Prologue

Most of us have stories to tell about our chosen vocation and how it has affected our lives. In the military they call them war stories, and you can hear them all night long in any bar where military folks congregate. If you don't like bars, just spend a little time at the local VFW hall. Most of these tales are entertaining, though suspending disbelief is an ongoing challenge sometimes.

For the rest of us, our civilian "war stories" are usually a little less fantastic, though we all have the same urge to embellish the tales we tell. As a psychiatrist I hear a lot of that. Some of what I hear is pure flight of fancy that fulfills some inner need of the ego. It can also be brought on by misfiring neurons, or disease, or trauma to the brain.

My name is John Smith. Don't laugh. There are, at present, 44,529 of us in the United States alone. And that is, in fact, my name, though by the end of this, my own war story, you may decide that I invented that name to preserve both my identity ... and my life. For the war story I'm about to tell you is one that may rip the fragile skin from the body of social order. The natural question to ask is why a psychiatrist, whose life is devoted to nurturing sanity, would bring forth something that may drive literally hundreds of thousands of people insane.

The fact is that I have to expose this information. I'd go insane myself if I did not.

Chapter 1 »