Page 56 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Cabalocracy and the Hall of Mirrors

And they were his last words. Those few articles I found appeared
only because of a spectacular explosion: Capra’s garage, with him in
it, had blown up in the middle of the night. His life and its work were
gone in a flash. An assortment of officials, local and federal,
examined the scene and determined that the place had been booby-
trapped by Capra, and that he had detonated it himself with the
remote control he kept in his pocket. Was it accidental or suicidal?
Impossible to tell after the fact. Death by misadventure was the
verdict. I knew another explanation or two which apparently were
not considered: Capra could have pushed the button when he
thought he was under attack, or the explosives might have been
touched off by an interfering signal from an external location. In
either of those CT-like cases, Curtis Capra would have been, in some
cruelly ironic twist of fate, both vindicated and denied any appeal.
But despite my understanding of his manifesto and its
ramifications, Curtis Capra’s final reflection did not shatter my own
speculum of illusion and unresolved doubt. And I had other
passageways down which to walk, with disparate images to confront
and different doors to enter. Transcending the hall of mirrors was
not for me. If Al Magnus had sized me up correctly, he knew I was
unlikely to identify sufficiently with any of my subjects to adopt their
far-out ideas. Paradoxically he also said I could deal with them
effectively owing to some psychological traits only he could identify.
But he had understated the danger in dealing with psychoceramics: I
resolved not to go blithely again into situations with clear potential to
deprive me of life or liberty. And I had to admit that the increasing
pay-out was enough to keep me going on to the next assignment and
not be repelled by the intellectual absurdities and ethical ambiguities
of what I was doing. It was in my mind that I could take the money
and run away from the whole crazy business any time I wanted to
instead of enjoying the catharses of prodigality. But I didn’t.

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