Planet Fever (10 page)

After he highlighted four films, I offered a few cents into the “small-talk machine.”

“Deciding which film to see, eh?”

“No—I’ll probably go see about five,” he stated.

“Like movies?”

“Yeah.” He paused. “Yeah I do.” He resumed silence.

“I don’t know, man. I used to like movies, especially when I was a kid. Everything seemed new and original back then. Now they’re mostly shallow and predictable pre-packaged, prefabbed consumer items. I don’t think they’re worth the money and time you gotta spend insulted by the garbage,” I ranted.

The trucker stared at me, brandishing a consistent, ever-so-slight grin on his face, as if he were simultaneously scrutinizing the inner workings of my mind and contemplating something else of a profound nature. “Well, you’re right. They are, for the most part, getting shallower. And more sophisticated.” He uncapped the highlighter and circled a specific film in the paper. “But they’re a powerful means of conditioning.”

Intriguing. He was upping the ante: we were pulling our plugs from the “small-talk” machine and plugging into the “somewhat intellectual/philosophical discourse” machine. Having frequented the Diner over the past few months, I had become quite proficient at small-talk: drawing from a pool of general human experience that required minimal training in any discipline—meaning things we all experienced and could loosely opinionate on, like: the weather, the economy, movies and sports.

Most of the time it boiled down to this: whether or not something was bullshit.

Often the simple boundaries of “small talk” widened to include more profound conversation. This required time and a certain comfort with the person you were jabbering with. Nobody would turn to a stranger pissing in the urinal next to him and ask, “So—how’s the wife and kids?” And you’d never turn to someone you barely knew in the Diner and ask, “What would your assessment be with regards to the ontology of ‘being’?” unless you preferred your eggs up your ass.

This duct-tape-booted trucker put forth the demeanor that he didn’t care where the conversation went: he sat there, examining the paper; but he was bubbling inside to share a more profound discourse with me. Such was the nature of many truckers: they spent many hours and days alone in their own rig in their own head and had plenty of time to do nothing but drive and think.

I offered: “Oh yeah. The thing is, people buy into the hype. They think the better the special effects or bigger the budget, the better the film. Or the more money the film makes, the better it is. They’re like amusement park rides—a quick thrill then forgotten as the next ride begins.”

“Yup—that’s right. They’re purposely made, packaged and sold that way. Television programs are far more potent an example of weaponized media. You think you’d be ‘missing out’ on something because everyone else watches a certain show. And you wouldn’t want to be ostracized from the herd, would you?”

I took a sip of coffee and nodded.

He continued: “You agree a show to be great because the media informs you that everyone else believes in the greatness of it. Though you may not truly believe the show to be great, you go along with them, you see enough of them, and you start to believe the show to be great. What’s really happening is the masses are getting stupefied, or hypnotized—so these shows and films only appear to be great. A kid who barely knows arithmetic would find her older brother—who can do basic algebra—to be a genius. If she eventually gets smarter and learns calculus, and her brother still know only basic algebra, she no longer sees him as math genius. The masses are like the brother—they are being stunted.”

This guy could really rant.

“People’s intelligence is devolving: we’re becoming idiots and believing basic garbage to be great. The films, the TV shows, the news, the schooling are training people to be mindless slaves, and the populace are entertained by the training. And they do have hidden agendas tucked into them. It’s called ‘predictive programming.’ You slowly condition the population to accept things they used to find degenerate, or ethically debasing, or just plain wrong. Violence is the easy example. Many more subtle examples exist.”

The guy was sliding all his coins into the machine. His nonchalant demeanor was surgical and his manner of speech mathematical. He was going over a simple lesson with a pupil.

“So why do you go see them?” I asked.

He chuckled. “I need to see what stage they’re at with their master plan. Plus, I do enjoy movie theater popcorn.”

I had a few questions at this point. Who the hell were
they
? What the hell did he mean by “their master plan?” And why would this hypothetical “they” wish to “dumb-down” the masses?

I was on the verge of releasing a barrage of such inquiries when a huge plate of eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast clamored down on the counter before me.

“OK Eddie, here you go. Fuckin’ enjoy the piece, eh!” Chief turned to the trucker, “What’ll it be, buddy?”

“Coffee. Black. And the egg breakfast.”

“Over-easy, soft-boiled, Benedict, hard-boiled, sunny-side up, over-medium, or scrambled?”

The truck driver paused. Through his dark tinted shades I couldn’t tell if he was studying me or the menu. After a few seconds of deliberation he answered (as though solving some trivial puzzle), “Hmm … ahhh yes—scrambled.”

I got out my journal and jotted down some notes about what had just transpired.

AFTER I
had gotten my breakfast, the conversation turned into a history lesson: the man
knew
history. I sipped coffee, ate my breakfast and listened to Woods—that was the name he gave me—rattle off dates, places, events, people and other facts as though he were reading directly from a history book.

I sensed he was leading up to a certain point, but couldn’t fathom where. He seemed to be prepping me for some unknown, or as yet undisclosed test, as though his lesson was to be the initial spark to kindle my mind into a fire.

He went on about the development of Indo-European tribes, conquests of certain tribes upon others, the acquisition of lands, the growth of tribes, cities, cultures, states, civilizations, religions; the evolution of economy and the industrial revolution right up until World War II. In his opinion, POWER and CONTROL by a tiny master-class of an esoteric and mysterious inter-generational cabal were the main navigators of the development of human history.

“Why do these people want power and control?” I asked.

He grinned and boiled the genealogy of human history down to one word: GREED.

Then he tore out his movie list from the paper, finished his coffee, and said: “Well, I gotta go catch some films. I’ll see you.”

The little bell above the door jingled as he exited.

A quick flash of déjà vu told me I’d see that man again.

DRIVING ALONG
highway 60, I opened up the glove box and the same pile of cassette tapes spilled out. I grabbed one at random and slid it into the cheap deck. Through one blown speaker and one good one, spaced-out synthesizer music accompanied by late night radio show host Art B. Well’s bassy voice came tumbling out:

“From Greenwich around back to Greenwich, from the South Pole to the North Pole—this is
Art B. Well’s Take on Real Reality
. Today, my guest is an ex-covert operative who worked for an entity he calls ‘the Thought Police.’ He claims this organization is an enforcement arm of a larger organization that taps all human psyches…. In other words, all thoughts, dreams, and so forth are monitored by these guys. So be careful what you think and dream, listeners! Now, my guest calls himself Agent W. Hello, Agent W.”

Agent W: “Hello, Art.”

Art: “OK. To start things off, give us a brief overview of who you are—or were—and who or what you worked for.”

Agent W: “Well, basically I was an agent employed in the Subliminal branch of the Thought Police, which is a special unit of the Really Big Brother Department, a subordinate component of the Mind Procedure and Technical Support Office, which is a branch of the Neuro Service Agency, that falls under the umbrella of the Psychological Reserve—which is (in itself) one small branch of a great, web-like tree of subliminal, neurological, biotechnical, mathematical, philosophical, economical, pseudo-spiritual, matter-of-factual, extra-dimensional, and historical entities and bureaucracies—all interlocking and tied together. Basically, they call themselves the New (and Improved) Interstellar Syndicate, also known as the N(aI)IS. The thing is so utterly multi-tiered, intricate and
omnivalent
that to see it as a whole—or to
gestalt
it—is beyond human comprehension.”

The resemblance of Agent W’s voice with that of the movie-going trucker, Woods, from the diner was more than uncanny. But I dismissed it as a mere coincidence.

The tape continued.

Art: “In what way are
they
—this N(aI)IS pow-wow—beyond human comprehension?”

Agent W: “Well, historically, this entity has always been around. It just happens to be so powerful and clever, humans cannot ‘connect the historical dots,’ so to speak. Here’s what is beyond human comprehension: they
own
most of history: past, present and future.”

Art: “
Own most of history?!
What exactly do you mean by that?”

Agent W: “Well, you have to unlearn what you think history is—that is, as a series of random cause-and-effect driven events building up to present day. History is really a large, inter-dimensional map, or book of various maps. Like a ‘Thomas Guide’ road Atlas. Instead of mapping out streets in cities, freeways in states, and interstates in countries, the N(aI)IS map out history and focus on the movements and thoughts of each individual’s life, then it expands to families, tribes, cities, cultures, countries, civilizations, planetary systems, galaxies and universes. It’s nonlinear—‘time’ is the thread through which history is organized in three-dimensional space.”

Art: “Well, that certainly is powerful. So you are saying they
know
the past, present and future of everything and everyone within the universe?”

Agent W: “Universes; there exist more than one … but no, they do not. They have obtained
most
of the Milky Way’s, as well as a small section of the Andromeda Galaxy’s.”

Art: “Astonishing. This entity has total awareness of every instance of my very own past, present and future?”

Agent W: “You bet they do.”

Art: “And Bruce the producer here?”

Agent W: “Yup.”

Art: “…and the entire human population here on Earth?”

Agent W: “Pretty much.”

Art: “Whew…. Wow…. So what are they trying to accomplish by harvesting this information?”

Agent W: “Excellent question. They want to own each individual’s life ‘map,’ or ‘script.’ They do this by attempting to make revisions on certain parts of these maps or scripts—on all levels, if you will. For example, they will have to go through every individual’s ‘neural roads’ and DNA blueprints in order to revise their personal history. They have to do this meticulously for every individual’s existence throughout history.”

Art: “Now, wouldn’t this alter history whole-heartily?”

Agent W: “Astute observation. Obviously it could—and probably has already. But these maniacs—and they are maniacs—are so arrogant they think they are going to just revise memories and make subtle adjustments so they can control all of space and time, both of which are hot commodities. They are insane and meticulous … they have acquired (through a variety of dubious means) the best MTs—or ‘Mind Technicians’ fussing with individual neural circuits, adjusting and tweaking the psyches of people, unbeknownst to the people they are working on. Sometimes they must go through a few drafts of someone’s life in order to make certain that person’s life still fits within the framework of the ‘bigger picture.’ Some people—for reasons they cannot ascertain—have the capacity for more liberated thoughts and hyper-awareness, so they must be constantly revised via ‘Confusion and Distraction’ protocols, whereby they might have a few versions of their lives superimposed on top of the other and seem to experience a
schizology.
Or they continuously place and replace the person’s time perception, so the person feels a sense of déjà vu and time-based schizophrenia. All this to get at the core of the individual’s ‘programming,’ to attempt to alter the code. The more resistant ones are the intriguing ‘specimens’ (as they like to call them), for they seem to cause the most problems for them, and they can’t figure out ‘what makes them tick.’ Anyway—that’s a side topic. Most people go through two or three similar ‘existences,’ or live out pieces of their existences numerous occasions, unaware that most or some of their existence has already been lived before, but with minor alterations—and unaware that they are completely
owned.
”