Elysian Fields (9 page)

“
A few days ago I was just a kid playing a game. Today I have a father and a brother to fight for. And new friends who need me. Isn’t that enough?” said Allan defensively.

“
It’s more than that. You have guts and passion and a spirit of fairness. One day you’ll be a great leader.” Lan’s words surprised Allan more than anything.
He knows me better than I do myself,
thought Allan.
It feels good to have a brother who believes in you.

“Then there’s nothing to worry
about. We’re in good hands,” Daniel’s bitter tone surprised Allan, but not for long, because he continued. “Sorry for the sarcasm. Why don’t we wait and discuss this with Tom and David? For what it’s worth, I’m in, and will do anything in my power to help.”

“Are you sure about helping, Daniel? ‘
Cause you don’t sound sure,” Jules remarked.

“Sure I’m sure. I just thought we were getting
way overboard with our expectations. I like to keep it real, and manageable, that’s all.”

A few days later, David came back to Tom’s house in the Scrappie compound. He had a carrier from which Daniel recovered a large family of mice, ready to be used for an experiment on the food.

The two brothers went outside, and Daniel started to place the mice in two cages.

“One cage will hold the mice who will be fed city food. We’ll call them city mice. The other one will hold the mice fed on grains and cheese. We’ll call them the country mice. It will take me a few weeks to determine the effect of the food on the two groups, if any. It’s the best I can do.”

David looked at his brother. Daniel seemed glad to be engaged in something other than his books.
How much I’d like you to come back with me
, David thought, but he said nothing, because Daniel refused to talk about anything that involved him going back to the city.

“What are you reading these days?” David asked.

“The same stuff as before. All the books I found in an old house are science fiction ones. The owner must have been an avid sci-fi reader, but I think she or he was obsessed with dystopian societies.”

“What’s
dystopian
?” Mel asked, coming outside to join the brothers, with Jules and Allan following her.

“
Dystopia is a bad society, a twisted world where people are oppressed and live in misery or in frightening conditions. Most of them don’t even realize their lives are not as they should be. It was used in stories of the future, written by people who were concerned about the way things were going in the world.”

“
At the opposite end, there is Utopia, a place where everything is just perfect, in an ideal state. I don’t think many people wanted to read about that. Where there’s no conflict, there’s no action, which makes for a poor plot for a book,” David commented. “Why your fascination with such books, Daniel?”

“They got me thinking about our own society. Reading those books made me realize that we
might live in such an altered world.”

“The Elites would
disagree with you,” Jules intervened in a sad voice. “They live in Utopia.”

“
But they would be wrong,” Daniel explained. “Neither the Elites nor anybody else living here without knowledge of what’s going on could objectively consider our city a utopian or dystopian society. You see, it is hard to see the world with preconceived ideas when you are a part of the system. One has to go through a drastic transformation in order to do so, or get out of the system completely to better understand it.”

“And this is what happened to all of us,” Allan completed Daniel’s idea. “We
’re able to see how bad things are when faced with adversity.”

“That’s right,” Daniel smiled in Allan’s direction. “I’m glad we think along the same lines. I think we live in one of the worst nightmares a mediocre
science fiction writer could conceive.”

“It cou
ld be worse. We could be tortured or something,” Mel exclaimed. “And why do you say a
mediocre
writer?”

“
Because there is no way out. A great writer would concoct a solution to this, an amazing way out, a bunch of heroes saving the world.”

Allan approached and placed his hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “Man, this is not a science-fiction book. It’s for real. Let’s find a way out by ourselves. Remember what we talked about last Sunday? There’s hope, my friend.”

“Speaking of which, is Tom home?” David inquired. “I have some information I’d like to share with you all.”

“He’s eating,
just got home a short while ago,” Mel replied. They went inside to discuss the latest developments.

“
Regarding the entertainment connection,” said David, when everybody was seated in the large living room. “What’s been bothering me for the longest time is the ability of people to watch the Digiscreen endlessly, no matter what’s on. Being a software engineer, I’m involved quite a bit in game development, and I also collaborate with graphic artists and commercial developers.

“
As I promised you a few days ago, I talked to a couple of friends about the possible ways of influencing people’s minds. I told them that I was just curious, in light of our previous conversation on the subject.

“They showed me some archived files on the matter, and we discussed at large
the various ways the media manipulates our minds. The most powerful tool utilized was based on subliminal perception. It’s been around for quite a while and what I’ve found is that in the past it’s been used extensively in everything that involves communication of any kind.”

“And what exactly is subliminal perception?” asked Mel.

“Subliminal means "below threshold." Subliminal perception means perceiving without being really aware of it. It plays with your subconscious mind. For example, you really, really want to eat that particular food, but you don’t know why.”

“So how does it work?”

“It works based on very powerful motivators such as intense pleasure or fear. For example, sex is a very powerful stimulant, so the message in the ad you are watching could be laced with sexual symbols or images, and thus it becomes irresistible. I saw instances where the food was presented to the open mouth as if it was open to receive something else, not food.”

“A phallus?”

“You got it. Or the drink has foam in the shape of a naked, lascivious woman lying down.”

“Are you kidding me? “

“Not at all. I saw the old archived files. It started a century and a half ago with ads for soda drinks and popcorn. They made people love to eat popcorn during a movie, like we do even today, by using tachistoscopic displays.”

“What’s that?”
asked Jules.

“A tachistoscope is a device that displays an image to show something too fast to be
 consciously recognized. Except that the subconscious mind takes notice. So they placed pictures of popcorn throughout the movie, one frame at a time, so fast that people couldn’t notice. Yet they felt an overwhelming urge to have some popcorn, which they began to purchase at hugely inflated prices. Such is the power of subliminal messaging. But they also play on the negative. The researchers studied what nightmares alcoholics have when they think of quitting drinking and they put those nightmares in the ads.”

“What kind of nightmares?” Daniel asked.

“Screaming faces, hidden or airbrushed in the foam or the ice of the drink, so that the alcoholics watching liquor commercials, though trying to resist buying, would keep doing just that, drinking for fear that their nightmares would come true. Anyway, there are other subliminal strategies, such as figure-ground reversals, embedding,
double entendre, low-intensity light and low-volume sound, lighting and background sound.“

“Are these techniques used at present?” Tom talked for the first time since the conversation started, with great concern in his voice.

“I don’t know,” David confessed. “My friends haven’t mentioned anything of the kind. They were just saying that such methods were used in the past. “But obviously we have to consider the possibility. What’s stopping anybody from doing that? We don’t have any controls in place to prevent it.”

“No, we don’t,” Tom added. “
I wasn’t even aware of these techniques as the head of Secure-IT. I think the next step is to find out if this is the case. Our people seem addicted to their Digiscreen programs. If we can determine that it’s true, and caused by the media, then we can go after the programmers or advertisers involved and hopefully get to the brains behind the operation.”

“It will require some time, and it will not be easy for me
,” David tried to explain his position. “I don’t know exactly what to look for. I will try and talk to a friend who is a graphic artist. Maybe we can find something together, hidden images or messages in the current ads. If it’s been going on all this time, we should have a lot of material to mine for data. I’ll do what I can.”

“
We can ask nothing more of you, my young friend,” Tom smiled at David.

The following weekend,
everyone had once again regrouped at Tom’s house in the Scrappie compound. Lan managed to come as well, and he told Allan that even though all was quiet at home, he had been anxious to see his new friends and was happy to be in a place where nobody would attempt to take his life.

They were enjoying the late morning weather in the backyard, the rain the night before having cleaned the air and brought an unexpected freshness to the surroundings.

Allan had been thinking of the idea of freeing the clones and putting an end to the clone generating technology. He was still stuck on how to implement the idea with their existing resources.
What an unusual taskforce, each of us so different from the other, and yet so similar in our dreams. Is it possible that we can ever succeed? Is it probable? Is it worth dying for it? Are we willing to die for it?
These were the questions going through his mind as he decided how to bring the topic up in the conversation.

“
I’d like to say something. Please hear me out before you jump in.” Allan tried to steady his voice as he began. “In the
Art of War
, Sun-Tzu wrote:
In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity
. We live in apparently chaotic circumstances. We don’t know what to do, and yet there is so much that can be done, even without knowing our enemy very well. Can you imagine our potential? The opportunities are endless.”

“
We have to expose our unknown enemy,” Allan continued. “We have to attack him where he is unprepared, appear where we are not expected. What’s the best way to engage our foe? We attack the cloning facility. Our gain would be twofold: one, we gain freedom for the captive clones and two, we make the enemy take action so we are able to identify them.”

“
Isn’t that dangerous?” David asked. “We don’t know how strong they are. And who is going to attack the cloning building? We don’t know how to fight. We don’t even have weapons.”

“
There is merit in what Allan is proposing,” said Tom, the crease on his forehead deepening. “I can see the events unfolding in an advantageous way for us. I have some trusted friends, former comrades of mine, who could assist us with the resources we need for the attack itself. There is little security in the building, as far as I know. The problem is how can we save the clones? We don’t know how many there are and we don’t have enough resources for their rescue.”

“
We could ask the Scrappies for help,” Jules proposed. “Some of them are clones themselves.”

“
What makes you think they’ll help?” David seemed skeptic. “Most of them are just scavengers, afraid of everything, living for themselves and barely able to keep themselves alive.”

Tom
shook his head, “Not all of them are helpless. It takes a lot of courage to last here. Some of them are not much different than us. They live in small groups, take care of each other, and form families of sorts.”

“Why haven’t they formed
a real community then?” Mel asked, seemingly confused.

“
Everybody is afraid of congregating. When that happened in the past, people started to disappear. When the Scrappies live apart, the city security people leave everybody alone.”

“
We could go to each group, one at a time, and talk to them,” Lan proposed. “This way, we don’t congregate, but we share with them our plan and ask for them to join us in the rescue.”

“
And what happens if someone is an undercover security person, a spy? We'll all be exposed then.” David’s comment left them feeling vulnerable.

Daniel
didn’t necessarily agree, “If we don’t employ their help, we might as well give up before we start anything. We can’t succeed alone.”

At that point,
Tom took the lead in the conversation. “We’ll take that chance. I know the Scrappies better than any of you. And I also know most of the Security people, meaning I have a better chance of spotting an intruder.”

Allan felt that the moment had come, the time that each of them took a stand and made a commitment. “
Let’s go back to the beginning of this conversation. My question to you guys is: who is in?” He looked at each of them, one by one, trying to sense their emotions and thoughts.

Everyone’s
hand, except David’s, went up. Allan could see their eyes raising to look at him, with determination and resolution in them.

“
What about you, David?” he asked quietly, afraid that he had lost one ally.

“
I have a lot to lose,” David said hesitantly, in a low voice. “My life even, never mind my lifestyle and my job. Yet I can’t sit on the fence and watch you guys die.” He appeared to have made up his mind. “All right, I’m in, but for the record, I think you’re all absolutely crazy, and a bunch of misfits to boot.”

Allan breathed in relief.
All on board, thank goodness.

Before anybody had a
chance to say anything else, Tom spoke again, “I’d like to add to our numbers my good friend Serge and a few of our trusted comrades. They would give their lives for me, as I would do for them.”

T
his is how we became more than the sum of our individual beings. An unusual group, tasked with changing the fate of the city forever.
Allan felt his whole being filled with energy and purpose.

“I think
we’re all feeling great about things now,” said Daniel. “But have you considered what happens after the attack on the cloning facility? Assuming that we get the clones out of there and safely to our compound, what happens next? All the security forces will come after us, round us up, clones or not, and take us all to the Happy Endings clinic.”

Everyone
looked at him in silence. Allan had thought about that as well. It was something he had wanted to talk about later, with Tom, but now he had to deal with the question head on.

But Tom
spoke first. “Don’t worry, Daniel. It’s part of what we have to deal with. All of you try to think of everything that we need to do and anything that could go wrong. But for your peace of mind, I thought that I should go to Secure-IT headquarters and face Thomas. He will call the security forces to arms. I can deal with him then and there, while taking control of the small army, and thus of the city.”

“Now we’re talking,”
said Lan excitedly.

“
All right, then. Think about everything.” Tom reiterated. “I have to talk to Serge before anything else. Then all of us will lay out some plans, discuss the pros and cons, and assign tasks for every individual. Not a word to anybody else until then.”