“And you must be our guest,” a middle-aged man in a white lab coat said, also walking into the lobby.
The time traveler stood and extended his hand, but when he did, the other man took a quick step back as if he had no idea what his guest might do next.
“Please, this way,” the man said, regaining his composure and ushering the time traveler into the main part of the hospital. As he followed the doctor, a large man in scrubs filed in line behind him, making sure their visitor didn’t do anything crazy.
“Right in here,” the doctor said, opening the door to his office and pulling out a chair for his guest. After the time traveler was sitting down, the doctor added, “We won’t have any problems here, right?” and the large man stepped forward to see what the response would be.
“I’m not sure what they told you,” the time traveler said, “but I’m here because I lost my memory, not because of any deviant mental condition.”
“We’ll be the judge of that,” the doctor said, sitting down behind his desk. And then to the giant: “We should be okay. But keep an ear open.”
The orderly lumbered out of the room, leaving a smell of bleach and hydrogen peroxide behind him.
“So, you lost you memory?” the doctor said, smiling.
Behind the doctor were degrees from three different colleges and universities, as well as letters of recognition, the signatures too small for the time traveler to see who had endorsed them. There were no family photos, nothing to show that the doctor had a wife or children or, really, anyone at all he loved or who loved him.
“Yes,” the time traveler said. “That’s correct.”
“Well, let’s start with introductions. I’m Dr. Martin. What’s your name?”
If it had been the first time he was asked this question, he would have needed a moment to think of the best answer. But after having just come from the warden’s office, he knew exactly what to say.
“I don’t remember.”
The doctor scribbled something into a notepad on his desk, then looked up at the man sitting across from him and said, “A lot of people come in suffering from memory loss. It can be part of a much more serious mental problem.”
The time traveler thought back to how lucky he had been to pass through the Tyranny’s checkpoints without being pulled out of line, how fortunate he had been just to go undetected by the AeroCams and make it to the site where he would be sent back in time. The Thinkers, himself included, had to be absolutely diligent in making sure none of them said or did anything in the weeks leading up to their departure that would be overheard by the Tyranny’s vast array of microphones and cameras. They spoke in codes that sounded like normal conversation. They referred to each other by nicknames that sounded like actual people or places.
There had been so much hope in the eyes of the ten men who had lined up against the stone wall to be sent back in time. Now, if the averages held up, seven of those men had died immediately after disappearing from their own time. Only three of them would have a chance at preventing the Tyranny. One of them might be sent back too far in time, reappearing in the age of dinosaurs or primitive man. One of them could easily be sent back too little in time, reappearing minutes or hours before he left instead of decades. Only one of the ten men would have a legitimate chance at changing the path of the future away from a reality in which the rich and powerful were excused for their crimes while everyone else could be found guilty of crimes they didn’t even commit, where the leaders passed laws that rewarded the men who had gotten them elected and punished everyone else. And the wars, spreading blood across the entire world. Always the wars.
Now, instead of having a chance at giving his parents and his brother a different life, he would spend the rest of his life in a padded room, his arms tied to his sides, yelling about how he needed to be set free so he could change the world. If he weren’t already crazy, they would make sure he turned out to be. It was sheer lunacy.
He thought about darting out of the doctor’s office, back down the hallway he had been led through, and out the front door into the San Francisco streets. But he knew the bull of a man would be just outside the door, waiting for that exact kind of desperate act. And then his fate would be sealed because trying to escape from a mental hospital, even if it was only for a routine exam, would mean he had to be crazy. Instead of preventing the Tyranny, he would have to eat mashed potatoes with his bare hands because he wouldn’t be trusted with holding a fork or spoon for fear of what he might try to do with it.
“That may be true,” the time traveler said, “but I already had a preliminary evaluation at Alcatraz”—he doubted the doctor would call to see if this was true—“and they gave me a clean bill of health. They sent me here just to see if you could help jog my memory.”
The two men stared at each other for a moment. To the doctor’s credit, he had probably heard the same line before from genuinely crazy individuals, but the time traveler hoped a trained professional would be able to differentiate a crazy man from a sane one just by looking at his eyes. The time traveler also knew that nothing the doctor might say or do would be able to bring his memory back because he had never lost it.
“And if you can’t help with my memory,” he added, “I would think the next step would be for me to go to the police station to see if there were any missing person’s notices.”
“Just you relax,” Dr. Martin said. “We’ll determine the next steps for you.” And then he smiled, revealing a line of mismatched, yellow teeth. “Since you cannot remember your name, is there anything you would like me to call you in the meantime?”
Was there any harm in picking his real name if it was only temporary?
“Winston seems as fine a name as any other,” he said, after a rubbing his chin and looking up at the ceiling.
“Okay, Winston. Very good. It’s nice to make your acquaintance. Why don’t we start by you telling me the last thing you remember?”
“I don’t remember anything before coming to in the water.”
“Complete amnesia?”
“Yes.”
“That’s very rare indeed. Even with some kind of head trauma, there is only limited amnesia, not an entire life.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve found that in most cases, people claiming to have complete amnesia are suffering from some kind of delusion.”
Here it comes, Winston thought.
“Do you hear other voices? Do you see people no one else can see?”
“No.”
“Do you think people are out to get you?”
Winston shook his head. If Dr. Martin had any idea about how the Tyranny’s men really had been out to get him, he wouldn’t ask such silly questions.
“What is your favorite color?”
Jesus Christ, Winston thought. Is this guy for real? If I say red does it mean I’m crazy? Is the doctor just looking for a reason to lock me up? Are other Thinkers locked in padded cells just because they appeared out of nowhere one day and happened upon a medical professional who wanted more patients?
“What’s your favorite color?” Winston said.
“I don’t have one,” Dr. Martin said, smiling.
Winston returned the smile. “Mine changes from day to day.”
“Right now, would you say you’re more nervous or more paranoid?”
“Neither.” And then, for good measure, “I’m just eager to return to my old life. Whatever that was.”
“Why did the guards at Alcatraz have to subdue you when they first found you?” Dr. Martin said, nodding with his eyes toward the lump and gash on the side of Winston’s temple that had required seven stitches to close.
“They didn’t have to. They were confused and thought I might be an escaping convict.”
The doctor scribbled more notes. “Can you see how that story may sound fanciful? You just happened to wash ashore at a Federal penitentiary, without your memory?”
Winston took a deep breath. It was very possible that
no matter what he said, even if he could prove without a doubt that he was sane, Dr. Martin would call for the ox of a man and have their guest dragged away to a cell where no one would ever see him again.
“You’re right. If someone told me the story, I’d be skeptical myself. But imagine how I feel, since it really did happen to me.” And then, before the doctor could write something else into his notepad: “But I made a friend of the warden. In only a few hours we became good buddies. He even invited me to his house to have supper with him and his wife. And he seemed like a pretty good judge of character.”
The lies could easily be disproven. All it would take was one call from the doctor to the warden, in which he asked if the dinner invitation had taken place, for the entire story to fall apart. But it was important to let Dr. Martin know, before his impulse to lock up everyone who came through the door became too strong, that someone on the outside world would be expecting to hear from him again. That thought, that the doctor’s new toy might bring people looking for him, would be the only thing keeping Winston out of the mental institution for the rest of his life.
Dr. Martin scratched at the side of his nose, then picked at his finger, and Winston saw that it was infected after weeks, if not months and years, of being picked at. The doctor pulled a long strip of a hangnail away from his finger, then let it fall to the floor. The finger began bleeding again. Dr. Martin saw his guest looking at it and immediately hid it under his desk.
“So, you made a favorable impression on the warden?” he said, not smiling, all traces of congeniality gone.
The doctor stared through Winston as if seeing the possibility of all the things he could have done to a new resident. Electroshock therapy until Winston was making up memories just so he was left alone. Weeks at a time in a cell without any human interaction just so the doctor could see what it did to his patient. And in some other reality, those things may have been exactly what did happen to Winston. But not this one.
“Well, you made the same impression on me,” the doctor said, gritting the words through his teeth. “I’ll have one of the nurses contact the police department. They’ll send someone by to pick you up and you can go from there.”
“Thank you,” Winston said, standing up, ready to head back to the lobby.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What’s that?”
Now it was the doctor’s turn to extend a hand. “Normal people, people who aren’t deviant from society’s norms, shake hands with one another.”
“Of course,” Winston said, and did just that.
On his way back to the lobby, he noticed Dr. Martin’s blood, from the open wound on his infected finger, and wiped it on the bare white walls before he walked through the doorway and out into fresh air. He was more than content to wait on the front steps until a police officer arrived. Above him, the grotesque stone children lining the psychiatric hospital beckoned him to reconsider and stay a while longer. Across from him, the stone angel above the Bank of California laughed at him.
“What a weird world people make for themselves,” Winston said, trying to find anything else to look at other than stone monsters.
18 – Secret Societies
Year: 1961
Dulles looked at his clock. A pattern had formed: he was still behind his desk after everyone else had gone home for the day. Dinner would be cold by the time he got back to see his wife. She would be spending most of the evening alone, as she did too often these days. Life wasn’t supposed to be like this. He had put in his time. All the hours he had spent earlier in life doing the things no one else wanted to be associated with. All the travel. Working seven days a week. It was supposed to have been so he could relax in his later years and enjoy everything money could buy. And yet here he was, with still more work to do before he could pack up his suitcase and turn off his office light.
When his phone rang, he actually thought about ignoring it. No one called his direct line, however, unless it was urgent. And no one called it this late at night unless it required immediate attention.
“Hello?” he said, trying to sound enthusiastic.
He listened for a moment, then reached across his desk to a pile of folders he had not yet gotten to.
“When was this?” he said. “Last night? To the Newspaper Publishers Association?”
He put his left hand to his temple. With the caller still talking, Dulles scanned the transcripts of JFK’s speech the previous night, April 27, to a room full of men and women in the newspaper business.
He had to reread each sentence a second time because the voice on the other end of the phone wouldn’t shut up and kept breaking his concentration. “Hang on, dammit, I’m reading it now.” Then, he added, “I’m sorry, it’s been a long day. I’m getting too old for this.”
The throbbing in his head only grew worse as he continued to read. After his opening, the president was quoted as saying:
The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.
Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.
That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.
The voice on the other end of the phone started saying something else.
“I haven’t gotten there yet. Let me finish reading.”
As soon as he looked back down at the typed speech, Dulles saw what the caller was talking about. Kennedy went on to say that although there was no active war, the country, the country’s way of life, was under attack. No war, he said, had ever posed a greater risk to the country than the secret threat he was referring to. And then he saw what the caller was referring to in particular:
For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.
“My lord,” Dulles mumbled, “This Kennedy thinks he’s a god.”
JFK went on to ask the men and women in attendance for their help in fighting this secret war by informing the people and making sure they had all the facts about the men in the shadows, who were not elected, but still held incredible power.
As the man on the other end of the phone started talking again, Dulles read that Kennedy ended by telling his audience, “With your help, man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.”
“I know,” the Director of Central Intelligence said. “I know. But let’s give him some time. He’ll come around.”
Dulles pulled the phone away from his ear when the man on the other side began to yell.
Once the barking was done, Dulles said, “We can tell people h
e was talking about Communism. They’ll believe it.”
This put the caller at ease somewhat, but Dulles still held the phone with his hand instead of letting it rest against his shoulder so he could quickly move it away if the caller began to scream again.
Dulles said, “No one will care about this speech a week from now. We can make things escalate in Cuba. That will show people he was surely talking about the Russians. And it will distract him from more important matters. Maybe, after he cools off, he’ll come around and start to see things our way.”
He listened for a long while as the caller went on and on. As important as he knew all of this was, Dulles wished he could just hang up the phone and go home.
“I know,” the director said when the caller was done lecturing him. “But let’s give him a chance. It’s easier than the alternative.”
When the call was over, Dulles knew it wouldn’t be very long before he would have all the time he wanted to spend with his wife at their luxurious home. He couldn’t do what Kennedy wanted, disband the group of people working to stop any time traveler from interfering with the country, which would mean he would either be dismissed or have to retire. But he also couldn’t see himself doing what the caller had insinuated. Was he losing his touch? He had no qualms about sending his men into countries and weakening their governments until there were riots in the streets, bloodshed, women and children dead. That was part of the business. He had no problem signing off on the orders to have other countries’ elected leaders poisoned or gunned down. But what he was being told to do now was different. It was his own leader. It was his country’s leader. If he signed off on this, it was proof that nothing was off limits, that there was nothing the men who really controlled things wouldn’t do to stay in power.
The Theta Prophecy Page 13
