The Erased, page 6
Erik Kaplan was probably a Transhuman. He is probably dead. The escape attempt that caused the injuries to Gary were likely caused by an ability to remote into Gary’s head. Whatever it was, and whatever happened to him, the administrators, Orderlies, and Nurses have all kept it under heavy wraps.
Block finally did start singing, something about a superman, which sounded like a song Didi used to sing from time to time. Something from an opera, maybe. He sings under his breath, “ah ha ha ha ha ha…” in syncopated rhythm.
“This is so wrong,” I tell the two of them. “At night, I sit and think... about the faces of my wife and my daughter.” My jaw seems to be doing better, much less strained. “As though the agents were part of some kind of great vacuum sucking them away from me. Have you ever felt that strong a pull of gravity?” I ask. They’re silent, each looking down contemplatively.
“Ian, I’ve felt my share of wrongs,” the Professor finally speaks. “We could all sit here and tell our sob stories.”
I ask how they nabbed him.
And he told me. His bride they didn’t just drag away from him; they put a bullet in her head, bagged her corpse right in front of him as he screamed and punched. “She was obviously resisting arrest,” he explains sarcastically. “They said she was reaching for a gun.”
His face falls sullen, but he continues, “’Then why don’t you plug me?’ I spit in his face. I’m punching and kicking. ‘I’ll make it easy for you!’ I scream and spit some more. ‘Because you’ve still got to serve your country, you rebel bastard,’ says the man who pulled the trigger on Renata. I used to have an arsenal in my home, Ian,” he tells me. “My home was a compound not unlike a goddamned fort. All that time, my paranoia, and I was right in the end. I was a wealthy man. I’d made my fortune in journalism. Earned an honorary PhD in the fucking subject. You all call me the Professor, but to be honest, I’ve never taught a single goddamned class.”
Block and I are both quiet. Block doesn’t have any songs to sing as the Professor reminisces.
“I’m here because I’m being studied. Same as you both. And you know what? It fucking sucks. So yes, Ian, Anthony’s right. They put her there to fuck with you. They put you here to fuck with you. They put me here and him here and everybody here, just to fuck with our heads and tell us what we can and can’t do. What makes us tick? What makes a hardcore liberal journalism student join the Air Force? How about a fucked-up suicidal sex addict? Why are you working on the android? It’s all headgames.” Every word right on top of the next. His palpable emotion still shines through despite his fast words.
Tags: Vanessa, the Professor, erased, studied
10. amor fati (42)
When I blasted William in the chest with shells from the double barrel shotgun, the bastard simply looked at me. Didn’t even move him. Didn’t cause him to flinch. Nothing. His shaggy beard, his calm and callous demeanor, he began to laugh.
“That tickles,” he said.
“Goddammit!” I shouted, a cigarette slipping from my lips to the floor. “That’s simply not possible! Who the hell do you think you are, you grimy bastard?”
“I’m the next phase in human evolution,” he told me, barely able to keep a straight face. “I’m the future.”
“What in blazes are you telling me?”
“Your species has become obsolete. But don’t worry. I’m not here to hurt you.”
I pump the shotgun in an inane gesture. “That’s not terribly comforting friend. You tell me I’m obsolete, then you tell me you’re not here to hurt me. Contradictory statements, in a way. You’re a goddamn android, aren’t you? A goddamn Transhuman, come to kill me after all this time.”
“Not exactly,” he cackled.
My dog barked incessantly in the corner of the room. My new bride was somewhere else in the compound, and probably didn’t hear any of this chaos going on. Already, she was used to the strange sounds of shouting from me followed by gunfire. Sometimes these things just have a way of happening.
“I came to you because you wrote about them,” he told me. “Because I think one of them did this to me. And it’s your duty, Mr. Stockton, to tell the world about me.”
“Where did you come from?”
“I don’t remember much. But it’s not about what I remember, it’s about what I know.”
I told him to stop. I had to find my tape recorder, so I asked him to have a seat at the desk that I used to have next to the window, which looked out into the Oregon wilderness. Mostly forest, snow, mountains. I sat across from him in front of the classic typewriter on which I’d written the book that he claims directed him here. I know exactly what book without him telling me – The Wolves Within the Gates.
“My memory only stretches back about six months. The first thing I do remember is a man standing over me in a hospital bed,” he said after I’d started the recorder rolling, “The man was sitting at the foot of my bed. He said his name was Smalley. He told me there had been a procedure.”
“What kind of procedure?” was my immediate response, but he just kept right on talking as though I hadn’t even asked.
“Smalley began the process. He told me that I’d be trained and briefed, but honestly, I don’t remember ever being briefed on what had happened to me. Or what was continually happening.”
I tried to interject again. “What exactly was happening, William?”
“Well, to demonstrate, they gave me an electronic library. I burned through it in two hours. I suddenly broke every workout machine in their fitness room. I could see everything in patterns; I could theorize about the nature of fate and provide mathematical proof for its existence. I could suddenly solve age old physics equations that Einstein and Hawking stumbled over.”
“Can you provide any proof for this?”
He stopped and grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil, both of which were sitting next to my typewriter; objects I used for quick notes. He scribbled furiously, and after four minutes solid, he stops. Hands me the paper.
At the top, circled several times, it read “AMOR FATI” in capital letters. Nearly every letter of the alphabet was somewhere on this page, representing variables; there were greater than, less than, division, multiplication symbols everywhere. Fractions on top of fractions on top of fractions. Bosons, tachyons, strings and other physics babble were all well represented by these variables. “Fractal Probability Laws” was circled several times.
“What is this?” I asked.
He said, “It’s the fate formula. Eternal recurrence. Philosophy made into hard science.”
So I asked him what he was trying tell me with it. Does fate leave any room for a hardened journalistic sociopath like myself? Is there room in his formula for my free will?
“Of course there’s free will. You just can’t understand the interrelation. Someday, though, you might.”
But of course, there’s no way I can prove any of this anymore. I was a layman, for Christ’s sake, I couldn’t understand a fucking bit of that so-called formula. And besides, after I lost my friend, that paper didn’t matter. And I’m sure that the fuckers that brought me to the Home impounded that equation along with the rest of my possessions. And the tape I used for the recording.
“The idea that the universe is completely deterministic isn’t new, William. I’m a faithful proponent that actions are random – the universe is chaotic.”
“Wrong. We’re moving toward something. And this is the proof,” he said, tapping the paper with his finger.
“What is it we’re moving toward?” I asked.
At that exact moment, my wife Renata walked in the room. We must have looked absurd -- after all, he was unkempt, bearded, essentially homeless and I was there in a robe with a shotgun and a typewriter. “Renata, I’d like you to meet my friend William.”
“You can call me Bill,” he spoke toward her as she stood in the doorway. She was Latina, and in her early 30s. Her dark brown hair draped down her shoulders. She wore jeans and a USC sweatshirt, and carried a glass of milk. She took a sip, never dropping the odd, shocked look on her face. Then, she turned around and scuttled back into the hallway without speaking a word -- probably headed out to the east wing.
“She’s not surprised by my presence?” he asked.
“Of course she is. You just can’t understand the interrelation, friend. Someday, though, I’m sure you will.”
He shot me a sarcastic glare that I could feel rattling beneath his big, bushy beard.
“So what’s this here mean?” I pointed at the exclamatory phrase at the top of the paper. “Amor Fati? That’s Nietzsche, right? Love of fate?”
“Do you really want me to sit here and explain philosophy to you?”
I smirked back at him. “Well, it’s a rare opportunity when der Ubermensch himself is sitting across from me offering his opinion on the meaning of life.”
He laughs at me. Der Ubermensch. The post-human.
“Your wife’s very beautiful. She reminds me of someone.”
“Don’t go getting any ideas, friend. That’s my new bride, certainly. Now I suppose you can stay here, at least for the moment, but don’t be surprised if I do my damndest to keep tabs on you. You can shower, shit, and shave, if you’re capable, I mean, and maybe have a few beers with me, but I’ve got to keep my eye on you. I’m opening up my home, like Lot to the angels in the days of Sodom, but I have to trust you much less than he did them. And if the sonsabitches that’re after you tracked you here, I have to know that you can handle them. I’ve got guns, sure, you’ve seen that. But I get the feeling you might have something more than guns.” He bore my own monologue with good humor and stood up.
He reached toward my shotgun, picked it up, and in one swift motion bent the barrels back as though they were paper.
“I hope you have more guns,” he said, dropping it to the floor.
“William, my boy, I’ve got a goddamn arsenal hidden in this place.”
Fearfully and righteously yours,
Professor T.H. Stockton, Esq.
Tags: William Dunn, the compound, fate
I’ve been singing to myself for as long as I can remember. It’s something that focuses my mind. And it turns out that keeping that focus has been extraordinarily important in my adult life.
Some epileptics recite their names in order to stay focused when they feel like they might seize. Sometimes people repeat “Stay with me” in order to keep epileptics focused. I recite the lyrics to all the songs I know. And I know a lot. My father used to play records for me – yes, those old, outdated wax plates that were obsolete when even he was a young man. He loved synthpop records – Gary Numan, Thomas Dolby, New Order. However, you can’t survive on synthpop forever because each song is so damn similar. There were the Talking Heads, which was one of the greatest goddamn genius musical artists in the history of mankind, probably followed closely by The Police. But admitting those were the best doesn’t mean they’re my favorites.
My favorite musician of all time probably inspired all of those people. Hell, he probably somehow inspired every great musician since. His name was David Bowie. I was singing David Bowie when I first heard Bobby’s announcement about the Dead Hand transmitter. I was sitting in a titty bar that night, watching a girl insert matches into her nipples and lighting the cigarettes of my friends, Dodge and Landon, singing Bowie's "Suffragette City."
I remember it well.
The only time I didn’t sing like myself and focus my mind on lyrics was just before I discovered my epilepsy. When I got out of the Air Force I was convinced that they’d exorcised the music from my soul. That somehow, being a fightin’ man in our country’s military had taken the songs right out of my throat. I’d become more disciplined, but less focused.
When I’d enlisted, I was sent to Lackland air base in San Antonio. My recruiter gave me a list of things I wasn’t supposed to take with me to Basic. I brought nothing with me but what was required; official paperwork, identification, soap, shampoo, and three days worth of clothes. I wanted to shed as many possessions as I possibly could, so I left the rest of myself in a U-Store-It facility just outside of Washington, DC.
I was singing "I’ve Been Waiting for You" when I met my Training Instructor. I was singing “Ashes to Ashes” when I got the notice of my medical discharge. Epileptics aren’t even supposed to have a driver’s license, let alone operate a machine like a USAF Harrier Jet. Apparently it was a blessing that I didn’t have my first seizure when I was in the air during my assignment at Edwards.
Lackland was difficult because I fell in lust with another recruit named Gloria. Prior to the military, I was used to degrading myself. After Bobby was captured, I spent a lot of time in a mostly underground sex club called Shadows. The way people binged on alcohol and drugs, I binged on sex. I don’t know if you’d call it an addiction, but I did things I’d only dreamed of in that brief period.
Shadows wasn’t the titty bar that me and my friends were sitting at; Shadows was worse. It was practically a brothel. It was the kind of place that you could meet certain other discreet individuals and engage in certain carnal acts with those you met while on the premises. The first time I walked out of there I was singing Bowie’s “Teenage Wildlife” and had consumed some amphetamines prior to engaging in said acts.
This, however, did not trigger my epilepsy.
The amount of sexual release I experienced when attending nightly sessions at Shadows probably helped suppress any possible seizures that would have happened. Sexual release often lowers stress, which can help control seizures.
The Air Force was not the best idea for a person who was somehow suppressing epilepsy. Basic training was obviously highly stressful. Being sexually attracted to another recruit was highly stressful. As was my assignment to Edwards Air Base. It would’ve been an amazing coincidence if Gloria had been assigned to Edwards as well.
An amazing coincidence, indeed, as we shipped out there on the same bus.
Have you ever had an experience where you couldn’t keep your hands off one another when you’re alone, but you never actually engage in sexual relations? Like a series of dry-humping incidents in dark corners. That’s the sort of thing you learn in Shadows: how to be really persuasive in public.
Edwards was almost strictly for test pilots; the USAF Test Pilot school’s located there. What better way to kill myself than by taking an experimental aircraft past its limits. My callsign was Blockhead.
Now I can only wonder what happened to Gloria. Her callsign was Glory. Don’t underestimate the aphrodisiac power of the possibility of getting caught doing something you shouldn’t. Fraternization in the Air Force is strictly prohibited, as it is in the other branches of the US military. Now, we’re years and years on, and where am I? Where is she? We never even made love, if that’s what you’d like to call it. It was more like public masturbation. Heavy petting and rubbing. We knew the risk, but we couldn’t help ourselves.
My first time in Shadows, I met a girl named Kelly. She seemed a little too young to be in a place like that, but I wasn’t questioning anything. Fuck, I mean, I was in Shadows. She was brunette, almost anorexic thin. She had B, maybe C cups. The rooms in Shadows are set up like small hotel rooms; almost small champagne rooms. Kelly met me at the bar, eyed me up and down, and claimed to know me better than I knew myself. She said she knew exactly what I was after, took my hand, and led me to one of those rooms.
These very small rooms were covered in red -- curtains, sheets, velvet. She laid down facing away from me and asked me to hold her. Her ice blue eyes hypnotize me as her voice seduces me, “I want you to have this night. I want it to be yours.” She rolled into a face down position, her ass in the air, still wearing a pair of jeans, a black tank top, and a blouse. I ripped her pants down so that she was bare-assed and was inside her lightning fast.
Gloria was different. She was fighting it. When I had to leave, I could tell how empty she felt, how much she’d actually wanted me to stay. It should’ve simplified things, but it didn’t.
Then came the accident.
I was a damn fool to be driving across the California desert, near Joshua Tree, after I’d just been diagnosed with epilepsy. An even damnder fool for being blitzed fucking drunk after being discharged from the military. And damndest for being thoroughly heartbroken and suicidal. That’s when I blacked out, seized, crashed into an oncoming car.
The woman on the other end, she was lucky. I’d seized and swerved into her – sideswiped and then went straight into a telephone pole on 29 Palms Highway. She was the kind of woman who strapped her toddler daughter into a child safety seat in the back of her mini-van-type SUV. I have no memory of any of it; apparently, I was still seizing when the lady was trying to pull me out of my car. The two of them were fine; I was the real mess.
You have to look at events not as they occur, but at their causes. In a mad cocaine binge, Bowie and his band recorded a song called “Stay” for the album Station to Station which is playing on the car stereo when you black out and sideswipe a mom and her toddler. The last thing I remember before blacking out was singing along.
I woke up still singing that song and completely oblivious. Somebody snapping their finger about three inches in front of my face. Words like “Concussion” and “Tachycardia” are drifting through the air, amid a flurry of faces that seem to stand still while the ceiling flurries past. In my memory, I’ve replaced the faces of the doctors who were integral in saving me with the faces of famous TV doctors. Like Dr. Elmore Heath from the drama Guest Star; I can see his face upside down above me – he’s the one snapping his fingers. Dr. House, that old uncompromising curmudgeon, is limping along the right side of my stretcher as it moves through the halls – and even the walls passing by somehow resemble his Princeton Plainsboro teaching hospital. Dr. Jack Shepherd is viewing spinal x-rays on the other side. As he walks, he leans over to another doctor, Quincy, M.E., who obviously suspects foul play. Even the beautiful Dr. Elliot Reid is winking at me out of the corner of my eye, and I keep thinking, “hey, maybe her and me in a medical supply closet…”
