Halo Cryptum

Halo Cryptum: The Forerunner Saga

By Greg Bear

Truly, the Deep Reverence seemed like a great tree riddled through by the wandering whimsy of a single, awful termite. The higher we progressed with the fortress – and progress is not the correct word – the deeper the sense the sense of undisciplined decay. I wondered if the Confirmer had for the last thousand years spent his time building useless follies throughout the decks, above and below, draining the ship's resources and perverting its original design.

We came finally to a space warm enough and with sufficient oxygen to relieve the burden of our armor. This hiss of replenishment was like a gasp as our ancillas sucked in reserves for what they, too, seemed to think might be a desperate time.

The Confirmer's command center was hung with tattered draperies of a design I could not recognize. Within the drapes, pushing up through or rising between, were dozens of sculptures made of stone and metal, some quite large, and all wrought with a grace and skill that was evident whatever their subjects might have been – abstractions or representations, who could tell?

But as a command center, this space was no more functional than the empty vault we had first entered. Clearly, the fortress had become a cluttered ghost of its former might.

The Confirmer ordrered up seatin arrangements. With creaks and groans, the deck produced only two chairs suitable for Prometheans, plus a small bump that might have been meant for me. Some of the drapes drew aside, rpping and falling in dusty shreds... and three sculptures toppled, one of them nearly striking me before it landed on the deck with a solid thunk and split in two.

The Confirmer carried bottles from a broad cabinet half-hidden in the drapes, walking with a left-leaning lurch. “The best I have to offer,” he said, and poured out three glasses of a greenish liquid. He sat and offered a glass to the Didact and one to me. Neither of the glasses were clean. “You remember kasna,” he said, lifting his own glass in toast. The liquid inside smelled sweet and sour – pungent – and left a stain on the glass. “The San'Shyuum have always excelled in the arts of intoxication. This is from their finest reserve.

The Didact looked at his glass, then downed it in a gulp – to the Confirmer's dismay.

“That's rare stuff,” he chided.

“You allow the San'Shyuum to travel between their two worlds?” the Didact asked, returning the glass to the dusty tray.

“They are confined within the boundary of the quarantine,” the Confirmer said. “There's no reason to hold them fast.”

“In many ways, there were worse than humans,” the Didact said.

 “You've not had contact with any other warrior in how many years?”

“The living? Centuries, centuries,” the Confirmer said. “The last shipment of...” He stopped himself, looked about with curtained chamber with eyes that had lost nearly all focus. “Many colleagues are brought here, you know. Exiled with less dignity than the Council allowed you. They've fought, and lost, many political battles since you vanished.”

“Where are they?”

“A few were allowed their own Cryptums. The rest... the Council shipped us their Durances.”

“The Deep Reverence has become a graveyard?” The Didact asked, the last color departing his already pale features.

“Missed and misguided, they now claim.”

Space ships. Illustration by Elena.

Person-centered Approach

A Directional Process in Life

Practice, theory, and research make it clear that the person-centered approach rests on a basic trust in human beings, and in all organisms. There is evidence from many disciplines to support an even broader statement. We can say that there is in every organism, at whatever level, an underlying flow of movement toward constructive fulfillment of its inherent possibilities. In human beings, too, there is a natural tendency toward a more complex and complete development. The term that has most often been used for this is the “actualizing technology”, and it is present in all living organisms.

Whether we are speaking of a flower or an oak tree, of an earthworm or a beautiful bird, of an ape or a person, we will do well, I believe, to recognize that lie is an active process, not a passive one. Whether the stimulus arises from within or without, whether the environment is favorable or unfavorable, the behaviors of an organism can be counted on to be in the direction of maintaining, enhancing, and reproducing itself. This is the very nature of the process we call life. This tendency is operative at all times. Indeed, only the presence or absence of this total directional process enables us to tell whether a given organism is alive or dead.

The actualizing tendency can, of course, be thwarted or warped, but it cannot be destroyed without destroying the organism. I remember that in my childhood, the bin in which we stored our winter's supply of potatoes was in the basement, several feet below a small window. The conditions were unfavorable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout – pale with sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots they sent up when planted in the soil in the spring. But these sad, spindly sprouts would grow 2 or 3 feet in length as they reached toward the distant light of the window. The sprouts were, in their bizarre, futile growth, a sort of desperate expression of the directional tendency. They would never become plants, never mature, never fulfill their real potential. But under the most adverse circumstances, they were striving to become.

Life would not give up, even if it could not flourish. In dealing with clients whose lives have been terribly warped, in working with men and women on the back wards of state hospitals, I often think of those potato sprouts. So unfavorable have been the conditions in which these people have developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted, scarcely human. Yet, the directional tendency in the can be trusted. The clue to understanding their behavior is that they are striving, in the only ways that they perceive as available to them, to move toward growth, toward becoming. To healthy persons, the results may seem bizarre and futile, but they are life's desperate attempt to become itself. This potent constructive tendency is an underlying basis of the person-centered approach. 

(Aspects of a Person-Centered Approach, the Foundations of a Person-Centered Approach. A Way of Being by Carl R. Rogers).

Organisms are always seeking, always initiating, always "up to something." Picture by Elena.

Thoughts Regarding Death

Thoughts Regarding Death

… And then there is the ending of life... Ten or fifteen years ago I felt quite certain that death was the total end of the person. I still regard that as the most likely prospect; however, it does not seem to me a tragic or awful prospect. I have been able to live my life – not to the full, certainly, but with a satisfying degree of fullness – and it seems natural that my life should come to an end. I already have a degree of immortality in other persons. I have sometimes said that, psychologically, I have strong people close to me all over the world, Also, I believe that the ideas and the way of being that I and others have helped to develop will continue, for some time at least. So if I, as an individual, come to a complete and final end, aspects of me will still live on in a variety of growing ways, and that is a pleasant thought.

I think that no one can know weather he or she fears death until it arrives. Certainly, death is the ultimate leap in the dark, and I think it is highly probable that the apprehension I feel when going under an anesthetic will be duplicated or increased when I face death. Yet I don't experience a really deep fear of the process. So far as I am aware, my fears concerning death relate to its circumstances. I have a dread of any long and painful illness leading to death. I dread the thought of senility or of partial brain damage due to a stroke. My preference would be to die quickly, before it is too late to die with dignity. I think of Winston Churchill. I didn't mourn his death. I mourned the fact that death had not come sooner, when he could have died with the dignity he deserved.

My belief that death is the end has, however, been modified by some of learning. I am impressed with the accounts by Raymond Moody (1975) of the experience of persons who have been so near death as to be declared dead, but who have come back to life. I am impressed by some of the reports of reincarnation, although reincarnation seems a very dubious blessing indeed. I am interested in the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and the conclusions she has reached about life after death. I find definitely appealing the views of Arthur Koesler that individual consciousness is but a fragment of a cosmic consciousness, the fragment being reabsorbed into the whole upon the death of the individual. I like his analogy of the individual river eventually flowing into the tidal waters of the ocean, dropping its muddy silt as it enters the boundless sea.

So I consider death with, I believe, an openness to the experience. It will be what it will be, and I trust I can accept it as either an end to, or a continuation of life.

(A Way of Being, by Carl. R. Rogers. Personal experiences and perspectives).

Being alive involves taking a chance, acting on less than certainty, engaging with life. Illustration by Elena.

Mental Illness

Mental Illness

One in every hundred people will develop schizophrenia in their lifetime. At the beginning of the 21st century, three hundred thousand Canadians aged sixteen to thirty have been diagnosed with schizophrenia. The average time between onset of symptoms and fist effective treatment is one to two years, but be much longer.

Males and females are equally likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia. But males tend to have an earlier age of onset, in the teens or early twenties for men, and in the twenties or early thirties for women. Nearly 80 per cent of people with schizophrenia experience a major depressive episode at some point in their lives.

Approximately four out of every ten people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia attempts suicide, and approximately one in ten people diagnosed with schizophrenia die of suicide, making it the leading cause of premature death for people with with schizophrenia. Besides, suicide in this population is rarely attributable to florid psychotic symptoms (hallucinations, delusions); it is more likely to occur in periods of remission or improved functioning. Depression and hopelessness are important factors in suicide by people with schizophrenia.

Tom Ko has worked with 160 families in his job as therapy supervisor at the Calgary Early Psychosis Treatment and Prevention Program. Many – but not all – of his clients are young enough to be living at home with parents and siblings. Ko, who has a master's degree in social work, encourages the whole family to attend psychoeducation sessions with him. “Not all siblings have strong emotional reactions to the illness,” says Ko, a social worker. “But all have some reaction to a psychotic illness in the family.”

How Siblings Are Affected

Here are some of the common emotions and issues raised by the siblings:

1. Anger of parents (“Why don't they take control and fix this?”) and at the unwell sibling (“Why doesn't he just get better?”) “They get angry a lot because things have changed, “Ko says. “They want their brother or sister back.”
2. Grief and sadness: “Because the family isn't the same, and they can sense that.” Ko says that children go through a grieving process just as parents do. “When things change and everything's up in the air, they do get depressed.”
3. Fear that they'll become mentally ill. “Not the seven-year-old but the fourteen-year-old says, “Will I get it?” And we are always upfront.” (Research shows that if you have a first-degree relative with schizophrenia, you in turn have a 10-per-cent chance of winding up with the disorder; this compares to a 1-per-cent chance for someone with no diagnosed relatives.)
4. Guilt that they contributed to their sibling's disorder, or made it worse. For example, two brothers may have been fighting just before one is diagnosed (which is not uncommon because the sibling relationship changes with the onset of symptoms). “We try to tell them, “ You didn't know; of course you got into fights; everybody does, but it didn't cause the illness.
5. Loss of normal family relationship: When parents are tied up with hospitals and meds and caring for their unwell child, says Ko, “It's easy to forget there are other kids involved... Often they (the siblings) will say “we used to have family dinners together, do this and that together.” We try to get them back to those family routines so that everything goes back to normal as much as possible.”
6. Confusion because they know something is wrong but no one is explaining what or why. “They find it very difficult to understand sometimes. They can tell their brother or sister is different, they can tell their family is different, and they wonder. But it just becomes a family secret that no one talks about. They want to know what's going on.”

People can recover. Most of the people who have recovered have been at the depths of depression or the depths of some other illness, and they have made it back to find a life worth living with meaning and purpose. Illustration by Elena.

Mental Disorder

Mental Disorder: What It Feels Like?

Unless you've been there, it can be pretty difficult to imagine what it's like to suffer from a mental disorder. What does it truly feel like to experience the delusions or voices that come with schizophrenia? To soar with the unbridled euphoria of a mania? To shake with the heart-numbing fear of a panic attack?

Short of actually having the disorder, there are very few ways of comprehending what it's like to be inside someone else's head. We could rattle off lists of clinical symptoms, but that would get dull pretty fast. It also wouldn't really give you a visceral sense of the experience.

Yet all of us are curious. Scientists, in fact, have tried to give other folks a taste of what mental disorder feels like. One of the most intriguing efforts is a virtual-reality setup which, using specially enhanced audio and visual effects, attempts to transport the subject into the mind of someone with schizophrenia. You actually hear those internal voices in a manner that those with the disorder say comes close to their reality.

Some sources will tell you that manic depression, or bipolar disorder, as it's also known, rarely shows itself much before the the age of eighteen. But ask any of my friends, reachers, or family – any of those brave souls who traveled with the ill person through his or her life – and they will vigorously dispute that claim.

A rapid cycler, mood changes are like gunfire in the trenches – bang, bang, bang. Light, dark, light, dark. Nobody knows if it's possible to switch a light on and off as quickly as brain manages to switch between euphoria and devastation.

These people spend part of their lives feeling as though they will never join the human race. It's as though they live in a cage where they can hear the world but the world cannot hear them. After years, they see this simply as a manifestation of their illness, which has a way of making the ordinary seem threatening and frightening. Paranoia is more than an occasional visitor. People affected have sat on the subway, convinced that others were laughing at them; they have left parties after an hour, certain that the guests thought the ill persons had no right to be among them. Manic depression can make that girl in The Exorcist (at her writhing, screaming, priest-hating worst) look like someone you would ask to babysit their three-year-old. But these people own their illness. And it will be part of them for the rest of their lives. People can't turn their back on it.

People have been asked if they see their illness as a tragedy, or at least as something that's robbed them of anything of vital importance. Sometimes they do. But stress is a killer; it can initiate the descent into depression, the rise into mania. These people have learned to be vigilant about avoiding those situations that will exacerbate their disease.

The illness also destroys relationships, chewing them up, spitting them out. These people mourn the friendships they have lost. Their behavior – especially when manic – has alienated friends and relatives. In some cases, the ill persons have never been able to reconnect with them.

And yet, many of them can't say that they think of themselves as tragically touched. It is like being born with red hair or brown, one eye or three; you know nothing different, so what does it matter^ We all have a cross to bear. They will carry their cross for all their life.

There's a saying you sometimes hear in the mental health world: Label belong on soup cans, not people. Illustration by Elena.