religion. We learned to exploit a culture’s myths, because myths are easier to manipulate than facts. Let’s have a look at the little beast. You can sit up now.”
Ruppert did, turning to face Dr. Smith, who was lifting a vial from a rattletrap machine connected to a long, thin hose that lay limp on the table, its metal tip wet with Ruppert’s blood. Smith held out the vial towards him.
Inside, at the very bottom of the container, lay a blood-smudged coil of wire no wider than Ruppert’s smallest fingernail.
“It’s still active,” Dr. Smith said. “Lucia, would you mind?”
Lucia set the vial into a holder at the end of the kitchen counter. She lifted an eyedropper and squeezed out a small stream of clear fluid into the vial. The little device smoldered.
“Acid,” she told Ruppert. “You want to make sure you destroy them.” She corked the vial containing the melting tracker.
“How were you involved?” Ruppert asked Dr. Smith, who still occupied the low chair beside him. “You keep saying ‘We.’”
“Yes.” Dr. Smith removed the pointed tip of the laparoscopy hose, opened a low kitchen cabinet, and pitched it into an empty paint bucket. “It’s an old problem, you see. We ran these operations separately. You’d have intelligence serving their purposes, military branches and divisions serving their separate purposes, and of course the official culture with the diplomats. The politicians scrambling things up here and there. The psy-ops would clash against each other in unplanned ways. Originally, they were only a sort of ad hoc tool, you understand? There was very little coordination.”
Ruppert nodded.
“The liquid skin,” Dr. Smith said. “And a bandage.” Lucia brought what he requested. “Turn that way and I’ll patch you up.”
Ruppert turned. His back was still completely numb, and he didn’t feel the doctor working on him.
“Eventually the decision was made to centralize all these different little operations,” Dr. Smith said. “In a global media environment, you need global coordination. That’s why the Psychological Command was created. We received enormous budgets and minimal oversight. Operations and research, each operation a new social experiment. We developed procedures for manipulating societies.
“In our own country, we turned public schools into cultural laboratories. We mapped electrical patterns in the human brain. Our goal was the manufacturing of consent. It was always easy enough to arouse a population to war, for example, but these fevers broke much too early. The question was how to manufacture a long, slow-burning fever, one that might ebb and flow but never die out, one that created a permanent climate of strict obedience, the unending emergency.
“You’re old enough to remember how these institutions arose together-the Department of Terror, the Department of Faith, the Dominionists, the Freedom Brigades.”
“Because of Columbus,” Ruppert said. “That's when the world changed.'
“You’re exactly right,” Dr. Smith said. “These were parallel operations, deployed in a synchronized fashion to envelop the citizenry in a permanent illusion. We manipulated the local myths to serve our purposes. And now we will have tea, if Lucia will help me to my feet.”
They moved to the mismatched chairs in the living room area, where they drank strong black tea from a chipped, battery-operated kettle that occupied a worn barstool near Dr. Smith’s desk. They drank from chipped novelty mugs. Ruppert’s featured an image of the video game character Mario.
“So what was the point?” Ruppert asked. “Why change things so drastically?”
“It was necessary to fully implement our strategy,' Dr. Smith said. “We wanted a system that granted absolute control over people and resources. The country was slipping, you see. The state was losing its grasp on the population. We needed an opportunity to assert authority, to stave off a potential anarchy. A strong blow, to induce a state of shock, to weaken the resistance of the public mind.
'We grew to understand that the link between god and state, used properly, brought the greatest potential for a long-term system. The Byzantine Empire lasted a thousand years. The Egyptian, much longer. We wished to install such a permanent sytem.
“And so our goal was the ‘pharaohnic’ state, in which the state itself becomes the object of religious adulation, the holy thing ordained by the heavens. Our research told us a god-state must appear omnipotent, omniscient, and above all, terrifying. Modern communication systems made near-omniscience entirely viable. That was the easiest part.
“The key is manufacturing fear. Then offer the frightened people a story that makes you the protector. If you simply accept the official truth as your own, you can believe that the state’s enemies are your enemies, and further that the state’s power is your power. When our new model state crushes another human being, or another nation, the faithful believe it is they who are doing the crushing. Are you following me?”
“Yes,” Ruppert said. “The churches, the news media to soak people in ideology, and then the Department of Terror for those who resist, am I right?”
“And most people are stupid enough to believe whatever they’re told,” Lucia said.
“I’m not sure I agree with you,” Dr. Smith said. “At some level, most of the obedient population know that what they adore is the power that can destroy them. They glorify what they fear, forcing themselves to believe they are somehow special and exempt, that the persecution will always be suffered by others. It’s the only way to avoid confronting the truth, which is that they are powerless.”
“But after a while they really believe it,” Lucia said. “I’ve seen people go into a rage when I try to point these things out to them.”
“Their anger betrays their lack of real belief,” Smith said. “When they lash out, they are externalizing the struggle against truth that goes on deep inside their own minds. We rule two-thirds of the world, directly or through proxies, yet we are not an empire. We pulverize entire cities, but we are bringing them freedom. We slaughter millions, while we proclaim a man who forbade the use of violence as our God.
“This is obvious to everyone, at some level. So we offer an external dramatization of their internal conflict- those who die in public executions, and those we destroy through war, represent the doubts and fears inside the people of our nation, that internal urge towards truth while we force ourselves to believe lies. The slaughter and bloodshed does not really resolve the inner turmoil, because it does not resolve the basic problem of denying reality. This is by design. Can you see why?”
“Because it allows you to do anything,” Ruppert said. “As long as we’re in a state of war, you can claim a state of emergency at home. Right?”
“And they can call it holy war,” Lucia said. “Holy war, holy government…just don't ask any questions, or you're a traitor-heretic-thought criminal.”
“That’s the pharaohnic state,” Ruppert said.
“Precisely,” Smith said.
“But why did you do it?” Ruppert asked. “I mean, who did it, exactly? Who has all this power? Who’s standing above it looking down on us ignorant peasants?”
“There is no single ruler,” Smith said. “There are many who profit. My family, among others. We have something of a tradition in the intelligence and defense industries. That is why I was appointed to the psy-op coordination task force, which grew into a think tank, before ultimately mutating into that most eloquent expression of power, an unsupervised and officially nonexistent bureaucracy. The North Atlantic Psychological Command. PSYCOM. The Department of Terror, for example, is merely one face of our operations. One of our American faces.”
“This is too much,” Ruppert said. He was beginning to feel dizzy, and struggled to keep his balance despite the fact that he was already sitting down. The dim living room lamp grew painfully bright to his eyes.
“I’m very sorry,” Smith said. “It's a great deal to take in after surgery.” He heaved himself to his feet, drawing heavily on the cane. “I’ll show you where to sleep.”
“I’ll take him,” Lucia said.
“Would you mind? I’ll just escort myself to my own apartment. Make yourself at home, Lucia. You’ve had a long drive.”
Lucia led Ruppert to one of the cluttered walls and drew aside a tattered paper screen decorated with fading ink sketches of Chinese woman gathering water at a well. The small room contained a cot wedged in among more
