“The meter shows the number of active Energy Mirrors.” explains Espree.
Boop is inspecting the meter closely. “OK, meter says 285. Do you agree? He shows it to Turse who nods. “Not exactly a full load, but I think we can do 1200 credits―sound good to you?”
Turse’s ridge falls over to the side and his coloration goes dull. He’s obviously not pleased with the offer. Doyle jabs him in the side.
“Uh, well, c’mon Boop, we gotta get at least 1500. We’re loosin’ credits at 1200!”
“Sorry guys.” says Boop, “1250 is the wholesale price and you aren’t even distributors. You know we all work on commission don’t you? I’d have nothing left.” He shrugs. “I gotta make a living.”
Doyle jabs Turse again.
“Uh, well, can’t we go at least 1225 Boop? That way at least we can pay our expenses!”
Doyle’s dorsal has gone bright red, his coloration is streaked with bright-orange as he steps forward pushing Turse behind him with one arm.
“Look man! I know damn well that you can pay 1750 for a full load and you’ll still get your damn commission! And considering we have to travel halfway to the rainbow nebula now to set up our trap, and considering the location fee has gone up 25%, and considering it takes a full load of fuel and 3 extra centi-terms travel time, and seein’ as you haven’t been willing to lift a freakin’ finger despite our excessive efforts to be good suppliers to VWF, I think 1200 is a damn insult. Now you either pay us for what it’s worth, or we’ll take our business to GWF where they don’t dicker around with you and the brokers aren’t so worried about padding their credit book!”
Boop ridge falls limp. He seems to gape at Doyle. Turse is staring at his partner. Some of the nearby hunters have turned and are looking on too. Boop is looking around―obviously very uncomfortable being at the center of attention.
“Uh, well. Look Doyle,” he says softly―turning serious, “I haven’t paid over 1450 for a load for months. If I bought for less than that, I’d be put back in inventory, makin’ minimum wage.”
Doyle shakes his head, “Fine, C’mon,” he say’s grabbing his stunned partner by the arm. “I’d rather get 1400 from GWF. At least they won’t insult me.” He pulls Turse along with him, heading back in the direction they came.
“OK! OK.” Says Boop as softly as he can. “OK. 1500! You’ve been good suppliers. I’ll go 1500. But only as a personal favor. I can only give one customer bonus per week.”
“1500 and a refuel,” says Doyle emphatically.
“1450 with a refuel coupon!”
“C’mon Turse,” he says pulling his partner along.
“OK. OK. You got a deal.” Says Boop quietly, “1500 and fuel.”
Feigning reluctance, Doyle turns walks back to the counter. “Let me see the contract.” Boop punches in the figures and brings up the image on screen. Doyle reads it over and imprints it. “Someone’s got to make an honest man out of you.” He says.
Boop chuckles, “You drive a hard bargain Doyle, how’s about lettin’ your partner do the dealin’ next time,” he says smiling at Turse.
Turse has a miserable look on his face, his dorsal has gone limp.
“Pull up to dock 32A,” says Boop.
Turse and Doyle turn to head back to the ship.
“I would have gone 1550,” says Boop.
Doyle looks over his shoulder glowing green. “I would have taken 1475.”
Espree looks over at me.
“There you have it. 1500 credits is the going rate for a load of enslaved souls condemned to hell for eternity. Are you ready for more?”
I really have no choice.
“Lead on oh wise one.”
CHAPTER 12
From a distance, it looks like a planet. Then as we shift to a closer view and it takes on the appearance of a big black ball with a small belt around the equator. It almost seems like a living organism. I can see a flow moving in circular streams inside the transparent outer shell. With nothing known to use as a comparison, I have no way of knowing its size.
“How big is it?”
Espree zooms in to a tiny area of the equator belt, and then she zooms in further until I can distinguish a ship similar to the Trap Ship we have been following.
“That thing is huge.” I say staring at a scene that has begun to draws me in with a dire fascination, “what is it?”
“It is a Containment Field. This is a storage and conditioning area for the newly captured free spirits. You were brought here after your initial capture. This is where you eventually succumbed to the whim of the universe around you. This is where you gave up…”
Espree’s is explaining the scene, but her explanation has faded into the background and I no longer hear her.
Once again I am at the whim of my emotions. But this time I feel none of the anger and the hysteria that I experienced in the previous views of the Trap Ship, instead I feel intensely heavy, dense and dull―unable to muster up the energy it would take to simply move. I am dead weight in the chair. Oh god I’m tired! I must rest. Maybe it was something in the food, maybe it was food poisoning. I just want to lie on a couch with a blanket and a TV set, watching an endless stream of movies as I drift in and out of consciousness.
I have felt this way before when, for whatever reason, my energy was down and I felt tired and lethargic; but this is such a feeling multiplied by 100. The idea of moving is absolutely repulsive to me; the thought of doing something―anything―requires too much effort.
I am in a state of semi-consciousness, drifting, half-asleep, half awake surrounded by a soft blanket of heaviness. What a lovely, depressing state of mind. I feel my eyes slowing closing, I suppose I should be looking at the viewer or talking to Espree, but frankly, I just don’t want to and furthermore, I don’t care.
Espree is nudging me. “Tim, you are reacting to the containment area. You are feeling the suppressive effects of the energy that surrounds you and contains you. You’ve got to confront this scene.”
She’s got my head in her hands, they’re uncomfortably cool. She’s turning my head to make me look.
I know I am in a room on planet Earth millions of light years away from this thing―if it even exists, which I doubt, and yet I don’t want Espree to zoom in any closer.
“Let’s not zoom in any more.” I hear myself say as if my body is talking for me.
Espree takes me by the hand and looks straight into my eyes. “Tim you are senior to this! You are not your emotions. You are not these heavy feelings. We need to look at this.”
I hear what she’s saying, but I just don’t care. I want to vegetate, that’s all I want. We can do this some other time―after I’ve eaten gluttonously for a few months and gained a few hundred pounds. Maybe I’ll have some motivation then and if not, who cares, who the hell cares. I don’t want to face anything; I’m just too damn tired.
“Let’s take a break”, I say, “I’m tired Espree. I’m just too tired. I just don’t care.”
I should get up and head back to my dorm. Oh, that couch sounds so good! But I’m just too tired to get up. I’ll just rest a bit. Maybe in a while, maybe….
How strange! I close my eyes and I can still see the scene in the viewer―only it isn’t the scene in the viewer, it is a scene in my mind and the scene slowly surrounds and engulfs me like a new generation of 3D movies complete with sensation.
I feel Espree’s and holding my own. That is the only reason I don’t think this is a dream. I know my body is asleep but somehow Espree is keeping “me” awake so that I may see this memory. Is it a memory? Or is it a dream?
I am moving into that liquid planet now and I feel compressed and surrounded by a thick layer of heavy energy. I am completely exhausted and yet the exhaustion is not me it surrounds me, but it is a separate entity, part of the scene I saw in the viewer but it is not in the viewer it is in me.
The past has moved into the present―it is my past, my existence.
I don’t care if
it is a collective universal experience from the transcendental firmament of life; I only know that this is an experience of mine―or ours―from eons ago.
I am in the containment field and all I wanted to do at the time was withdraw inside myself and be ‘safe” in my little bed, surrounded by my blanket of tiredness, slumbering in a world of dullness and sleep.
Espree keeps squeezing my hand, asking me to look. She is in the incident with me. She is my constant companion, my conscience, urging me to face my past.
I don’t know how long she kept me at it—telling me to describe what I see and feel— as I go in and out of consciousness. It must have been hours. Through sheer force of will she continued to pull me from my mental cocoon and ask me to help her understand what I was experiencing, badgering me for more data, more details, irritating me with her curiosity until I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take her…
I’m getting tired of getting tired. I’m tired of her being tired of me being tired. It’s all so tiring. It’s absurd….
“What did you see Tim?”
“The Energy Mirror! I see it! It is surrounding me. It is invisible―but it is ‘perceivable’, but only because I do not have Earth-eyes at the time!
“I am within it. I sense it surrounding me and I know that if I try to fight I will be defeated. And so I stay within it―I more as it moves.
“I get it now. I understand! Espree! All your explanations suddenly make sense. I actually see the Mirror and I fear it. I believe it is stronger than I am. This was the first time in my existence that I considered something was more powerful than me! What a terrible crushing realization and it was…it is, totally false!”
Then it happens. It all suddenly dissolves and is gone! The incident is gone, as if it simply exploded and disappeared. My skin feels cold and clammy as if all my blood had fled from my extremities in terror and now it is slowly and tentatively moving back. I am suddenly wide awake and alert and the debilitating heaviness is gone.
Espree looks confused. “What happened Tim?”
“I just ‘popped’!
“You what?”
“I popped! I popped out of it. And here I am.”
“You popped.”
“I popped.”
The puzzled look on Espree’s face is absolutely hysterical. The word ‘popped’ is even funnier, but that’s the only word that fits.
“Popped,” she says thoughtfully.
“Yep, I popped.”
We begin to laugh and the laugher becomes an uncontrolled, tear-streaming, side-aching barrage that continues on and on until we are lying on the floor exhausted. The laughter seems to be a release of all the energy I have been holding inside from this past incident. It is energy that has been with me forever along. It includes the conclusions have followed me through my existence from then to now. And now, after all these eons of time, I am free of it.
Gathering ourselves, we return to our seats. We both know what has happened. The effects of the incident have gone, the devastating tiredness is gone and the energy that had been suppressed is now available to me! Something I can now use at my disposal. The intense tiredness that I felt earlier was this energy―only inverted―used against myself.
“Espree! Do you realize what just happened? The effect of the containment area is gone and the energy it sapped from my very being is restored! I confronted it in my own mind ―because it was there, it has always been there, hidden from view, shrouded in MY OWN energy and now I have that energy back!”
It’s all smoke and mirrors Espree! This whole frickin’ universe is smoke and mirrors. And lack of understanding is the reason we have all fallen for the trickery.
I look over at the viewer. How strange. It looks familiar! Somehow I know this place! I’ve been there! Not actually there, but…
Espree’s eyes are almost phosphorescent.
“Do you realize Tim, you have apparently blown away the effects that have kept you trapped, and confined by the energy of this universe? Energy you have been confined within for eons?
“Tim! It is possible! You can be freed! This is what I have been trying to accomplish since the beginning of time in this universe. This is the first victory in a billion losses! The first!
“I do you realize what this means? Trillions and trillions of beings for billions and billions of years and not once did any of them escape their initial defeat at the beginning of their incarceration in this universe, but you just did!
Now we can free them!!!
I shrug. “Wow.”
I know, even if this were partially true, even if a minute fraction of it, this is far and away the most monumental revelation in the history of the universe! I should be jumping and screaming in utter exhilaration! I should be moon-dancing across the floor, doing back-flips. I certainly have enough energy! Yet somehow—aside from the incident we just confronted— it’s all still unreal to me. Everything for the past two days has been unreal! But I do know I am very happy. I do know I feel a calmness and a happiness I have never felt and that is just fine with me.
I motion to the viewer. “Tell me about the Containment Field Espree.”
“As I said, this is your first destination after being trapped by the Trap Ship. This is the place where newly captured free spirits are held in containment and broken until they are in a conditioned that makes them suitable to be ‘fitted to a mind’.
“Some of the spirits have been contained in the holding area for decades―even centuries―in a timeless battle with the containment field. Eventually they all will give up their resistance―they all do.
“The containment field is basically an immense computerized generator that tracks each spirit and monitors their energy output. Now that they have been confined to a location by the Energy Mirror, a spirit must be trained to succumb to the forces of the surrounding universe. When a spirit has finally descended into apathy―i.e. been broken―they will no longer resist the “Laws of Physics”. In this state they will then allow the flows of the containment field to move them. When this occurs, they basically follow the currents of energy―like a piece of wood floating down a stream. After a period of time they arrive out the outer layers of the field where they are tested for tractability. If they “fail” the test they are moved back into the inner layers. If they “pass”, they are moved to the outside layer of the field and into the distribution ships to be transported to a primary breeding colony―which will be our next visit.
“Wow, what a terrible place―and I can’t deny it Espree, I was there! And for such a long time! Of course I had no concept of time, only that it was very long and a long time varies from individual to individual. Maybe it was 20 minutes, maybe it was 20 centuries, time was a relative thing and all I know is that―at the time―the time was overwhelming in its length. Eventually the only thing I wanted was to be at rest because that was the only solution.” I chuckle, “a solution that I no longer seem to possess.”
I’m puzzled at Espree’s expression. She looks concerned, disappointed.
Why would she be disappointed?
She’s looking at me―actually not at me―she’s looking toward me.
“The energy mirror; it remains, your mind is still attached, your thoughts are still being absorbed and modified by the program, your barriers are still firmly in place.”
“No Espree! I am free of it! I feel wonderful!”
“I’m sorry Tim, you are not free. You are still contained and controlled within a Mechanical Mind.”
I disagree. “I feel completely released from all that! Really!
“Then come with me to the back side of the moon,” She says.
“What do you mean the back…”
“See what I mean!” says Espree. “You immediately went into a confusion. All the computations of your Mechanical Mind altered that simple request, and you have no idea what I was saying.”
“But Espree! I can’t just...”
“I can. I just did.”
I’m baf
fled. I have no idea what she is talking about.
“I gave you a concept: ‘Come with me to the back side of the moon.’ Your Mechanical Mind immediately detected the concept of ‘moon’ which has a circuit that spews out facts like “238,857 miles away”, which runs another program about transportation which opens a circuit about cars and propulsion and airplanes etc. etc. The concept of the moon may have 200 more circuits with data about atmosphere and gravity and craters and solar systems etc. etc.
“All of these circuits enter their computations into your thinking and the answer comes out something like; ‘But Espree, I can’t just fly to the moon!’ Meanwhile I simply moved to the backside of the moon and came back―no thinking involved.”
“You can’t tell me you just went to the moon and back!”
“That’s exactly what I am telling you. THAT is what freedom is Tim!”
“Okay, bring me back a moon rock…”
I look at Espree’s hand. There’s a rock in her hand. It just appeared!
“There!” She says angrily, holding up the rock before me. “There’s your damn moon rock.”
I don’t know if that is a moon rock or not, but I do know it just spontaneously appeared in her hand. “So you just went to the moon and brought back a moon rock?”
“Correct, and at this very moment a circuit in your mind is telling you that I can’t go to the moon and come back instantaneously.”
“Right, because you can’t.”
“Says who?”
“I don’t know who. I just…it just…I mean no one has ever…”
“You can’t pick up a palm tree and turn it upside down either, can you.”
“NO…no.”
Espree puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry Tim. I suppose I was just confused because I truly believed your Mechanical Mind and the Energy Mirror disintegrated when you blew the effects of the Containment Area away. But they are still with you.” She smiles. “BUT! That does not cancel the fact that you have just eliminated a major component of your enslavement in this universe AND that has never been achieved before!
Total Amnesia: Forgotten Lives Page 13