by John Nelson
“So, did I pass?”
“As you ascertained, your intuitive scores were the highest we’ve ever recorded, but then we don’t recruit people for this … faculty, or at least not yet. So we wanted to test your reach.” He paused for a moment. “You nailed the munitions plant and were able to transfer this image to our test subject.”
“So, do I get a free all-expenses-paid vacation to the Bahamas?”
Klaus laughed; the first time I’d ever seen him laugh. Somehow I wasn’t encouraged by it.
“Seems like you’ve become somewhat of a protégé of your healer, or should I say, target.” He let that settle. “Of course, we put you in this situation to test her effect on someone with your … propensities, and we’ve got our answer.”
“So was this the real op, your true intention in placing me there?” I asked.
Klaus stared at me for a long moment. “Let’s focus on you, not our intentions.”
While I was waiting out his next question or directive, I suddenly found myself watching the two of us from above, as if I were remote-viewing myself. Very interesting.
Apparently Klaus could sense the shift. “What just happened, Alan?”
I wasn’t about to confide in him. “I suddenly felt like taking a leak.”
He didn’t laugh this time. “You should take your situation more seriously.”
“I always take you seriously, Dr. Klaus. So why don’t you do the same and tell me what this is about?”
“I’m surprised you haven’t figured that out, Alan. This is a standard double agent protocol interrogation. Musgrave thinks you’re batting for the other team, and I’m here to test that.”
“By giving me psychic tests?” I asked.
“If your target was a female agent and you were required to … get intimate with her, we’d test just how far your transference had gone, to ascertain your allegiance or if you’ve been turned.”
“And in this case, the transference would be psychic or intuitive?”
Klaus smiled. “Yes, Alan, sharp as ever.”
“In your example, just because the guy was boning his target doesn’t mean he was turned, nor does my development say the same.”
“No, it doesn’t. But, it gives us a better sense of your objectivity or its lack,” he said.
I nodded my head. This made sense.
“And giving us that little ‘Dutch boy’ metaphor, or saying in effect that she’s not the problem and that we need to adjust neural processors to accommodate earth energy, is rather telling.”
“I didn’t actually say that,” I said.
“No, you didn’t, but give us some credit—we can extrapolate.”
I closed my eyes to tune in to my inner senses, as it were, and turned them on him to figure out where this was going.
“Psyching me out, Alan? Or is this a projection maneuver?” he asked.
“I’m just trying to get a feel for the larger scope of this … inquiry.”
“And what do you get?”
Interesting response. I had to ask myself—what do I get by giving him my analysis. But I figured that for Emma and me to have any chance of getting out of here alive, I’d have to talk my way out of this standoff. “The psychological schism created by neural processors and some fifty years of their general use, is creating a kind of lash-back cycle where repressed feelings or emotions are short-circuiting the processors, not to mention the rise of earth energy causing further schisms in many, or greater integration in some.” I paused. “So you have no choice but to adapt, but how is the problem and the whole point of this op.”
Klaus’ eyes widened. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better analysis of the situation.” He paused for a moment. “I’m sure my superiors will be impressed, and I think you just bought yourself … more rope.”
“To pull myself out of a hole or further hang myself?” I asked.
“Well, Alan, that’s your choice, isn’t it.”
“And yours is to deny this reality at your own peril.”
Klaus gave me another one of his wry smiles. I wished, as the British would say, I could put a sock in it. “Musgrave and others like him see things in black and white—top-down control or nothing,” he said.
I nodded my head and wondered if he were listening to orders over his earpiece.
“Others,” he continued, “and fortunately those at the highest levels, understand … accommodation. You and maybe Emma—her scores were somewhat interesting—might represent a more … productive model for healing this schism as you call it.”
I nodded my head again, but didn’t want to be too optimistic. “It sounds workable.”
He paused again, as if he were getting more feedback. “So, it comes down to how your neural processor, or its adaptation, has become an integrative force and not a destructive one, as in so many other cases.”
I could see where this was heading. “I don’t think it genetically adapted itself or was changed. It was just me working with the energy.”
“That’s one theory, but we need to test that. We would like to remove your processor, check it over, also see how you react without it—if your functionality decreases or even improves.”
“Whoa,” I said before I could catch myself. “You want to take out my neural processor?” This definitely unnerved me. I had to question their real intent here, and if it indicated something else. “I mean, you’d only have a few hours to examine it before you’d have to replace or reinsert it.”
Klaus chuckled. “Ah, ‘To die to sleep, to sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause.’”
“Yeah, no fucking kidding, Shakespeare.”
“So you don’t want to test your own theory, Alan?” he smirked.
“Seems like with our remote scanning technology, you can get the same results with 3-D neural scans.”
“Our brain specialists think otherwise.” He was carefully watching my reaction as if I had some inside info. “And besides,” he added, “we want to see how you function without a processor.”
The door opened and two beefy, military types in scrubs stepped inside. There was no fighting this directive. “Okay, be my guest, but …” I paused, getting my own sense of things, “Be prepared to be surprised.”
Klaus said, “You always surprise me, Alan.”
42.
While they didn’t have the facility here to remove Jean’s neural processor at the time, considering the difficulty her extraction posed, the OR that I was wheeled into had certainly been upgraded since our last visit. The brain doctors were different as well, with Eastern Region accents. I wondered if this was all done in preparation for my processor’s extraction, if so this had been planned for some time. I was lifted and placed on the operating table, an intravenous line of anesthetic was fed to me.
The neurosurgeon looked down at me through his digitized glasses, with their electronic feedback, which projected the magnified images on the surrounding vid screens. “Alan, usually with these extractions, we leave the cranial incision open to replace the processor within a short period of time, but with you we’re going to close it to see how you …” I was getting drowsy but could detect a catch in his voice, “ … function without it.”
I could almost hear him saying to himself, Good luck. I fell off to sleep, when I woke up, I was sitting up in a bed with my hands cuffed to the bed railing. A nurse, who was monitoring my vitals, stepped over. I pulled on my restraints. “We don’t want you touching your bandaged head, Mr. Reynard. Please relax.”
I closed my eyes and pretended to fall back to sleep, so I wouldn’t get pressed for my reactions or interrogated too soon. I felt light—an empty, airy feeling. I tried to focus on what was happening to me, but couldn’t call up any recent memories at first. I wondered if I had been in an accident, and if this was trauma amnesia. Then I got a sense of my situation, almost like a visual gestalt, as
brief flashes of the last few days came to me as an overview, like viewing an array of pictures on your portable. I understood, without analyzing or mentally picking it apart, what was happening. They, or Klaus and company, had removed my neural processor to gauge the effect on me. I felt my way through this recognition and it made me angry, or I felt angry but instead of that leading to a whole stream of angry thoughts, I just dropped into the feeling and focused on it and it rather quickly dissipated, or the energy spread through my body. This process felt familiar and I recalled, without actually recollecting or accessing memories, making love to … someone … Emma, and feeling the sexual energy running through my body, which felt wonderful.
“Alan, I know you’re awake, so just open your eyes.” The sound of this man’s voice made me really angry, and I had to shift my focus to drop into the feeling. Twenty seconds later the energy dissipated with a major rush that shook my body.
“Nurse, is he having a seizure?” the voice asked.
There was a long pause. “No signs of that, but his brainwave readings got scrambled. I better call the doctor.”
“No need. I’ve seen this before,” the voice said, and now I grasped who it was: Dr. Klaus.
Recognizing him, I found myself or something in me, like a wave of energy, flow through him and then quickly withdraw. It didn’t like … communing with all this negative and repressed emotion, or so I assumed or felt. I needed visual stimulation to close down this link up, so I opened my eyes.
“Ah, welcome back, Alan,” Klaus said, sitting in an elevated chair next to the bed, to bring him eye-level with me.
I squinted to see him, and he turned to the nurse and asked her to lower the light level. She did and I could now bring him into focus better. My body almost cringed at seeing this curmudgeon.
“So, how do you feel?” he asked.
I just stared at him and could sense all of his devious mental maneuvering, past and present.
“Well, not something you’d like to do.”
He sneered. “I wouldn’t imagine.”
The clearer or more conscious I became, the more interesting this … perception of things became. I mean, my neocortex was still working and without the processor’s enhancement, it could function well enough and do its customary analysis, but I didn’t want to rely solely on it or so it seemed. I also liked this new way of functioning, how I was intuitively perceiving things, which was way beyond the neural processor’s scope. I had to wonder if this was our real human potential, beyond our culture’s reductive techno perspective.
Klaus looked at the computer monitor off to my side and out of my line of sight. Apparently it was giving him brain scan readings, or some such thing, because he pursed his lips like someone trying to figure out a problem.
“So, tell me how you’re … operating or perceiving things, since all the doctors here think you should be catatonic.”
“You mean like them.”
Klaus almost laughed. “If you say so, Alan.”
I knew I wasn’t going to get out of here, or get my processor reinserted—if that’s what I really wanted—without giving them what they seemed to want. I wasn’t about to reveal the truth of my being or functioning in this state, but tell them something that would fit into their warped mind scheme. I paused and caught myself; yes, I was back into a thinking mode, but one where I seemed to have a choice as to how I would … operate.
“Well, I feel upsurges of feeling, some of them … harsh, would be the word, but they don’t seem to overwhelm me.”
“And that little spasm dance that you just did?” he asked.
“Don’t know exactly, but I felt better afterward.”
He nodded his head. “So you’re not doing it; it’s a bodily reaction?”
“You could say that,” I said, which wasn’t entirely the case, but that was all I was going to say on the matter for now. “What’s happening to Emma? You didn’t do this to her, did you?”
He watched my reaction and checked the computer screen for whatever reading it was giving him. “No. It wasn’t necessary, or let me say, it won’t be if we get what we want from you.”
“Which is?”
“How you’re functioning and to what extent, without your neural processor.”
“More tests?” I asked.
“Yes, on it and you, but at least you can do them in bed.”
“Well, let’s get started and …”
“And get it over with?” Klaus asked. “A word of advice, Alan. We’ve done this before … extracting processors and gauging functionality, so don’t think you can … fool us.”
“Why would I want to do that? We’re all on the same team, right?” I asked, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
Klaus smirked. “I would hope so.”
They let me rest for the remainder of the day and sleep without any further intrusion. The next morning after a hearty breakfast, a young Air Force psychologist wheeled in a portable table that bridged my bed from one side to the other, and allowed me to view a testing monitor and give my verbal responses. It was interesting taking an IQ test; I found myself at first trying to “figure” out the answers to the questions and visual puzzles they presented, until I realized I could just “sense” the correct answers. Once I was able to operate from this mode, the testing went quickly and the psychologist, who was scoring my responses as we went along, seemed intrigued by the results. I must have also scored quite high on the intuitive or psychic tests, gauged by the doctor’s reaction, but I did “cheat,” as it were, to keep the scores lower so as not to reveal my true potential.
After lunch, Klaus returned, finding it hard to hide his Cheshire cat smile. I could also sense a kind of shift in him, and he didn’t appear quite as negative—or was it a sense of self-affirmation? Either way, I had to wonder as to its effect on Emma and me and our fate.
“Well, Alan, you’ve certainly exceeded all of our expectations, or I should say your test scores indicate a higher functionality than anybody here … or in Washington had expected for a non-NP subject. It certainly gives us a model for what could be coming within the borny communities if we …”
“If you don’t stop it,” I said. Klaus didn’t respond. “And you wouldn’t want to adjust neural processors or do upgrades that would allow the general population to function as such?”
“Alan, I would advise you to temper your speculation. It only gives people like Musgrave a reason to burn you.”
“Not something you’re interested in?” I asked rather genuinely.
“Not really.” He paused, then added, “As with many intractable problems, the solutions aren’t one-sided, but come from a combination of polarized options. So, we wouldn’t want the bornies operating at this advanced intuitive level, but then we’d like our own people, and I don’t just mean the upper echelon but people in general, to function better or a little higher in this regard.”
But, I asked myself, after years designing processors that suppressed feelings, would they know how to make these adjustments? I doubted it. “So, where does that leave us?”
He stood up. “A strategy is being crafted. Be patient. In the meantime, we’re going to reinsert your neural processor and get ready to put you back into your life.”
My sense was that this wasn’t entirely true or was only the superficial side of a much broader and maybe even more insidious maneuver. “Guess that you wouldn’t consider just leaving it out?”
“While you may feel comfortable operating as you are now, our scientists tell us that this euphoric phase will pass and you could downgrade fairly quickly.”
My sense was that this was possible but just another challenge and that herein lay my true human potential and one that I wanted to explore. But again this development was too problematic for them and I was truly walking on the razor’s edge. I would go along with its insertion, knowing full well that “other” doctors could later remove it. “Back to Jerome or New York?”
“Unclear at th
is point.”
I couldn’t imagine going back to my old life with Sherry or as a K Industry’s analyst, cooped up in our 10th floor surround-screen electronic environment, or for that matter living in a big city, cut off from the energy of the natural world, especially that of the desert. I think Klaus could sense this.
“My guess is that they send you back to Jerome.”
“With Emma?”
“I’m not really sure at this point, Alan.”
43.
The next morning they replaced my neural processor. I woke up in bed again, but this time I felt rather different. Something wasn’t quite right, and not just the fact that the processor was interfering with my previous level of intuitive functioning—this was expected, given its computational bias—but it had a different orientation. The processors facilitate or accelerate the retrieval and processing of information in the neocortex but in this case, it seemed to alter this process to allow for more feelings. It occurred to me that they didn’t replace my old processor but inserted an upgrade with some modifications. But, while it seemed to allow more integration of feeling and intuition, it also filtered or modified them in a way that altered my mental perception of things.
What was really encouraging was that at the same time, or maybe in response to this alteration, some part of me could still objectively watch what was happening—my essence, if you will, didn’t reside in my neocortex or its appendage. In other words, I not only sensed but experienced that I wasn’t my mind but something totally more expansive—that which connected me to everything else in the universe—our true human potential. I also knew that I had to reside in this self, or I would be overwhelmed by the altered processing of this upgraded neural processor and its rather seductive counter integration of feeling and intuition, or at least until I could get it removed.
Of course, Klaus came in somewhat later to gauge my reaction and test my functioning, or just to view his handiwork and gloat. “So, Alan, how do we feel?”