95

He knows from the way his own mind works that smell is the closest of the senses to memory. If that's true for everybody, then this stinky lot has more memories than the Museum of Natural History. If, to the contrary, it is only true for him, then he can use this connection that is part of his mind to come to whatever conclusion is expected of him. And he can do it on his own. he is strong enough to do it. But what is this bit about being strong enough to do it? This is new, he thinks. It's as though what he is supposed to do is a good thing, a moral thing, the right and upstanding thing. The sacred thing that you are supposed to know, deep down, is correct in of itself without anyone else telling you. The type of thing in which you know it and you know that you know it. This thing that he is supposed to do he knows should not feel right -- it should not feel miles within feeling right -- and yet it does. Is this brainwashing? Probably. He wonders what he would think were he to stand up from this chair in which he is currently being embraced by The Magnificence. Damn but this group smells bad... It is not a funny thing, either, like the intrusive and comic odor of flatulence or of a near empty plastic gallon of milk that some chuckle-head leaves out but hidden behind the couch so that he can step on it and leave the people in the room wondering what the hell the smell is. This is funny stuff. The smell of these visions, of this group of people, however, is far from funny. It is tragic. Or it could be tragic. It could be the smell of an on-coming tragedy. A potential tragedy. Of something on the way to becoming a tragedy. He couldn't smell it before he had come into these visions. He could not smell it simply by looking around at the group -- at the committee -- that he had joined. But by golly he smells it now. And it is not the smell of death. It is the smell of life. This is the understanding that comes of the sense, and this understanding cannot be avoided, as it is brutal and cloying.