Unpossible

by Daryl Gregory

  That’s what we’re trying to find out, she thought. GLS-71 was an accidental treatment, a failed post-stroke drug that was intended to speed speech recovery. Instead, it found the clusters of mirror neurons in Broca’s area and increased their rate of firing a thousand fold.

  Mirror neurons were specialist cells. See someone slapped, and the neurons associated with the face lit up in synchrony. See someone kicked, and the brain reacted as if its own body were under attack. Merely imagining an act, or remembering it, was enough to start a cascade of hormonal and physical responses. Mirror neurons were the first cogs to turn in the complex systems of attachment, longing, remorse. They were the trip wires of empathy.

  Except for people like her all-stars. In psychopaths, the mirrors were dark.

  "I know you must be confused," she said. "GLS is making you feel things you’ve never felt before."

  "I even feel sorry for this piece of shit, even though I know what he was going to do to you. What he still wants to do." He nodded toward the bed. "This morning, he showed me where he was keeping the knife. He told me exactly how he was going to rape you. He told me the things he was going to force you to do."

  Dr. Liddell looked at Franz. The man wasn’t smiling—not quite. "You could have called a guard, Lyle. You could have just warned me."

  "See, that’s the thing—I wanted to hurt him. I thought about what he was going to do to you and I felt ... I felt—"

  "Luuv," Franz said.

  The screwdriver’s tip jerked. A thin dark line appeared along Franz’s neck like the stroke of a pen.

  "You don’t know what love is!" Lyle shouted. "He hasn’t changed at all, Alycia! Why isn’t it working on him?"

  "Because," Franz said, his tone condescending and professorial despite the cut and the wavering blade at his throat. "I’m in the control group, Lyle. I didn’t receive GLS."

  "We all got the drug," Lyle said. Then: "Didn’t we?"

  Franz rolled his eyes. "Could you please explain to him about placebos, Alycia?"

  She decided then that she’d like to stab Franz herself. He was correct; he was in the control group. The trial was supposed to be a double-blind, randomized study, with numbered dosages supplied by the pharmaceutical company. But within days she knew which eight men were receiving the real dose. Guards and prisoners alike could sort them as easily as if they were wearing gang colors: the psychos and the crybabies.

  "He’s playing you, Lyle," she told him. "Pushing your buttons. That’s what people like Franz do."

  "You think I don’t know that? I invented that shit. I used to be fucking bulletproof. No one got to me, no one fucked with me. Now, it’s like everybody can see right through me."

  The lieutenant cleared his throat. Dr. Liddell glanced back. The mass of helmeted men behind him creaked and flexed, a machine ready to be launched.

  Franz hadn’t missed the exchange. "You’re running out of time, Lyle," he said. "Any second now they’re going to come in here and crack you like an egg. Then they’re going to take you off to solitary, where you won’t be seeing your girlfriend anymore."

  "What?" Lyle asked.

  "You don’t think they’re going to let you stay in the program after this, do you?"

  Lyle looked at her, eyes wide. "Is that true? Does that mean you’ll stop giving me GLS?"

  They’re going to stop giving it to all of you, she thought. After Lyle’s breakdown, the whole nationwide trial would be canceled. "Lyle, we’re not going to stop the GLS unless you want to."

  "Stop it? I never want to be the guy I was before. Nobody felt real to me—everybody was like a cartoon, a nothing on the other side of the TV screen. I could do whatever I wanted with them, and it didn’t bother me. I was like him."

  Franz started to say something, and Lyle pressed the screwdriver blade into his neck. The two men winced in unison.

  "You don’t know what he’s like," Lyle said. "He’s not just some banker who ripped off a couple hundred people. He’s a killer."

  "What?"

  "He shot two teenagers in Kentucky, buried them in the woods. Nobody ever found them. He brags about it."

  "Stories," Franz said.

  Dr. Liddell stepped closer and knelt down next to Franz’s outstretched legs. "Lyle, I swear to you, we’ll keep you on GLS." She held out a hand. "Give the weapon to me, Lyle. I know you were trying to protect me, but you don’t have to be a murderer. You don’t have to throw away everything you’ve gained."

  "Oh, please," Franz said.

  Lyle squeezed shut his eyes, as if blinded.

  "I give you my word," she said, and placed her hand over his. "We won’t let the old you come back." After a long moment she felt his grip relax. She slowly pulled the screwdriver from his fist.

  Shouts went up behind her, and then she was shoved aside. The extraction team swarmed over the two men.

  Three days later she came down to solitary. She brought four guards as escort.

  "You know, you’re good," Franz said. "I almost believed you myself." He lay on the bed with his jumpsuit half unzipped, revealing the bandages across his chest. The blade had missed the lung and the heart, tearing only muscle. The wound at his neck was covered by two long strips of gauze. He’d be fine in a few weeks. "‘I give you my word.’ Genius."

  "I did what I had to do."

  "I’ve used that one too. But did you have to break his heart? Poor Lyle was in love with you, and you out-and-out lied to him. There was no way you were going to keep him on GLS—you made a petty thief into a suicidal, knife-wielding maniac. How can they put anyone on that stuff now?"

  "There’ll be another trial," she said. "Smaller dosages, perhaps, over a longer period of time."

  "That doesn’t help Lyle, now, does it?"

  "He’s going to live, that’s the important thing. I have plenty of GLS left, so I can bring him down slowly. The suicidal thoughts are already fading. In a few days he won’t be bothered by remorse. He’ll be back to his old self."

  "And then someday you’ll get to wring him out again." He shook his head, smiling. "You know, there’s a certain coldness about you, Doctor—has anyone ever told you that? Maybe you should try some GLS yourself."

  "Tell me about Kentucky," she said.

  "Kentucky?" Franz shrugged, smiled. "That was just some bullshit to get Lyle worked up."

  She frowned. "I was hoping you’d want to talk about it. Get it off your chest." She turned to one of the guards, and he handed her the nylon bag from her office. "Well, we can talk again in a few days."

  He blinked, and then he understood. "You can’t do that. I’ll call my lawyer."

  "I don’t think you’ll want a lawyer any time soon." She unzipped the bag and lifted out the plastic-sealed vial. "I have a lot of GLS, and only one patient now." The guards rushed forward to pin the man to the bed.

  She popped the needle through the top of the vial and drew back the plunger. The syringe filled with clear, gleaming liquid.

  "One thing I’m sure of," she said, half to herself. "In a few days, Franz, you’ll thank me for this."

  What We Take When We Take What We Need

  1.

  He almost missed the welcome sign. The two-lane highway snaked up into the mountains through dense walls of green, the trees leaning into the road. After so many years in the north it all seemed too lush, too overgrown. Subtropical. Turn your back and the plants and insects would overrun everything.

  Then he saw it, the sheet metal half swallowed by ivy, its message punctuated by bullet holes. WELCOME TO SWITCHCREEK, TN. POPULATION 815. The number was a lie, unchanged since the day he drove out twelve years ago. Or perhaps a temporary lie. Maybe no one had died or been born or moved away in all that time, the town waiting for him like an old dog that wouldn’t leave the porch, and now that he’d returned the number was true again.

  He fought the urge to slam on the brakes. He could turn his rust-pocked Ford Tempo around and head back to Chicago. The day he left Switchcreek he�
�d promised himself that he wouldn’t return until his father’s funeral. Terribly sick didn’t count. Mortal danger didn’t cut it. Yet a phone call had gotten him up at six in the morning, made him drive 500 miles. And then it pulled him across the invisible town line.

  Welcome back, #815.

  The house where he grew up was a little three-bedroom frame house at the foot of Mount Clyburn, surrounded by trees. His father’s car, an ancient Ford Crown Victoria, squatted in its usual spot. It looked like it hadn’t moved in years: Tires low, brown leaves shellacked to the body and windows. He pulled in behind it and stopped, but didn’t shut off the engine. He leaned forward and folded his arms atop the steering wheel, letting the struggling air conditioner blow into his damp ribs.

  The picture window drapes were closed. The white paint had grayed, begun to flake. The screen door hung open, but the wooden front door was closed.

  Finally he turned off the car and stepped out. Hot, moist air enveloped him; he’d forgotten how punishing August in Tennessee could be. He walked through the high, uncut grass to the cement porch and knocked. Waited and knocked again. After a minute he cupped his eyes to the diamond-shaped window set in the wood. He could make out a patch of familiar wall, then nothing but shadows. He tried the doorknob—locked—then stepped back.

  Something glinted in the grass beside the porch. He crouched to pick it up: a syringe and needle, the tube empty. What the hell? He set the syringe on the porch where he could find it later.

  He walked around the corner of the house, stepping carefully through the high grass, wary of sharps. The side window of his father’s bedroom was filled by a silent air-conditioner; the glazed bathroom window next to it was closed and dark. Behind the house, the backyard had shrunk from the advancement of the brush line. The rusting frame of his old swing set leaned out of the shrubs. Further back, the low, cinderblock well house—made obsolete by the sewer and water lines added in the ’70s—sat almost buried in the undergrowth like a Civil War fortification.

  The door to the back porch was unlocked. Pax went through it, to the kitchen door. He knocked once and turned the knob. The door swung open with a squeak.

  "Hello!" he called. "It’s me." The air smelled sickly sweet and fungal, a jungle smell. "It’s Paxton," he added stupidly. From somewhere near the front of the house came the low murmur of television voices.

  The kitchen was as he remembered it, though dirtier than his mother would have ever allowed. Dirtier even than they’d kept it after she died. In those years they’d lived like tenants without a landlord, a teenager and an old man who had become a parent much too late to have the energy to do it alone. But even then they’d never let things slide this far. The garbage can overflowed with paper and plastic containers. Dishes sat in the sink. In the center of the breakfast table was a white ceramic casserole dish, the aluminum foil peeled back.

  Pax made his way through the dining room, dusty and preserved as an unvisited exhibit, to the living room, where he found his father.

  The Reverend Harlan Martin had a firm idea of what a pastor should look like, and it began with the hair. Each morning after his shower, he’d carefully comb back the wet strands from his forehead and spray everything down with his wife’s Alberto VO-5, clouding the bathroom. Sunday required extra coats, enough hairspray to preserve his appearance through a fire and brimstone sermon, a potluck dinner, a visitation or two, and an evening service. His Sunday hair was as shiny and durable as a Greek helmet.

  As a child, Pax loved when the hair was down, as when his father slept late and came to the breakfast table unshowered, pushing the long bangs out of his face like a disheveled Elvis. Like now.

  His father sat sprawled on the couch, head back and mouth open, eyes closed. His dark hair, longer than Pax had ever seen it, hung along the sides of his wide face to his jaw. His body was huge. His father’s side of his family were all big, but this was beyond anything Pax had seen. He seemed to have put on a hundred pounds or so since Pax had left.

  "Harlan?" Pax said. The atmosphere in the room was hot and unbearably humid, despite the ceiling fan turning above, the air heavy with that strange odor like rotting fruit. He took a step forward. "Harlan?"

  His bulk spread across parts of three cushions. He wore a blue terrycloth bathrobe half closed over a white T-shirt, and black socks stretched over broad feet. His face was deeply cratered, the skin flaking and loose.

  His father’s chest moved. A whistling wheeze escaped his mouth.

  Okay, Pax thought. Still alive. Until that moment he hadn’t realized how he’d been braced to find a corpse.

  The coffee table and chairs had been pushed to the walls, leaving a wide space with clear view of the television’s flickering screen. The television abruptly became louder—an ad—and Pax flicked off the set.

  His father suddenly lifted his head, turned to glare at Pax. His eyes were glassy, the lids crusted with sleep matter.

  "Out," his father said, his voice garbled by phlegm. He coughed, and raised a wide hand to his mouth. The arm was as pockmarked as his face. He pointed past Paxton’s shoulder. "Out of my house!" He still had it: the Preacher Voice.

  "It’s me, Paxton." He crouched down next to his father, and winced at the smell of him. He couldn’t tell if he was delirious or simply confused by sleep. "It’s your son."

  The huge man blinked at him. "Paxton?" he said warily. Then: "It’s you."

  Pax gripped his father’s hand. "How you doing?"

  "My prodigal son," his father said.

  "The only kind you’ve got." Pax tried to let go, but his father squeezed harder.

  "Who called you? Vonda?"

  "Close," Pax said. He extricated his hand and stood. He was surprised to feel something oily on his palm, and rubbed his hand dry on the back of his pants. "I need to open some windows."

  "She wants me. Wants to milk me like a cow. You can’t be here."

  Pax pulled open the big front drapes, and fought down a wave of dizziness. The air in the room was too close, too fetid. The sickly sweet odor had blossomed, become suffocating. He’d been told Harlan was in trouble, but nothing had prepared him for this.

  "You’ve got to leave," his father said, his tone no longer firm. His body, huge as it was, looked like a bag to hold an even larger man. The skin hung loose at his neck and cheeks, and now beads of sweat appeared along his brow. How long it had been since his father last ate? Could he even move?

  Harlan’s face shone with sweat, as if breaking a fever. A water blister had appeared on his cheek, as large as a walnut, the skin so tight it was almost translucent. Pax stared at it in horror.

  "Oh," his father said softly. "Oh, Lord."

  "Harlan, what’s going on?" He tried to keep the panic out of his voice.

  "You took me by surprise," he said. He looked up, smiled faintly. His eyes were wet. Two more blisters had appeared at his neck. They seemed to expand as Pax watched. "You better leave now."

  Pax turned toward the front door, lost his balance, and caught himself. He turned the lock and yanked the door open. The air was too heavy to offer much relief. Keeping a hand against the wall to steady himself, he made his way back to the couch. The telephone wasn’t at its old spot on the end table. He’d called the house a dozen times over the past few days, but it had rung and rung.

  "Where’s the phone, Harlan?" Stains the color of pink lemonade had appeared on his father’s T-shirt.

  His father looked up at him with half-closed eyes. "Paxton Abel Martin." He said the name with a slow drawl, almost singing it, in a voice Pax hadn’t heard in a long time. He had a sudden memory of being carried up the church stairs in the dark—he must have been four or five—held close in his father’s arms.

  Pax kneeled in front of his father. The rich, fruity smell enveloped him. Pax gently pushed the robe further open, and began to lift the T-shirt. Blisters had erupted over the skin of his belly: tiny pimples; white-capped pebbles; glossy, egg-sized sacs. The largest pouches wept pin
k-tinged serum.

  "Oh Jesus." Pax bunched the edge of the T-shirt and tried to cover one of the open sores, but the oily liquid soaked through and slicked his fingers. "Listen, we’ve got to get you to—get ... "

  His fingers burned, but not painfully. He looked at his hand, rubbed the substance between his fingers. Slowly his gaze turned to his father, and their eyes locked.

  There you are, Pax thought. There, waiting beneath the sagging flesh, the mounds of pitted and pocked skin: The man who carried him up the stairs. Relief flooded through him. What if they’d been lost forever? Pax and his bloated father were here, in this stinking room, and they were also Harlan Martin and his four-year-old son, climbing out of the church basement after a long Sunday night service. He felt himself being carried, and at the same time felt the weight of the boy in his arms.

  And then Pax was on his back, staring at the ceiling. He raised a hand—I see that hand, his father used to call from the pulpit, I see that hand—but his limbs were so heavy, and his arm fell to the floor with a distant thump.

  He listened to the sound reverberate through the bones of skull. And then the world slipped sideways and pitched him into the dark.

  2.

  A young man lay sprawled across the braided rug. Skinny, head shaved like a criminal, a tattoo on his left arm. Still, unmistakable. He nudged the boy with his foot—and felt the poke under his ribs. That confused him. He tried to turn, to see who might be behind him, but now his arms and legs refused to respond. The boy on the floor made a noise, opened his eyes—