The Mind Game

by Norman Spinrad

  But a faggot… . Weller felt his flesh crawling. He’d never let himself be violated like that. Yet he also felt a flash of shame, for a part of him was saying, maybe you would, maybe you should. Because if you were in deadly earnest about your creative commitment, you had to detach yourself from your own personality, you had to let yourself bum, you had to be a monomaniac… .

  “Very good,” Sylvia said, looking up from the scope. “Very good indeed. You’re an excellent subject.”

  Weller became aware of the fact that he was sweating. His body was vibrating with fatigue, but it was a triumphant, almost sensual sort of fatigue. He felt very much as he did during those rare peak moments when he was really cooking on the set, when he could feel the camera, the actors, the very film moving behind the lens, as extensions of his own being. It felt something very much like creativity itself.

  “Quite a little game you’ve got here,” he admitted grudgingly, half hating himself for responding to it the way he had. This was not at all like a block-auditing. It didn’t make him feel confused and scattered; it actually did seem to focus his consciousness, to put him more fully inside his own mind. Jesus, he thought warily, I could get to like this. I had better watch my ass!

  Sylvia’s eyes seemed to smile for the first time, though her full expression remained enigmatically hidden behind the brainwave monitor. She glanced at her watch.

  “We have time for one more,” she said. “This time you’re a crippled beggar in ancient Jerusalem, a man of no faith, no belief in anything beyond himself. Jesus has just touched your lame leg and commanded you to rise. You get up, and your body is whole and healthy. You look into His eyes, and you are confronted with a clearly transcendent being, a creature superior to you in every way who loves you and has made you whole. Your skepticism is no longer tenable because your own body proves the reality. You worship him, you are transfigured and transformed.”

  Weller regarded Sylvia sourly, suddenly brought down from that energetic creative state. This was just a little too transparent. Superior being, huh? Transfigured and … transformed, huh? My skepticism is no longer tenable, huh? Jesus B. Steinhardt, huh?

  “This one is just a little too silly for me,” he said.

  “Is it?” Sylvia said evenly. “That’s funny, you’re reacting very strongly to it. It really makes you uptight.”

  “Oh, come on …”

  “Come on yourself, Jack. You’re really blocking. Are you so afraid of such a concept that you don’t even dare fantasize about it? Does the concept of a man who is greater than you terrify you that much? Is your mind so rigid you won’t even try?”

  “Oh, all right,” Weller said. I’ve put up my resistance, he thought, so maybe this is an opportunity to plant the sort of thing they’re looking for. If I can show that I’m wavering, that somewhere a tiny part of me wants to worship John B. Christ… .

  He tried to imagine that he was looking up at a Jesus who had just healed him, that he believed, that he worshiped… . But it was impossible to even think about it with a straight face. Maybe I should try what they’re really after, he thought.

  Okay, I’m sitting in a room with John B. Steinhardt. Annie and I have been reunited and I’ve got a fat contract to do a feature film, all through the good offices and wisdom of Steinhardt, who has helped me despite my own worthless self. Wouldn’t I love him? Wouldn’t I think he was hot shit? Wouldn’t I just sit there grinning like an ape and basking in the munificent wonderfulness of his being?

  Weller tried to hold this ludicrous concept in his mind, to impress it upon his brain deeply enough to affect the brainwave traces Sylvia was studying while trying to discern how he was doing by reading her expression from the top half of her face. Talk about Method Acting! he thought. Am I getting through? Good old wonderful John, who has given me wealth, success, by wife back, a Transformed mind in a healthy body, sweet breath and clean white teeth… . Ah, shit!

  “How am I doing?” he finally said when he could take it no longer.

  “About as well as could be expected at this point,” Sylvia said, looking up at him with unreadable eyes. She checked her watch. “I’m afraid our time is up,” she said. “You see the life counselor now—Mr. Rohrer in room two-oh-six. About signing up for meditative deconditioning. And you did want to talk to someone about seeing your wife… ?”

  “Yeah,” Weller said, blinking himself back into hard reality, remembering what it was that had brought him here in the first place. He tried to recapture the determination to force an immediate showdown that he had carried with him into the center tonight, but it seemed very difficult to connect with that mundane reality at the moment. For something new and unforseen had happened. Sure, the last scenario had been an obvious brain lavage, but the other two… . They had turned him on, gotten his mind moving along new parameters. This goddamn process really worked! As advertised. And now, despite himself, he felt an unwholesome fascination toward it.

  “I’ll be seeing you next week, won’t I?” Sylvia said with a knowing little smile. “Mr. Rohrer will handle the details of scheduling.”

  “I guess so,” Weller muttered. Now he realized that there never had been any chance that they were going to let him see Annie at this stage. After this one session it was clear that everything up till this point had been low-level stuff designed to lead him into meditative deconditioning, had only been the baiting of the hook. Because this stuff really seemed to work the way it was intended. They had won round one. They had gotten him interested in the game for its own sake. He sensed that some positive change in his life might come out of this meditative deconditioning thing.

  He shuddered. If that power were really there, what other, deeper, more subtle, and less benign changes could this process unfold in what he had once supposed was his immutable soul?

  Rohrer was a pasty-faced little man in his forties, and his office was little more than a cubicle; his persona was that of a paper shuffler, a low-level functionary who just filled out forms. He listened to Weller’s opening demands to see Annie with a bureaucratic weariness that no amount of verbiage could penetrate, letting Weller go on till he simply ran out of steam.

  “Really, Mr. Weller,” he finally said, “my job is to arrange your meditative deconditioning, not discuss life directives which are a matter of policy set at a much higher level. Besides, from what’s in your file it’s perfectly obvious that you’re not going to be allowed to see her until you’ve been processed to her level. So shall we get down to what we’re here for, eh?”

  “I’m not signing up for any meditative deconditioning until I see my wife,” Weller insisted, but with little internal conviction.

  “And you’re not going to see your wife until you’ve had meditative deconditioning,” Rohrer said. “We seem to be at an impasse.”

  “So we do,” Weller said wearily.

  Rohrer stared off into space for a moment. Then a lightbulb seemed to come on in his head so transparently that Weller was sure it was some kind of act. “I almost forgot,” he said, reaching into a desk drawer. He pulled out a white envelope and placed it on the desk top with his palm over it. “This may make a difference,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s an authorized communication from your wife,” Rohrer said. “My directive is to give it to you after you’ve signed up for meditative deconditioning.”

  Weller leaped half out of his chair and reached for the envelope. Rohrer looked startled, but slickly and quickly slipped the envelope back in the drawer. “Give me that or I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” Rohrer said. “Violence will be entirely counterproductive from your point of view. You don’t imagine you can overpower me and get out of this building with the letter do you? And to what end?”

  Weller slumped back into his chair. The wormy little bastard was right. They really had him. They knew he would have to see the letter. Of course, he could sign up for the course, get the letter, and then refuse to pay them …
/>   “Shall we get on with it?” Rohrer said.

  “All right,” Weller sighed. “Let’s discuss my meditative deconditioning. How long is it going to take me to reach the level where you’ll let me see my wife?”

  “That depends. …”

  “On what?” Weller snapped.

  “On how well you respond. On how many sessions a week you have.”

  “Goddamn it, can’t you give me a straight answer? How many sessions is it going to take me to be processed to Annie’s level?”

  “The usual range would be twenty to thirty sessions,” Rohrer said. “On the other hand, your wife will be continuing her processing in the meantime, so how long it takes you to catch up will also be a function of how rapidly you take the necessary processing. ”

  Good God! Weller thought. Thirty sessions at forty bucks each is twelve hundred dollars! At two sessions a week, that’s fifteen weeks, and another fifteen hundred dollars!

  “Do you realize what you’re saying, man?” he said. “Twelve hundred dollars! Fifteen weeks before I get to see Annie! Money aside, don’t you people have any heart?” The future spread out before Weller in an endless bankrupt headache throb.

  “It’s not as bad as all that,” Rohrer said blandly. “You seem to assume that we’re limiting you to two meditative deconditioning sessions a week. If the time factor concerns you, I’d suggest you sign up for the crash course.”

  “Crash course?”

  Rohrer nodded. “You can have a session every night in the week if you want to,” he said. “That way, the whole process would only take about a month. In fact it’s our experience that people who take the crash course finish the process in fewer sessions. You get into it more deeply that way. You might achieve fully eptified consciousness in as little as twenty sessions in as little as three weeks. Possibly at a savings of four hundred dollars.”

  Weller did some fast mental calculations. Seven sessions a week would cost him two hundred and eighty dollars, plus another hundred for Bailor. He was making five hundred dollars a week, so that would leave him four hundred and eighty a month to meet the mortgage payment and live on. He should be able to squeeze through. And he would save almost fifteen hundred dollars in the long run.

  More to the point, he might be able to handle this situation for another four weeks, but fifteen weeks more was unthinkable. There was no way he could endure that!

  “And at the end of the month I can see Annie?” he asked plaintively.

  “I have no authority to tell you that one way or the other,” Rohrer said.

  “Oh, for God’s sake ...”

  Rohrer leaned across the desk and seemed to crack his bureaucratic persona with a man-to-man smile that seemed totally bureaucratic in itself. “Well then, just between you and me, off the record, you understand,” he said, “it’s been my experience that in a case like this the life directive would usually be rescinded once you complete meditative deconditioning. Does that help?”

  Weller nodded. He sighed. There was Annie’s letter locked away from him in the desk drawer. I have to have that. There’s no way I’m going to leave here without it and only one way I’m going to get it. He thought of tonight’s session, the strange mixture of crude brainwashing and … and something else, something that had held an almost morbid fascination for him at a deep, deep level. Who are you kidding? he thought. You knew you were going to sign up before you came in here, before you even knew about the letter. This little fencing match was just a sham from word one. Get it over with, and get that letter!

  “All right,” he said. “I guess you’ve sold me the crash course.” Like a man struggling in quicksand, every move he made just seemed to suck him in deeper.

  Weller rushed out of the Transformation Center with the still-sealed envelope burning in his hand. He had resisted the impulse to tear it open the moment Rohrer handed it over; whatever was in it, reading it in this place would be more than he could bear.

  He ran the two blocks to his car, got in, and tore open the envelope. Inside were two sheets of Transformationalism, Inc. letterhead covered with perfect electric typewriting. Annie could not type worth a damn. Son of a bitch! It meant that someone had read what she had written, passed it, and retyped it—if Annie had really written the damn thing at all.

  His hands trembling slightly, Weller began to read:

  Dear Jack:

  How are you, love? I know you must be feeling better because I wouldn’t be allowed to write this letter unless your processors knew they had put you through some meaningful transformations.

  I’ve been going through some heavy transformations myself. I’m feeling better and stronger and more myself every day and the only block was missing you and worrying about you being left behind.

  But now I’ve been told that you’re on your way home to me, and it’s given me the strength to go on and endure the waiting with a happy heart.

  Knowing you, I know that you must still be confused and uncertain. You started your processing out of love for me, not because you thought you really needed it; we all know that. But by now you must see that something inside you has drawn you to Transformationalism for its own sake. I was enough to get you started, but now you’re not sure why you’re going on.

  I hope it isn’t making you doubt your love for me. I hope you’re not thinking you’re somehow betraying our love by continuing for your own “selfish” reasons. I also hope that you’re not hiding your real reasons from yourself out of some guilty, twisted loyalty to me.

  Because there is no selfishness here. When two people love each other, they both want each other to be the best possible persons they can. What enhances your self enhances us, and so enhances me. I had to leave you for a time because you didn’t understand that in relation to me. Now, love, you must be feeling what I felt. So no blame, no guilt. What you do for you, you do for us.

  So take care, love, feel free, do what you have to do for you, knowing that I understand you’re doing it for us. Take heart in knowing, as I do, that we’ll be back together soon—enhanced, fulfilled, eptified, a better you, a better me, a better us.

  Much love, Annie

  Carefully, mechanically, Weller folded the letter and slipped it back in the envelope. The signature in ball-point pen at the bottom of the letter had unquestionably been authentic. So whether Annie had written the letter herself or not, she had definitely at least read it and at least to that extent collaborated in its writing.

  But in another way it seemed like a Transformationalist document, another carefully calculated piece of brainwashing, even if every word had come straight from her heart. The timing was too perfect, what the letter had said was too close to what he had been feeling. It was all too perfectly crafted to psychologically reinforce the tentative decision he had just made for it to be just a random personal letter from his wife.

  Wearily he started the engine and put the car into gear. The letter that had seemed to be so much before he had read it now had proven to be nothing at all. Nothing was changed; he knew no more than before. Except, perhaps, that even his own motives might not be what they seemed, maybe he couldn’t entirely trust himself either.

  Six

  Hal Leer, red-eyed and ashen-faced even with the benefit of the best possible makeup, lurched around on rubbery knees in the center of the set while Barry the Brat and Scuffles, wearing matching Little League uniforms and baseball gloves, tossed the ball gently back and forth to each other—left, right, left, right.

  Weller, standing behind the rolling camera, watched the take with bleary, hostile boredom. Stupid brainless garbage I he thought. Like life in prison without possibility of parole, like life without Annie, like night after night of meditative deconditioning, the same brain-bonging routine over and over again. Start a segment on Monday, be half a day’s shooting behind by Wednesday, work like a maniac on Thursday and Friday to catch up, accepting any crap that was halfway usable as a print, wrap it up on Friday half-dead on his feet. And for what? S
o he could begin at the top of the cycle again on Monday morning. So he could collect his lousy five hundred dollars and pay out three hundred eighty dollars of it to Bailor and the Transformationalists. So he could keep going in order to keep going. He felt like a creaky robot, badly in need of oil, on an accelerating treadmill to nowhere.

  Only during his sessions with Sylvia did he feel really alert, and that was a state of heightened awareness almost too convoluted to bear. Bailor’s so-called counterprogramming only seemed to crank up his paranoia a turn of the screw tighter. Knowing what was going on only made it worse… .

  “They’re ping-ponging your head,” Bailor had told him. “They feed you scenarios keyed into your fears and guilts and dissatisfactions designed to drop your self-esteem through the floor, and then they hit you with a superman fantasy that lets you feel like the king of the hill. They move your sense of self-worth from your life as you’ve lived it into the whack-off fantasies of the life scenarios. Soon you want to be that Jack Weller, not the nerd sleepwalking around in the real world. The classic cult program. ”

  “So what do I do?”

  “Give ’em what they’re looking for,” Bailor had said. “Stop asking about Annie. Talk about your work problems. Throw in a few questions about Transformationalism here and there. But do it grudgingly and slowly—you’ve got to convince them that you’re coming around against great internal resistance. ”