Psychamok

Resume 1: Psychomech For each force there exists a counterforce, and every action has its reaction. For darkness there is light, for day night. Time is measured in space and space in time, and neither may exist without the other. These are Laws of Nature which apply to all matter, to every living creature in every biosphere, and to every psychic emanationeverythoughtin the great Psychosphere which encompasses all the worlds of space and time wherever life exists. And the Principal Law is this: There Shall Be a Balance. For laughter there shall be sorrow, and for life death. That is to say: for every birth or emergence there shall be a life or existence, running its course and coming to an end. With time tipping the scales, even mountains die and turn into sand.... ...Except that in 1952 a man was born on the planet Earth who would break that Prime Law. His name was Richard Allan Garrison, and his destiny was immortality. * * * Garrison's childhood was never easy, rarely happy. Life's knocks were hard; he was shaped on an anvil of pain. Finally the loss of his mother, the only one who ever cared or mattered, finished the job. Dipped naked in his sorrow, he emerged case-hardened. Cynical, a littlea rebel, somewhatand bitter, yes. But not completely. Garrison's flesh was weak as all flesh, but his will was unbendable. He had taught himself a trick: he could take disappointments, hurts and frustrations, and absorb them, drown them in the deep dark wells at the back of his mind. A trick, a defense mechanism. One which would serve him well. But there were other tricks in Garrison's mind of which he was unaware...until September 1972, in Northern Ireland. By then he was a Corporal in the Royal Military Police, a "target," as he and every other soldier out there thought of themselves. Boots and a uniform, a flak jacket and a Sterling submachine gun, and eyes in the back of your head if you fancy a pint in the mess tonight. September 1972, and a dreamor nightmarethat persisted in bothering Garrison. A warning, an omen, a glimpse into a strange future, the dream had concerned a man-God, a dog and a Machine...and Garrison himself. And it had ended with a bomb. While its repetition worried him he could hardly hope to recognize it for what it was; in Northern Ireland many men dreamed of bombs. But Garrison's bomb was real.... Thomas Schroeder was in Belfast, too, on business. Millionaire industrialist, ex-Nazi, arms manufacturer, international financier, he was there with his aide, Willy Koenig, and with his family. Schroeder's young wife, their baby son and the child's nanny, had rooms in a hotel in an assumed "safe area" of the city. From there, upon conclusion of his business, they were to fly to Australia; a holiday in the sun. That holiday never happened. Garrison was on duty when the bomb warning came, was there at the Europa when Schroeder and Koenig returned from certain "business" talks with the IRA (whose proposals they had viciously rejected) to find the building cordoned off and in process of evacuation. In an effort to get Schroeder's wife, child and nanny out of the hotel, Garrison had killed two young terroristsafter which he had been caught in the bomb blast. He was blinded, Schroeder crippled, the nanny killed outright. But Schroeder's wife and child were saved unharmed. At the last, however, when the blast came, Garrison had expected it. He hadknownit was coming and also that it would blind himas it had in his dream. He later remembered Schroeder's face from that dream, toothe face of the man-God.... * * *[read more]