THE VORACIOUS ALIENS
By William S. Burroughs

The human race is being attacked by a sort of mind cancer. Something is sucking the human mind dry and has been sucking it for the past two hundred years." That is the shattering discovery made by Prof. Gilbert Austin. Who or what is responsible? Mind parasites, malignant beings who lurk in the deepest layers of the unconscious... (in precise terms of physiology this would correspond to the back brain or hypothalamus)...

"Sapping the very life force of mankind, cutting him off from his natural capacity for self-renewal... It was all so unsettling that I broke the habit of year4s and drank a bottle of champagne at lunch time."

These words from Colin Wilson's science fiction novel The Mind Parasites reflect the presence of malignant viruses that are affecting human control over human situations. There is considerable inferential evidence to indicate the actual existence of such a parasitic instance as this book postulates. An Italian sociologist said: "If you want to get to the bottom of any situation that seems on the surface inexplicable, just ask yourself the simple question 'Who profits?'. Who would profit form blocking every basic discovery about the human mind? Techniques are now available to alter consciousness and effect the hypothalamus directly.

In a recent Mayfair article (Bulletin 17 The Brain Grinders) I described the experiments of Dr Millar who has demonstrated that any mammal can learn to control such seemingly involuntary processes as brain waves, blood pressure, rate of hearty beat his whole state of mind and body. Doctor Millar had great difficulty raising funds for his experiments. The importance of the experiments was completely missed by the Press.

The means are at hand to control spec but they are not being used. Despite impressive technical advances the planet is still in The Stone Age psychologically. Who would profit from turning the clock all the way back to the Stone Age and keeping man out of inner space? Only in the last two hundred years have technological advances made space exploration a possibility. By maintaining control of inner space the parasites can block any discovery or destroy anyone who suspects their existence. It is in fact unexplained suicides among scientists investigating inner space that lead to the discovery of these parasites by the narrator Prof. G. Austin.

Once the presence of the parasites is inferred the means to combat them is obvious... They must be combated by the brain itself... pushed up beyond its limits so that men can read each other's thoughts... and control their own thought's and feelings...

So they join battle with the parasites on equal terms.

These are precisely the measures I have advocated in the Acadamy Series, measures that must be applied whether we believe in mind-parasites or not, if man is to expand his horizons and survive in the space age. There is no turning back to the false security of dogmatic creeds.

"To travel in space you must learn to leave the old verbal garbage behind: God talk, priest talk, mother talk, family talk, love talk, party talk. You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to see what is in front of you with no preconceptions."

In Mr Wilson's narrative it is a space voyage that finally defeats the parasites. They cannot survive in space. As the space craft travels further and further form the earth, the parasites still lurking in the crew are in a panic.

"Now they felt their psychic links with the earth stretching and growing weaker and they were frightened. We now understand the nature of space fever that had so far frustrated all men's attempts to penetrate further into space."

Known, watched, the parasites become desperate and they now reveal themselves to be creatures of a low-intelligence-order, floundering about like beached squids.

"It happened on the fourteenth day... something infinitely evil and slimy was pushing its way from inside me. I realised I had been wrong to think of the parasites as separate beings. They were one with IT. An immense jelly like octopus whose tentacles are separate form its body and come about like individuals."

... (And this being is none other than the ancient slug Abhoth the Dark, also known as Abhoth the Unclean)...

... "Now this infinitely vile thing was coming out of its lair and I could feel its hatred of me, a hatred so powerful and maniacal that IT almost needs a new word. Then the inexpressible relief of knowing that it was gone..."

What's made this planet such a soft touch for Abhoth?... The greatest human limitation is that we are all tied to the present by an arbitrary identity, personal and national.

What is identity? The identity of a shark is its teeth, its size, its ability to eat and digest almost anything. An oyster's identity is its protective shell. Identity is then the means by which an organism protects itself and maintains itself in a hostile environment and all environments that contain other such identities are hostile.

And what is the identity of Abohth the Dark?

Its ability to remain hidden and carry on a parasitic existence that is hostile to the host by parasitic necessity. So we are all playing Abhoth's game. and by setting one identity against another Abhoth maintains himself indefinitely.

Isolation from such an environment is the first step into the unexplored territory of inner space...

"As man loses touch with his inner being he finds himself trapped in the world of other people. "Man is a political animal" said Aristotle telling one of the greatest lies in human history. For every man has more in common with the hills or stars than with other men, Other men do not supply our values. Other men do not matter in the way we have believed.

Man is not alone.

You could be the last man in the universe and you would not be alone..."

A further example of the way the virus works is manifested in The Farm, Clarence Cooper's novel of a Negro drug addict. This is the virus of narcotic addiction, and the penal system fostering it.

"We saw a nigger woman dead on the road. In a flash of that instant the black woman crimped in the smoky shimmering wreck...

The windshield had come inward like a butter knife to slice her head directly down the middle clear to the back of the her head so her thick just done hair sprayed like fine black blossoms in the wind and snow clung to it like the tiny hairs of Medusa and I heard one of them say up front:

"Gosh, Bob, did you see that niggerwoman?"

A Negro drug addict and pusher doing five years for sale of heroin is the custody of two marshals. He is being transferred from a Federal penitentiary to a Federal Narcotics Farm. Admission is restricted to narcotic offenders. Anyone can admit himself to the Farm for Treatment.

And these volunteers are allowed to leave on 24 hour notice, unless notice is given on Friday day. The Farm is a prison where prisoners who misbehave are subject to expulsion, i.e. return to federal penitentiary.

The guards do not carry guns and physical mistreatment of a prisoner would place a guard in danger of dismissal and loss of pension. This is not a story of sweat boxes, whips and chains. Consider the case of a an old German doctor who is caught short over a weekend and dies from a lack of medication:

Dr Uxekoll, looking fat around the ass, from the too small white jacket he was wearing, was lecturing the other doctor like a judge. The man must have been 65 or 70 years old kinda Germanlooking looked like a dope fiend to me. He was beautiful too with a face full of anxious lovely things to be remembered a completely alien personality to me.

"And you mean to tell me that I can't have medication? Surely you are joking?"

"Boy, I wish I was" said Dr. Uxkoll grinning. "We can't give you any medication because our studies show relatively cold withdrawal is best long run." He shook his head and shrugged grinning.

"That's the best deal I can offer you Doc."

"For years I have laboured under the delusion that this place was specifically set up for the relief of addicts. I've even refereed patients here. You tell me that now I have committed myself I am a prisoner until Monday morning and you will do nothing in that time to relieve my illness. I simply can't believe it is happening."

Uxekoll was smiling and benign: he held his hands together in front like a priest.

"I'm afraid it is. Happening I mean."...

The little doctor was dead by the time they got him to hospital.

However the real shock of the book lies not in what the author describes but in what he takes for granted like the weather:- that the American Narcotics Dept. has made informing a way of life. It works like this...

Now here is Mr average Pusher in his impregnable loft with double Locks and bars. They could never get him through that door without leaving him time to dispose of the evidence. Agents unscrew the firedoor and rush in finding opium hash LSD. Now comes the spiel:

"Sit down Sam. Have a cigarette... Don't worry about being put inside... as long as you cooperate, yes I said co-operate..." So another informer-pusher is added to the expanding tentacles of Abhoth the WRONG.

If on the other hand Sam has any silly ideas about integrity... "All right wise guy we can get you ten years..."

And they can.

To give some idea of the perversion of values involved: In junky parlance a man who informs is WRONG... ("The laws against addiction must reflect society's disapproval of the addict." Harry Anslinger) Addicts and pushers who inform receive lighter sentences and in many cases no sentences at all. So pressure is often put on an arrested addict by his family who would be deprived of support if he went to prison...

Do RIGHT to inform, Do WRONG not to inform, be RIGHT not to inform, be WRONG to inform. This is what the American Narcotics Dept. is doing in America and what they will do anywhere else they can find traction.

It can't happen in England? I'm afraid it is. Happening, I mean. In 1959 a doctor connected with the American Narcotics Dept. told Doctor Dent:

(Dr. Dent of England is the man who introduced the apo-morphine treatment for addicts. This treatment is the only treatment that works. It has never been tried in America.)

(Not so, Mr. Burroughs-- It has -with dire results-Say no more.)

He said to Dent: "I have a hunch you English will have our narcotics problem in ten years time."

In 1959 I wrote in Nova Express:

PLAN DRUG ADDICTION

Now you are asking me whether I want to perpetuate a narcotics problem and I say:

"Protect the disease. Must be made criminal protecting society form the disease."

The problem scheduled in the United States the use of jail, former narcotics plan, addiction and crime for many years. Addiction in some form is the basis. Must be wholly addicts. Any voluntary capacity subversion of the Will Capital and Treasury Bank. Infection dedicated to traffic in exchange narcotics demonstrated a Typhoid Mary who will spread the narcotics problem to the United Kingdom... Cut Up of Fighting Drug Addiction by Malcolm Monroe Former Prosecutor in the Western World, October 1959. IT almost needs a new word.

Additional notes on drug farms: There is an exclusive district in drug farms reserved for the DO-RIGHTS... nicer roomed more medication better class of people. On the other hand there is a place set aside for the Do-WRONGS over in section B with the other canine preparations.

(Research at drug farms has conclusively established the addiction liability of decorticated canine preparations in plain English dogs with their brains cut out who nonetheless react with sham rage and uncoordinated clonic movements when medication is withheld.)

Now about these Do Rights I don't say they are veteran informers, just normal human creeps. Here is Mr Average Do Right shows up at the door with letters from his clergy man bankmanager boss and boy picture of himself as an Eagle Scout shaking hands with a priest on graduation day Old glory stirring in the breeze of June. Not an informer exactly just a front office brown nose.

"Doctor, when I die I want to be buried right in the same coffin with you. Why you've made me see it all so clear, I'm shaking all over."

"I'll put you down for some more medication, son."

"Thank you doctor. Pushers should receive the death penalty. And everybody knows pot-smoking leads to heroin like whisky draws a priest?" Of such stuff are DO-RIGHTS made. While down in the dim grey region Where the DO-WRONGS hawk and spit..."

"The croakers wouldn't give me a goofball... ask me what the United States Flag means to me? I tell him soak it in HEROIN doc and I'll suck it... said I had the WRONG attitude I should see the Padre and get it straight with Jesus."

The virus thrives on unthinking conservatism. The less we consider our position, the less likely we are to turn our attention inside ourselves, where the virus exists.

Bloodworld by Lawrence M Jennifer can be read as a satire on self-righteous respectability. It concerns a planet where the inhabitants are

Divided into two classes: Lords and Ladies, and the Bound. The Bound are a slave caste. The Lords and Ladies are born to command. The young and personable Bound are available round the clock in the Remand Homes for the pleasure of the Lords and Ladies. And this pleasure consists of tortures inflicted on the Bound. There she is all tied up and waiting for you...

"The room which you will see... It was a small room no one in it except the girl and myself everything set out properly as of course it had to be since that was the job of the officials there who were themselves Bound and glad enough if you understand me of their simple tasks. There was the fire burning and everything else that was required... the room... the girl... the fire... Style B for on our world these matters a coded.

They meant pain and the long screams. Not even the screams of a lord meant to command. The girl was to scream. That was her life to wail as a Bound Girl in the Remand houses to be brought out and made ready for screams and for use.

Her eyes showed fright and that was very good the fear fed me finally and fed me fully. I stepped to the Fir3 bucket and withdrew a short handled metal band to touch her where my mother resided in her and she shirked with the mad pain the fine pain."

Or maybe you dig making love to a Bound Girl and feeling her all over with rubber glove sipped in acid? Well, that's what the Bound are there for to satisfy the Lords and Ladies. There is no crime, no unemployment, no insanity. It is Utopia. But sinister forces are at work. A man named Tonn who lives on the outskirts of town precipitates an unsavoury scandal. Haltingly, the hero's father, who is a pillar of Bloodworld society, a Council Judge in fact, tells his adolescent son about men like Tonn:

"He is actually seen there among the Women... waiting for the Bound Men..."

Seen there and without shame...

"Father you mean that he..."

"Yes, he uses Bound Men for his pleasure..."

The idea was almost inconceivable. Pleasure resided in a woman's body which was right and natural... (Just a matter of wringing it out with a bra soaked with lye or hot acid douche where it is right and natural.)

My father went on: "Some twist in him. I understand there are others in other cities. But ours is clean enough. That we should have one like Tonn is enough shame for all our people."

But ours is clean enough. That we should have one like Tonn is enough shame for all our people.

Summoned for questioning Tonn is cool... suave and insolent...

"Tonn's eyes burned... they burned with luminous dark flame and he seemed to sit quite at ease both hands in his lap... resting waiting...

The useless whiteness of those hands seemed terribly directed to some use I did not and could not imagine...

Tonn spoke as if no one else existed in the room:

"Prolonging pain for a space of hours, keeping the Bound in constant pain, creating varying levels alterable at will these are the true art... causing actual tears at the sight of my face..."

Unable to contain himself the Judge bursts out:

"What are you techniques?"

Tonnn gives him no satisfaction. "I am afraid Great Lord that these matters must be private. They have nothing to do with your questioning."

Like another world De Sade, Tonn the Suberversive corrupts the younger generation. The young are disillusioned with the Bound who no longer respond, no longer scream.

They begin looking speculatively at Mom and Dad over the wheaties. Mmmmmm. Inevitably they rise up and kill the entire older generation. And they scream good.

"BUT WE' RE COUNCIL MEMBERS!!"

"We are the council!"

And she shreiked again in their licking flames.

"It was fun."

The illusive Mr. Tonn is nowhere to be found.

"Yet Tonn seems the most important to me of all... Our world is gone and this is our end."

From the Mayfair magazine series entitled "The Burroughs Academy"