The Mind Game

by Norman Spinrad

  She paused, looked around the room as if counting the house or estimating their bank balances. “Tonight each of you is going to get the chance to actually try one of our processing techniques. You’re going to meet Benson Allen, director of this Center, and one of the earliest Transformed men. But first you’re going to see an initial orientation tape prepared by John B. Steinhardt himself at his headquarters at the Transformational Research Institute.”

  She pulled down the shades, doused the lights, and fiddled with the video console. After some multicolored static and a few protesting feedback screeches, the face of John B. Steinhardt appeared on the screen—florid, mobile, and already talking.

  “In the beginning,” Steinhardt said, “there was nothing but a bunch of rocks orbiting balls of gas, as deterministic and invariant as a rigged slot machine in Vegas.” Stock footage of planets and stars appeared on the screen, looking as if it had been clipped from 2001 or Destination Moon. Some more stock footage, this of lightning flashing above a primeval sea.

  “Then in the seas of Earth a funny thing happened. Chemical compounds started combining with each other to form ever more complex molecules until finally one of these molecules developed the ability to form replicas of itself out of the surrounding organic minestrone. This was the DNA molecule, the gene, the virus, the beginning of life.”

  Back to Steinhardt’s talking head, the big mobile mouth, the expressive eyes, the rubber features. “From the virus to the amoeba to the fish to the dinosaur to the monkey is a long, boring story I won’t bother you with,” Steinhardt said. “Because until man came on the scene, all these bugs and beasties were creatures responding directly to the environment, basically as predictable and invariant as those rocks circling the suns. If you could feed all the environmental data into a good enough computer, it could just about predict what every one of those creatures was going to do at any given moment. A great big cosmic pinball machine. ”

  A series of quickly changing still shots cribbed from old encyclopedias: cavemen, horse barbarians, African natives, knights in armor, sailing ships, medieval cities, cowboys.

  “But man had something new,” Steinhardt’s voice-over said. “A mind. Between the input of the environment and the output of response there was now psychic space. Inside that hairy skull were memories, internal processes, crazinesses, kinks, and uncertainties, so that no longer could a super computer predict the creature’s behavior from a complete picture of the external environment. Good-bye, environmental determinism!”

  Steinhardt’s face appeared on the screen again. “But not exactly,” he said. “As soon as he had a mind, man started changing the environment. He built tools and cities. He started jabbering and writing cheap novels. He invented politics and agriculture. Now there was a man-made environment, premodern culture. Man reprogrammed the environment, which in turn reprogrammed him into reprogramming the environment which was reprogramming him. What is called a direct-feedback relationship. From environmental determinism we evolved into cultural determinism. Language programmed our thought patterns. Religion programmed our moral patterns. Ideology programmed our perception of an official reality. And all of that programmed our behavior. Things were pretty damn stable because each individual was caught in a total cultural matrix which only changed very slowly because the individuals who could change it were pretty well programmed by it already. ”

  More stills flashed across the screen: Chinese paintings, medieval tapestries, Japanese scrolls, Hindu temples, Aztec relics, Byzantine icons. “And that’s what all human civilizations were like up till about last Tuesday on the cosmic time clock. Slow moving, stable, long lasting, catching those folks in a total cultural matrix that made them what they were, told them how to think, and determined their actions.”

  Back to Steinhardt’s talking head again. “But from about 1945 on, that brain-freeze has been shattered. Radio, TV, H-bombs, computers, drugs—human culture finally got to what I call the Transformation Point, where we started reprogramming the environment fester than it could reprogram us to deal with the changes. We’re changing the total environment so fast that it’s changing us faster than the cultural matrix can evolve to accommodate the changes. The situation has become permanently Transformational. So we’ve got people whose personalities were formed in the twenties, the thirties, the forties, the fifties, and the sixties, all trying to make sense out of each other and the seventies—which no one is programmed for—and not making it, because they’re as different from each other, cultural matrixwise, as Ancient Chinese, Middle Ages serfs, Aztecs, and Classical Greeks.”

  A crazy montage of images flashed across the screen faster than Weller could make sense out of them. Hippies, FDR, helicopters, Donald Duck, the Pepsi Cola Girl, the Beatles, God knows what. Then Steinhardt reappeared, slowly dissolving into the picture out of the chaos.

  “That’s why you need Transformationalism,” he said. “Your mind has to evolve to match this permanent situation of permanent change. You’ve got to get rid of that instantaneous personality that was frozen in a previous cultural matrix that no longer exists. You’ve got to learn to ride the changes as they come and change with them. Otherwise your kids will always seem like foreigners, you’ll never be able to figure out that crazy boss of yours, and you’ll stumble through life forever like a South Seas cannibal on Times Squares. The future belongs to the Transformational Man. Anyone else is already a creature of the dead past. We’ve got the techniques, we’ve got the organization, we’ve got the knowledge to give each and every one of you the Transformational Consciousness to cope with a Transformational World. And all the other wise guys who are peddling enlightenment these days are just whistling “Dixie.” Give us your mind, your time, and a few bucks, and we’ll give you the world!”

  Steinhardt saluted the screen with an almost silly grin, and then the tape ran out. After a few moments of hissing static the attendant turned off the video player and turned on the lights.

  Weller blinked, dazzled by the sudden light and by what he had just experienced. Amateurish as the stock-footage cutting had been, the tape certainly had impact. What Steinhardt had said seemed to ring with an essential truth that set off harmonics of agreement in Weller s mind, that seemed to get to him on levels he didn’t even know he had, though the details were already fading like the memory of a vivid dream or an acid trip.

  Of course, that might be illusion, Weller thought. For Steinhardt had enormous raw media presence—crude, rambling, unfocused, but enormous just the same. Star quality in the raw, as strong as Weller had ever seen it, a visceral onslaught that almost made logical argument totally irrelevant.

  “Now that you’ve been introduced to the basis of Transformationalism by John himself,” the attendant said, “here to tell you more about it is Benson Allen, director of the Los Angeles Transformation Center.”

  Allen entered the room, wearing a white ice-cream suit and a red shirt. He walked to the front as the young woman faded away to one side. Theatrically dressed as he was, Hollywood handsome though he might be with his long, flowing blond hair, his presence was still muted and pale in contrast to the immediate memory of Steinhardt. Weller wondered if he realized this, and if so, how he would cope with it.

  “Well, that’s John,” Allen said with a boyish little smile. “I’m sure you’re all a little knocked out, but man, not as knocked out as I was when I first met him. The only way I can try to tell you how much that dude changed my life is with my own little Transformational story.”

  Very good, Weller thought. Playing off it, not against it, and that’s the only thing he can hope to do. At the same time it seemed to him that Allen was really sincere, that he really was in awe of Steinhardt. As well he might be! “In the early sixties,” Allen said, “I was a San Francisco hippie-dip, smoking lots of dope, reading lots of science fiction, and otherwise just goofing around. Then I picked up on a science fiction novel by John called Transformational Man. Deep stuff. We have it on sale downstairs fo
r seven dollars and ninety-five cents, and I hope you will read it. In this novel John wrote about a small group of people who were really into what you just heard him talk about and who set out to teach it to the world and who called themselves Transformational Men.”

  Allen paused, gave his audience a strange, almost embarrassed puppy-dog grin and a little wry shrug. “Now I was loaded most of the time, and this was San Francisco when there was a new guru peddling a new world coming every month, and man, anything seemed possible,” he said. “Dig, I knew Transformational Man was just a science fiction novel, but what John was saying about human consciousness in that story was heavy and deep and true, and it seemed to me that the processes he described in the book would really work. So I started writing letters about it to all the science fiction fanzines, and I went to science fiction conventions and crash pads and rapped about it, and soon I was a little guru myself. I started a little tribe, took some of the techniques from Transformational Man, and we began processing people. That was the beginning of Transformationalism.”

  He looked out over the room, letting it sink in, smiled, nodded. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Z started Transformationalism, not John. After a year or so we had maybe a hundred and fifty members and a little house in the Haight, and that seemed to be as far as it could go. And then one day John B. Steinhardt himself showed up like a psychedelic grizzly bear, showing everyone what a real Transformational personality was like.” Allen shook his head ruefully. “For sure, I didn’t like it when he showed up. No one was going to accept me as the leader of anything with John around. John himself was absolutely knocked out at what I had made out of his novel. To him it had just been a good story. ”

  Allen shook his head, as if really remembering those days with a mixture of awe and fading jealousy. To Weller it seemed either genuine or a magnificent performance. “But a head like John’s doesn’t stay bonged for long,” Allen said. “It adapts instantly to the reality it finds itself in. He saw immediately that Transformationalism was the real thing. Dig— I had been transformed by his novel, and he was put through his own transformation by seeing what his own story had created through me, and that convinced him Transformationalism was valid, pow! in a flash!”

  Now Allen’s eyes seemed to look off into some distant yonder; there was no more undercurrent of jealousy, just undiluted awe. “At that moment John had a tremendous vision of how Transformationalism could change the world, of how my little group could be transformed into what Transformationalism is today. So John took over leadership of Transformationalism from me and built it into what it is now. ” Allen pulled a folding chair to him and sat down on it with the back of the chair to the audience and his arms folded across it, making the motion into what seemed to Weller like a gesture of fealty to the unseen presence of John B. Steinhardt.

  “Dig it,” he said. “John didn’t rip off the leadership. He took it because he was the Man. If he had had to ask, which he didn’t, I would’ve given it to him. I didn’t feel ripped off, I was glad he had taken over, because I knew that this was a greater man than me, that he could do things with Transformationalism that I couldn’t even dream about. Not only that, but with John running things, I knew I could become a more fully Transformed man than ever I could when I was the head honcho. I trusted him, I believed in him, I gave him what I had made, and he never let me down.”

  Allen hunched forward and gazed earnestly at the audience with that unblinking intensity that Weller was beginning to think of as the Transformationalist Stare. “That’s my Transformational story,” he said. “That’s how much I believe in what we’re doing! That’s why I know that Transformationalism is the answer for you, tool That’s why I’m so happy to see you here tonight. That’s why I want so much for you to join us. Transformationalism is real!”

  Weller studied Benson Allen’s face, trying to catch some hint of deception, some sign of insincerity, and failing. He was all but convinced that Allen believed every word that he was saying, that his devotion to Steinhardt was honest and total. Steinhardt’s sincerity, on the other hand, seemed like a fish of a different odor. It wasn’t too hard for Weller to picture Steinhardt totally snowing the stone-out previous incarnation of Benson Allen. But clearly there was more depth to Transformationalism than he had supposed, if someone on Benson Allen’s level could be a genuine true believer.

  Allen rose from his chair, breaking the mood. “Now each of you is going to get the chance to try one of our processes,” he said. “Some of you will try gaming it through, others will have a block-auditing session, and some will have a chance to do some role-reversal. Ms. Henderson here will read you your room assignments. Good luck, and I hope this will be the beginning of a new life for all of you.”

  Allen left the room and the attendant began reading off names and room numbers. “Hilda Bernstein, room two-oh-three, Harry Adler, room two hundred… .” Weller wondered whether the choice of who was going to get what kind of introductory processing was random, or whether they were trying to pick what had the best chance of hooking whom. Judging from the rest of the operation, he suspected the latter… .

  “Jack Weller, room four-oh-five …”

  Well at least it isn’t Room 101, Weller thought. Or is it?

  Room 405 was a small cubicle, bare and empty except for two white cushioned chairs and a white formica table between them. The walls were cream-yellow, and the light came from a harsh overhead fixture. It had the feel of a Gestapo interrogation cell, though the man waiting for him, about forty, with calm gray eyes and a bland characterless face, looked more like a supermarket clerk than a secret-police interrogator.

  “Hello, Jack, I’m Don, your processor,” he said in a flat midwestem voice. “Have a seat. We’re going to try a little role-reversal. First, to get us started, I’d just like you to tell me why you came here tonight.”

  Weller came to tense attention. Bailor had told him to assume that anything he said would get back to Benson Allen and that anyone he would be dealing with would have access to any information Transformationalism had on him. So he couldn’t present a neutral persona; he had to present the reality of Jack Weller, who was here because he was forced to be in order to get into contact with his wife. At the same time this was the opening act in his campaign to convince Transformationalism that he was becoming a genuine convert.

  “My wife has joined Transformationalism,” he said slowly, “and we’ve fought about it. In fact she’s left me and refuses to even talk to me again until I’ve had some Transformational processing.”

  “And she was issued a life directive to that effect?” Don said.

  Weller nodded. So Bailor was right, this guy had probably read the whole dossier. He really had to watch himself.

  “So then, Jack, you’re basically here against your will. Not because you’re really interested in Transformationalism, but because you want to be reunited with your wife?”

  This is the critical point, Weller realized. I can’t deny it, but this is where I have to start laying in the background for a phony conversion. And I had better be subtle about it.

  “Yeah,” he said grudgingly. “I’ve got to admit that… .And also, I suppose, I’ve got some curiosity about what this business is all about. I mean, Annie and I were together for a long time, and I thought we knew each other pretty damn well. Now this Transformationalism thing has come between us. I guess I’d be pretty stupid if I didn’t want to find out what it was that took my wife and made her into a stranger. ”

  Don nodded. His face remained totally neutral, totally bland. This guy doesn’t seem to have too much on the ball, Weller thought.

  “And that’s all?” Don asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, surely you must have some negative feelings about Transformationalism under the circumstances. Strong feelings.”

  “Sure I have some negative feelings,” Weller said carefully. “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Would you like to talk about them?”

>   “What’s the point?” Weller said uneasily. “I’m pissed off that you’ve taken my wife away from me. I’m skeptical about any outfit that would do such a thing. I think you charge an awful lot of money. I think you might be phonies. Do I really have to tell you that?”

  “It’s useful to have those feelings voiced, that’s all,” Don said. “But now we’ll really get down to what we’re about tonight. Now we’ll play role-reversal. Now I’ll be Jack Weller and you’ll be me.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s really very simple,” Don said. “You play the part of a Transformationalist processor interviewing Jack Weller, and I’ll be Jack Weller reacting to the processor.”

  “But I don’t have any idea of what a processor is supposed to do or say. …”

  “Of course you don’t. That’s the whole point. I get inside your skin and you get inside mine. That’s why I asked you a few questions at the beginning. You can start by simply asking me the questions I just asked you and play it by ear from there. Don’t worry, I’ll be helping you along.”

  He paused, looked earnestly at Weller, and said, “Try to really get into it. Be merciless. Try to really experience yourself from the outside and react honestly to what you’re hearing. And don’t be afraid to say whatever you might imagine a processor would say to Jack Weller under the circumstances. Now let’s begin. Jack Weller has just sat down, and you ask him why he’s come here tonight. …”

  Weller found it hard to mask his contempt. This nebbish is going to play Actor’s Studio games with me? “Hello Jack, I’m Don, your processor,” Weller said, broadly parodying the man’s own voice. “Have a seat. What we’re going to do is try a little role-reversal. First, to get us started, I’d just like you to tell me why you came here tonight.” Chew on that, you nerd!

  “My wife has joined Transformationalism, and we’ve fought about it,” the processor shot back in a fair imitation of Weller’s voice. “She’s been issued a life directive never to see me again until I’ve been processed. So I’m here to con you assholes into letting me see her.”