Fiction
As I mentioned in earlier installments of this series, a patient
presently confined to the Sleight Center psychiatric facility believes
he is the current director of the CIA. He also believes he is living in
the year 2053. He is writing CIA memos to "his
own top people."
Dear All,
I have now changed my title. I am still the director of the CIA, but I
am The Director in Exile. The Agency itself, in 2053, has dissolved
into a trillion-dollar wounded dragon. It is thrashing around, trying
to feel its own shape, and failing.
If we control the world but cannot control ourselves, then what is the sitrep?
If you build a house and let it go its own way, it eventually decays and
falls into terminal disrepair. I do not believe that is the fate of
Earth, but I know we have done great harm. Nevertheless, we continue to
play our games.
We exist, as an Agency, in our own space and time. We thrash, and we float.
Our principal task, mind control, has encountered unexpected resistance
from many quarters. To cite just one case, the disappearing of nations
into easier-to-manage larger regions (our agenda) has given birth to
hundreds of counter-outbreaks of decentralization.
Our own vaunted map makers have fallen hopelessly behind in their
efforts to compile and maintain a planetary picture. Our favored
propaganda term, "citizen of the world," has been rendered meaningless.
My new psychiatrist turns out to be an infiltrator from Free New
England, which has broken off relations with Washington. He is trying
to enlist me in "the movement." It's not my cup of tea.
Freedom is still an idea that energizes me, even after all this time.
I'm not sure I know what it looks like. But it must be centered on the
individual.
For a century, we have treated the world as a mere caricature we could
manipulate at will. But it turns out we are the caricature.
Before I was confined to this facility, I was working on a secret draft
of surrender. We would, as an ancient president once stated, "break up
the CIA into a million pieces."
I leave it to you to imagine the domino effect.
Of course, we would have to protect our agents. I was also working out a plan for that massive operation.
I am of the opinion that, if the specific CIA had never been created,
something very much like it would have come into being. Another
organization with our goals and operations would have emerged. It was
embedded in the psychology of humans. I think that
fact and that day have passed into oblivion. We may not have
experienced the very worst our species has to offer, but we have come
close enough to taste defeat and turn away. We've begun to stir from
our trance and rise a short distance above our base impulses.
So, after all this time, I find myself making a plea for sanity.
While confined to a psychiatric institution.
---The "director's" memo cuts off at this point. Or perhaps he ended it
there. A year later, he was gone; escaped from the facility.
Myths, legends, and no doubt, intentional cover stories have
proliferated around him. Some people actually believe he was the
director of the CIA. We have the usual reports of sightings across the
country. One wild story is interesting: he is now living
in an undisclosed location in Chicago, from which he secretly advises
the president. The president, according to the tale, is indeed plotting
the break-up of the CIA. But this is only one aspect of his agenda; he
intends to split the entire federal government
into much smaller units, each of which will act independently as
decentralized organizations. Their exact roles are, thus far, unclear.
Supposedly, the trigger for the revolution will be the return of 40
trillion dollars, which have been stolen from national
budgets over the past century. The money will be placed in the hands
of several thousand local community "leadership groups," who will use it
to finance "projects of benefit to the people." This account gains
some credibility, owing to the mood of the nation;
small communities are emerging across the land. They are aiming for
self-sufficiency. Recent discoveries in energy technology, beyond the
reach of traditional energy companies, have made it possible to power
local enterprises in any environment, at shockingly
low costs. The desire for freedom beyond the reach of central
government is deepening. Along with these thousands of new communities,
we are seeing the rise of private currencies. Recent reports of
"defecting police units and military groups" are adding
fuel to the fire.
One night not long ago, a man appeared as a last-minute guest on a small Web radio show. Here is an excerpt from his remarks:
"I am the Director in Exile of the CIA, an organization which hopefully
will soon take its last collective breath, and then disappear below the
waves of a new epoch. As you might suppose, I am on the move. Certain
people want to ask me certain questions I'm
not prepared to answer at this time. I've seen my path, I've chosen
it, I've stepped on to it, and I'm walking it. The air is cleaner for
me these days. This "place" we live in has been described in thousands
of myths down through the centuries. I see
it as one dimension among others. It has its charms, as does any
popular stage play. We tend to be far too serious when we should be
light-hearted, and light-hearted when we should be serious. My
experience as the director has taught me that humans can
be trained to commit almost any action, thinking it is for the greater
good. The CIA is an awesome center of deception. Our people are taught
to lie as the first order of business. Once we fasten on to a piece of
data, we lie about it. Reflexively. Domination
is our goal. Shaping the minds of the population is our prime
strategy. We are admired teachers who inevitably give students the
wrong answers to their questions. For us, truth is what a silver bullet
is to the werewolf. Extinction. The size and scope
of our organization has been underestimated. With our global
connections to major corporations, banks, foundations, secret societies,
governments, criminal groups, and organized religions, we are a
behemoth. As I've written, we have lost our way. We no
longer have control over many of our own operations. My chief
assistant once jokingly remarked to me, "We're so big, we cover so much
ground, we must be run from some extraterrestrial center." For a
century, we've proceeded from the assumption that all reality
is invented. Therefore, we took the lead in inventing it for billions
of people. Each one of them was capable of birthing his own reality,
but he had abdicated the job and the joy of being an Artist. That
cleared the ground for us, and we moved in..."
Since that night, on the radio, the director has not been heard from.
But since that night, by my own count, 274 men have "stepped forward,"
in one fashion or another, while maintaining their anonymity, to claim
they are the Director. They each have stories to tell, most of which
are interesting and contain details of damning
truth about past CIA operations. This leads me to believe that at least
some of these men are current or former employees of the Agency.
Thus, a trickle grows toward a Niagara of exposure... |
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