspecting tipi dwellers, most of whom were too busy fetching their own shit to either notice or care about somebody else’s.

Plus, Rainbow Circle types tended to love dragons. Puff the magic dragon lived by the sea, not on a constant diet of misery and despair. Christian fundamentalist nutters killed dragons. To pagans everywhere they were a symbol of life-force.

As Sweaty Bob and Dollop continued to bait each other with snide comments, Ariadne decided to just call it a day, and quietly slip away with Star and Nick from the band Solar Warrior, back to her tipi. It was useless. Perhaps she could make the journey alone. Perhaps not.

“What a shame,” said Beavis forlornly, watching Ariadne disappear behind a trailer, thinking that he too had better disappear, before he found himself getting dragged into something he regretted.

Next stop was the Greenpeace Field, it’s solar powered ‘Rainforest Shower Experience’ now put on permanent hold, filled with refugees from Tent City, who had settled into the cubicles amidst the exotic ferns and creepers.

Beavis asked about for Dr. Suzie Meyer among the smattering of Greenpeace staff and volunteers that had stuck around. They were dossing down in the Rainbow Warrior adventure playground, looking like the wretched crew of some long abandoned eco-tourist ghost ship. Dr Meyer had apparently, “Not come back yet from the expedition” according to a guy called Twig. But they were expecting her “any time soon”.

Next stop was the Green Futures Field. Of all the fields within Glastonbury, certainly the most self-sufficient, sustainable and resourceful. It was filled with activists, people used to roughing it and surviving in hostile situations. People knew each other, and trusted one another; people with tools and trucks and bicycle-powered cinemas. But one of the entrances was blocked by a huge barricade made up of logs, and pallets and assorted bits of metal, hemmed in by a large green box van. On top of the van sat two serious looking activist types armed with a baseball bat and an axe. Clearly, some serious shit had gone down.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Beavis called up. “Why is this here?”

“Hi Mr Beavis,” said the one lad. “We had a bit of a scene yesterday morning, and we voted to seal off one or two of the entrances. Just to help us keep an eye on things.”

“I see,” said Beavis. “What happened?

“A group of townies tried to rob our free food kitchen,” said the second lad. “You know us Mr Beavis, we feed the people. We will always share. But folk just taking stuff, and spilling half of it on the ground. Well.. That just won’t do.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Beavis. Having seen the worst of the rioting, he could well understand their reasons for protecting their people and stuff, but it was still hurtful to encounter a wall of fear at the entrance to the Green Futures Field, a space that had long since welcomed in the wider society, to switch it on to change and possibility.

“Was anyone hurt?” he asked.

“Just a few bruises,” said the first lad, dragging on a roll-up. “But they really scared Mad Lizzie and the kids.”

Beavis reached out to a particularly vicious looking piece of wood jutting out from the barricade.

“Fear eats the soul,” he sighed.

“Mr Beavis?” asked the second lad. “What’s going on? I mean.. Really going on, like? We heard that something is happening at the Tor?”

* * * * *

For security guard Wesley something was definitely beginning to happen at the Tor. For one thing, his head felt two sizes bigger, and his aching limbs were suddenly a lot more relaxed. He’d been dying for a smoke for ages, Daryl the Dealer’s drug paraphernalia burning a hole in his concentration like a hot rock the size of California. This was more like it. If Spike hadn’t have been such an uptight bastard he too could have been toking his away instead of giving it the whole intrepid explorer bit. What was the point of being a security guard anyway, if you couldn’t enjoy a bit of harvest with your festival? The trick was to keep it on the lowdown. Bust the kid who looks like his dad is a high court judge. And don’t get greedy.

It wasn’t the most salubrious chill out but it was nice to stop for a while, and see the hash smoke coil up around the beam of his head torch, hot boxing that particular section of the tunnel like a Rasta’s comfort blanket.

“Fuck off! Fuck Off!” Spike suddenly yelled from the darkness down the way, panicking the fuck out of Wesley’s pipe hand, which spilled it’s precious cargo like a mini glass saucepan. It didn’t sound like a tunnel collapse, more like someone being attacked by a giant grocery bag filled with off cuts of meat - all flappy and dull sounding.

Hey! What’s happening?” PC’s Stevens and Wilson yelled in unison. The entire line of communication beginning to sound like a besieged switchboard. No one able to understand anything above the crossed wires. Wesley was feeling incredibly high and at the same time incredibly tortured by the need to do something. As if he’d just dropped a huge flaming roach down the back of his mother-in-law’s sofa.

“Spike?! Spike?!” he shouted, adding to the noise and confusion. “Spike? Spike!” But a major section of the line was clearly down.

“What the fuck is going on?!” demanded PC Stevens.

“I don’t know,” Wesley replied. “Something..”

This was his big chance to prove himself. To put things right with Spike. To undo the damage his cowardly act had done to their working relationship back at Gate Two. He dropped Daryl’s pipe and clipper and hash and began to crawl to the rescue.

“I’m coming,” he cried, above the sound of much scuffling and scraping. “I’m coming!”

But something else was about to go down. For as Wesley shuffled his way to Spike’s assistance, he suddenly found himself going head to head with something most foul.

“Shit! It’s a fucking.. thing!”

The best description he could give under the circumstances, and probably the worst ‘thing’ you’d ever want to encounter that far beneath the ground whilst completely stoned.

PC Wilson stopped to listen, as Wesley cried out once again.

“Help! Help! It’s got me! HELP!”

The tunnel amplifying every last sound, the near total darkness sending everyone’s imagination haywire.

Then, just as Spike’s line had gone dead, so did Wesley’s. Something pretty dastardly having also clamped a hand over his receiver, and snipped the wire.

“Hello! Hello?” cried PC Wilson, the third link in this chain reaction of panic.

“What the fuck is going on, Wilson?” demanded PC Stevens, his torch beam thrashing about like crazy.

“I don’t.. Aaaaarrgghh!!” came Wilson’s blood-curdling answer, sounding how you would imagine Roger Daltrey might sound if he whacked a nail through his own ball sack.

PC Stevens wasn’t going to hang about to find out what that meant, and he began squirming and wriggling himself round as fast as he could. The sounds of frantic struggle growing quiet behind him, it soon becoming apparent that whatever had molested his colleague, and Spike, and Wesley, was about to molest him also. Gripping his torch in one hand he began to crawl like a crazed baby, not daring to turn round to see what the hell was chasing after him, gaining on him, devouring the ground like an Olympic mole rat, killing any safe distance there may have been in a matter of seconds.

Roy the cameraman, the last link in this broken subterranean chain, was busy turning down the audio levels yet again, growing increasingly fearful that all the action he could ever hope to capture, was coming his way fast. Lights on. Camera rolling. Blood curdling.

His reporter Sasha Lush, and the others above, were trying to work out what was going on down below. Dr Suzie Meyer caught Daryl the Dealer’s eye, the briefest look of guilt diving for cover beneath a poker face expression.

“Roy!” Sasha Lush called down to her cameraman. “Are you okay?”

But Roy was far from okay. Something had scared the bejesus out of him. Something he had managed to briefly film as it crept from the darkness ten yards or so down the tunnel.

“Shit! Shit!” he cried, hooking the camera strap over his shoulder, not even bothering to switch off the light, but grabbing hold of the rope like a drowning monkey. PC Stevens hadn’t got very far. And Roy’s dedication to the job of capturing the moment had gone on far enough.

Now he was using every last bit of energy he had to scramble up the rope to safety. Luckily, he was a pretty fit guy, and whatever the heck was chasing after him up the rope got the full force of a flailing boot right in the chops, sending it plummeting back down.

Dr Suzie Meyer shone her torch into the pit, getting the first hint of Roy’s bobbing head and shoulders as he climbed up towards them, his camera slung over his shoulder, the light still on, a look of sheer terror on his face. And it soon became apparent why. Something naked looking, with a head like an engorged tick, and massive dead eyes the colour of Teflon, was climbing up the rope behind him.

“It’s a fucking Alien!” gasped Clash Man Keith. “It’s one of Strummer’s aliens.”

“Where?” said Fliss, pushing him aside. “Oh my God!”

Keith was right all along. This was no cop in fancy dress.

“Help me!” screamed Roy, as the thing grasped his trouser leg and began to try and drag him back down into the darkness.

“Grab my hand,” shouted Earnest, extending an arm, trying not to look at this alien game-changer, this missing chapter from the Book of Genesis. “Grab hold of my hand, man!”

“It’s got me,” shouted Roy, trying to kick himself free.

“Grab hold of his hand,” cried Dr Meyer, also trying to block out that hideous, grappling, lunging two-legged shift in global consciousness.

“Come on Roy!” she cried, managing to grab hold of his camera strap.

But Roy’s shark attack face said it all. The alien thing had got him good and proper, and his arms just couldn’t hold out any longer. He suddenly dropped about a yard, momentarily clinging to the camera strap, which Dr Meyer, Earnest and Clash Man Keith now grasped like a SONY lifeline. The narrow strap growing taut for a few fleeting seconds, stretched to breaking point. One more vicious tug and Roy and the thin metal ring that fixed the strap to the camera body finally gave way, causing him to tumble back down into the blackness, and the camera to fly upwards and out, taking Earnest, Suzie and Keith with it. A too close for comfort encounter of the Fourth.. and anything but Kind.

Their escape plan had quite literally been shafted by Larr’s security staff, tough little Gray muscle sent in to close down the latest breach in security. Spike had met his ET counterpart, pretty butch by Gray standards, with all the musclie sinew of a bullmastiff’s inner thigh. Clearly adept at negotiating cramped spaces and wrestling intruders to the ground, these light-footed heavies had soon finished off each of the human intruders with their equivalent of a Valcan neck pinch.

Up above, the ringing from Roy the cameraman’s final terrified scream had resonated away to silence, leaving our haggard and harassed refugees - Clash Man Keith, Dr Suzie Meyer and company, to gape with “What the Fuck just happened?” eyes, at the now static line of rope that dangled down from Earnest’s cross; a dawning realisation that there really was no way out from Glastonbury Festival after-all, that their only glimmer of hope had been snuffed out by a largely unseen hand. Though, as it would soon emerge, not that unseen.

Dr Suzie Meyer noticed a flashing red light out of the corner of her eye. It was Roy’s video camera, its broken strap looping off to one side like a dead snake, the light torn from its mount and shattered on the ground close by. Roy’s camera was still running, that last unintended over the shoulder shot never terminated, but now running to at least five minutes.

“Look, the camera is still on,” cried Dr Meyer, snatching it up and handing it over to Sasha Lush like a black box flight recorder. But just how much of Roy’s last doomed flight to safety had it managed to record?

The tiny view finder screen clunked and whirred into rewind mode, sending that final shot racing back along the time-line. Seven faces jostled for position in front of the smallest viewing theatre imaginable, a battery warning light now flashing continually on the bridge of the viewfinder.

“That should do it,” said Sasha Lush, pressing PLAY.

It was the inside of the Duke of Somerset’s long forgotten bling tunnel, all squat and cramped and damp, the fierce camera light stretching far into the gloom. Daryl the Dealer had never seen it in the light.

You could hear Roy’s heavy breathing, his usual rock-solid grip compromised by slight quivers of anticipation and fear. The muffled sound of voices coming from above. Then a far more pronounced quiver as this hominid type creature stalked its way out of the darkness and into shot.

“What the fuck is that?!” said Sasha Lush, pressing the PAUSE button, halting the Thing in mid step, Roy’s intense camera light blasting its rubbery body from gimp head to gimp foot.

“What is it?” said Suzie Meyer, joining foreheads with Sasha Lush, straining to make sense of the tiny image before her. “It looks like a small child.”

“But what’s it doing down there?” said Earnest, leaning in and tilting the eye piece his way for a better view.

“I told you, it’s an alien,” said Clash Man Keith, catching Fliss’s eye. “We’ve captured an alien.”

“Or they’ve captured us,” said Earnest.

This was the final proof that Clash Man Keith had been waiting for. Actually, that a lot of people had been waiting for. Although, you had to wonder why, with all the millions of smart phones out there in the world, someone hadn’t managed to capture conclusive proof sooner.

“Let’s see, shall we?” said Dr Meyer, grabbing the camera back and pressing PLAY. The ‘Thing’ stalked its way towards a now discernibly shaken-up Roy, who clearly wasn’t going to hang around for the extreme close-up.

“Shit! Shit!” They could hear him cry as he threw the camera over his shoulder, turned and grabbed hold of his only lifeline, climbing away from the menace as fast as he could. The jerky image rushed past mud and rock, catching the briefest glimpse of his attacker - five useable frames of skinny upper arm, three frames of narrow shoulder, and just two clear frames of bulbous face, as it gave chase behind.

And so the entire crazy scene played out to a packed house. All eyes glued to the tiny view finder. The battery warning light flashing down the seconds to complete shutdown. The first ever alien abduction to be captured on video.

Now it was Dr Suzie Meyer who had a warning light flashing in her brain. She turned to Daryl the Dealer and grabbed him by the wrists.

“You knew, didn’t you?” she demanded. “You knew that there was something down there, didn’t you?”

Daryl the Dealer nodded like a naughty schoolboy. He hated getting cross examined, and Dr Meyer was extremely cross, her white boiler suit giving her the air of a lab technician, making him the rat, about to get seriously probed. The entire group was now looking at him. There was no option but to tell all. No one was sitting comfortably, but he began anyway, slowly spewing out fifty shades of gray alien. After which no one spoke for quite a while.

“So, what you’re saying is that all this is one big reality TV show?” said Lush, finally breaking the silence. Trying to come to terms with a key witness who looked like Worzel Gummidge on meth.

“Alien TV Reality show,” Keith corrected her, looking at Fliss.

“And we are the contestants?” Lush continued.

Daryl the Dealer nodded.

“What the hell do you get to win?” she sneered.

“A lifetime’s supply of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder by the look of things,” said Fliss.

“We don’t get to win anything,” said the Clash Man. “Perhaps survival, if we’re lucky.”

“But I already had ‘survival’,” said Sasha Lush. “I was doing all right before I came to Glastonbury.”

“We’re merely the betting slips,” sighed Keith. “Some alien scumbag’s idea of a good wager. They find our pain and suffering entertaining. The more we hurt, the higher their ratings climb. We’re probably on the front page of their TV Times.”

Lush instinctively patted down her hair and grabbed some lippy from her pocket.

“The last man or woman standing isn’t a finishing line that I’d ever want to cross,” said Fliss.

“Me neither,” said Earnest.

“That’s why we need to do everything we can to pull the plug on this nasty little show,” said Dr Meyer, grabbing hold of Lush’s now dead camera. “We have the evidence. We need to get back to the site as soon as we can, find some power, and show the world what is really going on here.”

“Do you think they’ll listen?” asked Earnest, who now had a lot to think about, The Bible having never once mentioned anything about alien races. “Will they believe us?”

“Perhaps not, if we leave the talking to you,” said Fliss, making the sign of the cross.

“And I suppose you’d do a better job,” said Earnest, poking his tongue out.

“We can at least try,” said Dr Meyer, looking out into the distance, back towards the festival site. “What choice have we got?”

* * * * *