November 1978: Names

If you got the impression that C never made mistakes, then you were wrong, he also made mistakes, mostly mistakes that belong by definition to a time when "he still over-trusted the earthers." One such mistake, a case I will not detail, is the same mistake of belief in a human being that led to his boat motorcycle being stolen. The second, and least understandable mistake is that he went to report it to the police. I have always seen in his apprehension and caution against the ‘establishment forces’ a healthy instinct. It was Beny, our friend outside the group who recommended him to go to the police, he said when he also instructed him where to turn "there are guys there who know their job, and they knew how to find you the motorcycle" he recommended. But when I think about it, in light of what happened next, it is possible that C wanted things to go that way, "directed himself to it" if to use his expression.

The problems started when at the station he was asked, by the policeman and the policewoman who accompanied him almost from the beginning, for a name and an ID card. He never had an ID card, as he left the world at the age when a green pass is currently issued, but no ID cards have been issued in it yet. And name he refused to give. Only his residential address, which is not listed there, and the neighbors' phone number (he never had a phone either), he was willing to give and said it was enough, but the police did not ask over it at all, anyway he relied on the police's ability to find him at any address, If she needs to. C had something principled against names. There is such a thing, he said, not only for the people of the earth. But none of his external friends had a name. Only the common soldiers, from the classes / groups of 'low-ranking' creatures (of whom the humanity of the earth is, in terms of the federation, even lower) were given identifying codes that could be called names, imprinted on their bodies, so that they would not escape. "name is a means of the lords to catch you in it" he would say. He also tried to get us emotionally separated from our names, in a ceremony he called 'Burning the Names', which was ironically done at the time I received my first ID card. He was not so successful. In the post I wrote about it, I still assumed he had an ID, and when he read the post (i.e., I read him the post), he laughed at me not knowing yet that he did not have an ID and did not have one. So he told me the full story of his arrest, which I knew only partially before.

"Call me Baruch Ben Neria, the main thing is that you will find the motorcycle" he told the two policemen who did not even have a page and pen to write down the complaint (he later suggested that I take this name as a blog nickname) and then identified himself with other names he invented on the spot. But that was in the days that followed. The policemen looked at his long hair and asked him if he was a deserter from the IDF, and threatened to hand him over to the army authorities. "They will find everything about you, they know who you are." C smiled, and said he did not have time to serve, because he was abducted at the age of 12. "Abducted? Wow, where from?" The policewoman asked. "From Earth," he replied. The policeman signaled to the policewoman with her finger on the temple to say "nuts" and she smiled at him understandingly. "It seems to me that your mind has really been abducted," said the policeman, "do you want us to give it back to you? Tell the truth, from which hospital did you escape? Said and mentioned some names of well-known psychiatric hospitals in the area. "I did not run away from a hospital, maybe I'm the one who came to heal here" "Did you come to heal?" The policeman's mouth twisted with a smile "Let's let's take you to heal". "What's your psychiatrist called?" The policewoman asked. A third policeman entered, and whispered with the policeman, C heard "special cases" and "oh", then he left and the first policeman signaled the policewoman to leave, and when he was left alone with C he was informed that he was detained in the room, and he has three hours to decide if he wants to be referred to nearby psychiatric hospital or the military authorities, who have just launched an operation to capture defectors, even veteran defectors. "I just want you to find me the motorcycle, that's why I came. Are you capable of that?" The policeman looked at him with a look that began to become hostile and left the room. Less than three hours passed, two hours passed and other people came, who invited C to get in a car with them. The vehicle, which was white and opaque, brought him to a place, full of neon lights and with no windows, people in white and gray again asked him the same questions, what is his name and why he do not have an ID card. He identified himself by various names, most of them biblical, they called where they called to and were repeatedly told 'we do not have such a name', 'not known to us'.

And on the second question he repeated what he had answered the policeman at the station. They were actually interested. But C refused to say more than that.
"Take me to your mind, these are things only he is allowed to hear," he replied stubbornly to each of them.
C claimed that not all people are telepathically impaired, that there are people who have the ability to transmit and influence their environment, and that each area has some 'regional brain' that gives instructions to others, even without them being aware of it, and he sets the environmental 'mindset', and the state and its overt and covert authorities also use 'regional minds'. He claimed this based on his experience from human-like communities he knew on the other planets and I'm not sure he was completely wrong about our planet as well. He must have had reason to think that the people who took him may understand exactly what he was talking about. And they probably understood.
"Do you know, until now we assumed you were playing, and I must say we enjoyed playing with you in your game. But you know that if we start taking your stuff seriously, you may be defined as a hostile body to Earth, then you will get a different treatment, completely different, and from people you do not want to meet." Told him one of the interrogators, the friendliest among them (though C said that they all were quite friendly with him, and honored him with food and drink while, also the room he had did not resemble a detention room, more like a vacation room, only they did not let him sleep much). He ended up giving them some details, much less than what I gave here on the blog. He chose what to deliver. "I wanted to stimulate the thinking, independent person in them" he told me "do not know if I succeeded. They are too satisfied with themselves, like everyone here." The last name he identified with was Patricio, and that was the closest thing to the truth, because that was the name everyone at the school in Ecuador called him. He told them everything about his being there before the abduction, because he said he wanted them to investigate, and perhaps they would get to the mystery of where his parents and sister had gone. "I did not care that my name, listed in the documents, birth certificate, etc. would be known by them too," C answered a question before we asked. "It's not a matter of principle and it's not really a secret. I did not care if they knew my name, just that I did not want to be the one to give them it, because I do not want to confirm to the establishment his story through participation in its names game. I would do that if I answered their name-quesion."

After ten days, they invited him to get back into the sealed vehicle, they dropped him off near the police station, and told him he was free to walk. He no longer re-entered the station to report the motorcycle theft.

Two days after he returned home, members of the group were then with him, a neighbor gave him a letter received in a mailbox near the address where he lived (about which he was not asked at all by any of the investigators). It was an official letter, stamped by airmail. The envelope had the name PATRICIO (all the letters in the capital) written on the pen with a Hebrew inscription that included only the name of the nearby street, and it was clear that it was written in a different pen. Beneath these would have looked as if they had cut the top layer of paper, in a place where another recipient's name and a street name were once written. Only the name of the city remains down in print, with a first letter in the capital ("You see" C said to whoever was with him "when they want to find they know, no need to give them names. Also the motorcycle they would find, if they wanted"). Inside the envelope, in a paper bearing the Ecuadorian government logo, in Spanish that he still remembered, was written: "Estimado señor,
Según una investigación que hicimos, los rastros de los miembros de su familia se perdieron en su viaje.
En la zona… el .. día .. mes .. año 1962.
En nuestra estimación, perecieron en las inundaciones que azotaron al país ese día, y en particular al entorno en el que viajaron." ("Dear Sir,
According to an inquiry we made, the traces of his family members were lost on their trip
In the area … on .. day .. month .. year 1962.
In our estimation, they perished in the floods that befell the country that day, and in particular the environment in which they traveled. ")
The date that appeared in the letter was the date of C's abduction, and he did not remember that that morning his parents and sister intended to go on a trip, certainly not to the area mentioned in the letter that is relatively far from Quito. Someone who knew Spanish, claimed that there was something wrong with that Spanish and Hafa agreed with him. Elton suggested testing in a lab if the Ecuadorian logo was real. C said there was no point, either way his family was not alive. His opinion was that they had done something similar to what they had done to him, when they came to the police to report his absence, but they did not return them. And according to his later inquiries, he was right. Something had changed in him following this letter, and it was impossible not to see. It seemed that he was no longer so sure that he wanted to share his knowledge with Earthers.
The meetings slowly faded away, until he left us at the end of next summer (he said goodbye to us in May, but left the country only in August, I still do not understand how he left the country and returned and left and return several times again, without an ID card, but the fact that he knew how to do it ). We have not seen him for more than 6 years.