The Mind Game

by Norman Spinrad

  The dining room was set up like a high-school lunchroom, or, Weller thought darkly, like something in a prison. There was a line of steam tables behind a counter that ran the length of one wall, and the rest of the room was filled with rows of long tables and cheap plastic chairs. Privacy was a hit-or-miss “—really a bitch eptifying my consciousness behind that one. It’s my major block—”

  No one seemed to be talking about the Dodgers, politics, dope, sex, career, movies, or anything else that didn’t relate to Transformationalism. Could it really be that these people had no private inner lives, nothing beyond the Transformationalist programs they were running on?

  He glided to the periphery of a group of four: a dark-haired woman in her late twenties seated on a couch with an intense-eyed young man with a strange 1950s crew cut, two other men standing in front of the couch talking to them, one with longish blond hair, the other a burly type in T-shirt and jeans. “—of course, it’s just a rumor—”

  “—sounds possible, and everyone knows they’re doing things at the Institute years ahead of anywhere else—”

  “—assuming thoughts do have a one-to-one relationship with brain waves, I don’t see why you couldn’t produce a given state of consciousness by reversing the polarity of a brainwave monitor—”

  “—but John doesn’t make that assumption anywhere—”

  “—doesn’t say no, either—”

  The woman on the couch looked up at Weller; she was thin, plain-looking, and something about her face made her eyes seem as if they were set too close together. “Hi,” she said, “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

  Weller nodded noncommittally.

  “Have you heard anything about the brainwave inducer?”

  “Not much,” Weller said ambiguously.

  “Are you into mind-matter interface theory?” the woman asked. “None of us really are. Do you know if it’s even possible to produce a state of consciousness electronically?” Weller shrugged. “I’m in the media end myself,” he said. The blond longhair looked at him strangely. “You work for Changes?”

  Weller nodded.

  “What do you do?”

  “I direct.”

  There was an intake of breath; they were suitably impressed, but there seemed to be something more, a certain tension seemed to have descended on the little group. “Then what are you doing here?” the woman asked.

  “Just following a life directive.”

  “That’s weird,” the crew cut said. “That’s really weird. There’s no one else on that level living here.”

  The four of them studied Weller guardedly. I’m older, I’m in a position way above them, and there’s no one else here like me, Weller thought. It must be more Monitor paranoia. He resisted the impulse to play to it; this was definitely a time to maintain a low profile, and for all he knew, one of them could be a Monitor.

  “So it goes,” he said, shrugging, and drifted off, leaving what he was pretty sure would be an altered conversation behind him.

  Weller glided in and out of a few more conversations— a discussion about a young man’s problems with getting his parents to accept his commitment to the movement, a disputation about the significance of a minor character in Transformational Man, a rehash of last night’s role-reversal game—all of which served only to increase his sense of alienation.

  This really was a roomful of people who ate, slept, and drank Transformationalism. More than that, the people living at the Center seemed to be the very bottom end of the movement—shiftless, confused kids without a pot to piss in or a dime to contribute to Transformationalism’s coffers. Scooped up as Steinhardt’s slavies as they might have been by the Hare Krishna movement or the Jesus Freaks, had they happened to be caught by those wavelengths first. The psychic lumpenproletariat of the seventies.

  One night of trying to relate to that had been enough for Weller. Better to stay in his room twiddling his thumbs than put himself in a situation where he would be bound to shoot his mouth off sooner or later. There was no way he could keep talking about Transformationalism with these lads without finally telling them a thing or two or being tempted to play Monitor, and they didn’t seem to talk about anything else. And he knew that the Monitors would be getting reports on anything he said to anyone.

  Six-twenty. Time to drift down to the dining room, he thought. If I’m in luck, they’ll let me keep to myself. Though he had a hunch that if he seemed to be making an effort to keep to himself, it would be a black mark in a dossier somewhere too.

  The dining room was set up like a high-school lunchroom, or, Weller thought darkly, like something in a prison. There was a line of steam tables behind a counter that ran the length of one wall, and the rest of the room was filled with rows of long tables and cheap plastic chairs. Privacy was a hit-or-miss proposition, a matter of picking an empty stretch of table and hoping it didn’t fill up after you sat down. About a dozen people were already eating, and the line by the counter was already fifteen people long, so the chances of being left alone didn’t look too good.

  Weller took a tray and dinnerware, waited dully on line for a few minutes, and finally got his turn at the steam tables. The choice, as it had been every night, was pretty grim. Poisonous-looking tamale pie. Spaghetti with lumpy meat sauce. Knockwurst and sauerkraut. Macaroni salad. Some kind of ghastly bile-green vegetarian stew with brown rice. The food was as cheap and crummy as it could get without inciting a revolution, even among these dedicated servants of the movement. Reluctantly, Weller settled for the knockwurst and kraut, macaroni salad, and coffee and scouted around for an unobtrusive comer where he might have a chance to be left alone. ’

  People were scattered pretty evenly around the room, but there was a stretch of about a dozen empty seats at the end of a table near a big garbage bin. Weller went over and took an end seat right by the garbage, hoping that would be unattractive enough to keep away his fellow inmates.

  But he hadn’t managed to get down more than a few forkfuls of macaroni salad and a single bite of knockwurst when a pimply young man and a guy about his own age sat right down across the table and introduced themselves with friendly enthusiasm.

  “Hi,” said the kid. “I’m Tod and this is Harry.”

  “You’re new here,” said Harry, “and we noticed you weren’t mixing much, so we thought we’d help you get acquainted. ”

  “I remember what it was like my first few days here,” Tod said sympathetically. “I didn’t know anyone, and I figured everyone else had had much more processing than I did and wouldn’t be very much interested in a lower consciousness like mine.”

  Despite his better judgment Weller found himself warming to them a bit—it had been a lonely four days, and they were apparently just trying to be friendly. “I’m Jack,” he said, but he still didn’t feel like saying more.

  “How much processing have you had?” Tod asked conversationally.

  “Block-auditing and meditative deconditioning,” Weller muttered.

  “You’ve completed meditative deconditioning?” Harry asked.

  Weller nodded.

  “How long did it take?”

  “About a month.”

  Both of them looked quite impressed, even amazed. “I topk the crash course,” Weller explained.

  Harry turned green with envy. “You must have a lot of money. I’d love to be able to do that, but I’m broke, and I’m working my way through processing doing the usual shit work, and that only gets me two sessions a week. I want to be a processor, but you’ve got to go all the way through meditative deconditioning before they’ll even consider you, and at this rate it’s going to take me at least another two months.”

  Very interesting, Weller thought. Apparently the amount of free processing you get depends on how much they value the work you’re doing for them. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch here! “I’m not rich,” he said. “I’m working my way through too. ” He was trying to be just one of the boys, but he was beginning to real
ize that people who got sucked in through the Celebrity Center got much different treatment than the peons all the way down the line.

  “What kind of work are you doing for the movement?” Tod asked.

  “I’m working for Changes Productions. As a director. ”

  “Wow. ”

  Now they were really impressed. Shit. No doubt everyone in the center would know about it by tomorrow. He was being trapped into becoming a local celebrity, and he didn’t like it at all.

  “Then you must’ve passed life analysis,” Harry said. “Was it rough?”

  Uh-oh. It was a delicate moment. If he told them the truth, they would think something very strange was going on, but if he lied and told them he had passed life analysis, it would get right back to the Monitors, and that would probably be a heavy black mark. “Pretty rough,” he said. “In fact, I’m not quite through.”

  They both looked at him narrowly. “And they’re letting you direct?” Harry said suspiciously. “I’ve never heard anything like that before.”

  Weller tried a different shrug. “I’m a pro,” he said. “I’ve done network directing. Changes Productions has an awful lot of work. I guess they just figured they needed me to help out right away.”

  “Far out,” Tod said. “Maybe I’ve seen something you’ve done?” But the older man’s gaze was still lidded; either he sniffed the odor of the Monitors, or he was jealous, or both.

  “I hope not,” Weller said dryly. “It’s all been Saturday-morning garbage kiddie shows.”

  “Wow, it must be a big change doing real work for the movement then,” Tod said. “I hope I’ll find something that important to do. ”

  “They seem to be able to eptify your contribution,” Weller said. “I’m sure they’ll find you the maximized slot.” Jargon, anyone?

  “You must’ve met some of the real high-consciousness people,” Harry said with open envy. “What are they really like?”

  “I’ve met Benson Allen and Harry Lazio,” Weller said, glancing at his watch. It was getting time to end this little chit chat before it got into dangerous areas. The way these guys were forcing the conversation, they could be Monitors. “They’re about what you’d expect—high-powered, together people.”

  “Hey, maybe you’d like to come to our rap session tonight,” Tod said. “We’re going to have a block auditor talking about cultural correlations of block patterns.”

  “Sounds interesting,” Weller muttered. “But I’ve got to be on the set early tomorrow, and I’m down for dishwashing. ” He checked his watch again, this time conspicuously. “In fact, I’d better get going. Been nice talking to you.”

  “We’ll see you around,” Harry said. “Maybe we can really talk sometime. I’d really like to know what life analysis is all about.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Weller said, getting up and shoveling his scraps into the garbage bin. He sighed as he moved off toward the dish-stacking area. Who would’ve thought I’d ever be glad to go spend an hour washing slimy dishes and cruddy pots? he thought. Well, it looks like I’m going to be forced to interact with these people whether I like it or not. As a local point of interest, yet. He had to admire the way Gomez had set up this test situation—there wasn’t going to be any place to hide.

  “Roll ’em!”

  “Brainwave Monitor, scene five, take two.”

  “Speed.”

  Weller surveyed the set for a moment. The meditative deconditioner was the real thing, so he had no trouble getting a credible performance out of her. The actor playing the client was a real client too, but he was also just enough of a professional to be having difficulty playing the client he really was without overacting. Weller had finally gotten around that by running through each take half a dozen times before he rolled any film, so that he was dulled enough to simply respond mechanically to the processor as he would in the real situation.

  The lighting was good—a whole order of magnitude better than anything Georgie or Shano had been able to do— a medium bright spot on the processor, soft backlighting for the client, establishing the relationship with a subtle visual image. The off-center and slightly low camera angle would give the whole scene an almost imperceptible larger-than-life iconographic quality. He was getting solid professional commercial footage, and he was getting it superfast by Changes Productions standards. Sara had to be pleased… .

  “Okay,” he shouted. “Action!”

  “You are walking along the beach, and far away over the surf you see an arm waving and hear a cry for help,” the processor said. “You’re not a good swimmer, but you dive into the water, going into the center of your fear to rescue the person in distress …”

  Then ten seconds of silent concentration on the part of the actor playing the client, which would seem like subjective minutes on film …

  Weller wasn’t even sure what they were going to do with this mini documentary on the brainwave monitor. The stuff they had given him to shoot would run about three minutes, but the script was full of interpolations like “narration to be added” and “insert stock footage,” so he didn’t even know how long the finished product would run, or even what it would be like.

  He cued the next line of dialogue.

  The client looked up, smiled gently, and said: “I felt physically afraid, but I did it. I really felt I was there, and I was able to conquer my physical fear. …”

  They’re really playing it close to the vest, Weller thought. Shoot these scenes like a good little boy, and we’ll slap some narration around them. Not only didn’t he have any creative control over content, the damn script didn’t even tell him what the eventual content would really be. It was almost a laboratory experiment designed to test his purely technical skills without letting him come within a mile of creative control. Almost a laboratory experiment?

  The processor nodded sagely. “The monitor showed that you really eptified your consciousness behind that scenario, Mr. Carson,” she said. “I think you’ll now find that you deal with physical fear much better in real time. We’re ready to go on to another block.”

  Good stuff, such as it is, Weller thought. They’ve got to be pleased with what I’m turning out. Unless some Monitor somewhere in analyzing my goddamn lighting and camera angles for subliminal regressiveness and disloyalty to the movement. That seemed like total paranoia, but around here total paranoia had a nasty way of coinciding with reality.

  “Cut!” Weller shouted. “Okay, very good folks, that’s a take. Well take a ten-minute break, and then go on to scene six.”

  Weller mopped his brow and walked over to the back of the sound stage where Georgie had been watching. He saw that Sara had walked in at some point and was standing beside him, looking pretty pleased.

  “That was very good, Jack,” she said. “You’re doing good work, and you’re really keeping ahead of the shooting schedule.” Ever since they had both been officially told that it was a no-no for them to go to bed together, she had been all business; she acted as if that little scene in her office had never been played. Which was all right as far as Weller was concerned; what physical attraction he had felt for her had been dissolved away by a distant contempt.

  “If you ask me,” Weller said, “the shooting schedules could stand to be tightened up around here. I mean, I don’t really feel I’m rushing anything.”

  “You’re really sharp,” Georgie said somewhat ruefully. “I don’t think the rest of us could work that fast; we just don’t have your experience. ”

  Weller felt like a bit of a shit; he really hadn’t meant to point out Georgie’s deficiencies as a director. “It takes time,” he said. “But you’ll learn, don’t worry about it.”

  “Well, anyway,” Sara said, “I just came here to tell you we’re all invited to a party Saturday night at the Steinhardt house.”

  “The Steinhardt house?” Weller said. “We’re going to meet John?”

  Georgie laughed. “No way,” he said. “John’s hardly ever there, and he never comes to his
wife’s parties.”

  Weller cocked an inquistive eyebrow at Sara.

  “The Steinhardts have a big house in Bel Air,” she said. “You could call it a mansion. John’s not there very often, but his wife Maria lives there, and she throws these really huge parties.”

  “I’ve been to a couple,” Georgie said. “They’re really something. Film people, movie stars, real jet set. You should love it.”

  “It sounds charming,” Weller said sardonically. Just what I need, a phony Hollywood party! He looked deliberately at Sara; some random impulse made him want to rub things in. “Will you be my date?” he asked.

  Sara frowned, but there wasn’t any real emotion in it. “You know I can’t do that,” she said. “We have our life directives.”

  “Not even a lousy date at a giant Hollywood party?” Weller teased. “Even if I swear not to make a pass at you?”

  Sara began fidgeting. “Please …” she said plaintively. “Well, then screw it!” Weller snapped petulantly. “I don’t want to go to some crummy Hollywood party anyway.”

  “You have to go,” Sara said.

  “Have to go? What the hell do you mean, I have to go?”

  “An invitation to one of Maria’s parties is like a life directive.”

  “What? What the hell kind of shit is that?”

  “That’s the way John wants it,” Georgie said reasonably, as if that were a logical explanation for anything.

  “John and Maria have a very complex relationship,” Sara said. “They don’t see each other very often, but they’re very close. Maria doesn’t have any official position in the movement, but she’s, well, Johns wife.”

  “Sounds like the ideal marriage,” Weller said sourly. “But why does she want us there?”

  Sara shrugged. “Maria likes crowds. She likes show-business people.” She smiled forlornly. “She’ll probably really like you,” she said.

  “Do you mean that the way I think you mean that?” Weller said.

  “It could happen,” Sara said quietly. “You can pick up your invitation in my office.”

  “And I really have to do this?”