John Krygelski - The Aegis Solution

“Why without any input from you? And a consensus reached by whom?”

“I’ll answer your second question first. The consensus can only be reached by those who have attained the plateaus, so to speak. And the answer as to why I wouldn’t be involved is quite simple. I could no more understand things from their perspective than an ant crawling across the floor could understand this conversation. How could I possibly contribute anything meaningful to the dialogue?”

Elias was, again, surprised by Kreitzmann’s candor and almost self-deprecating perspective. “How will you achieve all of this?”

“At first we will break it down into component skills. The telepathy you witnessed…the other experiments you will see soon. Each one focuses on one aspect or one skill of the human experience. The process will have some successes and some failures. The successes will be kept and moved forward…in a sense, graduated; the failures will be abandoned. As we build a pool of subjects who are superior to the norm in each category, we then move on to Phase Three.”

“Phase Three?”

Leaning back in his chair, Kreitzmann tucked his hands behind his head in a relaxed pose. “Explaining Phase Three at this point would be premature. I haven’t really described the first two phases or our underlying principles.”

“Okay.”

“We in this complex believe that the body, given a consistent example, will simply not know any better and will follow that example.”

“Certainly there are limitations.”

“There are, of course. But they are far higher than the level at which we all now operate. Most of our limitations are learned.”

With a slight grin, Kreitzmann asked Elias, “Do you know what is used in circuses to restrain an elephant?”

“I would guess a steel cable of some sort, and a substantial anchor point to which it is attached.”

The grin broadened. “Actually, they use a regular piece of rope, tied around one of the hind legs of the beast, with the other end fastened to a wooden stake pounded into the ground.”

“Any elephant could easily break that or pull it loose.”

“Of course it can. But it won’t.”

“Why?”

“From the time it was a baby elephant, that is exactly how it has been secured. As a baby, an elephant tugs and pulls constantly at the rope and stake, struggling with all of its might. But it is not able to budge the stake or break the rope. It learns that it can’t do it. Later, as it grows and becomes strong enough to easily either break the rope or pull out the stake, it never tries because it knows it can’t.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It’s true. Here’s another example. Beta fighting fish are natural territorial enemies. Anyone who owns an aquarium knows that if you put two in the tank, they will fight to the death.”

“True.”

“An experiment was done where two Betas were put into a tank, but they were separated by a pane of glass. The glass was invisible to them, but they could see each other. They would both repeatedly slam themselves into the glass, trying to get at the other, trying to fight, until they both eventually learned they couldn’t do it. They stopped trying. At that point, the glass was removed. The barrier was gone. Yet for the rest of their lives, they never once tried to cross that middle point of the tank; they had learned earlier that it was impossible.”

“Is that true? They would never cross the line for the rest of their lives?”

“Never. And there are many other similar anecdotes and experiments which contain the same lesson, experiments using all sorts of animals. These experiments have been described by motivational speakers for years, trying to explain to eager salesmen and middle managers that our limitations are self-imposed.”

“Did these experiments put you on your path of interest?”

“Actually, no. There were two events in my personal life which set my course, one small and the other quite significant.

“The first occurred when I was a boy of nine or ten. We had a dog, a springer spaniel, which stayed outside in our backyard. The yard was surrounded by a block wall, six feet high; and, for years, Sneezix was perfectly happy in his environment. Then, one day I looked out one of our rear windows into the yard and saw that there was another dog with Sneezix. They were playing and romping together, and I assumed that my sister must have left our gate open. I went out back. My arrival spooked the stray dog, and he quickly ran across the length of the yard, directly at the block wall. I was certain he was going to turn at the last moment, that he was simply panicked and was running mindlessly. Instead, right in front of me, this small dog, perhaps the size of a beagle, scampered up the face of the wall and over the top.

“I had never seen a dog do this before. He didn’t jump the wall. He couldn’t. With a running start, he just scratched and clawed his way up and over. I checked the gate and it was closed and locked, so obviously the stray had entered in the same fashion.

“I realized later than Sneezix had also never seen such a feat, but he only needed to see it once because he instantly attempted the same thing. He ran. With a sound of his nails against the block wall, he tried to scratch his way to the top. He fell back, got up, and tried it again. I watched, fascinated. He did not stop. He did not rest. Despite the fact that his paws were soaked with blood, over and over again he tried, getting slightly higher each time. Within an hour, he made it over the top.

“From that day forth, we were unable to keep him contained in the yard. His repeated forays into the neighborhood resulted in our having to pick him up from the dog pound twice. We trimmed his nails almost to the quick, thinking it would stop him. It didn’t. We chained him with a long chain, only to have a neighbor spot Sneezix hanging on the outside of our wall, his hind paws not quite touching the ground. Our spaniel had clambered over the wall, even while chained. The neighbor lifted him and unhooked the chain, bringing him to us. That poor dog, nearly dead, lay panting mightily for twenty minutes before he got up and scooted right over the wall.

“Eventually, the dog catcher picked him up a third time, and my father refused to pay the fee. I never saw Sneezix again. But what I learned from the whole fiasco was that it only took one example from the stray dog to show Sneezix that something was possible, something he didn’t believe was possible a moment before. And once he saw it, he wouldn’t rest until he did it himself. That lesson never departed; it was always in the back of my mind, unformed and unfulfilled until I attended university. It was my personal involvement in an attempt to replicate a well-documented feat from the distant past that crystallized my theory.”

Elias said nothing, waiting.

“The physical prowess of men from a thousand or more years ago has been recorded in song, story, picture, and poem countless times — descriptions of the rowing of warships, athletic competitions, voyages, battles. The historical record is rich with very detailed accounts which have provided measurable and replicable feats.

“Take the simple act of throwing a rock. Going back as far as cave paintings, there are depictions of hunters who understood the necessity of staying far enough away from dangerous beasts in order to remain alive. It was the desire for distance that eventually resulted in the perfection of firearms. But the primitives used rocks. From the pictographic evidence, we surmised that they would sneak up on tigers or other beasts, perhaps as the animals slept or ate a kill, and the men would hurl a rock, dealing a stunning, if not fatal, blow. Apparently, the vast majority of the human race has lost the ability to throw with the distance, force, and accuracy it once possessed, when that was an integral part of the hunting or defense regimen.”