Since we were from Flag, we were treated like royalty by the people in the org. After all, we were Hubbard's personal representatives, as Flag missionaires. Molly and Al turned out to be genuinely nice people. They showed us around New York City and we all had a great time together. Molly and Al's auditing went well and the mission was considered a success.
When I was in New York, my parents came to visit me. I had called them when I arrived in New York. It was the first time in over a year that I was able to tell them where I was, since the location of Flag had to be kept a secret. When I told them where I was, they immediately flew to New York to visit me. My mother remarked that I looked very thin, but she seemed to be very happy to see me. I had also stopped wearing my glasses because I had convinced myself my eyesight had improved. I knew that my parents were concerned, but they didn't criticize my involvement in any way, since they had learned that such tactics didn't work with me. No intervention, short of deprogramming would have worked on me at that time because of the high I was on. I had been through a lot of pain, but at that point, I felt it had all been worth it. At the time, I thought that my bad days were all behind me and from here on I would soar to greater and greater heights. As far as I was concerned, I was doing work that was vital to the salvation of the planet. It was almost as if the pain and suffering I had been through enhanced the high I was on that summer. I felt I had earned it!
The Rock Concert
In early September, 1974, I returned to the ship. When I arrived, I found out that Quentin was away on his annual three week vacation. I started on my next level of training, the Class VII course and internship, which qualifies the auditor to audit a set of processes called Power and Power Plus, designed to give the PC the ability to handle power. At that time, Power was an important grade of Scientology, but today these processes are rarely, if ever used.
Shortly after my arrival, an event occurred on the ship, which changed things for us dramatically. We were on the island of Madiera, which is owned by Portugal. There had been political trouble in that area and a political coup had recently taken place in Lisbon. It seemed that a group of communists in Madiera thought that the people aboard the ship were CIA and one afternoon, they threw rocks at the ship, injuring several people. I missed this fiasco because I happened to be ashore at the time, along with several other people from the ship, including Mary Sue. My friend Karen and I had just been to a movie and were on our way back to the ship when we were met by some people who told us what had happened. We were taken to a local disco to hide out until it was safe to return to the ship. Later that night, we were taken to the ship, which had gone out to anchor. This event, thereafter, became known as the «rock concert». Hubbard decided that we would sail across the Atlantic ocean to the United States, a voyage we began the next day. The trip across the ocean was smooth and for once, I didn't get seasick. The ocean was as smooth as glass. I loved to stand above decks and just look at the vast expanse of ocean on all sides of me.
We were just off the shore of South Carolina when Hubbard was warned that IRS agents were waiting on the docks to arrest Hubbard, so we headed for Bermuda, where we stayed for several weeks.
This wonderful, peaceful voyage across the Atlantic, unbeknownst to me, was to be the calm before the storm. All hell was about to break loose.
Here We Go Again—Another Rollercoaster Ride
While we were in Bermuda, Quentin returned from his vacation and dropped a bombshell. It seemed that his father tried to hush it up, but Quentin told me the whole story in a very calm, detached way. According to what Quentin told me, he had decided to kill himself again and had constructed an elaborate plan for his suicide. He flew to New York and took a room at the Times Square Hotel. He then took his passport, which was his only form of ID, and hid it behind the bathroom mirror in his hotel room. He didn't want anyone to know that he was the son of L. Ron Hubbard when his body was found. He then flew to San Francisco, where he planned to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, but when it came time for him to jump, he just couldn't do it. After that, he was found wandering around on a road when he was stopped by police who were looking for someone who had committed a crime. They determined that Quentin didn't fit the description of the suspect, but since he seemed confused and disoriented, they took him to a mental hospital. In order to protect his family's name, Quentin pretended to have amnesia. He was in an institution for about two weeks when someone from Scientology tracked him down, at which point Quentin «regained his memory» of who he was and was released. He told me this story in a very matter-of-fact tone of voice, as if he were telling me about an innocuous vacation itinerary. I was horrified, and he noticed. He remarked that the expression on my face looked like the expression on his mother's face when he told her about it. Quentin and his mother were very close. In spite of all her other faults, Mary Sue really did love her children and Quentin seemed to be her favorite.
To this day, I don't know if it was L. Ron Hubbard or Mary Sue, but someone was very upset that Quentin told me what happened. David Mayo, the Senior Case Supervisor, ordered me not to see Quentin anymore, without telling me who the order came from or why. I don't think the order originated with David. I asked him what was really going on and he flatly refused to discuss the matter further. David and I had gotten along pretty well in the past, but he was very firm on this issue. So was I. I said that Quentin was my friend, he needed me and I was going to be there for him. I told him that my personal life was none of his business. We got into a big argument. David's wife, Merrill, a top auditor on Flag, tried to get me to shut up to protect me, but I wouldn't back down. She knew I would get into trouble if I made waves, and she was right. David warned me that if I continued to see Quentin, I would be sent to the RPF. I continued to argue with him, and he put me on a retread, which meant I had to go back and review certain materials as an auditor. He also had an ethics officer talk to me, warning me of the consequences of having anything further to do with Quentin. I was supposed to just follow orders like a good little robot, but at that point, I still wasn't completely brainwashed, so I refused. I defied the order and kept right on seeing Quentin. There was still nothing sexual going on between us, but other people thought that there was and that we were hiding it. One time I had made a joke to Quentin taking a shower with him and somehow this came up in one of his auditing sessions and was written down, so I suppose David assumed that something was going on. I was incensed that my personal life was being interfered with and wasn't going to stand for it.
Meanwhile, I had finished my retread of course materials and was back auditing on my Class VII internship. I was auditing another intern, Rick, on Power processes. His auditing went very well and he completed the grade before all the processes had been run. In Power, at the time, if the PC went exterior (meaning if he had an out of body experience), he was considered complete on the grade and no more Power processes or its companion, Power Plus were to be run. This was the case with Rick, and he happily attested to completion of the grade. One week later, Rick came down with a cold and I, as his auditor, was immediately blamed and accused of «out tech». Hubbard personally ordered to see the folder, which was something he didn't often do. The folder was inspected by one of his teenage messengers, Jill Goodman, who was not a trained auditor and didn't know the first thing about what to look for. She told Hubbard that I hadn't taken the correct action to repair his Power Plus, which was a bald faced lie. The fact is, I hadn't even run Power Plus and so any action taken to correct that level would have been meaningless. Any auditor trained as a Class VII could have seen that, but nobody seemed to want to get involved. The result was an ethics order from Hubbard, personally cancelling all of my certificates and ordering a Committee of Evidence to be convened on me. I desperately tried to write to Hubbard to explain that this PC had never received Power Plus and to please look at the folder himself. I never received an answer.