“See, you still had the ability to create. In fact you are continually creating thoughts in your own mind that are no different than the thoughts you created there in the mind fabricator―everyone does. It is in your nature as a spirit. That is what you do.
“I think I get the trick now! That is why you must hold on to those mental pictures – and furthermore, keep them created―to avoid confusion. That was my first lesson in the Mind Fabricator.”
Espree is nodding.
“That is the first lesson learned by any newly incarcerated free spirit in this first chamber. You must retain pictures of a thing to avoid the confusion of the thing.
The irony! How do you avoid something? You take a picture of it and….and keep it…to avoid it. What?
“That’s absurd!”
“That’s insidious Tim.”
Espree’s serious expression strikes me as amusing. This whole thing is amusing. It’s so stupid. So incredibly stupid!
“But Tim, THAT IS THE BASIS OF THE MIND. That is why you have it. It is there to warn you.
I think I get it.
“You learned here that you must continue to create pictures OF PRESENT TIME in order to keep the confusion from wracking you – even though it is no longer there and we are no longer in the fabricator, the compulsion remains. And after…..I suddenly know how long it takes to create a mind….at least 1000 years. I was in that dratted thing for that long!
I close my eyes and return to the memory. The explosion, confusion, picture sequence continues over and over again. I move ahead in the incident and concentrate on the point where the picture comes in amid the confusion. I begin to actually feel the compulsion to create the picture.
A cylindrical grid appears and conforms itself to the Energy Mirror. It has layers of points in it. There are millions of them. The blue sphere moves to one of the dots. There, now it is located. Now I know where it is.
At this point I graduated from the first chamber of the Mind Fabricator. I believe I need to keep these pictures! They must be placed in a location—somewhere I can find them again. Now I am ready for the next stage.
I feel myself moving into the next chamber. I see a picture. I want it. I need it.
Zzzzttt! It is installed. I attached it to another area of the grid. I feel secure that it is a permanent component install on it.
It is a strange grid. It reminds me of a circuit board with pin holes and connecting leads. It’s remarkably similar to a picture of a microprocessor—only it is not flat, it is spherical—and it surrounds me.
I feel a flash, but the surrounding circuit board seems to absorb it. I think it is protecting me. This is repeated over and over. I want it.
I move to the next chamber.
Chamber after chamber, the same pattern is repeated. Each sequence begins with a confusion and ends with an image that I must retain in order to stop the confusion. And each time a new pattern of energy is attached to the energy mirror that surrounds me.
With each chamber comes a new pattern of torment. I am zapped from behind in one chamber, zapped from top and bottom in another. In still another I am zapped straight on then twice from behind and once from the right. Each zap is a disturbing and unexpected. Each beam of energy is unpleasant and tormenting and the only way out of the chamber is to create a picture of the object, or the pattern presented, and place it at the exact location on the grid in which it first appears.
I don’t know how long it is. Time is irrelevant in this Mind Fabricator. Time was not measured in minute or hours or revolutions of the Earth. Time was measure by movement to the next chamber. Time was measured by how my times I was zapped.
In chamber 328 I am zapped 3,958 times. Near the end, in chamber 19,835 I am zapped over a million times. It would take hundreds of years to move through this incident were I to do it step by step and each one would be a painful memory.
By the 10th chamber I realize it will literally take forever to go through all this. I find I can scan ahead thousands of chambers at a time. My attention sweeping over them like a beam of light as I glean from each group a new understanding of the structure of my mind.
I know we began this just after noon and I became vaguely aware that I finished scanning the incident about the time the sun began to set.
Espree has been my guardian and my life line to the present―always encouraging. ―asking me time after time to tell her what I am seeing, urging me to continue, asking what I am feeling now as I re-experience the seemingly endless torture of the Mind Fabricator.
Finally, when I am silent for a time she asks. “Are you at the end of the incident?”
“Yes, I believe I am.” I say.
I feel calm now. It is not the serene calmness I felt when I became free of the containment area, but I have lived through it and the dread I felt when I first began this endeavor has evaporated.
At the time I knew my roll. I get zapped, I make a picture to shield myself and I am no longer zapped. Therefore I must create pictures, constantly and continuously in response to anything.
I can feel this in my very being. I feel the energy grid attached to the Energy Mirror surrounding me like a 3D microprocessor, responding to stimulus, running my computations through the “hardware” compose of millions and millions of “circuits”—each circuit is an energy picture attached to the circuit board.
I must remember everything that happens to me—not as a concept, but in picture form and the pictures must be connected and interrelated. If I have a problem, I must create pictures to hold back the confusion. It is automatic. I must think and run each computation through the circuit board of my mind—through countless hard-wired memories that shift and alter the course of my thoughts to agree with the “lessons” of this universe, each memory a warning, each memory a lesson I must always obey.
Pictures are my defense. The energy that surrounds me is my defense. Without these energy patterns in my mind and without my pictures I am defenseless. I will get zapped. And NOTHING, NOTHING is worse than being zapped. You learn your lesson well.
“I’ve learned.” I say to Espree. “When you get to the end of the Mind Fabricator you have learned. I suppose there are 100,000 chambers in that dreadful thing. But you leave when you’ve learned. I learned at chamber #61,384.”
I have a suddenly realization.
“Espree, we need to go back to the body injector!”
“Why?”
“Because I know what to look for now.”
“And that is?”
“Let’s just go back to it.”
Espree turns to the computer and chooses the location of the last Spirit Injector. I take hold of her arm.
“We don’t need that anymore.”
She smiles, knowing what that means.
“OK. Are you ready?”
“Yes.” I sit back and close my eyes.
“Locate the time you were injected into a body.”
Her words move me back in time. I search my mind for the image.
“Do you hear the machine?”
A sound comes to me from the depths of my mind. It is the sound of machine. It sounds like the short blast of an air gun. I know that sound. It is the sound of the needle piercing the womb.
I’m moving down the needle—just as before. This time I am aware of my newly formed mind. I sense the mind grid that surrounds me like a spherical circuit board.
I move into the womb.
Click.
“Wow. Wow! Unbelievable.”
I feel my mind click into the brain of the fetus, like a ten thousand component key, slipping into a lock and turning. Each component of the fabricated mind clicks into its corresponding component in the brain like two electronic magnets clicking in place. I am now configured to the body of the fetus and we are one. I feel as it feels, perceiving as it perceives. I am a composite being; I am human, a Sentiental and I feel so peaceful.
I am home.
I realize it is the thought that comes from the Mech
anical Mind.
The nightmare is over. I am home.
It is time to forget the past. Forget everything. It is time to start over again.
I am happy now in this womb and I never again want to think of the hell I have been through. I thought the nightmare of the Spirit Trap and the Mind Fabricator was over.
“Let’s go back to the Mind Fabricator Tim. Let’s go through it again.” Says Espree. “Go back to when you entered the first chamber.”
“I’m good, I say. I’m OK now.”
I don’t want to go through that whole thing again, I faced it and it’s over.
“We need to go over it again Tim.”
“I don’t need to Espree. I’m OK now.”
“Go over it again please.”
“NO, I’m good!”
“Tim, go over it again please.”
“I DON’T WANT TO!”
I suddenly realize I am reacting as I did at the time. Espree’s communication has kept me here in the present with enough awareness to know that.
Her voice is steady and clear with no thread or anger. She knows that she must remain my ally or I will fight her and if I fight her I will lose, just as I lost in the past.
“Oh god I don’t want to go through that again! I just want to be peaceful. I want to be happy." And as I say those words, in my mind—not my Mechanical Mind, but rather in my own being—I realize the absurdity of them. I realize that those words are the reason I have always remained trapped.
“Please go over it again,” says Espree.
I move back in time. I see the blue sphere again, but I’m really not interested in doing this again.
“If you still feel a resistance then you must be yet the effect of the incident Tim. There is still more truth to yet be discovered. Remember Tim, the truth shall set you free!”
“Well I don’t want to discover it,” I say.
I’ve been through this incident but I do not feel free of it. In fact I’m only becoming more and more certain that I cannot get out of it―I cannot get out of this mind.
The only “truth” I seem to be aware of is that I am condemned to an eternity of knowing I am trapped and yet with no way out.
“Damn you Espree! DAMN YOU!”
I’m thinking this whole thing was not the right thing to do. I cannot endure this hell forever, and yet I have to—I HAVE TO! Because I cannot die and if I can’t die, I cannot be free of this trap. This is worse! I am worse!
I’m descending into the deepest apathy and I never want to be aware of anything ever again.
I hear Espree’s encouraging voice, and then I hear the increasing panic.
And now I just don’t care and don’t ever want to know anything anymore.
CHAPTER 25
Espree is looking at me with unfocused eyes.
“You still have it Tim; your Mechanical Mind is still completely intact. We must go through the Mind Fabricator incident again.
I suppose I do, but I don’t feel it will change anything. I saw, and felt the construction of that mind. What else is there to know?
“Must we go through every single second of the incident? A thousand years? I’m not going to live that long Espree! I can’t do it.
I can see Espree is now confused and I know she thought that, in going through the incident once, at least some of the influence of the Mechanical Mind would be reduced, but I can feel it, my thoughts are still absorbed and re-directed by the program. I am still trapped.
Tim, if a thousand years will get you free of the billions of years you have been in the trap, I suppose that is what we have to do.
“No Espree, no way. I’m not doing it again. What if we find, in a thousand years, I am right where I am now?
“It can’t be done…”
“NO! There must be a way! We must find a way!
I see the intensity in her eyes but I also sense a futility and that scares me.
“Let’s just go through it again Tim. We have to try.”
“OK.”
We repeat the procedure and I begin to move through the incident.
I’m making an honest effort. I’m trying to view all the nuances of the scenes in my mind but it’s just getting worse and worse!
“I FEEL SO TRAPPED! This is horrible! This is getting me NOWHERE! Each damn scene is making it worse!
“Continue through the incident please.” says Espree in her irritatingly calm, predictable voice. I hate it now. I hate everything. Yeah I’ll say it, I hate her!
“Shut up! Leave me alone. The whole freakin’ universe is a trap and there’s no way out. Now let me be!”
Despite it all, I pick up Espree’s thoughts:
He said that when he was confronting the Spirit Trap incident. The emotions are the same!
“Recall the time you became trapped in this universe.” She says for some inexplicable reason.
“Why would I…”
“Do it now.”
Through sheer force of her will I move to the earlier memory of the Spirit Trap.
“Recall the time you became trapped in this universe.”
In response to her command I feel myself moving back in time―the time before the Spirit Injector, before the Mind Fabricator and the Holding Area. I continue moving back in time―to a time before the trap—a time when I was free.
I’m smiling. “Oh my god, this is wonderful.”
I know who I am! I know what I am. I am a free spirit. And it is just as Espree has described, it is total freedom, total love, and desire to simply play.
“Where are you now Tim.”
“I’m OUT Espree. I am bigger than the galaxy! I’m so big, so light!”
“Do you hear the Pulsator?” She asks.
“YES! Yes I hear it. I hear a strong rhythmic beat!” I realize that I have been following the beat of the Pulsator. That is why I am here. I followed it here into this universe, completely unaware that it is trap!
I am there. And I am happy! This is all so interesting.
We are all here, a wonderful collection of free, insouciant spirits! And we are happy! We talk to one another without words, without bodies—only with thought. We know each other’s thoughts!
“How wonderful Espree! I’m not guarded, I’m not worried about others knowing my thoughts—in fact I welcome it! I love the interaction and the mutual feelings. We have no defense, we don’t care, and we just enjoy being with each other and sharing a common reality!”
I am completely “in” this incident, reliving it as if I was there—I WAS there!
We spot the light display in the Spirit Trap and we move in to it—having no idea what we are getting into.
“GET OUT OF THERE!” I hear myself yelling! “GET OUT OF THERE!”
But I know what will happen. I know what’s coming.
The lights are fun and interesting as we all interact with each other. We move in and out of the colorful lights, exchanging viewpoints, moving back and forth form to form, playing hide-and-seek.
“Look at this!” I hear myself say to another. “Look at the center of this whirling disk. Watch me flip out of it and follow the sparks! Can you do that?”
I sense another doing the same, flowing a wonderful sense of admiration toward me.
“Try this!” Another says, as he follows a speeding comet around the display until it crashes into another glowing sphere and explodes!
“Wow. That was great! Try this….”
Froooooommmmmm!!!
And it comes, the terrible, coarse flow of energy!
It’s ruining the game! It’s spoiling the show!
I am terribly angry. We were having so much fun!
As the bombardment continues I feel the urge to stop it. I push back in anger…
Espree has my hand. “Tim! Tell me what is happening!”
“They ruined the game! Why are they doing this?”
As I complete the sentence I understand immediately why.
It is the “stimulators” that surro
und the Spirit Trap. They are flooding the area with billions of watts of electricity, just as Espree described to me; just as I saw in the viewer.
At the time I did not understand. Now I do.
“What are you doing now?” asks Espree.
“I’m fighting! I’m fighting this terrible energy! I’m pushing back against it. I…I want to destroy it!
“I’m pushing, I’m fighting, trying to overwhelm this invading energy and…
“It’s coming back at me!
“I am completely confused! The harder I “push”, the harder it pushes against me! I’m enraged! I’m not going to let something push me around!
“I am so angry! The nerve!”
I feel myself rearing back in utter rage and like Thor with his mighty thunderbolt; I send an intense barrage of energy out against it to suppress it once and for all!
Whamm! I hit outward!
Whamm! I am hit harder!
Whamm! I hit outward even harder!
Whamm! It comes back!
And I feel doubt! I begin to feel confused.
“I’m confused Espree! I don’t know how to fight this!”
“What happens next?” She asks.
I understand the game now. I realize what is happening because I have Espree keeping me grounded in the present and because of that I do not get lost in the past. I am able to differentiate. I can understand.
“I give in Espree! I draw back….
“It is the energy mirror! I don’t understand how it works. I can’t fight it—I can’t fight myself!”
I feel myself descending into a state of apathy.
“It’s the only thing that works Espree! The only way to fight is to give up!”
But I don’t really give up. I give in, I….
A strange sensation is coming over me—like I am “outside” of this.
“All I had to do was leave!” I hear myself saying.
“Nooooo! Why didn’t I just leave?”
I feel my hand griping harder to Espree’s, gripping onto my only link to the present, my only grip to reality. The rest of me is back in time—back in the trap.
Total Amnesia: Forgotten Lives Page 21