Charles Wallace’s confidence lands him in deep trouble…

They go into the CENTRAL Central Intelligence building despite Calvin’s foreboding, and eventually just ask someone what to do (because the mechanics of the place aren’t immediately obvious).

“We’re strangers here,” Calvin said. “That’s why we don’t know about things. Please tell us, sir, who you are and what you do.”

“I run a number-one spelling machine on the second-grade level.”

“But what are you doing here now?” Charles Wallace asked.

“I am here to report that one of my letters is jamming, and until it can be properly oiled by an F Grade oiler there is danger of jammed minds.”

“Strawberry jam or raspberry?” Charles Wallace murmured. Calvin looked down at Charles and shook his head warningly. Meg gave the little boy’s hand a slight, understanding pressure. Charles Wallace, she was quite sure, was not trying to be rude or funny; it was his way of whistling in the dark.

This slightly sarcastic response is evidently great cause for concern on Camazotz, and when the man suggests that Charles should be “reprocessed”, Charles just goes along with it, thinking that it might bring him closer to whoever’s in charge here.

-I wish he wouldn’t act so sure of himself, Meg thought, looking anxiously at Charles and holding his hand more tightly until he wriggled his fingers in protest. That’s what Mrs Whatsit said he had to watch, being proud. -Don’t, please don’t, she thought hard at Charles Wallace. She wondered if Calvin realized that a lot of the arrogance was bravado.

The man stood up, moving jerkily as though he had been sitting for a long time. “I hope he isn’t too hard on you,” he murmured as he led the children toward the empty fourth wall. “But I’ve been reprocessed once and that was more than enough. And I don’t want to get sent to IT. I’ve never been sent to IT and can’t risk having that happen.”

There was IT again. What was this IT?

[…] “You may be detained for a few days,” the man said, “but I’m sure they won’t be too hard on you because of your youth. Just relax and don’t fight and it will all be much easier for you.”

They enter a large room filled with computers (the ancient computers that don’t even have any screens, just binary inputs and outputs).

Charles Wallace said suddenly, and his voice held panic, “Don’t let go my hands! Hold me tight! He’s trying to get at me!”

“Who?” Meg squeaked.

“I don’t know. But he’s trying to get n at me! I can feel him!”

“Let’s go back.” Calvin started to pull away.

“No,” Charles Wallace said. “I have to go on. We have to make decisions, and we can’t make them if they’re based on fear.” His voice sounded old and strange and remote. Meg, clasping his small hand tightly, could feel it sweating in hers.

Again, it’s not Calvin’s father whose life is at stake here.

What was there about him that seemed to contain all the coldness and darkness they had felt as they plunged through the Black Thing on their way to this planet?

“I have been waiting for you, my dears,” the man said. His voice was kind and gentle, not at all the cold and frightening voice Meg had expected. It took her a moment to realize that though the voice came from the man, he had not opened his mouth or moved his lips at all, that no real words had been spoken to fall upon her ears, that he had somehow communicated directly into their brains.

“But how does it happen that there are three of you?” the man asked.

Charles Wallace spoke with harsh boldness, but Meg could feel him trembling. “Oh, Calvin just came along for the ride.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” For a moment there was a sharpness to the voice that spoke inside their minds. Then it relaxed and became soothing again. “I hope that it has been a pleasant one so far.”

“Very educational,” Charles Wallace said.

“Let Calvin speak for himself,” the man ordered.

Calvin growled, his lips tight, his body rigid. “I have nothing to say.”

Meg stared at the man in horrified fascination. His eyes were bright and had a reddish glow. Above his head was a light, and it glowed in the same manner as the eyes, pulsing, throbbing, in steady rhythm.

Charles realizes he’s trying to hypnotize them with his eyes, so he tells them all to close their eyes. Evidently nobody has names here, just occasional physical differences like the man with red eyes here, because they’re all merely relevant as their functions, their place in the machine of this planet.

“Now, my dears,” the words continued, “I shall of course have no need of recourse to violence, but I thought perhaps it would save you pain if I showed you at once that it would be no good try to oppose me. You see, what you will soon realize is that there is no need to fight me. Not only is there no need, but you will not have the slightest desire to do so. For why should you wish to fight someone who is here only to save you pain and trouble? For you, as well as for the rest of all the happy, useful people on this planet, I, in my own strength, am willing to assume all the pain, all the responsibility, all the burdens of thought and decision.”

“We will make our own decisions, thank you,” Charles Wallace said.

“But of course. And our decisions will be one, yours and mine. Don’t you see how much better, how much easier for you that is? Let me show you. Let us say the multiplication table together.”

“No,” Charles Wallace said.

“Once one is one. Once two is two. Once three is three.”

“Mary had a little lamb!” Charles Wallace shouted. “Its fleece was white as snow!”

Charles shouts nursery rhyme to interrupt the rhythm, and Calvin soon follows suit and recites the Gettysburg Address, but Meg has the most difficulty resisting it.

“Father!” Meg screamed. “Father!” The scream, half involuntary, jerked her mind back out of the darkness.

The words of the multiplication table seemed to break up into laughter. “Splendid! Splendid! You have passed the preliminary tests with flying colors.”

“You didn’t think we were as easy as all that, falling for that old stuff, did you?” Charles Wallace demanded.

“Ah, I hoped not. I most sincerely hoped not. But after all you are very young and very impressionable, and the younger the better, my little man. The younger the better.”

At this clear targeting of her little brother, Meg finally speaks up.

“If you please,” she said, trying to sound calm and brave. “The only reason we are here is because we think our father is here. Can you tell us where to find him?”

“Ah, your father!” There seemed to be a great chortling of delight. “Ah yes, your father! It is not can I, you know, young lady, but will I?”

“Will you, then?”

“That depends on a number of things. Why do you want your father?”

“Didn’t you ever have a father yourself?” Meg demanded. “You don’t want him for a reason. You want him because he’s your father.”

“Ah, but he hasn’t been acting very like a father, lately, has he? Abandoning his wife and his four little children to go gallivanting off on wild adventures of his own.”

“He was working for the government. He’d never have left us otherwise. And we want to see him, please. Right now.”

“My, but the little miss is impatient! Patience, patience, young lady.”

And here’s where Meg’s faults begin to come into play. He’s pushing all the same buttons that the adults back home used against her, so he receives a similar response: Rebellion.

But the man redirects the conversation toward Charles again, and the boy surprisingly responds with violence.

Suddenly Charles Wallace darted forward and hit the man as hard as he could, which was fairly hard, as he had had a good deal of coaching from the twins.

“Charles!” Meg screamed.

The men in dark smocks moved smoothly but with swiftness to Charles. The man in the chair casually raised one finger, and the men dropped back.

“Hold it-” Calvin whispered, and together he and Meg darted forward and grabbed Charles Wallace, pulling him back from the platform.

The man gave a wince and the thought of his voice was a little breathless. Charles Wallace’s punch had succeeded in winding him. “May I ask why you did that?”

“Because you aren’t you,” Charles Wallace said. “I’m not sure what you are, but you” – he pointed to the man on the chair – “aren’t what’s talking to us. I’m sorry if I hurt you. I didn’t think you were real. I thought perhaps you might be a robot, because I don’t feel anything coming directly from you. I’m not sure where it’s coming from, but it’s coming through you. It isn’t you.”

“Pretty smart, aren’t you?” the thought asked, and Meg had the uncomfortable feeling that she detected a snarl.

And then he convinces Charles to LOOK INTO HIS EYES TO FIND OUT WHAT IT IS!

Charles Wallace looked quickly at Meg and Calvin, then said, as though to himself, “I have to,” and focused his clear blue ayes on the red ones of the man in the chair. Meg looked not at the man but at her brother. After a moment it seemed that his eyes were no longer focusing. The pupils grew smaller and smaller, as though he were looking into an intensely bright light, until they seemed to close entirely, until his eyes were nothing but an opaque blue. He slipped his hands out of Meg’s and Calvin’s and started walking slowly toward the man on the chair.

“No!” Meg screamed. “No!”

But Charles Wallace continued his slow walk forward, and she knew he had not heard her.

“No!” she screamed again, and ran after him. With her inefficient flying tackle she landed on him. She was so much larger than he that he fell sprawling, hitting his head with a sharp crack against the marble floor. She knelt by him, sobbing. After a moment of lying there as though he had been knocked out by the blow, he opened his eyes, shook his head, and sat up. Slowly the pupils of his eyes dilated until they were back to normal, and the blood came back to his white cheeks.

The man naturally berates Meg at this, and she responds that they’re all hungry, and the man seriously considers starving them out. Charles, however, doesn’t seem to realize just how close he was to losing his will.

Still holding Meg’s and Calvin’s hands, Charles Wallace stepped forward. “Okay, what next?” he asked the man in the chair. “We’ve had enough of these preliminaries. Let’s get on with it.”

“That’s exactly what we were doing,” the man said, “until your sister interfered by practically giving you a brain concussion. Shall we try again?”

“No!” Meg cried. “No, Charles. Please. Let me do it. Or Calvin.”

“But it is only the little boy whose neurological system is complex enough. If you tried to conduct the necessary neurons your brains would explode.”

“And Charles’s wouldn’t?”

“I think not.”

“But there’s a possibility?”

“There’s always a possibility.”

“Then he mustn’t do it.”

That’s about when he chooses to feed them, but since it’s all “synthetic” food, much like in The Matrix, he’s only able to trick Calvin and Meg’s senses into thinking it’s a delicious meal, while Charles sees it for what it is, tasteless mush. So Charles specifically is being deprived of a good meal because he’s still shutting out whatever force that wants him to submit.

“If I come in can I get out again?” Charles Wallace asked.

“But of course, if you want to. But I don’t think you will want to.”

“If I come – not to stay, you understand – just to find out about you, will you tell us where Father is?”

“Yes. That is a promise. And I don’t make promises lightly.”

Their only choice, if they want to find their father, is evidently for Charles to do this.

Now the red eyes and the light above seemed to bore into Charles, and again the pupils of the little boy’s eyes contracted. When the final point of black was lost in blue he turned away from the red eyes, looked at Meg, and smiled sweetly, but the smile was not Charles Wallace’s smile.

“Come on, Meg, eat this delicious food that has been prepared for us,” he said.

Meg snatched Charles Wallace’s plate and threw it on the floor, so that his dinner splashed about and the plate broke into fragments. “No!” She cried, her voice rising shrilly. “No! No! No!”

From the shadows came one of the dark-smocked men and put another plate in front of Charels Wallace, and he began to eat eagerly. “What’s wrong, Meg?” Charles Wallace asked. “Why are you being so belligerent and uncooperative?” The voice was Charles Wallace’s voice, and yet it was different, too, somehow flattened out, almost as a voice might have sounded on the two-dimensional planet.

Meg grabbed wildly at Calvin, shrieking, “That isn’t Charles! Charles is gone!”

Until next time…