While I returned to London a wealthy man, I spent much of the next year in a very dark depression.

Unlike the first time the aliens had left me, there was no question in my mind whether or not they existed, and this turned out to be the cause of much suffering. Where before I could operate in a relatively mindless fashion which helped to sedate my unhappiness, nothing could now deny the reality of these beings, nor the immediacy of their absence. That the 12-stage sequence had left me as well only served to compound my misery.

Still, at least I was rich, for despite its tragic collapse, TELEPORT had been a huge financial success, providing me with a stash of cash to secure luxury quarters in Docklands and a steady supply of drugs, booze and professional female charms. I was doing terrible harm to both my physical and spiritual aspects, turning in on an increasingly rotten core, but in a sick way, I was probably enjoying the mess, the fall from grace, and to hell with you damn useless humans.

I was alone through much of this, a number of former "friends" having abandoned me following the embarrassing California roll affair (lampooned on late night talk shows from LA to Timbuktu), while several of the well-meaning spiritual and alien-friendly types who had gathered around me in Boston wouldn't come too close for fear of infection. I can hardly blame them, for I truly was a disgraceful specimen, sucking the beauty and life from hosts, and turning the blood to my wicked devices.

Of course, there were enlightened beings less easily put off, family members, the chipped brother and sister, other Behehn and advanced students of TELEPORT, and I would say it is for no other reason than their support through those times that I am still alive to tell this story. I made it so difficult, pushing them away at every opportunity, but when the parents of the teenager who had died during one of the perverse TELEPORT rituals decided to sue, it was to their loving arms that I turned, agreeing it was best to just settle the thing and move on to the next, and hopefully more positive, phase of my existence. I cleared out my bank account and sent over the whole lot, abandoning my grand pad by the water and moving in with a sympathiser in Bloomsbury.

It is obvious now that losing the money was a wonderful blessing, and even at the time I probably saw the value, despite resenting the commencement of a job search and the thought of returning to a world of humans bound by such money-driven contexts. The search went on for weeks, then months, for as poor as I was, there were things I simply wasn't prepared to do. In fact, there was very little I felt that I could do and still remain true to the aliens and the sacred work with which I'd been tasked. This integrity seemed important to me, the faith in powers beyond this base setting, and it was to those powers that I now gave myself, despite the loss of a validation I'd known so intimately before.

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More articles by Marc Fiszman: • The Mekeer: TELEPORT • The Mekeer: Yenaa • The Mekeer: Preparatory • The Mekeer: First Contact