When I entered prot’s room on Wednesday morning, escorted by a couple of felines, he exclaimed: “Look what the cats drug in!” Several other inmates were in attendance.
I wasn’t amused. “Prot, I need to talk to you.”
“Anything you say, doc.” A tiny nod and all the other patients trailed out, but not without a little muttering and nasty stares, even from the cats.
I sat down in his chair. “What did you tell Milton?”
“You mean about treating his life as a bad joke?”
“Yes.”
“I told him to forget your history. It’s nothing but a bloody mess, a catalog of false starts and wrong turns, doomed from the beginning.”
“He should forget all of our history?”
“Every human being should forget it.”
I wondered whether he was joking again. “Look, prot. I appreciate your attempts to help the patients. We all do. But I don’t think you should try to treat them without discussing it with their doctors first.”
“Why?”
“Because mental illness is a very complex matter—”
“Not really.”
“Prot, I know you’ve helped others in the past. But a wild suggestion like that could backfire if——”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“And in the second place, how can we forget our history? Someone has said that if we forget history, we are doomed to repeat it.”
“You repeat it anyway! You have a war, then another war, then another and another. You never learn a thing from them, except how to kill more beings more efficiently. Your history serves mainly to remind you who to hate. But your petty wars and other peccadilloes are a small matter compared to your determination to destroy your own WORLD. Basically you got off on the wrong feet in the beginning. Everything you’ve tried—feudalism, communism, capitalism, nationalism, sexism, racism, speciesism— has failed. The only way to get out of a vortex like that is to start all over again.”
I reminded myself never to argue with a crazy person. “Thanks. I’ll pass that on. The other thing I wanted to talk to you about involves a couple of visitors we had -yesterday.”
“You mean the g-men.”
“You know about them?”
“Everybody knows about them.”
“So you know they want to speak to you.”
“They want me to go to germany, too?”
“No, I think the TV demonstration convinced them you can travel on a beam of light. But they want to know exactly how you do it.”
“It’s done with—”
“Mirrors. Yes, I know. Would it be all right with you if Giselle schedules a meeting between you and them?”
“If she wants.”
I stood up. “When will she be coming in?”
“Any time now.”
“She tells me she’s going to K-PAX with you. Is that true?”
“If rob goes, she wants to go, too.”
“And if he doesn’t want to go? Or you can’t find him?”
“I imagine she’ll want to stay here with him. Odd, isn’t it?”
“What’s odd about it?”
“Your beings would rather live on a doomed PLANET than go to paradise and leave someone you love behind. It’s a most interesting phenomenon.”
“In any case, do you think you should get her hopes up like that?”
“I merely answered her questions. The hope is her own idea.”
“But you might include her on your list.”
“Many of the sapiens I’ve talked to would go if they had the chance. And almost all the other beings. You’ve made life on EARTH miserable for them, you know. It’s turning out to be more difficult than I thought to narrow the list down to a hundred.”
“Before you make a final decision, the residents of Ward Three want to speak with you as well. Will you come for lunch today?”
“Will there be fruit?”
“I guess that can be arranged.”
“I’ll be there!”
I needed coffee. In the doctors’ dining room I found Laura Chang reading a journal and sipping a cup of tea. She had been with us only a couple of months and, as yet, I didn’t know her very well, except that she came with a fine academic record and excellent recommendations. About all I knew for sure was that she had been a championship ice skater in her youth but had sustained an unfortunate injury that shortened her career and precluded a trip to the 1988 winter Olympics. As a result of this and the subsequent depression she became interested in medicine and then psychiatry.
I asked her how she was getting along with her patients, whether she had any unanswered questions about the hospital, or any problems with the staff or facilities.
“That pounding and drilling in the new wing is driving me crazy!” she replied without looking up from her article (on the relationship between autism and oxygen deprivation in the fetus).
“Well, it’ll all be finished in another twenty or thirty years.”
Chang was not amused. “It’s like going to the dentist every day!”
I went for a cup of “rainforest blend.” On the other side of the room I could hear Thorstein and Menninger discussing Cassandra. Or Thorstein, anyway. He has the kind of voice that would carry across Grand Central Station. It appeared that Cassie had withdrawn even more into her thoughts and dreams than ever. This was not unusual—all the patients have their ups and downs. What was puzzling, however, was that she seemed to be the one resident on whom prot was having a negative effect. Even prot can’t win them all, I mused.
When I got back to Chang’s table she was still buried in the journal. I gazed at her shiny black hair, the bright, youthful face, and for a moment I caught a glimpse of the future. Despite the astronomical expense of medical and psychiatric training, the cost-cutting outlook of the healthcare providers, and all the other difficulties associated with the practice, I realized with no small degree of pleasure that the current crop of clinicians was among the best ever to come out of the various residencies. Maybe because the greater challenges aren’t for the faint-hearted.
“Any other complaints?” I asked her. “Anything you want to talk about?” What I really wanted to know, of course, was whether she was having trouble with any of her patients.
She looked up from her article. “I would like to know more about prot.”
“You mean about Robert. Prot is really only a secondary personality.”
“But if I understood you correctly at the last staff meeting, you’re having a problem getting through to Robert. What have you tried?”
Good God, I thought. She wants to help me. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted. But what the hell—maybe she could spot something I’d missed. I gave her a short summary of prot’s first and second “visits,” and a brief review of what had been accomplished, if anything, during our four sessions since his reappearance two weeks earlier.
“The whistle didn’t bring him out this time?”
“Not as far as I could tell. He’s withdrawn even deeper into his shell than he was when I first saw him seven years ago.”
“Yes.”
“With hypnosis or without?”
“Without. It was a post-hypnotic suggestion.”
“Ever try it when the patient was under hypnosis?”
My chin dropped. Then I burned the roof of my mouth. What a fool I was! It had been so easy to bring Rob forward in 1995 that I assumed hypnosis wouldn’t be necessary this time around.
Without another word she returned to her journal. But her eyes were even brighter than before, and I’m almost sure there was a hint of a smile on her face.
The Thursday lecture was another disaster. When I reported that prot wouldn’t cooperate in the light-travel experiment, there was a collective roar. A discussion broke out (as if I weren’t even there) about whether this proved prot was only human after all. When I finally gained control and began to talk about eating disorders, there was a constant shifting in seats, shuffling of papers, coughing and hacking, and the inevitable, “Are we going to be responsible for this on the final exam?”
I was tired and went through the material as fast as possible. And, as before, I was preoccupied by thoughts of prot and all the unwanted complications his presence at the hospital always brought, though I had been informed that his joining the residents of Three for lunch the day before had had a considerable salutary effect. And there was definitely a change in Milton. Not only was he no longer telling endless jokes and juggling vegetables and riding around the lounge on his unicycle, he couldn’t seem to do those things anymore, couldn’t even remember any jokes. In the not inexpert opinion of Betty McAllister and some of the other nurses, he was as sane as they were, and should be transferred to Ward One, if not discharged immediately.
But what about Cassandra? Why had she become more withdrawn than she was on her arrival, and what did this have to do with prot? Of course my thoughts were focused primarily on Robert. I had to find him again, perhaps while his “alien” friend was under hypnosis. Failing that, I planned to go at him with what might have happened to him as a baby, jolt him into consciousness one way or another. I only hoped the shock wouldn’t be just another short circuit.
Once again I withheld the bowl of fruit. I wanted prot to feel edgy, uncertain. He came into my examining room, glanced around, shrugged, and took his seat. “How are you today?” I asked him perfunctorily.
“Peachy keen,” he replied, rather pointedly I thought.
“Have you seen the CIA yet?”
“S?˄/, sen˄˙or, I see the cia by the seaside.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them it was done with mirrors.”
“What else?”
“They wanted to know if I’d explained the procedure to any foreign powers.”
“Well?”
“I said, ‘What you mean, “foreign,” white man’?”
I concealed a weak grin. “And?”
“They wanted me to sign something promising I wouldn’t do that.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“What’d they say?”
“They offered me some stocks and bonds.”
I couldn’t hold back a snort. “Anything else?”.
“They asked me not to try to leave this place.”
“Did you agree to that?”
“I said I would stay until December the thirty-first. Except for a few brief excursions, perhaps.”
“What did they think of your making ‘excursions’?”
“They said they would be watching me.”
“Since you brought that up, I wonder if you would tell me something I’ve been wondering about: How do you get out of the hospital without anyone seeing you?”
“Can you see a photon?” he asked with an all-too-familiar grin.
“But that’s what light is composed of, isn’t it?”
“More or less.”
“Well, can you go through doors?”
“Now, gene, you know light doesn’t go through doors.”
“Does that mean if we put you in a room without windows you wouldn’t be able to get out?”
“Of course not. I’d just open the door and leave.”
“What if the door were locked?”
He wagged his head. To him I must have appeared to be the stupidest person on Earth. “Gino, there isn’t a lock on EARTH I couldn’t open. But if you want to play another of your little games ...”
“What if there were no door?”
“If there’s no door, how would you get me in there?”
“Well, we could build the room around you.”
“And what would keep me from leaving while the walls are going up?”
“Well, we could—” But time was passing rapidly, and there wasn’t anymore to waste. “Ah, skip it. See that little dot on the wall behind me?”
He warbled, “That ooooooold black magic has me [pause] innnnnn its spellllll. . . . Onetwothreefour—” and dropped into his customarily deep hypnotic state.
I waited a moment before saying gendy, though confidently, “Rob, would you please step forward for a moment? I have something very important to discuss with you.”
There was no indication he had heard me.
“Rob, I think I might know what’s bothering you. What’s causing you so much anguish. May I tell you about it?”
I waited for another long minute. It was like speaking to the dead. Well, I thought, what can we lose? I pulled out the whistle and blew it as loudly as I could.
There wasn’t a twitch, not a flutter. But of course he might have been faking a response in 1995. As a former mentor was fond of saying, “When all else fails, try a sledgehammer.”
“Rob, I think you may have been abused in some way very early in your life, maybe when you were a baby. Something that you yourself may not even be aware of, and it ties in with your later encounters with Uncle Dave and Aunt Catherine. It was something terrible and it irreversibly changed your life, but whatever happened wasn’t your fault, and we can repair the damage if you’ll let us. Do you understand?”
No response.
“Rob? Can we talk about this for a minute?” I waited. “All right. If you’ll just indicate in some way that you hear me, you can go for now. I won’t bring this up again until you’re ready to talk about it—okay?”
Not a nod, not a whisper.
“All right, Rob. Please think it over until we meet again in a few days. I’ll see you then.”
I waited for another little while. “Prot? Are you there?”
His eyes popped open. “Hiya, doc, how you been?”
“Peachy keen,” I replied glumly. “I’m going to wake you up now. Five, four, three—”
“Are we done?”
“Apparently we’re back to square one. Again.”
“The best place to be!”
“In that case, let’s start where we left off last time. You were six, in Earth terms, and so far you’ve had a perfect childhood on K-PAX, with no problems whatever, except for the odd scrape or bruise, of course.” Missing or ignoring the hint of sarcasm, he waited for me to proceed. “What happened after that?” I prodded him.
“After what?”
“After you were six.”
“I was seven.”
“Har har har. Tell me about your life as a boy of seven. For example, did you have any friends your own age?”
“Everyone on K-PAX—”
“Let me rephrase that. Did you have anyone your age to play—I mean, to interact with? Of your own species, that is.”
“Not really. As you know, there aren’t many children around. Not like on EARTH, where almost everyone seems to think it’s his and her duty to breed and breed and choke your WORLD to death as quickly as possible.”
I jotted down: Environment rantings really about procreation/sex? “Let’s talk about you today, shall we? I remind you that if your parents hadn’t conceived you, you wouldn’t be here.”
“If Giselle had wheels, she’d be a wagon.”
“Do you think you shouldn’t have been born?”
“Irrelevant, incompetent, and immaterial. I didn’t get a vote in the matter.”
“If you had gotten a vote, how would you have voted?”
“If Giselle had wheels, she’d be—”
“All right. Who did you associate with when you were a boy?”
“Whoever happened—”
“—to be around. Yes, of course. But could you be more specific?”
He named a few names, none of which I had heard before.
“Okay,” I interrupted. “What sorts of things did you do with these—uh—beings?”
“The same as anyone does. We ate and slept and watched the stars and talked about all sorts of things.”
“What sorts of things did you talk about?”
“Whatever came to mind.”
At that point something came to mine. “Tell me: Who told you about the Earth?”
“No one told me. I heard your radio waves when I was in the library. Along with those of other PLANETS.”
“How old were you then?”
“Oh, thirty-five or so. Three and a half in your terms.”
“Are all K-PAXian kids interested in astronomy?”
“Oh, sure. K-PAXians love to talk about other PLANETS, other GALAXIES, other UNIVERSES, that sort of thing.”
“When did you first come to Earth?”
“You remember. In 1963, your calendar.”
“How old were you then?”
“Sixty-eight.”
“Was it your first trip to another planet?”
“No. But it was my first solo flight.”
“I see. Do you remember the details?”
“Every one of them.”
“Would you mind filling me in on them, please?”
“Not at all.” But he just sat there.
I rephrased the question.
“I got a call from someone named ‘robin.’ He said he needed me. So I hopped on over.”
“He called you on the telephone?”
“Of course not—we don’t have telephones on K-PAX.”
“So how did you know he needed you?”
“I suppose I happened to be tuned to his wavelength.”
“His wavelength?”
“Have you forgotten all your high-school physics, gino? A wavelength is the length of a wave.”
“And you just went.”
“Yep.”
“What were you doing when the call came?”
“Eating some likas. Watching a yellow horn dig a hole.”
“And where did you land when you got here?”
“In china.”
“How did you get to Montana?”
“Same way I got to china.”
“Light travel.”
“Kee-reck.”
“So you found Rob—”
“In no time at all.”
“What was he doing when you got there?”
“Attending a funeral.”
“What did he say when you showed up?”
“Not much. His father had just died.”
“So he was pretty unhappy?”
Prot paused here. “It was the first time I had encountered sadness. It took me a little while to understand what was wrong with him.”
“I figured it probably had something to do with his father’s demise.”
“Wouldn’t that make you sad?”
“I don’t know who my father is.”
“Of course. So you couldn’t possibly be sad when he dies.”
“I probably wouldn’t even know about it.”
“How convenient.”
“Is that another of your famous non sequiturs?”
“What did Robert want from you?”
“He didn’t say. I think he just wanted someone to commiserate with.”
“I can understand that. But why you?”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
“He doesn’t seem to want to talk to me. Will you ask him?”
“Sure. If I see him.”
“Thank you. Now—how long were you on Earth?”
“A few days.”
“Just long enough to help him over the worst of it, is that right?”
“I suppose you could put it that way. After a while, he didn’t need me anymore.”
“So you went back to K-PAX.”
“Righto.”
“Back to your wanderings and stargazing and all the rest.”
“Yes, indeedy.”
“And that’s how you spent your childhood.”
“Pretty much. An orange or a banana would taste good right now, don’t you think?”
“I’ll see that you get some at the end of the session.”
“No problemo. Now—how old were you when you got to puberty?”
“A hundred and twenty-eight.”
“What’s that like on K-PAX?”
“About like it is here. Hair sprouts up everywhere. Stuff like that.”
“Any change in your feeling about girls?”
“Why should there be?”
“When did you become interested in girls?”
“I’m interested in everything.”
“I mean sexually interested.”
“You’re playing dumb again, aren’t you, gene? No one on K-PAX is sexually interested in anyone else.”
“Because the sex act is so unpleasant.”
“Very.”
“Tell me—if it’s so unpleasant, why do any of your beings want to produce children at all?”
“Not many of them do.”
“Just enough to keep your species alive?”
“‘Species’ don’t live. Only individuals do.”
“I’ll rephrase that. Your species propagates only enough to maintain itself?”
“No. As a matter of fact, our species will probably disappear in a few thousand years.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?”
“Why should it?”
“Why should it? Because there wouldn’t be any more dremers (K-PAXians of prot’s species)!”
He shrugged. “Here today, gone mañana. A drop in the ocean of time.”
“All right. Tell me this: Is sexual activity unpleasant right from the start?”
“Did you ever get an erection when you were a boy?”
“Once in a while.”
“What was it like?”
“It usually meant I had to urinate.”
“You never touched your penis except to urinate?”
“No.”
“Did you ever have any sexual feelings when you had an erection, good or bad?”
“Pretty bad. I got up and peed right away.”
“So, in your entire—ah—four hundred years or so, you’ve never been with a woman? Or a man, for that matter? Or masturbated, not even once?”
“Nothing could be farther from my mind.”
“And no one ever made an attempt to seduce you at any time in your life?”
“Only on EARTH. Unsuccessfully, of course.”
“Have you ever seen anyone else do it? Of your own species, I mean.”
“Do what?”
“Engage in sexual activity of any kind.”
“No. It hardly ever happens on K-PAX, you know.”
“You’ve never seen anyone kiss or touch someone of the opposite sex?”
“Of course we touch. But only in what you would call a ‘platonic’ way.”
Something, no doubt extraneous, occurred to me. “If I remember correctly, you told me once that there is no such thing as marriage on K-PAX—is that right?”
“Yes, and may I say it’s a pretty stupid idea on EARTH, too.”
“Well, without love or marriage, how do you know who to produce a child with?”
“It’s no big mystery. You bump into someone who, for some reason or other, feels a compulsion to add to the population of the species and—”
“How would you know if someone wants to do that?”
“He or she will tell you, of course. We don’t have all these silly games you play on EARTH.”
“Where do you ‘bump into’ members of the opposite sex? Are there bars? Things like that?”
“No bars. No restaurants. No exercise parlors. No grocery stores. No churches. No—”
“While you’re traveling, then?”
“Usually. Or in the libraries. You’d be surprised how many interesting beings you can find in a library.”
“And you just do it, without thinking much about it?”
“Oh we think about it very carefully before going ahead with it.”
“You have to weigh the pros and cons.”
“Exactly.”
“And everyone on K-PAX knows how unpleasant sex is.”
“Certainly.”
“Who teaches you about that?”
“Whoever is—”
“Whoever is around. I know, I know. All right. What if someone wants to conceive a child with you and you don’t want to do it?”
“Nothing.”
“What about animals?”
Another little prot-like snicker. “We’re all animals, gino.”
“Did you ever see any other species on your planet copulate?”
“Once in a while.”
“Absolutely. There’s considerable resistance, a lot of noise and commotion.”
“Do all your beings have this problem?”
“I don’t consider it a problem.”
“Prot, which do you hate most—money or sex?”
He wagged his head again. “You still don’t get it, do you, doc? Money is a dumb idea. Sex is horrible.”
I nodded, surprised to discover that our time was up.
But prot wasn’t finished. “Your beings seem to be endlessly fascinated by the subject of reproduction. That’s all your popular songs are about, and your movies and sitcoms, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Love, sex, love, sex, love, sex. You humans aren’t easily bored, are you?”
“It’s an important subject for most of us.”
“Pity. Think what you could accomplish if you spent all that time and energy on something else.”
“We’ll take this up next session, all right?”
“Whatever you say. Don’t forget to have some fruit sent over. I’ll be in my room.”
“Just curious—what are you going to do after you’ve had the fruit?”
“Thought I’d take a nap.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“It can be.” He flipped on his dark glasses. “Cheers.”
I wondered what he meant by that. As he was going out the door, I shouted, “Prot!”
He whirled and peered over the dark glasses. “Yeeeesssss?”
“Do you ever dream when you sleep?”
“Sure.”
“Try to remember one for next time, will you?”
“That won’t be too hard. They’re always the same.”
“Really? What are they about?”
He rolled his eyes. “Ka raba du rasht pan domit, sord karum—”
“In English, please.”
“Okay. I see a field of grains, with trees and beautiful flowers mixed in here and there. Nearby a couple of aps are chasing each other, and in the distance a bunch of—well, something like your giraffes are munching rummud leaves. A whole flock of mountain korms are flying by, barking their exuberant calls....” He opened his eyes and gazed at the ceiling. “And the sky! The sky is like one of your sunsets—pink and purple all the time. You might say it’s a picture-postcard scene, except we don’t have pictures. Or postcards. The air is so clear you can see some of the rills on our closest moons. But the best parts of it you don’t see. You feel and smell and taste them. It’s so utterly calm that you can hear for miles. The air is sweeter than honeysuckle, only not as cloying. The ground is soft and warm. You can lie down anywhere. There is food wherever you look. And you are free to go anywhere without the slightest fear. Each moment is limited only by your imagination. And it’s wonderfully peaceful. There’s no pressure to work or do anything you don’t want to do. Every single moment is a happy time, a time without—”
“All right, prot. It sounds great. I’ll send you down a basket of fruit right away. What would you like?”
“Bananas!” he replied instantly. “I haven’t had any of those for a while. The riper the better!” he reminded me.
“I remember.”
He smiled in anticipation as he made his way to the stairs.
After he had gone I found myself scribbling: LOVE! SEX! LOVE! SEX! on my yellow pad. In fact I made it into a little tune. I had a feeling this had been a key session, yet I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why. Was his problem a question of doing something almost unspeakable (in his mind) to someone he loved? Did this involve sex in some way? To prot, sex was the worst idea in the universe, worse even than his other bugaboos—money, religion, governments, schools, and all the rest. Despite his milk and honey protests, life was so calamitous for prot and his fellow “K-PAXians” that most of them would rather become extinct than reproduce themselves. I couldn’t help feeling more than a little saddened by this terrible truth: The ultimate solution to his, and perhaps everyone’s, problems was death itself. I didn’t much like the ring of that.
Then there was the matter of dreams, a direct pipeline to the unconscious mind. There are whole journals devoted to the dream state, as well as to the phenomenon of sleep itself, though no one seems to know what purpose either of them really fulfills. It has been hypothesized (by Sagan, among others) that sleep evolved as a way to keep prey animals out of the clutches of predators during periods of highest risk. My own view is more or less the opposite: that sleep became a way to reduce anxiety and boredom while animals were in hiding. If so, it may serve the same function in human beings. In any case, the need for sleep has been with us for millions of years, as has, perhaps, the dream state.
The analysis of dreams can be a powerful component of psychotherapy. Dreams may be a way of bringing into the conscious mind events that are normally repressed. For example, a man who fears heights might persistently dream of falling out of windows. And a woman who is concerned about the sexual advances of a co-worker might dream of being attacked by men with clubs (phallic symbols). Though subject to more than one possible interpretation, dreams can give us important insights into what is literally “on someone’s mind.” Sometimes they can tell us things that don’t come out even under hypnosis! Though it didn’t seem likely that an analysis of prot’s relentlessly idyllic one would be productive, I kicked myself for not making an effort to analyze Robert’s dreams when I had had the opportunity. Now there were no dreams of Robert’s to analyze. There was no Robert!
I kicked myself again.