And we open our rucksacks at the same time, still seated on the cold metal, still looking out across the blackening water; the bulbs that illuminate the elongated M-shaped suspension create a matching W in the pool beneath. And we put on our black jumpers.

Each of us pulls our head through first, leaving the hood up.

The Lovers.

The Ungrateful.

The Poet.

We all slide our arms in. Left, then right.

The Doctor.

The Nobodies.

And Young Levant.

Our decision has been made.

We don’t have to say go.

Or jump.

Or count down from three.

We just know.

2

OTHER PEOPLE

The trick to running a cult is to get other people involved. Not new members or followers. Not more subscribers or a greater mailing list. It doesn’t matter if there are six people who think someone is Jesus or there are a million admirers hoping for a seat on the spaceship that will fly them away as Earth implodes with greed and apathy.

It’s not the apostles that make the cult.

It’s everybody else.

What is needed are the other people. Because other people always fuck things up.

Take the small town of Antelope, Oregon. A smudge on a map. Fifty people looking for quiet. They need a post office, a general store, a school and a church to exist. Not to survive. They haven’t moved here for that. Everybody knows everybody and everybody wants to be alone. Because they’ve come here to see out their years in peace. Then die.

Drop in four thousand disciples adhering to the philosophies of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Watch as they are welcomed as a peaceful people, renouncing a world of materialism in favour of a spiritual life. Embrace their desire to establish their own community.

Now get other people involved.

See how the word ‘community’ transforms into the word ‘commune’. Now wait as tensions rise and hostility grows. Wait a little longer. Because here come the other people. And it’s easy to take other people and make them fear something. Soon, a school teacher or postal worker or bar owner or dairy farmer has used the word ‘cult’.

Sit back and bask in your success as civilians are weaponised and cafes are poisoned and phone lines are tapped.

This is other people.

Take a student pastor at the Somerset Southside Methodist Church, Indiana. Tell him that he can’t integrate black people into his congregation. Piss him off. Give him a crusade.

Watch as he moves on and gives people hope. See his drive for racial equality. You don’t call the healings fake. Not yet. You call them Baptists. You say they are a church. He calls them the Wings of Deliverance.

Now let him open a soup kitchen for the poor, then watch as other people become involved. Because other people have an innate ability to take something good and turn it straight to shit.