by Blake Banner
“Then take me.”
She indicated the chair with her eyes and her head. I sighed and she handed me the slippers. I sat in the chair and threw the slippers on the floor.
She made a tsc! sound and sighed back at me. “How old are you? Four?”
Ten
She wheeled me past the desk to a bank of elevators. A couple of people passed and smiled at me. We boarded one of the elevators and rode it down to the first floor, which consisted of large, open spaces and plate glass walls overlooking lush gardens and sweeping parkland. There were a lot of people. All of them were dressed in normal clothes. Some had white coats. They all seemed busy. She pushed me across the lobby, past a reception desk, and out a set of automatic doors onto a path. That path wound its way through hydrangea bushes to a broad lawn that sloped down to a dense hedgerow running beside a stream. She wheeled me onto the grass and down to a bench where there was a man sitting cross-legged in an expensive suit, watching me. It was Ben.
Nurse Rogers stopped a few feet away from him and said, “Well, I’m sure you two have a lot to catch up on. I’ll leave you to it. If you could just bring him to reception when you’re finished?”
Ben looked up at her and nodded. She walked away.
“How much do you remember, Lacklan?”
“Everything.”
He made a face that said he was almost impressed. “That’s good. That’s a quick recovery.”
“Now I want my clothes back and I want to go back to my apartment.”
He gave a small smile and a small snort to go with it. “Let’s not rush things, Lacklan. Let’s see first if we have come to understand each other yet.” I didn’t answer. I just watched him. “Your mistake, from the start, was to think that we needed you.” He spread his hands. “You were convenient. You were very convenient. And you are very good at what you do. But, let’s be clear, Lacklan, Omega does not need you.”
“OK. Lesson learned.”
“Your other mistake: you kept telling me, ‘I don’t work for you.’” He shook his head. “Wrong. You do, Lacklan. From the day you came to my office at the Pentagon, you have worked for me. You see, just because you don’t want to, doesn’t mean you don’t. I own you, Lacklan.”
“Fuck you.”
He gestured at me with his hand. “Look at you! Half naked, barefoot, in a wheelchair!” He laughed out loud. “A prisoner of your own obstinate stupidity. And look at me. I am wearing a two thousand dollar suit, five hundred dollar leather shoes, my Jaguar is waiting out front, I have the freedom and the power to do whatever I please. And that includes letting you go, forcing you to stay, letting you live, or killing you off. Assimilate it, Lacklan. I own you.”
“What is this place?”
“I’m glad you asked. It’s the Richard John Erickson Institute. It is a research center that studies psycho-social dynamics.”
“Mind control.”
“You sound like a 1950 radio horror show.”
“Do I? Am I wrong?”
He shrugged. “Only in so far as the term is impossibly simplistic. What is ‘mind’, Lacklan? What makes your mind yours and my mind mine? Have you ever asked yourself that question?”
“No.”
“Mind…” He shook his head, biting his lip. “It’s a whole range of processes! Hunger, thirst, libido, anger, joy, excitement, analysis… And somehow you know that your joy is not the same as my joy, your anger is not the same as mine. When you analyze something, somehow you know that I am not making that analysis, it’s you. That sense of ‘I’ is also a part of Mind. But, what if, Lacklan, what if that separation was an illusion?”
I yawned. “Yeah, what about that?”
“What if your mind and my mind, and Nurse Roger’s mind, were all the same mind?”
“You know what, Nephew Ben? People who didn’t have anything better to do have been asking themselves that same question for about ten thousand years. And for all their philosophizing and asking of stupid questions, every baby that is born still knows that it’s an individual, and when it craps it doesn’t crap your crap, it craps its own crap. And when it laughs it laughs its own laugh, not yours. You can get Stanford University to do as many experiments as you like, and you can found as many psycho institutes as you like, the bottom line is, I am me and you are you. So get off your fucking ego-god trip, because you don’t own shit.”
He narrowed his eyes into an unpleasant smile. “And yet here we are. And with every passing decade since 1960, people in the west have felt themselves increasingly connected, due, in no small part, to the television’s power to homogenize culture. And since the late 1980s, due to the explosion in information technology. There is a matrix of thought and information, Lacklan, with a nexus within the World Wide Web, that is steadily exerting an ever stronger influence over the collective thought and the collective emotions of the world. Journalists are murdered in Paris and the people weep in Sao Paulo, New York, and Tokyo. A child is shot in Cape Town and people demand justice in London, Paris, and San Francisco. Trump is elected president in the U.S.A. and people demonstrate in Moscow, Madrid, and Munich. There are great streams of consciousness, information, and emotion flowing around the planet in a way that is not dissimilar to the streams of electrons flowing through your brain. I am here to tell you, Lacklan, that the destiny of humanity is to have a collective consciousness.”
“Ben, there is an Islamic terrorist cell threatening to bomb the United Nations General Assembly hall on Friday. They will not only kill several hundred people present, they will spread a genetically engineered virus, SF2, all across New York. Quit talking shit, and get me out of this damned hospital.”
“Institute.”
“I am going to come over there and break your fucking legs.”
“Move an inch and I will have you shot.”
I flopped back in my chair and closed my eyes. “What do you want, Ben? You want New York wiped out? Why? What for? If you wanted Marni and Gibbons dead you could have done it long ago, without this four ring circus. What do you want?”
He nodded. “That’s a lot better.”
I scowled at him. “You arrogant piece of shit.”
“Arrogant, yes. Piece of shit, not by a long chalk.” He pointed at me. “You, in your ridiculous bathrobe, in your wheelchair. You, you are a piece of shit. I am not.”
I repeated, “What do you want?”
He stared at me for a long while. “I want you to bring me Marni.”
“That’s what I was doing, Ben.”
He shook his head. “No, you were going off half-cock—again—murdering terrorists, uncovering bomb-plots…”
“They were going to kill Marni, goddammit!”
“Not if you had got her to us.”
I stared at him, incredulous. “They were going to kill thousands, possibly millions of people! Doesn’t that mean anything to you, Ben?”
“Lacklan, there are almost eight thousand million people on this planet, and they are all going to die. It’s what people do. They live, and then they die. The vast, vast majority will have insignificant lives. A very, very few will do something useful in their time. Let’s help those few, and let the many die where and when they will.” He stood. “Wake up, Lacklan. Time to wake up.”
“What are you going to do with me?”
He smiled and looked around, like he found my question amusingly stupid. “This is an institute that studies psycho-social dynamics, Lacklan. They are going to help you to adjust, psycho-socially.”
“You can’t do this to me. You have no authority…”
“On the contrary, Uncle, as your only surviving relative, and given your recent attempted suicide, I have the authority. Like I said, I own you.” He laughed and took hold of the back of the chair. “Now, shall I wheel you back, Uncle?”
Dr. Banks was waiting for us at the reception desk. She and Ben barely acknowledged each other. He patted my shoulder and said, “I’ll see you again soon, Uncle,” and walked out to his dar
k blue Jaguar.
I watched him go. Banks smiled at me and said, “Well, how are we getting on? Did we enjoy our little visit?”
I raised an eyebrow at her and repeated, tediously, “What, both of us?”
She took hold of the handles of the chair and started to push me down a passage. People passed and smiled at me. She chuckled. “You’re going to be an interesting case, Mr. Walker, I can tell.”
“He’s not my nephew. You know that, right?”
“Is that so? Well, you can tell me all about it in just a moment.”
We came to a door and she backed through it into a spacious, modern office with broad windows overlooking a garden with a lily pond. She pulled me in after her, then wheeled me up to the desk. There, she dropped into a large, black leather chair and sat smiling at me. Everybody smiled at the Richard John Erickson Institute for Psycho-Social Studies.
I said, “So, are we going to pretend that you are a regular psychiatrist and I am a potential suicide case? And that Ben is my nephew, even though we are practically the same age?”
“So what do you think is going on, Lacklan?”
“I’m not Mr. Walker anymore, Banks?”
“Are you going to answer all my questions with a question of your own?”
“Are you?” She pulled over a pad and made a note. I jerked my head at it. “Is that supposed to intimidate me?”
She didn’t look up. “Does it?”
“Should it?”
She finished making her note, set the pad on the desk and looked at me. This time she wasn’t smiling. “Do you know why your nephew registered you with us, Mr. Walker?”
“Yeah, do you?”
She obviously didn’t want to play the question game anymore because she said, “Yes, of course I do. Why do you think he registered you with us?”
I smiled on the right side of my face, where it’s most ironic. “So that I would stop killing Islamic terrorists.”
“Is that what you do?”
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s one of the things I do.”
“Would it be accurate to describe you as a lone warrior fighting against a vast conspiracy?”
“That would be accurate, Dr. Banks, yes. Does that make me paranoid?”
She gave a small laugh. “I wouldn’t be much of a psychiatrist if I came to a diagnosis like that on the basis of a short exchange like this, would I, Mr. Walker?” I didn’t answer. She took a breath and added, “Besides, at the Richard John Erickson Institute, we try to take a broader view. We don’t really think in terms of disorders or syndromes…” She shook her head. “Psychosis, neurosis, schizophrenia, paranoia…even normality! They are all very limited views of the mind.”
I made my voice dull to reflect my lack of interest. “Really?”
“We prefer to look at the relationship between the so-called individual’s mind, and the collective mind of society. Where a person is socially integrated, conflict naturally disappears and there can be no paranoia. Does that make sense?”
“Well, Doc, I’ll tell you what, it sounds to me like you’re all out to get me and make me one of you.” I smiled. “The Invasion of the Mind Snatchers.”
“Are you not already one of us, Lacklan? What makes you different?”
I yawned loudly. When I’d finished, I rubbed my face and looked at her with an expression that said she was boring me intensely. “Mainly, Doc, I guess, the fact that I am a paranoid schizophrenic homicidal maniac.”
“Do you consider yourself dangerous?”
“Very. Where are my clothes?”
“They are being laundered.”
“No, Banks, they’re not. You are keeping me in this robe, in this wheelchair, in a pathetic attempt to make me feel humiliated and rejected by the society around me. It’s undergraduate social psychology, and while you are playing your stupid games, people’s lives are at stake out in the real world.”
“And they need you to save them. Is that how you integrate, Lacklan? As a hero? You must either be an outcast psychopath, or a hero.”
“Smart.”
“How long do you think you are going to be here, Mr. Walker?”
“Do you know how transparent you are? When you want me to feel alienated you call me Mr. Walker. When you want to offer me integration you call me Lacklan.”
“How long do you think you are going to be in here?”
“I don’t know, but I have to be out before Friday.”
She leaned her elbows on the desk and rested her chin on her hands. “You’ll be lucky to leave here in ten years, Lacklan. More likely, you’ll be here for the rest of your life. If I were you, I would start adjusting.”
I gazed at her for a long moment, thinking. Finally, I said, “OK. If there is one thing I do understand, it’s power. Just tell me what I have to do, and I will do it.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not that easy, Mr. Walker.”
“It isn’t?”
“No, you see—and this is why it might take the rest of your life—you have to want it.”
“I have to want to become part of your society?”
She nodded. “That’s right. We will, of course, help you in every way.”
“Help?”
“With courses, mental training, meditation, hypnosis, group activities…” She paused and smiled. “…medication, electronic aids. We have some very advanced technology.”
I gave a single nod. “I understand. Well, Doctor Banks, I feel very motivated to fall in with your program and make lots of progress very quickly.”
She sat back in her chair and laughed. “Oh, Mr. Walker, I don’t believe that for one moment. I think you are being devious and manipulative, and I know just the cure for that.”
She pressed a button on her desk and, after a moment, four very large male nurses stepped in. The biggest one, a Russian-looking giant with a bald head, said, “You gonna come quiet, or we have to pacify you?”
I looked at him, and then the other three: a black guy with a mustache, an Aryan with real short hair and a guy who looked like Stallone with a lobotomy. They all looked like wrestlers, and I figured there were ten more where these had come from. I shook my head. “No, I’ll come quiet.” I looked at Dr. Banks and gestured at the wheelchair. “May I stand or am I going to be wheeled?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You may stand.”
I stood, and my only excuse for what happened next is that it caught me totally by surprise. Perhaps it shouldn’t have, but it did. The big Russian nurse plunged a huge fist into the pit of my stomach. I folded and sank to the floor, retching. And that was when they started kicking me and stamping on me. It wasn’t hard enough to do permanent damage. They didn’t want to break my bones or rupture my organs. They just wanted to teach me that I wasn’t such a tough guy. It hurt. It hurt a lot.
I don’t know how long it went on. It felt like a couple of hours, but it was probably not more than a minute or two. I adopted the fetal position and tried to ignore the pain by thinking about what I was going to do to each one of them when it was my turn. I fixed their images in my mind so I would not forget.
During the beating, I heard Dr. Banks get up and walk over. I couldn’t see her because I had my head covered, but I knew she was watching. I had her fixed in my mind, too.
By the time they had finished, I was partially unconscious and unable to walk. They lifted me back into the wheelchair, took me back to my room, and dumped me into my bed. After they had left, Nurse Rogers came in with a bowl of hot water and a cloth. She sounded as perky as ever.
“What have we been up to, then? You are a naughty boy! Let’s have a look at these cuts and bruises.”
She cleaned me up as I drifted in and out of consciousness. At one point I felt a sharp prick on the inside of my elbow, and a moment after that I was enfolded by darkness. As I sank into oblivion, Sergeant Bradley’s New Zealand voice inside my head kept saying, “Well, a fine bloody mess we’ve got ourselves into, lad, haven’t we?”
* * *
When I awoke I did not feel hung-over, but I did feel completely devoid of any kind of motivation. I knew I could move my arms and my legs, but I couldn’t be bothered to try. I shifted my eyes and noted without much interest that I was in a different room. It was identical, and everything was in the same place, down to the jug of water, but the view through the window was different. I was not looking down on trees, I was looking into them. I was on the ground floor.
I considered my condition and knew it was the effect of the injection Nurse Rogers had given me. It was like being deeply depressed, only without the sadness. It was actually quite pleasant. It occurred to me that they were watching me and monitoring me. They must know by now that I was awake, and pretty soon somebody would come in to take me to the next stage of the process where they broke me down and destroyed my identity. This pleasurable, drug induced apathy would be the haven I was allowed to return to, after they subjected me to regular bouts of hell. A hell I would be blamed for, a hell I would bring upon myself by resisting them. And all I would have to do to get back to this blissful apathy, would be surrender my mind and my will to them.
As I thought that, the door opened and Nurse Rogers walked in, smiling as ever.
For the few moments she had the door open I saw a large room, like a lounge, with nests of tables and armchairs, and beyond them two sets of glass doors that opened onto lawns and gardens.
“So, how are we feeling?”
In my mind I told her, “What, both of us? Fuck you, Nurse Rogers!” But for the cameras I smiled weakly and said, “We’re feeling kind of good. Have I told you how pretty you are, Nurse Rogers?”
She grinned. “No, but it’s nice to hear. We all like to be told nice things, don’t we?”
She came and helped me to sit up. I gave a comfortable chuckle. “I guess we do. Nurse Rogers…?”
“Yes, Mr. Walker?”
“Have you got a soul?”
She patted my pillows. “Now what kind of question is that?” She winked. “That’s the drugs talking!”
“Do you think we all have the same soul? Like Manitou?”
