Intervention by Julian May
He sits down and motions Moreno to a seat.
MORENO
(puzzled)
Your aura?
REMILLARD
(seeming vaguely annoyed with himself)
The bioenergetic field that surrounds my body — and that of every other living thing. Plants included.
MORENO
(nods, as if suddenly recalling)
It seems to me I've read that certain people can even see the aura that surrounds others... Can you see auras?
REMILLARD
Yes. If I concentrate on it.
MORENO
What do auras look like? What does mine look like?
CU REMILLARD
He is cupping his hands about the sick orchid plant and staring at it with mild intensity.
REMILLARD
Auras look something like glowing, colored halos that pulse and change. Healthy plants usually have a golden halo. Animals and people have more varied colors. Operants have halos that look bright to another operant who concentrates on viewing them. Since you're latent, Mr. Moreno, your aura is quite faint. It's reddish, shot through with flashes of violet.
MORENO (V. O. )
Does the color of a person's aura have any significance?
REMILLARD
We haven't worked out precise correlations yet. The individual aural coloration tends to vary according to mood, health, and the kind of mental activity being engaged in.
MORENO (V. O. )
Any particular significance to my red and purple?
REMILLARD
(looking blandly into camera)
I'd prefer not to comment on that today.
TWO SHOT — MORENO AND REMILLARD
Favoring Remillard and taking in the striking hologram of the brain.
MORENO
(in brisk mood switch)
We were discussing things that can inhibit the operation of the higher mind-powers... I suppose things like liquor, drugs, fatigue, illness — they'd all have an adverse effect on operancy, wouldn't they?
REMILLARD
Oh, yes. If anything, the higher faculties are even more sensitive to such things than the lower ones. But there are all kinds of other factors that can diminish one's operancy as well. For example, what the lay person calls mental blocks.
MORENO
Can you clarify?
REMILLARD
Let's take a more common mind function like memory. We've all experienced forgetfulness. Suppose I'm sitting next to a lady at a dinner party and I can't remember her name. Now why is that? Am I eighty-seven years old — in which case my forgetfulness is to be expected? No, I'm young and compos mentis. But no matter how much I exert my will power, I just can't remember. A psychoanalyst might come up with any number of reasons why. Perhaps the lady is an old flame who jilted me many years ago. Perhaps her name is the same as that of my Internal Revenue Service auditor! Or perhaps the problem is simply a very difficult foreign name that I failed to concentrate on when the lady and I were introduced. Any one of those rather subtle factors could inhibit memory. Metafunctions can be inhibited similarly.
MORENO
How about emotions? Anger, say. Or fear. If a person with strong metafunctions was afraid of the reactions others might have — afraid of hostility — could that make his powers go latent?
REMILLARD
It's possible. A strongly hostile or skeptical group of observers can also inhibit displays of metafunction.
MORENO
Have you ever experienced a diminishing of your own mind-powers because of emotional influences?
REMILLARD
(hesitating)
No. If anything, the adrenalin released by my body in response to such emotions would tend to reinforce my metafaculties. But then, I've been using the powers all my life, from the time I was an infant. When we begin training small children to operancy, we'll probably find that their higher faculties will remain usefully operant under all but the most extreme inhibitory conditions. After all — you yourself are seldom too shocked to speak. Or to see or hear. Or even to react in an emergency.
CU MORENO
MORENO
This testing and training program you advocate. Some people might say it had certain dangers. We'd be setting up a kind of elite mind-corps, wouldn't we? One that might eventually feel justified in seeking political power on the basis of their superior mentality.
TWO SHOT
REMILLARD
I don't think there's any danger of that.
MORENO
Oh?... Do you mean these operants would think politics was beneath them?
REMILLARD
(impatiently)
Certainly not. But there are so many other jobs to do that operants would find more satisfying. Einstein didn't run for President, you know.
CU MORENO
MORENO
(suddenly)
Do you, as a powerful operant, feel superior to normal people?
CU REMILLARD
REMILLARD
(again looking at plant, frowning)
The way you've phrased that question is somewhat inimical. Does a concert violinist feel superior to the audience? Does a mathematician feel superior to a cordon-bleu chef? Does a librarian with an eidetic memory feel superior to an absent-minded professor who won a Nobel Prize?
(lifts eyes and speaks deliberately)
Mr. Moreno, we all do things we know are wrong... like harbor prejudices to boost our insecure egos. One can suffer from shaky self-esteem no matter how well educated or how poorly educated one happens to be. Even television journalists can show bias for or against people they interview... I don't think that I look down upon persons without operant metafunctions. I'd be a fool if I did. I have certain talents, yes. But I lack so many others! I can't play the violin or sing or even cook very well. I'm not good at drawing pictures or playing tennis. I'm a terrible driver because I'm always off in the clouds instead of paying attention to traffic. I tend to shilly-shally around instead of making decisions promptly. So I would be an integral idiot to think of myself as a superior being... and I don't know of any other operants who think that way. If they do exist, I hope I never meet up with them.
CU MORENO
MORENO
How about the flip side of that question, then? Do you ever feel threatened by nonoperants?
TWO SHOT— REMILLARD FAVORED
REMILLARD
When I was much younger I kept my mind-powers completely under wraps because I didn't want others to know I was different. I wanted to be just like everyone else. You've interviewed a number of other operants for your television series, so you know that such protective coloration activity is the usual thing for youngsters who grow up with self-taught metafunctions. Minorities who seem to be a threat to majorities make the adaptations they must in order to survive.
MORENO
Then you admit that operant psychics can pose a threat to normals!
REMILLARD
(calmly)
I said seem to. Persons who are different from others in marked ways are often perceived as threatening. But it doesn't have to be that way. That's what civilization is supposed to be all about — resolving differences maturely, not acting like bands of frightened children. The
gap between operant and nonoperant is only the latest that modern society has faced. We also have technology gaps, economic gaps, cultural gaps, the generation gap, and even a sexual gap. You can refuse to cross the gap and throw rocks at each other, or you can cooperate to build a bridge to mutual betterment.
INTERCUT STOCK SHOTS — MONTAGE
Riotous scenes at London and Tokyo stock exchanges; mobs besiege banks at Geneva and Zurich; Monte Carlo Casino with sign: RELACHE/GESCHLOSSEN/CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE; Time magazine cover: DEFENSE STOCK DEBACLE; newspaper headlines: RUSSIA DUMPS GOLD, OIL LEASE CHAOS, COCA-COLA FORMULA REVEALED, OFFSHORE TAX REFUGES SELF-DESTRUCT; Newsweek magazine cover: WHO WILL WATCH THE WATCHERS?
But we've seen the turmoil that rocked the world stock and commodity markets following the Edinburgh Demonstration. And you must know that certain financiers and businesses that depend upon secrecy for their operations look upon telepathy and excorporeal excursion as deadly menaces. Other very serious problems are just beginning to crop up. Operants aren't numerous enough yet to pose much of a threat to society or to the global economy, but what about the future, when the superminds you propose to train begin to invade every walk of life?
TWO SHOT
REMILLARD
Operants aren't invaders from outer space, Mr. Moreno. We're only people. Citizens, not superbeings. We want just about the same things that you want — a peaceful and prosperous world for ourselves and our children, satisfying work, freedom from prejudice and oppression, a bit of fun now and then, someone to love... This invasion of yours: Do you realize you could be talking about your own children or grandchildren? Our preliminary studies seem to show that the human race has reached a critical point in evolution. Our gene pool is throwing up increasing numbers of individuals with the potential for becoming what you call a supermind.
MORENO
(looking slightly shaken)
My children?
REMILLARD
Or those of your cousins and uncles and aunts... or neighbors, or coworkers. In years to come, all humans will be born operant! But that's a long way off, and we poor souls are going to have to endure life in the transition zone during the foreseeable future. I won't minimize the fact that we may have a tough time. Adjustments will have to be made. But all throughout human history society has had to confront revolutions that overturned the old order. In the Stone Age, metal was a threat! The first automobiles frightened the horses and doomed the buggy-whip makers. But what one group sees as a threat, another group may hail as a blessing. Not to belabor the point... but did you notice that the latest issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has turned back the hands of its doomsday clock from two minutes before midnight to half past eleven?
MORENO
(permitting himself a wintry smile)
Is that how you operants see yourselves, Professor? As the saviors of humanity?
CU REMILLARD
REMILLARD
(sighs, fingering the plant)
Sometimes I wonder whether we might be the first scattered spores of the evolving World Mind... and then again, we might be only evolutionary dead ends, the mental equivalents of those fossil Irish elk with the six-foot antlers that were gorgeous to look at but losers in the survival game.
He looks at the plant, which seems noticeably perkier. Opening a desk decanter, he pours a bit of water into the pot.
MORENO (V. O. )
(incredulously)
A World Mind? You mean, some kind of superstate, like the Marxists envisioned? Operancy will lead to that?
TWO SHOT
REMILLARD
(laughs heartily)
No, no. Not a bit of it! No chance of our evolving into a metapsychic beehive. Humanity's individuality is its strength. But, you see... with the telepathy, especially, you have the potential for vastly increased empathy: mind-to-mind socialization on a level above any we've ever known... And it would be such a logical and elegant survival response, the World Mind. A perfect counterpoint to our increasingly dangerous technical advances.
MORENO
I still don't understand.
INTERCUT MYXOMYCETES NATURAL HISTORY SEQUENCE — paralleling Remillard's VOICE OVER.
REMILLARD (V. O. )
Perhaps an analogy will help. There's a peculiar group of living things
called Myxomycetes — or, to give them their more prosaic name, slime molds. A slime mold is either an animal that acts like a plant, or a plant that acts like an animal. Officially, it's a type of fungus. But it's capable of independent movement, like an animal. In its usual form, the slime mold is like a tiny amoeba, flowing here and there on the forest floor engulfing and eating bacteria and other microscopic goodies. It eats, it grows, and in time it splits like a genuine amoeba into two individuals. In a favorable forest environment there will be thousands or even millions of these little single-celled eaters going about their individual business... But sometimes, the food supply gives out. Perhaps the forest dries up in a prolonged drought. In some way the individual cells seem to realize that it's "unite or die" time. They begin to come together. First they form blobs and then rivulets of slime. These flow toward a central point and combine into a multicelled mass of jelly that becomes a real organism, sometimes more than thirty centimeters in diameter ... and it creeps along the ground. Some creeping slime molds look like pancakes of dusty jelly and some look like slugs, leaving a trail of slime behind. The organism may travel for two weeks, looking for a more favorable place to live. When it stops migrating it changes shape again — often to a thing like a knob at the end of a stalk. In time the knob splits open and releases a cloud of dusty spores that fly through the air. Eventually the spores come to earth, where warmth and moisture turn them into amoebalike individuals again. They take up their old life — until the next time things get rough and Unity becomes imperative...
TWO SHOT — REMILLARD AND MORENO — STEADICAM FOLLOWING —
We discover them as they are approaching the exit of the RESEARCH FACILITY. Moreno is leaving.
MORENO
And you really believe that human minds will have to come together in somewhat the same way in order to survive?
REMILLARD
The idea seems very natural to a telepath, Mr. Moreno. It's only a higher form of socialization, after all. To a tribe of primitives living at the clan level, the notion of a complex democratic society seems hopelessly bizarre. But primitives transplanted into industrial nations have often adapted very successfully. Think of some of the Southeast Asian hill folk who came to America in the 1970s and '80s. A World Mind is quite plausible to operants, and of course it would include nonoperant minds as well.
MORENO
I don't see how!
REMILLARD
Neither do I... at the moment. But that's the payoff that some of us metapsychic theoreticians envision. A society of the mind evolving toward harmony and mutualism that still lets individuals retain their freedom. That's one of the topics we'll be discussing in Alma-Ata next year, at the First World Congress on Metapsychology. We'll deal with practicalities first, but then the universe is the limit! It may take a few thousand years to accomplish a World Mind, but I like to think of the meeting there in Kazakhstan as the first little blob of amoebas flowing together into a true organism. The creature is still tiny and not very effectual... but it'll grow.
CUT TO MORENO CU — AGAINST PROGRAM LOGO (MATTE)
MORENO
(addressing viewers)
Denis Remillard's vision is an amazing one — but then he is an amazing man. Perhaps, as the President said, a supermind. Right now there are at most a few hundred others like him scattered around the world. But tomorrow, and next year, and in the twenty-first century fast approaching, those superminds among us will multiply. And as they do, they'll change the world. How they change it remains to be seen ... I'm Carlos Moreno for 60 Minutes.
FADE TO COMMERCIAL BREAK
23
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD
WHY HAD I done it?
What perverse compulsion had led me to top my nephew's display of psychokinesis with one of my own, thus revealing my most closely guarded secret on a television program beamed around the globe?
Oh yes, I had been more than a little drunk at the time, having given in to the need to fortify myself against the invasion of my bookshop by
Carlos Moreno and his squad of muckrakers. But to show my power so flippantly, with such cornball insouciance! I had to be cracking up.
After the fatal taping session in the shop, when we had all had our giggle and it occurred to me what a piece of lunacy I had perpetrated, I went on a to
Lucille.
"I knew it!" she exclaimed, pushing inside. "I just knew you'd done something stupid. Look at you! Roger, what are you doing to yourself?"
"Good question, " I mumbled, grinning down at her. But my drunken insolence quailed in the face of her terrible charity. I must have looked like a sodden scarecrow, half conscious and filthy; but she had helped tend her invalid father for years and had no trouble at all coping with me. She forced me to take a shower, dressed me in clean pajamas, and pummeled my brain until I swallowed a vitamin-laden milkshake. Then she put me to bed. When I woke up ten hours later she was still there, dozing in a chair in the parlor, and my hurrah's nest of an apartment was now spotless and my entire stock of booze had been poured down the drain.
With my head throbbing like a calliope at full steam and my knees awobble, I looked in hung-over wonderment at the sleeping young woman, trying to think why she, of all people, had come to my rescue.
Her eyes opened. They were brown and very stern, and I couldn't help remembering how she had sent Denis and me packing when we had first dowsed her out eleven years earlier.
"Why?" she said quietly, echoing my telepathic question. "Because I know just what came over you when Denis did his thing and you knew the jig was up. Poor old Roger. "
She stretched, then got up from the chair and looked at her wrist-watch. "Quarter to eight. I have a seminar at nine this morning, but there's time to scramble some eggs. " She headed for my kitchen.
"What d'you mean you know?" I croaked, shuffling after. "I don't even know! And what the hell right do you have coming up here and interfering with me? Don't tell me the fuckin' Ghost sent you!"