The Helmet of Horror
And you mean the Helmholtz won't notice anything?
Nutscracker
Used on its own, any one of the techniques used is easy enough to spot. But if the methods are combined together in a subtle fashion and always applied in rotation at a level of intensity just on the border line of perception, you get practically a hundred per cent precise manipulation combined with total imperceptibility.
Organizm(-:
I get it. It's like what you see at the railway stations in Asia. When a passenger thinks it's the tumbler-gambler who's going to cheat him but actually everyone playing the game is in on the swindle even though they're arguing with each other all the time, maybe even fighting.
Nutscracker
Exactly. Only in our case absolutely everybody in the station is in on it, including the stone Atlantes by the main entrance.
Ariadne
How clever you are, Nutcracker. After I listened to you I wrote a poem. It's dedicated to you, Romeo and Isolde. Shall I read it?
Nutscracker
Go on.
Ariadne
Beyond the window-pane on Doom and Gloom
Old Pavlov's Bitch's Sticky Glance is glued.
My Minotaur! Creep silently into my room
Beckon me with a glance, brazenly nude.
Nutscracker
Powerful as ever. And he's already partly fulfilled your wish by removing his helmet, even though he has no head underneath it. I'd say it's impossible to expose yourself any more brazenly than that.
UGLI 666
Nutcracker, there's one thing about what you say I can't understand. How can you change what's in front of a person's eyes without him noticing? If he's looking at the same place but sees something different, how can he fail to notice?
Nutscracker
I couldn't understand that at first either. But for the Helmholtz the word 'change' has no meaning. In real life what you see depends on where you look. But when you're wearing a helmet, it's the other way round - where you're looking depends on what you see. Is that clear?
UGLI 666
Not entirely.
Nutscracker
In the real world you see what's in front of your eyes. No matter which way you point your rump. But in this world you see what's in front of your eyes, no matter which way you point your head. As we used to say in the xxx, it's chalk and cheese, even though it sounds pretty much the same. You don't have any independent system of coordinates, and we decide everything you see. So you can't even suspect anything. For you even the world isn't what it really is, but what's shown to you. You feel like you're looking around in a natural manner, but in fact all the time your eyes keep stumbling over our candidate - sorry, I mean our vase - and it gives you this light and happy feeling. But you never think to ask why, the same way no one ever asks why it's a sunny day.
Organizm(-:
An interesting slip of the tongue.
Nutscracker
And if the mark turns his head too rapidly, so that 'Sticky Eye' and 'Sunny Kiss' stop working, then 'Doom and Gloom' and 'The Weight' kick in immediately.
Organizm(-:
Well, Nutcracker, so now I understand what you do for a living. Tell me, as a professional, do you reckon they could be influencing us in some similar kind of way in here?
Nutscracker
I'd have to think about that.
UGLI 666
I noticed a long time ago that conspiracy theory has taken the place of religion for atheists. They always think there's someone manipulating them, hypnotising them, zombifying them, bugging them, trailing them. But that someone is simply the devil, and that's all. The fact is, it's only a short step from atheism to schizophrenia, and in most cases it's already been taken. What about you, Organism? Do you feel like someone's manipulating you?
Organizm(-:
To be honest, I do.
UGLI 666
What kind of manipulation is it?
Organizm(-:
Being locked in here, for instance. Or being fed pancakes for the second day running.
UGLI 666
Ah, in that sense. But that's not manipulation, that's God's punishment.
Organizm(-:
Ugly, let me explain to you how we're manipulated in here. Let's assume that headgear on Asterisk's head is a virtual reality helmet after all.
UGLI 666
And then what?
Organizm(-:
Perhaps everything we see here is something like that flat area Nutcracker was talking about - with the three identical vases, except one of them is more identical than the others.
Nutscracker
For us to be manipulated like that, we'd have to be wearing helmets.
Organizm(-:
Maybe we are.
Nutscracker
Touch your face with your hands. Can you feel any helmet?
Organism(-:
No, but ...
Monstradamus
I know what he's going to ask now. He's going to ask whether you can use a helmet to simulate what you feel with your hands.
Organizm(-:
Well that's right. It seems a natural enough question to me.
Nutscracker
If everything is simulated by the helmet, then it's not a helmet or a simulation any more. It's life.
Organizm(-:
Nutcracker, there's one thing you didn't explain. Who switches on all these 'Sticky Eyes' and 'Sunny Kisses'? Surely someone has to control it all?
Nutscracker
Certainly. There's an operator with a special monitor. He sees the Helmholtz as a dot on a radar screen. And the vases would be, say, red rhomboids. There's a manipulation menu on the same screen. The rest is all just like in Windows - click and drag.
Monstradamus
Click and drag. A great slogan for a double-edged axe.
Organizm(-:
And how can you do it the other way round?
Nutscracker
How do you mean?
Organizm(-:
So the virtual reality helmet is on the operator who controls the manipulation. And this operator somehow makes the others see what he sees.
Nutscracker
How could he make them do that?
Organizm(-:
Hypnosis.
UGLI 666
There you are. I was just waiting for that word.
Nutscracker
I don't know much about hypnosis. But if a hypnotist was powerful enough to make others see what he sees, why would he need a helmet?
Organizm(-:
In order to know what the others have to see.
Monstradamus
You could take it even further. Not just seeing, but actually being there. Asterisk wears a helmet in which he sees a labyrinth. And we're all inside this labyrinth. And he manipulates us.
Nutscracker
You mean we're all inside the Minotaur's head?
Monstradamus
You could say we're in the space that he sees.
Nutscracker
Then where's the Minotaur?
Monstradamus
We have to assume he's in the space that Ariadne sees in her dreams.
Organizm(-:
End of the line. Remember, Nutcracker, at the very beginning you asked me 'Where is here exactly?' I didn't understand your question at first. In the helmet of horror, that's where.
Nutscracker
That doesn't fit, though. On the one hand, the Minotaur's manipulating all of us, but on the other hand, he's got no head ... But then again, quite apart from this particular case, I can testify professionally that's what causes all the problems.
Organizm(-:
Absolutely. This Asterisk has a cheap kettle with a solar battery in his helmet. How can he decide where to use 'Sunny Kiss' and where to use 'The Seventh Seal'?
Monstradamus
Automatically. It might all depend on which section of the helmet of horror a bubble of hope happens to burst in.
Organizm(-:
But I'm the one who sees the ray of sunlight or the dove, not Asterisk. I don't understand anything any more. Who's wearing the helmet of horror? Me or the Minotaur?
Nutscracker
The Helmholtz.
Monstradamus
We've been talking about that helmet too long already. It feels like we keep trying it on over and over again. It will attach itself permanently to our heads soon. Let's change the subject.
Organizm(-:
Great idea, let's. I've just had a thought. Has anyone ever wondered why Star Wars has such a strange sequel - instead of filming what came after the third episode, they filmed what came before the first one?
Monstradamus
Why?
Organizm(-:
At the end of the third episode Darth Vader dies, and that's the end of all the Star Wars. There can't be any more, because he's the Minotaur of that world, and that black heap of junk on his head is the helmet of horror. He thinks every one of them: Luke Skywalker, the robots, Chewbacca and all the rest of it. So after he's killed there can't be any continuation.
Monstradamus
But Darth Vader takes his helmet off before he dies. And underneath he has a normal head, only covered in scars.
Organizm(-:
Yes, but it's just a fantasy, after all.
Nutscracker
Yes, Organism. Very profound. And the Iron Mask was another Minotaur. When they handed him over to the Marquis de Sade to be corrupted, the revolution began, because the pain in his xxx made him stop thinking up royalist France.
Romeo-y-Cohiba
Isolde, are you here?
IsoldA
Yes.
Romeo-y-Cohiba
I'm back. What's happening here?
IsoldA
Nothing very interesting. Nutcracker was telling everybody about politics. And I only got back from Versailles just recently.
Monstradamus
Nutcracker, on that business of royalist France. You know, the Marquis turned out not to be so terrible after all.
Romeo-y-Cohiba
It's all very monotonous where I am. Bushes, a bend, bushes, a fork, a bend, on and on for ever. The passage is about six feet wide.
IsoldA
What's that in metres?
Romeo-y-Cohiba
Two. Makes you feel like a rat in a maze. At one point I decided I'd had enough and tried to climb through the hedge. Some chance. There's a barbed-wire mesh fence in the bushes - like the grid of bars in reinforced concrete. And I'd been wondering how they managed to keep the bushes so even!
IsoldA
That labyrinth must lead out into my park. You just didn't go far enough. We have the same ground under our feet. Beige soil.
Romeo-y-Cohiba
I kept turning to the right. It's funny. A flashback from my childhood. You know the way it is - a memory illuminated by a warm, long-forgotten light that seems to conceal the most important answer of all. Some book of adventure stories you read God only knows how many years ago. Where it said you can get through any labyrinth if you keep turning right all the time. So I decided to try it. Seems it was right - I did find something interesting after all. I saw one of your fountains. It was a long way off, though.
IsoldA
Tell me about it, then.
Romeo-y-Cohiba
At one point in the labyrinth there's a little bench. A perfectly ordinary bench, like they have in parks. I climbed up on it and stood on the back, and my eyes were level with the upper edge of the bushes. On one side I could see a jet of water rising into the air, and on the other, way off in the distance, some kind of dark roof that looked as though it was covered with soot. The roof was hard to make out because it was so far away, and the jet of water was very strange - one jet shooting up into the air, but several of them falling down. Maybe it was an optical illusion.
IsoldA
No, that's right. I know that fountain. It has bronze figures too. There's a snake and a ... I've forgotten what it's called, like a pig with long spines.
Romeo-y-Cohiba