The Dissertation, page 52
part #2 of Tinieblas Series
Honored examiners, I accepted at once. I had no need to prove my courage to the likes of Epifanio Mojón. Nor did I feel the kind of solipsistic yen to find out how I’d do that drives so many peace-loving young fellows into combat. But I will run any risk and explore any avenue to gather information germane to my investigations.
General Mojón told me he’d be back the following evening and disappeared. I busied myself studying Darcourt’s account of the engagement (op. cit., pp. 130-149). The next night I went into battle.
But I had best describe what General Mojón had in mind:
Human beings (like all animals) possess organs sensitive to such external events as light, sound, heat, pressure, etc. The responses of these organs are coded electro-chemically and transmitted to an analog computing instrument which organizes and records them. The organizing/analyzing process may provoke such internal events as the secretion of hormones and their flow into the bloodstream, which in turn provoke further internal events (e.g., changes in the rate of pulse, breathing, and metabolism. Messages relating to these secondary internal events are fed back into the computer, which organizes and records them. Poets call these messages emotions. The record of perceptions may be played back.
It is now helpful to consider certain metallic devices that correspond roughly to the protoplasmic organs I have referred to. A combination TV-sound recorder, for example, may he equipped with a camera and an impedance microphone. As such, this machine senses light and sound waves, codes perceptions of them electronically, records these perceptions on magnetic tape, and (when hooked up to a suitable receiver) plays them back. Two recorders may also be linked together, so that a recording made by one may be transmitted to and recorded by the other. For such an operation no sensing devices, no camera eye or microphone car, are necessary. Such an operation may, moreover, be performed, say, thirty years and eight thousand kilometers from the time and place of the original recording. Barring deterioration of the tape, the second recording is as sharp as the original.
What General Mojón had in mind was to retrieve from my father’s memory the complete record of his experiences and emotions during the first twelve hours of the fight for Colle Belvedere, and to feed this record directly into my brain, so that I should see, hear, taste, smell, feel, think, suffer, and exult exactly as my father had. The technique of such retrieval and transmission was developed by a team of medical researchers formerly citizens of Germany, now participants in Torture. At the time it was performed with me, the operation had been tried successfully (if that is in fact the correct word) with a number of spirits from Victim, but never with a resident of this world.
During experiments conducted in Torture, the supposed witchmaster Urbain Grandier, the attempted regicide Robert Damiens, and the sodomite lover of King Edward II, Hugh Despenser, were put in deep hypnosis and caused to relive their executions, which experiences were simultaneously transmitted to a representative sample of subjects. So effective is the process in reproducing in one individual sensations and emotions felt by another that when Despenser relived the moment when his generative organ was seized in pincers and sliced off, a female subject who was the beneficiary of this experience displayed a most convincing agony, although she had never possessed an organ of that sort herself.
There is, of course, no reason why this process need be used only for tormentive purposes. It might give paralytics the thrills of Olympic competition, allow the blind to study history of art, and let the deaf hear Mozart. It might put stay-at-homes in moon capsules, or “Silent, upon a peak in Darien.” And it might close the gulf between the sexes, permitting men to know childbirth and women to know fatherbood, as well, of course, as to participate in sexual congress from each other’s points of view (as, in fact, León and Rosario were able to do without the help of Nazi doctors—see Chapter 11). General Mojón’s experiment with me is a case in point. Whatever his motive in arranging it and despite its being somewhat unpleasant—especially with regard to side effects (of which more later)—the experience not only enlarged my own consciousness but contributed to the advancement of human knowledge. I can only hope my father, who after all was neither consulted nor rewarded, did not mind too much reliving his first day of combat.
But I learned all these particulars only after my pilgrimage to Belvedere, When General Mojón ordered me to stop my cars with cotton, blindfold myself, and lie down on my bed, I had to overcome considerable trepidations. I lay there in great unease for about half an hour while he wrangled with technicians on the Astral Plane. I could get only his side of the communication, and it scarcely calmed me to hear him bark, “Come in, Torture; Torture, come in!” every few minutes when whoever he was on to left him, no doubt to supervise some detail of the preparations. Nor did I receive any warning whatsoever, unless one might count Mojón’s satisfied grunt just before my father’s mind juiced into mine. All at once I lay soaked and shivering on rough stones, peering into icy darkness, charged with adrenaline, thinking in French.
But let me be accurate: I was not Camilo Fuertes, candidate for the Ph.D. degree in history. I was León Fuertes, corporal, 3rd Squad, 4th Section, 11th Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Tunisian Tirailleurs. I did not ask myself: What’s going on? Where am I? I knew exactly what was going on and where I was. A regimental attack was going on, and I was on the west bank of the Rapido River waiting for dawn and the assault. And though I knew that, I did not say to myself: Keep your eyes open; note everything you can and remember it so you can write it down accurately later. I had no thought at all of writing history. I didn’t even think that the battle I was about to take part in might be mentioned in history books someday, though I suppose this is not an uncommon thought among soldiers. I make this point because there is no such thing as a Camilo Fuertes who is not concerned with history. Camilo Fuertes had, therefore, ceased to exist. The analog computing organ containing the program of Camilo Fuertes’ identity was temporarily filled to the last neuron with impulses from León Fuertes’ memory.
What I experienced during the next twelve hours is described in text above. Mental and physical stress, fear of “death,” joy in murder, rage at the enemy, and grief for slaughtered comrades: it is all there. Because I experienced it personally, because I was León Fuertes for that period, I found some difficulty in using the third person. I marvel, in fact, at the pomposity of folks like Caesar and de Gaulle, who can relate their experiences as though they had occurred to someone else. I had no trouble at all, on the other hand, recalling what had happened. My problem, rather, was weeding out details that, however interesting in themselves, did not really demand inclusion in this dissertation. Chapter 15 would, otherwise, have grown monstrously long.
Worse than the actual experience of battle—which, as the reader will take note, had its rewards for León—was its aftermath. General Mojón’s experiment continued beyond the occupation of the German positions on Crest 718 (which I have judged the natural point to end Chapter 15) and included the lull thereafter and the German counterattack (which I shall tell in the first pages of Chapter 16). It ended at dusk with the repulse of that attack, so I did not have to spend the night on the mountain under rain and fire, but I hardly think that would have been a greater ordeal than what I actually went through and must describe here as a caveat to others. The process of direct brain-to-brain transfer of experience may, after all, be taken up by other activities besides Torture and someday offered to the public of this world to provide people the kind of consciousness-expanding benefits I have touched on earlier in this note. Potential consumers must be aware of its side effects.
At the conclusion of the experiment I had no knowledge who or where I was. General Mojón did not stay on to ease me out of it. I woke up, as it were, blindfolded, with my ears stopped. On removing these sense mufflers, I found myself in an unfamiliar room dressed in unfamiliar clothing. I went to a mirror (for the first time, by the way, since the evening described in note 57) and saw an unfamiliar face. In short, I suffered total amnesia, a frightful state, concerned examiners, quite frightful.
I do not know how long it lasted. It might have gone on much longer than it did, but that Arnulfa’s arrival brought me out of it. I had the presence of mind not to go flailing about wildly, not to turn everything upside down hunting for some identity document or rush out in the street for help. I lay down on the living room couch in the pool of warm sunlight from the courtyard, waiting for my heart to stop pounding and my breathing to calm. This had more or less occurred when Arnulfa, who had forgot her key, rang the doorbell and called out, “Don Camilo!” That brought me to myself, and I got up and let her in.
But my first thought, one that took me an unconscionably long time to overcome and pummel from my brain, was that I was mad. The battle experiences I’d got from my father rushed back to me along with my identity, and I believed them and the events that preceded them—my conversation with General Mojón, for example—hallucinations. I thought I was insane and desperately in need of help. This delusion has possessed me from time to time in the past. While in its grip I see nothing clearly and consider the whole world of spirits merely the figment of my diseased imagination. Compassionate examiners, this is a hideous condition. Hideous, hideous, hideous.
Next, I decided I’d been dreaming, or nightmaring rather. Luckily enough, I was able to reach this decision fairly quickly, perhaps in as short a time as twenty minutes, though it seemed longer, for I was at the point of suicide, and to one who believes the next world only a figment, suicide is a serious affair. I put the matter of spirits aside for the moment and decided I had grown myself a great, rearing nightmare by thinking too precisely on my father and the Battle of Cassino. This too was unpleasant, though nothing like what I’d just been through, since I felt I might be tempted to draw on what I now considered dream visions for this dissertation, and that would be a most unscholarly predicament to fall into.
Only after a long while was I able to put my universe back together crumb by crumb, to bring myself back to a belief in the reality of General Mojón’s spirit and its responsibility for my voyage into the maelstrom of war. Only then did I sleep, and for some days afterward I remained shaken. I need scarcely say that when General Mojón showed up that evening for our scheduled interview, I demanded and received a full explanation, and gave him a stern tongue-lashing for tricking me into causing my father inconvenience.
I caution others to consider these side effects before participating in brain-to-brain transfer of perceptions. Perhaps the process will be improved to eliminate them. Perhaps they would not have occurred had the experiment been conducted out of some other activity than Torture, which is, unfortunately, the only activity that has the process as yet. Certainly the process is a valuable investigative aid. Certainly it has contributed to the preparation of this dissertation, both with regard to Chapter 15 and in furnishing me firsthand background information on my father’s war that will no doubt be helpful in Chapter 16. Certainly it is the best means of researching my particular subject, given the lamentable reality that my father is presently held incommunicado in Victim. And certainly it might be of benefit to others. But one must take note of the side effects.
For my part, I can bear them. I’m no romantic seeking thrills and chills, but I can endure what others have endured, if it be in the advancement of knowledge. Where others have gone I too must journey, to bring the story back for those too busy or too weak to make the trip. As for side effects and other mental risks, I accept them. I did not fight at Ayacucho, or in our civil wars, or with Sandino in Nicaragua, or in Europe with the French, or in Vietnam, but no one can say I have less courage than the others of my line.
I will not harm others, though. I have told General Mojón to have his brilliant troupe of Dachau grads consult my father if they hope to run another brain-to-brain between their world and mine. Or find another subject; I won’t take part in any more of them unless my father knows what’s going on and freely consents. I am not quite so dedicated to “science” as the “physicians” of Auschwitz and Treblinka. I will suffer a bit myself, but not torment others. For all I know, the process may be worse for my father than it was for me, and he’s suffering enough without my causing him pain.
Peace and mercy on him. I pray he may forgive me.
77. To guard against pernicious thought
The Government has begun assigning members of the Policía Urbana de Seguridad (PUS) to ride the buses.
These are not real cops but rather an auxiliary goonhood recruited earlier this year to supplement the more formal organs of repression. PUS agents are picked from the pool of minor criminals secreted by the slum quarters of the capital, the sort who mug old ladies in the narrow streets around the public market. They receive no training, wear no uniforms, and possess no qualifications beyond their bullies’ readiness to brutalize the peaceful and defenseless and their thieves’ loyalty to the regime. Their mission, as stated officially, is “to protect the state against counter-revolution and subversion.” In practice this translates to such prodigies of national defense as apprehending (and in the process roughing up) a fishmonger who chanced to wrap a sea bass he’d just sold in a piece of newspaper bearing the photo of General Genghis Manduco, Chief of the Tinieblan State and Maximum Leader of the Tinieblan Revolution. The poor sap got two years, one for lèse-autorité and one for counter-revolution; his housewife customer, charged as an accessory before the fact, was absolved in reward for giving evidence.
These heroes, as I say, are being randomly assigned to ride the buses, in imitation, it would seem, of the anti-hijack guards put on board aircraft in the United States a few years back. No one is worried about buses’ being hijacked, of course, but rumor has it—and rumor is the only reliable means of mass communication in this country—that the Government is at its wit’s end to stop the displays arranged by Padre Celso Labrador, or at least neutralize their effect.
These displays have become more frequent and more variegated. Arnulfa saw one that, from her description, seems to have resembled the seven-headed beast of Revelation. Each head was in the likeness of an officer of Manduco’s junta, and the design was topped with the scrolled legend: “HE THAT LEADETH INTO CAPTIVITY SHALL GO INTO CAPTIVITY—HE THAT KILLETH WITH THE SWORD MUST BE KILLED WITH THE SWORD.” Another, which she heard of at second or third hand, depicted a number of high government officials. They had loathsome insect bodies and flew across the whole side of one of the huge new buses, and the phrase “FOR THEY COVERED THE FACE OF THE WHOLE LAND SO THAT THE LAND WAS DARKENED” was written beneath them in Day-Glo colors.
All the painters and graphic artists in the country have supposedly been put under arrest. The Civil Guard is on alert. The members of the Junta are said to be diarrhetic with worry. But relief may be at hand. According to General Mojón, the Committee for the Dissemination of Terror and Despair has entered negotiations with representatives from Justice, and has proposed (as of yesterday, 7th August, 1974) to cut off aid to Richard Nixon in return for a moritorium on the anti-Manduco campaign. Justice wants Mr. Nixon out of office very badly and will probably go along, though they are dragging the palaver out to let the padre get a few more licks in.
He makes a point of hitting buses with PUS agents on board. The agents console themselves by trying to guard against pernicious thought. They wonder out loud whether the bus they’re in is destined for decoration and arrest anyone who seems to look forward to such an event. They spout wisecracks about the situation and arrest people who smile. And should the padre strike, they arrest those who fail to make a convincing show of righteous indignation. The result has been that few bus riders have trouble finding seats these days and that they proceed to their destinations in mute solemnity.
78. His squad
I was able to interview only one member of the squad my father, León Fuertes, led at Belvedere.
Dax, Djemal, Boulala, and El Haoui have all recycled to this world, Dax doing so at once, a not uncommon course of action with those who “die” in young adulthood. His memory was cleansed and his spirit sent back to this world before the end of 1944. (Memory erasure is, by the way, standard operating procedure’ with all recycling spirits, but it is sometimes partially botched; hence the intimations of immortality and vague remembrance of past states experienced by some residents of this world.)
Djemal chose Getting and Spending and was there for three-plus years. Upon the establishment of Israel (May, 1948), he applied to be recycled there, and his spirit was put into one of the first embryos conceived in that country.
Boulala and El Haoui entered Warrior’s Repose (also called Houri and so referred to on the application forms of female spirits). It is this activity that was described to Mahomet by a spirit named Gabriel and that forms the basis of that “Paradise” mentioned profusely throughout the Koran (see particularly Chapters XLIV, LV, and LVI).
Because he maintained prolonged contact with a single spirit source, Mahomet picked up a great deal of detailed information about a narrow spectrum of the next world. Besides Warrior’s Repose/Houri, he knew only certain aspects of Victim, which he calls the Pit in his suras. What he knew, however, he knew well. The gardens, fountains, fruit trees; the tasty viands and the wine which leaves no hangover; the shady oases and soft carpets; the rich silks and fine brocades, are all depicted with great accuracy by the Prophet, while the houris are as “smooth and lovely” as he says they are. He erred only in holding that the activity is restricted to pious Muslims, and that the houris exist merely for male delectation.
Warrior’s Repose/Houri is designed to accommodate not only hedonistic male spirits but also those female spirits whose idea of how to spend eternity is to be around hardy, possessive males—a rather widespread female dream, Steinem, Millett, Friedan, et al. to the contrary notwithstanding. (The mirror-image activity, Courtly Love, is offered for male spirits who enjoy paying elaborate and more or less chaste homage to females, and female spirits who enjoy collecting same.) The entrance requirements are: for males, valor; for females, virtue. The experience of millennia has shown a four-to-one ratio of fair to brave satisfying to all parties. No one becomes a houri save by choice; no one need remain a houri an hour longer than she desires—though, of course, an abrupt exit may entail a period of inactivity in Prorogation. In confecting his “Paradise” out of the information he received from Gabriel, Mahomet may have been influenced by his own fantasies. Or he may have distorted purposely to play on the male chauvinism of his neighbors; he was trying to establish a religion, after all. He knew nothing, moreover, of Courtly Love, where the ratio of knight-troubadour to lady is likewise four to one. He certainly knew nothing of Amazonia, whose participants are exclusively female (as those in War are male), though not particularly violent. Viewed clearly and in panorama, the next world is neither male-supremacist nor female-supremacist.
