are prominent in bright and radiant backgrounds. The circumstance would be rather equivalent to a conference or an assembly of a political party. Not only were the subjects in dark portraying an unusual profile, but also the way they stood up disclosed an unsurpassable silent arrogance. At first glance, the movie seemed to have been made by a voyeur who managed to visit the facilities of the Complete ones. Yet, the serenity with which the film has been made suggested that its direction might have been allowed. Rafael believed that this was the case.
Standing on the top of a grandstand an individual seemed to display a bossy position; he was making his speech before those who looked to attempt to get into this underworld or aesthetics vigilant subculture. Pretty much nothing seemed to make sense so far to Rafael…
— Welcome to the community! — greeted the Master.
— To be the Complete ones… is that what you want to become, isn’t it? That we shall we see… Being incomplete is, in the meantime, quite a challenge. Once again, please be welcome. After this, you know… you will not go back… There is no ‘how’ to come back. — he said smiling, mysteriously suspicious, as a true believer and loving it.
— It is impossible. There is no such thing as ‘former Complete Men’. The rules are the following: you will become everybody else, anywhere, at any moment, taking their questions to solve them, by showing how powerful you are in solving situations with a razor-sharp simplicity. If you are not afraid of the future, please address it in a responsible way.
— Excuse me, but what do you mean by saying we will not go back? — one of the potential pupils asked waving one of his hands.
— Because there are no written records on any one that attended The School and thus chosen to exit from the bond established with ourselves. Once the challenge is accepted, you the apprentices have no point of return. What you learn from us is something taught nowhere else. And besides, no one is obliged to stay in The School, but the fact is that everybody still remains here, nobody quits. — the Master announced super-sure of his words, as he added a visionary look, steady and stiff, rare.
— What is it that drives you seriously into believing in that? — the same young man asked, now feeling more secure in questioning the Master.
— Our results speak for ourselves. — the Master answered back, showing white sparkling teeth and an inspiring gaze sided by wrinkles.
— What is for sure is that you will need an alibi in your reality. You will have to establish a contract with the Real. Grab the pulse of life, feel it. The main goal will be reached by you over the course of the Operations in The Schools. You will know things before learning them, by making solely good use of your perception. You will be at the top, knowing thy selves on the edge. That I will guarantee to you. Otherwise, you will never become Complete Men. Grow up and think towards new levels. After everything, the process shall be terminated.
— You will surely forgive me, but I did not understand why you said we will have an alibi, and also, how we will know things without reaching them? — another student highlighted, John, as equally puzzled as Mark asked.
— Our students are integrated in society, in the common everyday life, but they are just doing their jobs; disguised while they fulfill the goals of the Operations of The Schools. Your alibi is the subject-matter how you get to live in both worlds simultaneously while you perfect yourselves as people in our Schools. We did not choose this path. Please keep in mind that the path chooses us. As you intervene in people’s reality, you will develop intuition and you will be usefully wise, so that your assignments become effective.
— Are you saying we will be changing our reality? — another potential student asked, boldly. — Reality happens no more, it is cultivated, produced, it is a scene sketched up; it flows, and it convinces people, it lies within a map, it is integrated on the screens. These Schools are a response to that inversion. — the Master clarified with a discrete thrill in his voice.
— What do you mean by saying these Schools are a response to such inversion? — the same man asked.
— My dear friend, if the State, society and the citizens in themselves would perform rightfully, we would not exist. We would be relieved of our command; our presence would be excused. It is a paradox, but the truth is that we fill the voids of contemporaneity’s voids in the consumeristic consciousness and in technocracy. We are diplomats, professors, businesspeople, fighters and social workers. We are true soldiers of dialogue.
The Master was happy to answer the doubts. He knew his figure would set up a vision, that above all it would drive a crowd into rapture with his rightful and instantaneous answers. His image represented an envied power. It would not surely be a blinding power. This would be a power to be persuasive, seductive, for what it was in itself, not for what it had to be.
All the candidates willing to become students in The Schools of the Complete ones were thinking about getting in, and so they kept debating issues with the Master. They aspired to switch impressions and solve classic riddles; the bottom line is that the goal was for people to learn how to change their lives, and in effect, people would change the others’ lives due to a civic responsibility. There was no conspiracy in the sense of a criminal organization or traffic of influences. Before anything else, it was an organization deprived of paranoia and fights for power among its groups.
At the Schools of Complete ones, the hierarchy is symbolic and it all could be resumed to a process. A process that in that moment had its inception date for the rookies who aspired to complete themselves as men.
— How can you describe the students that finish this course? The ones that finish the best way possible the Operation at The Schools and thus become Complete Men? — asked one of the most avid candidates, eager for an answer. The Master did not say what they wanted to hear. Even though, they enjoyed what they heard.
— The Complete Men seem to be normal humans, yet they are not. They stand in advantage before the ordinary people. They need that edge to go further beyond what is expected out of the most mortals. They seem like mainstream human beings, but they are better, more human, carriers of an astonishing humanity, so much atrocious and dearest that it could be understood as a threat to those ordinary crazy ones who stand in power.
BZRCCCRTTTTFFFTTTT!!!
Without knowing exactly what was wrong with the tape, Rafael rushed to retrieve it and then inserted it back in the MiniDV player; it was this or the tape being “chewed” by the head of the reading gear. He had never seen something so interesting and as mysterious, too. His curiosity was fed each time the movie was cast on the screen and the answers came out of the figure leading the speech in the recording. Now things were making sense. Rafael knew now that Roberta Wagner was not so smart by giving him all this information. He knew he had in his possession something of a higher value. He could write an excellent report or a research article, and so he was already thinking about showing it up on television. However, it was a bit early to get into major conclusions. The tape had a lot for all to begin. Rafael kept watching the tape after re-inserting it back on the player and so he saved his reflections for later.
Somebody must have the chance to try to make serious journalistic work on these Complete Men, but perhaps enough courage was missing to display it on the public sphere, in the media, the Network. “Was it Roberta herself?”— Rafael thought. He immediately silenced his mind from the moment one could hear in the recording a voice over referring in the first person, much as a storyteller that:
— It all began with the creation of a School of perfect men. There was no time to think in trivialities. After all, we had been designed to fight ignorance. So, we managed to study the universe in a cross-disciplinary form — the Circumverse —, given that
