He gets the hang of the controls fairly quickly, but keeps saying stuff like "Ho, ho! Centrifugal momentum about 160 foot-tons per second," to Mary's confusion. The girl meanwhile is giving him directions to Lynchburg in hopes that the cops will give up the chase once they cross the county line. I guess she hasn't heard of the concept of "hot pursuit." There's squealing tires and sudden turns, but Heller gets them on a four-lane highway, roaring along at ninety miles per hour.
Naturally, this is when Mary decides to show Heller what all the buttons on the dashboard do, while he's busy weaving through traffic and trying to shake hostile pursuers.
They go on to have a nice conversation with the cop cars right on their heels. Both of them are talking more or less normally now - Heller's rustic accent has faded ever since he started talking Car Science, and he guesses that Mary's not from around here either. She explains that she is a native Virginian, but she went to a New York college. She advises Heller - with police sirens wailing behind them - to make sure he gets his all-important sheepskin, the only thing of any importance you can take from college.
Gris, who is of course listening and watching all this through Heller's senses thanks to a miracle of science, is excited to find a kindred spirit in Mary, who is a certified doctor of philosophy - a psychologist. Heller asks about the profession, and Mary explains.
"A lot of horse (bleep). It's a con game. They try to make you think you're nobody; just a bunch of cells, an animal. They can't do anything. They teach that you can't change anybody. They even have total consciousness that they're fakes. So why bother to practice it?"
This horrifies Gris, who immediately labels Mary a heretic. The girl goes on to explain that her professors encouraged "free love" among students in order to "turn every college dorm into a whorehouse," and what's worse is that they were all "bad (bleeps)." Meanwhile, I think the pursuing cops are taking potshots at the Cadillac, which the protagonists utterly ignore as Mary continues to denounce psychology.
Heller asks why Mary doesn't have a job even though she's got that diploma.
"The public won't have anything to do with a psychologist. They know better. The only people who employ psychologists are the government. They think they need them to teach kids, to defend the bankers and wipe out dissidents. The government thinks the psychologists can keep the population under control. What a laugh!"
[...] "Listen, kid. I may be a thief. I may be a totally hooked dope addict. I may be a whore. I might have some incurable disease. But don't think I've stooped so low as to work for the God (bleeped) government! Do you think I want to be a paranoid schizophrenic like those guys?"
Note that calling upon a deity to condemn someone to fiery torment is censored, but not selling your body to strangers.
Mary's mention of paranoid schizophrenia makes Gris reevaluate her, given his own revelations about his boss Lombar Hisst. He concludes that even though Mary speaks blasphemy about the most holy of professions, she still uses the skills of blackmail and manipulation to great effect, making her a psychologist in deeds if not words.
Meanwhile, Heller, while going down a hill at 135 miles per hour, takes the car through a U-turn, skidding through a highway divider to go the opposite direction, narrowly avoiding the slower traffic. The cops crest the hill and continue on oblivious, while Heller slows to a more legal speed and plans to turn onto another highway and continue on a parallel course to Lynchburg. Mary expresses her hope that she can get a fix there.
So... well, I guess Hubbard's made his views clear here. Psychology is a scam that everyone knows doesn't work, including its practitioners. There is no interest in helping others or learning how the human mind works, just in telling people that they're animals in hopes that they'll sleep with you. But despite psychology's 0% approval rating and the common knowledge that the profession is a sham, the government is convinced that it's vital to keeping the populace under its control. Also, bankers are involved.
The person telling us this is a drug-addled prostitute going through withdrawal symptoms, and yet this mind-bogglingly nonsensical situation is what Hubbard appears to have fervently believed was happening around him, prompting him to write this work of "satire" in order to defeat psychology once and for all.
Chapters without anyone commenting on Heller's stupid clothes: 4
Back to Chapter Three
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