The Mind Game

by Norman Spinrad

  Johnny paused dramatically and forked some food into his mouth. “Well, Transformationalism proceeded to go after his ass,” he said. “They sued him about a million times, and they sued the magazine that printed the pieces, and finally they started suing anyone who tried to publish anything he wrote. Never won anything in court, but they made him a very undesirable boy to publish, and they bankrupted him with lawyer bills.”

  Johnny shrugged. “I don’t know much more,” he said. “All I know is that these days Golden bombards every column and press agent in town with totally libelous stuff about Transformationalism. I mean, genuine lunacy. You know, they own GAC and MGM and Howard Hughes, and they control your phones and have half of Washington in their pocket, and they’re sending out secret control rays from the Capital Records Tower, and generally polluting everyone’s vital bodily fluids. He’s gone all the way round the bend.”

  “But apparently he does know a lot about Transformationalism,” Madge said.

  “Yeah, I mean, he’s spent the last couple of years totally obsessed with the subject,” Johnny said. He grinned wanly. “I suppose he must know a lot of real dirt too. Even paranoiacs have enemies.”

  “How can I get in touch with this guy?” Weller asked. Rays from the Capital Tower seemed a bit much, but there was little else that he didn’t believe possible when it came to the powers and tentacles of Transformationalism. If nothing else, this guy Golden might have some stuff that would go nicely with the Master Contact Sheet in his blackmail file. And something else made him want to meet the man; here, after all, was someone he could really talk to, crazy or not.

  “I could call him and set up an appointment,” Johnny said uncertainly. “If you really want to get involved in that insanity …”

  “You think I’m not involved already?” Weller said dryly. “Yeah, but you’re not down on your knees chewing the rug yet,” Johnny said. “I mean this guy is cray—zee!”

  “Please do it, Johnny,” Weller said. “I think I owe it to myself to look into it. ”

  “Okay,” Johnny said, “I’ll give it a try. But I don’t guarantee anything. I mean, Golden sees Transformationalist agents under every bed. It’ll take some convincing.”

  “That’s the name of your game, isn’t it?” Weller said. Johnny laughed. “So it is,” he said. “Give me a call about noon tomorrow, and 111 let you know how it goes.” He glanced at his watch. “Hey, it’s getting late. We’d better get the check or we won’t make it. Sure you won’t come along, Jack?”

  “No,” Weller said. “I really can’t. But thanks. Thanks for everything. ”

  “De nada” Johnny said. “Anything I can do to help.” He looked at Weller narrowly. “I mean, almost anything. Don’t you start hitting me with daily paranoia stories about Transformationalism, okay?”

  “Even if they’re true?” Weller asked.

  Johnny grimaced. “Especially if they’re true,” he said. “If there’s really a conspiracy out there controlling my vital bodily fluids from the Capital Tower with secret rays, this old boy doesn’t want to know about it. As far as I’m concerned, my clients already give me all the paranoia I can handle.”

  The address that Johnny Blaisdell had given Weller turned out to be a crumbling and sinister-looking apartment house on a slimy back street in Venice a couple of blocks from the beach; an area haunted by spectral hippies left over from the sixties, ghostly old beatniks left over from the fifties, and wasted junkies living very much in the perpetual now. Parking spaces at the beach were at a premium, so Weller had to park four blocks away and walk nervously down the dark streets, tensing every time he passed a shadowed alleyway.

  This is really the pits, he thought, as he climbed the crumbling flight of concrete stairs to the building entrance. He checked Golden’s apartment number on the mailbox—3C —and entered the building through the unlocked inner door, for there were no working buzzers.

  Up three flights of stairs smelling of old cooking grease and piss and into a dim hallway with peeling yellow paint and a series of doors, each one painted a different fading color.

  Three-C was painted battleship gray, and the door had a peephole and three locks in it.

  Weller banged sharply on the door, and a moment later there was an eye at the peephole. “Jack Weller,” he said, as per Johnny’s instructions, “the man from Changes.”

  Click! Slok! Blang! The sounds of locks being turned and bolts being thrown, and then the door opened. A gaunt figure wearing T-shirt and jeans stood there outlined in the dim light, with matted brown hair that looked as if it hadn’t been combed in a week, big sunken eyes, an etched beak of a nose, and a heavy five o’clock shadow.

  “I’m Rich Golden,” the man said. “Inside.”

  Weller stepped directly into a dark kitchen. He could make out the rough shapes of mounds of dirty dishes and pots heaped in the sink and more on the drainboard. His nostrils were assailed by the odors of old food scraps, garbage, and pot. Golden threw a bolt, turned three locks, and led him through a beaded archway into a kind of living-room-cum-office.

  There was a musty old couch heaped high with papers, files, newspapers, reels and cassettes of tape. There were two chairs, also heaped with paper and crud. There was a big fancy desk with a typewriter, a telephone, a complex tape-recorder rig, and a metal gooseneck lamp which cast a harsh cone of white light on more papers, files, newspapers, pictures, and tapes. Two walls were lined with filing cabinets, and the tops of the cabinets were piled nearly to the ceiling with more files and papers. The room was lighted by a naked bulb covered by a pink Japanese lantern. The air was blue with pot smoke. And the only two windows were completely covered with tinfoil.

  Golden casually cleared sitting space on the couch by dumping some heaps of papers, files, and tapes on the dusty floor. He sat down, lighted a half-smoked joint that had been sitting in an ashtray on the arm of the couch, exhaled smoke as Weller gingerly sat down, and said, “Let’s get on with the briefing.”

  “Briefing?” Weller said uncertainly.

  “Blaisdell told me your situation,” Golden said, “and he told me you wanted a briefing on Transformationalism. I’ve checked him out, and I don’t think he’s in on it, though of course you never can tell. If you’re paranoid, I could play back our conversation for you. Naturally I tape all my phone calls.”

  “Uh … I don’t think that’s necessary,” Weller said. Golden giggled nervously. “Right,” he said. “Tapes can be doctored anyway, so what would it prove? You wouldn’t believe what they can do with tapes.”

  Weller was having difficulty following the logic of Golden’s conversation, if indeed there were any. “Tapes? They?” Golden looked at him strangely. “Transformationalism,” he said. “The conspiracy. They can even synthesize your voice with a computer. They’ve got me making threatening crank calls all over town. Destroys the credibility of the real thing.” He pushed the burning joint at Weller. “Take a hit.”

  “No thanks,” Weller said. He was having enough trouble understanding what Golden was saying without getting stoned! “You really should,” Golden said. “It randomizes your synapses and keeps the programming from taking hold in your brain. Blocks the control waves too. I’ve been doing a lid a week since I got into this. It’s the only thing that keeps me autonomous. That’s why they are against legalization, you know. No? Yeah, well you don’t know what I know. But that’s why you’re here, right?”

  “Right,” Weller said. But he was beginning to wonder. So far, Richard Golden seemed crazy as a bedbug. He didn’t even know where to begin, what to ask. He felt totally disoriented.

  “Well, where do you want to start?” Golden asked. “The heaviest stuff? The snuffs?”

  “Snuffs?”

  “Wait a minute,” Golden said. “I’ll go get the snuff file file.” He got up, rummaged in his filing cabinets for a few minutes, and came back with two fat folders. He handed them to Weller. “Snuffs,” he said. “The first file is the certains. Second is t
he probables.”

  Weller leafed through the first file. There were newspaper clippings of murder stories, neatly typewritten lists of names and dates cross-indexed to the clippings, and pages of typed notes that seemed to be in some kind of code. The second file was more of the same, but there was a lot of weird stuff about the assassinations of JFK and Bobby Kennedy.

  “Surprises you, doesn’t it?” Golden said. “You can hardly believe it. But it’s all there in black and white. I estimate that they’ve done maybe a hundred snuffs. Including both Kennedys. Possibly King, too.”

  “What?”

  Golden laughed. “Right, you think I’m crazy, and I don’t blame you. But I’ve got evidence that both Sirhan and Oswald received Transformationalist processing. And how do you think Jack Ruby contracted cancer in prison? They can do it to you with rays. They’ve got all kinds of things at that Institute of theirs. Why do you think I’ve got tinfoil on my windows, huh?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Everyone thinks I’m crazy,” Golden said. “Even I think I’m crazy. That’s part of the technique. They don’t just discredit everyone who’s onto them, they try to turn you into a mental wreck so you stop believing it yourself. You want proof? Take a look at this!”

  He rummaged through his files again, muttering and cursing to himself, and came back with another folder. “This is hard investigative reporting,” he said. “I got myself a book contract on the basis of this material. It’s a file on the companies they control, though I certainly don’t guarantee that it’s complete yet. Some of them they own through fronts, some of them they control through key personnel. Take a look.”

  Weller looked through the neat compilation of lists, corporate letterheads, newspaper and magazine clippings, and carefully typed interview transcriptions with ever-growing unease. He recognized companies from the Utopia Industries listings in the lobby of their office building. He recognized companies and names from the Master Contact Sheet. There was no doubt that some of this stuff was true, and only a really top investigative reporter could have ferreted much of it out.

  But there was more, much more. Studios. General Motors subsidiaries. Names of local phone-company executives scattered throughout the country. Oil companies. Radio stations, TV stations, publishers, newspapers, and national magazines.

  Much of it he knew to be true. Some of it was so clearly fantastic that it had to be pure paranoia. But in between were dozens or even hundreds of companies and executives who might or might not be really under Transformationalist control. And all of it seemed to be the product of the same brand of very professional investigative reporting. Where could you draw the line between paranoia and horrible reality?

  “Well, what do you think about that?” Golden finally said.

  “Very impressive. Very scary,” Weller admitted. “And I’ve got confirmation of some of it. How in hell did you dig all this out?”

  “Professional secrets,” Golden said, taking a long drag off his joint. “I was one hell of an investigative reporter, I know how to dig out a story. And I’ve been at this full time for years. I wrote two dozen articles about it, and three of them were published, and people knew I was doing a book before they came down on me. People talked for a while. Before they started disappearing. Before they killed my book and kept my articles from being published. Whatever they do, they can’t keep me from doing what I know best. And someday … someday. …” Golden began to tremble. He balled his hands into fists, released them, did it again, four times in quick succession.

  He took a quick drag off his joint, bounded off the couch, and snatched four huge files off the top of one of the cabinets. He sat down and dropped them heavily on the floor in front of him.

  “Look at this shit!” he said shrilly. “Know what it is? My media files! Records of all the lawsuits they threw at me. Letters from magazines telling me they won’t publish what I write. Think I’m just being paranoid? I’ve also got records on three dozen writers, reporters, and TV newspeople that Transformationalism has beaten into the ground for daring to say anything about them. Lawsuits. People getting fired for no apparent reason and then never getting rehired. Reporters just disappearing, man! Getting cancer. Being committed to mental institutions. Bankruptcies. Phony dope raps.”

  Golden bounced off the couch and went to his desk. “Think I’m crazy, huh?” he said, touching his phone. “Well, maybe I am. They sure try hard enough. Phone calls in the middle of the night every night for months. Now they’re tapping it, and I think they’re sending subsonic vibrations—fourteen cycles a second, the panic frequency, look it up—through the dial tone. I may be crazy, but I’m not full of shit.”

  Golden abruptly seemed to calm himself somewhat. He sat back down on the couch. “Look,” he said, “Blaisdell told me what your situation was, otherwise I wouldn’t have taken this chance, not unless I knew you were really in danger, I mean, how do I know you’re not a Monitor, right? For that matter how do you know I’m not a Monitor? How do either of us know Blaisdell isn’t a Monitor … ?” Golden blinked, as if realizing that he was wandering.

  “Shit,” he said, sucking on his joint, “what I’m trying to tell you is that I come from the same place you do, is why I’m taking this chance. They sucked up Carla, my old lady, just like they did your wife. Only instead of being nuts enough to try and infiltrate them—and you think I’m crazy!—I went after them head on, power of the press, and all that bullshit.” Golden got up, went to the desk, took a plastic bag of grass and some rolling papers out of a drawer, and began to roll a fresh joint. “But that’s what it was, bullshit,” he said. “Man, the so-called power of the press is like pissing into a hurricane up against something like Transformationalism.”

  He lighted the joint and began pacing in small circles, puffing on it as he spoke. “Shit, they destroyed my career. I mean, I’m good, I’ve sold articles everywhere, magazines came after me, and now I couldn’t get an assignment to cover a cat show for the Valley Green Sheet. You know why I’m still alive? Because the fuckers figure I’d be more trouble to them dead than alive. I’ve got information that should send them all to jail for a thousand years, and I can’t do anything with it. No one will touch it, no one dares listen to me. But I’m a well-known crank on the subject of Transformationalism; if I were murdered, then maybe there’d have to be an investigation. If I hadn’t understood that early on and gone totally public, I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”

  “Why don’t you turn over this stuff to the police?” Weller asked. “Or the FBI? Or even a congressional committee?” Golden laughed maniacally. He went over to a row of filing cabinets and leaned against them. “The police? The government?” he said scornfully. “In here I’ve got records of how many congressional campaigns have been financed with Transformationalist money. How many state legislators they control. How many cops they own.” He shook his head and sat down on the couch beside Weller.

  “What I’m trying to tell you,” he said in a strangely subdued voice, “is give it up, man. Don’t you yet understand what you’re up against? Transformationalism controls over a billion dollars in capital. They snuff people. They control dozens of politicians. They can stop anyone from writing anything about them. They know more about brainwashing and mind control then anyone. And at that Institute of theirs, they’ve got whole platoons of Dr. Frankensteins inventing subsonics that can control your mind through your phone, rays that give you cancer, drugs they can put in the water to turn people into zombies, machines that can read your thoughts, and other machines that can put thoughts into your head. Give it up, man! You can’t beat the bastards.”

  “What about you?” Weller said. “You’re still fighting them. …”

  “Me?” Golden said bitterly. “What the hell else can I do? They took my love away from me, they took my career away from me, and they’re trying to take my mind away from me. I’ve got no choice. What am I supposed to do? It’s keep going or become a junkie or commit myself to a nut ho
use or kill myself. Fighting Transformationalism is all I have left. There isn’t any other me.”

  Weller stared into Golden’s red-rimmed eyes, and what he saw shook him to the core. With his cancer rays and Kennedy assassinations and hypnotic dial tones, there was no doubt that Golden was far around the bend. Yet it was also certain that some of his material was the real thing—the Master Contact Sheet proved that. If some of it were true, how could Weller be sure that any specific part of it wasn’t true, except for the rays and the phone paranoia and the Kennedys? If most of the material on companies controlled by Transformationalism were true, if the media file were the real thing, if the political files weren’t pure paranoia, then he was up against something that made the Mafia look like the Knights of Columbus. The Master Contact Sheet might be worthless as blackmail material if Golden, with all his files, was so totally impotent.

  But even more frightening was what he saw in the man himself. This broken, raving creature had been a top journalist; Johnny Blaisdell had said so, and Johnny knew who was whom. And whatever else was or wasn’t true, it was an indisputable fact that it was Golden’s involvement with Transformationalism which, one way or another, had reduced him to this state. An involvement that had begun just as his involvement had begun. “Fighting Transformationalism is all that I have left,” Golden had said. “There isn’t any other me.” And you, Weller? he thought. What other you is there now? Are you looking at your future? Are you looking at what you’re becoming?

  “Can’t you get yourself out of it, Golden?” Weller said. “Can’t you move to New York or somewhere, get your head straight, and start all over?”

  Golden sighed. “You still don’t have the big picture,” he said. “I’ve been declared a regressive. They’re all over the country, and they watch me all the time. Wherever I’d go, they’d know. Wherever I try to get published, they’ll stop me. Their rays reach everywhere. They’re keyed into the national phone system. There’s no way I can escape them. All I can do is keep on fighting until they stop me.” He took a long hit on his joint. “Which, some day, they surely will,” he said.