The Intervention Part 32

We're only beginning to discover ways to do this. It's very hard to foil the ultrasenses, such as excorporeal excursion and telepathy, that don't seem to require much expenditure of psychic energy. Things like psychokinesis, on the other hand, can be rather easily frustrated by external factors. And internal, subjective factors can be even more inhibitory.

TRACK INTO REMILLARD'S OFFICE.

Angle favoring door as Remillard ushers Moreno inside. The office furniture is old, academic-shabby. Extensive wall bookcases overflowing with books and papers. Computer terminal. Wall hologram of human brain. Painting of Mount Washington, New Hampshire. And everywhere - on desk, shelves, brackets, floor - PLANTS growing luxuriantly.

MORENO.

(looking around) Quite a conservatory you have here, Professor. You must have a green thumb.

REMILLARD.

(examining droopy plant on desk) Actually, it's more like a green mind, I guess. Now this poor little Paphiopedilum really needs mental TLC, so I keep it close by and let it share my aura as well as the occasional healing thought.

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 psychoa.n.a.lyst 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 n.o.bel 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 s.e.xual 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, OFFSh.o.r.e TAX REFUGES SELF-DESTRUCT; Newsweek magazine cover: WHO WILL WATCH THE WATCHERS?

MORENO (V. O. ).

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 s.p.a.ce, 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.