Respectfully,
General Director Burgermayer
[End of Document 7]
REPORT COMCON-2
No.016/99 Urals-North
Date: 8 May 99
FROM: T. Glumov, Inspector
THEME: 009 “A Visit from an Old Lady”
RE: The visit of the Wizard (Saraksh) to the Kharkov branch of the Institute of Metapsychic Research (Institute of Eccentrics)
In accordance with your orders, yesterday morning I arrived at the Kharkov branch of the Institute of Eccentrics. The deputy director of the branch, Logovenko, gave me an appointment at ten; however, I was not brought into his office immediately, but was subjected first to a check up in a chamber of sliding frequency KSCH-S, also called “How To Catch an Eccentric.” It turns out that every new visitor to the institute is subjected to that procedure. The aim is to discover the person’s “latent metapsychic capabilities” — in other words, the so-called hidden eccentricity.
At 10:15, I presented myself to the deputy director for communications with public organizations.
(Logovenko, Daniil Alexandrovich, doctor of psychology, corresponding member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Europe. Born September 18, 30 in Borispol. Education: Institute of Psychology, Kiev; Control Department, Kiev U.; special course in higher and anomalous etology, Split; Basic works — in the area of metapsychology, discovered the Logovenko Impulse, a.k.a. “t-spike mentogram.” One of the founders of the Kharkov branch of the Institute of Metapsychic Research.)
D. Logovenko told me that he personally had met the Wizard in the morning of March 25 on the cosmodrome at Mirza-Charle and accompanied him right into the Institute building. With them were the department head Bogdan Gaidai and the Wizard’s escort from COMCON-1, Borya Laptev, whom we know.
Arriving at the Institute, the Wizard declined the traditional reception and expressed a desire immediately to begin getting to know the work of the Institute and their clients. Then D. Logovenko turned over the Wizard to the care of B. Gaidai and never talked to the Wizard again.
I: What was the Wizard’s goal at the Institute, in your opinion?
LOGOVENKO: The Wizard didn’t say anything about it to me. COMCON informed us that the Wizard allegedly wanted to familiarize himself with our work, and we were glad to offer him that opportunity. Not without our own interest, by the way: we hoped to study him. We had never worked on a psychocrat of such power, and from another planet to boot.
I: What did your study show?
LOGOVENKO: We did not study him. The Wizard cut short his visit totally unexpectedly.
I: Why do you suppose he did that?
LOGOVENKO: We are lost in conjecture. Personally, here is what I think He was introduced to Michel Desmond, a polymental. And the Wizard noted something in Michel that slipped past us. And whatever is was either frightened him or insulted him, in a word, shocked him so much that
he no longer wanted to deal with us. Don’t forget, he’s a psychocrat, an intellectual, but by birth, upbringing, and worldview, if you like, he’s a typical savage.
I: I don’t quite understand. What is a polymental?
LOGOVENKO: Polymentalism is a very rare metapsychic phenomenon, the existence in one human organism of two or more independent consciousnesses. Don’t confuse it with schizophrenia; it’s not pathological. For instance, our Michel Desmond. He is an absolutely healthy, very pleasant young man, manifesting no deviations from the norm. But a decade ago, quite accidentally, it was discovered that he had a double mentogram. One was ordinary, human, simply related to the past and present life of Michel. But the other one was discovered at a specific, strictly precise depth of mentoscopy. This is a mentogram of a creature that had nothing to do with Michel, living in a world which we have not been able to identify. Apparently, it is a world of incredibly large pressures and high temperatures… But that’s inessential. The important
thing is that Michel has no idea about that world, or about that cohabiting consciousness, and that creature has no idea about Michel or our world. So this is what I think: we managed to discover a neighboring existence in Michel; but what if there are others in him, beyond the limits of our methods of discovery, and they shocked the Wizard?
I: This Desmond’s second world doesn’t shock you?
LOGOVENKO: I get your point. No. Not at all. But I must tell you that the mentoscopist who first looked into the world experienced a profound shock. Primarily because he thought that Michel was a secret agent for the Wanderers, a Progressor from an alien world.
I: How did you determine that this wasn’t the fact?
LOGOVENKO: You can relax on that score. There is no correlation between Michel’s behavior and the functioning of the second consciousness. The neighboring consciousnesses of a polymental do not interact. In principle, they cannot interact, because they function in different planes. Here is a crude analogy. Imagine a shadow show. The shadows projected on the screen cannot interact. Of course, there are various fantastic ideas, but they are merely fantastic.
My conversation with D. Logovenko ended here, and I was introduced to B. A. Gaidai.
(Gaidai, Bogdan Arkhipovich, master of psychology. Born June 10, 55 in Middle Buda. Education: Institute of Psychology, Kiev; special courses in higher and anomalous etology, Split; Basic works in the metapsychoiogy. Since 89 has been working in the Department of Psychoprogaostics, since 93 head of the laboratory of Instrument Control, since 94 chief of the Department of Intrapsychic Technology.)
An excerpt Gem the conversation:
I: In your opinion, what interested the Wizard most at the Institute?
GAIDAI: You know, I have the impression that the Wizard had been misinformed. It’s not surprising; even here on Earth many people don’t understand our work, so what can you say about the Progressors with whom the Wizard deals in Saraksh? I remember that I was immediately surprised that the Wizard, an extraterrestrial, wanted .to see only our institute out of the whole planet Earth… I think this is why. Back on Saraksh be is king of the mutants, so to speak, and he, probably has many problems as a result: they degenerate, get sick, they need treatment, support. While our “eccentrics” are also a type of mutant, and he imagined that he could pick up useful information at the Institute, he probably thought we had something like a clinic here.
I: And seeing his mistake, he turned and left?
GAIDAI: Exactly. He turned a bit too sharply, I guess and left a little too fast. But alter all, maybe that’s how they behave there.
I: What did you talk about with him?
GAIDAI: We didn’t talk about anything. I only heard his voice once. I asked him what he would like to see, and he replied, “Everything you’ll show me.” His voice, I might add, was rather repulsive, like that of a crotchety witch.
I: By the way, what language did you speak?
GAIDAI: Just imagine, Ukrainian!
According to Gaidai, the Wizard met only three clients at the Institute. I’ve managed to speak with two of them.
Ravich, Marina Sergeyevna, age 27, a veterinarian by education, now a consultant to the Leningrad Embryosystem Factory, the Lausanne Workroom on Realizing P-abstractions, the Belgrade Institute of Laminary Positronics, and the chief architect of the Yakutsk Region. A modest, very shy and sad woman. She has a unique and still unexplained ability. (They haven’t even given this ability a scientific name yet.) If you set a clearly formulated problem that she can understand before her, she begins to solve it passionately and with pleasure, but as a result, completely beyond her control, obtains the answer to another problem, which has absolutely nothing to do with the problem at hand and which, as a rule, is beyond her professional interests. The posed problem acts as a catalyst on her consciousness to solve another problem, which she either glanced at in some popular scientific journal or accidentally overheard in the conversation of specialists. It is impossible to determine ahead of time which problem she will solve; there is something like the Classic Uncertainty principle in physics at work here. The Wizard came to her office at the moment when she was working. She vaguely remembers his ugly, large-headed figure, dressed in green, and has no other impressions of the Wizard. No, he didn’t say anything. Bogdan made the usual noises about her “gift,” and she didn’t remember any other voices. According to Gaidai, the Wizard was there for only two minutes, and she did not interest him any more than he had her.
Michel Desmond, 41, a granular engineer by education, a professional athlete, European tunnel hockey champion for 88. A jolly man, very pleased with himself and the world. He treats his polymentalism with humor and total indifference. He was on his way to the stadium when they brought in the Wizard. The Wizard, according to him, looked sickly and was silent, didn’t get jokes; he probably didn’t understand where he was and what was being said. Of course, there was an instant — which Michel will remember for the rest of his life — when the Wizard raised his huge pale eyelids and looked right into Michel’s soul, or maybe even deeper, into the bowels of the world where the creature lives with whom Michel must share his mental space. That was an unpleasant but astonishing moment. Soon after that the Wizard left, without even saying a word. Or good-bye.