Power of Suggestion...

‘It’s early yet, but we’d better talk quickly,’ Cleo said as she shot a disdainful glance at a couple who had just very nearly seated themselves unceremoniously and abruptly in the middle of our table. ‘Things start to escalate around these places in a hurry.’ Indeed, the throbbing crowd seemed to be reaching yet a higher level of hypnotized frenzy.

‘Yes, and why, exactly, is it that we’re in one of “these places,”
anyway?’ I asked with an obvious mixture of skepticism and distaste.

‘Don’t you mean what are you doing here?’ she laughed, ‘I’m quite comfortable. Besides, it’s safer than you think. For what we have to discuss, it’s far safer than any place we could have met in our neighborhoods. Nobody here cares. About anything. They just want the rush. What could be safer?’

‘I’m beginning to get the impression you could feel safe almost anywhere, even though you stick out like a sore thumb, albeit a different sore thumb than the last time I saw you.’

‘Gosh, you’re a pretty perceptive guy,’ she deadpanned.

‘So, tell the perceptive guy what he’s doing here.’

‘I hear you’re seeking info, and I’ve got info…some fairly rare, hard-won info. Not a lot, but maybe if we put what you’ve got and what I’ve got together...’she gazed into her drink, gently stirred it with its adorning skewer of jellied fruit, then returned her gaze to mine as she lifted the skewer to her smiling lips to gently nibble a neon green morsel. Despite her stated desire to expedite our exchange, she seemed to have time to lord her mastery of this milieu over me.

The pulse of the music and the crowd seemed to be working into my bones, and a ringing nausea was starting to settle in at the base of my skull. My sense of relative well-being was rapidly fading. ‘What info do you have?’ I pressed insistently, ‘I truly don’t understand what I’m here for, and I still think I’ve taken leave of my senses to have come at all, so you’d better have something good, and you’d better get on with it.’

Her cocky half-smile, arched eyebrow and level stare called my bluff. We both knew I’d wait half the night if she made me. Only one of us knew why. I just hoped she wouldn’t be so cruel.

The smile disappeared. Her posture straightened and she became quite serious. ‘Well…promise you won’t be mad, but the fact you have no idea why you’re here is a big part of my proof that I do have something to offer you. I did that to you. When I saw you the other night, I planted a suggestion in your mind. Nothing elaborate, no supporting logic, just the compulsion to follow through with a simple act – in this case, meeting me here tonight and hearing what I’ve got to say. The bouncer who came outside to get you, all the people out there who didn’t seem to notice you, the bartender waiting for you to ask for me, the group of kids who suddenly couldn’t get from this table to the dancefloor fast enough, the way you relaxed as you sat down…all my doing. A simple suggestion is about all I can actively place into another person’s consciousness, but I’m really good at that. It’s short-term, of course. Usually lasts just a few minutes, a day or so, a week, tops, if I really pull out all the stops. I need more. I hope you’ll help me find at least a few more of the pieces to this puzzle, in return, of course, for my teaching you what I know.’

I wasn’t sure whether what I was hearing made the situation or the individual before me seem more or less alarming. I’d begun draining my glass in earnest and motioned for a passing server to bring me another.

‘So you know something of Kathryn’s work?’ I ventured.

Here she became visibly rattled. Her gaze dropped from mine and one of her hands began absently unraveling a bit of her coiffeur. ‘I had the honor of knowing the woman herself, briefly. I Idolized her. All I ever wanted was to continue her work. Someone should…for the right reasons. I truly hope you’ll let me help you. It would mean a lot.’

I was confused by this change of demeanor. What could make someone self-assured enough to walk among the nons in their places of leisure suddenly falter discussing the business she had herself determined to cover?

A millisecond later, she recovered. ‘Do you remember Antonia Buser?’ I did, very vaguely, and nodded so. ‘ She was my mother. When Kathryn was just beginning her study of consciousness, she and my mother were research partners. Kathryn used to come over to our laboratory and the two of them would work on their other projects, then finish the evenings with some of Kathryn’s directed consciousness experiments and exercises. I was young, only in my teens, but I wanted very much to work with them. I had overheard Kathryn talking about work she had done with other children and I begged my mother time and again to ask Kathryn if I could join them. My mother refused. You see, for a scientist, I’m not very smart. My mother was ashamed of me and did her best to keep me away from all of her friends. She stopped just short of physical imprisonment. She barely let me speak to anyone…but Kathryn was so beautiful and so very kind. She seemed to sense I needed a friend and she always found a way to engage me in conversation, even under Mother’s disapproving eye. I was inevitably reprimanded later, of course, for having imposed myself, but I didn’t care. I lived for the afternoons Kathryn came over.’

The surfaces of our drinks had become rippled with the increasing motion of the place. I was uncertain whether it was the unaccustomed consumption of synthetic liquor or some other combination of factors, but Cleo’s odd eyes seemed to turn more luminous with each pass of the club’s rainbow-hued rolling strobe and her voice seemed to weave itself into the rhythm of the music. The lines dividing her/me/us/them/animate/inanimate were becoming indistinct, even fluid. Despite my better judgment, I found myself not unwillingly yielding to the spell.

‘I also took some souvenirs to help get me through the days in between. When she and my mother went downstairs to work, Kathryn generally only took down the case that held research materials for the “core” work they were doing together. She left her smaller bag of personal research on a chair upstairs and came back for it only when the main work was done. That was generally at least two or three hours later. As long as I moved quickly, I had time enough to sneak into Kathryn’s personal bag and copy any notes I found there, then return the pages before they were missed. I’m not proud, but I won’t apologize. I had to satisfy the usual scientific hunger for knowledge somehow. With all the restrictions in my life, I had become uncommonly good at removing then replacing items exactly as I had found them. Not once was my “borrowing” even suspected. I read my copies of Kathryn’s notes over and over, memorizing them, spending hours trying to master the techniques and routines Kathryn described.

‘Then my mother and Kathryn had a falling out. I didn’t know why for years. I just knew Kathryn stopped coming over. I never dared to ask why, but assumed it had something to do with me.

‘I kept working with my copied notes, hoping if I worked hard enough I could reach Kathryn with my mind and apologize. Like I said, though, I was young and not particularly smart for a scientist. Labor as I did over those notes, it was several years before I had my first success. Even then, it was minimal and sporadic. I caught only glimpses of others’ thoughts. Nonverbal, photographic flashes mostly, but occasionally with some sense of the thinker’s intention. If there were several people in the room, I couldn’t even be sure whose images I was seeing. I had opened up some kind of pathway on my end, but I couldn’t control what I might receive. It almost drove me mad.

‘Worst of all was the nature of some of the things I saw- deeply disturbing images of scientists thinking and doing things scientists aren’t supposed to do. That’s what kept me going. My life felt pretty worthless, anyway, so I had no good reason not to find out as much more as I could, no matter the personal cost. I kept doing the exercises and started making a lot of notes and hypotheses of my own to test. Finally, I developed enough control to select the mind I wanted to access and usually gain entry. It seemed my status as interloper was that of the fly on the wall. While I couldn’t get in very deep, never past the level of immediate, surface-level thought, no one seemed to notice my presence, so I was free to hang around in their heads as long as I wanted, just waiting for something useful to drift by. While my desire was to probe much deeper and much more purposefully, I just wasn’t able. I’m still not…yet. So I was patient, did what I was could, and gathered fragments of information from the surface level thoughts presented.’

She inched forward to the very edge of her seat and leaned in toward me to combat the still-increasing din, motioning me to do the same. Compelled though I was, by this time, by what she had to say, I must admit her movement and change of position drew my attention momentarily away from her words to some of her more carnal enticements which were, from the angle then presented, well displayed almost in full. With sudden, self-conscious realization, I turned my focus back to her words as she continued speaking. I pushed my drink away and hoped she hadn’t been in my mind just then.

‘My own mother’s mind was one of those I had most wanted to scour for answers. I wanted to dig out any more she might have learned from Kathryn that could further my own progress…plus maybe there were still a few personal scores… Unfortunately, by the time I reached the stage where I could choose a mind and tune in indefinitely, my mother only had about half a mind left for me to explore. She had been diagnosed with an untreatable, rapidly-progressing mental degenerative disorder that would render her first disoriented, then severely delusional and ever more feeble until, ultimately, all systems would cease to communicate and her body would fail.

‘For the last five months of her life, I barely left my mother’s side. The community caregivers who came and went praised me endlessly for my dedication. They found it especially remarkable, I’m sure, in light of the rumors I was certain they had heard about her treatment of me. If they had known my only motivation was to pry as much out of her brain as I could in the brief time I had left, I’m sure they would have admired me less. Either way, I’m fairly certain my numerous other aberrations still limited my viability for sainthood in the eyes of my supposed peers.’

These last, dry words trailed off with a smile more amused than rueful. Every scientist I had ever known, even the antisocial sorts such as I had become, were quite dependent upon the support and opinion of our small, physically disperse, but tight-knit community. Here was a young woman who honestly didn’t seem to care. This realization increased my growing fascination with her.

‘Anyway, I found a few clues that helped lead me to the suggestion thing, plus bits and pieces about barricading one’s own consciousness – very crucial and probably the first thing we should work on- but most importantly, I caught a glimpse of what a person who takes the path I’d chosen might be up against if anyone should learn of it in our world.’

The lights dimmed and tempo and rhythm changed to something even more electronically erotic, almost tango-esque. The crowd response was immediate and unanimous. By this time she had drawn so close in her efforts to be heard that I could feel the warm breath of each word in my ear. I was chilled by the occasional brush of her lips against my flesh.

‘Jack, do you know why your wife died?’