“I don’t really know,” I say, with a shake of the head.
“That’s how it is,” says the Gatekeeper, satisfied.
25
Meal, Elephant Factory, Trap
CLIMBING the rope was easier than climbing the steps. There was a strong knot every thirty centimeters. Rope in both hands, I swung suspended, bounding off the tower. A regular scene from The Big Top. Although, of course, in the film the rope wouldn’t be knotted; the audience wouldn’t go for that.
I looked up from time to time. She was shining her light down at me, but I could get no clear sense of distance. I just kept climbing, and my gut wound kept throbbing. The bump on my head wasn’t doing bad either.
As I neared the top, the light she held became bright enough for me to see my whole body and surroundings. But by then I’d gotten so used to climbing in the dark that actually seeing what I was doing slowed me down and I nearly slipped a couple of times. I couldn’t gauge distance. Lighted surfaces jumped out at me and shadowed parts inverted into negative.
Sixty or seventy knots up, I reached the summit. I grabbed the rock overhang with both hands and pushed up like a competition swimmer at poolside. My arms ached from the long climb, so it was a struggle. She grabbed my belt and helped pull me up.
“That was close,” she said. “A few more minutes and we’d have been goners.”
“Great,” I said, stretching out on the level and taking a few deep breaths, “just great. How far up did the water come?”
She set her light down and pulled up the rope, hand over hand. At the thirtieth knot she stopped and passed the rope over to me. It was dripping wet.
“Did you find your grandfather?”
“Why of course,” she beamed. “He’s back there at the altar. But he’s sprained his foot. He got it caught in a hole.”
“And he made it all the way here with a sprained foot?”
“Yes, sure. Grandfather’s in very good shape.”
“I’d imagine so,” I said.
“Let’s go. Grandfather’s waiting inside. There’s lots he wants to talk to you about.”
“Likewise here,” I said.
I picked up the knapsack and followed her toward the altar. This turned out to be nothing more than a round opening cut into a rock face. It led into a large room illuminated by the dim amber glow of a propane lamp set in a niche, the walls textured with myriad shadows from the grain of the rock. The Professor sat next to the lamp, wrapped in a blanket. His face was half in shadow. His eyes looked sunken in the half-light, but in fact he was chipper as could be.
“Seems we almost lost you,” the Professor greeted me ever so gladly. “I knew the water was goin’ t’rise, but I thought you’d get here a bit sooner.”
“I got lost in the city, Grandfather,” said his chubby granddaughter. “It was almost a whole day before I finally met up with him.”
“Tosh,” said the Professor. “But we’re here now and ’sail the same.”
“Excuse me, but what exactly is ’sail the same?” I asked.
“Now, now, hold your horses. I’ll get t’all that. Just take yourself a seat. First thing, let’s just remove that leech from your neck.”
I sat down near the Professor. His granddaughter sat beside me. She lit a match and held it to the giant sucker feasting on my neck. It was big as a wine cork. The flame hissed as it touched the engorged parasite. The leech fell to the ground, wriggling in spasms, until she put it out of its misery.
My neck felt seared. If I turned my head too far, I thought the skin would slip off like the peel of a rotten tomato. A week of this life-style and I’d be a regular scar tissue showcase, like one of those full-color photos of athlete’s foot posted in the windows of pharmacies. Gut wound, lump on the head, leech welt—throw in penile dysfunction for comic relief.
“Y’ wouldn’t by any chance have brought along anything to eat, would you?” the Professor asked me. “Left in such a hurry, I didn’t pack.”
I opened the knapsack and removed several cans, squashed bread, and the canteen, which I handed to him. The Professor took a long drink of water, then examined each can as if inspecting vintage wines. He decided on corned beef and peaches.
“Care t’join me?” offered the Professor.
I declined. We watched the Professor tear off some bread and top it with a chunk of corned beef, then dig into it with real zest. Next he had at the peaches and even brought the can up to his lips to drink the syrup. I contented myself with whiskey, for medicinal purposes. It helped numb my various aches and pains. Not that the alcohol actually reduced the pain; it just gave the pain a life of its own, apart from mine.
“Yessir, that hit the spot,” the Professor thanked me. “I usually keep two or three days’ emergency rations here, but this time it so happened I hadn’t replenished supplies. Unforgivable. Get accustomed to carefree days and you drop your guard. You know the old saying: When the sun leaks through again, patch the roof for rain. Ho-ho-ho.”
“Now that you’ve finished your meal,” I began, “there’s a few things we need to talk about. Let’s take things in order, starting from the top. Like, what is it you were trying to do? What did you do? What was the result? And where does that leave me?”
“I believe you’ll find it all rather technical,” the Professor said evasively.
“Okay, then break it down. Make it less technical.”
“That may take some time.”
“Fine. You know exactly how much time I’ve got.”
“Well, uh, t’begin with,” the Professor owned up, “I must apologize. Research is research, but I tricked you and used you and I put your life in danger. Set a scientist down in front of a vein of knowledge and he’s goin’ t’dig. It’s this pure focus, exclusive of all view to loss or gain, that’s seen science achieve such uninterrupted advances … You’ve read your Aristotle.”
“Almost not at all,” I said. “I grant you your pure scientific motives. Please get to the point.”
“Forgive me, I only wanted t’say that the purity of science often hurts many people, just like pure natural phenomena do. Volcanic eruptions bury whole towns, floods wash bridges away, earthquakes knock buildings flat—”
“Grandfather!” interrupted his chubby granddaughter. “Do we really have the time for that? Won’t you hurry up a bit with what you have to say?”
“Right you are, child, right you are,” said the Professor, taking up his granddaughter’s hand and patting it. “Well, then, uh, what is it y’ want t’know? I’m terrible at explanations. Where should I begin?”
“You gave me some numbers to shuffle. What were they all about?”
“T’explain that, we have t’go back three years. I was working at System Central Research. Not as a formal employee researcher, but as a special outside expert. I had four or five staffers under me and the benefit of magnificent facilities. I had all the money I could use. I don’t put much by money, mind you, and I do have something of an allergy t’servin’ under others. But even so, the resources the System put at my disposal and the prospect of puttin’ my research findings into practice was certainly attractive.
“The System was at a critical point just then. That’s t’say, virtually every method of data-scramblin’ they devised t’ protect information had been found out by the Semiotecs. That’s when I was invited t’head up their R&D.
“I was then—and still am, of course—the most able and the most ambitious scientist in the field of neurophysiology. This the System knew and they sought me out. What they were after wasn’t further complexification or sophistication of existing methods, but unprecedented technology. Wasn’t the kind of thinkin’ you get from workaday university lab scholars, publish-or-perishin’ and countin’ their pay. The truly original scientist is a free individual.”
“But on entering the System, you surrendered that freedom,” I countered.
“Exactly right,” said the Professor. “I did my share of soul-searchin’ on that
one. Don’t mean t’excuse myself, but I was eagerer than anythin’ t’put my theories into practice. Back then, I already had a fully developed theory, but no way t’verify it. That’s one of the drawbacks of neurophysiology; you can’t experiment on animals like you can in other branches of physiology. No monkey’s got functions complex enough t’stand in for human subconscious psychology and memory.”
“So you used us as your monkeys.”
“Now, now, let’s not jump to conclusions. First, let me give you a quick rundown on my theories. There’s one given about codes, and that is there’s no such thing as a code that can’t be cracked. The reason bein’ that codes are composed accordin’ to certain basic principles. And these principles, it doesn’t matter how complicated or how exactin’, ultimately come down to commonalities intelligible to more than one person. Understand the principle and you can crack the code. Even the most reliable book-to-book codes, where two people exchange messages denotin’ words by page and line number in two copies of the same edition of the same book—even then, if someone discovers the right book, the game is up.
“That got me t’thinkin’. There’s only one true crack-proof method: you pass information through a ‘black box’ t’scramble it and then you pass the processed information back through the same black box t’unscramble it. Not even the agent holdin’ the black box would know its contents or principle. An agent could use it, but he’d have no understanding of how it worked. If that agent didn’t know how it worked, no one could steal the information. Perfect.”
“So the black box is the subconscious.”
“Yes, that’s correct. Each individual behaves on the basis of his individual mnemonic makeup. No two human beings are alike; it’s a question of identity. And what is identity? The cognitive system arisin’ from the aggregate memories of that individual’s past experiences. The layman’s word for this is the mind. No two human beings have the same mind. At the same time, human beings have almost no grasp of their own cognitive systems. I don’t, you don’t, nobody does. All we know—or think we know—is but a fraction of the whole cake. A mere tip of the icing.
“Now let me ask you a simple question: are you bold, or are you timid?”
“Huh?” I had to think. “Sometimes I get bold and sometimes I’m timid. I can’t really say.”
“Well, there’s your cognitive system for y’. You just can’t say all at once. Accordin’ t’what you’re up against, almost instantaneously, you elect some point between the extremes. That’s the precision programming you’ve got built in. You yourself don’t know a thing about the inner shenanigans of that program. ’Tisn’t any need for you t’know. Even without you knowin’, you function as yourself. That’s your black box. In other words, we all carry around this great unexplored ‘elephant graveyard’ inside us. Outer space aside, this is truly humanity’s last terra incognita.
“No, an ‘elephant graveyard’ isn’t exactly right. ’Tisn’t a burial ground for collected dead memories. An ‘elephant factory’ is more like it. There’s where you sort through countless memories and bits of knowledge, arrange the sorted chips into complex lines, combine these lines into even more complex bundles, and finally make up a cognitive system. A veritable production line, with you as the boss. Unfortunately, though, the factory floor is off-limits. Like Alice in Wonderland, you need a special drug t’shrink you in.”
“So our behavioral patterns run according to commands issued by this elephant factory?”
“Exactly as you say,” said the old man. “In other words—”
“Just a second. I have a question.”
“Certainly, certainly.”
“I get the gist. But the thing is, those behavioral patterns do not dictate actual surface-level behavior. Say I get up in the morning and decide whether I want to drink milk or coffee or tea with my toast. That depends on my mood, right?”
“Exactly so,” said the Professor with a nod. “Another complication’s that the subconscious mind is always changin’. Like an encyclopedia that keeps puttin’ out a whole new edition every day. In order t’stabilize human consciousness, you have to clear up two trouble spots.”
“Trouble spots?” I asked. “Why would there be any trouble spots? We’re talking about perfectly normal human actions.”
“Now, now,” said the Professor. “Pursue this much further and we enter into theological issues. The bottom line here, if you want t’call it that, is whether human actions are plotted out in advance by the Divine, or self-initiated beginnin’ to end. Of course, ever since the modern age, science has stressed the physiological spontaneity of the human organism. But soon’s we start askin’ just what this spontaneity is, nobody can come up with a decent answer. Nobody’s got the keys t’the elephant factory inside us. Freud and Jung and all the rest of them published their theories, but all they did was t’invent a lot of jargon t’get people talkin’. Gave mental phenomena a little scholastic color.”
Whereupon the Professor launched into another round of guffaws. Oh-ho-ho. The girl and I could only wait for him to stop laughing.
“Me, I’m of a more practical bent,” continued the Professor. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and leave the rest alone. Metaphysics is never more than semantic pleasantries anyway. There’s loads t’be done right here before you go drainin’ the reality out of everything. Take our black box. You can set it aside without so much as ever touchin’ it, or you can use its bein’ a black box t’your advantage. Only—” paused the Professor, one finger raised theatrically, “only—you have t’solve two problems. The first is random chance on the surface level of action. And the other is changes in the black box due t’new experiences. Neither is very easy t’resolve. Because, like you said, both are perfectly normal for humans. As long as an individual’s alive, he will undergo experience in some form or other, and those experiences are stored up instant by instant. To stop experiencin’ is to die.
“This prompted me t’hypothesize. What would happen if you fixed a person’s black box at one point in time? If afterwards it were t’change, well, let it change. But that black box of that one instant would remain, and you could call it up in just the state it was. Flash-frozen, as it were.”
“Wait a minute. That would mean two different cognitive systems coexisted in the same person.”
“You catch on quick,” said the old man. “It confirms what I saw in you. Yes, Cognitive System A would be on permanent hold, while the other would go on changin’ … A′, A″, A″′,… without a moment’s pause. You’d have a stopped watch in your right pocket and a tickin’ watch in your left. You can take out whichever you want, whenever you want.
“We can address the other problem by the same principle: cut off all options open to Cognitive System A at surface level. Do you follow?”
No, I didn’t.
“In other words, we scrape off the surface just like the dentist scrapes off plaque, leaving the core consciousness. No more margin of error. We just strip the cognitive system of its outer layers, freeze it, and plunk it in a secret compartment. That’s the original scheme of shuffling. This much I’d worked out in theory for myself before I joined the System.”
“In order to conduct brain surgery?”
“Yes, but only as necessary,” the Professor allowed. “No doubt, if I’d proceeded with my research, I would have bypassed the need for surgery. Sensory-deprivation para-hypnotics or some such external procedure t’create similar conditions. But for now, there’s only electrostimulation. That is, artificial alteration of currents flowin’ through the brain circuitry. Nothin’ fancy. ’Tisn’t anythin’ more than a slight modification of normal procedures in current use on psychotics or epileptics. Cancel out electrical impulses emitted by the aberration in the … I take it I should dispense with the more technical details?”
“If you don’t mind,” I said.
“Well, the main thing is, we set up a junction box t’ channel brain waves. A fork, as it were. Then we implant ele
ctrodes along with a tiny battery so that, at a given signal, the junction box switches over, click-click.”
“You put electrodes and a battery inside my head?”
“Of course.”
“Great,” I said, “just great.”
“No need for alarm. Isn’t anythin’ so frightenin’. The implant is only the size of an azuki bean, and besides, there’s plenty of people walkin’ around with similar units and pacemakers in other parts of their body.
“Now the original cognitive system—the stopped-watch circuit—is a blind circuit. Once you enter that circuit, you don’t perceive a thing in your own flow of thought; you have absolutely no awareness of what you think or do. If we didn’t arrange it that way, you’d be in there foolin’ with the cognitive system yourself.”
“But there’s got to be problems with irradiating the core consciousness after it’s stripped. That’s what one of your staff told me after the operation.”
“All very correct. But we still hadn’t established that at the time. We were workin’ on supposition. Well, we’d done a few human experiments. Didn’t want t’expose valuable human resources such as you Calcutecs t’any dangers right off the bat, y’know. The System selected ten people for us. We operated on them and watched for results.”
“What sort of people?”
“The System wouldn’t tell us. They were ten healthy males, with no history of mental irregularities. IQ 120 or above. Those were the only conditions. The results were moderately encouragin’. In seven out of the ten, the junction box functioned without a hitch. In the other three, the junction box didn’t work; they couldn’t switch cognitive system or they confused them or they got both.”
“What happened to the confused ones?”
“We fixed them back the way they were, disconnected the junction box. No harm done. Meanwhile, we continued trainin’ the seven, until a number of problems became apparent: one was a technical problem, others had t’do with the subjects themselves. First of all, the call sign for switchin’ the junction box was too codependent. We started off with a five-digit number, but for some reason a few of them switched junctions at the smell of grape juice. Found that out one lunchtime.”
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World Page 24
