Big Egos

by S. G. Browne

  His existence here, in this universe, to quote my dear friend Mr. Spock, is illogical. It would make more sense if this was a planet of parody characters or a galaxy of superspies, but it’s apparent he doesn’t belong here. And while the Prime Directive dictates that there can be no interference in the natural course of a society, even if well-intentioned, I have an obligation to remove him before he gets into trouble.

  “Mr. Powers,” I say. “May I have a word?”

  When he turns to look at me, Barbarella slides past him and walks out of the room, giving me a meaningful glance on her way out.

  There’s something about me that women can’t deny. I call it the Kirk Phenomenon. Maybe it’s because I once made a gun out of bamboo that shot diamonds.

  Let’s see Picard top that.

  “Where are you going, baby?” Austin Powers follows Barbarella to the doorway, then he turns to me and smiles. “She was very shagadelic, wouldn’t you agree?”

  I look at him for any signs of a nervous tic or a twitchy eye. Burst blood vessels or dilated pupils. Those are the first symptoms. If you catch it early enough, then you still might have a chance, but brain damage caused by prolonged use of black market Egos isn’t reversible.

  I just hope I’ve caught it in time.

  “Hey, what’s your bag?” he says to me. “I like your look, man.”

  “Come on.” I take him by the arm and lead him out of the bedroom and down the stairs. “We’re getting out of here.”

  “But why? I’m having a smashing time.”

  “Because it isn’t safe.”

  He stops when we reach the bottom of the stairs and looks around. “Is Dr. Evil here?”

  “No. Dr. Evil is not here.”

  “Random Task?”

  “No.”

  “Goldmember? Fat Bastard? Mini-Me?”

  “No.” I continue with him toward the front door. “None of them are here.”

  “Then why are we leaving, man? Let’s stay and have some shits and giggles.”

  I stop and look around, checking out the other inhabitants of this planet, wondering if any of them are watching us with hostile intent. Other than Fox Mulder, who is studying everyone with an emotionless expression, I don’t see anyone who looks like they mean us any harm. Still, I can’t take that chance.

  “Are you okay, man?” asks Austin.

  I turn to look at him and notice that his left eye is twitching. I smile and act like nothing’s wrong.

  “I’m sound as a pound, my friend,” I say, putting an arm around him and leading him out of the house. “Now let’s go have some of those shits and giggles you were talking about.”

  He gives me a big smile and says, “Groovy, baby.”

  CHAPTER 32

  I wake up to the sound of bees sending me a message in Morse code.

  Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . . Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . . Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . .

  Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like they’re sending the same letter over and over. Since I don’t speak bee, I can’t tell for sure. For all I know bees only have one letter in their alphabet and it has different meanings, kind of like Aloha.

  Maybe they’re Hawaiian bees.

  I open my eyes hoping to find myself on a white sand beach beneath a palm tree with the Pacific Ocean lapping at the shore. Instead I’m on my hardwood floor beneath a ceiling fan with a headache thumping at my temple.

  The insistent bees are still trying to get their message across. When I look over I see my cell phone on the floor and realize it’s on vibrate. Someone’s calling me.

  I’m not really up to talking right now. My lips are dry and my tongue is sticking to the roof of my mouth. It feels like someone opened a glue factory in my gums.

  The phone stops vibrating, so at least I don’t have to deal with that decision. Right now all I have the energy to focus on are my basic bodily needs, like hydration and urination, maybe something to get rid of this headache. So I get to my feet and walk into the kitchen and fill up a glass with cold water.

  My phone starts vibrating again, the bees sending out their indecipherable message. Whoever it is must really want to talk to me, so I grab the phone without looking and answer it on speaker.

  “Yeah?”

  “Where are they?” says Nat’s voice.

  “Where are what?”

  “You know damn well what.”

  I take a long drink of water, washing away the glue factory, and try to make some sense of Nat’s question. With my pounding headache and Ego withdrawals, I don’t have any idea what he’s talking about.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.

  “Don’t play games with me, bro. What did you do with them?”

  “What did I do with what?”

  “My Egos,” he says. “You took them.”

  “When did I take your Egos?”

  “Last night. This morning. It doesn’t matter. I know it was you. Just give them back.”

  For a moment I think Nat is imagining things, and then it comes back to me in flashes and snippets.

  Last night, after I found Nat and his Austin Powers alter ego, I took him out, got him drunk, drove him home, and tucked the passed-out secret agent into his bed. Then I searched his apartment until I found his stash of black market Egos.

  In addition to The Austin Powers, he has knockoff versions of The Captain Kirk, The James Dean, The Al Pacino, The Dirty Harry, The Sundance Kid, The Han Solo, The Jim Morrison, and The Ryan Reynolds.

  Even at their discounted prices, his collection of Egos had to set him back at least four or five thousand dollars. Not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, but I know Nat doesn’t have that kind of money to burn.

  “I want them back,” he says. “And I want them back now.”

  Delilah walks into the kitchen in her underwear and one of my T-shirts. She doesn’t say anything but just stands there and stares at me like she’s mad about something.

  She needs to take a number and get in line.

  I pick up my phone and turn off the speaker. “I know you want them back,” I say to Nat, “but I’m keeping them.”

  “You can’t do that. They’re not yours!   ”

  I hold the phone away from my ear but I can still hear him screaming.

  “They’re mine! You don’t have any right to take them from me!”

  “Who are you talking to?” says Delilah.

  I signal her with an index finger to hold off for a moment, then I walk into the living room to continue my conversation.

  “It’s for your own good,” I say to Nat.

  “No. It’s for your own good,” he says. “You have all those stock options that are worth more money if people buy your Egos instead of getting them on the street.”

  “That’s not true,” I say.

  “Then what is true?”

  I can’t explain my additional concerns about Nat’s safety without implicating myself in the deaths of at least two dozen people, but I have to try to find some way to convince him.

  “It’s not safe for you to use them,” I say. “They’re dangerous.”

  “What’s dangerous is me coming over to kick your ass if you don’t give me back my property.”

  While he sounds convincing on the phone, I’m not worried about Nat carrying through with his threat. He’s all bluster.

  “Nat, listen . . .”

  “No. You listen. You either give me back my Egos or else you can consider this the end of our friendship.”

  “You don’t understand . . .”

  “You don’t understand. I mean it. Make your choice. Me or my Egos.”

  I don’t want to lose Nat. He’s the one person who has always been on my side, the only constant in my life that’s been real. But in order to keep him that way, I can’t give him what he wants.

  “I’m sorry, Nat.”

  He hangs up. I consider calling him back but decide it would be pointless and instead I toss the phone aside, sit down on t
he couch, close my eyes, and run my hands through my hair. When I open my eyes, Delilah is standing in the dining room with her arms folded, staring at me, still looking pissed off.

  “So what did you do last night?” she asks.

  “I can’t tell you,” I say.

  Delilah nods and gives me a tight-lipped stare, then turns and walks back into the bedroom.

  CHAPTER 33

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not at liberty to discuss that information with you,” says David Cook, the executive vice president at EGOS.

  I wanted to talk to the president or the CEO, but they wouldn’t see me, so here I am, two days before Thanksgiving, sitting in a chair across the desk from the EVP.

  “What do you mean you’re not at liberty?” I say. “This is my team we’re talking about. I think I have a right to know what happened to them.”

  I can still see Angela. Not the way she was for the five years we worked together, the way she kidded and giggled and shared her tales of horrible dates, but the way she was at the end, curled up beneath her desk, her eyes wide and filled with fear.

  Who am I?

  Who are you?

  “I’m sorry,” says David. “But these are personal matters pertaining to the individuals involved, and company protocol doesn’t allow me to discuss them with you or with anyone else who is not an immediate family member.”

  “Not even if the information might be relevant to the safety of the other members of my team?”

  While Chloe’s possible use of illegal Egos is up for debate, I know Angela never shopped on the black market. So it seems reasonable that what happened to her could happen to the rest of us. Or to anyone else who has been using Egos for more than three years.

  David Cook flashes me a practiced smile that looks exactly like the one I got from Bill Summers. They must buy their smiles at the same store.

  “There’s nothing to be concerned about,” he says. “You can rest assured there’s no danger to the other members of your team.”

  While Emily, Vincent, Kurt, and Neil all seem perfectly fine, I can’t help but think about the anomaly that Angela found in regular consumers of certain fictional Egos.

  “So you’re saying Big Egos didn’t play a role in the fact that both of them had mental breakdowns?”

  “Big Egos are perfectly safe when used properly,” he says, regurgitating the company line. “Whatever happened to Angela Bennett and Chloe Lee, while unfortunate and tragic, was most likely due to external mitigating factors, such as recreational drug use, preexisting medical conditions, or the use of black market Egos.”

  I stare at the executive vice president of EGOS, sitting there at his desk in his Armani suit with his manicured hands and his perfect hair, acting like he has a reporter’s microphone shoved in his face, and I wonder what he knows that he’s not telling me.

  “Can you tell me if this is happening in other departments?” I say. “Have there been other cases? Or is this just happening in Investigations?”

  Any information coming out of the other departments is being filtered through corporate and no one’s talking for fear of losing their jobs along with their stock options, which is all part of the nondisclosure agreement we all had to sign in order to work here.

  I had no idea how much freedom I was giving up when I signed that damned thing.

  “It’s my understanding that the episodes with your team members are isolated cases,” he says. “That’s all I can tell you. If you want additional information, I’d suggest talking to HR.”

  “I’ve already been to HR,” I say. “They told me to talk to R&D, who told me to talk to Operations, who told me to talk to HR.”

  I’ve gone around in so many circles I’m beginning to feel like I’m chasing my own tail.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “But I’ve told you everything I can. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  And then I’m shown the door.

  I stand out in the waiting room, trying to think about what I should do next. Even if I could get a meeting with the CEO or the president or anyone with a corporate title, I’d just be wasting my time. All they’d give me is the same old song and dance. And anyone in any of the other departments who might be able to give me a straight answer isn’t going to talk straight. Instead they’re just going to send me around in more circles.

  Someone’s keeping the truth from me. From all of us. I need to find someone who’s willing to talk. Someone who knows what’s going on. The problem is, other than the remaining members of my team, I don’t know who I can trust.

  CHAPTER 34

  “Are you spying on me?” I say.

  Delilah’s reflection regards me with an expression that’s part indifference and part irritation. It’s one of her trademark looks and one she’s been giving me more and more lately, with an emphasis on the irritation.

  “Why in the world would I be spying on you?” she says.

  I watch Delilah in the bathroom mirror, applying a coat of lipstick, and I wonder if she’s telling me the truth or if she’s just putting on an act. I’m beginning to think she’s always performing and that the person I think is Delilah is another act. A role she’s playing just for me.

  Before I met Delilah in my last year of college, she hung out with friends who got her into Irish dancing. Before that she dated a Beat poet and that became her passion. Before that she got involved with a crowd that was into poly-paganism.

  She’s like a chameleon, taking on the identity of her peers, adopting their likes and passions in order to blend in and belong. The perfect type of person to be a spy.

  Or maybe I’m just paranoid.

  “You haven’t denied it,” I say, talking to her reflection.

  We have entire conversations like this. Delilah at the sink, flossing her teeth or applying makeup or plucking her eyebrows and me off camera somewhere—on the toilet seat, toweling after a shower, watching her from the doorway. Our eyes only meet in the reflection of the bathroom mirror. She never turns to look at me.

  “I haven’t denied it because it’s ridiculous,” she says.

  She seems annoyed about something, what I don’t know. But that’s twice she hasn’t denied that she’s a spy. If she doesn’t deny it a third time, I’ll know it’s true.

  Somewhere that logic makes perfect sense.

  I think Schopenhauer said that every truth passes through three stages before it’s recognized. In the first it’s ridiculed. In the second it’s opposed. And in the third it’s regarded as self-evident.

  Which means Delilah’s guilt by nondenial is almost self-evident.

  Part of me realizes there’s something flawed in my thinking and that relying on a nineteenth-century German philosopher to guide my thought process is a little suspect. Maybe it wasn’t even Schopenhauer who said it. And even if it was, what the hell does he know?

  Still, there’s something about threes I can’t seem to let go of. Maybe it’s that good things come in threes. Or the third time’s the charm. Or three on a match is bad luck.

  “Why are you counting on your fingers?” asks Delilah, her tone matching her irritated expression.

  I look down and notice I have three fingers held up. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is why you won’t answer the question.”

  “Which was . . . ?” Delilah raises one plucked eyebrow in the mirror.

  Which was? Which was? What was the question?

  I have a moment of panic when I realize I have no idea what we were talking about. Then I look down and see I’m still holding up three fingers. With an effort, I try to figure out why, which takes me back to Schopenhauer and then to Germany, which makes me think of Nazis and Indiana Jones. And then it comes back to me.

  “Are you spying on me?”

  Delilah finally turns around to look at me. “Is there a reason I should be spying on you?”

  I think back to Schopenhauer, to what this means, since Delilah didn’t deny the truth a third time. Does that mean she’s not spyin
g on me? Or is she just trying to confuse me?

  “I don’t know what is wrong with you but I don’t have time to play around.” She turns back to the mirror. “I have to finish getting ready. Are you going to get dressed?”

  I look in the mirror at my reflection, which is wearing a T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts with little shamrocks all over them. Delilah gave them to me last St. Patrick’s Day, called me her little good luck charm. Which gets me to thinking about Elvis and Deborah Harry and deep-fried Twinkies and I realize I’ve forgotten what we were talking about.

  “Dressed for what?” I ask.

  “We’re going to an Ego dinner party in Santa Monica for Thanksgiving,” she says. “You promised we could go.”

  I vaguely remember making a promise about a Thanksgiving dinner, but it feels like a memory that belongs to someone else.

  “Who are you going as?” I ask.

  “Jackie Kennedy Onassis,” she says, exasperated. “We went over this already.”

  That means I’m probably going as JFK, so I’m thinking I should probably put on something more appropriate.

  I turn around to get dressed, trying to get a grasp on my train of thought, when I notice a bouquet of red roses sitting in a vase on the table near the bedroom window.

  “Where did those come from?” I ask.

  “Where did what come from?”

  “The roses.”

  There’s a long pause before she answers. “I got them for my birthday.”

  Delilah’s birthday is November 20. That was this past Saturday. I don’t remember getting her roses for her birthday. I don’t even remember celebrating her birthday. Which I realize might be a problem.

  “Did I give them to you?” I ask.

  She lets out a single, humorless “Ha!”

  I’m afraid to ask, but at this point I’m too lost to do anything else. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I bought them for myself,” she says.

  Uh-oh. This can’t be good. “Why did you buy them for yourself?”

  Delilah marches over and shoves me once, hard, in the chest. “Because you forgot my birthday, you fucking asshole!”

  That would explain why she’s been so irritated with me.