Chinese martial arts weapons, Chinese throwing stars, numb-chucks, brass knuckles with spikes etc.. My mother hated, and I mean hated guns. I was not allowed to have ANY toy guns as a child what so ever, no bee-bee guns, no toy guns, not even any plastic guns. I wasn't even allowed to play like I was shooting anyone (cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians) when I was a child. When Atari came out, my mother hated even the idea that I was shooting something in a video game (space invaders), as a result she simply would not allow me to play certain games and she would not allow me to have them (I would play them anyway just over at a friends house). When I was in high school and Nintendo came out she would not allow me to buy the plastic gun which hooked into the game so I could play "duck hunt" or some police game. When we would go to buy games she simply said "it's my money and I will not buy that game for you." I wanted "the road warrior" or something and she wanted me to get "tennis" or "bass fishing" "you used to love to go fishing" she would say. She really was something. With my father coming back from Vietnam a different man and having severe mental anguish about what happened over there and the whole experience, and after what happened to Mr. Johnson I can't really blame her for her gun hysteria, I can only try to understand. BUT ANYWAY, here I was, a 19 year old kid and all of a sudden I got to fire all these these "really cool" guns, and they had all this "really cool" stuff like knives, killing wires, night vision goggles, and all of these ADULTS were running around as fast as they could for ME. Running around, changing targets for ME, getting ME a sandwich or a drink and they all seemed so eager to do something for me, anything, anything I asked, anything I wanted they would run and get for me. They seemed so impressed with what I could do, I sensed they envied me, I also sensed they feared me. I felt like a celebrity, and I felt like a king.

All of the shooting took only about an hour or so I would estimate. After the first round, they never told me any of the results. All I remember is the atmosphere had a feeling of elation, euphoria, exuberance, everyone had these HUGE smiles on there faces, laughing, and admiration. Honestly, as we got further and further back, I don't even know if I was hitting ANYTHING! All I remember is raising my arm and firing the pistol. I COULDN'T THINK, I COULD ONLY DO. I would just fire the pistol at the target, step back, and they were always for some reason happier than pigs in shit.

The thing is they liked me. If the atmosphere seemed "light" I somehow found myself suddenly speaking and making comments for no particular reason. When I spoke everyone would freeze and listen. I liked this fact, I liked it very much. I would make comments like "Should we be wasting all these bullets? There very expensive aren't they?" (my mothers' mother, the very frugal Grandma Angrstrom coming out of me). And they would all start laughing hysterically.

I remember Mr. Green saying to me with a tear in his eye from laughing so hard "Rhino, you can shoot as many god d*mn f*cking bullets as you want. It's on me and I'm buying. Shit! I'll get you bullets by the f8cking truck load if you want." I said "Really? Are you sure cause that can really start to add up!" and they all burst out laughing again.

After that comment is what I most remember specifically about this whole episode. I remember watching Mr. Green as he turned to someone in a long dark overcoat and saying "I f*ckin like that kid.. I f*ckin like him! I like how he thinks! as a matter of fact" and he turns and motions the man with the white hair and black leather coat over to him and a few others join him. The man with the white hair then says "Rhino, come over here." I walk over and he says "Rhino, let me first tell you that you did an outstanding job, and as a reward we are going to send you home early tonight. I want you to go home and get a good nights rest, you've earned it." I said "awesome, thank you very much." Mr. Green then pats me on the back and says "outstanding son, f*cking outstanding!" This was the first time Mr. Green had physically touched me and I remember the "eerie" feeling I got and the "chills" that went down my spine as he removed his hand from my back. I walked over to the wall and picked my coat off the floor and followed the two men who always drove me out to the car. Then I remember being in front of the dorm and I actually said "good by" to the two guys and went inside to bed.

Most of all I remember the proud feeling of amazing them with my shooting even though I don't know exactly how I did it. I remember the feeling of being "honored" with a reward because I could somehow do things none of them could do. And most of all I remember the "eerie" feeling of Mr. Green touching me. He had always been there and I had seen him many times, but for some reason now in my mind he finally had become all too real. If that makes any sense?

After that they then instructed me with rifles, more pistols, basically every practical thing that shot a bullet I was instructed in how to use it, clean it, shoot it, and kill with it. And as soon as the instructor was finished I instantly knew it all like the back of my hand, like I had done it a thousand times before. I remember feeling the differences between the M-16 and the AK47 as I shot them. Shooting small semi-automatic weapons (like an Uzi only different). Then asking me to remember which weapons I personally liked the most.

They converted the longest hallway into a target range since it was the longest stretch in the facility, by placing sand bags all the way at one end and blocking off all other door ways and hall ways along the way. I would estimate it was about 70 yards + or - long. In doors this shot seemed very distant. They also had converted the original range to have these "pop-up" targets, as well as moving ones which ran along this miniature track. The targets would come out of this temporary wall, go across the line of sight on the track and then disappear into the other wall, and they had tracks going at different distances, coming to and going away etc. For the next while it seemed that all I did was shoot. All the other experiments seemed to have been put on hold. The exercising, the brain games, the puzzles, the punching bag, everything.

I could hit ANY target still or moving, at ANY range, with ANY of the guns in the exact center every time. Except for some reason I remember having some trouble with the semi-automatic type stuff, because the gun was not designed for accuracy it was designed for speed. So it would fire so fast the distribution pattern just wasn't accurate enough. And by not accurate enough I mean instead of having one bullet hole in which all the spent rounds would pass through in the exact center of the red dot (which the targets now came with already painted on). The semi-automatics would basically just eliminate the entire red dot which was the size of a half dollar if I emptied the clip in one burst. This was basically still an unbelievable bulls-eye and show of marksmanship, but it was not what they wanted. They wanted every bullet through the same hole every time, all the time. In the exact center of the red dot, no exceptions, and no excuses. So they backed off using these guns for the time period.

At close range I could do this without any problem I would estimate under 20 yards. The further I backed away the larger the single bullet hole would become. As I backed as far back as I could go on the long range (60 or 70 yards), the bullet hole had gone from being about the size of a "dime" to being about the size of a "quarter". I remember after I shot they would gather around the target at the other end and then yell for me. I would run down, and see one hole the size of a quarter in the red dot on the head, and this "rush" of pride would run through my body. But when they spoke to me it was not praise, they were screaming at me with criticism. "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS, YOU CALL THAT SHOOTING, GO BACK AND DO IT AGAIN, AND I WANT TO SEE ONE HOLE THE SIZE OF A DIME NOT THE SIZE OF A FUCKING GOLF BALL. DO YOU UNDERSTAND." I would have to go back and do it again. I remember some improvement but then I would worsen again. They sent me home early anyway to get some rest. They were pushing me and my limits. Yes I was doing incredible things but they wanted to see just how far I could go and just what I could do.

The helmet of knowledge-
Everything was going very well with my conditioning and my training. Mr. Green and Adolph seemed pleased with my progress. Until we began shooting outside. It all seemed different now. With the cold air on my face I felt more "awake" and more aware of what was going on. The pistol no longer felt like an extension of my own hand. It felt cold and seemed to be heavier now. When I shot as the distances got greater and greater I became worse and worse and began to miss. And by miss I mean being on the edge of the red circle not in the exact middle, hitting the black, missing the black but still hitting the paper. My "automatic adjustments" for wind and distance didn't seem to work very well if at all. One night it was very windy and raining and I was missing the red dot, and I even missed the target all together a few times. This is with a pistol (I think it was, or was very similar to a Beretta). They bring me back inside and give me an "ass chewing" about my very poor performance. They send me back to the lab where I do "simple things" for the rest of the evening. Like the squat rack, more brain puzzles, strength exercises etc.

The next night as I'm walking into the lab Adolph instructs me to follow and we proceed to a room that I had never been in before. It is like an empty class room, there are green black boards on the walls up at the front, one green black board which can flip around and is on wheels off to the right and one student desk in the middle of the room. That is all. They tell me to sit and I do. I become very nervous as I'm thinking they are going to test me or something and I haven't studied. A man in a baby blue lab coat walks to the front. I do not recognize him. There is a nervous tone in his voice as he begins.

I have no idea what is going to go on as this format is all new to me. He begins talking about angular trajectories, muzzle velocities, and how air densities are measured verses altitude at sea level and this then equates into a friction coefficient equations to measure the angular trajectory of a projectile! And he goes on and on. "HOLD IT" I speak out. "Can I have a pencil and some paper to make some notes?" I ask. For the next while I'm frantically bent over the desk and trying to write down everything he is saying and copy the diagrams he is drawing on the board like I'm in class back in school. After a while Adolph walks over to me and says "Rhino, do you need a break?" "YES I need a f*cking break" and I slam my pencil down and put my head between my hands. "Are you getting all of this?" he asks me. "NO" I answer, and I remember starting to cry "I'm trying, really I'm trying, but I DON'T HAVE A F*CKING CLUE ABOUT ANYTHING THAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT!". We take a break. I'm very nervous about having to go back into the room. I had gotten a "D" in algebra in high school and they are talking about stuff I had never even herd of before, and they want me to understand this stuff, there is no f*cking way Iím thinking to myself.

They call me back in and for the first time I felt sort of "scared". Not over where I was, who I was with, what they did to me in the lab. I was scared about letting then down. I was scared because I had convinced myself that no matter what happened I could not do this. I was never a good student in school and this stuff, forget it. There was just no way!

As I sit back down I'm looking for the man in the blue lab coat and he is no longer there. It is only the man with the white hair. He says a few words and I become relaxed and I close my eyes. I hear him. He tells me to "just relax" and "just sit back and absorb like a giant sponge, just absorb everything." I hear the instructor begin speaking again and this goes on for a while. I hear Adolph ask me is any of this sinking in?" and I shake my head and answer "NO" and open my eyes. As I open my eyes I look to my right and see the man with the white hair and Mr. Green speaking to each other in a fairly loud tone. Not arguing but clearly annoyed. I put my head in my hands again and then stand out of my chair and yell "HOLD IT, I have an idea!" I was so proud of my self. The man with the white hair comes over and asks "What's your idea?" with this cautious look on his face (I remember his look of caution). "take me to my LEVEL, take me to my ROOM. I have an idea!" "What are you going to do?" he asks. "PLEASE, JUST TAKE ME TO MY ROOM" I say. "Rhino" he says "I have to know what you are going to do." "I'll explain everything in a minute! just please take me to my room, trust me, you're gonna LOVE this!" I said.

When I opened my eyes I explained what I had done in my special room in my mind.

What I had done was this. In the main room of my mind (the big blue room with the 20 foot ceilings) on the far wall was the circuit breaker for my nerve endings (like the fuse box in your house). This device allowed me to turn my nerves on and off at will mentally just by flipping the circuit when needed. Next to that was the adrenaline valve which allowed me to turn on and off my adrenaline flow to my body. It was simply a thin copper pipe which came out of the wall , came down and went back into the wall again with a valve in the middle of it like the main water valve in the basement of your house which controls the water flow coming from the street into the house (the same thing only I was controlling the flow of adrenaline and not the flow of water and it was for control of my body not for control of the house). Allowing me to turn my adrenaline gland on and off at will. Next to it was the fear switch. It was this big old fashioned circuit breaker type switch which was chained in the "off" position with a "DO NOT TOUCH" sign on it. They had ALREADY conditioned me to install these devices back in "room 101" and this is how I had configured them in my mind.

What I did was next to the fear switch I created this big metal box.