by Gene Brewer
I offered him an evening with Giselle, a visit from his son, even one from his mother. He didn’t seem to care about any of this. I played my hole card. “Your father may be coming to see you soon. Would you like that?”
I thought I saw one of his hands twitch briefly and heard a muffled sound of some kind, but it didn’t show up on the tape of this session. I waited for a moment in case he changed his mind about coming out. He didn’t. “All right, prot. Come on back.”
He quickly raised his head. “Finito?”
“For the moment. Please unhypnotize yourself.”
“Fivefour— Find him yet?”
“No, I didn’t. Any suggestions?”
“Perhaps you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“What tree would you suggest I bark up?”
“I was thinking of the tree of knowledge.”
I glared at him. “Last time you told me about a ‘memory-restoring device,’ remember?”
“Of course.”
“There’s something about the—uh—‘kroladon’ that I don’t understand.”
“I’m not surprised.”
Prot seemed to be getting more arrogant every day. But perhaps that was just my own frustration coming out. Or maybe it was his. “Does it bring forth all your memories? Even the bad ones?”
“We don’t have bad memories on K-PAX.”
“I see. So if I asked you something about your past, anything at all, you’d tell me?”
“Why not?”
“Even if it were uncomfortable for you?”
“Why would it be uncomfortable?”
“All right. Let’s talk some more about your childhood on K-PAX.”
“You seem to be obsessed with childhood, gino. Is that because your own was so terrible?”
“Dammit, prot, when this is over, you can ask me any questions you like. Until then, we’ll concentrate on you. Okay?”
“It’s your party.”
“Some party. Now—I want you to think back again to your boyhood on K-PAX. You’re fifty-nine point nine now. Understand?”
“I think I can manage that.”
“Good. Great. Okay, you’re sixty now, and time is passing rapidly. You’re watching the stars, eating, talking and running with your friends of whatever species, the days—I mean the time—is going by, and soon you’re sixty-eight point one. Some more time goes by, and you become sixty-eight point two. And so on. Point three, point five, point seven, point nine. Do you remember anything about those days?”
“Everything.”
“Naturally. Now I’d like to put you under again.”
“Under what?”
“Prot, please just go to sleep.”
“One—”
“Prot? Can you hear me?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Now I want you to think back to the time you were sixty-eight point five. What do you remember about that time in your life?”
He thought for a moment. “Nothing.”
“Can you describe something that happened when you turned sixty-eight point six?”
“I remember looking up at the stars.”
“Is this the first thing you remember?”
“Yes.”
I sat bolt upright. “Go on.”
He put his hands against his temples and frowned. “My head hurts. I remember wandering toward K-MON for a while. I came to a balnok tree and smelled its bark. Balnok bark smells terrific! I chewed on some, then I found a rock that I hadn’t seen before, and I asked someone what it was. He told me it was a silver ore, and the blue and green veins were morgo and lyal salts. It was so lovely that I—”
“Excuse me. Were you wearing any clothes at the time?”
“No. Why should I?”
“What about the man?”
“No. And he wasn’t a man. He was a cras [pronounced ‘crass’].”
“What’s a ‘cras’?”
“A progenitor of the dremers.”
“The dremers evolved from the crasses?”
“That’s another way to put it.”
“Did he harm you in any way?”
“Of course not.”
“What happened after he told you what the rock was?”
“He went his way and I went mine. In a little while I got a call from—”
“All right. We’ll return to this later. Right now I want you to go back just a bit. Something happened to you earlier. Maybe you fell out of a tree—something like that. You might have been knocked out. When you woke up, you had a headache and you were lying on the ground. Someone was wiping your face, and you couldn’t recall what had happened to you. Do you remember that moment?”
He closed his eyes. “Uh—”
“Do you remember what happened to you? How you came to be lying on the ground with a headache?”
He frowned hard and then stared at the ceiling as if trying to find some answers there.
“Try to remember, prot. It’s very important.”
“Why?”
“Prot—please try to cooperate! I think we may be getting somewhere.”
“Where?”
The tape indicates that I took a long, deep breath at this point. “I don’t know yet. For now, please try to remember how you got that headache!”
He paused again. “I—there’s a—a dremer. He is lying in a hollow log. I am cleaning him with a fallid leaf . . . .”
“Tell me more about this—uh—being. What does he look like? Is he young or old?”
“Not old, but not young, either. He is broken. He is in—in great pain, and—I don’t remember anything else.”
“Try!”
“I remember running. I am running, running, running as fast as I can. I’m running so fast that I bang against a tree. Then someone is wiping my face. My head hurts....”
“Okay, what happened after that?”
“I found some balnok bark to chew on, but the headache didn’t go away. I told you about the silver ore. Later on, I heard someone calling me. It was Robert. He needed me, and I went to help him.”
“Don’t you think it a little strange that someone would call you for help right after you lost your memory?”
“Not really. Beings are crying out for help all over the UNIVERSE.”
“I see. All right—this is your first experience with interplanetary travel, right?”
“No. I’d been doing that for quite a while.”
“You had traveled to other planets?”
“I’d been skipping around our solar system since I was twenty-five or so. As a passenger, of course.”
“But none of these trips came about as a result of your being ‘called for help’ by someone.”
“Nope.”
“And—even though you had never even been out of your own solar system—on your first trip to another one you travel halfway across the galaxy by yourself.”
He shrugged. “That’s where your PLANET was.”
“Weren’t you afraid? Didn’t it bother you to be so far away from home at so young an age?”
“Home is wherever we are. The UNIVERSE is our home.”
“Who told you that?”
“Everyone.”
“No small-town family ties for K-PAXians, right? But didn’t you feel the need to have an adult go with you? To get you out of trouble if need be?”
“Why should I get into trouble?”
“Well, you might run into some dangerous animals, for example.”
“I did.”
“You did?”
“Yes. Homo sapiens.”
“All right. Let’s go back to the time just before you got the call. You were bathing someone. Do you know who it was?”
“No.”
“Concentrate, prot. You were bathing this man, and suddenly you started running. Why?”
“I— He—”
“Take your time.”
“Something was wrong.”
“What was wrong, prot? What was wrong?”
&n
bsp; “I don’t know. That’s where it’s fuzzy. The next thing I remember is running away from him.” He was becoming agitated.
I hated to close this session, but, unfortunately, I had to attend a fundraising luncheon (one of the things I had tried unsuccessfully to eliminate from my cluttered schedule) on Long Island. I was tempted to skip it, but I was the featured speaker. “All right, prot, you may unhypnotize yourself.”
“Five—”
“That’s all for today. I’ll see you on Friday.”
He left, but without the usual jaunty step, or so it seemed to me. I, too, was washed out, and I finished off the pizza and chocolates. Perhaps, I thought, I can make the talk a short one.
To my surprise, the CIA was present at the fundraiser, along with several members of the press. Both groups stared at each other suspiciously. I have no idea how they got wind of the event, but the whole thing took on an entirely different character.
I began by describing progress on the new wing, and how it would provide needed space for new facilities and instrumentation to carry out important research well into the twenty-first century. Before I got any farther, however, someone asked a question about prot. I admitted he had returned, but declined to comment on the nature of his treatment. Nonetheless she (and others) persisted: Who was he, really? Where had he been? Could he really do all the things I had reported in my books, particularly travel faster than the speed of light? How long was he staying? Where was he going? Who was he taking with him? Was he really behind some of the “miraculous” cures we had achieved in recent years? Why were so many people hanging around in front of the hospital? And on and on. Unfortunately, I didn’t have many of the answers. Indeed, it occurred to me that I really didn’t know very much about prot, about multiple personality disorder, about anything.
And the lunch was no picnic, either. I toyed with a plate of linguine (with a sauce of wild mushrooms and black olives), and couldn’t even look at the Death by Chocolate cake. My stomach was churning and the unanswerable questions kept coming. It was like a nightmare. Worst of all, there wasn’t a single financial contribution, much to the chagrin of Virginia Goldfarb and our financial officer, who were becoming more and more frustrated by the cost overruns associated with the construction of the new wing, another affair I was nominally in charge of.
The next morning, just as the sun was coming up, it finally dawned on me why Cassandra might have been a little depressed recently—she may have seen something in the skies that indicated she wouldn’t be among the passengers selected for the journey to K-PAX. But, if so, she might well have some information on who would be going, especially now that the time of departure was rapidly approaching. Of course I didn’t expect a mass exit on New Year’s Eve, a flock of patients streaming into the heavens like a gaggle of featherless geese. But if I could get the names of those on the “waiting list,” it might help the staff deal with the terrible, though certain, letdowns among those who were lining up for the trip.
Prot, prot, prot. Where have you come from and where are you going? How is it that some people, or even their alter egos, are able to convince others they know all the answers, hold the keys to the kingdom? Can anyone explain how a charismatic figure can talk three dozen people into taking a cyanide trip to Comet Hale-Bopp? And these weren’t even residents of a mental institution!
In the shower I didn’t have enough energy to sing the toreador song from Carmen, though it burrowed through my head like some relentless worm. I keep holding up a cape and prot keeps goring me. How now brown cow?
I recalled in detail the previous day’s session. We were coming closer and closer to the truth, but never quite getting there. Every opened door led to another empty room. How could I overcome the imperfections of a “kroladon” and get him to tell me what went on between prot (Robert) and a broken middle-aged man (his father) just before all hell literally broke loose? Perhaps I needed to sharpen the focus. Pound at that tiny interval of time just before little-boy prot ran away. Take it minute by minute, second by second until he reveals something about what happened. “Tor-re-a-dor, en garrr-de!”
Later that morning, while shivering on the back forty waiting for Cassandra to complete her meditations, I got a beep from Betty McAllister—my afternoon interview with a new patient had been cancelled. I immediately asked her to try to arrange an extra session with prot for that hour.
When I returned to the lawn, Cassie was gone. I didn’t have time to track her down—there was a building committee meeting at ten o’clock. I took a stroll around the back forty, peering up at the open walls rising from the ground, the helmeted workers milling around above. What were they thinking about? Lunch? A daughter’s birthday? Going home after work? A weekend football game? A trip to K-PAX?
Session Forty
While waiting for him to make an appearance I reviewed what I knew, exactly, about the moment before prot started running from the man he was bathing. All I really knew was that suddenly young prot was running away. What in God’s name had happened at that seminal moment? Had something equally devastating happened to six-year-old Robert? And what was the connection between the two?
I had rescued a whole bowl of elderly bananas from the hospital kitchens. Prot went for them immediately, gobbling them down like a man starving. When he was finished and had sat back licking his fingers, I turned on the tape recorder and we went over the crucial events again without hypnosis. But he was unable to add a thing to fill in the brief gap in his memory. I uncovered the white dot and asked him to hypnotize himself. When he was in his usual deep trance I took him back to age sixty-eight and asked him to recall the details surrounding his bathing the broken, middle-aged dremer. He could barely remember the episode, and the only thing new I could get out of him was that the man started to rise from the hollow log (bath tub) just before prot departed the scene.
“Try to remember, prot! Was he reaching out to touch you? To grab you?”
“I— I don’t— He was trying to—”
“Yes? What was he trying to do?”
“He was trying to hit me!”
“Why? Do you know why he was trying to hit you?”
“I— I— I—”
“Yes? Yes?”
“I can’t remember. I can’t remember! I CAN’T REMEMBER! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”
“All right, prot, calm down. Just relax. That’s right. Relax. Good. Good....”
He took several deep breaths. I brought him out of hypnosis and he was immediately in complete control again, as if nothing had happened.
I decided to try a different approach. “Space travel is somewhat risky, isn’t it?” I ventured.
A familiar look of exasperation mixed with condescension crept over his face. “Gene, gene, gene. Didn’t you have a bicycle when you were young?”
I suddenly remembered my father running alongside my new bike, finally pushing me off, my feeling of pride when I wiggled my way down the driveway by myself. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
“Space travel to us is like riding a bicycle would be to you. Did you worry about falling down every time you jumped onto it?”
“Not after the first few tries.”
“Egg-zack-a-tickly.”
“Tell me—what’s it like flying through empty space at several times the speed of light?”
“Like nothing.”
“You mean there’s nothing like it.”
“No, I mean there’s no sensation at all.”
“Is it like being unconscious? Or asleep? Something like that?”
“Something like that. It may be akin to what you call ‘hypnosis’.”
I didn’t miss the irony here, but there was no time to dwell on it. “No feeling of hunger or thirst, of getting any older. No sensation of any kind.”
“Nope.”
“Why don’t you burn up in the atmosphere, like a meteor?”
“Same reason light doesn’t burn up in the atmosphere.”
“When you ‘landed,’ didn’t you
stop with a bit of a jolt?”
“No.”
“How do you stop?”
“Simple, if you have the right program.”
“You mean it’s done by computer?”
“Of course.”
“You bring a computer along wherever you go?”
“Sure. So do you. We’re all basically computers with legs, haven’t you noticed?”
“Are you saying the whole thing is programmed into your brain and you have no control over it?”
“Once the matrix is in place, it’s a done deal.”
“It overrides your own will power, is that it?”
“There’s no such thing as ‘will power,’ my friend.” He sounded rather wistful about this, I thought.
“We’re all just a bag of chemicals, is that what you mean? No one has any control over his actions.”
“Can hydrogen and oxygen stop themselves from making water?”
“You’re talking about predestination.”
“No, but you can call it that if it helps you to understand. I’m not saying your life is predetermined from beginning to end, only that in any given situation you will act in a predictable way, which is determined by the chemistry of your brain. You dig?”
“So if, say, a person killed his father, it’s not his fault, right?”
“Of course not.”
“Have you discussed this with Rob?”
“Many times.”
“Then why does he feel guilty about his father’s death?”
“He’s a human being, ain’t he?”
I stared at him for a moment. “Prot, something just occurred to me.”
“Bully for you, doctor brewer.”
“Did your whole body make the journey from K-PAX? Or just your ‘spirit’ or some sort of ‘essence’?”
“Do I look like a ghost to you, doc?”
The tape indicates someone tapping furiously on a notepad with a ballpoint pen. “Then why—oh, the hell with it. Just a few more questions about your first trip to Earth, okay?”
“I’ll save you some time. Though there was no sensation of growing older during the journey, I aged about seven of your months. The trip was uneventful, I didn’t run into anything, I landed safely, took a look at the beings in china, attended a funeral in montana, commiserated with robert, the details of which you have ample notes and recordings, and made it back to K-PAX in one piece. Anything else?”