Cunning Stunts Part One Mark Bandier

The soaring interconnected towers of the Church headquarters shone high above the mazed gardens of the city-state of Riaspa.

The Church had through it's own vigorous efforts become the center for law, communication, and entertainment throughout Riaspa.

A large crowd was gathered in the Central Square viewing space for the evening viewing. Their faces reflected colors from the giant viewing screen.

The viewers seemed to achieve a bliss entirely apart from ordinary experiences. A unanimous sigh came across the fountains that marked the main street of Riaspa as the televised morality play drew to a close.

As he moved past the viewing area Tahril's posture sagged despite his efforts. It saddened and frustrated him to see multitudes lulled into opiate-like states by the mindless platitudes provided by the Church-monopolized television services.

After two decades of the Church's television it was clear that nothing could compete with the giant screens hold over the masses.

Tahril greatly missed the now defunct open-air Riaspian theater. He had especially enjoyed the improvised plot developments that resulted from the audience being asked to suggest characters actions.

He had even enjoyed the interactive plays unusual performance times. Tahril felt that bringing nature into a performance in the form of sunrise or sunset or even just viewing actors in natural amphitheater settings added immeasurably to the enjoyment and often the dramatic impact of the performances.

He also lamented the loss of the theatre's voice in the complex questions of existence. But in the face of the sudden impact of the giant screens the theater had soon withered and died.

Just over a wooden bridge a passerby whispered to another "That's Tahril. He's on the council -- " He was interrupted by his companion who muttered "Tahril doesn't know what's going on. "

Tahril gathered his ceremonial cloak against the damp, winter wind as he saw Sarella. Sare, he thought, seems to be reclining no matter her position. Somewhat reluctantly Tahril met her eyes and they made small talk.

Later as he walked home Tahril thought more of Sarella. They had seemed to compliment each other so, to effortlessly fit together like jigsaw puzzle pieces, that Tahril had thought they would soon become lovers when they had met a few years ago.

Tahril was glad to close the blue-green door of his home against the winter chill.

His modest home was surrounded by a fair amount of land. Tahril had purchased the property with profits he had received from his families interests in publishing and heating oil.

Tahril's inheritance, along with the accidental deaths of his immediate family had served to distance him from much that was considered part of proper child development in his times.

It had also given him opportunities to pursue interests most of his people knew very little of.

As he walked through his home Tahril reflected on how Sarella would disapprove of his general messiness, let alone his indulgence in traja plants.

As he passed by his book and paper strewn desk Tahril thought that Sarella would surely deem his thoughts and lifestyle out of the "flow", the Church approved way of viewing life Tahril simply couldn't fall in step with." An inch within an inch full of miles.." Tahril mused to himself.

For most of his life it seemed Tahril had drained his energies resisting church claims (however cleverly they were disguised in their television programs) that all problems could be solved through adherence to Church dogma and all questions could be answered by examining collective Church wisdom.

Tahril found great pleasure in escaping his cares in smoking the blue traja leaves. As he paused after deeply inhaling a grin slowly spread across his pale features.

"Yes," he thought "Sarella would not go for this." He was heartened by the potency of his new strain of traja plant. It seemed to more than overcome the resistance he had lately developed to the blue leafed plant's effects.

Later as he sipped white wine Tahril had a singular compulsion to go out into the city. After a long walk he passed a viewing. While he was idly watching, the idea emerged fully formed in his consciousness. He had never experienced anything like the transition and transformation he simultaneously felt.

It was as if a log-jam had suadenly broken in his mind. What had been invisible was now absolutely clear to him.

Now as he walked through the city everything he saw was now different but at the same time the same as always to Tahril.

It seemed so elegant to him. There was no need to reinvent the wheel to loosen the Church's stranglehold on a once free society. All that had to be done was to manipulate the Church's broadcasts on a subliminal level and the people would be manipulated by a force other then the Church for for the first time in decades.

Tahril felt euphoric as now it was the third week since most Church transmissions passed through his devices and had his "message" appended to them.

However to his friends Tahril seemed hyper and in need of a long rest.

A fortnight later Tahril had developed a fever but went out again into the dark streets. Tahril felt a renewed feeling of vigor "the strength of the ages" he had named it as he saw several citizens joyously baptizing themselves in the ceremonial fountain.

Tahril had foreseen more extreme behavior, but what could he have expected? The only message he had loaded over the nightly Church broadcasts was "He is coming" using messianic images and type that appeared and vanished too quickly to register on the conscious mind.

Above the city, enclosed in an amber colored dome the city-state's upper-crust celebrated the passing into the new year. Despite the festivities and blinding snowstorm Tahril's friends noticed his obsessive preoccupation with many new fads.

Later that night Tahril was unconcerned with the snow on his boots as he quickly advanced towards his game table. Sarella rapidly followed Tahril into his home and game room.

Tahril held the familiar instructions within the game box close to his chest. Once again he felt a something within, an entity; incomprehensible power. Many different things went through his mind as he watched his world distort as did Sarella who standing close beside him was somehow drawn into the experience.

Now as Tahril looked the instructions in the game box momentarily blurred. Focus soon returned but the instructions word configuration and content were greatly altered.

Tahril now looked at Sarella with a somehow stricken expression and gestured emptily at the box.

He drew Sarella to him in weary embrace but continued looking at the altered instructions.

At first Tahril had felt the changes in reality he had orchestrated would herald the start of a new age of true knowledge. But a deep dread had settled over him as if he had opened something far more dangerous than Pandora's box.

These days there was a constant buzzing in Tahril's head about his new process. It had removed him from his love-making with Sarella.

Part of his personality had objectively looked on musing about his ever increasing traja leaf consumption and imagining Sarella's body as something that had bloomed from his own.

The snow drifted from the pearl colored sky onto the city and the sea just beyond. Tahril idly traced the profile of Sarella's breast and listened to the wind.

"Tahril?" asked Sarella now sitting up in Tahril's blue-green bed and holding the still altered rules on the inside of the game box "How did these get changed?"

"I've uncovered a means of changing the way things have become. By flashing words and pictures on television screens too fast to be consciously noted the Church has been using and influencing people's minds.

"I don't know how long they've been doing it. But when I started implementing my idea I found that the the Church had been doing exactly what I had thought of years before my first attempts.

"I'm not playinq God Tahril." Tahril continued I don't understand." she stated flatly.

"By displaying words and pictures on a screen too quickly for them to be really seen those images and words are allowed into the mind coated by what the conscious mind sees and hears. It's a mental Trojan horse.

"People's thoughts are unconsciously influenced and their mental energies can be pooled and used to do what you saw last night. Alter reality by getting psychic energy going in the same direction and using it like a mental tool.

"You can do this at will?" Sarella asked.

"No," he replied. "It's like creating the conditions for a storm in a test tube. Gradually enough energy can be created so that someone can be lifted by the massed mental energy into a state that allows the initiator to change established reality by thought."

"It's as if you become God for a time," whispered Sarella.

They were now in the sun-room as the last day's light spilled through the terrace windows. "No," Tahril replied. "It's totally man-made."

"It's time," Tahril announced and he abruptly turned to face Sarella over the cluttered table. Suddenly the air became filled with an electrical pulsing and as Sarella had the disturbing notion of herself being one hundred times larger then she had been seconds before.

Then for Sarella there was a feeling of no longer having any concept of herself as a separate individual; she just was aware of time having passed while she had been one with all. That sensation was followed by a merging of all her senses amid a feeling of passage.

Then as suddenly as it had begun all was restored for Sarella, her whole world and sense of herself as a separate sentient being. But she heard a repeating sound. Now looking through the sun-room windows Sarella saw the ocean in all its somber blue magnificence where Sarella had just been viewing a series of low-lying hills.

"All the insects and animals I've affected on those barren hills," Tahril mumbled as he crossed the room and opened the window to see the birds flying over the white caps as the daylight yielded the cold sky to night.

The relay station was at the summit of the small mountain about which there were many oceanside resorts. On this day there was warmth in the February air and the sky a crystal blue.

The sight of Tahril's play-disks and wiring spliced onto the Church's had quickly brought a senior staff to the station. Church security had traced Tahril's DNA. In Riaspa, DNA samples were required of all patients upon visiting any medical clinics.

As the Archbishop left the station his fury was such that his bright red cheeks made a pleasing contrast to the azure sky.

Soon the Archbishop was speaking rapidly but he was soon stopped by a staffer who remarked that killing Tahril would be an affront to the ancestors as he was of the founding line. "Then we must forever remove him from society!" the Archbishop stated in a voice beyond anger.

Near a sand dune Tahril addressed a large crowd advocating the end of Church controls.

At the fringe of the crowd Jersef, Tahril's chief of staff, and Sarella stood, grim faced and silent.

Jersef whispered to Sarella, "Now they'll have no choice but to crush the movement. They'll see his speech as a call to anarchy. It's like a different personality has taken over his mind."

Late that night in Tahril's tent Tahril appeared weary to Jersef. "What will you do next?" Jersef hesitantly addressed Tahril. "Your tricks impress the people but stuff like rivers changing course and mass meals won't save you from armed hordes."

"I don't think we need any sort of evolution. We can create a paradise here and now with enough power being properly channeled."

After a pause Tahril continued. "I have to say, what I'm saying it's like swimming with the ocean current after a lifetime of fighting my fate. "

At that moment a specially trained assault team descended upon the encampment.

"You must let me leave... I must leave.... " Tahril's hoarse cry reverberated down the gloomy corridor.