The Mind Game

by Norman Spinrad

  I think this is an awful lot of highfalutin’ bullshit over a bunch of crummy commercials, Weller thought. But he smiled back at her, and said, “Transformationalism optimizes consciousness, so you can hardly expect the product to get the message across if the people making it aren’t turned on creatively.” How’s that for party-line bullshit? But he couldn’t help throwing in a zinger. “Of course, just as talent is no substitute for dedication, dedication is no substitute for talent”

  “But processing releases the talent in everyone,” Georgie insisted.

  “It can’t release what isn’t there.”

  “That sounds like an elitist remark,” Shano said self-righteously.

  “Aren’t we an elite?” Weller replied, looking straight at Sara. “Can you set out to transform the world and not consider yourself an elite?”

  Sara’s eyes flashed something at him. “I never thought of it that way,” she said.

  “That’s bullshit,” Shano said. “Transformationalism is open to everyone. The whole idea is to transform the total consciousness of all the people.”

  But Sara wasn’t paying any attention to Shano. Something was vibrating in the air between her and Weller. An instant later he felt her calf against his and knew it was real. Was this a game, or was she really attracted to him? With her flesh touching his, at the moment he didn’t give a damn. She was sucking up what he was saying, and she was giving him an unambiguous sexual signal, and it gave him a heightened sense of his own being much like what he felt when he was directing well, and he would bloody well ride it and let them cope with him for a change.

  “Transformationalism is no democracy,” he said. “Any more than a shooting set is. If we believe we can improve the consciousness of the public, and we’re trying to sell that to them, and being Machiavellian about it in the bargain, then we’re functioning as an elite, whether we have the balls to admit it to ourselves or not.”

  “I never thought of it that way before,” Sara said, rubbing her leg against Weller’s.

  “Maybe you should be a Monitor … ,” Shano muttered. “What did you mean by that?” Sara snapped, suddenly removing her leg from contact with Weller’s flesh.

  “I dunno,” Shano mumbled. “It just came out.”

  Abruptly Weller felt angered, frustrated, yet above it all. Perhaps it was the withdrawal of Sara’s sexual attention, but now they all seemed like characters in a film he was directing. He knew their motivations and where their reactions were coming from, but he himself was the unmoved mover. Some perverse and perhaps cruel impulse made him want to push them just a wee bit further. He had been manipulated and evaluated for so long that it gave him a long-lost sense of power to play director, to keep things stirred up.

  “I can see where Shano’s coming from” he said. “I mean, that is where the Monitors are at, isn’t it? They do function as an elite, and they’re not exactly shy about it. And they’re functioning as an elite in relation to us, now aren’t they?” Sara flushed. “The Monitors perform a necessary function,” she said tightly. But her eyes did not exactly portray total conviction. Of course not! Weller thought. She’s supposed to be the head honcho, and there’s old Karel peering constantly over her shoulder and overruling her whenever he feels like it.

  “Exactly, Sara,” Weller said evenly. “And their necessary function is to guide us with superior insight. They’re Transformationalism’s elite, the level above us.”

  “I never thought of the Monitors as superior beings,” Sara said indignantly.

  “Really?” Weller oozed. “They’re closer to John. He chooses them, trains them, and puts them in the position they’re in. If you don’t regard them as higher consciousnesses, why obey them? Just because you’re afraid of them?”

  “I’m not afraid of Owen Karel,” Sara insisted, with zero conviction.

  They were all looking at Weller very peculiarly now, and he wasn’t quite sure just what it was he was doing. But whatever it was, it had sure hit a nerve!

  “Hey, man,” Shano said nervously, “What kind of game are you playing? Why are you running this number?”

  “I’m not running any number,” Weller said sweetly. “I’m just being sincere. I respect the superior consciousness of the Monitors.” He paused, lowered his voice an octave. “What’s the matter? Don’t you?”

  “Maybe you should be a Monitor,” Georgie said, and in his eyes was the clearly written thought: maybe you are. So that’s it! Weller thought, laughing inwardly. They’re seeing Monitors under their beds. I’ve really succeeded in making them paranoid!

  He gave a throaty, ambiguous chuckle. “Should I be called upon to serve . …” he said slyly.

  Sara looked sideways at Weller. What was that look in her eyes? Admiration? Lust? A new kind of respect? Or was it fear? Weller had a flash of insight into what it must be like to be a dedicated Transformationalist, an insider like Sara, wielding power over those below you but always looking over your shoulder and wondering. Fearing the Monitors, resenting them, but prevented by your very belief from even admitting it to yourself.

  “I think it’s time to get back to work,” Sara said uneasily. Weller wondered if she would dare report this little conversation to the Monitors.

  He wondered if she dared not to.

  Ceremoniously Sylvia unplugged the headband jack from the brainwave monitor, slowly took the electrode band off Weller’s head, and placed it on the table between them. Weller could anticipate her words before she said them, for Garry Bailor had called the shot two days ago. “Congratulations, Jack, you’ve completed your meditative deconditioning. ”

  It had been the only positive thing about his last meeting with Bailor. “They’re not making any money off you now,” Bailor had said, “so they have no reason to prolong it. And from what you tell me about this life-analysis thing, it seems to be mainly a matter of trying to determine whether or not the programming has really taken hold.”

  “So now what?”

  “Now you’ve got to get past this Gomez character,” Bailor said.

  “How am I supposed to do that?” Weller asked. “He’s ten times sharper than any of the other bozos I’ve had to deal with. He’s getting reports on me from Karel, from Sara English, from God-knows-who-else, and I can’t even figure out what the right answers are supposed to be.”

  Bailor seemed to shrink backward across the couch away from him, coolly distancing himself from the whole damn situation.

  “I told you, I don’t know a damn thing about what goes on at this level,” he said. “You’re in deeper than anyone I’ve ever worked with. ”

  “That’s a big fucking help!” Weller said angrily.

  Bailor shrugged. “Seems to me you re the expert at this point, not me. The number you ran on them in the restaurant, giving them a little paranoia about maybe you being a Monitor, was something I never would’ve thought of, and professionally speaking, I think it was probably brilliant. It should make whatever reports they turn in on you as bland and nonforthcoming as they can get away with. But dealing with Monitor interrogation techniques. …”

  He seemed to cringe, and inch even further away from Weller, as if Weller had some loathsome disease. “I don’t know anything about it, and I don’t want to know anything about it. To tell you the truth, this is getting a little heavy for me.”

  “Really?” Weller snarled. “And what about me?”

  “You’re the guy with the motivation, I’m just a hired gun,” Bailor said coldly. “This is your life, but to me it’s just another job. I can’t afford to get in too deep. I walk a thin line as it is.”

  A cold fear insinuated itself into Weller’s anger. “Are you saying you’re going to bug out on me, Bailor?” he said. “You want to give me my fifteen hundred dollars back?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Bailor said quietly. “I just mean there’s a line I won’t cross. I’m not going to do anything to get the Monitors interested in me.” He smiled falsely. “Look, this stage of the game
is your trip, not mine. It’s an acting problem. Gomez is your audience, and you know what part you have to play for him. You’re the film director, you know this stuff. Maybe what you’ve got to use is, what do they call it, Method Acting. If you don’t know enough to fool this guy by presenting the surfaces you think he wants to see, then internalize the part; don’t act, be.”

  “Thank you Lee Strasberg,” Weller had muttered, and he had left soon thereafter; disappointed, pissed off, a little worried about the depth of Bailor’s commitment and the real extent of his expertise.

  But now he had to admit that Bailor, for all his deficiencies and apparent cowardice, was basically right. What else was there to do? Hadn’t that been what he had been doing since he went to work for Changes Productions? Hadn’t his performance reached a certain peak in the coffee shop?

  He had played Jack-Weller-the-convert so well that he had gotten real converts to wondering if he might be a Monitor. And it hadn’t been a piece of calculated surface acting; it had come bubbling up out of him unbidden. He had really synced into the part, operating at optimum consciousness. And somehow, at least temporarily, it had given him the power.

  Maybe I should ride with it, he thought, looking across the brainwave monitor at the smiling Sylvia. I seem to have convinced her and her damned machine.

  “Well, how about that,” Weller said genially. “I’ve made it.”

  “Well, of course, there are further levels, further processes,” Sylvia said. “But now that you’re in Monitor life analysis, they’ll decide what you go on to next, when you’re ready for it.”

  “Tell me,” Weller said with crafted spontaneity, “have you ever processed a Monitor?”

  “A Monitor?” Sylvia said, her face screwing up into an expression of uneasy surprise, almost of outraged propriety.

  “Sure. I mean, someone has to give the Monitors their meditative deconditioning, right?”

  Sylvia seemed to relax slightly. “Oh,” she said, “you mean have I ever processed someone who later became a Monitor? Yes, a few times. But you surely don’t suppose that actual Monitors receive processing on my level!”

  “Well, who does give Monitors the processing that makes them Monitors?”

  “Er … ah … the Monitors themselves, I suppose … maybe even John … I don’t really know. …” She seemed really shook. “Why are you asking me all these questions about the Monitors?” she said more sharply.

  Weller shrugged diffidently. “I guess because I think they’re fascinating people,” he said. He rose, suddenly took her hand, and shook it. Sylvia’s hand was limp and unresponsive, and she was eyeing him most peculiarly. “Don’t you think they’re fascinating people?” he said, with smarmy sincerity. “Don’t you admire their heightened awareness?”

  Sylvia could find nothing to say to that.

  “Well, I’ve got to go to my life-analysis session now,” Weller said breezily. “It’s been nice working with you.”

  And he left her standing there, wooden-faced, having suddenly been dismissed by him, thinking God-knows-what. I’ve really found something that keeps these nerds off-balance, Weller thought buoyantly, as he took the elevator to the seventh floor of the Center.

  If only it could work on Gomez. But why couldn’t it? Somehow fascination with the Monitors had become a piece of the part he was playing, one of those little schticks that appear from nowhere and give a performance unexpected depth. Why not keep it? Maybe even Gomez isn’t immune to flattery.

  When he entered room 703, Gomez tracked him with his eyes as he walked to his chair with a very strange expression on his face, as if Weller were some exotic and rarely seen animal. He sat there studying Weller silently for long moments while Weller gave him the old Transformationalist Stare back.

  “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you, Weller?” he finally said.

  “Am I?”

  “Come off it, Weller. What was that number you ran on Sara English and her flunkies?”

  “What number?” Weller asked innocently.

  Gomez shook his head sourly. “What number? You’ve got them half convinced you’re a Monitor, and you ask me what number?”

  Weller shrugged. “I’m not responsible for what goes on in other people’s heads,” he said.

  “Cut this shit out!” Gomez snarled. “Stop jacking me off! I’ve got the reports. What was all that crap about the Monitors?”

  Weller shrugged. In for a dime, in for a dollar, he decided. “All I remember saying is that I thought the Monitors were an elite because they had a higher level of Transformational consciousness,” he said blandly.

  Gomez pursed his lips and rolled his eyes briefly toward the ceiling. “You expressed an awful lot of enthusiasm for Monitor discipline,” he said.

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Motherfucker!” Gomez hissed under his breath. Then, in clipped, controlled tones: “You know damn well what the general attitude is toward the Monitors inside the movement. They’re afraid of us. They resent us. Nobody accepts Monitor discipline with enthusiasm.”

  “I do,” Weller insisted.

  Gomez groaned. “All right,” he said, “we ll play your little game. Suppose you explain your loving devotion to the Monitors.”

  It seemed to Weller that Gomez really was off-balance, that he had never heard anything like this before, that he couldn’t have gamed this one out beforehand. It seemed that he had at least temporarily gained the initiative, that he was finally confronting his interrogator on a more or less equal footing. You’re sharp, he thought, but you’re no superman, Gomez.

  “I’ll be honest with you,” Weller said, at least half truthfully. “Until I ran into you, there wasn’t anyone in the movement who impressed me as a superior type, someone with as much or more on the ball as me. But I can’t outthink you, and I can’t figure out what you’re thinking, and I’ve got to respect that. It fascinates me. It proves to me that my consciousness really can be improved by processing because frankly, I don’t think you were born with a better brain than mine. ”

  “That’s a fancy brand of manteca you’ve got there,” Gomez said sardonically. But his voice had no real edge to it, and Weller sensed a certain fascination with what he was saying behind those hard eyes. How could Gomez not be intrigued? In his own mind he had to believe that what Weller was saying was true, yet it was also the grossest form of fawning flattery. Gomez knew both aspects, and the personal paradox had to make him feel pretty damn ambivalent.

  “I’m a hard case,” Weller said, boring in. “You’ve as much as admitted it yourself. When I lock horns with a harder case, I’ve got to be impressed. Or don’t you think you’re as good as I do?”

  “Cute, Weller, very cute,” Gomez leaned back and drummed his fingers on the dossier in front of him. “As long as we’re whispering sweet nothings to each other, I’ve got to admit that you’re a hard one to figure out too. Your motivations for joining Transformationalism were transparently hostile. Yet all the reports come out clean. A competent processor says you’ve successfully completed meditative deconditioning. You feed me all the right responses. …” He shook his head ruefully.

  “But … ?” Weller said.

  “But I don’t trust you, Weller, I don’t trust you at all. I can’t find any reason to declare you a regressive, but I can’t certify you either.”

  “Sounds like you don’t have enough faith in what you’re working for,” Weller said. “Sounds like maybe you’re not sure that Transformational processing works.”

  “Oh, bullshitl” Gomez snapped irritably. Then suddenly he became more reflective; his eyes became more inward-directed, his voice softer.

  “I’ll level with you,” he said. “There’s no question that in general, Transformational processing does work. In general. But you’re a so-called creative type, and we’ve found that most people like you have a very strong resistance to the idea of being processed. People who work with their minds are afraid of losing their talent if they
let someone play with their heads.

  “Besides,” he said more sharply, “you’re a director. You know acting. You’re into creating fictions. In short, you’re a professional bullshitter. And I get the feeling you’re playing some kind of game with me right now. ”

  Jesus, have I outsmarted myself? Weller wondered. Have I gone too far? Or would he have the same suspicions about me no matter what I did? At least this way it’s out in the open… .

  “But if I am sincere, I’d be saying the same things, wouldn’t I?” he said. “The reports would read the same.”

  “So they would,” Gomez said slowly.

  “And you do have to reach a decision… . And Harry Lazio is anxious for me to start directing. …”

  “I don’t have to answer to no Harry Lazio!” Gomez snapped. “But you do have to answer to someone, you do have to decide,” Weller said. “In a court of law I’d be innocent unless proven guilty. …”

  “This isn’t a court of law, Weller,” Gomez said. “No one passes a Monitor life analysis until we’re certain. Period.”

  My God, what have I done? Weller thought. He had a vision of being trapped in this room forever, chewing over the same material with Gomez again and again, locked in a permanent stalemated life analysis. “We’ve reached an impasse?” he said dully.

  Gomez laughed. His demeanor brightened, and once again he seemed impenetrable and on top of things. “Well, well, well,” he said mockingly, “it’s still possible for our little Monitor lover to underestimate us, is it? No, Weller, we haven’t reached an impasse. We have our ways. Well get at the truth, never fear.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Weller said, putting as much sincerity in his voice as the sudden sinking sensation in his stomach would allow.

  “Are you, Weller? Are you really?”

  “I know where I’m coming from, and I want to convince you. What do I have to be afraid of?”

  Gomez laughed again. “What indeed?” he said. “Well, we’ll soon see.”

  “What’s going to happen now?”

  Gomez gave him the Transformationalist Stare, and this time Weller had neither the energy nor the will to resist. He found himself looking across the desk into those hard, unwavering eyes—transfixed, and more than a little frightened.