There was a brief hiatus of a few months. I received word through a small note hidden inside my junk mail – do not go to the Group Jeff ballet this evening. There has been a change of venue.

I knew well enough that this was a message from the archivist, so I stayed home that nightexpecting further instructions. Usually at home I wasn’t that alert, but instead just let my guard down and fell into my private reverie. Tonight I was alert to all sounds around me, all subtle changes of light oratmosphere.But evening became night without anything further, so I got ready for bed. Brushing teeth, standing in my nightgown, a flicker at the edges of the mirror. A flash of light soon followed. I was floating in air, in black space, my nighty billowing around me absurdly.

When I opened my eyes I was lying on the bathroom floor. Light flooded the apartment. It was mid morning and I heard the phone beeping its alarm. What the hell? I thought, this is too much, too serious. And I can’t do this sort of thing anymore. It seems I was teleported but where to? I stood, stretched and looked for signs, as I had been trained to do. There was a glint of metal on the tiles, a golden key? No a flat brass lozenge with some face stamped on it. A strange coin, unknown currency.The verso side was an image of a dragon, or was it a cloud? Hard to make out. I must take this to the archivist, I decided.

Dressed, coffee in hand,I rang her bell. As usual she fussed around about my lack of calling first but it was all a show, We knew that face-to-face was the only way for us to be sure the contact was genuine. People in the hills had been wiped out, there were rumours in the town that we were not to use certain words or phrases anymore. Everyone carried coded ID papers which were renewed on a monthly basis. This was the climate in which I was involved in Project Wunderkabinett. It felt as urgent as war time.

But we continued on as normal with only a very few safeguards in place: Face to face or cryptic communications were key. When I told her of the ballet code message, I could tell by the look on her face at the source was unknown to her. She worried if she didn’t understand – which made her a truly terrific archivist, known for hunting down every bit of pertinent information. I told her everything, then showed the pièce de résistance, the proof, the oblong coin.

“Very interesting,” she said, bringing it to her examination table with high magnification equipment.

“Most unusual. Let’s date it and find out where the others are – for there must be others, right?”

Her sophisticated camera and examining tools were all put to this purpose.

“Now, you, how are you? What do you recall of the whole experience, anything at all?”

I shook my head, then noticed that my hands were also shaking. As soon as she questioned me, it flooded back. The piercing sound filling the bathroom. The flash of light. Dropping my toothbrush, weak knees, vomiting on the floor as I laid in fetal position, falling and floating in darkness, the tone softening into a music. The darkness pierced by points of light, the soft metal landing, the others surrounding me in what I could only describe as a circle of love. One light beam in the distances or was it a loudspeaker? On a person, sort of, like the way the others were like people but simpler, more loving, more beautiful with eyes large and radiant, communicating deep worlds.

That light person glided to me, lifted me, for she was huge, and I was taken away into that incredible loving unfoldment. Coddled and patted, held close, filled with beauty, sounds and shapes of all colors, ecstatic touch and the finest of perfumes tasted like heaven. For it was heaven here. I had no thoughts, the music filled me with such emotional grandeur, and enormity of subtle orchestration falling like waves of the sea, or fire storms, or silent starlit nights, or lush forests. At one point I looked down to see my body lying abandoned on the bathroom tiles. I felt pity mixed with sweet love and then bang I was back there.

She had been listening to my account without interrupting or questioning, but now she turned to me, face resplendent. I saw in her eyes what I had seen or known in the beings of that place. I understood. It was an initiation, her confirmation of it was clear in her eyes.

“What about the coin?” I asked.

“Oh that’s just your ticket. Keep it in your pocket – it might come in handy sometime.”