Creation And Destruction

Creation And Destruction

She came to the canal every day, the pretty girl in the light blue dress. She sat on the banks, looking at her reflection in the water. She sat until the sun went down

The people in the village talked about her behind her back. Was she waiting for a lover to return from the war? Did someone she love drown in the muddy waters of the canal? What did she see when she stared at her reflection day after day? What could be so interesting? Was she touched in the head?

In the reflection, the face that looked back at her was much older. All of the cottages on the side of the canal had decayed. Some had been torn down and replaced with McDonald’s and Starbucks.

The pretty girl wondered if she were mad. Why was she hallucinating so? Why did the face in the water look so old? Why wouldn’t the water reflect what she saw around her? What were the strange buildings she saw in the reflection?

The older woman on the other side of the reflection also worried about being mad. Why did the canal tease her? Why did she always see the face of her younger self?

Why couldn’t she see the wrinkles years of sadness had etched into her face? Why couldn’t she see the chain stores that scarred the street? Why did the water reflect a village that was only alive in her memories?

The young girl in the peaceful village thought her world was real.

The older woman in the sprawling suburb thought her world was real.

But neither is real.

Both worlds are products of imagination.

Alone sits a writer. He sits in front of a laptop computer in his writing room on the top floor of a big old house in Newport, Rhode Island. He created the world of the young woman in the light blue dress. He created the world of the older woman. In fact, he created both women. They are his. He has the power to destroy them by pushing the delete button.

The men in the pale blue lab coats observing the writer in his cell know everything that comes from the writer’s mind has been implanted during the interrogation. The interrogation that had been in the basement of what most people thought was a historic mansion along Ocean Road in Newport.

It was really a front for the headquarters of the disinformation unit. But the disinformation unit didn’t exist. Not on paper. Not in any books. Only in a few computer programs.

The men in the pale blue lab coats worked for the disinformation unit. They created the scenes in the writer’s mind. The writer types the scenes into the computer, just as he has been instructed during the interrogation.

The techniques had been theory. They had worked only on chalkboards. They, too, at one time, had been only ideas. Now they were a reality.

Tomorrow the men in the pale blue lab coats would plant the seeds of other scenes in the writer’s mind. Scenes of torture and destruction. Scenes of fiery death. Scenes the writer would think he had witnessed in counties he had never visited.

Soon the men in the pale blue lab coats would turn the writer over to the men in navy blue suits. The men in the pale blue lab coats and the men in the navy blue suits realized the writer was a crucial piece in the elaborate game they were playing.

Funding talks started in two days.

There would be a press conference. The writer would tell other stories. There would be headlines. There would be a trial. There would be military action.

The unit would receive a three-hundred percent increase in funding. All of the books.

The writer would then disappear. It was almost as easy for the men in the navy blue suits as pushing a delete button on a computer. Almost.