2016

by Roberto Ricci

  These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Level 10 Copyright © 2012 Roberto Ricci All rights reserved

  Sweet Dreams Inc. Copyright © 2011 Roberto Ricci All rights reserved

  Parablu Copyright © 2011 Roberto Ricci All rights reserved

  Available from the same author:

  The Red Harlequin Book Series

  The Return

  Parablu

  Level 10

  Sweet Dreams Inc.

  PARABLU

  “Mom! Mom! I’ve got a headache again!” Jimmy took off his headset and began to cry. Grace rushed upstairs to see what was happening.

  When she entered the room, she found her son in tears and lying on the bed with both hands covering his head.

  “It’s hurting me!” said the young boy between sobs.

  “Oh, honey,” She said almost crying herself. She kissed him gently on his head and hugged him.

  “Soon it’ll pass,” she said softly. “Now lie down while I’m going to prepare a cold pack to put on your forehead.” Jimmy did as he was told as Grace went to the kitchen downstairs.

  This wasn’t the first time Jimmy had a migraine and it probably wasn’t going to be the last, she thought. Initially, she believed the cause of the headaches had something to do with his eyesight. Jimmy was eight and it was around the same age that her ex-husband had begun wearing glasses. Yet the eyesight visit showed that Jimmy had a perfect vision, 20/20.

  The migraines had begun shortly after the introduction of the new online school program, a privately funded program to further the school district’s curriculum at home and which was quickly spreading in other districts as well. Jimmy came home one day with a special headset designed for him to connect directly to a virtual version of school and to a virtual tutor. Grace had thought that they had given her son a faulty headset and so she returned it to the school and requested a new one. Yet the migraines didn’t go away. On the contrary, what started as a sporadic symptom began to increase in frequency. They had now reached the point that every time Jimmy put on the headset and connected to the online school, he was sure to get a headache. And now Grace was becoming seriously worried.

  She had spoken with Jimmy’s teachers asking whether he could be at least temporarily exonerated from the Knowledge Network activity, but they had replied that the District Board had made such activity an integral part of the school experience and that failure to participate in it would mean failure to move to fourth grade. She had later come to know, unofficially from one of the teachers, that failure to include all students in the program would mean failure to receive new school funds from Anamast, the search engine company that was sponsoring the entire program.

  She had then gone to Jimmy’s pediatrician to ask whether he could sponsor somehow her request to the School Board supporting it with medical reasons. But the doctor did not find anything wrong in Jimmy and the only thing he did was to suggest taking him to the Neuroscience Institute for a more detailed examination. It was only when she left his study that she noticed the Anamast calendar on his wall.

  Grace had diligently followed up on the doctor’s instructions and had scheduled an appointment at the Institute. Hopefully, someone there would be able to finally give her some answers, she thought. With the tray ready, she went back up to Jimmy’s room. She found him still tossing and turning on the bed. The headaches would last an hour or so and then they would go away. She had tried with aspirins and other medications, but nothing seemed to work. After their divorce, her ex-husband moved to Australia and there had never been a moment that she had wished him back but now she would have liked to have someone else there to support her.

  The following day, mother and son made their way downtown where the Neuroscience Institute was located. It was an impressive, brand new facility made entirely of glass which had been inaugurated just a few months before, in December of 2015. Grace and Jimmy had arrived early in the morning and had stopped to admire the breathtaking entrance. In front of the crystal monolith, there was a gigantic, bronze sculpture of the human brain which reigned over the large, white marble plaza.

  Grace took Jimmy by the hand and walked past the huge sculpture. “Wow mom, is this a dinosaur’s brain?” asked Jimmy.

  “No honey, it’s a sculpture of the human brain. They built it here because this is the place where doctors study it.”

  “Are they going to study my brains too?” he asked.

  Grace didn’t reply as she didn’t know exactly what they would do to her son. Inside the main building, they approached the round reception booth. It was empty but as soon as Grace came close, the booth came to life and a holographic image of a smiling nurse materialized inside it.

  “Welcome to the Neuroscience Institute, how can I help you?” she said warmly.

  “I have a visit scheduled for my son James Rodier, at eleven with Doctor uh, Doctor…” Grace had forgotten the Doctor’s name and was quickly looking inside her purse for the piece of paper.

  “With Doctor Tanaka. 3rd floor, room 112. Just follow the orange lines to the elevator,” replied the artificial image promptly.

  Grace repeated the directions as if trying to make a mental note of it, “3rd floor room 112.”

  “Is there anything else I may help you with?” asked the virtual nurse in a slight metallic accent.

  “No thank you, that’s fine,” replied Grace.

  “Thank you for using the Neuroscience Institute,” said the Nurse before disappearing.

  Grace and Jimmy went to the elevators indicated by the orange line. While waiting for the lift, Grace noticed a plate on the wall which had been placed there to commemorate the day the Institute had opened. The plate reminded everyone that the creation of the Institute had been made possible only thanks to a very generous donation made by Anamast Corporation.

  When they arrived at the waiting room outside room 112, there was only another man waiting outside. They sat down waiting for their turn.

  Jimmy was tapping his feet nervously. Grace noticed it. “Stop it Jimmy! There is another person waiting and you’re bothering him.”

  The man sitting to the right of Jimmy finally looked at him and smiled. “You nervous?”

  Jimmy nodded.

  The man whispered, “Me too. I hate going to the hospital.”

  Jimmy smiled and whispered back, “me too.”

  Now Grace looked at both of them. The man, in his forties, had something about him, an innocent expression that made Grace feel at ease.

  “John Davy,” he said as he leaned his right hand towards her and over Jimmy’s head.

  “Grace Rodier, nice to meet you,” she said as she shook it.

  “Are you here for Doctor Tanaka?” he asked.

  “Yes, it’s for him. He suffers from chronic headaches.”

  John now looked at Jimmy. His expression changed as Grace noticed a worried look on his face.

  “You suffer from headaches as well?” she asked him.

  John nodded. Although he kept his courteous smile, Grace could see that something was bothering the man. Maybe talking about his personal health was not something he felt comfortable talking about she thought, so she did not insist further.

  They left him in the waiting room as a muffled voice in a speaker called for Jimmy.

  Inside, an Asian man with silver hair and a white robe was standing in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets. He kneeled down to Jimmy and smiled reassuringly. “What is your name young man?”

  “Jimmy,” replied the boy shyly.

  “Jimmy, nice to meet you. I’m Doctor Tanaka. What
seems to be the problem?”

  “My head hurts.”

  “Mm, that is a problem. Your head should not hurt at this age. You should start having headaches when you start dating girls!” he said laughingly while turning to Grace. Grace smiled courteously although she didn’t find it particularly funny.

  “Well let’s see now,” said Tanaka turning serious again. “Let’s begin by running a scan of your head. Come inside here young fellow.”

  The doctor led the boy inside a vertical, semi open white cylinder. “There,” said the doctor. “Just relax and keep straight.” Jimmy did as he was told although he was looking nervously towards Grace.

  “Relax young man,” said the Doctor, “this won’t hurt a bit.” He then pressed a button and the white cylinder came to life. The luminosity of the white cylinder increased as a green laser beam began to scan Jimmy’s head from top to bottom all the way to the neck and then up again. Doctor Tanaka had now put on his headset and was busy reading the real-time results of the scan.

  Grace stood there silently worried about the possible results of the scan. She had done a research on the many possible reasons for children’s headaches. Most of them were not reassuring to say the least.

  Doctor Tanaka was not saying anything but only grunting and mumbling every time a reading came out. The scan finally terminated and Doctor Tanaka performed other tests on Jimmy.

  Thirty minutes later, Jimmy was given a candy and told to wait outside.

  Grace sat down; bracing herself for what could be terrible news.

  “Is everything all right with Jimmy Doctor?” she asked trying to decipher the look in his eyes.

  Doctor Tanaka was now looking at his monitor, not saying anything. He finally raised his eyes from the screen and looked at Grace reassuringly. “Yes, Mrs. Rodier, Jimmy’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with him. I have had similar cases like him and usually what it boils down to is a lack of glucose particularly accentuated in moments of excess cerebral activity. In Jimmy’s case, this obviously happens more often than in other children.”

  Grace hesitated for a moment but then finally asked, “So it’s not something serious?”

  Tanaka smiled and said: “No, it’s just a lack of sugar that we need to compensate. That’s all. Your son is fine, Mrs. Rodier.”

  “Oh thank God. Thank you, thank you, Doctor,” she said, finally relieved of the news. “So what do I need to do, give him more sweets?”

  “No, of course not,” replied laughingly Tanaka. “There is a particular medicine I’ll give you the prescription for. It’s called Parablu. Jimmy should take two doses a day; one in the morning before going to school and one in the afternoon before he starts his homework. It should do the trick… Oh and it’s free too. It’s paid by Anamast, our major donor. Just go with this to your pharmacist and he’ll know what to do.”

  Tanaka gave Grace a pink slip and shook her hand. “Thank you so much, Doctor,” she said. She was about to close the door when she remembered about the other man waiting outside. “Should I leave the door open for your next patient?” she asked.

  “Oh no, you can close it. I’m actually about to leave myself. I have no other patients today,” he replied.

  Puzzled by his remarks, Grace closed the door and went over to the waiting room. No one was there. The man they had met while waiting for Doctor Tanaka had left.

  They had just exited the hospital when that same man approached Grace.

  “Did he tell you to take the beverage?” he asked nervously.

  “Oh God you scared me!” said Grace trying to be polite but in reality surprised by the fact that the man seemed to be waiting just for them.

  “He told you to give him the drink, didn’t he?” the man had now raised his voice.

  “I’m sorry I don’t understand what you are talking about,” said Grace now worried that the man may have been at the Institute for mental disorders rather than for headaches.

  “Don’t do it! It’s poison! I know the real reason for those headaches.” He now seemed growingly anxious and was looking around as if afraid of something or someone.

  Suddenly many people turned around looking at them. “They’re using them, Grace! They’re using our children!” He then took out a small piece of paper and handed it to Grace. “Here, if anything strange happens to Jimmy from now on, read him this. Do it for your son Grace!” It was the last thing she heard before the man turned around and quickly vanished amongst the crowd.

  “Mom?” now Jimmy began to worry too. “Mom what did he mean?”

  “Nothing dear. It’s just that he is not feeling well.” She said still shaken. She put the piece of paper in her pocket. “Come on, let’s go get some ice cream” she then said to her son and managed to get him smiling again.

  Back home Grace was studying the blue plastic bottles of Parablu that the pharmacist had given her. They came in packs of twenty bottles of 8 fluid ounces each. She read the ingredients on the label: Aqua, AddBlue, Glucose, Sodium, Natural Flavorings.

  What in God’s name is AddBlue she thought to herself? She was going to do a search on it later on.

  She thought again about the man in front of the hospital. Then she thought about the pharmacist. “I only have twenty bottles here Grace but I’ll reorder them. I can’t order them fast enough!” she recalled him saying laughingly. It can’t be that bad if so many people use it, she thought to herself.

  With this in mind, she went to her son’s room to give him the first dose of the day.

  When he took a sip from the glass, Jimmy almost threw up. “Mom it’s disgusting! It’s oily and smells like gasoline.” Grace put her nose near the glass full of the blue, oily beverage and instinctively pushed the glass away. Then, conscious that her gesture was not a reassuring one for her son, she brought the glass near her nose again.

  “Honey, it’s the only way we can make your headaches go away,” she said speaking softly to him while caressing his hair. “Come on now, drink it up. It’s good for you.”

  Jimmy did as he was told but threw up the entire portion of the blue substance on the bed.

  “I can’t! It’s too disgusting!” he said crying again.

  They tried again, this time mixing it with some orange juice, but it had the same result. They tried a third time and this time Grace, notwithstanding her son’s tears, held her son’s mouth shut until the beverage finally went all the way down.

  “There. Good boy Jimmy. Don’t throw up now.” She waited several minutes in his room to make sure the drink wasn’t coming back up again.

  Finally, Jimmy said, “It’s strange, I feel like my head is cold now Mom.”

  “Must be the effect of the medicine,” she replied somewhat perplexed. The bottles had not been refrigerated.

  “Does it bother you?” she asked her son.

  “No,” he replied. “It’s just weird,” and soon after put on his Anamast headset on and began to do his homework.

  She stayed in his room for a while but then, when Jimmy seemed not to suffer from any side effects or headaches she left, finally relieved. It’s working, she thought.

  That night she couldn’t sleep. The thought of the man in front of the hospital had scared her. She got up from bed and put on her headset. A virtual search agent popped up. “Hello Grace, welcome back to Anamast’s Knowledge Center. What would you like to know?”

  She hesitated for a moment and then whispered “Parablu”, almost as if afraid that someone could have heard her.

  The agent came back immediately with lots of information on the subject. “Parablu is a glucose-based medicine used in severe cases of headaches and migraines. It has been developed by Humana LLC, a medical start-up based in Los Angeles. Shareholders include Anamast Corporation, Angel Ventures I and Golden Gate Energy.”

  She then did a search on AddBlue.

  “BlueAdd is a refrigerating fluid in use for both primary and secondary systems in …”

  The Agent had mistaken the search, mismatch
ing the word, thought Grace. She turned her NetView device off and went back to bed, as she was too tired to continue.

  The next day after she had brought Jimmy to school, she stopped to speak with a group of moms who always stayed a bit longer after the school bell to talk over a cup of coffee.

  She tried to casually introduce the argument although she was worried about their reaction.

  “Has anyone of you ever heard of a medicine called Parablu?” she asked.

  “Sure,” said one of the mothers, “it’s for children’s headaches. It works, but it stinks.”

  “I thought it was an energy drink for teens,” said another.

  Relieved, Grace now felt like a fool for doubting Doctor Tanaka.

  When Jimmy got back from school, Grace had already prepared the dose of Parablu to give him. The headaches had stopped and he had now learned to gulp the liquid down without throwing up every time. The smell of gasoline began to permeate the kitchen as soon as she had opened the blue bottle, but that was something both of them got used to as well.

  After Jimmy had taken the medicine he went upstairs, ready to begin his homework as always while Grace began to think what to order for dinner at the online market. She had written list down but couldn’t find it and also searched inside her pockets. She took out a crumpled piece of paper. Realizing that it wasn’t the shopping list, she was about to throw it away but curious to see what was written on it, she unfolded it.

  It was a small blank sheet of paper with the exception of one sentence printed in the middle:

  Did Eve Lie Evoking The Eternal Adorable Lost Love

  She then remembered the incident with the strange man in front of the Neuroscience Institute. It seemed to be senseless jargon and Grace threw it in the waste bin. She began to browse the online market’s offers through her NetView device, but the ominous words of the man at the hospital continued to echo in her mind. The thought that somehow her son was in danger gave her a feeling of uneasiness. She turned off the NetView and opted for a homemade dinner. She began to chop some vegetables but stopped almost immediately. She opened the trashcan and took the wrinkled piece of paper. She left the kitchen and went upstairs to her son’s room.