by Cody Sisco
The pudgy man remained motionless, his chin lifted to the ceiling.
The woman called the pudgy man to the door. He rose jerkily, his arms wiggling in front of him, like a beetle that can’t manage to turn itself over. With a hasty glance at the others, he staggered forward. The door retracted to allow him to pass and closed behind him. Victor saw nothing of the other side.
Victor whispered to the young man, “I heard that they starting asking us about Carmichael. Is it true? Do you know?”
The young man folded his arms, sat back, and looked away.
Perhaps it was a baseless dark-grid rumor. There was no point in dragging anyone, even people with MRS, through that hell. Ozie may have got it wrong.
The woman called Victor’s name, and the door opened.
“Eleven years,” the young man said. “How did you manage it?”
Victor looked at him. How could he explain years of therapy and hanging on by a thread? “Never surrender,” he said.
Victor stepped forward. The door slid shut behind him.
“To your right,” the woman said from behind a glass partition. “Dr. Santos is waiting.”
Victor walked down the hallway and braced himself for a barrage of questions. He had completed years of coaching. He would pass. Be polite; be brief; be normal. He repeated the mantra under his breath until he reached the correct door and entered.
The doctor sat in a large high-backed synthleather chair behind an enormous wooden desk. His baby face was smooth, round, gleaming, and topped by hairs as wispy as spiderwebs. There was nothing on the desk, save for a pen and a folder. Victor’s records, presumably. Now that Oak Knoll’s records were gone, the file on Dr. Santos’s desk was probably the most comprehensive existing documentation on Victor’s physical and mental condition.
“Empty your pockets and sit down, please,” Dr. Santos said in a high voice. His vowels sounded slightly twisted, the way singers sometimes contorted their words to make an odd rhyme work.
Victor froze. The data egg.
He took his MeshBit out and placed it in a bowl on a small table by the door. He removed his wallet as well and put it in the bowl. He left the data egg in his pocket and sat in a large chair shaped like a pitcher plant’s flower. When he lowered himself into it, the chair’s deep indent and angled back forced him into an uncomfortable semireclined position. Synthleather fabric pressed into his sides, and the chair threatened to swallow him whole.
The only other furniture was a tall cone-shaped lamp that threw a bright circle onto the ceiling. Victor stared at the place where the light intersected the wall until he remembered that he should be making eye contact. But Dr. Santos was busy reading his file.
After a full minute of silence the doctor said, “Victor Eastmore.”
It didn’t sound like a question. Though maybe it was a test. “That’s correct, sir.”
Dr. Santos looked up. “You should call me Doctor.”
“Yes, Doctor.” Already this was off to a bad start.
Dr. Santos opened a desk drawer and placed a pyramid-shaped device on the table, twisting its top until the apex lit up green.
He began speaking. “This is a formal psychiatric evaluation under the Carmichael laws of Semiautonomous California. This recording will be shared with the SeCa Health Board’s Classification Commission to be used as evidence in the event of any legal challenge. Victor Eastmore, you hereby waive any potential claims against me, including damages and harm as a result of my determination of your status.”
Polite. Brief. Normal. Don’t forget to breathe.
Dr. Santos leaned forward and waved a hand at Victor. “Say, ‘I agree.’”
Victor sat up and said, “I agree.”
Dr. Santos rose from his chair, walked behind Victor, and suddenly a low hum surrounded him, tingling his skin and blurring his vision. Some sort of electromagnetic field had been generated by the chair. A truth gauge, maybe. Another set of data to feed to the authorities.
“What is that?” Victor asked. “That feeling?”
“This chair uses an array of Dirac-monopole active-resonance sensing units. Only Health Board–licensed physicians are permitted to use them.”
“They’re new,” Victor said, ignoring the urge to jump from the chair.
“Indeed. Let’s get started,” the doctor said, returning to his seat. “I’ve reviewed your records. You were diagnosed in 1979. You have a history of violent behavior, lapses of judgment, and fugue states. To be honest, you’re incredibly lucky to be a Class Three. I probably wouldn’t have made that call, but—let’s see . . .” He paused for a moment to read the file. “Dr. Tammet documents your progress in mood stability, impulse control, and interpersonal communication. However, because her license to practice medicine in SeCa has lapsed, her entries in your record will be purged.”
Victor tensed. In an instant, all the evidence supporting Victor’s continued Class Three status had been swept aside.
Dr. Santos said, “I’m not sure any progress in your outward behavior will impress me sufficiently if the underlying neurobiological condition has deteriorated. We’ll see.”
The hum of the chair surrounded Victor, oscillating and thrumming. It felt like microscopic bees swarming around him.
“Well?” Santos asked.
“Um, I’m not sure what the question is.”
“Should you be a Class Three—”
“Yes,” Victor answered. “I’m making progress—”
“Excuse me. I don’t like being interrupted.”
“But—”
“The question”—Dr. Santos paused, glaring, and Victor held his tongue—“is whether you should remain Class Three, meaning that you are competent to be out among normal people. Tell me about your medication.”
“Personil,” Victor said, licking his lips. The imaginary bees hummed loudly in his ears, and the air started to fill with gray smoke, ebbing and flowing in concert with the scanning chair’s fluctuations. The sensations were far stronger than his synesthesia usually was; they seemed tangible, palpable, real things in the real world, rather than artifacts of his brain’s processes. The chair was amplifying his symptoms.
“Yes? And? It says here Dr. Rularian prescribed one fifty-milligram pill twice per day.”
Victor focused on Dr. Santos’s words. Personil, every day, that was the official story. “Personil was supposed to help me maintain emotional equilibrium.”
“Was?”
Victor thought better of saying, You know, before I threw the pills down the toilet. He scratched his arm. The buzzing and smoke irritated his skin. He pictured scales forming in his epidermis as the cells cleaved from each other and a clear ooze flowed from the gaps.
“I feel stable,” Victor said.
“Have you had any episodes or outbursts in the past ninety days?”
“No.” He scratched his arm again, trying to relieve the itching. Dr. Santos would have no way of knowing about the scene at the funeral.
“Loss of memory?”
“No.” Victor fought the urge to cough and started tapping his toes inside his shoes, ticking off each second, focusing on real sensations, not his mind’s confused effluvia. The tapping should help. Real, physical sensations kept anxiety and delusions at bay. So Dr. Tammet had always said. She also said that imagining being calm was the same thing as being calm, but her words meant nothing to this doctor.
Dr. Santos steepled his fingers and pressed them into the flesh of his neck, creating dimples like the buttons constraining the fabric on his synthleather chair. “Irritability? Mania?” he asked.
Victor swallowed, trying to gauge by the way saliva moved whether his throat was actually swollen or if he just perceived it to be. “No. To both questions.”
“How does the medication make you feel?”
Victor blinked and breathed. “Calm.” His voice hummed discordantly with the chair’s buzzing. One hand cupped the data egg through his pants. It comforted him. He focused his gaze on the midpoint b
etween his knees rather than the eyes peering at him from behind the doctor’s round lenses, barely visible through thick gray smoke.
Dr. Santos picked up some papers and examined them. “Are you taking any other medication?”
All the saliva in Victor’s mouth dried to paste. Did he forget to fill a prescription? Or—Laws!—did Dr. Santos suspect about the tinctures?
“Does my file say I am?” Victor asked.
Dr. Santos dropped the papers onto the desk. “I asked you a question.”
“No, Doctor. I’m not taking any other medication.”
Dr. Santos rose, walked around his desk, and tried to perch on its edge, but it was a little too high. He stopped trying and settled for leaning against it. “You are working at a biotech firm. Part of the ‘Safe Places’ program. Tell me about your job.”
Victor hadn’t practiced for this conversation and didn’t know what was expected, though he should have known they would ask about his work. “I help run the DNA analysis for Gene-Us, Ent—I mean, BioScan, Inc.”
“That sounds like a highly technical position.”
Victor pressed back into the padded material of the chair. “I graduated university with high marks.”
Dr. Santos cocked his head. “I’m asking about your work, not your education.”
“What is the question?” Victor exerted pressure on his jaw to keep his teeth from grinding together.
Dr. Santos leaned forward and scowled. “Young man, it’s in your interest to cooperate. Your future depends on it. I’m trying to help you. Tell me about your job. How is it working out?”
“I like it.” What else could he say? Think! Victor coughed. “I like the challenge. It’s my job to make the analysis as efficient as possible. I’m good at it.”
“With whom do you interact? How many people are in your group? Do you get along with your coworkers?”
Victor tried to keep the questions ordered in his mind. It helped to physically imagine them floating in space, to his left, straight in front, and to the right. Unfortunately the smoke wafted distractingly past them. Left first: with whom did he interact? “My supervisor runs the sequencing operations. Her name is Karine. She’s—”
But the doctor hadn’t asked about his supervisor per se. “I interact with her most often.” He cleared his throat and moved on to the next question at center. “There are eight sequencing data analysts, including me.”
And finally, the question of how Victor got along with his coworkers hovered alone. He had to tell a delicate lie.
“I get along with most of them.”
“Most?”
“I . . .” He couldn’t tell the doctor that he’d almost gotten into a fight several times. “They tease me sometimes. They call me names. A few of them do.”
“I don’t care about their behavior. I care about yours. How do you respond?”
Dr. Santos should care about them. They were the ones who caused problems. Victor would do fine if he were left alone.
“I ignore them. I try to not hear what they say.”
“That’s not a good response. Someone with your condition needs to always pay attention to surroundings, to social cues, to speech. You can’t hide from your problems; you have to confront them.”
That didn’t make any sense. Victor’s entire strategy for dealing with his condition was to cut himself off from the world and keep it from affecting him and, as importantly, to keep his confused inner life from seeping out. “You want me to tell them to stop calling me names?”
“I didn’t say that! You need to confront your problems. Your coworkers can do whatever they like. But your entire brain is like a short circuit moving too quickly to anger and violence. You have to be honest with yourself. Notice how you react emotionally. Experience the emotion, and then let it go. It’s a matter of self-control.”
That made a little more sense, but Victor still thought Dr. Santos didn’t really understand him or his condition. “Dr. Tammet taught me to manage my emotions.”
Dr. Santos laughed. “Advice from a discredited therapist is not going to help you.” He moved behind the desk and took up Victor’s file again. “Tell me about your dreams.”
“What?” Victor gulped. They had never asked about his dreams before. He hadn’t told any medical person about them. Not the doctors at Oak Knoll. Not Dr. Tammet. Not even his granfa. Dr. Santos couldn’t have known about them. He’d only ever told Elena, and that had nearly ruined him.
“Your dreams,” the doctor repeated.
Was this a standard question now? He couldn’t describe his dreams to Dr. Santos. He would be locked up for life.
The doctor continued, “Your sleep patterns. Any nightmares? Narcolepsy? Insomnia?”
“I used to have trouble falling asleep, but the Personil helps.” This was somewhat true. The medication helped him fall asleep, usually during meals. He’d had nightmares of drowning in a bowl of soup more than once.
“Hmm.” The doctor pressed his lips together. “There’s a new part of the procedure. Bear with me—it’s not typical of most psychiatric evaluations. Listen to this statement, and then tell me how it makes you feel.”
Dr. Santos read a detailed account of the events in Carmichael from when Victor was four years old. It started with the months Samuel Miller spent secretly setting fire traps and explosives throughout town, each one equipped with a quantum trigger. The account included Mía Barrias’s testimony to the Classification Commission about what she saw the day he triggered them all, the day of her honeymoon: the fires, the rampaging autonomous vehicles, the bodies, including her husband, Claudio’s. The sleeping smoke that had drifted through town so that Samuel could round up the stragglers and execute them with his modified stunstick.
Victor listened with a sinking feeling in his gut. Despite living through it, surviving the day by being locked in his house by himself, afraid that the fires would burn him up, that his parents were already dead, that the man he’d seen in his nightmares would find him and kill him—he had never known in this much detail what had happened. He had tried not to think about it. Even the vidfeeds they played in school weren’t this graphic.
Then Dr. Santos began to read the transcript of the semi-incoherent statement recorded by Samuel Miller explaining how his actions were meant to create a bridge between two universes.
Two! Victor shivered. Why was Dr. Santos telling him this? It had nothing to do with him.
Dr. Santos completed the account. “What is your response to that?”
Victor gulped. “I don’t have one.”
Dr. Santos frowned. “You feel nothing?”
“No. I mean that I’m not responsible. I’m not him. Why did you tell me all that? I didn’t want to know that.” His heart pounded. He felt his control slipping.
“Victor, listen carefully. The Carmichael laws were passed to ensure that type of thing never happens again. You—like Samuel Miller—have been diagnosed with mirror resonance syndrome. Unless you can prove that you are not a danger, it’s in the public’s best interest for you to be locked up for a very long time, maybe forever.”
Dr. Santos leaned back in his chair, breathed in, and let the air out slowly. “Now that you understand the question, please state your response.”
Victor sensed the field surrounding him as a vibration just past the limits of his perception. All his words, expressions, gestures, and brain activity fed a data storage matrix somewhere, encoding him for classification. What if he answered incorrectly? What if his brain had already answered for him?
He looked at the recording device. There had to be a reason to record his answer. The stupid question must mean more than he’d realized. And Dr. Santos was giving him a second chance to answer it.
Victor gripped the data egg in his pocket and spoke each word carefully. “He should not have done what he did. It was wrong. He broke the law, lots of laws. He was . . . He was wrong. I hate him.”
Dr. Santos nodded. “I have to say, for someone
with your pathology, I’m impressed you’ve been living unassisted this long. However, I’m not inclined to agree with your present diagnosis, given your past behavior. Unless the statements from your employer or the brain scans convince me otherwise, I’m afraid you’ll be downgraded to Class Two and moved to a ranch in Long Valley where you’ll receive proper care. Your family can visit once a month, of course. My office will be in touch within the week with our determination. If it were up to me, my conclusion would be immediate, but the law requires us to be thorough. In any case, you may as well pack up your things. The enrollment process, once underway, can be quite . . . brisk.”
The chorus of bees returned and reached a crescendo. The world was blotted out by swirling gray dust that solidified in the air like quick-setting cement. Dr. Santos rose from his seat, despite the slate entombing them both. Victor got up stiffly, collected his personal items from the basket, and moved to the exit, his hallucinations diminishing only slightly after he left the chair.
Dr. Santos waited for Victor to pass through the door and directed him down the hall. When he reached the woman in the front, she pressed a button, the door slid open, and he stepped into the empty waiting room.
The bees continued buzzing frenetically behind Victor, but he paid no mind, taking swift steps down the hall, toward the exit, and into the elevator, where the seconds passed like hours and vibrated in his chest. Finally he passed into the sunshine and fresh air. He shook while he waited for the shuttle bus home. People on the bus stared, but he couldn’t stop the shaking, even after he arrived home, rushed into the kitchen, and poured ten vials of fumewort tincture down his throat.
Chapter 17
I believe Jefferson Eastmore underestimated Victor’s drive to cure himself. He assumed Victor’s obsessions would fade away, that they were somehow self-correcting over time and vulnerable to the wisdom he imparted.
In fact, the opposite is the case. The man’s interventions, both before and after he died, were insufficient to alter Victor’s course. Our minds are hungry to confirm their own biases. They feed off narrow slices of experience and knowledge that support a preexisting worldview. Contrary evidence is rejected.
