The whole tunnel wobbled and dimmed in his vision. It was a nightmare funhouse through the eyeholes of the mask he wore. Monsters lurked in the shadows, placed there by the bad trip thoughts all around him. The air was poison, suffocating him, about to kill him.

Rangan shook his head, forced himself to breathe deep, fought to clear his mind.

Rules of responsible drug use, he thought.

Know your substance before you start.

Know your dose.

Safe, comfortable setting.

He shook his head. They’d struck out on all three of those.

Rule four: if it’s your first time, have a more experienced friend with you as a guide.

Rangan grunted.

I guess I’m it, he thought.

He pushed up to his feet.

“Hey, everybody!” he yelled, waving his arms.

They barely blinked.

Of course.

He shook his head again, and stepped forward, carefully over one prone tripping legislator after another, pausing as the room spun, catching himself against the wall when the air thickened into deadly toxic gas – when the shadows reached out to swallow him – then moving again, step by step, his stomach heaving, his eyes burning in sympathy for their eyes, his face covered in sweat, until he reached an intersection, where he was as central as he could be, where he could see people stretched out in all four directions.

Rangan leaned against a wall and closed his eyes.

He reached Inside, found the controls for the high-gain antenna Cheyenne had designed, that he still wore. He switched it out of directional configuration, detuned it to get maximum 360 degree coverage.

Then he did the most natural thing he could think of to affect the mood of a whole crowd of people.

He started to play for them.

He started to DJ.

He fired up NTracks, loading a party chill out set he’d mixed late one night at the Bunker and set it to slowly fade in, broadcasting through his thoughts, through Cheyenne’s high-gain antenna, to every mind around him.

White Sands rose up, the first track on this set, a party chill-out tune, distant surf, wind ruffling palms, a full moon on a warm night. The track started playing in his mind and he had a memory of a house party in Oakland where he’d played that track at 5am while exhausted partygoers draped themselves over couches and one gorgeous Latina couple danced slow and sexy and the music was washing out of him into the minds around him and so was the surf and so was the warm tropical air and so were the dancers.