1 (13) This man, after a hard struggle in childhood and youth against poverty and lack of education, became a journalist. For many years he was a dubious figure in the eyes of the authorities, for he was one of those - sharing a critical and analytical capacity not dissimilar from that of 1 (5) - who were continually attempting to present a factual picture of events and processes to the public very different from that of the majority view. This from a nonpolitical viewpoint, though he was branded as a socialist at a time when it was unfashionable and ill regarded. As happens often on Shikasta, the viewpoints he had represented for three decades, side by side with a minority of similar men and women who had a hard time of it, suddenly became a majority view, and almost overnight he was something of a hero, particularly among the young. There are areas of Shikasta where critics of society may be hunted and persecuted all their lives. In others, they are absorbed. Over and over again, people who have been kept on the move mentally, always having to defend and sharpen and refine their perceptions of events, will suddenly find themselves in a spotlight focussed on them by the many publicity machines, will be made national figures, will be frozen, in fact, in public attitudes. Again and again, valuable people become neutralised, made into - often - figures of fun, at the least lose their impetus, their force. The man listed here fell into this trap, and had not understood that he was repeating and repeating old attitudes. I have arranged for him to meet a woman from Southern Continent I, who has had to fight so hard all her life even to survive that she has energy for two: he will marry her, and become revivified, and forced out of his pattern. Their children may be expected to be remarkable, and I have arranged for them to be watched by Agent 20.
1 (9). This woman has always been oversensitive to influences of any kind, and lacking in robustness and self-definition. She was sheltered by a strong family and then by a strong husband. He died and she was quickly a victim of depressions and states of sorrow that became addictive. This condition attracted vampires in Zone Six of a particularly virulent and persistent sort. It was clear that she could not live long and that in Zone Six she would be awaited by no helpful entities. I wondered whether to attempt another marriage for her, but it happened that a woman with strength of character and decisiveness capable of repelling any amount of debilitating and miasmic influences was in a condition of indecision about her life. They are now living together and the resulting energies are successfully rebuffing the malignant entities from Zone Six.
DOCUMENT, LYNDA COLDRIDGE.
(No. 17, this Report.)
I am writing this for Doctor Hebert. I keep telling him I can't write, I never write, I never have. He says I must. So I am. He says if other people read it they will be helped. But the reason he wants me to write things is that I will be helped. That is what he thinks. Well he will read this first so he will find out what I think. Although I do keep telling him. Doctor Hebert is a nice man. (You are a nice man!) But you don't listen. Doctors are always like this. (Not only doctors.) I often talk to Doctor Hebert for hours at a time. But he wants me to write my thoughts down. That seems to me funny. Crazy. But it is me who is crazy, not Doctor Hebert. Doctor Hebert knows everything that ever happened to me. He knows more about me than any other doctor. More than Mark does. Well that goes without saying. Or Martha. Or even Sandra or Dorothy did. Doctor Hebert says it is important that he knows about me. He says I have had every form of treatment ever used in mental hospitals. He says I have survived them. This is wrong. I have not survived them. I tell him how I was when I was a girl. I was mad then. According to their ideas. Then I tell him how I was mad when I was mad in the way I was mad when they started giving me treatments and putting me into hospitals. Because the two kinds of madness are different, not the same. Do you understand this Doctor Hebert? (You say I should call you John but I don't see why. Calling you John doesn't make you mad or me sane.) When I was a girl all kinds of things went on in my head, and now I know that was mad. Because so many people have said so. But it was lovely. I often think about that. I have not known that niceness since. (But sometimes I do get little flashes but I'll write that later. If I ever get to it.) And when they began the machines and the injections and the dreadfulness what was in my head was different from before. But they wouldn't see that. Do you, Doctor Hebert? Do you? I am telling you. In words. Words, but on paper. I shall begin again here. I get muddled. I meant to say something else first of all.
Doctor Hebert has ideas of all kinds. Some of them, are good. I applaud them. I applaud you Doctor Hebert. Clap Clap. This is one of my childish days. Doctor Hebert says that I feel myself to be useless. (But I am. Anyone would see that at once.) He says that I can be of use to people who have just gone mad and who don't understand what is happening to them. He says I should go to such a person and say This is what is happening to you. He says that then they will feel better. And make me feel better because they feel better. But what he doesn't understand is, what will make them feel better is that they feel better. I.e., it all stops, it goes away, they aren't crazy any longer. He says I must say to some poor loon, all shaking and crying and hearing voices, sometimes coming out of walls, or seeing horrible things that aren't there (but perhaps they are!) I must say... new sentence. Look, I must say. Do not be afraid. You see, it is like this. (I am talking to this poor loon now.) We have senses adjusted to a very small range of sight or hearing. All the time sounds are coming in from everywhere, like a waterfall. But we are machines set to accept only let us say 5 percent. If the machine goes wrong then we hear more than we need. We see more than we need. Your machine has gone wrong. Instead of seeing just daylight and night and your cousin Fanny and the cat and your ever-loving husband, which is all you need to get along, you are seeing a lot more i.e. all these horrors and peculiar colours and visions and things. The reason they are horrors and not nice is that your machine is distorting what is there, which is really nice. (So says Doctor Hebert, but he is a nice man. You are a nice man Doctor Hebert, and how do you know?) And instead of hearing your husband saying he loves you or your wife or a bus going past you are hearing what your husband is really thinking. Like, you are an ugly old bag. Or what your children think. Or the dog. (I can hear what the dog belonging to the caretaker thinks. I like him better than most people. Does he like me better than most dogs? I shall ask him. If people knew what dogs are thinking they would be surprised. Just as well, really.) Well, if I say all this to the poor loons, they will cheer up and feel better. Says Doctor Hebert. To understand all is to forgive all. But I say to Doctor Hebert, that is not so. If you have voices sometimes it seems a hundred of them hammering away in your head, then you don't care why. You can do without original thoughts about percentages believe me. You want them to stop. And if you keep seeing monsters and terrible things you want them to go away. Is it going to cheer them up? I mean, knowing that we (people and for all I know dogs too) are geared to see only Aunt Fanny and the cat and the street because outside this everything is horrors? (Doctor Hebert why are you so positive the horrors aren't there? I mean, why? I really want to know. I mean, what world are you living in, Doctor Hebert, because I don't think it is the same as mine. Well I suppose that goes without saying, because you aren't rnad and I am.) I shall start again. What you are wrong about is this, that people will feel better if I or you say things like this. Because nearly everyone has been brought to believe that the 5 percent is all there is. Five percent is the whole universe. And if they think anything else, they are peculiar. And if the machine then goes wrong and in comes let us say 10 percent then as well as being frightened about voices coming out of someone's elbow or the door handle, and what these voices say which is nearly always silly, then they will know they are bad. Wicked. Because you can't change people's ideas. Not just like that. Not suddenly. As it is, the poor loons are coping with silly voices that they know are silly, which is bad enough, but the voices are saying they are wicked and disgusting. Nearly always. And then on top of that, they have to cope with knowing that they are open to more than 5 percent, which is bad by definition. When they were children it is more than likely they saw and heard all kinds of things more than the 5 percent, like having friends they could see others couldn't, and their parents when they told them said they were lying and wicked. I am getting upset. I shall stop now.