The Music of the Mind Ch. 12

"I break with them. You have saved me, and I will serve you." He spoke all this simply and directly. I found myself sitting with my mouth hanging open for several seconds as I collected my thoughts.

"Dimitry, I don't want any one to serve me. Why don't you try serving yourself for a change?" I said.

He sat again in silence, his mind churning on my words. His face looked pained, as if he was unable to comprehend what I had said. He truly looked in pain. I found myself calling his note to me, an almost instinctual response to seeing someone hurting. His head snapped up and he looked at me in panic as his note filled my mind. I hastily pushed it away.

"I'm so sorry, god it is just habit to want to help when people are struggling. I didn't mean to intrude. I am not used to being around others with the gift." I said this in a rush, feeling the color rise in my cheeks. Dimitry relaxed back into the couch and regarded me for long moments. I was puzzled though, for in that moment in his mind I had heard a terribly powerful discordant note that was ringing in him like a resonating chime.

"You are forgiven; after all you are my master now. If you wish to look in my mind I should not stop you, nor do I think I could stop you." He smiled sadly as he said this.

"Dimitry, I told you I am not your master. I don't want your service; the most I would hope for is your friendship."

"I do not understand." He said, his brow wrinkling and his face once more bearing that look of pain. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck. Something was definitely not right here. I wanted desperately to look in his mind again, to seek out that loud note. I had not noticed it last night.

"Dimitry, look I really want to look in your mind again. I think something is wrong. When I was in for only a moment before I heard a terrible sound, I want to make sure I didn't break anything. Would you let me?"

"Of course, as I said you are my master now." He said softly.

I wanted to argue, but instead I merely nodded, and called his note to me. I saw him jump, then he closed his eyes and leaned back on the couch. The note was all through him, ringing like nails on a chalk board.

I let my consciousness fall through the layers of his mind seeking it. It was deep, but not so deep as the instrument, or the primal sounds. When I found it, I felt like I was watching a blaze of sound that waved before me like a bonfire.

I had begun to realize, that at the lower levels of the mind were certain areas where the music generated by the great instrument of the mind burst forth. As I watched this sound, I had the distinct feeling that this sat on one of those areas. The longer I observed it, the more certain I became that it was not natural either.

I felt my way into it, the pain of it hitting my like a physical blow. It was surprising to me how pure it was actually, and how ugly. It was a single principle captured in thought. It was simple, and it horrified me. It said:

"You must serve. There is no you, without your leader. You must serve."

I pushed away from this note, this sound of subservience. I wanted to rage, to scream out at it, this blasphemy against human spirit. I reached out and tried to still it. I poured all the force I could into it, and it barely affected it. I felt the rage in me building. With one last attempt I wrestled with this sound, and still it screamed on.

I pulled back from it them, now deadly calm. I had to think, this was not a problem for brute force. I began to examine the space around me, and I them noticed it was unusually quiet. Few other notes rang from this part of his mind. The more I listened to that quiet around me I became aware of a tremendous pressure around me.

Then I felt it. Imagine if you will that the mind has many layers of thought, and that each acts as a kind of membrane that transmits thoughts from the deep origins of the mind, from that great instrument of thought. I realized I was looking at a terrible scar on the membrane that transmitted though here.

Behind this scar was a tremendous amount of pent up thought, but when it hit this scar all the energy that filtered through it was transformed, and took on its message. Any thoughts that would come through this area were stifled. It made the fury burn in me again, that anyone would do this to someone.

I reached out, and I tried to sooth that scar. Much like I had healed and reattached the strings, I began to generate sound in counterpoint to the terrible noise of the note that rose from it. Slowly it began to smooth, to fade away. It felt like it took a terribly long time, and I think far more energy then when I had healed Dimitry the night before.

Finally, when I could feel the scar was gone, the terrible noise faded and the space around me rang with silence. Then I felt the pressure again, and I could feel a tremendous amount of sound building beneath me. It was like standing on the dome of a volcano that was about to erupt. I fled then. I admit I ran in fear like a child.

As I came to his surface thoughts, and I could interact with the room around me I saw Dimitry sitting staring at me with wide eyes. His face was one of pure fear, of absolute animal panic. I poured notes of calming into him as I spoke.

"Dimitry, I have healed another problem in your mind, but it has held in a lot of thought for a long time. It is going to come out now. I will help you, please trust me."

He nodded and then the first wave hit.. I felt it rise up through his mind like a scream. A hundred notes of intense sound poured around me. I was already exhausted, but I poured calming and comforting sound into him. I tried to still the notes that raged the loudest.

Pictures and feeling and distant memories flitted past me. Dolkoff had put this command in very young, and every thought of rebellion, every injustice, every horrible emotional wound he had inflicted on this boy, his son, poured out of him now. The tides of adolescence and the throws of early adulthood independence were all here in his mind, bottled up like the genie in its prison.

How long the barrage went on, or how much I helped him I don't know. At some point I realized I was on the couch beside Dimitry holding him like a son or brother as his body was wracked with sobs, and screams of anger and outrage. Imagine if you will all the pain of growing independence happening to you at once.

The sound did not stop abruptly, but can in shorter and shorter fits and spurts. It was like watching the mind regurgitate a great gout of toxic thought that had been too long pent up. When the storm finally wound down entirely Dimitry slumped into a deep dreamless sleep in utter exhaustion, and I at last allowed myself to exit his mind.

I was tired like I had never been before in my life. The colors and the objects in my home swam into and out of focus. Unable to stand I slid to the floor beside the couch, and felt sleep overtaking me. The clock on the wall read three pm, and my last conscious thought was that I had not opened the store today. . .

I came awake with a start. The light in the room reminded me of the morning as the golden rays of the setting sun now slanted through my western windows and across the room. I pushed my body erect leaning against the couch as I looked around. I was still tired, but clear headed now. It was a little after five now, and Dimitry still slept on the couch behind me. I held my head in my hands and gently rubbed my temples.

"Not to self, don't unleash a lifetime of pent up thought all at once ever again." I thought.

I could only imagine what kind of hell that had been for Dimitry to experience. All those memories so fresh in his mind, and all at once. I felt horrible. I pulled his note to me, and was surprised to find his mind remarkably calm. Like the mountains after a thunderstorm, clear and bright and still. The memories of the event were more prominent then the ones that had been released. The old memories seemed to be quickly fading into the background, as if they were actively seeking the place, in the mind, they should live if they should at all.

The memories of the torment I stilled and tried to push to a more distant place. He had enough to deal with without that haunting him. Finally I visited the site of the scar, and could find no trace of it. Now, even though his mind was dreaming, I could feel the notes begin in this place. Notes of independent thought, of will, of ego, of self-reliance. I strengthened what I could and then left, already feeling my fatigue again.

I pushed his note from my mind and struggled up and into the kitchen. I was tired, but also very hungry. I thought about Dimitry, and my thoughts drifted to the tattered curtain in his mind. I began to make Mac and Cheese as I wondered if it could be healed. God, hadn't I mucked around in his mind enough I thought.

Twenty minutes later I carried a tray with two large bowls of Kraft Dinner, a large pot of coffee, two mugs, and a couple bottles of water back out to the living room. After setting it on the coffee table, I reached down and gently shook Dimitry's shoulder.

"Hey, wake up and eat something." I said and his eyes slowly cracked open.

I sat and grabbed my bowl and started shoveling the food down. It took my guest a few minutes to wake enough to sit up unsteadily, and then begin to eat. We ate in silence until both of us had cleaned our plates and started on the coffee before he spoke.

"What did you do to me?" his voice was haunted with the memory of the pain.

"I healed a scar in your mind. I am sorry for the pain and the memories; I didn't know it would do that if I healed it." I said watching his eyes.

"A scar? I don't understand."

"When you were a child I think, Dolkoff scarred your mind to make you more obedient. To take away your free will he shut off your ability to think thoughts that lead to rebellion or independence. I removed the scar and all the thoughts that were bottled up beneath it came bursting out. I'm so sorry for the pain it caused you. I tried to help as much as I could."

He nodded his head and sat looking at the steaming coffee for long minutes. Finally when he looked up at me his eyes were brimming with tears, and the stoic expression he had worn had vanished now beneath a look of great sadness.

"I hate him. I hate what he has done to me and my sister our whole lives. God I hate him." As he spoke the tears flowed down his face and he began to tremble. I wanted to comfort him, but something told me that these at least, were healthy tears.

For the next two hours he sat and cried and bit by bit he told of his childhood, of the training, of the terrible cruelty of his father. I let him speak, I nodded when he looked for a response, but mostly I let it all come out. When he finished he sat for a time as his body slowly came back under his control. When he finally looked up at me he smiled, a genuine smile and it was as though many of the burdens of his life that had been lined in his face vanished.

"How do you feel?" I asked quietly and he shook his head still smiling.

"I don't really know to tell you the truth. I feel like I have awoken from a bad dream to find the landscape of my life is all changed. I feel like everything I have believed is now suspect." He looked at me a long moment before going on. "I feel like a boat cast adrift out of sight of land, and with no stars to guide me."

"Well, you do have a couple things going for you." I said

"Oh yeah?" He raised his eyebrows as he looked questioningly at me.

"Yeah. First you're not dead. Second, as hard as it is to feel like you don't have anything to hold onto, at least now your life and your mind are your own."

"You think so? I think when I leave here it will not take my father long to find me, and when he does not even Anna will be able to help me." He said

"No, but I might be able too." His eyes found mine and we looked hard at each other as if trying to see into one another. "But I prefer to help friends."

He sat for a long time looking at his hands. There was still blood dried in places on one, and he rubbed at it absentmindedly for a minute as his mind worked. I could almost see him come to a decision as his shoulders squared, and his jaw clinched.

"I would like to be your friend I think, but I have to find my own way first. I feel like I don't know who I am anymore. I will promise you though, that I will never return to being your enemy." I nodded as he finished speaking.

"Before you go then, I would like to offer you a few last bits of help, if you would allow me too?"

"I have nothing; I am in no position to refuse your help."

"I think I can repair the curtain in your mind that would allow you to shield yourself. It will give you at least a fighting chance against your father. I can also give you some money if you need it, and offer you my shower and some clean clothes." It was hard to read the expression on his face as he sat looking at me.

"If you can give me the protection I have always lived without, I would be more grateful then you know. The other things are trivial compared to that, but I will take them as well for as I said, I have nothing." I nodded.

"Well, let me see what I can do. No time like the present huh?" I smiled trying to lighten the tension, though my stomach suddenly felt like it was tied in knots. Dimitry simply nodded.

I called his note to me and sank quickly into the depths of his mind. Again it felt like a long trip to reach the instrument of his mind. It was humming and singing now softly as it pushed his thoughts up through the layers of his consciousness. It was simply beautiful to behold in operation.

I found the tattered corner of the curtain, and began to pull it together with the piece next to it. It hummed, and I added my note to fuse them together. As I worked it became clear that the whole curtain was here, it was just in tatters. The more I stitched it back together, the easier it became, and I remembered my own curtain reforming in the heat of my battle with Dolkoff. Perhaps if I could get it far enough along it would heal on its own.

As I worked I freed the stuck edges on three sides as I had done in Tuyen's mind, to make sure he could open and close it. Compared to the other things I had endured and done this day it felt like a simple task. Finally as I finished, I rose back up to consciousness, and pushed his note from my mind.

The room swam as I felt the dizziness of fatigue rush over me and I grabbed the arms of the chair to steady myself. Dimitry sat with his eyes closed, and a slight smile on his lips. I could feel his note dimming and brightening before me in my mind. I guess it had worked. Finally it dimmed almost to nothing, and he opened his eyes to look at me.

"I can not thank you enough for this gift. You have given me back my life, and now you give me the chance at a future. There is nothing I can do to repay these gifts now, but one day I will." He said his voice husky with emotion.

"You owe me nothing." I said smiling now as my energy began to return.

I showed him the shower and took his cloths to the washing machine. An hour later he was dressed in clean clothes with a small suitcase of my clothes that I thought might fit him, and ten thousand dollars courtesy of the genie's wallet in his pocket. He left hastily then, with only a handshake and a soft nod of his head. I think we both felt awkward in each others presence after what we had just been through.

Minutes later I found myself sitting on the couch looking at the clock which read 7:15pm when suddenly I realized, "Where the heck was Tuyen?"