Anger Management
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Anger Management
Book Three of Adrenaline Rush
Lawrence M. Schoen
Brian Thorne
Copyright © 2020 by Lawrence M. Schoen
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
Cover art by Ryan Schwarz.
Book design by Lawrence M. Schoen.
Lawrence M. Schoen's Author photo by Nathan Lilly.
Brian Thorne's Author photo by Shenoa Herlinger.
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-951391-16-4
Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-951391-17-1
Version 200405
This book is dedicated to all the scientists, doctors, nurses, and first responders putting themselves in harm's way to protect us all during this current pandemic that threatens to engulf the world.
Nobody deserves more recognition at this moment than they do.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Acknowledgments
About Brian Thorne
About Lawrence M. Schoen
Also by Lawrence M. Schoen
Chapter 1
“I want you to change me into a clone of Tycho!”
Coop nearly dropped his cup, spewing coffee in a stunned spit take that would have done any golden age comedian proud. He lurched upright on the upholstered blue and grey chair that had been cradling him so comfortably. After a long life working in Hollywood he imagined he'd seen or heard every crazy idea that studio heads, wide-eyes mystics, or born-again post-modern newer-agers had ever come up with. But Dr. Acorns's statement proved him wrong.
“That doesn't make any sense. First, even I know that cloning people still isn't possible, and second, even if it were possible — which it's not — Tycho's been in a coma for, I don't know, forever? Seriously, Jess, you're the one who told me she's brain dead!”
He’d had his feet propped up on a nearby end table. They plummeted to the floor as he swept his legs off the table, nearly knocking Potato to the ground in the process. At the last moment he absently scooped up the blue and green striped alien fuzzball and held it close to his chest as he got to his feet and glared at Jess, her words echoing impossibly.
“Mr. Cooper, please, just hear me out.”
The two humans faced off in what was possibly the most luxurious room on the entire moon, the presidential suite of the Palais Titan. They paid for it with money acquired from selling off technology that had belonged to the Box, after eliminating their robotic presence from Titan. She was a world class virologist who had been researching an alien virus to end all disease. He was a sixty-something actor who had been dying of liver failure after decades of alcohol abuse and mistakenly agreed to take part in her experiment. Unseen but no less present was their point of intersection, an artificial personality that had taken up residence in Coop’s head as a side effect of an alien virus she’d injected him with. The personality was named Dyrk, the product of endless hours of action adventure films.
«I heard it too. Clone her into Tycho? That's what she said. Is she insane?»
Shut up, Dyrk, Coop thought to himself and his viral echo.
“Jess, I know you’ve been through a lot these last few days, what with discovering a cure for, well, nearly everything. And learning that the alien robots that hired you had decided to kill you instead. And then escaping them. And then helping Dyrk and me to wipe them from Titan.”
«That pretty much summarizes it.»
What part of 'shut up', is giving you trouble?
As usual, Jess wasn't privy to the conversation going on in Coop's head.
“It's a lot, I get that, but you’re not making sense now.”
“What doesn’t make sense to you, Mr. Cooper? The virus that healed you and is actually making you younger, that same virus is going to kill me within a few days’ time.”
“No, right, I get that. But maybe Dyrk can remove the virus from you. Wouldn’t that help?”
“It’s too late. It’s already restored my body to the peak of genetic health.”
“But that should be a good thing. Peak of health. Fit as the proverbial fiddle. Hale and hearty. Full of piss and vinegar.”
«Piss and vinegar?»
It's an expression. Also, shut up!
“You're missing the key distinction, Mr. Cooper. Not the peak of health, the peak of genetic health. Which in my case includes an incurable congenital disease, which is now likewise at its peak and as a result will kill me in days. That only leaves the one option that I’ve come up with.”
“But Jess, it’s not possible!”
She stepped closer and took Potato from him, cradling it against her chest. The alien creature nuzzled against her neck. “No, it’s just never been done before. But no one has ever had this virus available to them, or Dyrk’s ability to guide it, or Potato’s pheromones to empower it.”
Coop gestured in the direction of the unconscious figure of a young woman with ebony hair sprawled upon a blue chez lounge, just visible through the open doorway in the next room. “None of which has helped Tycho. She’s still in a coma.”
“Exactly,” said Jess.
“Exactly what?”
«Seriously, I’m not following any of this.»
“Tycho has been in a coma since before she received the virus. Arguably, she doesn’t have a mind to guide it to restoring her to her genetic best. I do.”
“But you just said your virus is killing you.”
“It is. I need Tycho’s.”
«But Tycho’s virus only works for Tycho.»
“Dyrk says her virus only works for her.”
“Exactly!” Jess folded her arms across her chest, her expression clearly showing that she'd won the argument even if Coop didn't see how. “Which is why I want him to change me into a clone of Tycho!”
Chapter 2
Alhiz’khlo’tam was one of only a few thousand Clustera to have survived the destruction of their homeworld at the hands of the Box. He and his middle daughter, Antella'nestra, were the only Clustera on Titan. They were also the only members of his familial pod to have lived through the massacre. Back home, his daughter had been a valued artisan, one of the world’s best creators of the colandracel, the prized crystalline instruments that only the most skilled performers could use to give voice to Heaven itself. And he, Alhiz’khlo’tam, had been among his world’s most accomplished players.
Now that was ancient history. The trauma of so much horror and death had altered them both. Antella'nestra had retreated somewhere into her mi
nd, never speaking again. Her hands still flew across the sonic loom that was always near, but they did so like some cleverly designed clockwork automaton. She lacked the joy that had once overflowed her every movement. Whether the crystals she wove into each new colandracel still elicited the divine was unknown; Alhiz’khlo’tam had never played any of them. As tragic as his daughter's fate, his own transformation was even more amazing. From a talented artist whose music had brought hundreds of thousands to ecstasy, he had arrived on Titan stripped of his ability to play and found work as a bouncer in a syndicate club. It had been a long climb through the ranks, an ascent filled with double-dealings and betrayals, until he had achieved the head of a crime syndicate that ran a third of the moon. His enemies and his associates — for a crime boss of his stature did not have friends — knew him only as Al.
In a secure room deep beneath the surface, a location known to no other, Alhiz’khlo’tam tapped into the spaceport's own systems, running software that endlessly scanned for any bit of data that might suggest Box activity. For years there had always been something, a slight but steady stream of information, often as not tracking the comings and goings of the three Box personae that had established their research 'ranch' on Titan. That had ended a day ago. Cooper, a newly arrived human, had somehow defeated them all. Al's scanners had been silent since.
Until now.
A klaxon announced the transition of a small vessel emerging from null-space above Titan. Telemetry poured in revealing a craft too small to be a passenger vessel, even too small for an automated transport. In many ways it resembled nothing more than a missile rack strapped to a null-space engine. Seconds after it had arrived, twenty 'missiles' separated from it and fell toward Titan. Al's software attempted to identify the projectiles, wasting processing cycles comparing them against its database of armament before moving on to other Box hardware. Not missiles at all, but simply twenty instances of a Box avatar that had never visited this star system before, a form very different from the three varieties of Box that had lived on the human's moon of Titan. The Box named this entity Doos, and among the race of machine intelligences, it acted as a judge and jury, dispensing what they perceived as justice. Thousands of Doos had arrived on Clustera once, bringing about the destruction of that world. Al never imagined he would see their like again, and surely not on Titan. Now they fell from the sky. The Box had returned!
Chapter 3
“Jess, maybe it would help if you start from the top.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, break it down for me. Out loud. You’re clearly stuck in your own head.”
The young researcher sighed. “Okay. Let me see…” She began to pace again as she talked.
I wonder if she even knows she does that.
“You, Mr. Cooper, have been infected by a version of the virus that has completely integrated with your central-nervous system. It has become sentient, like a conscious echo, and goes by the name Dyrk. Dyrk’s presence seems to be tied to certain stressors that trigger neurophysiological reactions.”
Coop nodded and stroked his chin. He enjoyed it when she dumbed it down enough for him to keep up with her scientific prattle. She liked big words, lots of them in quick succession. Coop did not and usually he'd zone out, but he did his best to stay focused this time.
Jess continued. “When you arrived on Titan you presented as a sixty-something-year-old human male. You suffered from late stage cirrhosis of the liver and all the other anticipated effects of a lifetime dealing with an alcohol use disorder. You were then injected with the virus and subsequently underwent multiple stressors that placed extreme demands upon your body. Now you present as a robust, healthy male in his late forties, early fifties, with no physical ailments. You are at the peak of health and getting better every hour.”
“Yes I am. So far, so good. Keep going.” Coop had refilled his coffee and took a sip. He liked helping.
“By contrast, Tycho is a comatose human female of just under twenty-years. She has been infected with the virus for almost the same amount of time as you but with no change in her state whatsoever.” The doctor gestured at the back bedroom where the young woman lay in a vegetative state.
Coop had avoided that room as much as he could. It was weird to see someone so young and pretty look so lifeless. It made him squirm and feel all kinds of icky.
He set his cup down and put on his best concentration face as Jess continued to monologue. He even steepled his fingers under his nose to project maximum attentiveness.
“Finally, there is my situation which is perhaps the most complicated.”
«Says the woman that doesn’t have an alien invader living in her mind.»
Concentrate, Coop thought back. One of us really needs to understand this.
“My illness has returned… with a vengeance. In fact, it appears that the virus has actually intensified and advanced my congenital disorder.”
Coop nodded slowly. “I think I'm following. Go on.”
“I didn’t see it before, but now I can’t ignore the truth. I was wrong, the virus doesn’t cause the body to heal.”
Cooper scoffed. “Of course, it does. Or have you forgotten my perfect liver and even better looks already?”
«As if she could have missed those.»
“That’s just it. Your liver is perfect. It’s exactly the liver that you are supposed to have. It’s right there in your genetic blueprint. I now see that's how the virus works. It doesn't simply heal. It's more subtle than that. It restores things to their original design, wiping away the deviations of time and environment until you’re at your body’s optimal level.”
“So how is that a problem?”
Jess sighed. “You’re not paying attention, Mr. Cooper. My health issues aren’t like yours were. I don’t have a liver that I’ve abused with decades of alcohol and a plethora of other bad choices.”
Ouch. I resemble that remark.
Jess continued. “I have a genetic disease. It’s hardwired into me, part of my particular blueprint. It is as much a part of me as the color of my eyes or my fingerprints.”
“But weren't you getting better, at least for a bit?”
“I’d been treating myself with a pharmaceutical cocktail that managed to retard the progress of the disease for months. And yes, initially, when we were fleeing for our lives, because I was scared out of my mind, the virus partially activated in me. I think it read how my body was responding to the drugs I’d taken and ramped up that response, for a time. But then it began looking through my genetic code and started trying to put that so-called optimal version of me in place.”
“So, what are you saying?”
«She’s saying that the virus is functioning in her, just without the benefit of a bonus personality living in her head to help direct it.»
“I’m saying that I was better off before I injected myself with the virus. I’m saying it’s working very hard to ensure that my disease kills me, probably within a week.”
The things Jess had been saying finally fell in place for Coop. The virus that had given him his life back was going to take hers away.
«Coop, slide over.»
Without waiting for agreement Dyrk took control over Coop’s body.
“You could at least let me pretend I have a choice.”
«Sorry buddy. But there’s a damsel in distress. No time.»
Dyrk stood up. «Jess, Dyrk here. And I’m confused. Why would your virus have waited for you to be scared before it activated? There’s been plenty of adrenaline running around to trigger it.»
“Because I modified each version of the catalyst through the movies I showed it while it was incubating inside Potato. You are the product of action-adventure films. Tycho was shown exclusively war movies with a heavy post-apocalyptic bent. And my version of the virus was shown horror films. Which, in hindsight, was not the best choice.”
But if the virus is working in her, why doesn’t she have an echo like you living in h
er head?
«You may be surprised to hear this, but Ben just asked a good question. Why hasn’t your virus manifested, the way I did in him?»
“I suspect your situation is unique. I believe — though it’s almost impossible to prove — that the neurological-altering effects he experienced from null-space syndrome allowed for you to take up residence alongside Mr. Cooper in the same mind. In other words, he and I both have the virus, but he picked up a parasite.”
I second that description.
Dyrk ignored Coop. «Parasite?»
Jess shrugged. “Initially. Though it's clear you're moving to establish a more symbiotic relationship because of your ability to interface with the virus to effect positive changes. That's actually what gave me the idea of changing into a clone of Tycho.”
«Because I can manipulate the virus to effect deliberate changes in the host? I suppose that might work, if I'm able to interface with your virus.»
Relief shone in her eyes. “So, you think there's a chance? I mean, it's a lot more than just altering the virus in a vial of blood.”
«Well, that's what we need to find out. Can I communicate with your virus well enough to convince it to work off the template of Tycho's DNA, instead of your own?»
Jess chewed her nails for a moment. “I don’t have much to lose. What do I need to do?”