Planet Fever

by Stier Jr. , Peter

  I anticipated an onslaught of cussing and scolding on her part.

  Instead, she placed her brush down, got up and approached me. She sat down across from me at the table.

  Neither of us spoke.

  I poured another shot and took it down; this time I didn’t wince.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “My life. Maybe a few times. Maybe a few times too many. Maybe free thought and will….”

  I had expected her to say, “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Instead, she nodded. “I figured this would happen. Perhaps you should give Götzefalsch a call.”

  Götzefalsch—the quack that she found for me. How convenient.

  “Yeah, that might be a terrific idea … then perhaps you should give the Thought Police a little jingle—let ‘em know you got a drunk on your hands spilling out illegal thoughts … they might need to lock it down.”

  She was taken aback, or at least gave the impression of being so.

  “The Thought Police? Eddie….”

  I cut her off with a guffaw-like chuckle. At this particular point, my life had boiled down to a B-grade movie, and I was merely playing the role. But I was on to her. Maybe I had always known the truth. My problem, or recurring problem was that I didn’t know if I knew.

  Staring at the redheaded beauty with her fantastically false pretense of sympathy creasing across her big blue eyes, I knew that I knew something: she couldn’t be trusted.

  “Those pills must be working. Eddie, don’t drink—you’ll relapse. I don’t want to lose you again!”

  “It ain’t those pills—I don’t know what those things are doing … probably re-mapping my existence. Maybe they are the source … maybe the only loophole for me is booze. Shit, I don’t know.”

  “Eddie, we’ve been through this before.”

  I flipped through one of my notebooks. Lots of handwritten half-baked ideas and nonsense. “We probably have been through this before, and we may go through it again…. M.T.—M.T….” A business card fell from one of the notebooks. “Mind Technician! That’s it! Götzefalsch’s working for those son-of-a-bitches! He’s one of them! Maybe you’re one of them!”

  “Settle down, Eddie, settle down.” She assumed a no-nonsense, professional posture, and stroked my cheek. “He’s working for us.”

  “You and me? That’s comical.” I poured a shot and lifted the glass. “I should jot that down.”

  “The Free Thought-and-Will Chapter,” she said, moving the bottle of vodka away.

  I placed my full shot glass back down.

  “WHAT THE hell are you trying to do to me? I don’t want any more of the pills. I’m done!” I yelled as Götzefalsch paced behind his desk.

  After Mona mentioned the Free Thought-and-Will Chapter, I let her convince me to go see the Doc, but now I was having a rush of doubt.

  The Doc shushed me, looked around and whispered, “Eddie, I am geeving you fake peels—vons vich act seemular to theirs, but vill actually free your mind up, eenstead of manipulate it.” He winked.

  Mona stood next to the doctor and leaned closer to me. “We know that the Head Covert Manipulator of the Syndicate in this area is a man called Froward Moroni. He acts as an eccentric vagabond who goes around and collects other ‘disenfranchised’ people and enlists them into a roving artistic troupe. Seems harmless on the surface, but covertly the ‘artists’ act as unknowing conduits for the spread of mass-mind-washing. He slips everyone the drugs and we don’t know how, but he implements some sort of transistor-neural frequency via a device—perhaps installed in his own brain—which has laser-like precision and can completely act on a personality individually. The person then carries this frequency and spreads it broadband, all on a neuro-telepathical and hyper-subliminal series of bandwidths that piggyback along all electronic transmissions and frequencies. Very technical and dastardly. These poor bastards don’t realize they are agents for one part of the plan for Subliminal Imperialism.”

  Was she serious? Or had she just memorized that spiel like a good actress?

  Telepathic ventriloquist. That thought scurried from the recesses of my mind to my awareness. Where had I encountered that?

  Mona continued. “You were to act as a spy, gathering intelligence on the man. We apologize, because in order to infiltrate, your mind had to be altered so Moroni couldn’t scan you for your true objectives. He had to be convinced that you were a burned-out writer on the skids. Therefore, you had to be convinced as well, or at least confused about your place in life. That’s why you’re presently confused as to your identity; most of your identity is either cloaked or forged from the pills and neural programming. We’re trying to retrieve your actual identity, but it’s been tough going.”

  It started to come into focus, the way a movie projector does before the opening previews. Slowly, the pieces began to line up in a semblance of logical order.

  I wasn’t insane.

  I was being made insane.

  For a higher purpose.

  “Makes sense. So when I drink, some of my true thoughts could spill out, prompting an A.P.B. to be put out for me?”

  With his thick Austrian, or German, or possibly Swiss accent, the Doc spoke: “Preecisely. Vee also need to keep track of you to unclog dee fake identitee und get you back to your true self. But vee must bee very careful, or else they veel find you out, und us too!”

  Mona reached down and squeezed my hand. “Moroni did a thorough job on you. We think he’s attempting to use you as his own spy to gather intel on us. Not knowing we were already working with Götzefalsch, he sent you here to have you re-integrated as an agent, after his big speech at Griffith Park, the one where he ‘declared war’ on the N(aI)IS. And if you don’t pan out for him, you’ll be written off as a burned-out writer who drifts through life in a drunken, confused and brainwashed stupor. They want everyone pretty much that way anyhow … to keep people enslaved. Either way, he’s got nothing to lose.”

  I thought (what I hoped to only myself) that everything was too perfectly cliché. If this were a novel, I would’ve wanted to donkey-punch the writer. The dialogue was schlocky, the storyline all over the damn place, and the plot dangled like pieces of loose thread as the writer desperately tried to make connections as he went along. Somehow I had ended up his victim, with him testing to see how much of his disheveled madness I could—or would—endure.

  “You people are full of shit. This is some kind of fucked-up psychological test in the form of a game to see whether I can distinguish fact from fiction. If I buy into this crap, you guys will string me along and allow me to go through this ‘test’ confused, mentally disjointed and unfocused. If I don’t buy into it, you will let me know I am ‘progressing very well’ and I am re-integrating into society as planned. Either way, I am brainwashed. And for God knows what purpose. Do you two get off on fucking with people’s heads?”

  They exchanged glances and the Doc shrugged.

  Mona straightened her jacket and stepped back. “We’re looking out for your best interest, Eddie. We’re here to help you regardless of what you choose to believe. At least give us that: we’re allowing you to choose. So what will it be? What do you want to do?”

  She had me there.

  The time and effort she had spent with me—regardless of who she was—testified on behalf of some kind of compassion for me, or at least a commitment to her job of acting compassionate, which was also admirable.

  At this particular moment I wanted to get the hell away and try to collect and organize any cogent thought that happened to be lying about my disheveled psyche. I wanted—no, I needed to speak with someone who I could identify with … then (at the very least) I’d know if I was alone in my predicament or if others were also in the same screwy boat. If there were others in the same screwy boat we could, perhaps, pool together our own experiences and solve the existential query of what the fuck was going on here?

  Telepathic Ventriloquist. The thought flashed into my mind again.
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  Then the remembrance of one man perhaps I could trust.

  “I want to go see Fred Fillono, the filmmaker,” I said.

  AFTER A FEW weeks of research, I happened upon Fillono’s whereabouts while perusing the latest issue of the Independent Thinker’s Film Mag. The magazine contained a little expose on the man: Fillono had founded the “Please Yourself for the Sake of Others Film Institute,” which was situated high up in a remote part of the Colorado Rockies.

  Up there in the mountains he had inherited a semi-defunct small ski resort near a quaint town, whereupon he had socially engineered an academy and community that focused on filmmaking, sculpting, performance art, poetry, music, dancing, theatre, photography, painting along with farming, carpentry, electronics, plumbing, mathematics, engineering and chess. Rather than paying a tuition to attend the academy, the students were to learn a trade in tandem with their studies and work their trade within the community in exchange for their schooling. No money whatsoever existed in the place: all exchanges for goods and services and shelter and whatnot were conducted with a computer-calculated “barter system.”

  I jotted down the address, grabbed the Road Atlas of the Western United States, packed up some gear, gave Mona a goodbye hug and kiss, got into my pick-up truck and started on my way toward Fillono’s utopia.

  It was a trip I had to take alone.

  Mona understood, or at least pretended to.

  She was a helluva gal. Or was playing the part too damned well.

  ART: “SO—what precisely is this Free Thought and Will Chapter?”

  Agent W: “It’s not a question of what it is, rather who is part of it. It isn’t a large, centralized organization in the conventional sense. There is no real chain of command structure, no hierarchical membership. It’s rather a series of chapters in different areas who are commissioned by the Originator of All Realities to achieve the same goal. Many may be part of it who don’t know they are, while others are part of a counterfeit version in the guise of the real deal.”

  Art: “So what’s the goal of this cacophonous and rather unconventional organization?”

  Agent W: “To stave off tyrannical forces for the liberty of all individuals … the same intent as the Originator of All Realities’ intent was, is and always will be: for all sentient beings having a freedom to choose.”

  Art: “Choose? What do you mean by that?”

  Agent W: “Having a freedom to make a choice is the very essence of freedom itself. Let me begin by telling you what choice is not. Television news programming offers a good example. OnTV—including cable—there are a number of various news channels. Therefore, on the surface it seems as though the average viewer has quite a number of options to digest various views on the information being presented. With these ‘alternating’ views, the viewer feels they’re able to gain a clearer picture with the information, hence get a clearer perspective on the world at large. Allegedly, the viewer has choices on how to decipher the given information, process it, and think about it. But the viewer doesn’t really have any choices, you see. The game is rigged—the information gates are filtered, the environment is controlled. These numerous channels are really owned by a cartel of only a few mega-powerful corporate entities who dictate what information the networks receive, how they release it and even comment on its implications. So the viewer receives information in a manner on how it is given to them, and his attitudes are shaped in a manner, which serves the corporation’s best interest. If I own a giant chemical plant, I will make sure the virtues of my product are extolled and those of the alternatives are either not heard or else demonized. There is no choice—only a brainwashing. Another classic example: play two sides off each other. This is why there are wars: someone always makes money off wars, and that someone doesn’t care who wins…. What people don’t realize is that, like Don King, they tend to own both boxers.”

  Art: “Ahh, so people believe they have choices, but these choices are really just—uh—different manifestations of one given agenda or program.”

  Agent W: “Yup ‘program’ is a good word…. We are programmed. History, religion, philosophy, economics, cola, various means of existence, they all adhere to the same pattern. What’s really happening is that people have been and are being indoctrinated like a herd into one narrow view, all the while going through life believing they are free to roam around the prairie and be free and make willing choices….”

  Art: “Well, I personally believe myself to have freedom. I mean, I should pay taxes, work, stop at red lights, purchase food—but I choose to do those things, otherwise chaos would ensue. I have enough intelligence to know what to believe and what not to believe. I still believe I live in a country which allows us liberties and freedoms—within the realm of reason.”

  Agent W: “Of course; relatively speaking, we have more ‘room to roam’ than do certain people in other parts of the world. But the process of indoctrination relies upon that. If you are in a cage larger and cleaner than a person next to you, your captors may say to you ‘look at that! You’re free to stretch out and walk around. Your neighbor is in a cage. You’re free.’ The actuality is that both are in cages—one simply happens to be less constricting. Over time, this is how the process works. The masses are slowly being boiled. Rather than an invasion with tanks and guns and missiles, we are being invaded slowly, subtly; subliminally and electronically. The military generals now come in the form of investment banking magnates and global cartels and wear three-pieced suits. Guns have been replaced with TVs, computers and other gizmos, firing their ammo in the form of bits directly into the brains of the populace. Art, the play has gone covert—subliminally so. If you were mind-washed, would you know it?”

  Art: “Er—well—obviously not.”

  Agent W: “You’re correct. You see, to a certain extent we are free like a prisoner is free to roam about his cell, eat, piss, shit his pants if he wants to…. But in reality, the prisoner is only free within his confines. Hence, on a cosmic scale—he is not free at all. Real choice is the ability to have complete and untainted Truth datum offered you, and how you decide to conduct your life given this info.”

  Art: “Truth … well, that is a Titanic concept, with many varying views…. Is there but one all-encompassing absolute Truth?”

  Agent W: “Oh, sure there is. Truth is not a convoluted, confusing concept as it is made out to be. It is, in fact very simple. Truth is—”

  At this point Woods’, or Agent W’s voice began to slow down and contort like a machine powering down. I ejected the cassette, and a long stream of the brown magnetic tape poured forth in a spaghetti heap. The cassette player had eaten the tape. I tossed the plastic casing out the window, leaving behind yards of useless tape that streamed for at least twenty yards behind the vehicle. I grabbed my machete from under the seat and drove it into the mouth of the deck. Plastic and metal snapped and cracked as I twisted and darted the weapon into the machine, cursing the whole time.

  I DROVE down a deserted freeway for a while with the radio shut off, sitting with the unbearable clamor in my head. I am Eddie Bikaver, hack reporter. I’m on assignment assembling the fragmented scraps of my life. I’ve been swindled. Moroni fucked me over. No one can be trusted. Who am I again?

  I turned the dial on the half-busted console, hoping to come across a station. After the furious vengeance I had wrought upon the deck, I was somewhat shocked the radio still worked. Though I wasn’t in the mood for blocks of incessant commercials trying to get me to buy that damned car, eat that damned fast food, or use that damned credit card, I’d graciously take a string of ads followed by some fluffy pop tune from 1978, rather than listen to one more thought.

  After the fifth commercial yelling about some morning radio zoo programming, I clicked the radio off.

  Instead I drove and concentrated to the drone of the motor. I liked that; my mind finally felt at ease. I hadn’t had any sense of purpose or direction for quite some time. Winding my way to Fillono�
�s academy allowed me to have a sense of progression: I knew where I was going, what I was doing and how I was doing it—and on my own accord. For the time being, my mind was focused … that is, until….

  I am Eddie Bikaver, hack reporter. I’m on assignment assembling the fragmented scraps of my life. I’ve been swindled. Moroni fucked me over. No one can be trusted. Who am I again…? Damn this mind.….

  On the western slope of Colorado, the main arteries of the freeway turned into the narrower state highways and after an hour or so the mesas and foothills yielded to the vast and majestic mountains. I pulled over to study the map. I had two options: stay on this state highway and circumvent this range of mountains, or take the pass, which would be more scenic and possibly shave a few hours off my drive, as long as the weather permitted. The sky was blue with some patches of cotton-ball clouds. I rolled off the highway and onto the two-lane road straight for the mountains.

  A half-hour on the pass, a fog had set in, which made driving the switchback ridden and guardrail-less road all the more treacherous. I stayed relaxed, taking it easy, though I had to keep wiping sweat off my palms. Visibility was minimal, and the edge of an abyss loomed just yards away from the side of the road—one simple yank of the wheel to the left and I would’ve tumbled down the side of the mountain….

  A PERSISTENT drizzle decided to accompany the fog as the paved two-lane road became a one-lane dirt road, which eventually evolved into a mud trail. My sweat-ridden palms were slick on the wheel and I kept the vehicle in first gear.

  Maybe the short cut wasn’t such a bright idea.

  The rear wheels of the truck fishtailed every so often as the grade became steeper, the switchbacks sharper, the fog heavier and the precipitation more copious. I had to keep going, for if the truck stopped there was a good chance of getting stuck. A blind U-turn on this narrow mountainside Jeep-trail was out of the question. I tried by instinct and feel to hug the inside of the road—the mountainside—and prayed that I didn’t hit a random, giant fallen boulder, and that a random, giant falling boulder would not hit me.