Authority: A Novel

In Control’s dreams now, he is lying in the dark waters at the cliff’s bottom. He stares up at the clear sky, with no sound of splashes or ripples. He ends up “swimming vast and unknowable among the other monsters” (225).

Under stress and feeling mentally off, Control starts to experience mental volatility. He drinks often, smokes, spends time in seedy bars in town, and has sex with a random woman. He does not shower for days. On Saturday morning, he calls The Voice with notes in front of him and an air horn set on a timer on his phone. Every time he starts to lose mental control while talking to The Voice, the bullhorn sound brings him back to reality. He reads from his notes:

CONTROL, YOU ARE BEING SUBJECTED TO HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION BY THE VOICE ___ Check this line and scream obscenities. Move down one line. [...] Rinse, repeat, brought out of it by the bullhorn, pulled back into it. Until, finally, he reached the end: ‘Check this line and repeat these phrases’—all of the phrases he’d found in the director’s desk (231).

Control rightfully suspects he has been put under hypnotic command the entire time he has been at the Southern Reach.