Foreman grinned. "You don't know the half of it, Jim."
"Well, gosh," I said, because I couldn't think of anything else to say. "Everybody quotes you."
"That's the idea," said Foreman. "I never said I wasn't vain. But we were talking about you, not me. We were talking about The Mode Training."
I looked away from them both. I looked out over the sharp green hills of Hawaii. The colors were so bright here they were almost unreal. I looked back to Foreman. The breeze ruffled through his white hair, making it stand up like a crown. The top of his skull was pink and shiny. Once again, it was a question of trust.
It was always a question of trust.
Finally, I said, "I know what the Training is. I looked it up. It's about self-actualization. It's about being the best that you can be. It's about being truly human. It's the next step. But I can't even manage being me. How can I manage anything more?"
Foreman considered the question. "I don't know either."
"Well . . . what kind of an answer is that?"
"An unsatisfactory one. Do you know that all the answers are unsatisfactory? They always will be. If you're looking for satisfaction, you're looking in the wrong place. The answers are the answers. Period. Whether you like them or not is irrelevant. Satisfaction lives somewhere else."
"So . . . okay, then I can't do it," I said.
"That's right," he agreed. "You're arguing for your limitations. That guarantees your failure." He added, "Too bad."
I stood up. "Maybe we'd better go back then."
"Okay."
"Dammit! Aren't you going to try to convince me?"
"No." His expression was impassive. "Why should I? You're responsible for yourself. You already know that. If you want to keep on thinking you're a failure, that's your choice too."
"That's what Jason said," I snapped.
Foreman nodded. "Maybe Jason was right."
"No, he wasn't! He was wrong! I know it! I don't know how I know it, but I know it."
"So prove it," Foreman said calmly.
I froze. "You're manipulating me," I said softly. He shook his head.
I glowered at him. I wanted to punch his fatuous grinning face. Lizard's too. I felt trapped in a corner.
Foreman was impassive. "Relax, Jim. This is just a picnic. And a talk. We don't have an agreement for anything more. Lizard asked me if you could do the Training; but since you don't want to, you can't. Besides, you've already done it."
"Huh?"
"Delandro was one of my students ten years ago. One of the best. I'm certain that he discovered things about the Chtorrans that are true. I'm certain that everything he told you was the truth as he had experienced it. I'm certain that his Tribe was definitely a context of lovingness, despite whatever judgments any of us might care to add. I may not like the facts, but I'm certain that there is a truth behind what you say, else you-and I and Lizard-would not be so disturbed by it."
"He tried to brainwash me."
"And he must have succeeded. You're still crazy. Sit down." I sat.
He moved closer, so he could reach over and put his hand on mine. "You need to abandon some old concepts, Jim. They're keeping you stuck. Delandro used the technology of The Mode Training to create a specific mode, a context of operation. It worked for his Tribe. They survived. It worked until it stopped working. Somewhere, there was a fatal error. You were merely the expression of that error. Think of it as an experiment that failed. The program crashed. It wasn't viable. But it was one more attempt on the planet to create an operating mode for human beings that guarantees survival in a Chtorran future.
"You've already had the first part of the Training, the experience of transferring from one mode to another. But that's only the smallest part of it. The real training is the creation of operating modes. Call it programming the human machinery."
"I want to do the Training to be deprogrammed," I said.
"There is no deprogramming. All there is, is shifting from the operation of one program to another. A computer that isn't running a program is a dead-and useless-machine.
"I'm going to give you the good news now. If you know this fact, then you can create programs of joy and satisfaction."
"I don't like it."
"I didn't ask you to like it. Just know it." He sighed. "Let me give you one more piece of bad news that may put some of this in perspective. Do you know what the natural state of humanity really is?"
I shook my head.
"The cult. That's the impolite term for it, but it's accurate. People need tribal identities. Veteran. Hacker. American. Fan. Employee. Parent. Grandparent. Writer. Executive. The problem with America is that it's a country that invented itself. So there aren't a lot of tribal identities. People keep borrowing identities from other sources. Religious ones are great, especially some of the Eastern disciplines. Martial arts. Creative Anachrony. Transformational Communities. Political movements. Genre fanatics. Sexual communities. We use the word cult to identify the ones that are alien to us, and we ignore the real truth that people need to belong to tribes in order to provide a context for their identities. Without your family, tribe, nation, or context, you don't know who you are. That's why you have to belong to something.
"Break away from one something and become part of another and you're reprogramming your operating context and the identity that operates inside that context. We call that being seduced by a cult, because it threatens us. It suggests that there's something wrong or weak or inappropriate about our identities. It suggests that we're not right. So we call it a cult and make it as wrong as we can so that the people close to us won't want to do it, won't desert us, won't insult or damage our contexts. We do it to preserve our identities, right or wrong. But this is the bad news, Jim. It's always wrong. Because you are not your context."
I chewed that thought over. Foreman was right. I didn't like it. "So, all you're doing is replacing one cult with another?" I asked.
He nodded wryly. "You can look at it that way. It wouldn't be inaccurate. But The Mode Training is an attempt to go beyond the limitations of living inside a cult to the possibilities that are available when you can create any context or cult you need."
"So, it's all brainwashing?"
"Jim, forget that word. All education is reprogramming. All transformation is reprogramming. First we find out what you know; then we identify what's inaccurate or inappropriate. Then we devalue your investment in it so that we can replace it with the correct information. A lot of times, it also means devaluing the context around the information and replacing that with a more appropriate one. This is what you do whether you're learning trigonometry or French or Catholicism. Yes, it's reprogramming. The same way you reprogram a computer. You're a machine, Jim. It's all bad news. So, what are you going to do about it?"
I looked him straight in the eye. "I don't know," I said. I said it with finality.
"Fair enough," said Foreman. "When you get bored with not knowing and start getting curious about what's on the other side-and I know you will-then come see me. The next Training starts in ten days. I'll hold a chair for you."
He stood up and stretched and ran a hand through his hair. He pointed along the rim of the crater. "See that little building over there? That's a comfort station. I'm going to take a walk."
He left Lizard and me alone.
I looked at her. "I don't like being told that what I feel for you is just a program. It makes me feel like I'm not in control."
Her eyes were deep. She asked, "So, who wrote the program?"
"I don't know."
"Yes, you do."
I looked at my love for Lizard. Oh. "I-I guess, I did."
"You guess?"
"I did."
"Uh-huh. And so did I. So what?" She said, "We've been looking at the worms as biological machines and trying to figure them out. What would we discover if we turned the same mirror on ourselves? What kind of machines are we?"