The King’s Hypnotist: Chapter Two
Tiberius Tullius woke up the next morning with the worst breath of the day. His mouth felt as if all of Hannibal’s elephants, plus some of his Spanish cavalry, had come out of the far reaches of time to march about in his mouth and drop their dung down his throat.
“Breakfast!” he shouted as he rolled out of his damp bed onto the cold, hard tiles. “Light! Water! Barber!”
He stood up and rubbed his face. He always felt this way in the morning. Either he stayed up too late, drinking, or he stayed up too late doing work. There was also the sex. The result was the same—morning aches and pains.
The two slaves who had serviced him last night removed themselves from his bed, the man and woman making sure to pick up their tiny tunics before leaving. He smiled a tad, searching his memory to try to find out just how much fun he had last night.
Then the memory of the final course of last night’s dinner hit him.
“Oh by Jupiter,” he said to himself as a slave helped him into a clean tunic, another pushed him down into a chair, and a third prepared to shave his face clean of the new growth that had appeared there during the night.
Cleopatra, the Twentieth Princess of King Kemet, Royal Daughter to Cleopatra the Eleventh Princess, Sixteenth Wife to King Kemet, so on, so forth, had decided not only would he help her become strong and smart and all powerful BUT he would help her brainwash all the other members of the Royal Family, the Court and, of yes, some of the Generals also.
“I’m doomed,” Tiberius murmured to himself as the slave carefully used a razor to shave the tiny hairs off his chin. He carefully tilted the whining Roman’s head back to gently work right under the chin—always a problem with this Master. Why did he always have to talk so much?
It was amazing how calmly she had explained it to Tiberius over apples and mixed nuts. How she smiled as she described the way her Family would bow down to her. How members of the Court would praise her. How the Generals would kill her enemies. Oh yes, she was so pleased that she even accepted a napkin of food to take home.
Tiberius tried to calm himself but it was very hard. Slaves could be spies, flowers could have recorders, and microphones could be aimed at his house. Kings were so impulsive. Inbred ones more so.
He had some bread and cheese for breakfast, plus some pure water. It was traditional to eat little for breakfast and, sometimes, traditions were a comfort. He had his best toga, with the purple border showing his statue as a Senator, brought to him. It took three slaves to help put it on but it was worth the extra touch. One had to look one’s best.
After using the toilet he sat in a folding chair in his atrium, next to the fountain, and nodded to the door slave and his secretary that he was ready for his visitors. He braced himself and forced a smile onto his face.
In Rome, for thousands of years, it had been the practice for all great men to greet their minions in the early hours of the day. Well, the polite term was client, but minions was a good stolid word also. They came to beg for money, ask for help, to ask for a strong arm. And in return they gave their benefactor their support, their votes, and, sometimes, their swords soaked in the enemies of their boss. Well, that is how the system worked. From the lowest of the low in the dirty streets to the highest of the high on the Palatine Hill. Now, this planet had no official link with the Senate. There was no embassy, no military base, not even a delegation. Yet there were Roman bankers, and Roman slave dealers, and Roman silk merchants, and all kinds of Roman tourists. So of course, when they had trouble, or legal issues with the local government, or thought the wine was not watered down enough, they came to Tiberius’s house.
Thank Jupiter they had to get past the Palace guards first—which meant they were at least clean and presentable—but there was always two or three dozen of them each morning.
So Tiberius nodded his head and shook hands and said, “Dear me,” and made promises and gave out friendly, interest free, loans and took notes and, in general, made people happy in the name of Rome and his family.
The last person to be presented to him was NOT Roman yet was a great sight for sore eyes.
“Hector!” shouted Tiberius, as he leapt from the chair, tipping it over, and embraced the young Greek in a bear hug.
“Tiberius!” said the handsome man, returned the hug. “I say, are Romans always so emotional.”
“You have no idea what I have been put through,” Tiberius whined, gesturing for a slave to step forward. “Water? Grapes? Bread?”
“No, no,” said Hector with a smile. “I already have broken my fast. I have come to take you to the market to buy you a gift on this important holiday.”
“Not another holiday,” said Tiberius with a roll of his eyes. “These people have too many Gods. Which is it this time? Anubis?” Turning to the staff he ordered, “Another chair!”
“No,” said Hector with a grin. “It happens to be one of your holidays.”
Tiberius set his chair upright and offered it to his Greek friend. He then sat down on the second one brought by the slaves. He adjusted his toga and tried not to look too embarrassed.
“I can never keep track of them,” the Roman stated with a shrug. “The Senate makes one, then changes its mind, removes it from the calendar. Then it changes the calendar. Which is stupid because every planet has its own anyway. What month is it back home anyway?”
Hector chuckled. “April Seventeenth. The Festival of the Parthian Annexation is today. You know, to honor Gaius Octavius.”
“Huh…”
“The man who took over after his uncle died in Nineveh during the invasion of the East,” hinted Hector.
“Oh yes…and defeated the Gauls…”
“The Parthian people were descended from the Persians in fact.”
“Well,” said Tiberius with a dismissive wave of his hands, “I could never remember history. There is so much of it to remember.”
“And we Greeks remember nothing BUT history,” said Hector, as he stood up and grabbed his friend by the left arm. “Now come with me. I will buy you anything you wish in the market. Afterwards we can visit the public bathhouse and then I will treat you to a meal out my house.”
“Oh,” said Tiberius, trapped between wanting to get a gift and not wishing to go out into the hot, dirty, crowded streets of the city. “Oh, alright. GET MY TOGA!”
Outside Tiberius’s house was one of the largest litters he had ever seen. As big as a small boat, with at least thirty men at the poles, the whole thing looked too big to move.
“I prefer motorized carriages myself,” said Hector with a smile, unfolding the step ladder, “but the King offered me one of his litters and who am I to refuse.”
“Teaching his kids history?” asked Tiberius as he stepped up and into the litter, selecting one of chairs in the rear that faced forward. There was not much of a view, as the whole litter was encased, but he hated to ride backwards.
“What else,” as he picked the space next to his friend at the same time stomping his right foot on the floor. The thirty men all grunted, lifting the litter, and were soon carrying it down the tree lined pathway, towards the nearest gate.
“Market!” Hector shouted before pulling a bottle of wine from under his chair. “Good Italian wine?”
“Always!”
The litter navigated slowly out of the maze of stables, barracks, gardens, and treasuries to enter the city itself. Thebes was, outside the Palace grounds, a mixture of high tech buildings in a sea of poverty and filth. Metal flyers glittered over smoke filled dens of sin and lust. The city watch patrolled public squares hunting for pick pockets, con artists, and unlicensed street walkers. Taverns served cheap beer and dark bread to dust covered workers while restaurants, guarded by door men in white jackets and hidden weapons, served roast peacock and only the finest, chilled, wines to perfumed nobles and their perfumed wives.
Even the lone river that wandered through the city, which was also called the Nile, was crowded with a mixture of private pleasure craft and smelly fishing boats. The water was amazingly clean and clear but you rarely saw it under the horning, smoking, churning, and rumbling objects that many people called river traffic.
“So full of life!” exclaimed Hector as he helped himself to some wine after refilling Tiberius’s goblet for the third time. “So much to see and hear!”
“And smell,” said his Roman friend before draining his cup for the fourth time.
Hector just laughed and said, “Does it not remind you of Rome?”
“We have laws to deal with noise and water pollution,” pointed out Tiberius. “But that is neither here nor there. I wish to bounce something off that head of yours.”
“Not the goblet I hope.”
“What?” said Tiberius, in false outrage, “and waste good wine. No, I want to talk to you about hypnosis.”
Hector frowned and sipped some of his wine.
“Surely, you know more about that than I do, my friend.”
“I need the logic of a Greek thinker,” said Tiberius. “And I need to clear my thoughts on some issues.”
“Loose!”
Tiberius smiled, refilled his cup in his left hand, and then grasped his toga with his right hand, entering that mode that many would recognize as a Roman Senator about to launch into a long and, very likely, boring speech.
“Hypnosis,” he stated, “is when the outer layers of our mind, are removed to get at the inner layers. The inner layers are those that deal with drive, basic emotions, wishes, and, in other words, our motivations. The outer layer is developed as we age, like the rough bark of a tree, which limits us, puts the brakes on stupid behavior but also, sometimes, tells us we need to stop dreaming and get serious.”
“Yes, yes,” said his Greek friend. “A glove covering the hand.”
“Now, when we use hypnosis,” continued the Roman with a gesture of his, already empty cup, “we strip off the glove. Get to the basic fears, dreams, and inner most self of the client. Now, here is the question. So listen carefully. They say you can not force anybody to do anything while in a trance. Because they are still aware WHILE in the trance and their mind will not allow itself to be used or abused.”
“True.”
“BUT!” said the Roman with a slightly drunken grin, “The mind is made up of many parts. The outer part is like an parent, driving the carriage, while the inner part is like the kids, forced to sit in the back seat. Get it?”
“You lost me,” said Hector with a frown, tumbling his friend’s words around his head like rocks but failing getting to their polished core. “Elucidate,” he added.
“The conscious part of your brain is like the adults in the family,” stated Tiberius with a gesture of his hands, having forgotten both his heavy toga which was slipping off and his goblet that was now rolling about the floor of the shifting litter, “and your unconscious mind is the kids. They make up your total mind.”
“Now here is the good part,” he said, while leaning towards his friend. “Here is the great part. The mind is in control, yes? Just like a family in control of the carriage. But what happens if the adults, the father and the mother, are no longer in charge? What if the kids are driving? The family is still in control, yes?”
“Well…”
“So the unconscious is free, enjoying itself, wanting to do things. ANYTHING! Out of control and eager to play.”
“You think you can get a person in a trance to do things it would otherwise not do, willingly, because part of the mind WANTS to play?” asked Hector, finding the point with the skill of a Greek thinker.
Tiberius just touched his nose with his right forefinger and smiled.
Hector’s litter finally came to a sudden stop, after about a half an hour plowing through the streets like a ship in a storm. Hector stepped out and helped his tipsy friend out.
“Now, for your gift,” said Hector. “And maybe a few presents to send back home?”
“I am sure father would love a live cobra,” giggled Tiberius.
“I’ll pick the gifts,” added Hector quickly, pulling his friend out of the way of a speeding bike taxi. “Let us check out the tables over there.”
“Fine, lovely,” muttered Tiberius as he was dragged towards the shouting merchants and their home made wares, “nothing like fake Egyptian tourist crap.”