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Eyes

In the first year of his administration, President Clinton was advised by his cabinet to check the pulse of the nation regularly by meeting with people radical in their beliefs about important issues of the day. Among them was anti-modernist Theodore Kaczynski. At the time, Theodore Kaczynski lived in the woods; his coat was of deerskin, he ate only of his garden and hunting rifle, and he drank his water from the river.

On the night before their first meeting, President Clinton had a dream that he was eating a fish, and when he got to the bones of the fish, these were made of wires. He threw down the fish upon the floor, and it was still alive, though half-eaten. It said to him, "The way of flesh doesn’t apply to the works of flesh."

In President Clinton’s meeting, he didn’t bring up the dream right away. But as he listened to Theodore tell him that humans shouldn’t be made to serve the works of their hands, that technology controls men more than they control it, he was reminded of the dream, and he told Theodore of its contents. "My God," said Theodore; "that was no dream. That was a vision."

After first having the dream, President Clinton wasn’t sure what it meant; he had disregarded its contents as nonsense, and had no idea what the words of the fish were saying. But after meeting with Theodore, he was sure he knew what the dream meant, and was astounded by Theodore’s ability to make sense of it. President Clinton for years had dreamt often, and had rarely if ever been able to understand a dream’s meaning. He immediately asked Theodore to interpret his dreams on a regular basis. He told no one of this, however, as he didn’t want it made public that he paid any attention to dreams; the public might interpret this as some sort of mysticism or magic. Dreams are mysterious, and the act of searching through their contents for meaning is threatening to some people, people who would rather never remember them at all, and, if they did, would never give them a second of exploration.

The next time they met, President Clinton told Theodore Kaczynski of his latest dream. "I was in prison," he said, "and a bell was counting the hours. Like a great clocktower chimes away the time with its number of rings, so the bell was marking the hours. We passed from three o’clock to nine o’clock it seemed in a matter of minutes. Finally, we approached twelve o’clock, and a man said to me, ‘You shall never get out of here at all, not even through trickery.’ What could this dream mean, Ted?"

"The prison is the world," said Theodore; "the prison is the very flesh you are trapped inside of. People will look during the eleventh hour of your administration toward a way out of the prison, a way out of their own flesh. The man’s words meant that even by tricking oneself with the illusion of pleasures and happiness, one cannot get out of that prison."

The next night the President had another unsettling dream. He was at a cannibal feast, and he was being cooked inside a giant metallic cauldron. When he was cooked, the cauldron was drained very slowly out the bottom. He found himself leaking out of the bottom with the water, till he seemed to dissipate into nothing, and he awoke. All that day, as he met with his cabinet and took care of business, he was thinking about the dream, wondering what it could mean. Finally, at the end of the day, he had a chance to call Theodore and tell him the dream.

"The cauldron was metal, symbolizing machinery," said Theodore. "The cannibals were men who eat men: therefore they are unconscious of themselves as humans, eating human flesh as if it weren’t the same flesh as theirs. These men eating human flesh are the scientists who create machinery wholly unconscious of what they are doing. As you were drained with the water out of the metal cauldron, you symbolized humanity slowly draining out of machinery: thus machinery will one day completely take over, and there will be no flesh left, not even the flesh that built it."

"What does this have to do with the prison dream?" asked the President.

"I’ll have to think on that," said Theodore.

That week Theodore prepared a gift for the President. He wrapped it in a box and sealed it with tape and wrapping paper, then put a little bow on it. When the President received him the next time, Theodore presented the gift. Since it had already passed through a metal detector, the President felt it was safe to open it.

He neatly plucked off the bow, and began carefully removing the tape from the corners. He folded the paper off the box, and opened it and looked inside. Inside there was a great pile of the eyeballs of animals. President Clinton was enraged, and stood with his finger pointing, screaming at Theodore that if he didn’t leave immediately he would have him executed by the courts. Theodore simply sat there and said, "This is the world," and President Clinton grew deathly pale. He became calmer and sat, then told Theodore of a dream he had had the night before. In the dream, he was driving a car, but it was on railroad tracks, and it ran on electricity. No matter where he steered the car, it would follow the tracks instead of his directions. Finally, he looked about him, and there was nothing but electric cars and metal tracks. A voice came out of the sky saying, "This is the world."

Theodore sat and listened to this dream, and asked President Clinton a question. Would he dive into a river first to save a grown man, or an infant? "An infant," said the President. "Why?" said Theodore. "An infant is more helpless," said President Clinton. Now Theodore asked him if it was easier to kill an infant, or a grown man. "An infant," said the President. "Wrong," said Theodore. "It is harder to kill an infant, because he looks more appealing and adorable." The President hadn’t thought of it this way. Theodore then took the box of eyes, raised it above his head, and declared, "Execute this criminal, and do what should have been done while he was helpless in the womb." The President trembled, and replied, "I am no match for him," and he stared at the box of eyes, which stared back at him through their death, knowing all and seeing the President was much more helpless than them.

The President signed an executive order the next day to put Theodore in prison, as he felt threatened by his words and the gift he had brought. But he had a sense of pity for the man, and asked him if he had any small requests. Yes, said Theodore, he did: he wanted a diet made of nothing but the eyes of animals. President Clinton asked him if he preferred any particular animal, and Theodore said no, any eyes would do. For a few months President Clinton went with his dreams unexplained, as Theodore languished away on his diet of eyes in a sunless prison. Finally, the President had a dream so disturbing he couldn’t get it out of his mind.

He told Theodore that if he could explain the dream, he would set Theodore free; if he couldn’t, he would have Theodore executed. He asked Theodore, before telling him the dream, if he was up to the challenge. "Tell me the dream," said Theodore, "and I’ll tell you if I am up to the challenge." "No," said the President, "tell me now."

After Theodore accepted the challenge, he was shown into the White House and met with the President alone. "Now," said Theodore, "what was your dream?"

"I had a dream," said the President, "that I was looking at a man through black and white video, and he was eating cameras. A voice came over an intercom, and said to him, ‘Stop eating those men.’ That was the entire dream."

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