by Stephen King
Still pushing his cart, the man wearing Library Al’s body returned to Room 217 and placed the Zappit on the table by the bed—it merited further study and thought. Then (and not without regret) Brady left Library Al Brooks. There was that moment of vertigo, and then he was looking up instead of down. He was curious to see what would happen next.
At first Library Al just stood there, a piece of furniture that looked like a human being. Brady reached out to him with his invisible left hand and patted his cheek. Then he reached for Al’s mind with his own, expecting to find it shut to him, as Nurse MacDonald’s had been once she came out of her fugue state.
But the door was wide open.
Al’s core consciousness had returned, but there was a bit less now. Brady suspected that some of it had been smothered by his presence. So what? People killed off brain cells when they drank too much, but they had plenty of spares. The same was true of Al. At least for now.
Brady saw the Z he had drawn on the back of Al’s hand—for no reason, just because he could—and spoke without opening his mouth.
“Hey there, Z-Boy. Go on now. Get out. Head over to A Wing. But you won’t talk about this, will you?”
“Talk about what?” Al asked, looking puzzled.
Brady nodded as well as he could nod, and smiled as well as he could smile. He was already wishing to be in Al again. Al’s body was old, but at least it worked.
“That’s right,” he told Z-Boy. “Talk about what.”
• • •
2012 became 2013. Brady lost interest in trying to strengthen his telekinetic muscles. There was really no point, now that he had Al. Each time he got inside, his grip was stronger, his control better. Running Al was like running one of those drones the military used to keep an eye on the ragheads in Afghanistan … and then to bomb the living shit out of their bosses.
Lovely, really.
Once he had Z-Boy show the old Det.-Ret. one of the Zappits, hoping Hodges would become fascinated by the Fishin’ Hole demo. Being inside Hodges would be wonderful. Brady would make it his first priority to pick up a pencil and poke out the old Det.-Ret.’s eyes. But Hodges only glanced at the screen and handed it back to Library Al.
Brady tried again a few days later, this time with Denise Woods, the PT associate who came into his room twice a week to exercise his arms and legs. She took the console when Z-Boy handed it to her, and looked at the swimming fish quite a bit longer than Hodges had. Something happened, but it wasn’t quite enough. Trying to enter her was like pushing against a firm rubber diaphragm: it gave a little, enough for him to glimpse her feeding her young son scrambled eggs in his high chair, but then it pushed him back out.
She handed the Zappit back to Z-Boy and said, “You’re right, they’re pretty fish. Now why don’t you go hand out some books, Al, and let Brady and me work on those pesky knees of his?”
So there it was. He didn’t have the same instantaneous access to others that he’d had to Al, and a little thought was all it took for Brady to understand why. Al had been preconditioned to the Fishin’ Hole demo, had watched it dozens of times before bringing his Zappit to Brady. That was a crucial difference, and a crushing disappointment. Brady had imagined having dozens of drones among whom he could pick and choose, but that wasn’t going to happen unless there was a way to re-rig the Zappit and enhance the hypnotic effect. Might there be such a way?
As someone who had modified all sorts of gadgets in his time—Thing One and Thing Two, for instance—Brady believed there was. The Zappit was WiFi equipped, after all, and WiFi was the hacker’s best friend. Suppose, for instance, he were to program in a flashing light? A kind of strobe, like the one that had buzzed the brains of those kids exposed to the missile-firing sequence in the Pokémon episode?
The strobe could serve another purpose, as well. While taking a community college course called Computing the Future (this was just before he dropped out of school for good), Brady’s class had been assigned a long CIA report, published in 1995 and declassified shortly after 9/11. It was called “The Operational Potential of Subliminal Perception,” and explained how computers could be programmed to transmit messages so rapidly that the brain recognized them not as messages per se, but as original thoughts. Suppose he were able to embed such a message inside the strobe flash? SLEEP NOW ALL OKAY, for instance, or maybe just RELAX. Brady thought those things, combined with the demo screen’s existing hypnotics, would be pretty effective. Of course he might be wrong, but he would have given his mostly useless right hand to find out.
He doubted if he ever would, because there were two seemingly insurmountable problems. One was getting people to look at the demo screen long enough for the hypnotic effect to take hold. The other was even more basic: how in God’s name was he supposed to modify anything? He had no computer access, and even if he had, what good would it be? He couldn’t even tie his fucking shoes! He considered using Z-Boy, and rejected the idea almost immediately. Al Brooks lived with his brother and his brother’s family, and if Al all of a sudden started demonstrating advanced computer knowledge and capability, there would be questions. Especially when they already had questions about Al, who had grown absentminded and rather peculiar. Brady supposed they thought he was suffering the onset of senility, which wasn’t all that far from the truth.
It seemed that Z-Boy was running out of spare brain cells after all.
• • •
Brady grew depressed. He had reached the all too familiar point where his bright ideas collided head-on with gray reality. It had happened with the Rolla vacuum cleaner; it had happened with his computer-assisted vehicle backing device; it had happened with his motorized, programmable TV monitor, which was supposed to revolutionize home security. His wonderful inspirations always came to nothing.
Still, he had one human drone to hand, and after a particularly infuriating visit from Hodges, Brady decided he might cheer up if he put his drone to work. Accordingly, Z-Boy visited an Internet café a block or two down from the hospital, and after five minutes on a computer (Brady was exhilarated to be sitting in front of a screen again), he discovered where Anthony Moretti, aka the fat testicle-punching cocksucker, lived. After leaving the Internet café, Brady walked Z-Boy into an Army surplus store and bought a hunting knife.
The next day when he left the house, Moretti found a dead dog stretched out on the welcome mat. Its throat had been cut. Written in dogblood on the windshield of his car was YOUR WIFE & KIDS ARE NEXT.
• • •
Doing this—being able to do this—cheered Brady up. Payback is a bitch, he thought, and I am that bitch.
He sometimes fantasized about sending Z-Boy after Hodges and shooting him in the belly. How good it would be to stand over the Det.-Ret., watching him shudder and moan as his life ran through his fingers!
It would be great, but Brady would lose his drone, and once in custody, Al might point the police at him. There was something else, as well, something even bigger: it wouldn’t be enough. He owed Hodges more than a bullet in the belly followed by ten or fifteen minutes of suffering. Much more. Hodges needed to live, breathing toxic air inside a bag of guilt from which there was no escape. Until he could no longer stand it, and killed himself.
Which had been the original plan, back in the good old days.
No way, though, Brady thought. No way to do any of it. I’ve got Z-Boy—who’ll be in an assisted living home if he keeps on the way he’s going—and I can rattle the blinds with my phantom hand. That’s it. That’s the whole deal.
But then, in the summer of 2013, the dark funk he’d been living in was pierced by a shaft of light. He had a visitor. A real one, not Hodges or a suit from the District Attorney’s office, checking to see if he had magically improved enough to stand trial for a dozen different felony crimes, the list headed by eight counts of willful murder at City Center.
There was a perfunctory knock at the door, and Becky Helmington poked her head in. “Brady? There’s a young woman here t
o see you. Says she used to work with you, and she’s brought you something. Do you want to see her?”
Brady could think of only one young woman that might be. He considered saying no, but his curiosity had come back along with his malice (perhaps they were even the same thing). He gave one of his floppy nods, and made an effort to brush his hair out of his eyes.
His visitor entered timidly, as if there might be hidden mines under the floor. She was wearing a dress. Brady had never seen her in a dress, would have guessed she didn’t even own one. But her hair was still cropped close to her skull in a half-assed crewcut, as it had been when they had worked together on the Discount Electronix Cyber Patrol, and she was still as flat as a board in front. He remembered some comedian’s joke: If no tits count for shit, Cameron Diaz is gonna be around for a long time. But she had put on a little powder to cover her pitted skin (amazing) and even a dash of lipstick (more amazing still). In one hand she held a wrapped package.
“Hey, man,” Freddi Linklatter said with unaccustomed shyness. “How’re you doing?”
This opened all sorts of possibilities.
Brady did his best to smile.
BADCONCERT.COM
1
Cora Babineau wipes the back of her neck with a monogrammed towel and frowns at the monitor in the basement exercise room. She has done only four of her six miles on the treadmill, she hates to be interrupted, and the weirdo is back.
Cling-clong goes the doorbell and she listens for her husband’s footsteps above her, but there’s nothing. On the monitor, the old man in the ratty parka—he looks like one of those bums you see standing at intersections, holding up signs that say things like HUNGRY, NO JOB, ARMY VETERAN, PLEASE HELP—just stands there.
“Dammit,” she mutters, and pauses the treadmill. She climbs the stairs, opens the door to the back hallway, and shouts, “Felix! It’s your weirdo friend! That Al!”
No response. He’s in his study again, possibly looking at the game-thing he seems to have fallen in love with. The first few times she mentioned Felix’s strange new obsession to her friends at the country club, it was a joke. It doesn’t seem so funny now. He’s sixty-three, too old for kids’ computer games and too young to have gotten so forgetful, and she’s begun to wonder if he might not be suffering early-onset Alzheimer’s. It has also crossed her mind that Felix’s weirdo friend is some kind of drug pusher, but isn’t the guy awfully old for that? And if her husband wants drugs, he can certainly supply himself; according to him, half the doctors at Kiner are high at least half the time.
Cling-clong goes the doorbell.
“Jesus on a pony,” she says, and goes to the door herself, growing more irritated with each long stride. She’s a tall, gaunt woman whose female shape has been exercised nearly to oblivion. Her golf tan remains even in the depths of winter, only turning a pale shade of yellow that makes her look as if she’s suffering chronic liver disease.
She opens the door. The January night rushes in, chilling her sweaty face and arms. “I think I would like to know who you are,” she says, “and what you and my husband are up to together. Would that be too much to ask?”
“Not at all, Mrs. Babineau,” he says. “Sometimes I’m Al. Sometimes I’m Z-Boy. Tonight I’m Brady, and boy oh boy, it’s nice to be out, even on such a cold night.”
She looks down at his hand. “What’s in that jar?”
“The end of all your troubles,” says the man in the mended parka, and there’s a muffled bang. The bottom of the soda bottle blows out in shards, along with scorched threads from the steel wool. They float in the air like milkweed fluff.
Cora feels something hit her just below her shrunken left breast and thinks, This weirdo son of a bitch just punched me. She tries to take a breath and at first can’t. Her chest feels strangely dead; warmth is pooling above the elastic top of her tracksuit pants. She looks down, still trying to take that all-important breath, and sees a stain spreading on the blue nylon.
She raises her eyes to stare at the geezer in the doorway. He’s holding out the remains of the bottle as if it’s a present, a little gift to make up for showing up unannounced at eight in the evening. What’s left of the steel wool pokes out of the bottom like a charred boutonniere. She finally manages a breath, but it’s mostly liquid. She coughs, and sprays blood.
The man in the parka steps into her house and sweeps the door shut behind him. He drops the bottle. Then he pushes her. She staggers back, knocking a decorative vase from the end table by the coathooks, and goes down. The vase shatters on the hardwood floor like a bomb. She drags in another of those liquid breaths—I’m drowning, she thinks, drowning right here in my front hall—and coughs out another spray of red.
“Cora?” Babineau calls from somewhere deep in the house. He sounds as if he’s just woken up. “Cora, are you okay?”
Brady raises Library Al’s foot and carefully brings Library Al’s heavy black workshoe down on the straining tendons of Cora Babineau’s scrawny throat. More blood bursts from her mouth; her sun-cured cheeks are now stippled with it. He steps down hard. There’s a crackling sound as stuff breaks inside her. Her eyes bulge … bulge … and then they glaze over.
“You were a tough one,” Brady remarks, almost affectionately.
A door opens. Slippered feet come running, and then Babineau is there. He’s wearing a dressing gown over ridiculous Hugh Hefner–style silk pajamas. His silver hair, usually his pride, is in wild disarray. The stubble on his cheeks has become an incipient beard. In his hand is a green Zappit console from which the little Fishin’ Hole tune tinkles: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea. He stares at his wife lying on the hall floor.
“No more workouts for her,” Brady says in that same affectionate tone.
“What did you DO?” Babineau screams, as if it isn’t obvious. He runs to Cora and tries to fall to his knees beside her, but Brady hooks him under the armpit and hauls him back up. Library Al is by no means Charles Atlas, but he is ever so much stronger than the wasted body in Room 217.
“No time for that,” Brady says. “The Robinson girl is alive, which necessitates a change of plan.”
Babineau stares at him, trying to gather his thoughts, but they elude him. His mind, once so sharp, has been blunted. And it’s this man’s fault.
“Look at the fish,” Brady says. “You look at yours and I’ll look at mine. We’ll both feel better.”
“No,” Babineau says. He wants to look at the fish, he always wants to look at them now, but he’s afraid to. Brady wants to pour his mind into Babineau’s head like some strange water, and each time that happens, less of his essential self remains afterward.
“Yes,” Brady says. “Tonight you need to be Dr. Z.”
“I refuse!”
“You’re in no position to refuse. This is coming unraveled. Soon the police will be at your door. Or Hodges, and that would be even worse. He won’t read you your rights, he’ll just hit you with that homemade sap of his. Because he’s a mean motherfucker. And because you were right. He knows.”
“I won’t … I can’t …” Babineau looks down at his wife. Ah God, her eyes. Her bulging eyes. “The police would never believe … I’m a respected doctor! We’ve been married for thirty-five years!”
“Hodges will. And when Hodges gets the bit in his teeth, he turns into Wyatt fucking Earp. He’ll show the Robinson girl your picture. She’ll look at it and say oh wow, yes, that’s the man who gave me the Zappit at the mall. And if you gave her a Zappit, you probably gave one to Janice Ellerton. Oops! And there’s Scapelli.”
Babineau stares, trying to comprehend this disaster.
“Then there’s the drugs you fed me. Hodges may know about them already, because he’s a fast man with a bribe and most of the nurses in the Bucket know. It’s an open secret, because you never tried to hide it.” Brady gives Library Al’s head a sad shake. “Your arrogance.”
“Vitamins!” It’s all Babineau can manage.
“Even th
e cops won’t believe that if they subpoena your files and search your computers.” Brady glances down at Cora Babineau’s sprawled body. “And there’s your wife, of course. How are you going to explain her?”
“I wish you’d died before they brought you in,” Babineau says. His voice is rising, becoming a whine. “Or on the operating table. You’re a Frankenstein!”
“Don’t confuse the monster with the creator,” Brady says, although he doesn’t actually give Babineau much credit in the creation department. Dr. B.’s experimental drug may have something to do with his new abilities, but it had little or nothing to do with his recovery. He’s positive that was his own doing. An act of sheer willpower. “Meanwhile, we have a visit to make, and we don’t want to be late.”
“To the man-woman.” There’s a word for that, Babineau used to know it, but now it’s gone. Like the name that goes with it. Or what he ate for dinner. Each time Brady comes into his head, he takes a little more when he leaves. Babineau’s memory. His knowledge. His self.
“That’s right, the man-woman. Or, to give her sexual preference its scientific name, Ruggus munchus.”
“No.” The whine has become a whisper. “I’m going to stay right here.”
Brady raises the gun, the barrel now visible within the blown-out remains of the makeshift silencer. “If you think I really need you, you’re making the worst mistake of your life. And the last one.”
