Me: What can you tell me about the Ark of the Covenant? What’s up with that? I think they say that when it’s opened it actually kills people. Was there something in there?

Erik: A fungus among us!

Jamie laughs.

Me: Oh god. No, seriously. Apparently people got sick around it. They had some sickness, so they say.

Didn’t you always wonder who this “they” guy is? Pretty damn smart.

Jamie: He calls it like a poisoning.

Erik: Or there was a tiny little army guy who would pop up with a gun and just shoot everybody.

Me (laughing): Yeah right. Like a Jack-in-the-Box!

Erik: It’s some kind of poisoning that got through the skin. It was through touch. It wasn’t airborne.

Me: Was it like a nuclear thing, like radiation? Maybe they found some nuclear enriched uranium?

Erik: That’s probably why they say it glowed.

Me: Ah. So was it some sort of caustic poison? What was it?

Erik: It’s a natural element. It wasn’t manmade or put together and became poisonous, so the natural—

Me: Was it something they found that the aliens left behind?

Give me a freaking bone here!

Erik: Whoa, whoa, whoa! You’re going to fuck with a lot of people’s heads.

Jamie: No, this doesn’t seem to be from the aliens. How does—is radiation natural?

Me: Yeah, it can be. Uranium is a natural element.

Jamie: Does that glow?

Me: I just don’t know. Ask Erik. Erik, does it glow?

Jamie: To me, what he shows me is pretty looking. Very pretty. It looks semi-precious.

Me: Okay.

Jamie: You know, like there’s some sort of sparkle or sheen, but you couldn’t be in contact with it, kind of like the radiation. It’s through touch. You don’t breathe it in and die. It’s through holding it. That’s why it was kept so far, far away, but it’s not like there were tons of scientists going around saying, “Oh, you know what that is?”

Me: All right. So, it’s some natural element.

We’re going around in circles here, and I’m starting to get frustrated!

Erik: Yes.

Me: Why did they have some sort of religious meaning behind it?

Erik: Oh gosh, Mom. You know, anything back then that was unexplainable had to be given from God or had to be wrapped up in some story like that so that the masses could understand why it was there and what it was doing to people, and it was a great excuse to keep people in line. You know, “Fuck up and we’re going to make you touch this.”

Jamie and I laugh hard.

Me: Where did they find it?

Jamie: I asked that one earlier and he kept taking me into the ground as if they were digging, excavating, opening something up. I can’t find out where in the globe.

Me: Well, where is it now? What part of the world is it now?

(Long pause)

Jamie: He takes me to the Middle East. I’m not in Europe like Portugal, Spain. I’m not in Northern Africa.

Me: Not in America, right? Because there was some question that it might have ended up here somehow.

Jamie: Mm mm. I feel like it’s under something.

It’s weird that Jamie is paraphrasing Erik and describing the images he’s sending her rather than translating her word for word. It sounds like he’s conveying more images than conversation.

Jamie: I don’t know if it’s buried or under the water. It’s under something.

Me: Well, is it buried or under the water, Erik?

(Long pause)

Jamie: He can’t give me a clear—it’s not sitting out. It’s not somewhere obvious. I know that it’s not in cabinet or in a mountain. It’s not on the side of a mountain. I know it’s underfoot.

Me: Oh, okay.

Jamie: So, it’s ground level, under.

Me: Erik, how come you can’t give a clear answer sometimes? Is it because you don’t know? I know that you don’t know everything.

Erik: I’d like to think I do, but…

Jamie and I chuckle.

(Long pause)

Jamie: I’m arguing with him. I’m sorry. I was telling him can’t you ask someone, you know, broaden the search, or…

Erik: Sometimes it’s just not like that. That’s not what my purpose is. That’s not my dream. Really, poison? Why would we want to dig that up?

Me: Ah, so you don’t want to give the information, because it’s too dangerous. Okay. That’s interesting. Anything else about the Ark of the Covenant?

Erik: No, but I really think it’s fucked up that a lot of times when we can’t explain an experience—

(Long pause)

Jamie (to Erik): Get your words together!

Erik: If we can’t explain an experience or what we see or what happened to us, we automatically think it’s God related.

Me: Mm. That’s true.

Erik: We all are connected. We all are part of God, but God doesn’t hang around and take his knowledge or his viewpoint—let’s just say He for lack of a better fucking term, so don’t get all excited—and pull shit on individual people.

Me (chuckling): Of course not.

Erik: God is so excited that we can manifest and create our own life and our own destiny, that that’s the biggest joy in the whole damn thing. You actually orchestrate what poison you come across and how you want to designate it and who you want to give it to.

Me: Of course.

I feel so unrequited.