We went up high in the mountains where it was quiet. There was an unused cabin up there, off the grid, not on Google maps, strategically hidden from the satellite scans, with no cellular footprint, having been lead-shielded from the start, no phones ever used up there, no trace of anything, just our analog trail, our knowing that it was up there, and we went up there, just a few of us, after the leader died, because it had gotten so crazy at the end we really started to lose it. Us. We who were trained to maintain at any cost, we’d started cracking. Each of us knew it. Each of us knew, in his own way, that he was showing damage, that all we knew about PSYOPS, about torture techniques and the manifold ways of disordering even the most resilient and resistant psyche, was of no help here. It surprised us. It surprised us and humbled us. We had thought we were prepared.
It was Harry, who never said much, who tried to put it in perspective, talking about Oedipus and Freud, trying to get it through our thick skulls that what we don’t know we really don’t know.
“The fact that we know there’s an unconscious makes no difference.”
We didn’t even know what he was talking about at first. We just knew we had to get out of that situation down there in the village, to head up in the mountains, cache some food, get away from that voice, that voice, that voice that was in our heads, that had frayed our nerves.
It was a big cabin. It had been there a long time. In World War I, the Italians had used it in the Apennine campaign, but then it was kept secret, off the maps, fell into Allied hands in World War II, and every now and then a black ops team would use it but then sanitize it and redact all mention, wipe it off the maps, and as I said, strict policies on all electromagnetic radiation, no cell phones, nothing, not even a radio.
I spent the days walking in the woods. I didn’t talk much. Harry did all the talking. I think each of us felt a little ashamed and chagrined that we’d been worn down. And we didn’t have a plan. When the leadership crumbled and this clown took over, we thought, well, he’ll be replaced and we’ll go back to normal. But then he kept at it. Bizarre edict after bizarre edict. Bizarre missions, his psychotic ramblings they called speeches, the required reading of his tweets, and that family of his, they followed him around. We had no idea who installed him. It felt like a curse. And we were not strong enough to withstand it. That was the big lesson.
Luckily, we had the cabin. It wasn’t really a cabin, it was the size of a mansion, but spread out, with connecting corridors to keep off the snow and provide some heat ducts. None of us talked all that much. We knew what we had to do.
We stayed up there for six weeks. One day Harry said he’d like to see the village again, at least to surveil it to see if it might be safe to return.
It seemed like time. We began to get ready to go down the mountain.
