Tomy and the Planet of Lies by Erich von Däniken Read Free Book Online Page B

like a holographic image. The problem lay with the ego of the body concerned. This “I” is a world in its own right, created at birth and stretching to the person’s present. This “I” is, by its very nature, egocentric, we are all egomaniacs. Somewhere between the consciousness and the ego is a kind of filter. The consciousness doesn’t allow information from other consciousnesses—we would say subconsciousnesses—through. This serves as a kind of protective mechanism for the body; otherwise we would quickly go crazy...
    â€œAnd so you broke through this filter between the subconscious and the conscious and then the ego and—I repeat—started giving the commandant orders?” Marc was determined to get to the bottom of things. He didn’t believe a word Tomy said.
    â€œMore or less, yes. When someone has a strong will his ego violently resists the takeover because it senses the suppression of his own identity, his “I,” and this causes a terrible state of panic. The commander in Taftan is very egocentric and I still have very little experience with people. He is, by the way, from a very good Iranian family and visited Switzerland in his youth.”
    We said nothing. It was all too much, too quick. We didn’t understand and we didn’t have the time to sit back and think about it. Therefore, I started picking up the articles of clothing that we had used for our signal and rolled up the aluminum foil. Tomy realized that he was hungry and Marc offered to cut him a few slices of ham. A short while later we were all sitting in the car; we didn’t want to take down our Bedouin tent until shortly before we were ready to set off. The battery level indicator was looking a lot healthier, so I turned off the motor. We sat in silence for a while until Marc couldn’t hold it in any longer and demanded:
    â€œAnd when the hell did you learn Arabic?”
    â€œIt’s just the same as how I learnt Swiss German from Erich,” Tomy said. “From the commandant’s memory.”
    It’s all too crazy, I thought, that Tomy could take over a hundred people from different countries and he would be able to speak all their languages. Wouldn’t that drive him crazy? How could the human brain cope? Tomy’s patience with us was exceptional, as I was to learn in the coming days and weeks.
    For now, we stuffed ourselves full of ham and crispbread, all washed down with mineral water, but we couldn’t help constantly asking Tomy questions. The commander of the barracks, Tomy told us, had only given in after Tomy’s consciousness had signalized “no danger” and “good being, friendly being” and the commandant’s ego had finally accepted this.
    After this had happened, the commandant had listened excitedly like a researcher and started a dialog with Tomy. He had talked aloud, using his voice although this was unnecessary, and Tomy had answered with his consciousness. In Arabic. For anyone standing around it would have seemed as if the commandant was talking to himself, but luckily, they were alone in the room. After the commandant had heard about the situation that we were in, he said that he was powerless to help us—because we were on the other side of the border. He wasn’t allowed to send any troops over the border, because it could lead to a political ‘situation’ and he could be court-martialed and lose his job or even be sent to prison.
    It was only after a lot of haggling that he had consented to send a truck and one single officer. If there were any problems, he could always claim that his soldier had simply lost his way. So he had chosen the young officer Mahmud, a mechanic from his division, to take on the mission of helping us. The operation would cost 600 U.S. dollars, not including the water and the Coke.
    â€œSix hundred dollars?” I repeated. “Not bad for an army exercise at the