A drone operator

"But then later on during the news, I told myself 'Shit! Did I just kill real people?' And then I thought 'What the fuck! The little girl and a dog?' And my mind went ballistic. It was a real girl, you know. I blew up a little girl and her dog, a dog... you get it?"

"Sorry about this, Peter. It wasnt your fault. You didnt know about it." Russell tapped Peter on a shoulder.

"If this wasn't my fault then whose fault was it?"

Russell didnt know what to say.

"Sure I wasn't the one who orders this, but I was the one who pulled the trigger. And I knew what I was about to do. They told us when they hired us. Only they told us that most of the flights would be scout flights and they also didn't tell us when our training missions became real."

Russell helped Peter to sit down on the massage table and was tapping on his shoulders and back.

"But you see," Peter continued, "this is my profession. It's not extremely well paid, but its secure and has good benefits. So for a while, I didn't know what to do?"

"How did you start ironing? Russell looked at the clock on the wall. He still had another 15 minutes before his next client arrived.

"Oh, by accident. I spilled something on my tie and needed to iron it. While ironing, I felt some kind of calmness, a release and a piece of mind. And then I started doing it every day after work because I had to shoot again. I mean - not always, but from time to time. But this need to ironing was becoming more and more pressing. I was just dreaming to come home and start doing this. My kids even laughed about it. And I cannot tell them, you know."

"I quit this job, you know. I mean, this was my profession and everything and the benefits, an insurance and pension plan went with it. But I just couldn't do it anymore. One day I came to work and I felt nauseous. Nauseous"; Peter put the hand on his throat and made a movement simulating vomiting.

"You can dress up now." Russell was holding his chin.

"Sure. Thank you. But you know," Peter continued, because obviously, this was his sore spot. "When I quit, I could not get rid of it and continued thinking about it… I don't even know if thinking is the right word. It became like a constant delusion or a nightmare. Sometimes, I don't know if this is a dream or what. Its like I live through this in parallel with my regular life. Not sure why, but it stayed with me. That little girl, the dog, the drone, black birds all around walking on the ground and flying around and fire and smoke everywhere. The little girl runs with her dog and the drone is getting closer and closer to her and then it fires a missile and she and dog are gone."

"Did you go to a psychiatrist?"

"Yes. We talked about it and, just like you, she told me that it wasn't my fault. And I understand that, but... Sure, I was the one who pulled the trigger but I was not the one who commanded it and who concocted the whole ordeal." Peter now stood up and as if looked at Russell, but, actually, was looking sort of through him.

"So, I am saying that I understood all this, but I still cannot get rid of this… I dont know how to call it… vision. Its chasing me."

"You know what…" Russell flipped through some addresses in his iPhone, "Ill give you a number of this one psychic. She is not a bullshit artist like many other ones. She is for real and she might help you. She releases bad energy; stuff like that. And she is very private. I mean you can be sure she wont tell anyone."

Peter set at Madame B's little office on the couch. His face was calm, but this was rather a Christian than an Olympic calmness.

Madame B. didnt look like one would think a stereotypical psychic should look like. She neither looked solemn and mysterious nor did she appear probing or cunning. Her look was amiable, cheerful and attentive when she listened to a question or a narrative. At the same time, when she spoke on spiritual matters, her glare became transfixed and vacant, as if a point of interest located not outside of her eyes, but deeply inside her mind. Now, when she listened to Peter, it seemed that only a part of her mind followed his explanation noting and placing them in order.

My own photo

"I don’t know if I can help you, Sir. As far as PSTD is concerned, my success rate is only about 50%."

In silence, Peter made several slight rocking movements back and forth and sighed. "But I dont know where else to go. Russell told me you can help."

"I am not a magician. In certain cases, I can help in others I can't. I tell you one thing though if you will decide to try I will do everything in my power to help you."

Peter again made several other movements obviously thinking over her words.

"Ok," he finally made a decision, "lets go for it."

Madame B. closed her eyes, relaxed and focused her attention on the task at hands. In a few moments of concentration, she was able to enter Peters astral body. For that he didn't have to be located in a room with her. Astral travel has to do with relocating to a space and time in another reality, where projections of our three-dimensional subspace collapse into a point, making the travel over long distance instantaneous, similar to an electron that disappears from one orbit and appears on another one. Yet, if you would ask Madame B. to explain how she does it she wouldn't be able to. Her senses couldn't register a silver trail of her consciousness crossing the pitch black vastness of cosmic space. She suddenly just felt the connection with the person she was about to treat. This connection happened abruptly; one instance it wasn't and another one it was. For Madame B., this was quite natural just like for many other people it was to see, hear or touch.

Having entered the Peter's astral body, Madame B. made a swirl around it and saw that the colors are not in balance because of the blockage of green color on the level of solar plexus chakra.

Madame B. started to paint with the green color over shadowy darkness. As she started doing this, she felt pressure and tightness of the astral media as if she was repelled by a magnet pole of the same polarity. This resistance made her realize that right here there was the root of an emotional problem she had to investigate. As usual, in this case, Madame B. relied on her trained intuition. Being of a slender and fragile built, one would never suspect that Madame B's intuition was trained like muscles of an athlete. Like a surfer that drifts on the water surface expecting to ride a wave, Madame B. focused her concentration waiting for the next powerful surge coming from the space-time continuum. As soon this wave was passing by her spiritual presence, she settled on its crest, trusting it would take her to the right place. Slowly, the contours of the past drama began to surface, like features of a face coming gradually to a light from the darkness. The circumstances of Peter's drama started to unfold.

What she saw blocking his chakra channel was a complex scene composed on two different flows of consciousness one packed inside another one like matryoshka dolls. Both of them having a very close relation to what Peter lived through. She saw a military compound without windows, a large computer screen and a panel with a multitude of different buttons and controls. Then the vision took her inside the screen, it became larger and larger until, finally, she was the inside of the computer screen seen itself. She saw herself inside a drone and underneath her a large bare plain with islands of fire and black smoke, and another drone high in the sky. Then a dog and a little girl run out of the house, the missiles fires and the girl and the dog lay dead on the ground while black birds fly above and around them, closing to their motionless deformed bodies.

Their next session was via Skype. There was no need for Peter to come to the office. All that Madame B. requested was for him to withdraw from eating or drinking during the session and wearing something light.

Before the session, for a while, Madame B. thought of how to replace the bothersome vision? Surely, the replacement should have been accomplished on the subconscious level. But Peter's "vision" as she mentally labeled it, was complex. The two flows of consciousness packed within each other she decided to substitute also with two different flows of consciousness - only instead of the dark and gruesome one, to plant in memory bright and joyous details.

The torturing memories of the military bunker she decided to replace with the quiet room, placed a tall coffee mug on the table for comfort and replaced a mouse with a pen and a computer monitor with a nicely bind old book, opened on some accidental page. The book and a pen were her mechanisms for initiating an internal flow of consciousness, to replace the depressing and horrific one with a bright fantasy.

Inside of that fantasy, she planned to replace all its elements. First, she was going to substitute the ominous drone with the whimsical old-fashioned air balloon, the burned land with well-maintained lawn, the speckled with holes, wretched building with the street lamp and black birds with bright-feathered birds – seagulls. In order to get rid of the fires, she invited a light mushroom rain.

And of course, she also was eager to resurrect the two most important principals: the dog, which in her interpretation happen to be a good-natured Weimaraner and, of course, the girl. The face of the girl was unrecognizable in Peter's nightmare. Thus, Madame B turned her away from the view and even covered her with the cute red umbrella. The girl and a dog walked together toward peaceful sunset and the mood of the entire scene would be a joyous anticipation.

Once the decision on the types of substitutions necessary was made, Madame B. focused on Peter's case, letting her intuition guide her in solidifying the technical details into one monolete mental canvas.

Then she sat for around five minutes with closed eyes motionless, while her mind floated over Peter's vision, iterating through the objects in his persistent vision.

Having entered Peters astral body, Madame B. made another swirl around it and positioned herself next to the memory location that held Peter's derogatory vision. The time for analysis and rationalizing was over. Now Madame B. delegated her entire spiritual and mental resources to her intuition and all subsequent actions underwent under its sole control.

Madame B. cleared the memory location occupied by the nightmare. Now it was critically important to replace the content of the memory location right away. Otherwise, its content could be filled by the same bad memories like a drain pipe during a heavy rain would be clogged again by leaves, dirt and conifer needles. Having cleared the memory location, Madame B. immediately placed the entire designed canvas of the happy scenario held suspended in her mind into that now empty location.

Blocking her mind from the possibility of a failure, Madame B. poured all her spiritual energy into covering this blank memory canvas with the multicolored premeditated vision of happy ending.

Unlike a Hollywood movie, there was no assurance that good will overtake evil in Peter's subconscious mind. But Madame B. felt it was her duty, as it was the duty of all the good and honest people, to try to overturn the damage done to good innocent people by hatred concocted by a clash opposing ideologies and political ambitions of rich and powerful in this World.