by J L Bryan
“No, we never spoke before.”
“Dominionist?” Smith asked. “One of those big stadium churches?”
“Yes. Golden Tabernacle. His name is John Perrish.”
“I don’t know that name. Not that it matters. I assure you the man is a psycho.”
“He didn’t seem crazy to me,” Ruppert said. “Definitely creepy, though.”
“He’s clueless,” Lucia said.
“Remain very still,” Dr. Smith said. “If you look on the screen, you can see the edge of your shoulder blade.”
Ruppert looked up at the image on the screen, but it was still grainy blurs to him. “You’re inside me?”
“I am.”
“I hope you can see that stuff better than I can.” The image on the screen advanced from one blurry area to the next.
“I can see what I need,” Dr. Smith said. “You’re completely unfamiliar with PSYCOM, then?”
“With what?" Ruppert asked.
“Lucia, would you help explain? I’m certain he would prefer I concentrate on the task at hand.”
“Please,” Ruppert said.
Lucia pulled up a chair in front of Ruppert. She’d tied her long hair back from her face.
“You have heard of psy-ops, right?” she asked as she sat down to face him. “Psychological operations run by the military, or intelligence, or politicians?”
“Right,” Ruppert said. “Like dropping leaflets on other countries when we attack them.” He thought of his own job. “Or planting stories in the news.”
“Sure.” Lucia said, rolling her eyes. “If this was World War I, maybe.”
“What else?” Ruppert asked. “The churches, that’s what you’re saying?”
“You must understand that no government rules by violence alone,” Dr. Smith said. “A state must appear legitimate to its population-at least, a substantial portion of its population. We calculated that one-third of the population is sufficient for absolute control, provided that the remaining two thirds remain factioned and quarreling. Ideally, of course, you would prefer to have majority compliance, but this is nearly impossible to effect reliably over the long term."
“I’m not sure I’m following you,” Ruppert said. He watched as the viewpoint onscreen nudged past a swollen blob that might have been muscle tissue.
“Someone explained it to me like this,” Lucia said. “What’s the difference between a king and a warlord?”
“What?” Ruppert asked.
“It’s like a riddle.”
“I don’t know. A king wears a crown?”
“He’s not so far off,” Dr. Smith commented.
“The difference,” Lucia said, “Is that a king has priests who back this crazy claim that he's the king and should be obeyed.”
“And a warlord?” Ruppert asked.
“He just has guys with guns.”
“A question of legitimacy,” Dr. Smith said. “Ordained by the gods, or forced by bloodshed, you see. The priests who cooperate inevitably grow quite wealthy and powerful themselves. They feed upon the system.”
“You’re saying the Dominionist churches are propaganda tools,” Ruppert said. “But that's obvious.”
“You’re skipping over the point,” Dr. Smith said. “In ancient times, a priesthood sufficed to legitimize the king. Ruling the modern world requires a complex information machinery. Priests, as you’ve mentioned, but also public relations professionals, historians, publishers, news reporters, teachers. The absurd rigmarole of voting and elections. Public rituals to make the commoners feel they are a part of things. Hold your breath and refrain from moving.”
Ruppert heard a mechanical clatter somewhere behind him, then a hissing, sucking noise close by his head.
“Stay where you are,” Dr. Smith said. “When fighting a war, a ruler has two goals in the area of public opinion. Generate support among your own population and discord among the enemy’s. We’ve done tremendous research in both areas. Eventually, you come to see all populations, enemy or ally, as the same, because in all circumstances the goal is to generate support for you and hostility toward the enemy.
“We learned to wage information war. We developed methods of infiltrating and subverting key information institutions in a society-the news media, yes, but also the long-term indoctrination structures of education and religion. We learned to exploit a culture’s myths, because myths are easier to manipulate than facts. Let’s have a look at the little beast. You can sit up now.”
Ruppert did, turning to face Dr. Smith, who was lifting a vial from a rattletrap machine connected to a long, thin hose that lay limp on the table, its metal tip wet with Ruppert’s blood. Smith held out the vial towards him.
Inside, at the very bottom of the container, lay a blood-smudged coil of wire no wider than Ruppert’s smallest fingernail.
“It’s still active,” Dr. Smith said. “Lucia, would you mind?”
Lucia set the vial into a holder at the end of the kitchen counter. She lifted an eyedropper and squeezed out a small stream of clear fluid into the vial. The little device smoldered.
“Acid,” she told Ruppert. “You want to make sure you destroy them.” She corked the vial containing the melting tracker.
“How were you involved?” Ruppert asked Dr. Smith, who still occupied the low chair beside him. “You keep saying ‘We.’”
“Yes.” Dr. Smith removed the pointed tip of the laparoscopy hose, opened a low kitchen cabinet, and pitched it into an empty paint bucket. “It’s an old problem, you see. We ran these operations separately. You’d have intelligence serving their purposes, military branches and divisions serving their separate purposes, and of course the official culture with the diplomats. The politicians scrambling things up here and there. The psy-ops would clash against each other in unplanned ways. Originally, they were only a sort of ad hoc tool, you understand? There was very little coordination.”
Ruppert nodded.
“The liquid skin,” Dr. Smith said. “And a bandage.” Lucia brought what he requested. “Turn that way and I’ll patch you up.”
Ruppert turned. His back was still completely numb, and he didn’t feel the doctor working on him.
“Eventually the decision was made to centralize all these different little operations,” Dr. Smith said. “In a global media environment, you need global coordination. That’s why the Psychological Command was created. We received enormous budgets and minimal oversight. Operations and research, each operation a new social experiment. We developed procedures for manipulating societies.
“In our own country, we turned public schools into cultural laboratories. We mapped electrical patterns in the human brain. Our goal was the manufacturing of consent. It was always easy enough to arouse a population to war, for example, but these fevers broke much too early. The question was how to manufacture a long, slow-burning fever, one that might ebb and flow but never die out, one that created a permanent climate of strict obedience, the unending emergency.
“You’re old enough to remember how these institutions arose together-the Department of Terror, the Department of Faith, the Dominionists, the Freedom Brigades.”
“Because of Columbus,” Ruppert said. “That's when the world changed."
“You’re exactly right,” Dr. Smith said. “These were parallel operations, deployed in a synchronized fashion to envelop the citizenry in a permanent illusion. We manipulated the local myths to serve our purposes. And now we will have tea, if Lucia will help me to my feet.”
They moved to the mismatched chairs in the living room area, where they drank strong black tea from a chipped, battery-operated kettle that occupied a worn barstool near Dr. Smith’s desk. They drank from chipped novelty mugs. Ruppert’s featured an image of the video game character Mario.
“So what was the point?” Ruppert asked. “Why change things so drastically?”
“It was necessary to fully implement our strategy," Dr. Smith said. “We wanted a system that granted absolute
control over people and resources. The country was slipping, you see. The state was losing its grasp on the population. We needed an opportunity to assert authority, to stave off a potential anarchy. A strong blow, to induce a state of shock, to weaken the resistance of the public mind.
"We grew to understand that the link between god and state, used properly, brought the greatest potential for a long-term system. The Byzantine Empire lasted a thousand years. The Egyptian, much longer. We wished to install such a permanent sytem.
“And so our goal was the ‘pharaohnic’ state, in which the state itself becomes the object of religious adulation, the holy thing ordained by the heavens. Our research told us a god-state must appear omnipotent, omniscient, and above all, terrifying. Modern communication systems made near-omniscience entirely viable. That was the easiest part.
“The key is manufacturing fear. Then offer the frightened people a story that makes you the protector. If you simply accept the official truth as your own, you can believe that the state’s enemies are your enemies, and further that the state’s power is your power. When our new model state crushes another human being, or another nation, the faithful believe it is they who are doing the crushing. Are you following me?”
“Yes,” Ruppert said. “The churches, the news media to soak people in ideology, and then the Department of Terror for those who resist, am I right?”
“And most people are stupid enough to believe whatever they’re told,” Lucia said.
“I’m not sure I agree with you,” Dr. Smith said. “At some level, most of the obedient population know that what they adore is the power that can destroy them. They glorify what they fear, forcing themselves to believe they are somehow special and exempt, that the persecution will always be suffered by others. It’s the only way to avoid confronting the truth, which is that they are powerless.”
“But after a while they really believe it,” Lucia said. “I’ve seen people go into a rage when I try to point these things out to them.”
“Their anger betrays their lack of real belief,” Smith said. “When they lash out, they are externalizing the struggle against truth that goes on deep inside their own minds. We rule two-thirds of the world, directly or through proxies, yet we are not an empire. We pulverize entire cities, but we are bringing them freedom. We slaughter millions, while we proclaim a man who forbade the use of violence as our God.
“This is obvious to everyone, at some level. So we offer an external dramatization of their internal conflict-those who die in public executions, and those we destroy through war, represent the doubts and fears inside the people of our nation, that internal urge towards truth while we force ourselves to believe lies. The slaughter and bloodshed does not really resolve the inner turmoil, because it does not resolve the basic problem of denying reality. This is by design. Can you see why?”
“Because it allows you to do anything,” Ruppert said. “As long as we’re in a state of war, you can claim a state of emergency at home. Right?”
“And they can call it holy war,” Lucia said. “Holy war, holy government…just don't ask any questions, or you're a traitor-heretic-thought criminal.”
“That’s the pharaohnic state,” Ruppert said.
“Precisely,” Smith said.
“But why did you do it?” Ruppert asked. “I mean, who did it, exactly? Who has all this power? Who’s standing above it looking down on us ignorant peasants?”
“There is no single ruler,” Smith said. “There are many who profit. My family, among others. We have something of a tradition in the intelligence and defense industries. That is why I was appointed to the psy-op coordination task force, which grew into a think tank, before ultimately mutating into that most eloquent expression of power, an unsupervised and officially nonexistent bureaucracy. The North Atlantic Psychological Command. PSYCOM. The Department of Terror, for example, is merely one face of our operations. One of our American faces.”
“This is too much,” Ruppert said. He was beginning to feel dizzy, and struggled to keep his balance despite the fact that he was already sitting down. The dim living room lamp grew painfully bright to his eyes.
“I’m very sorry,” Smith said. “It's a great deal to take in after surgery.” He heaved himself to his feet, drawing heavily on the cane. “I’ll show you where to sleep.”
“I’ll take him,” Lucia said.
“Would you mind? I’ll just escort myself to my own apartment. Make yourself at home, Lucia. You’ve had a long drive.”
Lucia led Ruppert to one of the cluttered walls and drew aside a tattered paper screen decorated with fading ink sketches of Chinese woman gathering water at a well. The small room contained a cot wedged in among more of the cardboard boxes, which served as the room’s walls.
“This is a nice spot,” she said. “I think there’s some clothes in these boxes by the door. Water’s pretty scarce. If you have to piss or something, go into the cave behind the blue curtain out there and follow that all the way until it dead ends. Actually, you’ll probably want to stop before you get to the very end. You know.”
“Thanks,” Ruppert said.
She lingered, studying his face.
“What is it?” he asked.
“When did they get to you?” Lucia asked.
“Who?”
“Terror,” she said. “I can tell. How long did they keep you?”
“I don’t…I’m not…” Ruppert was so tired he could barely think. He did not know how to handle the question: Lie? Confess? Somewhere in between?
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “We can talk later.”
“Thanks.”
She stepped away from him, then slid the paper screen back into place.
The cot creaked as Ruppert lay down on it. He doubted he could rest well in such a strange location, but he was asleep before his eyes were fully closed. His dreams were dark, and he sweated in his sleep.
NINETEEN
Ruppert awoke to the scratchy, hiss-filled melody of Billie Holiday singing “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?” on the record player. He nudged aside the paper screen and joined Lucia and Dr. Smith in the living room area, where Lucia was eating spinach from a can. Smith sat in a threadbare recliner and tinkering with the back of a bulky screen mounted atop an easel.
“More water, more batteries,” Smith was saying. “I can’t have too much of either.”
“I’ll let someone know,” Lucia said. “What about food?”
“I’ve got more than enough to last the rest of my life.” Smith scratched at his beard and looked at Ruppert. “How’s my patient? Swelling? Discomfort?”
“I feel fine,” Ruppert said. “Actually, I haven’t slept that well in years.”
“Have some breakfast.” Lucia handed him a rectangle of metal fitted with a pull tab.
“Sardines?” Ruppert asked. He peeled back the lid to see a dark orange mass under a layer of thick oil.
“Tinned cheese,” Lucia said.
“Can they do that with cheese?”
“They did it. Dig in.” She handed him a spoon.
Ruppert scooped out some of the mushy cheese material, but before he put it in his mouth, he tilted the spoon to let the oil spill back into the tin. The cheese tasted rank and had a slimy texture-it seemed to wriggle around his teeth as he tried to chew it.
“Good?” Lucia asked.
Ruppert forced himself to swallow. “Sure. Thanks.”
She shook her head. “It’s foul.”
“Then why do you get spinach?” Ruppert asked.
"You think it's any better?"
“Don’t tell me you hate the cheese, too.” Dr. Smith leaned over, scooped out some of the cheese with his own spoon, slurped it down. “What’s wrong with that?”
Ruppert slid the tin across the table, closer to Dr. Smith.
“What are you doing here?” Ruppert nodded at the bulky easel screen.
“It’s just a focusing device,” Smith said. “You
may not be out of Terror’s pocket yet. We’ll need to check you for programming.”
“You think I'm a computer?"
“Your brain is,” Lucia said. “And they know how to install controls. And if they took you long enough to put in a tracking device…”
“We’re not blaming you if they did,” Smith added. “It’s a necessary precaution on our part. Terror runs all kinds of strange games, and we have to be careful.”
Ruppert looked at the blank screen. “You told me you were involved in creating the PSYCOM.”
“I was one of the first psychos,” Smith said. “That’s what we called ourselves.”
“Why did you change your mind?” Ruppert asked.
“You mean, why did I abandon wealth, influence, and an intimate knowledge of the world’s greatest secrets in exchange for a hole in the ground?”
“Seems like a reasonable question,” Ruppert said.
“Only the poor and the animals are free. George Orwell," Smith said. "My old life involved power, duty, secrecy. Now I am free."
“What changed your mind?” Ruppert asked.
“When I saw our designs unfolding in the real world,” Smith said. “Prior to that, it felt like an abstract intellectual exercise-how to theoretically attain full-spectrum psychological dominion…if one wanted. After Columbus, I watched things we had discussed in comfortable chairs at a conference table begin to unfold, the whole architecture imposed from the top down-the Emergency Detention Centers, the Department of Faith, and of course Terror. When those awful Freedom Brigades began their rampages, burning down neighborhoods and shooting people in the streets, that’s when I left.”
“You just quit?”
“I wish I could have.” Smith chuckled. “No, death was the only way out for me. So I engineered that. Or an illusion of it, as you can see." Smith glanced down to the cheese tin. He had eaten most of the contents. “I apologize. Have the last piece.”
“It’s all yours,” Ruppert said.
“I like it better here,” Smith said. “I can grow out my hair like some kind of radical. And there’s time to read. I never had that before. I’m even writing a book on PSYCOM and its programs, so maybe that will be of some service to the country. It won’t be available in bookstores, naturally.”