Chapter 4

Brainwashing, also known as mind control or thought reform, became known to the general public in the wake of seemingly bizarre behavior by some American prisoners during the Korean War of the early 1950s. These captives appeared to cooperate with their Chinese captors, and some confessed to war crimes or defected to the side of their tormentors. Techniques that facilitate this kind of thought conversion include extreme isolation and physical as well as psychological torture, followed by a barrage of coerced re-education sessions designed to exhaust the psychological defenses of captives, replace their system of values, and undermine the idea of having free will. Religious cults employ these techniques in order to persuade converts. Military boot camps operate in similar fashion.

Following the loss of its nuclear monopoly and during an especially intense period of Cold War paranoia, the United States Central Intelligence Agency began a secret research program in the 1950s, codenamed MKUltra. This program attempted to design, develop, and perfect a truth serum and other mind control protocols, ostensibly to convert or coerce foreign intelligence agents. Researchers experimented with isolation, sensory deprivation, hypnosis, and hallucinogenic drugs including LSD, often administering the drugs illegally on unwitting subjects. Albert Hoffman first synthesized LSD, a derivative of the ergot fungus, in Switzerland in 1938. Albert Hoffman discovered LSD’s psychedelic properties in 1943. The drug was marketed in 1947 under the name Delysid for the treatment of psychiatric disorders. MKUltra became public knowledge during the US Senate’s 1975-1976 Church Committee investigations into possible abuses of intelligence gathering activities by the CIA, NSA, FBI and IRS. Those abuses included assassination attempts on foreign leaders, covert efforts to destabilize foreign governments, and domestic espionage.  MKUltra was officially discontinued in 1973.

Also in 1973, a Swedish convict named Jan-Erik Olsson took four employees hostage during an attempted bank robbery. He negotiated the release from prison of a friend to aid him, and the two tortured their hostages for a few days before being captured by police. Once freed, the hostages refused to testify against their captors and instead began raising funds for their defense. This behavior would later be described as the “Stockholm Syndrome.” Psychologists identified four components of this syndrome: no prior relationship between captors and hostages, hostages developing positive feelings for their captors, hostages refusing to cooperate with authorities, and hostages developing a lasting sense of identification with their captors, often to the point of defending the captors’ behavior even after the hostages had been freed.

{Begin transmission 006}

I’ve just had my second meeting with The Counselor. I wish I could record these meetings as they happen, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards. I’m not sure how that would work for telepathic conversations anyway, so this might be the best I can do. Come to think of it, I’m not sure it would work for my conversations with the gorilla-pigs either, since I have to wear a headset to make sense of what they’re saying. What exactly would I record, anyway? One of the gorilla-pigs brings me a recording device from time to time, and then they leave me alone to record my messages, then a gorilla-pig returns a few minutes later to collect the device. They don’t tell me in advance when I’ll have these journaling opportunities, and they don’t tell me how long I have to record my thoughts, either. The whole process is a bit weird, but I guess I’ll have to take what I can get.

I tried to get as much information out of The Counselor as I could, but of course, I couldn’t get to everything I wanted to discuss. This time, I started by asking what had happened to me between the time I left Earth and the day I woke up here. The Counselor made it clear that he/she/it didn’t know everything that happened, but tried to tell me what was known. I’ll get to that in a second, because I found out some things about The Counselor and The Old Ones that I want to relay first.

I asked The Counselor where they come from, and was told the name of their planet would not make sense to me, and it was irrelevant since they no longer occupy that planet. More on that later. The Old Ones called this planet “Home” in their language, but humans can’t speak or fully understand their language. I suppose the best we can do is call it “The Home Of The Old Ones.” It’s somewhere much closer to the center of the Milky Way than Earth is, but on the side furthest from Earth, so humans have not yet been able to observe its star or the planets in its orbit.

The Old Ones have no gender in the sense that humans do. They’re unisex, I guess, and they seem to have no problem with me referring to individual Old Ones as he, she, it, or he/she/it, either. The Counselor seems very Zen-like to me. Calling an intelligent being “it” seems rude, though, so I’m reluctant to use that term. My folks taught me better manners than that. The Old Ones have lifespans on the order of tens of thousands of Earth years, so “The Old Ones” seems to be an entirely appropriate name. Individual Old Ones are capable of producing eggs and sperm, but they tend to reproduce in pairs. Each Old One usually reproduces only a few times, and may alternate between contributing sperm or eggs to the process. There are no large Old One nuclear families. The Counselor told me that a few Old Ones have reproduced through parthenogenesis, but that practice is exceptionally rare, and has happened only in very extraordinary circumstances. The Old Ones prefer to mix their genes when reproducing in order to increase their genetic diversity.

After I got through discussing this background stuff about The Old Ones, I pressed for answers about what happened to me. The Counselor told me that my journey from Earth took something like 30 Earth years. I wasn’t prepared for that revelation. Why wasn’t I an old man now? 30 years?! Apparently, I was placed in some sort of stasis cocoon, which reduced my metabolism to the bare minimum required to keep me alive. The Pranksters have been using this kind of stasis technology for centuries, if not longer. The Pranksters are capable of curing most human diseases, correcting genetic defects, healing injuries, and slowing our aging process. They can’t make us immortal, though, and they aren’t immortal, either. The Pranksters live for the equivalent of several Earth centuries, and have learned to tweak human biology well enough to allow us to live for several centuries, too. The Pranksters corrected my vision and improved the functioning of my lungs, liver, heart, brain, and kidneys, all while I was in transit. They’ve been doing similar procedures on other abductees for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years. Freaky, right?

I must be about 70 years old by now, but I feel no older than the day I was nabbed. In fact, I’ve never felt healthier. Should I thank them for abducting me? I am deeply conflicted about it. I never asked for any of this to happen. It gets even weirder, though. No one on Earth knows I left. No one is looking for me. The Pranksters left a clone behind in my place. Not a perfect duplicate exactly, because that seems to be a lot more difficult to pull off than my science fiction addled brain led me to assume. They left behind a genetic doppelganger that could fool anyone on Earth, as long as the doppelganger never woke up and interacted with anyone for very long. The doppelganger would not have my memories or all the quirks of my personality. The Pranksters must have identified me for abduction at some point before they actually grabbed me, took a DNA sample, and somehow grew a clone that resembled me well enough that it would pass for the real thing. Then they deployed some kind of stealth technology to appear at my place without being detected. They knocked me out, and left the clone behind. At least, that’s what The Counselor seemed to be trying to tell me. I kind of got lost in the minutiae, frankly. I was a bit too stunned to take in all the details without being incredibly distracted by my sea of emotions. I felt incredibly sad and depressed by this news. I suppose I still had hope that I would return to my old life at some point, or that it was possible, but now I have to admit that is not going to happen. Whatever plans I had for my future are pointless now. I have no idea what the future has in store, and I’m not even making the decisions that effect what my future might be.

As I got lost in contemplating the consequences of everything The Counselor told me, he/she/it called an end to our session. I can’t say I minded. I felt lost and very alone, and wanted to gather my thoughts.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. The habitat on The Old Ones’ home planet was destroyed in some kind of immense civil war a few million years ago, so it became unable to support life. The Old Ones now occupy several planets throughout the galaxy. The Counselor said they are working to prevent catastrophes like the one that ruined their home from happening elsewhere. I admire that. It seems very humanitarian. Well, that’s not the right term. Old Ones-itarian? You know what I mean.

{End transmission 006}