William S. Burroughs

The Burroughs Academy Bulletins


THE LAST BROADCAST

Marrakesh 1969: A folkloric lunch in the patio of our charming Arab House in the alleys of Marrakesh placed at our disposal by the British you can buy a whole package like this marvellous old pot-head Fatima thrown in smoking with the trade in the kitchen after lunch over mint tea Farid asked Reggie and I to write out the names of our mother so he could tell our fortunes. The uneasy spring of 1969 here in the middle of a film to find myself one of the actors. The Chief has asked me to his house for dinner.

"Around eight Rogers"

Clearly I am gaining their confidence whoever they are. I had never been asked to his house before. The Chief received me in his patio mixing a green salad, thick stake laid out by the barbecue pit.

"Help yourself to a drink Rogers." He gestured to the drinks tray. "There's kief of course if you want it."

I mixed myself a drink and declined the kief: "It gives me a headache."

I'd seen the Chief smoking with his Arab contacts but that didn't make it me a licence to smoke. Besides it does give me a headache.

The Chief's cover story is an eccentric old French comte who is translating the Koran into Provencal and sometimes he will pull cover and bore his guests cationic, you see he really knows his cover, Provencale and Arabic too, you really have to study your cover for years on a real undercover job like this. Or at least

You did in the old days before projections, the old B.P. days. Now an agent has his cover projected on him and this his training form years to months.

The chief wasn't pulling cover tonight. He was expansive and "watch your step Rogers" I told myself sipping a weak scotch.

"I think you are the man for a highly important and may I add a highly dangerous assignment, Rogers. You fell for that crap?"

"Well, sir, he is impressive" I said cautiously.

"He's a cheap old ham," said the Chief. He sat down and filled his keif pipe with one hand. He smoked and blew the ash out absently caressing a gazelle that nuzzled his knee. No one knows for sure who the Chief is. He may not be CIA at all, could just as well be working for the Russians, the French, The Chinese or even some independent group privately financed. One thing for sure he does alright by himself. It is a beautiful patio with bouganvillia, lime trees and eucalyptus, fish pools and fountains. The Chief has a curious way of talking "thinking out loud" he calls it.

"The old singer lives in a tower over the market sitting there in an amber wheelchair yellow skin silk robes blue snake eyes skin like smooth yellow parchment two long serpent fangs grafted into his upper jaw. All round the square are sacred musicians wiling flutes pounding drums the music channelled into the tower through porcelain ducts. He sits in a small round room with obsidian windows. As the music pulses through him he begins to rock back and forth and a thin siren wail begins to break from his lips now open to yellow fangs.

DEATH DEATH DEATH

The pictures crash and leap form his eyes like white lighting over the city

DEATH DEATH DEATH

A thin high vibration that crumbles the city to pile of rubble. In the ruins of the empty city the tower still stands... this is the secret of the ancient Mayan which few are competent to practise. When comes such a singer as the Old Yellow Serpent?

Now the boy who look into these witch-doctor, sorcerer, ancient East, Mayan, Atlantis, Druid, or whatever secrets are known as the Folk Lore Dept. or FLD. We have to run down every lead to stay ahead of the Commies or everybody's kids will be learning Chinese. Well a Mexican shoe-shine boy who was intimate with one of our agents..." The Chief got up and put the steaks over the grill in the barbecue pit.

"Now this Lad" The boy was smiling from the other end of the patio like a shy young animal. The Chief beckoned. The boy shook his head smiling and stayed where he was. The Chief stood quite immobile his eyes flickering a little whine in his throat. The boy stopped smiling and his forehead wrinkled. He took a footstep forward and then another until he stood in front of the Chief. The whine shut off. The boy shook himself and the Chief patted his shoulder.

"Here's three dirhams for the cinema"

The Chief refilled his kief pipe.

"We've stumbled on something right enough. A control secret of the Ancient Mayans. Now that lad... he's a doll isn't he?... is a natural sensitive, one of the best deep trance mediums I've ever handled. In trance he would turn into a Mayan priest. Looking through the priests' eyes... it's rather like a moving TV camera... I could see the temples, the towers, the scared books, the dead beaten eyes of the workers. Basically the whole thing is very simple.

Only the priests could read the books of pictures writing good and bad days mostly bad of course family plagues madness soil exhaustion the whole production. Now here is a young apprentice in one of the lower rooms of the tower... He sits naked on a leather cushion... The sacred books are open in front of him...

What is going to happen to him that day is written down in the books. He sits there rocking back and forth to the sacred music spitting the pictures from his eyes. He can feel the pictures hit and take. He can feel right into the bodies and minds of the workers with his pictures. The Egyptians had the secret too. And we have reason to believe that it reached its highest stage in the Chimu region of Peru. Home of the incomparable Yellow Serpent, the greatest, best singer since the Spitting Cobra of Yemeni who built up an army of fanatical khat users. We've got our boys working on that. He plays ball or we cut of his khat. Gotta stay ahead of the Commies."

"Or everybody's kids will be learning Chinese."

It slipped out. The Chief slipped me a look like a striking cobra and I found myself on the floor shuddering. What had I seen?

A discrete Arab servant helped me back into my chair and gave me a glass of water He swept up broken glass form the red tiles.

"Can't quite remember what you saw can you?

You see it's all a question of knowing how.

If you do it right they always get the picture. Now this lad is a natural and it was through working with him that I was able to perfect and streamline the operation. Of course intensive training

Is a necessary for success as it is in any discipline. Learning to think in pictures without words is a whole new way of thinking very painful at first. Our agents learn a simplified picture language derived from the Mayan and Egyptian's systems. Then the agent learns to think in pictures quite different from the words he may be using... friendly words, unfriendly pictures. I was privileged to assist in a manner of speaking at the Yellow Serpent's Last Broadcast.

Pure killing sweeps the Mind clean.

DEATH DEATH DEATH

DEATH DEATH DEATH

Pictures leap and crackle form his eyes like a vast whip through the city.

DEATH DEATH DEATH

And now the Serpent swings his whip through the sky.

DEATH DEATH DEATH

There's no ecstasy to compare with it rather like depth madness and you have to be careful. The whole city could blow up in your face. Ever see an Arab mob in action, Rogers?"

The Chief fingered a cyanide button absently and caressed his gazelle. He is a walking gas-chamber: cyanide tiepins, cyanide cufflinks, a cyanide tooth he can release with his tongue, cyanide gas in the soles of his shoes, very comfortable so he tells me.

"Now the technical Dept., it thinks we are all crazy as our way of life is reprehensible."

"Bring us the ones that work they say, facts, figures, personnel. Get the gimmick off this joker, steal it if you have must. Operation here or there this or that. We do not have an agent could do thirty seconds with the Yellow Serpent and they want him in a basket! The Spitting Cobr4a of Yemmeni is barricaded in his tower with enough khat to last him ten years. Try getting within a hundred yards of the tower. And they want all his poisons neatly labelled and classified.

Put that joker DEATH on the line. Take care of Mao and his band of cut-throats. Here live stupid vulgar sons of bitches. Who thought they could hire DEATH as a company cop... empty newspapers in the wind, frayed sounds of a distant city... DEATH, Johnny, come and took over... distant hand couldn't time guesses to the last broadcast... a rustle of darkness and wires..."

Here in this Medina house smell of stale trade flesh on the sheets The Herald Tribune a packet of cigarettes the Swiss Agency just called to say all Americans are being denied access to Morocco... the uneasy spring of 1969... Marrakesh... May 24.


DO YOU REMEMBER TOMORROW?

Go out and take your own pictures.

Go back and find your own sets... firefly evenings at the Bellrive Country Club... Forest Park, my brother's silver "Daisy" glinting in the distant sun... You can find all your own Dream Sets in Bob Martins Home Movies... I am the Director. You have known me for a long time. You can't remember fade-out format?

How it looks on the page?

Now a spaceship is no more no less than a spaceship room anywhere... every object and person in that room or set. Almost anything or anybody can be dragged on set. Lady Sutton Smith presents a way of tidying up your digs. I call it "the touch of my hand." Here is a dreary mess: bathroom glass streaked with toothpaste containing a finger of flat beer... filter cigarettes ground out in the remains of a cream éclair... red plastic shoehorn used by Sloppy sawyer to eat sardines out of a tin he opened with his bayonet. All this is spread out on a mouldy piece of furniture suggesting a sea-chest. Well, you have your peg to hang it on: Sloppy Sawyer ate here at this remote post. He was here and left his "Muriel". A "Muriel" is what you don't want in your movie. A "Muriel" is an off-set "grimsy". You need Sloppy Sawyer to bring a "Muriel" on set. You see, it is time to apply what you have learned to the Present Time operation of tidying up on a film set. Now let each piece of furniture feel the touch of your hand.

Who would sit just so and where? You can make a place for all your old friends as well. I just had the pleasure of meeting Sloppy Sawyer: he was you might say conjured up by the shocking emergency he left behind. If you want all the old showmen to visit you have to offer them a set. Mrs. Murphy's Rooming House remember? Not too far to walk and right in the next room is a Murphy bed, and for those who don't know what a Murphy bed is: In the 1920's there various attempts to create an all-purpose furniture unit and the Murphy bed was the result of one such attempt. It folded up into a wooden bureau with draws for your clothes. When the bed unfolded with your clothes above your head and a table to hand with a hot plate, you could set up a cosy little unit in any corner... plenty of H in those days at $30 a piece... this old grey junk packing, pulling dirty shirts and stiff socks from his draws in the Murphy bed... suitcase open... he goes into the bathroom... cigarette smouldering on a empty razor packet... he reaches under the wash stand for his works... brown paper packet with a rubber band round it. He puts his works in his pocket... back for a last check of the drawers. Opens a drawer... mosaic of objects left behind him... the drawer sticks as he closes it... dim jerky far away... last junky selling his empty suitcase.

This must be Doc Lamberts Blackout Clinic. Two Union Members put the bite on him for his dues:

"One cigarette, Mister..."

Well, we get around to the door when I spot this Time Vigilante with a sloppy briefcase, the fink, with letters spilling out of it... looked like he might attempt a citizen's arrest... I threw him a cool curve... spun him around a corner about his dirty rotten fink business... Dr. Lambert wrote me a Murphy Rx to carry me over until I could book a passage on a "Deadliner"... any place but here.

8 frames a second is a get-away speed... old junky packing, minutes to go at Mrs. Murphy's Rooming House, remember a rumble at Dallas, the Director on stage screaming "The tide is coming in at Hiroshima, you dumb earth hicks, sauve qui peut!, Any second now the whole shit house goes up!"

"Oh, don't bother me with all that junk, John! THE DIRECTOR IS ON STAGE, and you know that means in show biz..."

"I am talking to the Director," (he apparently said to the girl) "do you understand? You'll know what to do. Always be calm... What? What?"

"What an old cornball... just hope he can drag it out until I can get my bags packed."... (somehow suggested bags packed.)

16 frames per second... blue magic of old movies... cool remote Sunday garden... afternoon shadows on the boy there... "Are you a member of the film union? Film Union 4 p.m. I do firefly evenings, flickering silver smiles... summer golf course waiting for rain..."

Smell the florist shop?... fading streets... a distant sky...

24 frames


OH GOD GET ME OUT OF THIS

You couldn't say exactly when it hit familiar and dreary as a cigarette butt ground out in cold scrambled eggs the tooth paste smears on the wash stand glass why you were on the cops day like another feeling a little worse than usual which is not unusual at all an ugly thing broke out that day in the precinct this rookie cop had worked a drunk over and the young cop had a mad look in his eyes and he kept screaming:

"Let me finish the bastard off! He's passed out on some kinda dope. I tell ya!"

I've seen that look before and I know what it means: "cop crazy". When it hits they'll rush out, search, arrest, spa, anyone in sight. We try to cover for them. "Son, if the cop madness come on you find an old bum just as quick as you can and let yourself go."

Well it turned out that the rookie has picked the wrong drunk he was a big ad exec. On a spree such a stink goes up we toss the kid to the wolves and he draws a stretch and some con beats his brains out in stir. We can cover fir individual cases or write them off but the next day is worse ---------- worse the madness would seize whole precincts for a few minutes during which anyone in the tank is beaten to bloody pulp then the madness drains out and their strength with it.

"Double whiskey, Martin"

"You're a cop kinda early, aren't you Clancy"

"I don't know Martin something is happening to me maybe I'm going nuts just to do anything Martin, Like get up, shave, dress, well it hurts see? I tell myself Clancy anymore form you sap what's all the fuss everyone does these things everyday been doing it for years so who am I to start complaining but strength sags form the work I'm doing, no blood left in me to sap sick junky takes everything I got to make it to the bus-stop and one thought in my mind "please god let there be seat a warm seat by a window" and then I get to the corner by the precinct and have to lug myself out the bus."

"Covered you like the white stuff, Clancy?"

"Eh, what's that? Give me another, Martin."

Martin fills the cops glass. He leans grey junky forearms on the bar. He doesn't care if Clancy sees the needle marks. He doesn't mind shaving and dressing. He speaks calmly.

"Yes it's hitting all of you can't find a taxi in the street or so many they chase a fare up the sidewalk and jerk him in that's another way it hits people go crazy to do something can't just sit there moping gotta DO SOMETHING.

I can see it coming on now Clancy. Yeah, you are a cop and you gotta DO SOMETHNG. Now that gum won't do you any good. Better put it away. You don't believe in that gun anymore Clancy... you don't believe in that gun neither... nor the work you are doing... What kept you doing it Clancy?

It was the feeling that were on set knowing you had a part in the film and the film covered you just like the white stuff covers a junky he don't mind shaving and dressing. And you didn't mind doing those things just as long as the film covered while you were on the cops. Well the film isn't there anymore Clancy the spring is gone from your sap strength sags from your good right arm cold and wooden your fingers. And what has happened to your pigeons Clancy? You used to be quite a pigeon fancier remember the feeling you got sucking arrests from your pigeons soft and evil like the face of your whisky priest brother? Where are their junk rotten souls? Rags and tatters of old film... Sure Clancy we remember the man you sent up came around later to thank you and the watch the chief gave you when you cracked the Norton case. Time to turn in your cop suit to the4 little Jew who will check it off in his books.

It was the film held you together, Clancy. You were the film all the old cop films eating his apple twirling his club..."

The sky goes out against his back.

Unpaid bills unanswered letters each simple task an agony to perform everyday a little worse and the worse it got the less was happening as the structure quietly foundered whole apartment blocks phone in to say they won't be coming to the office that day and nobody is there to take the calls.

The writer flinches form his typewriter the cop turns sick at the sight of his badge. Tools fall from the slack hands ploughs gather dust in ruined barns. Fanatical sects spring up wrecking whole districts in whirlwind riots. A few minutes later the rioters sit in the wreckage stirring blood with a stick or staring into space with dead hopeless eyes. Last dying twitches of the West.

A little fat man was standing by my desk. "I know you. You're the little fat man who gives explanations in science-fiction stories."

"Yes, that's me Bill. Guess you could write my lines for me most of them. You want out of present time don't you? Well, that's tougher than you thought, a whole lot tougher. Time hits the hardest blows. Well I can give you a few hints no more than that though. And that's against the rules oh yes we have rules. As son as you work for any organisation you have rules and it's a rule that anyone working for any organisation cannot be allowed to know the reason for the rules not the real reason... present time... right now... agony just to be here isn't it? Well to begin with let look at people who don't mind being in present time:

Indians in South America setting fish-traps... hunting... cooking... making canoes... Well I could on you get the picture... every object has its place not many objects you see these backward people are on set. Present time is a film: if you are on set, in Present Time you don't feel present time because you are in it.

Well no use trying to duplicate a set like that in a cit6y of course you can approximate it in your apartment weed out all the objects not on set but even if you get your apartment on set where no object jumps out at you and kicks you in the stomach sooner or later the objects move back into random positions and there is still all outdoors to contend with you trail it back with you all those words and sounds and images that have nothing to do with you... Alright let's look at someone else who can make out in present time... a man having breakfast in bed reading letters... He dictates into a Dictaphone... See what I mean? He is Rich! He can buy padding. Someone else will type his letters he is dictating and pay the bills and see the electricity and heating works. He can buy exemption from present time or at least he could until the film jammed.

"Now here is someone else doesn't mind being what he is... Martin is there cooking up the white stuff grey shadows on a distant wall... So what is the film made of? JUNK. The more you use the more you need. And where does that end? Where would it have ended if we hadn't decided to end it right here in the United States of America?"

He gets up and passes the room. "What after all is your God? Seen from a galactic standpoint a little tribal chieftain weak corrupt a drug addict. Sold out his people just like that." He snaps his fingers.

"Yes, there is some ground for the provincial egotism of the of the earth peoples, the planet is remarkable in many ways... the more or less equitable temperatures, vegetation, water this can be very important to planets where there is no water like Mars for instance... minerals, oxygen, animal food.

To put it country simple earth has a lot of things that other people might want like the whole planet and mebbe these folks would like a few changes made like made more carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere and room for their way of life. We've seen this happen write here in these United States. Your way of life destroyed the Indian's way of life. Gave them reservations didn't you?

Now my own position is ticklish. I'm with the invaders no use trying to hide that and at the same time I disagree with some of the things some of them are doing.

Oh, were not united anymore you are the conservative faction that is set on nuclear war as the solution to the personal problem. Others disagree. Now I don't claim that my motives are one hundred per cent humane but I do say that if we can't think up anything quieter and tidier than that then we aren't all that better then you earth apes. How many of you can forget that you were ever a cop a priest a writer leave everything behind you ever thought and said and did and walk right out of the film? There is no place else to go. The theatre is closed."


WIND DIE YOU DIE WE DIE

Under a dim moon and dim stars I walked down to a clear5ing over the sea where I had mad love to a girl some nights before. She could not have known that here romantic middle-aged lover was actually a stranded pederast who had experienced considerable strain fulfilling his male role. Anything is better than nothing is a very bad approach to sex. I stood there hearing the sound of the sea several hundred feet down at the bottom of the steep slope, feeling the wind on my face and remembering the wind on our bodies, the wind that is life to Puerto de los Santos. Los Vientos de Dois, the Winds of God, that blow away the mosquitoes and the miasmal mists and the swamp smells. The Winds of God that keep the great hairy tarantulas at bay, and the poisonous snakes away. The natives have a saying: "Wind die, you die, we die." I knew this could happen.

In fact I had written a thesis showing low pressure areas were shifting inexorably to the east and that the Winds of God must soon die. My thesis had not been well received by the local officials who were preoccupied by the possibility of a modern airport and jet service to Miami. Soon they told each other American tourists loaded with money would come to enjoy the Winds of God, the dry balmy wind like great fan form the sea that kept the temperature just right day and night the year round.

"If only we had some communists to fight," said the official sadly. "Then we could be sure the Americans would give us money."

Somewhere in the distance a dog was barking from a garden villa. I turned and walked back to the empty sea-road under the dim moon and dim stars.

The lack of communists it seemed was crucial and the airline made arrangements elsewhere. Then an ominous portent of disaster touched Puerto de los Santos. The Winds of God were dying. Today whole sections of the foreign quarter are deserted, the swimming pools are full of stagnant rain water. In the desolate markets the bright fabrics and tin ware no longer flap and clatter in the Winds of God. There are few purchasers and fingers that touch the merchandise are yellow and listless with fever. The mosquitoes have returned and the swamp smells, the great hairy tarantulas and the poisonous snakes. Puerto de los Santos is dying. Slowly.

In my New York apartment I remember that spot over the sea. No lovers would go there now because of the mosquitoes the spiders the snakes. It is getting dark and I stand by the window looking at the lights of New York.

This city will also die. Remember the power failure some years ago? It was never explained to anyone's satisfaction least of all mine. In fact I have written a thesis to show that, owing to reverse currents, there will soon be no electricity conducted on the Eastern Seaboard My thesis has been shelved in Washington. People do not like to hear these things. I know that in a few years the Greta White Way will black out forever. I can see darkness falling in great black on the stricken town. Before that happens I will be somewhere else no doubt writing another thesis that will not be very well received by the local officials. I stand at the window and remember the wind of our bodies the sound of the sea dim and jerky far away stars.

"Wind die. You die. We Die."

THE END

I turned the page to be faced by a lurid colour picture of a creature with pendulous leathery breasts, two front legs ending in claws and a scorpion's tail. They had the beasts of women, a scorpion's sting, and snapping teeth!

They came in countless hordes and they attacked!!!

THE CRAWLING BREASTS

Tommy Wentworth, an assistant baker, was riding home on his bicycle after work. He lived a few miles out of town and rode too and from work every day. As he passed St. hill he heard a curious sound like the clacking of castanets. He stopped and leaned his bike against a tree. Saint Hill, so called after a local saint who had killed a dragon, was covered in trees vines and heavy undergrowth. On weekends Tommy often came here with his friends to pick blackberries. He heard the sound of many bodies slithering through the undergrowth. Why it sounded like an army! He walked a little way up the hill and pushed aside the bush. A few minutes later he was panting out his story to a sceptical constable.

"Women you say with hanging breasts and walking on two front legs? Scorpion stings and snapping teeth is it? You wouldn't have been stopping in at The Swan for a few pints would you know?"

The constable winked broadly.

"But I tell 6you I saw them! And coming this way too!"

The constable looked sharply. Colonel Sutton-Smith was standing in the doorway his sporting rifle under his arm.

"Constable, there are some sort of monsters advancing on the village. We must call up every able-bodied man between the ages of fourteen and seventy with whatever weapons they can lay hand to. Have them assemble at Saint Hill Green."

The constable turned pale. "Monsters you say sir? You saw them?"

"Yes through my binoculars. They will reach the village in a quarter hour or less. There is no time to lose."

The constable opened the drawer and took out an old Bulldog Webley .455. He looked at it dubiously:

"I doubt if it will fire sir after all these years... must be some cartridges left somewheres."

The Colonel turned to Tommy: "And now my boy get on your bicycle and cover the houses on the east side of the road, down to Shelby Farm. Tell the men to collect whatever weapons they can find and report to the Green. Women and children to stay looked up in the houses. The constable and I will cover the west side. Look sharp now."

Ten minutes later thirty frightened men and boys stood on the Green armed with shotguns, pick axes, iron bars, meat cleavers and cobble stones. Lanterns had been lighted casting an orange glow over Dragon Lake. Buckets of petrol stood ready to burn the monsters.

"Here they come!" Tommy shouted.

"Form a square men!" The Colonel snapped. He raised his rifle.

"Mr Anderson will see you now. Will you kindly step this way Mr Seward." Somewhat reluctantly I put down the magazine and followed her down the corridor. Funny what you find in old pulp magazines. "Wind die You die We die."

Quite haunting really... good stories too... the dim night sky... the place by the sea... the shadowy figure of the absent girl... you can see it all somehow.

Curiously enough I had myself come to sound a word of warning, a warning, a warning I was reasonable sure it would not be heeded. Still, a man has his duty. And I was reluctant to leave the intrepid colonel frozen forever rifle at his shoulder. Perhaps I could pinch the magazine on the way out. I doubted this. The receptionist had a sharp cold eye. She opened the door.

Mr Anderson was crisp and cool. "What can I do for you MR Seward?"

"Mr Anderson I was wondering if you had my treatise on the possibility of virus replication outside the host cell?"

Mr Anderson looked at once vague and desperate. "Well I can't say that I have"

"The treatise is theoretical of course. But I have not come here to discuss theories Mr Anderson. I have come to warn you that virus replication outside the host cell is now an accomplished fact... Unless the e most drastic measures are taken at once... measures so drastic I hesitate to tell you what they are... unless these measures are taken Mr Anderson within tow years or less the entire male population will be reduced to /"

Mr Capwell will see you now Mr Bently, will you step this way please?"

Somewhat reluctantly I put down the magazine and followed her down the hall. Quite an idea. Story of someone reading a story of someone reading a story. I had this odd sensation that I would end up in the story and someone would read about me reading the story in a waiting room somewhere. As I followed her down the corridor the words I had read began shifting in my head all on their own as it were... shifting inexorably to a spot over thy sea... in the distance a dog was barking from... this spot... deserted swimming pools at the bottom of a steep slope... villa garden... bright wind in the desolate market... our bodies reflected... tin wares clattering in the Winds of God... Swan for a few pints would you now... I turned the page to be faced by his leathery breasts... Two Claws Smith was standing in the doorway... She could not know that her stranded pederast had experienced arrangements elsewhere... Exactly what would the male population be reduced to and what were the drastic measures by which Mr Seward proposed to avert such reduction?

Perhaps I could charm the magazine out of the receptionist. I nearly laughed out loud at the thought that I might wind up making love to her under a dim night sky in a clearing over the sea. She turned to and flashed me a smile as she opened the door. It was a smile that said: "I wish you luck he's a real bastard." He looked at me as if he was trying to focus on my face thru a telescope.

"Yes Mr uh Bentley," (clearly he assumed that I was using an assumed name) "And what can I do for you?"

Mr.uh Capwell what can you for your own reflection many times removed of course or to put it another way on the subject of wrongness how wrong do you think you generally are?"

He visibly experienced more difficulty in focusing on my face.

"I don't believe I understand you Mr. Bentley"

"In that case I will make myself clearer. But first let me ask you have entertained certain elementary considerations... with regard to repetitive irritations of virus origins? One sneeze for example is inconsequential whereas a thousand consecutive sneezes might well prove fatal... the common cold Mr Capwell is uncommon to be sure in this climate and for that reason should you leave Panama and return to New York it is your duty to know and mine to inform you that you would have as it were an unseen travellers companion of the most regrettable and may I add the most versatile proclivities. No, Mr. Capwell this is not a communist plot. It is simply the mirror image of such a plot many times removed and apparent because you believe that it is. You know of course that it is a common measure of prophylaxis to shoot a cow with aftosa and that a reasonable cow and that a reasonable cow would not object to this procedure if that cow had not been indoctrinated with the proper feelings of duty towards the bovine community at large. Does that answer your question Mr Capwell?"

When you look down the a snub nosed .38 you can see the bullet at the bottom of the barrel. It gives you a funny feeling many times removed.

"You can see Miss Blankslip now Mr. Tomlinson."

"In focusing my face Thomson is the name."

"Oh yes Mr Thomson if you'll just care to step this way... It is in the East Wing... I'll see you past the guards."

"Did I understand you to say Miss Blankslip?"

"Yes, she ahs remained unmarried," the boy told me. "It is said that she experienced a great disappointment in love many tears ago... but that was in another country... and besides, her present condition would make matrimony an interesting but remote contingency."

We were walking through what appeared to be an abandoned compound or concentration camp... rusty barbed wire, concrete ditches and barriers overgrown with weeds and vines.

Here and there the concrete was blackened by some fire long ago. We passed three barriers where a guard lounged, tunic unbuttoned, rusty revolvers in holsters green with mould. They waved us through with listless yellow fingers. A sour rotten smell of stale flesh and sweat hung over the compound like a smog.

"The odour is still here of course. You see there has been no wind since..."

It was getting dark. I had a curious feeling of being three feet back of my head. Years ago I had studied something called scientology I think. As if seen through a telescope form a great distance I read the following words:

"In other words, two of each of anything. One facing the other. By bracket of course we mean putting them up as himself as thought they were put up by someone else, the somebody else facing somebody else, and the matched terminals again put up by others facing others."

Mirror images mocked up opposite each other each pair placed there by the next in line. We had reached the end of a brown lake lit by carbide lamps. In the shallow water I could see crab-like fish that stirred the surface of the water occasionally realising bubbles of stagnant swamp smells. A few trees grew here of a strangely bulbous and distorted variety. Gathered in this desolate spot were a handful of ragged soldiers diseased and dirty. One of them stepped forward and handed me an old Webley .455. An officer with a rusty sporting rifle under his arm returned my salute. We were standing in front of what appeared to be abandoned barracks. The receptionist turned to us... with the manner of a circus barker.

"And now folks, if you'll just care to step this way you are about to witness the most amazing the most astounding living monstrosity of all time. She was once a beautiful woman."

He unlocked the door and we filed in. A terrible stench of unknown aroma seared the lungs and grabbed the stomach. Several soldiers wretched into faded bandannas. In the centre of the dusty room was a wire mesh cubicle where something stirred sluggishly... I felt an overwhelming nightmare vertigo.

"YOU! YOU! YOU!"

It was the end of the line.


MAN VOTED FOR A GODAMM APE

The scene is Grants Park Chicago 1968. A full scale model of the Mayflower with American flags for sails has been set up. A.J. in his Uncle Sam suit steps to a mike on the deck.

"ladies and gentlemen, it is my coveted privilege and deep honour to introduce you the distinguished senator and former Justice of the Supreme Court Homer Mandrill, known to his friends as the Purple Better One. O doubt you are familiar with a book called "The African Genesis", written by Robert Ardrey, a native son of Chicago, and I may add a true son of America. I quote to you from his penetrating work:

"When I was a boy in Chicago I attended the Sunday School of our neighbouring church. I recall our Wednesday night meetings with simplest nostalgia. We would meet in the basement. there would be a short and a shorter benediction... And we would turn out the lights... and in total darkness... hit each other with chairs."

Mr. Ardrey's early training tempered his character to face and make known

The truth about the origins and nature of mankind.

"Not in innocence and not in Asia was mankind born. The home of our fathers was the African Highland. The most significant of all our gifts was the legacy bequeathed us by our immediate forebears, a race of terrestrial flesh eating killer apes... Raymond A. Dart of the University Of Johannesburg was the strident voice from South Africa that would prove the southern ape to be the human ancestor. Dart put forward the simple thesis that man emerged form the anthropoid background for only one reason because he was a killer.

A rock a stick a heavy bone was to our ancestral killer ape the margin of survival... and now we sat in his office at the wrong end of the world... Man's original nature imposes itself on any human solution."

The aggressive nature of the southern ape, suh, glowing with menace, fought your battles on the perilous veldts of Africa 500,000 years ago. Had he not done so you would not be living here in this great city in this great land of America raising your happy families in peace and prosperity. Who more fitted to represent our Simian heritage in all its glory than Homer Mandrill, himself a descendent of that illustrious line?

Who else can restore to this nation the spirit of true conservatism that imposes itself on any human solution?

And at a time when this great republic is threatened by enemies foreign and domestic? Actually, there can be only one candidate: The Purple Batter One... Your future President...?

To the battle Hymn of the Republic an American flag is drawn aside to reveal a purple assed mandrill (thunderous applause). Led to the mike by secret service men in dark suits that suggestively here and there, the Purple Better One blinks in bewilderment. The technician mixes a bicarbonate of soda and belches into his hand. He is sitting in front of three instrument panels one labelled P.A. for Purple Ass, one labelled A. for audience, a third labelled P for police.

(Crude Experiments with Rhesus monkeys have demonstrated that small currents of electricity passed through electrodes into the appropriate brain areas can elicit any emotional or visceral response: rage, fear, sexuality, vomiting, sleep, defecation. No doubt with further experimentation these techniques will be perfected and electromagnetic fields will supersede the use of actual electrodes embedded in the brain.)

He adjusts dials as Homer's mouth moves to a dubbed speech from directional mikes. The features of other candidates are projected onto Homer's face form a laser installation across the park so that he seems to embody them all:

"At this dark hour in the history of the Republic there are grave questions troubling all our hearts. I pledge myself to answer these questions. One question is the war in Vietnam which is not only a war but a Holy Crusade against the godless forces of communism. And I say this to you... If these forces are not contained they will engulf us all (thun.app.). And I flatly accuse the Administration of criminal diffidence in the use of atomic weapons. Are we going to turn a red and blue ass to the enemy (NO! NO! NO!) Are we going to fight through to victory at any cost (YES! YES! YES!) I say to you we will win if it takes ten years. We will win if we have to police every blade of grass and every gook in Vietnam. ( thunderous applause). And after that were going to wade in and take care of Chairmen Mao and his band of cut-throat slave drivers( thunderous applause). And if any country shall open its mouth to carp at the great American task well a single backhanded blow from our mighty seventh fleet will silence that impotent puppet of Moscow and Peking.

Another question is so called Black Power. I want to go on record that I am a true friend of all good darkies everywhere.

(To wild applause a picture of the world famous statute Natchitochas Louisiana flashes on screen. As you all known this statute shows a good old darkie with his hat in his hand and is dedicated to all good darkies with his hat in his hand and is dedicated to all good darkies everywhere.)

Homer's voice chokes with emotion and tears drip off his nose:

Why, when I was fourteen years old our old yard Nigrah Jones got runned over by a laundry truck and I cried my decent American heart out. And I have a deep conviction that the overwhelming majority of Nigrahs in this country is good Darkies like Rover Jones.

However we know that there is in this country today another kind of Nigrah and as long as there is a gas pump handy we all know the answer to that (thunderous applause) And I would like to say this followers of the Jewish religion. Always remember we like nice Jews with Jew jokes. As for niggerlovin' communistic agitating Sheeneys well just watch yourself Jew-boy or we'll cut the rest of it off. (That's telling 'em Homer).

(What about the legalisation of marijuana?) "Marijuana! Marijuana! Why that's deadlier than cocaine! And what are we going to do about that vile America-hating hoodlum who call themselves Hippies Yippies and Chippies? We are going to put this scum behind bars like the animals they are (thunderous applause). An I tell you something else... a bunch of queers, dope-freaks, degenerates and dirty writers is living in foreign lands under the protection of American passports from the vantage point of which they do not hesitate to spit their filth on Old Glory. Well, we're gonna pull the passports of those dope freaks... ( the technician pushes a sex button and the Simian begins to masturbate)... bring them back here and teach them to act like decent Americans"... (the Simian ejaculates hitting the lens of a Life-Time reporter).

"And I denounce as communist inspired rumours that the dollar collapsed in 1959. I pledge myself to turn the clock back to 1899 when a silver dollar bought a steakdinner and a good piece of ass. (thunderous applause as a plane writes September 17th 1899 in the sky in smoke). I have heard it said that this is a lawless nation, that if all the laws in the land were enforced truly we would have thirty percent of the population in jail, and the remaining 70% in the cops. I say to you if there is infection in this great land it must be cut out by the roots. I pledge myself to uphold the laws of America and to enforce these hallowed statutes on al violators regardless of race creed colour or religion... (thunderous applause)... We will overcome all our enemies foreign and domestic and stay armed to the teeth for years decades centuries."

The Simian bares his canines, shits on the deck, and wipes his ass with Old Glory. A phalanx of blue helmeted cops shoulders its way through the crowd. They stop in front of the deck. The lead cop looks up at A.J. and demands: "Let's see your permits for that purple assed son of a bitch."

"Permits? We don't have any stinking permits. You are talking 6ot the future president of America."

The lead cop takes a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and reads MUNCIPAL CODE OF CHICAGO... "Chapter 98, Section 14... No person shall permit any such dangerous animal with a chain, rope or other appliance, whether such animal be muzzled or unmuzzled, in any public way or public place."

He folds the paper and shoves it into his pocket. He points at the Purple Better One: "It's dangerous and we got orders to remove it. A cop moves

Forward with a net. The technician shoves the Rage Dial all the way up.

Screaming, farting, snarling, the Simian leaps off the deck onto the startled officer who staggers back and goes down thrashing wildly on the ground while his fellow pigs stand helpless and baffled not daring to risk a shot for fear of hitting their comrade. Finally the cop heaves himself to his feet and throws off the Simian. Panting and bleeding, he stands there his eyes wild.

With a scream of rage the Purple Better One throws himself at another patrolman who fires two panicky shots which miss the Simian and crash through a window of the Hilton in the campaign headquarters of a conservative southern candidate. A photographer form the London Times is riddled with bullets by secret service men under the misconception that he has fired form a gun concealed in his camera. The cop throws his left arm in front of his face. The Simian sinks his canines into the cop's arm. The cop presses his gun against the Simian's chest and pumps in four bullets. Homer Mandrill thumps to the ground and bloody grass, he ejaculates, shit and dies. A.J. points a finger at the cop: "Arrest that Pig" he screams, "Seize the assassin!"

A.J. was held no $100,000 bail which he posted form his pocket in cash. Further disturbances irrupted at the funeral when a band of vigilantes who call themselves the White Hunters attempted to desecrate the flag-draped body as it was carried in solemn procession through Lincoln Park on the way to its final resting place in Grant Park. The Hoodlums were beaten off by A.J.'s elite guard of Korean Karate experts who had gathered in front of the Sheraton to protest the legalisation of marijuana were charged by police screaming:

"Chippies! Chippies! Chippies!"

And savagely clubbed to the side-walk in a litter of diamonds, teeth, blood, mink-stoles and handbags.

As the Simian was laid to rest under a silver replica of the Mayflower, a statue of the purple Better One at the helm, A.J. called for five minutes of silent prayer in memory of our beloved candidate:

"Cut down in Grant Park by the bullets of an assassin... A communistic Jew Nigger inflamed to madness by injections of marijuana... The fact that the assassin had with diabolical cunning disguised himself as a police officer indicates the working of a far flung communistic plot the tentacles of which may reach into the White House itself. This foul crime shrikes to heaven high. We will not rest until the higher ups are brought to justice whoever they are and wherever they may be. We will realise the aspirations and dreams every American cherishes in his heart. The American Dream can be and will be realised. I say to you that Grant Park will be a shrine to all future Americans. In the words of the all-American poet James Whitcombe Riley:

"Freedom shall a while repair

To dwell a weeping hermit there."


THE VORACIOUS ALIENS

"The human race is being attacked by a sort of mind cancer. Something is sucking the human mind dry and has been sucking it for the past two hundred years." That is the shattering discovery made by Prof. Gilbert Austin. Who or what is responsible? Mind parasites, malignant beings who lurk in the deepest layers of the unconscious... (in precise terms of physiology this would correspond to the back brain or hypothalamus)...

"Sapping the very life force of mankind, cutting him off from his natural capacity for self-renewal... It was all so unsettling that I broke the habit of year4s and drank a bottle of champagne at lunch time."

These words from Colin Wilson's science fiction novel The Mind Parasites reflect the presence of malignant viruses that are affecting human control over human situations. There is considerable inferential evidence to indicate the actual existence of such a parasitic instance as this book postulates. An Italian sociologist said: "If you want to get to the bottom of any situation that seems on the surface inexplicable, just ask yourself the simple question 'Who profits?'. Who would profit form blocking every basic discovery about the human mind? Techniques are now available to alter consciousness and effect the hypothalamus directly.

In a recent Mayfair article (Bulletin 17 The Brain Grinders) I described the experiments of Dr Millar who has demonstrated that any mammal can learn to control such seemingly involuntary processes as brain waves, blood pressure, rate of hearty beat his whole state of mind and body. Doctor Millar had great difficulty raising funds for his experiments. The importance of the experiments was completely missed by the Press.

The means are at hand to control spec but they are not being used. Despite impressive technical advances the planet is still in The Stone Age psychologically. Who would profit from turning the clock all the way back to the Stone Age and keeping man out of inner space? Only in the last two hundred years have technological advances made space exploration a possibility. By maintaining control of inner space the parasites can block any discovery or destroy anyone who suspects their existence. It is in fact unexplained suicides among scientists investigating inner space that lead to the discovery of these parasites by the narrator Prof. G. Austin.

Once the presence of the parasites is inferred the means to combat them is obvious... They must be combated by the brain itself... pushed up beyond its limits so that men can read each other's thoughts... and control their own thought's and feelings...

So they join battle with the parasites on equal terms.

These are precisely the measures I have advocated in the Acadamy Series, measures that must be applied whether we believe in mind-parasites or not, if man is to expand his horizons and survive in the space age. There is no turning back to the false security of dogmatic creeds.

"To travel in space you must learn to leave the old verbal garbage behind: God talk, priest talk, mother talk, family talk, love talk, party talk. You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to see what is in front of you with no preconceptions."

In Mr Wilson's narrative it is a space voyage that finally defeats the parasites. They cannot survive in space. As the space craft travels further and further form the earth, the parasites still lurking in the crew are in a panic.

"Now they felt their psychic links with the earth stretching and growing weaker and they were frightened. We now understand the nature of space fever that had so far frustrated all men's attempts to penetrate further into space."

Known, watched, the parasites become desperate and they now reveal themselves to be creatures of a low-intelligence-order, floundering about like beached squids.

"It happened on the fourteenth day... something infinitely evil and slimy was pushing its way from inside me. I realised I had been wrong to think of the parasites as separate beings. They were one with IT. An immense jelly like octopus whose tentacles are separate form its body and come about like individuals."

... (And this being is none other than the ancient slug Abhoth the Dark, also known as Abhoth the Unclean)...

... "Now this infinitely vile thing was coming out of its lair and I could feel its hatred of me, a hatred so powerful and maniacal that IT almost needs a new word. Then the inexpressible relief of knowing that it was gone..."

What's made this planet such a soft touch for Abhoth?... The greatest human limitation is that we are all tied to the present by an arbitrary identity, personal and national.

What is identity? The identity of a shark is its teeth, its size, its ability to eat and digest almost anything. An oyster's identity is its protective shell. Identity is then the means by which an organism protects itself and maintains itself in a hostile environment and all environments that contain other such identities are hostile.

And what is the identity of Abohth the Dark?

Its ability to remain hidden and carry on a parasitic existence that is hostile to the host by parasitic necessity. So we are all playing Abhoth's game. and by setting one identity against another Abhoth maintains himself indefinitely.

Isolation from such an environment is the first step into the unexplored territory of inner space...

"As man loses touch with his inner being he finds himself trapped in the world of other people. "Man is a political animal" said Aristotle telling one of the greatest lies in human history. For every man has more in common with the hills or stars than with other men, Other men do not supply our values. Other men do not matter in the way we have believed.

Man is not alone.

You could be the last man in the universe and you would not be alone..."

A further example of the way the virus works is manifested in The Farm, Clarence Cooper's novel of a Negro drug addict. This is the virus of narcotic addiction, and the penal system fostering it.

"We saw a nigger woman dead on the road. In a flash of that instant the black woman crimped in the smoky shimmering wreck...

The windshield had come inward like a butter knife to slice her head directly down the middle clear to the back of the her head so her thick just done hair sprayed like fine black blossoms in the wind and snow clung to it like the tiny hairs of Medusa and I heard one of them say up front:

"Gosh, Bob, did you see that niggerwoman?"

A Negro drug addict and pusher doing five years for sale of heroin is the custody of two marshals. He is being transferred from a Federal penitentiary to a Federal Narcotics Farm. Admission is restricted to narcotic offenders. Anyone can admit himself to the Farm for Treatment.

And these volunteers are allowed to leave on 24 hour notice, unless notice is given on Friday day. The Farm is a prison where prisoners who misbehave are subject to expulsion, i.e. return to federal penitentiary.

The guards do not carry guns and physical mistreatment of a prisoner would place a guard in danger of dismissal and loss of pension. This is not a story of sweat boxes, whips and chains. Consider the case of a an old German doctor who is caught short over a weekend and dies from a lack of medication:

Dr Uxekoll, looking fat around the ass, from the too small white jacket he was wearing, was lecturing the other doctor like a judge. The man must have been 65 or 70 years old kinda Germanlooking looked like a dope fiend to me. He was beautiful too with a face full of anxious lovely things to be remembered a completely alien personality to me.

"And you mean to tell me that I can't have medication? Surely you are joking?"

"Boy, I wish I was" said Dr. Uxkoll grinning. "We can't give you any medication because our studies show relatively cold withdrawal is best long run." He shook his head and shrugged grinning.

"That's the best deal I can offer you Doc."

"For years I have laboured under the delusion that this place was specifically set up for the relief of addicts. I've even refereed patients here. You tell me that now I have committed myself I am a prisoner until Monday morning and you will do nothing in that time to relieve my illness. I simply can't believe it is happening."

Uxekoll was smiling and benign: he held his hands together in front like a priest.

"I'm afraid it is. Happening I mean."...

The little doctor was dead by the time they got him to hospital.

However the real shock of the book lies not in what the author describes but in what he takes for granted like the weather:- that the American Narcotics Dept. has made informing a way of life. It works like this...

Now here is Mr average Pusher in his impregnable loft with double Locks and bars. They could never get him through that door without leaving him time to dispose of the evidence. Agents unscrew the firedoor and rush in finding opium hash LSD. Now comes the spiel:

"Sit down Sam. Have a cigarette... Don't worry about being put inside... as long as you cooperate, yes I said co-operate..." So another informer-pusher is added to the expanding tentacles of Abhoth the WRONG.

If on the other hand Sam has any silly ideas about integrity... "All right wise guy we can get you ten years..."

And they can.

To give some idea of the perversion of values involved: In junky parlance a man who informs is WRONG... ("The laws against addiction must reflect society's disapproval of the addict." Harry Anslinger) Addicts and pushers who inform receive lighter sentences and in many cases no sentences at all. So pressure is often put on an arrested addict by his family who would be deprived of support if he went to prison...

Do RIGHT to inform, Do WRONG not to inform, be RIGHT not to inform, be WRONG to inform. This is what the American Narcotics Dept. is doing in America and what they will do anywhere else they can find traction.

It can't happen in England? I'm afraid it is. Happening, I mean. In 1959 a doctor connected with the American Narcotics Dept. told Doctor Dent:

(Dr. Dent of England is the man who introduced the apo-morphine treatment for addicts. This treatment is the only treatment that works. It has never been tried in America.)

(Not so, Mr. Burroughs-- It has -with dire results-Say no more.)

He said to Dent: "I have a hunch you English will have our narcotics problem in ten years time."

In 1959 I wrote in Nova Express:

PLAN DRUG ADDICTION

Now you are asking me whether I want to perpetuate a narcotics problem and I say:

"Protect the disease. Must be made criminal protecting society form the disease."

The problem scheduled in the United States the use of jail, former narcotics plan, addiction and crime for many years. Addiction in some form is the basis. Must be wholly addicts. Any voluntary capacity subversion of the Will Capital and Treasury Bank. Infection dedicated to traffic in exchange narcotics demonstrated a Typhoid Mary who will spread the narcotics problem to the United Kingdom... Cut Up of Fighting Drug Addiction by Malcolm Monroe Former Prosecutor in the Western World, October 1959. IT almost needs a new word.

Additional notes on drug farms: There is an exclusive district in drug farms reserved for the DO-RIGHTS... nicer roomed more medication better class of people. On the other hand there is a place set aside for the Do-WRONGS over in section B with the other canine preparations.

(Research at drug farms has conclusively established the addiction liability of decorticated canine preparations in plain English dogs with their brains cut out who nonetheless react with sham rage and uncoordinated clonic movements when medication is withheld.)

Now about these Do Rights I don't say they are veteran informers, just normal human creeps. Here is Mr Average Do Right shows up at the door with letters from his clergy man bankmanager boss and boy picture of himself as an Eagle Scout shaking hands with a priest on graduation day Old glory stirring in the breeze of June. Not an informer exactly just a front office brown nose.

"Doctor, when I die I want to be buried right in the same coffin with you. Why you've made me see it all so clear, I'm shaking all over."

"I'll put you down for some more medication, son."

"Thank you doctor. Pushers should receive the death penalty. And everybody knows pot-smoking leads to heroin like whisky draws a priest?" Of such stuff are DO-RIGHTS made. While down in the dim grey region Where the DO-WRONGS hawk and spit..."

"The croakers wouldn't give me a goofball... ask me what the United States Flag means to me? I tell him soak it in HEROIN doc and I'll suck it... said I had the WRONG attitude I should see the Padre and get it straight with Jesus."

The virus thrives on unthinking conservatism. The less we consider our position, the less likely we are to turn our attention inside ourselves, where the virus exists.

Bloodworld by Lawrence M Jennifer can be read as a satire on self-righteous respectability. It concerns a planet where the inhabitants are

Divided into two classes: Lords and Ladies, and the Bound. The Bound are a slave caste. The Lords and Ladies are born to command. The young and personable Bound are available round the clock in the Remand Homes for the pleasure of the Lords and Ladies. And this pleasure consists of tortures inflicted on the Bound. There she is all tied up and waiting for you...

"The room which you will see... It was a small room no one in it except the girl and myself everything set out properly as of course it had to be since that was the job of the officials there who were themselves Bound and glad enough if you understand me of their simple tasks. There was the fire burning and everything else that was required... the room... the girl... the fire... Style B for on our world these matters a coded.

They meant pain and the long screams. Not even the screams of a lord meant to command. The girl was to scream. That was her life to wail as a Bound Girl in the Remand houses to be brought out and made ready for screams and for use.

Her eyes showed fright and that was very good the fear fed me finally and fed me fully. I stepped to the Fir3 bucket and withdrew a short handled metal band to touch her where my mother resided in her and she shirked with the mad pain the fine pain."

Or maybe you dig making love to a Bound Girl and feeling her all over with rubber glove sipped in acid? Well, that's what the Bound are there for to satisfy the Lords and Ladies. There is no crime, no unemployment, no insanity. It is Utopia. But sinister forces are at work. A man named Tonn who lives on the outskirts of town precipitates an unsavoury scandal. Haltingly, the hero's father, who is a pillar of Bloodworld society, a Council Judge in fact, tells his adolescent son about men like Tonn:

"He is actually seen there among the Women... waiting for the Bound Men..."

Seen there and without shame...

"Father you mean that he..."

"Yes, he uses Bound Men for his pleasure..."

The idea was almost inconceivable. Pleasure resided in a woman's body which was right and natural... (Just a matter of wringing it out with a bra soaked with lye or hot acid douche where it is right and natural.)

My father went on: "Some twist in him. I understand there are others in other cities. But ours is clean enough. That we should have one like Tonn is enough shame for all our people."

But ours is clean enough. That we should have one like Tonn is enough shame for all our people.

Summoned for questioning Tonn is cool... suave and insolent...

"Tonn's eyes burned... they burned with luminous dark flame and he seemed to sit quite at ease both hands in his lap... resting waiting...

The useless whiteness of those hands seemed terribly directed to some use I did not and could not imagine...

Tonn spoke as if no one else existed in the room:

"Prolonging pain for a space of hours, keeping the Bound in constant pain, creating varying levels alterable at will these are the true art... causing actual tears at the sight of my face..."

Unable to contain himself the Judge bursts out:

"What are you techniques?"

Tonnn gives him no satisfaction. "I am afraid Great Lord that these matters must be private. They have nothing to do with your questioning."

Like another world De Sade, Tonn the Suberversive corrupts the younger generation. The young are disillusioned with the Bound who no longer respond, no longer scream.

They begin looking speculatively at Mom and Dad over the wheaties. Mmmmmm. Inevitably they rise up and kill the entire older generation. And they scream good.

"BUT WE' RE COUNCIL MEMBERS!!"

"We are the council!"

And she shreiked again in their licking flames.

"It was fun."

The illusive Mr. Tonn is nowhere to be found.

"Yet Tonn seems the most important to me of all... Our world is gone and this is our end."


THE TRANSPLANT APOCALYPSE

The Colonel beams at the crowd. Pomaded, manicured, he wears the satisfied expression of one who just sold the widow a fraudulent peach orchard...

"Folks, we're here to sell the only thing worth selling or buying and that's IMMORTALITY. However we issue a word of warning with each bottle in accordance with the terms of the franchise. Now here is the simplest and well on the way. Just replace the worn out parts and keep the old heap on the road indefinitely. Like to show you a short documentary film..."

As the techniques for transplants were perfected and refined the age old dream of immortality was within the grasp of mankind. But who was to decide out of a million applicants for the same heart? There simply weren't enough to go round...

You need the job lot once a year mouth to anus save 20% folks. Big executives use heart a month just as regular as clockwork. War lords, paying off their soldiers in livers and kidneys and genitals depopulate whole areas. Vast hospital cities cover the land cover the air-conditioned hospital palaces of the rich radiating out to field hospitals and open air operating booths.

The poor are rising in huge mobs. They are attacking the government warehouses where the precious parts are stored. Everyone who can afford it has guards and vicious dogs to protect themselves form roving band of parts-hunters like the dreaded wild Doctors who operate on each other after the battle cutting the warm quivering parts from the dead and the dying.. Weird sects conduct ceremonial parts-sacrifices on youths and maidens. A flourishing black market in parts grows in the gutted cities torn apart by the terrible parts-riots. People have lost all shame. Here's a man who sold his daughter's last kidney to but himself a new groin appears on TV to appeal for funds to buy little Sally an artificial kidney and give her this last Christmas. On his arm is a curvaceous blonde known apparently as Bubbles she calls him long john now isn't that quite.

Cut and grab men dart out of doorways an hack out a kidney with a few expert strokes of their four inch scalpels.

There are gambling dens where people play for parts and the big-timers ride around to floating parts games with refrigerated trucks full of parts... in these terrible slums scenes form Breughel and Bosch... misshapen masses of rotten scar tissue crawling with maggots and supported on crutches and canes on wheelchairs and carts... Brutal as butchers practitioners operate without anaesthetic in open air booths surrounded by their bloody knives and saws... the joinings are crudely done and the clients shoved into the streets... the poor wait patiently in the public-parks lines for diseased genitals, a cancerous lung, a cirrhotic liver. They crawl towards operating booths holding forth nameless things in bottles they think are useable parts. Shameless swindlers, who buy up operating garbage in job lots, prey on the unwary.

And here is Mr. Rich-Parts! He is three hundred years old. He is still subject to accidental death and the mere thought of it throws him into paroxysms of idiot terror for days he cowers in his bunker two hundred feet down in solid rock, food for 20 years. A trip from one city to another requires months of sifting and checking alternate routes to avoid the possibility of an accident. How he hated the world. Surrounded by astrologers and soothsayers his idiotic cowardice knew no bounds. He is completely dependent on his doctors and technicians who could murder him at any time. To forestall this marksmen are posted around the operating room. There he sits looking like a Chimu vase with a thick layer of smooth purple scar tissue. Encased in his armour his movements are slow and hydraulic. It takes him ten minutes to sit down. This layers gets thicker and thicker right down to the bone the doctors have to operate with power tools. End result is a fibrous purple root stirring feebly. So we leave Mr. Rich Parts and the picturesque parts-people their monument a mountain of scar tissue...

There are other ways of finding immortality not in the body but in the mind. Here is Mr. Hubbard with a cheerful message about getting our bodies and sailing away with the SEA ORG...

And here is a centre of the Future representing Scientology at its best as it could be judging form my own experience...

The Centre occupies a vast strip of the Florida coast, apartment buildings, motels converted stores and offices. Signs point TO QUAL TO REVIEW TO HOUSING. No TO ETHICS is required.

Here are fifty recruits, boys and girls in their late teens and early twenties... atmosphere of a relaxed army camp, calm, friendly unhurried personnel. The recruits now have identical uniforms and folders. Old Sarge: "Now for the first ten days of processing you are more or less confined to quarters and there will be no talking. Any creep sidles up to you and starts talking about his case just tell him to take his trouble to Jesus. Creeps in every outfit. We don't assign conditions anymore but some people put themselves in a condition. So keep your case buttoned up fellers and that goes double for you dolls. And any of you blokes go out boozing are just lousing up your own release. So don't be dumping trouble into our laps and we will make it as easy for you as we can. There'll be exercise periods and swimming and skin diving you can sign up for boxing Aikido judo karate or ballet dancing if you're that kind of boy..."

The first ten days pass in a waking dream. The auditors have standard tech on automatic which leaves the auditor a completely relaxed calm competent practitioner smoothly dealing release after release like a friendly dealer cheating to let you win. The recruits drift around in a happy haze of releases. Now a release is a sudden flash of perception comparable to Zen satori, accompanied by a relaxed floating sensation floating about three feet above his head. Release always contains an element of surprise recognition. There may be vivid pictures and strange memories, from another time and place.

At the end of the ten days the recruits have been processed thru Grade 5. There is a social evening and not a few recruits repair during the dancing to the Captains Cabin, a jolly nautical pub where the friendly tars and officers of SEA ORG stand them congratulatory pints.

Now they will train for solo course and learn to audit themselves. In this course each recruit is assigned a "twin" with whom he will practice the training routines. The staff make every effort to find a suitable twin for each recruit. A smell of orange blossoms is in the air as a boy and girl do a confront. Two snippy faggots happily flunk each other over a card table. For Grade Six Release all the recruits gather in the chapel their E-Meters in front of them and run the process together. If tech is in they will release at the same time. Release fills the room and drifts out the stain glass windows,

Now for the clearing course. This is also run in the Chapel. There are many releases perilous reefs as well. The recruits are sharing a dangerous voyage across unknown seas but they know there is a safe harbor at the end. Expert auditors stand by in case they get in trouble. They all go clear at once eyes shining float up to the ceiling. An open air festival follows where the OT's show their skills: incredible card tricks and mind reading acts and feats of balance confronts that break a plate glass window. After the festival a two-week cruise with SEA ORG. Then tanned and fit back to the OT courses. They know they will live forever. That is what Mr. Hubbard is selling the only thing worth selling: IMMORTALITY

So lets get it all together under one big top all you jokers with a Save-The-Universe Act. Step right up young and old for the greatest show on any world. We are giving back to the marks.


D.E. / MY SUPER EFFIENCEY SYSTEM

A cold dry windy day clouds blowing thru the sky sunshine and shadow. A dead leaf brushes my face. The streets remind me of St. Louis... red brick houses, trees, vacant lots. Bright and windy back in a cab thru empty streets. When I reach the fourth floor it looks completely unfamiliar as if seen through someone else's eyes.

"I hope you find your way... red brick houses, trees... the address in empty streets."

Colonel Sutton-Smith, retired at 65 not uncomfortably on a supplementary private income... flat in Bury St. James... cottage in Wales... could not resign himself to the discovery of Roman coins under the grounds of his cottage, interesting theory the Colonel has about those coins over two sherries never a third no

Matter how nakedly his guest may leer at the adamant decanter. He can of course complete his memoirs... extensive notes over a period of years, invitations, newspaper clippings, photographs, stretching into the past on yellowing dates. Objects go with the clippings the notes the photos the dates... A kris on the wall to remember Ali who ran amok in the market place of Lampipur thirty years ago, a crown of emerald quartz, a jade head representing a reptilian youth with opal eyes, a little white horse delicately carved in ivory, a Webly .45 automatic revolver... (the only automatic revolver ever made, the cylinder turns on ratchets, stabilising the heavy recoil like a gyroscope.)

Memorise, objects stuck in an old calendar. The Colonel decides to make his own time. He opens a Scholl notebook with lined papers and constructs a simple calendar consisting of ten months with 26 days in each month to begin on this day February 21, 1970... Ratoon Pass 14 in the new calendar. The months have names like old Pullman cars in America where the Colonel had lived unt6il his 18th year... names like Beauacre, Bonneterre, Watford Jct. Sioux Falls, Pike Peak, Yellow Stone, Belle Vue, Cold Spring, Lands end, dated from the beginning Ratoon Pass 14 a mild grey day. Smell of soot and steam and iron and cigar smoke as the train jolts away into the past. The train is stopped now red brick buildings a deep blue canal outside the train window a mild grey day long ago.

The Colonel is jolted back to the Now by plate streaked with egg yolk, a bacon rind, toast crumbs on the table a jumble of morning papers, cigarette butt floating in cold coffee right where you are sitting NOW.

The Colonel decides on this mild grey day to bring his time into the present time. He looks at the objects on the breakfast table calculating the moves to clear it. He measures the distance of his chair to the table how to push chair back and stand up without hitting his legs. He pushes chair back and stands up. With smooth precise movements he scrapes his plate into the Business section of The Times, folds the paper into neat triangular packet, sweeps up plate, knife, fork, spoon and coffee cup out of the kitchen with no fumbling or wasted movements washed and put away. Before he made the first movements he has planed a whole series of moves ahead. He has discovered the simple and basic discipline of DE meaning DO EASY. It is simply to do everything in the easiest and most relaxed manner you can achieve at the time you do it.

He becomes an assiduous student of DO EASY. Cleaning the flat is a problem of logistics. He knows every paper. every object and many of them have names. He has perfected the art of 'casting' sheets and blankets so they fall just so. And the gentle silent spoon or cup on a table... He practices for a year before he is ready to reveal the secrets and mysteries of DE...

As the Colonel washes up and tidies his small kitchen the television audience catches its breath in front of the little screen. Knives forks and spoons flash thru his fingers and tinkle into drawers. Plates dance onto shelves. He touched the water taps with gentle precise fingers and just enough pressure considering the rubber washers inside. Towels fold themselves and fall softly into place. As he moves he tosses crumpled papers and cigarette packets over hi shoulder and under his arms and they land unerringly in the waste basket...

As a Zen master can hit his target in the dark with his arrow. He moves thru the sitting room a puff of air from his cupped hand delicately lifts a cigarette ash form the table and wafts it to the wastebasket. In to the bedroom smooth movements cleaning the sink and arranging the toilet articles into a nature mort different each day.

With one fluid rippling cast the sheets crinkle into place and the blankets follow tucked in with fingers that feel the cloth and mattress. In two minutes the flat is dazzling... Its just like retaking a movie shot until you get it right. And you will begin to feel yourself in a movie moving with ease and speed. But don't try for speed at first. Try for relaxed smoothness taking as much time as you need for performing the action. If you drop an object, break an object, spill anything, knock painfully against anything, galvanically clutch an object, pay particular attention to retake. You may find out why and forestall repeat performance.

If the object is broken sweep up pieces and remove from the room at once. If object is intact or you duplicate object, repeat sequence. You may experience a strange feeling as if the objects are alive and hostile trying to twist out of your fingers, slam noisily down at a table, jump out at you and stub your toe and trip you. Repeat sequence until objects are brought to order. Here is student at work. At two feet he tosses red plastic milk cap at the orange garbage bucket. The cap sails over the bucket like a flying saucer. He tries again. Same result. He examines the cap and finds that one edge is crushed down. He prises the edge back into shape. Now the cap will drop obediently into the bucket. Every object you touch is alive with your life and will.

The student tosses cigarette box at wastebasket, and it bounces out from the cardboard cover from a metal coathanger which is resting diagonally across the wastebasket and never should be there at all. If an ashtray is emptied into that wastebasket the cardboard triangle will split the ashes and the butts scattering both on the floor. Student takes a box of matches from his coat pocket preparatory to lighting cigarette from the new package on table. With the matches in one hand he makes another toss and misses of course his fingers are in future time lighting a cigarette. He retrieves package puts the matches down and now stooping slightly legs bent hop skip over the washstand and into the waste basket, miracle of the Zen master who hits a target in the dark these little miracles will occur more and more often as you advance in DE...

The ball of paper tossed over the shoulder into the waste basket, the blanket flipped and settled just into place that seems to fold itself under the brown satin fingers of an Old Persian merchant. Objects move into place at your lightest touch. You slip into it like a film moving with such ease that you hardly know that you are doing it. You come into the kitchen expecting to find a sink full of dirty dishes and instead every dish is put away and the kitchen shines.

The student considers heavy objects. Taperecorder on the desk taking up too much space and he doesn't use it very often. So put it under the wash stand. Weigh it with the hands. First attempt the cord and plug leaps across the desk like a frightened snake. He bumps his back on the washstand putting the recorder under it. Try again lift with legs not back. He hits the lamp. He looks at that lamp. It is a horrible disjointed object the joints tightened with a cellophane tape disconnected when not in use the cord leaps out and wraps around his feet sometimes jerking the lamp across the desk. Remove that lamp form the room and buy a new one. Now try again lifting pivoting shifting dropping on the legs just so and right under the washstand.

You will discover clumsy things you've been doing for years until you think that is just the way things are...

Here is an American student who for years has clawed at the red cap on English milk bottles... you see American caps have a little tab and he has been looking for that old tab all these years. The one day in a friend's kitchen he saw a cap depressed at the centre.

Next morning he tries it and the miracle occurs. Just the right pressure in the centre and he lifts the cap off with deft fingers, and replaces it. He does this several times in wonder and in awe and well he might him a college professor and very technical too, planarian worms learn quicker than that for years he has been putting on his socks after he puts on his pants so he has to roll up pants and pants and socks get clawed up together so why not put the socks on before the pants? He is learning the simple miracles.

The Miracle of the Wash Stand Glass... We all know the glass there on a rusty razor blade streaked with pink toothpaste a decapitated tube writhing up out of it... quick fingers go to work on it and the Glass sparkles like the Holy Grail in morning sunlight.

Now he does the wallet drill. For years he has carried his money in his left-hand pocket of his pants reaching down to fish out the naked money, bumping his fingers against the edges of the sharp notes. Often the notes were in two stacks and pulling out the one could drop the other on the floor. The left side pocket of the pants is the most difficult to pick but worse things can happen than a picked pocket. One can dine out on that for a season.

Two manicured fingers sliding into the wellcut suit into the waiting hand an engraved message form the Queen. Surely this is the easy way. Besides no student of DE would have his pocket picked applying DE in the street, picking his route in the crowds through slow walkers, don't get stuck behind that baby carriage, careful when you round a corner don't bump into somebody coming round the other way. When speed is crucial to the operation you must find your speed, the fastest you can perform the operation without error.

Don't try for speed at first it will come his fingers will rustle through the wallet with a touch light as the dead leaves and crinkle discretely the note will bribe a South American customs official into overlooking a shrunken head. The customs agent smiles a collectors smile, the smile of a connoisseur. Such a crinkle he has not heard since a French jewel thief with crudely forged papers made a crinkly sound over them with his hands and there is the note neatly folded in a false passport.

Now someone will say... "But if I have to think about every move I make...?"

You only have to think and break down movement into a series of still pictures to be studied and corrected because you have not found the easy way. Once you find the easy way you don't have to think about it. It will almost do itself.

Operations performed on yourself...

Brushing teeth, washing etcetera can lead you to detect a defect before it develops. Here is a student with a light case of bleeding gums. His dentist has instructed him to massage gums by placing little splinters of wood called Interdens between the teeth and massaging gum with seesaw motion. He snatches an Interden between the teeth and massaging an Interden, opens his mouth ion a stiff grimace, and jabs at a gum with a shaking hand. Now he remembers his DE. Start over. Take out the little splinters of wood like small chopsticks joined at the base and separate them gently. Now find where the bleeding is. Relax face and move Interden up and down gently firmly gum relaxed direct your attention to that spot. No not getting better and better just let the attention of you whole body flow there and all the healing power of your body will flow with it. Everyday tasks become painful and boring because you think of it as WORK something solid and heavy to be fumbled and stumbled over. Overcome this block and you will find that DE can be applied to anything you do even the final discipline of doing nothing. The easier you do it the less you have to do. He who has learned to do nothing with his whole mind and body will have everything done for him.

Let us now apply DE to a simple test: The old Western quick draw gunfight. Only one gunfighter really grasped the principle of DE and that was Wyatt Earp. Wyatt Earp said: "It's not the first shot that counts it's the first shot that hits. Point is to draw aim and fire and deliver the slug one inch above the belt buckle." That's DE. How fast can you do it and get it done? It is related that a young boy once incurred the wrath of Two-Gun McGee. McGee has sworn to kill him and even now is preparing himself in a series of saloons. The boy has never been in a gunfight and Wyatt Earp advises him to leave town, while McGee is still two saloons away. The boy refuses to leave.

"All right," Earp tells him. "You can hit a circle four inches square at six feet can't you? Alright, take your aim and hit it."

Wyatt flattens himself against a wall calling out once more: "Take your time, kid."

(How fast can you take your time, kid?)

At this moment McGee bursts through the door a .45 in each hand spitting lead all over town. A drummer from St.Louis is a bit slow hitting the floor and catches a slug in the forehead. A boy peacefully eating chopsuey in the Chinese Restaurant Huey Long next door stops a slug in the thigh. Now the kid draws his gun steadies it in both hands aims and fires at six feet hitting Two Gun McGee squarely in the stomach. The heavy slug knocks him back against the wall. He manages to get off one more shot and bring down the chandelier. The boy fires again and sends a bullet ripping through McGee's chest.

The beginner can think of DE as a game. You are running an obstacle course the obstacles set up by your opponent. As soon as you attempt to put DE into practice you will find that you have an opponent very clever and persistent and resourceful with detailed expert knowledge of your attention for the moment necessary for you to drop a plate on the kitchen floor. Who or what is this opponent who makes you spill drop and fumble slip and fall?

Groddech and Freud called it the IT, a built in self-destruct mechanism. Mr Hubbard calls it the Reactive Mind. You will disconnect it as you advance in DE. DE brings you into direct conflict with the IT in present time where you can control your moves. You can beat the IT in present time.

Take the inverse skill of the IT back into your hands. These skills belong to you. Make them yours. You know where the wastebasket is. You can land an object in the wastebasket over your shoulder. You know how to touch and move and pick up things. Regaining these physical skills is of course simply a prelude to regaining other knowledge that you have but can not make available for use. You know your entire past history just what year month day and hour everything happened. If you have heard a language for any length of time you know that language. You have a computer in your brain DE will show you how to use it, but that's another chapter.

DE applies to ALL operations carried out inside the body... brain

Waves, digestion, blood pressure, and heart beat rate... And that's another chapter... "And know I have stray cats to feed and my class at the Leprasarium, Lady Sutton-Smith raises a distant umbrella... I hope you find your way... the address in empty streets..."

EASY DOES IT

DOO DEE DOO

DO EASY


TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMINGS

This film concerns a conspiracy to blow up a train carrying nerve gas from the west cost to the east coast where it is supposed to be dumped into the Atlantic. The conspiracy is not political. Only one FBI man is alert to the danger but cannot convince his superiors that a conspiracy exists. He is playing a hunch and sometimes he doubts the validity of his intuition. Minutes before countdown he has the evidence he needs. He gets through to the President. Army, Navy, Marines, converging on headquarters of the conspiracy. FBI man rounds up local police and leads raiding party. Raiding party and conspirators wiped out. Marines, Army, Navy rush in through a pile of corpses and de-activate the robot-controlled missile that is designed to blow up the train. Conspiracy succeeds posthumously when a truck driver on LSD trip with a load of high-octane fuel crashes into train.

Conspirators include a folksy meteorologist, an embittered homosexual, a Chinese camera man, a Lesbian, a pistolero Mexican, a Negro castrated in his cradle by rat bites. The time and place for countdown depends of course on prevailing winds and the meteorologist is busy with continual calculations, weather maps, barometer readings, and wind speeds, telescopic observations of clouds and birds. There are also instruments of

His own invention. He is contemptuous of weather reports: "Doesn't know a typhoon from a fart. You see that vulture up yonder? He can tell you more than a room full of weather maps and barometers. The birds know."

As the conspirators move the FBI man is always one step behind them. His investigations are handicapped by his belief that the conspiracy is financed by a private inheritance. The sum was left to Clem the meteorologist by an eccentric millionaire perturbed by overpopulation, pollution, and the destruction of wild life.

Billionaire on his death bed: "Clem, swear to me by everything we both hold scared that you will every cent of this money to turn the clock back to 1899 when a silver dollar bought a good meal or a good piece of ass."

Opening scenes show Old Glory in the wind seen thru telstar. "Star Spangled Banner" is playing. Cut to conspirators headquarters in running. There are weather maps on the wall and a relief map of the USA - Clem: (looking up from telstar) "Now I wish that breeze would hold up for another 48 hours."

Audrey the homosexual is looking through the telstar...

US Army Reservation: Authorised Persons Only. Inside the gate the last cylinders of gas are being loaded into a train. The telstar lingers lovingly on the ass of a young solider who is bending down and over to pick up a cylinder of nerve gas.

Cut back to HQ: Mr Lee the Chinese camera man takes over at the telstar. Train doors shut and locked. A gum-chewing MP reading SEXTOONS presses a button. The gates open and the train moves out.

Clem (standing in front of USA map): "You know, I love this country. Only thing wrong with it is the folks living there." (His face goes

Black with hate.) "MOTHER LOVING STUPID ASSED BIBLE BELT CUNTSUCKERS." (He smiles and turns to Audrey, Miss Longridge and the spade whose mane is Jones). "Now, you're city folk. You never drank cool spring water on a summer afternoon. You never sat down to fried squirrel and jack salmon with black-eyed peas and wild raspberries. You never planted corn and cotton and tomatoes and watched them grow. You never sank your fingers... sandy loam... I've seen it four feet deep... "(He turns back to the map) "Yesssirreee, we're gonna lay down a mighty fine layer of fertiliser." (He sweeps his hand across the Middle West) "The trees will grow again. The bison will come back. The deer and the

Wild turkey."

Jones: "I had a dream he said."

Audery: "Other people are different from me and I don't like them."

The camera man is taking long shots thru the telstar. Miss Longridge is looking at the nudes in Playboy.

Tio Mate the Mexican pistelero is cleaning his Smith and Wesson tip-up .44. It is a beautiful gun, custom-made with hunting scenes engraved on the cylinder and barrel, given to him by the patron 30 years ago for "taking care of my unfortunate brother the General." Jones is taking a fix.

Cut to FBI man pacing up and down in his office. His name is Joe Rogers.

Rogers: "I had a dream I tell you. I saw the train go up and that gas sweeping up the Eastern Seaboard."

His second in command Mr Falk is inclined to be cynical and describe himself as "a crazy white collar bum who works for that crazy American Administration."

Falk: "Are you going to tell the Chief about your dream Joe?"

Rogers (picking up phone): "No, but I am going to ask him for more reinforcements."

Falk: "Got stay ahead of the Commies or everybody's kids will be learning Chinese."

Rogers: "If my hunch is correct there may be no kids around to learn anything."

Cover story of the conspirators is that they are making a documentary film of America. Clem is the Director, Lee the camera man, Audery the Script Writer, Miss Longridge the Business Manager, and Tio Mate the Studio Guard. The film

Of course is a documentary of America. Theme songs: "The Star Spangled Banner", "America I love you", "From Sea to Shinning

Sea", "Don't fence me in"< "Home on the Range", "The Red River Valley." Rogers encounters the film company at the OK Corral in Tombstone. He is intuitively suspicious. However a check turns up no political connections and he drops the lead. As the conspirators move from one set to the other the following incidents occur:

In a deserted roadhouse Audrey rapes a young sailor at gunpoint while Lee passively films the action.

Audrey: "OK CUT..." (He turns to the sailor)

"You can put your clothes on now... and lets see how fast you can run."

Sailor takes off like a rabbit and reaches the top of the hill fifty yards away. Tio Mate draws aims and fires. Tio Mate can blast a vulture out of the air with his .44.

Miss Longridge rapes two female hitchhikers and then stark naked she kills them with a baseball bat.

They stop at a filling station and honk. Nobody come so Joe gets out to fill the tank himself. At this moment the owner of the filling station, a Nigger killing lawman with six notches sin his gun, comes out a side door.

Lawman: "Get away from that pump, boy"

Jones: "Yahsuh, boss." (he drenches the lawman with gasoline and sets him on fire.)

Jones who is hooked on drugs leaves a wake of dead druggists.

Audrey is restrained at gunpoint from mass-rape of a boy scout troop.

Tio Mate shoots down an Army helicopter.

Clem sounds a word of warning to his impetuous companions.

Clem: "Such a thing as too much fun. We're leaving a trail like a herd of elephants."

They were stopped by three cops.

Cop: "We gotta find out who you folks are.2

Clem drops his hands resignedly and nods to Tio Mate.

Tio Mate: "I will show you who you are senor"

(and he ills them with three shots.)

Clem (getting out of his car); "Now here how is this going to look? Three cops right dead centre through the eyes?"

They put the cops in their car, set the cab on fire, and send it over the hill.

A pattern is emerging... dead druggists... helicopter pilot killed by .44 bullet... On a hunch Rogers runs an autopsy on the three cops found in burned out car... All three died from heavy calibre bullet thru the head... naked bodies of two female hitchhikers found under a railroad bridge their heads battered to jelly... young sailor killed by .44 bullet in the back... better dig him up too... recent sexual assault... Meanwhile reports are coming in... Govt. Chinese, queers, Lesbians, all leaving the east Coast in droves...

Suddenly it hits him...

THE DOCUMENTARY FILM COMPANY!!!

The day is September 17. Hurricane warnings out. The film company is in an old deserted estate reconstructing the 1920's. The set is Palm Beach. Minutes to countdown... Outside the wind is rising. Rogers: "FBI. GET ME A PHONE"

He commandeers the entire police force of Palm Beach and West Palm Beach. Sirens blaring they race thru the windtorn streets. Trees are going down. A car full of cops is electrocuted by a high-tension wire. They sweep up the weed grown driveway and surrounding the house. The conspirators are outnumbered ten to one but they have bazookas, grenade launchers, machine guns and phosgene bombs. As the battle rages the hurricane hits full force. When the Marines arrive, with the Army and the Navy, everybody is dead on both sides. Clem's hand inches away from the control switch.

Five Star General: "Thank god we arrived in time." (He looks at the dead cops.) "And thank God for men like these." (He orders the burglar to play taps.)

Cut to the tripping truck-driver coming down a long grade, throttle to the floor, the hurricane behind him. He bellows out the "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

HE HAS LOOSED THE FATAL LIGHTINING OF HIS TERRIBLE SWIFT SWORD : : : : : : : : : :

HE IS TRAMPLING OUT THE VANTAGE WHERE THE GRAPES OF WRATH ARE SORTED : : : : : : : : : :

HE HAS SOUNDED FORTYH THE TRUMPET THAT SHALL NEVER CALL

RETRAET : : : : : : : : : :

He smashes into the train. White hot gas cylinders explode high into the air. The hurricane races north, whipping clouds of nerve gas across a torn silver sky.

Film closes with "The Star Spangled Banner" played softly in a minor key as the camera shows aerial view of dead cities with flash close ups thru telstar. The camera is farther and farther away, the music always fainter. Last shot shows ghost faces of the conspirators against a gleaming empty sky. They wave and smile.


REVIEW OF "THE PROCESS"

In 1959, Gysin wrote: "Writing is 50 years behind painting." He attributed this time lag to the fact that the painter can touch and handle his medium whereas the writer cannot. The writer does not yet know what words are. He deals with abstractions from the source point of words. Few writers are even trying to establish tactile communication with words. Words are secret untouchable objects is it not? Superstitious awe of one's medium is crippling and cripples fall behind. This cultivated distance from the medium also places writing behind film and TV regardless of content. Unless writing can bring to the page the immediate impact of film it may well cease to exist as a separate genre. We are no longer living in the 19th century. The omniscient author who can move into the past, the future and the minds of his characters is an outworn device.

In "The Process", Gysin has eliminated the obtrusive explanatory author. Nothing is presented that the character speaking could not know form his own point of observation. Any writer of film scripts must specify his source of information. "It was Saturday evening in July 1923." Fine thank you but how does the audience know it is a Saturday afternoon in September 1923? I do not imply that novels of the future will read like film scripts with little or no descriptive writing. It is hoped that film scripts will come out to read more like novels. The more accurate and poetic the descriptive writing the more vividly scenes will be presented to the reader.

In "The Process" description is done on location. It consists of a number of narrations all done in the first person by different characters. The sections are entitled: I THOU IT SHE WE YOU (fem.) YOU (mas.) THEY. These voices are recordings of the Uher of Ulysses O Hanson of Ithaca New York, a pot-smoking Negro professor skilled in scholarship-, foundation-, grant and sponsor hopping, a traveller through a great desert where the fabulous Himmers juggle precarious phantom empires over heat waves and atomic testing sites. His tape recorder is the point of observation that brings each narration into present time. We do not see the director or the scriptwriter. Their presence is as always inferential. We do not see Hanson who records plays back and changes the tapes. He himself is another recording made by someone who does not appear. Hanson is entitled to make the last recording for Thay Himmer has given the emerald seal Beginning and Ending of the Word.

SHE says the first word was "Hello". SHE means to say right enough the first word was enforced recognition of another being inside the human body. The body was recognition of word. The body was word made flash - (a slip of the typewriter or was it?) The body was word made flash... picture... flesh. The body is three: two who talk and on e who records. The last word is not spoken from a human throat. The last word is spoken form the Emerald. Word is once again outside. Only the recordings remain. The Emerald is a tape recorder, the visible world its recordings.

Unexpected rising of the curtain can begin with a tape recorder against a white wall. There is a round opening in the wall thru which we see the blue sky of Africa. A black hand presses the button PLAY I...

"I am out in the Sahara heading due South with each day of travel less sure of just who I am, where I am going or why. This desert is so long it can take a lifetime to go from one end to the other and a childhood to cross its narrowest point. I made that crossing in another continent."

... tenement hallways, stickball games, paved playgrounds, subway turnstiles... Hanson is writing a letter to the Foundation... sand-dunes, a jolting truck, smell of hot iron and acrid exhaust fumes Hanson fills his keif pipe. Black Greaser, the driver's assistant, on a flute made out of an old bicycle pump is playing a windy tune...

Oh, we'll cross the Sahara and never come back...

Scenes rise from the recorder... a fort from BeauGeste, where the commandant forbids him to go or turn back... arrangements with a Taureg guide... "All day long under the white hot silvery tenting of the sky we advance through the country of fear. The watering eye of the mirage is The Great Show of the World, a vision of glittering marshes just out of reach. Your camel lets out a terrible bellow and roars off to take a deep gulp of the stuff"...

Nothing there to drink but a tape-recorder... "This cool freshwater lake fed by deep underground springs rises unexpectedly from a waste of black stone. Now man and beats can drink their fill and bathe in the limpid waters..." Scenes rise from the tape-recorder...

kief smoking sessions with the Mystic Brothers who go into trances and leave their bodies...

"You may not pass here in a lifetime"... the journey is circular and returns to Tanja.

THOU... Hanson, or Hassan as the Arabs call him, Hassan Merikani, is trying to sleep in his Tanja house despite tappings from next door is broken with a hammer and there Hamri framed in the broken wall... "Were you really astonished when I came through the wall right into your room?"... Hamri who comes form the mountain village of Joujouka where the Rites of Pan are still celebrated, Hamri the smuggler king of the trains who was ruined at 15 because he forgot the boy he was visiting has a wicked sister, Hamri the painter, Hamri who is not at all content just to be recording... "Mektoub, it is written." And now Hassan Merikani, the Master of Ceremonies, introduces that interplanetary vaudeville team the Himmers...

This pair who travel through Africa with a million dollars tossed casually into a suitcase leaving a wake of riots and devastation behind them as all travellers in present time must do riding a surfboard on the wave of present time which is of course what the city desk calls NEWS...

"But we have nothing to do with it really it's just that we happen to be there when it happens, or more precisely just after it happens, you understand..."

(Thay and Mya taxi thru a riot torn city the riot always just behind them the suitcase with the million dollars bouncing around on the roof of the cab)... and now the one and only Thay Himmer, Doctor of Grammatology, Advanced Student of Ismak, Hereditary Bishop of the Farout Isle.

HE... "I've been thru the whole gamut from Voodoo, to MRA, from Scientology to Subud, I've been thru every branch of Eastern Mysticism. All the women in my family have been ardent theosophists, followers of Madame Balvatsky and Annie Besant, in close contact with Swami Vivekananda and Krishnamurti: aunts, great-aunts always talking about Gurdjeiff, prana and all that sort of thing or trailing around in trances at home. So you see I know both the practical and theoretical side of the business since childhood you might say and I proclaim to one and all that Morraocco the Wild West of the Spirit... HIYO SILVER..."

And he jumps into a sacred spring where no Christian foot has ever washed before and gets himself initiated into a self flagellating cult at great personal danger.

... "dancers around me began splitting their heads with great earthen pots which they broke on their skulls with the sound of coconuts cracking. One woman kept spinning until her hair stood out like spokes stiff with blood, splashing everyone around like a lawn-sprinkler... the brothers were all pinned to the walls with long kebab skewers thrust right thru the gut and hammered into the walls as the Initiator thrust a long icy cold finger into my abdomen finding the place and I woke in a clinic on the outskirts of Tanja..." He is a dauntless initiate, a bigtime Player in the Game an interplanetary agent shimmering with eerie authority from some tenuous lost place far away and long ago or if you like the high priest of some future cult clothed in robes of Perhaps.

Well, this Operation Seal... (a seal balances the world on its nose and is rewarded with a small fish)... Beginning and End of the Word... In the Beginning was the Word. In the beginning of what exactly? What we call recorded history goes back mebbe 10,000 years and there can't be any new roles because it is all pre-recorded, the world is contained in that Word the Saharan Scarab you hold in your hand... the scarab sign in Egyptian picture writing means become you know. And there is some veteran ham on stage who thinks he is becoming...

Nothing new here really any native can understand its just a question of information storage all the possible combos. An if you have all recorded history stored in one artefact well that's it...

The World is shadows on the wall which flicker briefly over the recorder and return to silence.

And now it is my privilege to introduce another bigtime Player, the eternal SHE...

SHE has married the richest boy in the world... SHE has synthesized BOR BOR the female dream dust, and she dreams about an African Empire based at HER air-conditioned fortress of Malamout deep in the Sahara with Hassan as her Prince Consort... Eyes old unbluffed unreadable portentous as the mushroom cloud over an atomic testing site riding a bulldozer of Present Time, hard drinking, outspoken, overwhelming, the incomparable Mya Himmer:

SHE... "Just say the WORD Hassan and you are Emperor of Africa, have you seen the Foubla faggots my dear the most beautiful boys in the world and that's official and me married to the Richest Little Kid in the World the best things in life are stolen you know you are feeling the BOR BOR? No, don't panic it will make you see things more clearly what you've known all along so don't be silly and say you won't be Emperor of Africa after all it's a game and we'll cheat you if we can no isn't that fun? You only have to say it you know the Word..."

IT... "lists the computerized properties and assets played by the Himmers in a game of computerized chess... All the headings refer you to the very complete electronic Library we have here... BIO KEY is the name of our pharmaceutical combine in Mexico... weight for weight steroids are worth about 17 time s there weight in gold... Madame Mya is sitting on the biggest steroid bank in the world... C is for Chemistry... remember Chemistry of course things can be done in other ways but there is nothing quite like a double dry Martini or the right steroid at the right time, or a heroin/coke speed ball, or even the quite unmistakable LSD BOR BOR... F is for Foubla... here are some of the pictures of the boys during their annual orgy... the hormone content of their entire Foubla nation out there nearly two million of them carried about in a briefcase..."

YOU... (fem.)... "You yourself pointed out that immortality was the only proposition out that pushing... Behind the gritty whisper of the sand I hear a rasping silence like white sound feedback.... present time is draining away from this point like the sand in an hour glass..."

YOU (masc.)... "Of course the sands of present time are running out from under our feet. What are we here for? We are here to go? It still takes a pair to beat old terrestrial death and roll out replicas all over the Universe. All we need is the Emerald..."

The last tape is THEY... The Himmers make a brief dimmed out appearance transformed into a dull couple form Illinois, Hasssan is on his way on the train again with his kief pipe to a teaching job in Algut School. The mirage of BOR BOR is gone. The tapes shred to dust. The recorder turns to an Emerald seal slowly cobered by dust and drifting sand. THEY have all spoken. The Emerald was a tape. The Process was the Recorder.

This is a book you will want to read and reread. It will tell you what is happening in present time. How things are made to happen or not to happen. In Present Time. It is also first class entertainment. Start to read it and you will find that it reads itself.