commonsensical that I see why it wasn’t even mentioned in the master plan. No harm done, thanks to Betz. Well, the Boss picked himself a good foreman, I’ll say. Talented fellow, and so young, too, great co-ordinator, and no prima donna. Salt of the earth type. How did things go with you? Better, I hope.”
“Fine, Sir, just fine! I’ve been inspecting the special suits our men will have to wear. They’ll have to be made of just the right blend of lightweight material and still be solid stuff, if you know what I mean. But sometimes I do find myself wondering how come the Boss’s instructions are so detailed even on something as minor as clothing?”
“I wouldn’t consider that to be minor, O.A. After all, I sure wouldn’t want any of our men getting burned or something because the atmosphere was lacking or the suits were not flame-resistant or anti-magnetic or static-proof, or something like that. All I know is that every fibre and filament has to be in place. You’ve got to be real careful with those fibres and threads so that they conduct just the right amount without resistance or overload, know what I mean? A short-circuit anywhere could be fatal, you know.”
“They sent me to you, sir. Here are my credentials. You’ll never get the hang of all those names and titles in my pedigree so let’s skip the formalities. Just call me Jess. I’m from The Daily Median. Came for some information about your project here. You’re quite famous, you know. All over the globe, in fact! You know, it’s real nice of you guys to let me in. Thought there’d be plenty hush-hush on something as big as this. Can you tell me what it’s actually all about?”
“I’ll try to explain it in layman language as best as I can. You could put it like this: Our overall project has something to do with hi-fidelity reception from out beyond. We’re trying to tune in on cosmic transmissions of a special order and sensitivity. This has never been done on a massive scale like this before and we’ve got to start from scratch, manufacturing and assembling all our own equipment. We’ve got to train a special corps of men, too. These transmissions from out yonder are so special and that’s why our reception equipment has to be so very delicate. These incoming transmissions are influenced by the vibes of the receiver operator and can even be affected by the receiver himself. In fact, they’re so sensitive that even the brain waves of the slightest aberration can make a difference. So all the operators have to be emotionally and morally stable as well as highly sensitive and well trained.”
“Oh, then I read you all wrong! I thought this was some kind of moonshot outfit.”
“Did you? Well, let me show you around the place, and then you can go back to The Median and tell your readers all about it. See if you can make them understand what it’s all about.”
“Sounds O.K. with me, though out there we get the impression that you don’t care much for outsiders.”
“You’re right about that. We don’t want snoopers messing around. We don’t want mental saboteurs who might ruin the excellent morale we’ve built up here. But you seem to be all right, so we’ll take our chances with you.”
“That’s very kind of you, I’m sure. Mind if I ask some questions?”
“Fire away!”
“How did you get all your raw materials to this man-forsaken spot? I see technicians working with rare woods, copper, silver, gold. Seems that everything is of the best quality, too.”
“That’s right, the materials are not from here. We brought it all with us and all of it belongs to the people themselves. They worked hard for it, I can tell you and they’ve freely given it for this part of the grand project. And you’re quite right, there’s no expense spared. Everybody wants this to work out well. As I’ve explained, the transmission from way out yonder is of the utmost exactitude and the success of the whole project depends heavily on the correct reception and this in turn depends on the perfection of each minute component. We don’t worry here too much about budget restraints. Everybody wants to be part of the project and the whole thing is run on a communal basis. Every one of us has bought an initial shareholding and we all pay our yearly dues regularly. Equally. On top of that, anyone and everyone can chip-in as their means allow.”
“Do I get you straight? The financing is coming from all the members? There are no shirkers? Wow! No wonder you’ve got enough gold and silver and all those precious materials!”
“Yep, everyone’s a partner in this project. More than that! Some of our wives volunteered their own jewellery to be melted down.”
“Amazing! I think the sociological aspects of this project are even more fascinating than the technical ones. Would make a fascinating study. Tell me, this sharing business goes all the way? ‘The community that eats together’ and all that jazz?”
“Oh no! We confine our togetherness to work, meditation and learning together. But we have completely separate housing, and so on. In fact, the layout of our houses was especially designed so that no one entrance faces another. We believe in each family unit keeping its individuality. Makes for less friction all around and maintains the emotionally stable atmosphere which is so vital to the whole project. As I told you before, any offbeat brain waves or highly charged negative emotions can throw the whole programme off kilter.”
“You say you meditate together? If I get you right, doesn’t that generate psychic energy of extremely high velocity?”
“Good for you! As I said, we’re concerned specifically that since aberrant psychical activity can adversely affect the whole experience, that’s why we all meditate in the same direction, so to speak. This is another integral part of the whole project which I haven’t explained yet. As you know, we actually have rather more than two million souls with us, all of them involved in this grand project. So you probably wonder why we are doing this on such a gigantic scale. Well, it’s like this. We know that it is precisely this concentration of mental effort — in layman terminology ‘our magnetic force-field’ — which attracts that special transmission — that we spoke about before — our way. We’ve got a kind of motto for it: ‘Think One.’ We had our first trial demonstration not so long back. It was something to experience, but the force of it was a bit too much for us. You see, we had no equipment. It took place just out in the open and it struck us like lightning. There were a couple of other hiccups too that I’d rather not go into but after that, the Boss said that we’d better go ahead and design the machinery and its housing and train our special corps so that we could maintain a steady psychical level. That’s what this part of the project is all about. I hope I haven’t confused you too much.”
“I’m afraid you have. But I’d like to stay around and see for myself what’s going on. I don’t mind telling you that the atmosphere here is so pleasant and exhilarating that if you’d allow it, I might even want to stay and join you. Oh, one minor question. Do you have a name for this particular stage of the project? No one on the outside seems to know.”
“Oh? Didn’t I tell you that? We call this part of the project ‘Operation Mishkon.’”
