Agents
of the Dream Police are trained and equipped to use the Rodes-Buchanan Twinning
Device to infiltrate the dreams and reveries of the subjects of their
investigations. The Rodes-Buchanan Twinning Device is an electrical device
capable of transmitting human thought and physiological responses via psychic
transmission. As an added benefit it can also determine the specific weight and
density of each of those individual intercepted thoughts. The Dream Police are
forced to use this bit of paranormal technology instead of invading dreams by
their own power because they are psychics without spirit. They see nothing and
they understand less.
But the twinning device creates a
psychic sympathy between the minds and bodies of connected subjects so that,
despite their lack of spirit and vision and understanding, they are able to see
something after all. After connecting the leads and wires to the heart and head
of the subject, (and after using his personal, individual dactylogram to
authorize and activate the psychic transfer) Doctor Benjamin Test – chief of
the Levant Area Dream Police - injects Field Agent Basil Ikon with alternating
doses of Semi-synthetic Eukoldol-7 (a radically redesigned version of the
opioid popular among Nazi soldiers during World War II-really evil shit, trust
me) and Pervition (a pill form of methamphetamines, also popular with the
Nazis). Sometimes he supplemented these with chewing gum laced with cocaine –
the kind used by one-man UN submarine pilots. They chew it as they penetrate and
patrol the rivers of the Roman Empire.
They also ingest the yage, the
South American entheogen which contains the chemical Telepathine, which
fluoresces green under ultraviolet light. It may be toxic in large doses, but
when calibrated correctly it facilitates psychic connection between users even
over long distances.
All the reports and memos filed by
Dream Police agents are printed on paper that resists reproduction – so it is
difficult to say with certainty what they knew and when they knew it, but it does
not appear that they knew anything about the visionary dreams received by
Paul. Usually they’re much better about
tracking this sort of thing, but every now and again they miss something.
For example, it isn’t widely known
outside of the Dream Police offices, but the American author, and riverboat
grumbler, Samuel Clemens (better known as Mark Twain) had a premonitory dream
of the death of his brother, Henry. Clemens dreamt of his brother lying inside
a metal coffin with a bouquet of white flowers. He was wearing one of Samuel’s
suits. About a month later the steamboat aboard which Henry was working
exploded killing nearly 250 people, including Henry. It was this psychic dream
that convinced Samuel Clemens to join the Society of Psychical Research.[i]
I dreamt that when I saw her again after all this time in that skeeball arcade she was engaged in a project of surgical self-discovery
– gross lip enlargement, and overstretched blepharoplasty. And that she was
dating a balding and goateed man wearing a bandana tied around his forehead –
who bragged to me about banging such a classy broad. He smacked me on the
shoulder and laughed, “but you know what I’m talking about, don’t you brother?”
She turned on me with her grotesquely swollen lips and said, “You can’t tell me
what to do anymore.” But I never had.
Was this dream psychic in anyway?
Was it prophetic or premonitory? Good Lord, I hope not – for her sake as much
as for mine. Even after what she put me through, she deserves better than that.
And then it comes. Somewhere Doctor
Test injects Agent Basil Ikon with the promised Eukodol-7, an enlarged dose,
the syringe like a cannon overcharged with double cracks. But first comes the
Succinylcholine - a skeletal muscle relaxant administered intravenously. It is
commonly used before surgery, mechanical ventilation, and electroshock therapy.
It induces a near total paralysis of the body – including the respiratory
system. Dream Police agents using the Buchanan-Rodes Twinning Device often have
to be reminded to breathe as they dream.
Agent Basil enters the dark defile, the total darkness of shadow lands.
The world is the tomb of a homicide victim. Immutable. His blood is chilled.
Death is the shepherd of the grave, feeding on the flock. “Mangez, ô mort, et buvez, et buvez encore,” he says and then he
sleeps, and sleeping he steals your dreams.
I don’t know if I’ve ever had any
predictive dreams like Clemens dreaming of the death of his brother or like
Paul dreaming of the Macedonian man, though I have had my fair share of bizarre
dreams that seem like they were heavily layered with symbolic content that
could maybe have been prophetic. But prophetic of what I do not know. They
could have meant anything and if they could mean anything then they mean
nothing. Maybe. Niente di niente. Maybe.
I still remember the three
interpretive questions that Mister Spanogle taught us in my high school English
class: 1) What does it say? On the positive, physical level, what does the text
say? What is it in the material world? 2) What does it mean? Grounded in the
physical world but transcending that to something beyond the specific object –
what is the dialectical idea? There may be competing ideas here, unresolved
ideas, but that is acceptable. When you’ve moved beyond the mere words you can
ask what means, but you must ask the first question first. Only then may you
proceed. And after you’ve explored what it means you may ask the final
question3) What does it mean to me? As an ultimate term of higher truth, as an
article of faith, what does it mean? What does this higher truth mean to me?
How will it organize my experience and behavior? What practices will this
encourage? What orthopraxis? He wanted us to apply these questions to
understanding the William Carlos Williams poem The Red Wheelbarrow, but I have
continued to use them through all my life. I don’t know if Mister Spanogle
studied Saussure, though I assume that he probably did. And I don’t know if
structural linguistics has anything to contribute to the field of oneirology,
but I suspect that it might.
I dreamt recently that I was asked
to write a novelization of a series of youth retreat meetings, to interview the
teens and young adults who’d attended the religious retreat and to craft a
novel of their experiences. In the dream I was excited about the project even
though I knew with a certainty that it would lead to renewed conflict with the
leadership committee. I dreamt once of my now ex-wife asking me repeatedly,
“Where were you?” But I cannot remember the context of the question – and
context is king, even in dreams. I dreamt also of rain, I dream frequently of
rain – probably because it hasn’t rained here for many weeks and I miss the
rain. I dream of petrichor.
Do you smell that,” Doctor Test
asks the oblivious patient strapped to his Rodes-Buchanan twining device in the
darkness of the hidden inner chamber. “It is death,” he says as he patiently
applies perfumed oils and curative cosmetics for the skin to the oozing
pustules on Agent Ikon’s arm. The injection sites of Dream Police operatives
are regularly infected and require frequent applications of soothing lotions.
I dreamt of a unicorn trapped in a
palm tree. I dreamt of a Catholic priest stabbed to death in the confessional
and thrown from a third story window. I dreamt that I was bursting into
melancholic unfriended flames. And even if you can’t spell “melancholy” without
“holy,” it was a terrible dream. I dreamt of an assassin firing at children on
a playground and of my ex-wife screaming at me for tackling the shooter and
calling for the police – not because she was afraid I’d be injured myself in
the melee, but because she believed I was taking my anger at her out on him.
Dreams make no sense.
Summon the elder ones. Smear the
oil; recite the prayers. Doctor Test is not ready to turn his test subjects
over to the pawing shovels of the resurrection men, even when they’ve become
vicarious junkies like Agent Ikon. Outside, the wind picks up, swirling the
dust and trash in the streets. Will agents of the Dream Police begin to focus
their psychic twinning device on me and my dreams? I do not know and I am
fearful. What does this mean? Timor
mortis conturbat me.
