Full Spectrum 3 - [Anthology]

by Ed By Lou Aronica et. el.

  “Poor Doctor Stone,” Sarge broke in. “Yeah, that’s too damn bad. I wasn’t too keen on having an implant, ya mean? But those poor fuckers in the re-me ward—I never heard of no one that came out of there happy.”

  “No one’s happy until he’s dead,” the Napalm Man slurred out, and he took another sip of whiskey.

  “Hell, I’d be happy if I could just get simplicity,” Sarge said. He winked at the old woman, but she was just sitting still next to him, staring at nothing.

  Or it seemed she was staring at nothing. When One-Eyed Nick looked more closely, he thought she was really staring off intensely, perhaps even looking for the lights. A block away, past the row of dumpsters chained to the humming telephone poles, the alley dead-ended at the edge of the highest hill in the Blue Zone. Below them, somewhere, at the edge of memory, were the Black Zone and all the other more brilliantly illuminated zones of the City. The City itself had no edges; it was a disk of lights that went on and on forever.

  The Napalm Man rolled some whiskey around in his mouth and asked, “Was that where Dr. Stone met Rose? Tell us about the remedial education ward, Nick.”

  One-Eyed Nick sighed and rubbed his left arm where it always hurt, on the inside above the elbow. He said, “The ward was on the top floor of the hospital’s south wing. It was one of the old wards, you know, cracked tiles and long hallways, and the lights were too bright; the lights made your eyes ache so bad you wanted to pull them out of their sockets. Everything smelled like disinfectant and vomit; the air was bad because you couldn’t open any of the windows. Of course most of the rooms didn’t have windows, just a bed with the built-in restraints, a toilet, a sink and TV set. But the doctors’ offices had windows. I used to clean them up —I was running from the law and that was the only job I could get. Anyway, from Dr. Stone’s office window, you could look out across the whole sector. Out across the Sink and Diesel Flats almost to the edge of the Salient. Doctor Stone had good eyes, and he said you could see the trenches thirty miles away. When the war started going bad and the Reds threatened to use their atomic cannon, the trenches couldn’t have been more than nine or ten miles from the, hospital. You could hear the big guns booming like thunder, getting closer every day.

  “And you know, Rose hated the sound of the guns more than anything else. She hated war, everything about it. She’d written antiwar poems— she was a famous poet. That’s why she was in the hospital. The Medical Congress had just created a new category of mental illnesses, and the clinic doctors committed anyone they caught suffering from them. The unnatural desire to be alone, the inability to follow orders—there was an illness named ‘oppositional disorder.’ You know what that was? The psychiatrists’ manual, DSM III, defines it as ‘a pattern of disobedient, negativistic and provocative opposition to authority figures.’ And Rose was very disobedient, sometimes even provocative. She was a member of the Green Party; in fact she was one of the founders of the Greens. She wanted to abolish war, everywhere, in all the zones of the City, for all time. Crazy, huh? And that was the diagnosis, that she was suffering from an illness the doctors call ‘Desire for Utopia.’

  “When Dr. Stone first met her, in her little room up in the south wing, she still talked of ending the war all the time. She liked to bandy about arguments for weapons abolition, animal rights, and direct democracy. She liked to talk too much. She told Dr. Stone things he didn’t know. Years ago, the Yellows used their atomic weapons against the Greens. During the eighty-ninth phase. They destroyed the entire zone. Nothing was left, nothing but rubble and mounds of people that looked like burned lamb chops. And the stupid Yellows, they thought they’d won, but they’d forgotten that they were downwind of the Greens. The dust clouds blew back over them, and they all died vomiting up their stomach linings and their hair falling out from radiation sickness—that’s what she said.

  “She had guts, you know, she talked about whatever she wanted to— that was one of the things Dr. Stone fell in love with. And she was a beautiful woman, beautiful black eyes and a beautiful smile. How many ways are there to fall in love? He fell in love passionately, romantically, blindingly. To tell the truth, he fell in love wantonly and unrealistically, too. He first saw her sitting on the edge of her hospital bed, waiting for him to make his rounds, and she was kicking her long, naked legs like she was a nervous little girl. But she had a naturalness, you know, a free and innocent quality. She didn’t care that the back of her hospital gown was open halfway down her back, because she always liked her body, even if she was a little too full in the breasts and hips. She liked just about everything, Rose; I think she must have been in love with the world. In fact, even though she was in deep trouble, you know, all shut inside a little beige room that smelled of starched sheets and chemicals, she seemed quite happy. I think it was this irresponsible happiness of hers that immediately won Dr. Stone’s heart.

  “After Dr. Stone had introduced himself and started to make the typical inane bedside talk, Rose immediately took control of the conversation, something a patient should never be allowed to do. “Do you believe in God, Doctor?”—this was practically the first thing Rose said to him. She was scared, maybe even terrified, it didn’t take a psychiatrist to see that, but she managed to speak calmly, that was the way she was: the worse things got, the calmer she’d get. It was almost unreal, this calmness of hers. “Do I believe in God?” Dr. Stone wondered aloud. “What God?” He couldn’t understand why she would ask him if he believed in God; what did God have to do with what went on in the remedial education ward of the Zone Hospital? “What are you going to do, Doctor?” she asked as she kicked her legs and looked at him with her sad, beautiful eyes. “Oh, God!” she whispered, “God forgive you!” Dr. Stone went over to her and touched her shoulder; he surprised himself because he had never allowed himself to touch a patient before. “Don’t be afraid,” he said to her, “we’re not here to hurt you.” Now this was a terrible lie, because of course they both knew that if he followed the usual procedures he was going to have to hurt her, maybe not her nice body—he wasn’t a torturer, after all—but her mind, that was a different thing, and when he was through mutilating her memories, she would be full of hurt, that is if she remembered anything at all. Did he believe in God? Who could know what Dr. Stone believed?—he was the most complicated man I’ve ever known.”

  One-Eyed Nick paused and sighed as he rubbed his arm. He stared out above the street at the opposite end of the alley where the power lines hissed and buzzed from the moisture in the air. It wasn’t raining now, but there must have been showers or some kind of storm earlier that evening; a flickering neon sign above a hairdressing shop cast muted pinks and blues over the wet asphalt. God, it was pretty, the drowned colors swimming in the rain; you could never tell when you were going to come across a piece of prettiness in this dirty, ugly world.

  The Napalm Man swigged some whiskey and offered the bottle to the old woman sitting next to him. But she was staring at something and apparently didn’t see his outstretched hand. He licked his lips, gathered in the folds of his trenchcoat and took another gulp. He said, “Not too many people know what happened to God, do they? People are robots; how can robots know about God?”

  Sarge looked at him and asked, “Who wants to believe in a goddamn God anymore? Nah, there’s no God, but if there was, he’d give me simplicity, ya mean? Just simplicity and I’d be happy.”

  “No one’s happy until he’s dead,” the Napalm Man said. Then he coughed, looked at One-Eyed Nick, and forced out, “Dr. Stone wasn’t a robot, though, was he?”

  One-Eyed Nick stared through the mist steaming up off the alley like clumps of damp, gray gauze. For a long time he tried to remember what Dr. Stone was like. Finally, he said, “No, Dr. Stone was not a robot. He was a secret rebel; you know, an outsider. He’d waited all his life for a good enough reason to spit in the eye of authority and break the rules. In one way, Rose was his salvation. In another, of course… well, he fell in love with her, but it’s m
ore than that, he dared to fall in love with her, do you see the difference? He knew what he was doing, or thought he did. He came up with a plan to save her. True, it was a desperate plan, but he was desperately in love, and desperate men do desperate things. He had to get her out of the hospital. He couldn’t just lose her file or falsify her records, not in the remedial education ward. No, she would have to be properly discharged. But the thing was, she’d have to be treated first; if she wasn’t treated, she’d be there forever. No, that’s not quite true. Dr. Stone could have certified her sane, and avoided the treatment. But she’d done crimes—I’ll tell you about this in a minute—and sane criminals were bused to the incinerators at the edge of the Diesal Flats, and they never came back.

  “So Dr. Stone began visiting Rose in her ugly little room. Every day, sometimes twice per day, occasionally even at night. He’d had about fifty patients so far on the re-me ward, and they’d all been criminally insane. But he used the same techniques with Rose; there were no machines and very few drugs. A pen, a notebook and a tape recorder—these were all the instruments he needed, at least at first. He had to record her memories, you know. His method was largely psychoanalytic and associational: What were her parents names? What did she think it meant that her favorite color was green? Did she remember the day her father’s plane was shot down and her mother took her to live in the housing project at Cabrini Green? And so on; there was no end to Dr. Stone’s questions. He was trying to make a map of her mind. Of her memories. Herself, her very self, do you see?

  “Of course, Rose didn’t want to talk much, not about the really personal things. She had a strong will—why should she help the doctors do something evil? She’d spent her life trying to fight what she thought was evil, so why should she strip her soul bare just for him to see? No, she wouldn’t answer his questions, but she did ask him questions: Had he lost anyone he’d loved in the war? How could such a kind-looking man condone holding people in a hospital against their will? And one day, she rubbed her long hands together nervously and asked him, “What happened to your other patients, Doctor? Did you just erase their memories like dumping information from a computer? What were they like… afterwards?” And he took her hands in his and said, “You don’t understand, they were sociopaths, really nuts—after the deconstruction, we had to create memories, certain events and emotions they’d never experienced. To heal them, Rose.” And she jerked her hands away from his and began rubbing her temples. “Am I nuts, too?” she asked. “Is that what you think you’re going to do, to heal me?” He tried to smile, and he wanted to tell her that he loved her, but how could she ever believe that? So he said, “Please trust me, everything will be preserved, I promise.” She touched his fingers, then, touched his ring finger where there should have been a gold band but wasn’t because he’d always been too busy to think about getting married. She said, “You’ve got such gentle eyes, I’d like to trust… but, oh, God, how can I?” She stroked his hand, flirting with him a little, even though she despised women who did that sort of thing. The thing was, she was fighting for her life. She was fighting to hide the light, you know, the secret light everyone holds deep inside. She was afraid that Dr. Stone, if he ever saw it, would snuff it out like a candle in a rainstorm.

  “But he had to get at her memories, so he considered using the drugs. Rose must have known that he would eventually have to use drugs; she’d probably heard horror stories from the nurses about drugs that wreck your memory. There was one drug, a cross between one of the benzodiazepine derivatives and several psychotomimetics—it was called DZ-1128. It would have cracked her skull open and made her babble like a child. But Dr. Stone couldn’t bring himself to have her injected, so he tried other, milder drugs, mainly caffeine and sugar. And conversation—she was addicted to conversation. One evening during the news, just after the Zone Science Marshal had reported new outbreaks of anthrax down in the Diesal Flats, he brought a box of jelly doughnuts into her room—Rose had a terrible sweet tooth, you know. He asked her if she hated the Reds for bombing Fifth Ward, for killing her husband and her infant son. And there she sat, eating her doughnut, licking grape jelly and powder off her lips, and drinking cup after cup of rich Purple Zone coffee. He didn’t expect an answer. But she surprised him, saying, “It’s funny, Dr. Stone, but I can remember when Johnny was born, everything about it in great detail. I’d always wanted a natural birth, and so did Bill; he hated the idea of me being drugged up and restrained, with monitors attached everywhere, but he always said it wasn’t him being split open like a butchered hog, so if the pain got too bad and I wanted to ask for a spinal or something, that was fine with him. And it hurt like hell, all the panting and the midwife having me push when I wasn’t ready, but the pain really was manageable. And afterwards they put little Johnny on my stomach, I can still see him lying there all bloody, looking up at me with his unfocused, blue eyes. I can remember the snip of Bill cutting the cord, and here’s what’s funny, I was in the bedroom cutting out a pattern for Bill’s new uniform when our block was bombed. Bill was giving Johnny a piggyback ride in the living room, and I was snipping out a piece of cardboard, and to this day, Doctor, I can’t think about Johnny being born without thinking about… It’s just very funny the way one memory is associated with another, everything woven together like a shimmering tapestry —that’s an image I’ve always liked—everything holding meaning next to meaning. My God, I can’t let myself hate the Reds, or anyone else; if I did, I’d spoil it all, don’t you see?”

  “After that he and Rose talked long into the night. She talked about love and war and how lonely she’d been all those years before they brought her to the hospital; she told him almost everything. In the end, just before dawn, she told him about her secret poem, the one that had changed her life.”

  One-Eyed Nick fell silent as he looked at the old woman leaning up against the Napalm Man. She held her hands out to warm them in the light of the fire, then she massaged the long bones on the back of her hand. She smiled at One-Eyed Nick; it was the first time that night he remembered seeing her smile.

  “How could a dumb poem change anyone’s life?” Sarge wanted to know.

  “It was a short poem,” One-Eyed Nick said, staring off into mist. “A couple of stanzas, a poem of Shelley’s. Let me see if I remember it.” He placed the flat of his hand over his eye patch and recited:

  Music, when soft voices die,

  Vibrates in the memory;

  Odours, when sweet violets sicken,

  Live within the sense they quicken.

  Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

  Are heaped for the beloved’s bed;

  And so thy thoughts when thou art gone,

  Love itself shall slumber on.

  The old woman’s eyes were suddenly shiny with tears. The Napalm Man patted her on the back. He looked like he wanted to cry himself. “A sentimental poem, isn’t it?” he said at last.

  One-Eyed Nick nodded his head slowly. “You have to remember that Rose was a girl when she first read the poem. Probably eleven or twelve years old—that’s a sentimental age. She still looked at the world as if she were its center, just like any kid. So the poem instantly caught her attention, not just because of the sentiment, but because it was about a dying rose. The thing is, that particular name coupled with death made her think deeply. And Dr. Stone asked Rose if that was the first time she’d thought about dying, and she just looked at him with her tired, beautiful eyes and said, “Oh, no, of course not—I suppose I was a morbid little girl, especially when things were going well, and I thought about death all the time. But never myself, you know, I never saw myself, what I might become. But the poem, the flowers—it’s still so vivid. I’d checked out a book of Shelley’s poems from the sector library and taken it down to Memorial Park. It was a perfect fall day. The trees were afire with light and color, and the air itself burned with the smell of dying flowers. I sat in the rose garden all afternoon with my book, reading. Dusk came, and all around
me, the violet sky dying into night, the stillness, the grass drenched with rose petals, myself—everything was suddenly very real. There was a terrible beauty, a sense of joy mingled with overwhelming poignancy. And I never wanted to lose it, never, never. How can I make you see it, Doctor? It’s all so delicate, isn’t it? So urgent and quick.”

  “For Rose, it was really the beginning of everything, this vision, you know, this ever-near appreciation of death and life. Of course, she’d seen the napalmed bodies being pulled from the buildings—who hasn’t? And several of her schoolmates had died of anthrax and pneumonic AIDS, but when you’re a kid, you never quite believe it can happen to you. And so the poem: Rose recited it until she knew it by heart. Although she was very young, she began to think with the mind of an adult. If death was inevitable, she wondered, how can life have meaning? If life is nothing but struggle and war, how can there be help for pain? When the rose is dead, what’s left of beauty? There in the park, you know, looking at the pretty flowers all around her, she began to formulate her philosophy of life: It’s true, there’s no help for pain, but man made war, and man could abolish it. Or I should say, woman could get rid of war, she really didn’t have much faith in men. And, yes, death came to everyone, but she thought that everyone—everything—could have a kind of immortality. Nothing has to be lost; this became her faith. She would try to remember everything she saw in life. And someday she’d recapture it with words, the soul of the world. The whole, goddamned world.