Humbug (The Unwinding of Ebenezer Scrooge): A Science Fiction Adventure, page 14
There was a fourth child. He watched from a wheelchair, his head quivering.
“This is Christmas, Ebenezer.”
He barely heard the dreadlock man. The chaos rattled his head. But it wasn’t unpleasant. An undercurrent of joy buoyed it. The room was warm and alive, the children squeezing joy out of every second. This was the last place Eb would want to be.
Yet he didn’t run.
A stuffed lion hit him in the stomach. He held his robe closed with one hand and picked it up. Its nose was wet. A voice box roared when he squeezed it. One of Jacob’s animals.
One of the girls crawled over and sat on her haunches, panting. Eb dangled it by the tail and she took it with her mouth like the old man in the dirty robe belonged there. She scrambled past a bookshelf bolted to the wall.
“It’s a strange disease,” the dreadlock man said, his breath tickling Eb’s ear, teeth clacking. “They become more energized as it progresses. Hyperactivity can go on for days with no sleep. Televisions get pulled down, tables turned over. Their curiosity becomes a raging current, like half-pint tornados ripping through the house.”
He pointed at the Christmas tree on the porch. It wouldn’t survive indoors.
“But you know all about that,” he said. “Jerri being an advocate for the disease, I’m sure she told you hundreds of times.”
The woman on the phone was frowning. She was the one that answered the door. Her dark hair pulled back, she pressed her hand against her ear and left the room, eyebrows rigid. A few minutes later, Jerri followed her.
“Who is that?” Eb asked.
“Carol. You met her last summer.”
Names didn’t stick with Eb. They were just labels. Faces he recalled, not names. Carol, though, wasn’t registering. She obviously didn’t work for Avocado, he’d remember that. And she wasn’t a contractor or a contact or someone important, at least no one he’d met, despite what the dreadlock man said.
They had gone into the adjoining kitchen. Carol leaned against the sink, arms folded.
“He’s still there. On Christmas Eve,” she said. “I can’t take this anymore, Jerri. He’s got to find someplace else to work.”
“I know,” Jerri said.
“We didn’t sign up for this.”
“Of course not.”
Carol sniffed. “It’s just hard sometimes. You know?”
Jerri put her arm around her then poured two glasses of wine. The tornados stormed in and out of the kitchen but didn’t disrupt the moment. Jerri and Carol watched them strip magnets off the refrigerator. Coloring book papers and letters to Santa scattered in their wake.
The refrigerator door was plastered with magnetized letters and words, pictures, and a dry-erase board, where five stick figures were outlined in black marker. Family photos were mounted in clear plastic frames. One was from the beach, before their third child was born. Carol and her husband held one of the children. Their other child was in the wheelchair.
Eb pulled the plastic frame off the freezer. “Rick.”
“That’s him,” the dreadlock man said.
This was Rick’s house. Carol was his wife. Of course, it made sense now. He’d met her on Rick’s first day at the plant. They came to the office and spoke to his projected image. Her expression wavered between laughing and getting sick.
Now she just looked sick.
“He never said his children had this… this condition.”
“Yes, he did,” the dreadlock man said.
Eb couldn’t argue. He probably did and Eb didn’t care. That was their problem. Eb had his own issues to deal with. He didn’t have space to even remember their problems, too.
Let alone care.
Rick and Carol were smiling in the photo. They looked like they hadn’t slept in days, eyes weary, cheeks sagging. But they were smiling.
“Jerri recruited him,” Eb said. “She brought him to Avocado five years ago. But I never knew about their kid being sick and…” He stopped. It was a lie.
He knew.
“Jerri and Rick met at an MPS conference,” the dreadlock man said. “They got to talking about Jacob’s medical program. Rick wanted to be part of it, so one thing led to another.”
Jerri swirled her glass and took a sip. She looked into the red wine, the answer floating somewhere below the surface.
“Why are you still there, Jerri?” Carol asked. “Why do you still work for that man?”
“I believe in him,” she said. “He’ll do the right thing.”
“The crazy old curmudgeon? I’m sorry, Jerri, but you have to let go of hope. Unless he can make money from it, he’s not doing anything different. He’s not changing.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ve been watching him for five years. He’s always been an awful small man, even when Jacob was around. And when he died, it only got worse. He deserves to be loathed and pitied. He only thinks of himself, you know that. He’s insulated from the world, there’s no saving him from himself. And now with the stupid hat, he’s just mocking us, Jerri. It’s like a child playing dress-up and I can’t take it anymore. I don’t know how you do it.”
Jerri continued swirling the red wine. She was nodding to herself, the sort of nod that you knew better than to keep doing what you were doing, the sort of nod that was betting the long odds that kept getting longer. She put her arm around Carol, their heads touching at the crowns—two warriors that had seen worse.
The tornado train chugged into the room for another round. The women caught the children as they raced around the island counter, tickled their ribs past the refrigerator, past the crazy old curmudgeon in the dirty robe and his dreadlocked companion.
“I see Santa!” someone shouted.
The front door opened, followed by a ho-ho-ho and a collective squeal that could slice an eardrum. Eb wanted to join them, wanted to watch the children sit on Santa’s lap, watch them spill eggnog on his shaggy red pants and bomb the house with half-eaten cookies.
The dreadlock man had his hand on the refrigerator.
When he pulled it open, a frigid wind inhaled the room. Pots and pans clattered, wineglasses tipped, and letters to Santa were vacuumed inside. Eb held his robe with both hands. The dreadlock man threw the door wide open.
And inside they went.
Eb was lost again, tumbling through darkness. This time he landed without confusion. There was a ceiling high above and an enormous avocado backlit on the wall. The lights were off. Three men, their backs to Eb, were huddled in the glow of a computer.
“That’s the one.” Rick’s tie hung around his neck. “Can you let that run?”
“Yeah,” Kyle said.
Kyle was the head of IT. Eb didn’t know the other one’s name. They were like ants that fixed stuff and went back into hiding. Now they were in Rick’s office. Across the open floor and cantilevered over the plant’s office space, a glass office was lighted. The image of a slender man stood with arms folded. Top hat tipped forward.
Eb’s projected image was watching.
Oily fumes seeped into the room, the fabricated smell of new parts fresh from the plant. Somewhere, incense was burning.
“That’s it.” Kyle tapped the space bar. “That’s all for now.”
“But it’s isolated?” Rick asked.
“Far as I can tell. Never seen anything like it. Seems to be connected through the Avocado network. How we never seen it before, I can’t figure out.”
“Think it’s a virus?”
“If it is, the company’s doomed. It’s dug into the backups, too. If this thing has a fuse, everything blows.” An explosion sound effect filled his cheeks.
Eb cringed.
“We’ll have some answers in the morning,” Kyle said. “That’s all for now.”
“All right,” Rick said. “Listen, thanks for staying. I know it’s Christmas; you guys didn’t have to do it. This means a lot.”
The IT guys mumbled something about family and video games.
“Here.” Rick handed them green boxes. “Little something for the girlfriends.”
“Unless there’s a girlfriend in this,” Kyle said, “it’s for me.”
“I’m not telling you what to do with it.”
They locked up and shut down. Rick grabbed his briefcase and a velvety red bag from the desk drawer, the glow of the monitor lighting the way out. Eb and the dreadlock man watched from inside the office.
It was late, but Rick didn’t run for the door. He dug into the red bag for gifts identical to the ones he’d given the IT guys—green boxes with red ribbons and a paper tag dangling from each corner. Rick’s handwriting glittered in gold ink. He began hiding them in desk drawers at each cubicle.
“He does that every year,” the dreadlock man said. “Puts it somewhere—”
“So I don’t see it,” Eb finished.
When each gift had been delivered, he searched for one last item. As he punched the security code at the front door, he pulled a Santa hat out of the bag.
Avocado was quiet. Dark.
Not a string of garland tainted the room. Not a flash of red or green polluted the walls. The frozen image of a top-hatted figure continued staring down.
“What do you want from me?” Eb said. “You want me to give them presents, sing them Christmas carols and bake cookies? Should they get more vacation? Hard work is what made this place great; honest hard work put us on top. We earned that, and I’ll be damned if I give it back so they can—”
“Laugh? Love?”
“Don’t put this on me!” He shook his finger in dreadlock man’s face, brushing his nose. “I give them work, pay them money. They live in giant houses with stocked pantries and cars—cars with an S, mind you, more than one in their garage. So I’m demanding, so I push them. I make them better. I make them more than what they are.”
Eb went to the computer where data scrolled and the hard drive was grinding. These were the times he could deliver a deathblow speech about work ethic and dedication. But his gut stirred with a toxic emotion that weakened his knees and clogged his throat.
“What do you want from me?” Eb asked.
“I want you to be present.”
Images flickered on the monitor. Faces of children, of beaches and mountains and cities and farms.
“To be in the world, Ebenezer. To know it.”
The room grew dark; the computer appeared as a window on a passenger train, a landscape of images racing past. Homeless men and women sleeping beneath streetlight decorations. Men and women fighting, singing, hugging and slapping and kissing and celebrating.
Images of everyone. Everything. Hopeless, righteous and loving.
The world.
Somewhere in the dark, a child began to cry. Eb turned toward the blackness behind him, a room that was endless and mysterious. Out there, the sobs grew louder.
Footsteps.
The monitor brightened, light penetrating the darkness to reveal a long hallway, doors on both sides. An exit sign. A receptionist desk. Folders and the medicinal smell of antiseptic.
A woman with tightly wrapped hair brushed past Eb. Her athletic shoes were silent. She pushed open the door on the right. The cries peaked.
Eb drifted forward.
He stood in the open doorway. The nurse bent over a bed. Tubes hung over silver rails; monitors chattered while she soothed the little girl’s tears. The little girl that was crying for her mother.
On the windowsill, there was a vase with wilted flowers and a deflated balloon. Between the flowers and the balloon, a toy leaned against the blinds. It was dusty and old, but watched over her nonetheless.
“Don’t forget the world,” the dreadlock man said.
Eb walked into the room without notice. He propped up the balloon, reached for the toy, and wiped the dust from the glass eyes of a stuffed tiger. It roared when he squeezed it.
“And the world won’t forget you.”
The ceiling cracked.
A concrete block shattered on the floor. The walls fell inward. Eb clutched the guardian tiger as the world collapsed into darkness.
Streaks of ochre and maroon painted the morning sky. The droid found Eb quivering on the lounger, squeezing the collar of his robe to his chin.
NINETEEN
~
The theatre room was musty and forgotten.
Eb paced around a fat chair that faced an arcing gray screen. He had not been down to this part of the Castle to watch a film since the immersive experience of the domed projection room had been built.
Had it been any other day, he would chastise the droid for neglecting the film room. Good money had built it, there was no excuse for letting it smell like that. He wouldn’t have bothered coming down there if he didn’t need the antiquated technology to talk to someone that couldn’t connect with his projection room. But there were bigger problems to boil.
Such as walking, talking nightmares.
One of the droids stood behind the comfortable chair. Another one entered with a teacup and saucer. The sudden movement threw off Eb’s stride as if someone had jumped from the bushes and shouted boo. He clutched his chest.
“Would you care to sit, sir?” The droid placed the teacup on a small table. Peppermint aroma filled the room. “The doctor will be ringing soon.”
Eb shook his head and muttered something even he didn’t understand.
Both droids remained in the room, a pair of sentinels at the corner posts of a cushioned throne, watching their master circle the room, nightmarish thoughts dragging like tin cans. It was exhausting to keep ahead of them, but what choice did he have? If he stopped, they would find their place in his head, the memories of a dreadlock man and the places he took him.
Places Eb didn’t want to go.
“I need help,” Eb told the droid that morning.
It was the first time he had ever uttered those words that he could recall. He had always dealt with troubles head-on. Anything that got in his way was either pushed aside or run over. But this… these… the dreadlock man and the thing… he had never encountered anything like this. They could not be ignored. And Eb couldn’t handle another midnight visit, not another nightmare trip to the future or anywhere else without going clear off the rails.
Perhaps he already had.
“Dr. Chase is connecting, sir.”
The gray screen turned silver. A thread of static crackled across it. Eb stood in front of the cushy chair, his lotioned hands crawling over each other. Colors spilled from the static. An abstract painting appeared above a bookshelf. Someone off-camera cleared their throat.
Eb’s heart rate climbed. What if no one was there? What if he couldn’t get help? It was Christmas morning, after all. Worse than that, what if the dreadlock man sat down?
What if I’m still dreaming?
His noodly legs spilled him into the chair, the robe falling open. He pulled it closed just as a dark form filled the screen. He pulled the robe’s collar closed. The droids each massaged a shoulder.
“Good morning, Ebenezer,” Dr. Chase said.
She sat at what he presumed was her office desk. A small image of Eb’s projection popped up in the corner. It wasn’t the square-chinned handsome projection made for public consumption. It was the ruddy-face fatso filling the La-Z-Boy like a jar of quivering jelly.
“Hello?” she said. “Can you hear me, Ebenezer?”
He tried to nod. Dr. Chase was a black woman, her flesh darker than the dreadlock man and her hair cut very close to the scalp. Her eyes were dark. Not black holes, but the resemblance temporarily paralyzed him.
“We can hear you, Dr. Chase,” one of the droids said.
“Stop it.” Eb smacked their hands. “Go. Get out.”
Suddenly they were a nuisance. One second he couldn’t be alone, now he didn’t want to be treated like a child. He pointed at the door and shook his finger. Dr. Chase sipped from an oversized mug. Her face filled the twenty-foot-tall screen, an African-American goddess staring over a cup of coffee at her helpless minion.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“I’m in need of a prescription, something to control dreams and bad thoughts.”
He could’ve just acquired something and taken it. He didn’t need a prescription, that was for the general population. The droid had done the research and suggested several psychotropic drugs, but it was all too confusing. Popping random pills seemed like a bad idea. But he needed something that would work definitely.
Immediately.
“Tell me what’s going on?” she said.
“Nothing, really. Just need to feel better.”
“I see. And why is that?”
“Because I want to. Doesn’t everyone?”
She sat back, nodding. “It’s Christmas morning, Ebenezer. I have family waiting for me, but I took your call out of respect for Jacob—”
“Are they in the next room?”
“What?”
“Your family, can they hear us?” Eb sat forward, his hands strangling each other.
“No, Ebenezer. This is a private conversation. Nothing you say will leave this room. You have my word.”
“I just want some drugs, that’s all. I know you helped Jacob with that sort of thing, that’s why I called.”
“My work with Jacob is none of your business. The application of medicine is not something I use lightly, you understand?”
“You’re a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists give drugs. It’s sort of why I called you.”
“My family’s waiting, Ebenezer.”
“You already said that.”
She pursed her lips, raising an eyebrow.
Normally, he would unload on her before dramatically storming out. She was making the rules, not something he allowed. But this was not a negotiation. And she was the only person outside his ring of trust he could talk to about this.
And that was debatable.
Actually, there was no one in his ring, but she was someone that Jacob always recommended, insisting she was the best therapist, or life coach or whatever she called herself, he had ever witnessed. She wasn’t all touchy-feely, so there was that.
