What happened previously: a psychiatrist visits his most important patient, seemingly suffering from some rare type of autistic condition, while all kinds of strange phenomena take place, including a complete disturbance of deep space objects. It turns out his patient is a member of a collective entity that mentally unites those who share the same condition. Finally, he broadcasts a telepathic message explaining that all human beings will be shifted to another type of reality monitored by the Collective, and invited to become members of it, if they want to.
“But who is this 'One' you talk about, Damien?”1 The sequence of phonemes was unrecognizable, but the layout of the concepts they had represented appeared with enough clarity, in spite of this memory's timeworn state. Bribes of melodies played on a strange instrument, rather refreshing in fact, brightened up the rest of this blend of heterogeneous impressions. Anxiety, surprise, vertigo, fear. But a certain relief as well.
“This is a world wide telepathic broadcast,”2 he managed to discern. Difficult to be any more pompous. The big head, that's really not from yesterday, uh? he thought.
- Jason, please, spare us your sarcasm.
The thought presented itself to his mind just as any other, but it didn't come from inside. A rather commonplace phenomenon in a collective entity within which individuals had the possibility of connecting their psychic experience in a live stream. He could have tried to trace the exact source of this telepathic message, but he had no reason to make this effort. Anyway, it was obviously enough to think in order to answer this interlocutor.
- Eh, leave me alone. Nobody asked you to come breathe down on my neck, so if my reflexions dissatisfy your little mental ease, no-one will stop you from going take a hike.
Jason knew that this attitude would sooner or later bring him trouble. But he couldn't refrain from rebuffing such you brain constipated couch potatoes when he had an opportunity. He activated his mental firewall, which caused the disconnection of all his followers at once. He was allowed to do that from time to time, but never for very long.
He applied his mind again to the contents of the memory unit he had come here to examine. Its state of natural deterioration indicated it dated back to several cycles of the Collective's climaxes and anticlimaxes. Laboriously, he retrieved one last sentence he could not make any sense of before concluding he wouldn't extract anything more conclusive from this unit. He severed the connection by removing his hand from the membrane. The cell he had just scanned looked slightly invigorated, which, as an ancient memories lover, made him give a hint of a smile. He surveyed the rest of the wall, in search of another cell sporting one of the specific shades of green he was looking for. But this alveolus didn't show anything unusual, apart from the ubiquitous affluence of decaying units, whose worrying number multiplied every day.
- Pleasure is happiness. Let no one prevent me from enjoying whatever I want whenever I want it.
The thought had imposed itself to him. It was one of those annoying buzzes which disrupted the network ever more frequently. That one squarely passed through his firewall. This meant it had a viral component and indicated a criminal origin. Jason concentrated on the underlying psychic impressions to identify a signature he then used to elaborate a ping he sent to the entire Collective. He got response from a colleague's subconscious who was busy being massaged, and added him right away to his black list of occasional spammers. He sent another series of pings on the network to get a topography of this buzz' replications in real time. Judging by the number of affected members of the Collective, this meme was having a broad success.
- Happiness is only real when shared.
The altruist antidote-slogan, contrived ad hoc in a hurry by the department in charge, arrived once again too late. At this stage, a large number of psychologically vulnerable members of the Collective had already suffered in their deep subconscious a damage that would be difficult to repair. The only answer the system could bring to it was an intensification of heterocentric propaganda. This kind of egotist attacks aiming at destabilizing the Collective's cohesion by exacerbating its members' individualist impulses was becoming ever more frequent. Rumor had it for that matter that they came from outside.
Leaving this train of thought behind him, Jason resumed his navigation in a marine mammal fashion, with a simple undulation of the spine. As he came out from the cavity, the perspective on the symbolic space that appeared in front of him would have had enough to baffle a neophyte: on one side, the multitude of contiguous alveoli accommodating the fields of kindred memories; on the other side, a network of fractal passageways opening on expanses that seemed to stretch to infinity.
- Truth and harmony are like the two wings of a bird: they must be of equal size and equal strength.
Jason had to make a substantial effort to control his irritation over this new interruption. Negative emotions were outlawed within the Collective, and giving in to them could lead all the way to exile. He decided to rather examine the message. This time it wasn't a meme, but a pure viral attack. However, unlike the usual buzzes, this message gave actual food for thought. Dreading another interruption, he waited for the antidote-slogan for some time, but nothing came. The department probably wasn't able to react quickly on such a theme.
So Jason refocused once again on his task. He put his fingers in his mouth, to reach for a seed in a pocket he had inside the cheek. He embedded it in the interstice that separated two cells of the wall. The Collective had authorized him to leave his own markers at the entrance of the areas he had already explored. Obtaining its approval had been all the more easy that he was probably the only one spending his free time in this way. Most of his fellowmen, once their labor was over, if they didn't get themselves projected into relaxation spaces, preferred a live connection with the experience of someone they found interesting. No one else than the recollection clerks ventured in these deep layers of the memory index. He would catch sight of their silhouette from time to time, busy scanning the walls, more akin to the shape of a tadpole than that of a mermaid.
- Jason, sorry to interrupt your little old memories chase, but we have a level three emergency. We remind you that in accordance with your contract with the Collective, you must in such a case make yourself available immediately. Please prepare to receive the file.
- Thank you so much, my dear, Jason thought. You are as charming as a butcher's chopper. And indeed you're right, it's not like if I was interrupted every thirty seconds.
He pushed his thumb between his eyebrows, as if pressing a button, and the whole symbolic space shut down from his mind. He got back to his normal body - a head, a bust, two harms and two legs - sitting in his armchair, in the subdued atmosphere of his vast living room. He had two or three minutes in front of him. Just enough for what Theo had asked him. He found his friend on the network at his usual location.
- Okay, Theo, he thought, get going quickly, I don't have a lot of time.
Theo was one of the Collective's dreamers-creators. He had acquired through training the rare skill of having a conversation while dreaming-creating environments for his fellowmen.
- It's ready, you can go, he answered mentally.
Jason went to the other side of the room to open the shutter. The sunlight contrasted sharply with the twilight of his apartment and induced a slight pain in his eyes. He squinted. Some bees bustled about the flowers sitting in a tub suspended to the balcony. A few stories down, an avenue seething with busy people. Before him stretched the sea of roofs so characteristic of Paris, over which stood the Eiffel tower. On his left, he recognized in the distance the Tower bridge. Why was he not surprised? On the other side, a plethora of bad taste light displays beyond which took pride of place a disproportionate building showcasing its name in obnoxiously large letters: “Caesar's palace.”
Pure nonsense.
- And you dare calling this a vintage reconstruction? he thought. Listen, I already told you, it's ridiculous. I don't want to have anything to do with this. l quit.
- Then at least, make me a file with everything you know, Theo thought.
- You can do it yourself, I grant you full access to my memories, don't I?
- But it's too long, I don't have the time, I only have a few days left before the festival.
- Well, I don't have time to waste either, mind you. If it's to ignore my advice at the end of the day, you can very well do it on your own.
Jason turned around to go back to his armchair, but suddenly, all he had in his field of vision was an anarchy of kaleidoscopic details, as if he was forced to see the world through a broken looking glass. The walls merged with the ground and the ceiling. It was impossible to distinguish anything.
- Come on, Theo, it's not funny, he thought.
Theo giggled mentally.
- I'll stop if you promise me you'll make a file with all you know about Paris.
- Don't push it, Theo, I have an emergency I need to take care of, and I should get the data any time now.
- Well, don't forget I am the one controlling your environment here, and you owe me one.
- Alright, jackass, you won. But after that you'll stand on your own feet, okay?
- No problemo.
- Now come on, put everything back in order.
- But you'll do it right after you come back, are we okay?
- Yeah whatever, come on.
The familiar environment of his apartment reappeared. Jason fell down in his armchair. Moments later, the operational file presented itself to his mind. It was a continuous flow of concepts and sense impressions whose rate was in his control. The subject was an exiled. A former member of the Collective who had been expelled and forced to live fallen, in the peripheral domain of influence, with misfits and individuals facing their end of life.
- Where about is the subject? How do I connect to him? he asked mentally.
- Show a little self-restraint, for goodness' sake, someone thought. Start with perusing the facts mentioned in the file.
- Oh, really? And you really think I can't discern your little xenophobic ulterior thoughts? That's right, I am one of those wetbacks who ignore the good savoir-vivre. Well, it's too bad you native people are such scaredy cats who are too scared to step out from their comfort zone, because you will always need unbred boors like me to get their hands dirty.
The guy disconnected and activated his psychic firewall. He had asked for it. Jason accelerated the flow until he got to the information he was looking for. The subject was a former researcher. He had found a number of answers deemed interesting to rather difficult ethical and epistemological problems. While combing through the data, Jason learned the subject had even partly laid the foundations of the work he was doing himself on a day to day basis for the Bureau of Contradictions, relating to the resolution of philosophical divergences.
Even so, this researcher had gradually fallen out of favor for persisting with formulating deviationist theories questioning the absolute preponderance of the cohesion factor within the Collective. Broadly speaking, he claimed that the decision had to be made to temporarily weaken unanimity among the members if certain non-consensual evolutions in the search for truth turned out to be judicious. He had finally been exiled in the peripheral domain of influence where he had been living ever since, under high psychic surveillance.
The rest of the file revealed that he had just been identified as the person behind the viral attack which had taken place just of few minutes earlier, the one that compared the ideal relationship between truth and harmony with a bird's wings. After that, his mind had become completely silent, as if he had activated a mental firewall through which no expert was able to pass. This was what had triggered the level three emergency. The penalty in this case was a definitive banishment of the subject. In other words, his expulsion out of the Collective's sphere of reality. But before that, it was hoped that he could provide information about the origin of the egotist attacks that exhausted the Collective, in such times when exiles had become dangerously more numerous than new arrivals.
Jason pushed the palm of his hands against the ground to sustain firmly his half-kneeling posture. It could avoid him to collapse during the transfer. His vision blurred for a fraction of seconds. As his body was riddled by a characteristic shiver, the familiar atmosphere of his living room fade away and was replaced by a much more luminous setting. A light breeze caressed his face. A circular carpet had been placed at his point of arrival so that he would not find himself in the dirt after his rematerialization.
He enjoyed going on assignments in the peripheral domain of influence. It was a space monitored by the Collective, which was part of its sphere of reality, but whose inhabitants were not connected to the internal network. Not to their knowledge, at least.
It broke the routine a bit. And also, here the Collective did not control absolutely everything, which let him appreciate a certain margin of liberty. In this domain, the Collective's dreamers-creators only produced a constant structure that required almost no update. But the best thing about this place, he couldn't allow himself to think about it. It was that here, individual minds were separated from one another, so he didn't have to police constantly his slightest thoughts.
- Do you want some help, sir?
Someone was offering their hand to help him stand up. He refused with a polite gesture and got up by himself. Two police officers in uniform faced him. Behind them, the tall vertical figures of troglodyte housings stood out against the white sky. They stretched as far as the eye could see. The peripheral domain of influence's capital counted hundreds of millions of inhabitants. They were those who were not fit for living in the Collective's nest: from trouble-makers to individuals on the verge of death whose thoughts and emotions would be unmanageable on the network. Those fine folks were maintained at distance by a police cordon.
Jason checked that the dreamer-creator in charge of his transfer had correctly dressed him as asked, with a dark suit and tie, along with black sunglasses and without forgetting the white ear bud with coiled wire. Seeing this, one of the police officers suppressed a mocking smile. Jason forgave him gladly. This poor chap didn't have the slightest idea of what the Collective's memory held. For him, the horizon of reality was limited to this peripheral domain of influence and he couldn't know anything else.
Jason looked around while arranging his suit around himself in a coordinated movement of arms and neck he found elegant.
- Where is the subject? he asked while searching his pockets. One of the police officers showed him the direction of a small cliff whose top hung above a group of dry trees.
- In a cave somewhere around there, sir.
- Is he alone? asked Jason while glancing at the inner pocket of his suit.
- He is alone, sir.
- Alright. Stay here and make sure that no one draws near the suspect, he said while nodding to designate the crowd.
- Yes, sir.
Jason moved away, but stopped after a few steps.
- Oh, and I almost forgot.
He turned around and addressed the one who had almost laughed at him:
- Cut me down this donut consumption. You're too fat.
- Certainly, sir. At your command, sir, the officer answered while standing to attention.
Jason headed for the pointed out direction. The watch that had been put on his wrist vibrated. It was the signal indicating that the mental firewall which had been especially designed to protect him in case the subject would try to penetrate his mind had been installed and tested successfully. Jason felt his level of stress increase, but he had learned to enjoy the sensation that adrenaline brought him just before situations of danger. He approached the rock wall with precaution, weapon drawn. Once he had reached the cave's entrance, he used a mirror with telescopic handle to look inside. There was a man back there, which Jason could only as a silhouette in the dark. He seemed to be sitting directly on the floor, motionless.
Jason moved forward very slowly, maintaining his weapon pointed at the man. The subject did not betray himself with any movement. Jason identified the position the man had adopted with a posture he had once observed in a scene recovered from a very old memory of the Collective. It used to be called something like “lo-tous.” He pulled the trigger, which projected a dart whose point released a powerful sedative. The subject remained in his posture; only his chin sagged. Jason moved closer with precautions. This was way too easy.
After having inspected the surroundings, he was nevertheless forced to conclude there was no apparent danger. So he drew from his inner pocket a transfer module he put down on the ground. He pulled a wire whose end was split in two and stuck each strand on the subject's temples. He pulled another one he put up on his own temples, deactivated the module's safety, and breathed in deeply. The rest of humanity's sphere of reality was quite another story. He pushed the thought away and hit the button.
Transfers to this sphere of reality were always strenuous. It gave the feeling of being smashed to bits from inside, reduced to dust, to then have to put the fragments back together. The vast majority of people would have lived this experience as a trauma. But for Jason, it had almost become a routine. He lost the notion of time, as every time. His ego reassembled itself slowly, bit by bit. Here, the environment was not monitored by the Collective's dreamers-creators, but by a consensus between the deep subconscious of all the beings sharing this notion of reality. His mind had to comply with this consensus.
He felt nauseous, as always. An almost total darkness surrounded him. It was even darker than the previous times he had come here. He drew a torch from a pocket to cast light around. The subject was there, still sitting in the same posture. Instinctively, he looked for the transfer module. It was an absurd reaction, but he couldn't keep himself from having it. He couldn't dare to imagine what would happen if someone managed to get transfered back to the Collective. But the standard transfer protocol assured that the module would stay on the other side.
They were in some kind of roundish cavity with blue walls, something like a cave. There was an opening in a wall that connected outside, in some sort of gigantic tunnel. In the distance there, thousands of moving lights gave evidence of bustling activity. He went near the subject, drew a vial from his vest, opened it and placed the neck below his nose. The suspect twitched and opened his eyes slowly. He didn't seem bothered in the slightest by the light directly in his face. The moment had come to start the interrogation.
- Who is behind the egotist buzzes? he asked bluntly.
- What is the meaning of life? the subject retorted with a smirk. He remained upright and perfectly motionless. Jason decided to give him another chance.
- How did you make your buzz pass through mental firewalls?
- Where are we coming from, and where are we going to?
- Who taught you how to create viruses?
- What is the profound nature of reality?
- Alright, then. If you don't want to cooperate, I will have to start using methods which are forbidden in the other sphere.
- FBI or CIA?
Jason stopped and stared at the subject interrogatively, raising an eyebrow.
- Your suit, the one you've had materialized from memory. Is it to imitate FBI or CIA agents?
Jason remained blindsided.
- The FBI would take care of domestic affairs while the CIA would treat international ones. That was eight cycles of climaxes and anticlimaxes of the Collective. At each end of cycle, as it was the case back then, the Collective looses so much power that its sphere of reality gets absorbed by the rest of humanity's. The rare few members remaining find themselves scattered and considered as deficients.
- Yeah, I know that. But finally the day comes when, in spite of their being scattered, they recover enough power to rematerialize their sphere of reality, and they invite their fellowmen to join them, after having made a demonstration of what they are capable.
- And then each cycle is so long that only those who are interested in memories from the distant past are aware of their existence. But do you know on the other hand what causes the Collective's regression, at each end of climax era?
The subject punctuated his question with a sustained look. Jason remained silent.
- Cohesion between members always remains the supreme value, he continued, because without it, the Collective is doomed to chaos. But due to its constant manipulation of the gross reality in which it evolves, the Collective finally forgets that there are profound laws of the universe that it cannot wield as it pleases. This leads it to overprotect a superficial harmony among its members by silencing dissident voices instead of analyzing what they have to say.
- False! And I am in a good position to know about it. I work on a daily basis to the resolution of divergences in opinions at the Bureau of Contradictions.
- Well, okay. And at the end of each of your inquiries, what happens? The case is presented to a judge, along with a large number of jurors, who vote for the theory to be adopted, which implies that they will always make the collective, consensual choice, and not a choice based on a deep understanding that may occasionally require important calling into question. The Collective must keep its ability to question itself. Once it has lost it, its regression becomes inevitable. It's only a matter of time. By the way, I am not the only one set in its sights. Do you know why you are the one they sent to take care of me?
- Because they needed someone to bring you here, and I am familiar with this place.
- Haha! You are so naive. As if the Collective would not engage in actions it has itself declared illegal. Its state of degradation is certainly much more advanced than you think. In spite of the regulations limiting authorized time in mental autarky, there are minds within the Collective who live permanently hidden behind firewalls, because they want their thoughts to remain secret. They are the ones who felt threatened when they realized they could not read mine any more.
The subject chuckled.
- If they knew! he continued. The truth is that they put you on this case because they thought it would be a suicide mission.
Jason drew his weapon and pointed it towards the subject.
- If you move, I'll shoot you down, understand?
- You have nothing to fear from me. Anyway, you are protected by the state of the art in terms of mental firewalls, aren't you? The subject smiled sardonically.
- In a place such as here, he continued, you only need to keep your distance from me, and nothing can happen to you. What happened, in fact, is that they have grown tired of your behavior towards your peers, which too many find offensive. You have been tolerated for a long time, because of your special set of skills that interest the Collective. But its regression having its radicalization as a corollary, your ways have been ever less accepted. What your bosses actually think, is that you will probably not pass the test of psychic quarantine on your way back; and that if by chance you do, you will probably come back with vital information about me and maybe about the origin of those egotist viral attacks, as well as the specifics of an aggression which may well originate from outside. Maybe even from here.
Fleeting lights appeared in the ducts leading to the room they were in.
- You called them, didn't you? Jason said.
- I have done all this because I am on the verge of facing my death. And you are the only person I have come to know of, that would be able to take up the torch.
Jason pressed his finger on the trigger, but it remained stuck.
- This you again, uh?
- Time is running out. Don't use your powers. Surrender. I assure you everything will be fine.
Jason rushed towards the subject and hit him on the head to knock him out with the gun grip. But when he made contact with his crane, something undefinable happened. As if a gleam entered in him. He felt strange. His vision blurred, his ears whirred with tinnitus. He had the odd feeling that nothing would ever be as before.
- Nothing can go wrong now, the subject said before becoming completely still.
Agents in combat outfit burst into the room. Jason pointed his weapon towards them, but instantly realized it would be useless. He dropped it and fell down on his knees. He would have to adopt another strategy. Enemy agents came close to him, ignorant of the danger. They seized him to pin him down, but they found themselves unable to make him move, as if he had been transformed into a statue.
Jason was sitting on his heels, face down, staring at the ground. He needed concentration. If his perceptions had to comply with the general consensus in this sphere of reality, he nevertheless had learned to use the power of his mind to locally influence the laws that determined the workings of matter.
He could now feel everything that surrounded him as a part of himself. In a split second, he created around him a spherical layer of air overpressure which propelled itself in full blast in all directions. The agents fell on the ground and remained there, knocked out.
- Well, son, it's been a while.
The phrase had been pronounced in his mother tongue. His heartbeat accelerated. This voice...
- I thought I would never get hold of you again, it continued. It'd been at least fifteen years I had given up.
A torrent of impressions rushed in his mind. It had been so long before... Long before he had joined the Collective. He saw himself as a child, at the mercy of this scumbag, forced to use his exceptional skills to help him frame strangers.
- Unfortunately for you, your little friend turned you in.
Raging, Jason looked at the subject, ready to unleash his anger on him. The man was still sitting in the same posture, imperturbable, but was already transforming into a tangle of luminous strands, as if dematerializing.
- Come back to work with me, the voice continued. Together, we will rule this place.
Jason smiled internally. How could this prick even...
He was interrupted in the course of his thoughts by a sting in his lower back. He tried to pass his hand on it, only to realize he was paralyzed. He let himself get distracted like an amateur. Some more agents rushed onto him. He could not resist any more. His body would not respond to his commands. But thanks to its power, his mind remained alert.
They took him away. He saw a succession of duct walls. His eyelids grew heavy. He realized that in spite of his general state of lethargy, he could still move them.
So he closed his eyes. But in spite of the usual myriad of phosphenes, his retina was bombarded by a powerful inner light, which paradoxically seemed to come from afar. He decided to concentrate on its source. The rolling his body was subjected to seemed to slow down. A flow of subtle pleasure passed though him, while a serene joy invaded his mind. The more he immersed himself in the source of the light, the more he had the feeling to zoom in himself, as if the sphere of perceivable phenomena of his mind took gigantic proportions, so that he could distinguish the slightest details. The external movements of his body had stopped completely, as if the course of time had been so much slowed down that it had come to a halt. He had the feeling to access an inner reality that had always been there, but which took place at temporal and mental scales normally inaccessible. He started distinguishing slight movements in the light. They were the mark of living beings. The hands behinds the strings of the puppet every human being was.
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Thank you for reading this short story. I hope you will have enjoyed it. In any case, do not hesitate to send me your feedback, whatever it may be. You can contact me by email at remyzins at gmail. You can also find my facebook page here.
Rémy Zins
1In English in the text. See Mnesium.
2In English in the text. See Mnesium.
