The talks begin. wallsheaven.com
That night, after dinner, began the first of a long line of private conversations with Mary in the library about the last three years of my mostly missing life. It was a delicate and sensitive affair, as she was complicit in some degree, so I had to couch my questions carefully. Her replies were often painful to me, and she knew it. But we did proceed.
Just as I remembered, Claire had found a way to soothe and subdue and then to completely control my mind on our long trip to Tahiti. She taught these tricks, these programming scripts, to the other women while holding hands, while sunning themselves.
With her first chip implant, with all that screaming powerhouse of knowledge in her head, she had somehow learned to communicate directly with computers and control them, something none of us could match. She remembered enough of that talent with the clean chip and quickly refined and expanded her unique abilities. It gave her the same godlike control over the computers in our minds, which by chance she practiced on me with success, then bursting with pride at her discoveries, she shared that power with Samantha and all her new-found female friends At first they had no purpose with this new talent. It was only an innocent game which Mary said she had no interest in as far as it concerned men but which she started playing with Jane like a chess match, friendly at first but turning ugly down the line.
I asked her why we couldn’t do the same and fight back, as I saw it happening to me and dreaded it.
“You were the only one, Roland, who saw it happening because you were the first, our first test subject before we were adept at it. That’s why Claire had to keep you silent. We all hated that decision, Claire most of all, but if the secret got out it would be useless, and we already saw the possible benefits for the whole planet if we could influence important people to do good. There’s something different in a man’s and a woman’s brain. You never dreamed you had to influence us. You knew you could just crudely command it, tell us what to do. But for tens of thousands of years, we had to practice the subtle arts of persuasion to get our wants, or at least some of them. When the chip came along we were bound to win because ‘subtlety’ was the name of the game.”
“One other thing, Claire always loved you. Her work at the UN over the last three years has been hugely successful. Don’t you know the whole world is at peace, largely due to her backroom negotiations with world leaders, all under the influence of the chips, and her? Armies and navies everywhere have been reduced in size; nuclear arsenals are being dismantled, swords to plowshares. Everyone is focused on reconstruction and restoring health to the planet, just as the chips restore us to health. This last war was a breaking point in the mad logic of mutually assured destruction. Claire stepped in just at the right time to restore people to their senses. You were the one sacrifice she had to make to accomplish this, and in many ways, as she told me herself, you were the cause, her driving spirit.”
“Where is she now and when was the last time you talked to her?”
“She’s in New York. I talked to her two weeks ago, and when I told her I was thinking of returning to California, she begged me to check in on you.”
“So if everyone is losing their chip power over time she must be high on the list to be just like me, near blind.”
“Yes she is” Mary replied, “and she says her work will soon be over.”
That was more than enough to sleep on for one night, and our conversation ended. In the following evenings they continued. We often invited Monique to join us but rarely Scout. She didn’t want to hear all the sad things that had happened to me, only the good parts. Some evenings, at the dinner table, I gave them long and detailed descriptions of my summer trip to the mountains with Charlie and Jack. They laughed and laughed at the comical aspects of it, the poker games, me smoking cigars, the outhouse and the torn pages of the books I didn’t like. Then bathing in the frigid lake, and of daily life in such an odd place. I told them I was most definitely going back there again and kiddingly offered to take them all with me. They politely declined that invitation.”
The first Sunday after their return I asked Mary to give Naomi a call for a get-together and dinner at her mother’s. As soon she heard Scout was with us she and Jason were here in minutes. After the hug fest we spent the afternoon in Abbott’s living room drinking sherry and talking away, just as we used to in the first days when we were all innocents and best friends. It seemed like we were now best friends again. I steered the conversation to the matter of the degradation of the chips, hoping Jason and Naomi would have all the latest info on it.
“It’s a real mystery” Jason began, “and no one can figure it out beyond the fact that the old chips still operating and the new ones fight each other as if in some kind of territorial war, a tug of war, and the human brain, their battlefield, is the casualty. We ourselves proved that you could eat a second wafer with only good effects if the previous one is removed, as ours were in the EMP blasts. So now the dilemma is that even though we feel the vast majority of the chips in our head going out, there may be a few thousand still operating, too few to sense but enough to wreak havoc if we ingest a new set. We might have to wait another five years before it’s safe. And there’s no way of knowing for sure. After I talked to the doctors taking care of Samantha in Australia and read their reports, I’m in no rush to even begin thinking of taking another for at least a decade. But I did hear just a week ago from Jaime that she is slowly regaining her senses, back in her wheelchair. She was sipping tea in their backyard when I called. He took the phone out to her and she said hello to both of us, knowing who we were, but that was all she could manage.”
Once again the subject turned to Claire and some recent delegation in the Middle East that she was a big part of, and how successful it had been. It was all over the news, but I never watched it or anything since my media-free summer. I noticed as the others first started talking about her that Naomi kept glancing at me with a half-worried look. I gave her back a bemused smile, expressing something like, “I knew this was coming, but I’m okay.”
Even in my talks with Mary, Claire would always come into the discussion. It seemed like she was the sun of our solar system and all of us were the planets revolving around her. At the end of the dinner, as she and Jason were leaving, Naomi pulled me aside.
“Roland seeing you well again is the best thing that’s happened to me all year, and I’m going to visit with you every weekend, you and Scout, and make up for all the terrible months I snuck up here to visit my mother and left without knocking at your door, when I couldn’t bear the sight.”
She said this with tears flowing from her eyes and streaming down her cheeks, and I felt them welling up in mine.
I hugged her and said, “I know, I know.”
In the following weeks the four of us searched rental and sale leads to find Mary and Monique a home for their business. On week three we found it, a large house with a commercial license on the north side of campus, just a few blocks away, a street filled with students and pedestrians from early morning to late at night. I put down the deposit on their mortgage, bought them the equipment they needed, and we had the bottom floor remodelled, going to city hall to procure the licenses.
At first, the secretaries there told us this would take months, so I asked to see the mayor and told him of my connection with the governor. One phone call was made and the licenses were all of a sudden ready, with the mayor coming down to shake our hands before we left the building. The shop was opened the week before Christmas to stellar crowds and reviews.
Mary kept her promise of full disclosure, and every evening she spent hours answering all my questions.
After Claire and I left the island, Jaime continued running the lab there and trained Samantha and Mary and Jane in every detail on how to operate it. The wafers streamed out, and Mr. Tanaki began to distribute them wisely through his connections, around the globe.
“And he didn’t just sell to the rich” she added. “He always mentioned he was following your advice to a large degree, making many of them free for the sick, selling a few to the rich for millions of dollars to finance more production.”
“Samantha and Jaime flew to Australia, to set up a much larger lab. Jane was fully competent to run the small island lab, teaching more assistants, but that’s when she fell in love with the native girl and the trouble began between her and me. Mr. Tanaki stepped in and sent both of us to Paris with a portfolio of ten thousand wafers ready in hand. That made us celebrities overnight and a swirl of fame, and wild social life engulfed us. We were put up in a house that once belonged to a king. The parties never ceased, but the music did, to our relationship.”
“Claire visited us twice in Paris. The first time was right after we started fighting, to try to reconcile us. I asked Claire specifically about you, what you were up to, and could tell by Claire’s hesitations that it wasn’t good. But she had bigger matters in her lap. The second time was a year later, six months ago after Samantha’s meltdown. I asked about you again, but Claire could only respond that you had broken up with her temporarily, that you were away and she didn’t know where but that her U.N. work was almost done and that she’d spend all her efforts after that to find you.”
“I’m surprised to see that she’s not sitting with us right now” Mary said, “the way she keeps track of everything and dotes upon you. She must be losing her powers. I remember, in her heyday, she was light years ahead of us. She was our mentor in everything, our guru. And the fact that she loved you so deeply, so completely, Roland, considering what an amazing woman she is, I think you should be proud.”
“For putting me to sleep for three years. Mary, give me a break. If that’s a sign of love so is a triple dose of Seconal with a whiskey chaser.”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up” Mary answered, “but you were her sleeping beauty. This is so hard to explain, and it hurts me to try. I don’t know where she is or what she’s up to. But I do know that you’re the only one in the back of her mind right now.”
“Hardly a comforting thought” I said to myself. I put the matter aside in the following days, glad to deal with all the distractions and details of getting Mary and Monique set up in their business. We found a College of the arts school for Scout to attend in Oakland. She was reluctant to go at first. I drove her there and back every day for weeks. It wasn’t the curriculum, but another girl she became close friends with, another wafer child, that endeared her to the classes. The two became inseparable friends, two thirteen-year-old girls. Her friend’s name was ‘Rebecca'. I met her wealthy parents. They lived nearby and had the four of us over for dinner one night, and we them the following week. The girls would do weekly sleepovers, but behind those closed bedroom doors the adult world was excluded.
Mary told me more about the life she lived in France. Scout was put up in an elite boarding school in Paris, home only on weekends, and was happy. Jane was busy in the organization of the first lab in Paris, which took a month of round the clock effort to get up and running. Then she went on:
“I became the dispenser of the chips. After long consultations with government officials, it was decided that the elite and those managing affairs would get half, but the other half would go to those most in need of them, the elderly and the sick, especially sick children. The French are really an enlightened people. I’m sure it wasn’t like this in other places.”
“Jane and I reconciled for the first year there, but I was away most of each week. From Paris I was sent out to the nearest towns, travelling in circles, like the ripples from a rock thrown in a pond, if one charted my course on a map. And the French are so quaint, yet so logical and sensible. In all the old towns and villages we distributed the wafers from the church. The people chosen to receive them would have their names posted on its wooden doors, and they would come in a procession around noon when I arrived. I’d stand at the altar beside the head priest and place the wafers on each person’s tongue as they came up and kneeled, just like communion, and the priest would administer them a sip of wine. It was mostly sick children and old folks, and then, of course, the mayor and his functionaries and the rich. I had a schedule of passing out a hundred a day, each day in a different place, returning to the larger towns more frequently. I’d pass the night in the town where I delivered. They’d throw a public dinner for me and put me up in their best lodgings. But by far the greatest reward for me was always the next morning. The people who were healed would flock around the house I’d stayed in, bearing gifts. I made it a policy not to accept anything more than their hugs and their thanks.”
“But the children, I couldn’t refuse them. They’d bring me crayon pictures they drew in the morning, and letters and all sorts of knick-knacks they’d made to thank me. I brought back a suitcase filled with those gifts, all tinsel and ribbons and pieces of paper, the only suitcase I brought back, and now I’m dependent on your charity and costing you money. I’m so improvident. I could have brought back a suitcase filled with jewelry and gold.”
“No Mary, you brought back a suitcase full of love, and that’s priceless.”
“Thank you Roland, you’re so kind” she continued. “Monique was my assistant in this business form the start, as my French was rusty at first, and we slowly fell in love. Jane is sitting in her palace in Paris right now and hugely rich. I know it from the jewelry she wears and her limousine and parties.”
“Mary, you’re so simple and sweet” I had to say, “If you asked Mr. Tanaki for a million dollars today you’d have it in your bank account tomorrow. And in France, you’re a saint, a Joan of Arc. How’s that for wealth. But I’m glad all this honesty on your part brought you back to my house, especially with Scout in tow. I’ve just changed my mind. I’m buying you that house and giving it to you as a wedding gift, for you and Monique. Believe me when I say it’s the least I could do for all you’ve brought to me.”
That was the end of that night’s pleasant conversation. As I lay in bed, thinking about it, I realized what a lucky man I was with Scout and Mary and Monique under my roof; Mary with her southern drawl and Monique with her cute French accent making an unimaginably delightful pair, and then Scout, with her rapid-fire talk, rapid as her growth. I had no cobwebs in my mind right now. I was happy and without illusions.
A clear picture of what had happened to me was beginning to emerge, like a morning fog lifting over a cold lake and revealing sunbeams. But I still had a few nagging questions which only Naomi could answer, and I took her aside on one of her Sunday visits. We had the talk.
“Naomi, that time two years ago when I thought I’d beaten Claire at her own game, that was an illusion, wasn’t it. We never did race to the lab late at night and change the chips?”
“No, of course not” she replied. “And you never had Claire in your power for even an instant. She put that whole scenario in your head to release you from most of the heavy-handed controls she’d put on your mind at first. Your freedom to think and enjoy life was so much improved for it. She gave you your identity back. It was her improved version of the spell she had you under, and she administered it just as soon as she perfected it so that you could enjoy a fuller life again. She loves you so much. It took her a year to develop it. She told Jason and me all about it in case you came to us with questions. The only thing she had to trick you about after that was time, because of her mission for world peace. We were all in this together, all for the same goal, and in large part, it’s worked.”
“So you don’t control Jason” I asked.
“Of course not. There’s no conspiracy against men. He knows everything, just ask him. We never secretly influence each other’s thoughts. The only thing we do when we commune is make each other happy. We share our thoughts like two lovebirds. And that’s what the programming on the chips does. There are hundreds of programmers around the world right now who’ve written the scripts, men and women, all to make people more compassionate, less brutal. So the images we implant are soothing, scenes of love and cooperation and nurturing which of course involves mostly images of women and babies and children, not men running around with guns.”
I knew this wasn’t the full picture, only a partial one. But from this information, I began to see how the history must have unfolded. I knew that there was a plan in the beginning to empower women through the wafer to lord it over men. And they did have the initial upper hand, of which Jaime and I were the first examples.
But the first thing that most women did with their newfound command over their men was to better them, tone down the brutal side and foster the sensitive, empathetic traits. This was what a much deeper trait that human nature dictated. Conquer and assimilate. And in most cases, they were hugely successful. But this, in turn, gave their partners a deeper insight into the workings of the female mind, its psychology, its desires and needs. It wasn’t long before groups of men were holding seances and holding hands, communing and sharing every coding sequence discovered from their significant other and practicing their uses. And it didn’t take long because in a world where everyone could read each other’s mind, secrets were impossible to keep. Many women were even joining these men’s groups in their happily reconciled relationships, sharing everything.
So all the bright, early dreams of Samantha and Claire of a world dominated by the female sex were dashed to dust. Once men had all the same tools as women, the playing field was level again. But it was a gentle contest and by no means a war, where sensitivity and sharing and even pure love for one’s partner were the winning pieces on this strange, new chessboard of relationships.
Then again my situation came to mind.
“But look at Claire” I replied, “she can completely influence other people’s thoughts. You remember Bob, from when we first came back. I saw her drain his head like it was a pitcher of water.”
“She’s one of the very few” Naomi answered. “It’s an extremely complex talent not to have the other person see it. I could never do it even though Claire spent hours trying to teach me. Jason always knows when I visit his mind and vice versa. I sometimes think he’s even better at it than me, slipping into my thoughts and saying sweet things and slipping out again with me hardly noticing, except for the pleasant afterglow. But he told me himself when I showed him some of the scripts that Claire shared with me, that with all his brilliant skills in programming, they were way beyond his wildest imagination.”
“Samantha was her best pupil, she told me twice, and those afternoons I spent on your back deck with her and Natalie, I could never master the skills, though Natalie had a grasp of them. So forget all your convoluted conspiracy theories of women pulling the wool over men’s eyes. You were the one extreme example, and that’s it. I’m sure there are just as many men as there are women in the world who can do it and I know for sure that number is extremely small.”
“Then why again did she do it to me?” I asked heatedly.
“Because you’d be the whistle blower and her mission would fail. You’re so honest Roland, you could never keep it a secret, and it had to be a secret to work. And when she first came back here with you, she told me herself how her experiments on you had gotten off to a bad start, how horrified you were of her powers over you and how paranoid you grew. You would never let her wield such powers over others after that experience. So she did the best thing she could think of, reluctantly, because she knew it wasn’t a good solution. She erased your paranoia by putting you into a semi-state of sleep. She kept you here in your own home where you’d be safe until she could restore you to your full mind. But time has solved all that by itself. Next time she sees you everything will be fully explained and reconciled.”
“There won’t be the next time. I never want to see her again. The matter is ‘explained’ but it can never be forgiven.”
“But Roland she loves you so much, she has all along, coming back here so many times to check on you, to be with you for a single night when important diplomats and world leaders were told to wait. Just give her one more chance, please, for me, for all the friendship we’ve shared since we were children. It means everything to me. Please give me this one gift, as your oldest friend.”
With that our conversation ended. Naomi could tell by my looks that I didn’t want it to continue. So many laws of any normal human relationship had been broken, so many trusts, how could it be restored?
