Synapse
By D. August Baertlein
Copyright 2011 D. August Baertlein
Smashwords Edition
Cover Design by Siri Weber Feeney
Smashwords Edition, License Notes.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Acknowledgments
No book is an island, and I have plenty of people to thank for assistance with this one. First and foremost is professional illustrator, Siri Weber Feeney, who created the cover image for Synapse, as well as providing literary advice and encouragement along the way. Siri and the rest of my critique group, Rebecca Langston-George, Lynn Becker, Jean Ann Williams, and Terry Pierce, are a big part of what has kept me striving and improving all these years - and not just in writing.
Several other beta readers have helped me spot inconsistencies and incomprehensibles in Synapse, including the illustrious C. S. Perryess; my sister, Kris August; brother-in-law, Rad Davis; sister-in-law, Lisa Baertlein; and my ever supportive parents, Roland and Irene August.
I was also incredibly lucky to be part of an SCBWI whole novel workshop group where the now multiply published Heather Tomlinson gave Synapse a helpful critique early on. There are many others. You know who you are. Thanks!
Lastly, I would like to thank my husband and son. Although they didn't always understand my obsession with this imaginary world, they allowed me the space to go there when I needed to.
Table of Contents
AMNESIA - Mind Under Microscope
AMNESIA - Mind Over Gray Matter
TERRA - Thoughts About Thinking
TERRA - A Visit From Burlington
JAKE - The Accident
_______________________
My brother Gabriel was a blistering boil on my butt from the minute we were born. Before even. The competitive jerk kicked me in the face as he swam out of the birth canal on his way to being first at the very first thing we did. Story is we’re identical twins, but Gabriel didn’t come out with a big red blotch on his face in the shape of a foot. He got the first baby tooth, walked a month before I did, and was “the one with personality,” according to fat Aunt Betty. By the time we were nine he ran faster, jumped higher, and had gotten twice the academic awards.
The accident changed all that. Now the only thing Gabriel does better is drool.
I wish I could say I’d never dreamed of being an only child. In my juvenile mind it seemed like the only way I might ever be the favorite. That was nine years ago, though. Half a lifetime. Something like this changes you. Now I just want him back.
It happened on vacation at Lake Powell where the family had rented a houseboat for the week. We were anchored in a quiet cove, and Mom and Dad were taking an afternoon siesta. Gabe and I played a swimming hide-and-seek game we’d made up. Gabe was it. He counted from base, which was in the shade of the diving platform at the back of the boat. He counted in French. To one hundred and forty. Jeeze.
The rules were you couldn’t get out and hide on the boat, but we never said you couldn’t swim ashore. Gabe wasn’t worried, though. I was a loud flailing swimmer, and the key to hide-and-seek is stealth. Getting to shore without calling attention to myself was pretty much impossible, and he knew it.
That’s why it seemed like such a stroke of luck when a string of cigarette boats ripped by, kicking up a colossal wake, screaming like a dozen lawnmowers. Under cover of all that commotion I took off for shore at warp speed. As warp as my flailing got, anyway. When I hit sand I raced up the beach and hid behind a rock.
Like I said, the key to hide-and-seek is stealth whether you’re it or not-it. So when everything finally calmed down and I didn’t hear Gabe counting or splashing, I figured he was probably sneaking around under the boat trying to catch me by surprise. Maybe he was. I guess we’ll never know.
The cigarette boats raced back the other way, weaving in and out, chasing each other in circles. I waited.
I don’t know how long I sat there basking in the glow of my own cleverness. Everybody wanted to know afterwards. Still do. I remember it was long past the shivering, evaporative-chilling stage when the sun sucks water off your skin until you tingle all over with goose bumps. And it was past the relaxed toasting stage. In fact, it was just into the hot, sweaty point, where the urge to dive back into the water is practically irresistible – five minutes, maybe ten by the time I wondered why I hadn’t even seen him skulking around the boat looking for me. I had a pretty good view, too.
Finally, I got bored. “Over here, you big dweeb!” I shouted, coming from behind the rock and waving my arms. I swung my butt around and wagged it in the general direction of the boat. “Hey! Dorko! Over here!”
No answer. Just the droning of cicadas. I scanned the cliffs and bushes behind me, but couldn’t see anything boy-like, just a big, black lizard doing pushups on a rock and a couple of buzzards circling overhead. I sprouted a fresh crop of goose bumps. It wasn’t that I had a clue yet what had happened. I was more scared that somehow Gabriel had gotten the better of me again.
The sand scorched my feet as I hop-ran back to the water, and started breast-stroking slowly toward the boat. I kept my head up, watching. I swear I heard the Jaws theme song in my head. “Bum-pum. Bum-pum. Bum-pum bum-pum bum-pum." Every now and then I’d kick my feet straight down toward the bottom of the lake, lifting my head as high as I could, spinning around to see farther and deeper into the murky water. I was sure Gabe was going to come up under me, grab my ankles and scare the piss out of me. At the time I remember thinking it would serve him right.
I reached the diving platform at the back of the boat, the place where I’d last seen him, and he still hadn’t attacked. That was when I first thought he might be the one in trouble, not me. I climbed up the ladder and hollered, “Gabe! Gabe, where are you?”
I guess the little-girl squeak in my voice must have woken up Mom and Dad, because they were beside me in a flash, hollering, too.
Then I saw him, hanging there in the water. His red swim shorts billowed like a jellyfish, puffing in the swells from a passing boat.
I’d like to say I dove in, grabbed him by the armpits and dragged him up on deck. But it was Dad. Dad rolled him over on his belly, lifted his arms and forced about a gallon of water from his lungs. Dad gave him mouth-to-mouth, and CPR. Mom called on the radio for help. I just stood there gasping and crying like the useless piece of flotsam I was.
Everybody thinks you have to be dead to have a ghost. Not true.
Nine years after the accident, with Gabe in an institution twenty miles away, I was tripping over his ghost all the time. I’d hear him singing “We are the Champions” in the shower, feel him hovering over my shoulder making suggestions on my English essays, see his face in the mirror when I brushed my teeth.
We never brought Gabriel home, but his ghost found its way. Mom saw it today in one of Gabe’s old baseball cards stuck way back under the refrigerator.
“I don’t know what you thought you were doing, Martin,” Mom said, rubbing Sammy Sosa’s dusty face across the front of her muumuu.
Dad sagged, knowing what was coming. I watched from the kitchen while Mom closed in on him, there sprawled in his La-Z-Boy.
“Why’d you take us out on that god-awful lake, anyway?" She swirled her gin and tonic, and the ice jangled like broken glass. “We should have gone to Disneyland or someplace safe.”
“How was I to know?” Dad said. “You think I’m psychic? And who was it said, ‘Let’s go take a nap.’ Wink, wink. ‘The boys will be fine.' Well, they weren’t fine, were they?”
Dad had had a few too many, too. They seemed to think alcohol would take away the pain, but it never did. Booze just brought the ache to the surface and let it spill out and stain our world. Not that our pain was ever invisible, at least not to us.
It had been easier back when we still had hope, when Gabriel lay in the hospital in a coma and we thought he might come out okay. By the look of the big pulpy wound on the side of Gabe’s head, the doctors figured the wake from those zippy little boats had hurled him up against our big solid houseboat. Getting whacked on the head and knocked unconscious is bad, but passing out underwater – that’s nearly always fatal. Gabriel was lucky to be alive, the doctors said. But the end result of this kind of brain trauma plus near-drowning is hard to predict. They couldn’t give us a prognosis, we’d just have to wait and see.
And pray. We did a lot of praying.
The day he opened his eyes we had a big old party right there in his room – pizza, confetti, the works. Of course, Gabe still couldn’t eat. Or drink. Or speak. Every afternoon after that we’d put him in a wheelchair and take him for strolls on the patio, Mom, Dad, and I. And we took turns just sitting with him, talking about old times and laughing to remind him what he was missing, what he should be fighting for. We were still struggling to be a family back then.
A few months down the line, with the help of his physical therapist, he could move his hands and legs. He’d learned to swallow. Sort of. But his brain never came back. The real Gabriel never came back.
“Rita, we’ve been over this a million times." Dad’s voice drifted into the kitchen and brought me back to now. “There’s nothing more we can do. It’s over. Gabriel would want --”
Mom’s sobs drowned out whatever else Dad was saying. She was right. Having nothing more we could do made it so much harder. If there was nothing to do, there was nothing to hope for.
“Let’s focus on the positive,” Dad put his hand on Mom’s arm. “They take good care of him down at Happy Valley.”
“You know whose fault this is?" Mom shrugged his hand off.
“Please, Rita. Don’t go there. It doesn’t help anyone.”
I ducked into the kitchen out of sight. I knew whose fault it was. I had known from the moment I saw him floating there, jellyfish-like off the stern of the boat.
“It’s Jake’s fault!” she said. “Remember how he used to say he wished he was an only child?”
“Rita, he was four. Stop. We’ve already lost one son. Do you want to drive the other one away?”
“Jake should have helped him." She was sobbing hard now. So was I, my head pressed against the kitchen door.
“Jake didn’t know! How could he know?” Dad crushed an empty beer can on the end table. It would leave another scar in the oak finish, but nobody cared.
“Jake knew,” Mom said. “They’re twins. They feel it when things happen to each other. Twins are connected that way. I heard it on Oprah.”
“Oprah. Right,” Dad said. He popped open a fresh can.
I slunk out the back door never dreaming that Dr. Deborah Jane Ryder would soon be along to save the day.
In her own twisted way.
AMNESIA - The Robbery
Liquor store? Gas station? Mom and Pop shop?
Whatever.
Gun loaded. Tank full. Who gives a flop?
Belly growlin’, gnawin’ hard.
Mom and Pop then. They got food there.
Jumbo chips. Pop the Pop and grab some pop.
Ha! Good one. But I ain’t laughin’.
Never laughed. Not once this whole girl’s life.
Park the car, closest spot. Push open the door. Saunter in.
Stupid doorbell. Everybody turn. Everybody know.
“Mommy, Look. That lady gots a gun.”
I ain’t no lady. Ladies got pink pistol-ettes.
This here’s damn near an Uzi.
I shove the kid. Outta’ the way, my sharp eyes say.
“Calm down, girl,” man behind the counter say.
“I got my hands in the air. Getting you the cash, now. See?”
But he don’t reach for the register. Hand slips ‘neath the counter.
Maybe a gun. Maybe buzz the cops.
Squeeze the trigger. Bam bam.
Man drops to the floor.
I get the cash myself, chump!
Bam bam. Ching ching. Drawer pops open.
Lotta’ green. Maybe I eat for a week or two.
Everybody watchin’.
“Stop your starin’!" I wave my gun.
Six scared eyes look to the floor.
Woman cryin’, don’t know what for.
Time to go.
Whoa! Almost forgot the pop and chips back of the store.
Red can. Orange bag. But my gut wants more.
Lookin’, lookin’, don’t know what for.
Sirens blare.
Cops are comin’.
Sirens blarin’.
Cops are here. Bam bam.
Not my Bam bam.
Salty. Sticky. Bloody. Red.
Drippin’ down my sleepy head.
Black.
Cops say somebody’s dead.
Bullet only grazed my head.
Must be the other guy.
They think I’m stupid.
Truth is I don’t care. Carin’s for suckers.
Mamma never cared. Nobody cared.
“Amnesia? What kind a name is that?” cop say.
“The kind a name I got,” I say.
Mamma forgot who my daddy might be.
Named me Amnesia then forgot about me.
But I don’t tell him.
I don’t tell him nothin’.
“Stupid,” cop say.
I ain’t stupid. Just don’t care.
“How old are you, anyway?” cop say.
“Don’t know." It’s truth.
“Prob’ly try you as an adult,” cop say.
So?
Cop’s talkin’ at me, I don’t care.
Says I’ll die in the ‘lectric chair.
Lethal injection, hanging, whatever’s fair.
All so torqued about one counter clerk.
Everybody die, that’s how it work.
Unless that Ryder bitch get hold of you.
TERRA - The Recruitment
I should never have worn that dreadful skirt to give my first student seminar. Berkeley may be a prestigious university, but it’s not always a civilized place. It didn’t help that I was barely twenty and already in the Ph.D. program. There were those who felt I shouldn’t be there, and even more who felt threatened by my presence.
As I sat there awaiting my introduction, I pondered the merits of kicking off my discount store pumps and wriggling out of those itchy pantyhose. It was bad enough trying to present my life’s scientific work to a group that was mostly hostile and mostly male, without having to trip over the unfamiliar trappings of femininity in the process.
Add to this, my dismay at the repeated litany up and down the halls today, of, “Our Southern Belle is finally ringing,” and you’ll understand why I was growing more reluctant by the minute to waltz up to the podium and project my Alabama accent across that auditorium.
I looked out into the audience and tried to appear as though I was not going to faint. The good old boys greeted each other, laughing, shaking hands, and jostling for seats. I wondered how many of them were here for my fascinating talk, and how many just to see what I looked like in a dress.
Bruce Taninger was, no doubt, one of the latter. He slouched, front and center, his Birkenstocked foot resting on his hairy knee. I carefully did not look up the loose leg of his shorts, not wanting to see what dangled there. But I must have blushed, because he grinned his evil grin.
I looked away.
Just behind him was a man I had never seen before, unique in that he was dressed in suit and tie and sitting with his knees sedately crossed, rather like a woman. He did not take his dark eyes off me, but he also never smiled. His demeanor sent a spider crawling up my spine for reasons I couldn’t pinpoint.
The head of the Department of Molecular Biology tapped his finger loudly on the microphone. He said, “Testing. Testing,” and the room rumbled down to quiet. “Good afternoon,” he said. “Thank you for coming. Without further ado, I’d like to present to you, our own Garbage Queen, Terra O’Hare.”
To a thunder of laughter and applause, I rose and walked to the podium. It crossed my mind to flee the room, skirt clutched in my hand to keep from tripping, a modern-day Scarlett O’Hara. But I was no longer the Southern Belle, I was now the Garbage Queen.
I stood there for a moment trying to read the sweaty three-by-five cards upon which I’d typed my notes. A blizzard of tiny dots swarmed my vision and made this impossible, so I laid the cards on the podium and said, “It seems the introductory joke has already been told. Lights, please.”
I felt somewhat more comfortable in the dark. When my first slide filled the screen I merely read what was written there without elaboration. “Waste Into Energy – A biological process. By Terra O’Hare”
Remembering what I’d chosen for my second slide, I hesitated to press the Advance button. When I did, someone shouted, “Hah! The queen’s castle!” and the room roared with laughter. When it died, I said, “This is a picture of our city dump – not particularly funny if you consider that this amount of trash was created in less than a month. Imagine, if you will, the amount of waste created in this entire country in just one year. Ten years. Or the one hundred years required for many of the things in that pile to break down to their molecular components.”
The next slide was a petri dish with a few small dots growing on it. “This, my friends,” I said, then added “and foes,” to a chucking response, “is our knight in shining armor. This little colony of bacteria, or one like it, will save us from our own filth. I have bio-engineered a strain of Escherichia Coli, or E. coli, the common gut bacterium, to metabolize everything from banana peels and waste oil, to toxic organic chemicals. Better still, our knight here,” I flashed my laser to the screen, “will give us in return for our trash, a clean source of energy. Energy to light our houses, power our cars, run our factories.”
I had forgotten the audience existed, by this time. I spoke to the great accepting universe now, explaining how I would save it from mankind’s stupidity and greed. I went through the details of the genetic manipulations I had done. I displayed colored charts showing the increased efficiency of my newest strain over the wild type E. coli, and over all my other attempts thus far, and I explained exactly how I planned to further increase efficiency. I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that this was the greatest idea to come about since the first woman placed a rotting fish into the planting hole with her corn seed, and gave it a burst of fertilizer.
Then the lights came up, and the mankind whose stupidity and greed I had just been railing against reappeared before me to rip my research to shreds. First they questioned my premise, then my methods, and then my results. Finally they doubted it could ever be put into mass production even if it did actually work in the lab. At each stage I came back with good, solid arguments, and documentation to back them up. When the department head finally stood and thanked everyone for coming, I was exhausted, but satisfied that I had held my own.
I was gathering my unused note cards, when the man in the suit approached.
“Good afternoon,” he said and held out his hand. “I am Dr. Theodore Burlington.”
I held out my hand. “Terra O’Hare,” I said, belatedly realizing that if he had not yet caught my name, it was not likely something that would stick in his head. To my surprise, rather than shake my hand, he kissed it.
“A pleasure,” he said, and I blushed for the second time in an hour.
“I am fascinated by your work,” he said.
“Really? You might be the only one,” I replied.
“I believe you are onto something. I believe it so strongly that I would like you to come work for me. Now. Before graduation. I want you to increase the efficiency of your system to the point where we can patent it, market it, and make billions off of it.”
I stammered and mumbled about really needing to complete my Ph.D., publish a few more papers, make sure my resume was thick with accomplishments. He listened politely until I ran out of steam.
“I would pay you extremely well,” he said. “And your name would go on anything we patent.”
I just stood there with my mouth agape like a catfish pulled up in the mud.
“Your lab would be completely outfitted with all the latest equipment, and you would have as many assistants as you require at your service 24 hours a day.”
I think my eyes popped wide at this point, letting him know the bait was tempting.
“My facility is located on a tropical island where the sun always shines." He smiled as if he knew that my Seasonal Affective Disorder was doing its best to drive me from foggy Berkeley.
When I still did not answer, he came up with the zinger, the Cupid’s arrow to my heart. “You and your research will be provided the utmost respect at Burlington BioTech." No more Garbage Queen?
I was hooked, though went through the motions of talking it over with my parents and university advisor. Two weeks later I landed on the Hawaiian island of Kaho’olawe where Burlington had his secret lab. The whole island was off limits to the public, an edict enforced by a scattering of leftover unexploded ordinance from US Army and Navy bombing practice in the 1920s and 30s.
It was the perfect place to keep people out. And in.
Dr. Deborah Jane Ryder was invited in. But that comes later.
JAKE - Happy Valley
Happy Valley. That’s a laugh and a half. Oh, sure, the place is cheery enough – all done up in pretty pastels with teddy bear mobiles dangling from the ceiling. And I swear Gabriel’s caretakers are issued happy pills before each shift, specially formulated to make their voices lilt, and the corners of their mouths cramp up in permanent smiles.
I get nauseous every time I go there, which is once a week. Sunday. Others do their penance on their knees. I do mine on a cross-town bus trip, transferring three times.
This visit started out like any other, in the Rainbow Room where the patients were gathering for art. The Rainbow Room is really just the cafeteria, only at this time of day the patients are issued paint cups instead of pudding cups, and long-handled brushes instead of spoons. (They never got forks, whether it was art or lunch. You’d lose too many eyeballs in a ward like this, I guess.)
I got here early, like always, sat down at Gabriel’s usual table and thumbed through the stack of neon yellow art paper like it was a deck of cards. I picked a sheet off the top and read the other side. It was a flyer from Another World Video Arcade. Nice place, not far from here. I’d been in once, but it was too expensive for my pockets, had all sorts of fancy holographic gaming machines.
I scanned to the bottom of the page. Just once I wish somebody would donate flyers before the coupons expired. I wadded it into a tight ball and looked around for a challenging shot.
Suddenly Nurse Sue Ellen was beside me, nestling Gabriel’s wheelchair up to the table. I usually smelled her violet perfume coming a mile away, but today she’d snuck up on me in my distracted state. I stuffed the wad of paper surreptitiously into my jeans pocket.
“Lovely afternoon, isn’t it?” she lilted.
“Sure,” I said. “If you like 107 in the shade.”
“Here’s your paintbrush, honey." She pressed the tufted stick into Gabriel’s hand, then squeezed his fingers into a fist around it. “I can’t get over how much Gabriel enjoys painting. He’s a regular Picasso!" Giggles carbonated her syrupy voice.
I looked at Gabriel’s blank face and drooly chin, and wondered what he’d look like if he was bored stupid. “Sure,” I said.
Sue Ellen placed one of the yellow papers, blank side up, in front of Gabriel. “Have fun!” she said, and started to walk away. Then she turned back. “Oh, Jake. Dr. Ludlow wants to speak with you when you’re finished here.”
My heart skipped a beat. I knew Mom and Dad were having money trouble, but surely Dr. Ludlow wouldn’t kick Gabriel out of Happy Valley. Much as I hated this place, the truth was they took good care of my brother, and it wasn’t hard for me to imagine places a heck of a lot worse. Hell, I’d seen them on the news!
“What’s up?" I tried to sound casual.
“Don’t know." Sue Ellen shrugged and walked off, the scent of violets lingering in her wake.
Gabriel began to paint. He chose blue like he always did, and bent way down so his nose was almost in the picture. His hand, like the rest of his body, was tight and contorted, so the brush moved in funny jerks. The doctors called it severe spastic quadriplegia, which meant he didn’t have much control over his flailing, twitching muscles. It meant he’d never walk. Not that anybody really wanted him to walk. He was a lot easier to keep track of in a wheelchair.
“It’s starting to get pretty hot out there,” I told him. I always tried to think of something to say, even though I hadn’t heard a word back in nine years. He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t talk. I used to think maybe he could hear what I said, maybe it mattered to him that I was there and he’d miss me if I didn’t show up, but I’d about lost even that hope.
My eyes strayed to the saddlebag hanging off the side of his chair, the one that held the plastic bags collecting his piss and poop. He couldn’t even go to the bathroom by himself. He could barely swallow his spoon-fed gruel. Maybe he should have just died that day in the lake. That might have been better than this.
I rubbed my eyes hard before they welled up and embarrassed me. I faked a yawn like, Whoa, am I tired! Not a crybaby. No way. I never would have thought, back when I was a jealous punk kid, that I’d miss him this much. But he’s my brother, even if he was a know-it-all, butt-head, dweeberino.
Oh, wait. That’s what he used to call me. Ah, those were the good old days.
The old lady across the table dropped her chin to her chest and started to snore. Red paint oozed from her brush all over the half-finished tulip she was painting. Gabriel pressed his brush against the paper until it splayed, making blue duck feet that mucked across the page.
“The ice broke on the Santa Cruz last Monday,” I said.
That’s what we Tucsonans say when it gets over a hundred the first time each summer. The Santa Cruz River almost never even has water in it let alone ice. Pretty funny, huh? Gabriel didn’t think so. He didn’t even look up.
I cupped his drooly chin in my palm and tried to get him to look at me. He wouldn’t, or couldn’t. His eyes just wandered, unfocused, in all directions. Every time I visited I peered into those eyes, trying to find that bright, funny kid that used to live in there. But it’s lights out – Nobody’s home. It’s not just a blown fuse, the wiring is shot. Nothing salvageable.
Gabriel is gone, and the doctors say there’s no reason to believe he’ll ever come back, not even if I perform my hilarious Sunday weather monologue every week for the next hundred years. Plus it just plain hurts too bad to see him like this week after week. It’s making me freakin’ nuts.
“This is stupid!" I slammed my fist against the table.
The old lady woke with a start, splattering red paint across the table like blood from a bullet wound. She stared at me with huge unfocused eyes.
“Why do I keep coming here? You don’t know me from a dead skunk." I waved my hand under Gabriel’s nose trying to get his attention. Instead I knocked over the stack of yellow papers, sending them skimming across the floor.
“It’s true. I could just as well be an old dead skunk plopped in this chair every Sunday, stinking up the place." I was on a ranting roll. I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t try.
“Next week I’m gonna’ send a dead skunk and we’ll see if you can tell the difference.”
The old lady across the table started howling, and a bunch of the other patients joined in. Gabriel just kept painting.
“I quit,” I said.
Every eye in the room was on me as I gathered the yellow papers off the floor into a ragged stack, tossed them on the table, and stomped out.
Correction – every eye but Gabriel’s. Gabriel just painted on.
AMNESIA - The Execution
“Amnesia Rochelle Brindle?" Skinny, brown-haired bitch be reading my prison file.
Tag over her tit say, Deborah Jane Ryder - M.D.
Look in her eye say, devil doctor bitch.
“You’re to be executed in less than an hour,” she say.
I finger a dread hanging off my head.
Soon I be dead.
Lady seem to think I should be scared pukin’.
She ain’t read my file too good.
Amnesia don’t do fear.
Amnesia don’t give a crap.
“What kind of name is Amnesia?” she say.
I twist ‘round.
Dangle one leg off the arm of my chair.
Fix the bitch with my evil stare.
Mamma once said the coal blackness of that gaze sent maggots up her spine.
Ryder don’t flinch.
“Ain’t none of your business,” I say, “but Mamma thought it a big old joke.”
“Joke?”
She don’t look up. Don’t see my glare.
It ought to make her squirm like a big poked worm.
But she don’t care.
She don’t give a crap.
“What? No sense of humor?” I say.
Ryder grin. “No, not much,” she say.
I like her just then. It don’t last.
“Mamma hadn’t no idea who my father might be.”
I swing my dangling foot.
“He must a’ been white, by the muddy-brown looks of me.”
Prison slipper rise and fall.
Up.
Down.
Up.
“Your mother was African American?” Ryder say. “She had some form of temporary amnesia, and you were named after it?”
“Somethin’ like that,” I say. “Granny called it a Jack blackout, but that didn’t make for a catchy girl’s name.”
“Jack blackout?”
“Jack Daniels,” I say. Ryder ain’t too bright for a doctor.
“Ah." She nod. She pull out a notepad, and start to scribble.
Even upside down I read just fine.
I ain’t stupid.
Mild Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, it say. Then three question marks.
“Did your mother continue drinking while she was pregnant?”
Doctor bitch sound like one of them child welfare ladies. Used to come ‘round about my yard-ape stage.
Me swinging upside down on the monkey bars.
Them asking bass-akwards questions didn’t make no sense.
“Booze was like breathing to Mamma,” I say. “It’d take more than some fatherless babe to dry her up.”
Ryder nod.
“Got a smoke?”
“Smoking’s not permitted,” Ryder say.
She don’t smoke. Ain’t she smart.
“Pity,” I say.
Time to end her dogging.
I slap my thigh with my unchained hand.
“So! That’s the story of Amnesia. If I was a boy she’d a’ named me Jesus. Called it immaculate
conception.”
Ryder arch up one eyebrow, then go on back to reading.
“It says here you have no next of kin,” she say.
“I got ‘em,” I say. “Just that none of ‘em much like me.”
“Well, murder is a serious offense.”
Ryder say murder in that better-than-you tone, like it be mud in her mouth.
“And y’all about to commit it,” I tell her.
She look me square in the eye.
First time she really look, I think.
“Yes,” she say all slow and thoughtful.
“Killing ain’t no crime,” I say, “no, crime against nature, anyway.”
Her ice-blue eyes go sharp.
“Killing BE nature, straight and true,” I say.
“Lions to ladybugs gotta’ eat.
“People just got it down.
“War. Abortion. Capital punishment.
“Killing, that’s all it be.
“Ain’t no terrible thing, you ask me.”
Ryder nod like she understand.
“Science,” she say, like her mind drifting away.
I don’t get that one. Never studied science.
“Tell me about your next of kin,” Ryder say.
Her pen rise up. Ready.
I shrug.
“My next of kin passed me ‘round from the day I first got here.
“Aunts, uncles, grandfolks.
“Foster homes later.
“I got older, the stops got shorter.
“I could piss folks off in no time flat.
“Still can." I try my grin on her. No effect.
“Wouldn’t nobody take me by thirteen.”
“So, you never had a home?" Ryder talking to herself more ‘n to me.
I change my mind. She not like the do-gooder social service ladies.
Maybe she just curious.
She fix me with her icy stare.
“Friends?” she say.
I smile.
“Enemies remember you longer.”
Ryder smile back. Not what I expect. But I don’t much understand smiles.
“What about you, doc? You got friends?”
Doc stiffen up.
Her pen freeze on the page.
“I have colleagues,” she say.
Her lips pinch up to a thin white line.
I drop it. I got my thrill.
“What’s all this for, anyway, Dr. Debs? Last guy to ask about my childhood was the shrink said I’m not psycho enough to claim that insanity defense. “
“Psychiatrist?”
Ryder flip through them papers some more.
One catch her eye. She pull that sheet out.
“No matter,” I say. “I didn’t want no defense. Told ‘em I done it. Told ‘em I’d do it again.”
Ryder keep on scanning the page.
“Ah,” she say. “Emotional blank?”
“Yeah, so I heard.”
My slipper rise up over the arm of my chair. Then fall.
“So what you here for, anyway? Hear my final appeal to God? Ain’t gonna’ happen. The state’s gonna’ off me in . . .”
I look up at the big, white-faced clock.
“Five minutes. That’s about five minutes too long for me.”
Then a thought smack me hard.
“Don’t go filing no last minute appeals, doc. I’m outta’ here!”
Doctor look up from her notes.
“Not to worry,” she say. “In fact, I pulled some strings.” She smile. “Without me you might have waited decades to die.”
Glint in her eye make my scalp crawl.
Warden Johnstall come in. “Time to go,” he say.
I swing my leg ‘round, wait for Johnstall to unlock my chains.
Ryder just sit there. Smiling.
Warden herd me down the hall.
“That doctor of yours is bad as me,” I tell him.
He don’t talk.
Execution room is blinding white.
They lead me up to a big, white platform four foot off the ground.
One big, thick column.
“You folks putting me on a pedestal?” I say.
Nobody say nothing.
Stupid.
Two guards step up, take my arms.
I shake them off, mount the step, and lay on down.
Same two guards strap my arms, strap my legs, then disappear behind me.
Some guy jab a needle in my vein.
Pipeline to my bloodstream.
Nothing now but to wait.
Wall clock’s hand creeps on round.
Tick. Tick.
“The prisoner has waived her right to last words,” somebody say.
Tick. Tick.
Clock hand hits 12:00.
Warden step up, squirts something in the tube jutting outta’ my arm.
Sodium pentothol. Sedative. To keep me from thrashing around, making a big scene.
Big glass window. People watching.
The dead clerk’s wife. Couple of lawyers. Folks I don’t even know.
There, way in back. Dr. Ryder. Smiling.
Warden Johnstall squirts in the poison. Pancuronium bromide, he say.
Curare derivative. For to kill my lungs.
I ain’t stupid. Read my internet.
Stop my breathing. Keep me from crying out.
I wait for my lungs to lurch, to struggle.
Wait for the pain. But all I feel is sleepy.
Powerful sleepy.
I try to stay awake.
I want to know if that potassium chloride they shoot in last really burn like fire in your veins as it freeze every muscle you got. Freeze your heart solid.
But I fade out.
S’okay, I think. I’ll ask Ryder when she drop on through to Hell.
She’ll be coming down this same hatch someday.
TERRA - Success
My mind often drifts back to that last day. The last one I can remember anyway.
After months of work I had finally created a fungal strain efficient enough to save the world from human filth, and I was so pleased with myself that I could not wait to share the news. I called Malcolm Randolph’s lab. I wanted him to be the first to know, since his bio-engine would be the stage from which my fungus would perform its ecological miracles.
But he wasn’t in. I falter with voicemail under the best of circumstances, but that day my tongue, jittery beyond control, refused to wait for my brain to feed it proper words. It rambled foolishly on and on until I finally convinced it to say, “Call me,” and hung up.
I was disappointed to the core at not being able to speak to Malcolm. He was another of Dr. Burlington’s recruits, and we’d grown close the last few months. It wasn’t just because we were the last academics left to haunt the laboratory wing when all the other projects went belly-up. Malcolm was just . . . well, Malcolm. No pretenses. No games. We made a magnificent team, he and I.
When I switched from bacteria to fungi, Malcolm had to redesign his bio-engine to suit my new study organism. This change was crucial and Malcolm understood, even though it was a tremendous pain for him. Together we had dreamed that our work would provide a revolutionary new energy source for anything anybody could imagine.
Mostly Malcolm and I imagined cars. We would replace the gasoline automobile, and even the electric and hybrid car, in one elegant, ecological swoop, cleaning up the air, reducing landfills, and making the U.S. independent of oil-producing countries, all in a matter of a few years.
Of course, there were tremendous financial incentives, as well. That’s why we had the backing of the illustrious Dr. Burlington. It became more apparent by the day that the doctor did not have an altruistic bone in his height-challenged body. All he cared about was money, power, and success.
I suppose my motives weren’t totally altruistic either. While reaching for a bit of my own kind of power – Power to Save the World – there were times I felt positively goddess-like. I was certain I would go down in history as The Woman Who Rescued Humanity From Rubbish.
Despite the way it all turned out, Victory Day still shines in my memory. I drafted an email to Dr. Burlington saying only, “Success at last!" He would want to know. He was the boss, after all.
Five minutes later he appeared in my lab with a bottle of champagne in his hand and a glint in his eye. I had expected a summons rather than a visit. Though he would never admit it, labs scared the actual breath out of him. More than once I’d heard the snip-snap of his Italian shoes quicken as he held his breath to get past my laboratory door. He walked even faster when I had the Geiger counter clicking away, keeping track of radioactively labeled DNA.
While I was surprised to see him in the lab, the indecent look in his eye was customary. He looked me over head to toe with a couple of preprogrammed stops in between. I moved to put the desk between us. His hands had a tendency to wander.
“You got my message,” I said, nodding toward the champagne bottle.
“I did. How good is your latest . . . microorganism?" He never could remember exactly what I was working on.
“The new fungus is industrial strength,” I bragged. “It can manage a minimum of 84% energy extraction from every organic material I’ve thrown at it so far, from kitchen scraps to low grade petroleum.”
“Ah." He moved around the desk toward me, as if to see my notes. I knew enough to stay out of range. He always made it seem like an accidental brush-up, but after a few accidents, I caught on.
I went to the cabinet and got two 250 ml glass beakers. He looked puzzled. “For the champagne,” I said.
“Are you sure they’re safe?” he asked. “From contamination, I mean?”
I inspected one of the beakers, scritching the inside with my fingernail. “I imagine they’ll be okay. I keep most of the radioactive glassware in the other room." It was cruel of me to torture him like that. But I couldn’t help myself.
“I should go back to my office and get some glasses,” he said. “I forgot them in my hurry.”
“I’m kidding,” I said. “These beakers have never been used for anything but organic green tea. You have my word.”
He eyed the beakers suspiciously.
“You can pour while I put these yeast plates back into the growth chamber,” I said. “We wouldn’t want to stress the belle of our ball, 943A12." I waved the petri dish containing my wonder fungus at him, put it on top of a stack, and carried them all to the other room. On my way out I heard him rinse one of the beakers it the lab sink. His, I’m sure.
When I got back he was flipping through the loose notes I’d left tucked into my notebook. “Are you trying to sneak an early peek at the results?" I smiled. “Good luck. Until I get that transcribed into my notebook nobody will be able to decipher it.”
“My thoughts exactly,” he said. “I’ll need a written report. In English, not that gibberish." He tapped the notebook with a manicured fingernail. “Although, I suppose it’s really just a formality,” he said. “We have the organism and that’s what counts in the business world.”
In the science world, my world, people would want to see proper protocol and extensive documentation, and I would be sure to provide it. But it could wait until tomorrow.
Smiling, he turned to the two beakers of champagne, each poured precisely to the 100 ml red line. “Now, we celebrate." He handed me one of the beakers and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. (I’d forgotten to move.) “To my fungal gold mine,” he toasted.
“To 943A12,” I corrected, rotating out from under his arm.
“Yes, yes. 943 . . . whatever." He waved away the details of my science world with a two-fingered flick of his hand. “May that beautiful goop-wad put Burlington BioTech on the map and make me rich and famous!" He clinked his beaker against mine, then emptied in one gulp.
When he saw me staring, he added, “You too, of course." He pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and blotted his lips.
I’d had enough. “Time to get back to work,” I said. I turned on the Geiger counter and set it to Speaker Test. It began to click rapidly, like the room was a hotbed of radioactive materials.
Dr. Burlington scooped up the champagne bottle and fled, leaving his empty beaker for me to wash.
JAKE - Another Recruitment
I knocked on Dr. Ludlow’s office door and he invited me in. Ludlow is the director of Happy Valley, and by my calculations it was about time for his usual afternoon nap. Today, however he sat alert at his desk, and some woman with wild brown hair and a lab coat sat in his cushy napping chair.
“You wanted to see me?” I asked.
“Yes, I’m so glad you could make it,” said Dr. Ludlow, holding out his fish-white hand. The woman pulled herself up a little straighter in the La-Z-Boy, her ice-blue eyes following me across the room.
I gave Ludlow a brief handshake and dropped into the middle of three chairs lined up to face them both.
“I’d hoped your parents would come." Dr. Ludlow pursed his lips. “Did your father mention my having called?”
“If you talked to him after 10:00 a.m. he was probably too drunk to remember. Before that he’d be asleep. So . . ." I shrugged. “I handle Gabriel’s affairs these days, anyway,” I said, which was true. Except for writing the checks.
Dr. Ludlow nodded slowly. “Well, then, I’d like you to meet Dr. Deborah Jane Ryder." He indicated the woman with a nod in her direction. “She’s a neurophysiologist. She studies injuries to the brain and nervous system, and how they affect behavior.”
We eyed each other suspiciously, the wild-haired woman and I, but neither of us spoke.
“I’ll get right to the point,” he said. “Dr. Ryder wants to use your brother as the subject of a scientific study." He gave me this broad smile, like Gabriel had just won the Nobel Prize for Idiocy.
I tugged a string of hair down over my forehead. “My brother’s got enough problems,” I said, “without being somebody’s guinea pig on top of it all." I stood and headed for the door. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
The truth was I was so relieved that Ludlow wasn’t kicking Gabe out I barely thought about the rest of it. I was just glad Mom and Dad were keeping up on the payments.
Dr. Ryder watched my every move like I was one of her subjects. I was so unnerved my legs forgot how to walk. I had to concentrate on every step.
I’d almost escaped when she snagged me with the first words out of her mouth.
“I could make him whole again.”
My hand was on the doorknob. One foot was in the hallway. I could have made a run for it, but I didn’t. I let her reel me in like a trout on her twisted line of words.
“I believe your brother is still in there, much as you knew him before the accident, trapped in a body that no longer responds to his commands." She paused.
I couldn’t move.
“Trapped,” she repeated, and I thought she meant me, until she added, “But you could help set him free.”
Even knowing what I know now, I can see I had no choice. I’d have to have been an iceberg not to listen. I was lots of things at that moment – angry, self-absorbed, filled with self-loathing – but I was not an iceberg. I loved my brother.
I went back to my chair and threw her the coolest nod I could muster in that moment.
She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. Her hands clasped in front of her, she launched into her sales pitch. “Based on my research, Gabriel is most likely still capable of a great deal of thinking and reasoning. His synapses are still firing and I’ve developed a method of recording that activity from over 2,000 distinct areas of the brain. You’d be surprised. People like Gabriel are still producing a fair number of functional brainwaves.”
“So?” I said. “Even if that’s true, they don’t seem to be doing him any good.”
“So, I’ve developed a brainwave dictionary, a ‘Rosetta Stone of the brain’ if you will.”
“Rosetta Stone?" I’d heard the words before, but couldn’t remember what they meant. Some language classes you could buy online, I thought.
“The original Rosetta Stone,” Dr. Ryder explained like she was talking to a moron, “is a stone slab bearing the same text in three languages: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and demotic characters. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone enabled anthropologists to decipher ancient Egyptian writings.”
“So, you can translate thoughts with your . . . your brain stone thingy? So what? Gabriel has none.”
I was trying to sound blasé, but I could feel myself being sucked in. For so long I’d held out hope against all reason. I’d believed if I just kept coming and talking and praying, somehow I could bring him back to us. Now that I was finally starting to let go, to think about getting on with my life, here was this wild-eyed lady doctor dragging me back into the quagmire of hope. Hope is a hard thing to have, and such a hard thing to let go of.
“I suppose you could say I read minds." She tossed out a hunk of bait I couldn’t pass up.
“Yeah? What kind a reading are we talking about? War and Peace, or Pat the Bunny?”
“Somewhere in between,” she conceded. “In one experiment, after studying the subjects’ brainwaves for several weeks while they told me exactly what they were thinking, I placed them alone in a closed room and monitored only their brainwave patterns. They could watch TV, or read, or do whatever they wanted. I didn’t watch or listen into the room. Just into their brainwaves.”
“And?”
“When they came out I told them basically what they’d been thinking the whole time, minute by minute. They were astounded. Some thought I’d cheated." She made a hoarse sound deep in her throat, her version of a chuckle, I guess. “But when it came to their unspoken thoughts how could I cheat?”
“Okay, so you can read the normal thoughts of normal people who can help you translate the language of their brains. But what does that have to do with my brother, the vegetable?”
“Vegetable is such a harsh word, Jake.”
“Yeah, but it’s pretty descriptive, don’t you think? Gabriel’s had six doctors say he’s got nothing but mush between his ears. Reading his mind would be like reading some wall a two-year-old scribbled on with his mommy’s lipstick.”
“I think you’re wrong, Jake. I think there’s something there. I think we can give Gabriel his life back. Let him express his thoughts again, and experience the real world again.”
Give Gabriel his life back. Could she do that?
A swarm of gnats buzzed around my head. I swatted at them before realizing they weren’t real, just my brain freaking out. I took a deep breath, and focused on getting the straight scoop.
“Reading his mind, mush-brain or Einstein,” I said, finally, “is a far cry from giving him his life back.”
“Are you familiar with virtual reality?” She said.
“V.R.? Sure. Who isn’t?" I shrugged. “It’s a pretty awesome way to live your fantasies. So I’m told. What’s V.R. got to do with anything?”
“It’s key." Dr. Ryder’s chin floated up a prideful notch. “My V.R. system brings reality to the brain-locked patient. It responds to the subject’s very thoughts, so he doesn’t have to be able to speak or move. All he has to do is think." She paused to let this soak in.
“You just think it and it happens in 3-D all around you?" I meant it to sound doubtful, but it came out more awestruck.
“Pretty much,” she said. “The system reads the subject’s mind, then feeds back the appropriate holographic images, sounds, smells, and sensations. It gives my patients a life, where they once floated in limbo.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Gabriel imagines making a blinding run down the soccer field and kicking the winning goal, and the computer makes him feel like he’s really doing it?”
“I could even make him sweat." Dr. Ryder nodded. “But even better, I could feed him images and sensations of the real world so that he can come back to us and experience life with us here and now.”
“That would be impressive,” I conceded. “If true.”
She smiled. “Believe it.”
“But Gabriel can’t seem to see or hear anything – real or computer-generated,” I said. “He’s totally oblivious to me and everything around him. Virtual reality is great, but you have to have functional senses to see the holograms and hear the soundtracks. Seems like Gabriel’s senses don’t wire into his brain right anymore.”
“Great choice of words, Jake,” Dr. Ryder smiled, “But we can fix that wiring.”
“No way,” I said, like I was some kind of expert on the subject. After nine years of living this nightmare, I figured I was.
“Yes way!” she said. “In situations like Gabriel’s I can send signals directly to the brain. Bypass the senses.”
My stomach lurched. “That sounds like mind control,” I said.
“No,” she shot back. “Not really. It’s not any different from putting them into a V.R. chamber where they assume they’re functioning in the real world.”
She had a point, I guess. If virtual reality was so real it made you believe you were functioning normally, would it be any different to bypass the body’s sensors and feed visual and auditory signals straight to the brain?
“And, of course, it would be completely unethical to send my patients feelings or urges of my making. I only feed them things they’d normally receive through their senses.”
Then her eyes lit as if she’d suddenly remembered where her treasure was hidden. “And the best part is that you, Jake, can use a second V.R. chamber to enter Gabriel’s world. The computer will feed each of you the other’s thoughts and actions so that you can talk with him, interact with him just as if you were side by side. You could be brothers again.”
The gnats came back, but I knew better than to swat this time.
I’d spent a lot of nights lying awake talking to Gabriel. Telling him how sorry I was for everything that had happened before, during, and after the accident. How sorry I was for even being born. Now he might actually be able to hear me.
Dr. Ryder nodded like she could read my thoughts already.
“So, what exactly would you have to do to plug Gabriel into your system?” I asked. “Would he be permanently wired to a computer? Would it be done here at Happy Valley? When could this happen?”
“One question at a time!" Dr. Ryder laughed. “It could be done at my facility west of town just as soon as we can arrange it. And no, Gabriel would not be permanently wired to a computer. All the signals would be sent wirelessly to and from the 2,000 electrodes inserted into his brain to act as transmitter/receivers.”
“Inserted? Inserted into his brain?" I swallowed my stomach back down into place. “No. Huh uh. No brain probes. No way!”
Dr. Ludlow shifted in his chair. I’d forgotten the guy was still there, and when our eyes met he snatched his glasses from the desk and mumbled “I need to attend to my rounds." He darted into the hall like a scared puppy. What he didn’t know couldn’t come back to bite him, I guess.
Dr. Ryder didn’t miss a beat. “It’s just routine surgery. Gabriel might have a slight headache when he wakes up. That’s all.”
I cringed. “If God had meant for brains to be punctured, he wouldn’t have encased them in these nice bony skulls." I gave mine a tap.