by Blake Banner
“Well, I wouldn’t know about that, but it’s a very comforting thought, isn’t it?”
“It sure is. Am I going to see the doctor today?””
She came close to me and leaned forward, with her hands placed against her thighs, just above her knees, so I could see her cleavage. It was a nice cleavage, but it didn’t do anything to me. She smiled into my face and spoke to me like I was ninety.
“First we’ll have some breakfast, then we’ll take you to sit in the sunshine for a bit, and then maybe this afternoon, Dr. Banks will have another chat with you.”
I winced. “Do you think she will have me beaten again this time?”
She cocked her head on one side with the same, bright smile. “Not if you behave yourself! Do we think we can behave ourselves this time?”
“Yes, I think so.”
She didn’t say, “Good boy!” but she may as well have. She left the room and I closed my eyes. I explored my body with my mind. There was a complete absence of desire. All I wanted was to remain motionless and be in the moment. It was almost like Zen meditation. The window was open and I could hear the sporadic song of the birds in the gardens, the sigh of the breeze through the pine trees, and the occasional touch of the cool air on my cheek. I felt my ego dissolve, and I was all of those sensations. The moment wasn’t going anywhere, it wasn’t leading to anything. It just was, and I was it. It was peaceful and it was beautiful, and I wanted it to last forever.
I smiled.
One of the stupidest questions gurus, life-coaches and therapists will ever ask you—and they will ask you all the time—is, “What do you want?” And they will stress the last word as though they are conveying some especially profound meaning: “What do you want?”
It’s a stupid question because what you want will change every time your circumstances and your body chemistry change. If I ate two hours ago, I want to use the can. If I haven’t eaten for three or four hours I want to eat. If Nurse Rogers hadn’t been feeding me a cocktail of drugs, I would probably want to explain graphically to her and her cleavage exactly what ‘we’ wanted, and after that I’d want a long cold beer. Since Marni had gone missing I had wanted to find and protect her. But right now, because of the cocktail of drugs Nurse Rogers and Dr. Banks were feeding me, I wanted nothing. Literally. Nothing was the thing that I wanted. What you want changes all the time. That’s why it’s a stupid question.
The smart question is: what do you intend? Because where your desires can fluctuate, your intention can stay constant—if you’re made of the right stuff. I reached deep down inside myself and found the last voice that had spoken to me as I had sunk into unconsciousness. Sergeant Bradley, from the Regiment, the hardest, toughest son of a bitch I had ever met. A Kiwi built like a brick shithouse with a grin that would turn your blood to ice. I heard his voice, with his rich New Zealand accent, leering at me. “A fine bloody mess you’ve got yourself into, Captain Walker! Haven’t you? And what, may I ask, do you intend to do about it?”
And his eyes told me exactly what I intended to do about it.
Eleven
I was given breakfast and then taken to the lounge where I sat and stared out at the garden, the sunshine, and the birds. I used the opportunity to do some meditation. Anyone who has done martial arts seriously has learned to meditate, and in my drug-induced state it was very easy to achieve a deep trance.
After an hour or so I was taken to Dr. Banks’ office. This time I was allowed to walk, though I still wore the bathrobe I had been given earlier. Nurse Rogers opened the door for me and smiled as I went in. I smiled back. I had learned that, as we were ‘we’ and not you and ‘I’, it was always important to respond in kind. That is a big part of belonging. You smile, I smile, we all smile.
I stood looking down at Dr. Banks, as Nurse Rogers closed the door behind me. The doctor gestured to the chair across from where she was sitting, behind her desk, and said, “Please, sit.” I sat. “How are we feeling today?”
I nodded. “We’re feeling very peaceful. I know the feeling is drug induced, but it feels good.”
She studied my face for a moment and leaned back in her chair, holding a fountain pen like it was a twig she was about to snap.
“I have to say, Lacklan, I am surprised at the speed with which you have adapted. I am a little suspicious.”
I smiled in a way you could call rueful and gave a rueful little snort to go with it. “What day is it?”
“Why is that important?”
“Because I don’t know how quickly I have adapted. All I know…” I paused, as though I had realized that I knew more than I thought. Then shrugged and went on. “When those guys gave me that beating. That has never happened to me before. Normally I would have killed them all, and it would have taken a few seconds. Less than a minute. Being on the receiving end like that…” I paused again, staring at the silent trees beyond the double-glazed windows. “I realized how tired I am of killing, how tired I am of fighting.” I looked her in the eyes, like I’d had a sudden thought. “I don’t know if you are genuinely providing therapy, or whether you are simply here to condition me…”
I left it like that. It was not a question, but it invited an answer. She smiled, “Maybe the two are not so different, Lacklan. Had you thought of that?”
I smiled like I was impressed by her intelligence. “No,” I said. “I had not. Maybe you’re right. Can I tell you something about my childhood?”
“That’s why we are here. There is a Freudian element to the work we do.”
“I didn’t know this as a kid, but my father was one of the senior members of Omega. By the time he died, he was Gamma. There were only two members who were senior to him.”
She checked her notes. “This is the organization you claim is the government within the government.”
I knew I had never told her that, but I played along. “Yes. He was a harsh, brutal man, with very little compassion. At least that was how I saw him. He always favored my brother, because my brother was always willing to comply, and go along with my father’s wishes—to be an extension of my father’s will. I rebelled. The more I rebelled, the more he favored Robert. The more he favored Robert, the more I rebelled.”
“How about your mother…”
I gave her that, “You’re good” look. “My mother is English, minor aristocracy. Highly intelligent, well educated, cold as ice and tough as nails.”
“Those are two very powerful similes, Lacklan, ice and nails.”
“That’s her. She hated my father, and so did I. We formed a kind of alliance against him and Robert. It was a secret alliance, but we were there for each other.”
The most effective lies are the ones based on truth. I was aware of that, and I was also aware that as I was telling her these things, in my drug-induced semi-trance, it was having a cathartic effect. I was seeing and understanding things about myself, about my relationship with my parents and with Marni, that I had not realized before.
Banks said, “She was an ally whom you trusted, even though she was not physically there for you. You were forever chasing her, though you never caught her.”
“That’s exactly it. I left home and joined the SAS. They trained me in many things, but what I learned best was to fight. Never to give up. However powerful or invincible the enemy may seem, you never give up. You find the weak spot and you bring them down. You kill them.” I smiled. “But that was a lesson I had learned already. I had taught it to myself with my father.” I laughed. “I guess that’s an unresolved Oedipal complex, huh? My father should have won, but he didn’t. I did. My mother left him and returned to England. I won.”
“So you never introjected your father as your superego. You never became one with your father, never integrated with society.”
“I guess not.”
She stared at me a while, “And…?”
I took a deep breath. “With Marni…”
Again she checked her notes. “This was the daughter of your fat
her’s best friend, whom you say he was instructed to kill…”
I nodded. “Yes, that’s right. She wanted me to give up the Regiment and marry her. I was in love with her. I still am, I guess. But instead of accepting what life was giving me, I said no. And now I understand why.”
“That’s interesting. Tell me why.”
I shrugged like it was obvious and I had been stupid and blind not to see it before. “I didn’t know how to be her husband. All I knew was how to fight, how to kill. It was what I had done for my mother, and it was all I knew how to do for Marni.” I shook my head. “I cast her in the role of my mother: distant, unattainable, somebody I could love and adulate from a distance, while I fought to protect her. And I cast the whole, damned world in the role of my father, and myself as the invincible Oedipus.”
I felt a tear on my cheek. I was surprised to find it there. I wiped it away with the sleeve of my bathrobe, and when I spoke again I was astonished to hear a crack in my voice.
“I am tired of fighting, Dr. Banks. I am exhausted. I am sick of killing. The other day I bound a man with wire coat hangers, I cut off his thumb, and then I shot him in the head…” I gave my head several rapid shakes. “I don’t want to be that man anymore. And when…” I gestured at the floor where the four gorillas hade given me my kicking. “When those guys beat me up, you know what? It felt good to surrender at last. If I have changed quickly, I forget how you phrased it, maybe it’s because at heart I was ready. Maybe it hasn’t been quick. Maybe you just got me at the end of a long, long process. I am tired.”
For the last minute or so, while I’d been talking, she had been making notes. Now she raised an eyebrow without looking at me, and asked, “And what do you want as a reward?”
I frowned, taken aback by the question. “Reward?” I shook my head again. “I don’t want any reward. All I want is to rest. Like I said, I am tired. I need to rest.”
She put down her pad and considered me for a moment. “When you came in, you asked what day it was. What would you say if I told you it was Friday the 18th?”
I smiled. “Is it?”
She nodded. “You have been unconscious for over three days. Today is the day of the conference that you were talking so much about. Marni and Professor Gibbons will give their talk. Abbassi will detonate the bomb.”
I shrugged, closed my eyes and smiled. “If—if—that is the case, then I am pretty sure that Ben has it in hand. I don’t want this fight anymore.”
She gave a single nod and pursed her lips. “How about if I told you it was Monday? Monday 21st?”
I sighed. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Dr. Banks.” I spread my hands. “It’s not my fight anymore.”
She leaned forward and turned her laptop to face me. In the bottom right-hand corner of the screen I saw the time and date. It said it was the 21st of May, 2018. I stared at it a long time, assimilating what it meant. Eventually I gave a single, slow nod and said, “What happened?”
“Why do you want to know?”
I narrowed my eyes, thinking about the question and the answer. Finally, I said, “Closure?” Then I nodded. “Yeah, closure.”
“There was no bomb, either physical or metaphorical. The papers and the TV are full of the damp-squib of Dr. Gilbert and Professor Gibbons’ revelations. There was really nothing that any reasonably informed person wouldn’t already have known.”
I restored my rueful smile and stared for a long time at my hands in my lap. “Ain’t it always the way,” I said. “It is the destiny of your idols to let you down.”
She nodded. “Their destiny, and perhaps their most important purpose.”
I frowned at her. “How’s that?”
“Because as individuals, we are all flawed and fallible. It is only when we pull together as a family, as a society, that we can truly overcome our weaknesses.”
I sighed deeply. “I hear you, Dr. Banks. But that is a very big pill to swallow for me. I’m going to need a bit of time. All my life it has been me, alone against the dragon.”
An ironic smile, but a kind one. “And how’s that working for you?”
I responded with a small laugh. “Not so good. But please, give me a little time. It hurts to realize that everything you have lived by, and depended on, is false.”
“I know. Take the time you need. The drugs should help. You’re making good progress, Lacklan.”
I nodded. “Thanks.” I hesitated. “Maybe it’s the drugs talking, but I mean it. Thank you.”
“Sure.”
I made my way back to the lounge and sat for a while gazing out at the gardens. Then I took a walk through the grounds around the house. I was aware that I was being watched, but I was still in that blissful state of unconcern. Nothing mattered, because nothing was capable of triggering my adrenal glands and increasing my blood pressure. Everything was cool, man. I would have fit right in in the summer of love of ’67.
I wandered down by the stream and saw that it was actually a small river, maybe eighteen or twenty feet across. It was hard to gauge the depth, but judging by the reeds that were poking up out of it, it was at least four or five feet. The position of the sun told me it was flowing due south.
I turned and walked away. I came eventually to a small copse where there was a group of four young men and three women sitting in a circle around an older man on a chair. In the shade of the trees there was a comfortable recliner, and in the recliner there was a young woman lying back with her eyes closed. The older guy was talking incessantly, in a strange, undulating cadence, while the others watched and listened. At first, what he said seemed to be gibberish, to make no sense at all, but then I listened more closely.
“…and naturally your unconscious all the way down knows perfectly how to make deep changes are occurring even now as you listen to my voice sinking deep down all the way down into your unconscious and ever more unconscious than you were before is behind you and a part of the past that you are letting go away as far as it is possible to become so small that it disappears completely and you feel peaceful and happy as you observe how it becomes black and white like an old newspaper that has burned to ashes and you can turn and walk away because your unconscious knows exactly how to turn and walk away into a state of perfect peace and happiness…”
I paused to watch and listen. There was something deeply hypnotic about the rhythm of his voice, and I realized that that was what he was doing. He was hypnotizing the girl, probably as a master class for his students.
I moved on and eventually came to a rear entrance to the building. I moved into a long, tiled corridor with a series of doors set on either side opposite each other, maybe twenty five feet apart. Each door had a small window in it and I peered through the glass in the first on my right. There were young men and women sitting in a horseshoe around a woman in her forties, in jeans and a sweatshirt, had her ass on a small desk, talking to what I assumed were her students. I opened the door and stepped in. They all looked up at me, and the woman smiled.
“Hello…”
“Hi. I’d just like to hear what you’re talking about, if that’s OK.”
“Sure,” She gestured to a chair. “Join us?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure if I am ready yet. I’d like to just listen.”
“Sure.” She turned back to her class. “So, guys, can you think of any kind of thought that is not a picture or a sound or a feeling?”
A guy with a blond ponytail and something that would be a beard when it grew up, raised his hand.
“Art?”
“What about smells and tastes? We can have them as thoughts, memories…”
“But remember, as we discussed earlier, smell, taste, and touch all come under the same group of kinesthetic, because taste and smell are actually physical feelings. So, is there any thought you can have, that is not a picture or a sound or a feeling?” They all agreed that there wasn’t. So she went on, “So our next step is to realize that sounds, pictures, and feelings a
ll trigger each other in our minds.”
Art raised his hand again. “Can you give us an example?”
“Of course. If I say to you the words ‘violent car crash’ what happens in your imagination?”
They all gazed into the middle distance and Art shrugged. “I see a red sports coupe hitting another car and going off the road, smashing into a tree and bursting into flames…”
“Did I show you a picture of a red car?”
“No…”
“So the sound of my voice triggered not just a picture but a whole movie in your head.” They laughed and grinned at Art. She went on, “Now let me ask you this. I want you all to play Art’s movie in your heads…”
They all closed their eyes and she waited. Eventually they started to open them again. She said, “What did you experience…?”
Art said, “I heard the grating of metal, the screech of the brakes…”
A Chinese-looking girl held up her hand. “I felt the jarring impact when the car hit the tree.”
The woman nodded. “We have three systems of thinking, and each one triggers the other two. Now, let me ask you this, in which category do emotions fall?”
The Chinese girl said, “Kinesthetic, because emotions are feelings triggered by electrochemical and biochemical changes in the body, and the brain.”
“Exactly, so if I know what pictures and what sounds to present to you, I can remotely control, and alter, your body and brain chemistry…”
I thought of the man sitting in the copse with his pupils, the strange cadence of his voice and the odd syntax, with one sentence flowing into the next. I thought then of the billions of people, all attached to their screens, their telephones, their tablets, and their laptops, receiving an endless flow of images and sounds, all from the great matrix. What was it Ben had said? “There is a matrix of thought and information, with a nexus within the World Wide Web …”
A matrix of pictures and sounds with a nexus in the World Wide Web, all triggering biochemical and electrochemical changes in our brains and our bodies, to make us feel emotionally connected to each other, and terrified of our enemies. It was science fiction, but then again, so were cell phones. So was ninety-nine percent of information technology. The future was not now—we had left the future behind.
