Planet Fever (20 page)

But it wasn’t the first time I had “come to” completely confused, so I went with it.

He crunched on the ice cube and continued: “So the good Doctor Götzefalsch—brilliant mind, by the way—posited
Fractalyn
: a teensy-weensy robot-drug that goes through a person’s neuro-chemical network and wetware and maps it out in detail, then creates an exact and thorough multi-dimensional print of the genetic makeup of that person. From there we can create unique, personalized algorithms for how best to pacify that person … like a custom ‘mellow out program-code’ for any potential menace. Thus, any enemy combatants are rendered neutralized
en toto
and before ever becoming an enemy combatant. Simply put: we can read their blueprint, see that they are going to become bad guys and nip their ‘badness’ in the bud.”

I took a drink and a bit of the water seeped down the wrong pipe. I choked and coughed a bit. “Ahem…. Excuse me…. With all due respect—why are you telling me this?”

“Because you wanted to know.” He bit down on another cube.

“You’re telling me that I walked in here and demanded you tell me about experimental drug robots that turn people into programmed zombies and you just gave me the lowdown, just like that?”

“Yup. We made a bet, remember? You bet me that you would remember everything, and that you wouldn’t be affected—’hypnotized’ in your words—by the drug. You bragged about your ‘world class ability as a pro psychonaut to handle any substance.’ Hah. Do you consider yourself to be a programmed zombie at this moment in time?”

“No, I am a free-thinking individual who happens to be fighting you bastards.” I smiled, still not entirely sure he was one of the bastards, but at that moment in the timeline, I had more trust for the voice of Ronald Reagan than this guy.

The Colonel almost choked on his ice cube then smiled. “Son, you’re a pioneer, albeit a confused one. You are one of the
original volunteers
for this program.”

The static-like frequency buzzed into my ears and a quick flash of memory jolted me: an ad in the newspaper: “A-to-Z Research and Clinical Trials needs volunteers: Easy Buck$$$——Why Not?”

“You were a solid candidate: not a radical, but had a healthy distrust for authority…. A penchant for mildly subversive writing, a wild imagination, and you were flat-on-your-ass broke. You went for it. As the nano-drug insinuated in and mapped out your system, it found latent ‘intents’ of potential hostilities to the established status-quo, as well as early-on desires to become an astronaut, and that’s where the ‘Alternative Reality’ programs kicked in, and redirected you, or your waking-ego-consciousness, however you want to call the person named ‘Edward Bikaver’—to subvert a fictitious intergalactic cabal. The drug is working perfectly. You really are spaced out, man.”

“But I
am
hostile toward your plans. Everything you just told me about this frickin’ weird drug weapon is
wrong
and it’s something I would never endorse. As a matter of fact, I’m vowing at this moment to take a stand and oppose you assholes and all you represent.” Righteous indignation revved through me like a stock car. I’d never taken a stand like this before and it felt good. Vigor and adrenaline pumped through my veins and a clear purpose manifested: I had a visible enemy and a cause and it revitalized me.

The Colonel sighed and shook his glass, looking for any straggler ice cubes. “Again? Okay. Look, Eddie, baby—we’re on the same team. You’re hostile toward the….” He opened a manila envelope on his desk and pulled out of it a spiral notebook. He opened it and scanned through a few pages. “…Yes, the ‘New (and Improved) Interstellar Syndicate’—a cadre of space-alien finance oligarchs bent on controlling all stock shares of the known universe.” He slapped the notebook shut. “Pal, that’s the drug redirecting you to believe you’re doing something worthy, patriotic, and good, when in fact you are wrangling windmills. You see, project
Don Quixote
does that: it’ll steer potential rabble-rousers into a theatre of combat, which is totally fabricated. These ‘enemies’ are phantoms—they don’t exist outside the mind. Nobody gets hurt because it’s like a video game, but the
spirit
of the fight is still there.
That
is how to neutralize an enemy combatant: get them to continually
feel
he or she is ‘fighting the good fight,’ but is not actually causing any trouble. This way they won’t build any resentment toward us, their real nemesis, and they will be preoccupied fighting a non-existent battle. Imagine if the Visigoths, the Huns, the Vandals, all those menaces were busy battling ghosts inside their minds. We would all be speaking Latin right now…. With this defensive system, we won’t have the played-out traditional and generational blood feuds where people fight just because their great-grandpappies fought, etcetera. We’re taking the reality out of the enemy and allowing them to get their rocks off fighting virtual enemies…. Football and Soccer and video games and all those forms of bread and circuses throughout history were
Fractalyn
’s bush-league predecessors; this drug is much more effective and profitable. C’mon man, we’ve been through this baloney before. We’ve tried to get you de-progged, but the damn drug worked so well and you’re such a G-D’d hard-head that you still buy into all of it, and you’ll insist right now that this exchange is part of a PSYOP meant to distort and confuse you and that I am the enemy not to be trusted.”

“BULLSHIT,”
I choked out.

The Colonel took a deep, bored breath, checked his watch and from behind the tint of his sunglasses I suspected he was rolling his eyes, as though he had been through this scenario a thousand times before and it had gotten stale nine-hundred-ninety-eight times ago.

To break what was to him the agonizing banality of the situation, he brandished a Swiss-army knife from his desk drawer and pulled out the tiny plastic toothpick from it.

“Okay. Have you ever
actually
engaged, seen or perceived any member of this ‘cabal’, and if so
known
with 100% certainty that they were a
confirmed
enemy?” He flicked something from his teeth. “No? Right. Because they don’t exist. Now enlighten me thus: if they
did
exist, why would this vast, well-organized, well-trained, intricate contingent of nefarious racketeers dedicate colossal amounts of time, personnel, technology and resources to keep one dead-broke hack named Eddie Bikaver on the ropes? That’s running an ongoing ‘reality’ production around one person without ever letting slip that it’s fabricated. Have you ever thought about the improbability of that? The amount of energy, coordination and manpower that would muster? What sounds more plausible: an army of actors playing a fake reality around you at all times or that you’ve been having adverse reactions with an experimental drug that alters your perception of reality, so much so that you regard the unreal, or
irreal
as real?”

I had no answer to the Colonel’s question.

His breakdown of the situation deflated the dash and vigor in me like a pin to a balloon. He rendered the notion of himself as the enemy and me fighting a vast conspiracy as a fanciful, absurd hallucination.

I was trapped.

He had framed the trap so I could either be considered insane or deluded by drugs. The fight had abandoned me, and a depressed fatigue moved over me like steel air. I wanted to go home and return to the simple life of crappy writing, drinking, and general rigmarole.

I just wanted to be with Mona.

From somewhere inside, that manic voice of Ronald Reagan I heard earlier urged me to hold on—but that voice soon vanished as though emanating from a cheap AM radio inside a truck that was driving off into the horizon.

The Colonel put the toothpick back into the pocketknife and returned the item to his desk.

I took another sip of my water and stared into the glass. “All right. What do I do?”

The Colonel took out some papers from the folder that had been on the desk and began filling out some paperwork. “Eddie, we need you to sign some further agreements and contracts reaffirming that you have knowingly taken part in this experiment, that you are aware you are having adverse effects to the drug because you lied when you told us you had never suffered concussions prior to this….” he looked up at me and raised his eyebrows, “…when you had in fact suffered multiple concussions throughout your life….” he resumed writing, “…and are allowing us to continue monitoring and treating you until you are deemed fit. Any and all notes or forms of writing you make are our property, and you agree to give us charge of any template personalities that manifested and continue to manifest while under our supervision. Plus other standard legal B.S., so we can pay you and continue your progress since you are still, well—involved. For your protection and ours.”

“My soul.”

“Naw, you can keep that.” He paused, looked up and asked either “What
is
today?” or “Where is Atoz Al Ways?” I couldn’t tell which. I passed the latter off as nonsense on my part, so assumed he had asked what day it was.

I was about to answer, but I realized
I didn’t know.
Not the day, month nor year. “I don’t know….”

He shrugged at my answer, then continued jotting stuff down. “Oh yeah, by the way–what is the status of
your
book? Where are
you
at?”

The walls in the office began to reverberate and my heart thumped fear. My throat dried up, my field of vision expanded and contracted and I had no frame of reference as to what time and space were—as though I were
outside
time and space and my body was a shell that I knew was there but didn’t feel part of. The entire office, now a series of layered geometric-fractals of shape-shifting colors and depth patterns, I intuited as being a ship or vehicle which resided in a dimension far beyond comprehension.

Is this a panic attack?

“
No, you rube. The jackass has inadvertently said the code-question,”
the Voice of Ronald Reagan re-asserted itself from the recesses of my mind.

The Colonel ceased writing and looked up at me. Above his sunglasses, smack-dab in the middle of his forehead manifested a glaring, impersonal blinking eye, searing into my mind.

I sat in frozen shock, a shit-eating grin plastered on my face.

Have I seen the eye of the enemy? Looks like it….

Time had suspended, or we had transferred into a different type of time-scenario, like in a dream. I tried to swallow but couldn’t … I could do nothing but listen to the beating of my own heart.

The Colonel spoke: “It’s okay…. Well, it’s not okay, but it’s
okay
….”

????

The room morphed back into the office as the Colonel’s third eye blinked and disappeared. He had perceived me perceiving him and his third eye and this new development changed his plans for me.

I was a caged mouse.

The sneaking suspicion hovered over me that I wasn’t going anywhere for a long time.

The Colonel filed the papers back into the folder and closed it. “Have you been withholding more things from us, Bikaver? Because if you have you could be causing yourself a lot of problems, and be held liable for non-disclosure punishment. We could put a lien on you.”

“Withholding—what?”

“Well, have you perceived things that you haven’t entered into any of your journals?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Like what?”
Like that third eye?
I thought, certain he was monitoring my mind.

He was, because as I thought it, he flinched a bit.

I had one card up my sleeve:
he
couldn’t verbalize what
I
was thinking, or else all my “delusions” would’ve been justified as real. If he had asked blatantly “have you seen a third eye on my forehead?” I would’ve known the jig was up. No, he had to try to coax me to tell him what was going on, which would have made me look obviously insane.

I’m not signing jack-shit for you, buddy. I’m not going to tell you that I know you’re reading my mind. And I definitely am not going to vocally tell you I’ve seen your third eye.

“Like what? You tell me,” he said.

“Would you mind doing me a favor?” I asked.

“Perhaps. What would that be?”

“Call yourself a motherfucker. And pay me. I think I won the bet.” I smiled.

So he called in a couple of orderlies and they punched a needle into my arm and injected me with a high dose of something that knocked me senseless.