Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru

The latitude of the Pinnacle Rocks, where we’re gathered, is precisely 2057.6215 minutes of arc north. The reciprocal of this value is 0.000486. The original height of the Great Pyramid was precisely four hundred and eighty-six feet. This means that the latitude of this powerful place is the precise harmonic reciprocal of the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza, an ancient communications device of unsurpassed importance in connecting humankind with the directors of the spiritual program for our planet. The number four hundred and eighty-six also plays a central role in the harmonics of space and time, connected as it is with the universal interdimensional constant
aum
. Four hundred and eighty-six is a key that will unlock the gateway to dimensions. It indicates the cycle of challenge and transformation on which we are about to embark. Remember this number. Hold it in your minds as you listen to what I am about to say.”
    Joanie knew the rocks were located in a special place. Many of theCohort talked about the lines of power that intersected at this location, and not a few of them had dowsed along those force lines, but this was the first she’d heard of a relationship to the pyramids of Egypt. She tried to fix the figure in her head, muttering it a few times under her breath to help. The Guide asked the crowd to join with Oriana in chanting the hymn of welcome. She stepped up to the microphone, opened her arms wide and began to speak.
    “O Great Ones! O Brothers of Light! We pour out our libations of love upon you!”
    After each line she paused, and the crowd repeated her words. The effect was electric, and Joanie became increasingly sure that something extraordinary was about to happen.
    “We pour out our libations, knowing that every drop—”
    We pour out our libations, knowing that every drop—
    “Brings a blessing on the one to whom it is sent, and to the sender!”
    Brings a blessing on the one to whom it is sent, and to the sender!
    “Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!”
    Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!
    By the time she’d finished, the desert had changed from peach to lilac and the sun was shivering over the horizon, about to vanish. The Guide took the microphone again, and started to tell the story of his Experience.
    “I am here with you today,” he said, “because of something that happened to me in this very place. Eleven years ago, I was alone and friendless. I’d come out to the desert in search of an answer, a truth I knew I must find or perish in the attempt. One night, as I lay beneath the stars, contemplating my insignificance before the infinitude of space-time, I received a visitation. The craft was of a type that I know will be familiar to some of you, a silent carrier like a huge topaz flying through the starry night. It landed before me, its descent so perfect and soundless that as it touched the ground I could still hear nature—the insects, the wind, the distant howl of a coyote, a beast as lonely as I. My body felt charged with spiritual electricity, a feeling of excitement such as I had never known. Before my eyes, the hull, whose surface had appeared as a perfect flawless sphere, opened up to reveal a ramp. On that rampstood two figures, human, or so they appeared to me, people of such noble aspect and bearing that I felt I was in the presence of demigods. They were of a pure Aryan type, pale-skinned and gray-eyed, dressed in simple white robes, like our fathers of old.
    “ ‘What do you want of me?’ I asked. They told me not to be afraid, and bade me accompany them into their ship. They spoke not in the crude voices that you and I use to communicate but in a speech of the mind, a mental telepathy. Language took shape in my brain, clothed in what I understood as voices, beautiful, clear and mellow. When I stepped aboard, I entered a realm of wonder. The inside was curved and bathed in a soft warm glow, a comforting and womb-like space. I realized I was very thirsty. As if in response to