=1 "Adastra"

Adastra

by Author::Benedictus Montecrossa

A thousand metres under the Sea of Tranquility lies Adastra, the famous school for astronauts. As a roving reporter for the New York Daily Data I had been invited to visit this first truly universal university.

From Grand Central Station I travelled by tube to Adastra's training ground, located deep under the surface of the moon. There I was received by the president and systems manager, Dr. M.R. Talus. He explained their aim: to prepare young astronauts from all parts of the earth to navigate the cosmos and to travel alone for years among the stars. Where ordinary human beings would go mad, the astronaut has to remain in complete possession of his faculties, in perfect equilibrium and equanimity for months and years in the loneliness of space. He has also to be prepared for the fact that, after his 20 or 30 years of travel in space, the earth to which he returns may be five or then thousand years older.

“Psychologically,” he said, “we know from past experience that most people, after enforced solitude of even a few months, start having hallucinations. No human being has ever, without preparation, lasted a year in complete solitude. So the preparation given in the school involves a very deep change of character.”

“Why do you send only single people, why not two or more, in a spaceship?”

“Simple mathematics. The more components a space system has, the less reliable it becomes. Two or more do not add to the security of the mission. Even if we don't consider the weight, there are other complicating factors that endanger it. Take extroverts, for example; they will fight. Take introverts; they want privacy. Well, of privacy we can offer plenty, and make them happy, but of those missions which had two or more people none has ever returned. Perhaps they are colonizing far away planets, and feel no need to return.

“Tomorrow,” said the president, finishing the interview, “you will be given a first lesson. All our teaching is done by computer, of course.”

The next morning I was shown into a small cell completely isolated, the exact replica of a space cabin.

“Here you are in absolute security,” the director told me. “Nothing can happen to you. You are connected with the teacher, your computer, who supervises all your reactions and your bodily functions – temperature, heartbeat, respiration, blood composition and pressure, your encephalogramme and cardiogramme, as well as your hormo-, prano- and anandogrammes. Our young astronauts who stay in similar cells for three years are fed intravenously, to accustom them to the regime aboard ship. Your first lesson will last for twelve hours, after which you will sleep here. Tomorrow morning I will talk with you again.”

Two orderlies made the necessary connections with the testing apparatus and installed me in the most comfortable chair I had ever sat in. They left me facing a big video-screen that encircled the room. The screen started to light us as soon as the door closed.

Suddenly I was sitting on a promontory, and all around me was the sea, great waves beating on the rocks which I could feel trembling beneath me. A salty breeze was blowing, the waves thundered and sea birds cried. Then a lovely, warm, well-trained voice spoke:

“Everything in this universe, from the subatomic particles to the great magnetic currents of the galaxies, is wave motion. Your brain action also is a wave motion. What you now see here on the screen are your own brain waves as they appear on the cathode ray screen of an encephalograph. This one is called an alpha wave, the most ordinary kind. Just relax. Breathe in slowly, breathe out slowly. You are perfectly secure, there is no danger whatever. Relax. Look at your alpha wave. And here, what you see now is a beta wave. This wave occurs only in a relaxed state of mind.

“Now go back to the alpha wave. Make an alpha wave. Very good, these are alpha waves. Now let us try the beta wave again. No, no. Relax. Relax. Here they come, the beta waves. Try to become conscious of them. How does it feel to have beta waves? Pleasant? Very good. Let us go back to the alpha waves. Produce alpha waves. Come on, you can do it. Very good. You feel the difference? So now again, beta waves.”

And thus it went on. When I became tired, music was played, landscapes were projected, animal pictures shown, but always accompanied by the curves of my own encephalogramme projected on the picture. I was shown film scenes, some producing alpha waves and some beta waves. From time to time the voice insisted on physical exercise. I had to do some calisthenics or pull imaginary weights. Sometimes the chair simply started shaking just to give me a ride, or a massage. When I had become fully relaxed, mental exercises began again. Breathing exercises, alpha waves, beta waves. Then suddenly, to my astonishment, the computer announced:

“It is now ten P.M. And you will take your rest.”

My chair tilted backwards into a reclining position, the screen darkened, but the voice continued:

“Close your eyes, relax, and let us make beta waves. Relax your neck muscles. Breathe deeply. Here they come, our beta waves.”

Then the soft, low voice sang a folk song, a cradle song probably, and I fell asleep.

The next morning when I met the president I said,

“The whole night I dreamed about your damned alpha and beta waves.” He smiled.

“That is just what was intended. An astronaut has to conquer his subconscious. He has to learn to regulate his dreams. Each time alpha waves appear in his dreams the monitoring computer will tell him to go back to the beta waves, the waves of relaxation. In a few weeks he has learned to do it at will, and then he starts learning other waves. There are gamma and delta waves, and right on through the alphabet. At the end of a year one is really a master of that magnificent instrument, the human brain.”

“Who is master,” I interrupted, “the computer or the astronaut?”

“In the spaceship the computer is only an instrument, obedient to the astronaut. Here he is leader and helper, whose purpose is to make you more conscious of what goes on in your mind and emotions. By the end of the first year our students are more in control than other human beings ever are of their body and its functions, of their vital being and its desires, of their mind or what you call their personality.

“In the meantime,” the president went on, “the student continues to take breathing exercises and to learn the important relationship between breath and brain activity, so that merely by his breathing he can regulate it, can give himself a CO² high or an O low, can make himself sleep, or take a higher oxygenation make his brain work more clearly.”

“How are your students chosen?” I asked.

“We have a carefully prepared and extensive test programme which we apply rigorously. Only those who are in perfect physical health and psychologically apt are considered. The candidate must be eighteen years old, have finished high school in the top 20% of his class, possess an I.Q. of 140 or more, and be an extreme introvert without close relatives or friends. Perhaps you have read our ads?:

WANTED: Young men and women for hard work and dangerous mission. Safe return unlikely. Inquire: Adastra School For Astronauts.”

“How about dropouts?”

“Before they come to the moon they already had two years' extensive training as space apprentices during which time they learn space mechanics, space mathematics, and astronavigation. As they are under the continuous observation of space psychologists, we have some dropouts at this point, some of whom may apply for jobs as crew members on the shorter trips in our solar system. Then they specialize accordingly.

“So when they come here they know what to expect, and we know that they belong with us. Here there have been no dropouts.

“Right at the beginning the computer carefully tests the intelligence, the memory, the capacity for concentration, the imagination of the student, and tailors the teaching programme to individual differences. The effects of different kinds of music, colours, landscapes, are all measured, as well as his reaction to films, lectures, etc.

“At the end of six months the computer-teacher starts his sensory exercises also, beginning with the olfactory sense, the sense of smell, which is the easiest to educate. The computer presents various perfumes, giving their names, and then tells the student: ‘Now try to imagine them. How does a rose smell, for instance? Can you smell it? You can't? Well here's one, smell it. Now try to keep that fragrance in your memory.’ In a couple of days the student can smell any scent he cares to remember.

“Things already learned are carefully reinforced through repetition, and new subjects are frequently introduced in order to keep the undivided attention of the student. The days and the weeks and finally the months pass without his being aware of it. The only thing he is aware of is his continuous progress and his continuous acquisition of new skills.”

“The student does not leave his cell at all?”

“He has no need to leave it. He takes regular exercise. He is fed and entertained and taught precisely according to his individual needs. As we want to penetrate his subconscious, as we have to make deep changes in his character, it is of the highest importance that there should be absolutely no interruption of the training. Our aim is that he should be able to remain concentrated for twenty-four hours a day, even during his sleep!

“After awakening at the exact time he has decided upon, he continues his concentration. He is as carefully monitored as a heart patient in the intensive-care section of a hospital. His mental activity is supervised in the same way, in order to make him conscious of it and to accustom him to the monitoring systems of a real space ship.

“He has to control his brain activity continuously. The moment his waves appear on the video-screen he knows: ‘This is a delta, a fear-wave. I have to stop that.’ Or, ‘Here is a kappa, an anger wave. This will just make things more difficult.’ He learns about those brain waves that he has to avoid like hell because they are loops leading to madness. And he knows also that he has beautiful and delightful waves at his beck and call.

“Nothing can happen to him. Outwardly he is as isolated as he would be in space, and thus,” he added with a smile, “he can't get infected by either the bad humour or the aggressiveness of his contemporaries or by a virus-produced disease. And as he slowly acquires the time sense of an astronaut he is in no hurry to come out of his cell. What he is learning there is far too interesting.”

“Are mental exercises all he has? How about his physical condition?”

“You have experienced already how he takes regular exercise several times a day. No track sports, of course, no swimming or surf riding is possible on a space ship, but the computer puts him through calisthenics that exercise every muscle of his body. Each muscle is trained carefully, separately, and then with or against the others. There are many kinds of exercises one can do in a cell or the small cabin of a spaceship, and there are many gadgets, not only to keep him in trim but also to make him supremely conscious of his body. He learns to control his heartbeats by listening to them, just as he has to control his other bodily functions.

“When he lives in the weightlessness of space, there are many exercises open to him which we cannot do. On the other hand, when he has become accustomed to weightlessness for more than a few months he might never enjoy living in the gravity of a planet again. We intend to spare him that lack of ability for planetary life by keeping him rigorously exercised.”

“How does he control the hallucinations and loneliness you mentioned?” I asked.

“By the end of the first year students have learned to see whatever they wish.” He touched the selector, and an empty circle appeared on the video-screen.

“You see the face in the circle? Perhaps not, because you are still new to the adventures of space. But a trained astronaut can see a face, and when he does, he has then to practice assiduously unseeing it until the circle is empty again.

“As a means of conditioning him against the dizziness of deep space, he is taken on imaginary space trips. There he sees nothing around him except the stars, which slowly, softly turn. Then they begin to turn more rapidly, more and more rapidly, until finally everything in him screams, ‘I'm falling!’ Again the voice of the teacher comes through quietly, reassuringly, to explain that in space one can't fall; one must unlearn the reactions a planetary being has to falling.

“There are many more conditioning exercises for deep space, like recognizing stars. Each star is an individual, each has a different colour which the student has to learn to distinguish. After a few months of looking at them he is able to give a name to each, while to ordinary untrained people they all look very much the same.

“In the second year, along with his regular studies in astronomy, astronavigation, etc., he will start practical exercises with the help of prepared animal films. Famous zoopsychologists will explain to him the expressions of animals, their moods and reactions, their signs of fear and of approaching attack. He has to study them carefully and be able to say which brain waves are produced. Then men and women appear on the screen, talk and act, and again he has to identify their waves and moods.

“He has to be prepared to meet on his space trips the dominant species of foreign planets. How, for example, to speak to a customs officer who has the shape of a chameleon? What language to use to explain to a simiesque or lionesque state trooper where you come from and what you want?

“As an astronaut he may also be exposed to unknown viruses and microbes of foreign planets. For that purpose he has to become conscious of what goes on in his body when it is invaded by a foreign organism. The computer will say to him, ‘Now watch yourself carefully. You will be given a virus of the common cold, and you have to fight against it. We don't want you to become sick.’ Then it tells him step by step what is going on in his body:

“ ‘The first little shiver means that the virus has approached the outer defenses. It is at this moment that you have the first and best chance to prevent an invasion. In your imagination you will build a wall around yourself, and you will stimulate your body to build antibodies, soldiers for defense.’

“At the same time he learns bodily temperature control. The teacher explains where the seat of this control is and how to put it into action. Then:

“ ‘What you see now is a thermometer, a micro-thermometer. A difference of even a hundredth of a degree in your body temperature makes the needle go up or down. Now try to make the temperature go up. Concentrate on the spot I told you, where the temperature control is. Yes, good! See, the needle quivers. It goes up. Very good! Now breathe deeply. Heat your body with oxygen! Make the furnace burn!’ And later:

“ ‘Now make it go down. Make it go up again,’ till the student is able to control his own temperature. Now he can go into hibernation or he can produce in himself an artificial fever. He would even be able to sit naked in a snowdrift without getting pneumonia.”

As the interview was coming to a close, I said:

“Professor, you ave spoken only of the first and second years. What goes on during the third year?”

“In his third year, after he has learned the whole alphabet of his brain waves, he is asked, as he faces his encephalogramme:

“ ‘Now you have to make a straight line. No waves at all. All brain activity must stop. No wiggles in the line, an absolutely straight line. Yes, it is difficult. That's it, now it is coming. Yes, yes, very nice, but too short. Try to keep it longer. Now this is right. This is the encephalogramme of the dead, when all brain activity has stopped. But it is also the state at which one can receive messages from other minds. This capacity is necessary for communication with other astronauts.’ ”

“With other people too?”

“No, that is not permitted except under very special circumstances.”

“Well,” I mused, “of course if one is able to communicate with others while on a space trip, he is not completely alone.”

“No. Nobody is ever alone. Loneliness, the feeling of separateness, is pure ignorance, ignorance of our own mind. That is what he learns in his third year, and it is an absolute essential for his life on a spaceship.

“We teach him to lead a full life, turned inwards, listening inwards. Just as he has to guide and correct his spaceship, so he learns to watch his own slightest reactions and correct them, guide them, allowing only those he wants. For he himself is the most important component of the ship. In the silence of his mind, however, where ordinary people begin to have incoherent dreams or hallucinations he creates the most magnificent works mankind has ever seen: literature and art, poetry, dance, music, sculpture. When these boys come back from their lonely trips among the stars, after ten or twenty years (which for us on earth may be 500, 1,000 or 10,000 years) they will really have something to say. But for that they need trained, domesticated, disciplined minds, not wild ones like yours,” he said, smiling,looking at a needle behind and above my chair.

“They must be supermen!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, they are different from ordinary men,” he admitted, and continued:

“Towards the end of his third year – an end which comes sooner for some, later for others – the computer congratulates him and declares him a companion of the stars, ready to go forth among them. Then, without coming into further contact with another human being, he leaves on his spaceship for his destined journey, to carry man's message to other worlds and bring their messages to us.”

“Adventure or decadence are the only choices offered to mankind. The pure conservative is fighting against the essence of the universe.”

Alfred North Whitehead