They used to tell stories. First you had to get undressed. They made you lie down on the carpet. Then, while the others you were with tried to calm you, the leader would pry open your eyes with his fingers.
There would be an eyedropper that contained a very dilute acid and they’d let a drop fall into each eye.
After about an hour your eyes would clear, and you could swear that everything looked entirely different. There’s a beauty and a unity to everything. Objects are themselves and, at the same time, they’re not.
I was invited to participate in one of their ceremonies. I stripped to my briefs, took a conch shell in my left hand (to summon help if needed), and some ceremonial cloth in my right (said to symbolize the Golden Fleece of Jason). They laid a drape over me and administered the medication.
That’s how the officers found him, the next morning. There were no other people around. The “conch shell” turned out to be a cheap cordless telephone, the “ceremonial cloth” an ordinary bathroom towel. The subject underwent an extensive battery of tests, but no physiological effects were evident. He never, however, completed the final project for his Masters’ degree.