Midnight by Dean R. Koontz

“Gobbledegook,” Watkins said impatiently.

Shaddack stood. He put his hands in his pockets again. “Let me put it this way The theory says that consciousness is the greatest power in the universe, that it can bend the physical world to its desire.”

“Mind over matter.”

“Right.”

“Like some talk-show psychic bending a spoon or stopping a watch, ” Watkins said.

“Those people are usually fakes, I suspect. But, yes, maybe that power is really in us. We just don’t know how to tap it because for millions of years we’ve allowed the physical world to dominate us. By habit, by stasis, and by preference for order over chaos, we remain at the mercy of the physical world. But what we’re talking about here,” he said, pointing to Sholnick and Peyser, “is a lot more complex and exciting than bending a spoon with the mind. Peyser felt the urge to regress, for reasons I don’t understand, perhaps for the sheer thrill of it—”

“For the thrill.” Watkins’s voice lowered, became quiet, almost hushed, and was filled with such intense fear and mental anguish that it deepened Shaddack’s chill. “Animal power is thrilling. Animal need. You feel animal hunger, animal lust, bloodthirst—and you’re drawn toward that because it seems so … so simple and powerful, so natural. It’s freedom.”

“Freedom?”

“Freedom from responsibility, from worry, from the pressure of the civilized world, from having to think too much. The temptation to regress is tremendously powerful because you feel life will be so much easier and exciting then,” Watkins said, evidently speaking about what he had felt when drawn toward an altered state. “When you become a beast, life is all sensation, just pain and pleasure, with no need to intellectualize anything. That’s part of it, anyway.”

Shaddack was silent, unsettled by the passion with which Watkins—not ordinarily an expressive man—had spoken of the urge to regress.

Another detonation rocked the sky, more powerful than any before it. The first hard crack of thunder reverberated in the bedroom windows.

Mind racing, Shaddack said, “Anyway, the important thing is that when Peyser felt this urge to become a beast, a hunter, he didn’t regress along the human genetic line. Evidently, in his opinion, a wolf is the greatest of all hunters, the most desirable form for a predatory beast, so he willed himself to become wolflike.”

“Just like that,” Watkins said skeptically.

“Yes, just like that. Mind over matter. The metamorphosis is mostly a mental process. Oh, certainly, there are physical changes. But we might not be talking complete alteration of matter … only of biological structures. The basic nucleotides remain the same, but the sequence in which they’re read changes drastically. Structural genes are transformed into operator genes by a force of will… .”

Shaddack’s voice trailed off as his excitement rose to match his fear and left him breathless. He’d done far more than he’d hoped to do with the Moonhawk Project. The stunning accomplishment was the source of both his sudden joy and escalating fear: joy, because he had given men the ability to control their physical form and, eventually, perhaps all matter, simply by the exercise of will; fear, because he was not sure that the New People could learn to control and properly use their power … or that he could continue to control them.

“The gift I’ve given to you—computer-assisted physiology and release from emotion—unleashes the mind’s power over matter. It allows consciousness to dictate form.”

Watkins shook his head, clearly appalled by what Shaddack was suggesting. “Maybe Peyser willed himself to become what he did. Maybe Sholnick willed it too. But I’ll be damned if I did. When I was overcome by the desire to change, I fought it like an ex-addict sweating out a craving for heroin. I didn’t want it. it came over me … the way the force of the full moon comes over a werewolf.”

“No,” Shaddack said. “Subconsciously, you did want to change, Loman, and you no doubt partially wanted it even on a conscious level. You must have wanted it to some extent because you spoke so forcefully about how attractive regression was. You resisted using your power of mind over body only because you found metamorphosis marginally more frightening than appealing. If you lose some of your fear of it….. or if an altered state becomes just a little more appealing….. well, then your psychological balance will shift, and you’ll remake yourself. But it won’t be some outside force at work. It’ll be your own mind.”