False Memory

lines of the enabling haiku, after which the doctor said, “Tell me whether or not you are alone.”
    “I’m alone.”
    “I want you to go to Dusty and Martie's house in Corona Del Mar.” He checked his wristwatch. Nearly midnight. “I want you to go to their house at three o’clock in the morning, a little more than three hours from now. Tell me whether or not you understand.”
    “I understand.”
    “You will take with you five gallons of gasoline and a book of matches.”
    “Yes.”
    “Please be discreet. Take every precaution against being seen.”
    “Yes.”
    “You will enter by their back door. Under the doormat is a key that I have left for you.”
    “Thank you.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    Convinced that his subject wouldn’t have the technical knowledge necessary to commit a completely successful act of arson, wanting to be certain the house would be utterly destroyed, the doctor huddled against the pummeling wind and devoted five minutes to an explanation of how flammable liquids and highly combustible materials already on the premises could be best used to supplement the gasoline. Further, he enlightened his dutiful listener on the four crucial architectural details that could be used to serve an arsonist’s purposes.

     
     
    In spite of the danger in which they found themselves or perhaps because of it, in spite of their grief or because of it, Martie and Dusty made love. Their slow, easy coupling was as much affirmation as sex: an affirmation of life, of their love for each other, and of their faith in the future.
    For sweet minutes, no fear troubled them, no demons of the mind or demons of the world, nor did the hotel room seem either small or stifling, as before. For the duration of these silken rhythms, there was no blurring of the line between fact and fiction, between reality and fantasy, because reality was reduced to their two bodies and the tenderness they shared.

     
     
    At home, in his lacewood-paneled study, the doctor sat in his ergonomic ostrich-skin chair, touched one of the many buttons inset in an extractable writing slide, and watched as his computer rose out of the top of the desk. The lift mechanism purred softly.
    He composed a message, warning of Martine and Dustin Rhodes’s travel plans, providing detailed descriptions, and requesting, as a personal courtesy, that they be kept under surveillance from the moment they landed in New Mexico. If their investigation proved fruitless, they were to be allowed to return to California. If they obtained any information damaging to the doctor, he preferred to have them killed there in the Land of Enchantment, as the natives called it, to save him the trouble of disposing of them when they returned here to the Golden State. If termination in New Mexico was deemed necessary, then the couple should first be persuaded to reveal the whereabouts of Mr. Rhodes’s brother, Skeet Caulfield.
    As Ahriman reviewed his message to be sure it was clear, he was not optimistic that he’d ever again see either Dusty or Martie alive, and yet he was not entirely without hope. They had been astonishingly resourceful thus far, but he had to believe that a mere house-painter and a girl video-game designer would have their limits.
    If they exhibited little talent for playing detectives, perhaps when they returned to California, Ahriman would be able to engineer a meeting with them. He could access them, interrogate them to learn what they knew about his true nature, and rehabilitate them, removing all memories that would either inhibit their continued obedience or diminish their programmed admiration for him.
    If that could be done, the game would be salvaged.
    He could have asked the operatives in New Mexico to abduct the couple and put them, one at a time, on the telephone with him, which would allow him to access, interrogate, and rehabilitate them long-distance. Unfortunately, this would make his friends privy to his private game, and he didn’t want them to know anything about his strategies, motivations, and personal pleasures.
    Currently, he and the fellowship of puppeteers in New Mexico had an ideal relationship, mutually beneficial. Twenty years ago, Dr. Ahriman had developed the effective formula of combined drugs that induced a programmable state of mind, and he had continually refined it ever since. He also had written the bible on programming techniques, from which others did not deviate to this day. A handful of men—and two women—could perform these miracles of