Hypnotizing Maria

morning.
    The dry didn’t quite materialize, but the mosquitoes did. Not long after dark, they had hummed him from any idea of sleeping under the wing. He retreated to the cockpit, shut the canopy tight against the little beasts, stretched as much as he could by angling against the left side of the seat back, crowding both feet in the right rudder-pedal well.
    He improved his time by reading the T-34 Pilot’s Handbook yet again, by flashlight, 151 pages of absorbing text and photos. He managed thirty-three of them before the batteries dimmed and died.
    Alone, cramped, hot, wet, dark; ten more hours till dawn. Is this what you get when you accept suggestions to change the world around you?
    You didn’t suggest a comfortable bed every night, something said. You suggested a different world, one that you’d imagine true. You have it. If what you meant was no challenge, you should have said so. If what you meant was no discomfort, you should have made a note of that.
    He considered finding the spare flashlight batteries and adding I Shall Have No Discomfort to the list of suggestions. Alone and hot, cramped and wet and beginning to suffocate in the closed cockpit, he smiled as he thought about changing his list of autohypnotic suggestions.
    I Shall Always Have Plenty of Fine Food to Eat, And Oh by the Way I Shall Sleep Late Every Morning and Never Have to Take the Trash Out or Pay Bills.
    Someone camped not far away about then, listening in the dark, would have heard him laugh.



CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
    H e nearly remembered the dream, not quite. The last hour before sunrise, the pilot had fallen asleep. He had been back in school, or back at least in a place surrounded by empty blackboards.
    There had been thousands of words on the boards, but all of them erased, rows on rows of chalk-film eraser-marks. Then came one board, just before he woke, with one word, not chalked but chiseled in stone:
    Life
    There was a half-second to see it before the blackboards spun away and he woke to first light east, clear dark skies.
    A man who didn’t remember dreams, Jamie Forbes grabbed the last fragment, held till it dissolved in the dawn.
    The dream’s my answer, he thought. At last!
    Now, holding the answer, he went looking for the question. Life, he thought, life-life-life. Shall I write it down? Seemed silly, but the map lay on the right switch-panel console. He pulled his sleeve pen and wrote it: Life.
    It had seemed so important to remember that. Minute by minute, it was looking sillier. Life. Okay. Seconds ticked. Okay became Now-what became So-what. Life. Nice word, but it could use a little context.
    He climbed from the cockpit into cool air, mosquito-free, pretzel determined to be bread-stick. From the wing to the ground was a two-foot jump, felt like four.
    Wuff, what a night. I am stiff, stiff, stiff 1 .
    There in the sunrise, before he took the chains for true ... : No! I will NOT repeat after you! I reject your dull suggestion about my feelings I shall not trance myself sick or limited or unhappy. I am not stiff stiff stiff, I’m the opposite. I am a perfect expression of perfect Life, here and now. I’m limber as a snake, this morning. I feel zero pain, zero discomfort. I am in
    perfect health, full of energy, sharp, alert, rested and ready to fly!
    At one level he knew he was playing at his de-hypnotizing trick, at another he wondered if it might work.
    To his startlement, it did. Stiffness disappeared, vanished in the first half of the first second he pushed the suggestion away instead of hugging it, some bloodsucking vampire pal, to his neck.
    He practiced walking, in the predawn, as though he were perfectly un-stiff, and like some miraculous Bible healing he walked easily, relaxed and normal.
    Applause, from an inner gallery. It was a miraculous demonstration, by reflex: near-instant denial of negative suggestion, affirmation of real nature, suggestion vanished into rejection-limbo, ability-to-walk restored in seconds.
    This world, it really isn’t what it seems, he thought, jogging now along the dim taxiway, tasting victory. Since it’s going to be suggestions one way or the other, why not take the bright ones for true, instead of the drags? Is there something wrong with that?
    I’ll look at it this way: I’m rewiring myself. Every time, I’ll swap the negative energies for the positive, and see what happens. God knows I’ve bought the downs long enough in this lifetime, now it’s the ups’