Sam sat up and ran his hand through his hair. He sighed, “Doctor, what does it matter? I mean, really, what is the difference between seeing people disintegrate and just watching an explosion?”
“Simple,” the doctor answered. “The difference is the human element. Without witnessing the atrocity of their deaths, it would be but an explosion. It would be nothing more than an event. Yet the presence, and ultimately the loss of human life is meant to impress upon you the emotional or moral element of your vision. You are meant to perceive the destruction as a loss to life, not just a victimless cataclysmic occurrence.”
“I’m too sober for this,” Sam groaned, shaking his head.
Dr. Helberg laughed and slapped his own leg. He pressed his hands down on his knees and pushed himself up laboriously, still chuckling away as he went to stop his recorder. Sam had agreed to be recorded during his sessions for the interest of the doctor's research into psychosomatic manifestations of traumatic experiences — experiences that originated from paranormal or supernatural sources, ludicrous as it may sound.
“Poncho’s or Olmega?” Dr. Helberg grinned as he opened his cleverly hidden liquor cabinet.
Sam was surprised. “I never took you for a tequila man, doc.”
“I fell in love with it when I was in Guatemala a few years too long. Sometime in the seventies I lost my heart to South America and do you know why?” Dr. Helberg smiled as he poured the shots.
“Nope, do tell,” Sam urged.
I became obsessed with obsession,” the doctor said. And when he saw Sam's most befuddled look he explained. “I had to know what caused this mass hysteria people usually refer to as religion, son. Such a powerful ideology to have subjected so many over so many eons, yet yielded no concrete excuse to exist but for the power of men over others, was indeed a good reason to probe.”
“Slainte!” Sam said, lifting his glass to meet his shrink's. “I have been privy to that same kind of observation myself. Not only religion but unorthodox methods and downright illogical doctrines that had masses under their thrall as if it was almost…”
“Supernatural?” Dr. Helberg asked, lifting one eyebrow.
“Esoteric, I believe, would be a better word,” Sam said, downing the shot and wincing at the nasty bitterness of the clear substance. “Are you sure this is tequila?” he stammered, catching his breath.
Ignoring Sam’s trivial question, Dr. Helberg didn't stray from the subject. “Esoteric subjects encompass the phenomena of which you speak, son. The supernatural is but an esotheric theosophy. Are you perhaps referring to your recent visions as one of those perplexing mysteries?”
“Hardly. I see them as dreams, nothing more. They hardly constitute mass manipulation, like religion does. Look, I am all for spiritual belief or some sort of trust in a higher intelligence,” Sam explained. “I am just not convinced that these deities can be appeased, or persuaded by prayer to give people what they wish for. Things will be what they will be. Hardly anything throughout time came about by man’s pity-party begging a god.”
“So you believe that what will happen will happen regardless of any spiritual interference?” the doctor asked Sam, having pressed the record button in secret. “So you are saying our fate is already set out.”
“Aye,” Sam nodded. “And we’re fucked.”
Chapter 2
Berlin was finally calm again after the recent assassinations. Several high commissioners, members of the Bundesrat and various well-known financiers had fallen victim to the killings that were as yet unclaimed by any organization or individual. It was a conundrum the country had never had to deal with before, as the reasons for the attacks were beyond speculation. The men and women targeted had little else in common than being wealthy or well-known, though mostly in the political arena or the business and financial sectors of Germany.
Press releases had confirmed nothing and journalists all over the world flocked to Germany to look for some sort of secret report somewhere in the city of Berlin.
“We believe it was the work of an organization,” Gabi Holtzer, ministerial spokeswoman, had told the press during a formal statement issued by the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament. “The reason we believe that is because there was more than one person responsible for the deaths.”
“Why is that? How can you be so sure it was not the work of one individual, Frau Holtzer?” one reporter asked.
She hesitated, letting out a nervous sigh. “It is only speculation, of course. However, we believe that many are involved because of the different methods that were used to murder those elite citizens.
“Elite?”
“Wow, elite, she says!”
The exclamations of several reporters and onlookers repeated her ill-chosen words in exasperation while Gabi Holtzer tried to correct her formulation.
“Please! Please, allow me to explain…” she tried to rephrase, but the crowds outside were already roaring in upset. Headlines were bound to reflect the unsavory comment in a worse light than it had been intended. When she did finally manage to get the journalists in front of her to calm down, she explained her choice of words as eloquently as she could, struggling, since her English-skills were not particularly strong.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the international media, I beg your pardon for the misunderstanding. I am afraid I misspoke — my English, well… M-my ap-pologies,” she stuttered slightly and took a deep breath to compose herself. “As you all know, these terrible acts were committed on highly influential and prominent people of this nation. While these targets had seemingly nothing in common and did not even move in the same circles, we have reason to believe that their financial and political status had something to do with the attackers' motives.”
That was almost a month ago. It had been a difficult few weeks since Gabi Holtzer had to deal with the press and their vulture mentality, yet she still felt sick to her stomach when she thought about the press conferences. Since that week the attacks had ceased, but all over Berlin and the rest of the country, there prevailed a dark, uncertain peace, fraught with apprehension.
“What did they expect?” her husband asked.
“I know, Detlef, I know,” she sneered as she looked out the window of her bedroom. Gabi was undressing for a long hot shower. “But what nobody understands outside of my line of work is that I have to be diplomatic. I cannot just say things like ‘we think it is a well-funded bunch of hackers in cahoots with a shadowy club of evil landowners just waiting to topple the German government’, can I?” she frowned, struggling to unclip her bra.
Her husband came to her aid and opened it, slipping it off, and then unzipping her beige pencil skirt. It dropped to her feet on the thick, soft carpeting, and she stepped out of it, still in her Gucci platform heels. Her husband kissed her neck and rested his chin on her shoulder as they looked over the floating lights of the city in a sea of darkness. “Is that what is really going on?” he asked in muffled words as his lips explored her collar bone.
“I think so. My superiors are very apprehensive. I believe it's because they're all thinking the same. There is information we did not reveal to the press about the victims. That's the disturbing facts that tell us it is not the work of one person,” she said.
“What facts? What are they hiding from the public?” he asked as he cupped her breasts. Gabi swung around and looked at Detlef with a stern scowl.