Copyright © 1990 by Paul Cisek
"What do you see?"
"Animals, hundreds of them..."
"What kind of animals?"
"All kinds. Large mammals mostly, and insects."
"What are they doing?"
"They're moving. Very slowly. I can't actually see the movement, but I can perceive it's there... I can see muscles tensing and preparing for motion. I can extrapolate the action they will take. They're going somewhere..."
"Where?"
"It's impossible to describe. There's no sense of direction here. No concept of spacial orientation. Only shape and motion. It's not imagery, don't try to visualize it. I see the abstraction of a horse, not the physical creature. I see an ideal. It's more beautiful than you can imagine. The animals are..."
"What is it?"
"They're not moving, they're changing. Slowly, imperceptibly. Lamarck's evolution... I can see the monkey's hand altering. Changing the bone structure... I can see what it will become. I can see the necks of the horses becoming longer. Ants are sprouting wings. Slowly... The wings are... dropping. The salamander is losing its legs, oh my God!"
"What's wrong?"
"They're turning into snakes! The reptiles, even the birds are becoming longer, wings retracting. God, the monkey's tail is growing a head and coming off the body! The insects are dropping their legs and elongating. Into worms. There's thousands of them now, slithering over each other!
"Alex!"
"God, they're biting each other in half! The halves each become a new snake."
"Alex stop!"
"There's tiny snakes sprouting like hair from the body of a large python! Coming from its eye sockets!"
"I'm pulling you out!"
"Oh God there are millions of them! A sea! God! GOD, They're..."
* * *
On Wednesday morning, July 14th 2008, Derek Fowles biked to work as usual. It was a beautiful day, full of the sunshine and warmth of a New England summer. The weather had not been this good in over a week, and Derek had missed these peaceful moments. It was a time to relax and prepare for the day. Passing through the woods was his favorite part of the journey. Only a couple of hundred feet, only minutes, but enough to make one feel like nothing else exists. Like all that matters is breathing the air. Leaving the woods always seemed like a bad idea.
The trees ended and Derek began travelling down the shoulder of Route 9, on the left side so he could see the approaching cars. It was a beautiful countryside. The freshly paved road and the shining buildings in the distance were a curious contrast to the rich wildlife all around. It was a pleasant combination of nature and technology.
A car passed. He caught a glimpse of the face behind the steering wheel and lost his good mood. It was an unhappy, an unforgiving face. It would bring no smile today. He knew the type, he had long avoided developing one of his own. The bike helped a lot. Who would want to be inside a car on a day like this? To see the green fields projected onto a windshield. To scream unheard curses at fellow drivers who would be met with good cheer had they passed walking down the very same road. People let themselves get isolated from each other, they get lost in the system. Technology let them do this to themselves. The means has replaced the end. People forget or never learn what it is they seek. They watch life, not live it; they lose touch with reality.
He wiped sweat from his forehead and his neck with the wristband, and took a sip from the water bottle.
"Hypocrite," he thought, "Who are you to talk of reality?"
At thirty-five, he had all he ever wanted from life. He was married six years now to the most wonderful woman he had ever known. Vanessa was beautiful, loving, and brilliant. She was an accomplished theoretical physicist. He often felt guilty about the inherent conflict between their fields of expertise, but it never caused them problems. Three young children, two boys and a girl, completed this Norman Rockwell family picture. Derek often thought that if his life were a story, it would be overly idealized and unrealistic.
There's that word again.
One thing marred this image of perfection, however. His work was just getting too strange. Psychomechanics is unsettling by its very nature, but things were really getting out of hand. Dr. Derek Arnold Fowles PhD thought he would not be affected. His background in quantum physics should have made him immune to future shock. He should be able to remove himself above his work, isolated from it by formal mathematics. Not so. Future shock can affect even the most objective scientist, with the possible exception of Alex. He was getting too strange now as well.
How the world has changed in the last decade... It was still difficult to accept. When Dr. Isa Torhaagen published her research on "thought backtracing," the Earth shook. Such a massive breakthrough was unknown in the history of science. The world quivered still in disbelief. How arrogant it was of her to release her work on January 1st, 2001, the first day of the new millennium. Starting a new age, a new era for mankind. Her arrogance was as well known as her genius, and it cost her dearly.
Memories of those days passed through his mind. He was a graduate student of quantum physics at Stanford University when the change came. He was intrigued by his work, fascinated by it. He loved it more then the women he knew at the time. He believed he was discovering the very secrets the universe struggled so hard to conceal. He was an explorer in search of Truth. Isa Torhaagen turned his world upside down. After the original shock among the scientific community, the research was announced publicly. He remembered the sensation it caused, the protests. He remembered magazines formed for the sole purpose of discussing the implications. He still had some of her speeches on video tape. The Founder of a New Age, she was called.
He had her death on tape too, the very moment when an angry listener opened fire. The gunman was a devout Christian, and a psychotic. He wished to counter her attacks upon his religion with a bullet. Derek had not watched that tape since he made it.
Most religions were not opposed to Torhaagen's work, certainly Christianity was not. They incorporated it into their teaching, sometimes even using it as scientific support. Fowles, however, could not see how one could believe in a God after believing Torhaagen. The only deity he knew was a young man lying in semi-comatose sleep in a hospital bed, with tubes running into his arms and belly, with a crown of wires upon his head.
After learning of Torhaagen's research, Derek could no longer study physics. Vanessa did, but to her it was art, a creative process. How correct. Derek immediately threw away his plans of a physics degree and hurled himself into psychomechanics, the new science.
He turned left onto Research Lane. EMI Laboratories stood like a great monolith of tinted glass on his right. The forefront of genetic engineering technology, the very place where, ten years ago, the human genetic code was unraveled by the great Dr. Lowell Sumners. Derek could not see how anyone could work there, when next door, only two hundred meters away, the entire universe was being disproved. The Institute for Psychodynamic Research was a single story false-brick building pleasantly set near a pond. Its large windows revealed nothing of the wonders within.
He stopped his bike near the IPR logo, chained it to the rail, and entered the building.
* * *
PD: Dr. Chandler, I understand there has recently been another breakthrough in the field of psychomechanics. Can you explain to our readers what it is, and how it will affect the future?
RC: Well Karen, I believe the future is going to be nothing like what you or I can expect. We know so little about the potential of our research and the wonders it will reveal. I believe that every new discovery for the next several years will effect revolutionary changes in how we live and think. It is unreasonable to hypothesize about the future of psychomechanic research, as the phenomena we observe have consistently surprised even the most brilliant of the so-called "experts." We can only make guesses, and expect them to be incorrect.
Our current research deals with shared free-context symbolic association, or in laymen's terms, telepathy. That is, we are trying to establish direct, mind-to-mind communication, or thought projection. Although we were unable to convey complex meaning during the transmissions, we have had success in establishing mental links even over very large distances. I have personally exchanged telepathic greetings with Prof. Edmund Maartens at the Rotterdam Institute of Paranormal Research while at the IPR lab in Rhode Island. The communication was rather abstract, but to the best estimation, instantaneous.
PD: Can you tell us how it works?
RC: Certainly. Two years ago, I have proposed that symbolic associations can be shared by two distinct minds by attaching them to agreed upon archetypical icons. It presents a difficult task for the sender, but quite a basic discipline for the receivers. Such messages can be inscribed anywhere in the perceptual continuum, and are available to all proficient members. It is a broadcast network for the mind.
PD: I'm sorry, I'm no expert on psychomechanics and this is a bit over my head. Can you explain in simpler terms?
RC: Of course. I apologize. It has been a long time since my last interview with a non-technical periodical. Let me try to reiterate some of the pertinent theory that forms the foundation of psychomechanics.
As you may know, psychomechanics is concerned mostly with "thought backtracing," that is reviewing the path of mental information through constructive meditation. When Isa Torhaagen began studying human intelligence at end of the twentieth century, she was interested in tracing the origins of thoughts. She induced a trance state in her subjects through the utilization of certain neuro-stimulating drugs and electrical currents, that allowed them to look back over the paths that their thoughts have taken. The mind was disjoint into two parts, the conscious mind observing the thought activity distribution of the unconscious. She enjoyed tremendous success in her work.
Then in December 1998 she began studying perceptions. She expected to trace the images and sounds we hear in our minds to the eyes and ears. However, the perceptual stimulus seemed not to come from the sensory organs but from a primitive part of the brain known as the medulla, the "reptilian brain". Tracing further yielded the greatest discovery ever made in science. The sensory information was coming from within! The medulla is where it originates!
PD: So humans provide their own sensory stimulus. Their own reality...
RC: True, but that's not all. Further tracing led Dr. Torhaagen to a vast ocean of information we now call the Perceptual Continuum, or the Pool. This is where reality is defined. We each contribute to it, construct it through our individual creative perception. The inevitable conclusion you have heard eight years ago at the Munich Symposium: Nothing exists physically, the world is only a collective illusion. The ancient eastern teachings have proven to be true.
PD: How does this apply to telepathy?
RC: Directly. Since all humans share a common source of knowledge, they should be able to inscribe messages in it, to leave visual and auditory information for others to perceive.
What my colleagues and I have developed at IPR is the first practical application of these hypotheses. We have succeeded in transmitting rudimentary conceptual information through the mental landscape. The sender simply imagines a symbol in his or her mind, and it instantaneously appears in the mind of the receiver. It is by far the most effective means of communication known, and we project that it can be publicly available within ten years. I can foresee a day when human beings will become purely a mental species, existing in personally created worlds. We'll have no need for the so-called "physical" universe, for it is literally but a figment of our collective imagination!
PD: How do you think this will change the communication industry?
RC: It will revolutionize it! Not immediately, of course. Few companies want their executives to get high on drugs to make a phone call. Fewer still would equip their employees with neural implants. I'm convinced that conventional techniques will stay around as horses and trains have, but telepathy will eventually take over. If it is indeed instantaneous, it will be a key to space exploration in the future. However, I don't believe space exploration will be a significant issue in the future...
PD: Why not?
RC: Simply because I believe space does not exist. Only the psychic dimension deserves exploration.
I'm convinced that communication through telepathy will prove to be superior to anything humans have possessed up to the present. Concepts can be expressed without words, without the necessity to narrow the meaning of a thought to fit into discrete syllables. It is a purer form of communication. I believe creativity will flourish as full personal expression is made feasible. Lying is still possible, and the transferred thoughts can be filtered consciously, so people will not be afraid of exposing themselves in telepathic conversation. However, misunderstanding is vastly easier to avoid. As you know, most human conflicts arise through misinterpretation and lack of understanding of another point of view. This will be no more. I predict that a hundred years from now the world will be a very silent place, but much more peaceful. This may be the most important discovery mankind has yet made.
PD: What else can you project of the future of psychomechanics?
RC: Well, as I said we know very little. Everything we know will change, that's certain. All science outside of psychomechanics will be shown to be false. Scientists do not discover, they create, through hypotheses. Evolution did not exist before Darwin, or the moons of Jupiter before Galileo. The only true discovery so far made by anyone was made by Isa Torhaagen!
PD: How do you think scientists in other fields feel about such statements?
RC: How can they feel? They are scientists. They cannot turn their back on the facts. Psychomechanics is easily verifiable, especially the thought tracing aspect. The philosophical and theological implications are still disputed, as I'm sure they will forever be. Some of Dr. Torhaagen's more far-fetched and outrageous hypotheses have been shown to be untrue, but that does not make her less of a genius, or her science less valid.
PD: One more question, Doctor... How do you personally feel about your work?
RC: I believe it is by far the greatest power humankind has ever dreamed of possessing. It has the potential of realizing all of history's greatest desires. We have entered a new era. It will offer us more than we ever hoped for, but it will require us to re-evaluate our most basic assumptions and beliefs as to what we are. Such power requires tremendous responsibility and caution. I hope we are ready for it.
* * *
Alex was already in the lab. He had evidently come in in the middle of the night and hooked himself into the web. He was lying on the bed dressed in his usual sweatshirt and jeans and no shoes ensemble. The image of genius. A lab coat lay carelessly flung over the oscilloscope cart, and notes were scattered on the chair. The crown was upon his head and his mouth was hanging wide open. Tubes carried a dark brown liquid from the IV frame through needles in his arms. One tube ran underneath the front of his sweatshirt to somewhere near his solar plexus. What he was doing was highly against the rules, he was retracing without supervision. Chandler would be furious, but Derek would not tell. Derek would obediently sit at the monitor and watch the Alpha waves.
He sensed something was wrong when he came closer. Alex's eyes were open, but they were white. Horribly white, not even a trace of pupils. They stared upward sightlessly. Derek shuddered as he looked at the PSI recorder: Alex had been recursive for six hours. His mind was surely gone. Desperately, Derek reached for the hypodermic.
"Please don't."
He froze. The corpse on the bed had spoken. Its lips did not move. The eyes were normal again, looking up at him.
"I'm alright. Don't bring me out yet."
"What is going on?"
The expression was of ignorant bliss, peace, fulfillment.
"I'm in heaven..."
* * *
Dr. Richard M. Chandler rose from behind the desk.
"What the hell happened?"
Derek had just come back from the hospital. He had spent four hours explaining to a doctor what happened and was in no mood to repeat it. The doctor had not understood a word. Karl Thomson and Peter Jonas were also in Chandler's office. They all looked at him inquisitively.
"Alex nearly died this morning. He was in recursive state for over six hours."
"What did he think he was doing?"
"I don't know, but I don't think he should go under again for a couple of days."
"He's not ever going under again!"
Karl Thomson interrupted: "What are you talking about? He may have succeeded in reaching the controlling state. We can't stop now."
"He's not going under."
"Look Richard, if anyone can take it, Alex can. He has a lot of talent. He's the key to the project."
"He's mad! Have you seen the transcripts?"
"So he's afraid of snakes, many people are. We all have our phobias. Alex can handle himself. I'm telling you Richard, we cannot go on without him."
"We'll do just fine."
"Did Derek tell you what his eyes looked like?"
"They were white, I heard. No pupils right? Well, I've looked at the videotape and I saw pupils, dialated but otherwise normal."
"I'd like to see that tape."
"It's available from resource." Chandler's voice assumed a preaching quality, "I suggest you stay away from wild claims. Torhaagen had shown that the controlling state cannot be achieved by beings within the continuum. It would create paradoxes."
Derek could not resist interjecting: "I've never found the proof convincing."
"Work it out! I assisted Torhaagen in the research, remember? Shall I explain again the sailboat metaphor?"
"Spare us," said Thomson.
"Alex is not going in again. That's the bottom line. He's being transferred to theoretical. I can't risk his life over this."
"You mean risk your reputation..."
"That's enough Karl! I'm closing down the lab for a few days until things cool down. We are in a load of trouble as it is. The web is off limits. You can go."
Thomson left fuming. Richard was usually more understanding; he should not have reacted like that. Derek sensed a tension during the conversation that was not anger. Chandler was trying to conceal something beneath his mask of rage.
Derek had known Alexander Mendreyev for over three years, and never had he seen him back down from anything. The twenty-eight year old prodigy had never known failure or defeat. All his life his teachers let his mind roam free, aware of its potential. He would always be the teacher.
Alex would not be stifled. He would get into the web, probably with Thomson's help, and continue upon whatever path he had found. Although Derek admitted to himself his unease at this, he would not stop it. He wanted to know what was going on. Chandler was more concerned with his prestige than with the potential of the project. He did not appreciate the magnitude of what they may be on the brink of discovering. The controlling state. Projecting one's subjective reality onto the perceptual continuum. Altering the pool. Changing the face of the world!
* * *
I feel the touch of the needle upon my skin. The sensation is one of pain, but I control it and place it beside me. I feel the chemical enter my blood, watch each molecule as it course into my depths. The sensation is peaceful. I imagine the relaxation flow over me like a blanket. It covers my feet, my legs. The muscles relax, flesh fades. The blanket is drawn over my stomach, my chest. No breath stirs within. The heart ceases its relentless beating. My arms tingle as they dissolve under the touch of the fabric. My throat, then my eyes. I am gone. Only the mind remains. The mind is at peace. A medusa enters my mind. I feel its current within me. It synchronizes my thoughts. I move away from the mind. Watching. I see the thoughts travel like pulses along a string. I observe their paths. I am aware of the vibration as a whole. Another here watches me. Farewell, old friend. I drop from my safety to join the flow. I search. Years pass. I walk the path. I stand at the edge of reason. Here I have always turned back. To enter, to never return. The ribbon leads me forward. I become. Engulfed in the flow. The thought that shapes me. I am not the master. Absorbed. Part of the serpent. The forked tongue. Dissipate... He is gone... Returned... Awareness dissolved... Beautiful.
* * *
Derek Fowles was lying on the bed, his head lost in a globe of wires. Tubes were running in and out of his arms and stomach. His face was pale, without expression. A vein in his temple was twitching, the only sign of life. A young man in a white, loose-fitting sweatshirt was leaning over him, adjusting the wires.
The young man looked over at a computer monitor. Its screen was filled with multicolored ribbons flowing like smoke. He nodded to himself. The enzylthalamine saturation was levelling off and the neural impulses were synchronizing properly. The system was achieving equilibrium. Soon, the way would be open. Soon the journey would begin.
He looked at a picture of a young woman, his wife. She had died four years ago. He whispered goodbye to her memory. The young man in the white sweatshirt sat down upon another bed and pulled another helmet of wires onto his head. Carefully he plugged the patches into the tiny sockets embedded in his skull. He inserted the needles into his belly, into his arms, and laid back. He felt the relaxation flow over him like a blanket.
* * *
Derek woke with a start. The connection had been severed; something was wrong. He was still reeling in a dream state, forced to look upon the waking world. It seemed insubstantial, surreal. The walls looked like they were made of tissue paper, liable to drift away under the softest breeze. The humans in the room were like childish caricatures. One was leaning over him, its mouth moving. He could hear its breath, but not the voice... the breath was quick and sharp. Another human neared him. Its eyes were both on the left side of its face, one under the other. This human poked his arm with a silver fingernail...
"Ok, he's coming back."
The two men grabbed his arms and pulled them out of their sockets... He rose to a sitting position. The man above him kept talking.
"Derek, it's Richard. Can you hear me?"
Who is this?
"Do you understand me?"
No recognition, although the voice did sound like Chandler. Couldn't be though, Chandler was bald... This man had snakes growing out of his head.
A light shone into his eyes. It did not hurt. He let the energy enter him, felt its tangible presence.
"The pupils are coming back, look."
The light was gone. He saw Chandler's face before him. The face looked concerned.
"Do you know where you are?"
That finally brought him back.
They had sneaked in at midnight. Alex was barred from the web linkup, but he could use Derek as a vessel to work through. The machine could only distinguish the topmost personality. Derek went under first, and opened the way. They were supposed to travel together.
Alex lied. He apparently had planned something else. He used Fowles as a springboard to enter the continuum. To enter the controlling state. He wanted to weave the threads of perception into a new reality...
"How is Alex doing?" Chandler called out to his right.
Derek followed the voice with his eyes. It led him to look upon the backs of two men struggling with something on the neighboring bed. They looked as if they were performing CPR. The tubes had all been pulled out. Enzylthalamine was pouring out onto the sheets, staining them a dark brown color. The streaks formed a zig-zag pattern, like the back of a rattler...
"He's alive, but we can't bring him out. He's deforming rapidly sir!"
The man turned around, Fowles had never seen him before. Past him, something that looked like Alex was writhing on the bed. The wire headdress was lying off to the side, sparks flying across its synapses.
The two men stepped back and Fowles saw what was on the bed. Alex was becoming longer! His arms were withdrawing into the body, the legs were growing together. The skin was a sickly yellow color, criss-crossed with purple veins. They were bursting... spewing blood onto the floor. The Alex-thing was screaming. It opened its mouth, dislocating the jaw, and a bloated tongue came ripping out of its throat. The tongue was cratered with tiny pores, opening... closing... Derek could take no more, shut his eyes.
Chandler was shouting something into his ear. Something about how Isa Torhaagen really died. Something about a cover- up... to protect the public. He had tried, he said, to discourage this direction of research. To prevent the nightmare from recurring. He tried to convince them that the controlling state was unattainable, but they had to find out for themselves. He was raving. Control can be achieved, but it devours the mind. Alex couldn't handle it, neither had Torhaagen. That time fifteen people were burned alive!
Screams pierced the air. Derek turned his head instinctively, to see one of the assistants being engulfed by the thing that had been Alex. The others were running madly out the door. Half the man's body was already growing into it as his arms flailed in hopeless frenzy! His eyes were bulging, clouded by madness.
The thing was huge now, oblong and featureless, a horror to look upon. It was thrashing convulsively on the bed like a fish pulled onto the sand. Chandler ran to it, reaching for the violently discharging helmet. He plunged it into the body of the thing, and was engulfed in blue lightning. Instantly the machine exploded. Fragments of it flew across the room, covering Derek's right arm with tiny cuts. No blood came... He turned his head, shielding his eyes with the mangled forearm. The thing was still alive, devouring Chandler's charred body. Derek could not move his legs, could not escape. He watched...
It spread out into the room. Not physically, it reached out with spirit fingers and entered the floor, the walls. The air throbbed with its energy. Edges were abstracted, simplified. Details smoothed into dullness. Derek looked down at his hands, shapeless masses with only vestigial fingers. His clothing appeared to be made of the same substance as his skin, a smooth, shiny clay. He was becoming an abstraction of a human being. His mind was past horror, past fear. His eyes continued to see.
The room was being reconstructed with alternate features. The power cables were becoming snakes. They were cobras, spitting electric fire. The lab was expanding, ballooning outward. Thin tendrils of phosphorescence formed meaningless words in the air.
Suddenly the room was filled with water. The solid objects became air bubbles, Derek could see through them. One by one they burst into a shower of tiny shapes, and drifted upward out of view. Only his body remained, floating peacefully in the heavy liquid, carried by its currents.
Then the body dissolved too. He did not feel it go. Something huge reached down and took his soul.
He saw the paths. The Perceptual Continuum. Pulsating. Timeless. Without dimension. A great sphere crisscrossed with thousands of thin veins. Tiny nodes drifted upon the strands, receiving and sending pulses. He had been one of these nodes... A chaotic vortex formed in the network. Swirling, it sent waves down the strands of thought. Breaking down. His mind faded. Released. He roamed the pure paths. No order.
It was heaven.
August 1990