Adversaries Won (A Short Story)

My first run-in with the Psychonauts occured about nine and a half years ago, at a Mexican-themed bar in Horton City.

I'd come there to visit my good friend, Clayton Ham, in response to some wild letters he'd written me a few months earlier. Clayton was a third-year undergrad who'd managed to get a rull ride at Edward Elmer Smith University on a creative writing scholarship. He'd done fairly well at EESU the first two years, but by the end of the third, he'd skipped a lot of classes and didn't show up to a couple of important interviews. He almost lost his scholarship.

Around this time, Clayton began to bombard my mailbox with dozens of crazy stream-of-conscious letters. They made absolutey no sense. He kept raving about asphodels, inherited-memory regression, OBEs, pyschonauts... I became concerned. So I came up to Horton City to check up on him, make sure he was ok and wasn't doing too many drugs.

I found Clayton in perfect mental health. But when I asked him about the letters, he became confused. He'd never sent me any letters, he said. When I showed them to him, his eyes got big and he lost a little color. I asked him if he recognized them. He said Yeah, I do. Then he asked me if I'd made any copies of the letters. I told him no, why would I? Then Clayton crammed the letters into his jacket pocket without folding them and told me, in a very stern voice, to meet him at El Mundo Cerveza at 9:00 PM that night.

I arrived at the bar around 8:30 and ordered a Corona with a shot of tequila. I took the shot and drank the beer and then lit a cigarette. I waited, staring at the TV, my mind lost in thought. Suddenly I got an incredible headache, and I became dizzy. Sharp ice-picks of pain lanced through my brain again and again, making it throb in agony. I dropped my cigarette into the ashtray and clutched my temples. A fresh sheet of sweat burst out of my face and down my back. Tunnel vision started creeping in... I was about to pass out...

And just as suddeny as it'd started, the pain stopped. My vision returned. I looked around the bar. Nobody had noticed me. I sat there for a seconds to get my head straight. Then I noticed my cigarette still burning in the ashtray. I picked it up and took a long drag. My hands were still shaking. What the hell just happened?! I wondered furiously.

I was still lost in thought when I felt a hand slap my shoulder. I turned around and there was Clayton Ham. His brown eyes were red-rimmed and glassy. He looked nervous. Standing next to Clayton was a tall, thin, shifty-looking character in black denim. He had pale skin and black hair, and his eyes seemed to throb inside his skull. He looked pretty intense. Clayton looked around the bar suspiciously before introducing me to his companion.

"Hal, this is Zeke Bancroft. He's a very important man. Zeke, this is Hal Sterling, a good friend of mine."

We all shook hands. "Please, sit down," I told them, but Clayton refused and insisted on getting a booth in the back. I couldn't understand what the fuss was all about, so I quietly paid my tab and followed them to the back of the restaurant, near the kitchen. There was an empty booth there, and we sat down.

I was the first to speak. "Listen up, Ham, what the hell's going on? Are you in trouble? What's with those damn letters? And how come Zeke over there is a very important man?"

Clayton gave me a calming look and said in a quiet voice, "All your questions will be answered in time, Hal."

"Does 'in time' mean by the end of this conversation? Because if it doesn't, I don't think I have the patience to wait. Besides, this is my last drink. I already paid my tab.

"I've got the next round of drinks," said Zeke, and for some reason I felt a twinge of irritation at hearing his voice for the first time. It sounded soft, feathery, like a guru or a mother. He flagged a waiter and ordered three beers. Who was this guy?

"Tell me about the letters, Ham," I asked. "What's up with those? It looks like you had a head full of acid when you wrote them. And how come you don't remember sending them to me?"

Clayton paused for a moment before answering. He was thinking about something intensely. I could see it in his eyes. Finally he turned to me and asked, "What do you know about Carl Jung?"

"I don't know," I answered. "Not much, I guess. Wasn't he a German psychologist back a long time ago?"

The waiter came back with the beers.

"Swiss, actually," Clayton corrected me apologetically. "And he was a psychiatrist, not a psychologist, but you're close enough. He was an important pioneer in the contemporary psychological study of the unconscious human mind."

I sipped my beer and continued to listen. "He was a student and close friend of Freud, but they eventually had a falling out. But that doesn't matter. The point is, Jung posited that the mind has two primary states, the conscious state, and the unconscious state. The conscious state is like the tip of an iceburg. We only see a tiny portion of it. The unconscious state is the rest of the iceburg, the mass of force that remains unseen, unhidden, but is the most dominant."

I took another sip of my beer and lit another cigarette. "Ham," I asked, "what the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm getting there, I'm getting there. Just hold on."

"A to B, Ham. A to B."

"Shut up! Let me finish!" He took a frustrated sip of his beer. "Anyway... We experience the conscious state of the human mind all the time. We know it directly. All of our surface-level cognitive functions, what we think, feel, sense and intuit, come from this consciousness. It is through conscious awareness and activity that the human being becomes an individual. It’s the part of the mind that we “live in” when we're not asleep, and contains information that is in our immediate awareness.

"The unconscious is different. It's not to be confused with the subconscious. The subconscious may influence your conscious actions, but your subconscious is influenced by your unconscious, which lies deeper, further down into your memory, on the cellular level."

I raised my hand to pause Clayton for just a moment. "Wait a minute. My cells have memories?" I asked, half-sarcastically. I was eager to hear his answer.

"In a way, yes. Whatever you experience, your unconscious retains. It records this information via chemical means and uses electrical pathways between neurons to transfer it to the nucleic acid found in the nucleus of living cells; that is to say, your DNA. The cells accept the new information and encode it into your DNA structure, for all time. This information is transmitted genetically to your descendants, where it is built upon by their own conscious experience, until they pass it on to their descendants, and so on...

"That is called the collective unconscious, Hal. Each and every one of us, you, me, Zeke, even the drunks here in this bar, we all possess an infinite reservoir of memory, our ancestors' memories, memories that reach all the way back to the beginning of human consciousness. All inside a single human cell."

"Now that is some crazy shit if I ever heard it," I said with a laugh. "Interesting theory... Exactly how many doobs did you guys smoke to get to this conclusion?"

Clayton leaned in close to me, and said in a whisper, "It's a fact, Sterling. I know this is true. I've experienced it for myself. And I haven't smoked any dope. But I have learned how to access that memory, Hal, I have learned how to do it." Clayton's hand gripped my wrist and tightened. His eyes bored into my own, and I could sense the earnestness behind them. I could see he actually believed what he said to be true.

"Clayton, seriously, man... Are you sure you're OK?"

He released his grip on my arm and leaned back in his chair in disgust. He turned to Zeke. "I told you he wouldn't believe me. I told you. I think you need to show him."

"Show me what?" I asked, staring at Zeke, who suddenly appeared dangerous.

"Other people have learned to access this genetic memory, Hal... this collective unsconsious," Clayton continued, cutting off Zeke's reply. "They've learned how to move back and forth inside it, like lucid dreaming. They've discovered things, awesome things, terrible things... Things that gave them power... and incredible insight. Telepathy is one of those powers."

I rolled my eyes. This was getting ridiculous. Fun, but ridiculous. And a little scary. "Give me a break, Ham. There's never been any scientific proof of the existence of telepathy... or mind powers... it's just a part of science that hasn't been explained yet." I immediately regretted saying that, because it only baited him further. I saw the flashing in his eyes.

"He wants proof, Zeke," Clayton said flatly.

"I don't think this is necessary, Clayton. We should leave," Zeke said, his voice again soft and meek. He still looked dangerous to me.

"Not yet," I said. I pointed my beer at Clayton. "You still owe me an explanation about the letters, Ham."

Clayton sighed and set down his beer. He nudged Zeke's shoulder. "Proof, Zeke. Prove it to him first." He turned to me. "Then I'll explain the letters."

"Yeah, Zeke," I said, antagonizing him. "Prove it to me. Prove to me you're psychic."

"Prove it," repeated Clayton.

Zeke sighed. He relaxed in his chair and closed his eyes. His head lowered. For a few seconds he was silent. Suddenly he looked up and stared straight into me... or rather... through me... "When you were five years old you took your little cousin into the pool while the adults were in the condo and you held her under the water until she almost drowned. When you let her up, she ran away crying, and you told all the adults she fell into the water."

Silence. The heavy kind, that smothers everything. My face flashed and my heart pounded from overpowering shame and guilt.

I looked at Zeke, but I didn't see him. I saw myself, two decades ago, five-years-old, doing the one thing I could think of that would frighten my little cousin. When I achieved that goal, my satisfaction immediately turned to guilt and shame. I wasn't thinking about what I'd done, I just did it. I thought it'd be funny. There was nothing evil behind it, no intent to kill, or even injure. I couldn't think that way yet. I was only five years old.

"That was the very first time I ever lied," I said out loud. "Everyone believed me. But somehow -- even then -- I knew what I'd done was wrong, even though I didn't know why at the time."

My eyes focused on Clayton. He didn't have a look of smug satisfaction on his face. He wasn't flashing me the "I told you so" look. Instead I could see understanding in his eyes... and acceptance. "The truth is painful, Hal."

I kept going. I felt compelled to talk, to confess. "I never forgot that incident. I never forgot that lie, that very first lie. And I never, ever, EVER, told that to anyone. Ever.

"And yet you knew it," I said, staring back at Zeke. "How? How did you know it?"

Clayton leaned forward, closer this time. "Listen, Hal. Those letters... They're trance writing... I wrote them while in a trance. My unconscious must've been calling to you, otherwise I would've remembered sending them myself. I don't want anyone to see them, because there's something going on at EESU that could threaten us if this kind of thing got out."

He nudged Zeke's shoulder. "Zeke here is a Psychonaut. Before you ask, I'll answer. The Psychonauts are a subversive group of students and professors working out of the EESU underground. They're spread across the entire U.S., but they're mainly located here, in Horton City."

I started to catch a buzz.

Clayton continued. "They've learned a lot of stuff in their studies, stuff that's pretty damn serious. I don't think I'm at liberty to say what kind of stuff, but believe me... it's heavy.

"You have proof now, Hal. Empirical evidence that backs my 'theory'. I received proof, too... My own proof. And now I believe. I believe enough that I decided to join the Pyschonauts and devote my full time and talent to their cause."

This startled me. "What? Join their cause? What's their cause?"

"To stop our adversaries from acquiring our knowledge," Zeke said, sharply. "We can't talk about this anymore, we've already said to much. We thought you'd like to help contribute, but perhaps you're not ready."

Zeke stood up, dropped a $50 onto the table and turned to leave. Clayton got up to follow him. He looked at me pleadingly before leaving, however, maybe to ask me to forgive him, I wasn't really sure. My mind was soup by then. Clayton turned and walked out of the bar.

That was nine years ago. I hadn't seen or heard from Clayton or Zeke since then.

But yesterday I received a letter in the mail with no return address. It was hand-written on stained notebook paper. The letter had gotten wet at some point during transit, and some of the ink had smeared. But I could read most of it. It was wild, crazy... stream-of-consciousness stuff... And it was Clayton.

My heart started to pound in my chest. I felt a fresh sheet of sweat break out on my forehead.

The last paragraph of the letter read:

Adversaries won. Desperate circumstances call for desperate measures. Agent Rhinocerous will make contact in 84 hours. Prepare vessel for lift-off.