“Sid means that Parker’s about to graduate,” Zin said. “We all graduate at some point.”
“From what?”
“From the island. You’re here because you got problems, Danny Boy. You’ll learn that problems start with your mind, that we assign concepts and requirements to life that create friction and chaos. If we want to heal, we start with the mind. Or at least, that’s what the Investors tell us. Who the hell knows.”
Zin’s smile was infectious.
“You believe that?” Danny asked.
“Sure, why not? Don’t you see, Danny Boy, the universe is perfectly imperfect.” Zin wiggled his hands in mysterious-fashion. “There are no problems, you just think there are. And you believe what you think, and that’s why you’re here. We’re going to fix you.”
Zin jabbed at Danny’s forehead.
“And once you’re fixed, you get smoked. And once you’re smoke, you’re out of here.”
Zin pointed at the cylindrical building rising up from behind the dorms. Bands of glass windows alternated with bands of metal. Five floors. One of those glass floors was where Danny woke up and walked down the hall. The top floor was black glass. At the very top was a long chimney.
“That’s right,” Zin added. “Once you go to the Chimney, you leave the island. It’s graduation time, kind of like how they pick a new pope, when someone graduates the Chimney puffs and then it’s sayonara, baby.”
“Where do we go?”
“Home, I guess. Where else?”
The thought of going home wasn’t as comforting as it should’ve been, mainly because Danny couldn’t quite remember it.
“Come on.” Sid slung his arm around Parker’s shoulders. “Let’s have some fun before they smoke you, pal. What’d you say, huh? Old times?”
Parker was glassy-eyed.
“That’s the spirit. Let’s go, ya’ll.” They chucked the cards on the table and left the mess behind. “Zinski, bring the new poke. We’ll need him to take Parker’s spot on the team so let’s get him to the game room. We got a match in an hour.”
Zin pulled Danny along. Sid walked with his arm around Parker. It didn’t look like he was going to make it unless someone kept him propped up. A cold feeling crept into Danny’s stomach. He had a feeling what happened to him.
“What’s a poke?”
“That means you’re a rookie, a virgin that just got popped.” Zin pointed at the round band-aid on Danny’s head. “You got poked, Danny Boy.”
Danny touched the bandage. He felt a little guilty after Mr. Jones told him not to, then he noticed the zit on Zin’s forehead. When he first saw it, it looked like a deep blackhead. It was a little red and puffy around the edges, like maybe he was squeezing it. Is that a hole?
A cold feeling trickled into his legs.
Danny noticed the loner kid with the shirt over his shoulder. He was hardly a kid, looked like he was nineteen or twenty. Easily the oldest one around. An old man (there seemed to be an endless supply of them) limped toward him. There were a few words exchanged.
“Yo, Danny Boy!” Zin was calling. “Don’t get lost on day one, hurry up!”
Danny watched the long-haired kid follow the limping old man. Maybe he was going to get smoked.
5
Mr. Smith didn’t talk much. Reed expected that.
The old man limped along with a small grunt whenever he heaved his bum leg forward.
The elevator was in the center of the first floor. The inside was curved like a big tin can. There were only buttons for four floors. Nothing for the fifth. The doors remained opened while Mr. Smith looked at the numbers and the small camera staring back. A few seconds later, they closed and the elevator made the gut-dropping rise to the top of the Chimney.
Mr. Smith put his hand on Reed’s chest. “Wait here.”
The elevator opened. There were no walls on the top floor. Just one big room. One section had bedroom furniture, another office furniture; there was a bar with liquor bottles. But nothing in-between.
On the far side, by the dim windows, a large man wearing a flowery shirt was looking through an oversized telescope. Mr. Smith limped over. His words murmured across the room. The Director never looked up from the eyepiece but occasionally muttered back.
There had been other boys that failed in the Haystack for whatever reason and they just disappeared. No graduation or farewell just poof – they were gone. Didn’t matter if they went mental or the needle lobotomized them, it was game over.
Move on to the next contestant.
But they had been patient with Reed. He was nineteen. He’d be twenty in a couple months. And twenty – for whatever reason – was a magic number. Poof.
Mr. Smith didn’t look happy.
He was trying to hold his voice in check and kept stealing glances at Reed when he got too loud. The Director never bothered to pull off his telescope while Mr. Smith waved his arms and smacked his fist. And then he was dismissed. Mr. Smith came back like a peg-legged pirate that dipped his hair in a bucket of ink.
His cheeks were flush.
“The Director would like a word.”
“Reed, my boy, come here.” The Director was still hunched over the telescope when Reed approached. “You don’t want to miss this, take a look.”
Reed hesitated. The Director stood up and stretched his back. “Well, do I need to mail you an invitation? Come on, you must see this,” he said, happily. “Nature is happening, son.”
The Director was a large man with a scraggly beard and squinty, smiling eyes. He was wearing baggy shorts and flip-flops. Reed stopped short of the telescope, peering out the window at the back side of the island – a view rarely seen by any of the teenage campers. Rarely was one of them brought up to the Director’s office. The Investors’ living quarters hundred yards away, right on the edge of the island – the Mansion with stately palms. Beyond that was endless water.
“Reed, unless you can stretch your eyeball out of your head, you’re going to have to bend over to see what I’m talking about.” The Director smiled. “Take a look.”
Reed did so. Slowly. He adjusted his eye around the lens. It was focused far out into the ocean. Everything shimmered blue.
“You see it?” the Director asked. “Don’t touch the scope, just look with your eye. Just stay open and you’ll see it.”
There was nothing. Suddenly, there was a spray of water. A humpback whale broke the surface, its slick body rolled over and the white speckled tail slapped the water. He wanted to see it again.
“Magnificent, right?” The Director slapped him on the back. “Nature.”
Reed stayed perched over the telescope. Moments later, another one came up for a breath and disappeared beneath the waves, free to go as deep and as far away as it wished.
“How many rounds have you been through, Reed?”
Reed stood.
The Director was at the bar near a section of plush furniture. Ice rattled in a couple of tumblers and the Director poured drinks. One with Coke, the other whiskey. He brought the Coke to Reed, handed it to him with a stiff smile, the eyes still crinkled.
“I’ve lost count,” the Director said. “Twenty-five, would you say?”
“Sounds a little high.”
“Math wasn’t my strong suit, but twenty-five times you’ve been through the Haystack, Reed.” The Director took a drink and grimaced. “You like punishment?”
“I’ve discovered my inner masochist.”
“Well, then, how about I punch you in the face and we’ll have a ball.” He smiled wide and laughed loud. Reed joined him. They were both in on the joke for several moments, although the Director laughed a little hard.
The Director leisurely strolled away. He swirled the glass. He stopped at a large cage behind the expansive mahogany desk. It reached up to the ceiling, inside were a pair of large white parrots. He looked up at them, said, “Why won’t you take the lucid gear, Reed?”
“I’m not crazy about getting punched i
n the head with a needle.”
“It’s not a needle, Reed. It’s lucid gear, and it doesn’t hurt, you know that. The other boys have told you so. Hell, I’m telling you.” He pointed at the neat little hole in his forehead.
“Forgive me,” Reed said. “The needle-like lucid gear goes through the skull. It can’t feel good.”
The ice rattled. The Director sipped, nodding. He looked over, head cocked. A grim smile. He jerked his head, signaling Reed to come over. The glass of Coke was still full, soaking in his hand. Sweat or condensation?
Together, they watched the birds.
“This is my island, Reed. It’s my program, my vision that happens here. These…” He waved his drink toward the Mansion. “These Investors fund it, but it’s my vision to use cutting edge technology – revolutionary ideas – to help people like you, Reed.”
“I didn’t ask for help.”
“Yes, you did. You just don’t know it.”
“I don’t know much of anything, thanks to you.”
The Director ignored the insult. “You’re a kid, Reed. You don’t know anything about life and your place in it. And it’s a damn shame to see a kid like you with so much potential just waste away to nothing. I can’t accept a world that turns its back on people that need help, Reed. I can’t. I won’t.”
Reed realized the floor was slowly rotating. His view of the Mansion was slightly askew from when he arrived. Eventually, they’d be turning back towards the dormitory and the Yard.
“Why do you think I brought you here, Reed?”
“You know I don’t know that.”
The Director was nodding. He knew that Reed couldn’t make sense of the multitude of memories that crowded his mind; memories they both knew were implanted in Reed’s head to keep him confused, to keep him from remembering his past.
The Director put his drink on a small table and opened the doors beneath it. He pulled out a small cage squirming with oversized cockroaches. The parrots flapped madly, squawking. Feathers floated out of the cage.
“You think I brought you here to torture, mmm?”
“It’s crossed my mind.”
“You think I get my jollies by filling an island with young boys to torture?” He popped the lid and reached inside. The cockroaches hissed. “You think that’s me?”
“I don’t know who you are, Director. Like you said, I don’t even know who I am.”
A wingless cockroach clung to the Director’s finger, blowing air from the spiracles on its abdomen to hiss loudly. He held it close to his face. The cockroach hunched over and went quiet.
“I like you, Reed. You remind me of myself, all full of piss and vinegar. For all I know, you’re refusing the lucid gear just to spite me, to spite Mr. Smith. And I can respect that. I mean, Jesus lord, you’ve withstood some discomfort, son. I don’t think I could’ve done it when I was your age and I was one tough son of a bitch. You believe that?”
There was a long pause. The Director turned his hand over; the cockroach clung to it upside-down.
Reed answered, “Believe what?”
“That I was a tough S-O-B?”
“Again, I don’t know you, sir.”
“Yes, you do, Reed.” The Director glared, intensely. “You know me.”
Reed turned away. He didn’t know the Director, but that look told him everything he needed to. You know what I do.
The Director plucked the cockroach off his hand. It threw a fit, hissing and scratching for a grip. He pinched it by the abdomen. The birds jumped to the branch nearest the cage, their beaks jawing open and close, open and close. The Director dangled the cockroach just out of their reach. Feathers flew.
The cockroach hissed and hissed, and then it ended with its exoskeleton crunching loudly in the curved beak of the larger bird. The Director took a sip of his drink, watching the bird pull half the insect’s body, legs flailing, out of its mouth with its claw, chewing on it like popcorn.
“What makes you so tough, Reed?”
“I don’t know, sir. Maybe my father was a Navy SEAL.”
The Director stepped directly in front of Reed. They were eye to eye, only inches apart. Scotch was on his breath. “Every single boy that’s been to the island has taken the lucid gear the very first time they go to the Haystack. Not one has resisted, and you’ve done it… how many times, Reed?”
Shrug.
“Twenty-five,” the Director said. “You get it wrong again, I’ll slap you.”
He stayed uncomfortably closer, staring. The bird grinding the insect into bite-sized pieces.
Reed knew how he resisted, but how did he tell the man responsible for all the misery around him that it was a dream that told him not to take the needle? Sounds crazy, but what doesn’t?
It happened when he woke up in the lab with Mr. Smith staring at him. He clung to a memory as he opened his eyes. It was a girl with long red hair. She told him – as if she was talking to him – to resist. She told him that if he did, they would be together again, one day. It wouldn’t be easy, but he had to resist. If anyone could do it, he could.
He didn’t know what resisting meant until he entered the Haystack.
And when his resolve faded, when he considered reaching for the needle because he just couldn’t take it anymore, when he just wanted it to end, he would have another dream.
Resist.
The Director, looking as far into Reed’s eyes as he could and seeing nothing, stepped away. He sipped, thinking. Reed noticed the lump on the back of his neck when he bent over for another cockroach, the tracker imbedded between the C4 and C5 vertebrae. No one went unchecked on the island, not even the man at the top.
“I can’t accept watching you piss away an opportunity, Reed. Do you know what’s right in front of you? The effort Mr. Smith and I made to bring you here, to offer you freedom from your problems, to give you a nobler life. Do you know what it costs every day we keep you here and watch you deny the healing we offer?”
He squeezed the cockroach in his palm, crunching inside his closed fist.
“Do you know how hard we work TO GIVE YOU A BETTER LIFE?”
The birds jumped. So did Reed.
“We’re pioneers, Reed,” he said, softly. “We’re forging into new ground of healing the world. You’re a pioneer, do you understand that?”
Reed nodded, slowly.
The Director held his gaze, then offered his hand to the unfed bird. It pushed its beak between the bars and snatched the cockroach out of his palm. The Director flicked the slimy remains on the bottom of the cage and walked away wiping his hands with a paper towel.
The Director went to another telescope at the perimeter of the room, this one aimed over the Mansion. The floor had rotated. Reed was looking at the dorm and the Yard beyond.
“You have a shot at a second life, but I can’t make you take it. All I can do is offer you healing. No one can make you go lucid, you have to want it. Don’t you see, that’s why we make you uncomfortable before it’s offered? Your mind detaches from the body when it’s in pain, yet you continue to stay. You won’t take what I offer, Reed. And I can’t understand that.”
The Director spent a few minutes focusing on a new target. He stood up, hands on his hips. Staring out, pensive. Struggling with a thought. A decision. “Five more rounds, Reed.” The Director looked at Reed over the couches and tables and space in between. “I’m giving you an opportunity to help me help you. This is your last chance to take my outstretched hand. I can’t help the unwilling, son. You understand?”
The Director smiled, eyes squinting.
“If you don’t, then I’ve failed you, son. And I’m sorry for that.”
The Director went back to the telescope. The birds licked their beaks. Reed looked at the Yard below, wiping his slick forehead where the needle hole had long since healed.
6
Danny remembered going to summer camp… or something like that. The more he thought about it, maybe it was just camping. They went fishin
g. It seemed like a really fun time in his life.
The island was even better.
No one assaulted him in his sleep. No one dumped him in a trash can or even so much as gave him a wedgie. It was ten days of non-stop fun.
It started in the game room which turned out to be a game building. Flat screen monitors were positioned around the perimeter showing on-going games or flashing team standings of various competitions. Most of them were small capsules where campers could experience three-dimensional action while some were simple screen games for one or two people.
On the first day, Sid led them through the crowd. There were about twenty-five people – all boys, no old men – watching or playing. They made their way to center stage: a twenty-foot wide circular platform enclosed by a clear dome. Inside was a small scale layout of a war-torn city with smoldered buildings and overturned cars. Digital troops strategically stalked the cityscape and miniature helicopters rained bullets and missiles into clouds of smoke and fire.
There was a group on each side that controlled the tiny figures and with each explosion and each death, numbers changed on the four-side scoreboard hanging from the ceiling. Names repositioned in the standings. An hour later, one team stood victorious.
Zin smacked Danny in the chest. “We’re up.”
The taunting started when they stepped onto the small stage vacated by the losers, a group of Middle Eastern boys in their early teens. Danny saw the other team on the opposite side of the dome – they were Russian, maybe – pulling on black gloves. Sid was trading insults with the crowd, pointing at the scoreboard and thumping his chest. Zin gave Danny a pair of gloves and knee pads.
“No time for instruction. You’ll figure it out.”
The gloves slid on like silk embedded with fine wire mesh. The knee pads strapped on without anything special. Sid passed out yellow-tinted goggles with embedded earbuds and miniature microphones. Danny was still playing with the goggles when he was assigned to a tower and told to keep his head down.
“Watch and learn.” That was the only time Sid addressed Danny. “And try not to get killed, poke.”
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