When, decades later, Wilbur Smot happened over the company threshold, Brisbane Pharmaceuticals was on the corporate forefront. Their nursery provided day care for under-paid female employees. Their Enlightened Employment program introduced "blacks" both into the vocabulary and the lab. A minority quota was hired, and that quota met visiting government officials at the door and toured them around the lab. In fact, the "enlightened" employers knew there were no more blacks in the laboratory now than there were during old Hiram's days, but now everyone knew not to call them insulting words. And they had learned something else-something about the "mind regenerator." It could actually be absorbed through skin.
Thus when Wilbur Smot walked into the lab, it didn't surprise him to see the senior chemist wearing rubber gloves and a rubber mask. He knew he was trying to crack the chemical code of the "mind regurgitator," as the chemists jokingly called it.
Wilbur sidled over to the senior chemist. He had to make him understand that the real power of the mind could be unlocked only by eliminating resistance to natural power.
"I've got it," said the senior chemist, seeing a pale cloudy reaction in a beaker. "Of course. Do you know what it is?"
"No," said Wilbur Smot. He knew the senior chemist had discovered a component because it had reacted to an element in the beaker, a common chemical test. But he had no idea what great secret the senior chemist had discovered.
"This supposedly cursed formula doesn't regenerate the brain at all. It is unique, no doubt about it. But it doesn't make the brain work better, although people might think it does."
"What is it?"
"It is the reverse of sodium pentothal. I've never seen anything like it."
"The truth serum?"
"No. Pentothal used in small doses will trigger the memory, free it up. It isn't so much truth you get with pentothal but memory. This 'brain regenerator' actually hardens the arteries in the brain, cutting off functions, not freeing them. It is like instant amnesia."
"So that was why the chemist in the fifties forgot how to read time?" said Wilbur. "Every Brisbane chemist knew the story of the old Indian secret the founder of the company had challenged his chemists to unlock, and how the years had yet to bring an answer."
"Exactly," said the senior chemist. "But his memory came back. Fifty years earlier he would have been allowed to wander out of town, like the previous one. Maybe the first chemist took too much. Powerful compound."
"And the black person," said Wilbur, understanding now, "forgot to be subservient. It eliminated all learned functions."
"So he became absolutely normal, and was called ornery."
"And the Indians gave criminals a large dose so that their negative adult behavior patterns reversed to those of infancy," said Wilbur, who had learned much about negative thoughts at Poweressence. But then he wondered why it would be called "cursed" by the Indians.
"Well, think about it, Wilbur," said the senior chemist. "If you forget enough, you forget who you are. You forget who you love or who loves you. You forget where you belong. And for an Indian to forget his traditions is to die a living death."
"That's awful," said Wilbur.
"Yeah. We should be able to sell this to mental hospitals," said the senior chemist, swirling the fluids in the beaker to better examine the reaction. He breathed deeply, satisfied with himself.
"But if it is so powerful, don't you think we should use it for all mankind?"
"Use what for all mankind?" said the senior chemist.
"The solution you're examining."
"What about the solution I'm examining?"
"It can harm people," said Wilbur.
"This?" said the senior chemist, holding up the vial.
"Yeah," said Wilbur.
"What is it?" said the senior chemist.
"The 'mind regenerator.' You have discovered it works in reverse of a memory jogger. You've broken the secret of the curse. You have discovered it induces amnesia."
"What induces amnesia?" asked the senior chemist.
"That," said Wilbur, pointing to the vial.
"Yes. What is it?" said the senior chemist.
"A memory supressant?"
"Thank you, no. I already forgot what the hell I am supposed to be doing today," said the senior chemist. And in that instant, Wilbur realized his superior had inhaled the potion. He also realized it was too valuable to leave in the hands of the crudely commercial. It had to be taken from those people whose negativity was so strong they would inflict it on anyone just for profit.
This boon or curse to mankind belonged in the hands of the only people who truly cared about human life; the people liberated by Poweressence, which was not a cult, not a religion, not a fraud, but as Wilbur Smot understood in the very marrow of his soul, the absolute truth.
Wilbur eased the older man back to his office and then, being very careful neither to breathe nor to touch the brownish potion, he discarded the tests in the beakers. He removed all the notes compiled by the Brisbane chemists throughout the years and stuffed them in his pockets. Wilbur would take both the vial and notes to the one place in the world that would know how to use it. He would get them to the place he trusted, the place he trusted so much he allowed them to take thirty percent of his pay every week.
It was an old brownstone building, bathed in the sharp light of a sunny winter day, snow caked on the roof, a big sign in front offering a free character test. Wilbur had taken one of those when, lonely and frightened, straight from college, he came to Brisbane Pharmaceuticals.
The first level of tests showed that he had suffered blockages that made him, in the words of the attractive female examiner, unsure of himself.
At first he thought anyone could have assumed that simply because he had taken the test at all. Wilbur was not stupid. But then their probing questions turned up areas of fear and anger that even he was surprised to see actually existed. And when the examiner gave him a simple mental exercise to do, among a group of people, and the fear was diminished, he signed up for Level One. He did not hesitate, especially since the course was going up in price the next week.
Level One gave him a sense of a grand goal in his life as well as the tools to help him achieve it. Level Two gave him a sense of strength and peace. Level Three, far more expensive, gave him the challenge of throwing off all the shackles that bound everyone outside Poweressence.
Level Four, he knew, would be far more expensive than Level Three, and he did not know how many more levels he had to pass to free himself totally. But he did know he had found the truth. Those who made accusations against this wonderful freedom-loving, human-enriching movement were really suffering; they were sunk in the mire of negativity right up to their eyeballs.
The truth always had enemies.
Dr. Rubin Dolomo, founder of this great freeing secret of mankind, was perhaps, like all the great truth givers, the most persecuted person of his time. And why?
People feared the truth. From governments to secretaries with nice breasts and dimples, the truth presented a danger to them. And why? Because if they knew the truth, they would have to give up their slavery to their negative meaningless lives.
Dr. Rubin Dolomo did not hate these people, he felt sorry for them, and Wilbur should also. They were in darkness and could not help the things they did.
Of course this didn't mean the group didn't have to defend itself. Indeed it did. A child driving a massive truck might be innocent of all wrongdoing because of its age, but still the truck would do horrible damage. Imagine it running into a crowd. Imagine how many people it would kill.
In that case would it be wrong to remove the child? Would it be criminal then, to save so many?
When Wilbur looked at it like that, the fact that an eight-foot alligator was deposited into the swimming pool of a newsman writing defamatory articles about Poweressence did not seem so terrible. Poweressence had no intention of killing the man; they only wanted to bring him to his senses. Not that Dr. Rubin Dolomo would ever do anything like that himself. But enthusiastic supporters, full of desire to free the writer's soul, had ventured what might seem too far in the eyes of the world at large.
"You mean you follow a man who sneaks alligators into people's pools because they say bad things about him?" Wilbur's mother had asked.
"You don't understand, Mom. Dr. Rubin Dolomo can free you from a life of pain and underachievement and loneliness. Someday I hope you will change your mind."
"I already have. I used to think he was a hustling fraud. Now I think he is a vicious hustling fraud. Wilbur, leave those people."