Tripping Incarnate

By Scott Jacobsen

Joan of Arc is still alive…as an Incarnate. She was once Margaret Thatcher and is now Colonel Ingrid Ingersol, dictatorial President of America. When she flies to El Centro, California for leave, she encounters a boy who has just endured his first Crossing, the passing from one life to another.

The Colonel takes the boy, Wyeth Pierce, under her tutelage to prepare him for his role as a member of the Tripping Incarnate. And when he matures in a matter of days, Ingrid falls madly in love with him and she whisks him away to Reykjavik, Iceland and the annual Incarnate Gathering.

At the Gathering, Ingrid and Wyeth are told of three Incarnate who are evil beyond measure, a secret that Incarnate leader Robison has kept for millennia. He tasks Wyeth with vanquishing the evil Trio, but the Trio knows of their plans, and they set off nuclear devastation of every city of size on the planet.

Colonel Ingersol (aka Joan of Arc) guides the Incarnate to her Air Force One to fly to equatorial Africa to escape the fallout and impending nuclear winter.

The Trio are aware of these plans and launch a nuclear-tipped ICBM to their landing site...and as Incarnate, they are reborn as infants in a sheep pasture on New Zealand's South Island, one hundred eighty six years later, where they ultimately confront their nemeses.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350948080

Scott Jacobsen

Scott Jacobsen is a seasoned broadcast engineer and proud alumnus of the University of Oklahoma, where he honed his storytelling skills studying journalism. In his free time, he enjoys the thrill of the open road, frequently embarking on exhilarating bicycle tours. In 1975, he not only participated in a prestigious cross-country bicycle tour, but also captured his adventure on the big screen, starring in the feature film, "The Great American Bike Tour." A romantic at heart, Scott fondly recalls chasing his future wife, Peggy, up Gates Pass on their first date—a testament to his love for both cycling and his life partner.

Book preview

Last Moments

Steam rose from the hot asphalt as the remnants of the storm’s rain splattered on the street. An afternoon storm was a rare thing in this part of the country so early in the summer season. Typically, any monsoon carryovers from the deserts to the east didn’t come until late August, and then there were the hurricane remnants that rolled up from the gulf of California in early October. The storm that had just come through came from the west, more typical of the sparse winter rains that made it over the coastal mountains, from where San Diego used to be. It was early June, too soon for the monsoon carryovers from southern Arizona.

Fine raindrops fizzled like sand grains on the tin roof of Wyeth’s carport, and then it picked up briefly; another last-gasp downpour before it was all over with. He smiled as he remembered what his friend, David Hamilton, would have said when he lived in Oklahoma. It’s raining out there like a cow pissing on a flat rock.

The rain meant higher humidity in this God-awful heat, but it brought out the strong scent of the creosote bush he liked so much. Of course, in this part of the country, just east of the coastal mountains, creosote was about the only thing that survived without supplemental irrigation. As the storm moved east toward the central part of Imperial Valley, its back draft kept the air cooler for a bit, just like the monsoon he remembered in Tucson. The first time he experienced a storm like this was the summer after he moved to Tucson after leaving a TV engineering job in Oklahoma City.

He pulled a small sprig from the creosote bush by the front porch, crushed some of its small, shiny leaves between gnarly fingers and held them under his nose to savor the unique scent. This was medicine in its own right—fresh, clean—the smell of creosote was the essence of the desert. Native Indians even made a medicinal tea from its leaves. These thoughts brought him back to those lazy, summer days of the Sonoran Desert monsoon, so very many years ago; it was almost like a dream.

Now, things were very different indeed!

Wyeth, in his 98th year, had seen a lot. It was only five years ago, on October 8th of 2047, that the US had annexed Mexico. Mexico was now under the jurisdiction of the US President. That office had changed, too. It was more like a dictatorship—which was how the annexation had happened—established by a military coup led by Air Force Colonel Ingrid Ingersol. Events leading up to the coup started in the 1990’s, when increasing numbers of illegals began pouring across the Mexican border. By the late twenty-thirties, western Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California had been overrun by crime as Mexican and Brazilian drug cartels took over several border towns, including Las Cruces, Tucson, Yuma, El Centro and San Diego. Texas had firmly held its borders with its own militia, basically ignoring the federal government’s warnings of cessation of financial support if it continued to guard its own borders instead of relying on the Feds. Texas Governor Blanchard had told the Feds where to go with that one, and his bold stance sparked rebellion among several of the more conservative states in America’s Heartland that had followed the Texas example of financial independence, and had declared unconstitutional the federal taxation of its citizens. When the Fed had balked at this funding cutoff and began threatening those states with military action and occupation, Colonel Ingersol had rallied the troops.

In late July of 2045, Colonel Ingersol had garnered enough support from the high ranks of her own Air Force and also the Navy, Marines and the Army to overthrow the White House regime and establish the New Republic. Her first order of business was to declare martial law and appoint Media Officers as General Managers of newspapers, radio and TV organizations nationwide. This, Colonel Ingersol said, was the inoculant against the corrupt government which had so effectively torn down what was once the great Republic of the United States of America.

More than three million people had died within six months of Colonel Ingersol’s takeover. Most of them were those foolish enough to stand against the ranks of armed military after martial law was declared, because, like the Muslims, they were sure Ingersol wouldn’t be able to follow through with what she was doing.

Wyeth remembered well a question posed by a disgruntled reporter at her first press conference. What’s going to happen to our great democracy? Are you just going to wipe it from the face of the earth?

To this, she calmly responded with, I’m sure you know the words to the Pledge of Allegiance?

Of course I do. Every American citizen should know them.

Good. And what do those words say our flag stands for? Is it a democracy?

I…

I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America, she recited. "And to the Republic for which it stands…"

But… the Democrat began.

"Is there a problem? Do you deny those words?

Of course I don’t…but…

"Then perhaps you should read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution more closely…if you have ever read either of them. You may be shocked to learn that the document each of our elected officials has sworn under oath over a Bible to uphold and protect has largely been ignored and subverted by them.

I won’t pretend that this transition is going to be easy and pretty. There will be many who will protest. But those people must understand that the rest of us will no longer stand by while our corrupt government runs roughshod over its citizens who work hard every day to earn a living and produce something of worth, while it rewards those who refuse to do so.

It wasn’t long before the streets of America were as quiet as they had been when Wyeth was a boy in the 1950s, when people could go out at night without worrying about being mugged or worse, and they could actually let their children play outside all day long without worrying about them. The crooks knew that if they were caught, punishment would be swift and severe.

The money was different, too. Silver Certificate dollar bills were back, along with the right of exchange for their metal counterpart. Twenty-dollar gold pieces—double-eagles, maple leafs, krugerrands—it didn’t matter—were now worth their face value of twenty dollars. Gold and silver were no longer commodities, as they had been reestablished as the backbone of the New Republic economy, just as the US Constitution had specified when America was founded.

People hadn’t liked it when their annual salaries plummeted from hundreds of thousands to mere thousands, but these days a loaf of bread only cost about fifteen cents and a gallon of milk about sixty cents. Even a can of pop was only a dime. Inflation was gone overnight, because the Fed couldn’t print up more money than was backed by gold or sliver. In fact, the Federal Reserve had been replaced by the Banking Administration, and all banks were government run. Alan Greenspan was probably turning over in his grave.

The 60 million who fled to Mexico to escape what they called Colonel Ingersol’s dictatorship, quickly found their situation hadn’t changed at all after the Annexation. Canada, faced with the sudden influx of 30 million northbound malcontents directed its RCMP to greet any insistent border-crossers who refused to endure emigration procedure with gun muzzles—at the suggestion of Ingersol.

Colonel Ingersol hadn’t flinched at this kind of behavior; in fact, she’d expected it. She even granted a free plane ride to anyone who could manage acceptance in the country of choice.

If you don’t want to be here, we don’t want you, were her words spoken on national TV, repeated until there was no question the message had gotten through to even the cave-dwellers. In fact, Wyeth noted, TV in America was now like what he’d seen while he spent some time in Canada. There was none of the hype and nonsensical content of years past. It was his opinion that the programming was carefully filtered, allowing only conservative ideas to be disseminated. There were several rebellious broadcasts, which expounded opposing agendas in the name of the freedom of speech, and they were shut down with amazing speed. Make-shift protests, just like in the days when busloads of paid protestors were hired to appear in front of media cameras to make it appear that far more people than there actually were against the thing they were shouting about, were commonplace. Those staged events were short-lived when the organizers began to realize that the revamped media outlets were no longer interested in disseminating their message.

In the end, Ingersol had gathered sufficient evidence to prove that the protesters and their organizers were being controlled by rich elites who had an agenda to take away the freedom of American citizens.

Through all this, Wyeth had just stayed put. To neighbors who’d said they were fleeing what they called Ingersol’s insanity, he’d just said, I’m too old to go anywhere. I’m lucky I’m not in a nursing home. Thankfully, most of his family had decided to stay home, too. His more conservative friends had greeted Ingersol’s regime with open arms. One of them had said, It’s about time someone did something about those damned politicians and their politically-correct-happy asses.

Yep, Colonel Ingersol had laid down the law, alright—with the weight of her military behind it.

Wyeth didn’t agree with everything she did, but he had to admit that America was a hell of a lot nicer place to live once things had settled down. There was no longer the threat of terrorism from Muslims, because there were no more Muslims living in the US—they’d all been deported to the countries of their choice, and the ones that blatantly shouted, Death to America, were summarily executed in grand display on government TV, just like their native organizations did when they sawed off American heads, the whole time screaming the same defiant slogan in the name of Allah. Such public proclamation pretty much proved the point Ingersol was making about them. When reemerged Al Qaeda and its sympathizers like ISIS swore revenge and reiterated their Death to America mantra more loudly than they ever had, they found that they had become targets of fully half of the US nuclear arsenal. In the face of this, they said the American infidels would never summon the courage to follow through with such a threat. Ingersol’s twenty-kiloton fish-egg, delivered to the western Iraqi desert—for which she had proudly claimed responsibility and drew a line in the sand by daring Al Qaeda and anyone else associated with them to respond—had shut them up and there hadn’t been a peep heard from them since. The bomb had halted decades-long terrorist attacks in allied nations she had sworn to protect, which only served to prove the connection such attacks had to Muslim extremist organizations, and it conveyed to her immediate hero status throughout the Western world.

Even communist China had given its nod of approval; in their view, Ingersol’s action was like spanking a misbehaving child. Of course, that opinion was probably because they were quaking in their boots at the threat Ingersol’s regime posed.

Wyeth donned his helmet, walked his bicycle down the length of his driveway and gingerly slung his leg over its top tube. He pulled his grocery list from his jersey pocket for review before he began his trip to Samrose’s, a mile and a half away.

Hey, Wyeth, his neighbor, Bob, called. Going for another bike ride?

Just groceries, he returned.

It’s still raining, you know.

So?

Bob shook his head and waved dismissal as he turned back into his house, like he was scared of a little water. Well, time to get a move on.

The rain let up a little, becoming more of a sprinkle, and the sky was brightening; he could see the afternoon sun’s disc through the high clouds at the edge of the storm’s anvil top. In this heat, the light shower felt good. His damp bike jersey took on the effect of an evaporative cooler pad as he rode. He turned east onto old Interstate 8, which was now primarily a sparsely-traveled military route, since there was no San Diego on the coast anymore. But even in the old days, I-8 was one of the least-traveled Interstate Highways in the nation, but since the drug lords and their henchmen who had been forced out basically destroyed the city on their exit, nobody had the wherewithal to rebuild it, because almost the entire population that had lived there had either been forced out or one of the fleeing malcontents. Nowadays a car or patrol truck went by about every five or ten minutes. Once in a while, there would be someone from one of the small mountain or coastal villages, to visit for a change in climate.

This afternoon was no different, with no sound but the wind coming from the storm to the east, where a ceiling of retreating mamatus loomed, lightening spiking to the ground amidst feral-looking blackness. The storm’s outflow wind slowed him down a bit on the gradual downhill into town, but it was nothing he wasn’t used to. Although he was an old man, he’d ridden his bike all his life so his legs were still strong and muscular, spindly though they may be. As he entered the outskirts of West El Centro, the area at the western edge of Imperial Valley formerly known as Dixieland, he came upon a soldier moving slowly westbound in a desert-camouflage Hummer. The rain had let up completely now, and the soldier slowed further to check him out. It was Lieutenant Stevenson.

Yo, Wyeth, he called across the median with a curt wave. He slowed to a halt, and so did Wyeth.

Hey, Lieutenant, what’s up?

He nodded back toward town. Hell of a little storm just blew through town. You sure you want to pedal that thing through all the water?

Just going to Samrose’s. Need some groceries, see? Samrose’s was on the west side and higher ground, so it shouldn’t be too bad.

Ah, yeah, you’re okay then, he confirmed. He leaned out of his jeep and looked around anxiously. Hey, you heard the latest? Must really be something, because Stevenson wasn’t the talkative type.

What’s that?

The Colonel’s coming to town. He whispered it like it was the biggest secret in the world. It was how Wyeth came to his tentative conclusion.

Ingersol?

Yup.

What for? It was hard to imagine someone with such high status bothering with a flea-speck place like El Centro.

Dunno. Scuttlebutt has it there’s some kind of ceremony gonna happen down in Calexico. He performed another furtive scan. "I’ll tell you what I think, though."

He couldn’t imagine. What’s that?

She wants a vacation.

Here? In the summer?

Stevenson shrugged. Just what I think. We’ll see.

You ever meet her before?

Nope. She’s why I’m on patrol out here.

He laughed. "You’re always on patrol, lieutenant."

"Yeah, well, our colonel’s been sweating bullets getting ready and all. He’s got us all on edge, you know?"

With someone like her coming to visit.

Yeah, Stevenson breathed. He sighed. Anyway…

Mum’s the word, right?

Yeah, that’s right. He cast another cautious glance. "Look, I had to tell someone. News like that is hard to keep to yourself. Besides, I know you’ll keep quiet about it."

Wyeth nodded. You bet, lieutenant. His look as he considered Ingersol’s visit betrayed him.

What’s the matter? You’re not thinking of telling, are you?

He smiled. Nah. I was just thinking it would be neat to meet her.

Yeah, I know what you mean. She’s a looker, especially among military types.

I didn’t mean that.

Oh, yeah, Stevenson said, looking him over, I guess a guy your age…

Hey, I’m not dead yet…at least not like that.

Really?

Encouraging, ain’t it? he leered.

Stevenson laughed. See you around, Wyeth. He continued his westward patrol.

When he arrived at Samrose’s, there were soldiers outside and in, looking just as nervous as Stevenson. He gathered his list and Maury stood at the checkout, waiting for him. There was nobody else in the place but soldiers, probably currently stationed at the El Centro Naval Air Facility, locally known as The Pearl of the Desert.

What’s up with all these guys, Maury?

Beats me. They’re being pretty tight-lipped about it, whatever it is. I haven’t seen this kind of security since the Annexation.

Yeah, I saw Stevenson out on patrol when I was coming in to town, and he hardly noticed me, he lied.

You’re not heading into town on your bike, are you? Downtown’s all flooded.

Nah. Just taking this stuff home, see? He looked around at the soldiers who considered him nervously. Jeez, Maury, you’d think Ingersol was coming to town or something.

His remark made a couple of the troops flinch, which confirmed Stevenson’s news. One of them, an army sergeant he didn’t recognize, glared at him as he strode out to his bike. Man, some soldiers were such hard-asses. But even five years after the Annexation there was still some Mexican resentment, despite the fact that many of them had welcomed a huge leap in their living standard. Mexicans remained a proud people who were patriotic in the extreme. The military was probably right about wanting to keep things safe for the lady Colonel.

Persisting outflow from the retreating storm assisted him up the mild grade toward home—reward for the work going the other way. The sun was fully out now, about to set behind the Jacumba Mountains. The air had further cooled from the storm, almost down to 80 degrees, he guessed. The air was fresh and rife with the agreeable scent of creosote.

And then from behind—it must have been a fuel cell-powered truck because he didn’t hear it until the last second—he was hit…hard.

2

First Crossing

Wyeth woke up in the dark. It was real dark. He lifted his head and looked around, saw nothing. He blinked to make sure his eyes weren’t shut, and then pulled a hand in front of his face and wiggled his fingers. He couldn’t see them, either.

And then he remembered what had happened. He’d been hit by a truck while riding his bike home. But if that was true, why wasn’t he hurting like mad? Moving cautiously, he sat up, expecting stabbing agony of pain from injury. There was none. In fact, his movements came with surprising ease, as if his creaky joints had been miraculously lubricated. He moved his hands down his front, finding that his jersey seemed extra loose and disheveled, probably from being ripped during his fall from his bike. That wasn’t it, though. It was more like it was too big for him—way too big. His lycra bicycling shorts, when he managed to stand, fell down to his ankles.

What the…?! He froze. His words had sounded foreign, like those of a child. On the verge of panic, he bent down to pull up his shorts, and found their spandex waist large enough to accommodate a girth twice his own, and the legs, which normally covered the top two-thirds of his thighs, now reached the ground!

Crap! he squeaked, still in the childlike voice. Okay, he was officially panicking now. What to do…what to do? That’s it. Find something familiar. What happened to the bike? Find the bike.

He knotted the waist of his shorts so they wouldn’t fall off, and then with fingers splayed, he swept his arms before him as he moved slowly forward—and as soon as he lifted a foot, his bike shoe fell off. His foot came back down half on and half off the shoe, and he lost his balance and fell down on hard, sandy ground. He cast about and found his shoe. It was huge, like a Bozo shoe—which went right along with his giant clothes.

Remaining seated, he resumed the sweeping motion of his arms. The fingers of his right hand contacted something. It felt like a creosote bush, but its branches seemed larger than they should have. Following a branch with his fingers, he found the tip and rubbed his fingers over larger-than-life leaves, and pulled them to his nose to find the strong scent of creosote.

"Just what the hell…crap!" his boyish voice squeaked again. What is going on? he asked the darkness.

There was a noise—soft chirping—a cricket. And then a deeper sound, distant rumbling. Gathering light to his left caught his attention, and he snapped his head around to discover an approaching set of headlights, accompanied by the unmistakable rattle of a large diesel engine. A semi? Sounded right.

He got his other foot free of the Bozo-sized bike shoe and stood with his feet inside oversized bike socks. Maybe the truck’s headlights would allow him to spot his bike. He thought of trying to flag down whoever it was, but he was too far from the road, maybe thirty yards, and he wasn’t going to go running through the desert in the dark and step on a scorpion. That thought made him scramble to put his feet back in the big bike shoes.

The truck approached quickly and zoomed by. It wasn’t a semi like he thought, but some kind of military vehicle with a canvas back—a troop transport. He should have known it was military, since they were the only ones that still used diesel. Everything else used fuel cells. Funny how he was able to make out its shape in the dark. Except that it wasn’t as totally dark as he thought. The lights of El Centro cast enough residual light to silhouette the truck. Anyway, that didn’t matter right now. He’d spotted the handlebars of his bike in the momentary glare of the truck’s headlights, and he shuffled toward it, making sure to keep his feet in his bike shoes.

His bike was huge, just like everything else seemed to be. He felt with his hands, inspecting. The front wheel was a pretzel and the down tube was crushed from underneath. The rear wheel was twisted around the seat- and chain-stays, and the chain was wrapped like spaghetti around a mangled derailleur. Amazingly, the handlebars and front fork didn’t have a scratch—which made sense, since he was struck from behind.

Before that happened, he’d been about three-quarters of the way down I-8 to Dunaway Road, where Bleeker Street—his street—peeled off to the right and then angled north. There was no way he was going to drag that mangled bike home, even if it wasn’t that far. He decided to walk it on the road in his bare feet. There was a nice wide shoulder, and there was practically no traffic on his street, no matter the hour. He’d be home in no time. He fished his keys and wallet out of his bike’s seat bag, and carried them—they were huge in his suddenly tiny hands—toward home. Once there, maybe he could figure out what in the hell had happened.

It seemed like it took forever to get there, enough time that when he finally stood in his driveway, the eastern sky was brightening. The sun would be up in a little while—good. When he got to the front door he found a doorknob as high as his chin. Had he been suddenly transported to the land of the giants, or what? This was definitely getting pretty creepy. He had a fleeting urge to hum the Twilight Zone theme song, but such humor escaped him.

Fumbling with the keys, he managed—with much more effort than he remembered—to push open the huge door to his prefab house. Habitually, he ran his hands over his head—and instead of smooth baldness, he found a full head of hair! He had to reach up to the light switch, and when he flipped it on, he found a house built for a giant. The proportions were correct, but it was he, he realized now, who was diminutive.

He moved to the bathroom and the door-length mirror on the interior side of its door. The hallway carpet felt incredibly soft after walking on concrete for almost a half mile.

Jesus! he gasped. He stared in shock at his reflection. His jersey was shredded, alright—and bloody around the neck. But the person who stared back at him… I’m just a little kid! His voice matched the reflection. A reflection he hadn’t seen since his grade school days. He pulled his small hands up to his face and found smooth skin with peach fuzz instead of whiskers on a wrinkly, age-spotted countenance. He undid the impromptu waist knot from his bike shorts and they fell to the bathroom floor. The torn, bloody jersey had become repulsive suddenly and he pulled it up over his head like a dirty bed sheet. Standing naked, he inspected his full-length reflection. His body was cherub-like, absent of adult body hair or features. Even his prominent Adams-apple was gone—or yet to develop!

He searched his mind, trying to find an explanation for what had happened to him. Yesterday evening, he’d been riding his bike back from Samrose’s and then something had hit him from