Preliminary note: every single archive warning known by mankind applies for this chapter - Please proceed with caution.
"We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us."
Marshall McLuhan.
"Inability to distinguish between degrees of clarity: to lick the penumbra and float in the big mouth filled with honey and excrement."
Tristan Tzara – Dada manifesto.
When I look back and think about this process as a whole, I'm not surprised by the outcome. Even when most of my colleagues as well as people in this organization act as though the majestic results they now see before their eyes are simply occurring by wild happenstance, I am inclined to believe that this – my manifesto – is an ode to those who work with a clear goal in mind.
Now, as they marvel at my creation, I feel the need to write this document for generations to come to know that is procedure is completely achievable. In a little less than twelve months, I was able to successfully complete each stage of this unprecedented process. There are some rather crucial factors that need to be considered, in case someone wishes to replicate this work in the future. I will give detail for those in need, not only as a way to ensure some sort of professional legacy but also to give testimony of my many mistakes.
There are some preliminary notions that need to be addressed before I begin: fifteen months ago, I was contacted by an organization (Talon) because they were interested in procedures such as brainwashing and manipulation of the human mind. I took the liberty of devoting three whole months to complete my research and to conduct small tests in various anonymous subjects. The first thing that caught my attention (and began to awaken my fascination) was the fact that most theories seemed to revolve around the concept of conditioning.
Conditioning, per se, is not meant to be a detrimental activity. It's a procedure that, when aligned correctly with mental manipulation, can guarantee complete dominance over an individual's force of will but, again, a clear majority of neuroscientists don't consider conditioning a reproachable or questionable activity.
To put it simply, conditioning is strengthening yourself through repetition.
My most genuine concern back then was to determine whether the successful completion of these techniques was an achievable reality or just a useless handful of theoretical postulates. Fiction seemed invested in the theory, but fiction can also be quite deceiving (especially in the eyes of a scientist) so I decided to turn to history instead. Many examples show that mental conditioning, brainwashing, and mental manipulation have been utilized in the past, especially in times of war but, in most cases, these techniques seem to go hand in hand with concepts such as propaganda and political social indoctrination.
History can't seem to provide us with an actual example – most of the times, social behavior was molded by channeled messages broadcasted by the media. The results were only temporary, or simply bound to achieve commercial success. It is interesting to point out the fact that all investigation regarding mass media and the manipulation of social behavior derives from psychology. The very first theory in the field (The hypodermic needle model), for example, relies heavily on Behaviorism.
When an artist is performing, they are communicating. Subliminal or liminal, all messages have something to say, something that sticks around, something that doesn't leave whoever is on the other side of the screen or the stage. Every message carries something more – even silence carries something more. Communication is indispensable – to think about communication without the psychological foundation that must always go with it is simply unjustifiable. It's all meant to be connected: communication, psychology, and art.
The subject chosen by Talon made it possible.
When I first read about the subject in question I learned that she was a ballerina. This is no small detail: Talon had a rather poetic plot in mind and this woman was an artist. The fusion of the two elements made me think of Dadaism almost immediately – if Talon was looking forward to rewriting the Dadaist manifesto according to their own system of beliefs, they were definitely going to revisit the definition of art and, somewhere down the line, the very definition of an artist as well.
There's a primal, egotistical agent in every performer. The body (the most representative and iconic element proving their existence) acts as a conduit – it sends a message, it makes a statement. Actors repeat lines that others have written for them, dancers perform because a choreographer is dictating all their moves… If Talon wanted to recreate the analogies of the essential poetic narrative by revisiting the concept of art, they had all the right reasons to choose their own artist in order to mold them. I merely framed the entire operation in a very distinguishable art movement: Dadaism. What they were trying to do was dada. What they ultimately did, was dada.
The following pages contain every necessary key to create that artist, every factor ensuring us that, when the time comes, they will perform accordingly. Three crucial pillars have sustained all my work throughout the process: hypnosis, drugs and surgery – their correct implementation and their orderly administration guarantee permanent results. I hope this work can inspire those who are still trying to achieve the impossible. You should know, however, that the price you must pay for such remarkable success is only calculable by measuring the limits of eternity according to the devil's accountant.
Tom Beuhs – Psychiatrist.
Vienna. November 15th, 2067.
Stage 1: The Performer
The first and most important thing that needs to be understood about this procedure I'm about to describe is this: not all minds can be conditioned. If we keep in mind the previous definition of conditioning (the act of strengthening yourself through repetition) and if we agree on the fact that strengthening is a form of improvement, we must conclude then that not all minds can be improved.
Some minds have, literally, nothing left to offer.
While this might come off as a rather discriminatory, hateful assumption, I'd like to focus on the fact that choosing the right target demands real talent. This enterprise requires a conjoined effort: the targeted subject needs to be susceptible to change while the ones in charge of choosing them need to address the fact that some minds have already reached their peak. So, while I would gladly take all credit for my creation, the humble man in me needs to recognize the fact that I couldn't have accomplished such success if Talon hadn't chosen the perfect target.
Amelie Lacroix had an open door. Most people have one, if I had to be honest, an open wound or a traumatic experience that makes them permeable. When I first read about her I was shocked to find out that Talon hadn't seen it. They wanted the woman to kill her own husband, but they didn't pay that much attention to the fact that she hadn't spoken to her parents in years.
If we take that (missing - vacant) paternal figure and place it as the genesis of her internal conflict, we have an open door right there, waiting for us to walk through it. If we take into account the fact that this woman's husband is much older than her, we might as well assume that what she sees in him is that missing guidance she can't find in her own father. The juxtaposition of roles is a very common phenomenon – when roles overlap, the mind simply replaces actors, compensating losses by simply bypassing faces. This is one of the most ordinary examples of transference as a defensive mechanism. I understood, then, that if we were to succeed, her first victim could not be her husband.
Every process requires a period of preparation, it's only natural. I had already completed mine, but that didn't mean that the target was ready to succeed – replacing victims became my goal: I needed to convince Talon that it was necessary to delay things in order to obtain the best results. This unexpected turn of events delayed the operation for a little more than a month.
I finally approached the target for the first time on the afternoon of February 2nd, 2067. Talon had informed me that her husband, Overwatch agent Gerard Lacroix, was away on duty. We set up a false audition and made contact with her in a theatre in Paris, but I was well aware of the fact that the chosen victims were currently residing in Annecy, so transportation had to be taken into account as yet another item in our seemingly endless list of needs and logistics.
Since I wasn't working on my own that day (a variety of Talon agents were there with us, in the theatre, playing different roles such as dancers, technicians, evaluators, etc.) I formulated a small set of rules and distributed them.
The following information was available to all agents involved in the operation:
The target will be kidnapped but she cannot, under any circumstance, realize that she is being deprived of her freedom.
We will be replacing (as subtly as possible) small fragments of her reality in order to create a stable misdirection. She is not supposed to notice any changes, but she might feel a little confused. If confusion turns into mistrust, the entire operation shall be aborted immediately.
Once the subject is under the influence of drugs, nobody is allowed to speak to her but me. Not even on our way to Annecy.
I had already set my mind on a mixed procedure: conditioning, brainwashing, and mental manipulation were all going to play a significative role, all of them providing different aspects to the combination I was trying to create. Once the target arrived in the theatre I introduced myself as one of the evaluators as a first attempt to establish a steady bond of mutual trust between us – I offered her a bottle of water and stayed with her to make sure she drank it. Even when her pupils were visibly dilated, she did not verbalize if she was experiencing nausea or dizziness. The water, of course, had a combination of anxiolytics and sedatives in it. (Anxiolytics to palliate the effect of all those things she might find wrong or out of place; sedatives to make sure her mind wouldn't try to fight back.) I excused myself after a while and joined the rest of the evaluators and the audition finally began. One after another, our dancers performed before us until it finally was her turn to dance. She was the last one to perform that afternoon – I was merely trying to give the drugs enough time to kick in plus a prolonged waiting period filled with nothing but sheer anxiety and nervousness always makes for a wonderful context.
Amelie's performance was flawless, even for someone like me, who's not a connoisseur of ballet it was easy to tell she was great. But self-confidence was risky, so we asked her to stay and repeat her performance, we showed her uncertainty and doubt, we made her feel she wasn't giving it all, that she was not all that good.
Dilated pupils (compromised balance), excessive sweat (dehydration), slowed movements (disoriented mind) – the three fundamental pillars of a compromised, warped sense of reality, were playing in our favor. She was asked to repeat her performance many times – twelve times, to be exact. The thirteenth time, however, was different: we asked her to repeat her performance but, this time, we played the music in reverse.
In processes such as this, there must be a certain sense of challenge for the subject to interact with the environment. A compelling request – not verbal, not fully expressed but still there, lingering tacitly between the subject and their seemingly endangered goal.
When Amelie heard this music in reverse, it took her some time to adapt her moves to the distorted rhythm, but she eventually danced anyway. She undid every step in her own choreography, dancing in reverse and creating a dystopic, warped perception of the dance itself as a whole. The swan that had died during her previous performance was now resurrected. Her death was now her brand new genesis.
When I wrote the original report of that day, many people questioned why she had danced, they couldn't understand why she couldn't just figure out that something was wrong – they said: she could have just told you that dancing to music played in reverse is simply impossible. I reminded them that she was already under the influence of drugs, but there was something more: to achieve the best results, the subject needs to identify a clear goal and pursue it at all costs. Everything they do must contribute to the illusion of obtaining that desired, final goal. Amelie wanted to succeed: she wanted that role, she wanted the recognition that would supposedly come with it, and in order to get those things (those alleged rewards and gratifications), she needed to work. This simple goal was, subsequently, sustained by a variety of smaller goals: the need to succeed in the profession she had chosen for herself, the need to make her husband feel proud of her, the need to prove her parents that she was an independent, capable woman.
In every step of the way, there must be a clear purpose for the subject to pursue. The subject must always try to achieve that goal: a personal improvement, a final prize - that's why the subject endures the tests and trials they find in their path. Since we are placed at the other end of the line, our job is to procure a friendly environment for them. There must be strange elements that threaten to jeopardize the very sense of reality, but the subject must feel comfortable at all times. Uneasiness, per se, can only be interiorized as yet another test but unlike a concrete difficulty or a given obstacle, it cannot be assimilated. A hostile environment that the subject cannot either alter nor modify because it is beyond their control will only distance them from their goals since seeking that missing comfort will become the only reason why they would choose to thrive and make an effort in the first place.
We control the environment and we provide the goals. The subject perceives a false sense of autonomy when in fact, they depend on others. The goals that make them work have been previously established by others, the prizes they want to win are given by others. In a way we can say that the subject exists alone, the subject is but one, like a satellite, orbiting others that choose to keep them there, floating in their orbits.
The satellite-subject exists because others provide a false perception of gravity.
The subject passed out, as expected, before the song had ended. Our operatives collected her, and the second phase of the operation began. The trip from Paris to Annecy (by car) lasted for a little more than five hours, giving us enough time to work on the subject and prepare her. Just as I had previously ordered, no-one but me was able to speak to the subject from this point on.
Knowing she was going to regain consciousness rather sooner than later, I took advantage of her state and decided to add a small dose of crystal methamphetamine to the equation before the effects of the anxiolytics and the sedatives could wear off completely. This cocktail of contradictory sensations was the enabler I was looking for: desperation and euphoria, urgency and despair.
While many had longed for artificial intelligence in the past, I had decided to achieve the opposite: artificial emotion. We had previously recorded several phone conversations between the subject's parents – Talon's technicians modified the audio files, sampling and imitating their voices and reformulating many of their original statements. While the subject was still unconscious, I used these altered sounds to induce and trigger a nightmare. These familiar voices were the necessary anchor for the subject to secure a well-known, plausible universe for themselves. The environment must always demand action and reaction from the subject: it's not supposed to be just make-believe; pretending is not enough. But guidance is a must at all times. The subject moves, they act and they react because we are the ones who make that possible, because we create (and sometimes even become) the stimulus.
For five hours, the subject was exposed to the following repetition of messages, played in a seemingly endless succession:
"Our daughter has betrayed her own family."
"Our daughter is not good enough."
"Our daughter is a whore who has disgraced our family."
"Our daughter is dead to us."
"Our daughter destroyed all of our dreams."
"Our daughter doesn't deserve to be happy."
This was my first ever attempt at conditioning: I was determined to strengthen her through repetition.
The sound of her parents' voices, lulled by the soft movement of the moving vehicle and channeled by the drugs in her system created a lucid nightmare she could not escape from, overall making her more and more receptive to the messages flowing from the headphones to her barely-conscious (but still incredibly active) brain.
Even when she finally managed to open her eyes, she was still unable to discern nightmare from reality. She struggled, trying to force herself awake but to no avail: she was awake, but the nightmare we had created was so strong it was impossible for the woman to shake herself free from it. If you're having a bad dream and you can't wake up, what do you do? You fight. You pinpoint the cause of your despair, and you attack it. You point out where the monster is, and you annihilate it.
When we finally arrived at her parents' outstanding chateau in Annecy, some aspects of my plan began to fall to pieces. I wanted her to recognize her surroundings, I wanted her to approach the scene with a certain sense of familiarity despite the impossibility to differentiate between simple degrees of reality that she was experiencing. But she gave me no time. She moved faster than us, went straight to the kitchen, grabbed a knife and hunted her parents down like a vicious, wild beast.
Many of the men who were working with me that day suggested we followed her but I decided against it. I searched the house instead, while I waited for the woman to collect her first victims, until I found a picture of the subject and her husband on their wedding day. I placed the photograph (the decoy) on the little coffee table in the living room and went upstairs, thinking she was taking too long.
When I found her, she was asleep on her parents' bed. Covered in their blood. Comfortably resting between their butchered corpses.
She had an open door: her parents. I walked through that door and with a simple combination of hypnosis and drugs, I had finally helped her close that door. Many asked me why she had fallen asleep right after murdering her own parents: since she was still inside the nightmare, I'm inclined to believe she attempted to sleep only to wake up. Others suggested she might have found relief and closure in the act of eliminating the source of her unhappiness – that was the first time we actually considered and consequently analyzed the chance that she might have actually enjoyed killing her parents, even if she was still trapped inside the nightmare we had built for her.
Talon cleaned up the scene (they even cleaned her up) before we departed Annecy – we needed to make sure nobody could connect her to the gruesome murders. When they offered to erase her memory (a technology Talon had developed about a decade ago, with the invaluable assistance of a fellow colleague), however, I declined: I needed her to remember. To remember something – vaguely, incoherently. The subject could not discern between dream and reality: we could use that in our favor. I forced her to take a good look at the picture of her own wedding day on our way out, the decoy I had planted in her brain, meant to create an imponderable doubt. She was barely awake, but I was counting on the fact that if she was to remember something, she would find that picture intriguing, to say the least.
The hypothesis that she had felt some sort of satisfaction while killing her own parents led me to believe that she hadn't murdered them as an act of justice. If she had indeed felt that satisfaction, she had surely found a reward much greater than simply killing the monster in her dream. This was personal, this plot was not just a concatenation of events ultimately shaping up a story: the actors were more relevant than the acts they were performing. This was purely a character-driven story. And when a character dies and another character replaces them, finding parallels and connections becomes a natural exercise for the mind. The subject had already overlapped roles in her head in the past: her husband had replaced her father a long time ago. And if she had managed to kill her father, she was more than capable of killing her husband (the natural replacement she had found for her father) as well.
Stage 2: The Performance
I knew the police was eventually going to find out about the brutal murders in Annecy. I wasn't worried about it, we had been careful enough, nobody was going to connect those bodies to Talon, least of all to Amelie. But I also knew that such a crime was definitely going to make the news and the exposure was only going to add to the confusion that the subject was supposed to be experiencing.
We decided to use that moment of confusion to our advantage.
There was an unnecessary risk in waiting too long to approach the subject again. I had used a decoy and I had planted an imponderable doubt in her mind, the time was right, the opportunity was ours for the taking.
Every possible crack in her behavior could be explained by the circumstances. If she was to disappear, if her moods were to suddenly become erratic, people would just assume that the subject was in emotional distress due to the loss of her parents. At this point, the best thing that could happen to us, was for the case to go public.
A week after our trip to Annecy, I saw her again. It was early in the morning, the subject was accompanied by a young girl (presumably her husband's only daughter, a seven-year-old girl named Bertine Lacroix according to the investigation provided by our research team). The subject drove the girl to school that morning and I intercepted her when she returned home. She recognized me almost immediately, in fact, she approached me, not the other way around.
At first, she asked me about the audition, but I could see her interest lay elsewhere. She was just trying to strike up a conversation, and she had found the perfect excuse. I didn't know at that point if the fact that she had been able to recognize me so easily was a potential risk or not. I had intended for the woman to have a hazy memory of that day, but I had only focused my attention on everything that had happened once the nightmare was fully constructed. I didn't consider the chance that she might remember how the day had started, with the fake audition and our first encounter. The audition had just been a setup, an elaborate excuse for me to approach the subject in a controlled environment, I didn't deem it important.
She invited me to come inside and have a cup of coffee with her and I accepted mostly because I needed to find out just how much she remembered. But the person I found was deeply disturbed and plagued by many unanswered questions. She asked me how the audition had ended because she could not remember – she told me she had never passed out during an audition, it clearly embarrassed her. But she could not remember the music playing in reverse and I thought it was strange because she had passed out while the music was being played in reverse. She didn't have any sort of recollection of such a peculiar event happening that day.
When I realized these distorted fragments of memories were the advantage I was hoping to gain from this interaction, I decided not to use hypnosis again. At least, not immediately. I needed the subject to remain as lucid as possible since I still needed to gather some more information from her.
I informed her that she had failed the audition, that the company had given the role to somebody else and she grimaced at me, a forlorn gesture taking over her face. She told me then that her parents had been murdered that week, that she couldn't care less about the audition.
When she said that to me, I simply asked her:
"If you don't care about the audition, what are we doing here?"
She hesitated at first, but I knew she would eventually crack under the right amount of pressure. I had done such a remarkably good job on the day we met that this time I didn't need to use hypnosis or drugs. I simply picked things up right where I had left them. Facing her silence, I insisted, repeating my previous question many times under she finally said it: she needed me to make sure that the audition had indeed existed. She was doubting her own perception of reality.
She said she had vague recollections of a nightmare: she was back at her parents' home, but they didn't want her. She said the visions from her nightmare matched the scene they described on the news. She said she had a feeling she had murdered her own parents "as crazy as it sounds" but she wasn't certain of it. Then she finally mentioned the photograph: she told me that, in her dream, there was a picture of her wedding day on her parents' house – she said she and her parents hadn't been on good terms for many years, they had missed her wedding, that photograph was an inconsistency in her nightmare.
I told her that I was no expert, but dreams were supposed to be inconsistent. Still, I could see her struggle, she was trying hard to remember something she had not fully experienced.
We went out for a walk after that. She told me things about her and her life, she told me about her parents, her youth and her husband. She didn't mention he was an Overwatch agent. We stayed out until sunset, when she told me she had to go back home because her husband was surely starting to worry about her. I asked her if she had been trapped in that instability since her parents' tragic passing and she nodded her head. It was perfect: she could go missing and her husband would just assume that the only thing driving her was grief. In his eyes, her erratic behavior was completely normal and, of course, justified.
We were standing in the corner, the house she used to share with her husband already visible in my peripheral vision. She stopped, grabbed me by the wrists and asked me if we could meet again someday, she said she wanted to talk some more about what had happened that day. I told her I didn't understand why she needed to do that when she had indeed killed her own parents.
I was expecting a dramatic reaction, but she merely defended herself by stating that she had had no other choice. Then she repeated all those lines I had made her hear that day,
"Our daughter has betrayed her own family."
"Our daughter is not good enough."
"Our daughter is a whore who has disgraced our family."
"Our daughter is dead to us."
"Our daughter destroyed all of our dreams."
"Our daughter doesn't deserve to be happy."
And she said the only words I was not expecting to hear:
"I know you were there."
She wasn't accusing me. She was seeking my help. I did not say anything to her, only watched her as she went back home alone until she disappeared behind that door. When I went back to my hotel room and began to analyze our latest encounter, I discovered a certainty that gave me reason to believe she was ready to kill her husband that very same night: I had told her the truth, I had told her she had murdered her own parents – but she did not fight that notion, if anything, learning the truth had planted more doubts than certainties inside her mind.
I had to make her feel as though she was still auditioning for that role. I had to make her feel it wasn't over yet, that she was still trapped inside that confusing nightmare she could not fully understand.
I contacted Talon that evening, ordered them to assemble a team and meet me as soon as possible. It disheartened me to find out that Talon was not planning to keep her after that day, the just wanted her to murder her husband, they wanted Overwatch to find out about it but she was disposable. They would let her go with Overwatch and face whatever future they could offer her: a life in jail, a prolonged stay in a mental institution, Talon didn't care.
But I did.
Once the audition was over, I wanted her to return to me.
Suddenly, the realization became crystal clear to me: if I was to succeed, if I was to keep her I had to set some ground rules for the whole operation to work.
She could not develop a sense of loyalty towards Talon – at least, not just yet. I would have to make her see that she was merely a tool to them, nothing more.
She could not see Overwatch as her own personal salvation either. I needed to maintain the illusion of autonomy I had procured for her, she had to feel as if the choices she was about to make were her own.
Only then I would become her only puppeteer. She was just too fascinating of a process to let her go. There was no Talon, no Overwatch – just my desire to continue to work with her.
I ordered the team to wait outside the house, I didn't want them to interfere. The subject had given me enough reason to believe that she was ready to perform without the aid of drugs or hypnosis but if this was to work, I needed a moment alone with her. I stood outside her house (something was telling me she wouldn't be able to sleep that night) and waited until I saw her approach her bedroom window.
I'll never forget that look. It's impossible to explain, and I could never describe what I felt with enough accuracy, but I knew she was expecting me.
She let me inside her house and covered my mouth with her hands. I understood immediately that her husband – an Overwatch agent – was sleeping upstairs. I nodded my head. The subject led me to the kitchen and there we sat in silence. After a while, she looked me in the eye and she said:
"I think this is about my husband. I think they're trying to get to him."
I was starting to regret my decision not to use hypnosis. If she had already figured out that much, the operation was undoubtfully endangered.
I asked her: "Who are they?" but she didn't have an answer, at least, not a reasonable one. She kept on talking about her parents, specifically her father, but she seemed unable to identify who was targeting her husband and, furthermore, she could not seem to be able to join the dots and connect her father with her husband (at least, not consciously.)
I asked her then, once more, what was she doing with a stranger, why she had let a stranger into her house in the middle of the night. She flinched, cursed me under her breath and held her head in her hands. Time was running out, the target was still alive, Amelie was breaking down and Talon was waiting outside the door. The elements that had helped me that day in the theatre were gone. I was on my own – I needed to stretch the nightmare.
I told her that her husband was not the project. She was. I lied, but only partially: project Lacroix, to Talon, was about Overwatch agent Gerard Lacroix. To me, instead, it was entirely about his wife. The subject gave me a puzzled look as if she was contemplating her own importance in the matter. Then she looked up, looking more resolute: "I am the project," she whispered, and I nodded my head vigorously.
I was tempted to give her an order, a direct command for her to obey. I decided against it, she was not quite there yet.
Many elements from the nightmare had survived: the environment was familiar to the subject, it did not present any hostility towards her, she could feel in control when in fact she wasn't, and she could not point out that inside that familiarity, there was something amiss: the stranger talking to her in her own kitchen. I was only missing the impact of the messages she had heard that evening, if I could find a way to emulate those voices, the nightmare could be complete, but I didn't have any audio records I could use – I was the only instrument I had left.
"Why are you here," I asked her.
She didn't have an answer and I pressed on: I grabbed a kitchen knife and put it in her hands, resting the blade against her fingers. The subject could have perceived my actions as hostile, but it was a risk I was willing to take.
The following transcription contains many of the lines I told her that night, while the knife was still in her hands:
You are here, with a stranger, because your husband did not protect you.
You're grieving, and he cannot comfort you.
You cannot tell him that you killed your own father, he would never understand.
You cannot tell him that you killed your parents because he's an Overwatch agent.
You fear he'll hand you over to the authorities.
You fear they will lock you up forever.
You fear he'll think you've gone mad.
You fear your own husband.
You killed your own parents because your husband was not there to stop you.
If he had been there, you wouldn't have murdered them.
Why couldn't he protect you? He protects everyone, he protects people, that's his job.
He protects people, aren't you people?
And what about your parents? They forced you out, but aren't parents supposed to protect their children?
Aren't parents supposed to be responsible for their children?
Weren't you their child?
And what about your husband's close friend, Jack Morrison? Where is he now? Isn't he everyone's hero? Why isn't he here?
My only hope back then was to make her feel as if all those people were actively trying to drain the very essence of her prominence in the whole matter. Her parents, her husband, and even Jack Morrison had to be perceived as real threats trying to force her out of the limelight where she belonged – this was her struggle, her grief, her moment, her audition.
After a while, she looked me in the eye and interrupted my repetition of simple statements. She said: "I am the project, but what should I do now?" and I understood it was time for me to give her an order.
An order, when placed in such an altered mindset, is a command that guides an action and demands a reaction from the subject. More than that, an order given to a conditioned mind, subjugated and strengthened by repetition, becomes a leitmotif, an echo forever rooted in the subject's mind. Any order I could think of had already been adorned by a certain appeal – this woman trusted in me, and she didn't even know my name or who I was. I had become an entity occupying the vacant spot in between a controlled atmosphere and a misleading sense of self-awareness.
I didn't have much time to think about an ideal order, Talon had been patient enough. The first plausible command that crossed my mind was to order her to kill her husband, but I discarded it almost immediately: I couldn't afford to be so sharp, it was too specific, too bold. The veil of confusion I had placed before her eyes was strong but, like most fabrics, it was still permeable - a command as accurate as "kill your husband" was powerful enough to erode her conditioning with sheer cohesion. I opted to order her to kill the one she loved (a vague statement, I confess, a double-edged sword not worthy of accompanying anyone's thoughts for as long as they live) and the woman grabbed the kitchen knife and went upstairs.
I should have felt proud that night, but when I saw her leaving the kitchen I realized I didn't want to go with her. I didn't want to witness the moment when her life became a meaningless recollection of moments she had not fully lived, I didn't want to see her becoming a disposable tool in the eyes of Talon.
Professional distance is an ideal frontier I had crossed a long time ago.
While she was in her bedroom, murdering Overwatch agent Gerard Lacroix in his sleep, I let Talon know that the mission was completed. They rushed in and extracted me from the scene but they left her there, shocked and covered in blood. They didn't clean up the scene, they didn't care about fingerprints or evidence. They wanted Overwatch to know exactly what had happened.
Stage 3: Art of the Performer
My biggest concern, at this point, was to get her back. How to get her back. Since Talon had ditched her on the scene, the subject was now in the custody of Overwatch – and they were definitely going to try to undo what I had done. My little progress (little when compared to everything that I accomplished once the subject was retrieved) was too frail to stand their tests and I knew that the second she was free from the nightmare I had created for her, it was all over. I didn't want to start over from scratch, that would have been a complete waste of time and resources. Also, I didn't want to have to start over from scratch with some other subject – this was her project, finding a new subject would have been pointless.
I figured out I would never convince Talon to try to get her back if there wasn't a clear reward for them at the end of the line. At this point, I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do with her but I knew she had the potential to become something unique. Talking to several low-ranked Talon members, I discovered that the number one cause for desertion in the organization was a compromised moral. Many operatives were just interested in their paychecks, they didn't care that much about Talon's ideas or causes – but when compelled to act in behalf of the terrorist organization, a clear majority of these operatives would crack under pressure, feeling like they were "doing something wrong." A compromised moral encysted deep in your own ranks is far more dangerous than any skilled enemy. This gave me an idea: I could offer Talon an agent that would never succumb to guilt: a sleeper agent, beyond all loyalties, beyond all morality.
In order to achieve this, the nightmare was supposed to continue. The nightmare was supposed to become permanent.
The subject was rescued by Talon eight days after the death of Gerard Lacroix. Overwatch had tried to reform her, but the pain they found inside this woman was something they weren't counting on. Their efforts were good, but their reasons were stained by contradiction: why help someone who had murdered one of their own? To what end? Was redemption an option for someone like her?
When we met again, I did not like what I saw. They had changed her, she had changed: this individual was fragile, she was unstable, and she was no longer trapped in a controlled environment.
This was the starting point for a new sort of relationship between the subject and me: it became imperative for her to transition from subject to patient.
Our first month was a rocky start for the both of us. I devoted most of our time together to therapy. I also began to write weekly reports for Talon, informing them of her situation and evolution. Up until this point, Talon had perceived her as a necessary instrument to define their own poetic, but now that the artist had played her role (now that the audition was over), they still saw her as a disposable tool. All the while, I kept on highlighting an innate potential that no-one but me could see in her.
She (we) had materialized Talon's poetic, but I knew this woman had a poetic of her own.
The language was a barrier. My French was vague and her less-than-basic English was a calamity. Talon offered to pay for an English teacher but I declined: language, as a system, is a conduit in itself. I taught her the language myself, using the very definition of conditioning to mold every lesson – repetition to strengthen her mind.
I tried to establish a simple system of rewards during this period but the subject did not want anything. She just wanted to spend time with me. I became her reward – we would sit for half an hour and talk as if we were friends. She was lonely, helpless, and far away from home. Life as she had known it was over: her parents were dead, her husband was dead, and she did not have anyone else. In a way, I had become the only one she had – when she needed to talk to someone, she could only talk to me; when she needed to cry or laugh, she could only do those things in front of me.
This situation between us was quickly perceived as problematic by Talon. Many agents would talk on corners, telling the tales of the unthinkable romance between the mad scientist and the brainwashed widow. This led me to believe we were lacking a system of penalties – rewards are helpful, but a reward without the contrast of a possible penalty becomes an empty panacea, not a real prize.
The penalty for her was the opposite of her reward: every time she would do something wrong, she would be forced to spend thirty minutes on her own, locked up in one of the many cages Talon had in their headquarters.
This system of penalty and reward worked well from the beginning, but in order to obtain the best results, it became imperative for me to establish two very different phases (or moments) that would take place from time to time: pause and reset.
Pause: the patient is about to make a mistake (earning a penalty) so the professional has the chance to stop them and help them analyze what they're doing wrong.
Reset: every time the patient returns from the cage (penalty completed), the professional has to make sure they understand that this punishment does not define the subject. A penalty (just like a reward) is simply a momentary circumstance.
However, as weeks turned to months, I could still feel she needed to be close to me. At first, I thought she had gotten used to having me around but then I became suspicious of her true motives. When I opened up to her and told her that I could not trust her affection, she said that she had exceeded her art.
I want to take a moment to emphasize the importance of this revelation: she was able to perceive herself as Talon's performer. She was able to see the strings behind the puppet. Her loyalty (towards Talon) was not yet developed but still, she chose to stay – not because she had nowhere else to go but because of me. Amelie stayed because I was there.
Now I had reason to worry.
Trying to confirm my suspicions, I told her I had to leave town. I said I would be back in a week. She broke down and cried and slapped me hard across the face, then she threatened to end her own life with my own pen. This led me to believe the following: that order I had given her the night when she killed her husband was still there, in the back of her mind. It was a hunger that would not cease to evolve – and now she was starving. And since she didn't have anyone to love, her mind was ready to create a loved one for her. I was that loved one. I was going to become her next victim.
She was right: she had performed, she had delivered. This woman had given her all and now she had become the surplus of her own art. I had told Talon I was onto something big and now my own life was on the line. "Kill the one you love" was a monumentally vague statement.
She was used to overlapping roles: she had done it before, she was surely going to at least try to do it again. This was a behavior I had detected earlier in the process: the husband had replaced the father and now the professional was replacing the husband. Each layer (each new actor) acted like a mental bypass. The order was behind all those actors – "kill the one you love" had been big enough to hold generations of people. Now the order could not be retrieved because the actors that could have defused it were dead. Besides, "kill the one you love" was an obscenely wide statement: you can love your husband, you can love a friend, a coworker, your parents, even a neighbor. Love, per se, does not always require a romantic intonation.
I had failed. I should have found some middle ground between the utterly specific "kill your husband" and the scandalously vague "kill the one you love" – this mistake was giant, it couldn't be undone. The order was now a triggered response that would always demand a reaction from her. She would overlap as many roles as necessary in order to create that victim. She could not bond with other Talon agents now: she was far too dangerous.
I knew her love for me was not real. I never doubted this notion. But her mind had gotten used to this warped perception of reality and it was too late to change.
I had fallen in love with the idea of her as my creation – with the one she could have become, with the whole concept of assisted, artificial emotion. But now it was much too late. From this perspective, the command should have been: "kill the ones who are trying to push you out of the limelight" – that way we could have found a simpler excuse to keep her around: to kill Jack Morrison. I needed the resources that only Talon could provide, and I needed the shelter of an ambiguous morality in order to conduct these tests and experiments. But it all had backfired. And I was next.
Cornered by the circumstances, I understood that the only way out was to make her unable to feel. This, of course, was only going to render her useless to Talon but I was certain this was the only way. If she became unable to feel she:
Wouldn't pose a threat to everyone around her (but she would finally be able to bond with others in the organization.)
Self-loathing, guilt, and remorse could no longer affect her.
This second reason, I'll admit, sounded like a cheap excuse back then, but it was all I could do to help her. I had ruined this woman's life, the least I could do now was to exterminate the constant self-deprecating behavior that had taken hold of her.
We implanted a lock (a figurative padlock) in her frontal lobe to keep her from experiencing feelings and emotions. Contrary to what I had previously assumed, this drastic solution eventually became the very reason why Talon decided to keep her: a killer that cannot experience any guilt or remorse is worth the effort. The process cannot be undone – let's suppose someone removes the lock: she'll be able to feel again, of course, but that rooted order (kill the one you love) will bypass each actor, taking control of her actions once again.
From that point on, Talon and I focused on different aspects of her conditioning: they took care of the physical parts and I devoted myself to her mind.
They said she had potential to become a sniper – with some adjustments. The gold in her eyes was added to deprive her vision of any traces of photosensitivity. The cold blue of her skin is the result of a process that has slowed down her pulse in order to increase her accuracy.
Their only concern now was to determine whether she was able to experience fear. They locked her up in a room with several tarantulas and they just left her there. The woman did not scream, she didn't even make a sound. When they finally opened the door, she had several bite marks on her arms and legs, but the spiders were all dead. When the test was over I asked them why they were so interested in her lack of fear – they said that a fearless soldier is the best type of soldier.
Still, there was something strangely odd about this woman: I had no reason to believe she had forgotten her husband, far from that, but she would never talk about him. It was like his memory could not affect her at all. To be completely clear: I wasn't worried about the feeling of guilt that wasn't there, I was worried she might have been repressing something ulterior. Gerard's death had not affected her (Amelie was inside the nightmare, and Widowmaker could not feel anything at all) and I began to wonder whether this fact was now shaping up the perception she had of herself: she had killed her husband but she couldn't feel anything - not distress, not pity, not regret - perhaps this lack of emotions was making her question who she was now because she should have felt something. Every time she would try to stare at her own reflection in the mirror she would end up having a hard time, but did that mean that she could not recognize this cold and distant woman that she was now? Or was she able to recognize her but could not offer anything but complete indifference towards herself?
When I asked her about her thoughts on the death of Overwatch agent Gerard Lacroix, Amelie said that she "did what had to be done," her answer led me to think that this colder woman was capable of a wider logic, perhaps this woman had already realized that Gerard was going to die, one way or another. This unfeeling statement could have been perceived as the first attempt at developing a sense of loyalty towards Talon, but I still had my reservations on the matter.
During one of our sessions, she told me that she was getting "some sort of thrill" each time she would take a life. When I questioned her about this (even when I knew it was impossible for her to ever experience something like thrill or excitement again) she said it made her feel as if she was still searching for something. This inconclusive quest can refer to the missing loved one that she won't be able to find because she can no longer feel.
In the following months, I began to notice that she would no longer stare at her own image in the mirror. Shame and repulsion are emotions - something she was not supposed to be experiencing at all - so I decided to delve a little deeper: I had read in her file that Amelie had met her husband in a nightclub (she was one of the dancers) and, taking into account the fact that she was a ballerina, I could only assume that her body, as a constitutive element for her foundation, had always been a rather important agent in the construction of her ego.
For a woman that cannot feel, vanity becomes an empty social construction. When vanity ceases to exist, shame appears on the horizon, trying to emulate the guidance of a moral compass. Shame is a societal fence, a moral inhibitor. In a way, shame is even worse than decency. I ordered her to take off her clothes and lay down on the cot. About fifty agents walked in and followed my instructions (to walk around the cot and observe her in silence) but she did not seem to mind. I even ordered some of the agents to lean closer, to inspect her (to try to make her feel uncomfortable) and even to touch her - but she didn't care. This woman is completely indolent. This woman still uses her body as a tool (a modified tool) while the rest of her skills rely on a constantly-evolving education. Everything about her can be perfected. Everything can be learned.
She says she wants a name. Says she wants a story for herself. Talon baptizes her: "Widowmaker" – an ode to irony – but I cannot give her a story. She still is surplus, she still exceeds her own art.
I ordered the agents to leave us alone after a while.
It was not shame was she was experiencing, it wasn't repulsion either. It was something else entirely. I asked her how she was feeling, she smiled darkly at me (as if I could not see the irony of asking her how she was feeling) and said she was alright.
One day, as I tried to approach the situation from a different angle, I ordered her to masturbate and she said:
"I don't feel the desire to do so."
That was a good answer, even better than what I had in mind. Physical pleasure is not an emotion so this woman can still feel it, experience it, and even search for it – actively. But her answer was not conveying the simple dimension of pure physicality. She did not want to touch herself, she did not want to experience pleasure. In an emotionless reality, the pleasures of the skin (neuronal electric impulses) are the only resemblance to an actual thrill. She was rejecting it – even when she had previously admitted that the same so-called feeling was there every time she would take a life.
She would accept this satisfaction (the approximation to an actual emotion) while murdering someone but she would not accept any form of satisfaction for the sake of her own, individual pleasure.
Several weeks after that I found her touching herself when I walked into her room. The second she saw me standing there, she stopped – at first, I thought she had stopped masturbating because I was there, watching her, (perhaps a part of her was now addressing me as a real authority and not just as a reward or perhaps she was expecting some sort of approval from me) but then she resumed the task, and then she stopped again. She repeated these actions multiple times until I realized what she was doing: she was placing herself on the verge of pleasure, but never close enough to finally experience it. She had created her own system of penalties – her own pause and reset. When I connected the dots (her inability to look at herself in the mirror, her despondence towards physical satisfaction) I understood that she disliked the one she had become. I was still her only reward, only now she was the referee deciding her own punishments. This system of penalizations she had procured for herself was, undoubtedly, her last association to a moral semblance.
She couldn't stand the woman in the mirror because she couldn't stand the woman she was now. She was blue, she was cold, she was unable to feel, she was a killer – she could no longer recognize the victim in her. Even her new name was an unwanted contradiction: a woman in love that had murdered her own husband. The worst part was the fact that she would forever be the one who had killed Gerard Lacroix. Even free from the conditioning, even free from all possible brainwashing techniques and even free from the lock in her head, keeping the order at bay, she would always be the one killing Gerard. This other woman was fictitious, it was a deviation from the one she was before – but this other woman was not real, this other woman was still Amelie Lacroix.
Technically speaking, Widowmaker doesn't exist. Widowmaker is Amelie Lacroix.
She has become a description without a substance. She's just a shape with no real content inside. We have made her hollow, we have completely emptied her – now she's like a glass: I always drink from this glass, but I don't always fill it up with the same beverage.
Talon has become her reference – she follows them around and works with them (for them) but she cannot experience any sort of loyalty for them or the cause the organization represents. They are a simple source of company to her, they are the ones who hold the leash around her neck – the ones keeping the monster at bay, the ones who provide her with a false, albeit safe, sense of humanity.
Talon decided to remove her reproductive organs shortly after that – they said sex was only a distraction, even when I had assured them she didn't have the slightest interest in her own sexuality, not even as a form of release, not even as a form of social interaction. Once she recovered from surgery I decided to add another prize to our system of rewards and penalties: once a week, I would allow her to dance for half an hour. The skill was still there, it was practically a sin to let it go to waste plus perhaps she could find some comfort in the activity, removing myself from the spotlight – I could not be her only source of comfort, her only reward. Not only it was too dangerous for me but also, I knew I wouldn't be there forever, I needed to give her something else, something that was hers and hers alone, a reward that could always endure the test of time, a reward that could always outlive me.
The concept of "construct" plays a big role in this environment. She is Talon's construct.
This construct made by Talon (Widowmaker) is a woman that's deadly but sophisticated, a hallmark of artificial perfection, a mockery of finesse gone wrong. She incarnates now the very notion of abhorrence as beauty, of unoriginality that doesn't quite meet that what could be considered kitsch – she's a signature trademark of science and progress, a new poetic – she's pure Dadaism. Talon's Dadaism.
The fact that she still perceives me as her favorite reward manifests the idea of love itself as a construct – the order lingers there, in the back of her mind, the roles overlap but she is not supposed to feel love, no matter if the feeling is real or not. She can't feel love, but she has already placed me there, in the center of her so-called affection. Her love is a construct too, her love is a holistic construct – it's a cycle of transfixed roles that does not convey any real feelings or emotions because she does not need real feelings anymore. What we have built here is an artificial emotion: we have created empathic approximations.
The fact that she thinks of me as the one she loves (the one she must eliminate) does not mean that I have failed. Far from it. She cannot feel, but she loves me - she thinks she loves me. I have become the surplus in this brand new art. I have exceeded my own art. I have created the illusion of love.
Now, as I write these final lines and embrace my destiny as a man-manifesto, I understand this was the only way for this story to end. The husband had replaced the father, the professional has now replaced the husband. I look at those distant golden eyes of hers as she moves closer to me with such a false sense of intimacy it makes me tremble. I marvel at my creation. I am in love with the idea of her. She is watching me as I write these final lines, her hands on my desk – I am ready, for I have exceeded my own art.
I regret nothing.
She looks beautiful tonight, I'll make sure to tell her th
