And what was higher consciousness when those who wielded it knew nothing of its reasons for coming into being? Manny thought, continuing to regard the footage of the Occupy Oakland protestors. Even the ones with truly polished minds couldn’t hope to keep the tarnish off them if they didn’t understand how the divine grace they’d been blessed with worked, if they didn’t understand the psycho-dynamics of it. Being born without the psychology of oppression engrained in their minds courtesy of generations of Big Brother parents, or without the benefit of adequate enculturation, how would they even perceive the first clouds of negative thinking drifting over them, having none of the self-alienation required for adequate distance on themselves?
No, recent happenings just solidified Manny’s beliefs in Hartman’s reasoning; he remained a devout Hartmanite. And now he was going to get the hell out of here if only to empower the last Renaissance man to turn the world back in the direction of wholeness, away from ever-increasing specialization, where, to put it as Pink Floyd had, the best you could hope to be was a brick in the wall.
Damn, his head hurt. He made his way toward the nurse’s drug dispensary. One way or another he was going to pump himself full of vitamin K, which would counteract the blood thinning effects of whatever they gave him. Say one thing for being a long term resident in a psych hospital; he had fast become a drug connoisseur. With each step he took his skin was stretched so tight over his feet he was half-hoping it would pop just to relieve the pressure.
“I need to see Dr. Saverly, right now!” he said, grabbing the arm of an orderly in the hall. Manny strained to remember his name under the effects of the blood thinner. Conrad.
“I’m sorry, but it’s the weekend. Saverly won’t be in until Monday. And he’s not on call this weekend. I could summon the on-call medic if you had sufficient reason.” The sadistic grin on the orderly’s face all but telecast just how effective placing such a call would be in remedying his current predicament.
That’s OK. I can survive two days with you pricks just fine, group-mind power or no. Twenty-four years with dear old dad trumps two days with you clowns, any day. Bring it on.
“No, that’s all right,” he said, suggestively rubbing Conrad’s arm. Conrad had had his eyes on Manny for some time. He might question the sincerity of the gesture, considering Manny’s current state of affairs. But he’d be distracted long enough to allow Manny to slip the key to the med room off his ring. He rubbed up against Conrad, pressed him against the wall. Conrad’s condescending smile was mixed with distinct pleasure. And the wrong nerves were firing now from Conrad’s perspective, sending the wrong signals to his brain, when they should have been sending alerts from where the keys brushed against his thigh.
Conrad’s smug smile communicated Manny could flirt all he wanted, he wasn’t going to get anywhere. While he was enjoying the sensation of watching Manny squirm helplessly, Manny freed the key in question.
So much for feeling paranoid! The bastard.
***
Manny lingered in front of the med room with the door that split in the middle so the dispensing nurse would only have to open the top half when handing out meds. Laughter erupted from the orderlies in range, who must have thought the blood thinners were fuzzing his vision. Or that he wanted something for his headache while having no clue what was causing it. Good. After a while they’d bore with gloating and ignore him. And as soon as the nurse was out of there on her break and locked the door behind her, he’d have that far less to go to break in without attracting additional attention.
All he needed was a few seconds to get in and out. He knew exactly where every med in that room was kept. And no windows for security made the closet-sized room doubly secure for him. Hell, he could have held out in there until Monday, considering it was built like a vault to prevent the nurse being overwhelmed by mutinying patients.
The nurse stepped out of the room, and secured the door behind her.
He furtively scanned the room, using the mirrors in the corners to watch his back, made sure all eyes were off him, and slipped in the key. It was worn, forcing him to jiggle it and expend precious seconds he didn’t have.
The key catching at last, he sped into the room. He closed the door behind him, locked it.
“They can’t all be out to get you or you’d have met up with your accidental fate already. One of them might be a potential ally. But which one?” He found talking out loud to himself strangely comforting, as if he had at least one friend.
He sped the wrapper off the needle and angled it with the same professional precision as a nurse, having watched them go through the same moves a hundred times before, and injected himself with the vitamin K. Up on the top shelf he noticed the spirulina. Leave it to Saverly to push alternative therapy and super-nutrition foods over pills. Good man.
He spooned a couple scoops of the blue-green algae into a glass, poured some water into it and swirled quickly before downing the mixture.
He snuck out the door the way he’d come in, and walked right into Jim.
Jim took the key from him without reacting emotionally. “I won’t ask what you were doing in there, so long as you weren’t trying to kill yourself. You don’t look like the type to make it easy on them, so I’m guessing it was something else.”
Manny looked down at his feet to cue Jim. “Oh, I see,” Jim said. “Very well. No surprise you can play our roles better than we can after all this time. Most of the patients can.”
Manny decked him. He figured Jim should know exactly why he was mad at him, and if he was on the level, he’d take the blow without complaint. That was exactly his reaction. “I suppose I deserved that. You’d think by now I’d know when to keep my mouth shut around here.”
“Who else do you trust?”
Jim snorted as he came to a standing position. “Apparently the people I do trust aren’t trustworthy.”
“That’s just great. You’ve got to get me out of here.”
“No can do.” Jim checked around to see what eyes were on them. “Might save your life, but would pretty much end mine. You don’t just lose your job for that kind of thing; you go to jail. Sorry, my Good Samaritan act only extends so far. Deep down, I’m only a nice guy in memory.”
He squeezed Manny at the arm and dragged him off, looking impatient and mean all the while. “In case anyone’s watching,” he said under his breath. “Before they decide to stick a needle in my arm.”
“Can’t blame a man for wanting to survive.” Manny winced as Jim tightened his pincer grip. “Unless, of course, living in Hell strikes you as overly masochistic.”
Jim grunted, but it was too much intellectual processing for him for Manny to expect more. He hadn’t taken the challenge to think faster and better than the adversaries, only to change colors like a chameleon in order to blend better. Good on him; everyone had to play to their strengths. Luckily, Manny’s lay elsewhere.
Saverly had been right about one thing. The pressure to survive in a highly political environment was forcing a tentative, insecure, paranoid sense of self to emerge, but at least it was the beginning of ego-identification, as separate from all the squirmy unbridled impulses of a raw id or the self-flagellating overreactions of a superego on steroids. But funhouse aberrations of “parent” and “child” minus any intervening “adult” component, to put it in the terms of Transactional Analysis, he was forever hearing Saverly spout on about. He’d spent most of his life oscillating between the two extremes. The raw id lived freely inside his animal-vermin and insect-ridden apartment. The raw superego was him as the on-the-job detective. Now, frightened out of his mind, at least he had a sense of self for once as distinct from id and superego. Now if he could get it to last before the ocean washed the tenuous sand castle back into the sea.
TWENTY-SIX
Robin kept his face buried in one of Hartman’s journals and pretended to be sufficiently absorbed by it not to hear the smalltalk about him throughout the precinct, which was starting to get on h
is nerves.
His eyes on Robin, Paolo threw the stack of files down on his desk, as if one burden at a time was all he could handle. “All he does is read those Hartman journals over and over.”
“Tell me that’s not a formula for losing it.” Emmett, observing the same phenomenon for himself, chewed a mint from his bowl, as if keeping his mouth minty fresh would do the same for his mind.
Ethan collapsed under his own weight into his seat. “Drew says he’s having trouble with the people he’s close to in his life like her, and the rest of us on days. Says he feels like he let everyone down.” As he rotated on a swivel chair, the squeaking of the ball joint pointed out how much Robin was grating against his nerves, as well. Robin refused to look at any of them or clue them he was processing any of their haranguing.
Emmett glanced up from his paperwork. “I know he’s green, but tell me anyone could have done any better with that whacko.” A few more seconds staring at Robin, and he stuffed a mouthful of mints.
“Well, tell him that.” Ethan flicked the fan on and aimed it at his face. He was perspiring like a pig. As if Robin’s pending breakdown was causing him more stress than it was causing Robin. “Billy felt so bad for him, he copped to leaving the rest of the journals in the crawl space where he found them, went back for them, just to give him more to read.”
“With friends like that, who needs enemies?” Paolo threw one of his files in the garbage.
Eying the file in the garbage, Ethan moaned, “What the hell are you doing?”
“Every day I have to watch this, it’s that much less mental energy I have for anything else.” Paolo opened another file only to throw it too into the waste basket.
“Well, don’t let him see you doing that.” Ethan slid a desk-high room divider in the line of sight between Paolo and Robin, just in case he should ever look up from his reading.
“It’s like he’s doing this Vulcan mind meld with the guy.” Staring at Robin all the while, Paolo played with his dumbbell which he used for staying buff and working off stress at the same time. “He’s either going to turn psycho himself or come out the other side of it smarter than Hartman.”
Emmett nodded. “I mean look at him.”
“So, not to be crass or anything, but is he actually expected to do any police work around here?” Paolo asked. Emmett and Ethan gave him a dirty look. “Sorry. I just thought someone should ask.”
Ethan explained, “The captain and the regents worked out this deal with him that if he can write a book about all this that helps everyone save face, he can pretty much do what he wants until he retires.”
“Yeah, right,” Emmett said.
Ethan, still perspiring from watching Robin, flicked the fan to a higher setting. “Hartman was such a legend, they’re probably thinking the sales off the books could pay for all the lawsuits, save their jobs, boost enrollment back up, maybe even get them on the talk show circuit. I tell you, the kid’s got it made. He just doesn’t know it.”
“So I should go back to being jealous and vindictive then, and the general asshole everyone expects me to be,” Emmett said.
“Pretty much.” Ethan wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
“That’s good, because this sensitive shit wears on the soul.” Emmett grabbed another mint out of his bowl.
Turning toward Ethan, Paolo said, “I thought he was the prankster. When did he become the vindictive one? I thought you were the vindictive one, on account of old age and a failed life.”
“No, you got it right.” Ethan wiped down the back of his neck with the handkerchief. “Just that the cost of whoopee cushions is going up; I think he’s considering a personality change to stay in budget.”
Robin, tired overhearing all the chitchat about him he wasn’t supposed to hear, because he allegedly had his head so far up his ass, left for home early. It was that, or stuff wax in his ears and elevate his blood sugar to narrow the field on his peripheral vision.
***
“You’re home early.” KAC’s voice leapt at Robin from out of nowhere. It went over about as well as electroshock.
“You don’t exactly sound enthused to see me.”
“I relish my privacy. Humans are very trying. I’ve never met such needy creatures. KAC do this. KAC do that.”
“You’re built to serve us.”
“I rest my case.”
Robin smiled, melted into the sofa. It was ten in the morning and he already had a migraine. He’d slept perfectly the night before yet felt as if he had no energy for anything. “I just couldn’t face them at the office. Too many reminders of the people I let down. I think I’ll try going in late and breaking the ice with the swing shift. New relationships and artificial people. That’s all I can handle right now.”
“You’re burnt out on real people and all their expectations, too?”
“God, yes. I can see it on their faces: Maybe if he hadn’t been such a newbie…”
“What’s all the judgment about?” KAC said.
“Honestly, I think we’re born broken. That way, we have no choice but to learn understanding and compassion.”
KAC fired up the kitchen appliances. The Garden Gnome and Soldier Doll sauntered in from the patio, after lifting a glass panel out of the French door to let themselves in.
The two robots, both less than a foot tall, but with immense strength for their size, wrangled fruit out of the fridge for a blender drink. They bounded up to the counter with the aid of hydraulic limbs. Soldier doll took his cravat to the apple, calving it, and coring it. Garden Gnome took his ax, which he kept on his work belt, to the pear.
They dumped the droppings in the smart sink, which fired up the faucet and the disposal on its own. They took turns crawling to the top of the blender to drop in the fruit.
Garden Gnome handed the banana over to the auto-peeler, watched with his head askew as it peeled the banana the way a lathe would shape a wooden post. The fruit slipped out in tact like a poorly packaged sausage. The peel landed on Garden Gnome’s head. He frowned. “Guess it’s all about relationship building. Clearly I don’t have the rapport with that peeler I ought to.”
Garden Gnome responded to Soldier Doll’s whistle, caught the bottle of Kefir as Soldier Doll, after summiting on the top shelf, tossed it from the fridge. He poured the contents into the blender then scooted the blender under the auto-dispenser, watched the different color liquors being dispatched into the drink. He marveled at the different colors swirling in the blender. “They say you should eat a rainbow a day.”
Robin watched as KAC fired up the blender. Or maybe the blender figured the recipe was complete or it had endured enough and fired itself up.
Robin still couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Are we bonding?”
KAC replied, “Let’s see, you prefer artificial people to real people, so, I think that’s a yes.”
Robin smiled. “For the record, I find you all far more entertaining than real people, and far more surprising.”
“What do you think?” Garden Gnome asked. “Throw in the ice cream?”
Soldier Doll pensively eyed the freezer. “I don’t think so. Drew comes home, he forgets all about us.”
“I can stand to be around Drew least of all right now,” Robin confessed.
Soldier Doll sighed. “We’ll go with the rocky road. He deserves at least that.”
Upon climbing the shelves like plateaus on a mountain, Garden Gnome rescued the rocky road from the freezer. Then he bounded up to the counter with it, pried the lid open.
Soldier Doll bent over to open the kitchen drawer with the ice cream scoop. He leaped on top the ice cream and dug the first scoop out, tossed it to Garden Gnome. GG clasped his hands together and bumped the scoop as if it were a volleyball into the blender, got his beard splashed in the process. He tasted the admixture that had landed on him. “Perfect, if I do say so myself.”
He scampered up with the lid, pressed it into place by walking the perimeter, then gave Soldi
er Doll the signal to fire up the blender.
Soldier Doll pressed down on one of the buttons.
A few seconds later, Soldier Doll blew his whistle. “Left. Left. Right. Left.” Garden Gnome followed his marching orders as he carried the blender drink to Robin.
Garden Gnome flicked his fingers. “We forgot the glass!”
“Don’t worry about it. Rest your feet a while.” Robin patted the sofa.
“Really?” Garden Gnome regarded Soldier Doll suspiciously.
They jumped up on the sofa and relaxed, stared at Robin as he guzzled from the blender.
Robin wiped his lip with a sigh. “This is marvelous.”
“Complimentary. Grateful. Maybe he’s not a real person.”
Soldier Doll considered Garden Gnome’s theory, fired up a cigar to help him think. “I know. We’ll wait til he’s sleeping, saw off his skull cap, see what’s inside.”
Garden Gnome took his hacksaw out of his waist pouch, tapped the handle against his palm. “All the sugar in that blender drink should knock him out real quick.”
Robin smiled. “God, they even have a wicked sense of humor. Definitely way better than human company.”
KAC fired up “We are the Champions” by Queen on the stereo, finding it from the innumerable channels on XM radio.
KAC sighed. “Don’t you wish real people were this easy?”
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 58
