The Mind Game

by Norman Spinrad

  “And that’s it?” Weller said sullenly. “All those years of trying, and you walk away from it just like that?”

  Annie smiled at him, and the tranquil radiance of it nearly drove him crazy. “Can’t you understand how wonderful it is to stop trying to feed your own starving ego and be totally involved with what you’re doing on a really meaningful, fully eptified level?”

  “Well, what the hell are you doing?” Weller grunted.

  “I’m a creativity monitor,” she said.

  “A what?”

  “I work in the creativity program. I’m in charge of the brainwave tapes. I keep records of who’s doing how much work on what. I help decide which process to run on who when.”

  Weller’s growing anger broke through for a moment. “Sounds boring as hell,” he said.

  “It’s vital work, Jack,” she said somewhat testily. “It’s important to the movement.”

  “Running a time clock is probably important at MGM,” Weller said sourly. “That doesn’t make the job less of a bummer.”

  “It’s not just mechanical work,” Annie insisted. “I’m working to create more creative consciousness. And I’m one of the people involved in project decisions. I’m the one who evaluates how well which programs are working on the subjects.”

  “So you’re not just a clerk, you’re a cultural commissar,” Weller blurted.

  “Commissar?” Annie said, laughing. “Where did you get a crazy idea like that?”

  “From the highest authority,” Weller said. “Steinhardt told me flat out that you’d be giving him evaluation reports on me.”

  Annie’s expression finally darkened, as if she had just realized that they were having something like an argument. “You make it sound so awful,” she said. “But it’s not like that. I’m not spying on you, I’m helping you. Together we’re going to convince John that you’re the man for the job. I don’t have any doubts. Do you?”

  “No,” Weller muttered, unable to express what he truly felt. Anger, sadness, a sense of loss. That it had gone this far! That Annie could trade her career for playing Comrade Commissar to a bunch of freeloading writers and painters! That she could even report back to Steinhardt on him and expect him to approve of it! That he couldn’t feel free to say a damned true thing about it! Oh baby, baby, I’ve got to get us the fuck out of here—fast!

  There was a long period of awkward silence. Then Annie broke it with a warm smile that seemed like a forced act of will. “Let’s not spoil today with an argument then, okay?” she said breezily.

  “Yeah, sure, okay,” Weller said, making himself smile back. She took his hand and led him down the far side of the hill. There was no trouble at the gate—the guard recognized Annie and had gotten an updated directive on Weller too.

  Annie led him to a secluded cabin in a comer of the compound, heavily shaded by towering oaks, its rough wooden siding blending it into the landscape.

  Inside were two rather small rooms and a full bath. The bedroom was paneled in knotty pine, with rich blue draperies and bedspread. The other room was a combination living room, kitchen, and dinette in the manner of a family style motel. There was a compact stove-sink-refrigerator-combo unit behind a Formica breakfast bar with yellow stools. There were two easy chairs, a leather couch, a low round walnut table, a desk, and a color television set. Plush green wall-to-wall carpeting, anonymous framed prints, a complete set of pots, dishes, and silverware. Everything but the checkout notice. And, of course, an extension phone. Apparently even a “creativity monitor” did not rate free contact with the outside world.

  “Cozy, isn’t it?” Annie said as they sat side by side on the couch after the ten-cent tour.

  “Yeah, all the comforts of Las Vegas,” Weller said. He found that he had made an unconscious decision not to bring up the matter of missing phones. Already he found himself being somewhat guarded with Annie, slipping easily into the persona he had crafted for himself during his stay in the movement, and hating himself a little for it. But both Steinhardt and Annie had made it quite clear that she would be reporting on him as if he were one of the Colony guinea pigs, and nothing that he had seen in her so far gave him any confidence that her loyalties were not still split. Transformed? he thought bitterly. Yeah, that’s just about the measure of how we’ve both been transformed.

  And here we sit, he thought, knowing its long since time to make love. I know it, you know it, but where’s our reality? There are so many piled up changes in both of us that we’re like two kids sitting in the backseat of a parked car with our strangenesses and desires forming an invisible wall of tension between us.

  Later, after the long ice was broken, making love could just be making love again, but now it was something that had to be done, which made Weller’s first move a willfull act of determination.

  Weller snaked his arm around Annie’s shoulders. She moved hesitantly into the crook of his arm, but he could feel a holding back, a tension, in the pressure of her body against his. They turned to face each other, eye to eye, lips shimmering across a spark gap from lips, close enough for Weller to smell the perfume of her breath.

  “Well …’’

  “Well … ?”

  “Oh, this is ridiculous!” Weller said, trying to giggle it and failing, and he reached out, pulled her to him, and at last touched his lips to hers.

  At that moment psychic tension alchemized itself to almost tearful lust, and the body’s visceral memories and longing freed him from the paralysis of the mind. The kiss became deep and melting and endless, a dissolution of the tension interface between them.

  Weller released his breath into her and tasted her answering sigh, and at last he was free from history and expectation, free from the games and torments of the mind, a human animal come home to his own.

  They kissed and they touched, and they tasted each other anew. Clothes came away fumbling in haste, and in what seemed like one continuous bright moment, Weller was deep inside her.

  But not deep enough. As he felt her body responding beneath him, he found himself wanting to concentrate his total life-force into the knightly lance of his cock. He had to thrust its purifying length into the ambivalent shrouded core of her and reconquer the lady of his heart from the dragons of the mind.

  So what had begun as one thing became another. Tender homecoming became a demonic exercise in fancy fucking. Male ego lust combined with righteous wrath and messianic husbandhood to turn him on in darker and deeper ways than he had ever been before.

  Once she began to cry out in orgasm, he threw himself into the center of her ecstasy with even more heightened fervor. He wanted to keep her there for a long, long time. Until she was reformed from the chaos of ecstasy around him, purified of that which had been put there by Transformationalism.

  On and on he went, moving into the sound of her rising and falling cries, determined to keep her changes coming until he had fucked her brains clean.

  When he finally came himself, it was with blinding, uncontrollable force that shook him to his toes, but even that wasn’t enough. Far from being a culmination or a release, it was a goad and a challenge. He wanted to pour himself through this instantaneous pipeline to her center, flow with his own seed, and fill her with himself.

  He went on and on afterward until they were both far over the ragged edge of exhaustion, panting and heaving for air.

  “My God, it’s been a long time,” Annie said huskily. “Ah, I’ve missed you!”

  As soon as words returned, Weller felt himself returning from the cosmic battlefield. Now they were neither engaged in some Armageddon of lust and will, nor were they tension-ridden strangers. Now we’re just Jack and Annie again.

  Annie smiled impishly at him. “It was a lot better than I remembered,” she said teasingly. “And as I remember, what I remember was pretty damn good.”

  “Pretty fucking good!” Weller said, and a laugh managed to bubble out of him. What had to be done, had been done, and from here on in, their lovemaki
ng would become what it had always been—neither a thing of cosmic tension between them nor the golden path to the reclaimed Annie of his desires.

  That battle was going to be decided on a psychic level, not in bed.

  On balance he found he couldn’t decide whether that was a blessing or a curse.

  In a gesture of housewifely normalcy Annie stacked the last of the dinner dishes in the sink, wiped off her hands, and sat down beside Weller on the couch, which happened to be facing the television set.

  But once again her words came not from his wife but from her Transformationalist persona. “I think it’s time for you to get your first look at what we’re doing here at the Colony. ”

  They had lazed away the afternoon making love and talking, and their lovemaking had become more and more ordinary, even as Weller had known it would, for which he was warmly grateful. The more familiar it seemed, the more of a homecoming it was. There were times when the pleasure of making love to your own wife became the kinkiest sex trip of all.

  But he also wondered if they hadn’t done so much lovemaking partially because it kept them from talking. She was shining with the fulfilling light of Transformationalism—what had been a time of agony for him had been a golden age for her. He couldn’t be honest with her about what he felt about the movement, nor could he react from the heart to what she told him.

  So whenever words replaced touch, the walls were up, and their conversations swiftly degenerated into stylized fencing matches, half-sincere and half-political, in the most loathsome sense of the word.

  The last one, mercifully terminated by steak and home fries, had come pretty close to the edge.

  She couldn’t get over how wonderful it was that he had left Monkey Business and become a director for the movement. “God, it’s so good to see you out of there and doing something real. It’s like seeing you get out of prison.”

  “If you consider shooting television commercials a step up from kiddie shows,” Weller said.

  “But they’re Transformational commercials. They’re doing something real to change the world, it’s not just a meaningless Hollywood sausage factory.”

  “I seem to remember you had a pretty strong desire to become an Armor Star frankfurter yourself,” Weller said testily. “And believe me, all I’m doing now is turning out a different brand of baloney.”

  Annie looked at him narrowly. “You’re not happy to be working for the movement?” she said. “You don’t believe in what you’re doing?” Suddenly he had the feeling that there was a tape recorder built into the nearest lamp. That was definitely a commissar-type question.

  “They’re wasting my talents,” Weller said, backing off from the test. “I want to be doing the best I can, and churning out commercials is not it, I hope.”

  “But that’s why you’re here, Jack!” Annie said more brightly. “You’ve reached a level of consciousness where they’ll really let you direct.” She kissed him on the cheek. “You’re even going to get to work with John! If that doesn’t make you proud, it sure does me. ”

  “Well, it’s good to hear that,” Weller said sullenly. “Seeing as how your little reports on me will help determine whether I get to do it or not. ”

  “Oh Jack, don’t be so paranoid about it. It’s nothing, just a formality. Do you think you’d be here at the Institute with me if John had any real doubts?”

  “That didn’t seemed to be John’s attitude,” Weller said.

  “Do you really think you can understand John’s attitudes? We’re all supposed to report any regressive tendencies we see in each other. It’s for everyone’s own good. ”

  “That’s charming,” Weller snapped. “Does that mean I’m supposed to report any regressive tendencies 1 see in you?”

  Annie actually got nervous for a moment. “Why? Have I said something wrong?”

  The humorlessness of it was ridiculous. “Well, I’m not entirely convinced that some wee part of you isn’t still interested in a regressive career as a movie star,” Weller chided, trying to zing her into seeing the fatuousness of of such an extreme of Transformationalist zeal.

  “Really?” she said earnestly. “I really think I’ve eliminated that block, but if that’s what you’re picking up, it may be what I’m putting out on some level, and maybe you should report it.”

  “Oh Annie, can’t you tell when I’m putting you on any more?”

  “I’ve forgotten all those tacky little Hollywood games,” she had said, giving him a look of momentary contempt.

  Fortunately at that point there had been a loud sizzle from the broiler as the steaks called angrily for attention, and the ideological tension that had been building up to a confrontation again had been aborted once more, this time by the dinner table instead of the bed.

  But now the dishes were in the sink, and the fencing match would probably begin again, because now they were going on a tour of the Colony, according, no doubt, to his directive for the day. Well, there was no point in delaying the inevitable, and he did have a certain curiosity about what was going on here.

  “Okay,” he said. “I guess it’s time I got the grand tour.”

  The first stop was in the low white building at the center of the cluster of cabins, where a big, loftlike room was divided up into a series of cubicles. What was going on looked like standard preliminary processing: a subject wired into a brainwave monitor and a processor reading off block-auditing sequences or life scenarios. Half a dozen people undergoing standard block auditing and meditative deconditioning? Here, at the Institute? It didn’t make sense, not after what he had had to go through to get here.

  Silently he motioned Annie into the access hall. “What’s going on here?” he said. “How come you’re running such low-level processes on these people? I was told that no one got into the Institute without going all the way through life analysis. What are these beginners doing here?” He found to his surprise that he somehow felt indignant about it.

  “The people at the Colony are an exception,” Annie said. She suddenly began to look uneasy, as if there were something going on that she didn’t care to talk about.

  “Why?”

  “Well … ah … the Colony has a dual purpose. …”

  “Dual purpose?”

  “Shall we go meet some of the people at their work?” Annie said with forced brightness.

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “It’s really pretty technical, and I don’t think—”

  “Come on, Annie, this is me you’re jiving!” Weller snapped. “Besides, you’re my official guide, and if I’m going to work with John, I have to know these things.”

  Annie fidgeted for a moment, caught up in some unguessable conflict of directives. “Well, okay. The truth is we have a problem attracting creative people into the movement and keeping them there,” she finally admitted grudgingly. “They just don’t come to the regular Transformation Centers—that’s why John thought up the Celebrity Centers. And when we do get them into processing, they almost always drop out at low levels. Something about creative consciousness seems to block processing. ”

  “So you lure them here with free room and board so you can play with their heads.”

  “You make it sound so tacky. ”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Not at all,” Annie insisted righteously. “If something about Transformational processing turns off creative people, we’ve got to learn what it is and correct it. If we don’t bring Transformational Consciousness to the very people who mold mass consciousness, how can we create a Transformational culture? We’ve got to make Transformationalism chic with the molders of public consciousness.”

  “A direct quote from John?” Weller said dryly.

  “More or less. John is very concerned with this problem, having been a writer himself. But we are getting somewhere, thanks to the Colony. We can process a hundred people a year here. Processing may not be what they come for, but at least they get it, and some of it must stick.�
�

  “If creativity interferes with processing, I’d bet my bottom dollar that processing interferes with creativity,” Weller said angrily. “How much creative work have you done lately?” For that matter how creative have I been since I got involved in this mess, he realized glumly. All these mind games sap up psychic energy like vampire bats. No wonder creative people instinctively avoid it! But these poor bastards here get it force fed to them like I did.

  “How much work is really getting done in the Colony?” Weller said sharply. “I’ll bet all your guinea pigs are sitting around on their asses or reaming out crud to justify their existences. ”

  “That’s not so,” Annie said. “With modified processing and eptifiers, we’re succeeding here. People are being processed and working creatively at the same time. I’ll show you. I have to collect some brainwave recordings anyway.”

  “Sure, why not?” Weller said. “Let’s see if the guinea pigs are spinning their exercise wheels. ”

  Annie took him through a copse of trees to a nearby cabin where an emaciated man in cut-off jeans was working on a large abstract canvas in a midden of paints and brushes. But instead of the beret that seemed to go with the act, he wore a brainwave monitor band, but without a wire lead in evidence. As for the work in progress Weller might not have known much about art, but he knew enough about baloney.

  “Hello, Jerry,” Annie said. “This is my husband Jack. He makes commercials for the movement. Hell be staying with me now.” There was something cold and guarded in the way Annie spoke. She had pointedly avoided mentioning that he was going to be working with John with an instant cover story, and that was something she had seemed womanly proud of, a boast about him that he would’ve thought she was dying to make.

  “Jerry Winter,” the thin man said. “So you’re the latest inmate of Uncle John’s Funny Farm?”

  Annie shot Winter an absolutely poisonous look, and Winter seemed to fear it. “Oh come on, Annie,” he said ingratiatingly, “it’s just a little affectionate inside joke. Don’t lose your sense of humor.”