by Dima Zales
“Hmm,” Dr. Golovasi says, and I realize she has her trusty notepad and pen out and is looking through her notes. “How about free association?” When I look at her blankly, she adds, “I’ll say a word, and you blurt out the first thing that comes to you, so long as it’s inspired by the word I say.”
“Okay,” I say hesitantly. “I can try.” What I don’t add is that she’s already made me think of umbrellas and classrooms just by being here.
“Russia,” she says.
“Darkness. Trouble.”
“Good.” She gives me a smile. “Next word. Sister.”
“Madness,” I say instantly. “Heredity.”
“Ada.” She points her index finger at me, indicating I should speed up my answers.
“Fluffy puppies, and, err, thongs.” I chuckle nervously.
“Joe.” She clearly doesn’t want me to get a chance to regroup my thoughts.
“Alligator tears.” When she doesn’t say a new word, I add, “Icebergs?”
“You’re doing really well,” she says and rewards me with another smile. This time, her teeth merely look like chunks of porcelain. “Now, I’ll give you a topic, and I want you to free-associate a true story from your life. I’ll start with something safe, something not too personal to you. How does that sound?”
“Sure,” I say. “Shoot.”
“Open source.”
“Hobby.”
“No.” She gives me an intent look. “This time, I want you to form a story.”
“Oh.” I try to banish the pretty colors swirling through the doctor’s gray hair and do my best to come up with a story about open source.
“I assume you know what open source generally means,” I begin. “It’s a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public. Of course, the term spread from the software world, and now there are open-source colas and beer, not to mention open source in medicine in the form of pharmaceuticals and genetic therapies, as well as open-source science and engineering.” She nods sagely, so I continue. “The reason I said hobby is because I’ve been helping write open-source software on a number of projects. It started because I wanted to sharpen my C++ skills, and, to a smaller degree, I wanted to give something back. My friends and I use a ton of open-source software as starting points for our apps.”
She’s still listening, so I go on.
“Once I was part of the open-source community, I learned more about the spirit and purpose of open source, and the more I discovered, the more I liked what I learned. It was a shock because I thought that, as a venture capitalist who invests in software companies, I would be driven by self-interest to find faults with open source.” I note that her eyes are glazing over, but my spiel is clearing my mind, so I keep talking. “Open source is a great development model. It’s decentralized, and—this is key—it encourages collaboration. Many companies found that, despite intuition stating the opposite, they can and do make money supporting open-source software—”
“This is great,” Dr. Golovasi interrupts. “Now here is a new topic. Morality.”
Since this therapy is clearing my mind, I share my personal moral philosophy with Dr. Golovasi. As I speak, her hair takes on the appearance of the snakes in Medusa’s hairdo but rapidly returns to normal—another sign of my improvement. Her reading glasses try to grow eyes, but the eyes soon dissipate. The story (if you could give my ramblings such a lofty title) takes me something like forty minutes to get out, but then I realize I could’ve just said two words—the Golden Rule (or is it three words? English can be confusing sometimes). “So basically,” I say in conclusion, “I treat people the way I want to be treated.”
“Keep it up,” Dr. Golovasi says encouragingly. “Next topic—cryptography.”
“It’s something my friend Muhomor can talk about for hours,” I say, then falter as I notice the good doctor’s countenance change. She’s looking at me with more intensity than ever before.
Something about this topic really bothers me.
I struggle to clear my mind and succeed enough for me to recall something dire about Muhomor.
He’s badly hurt.
He was shot.
Remembering Muhomor getting shot triggers a cascade of other memories. I recall the shootout at the Georgian restaurant and the hospital visit that led to me being taken by people claiming to be part of a government task force. I recall the tube up my nose and Agent Lancaster and his questions about Tema—Muhomor’s cryptosystem.
Suspicions and revelations mushroom in my brain, then spread through my synapses like a nuclear explosion.
My hands turn into fists as I realize the full depth of the grievances committed against me.
Something must show on my face, because Dr. Golovasi asks, “Is everything okay?”
“You fucking bitch,” I grit out through my teeth. “Everything is far from okay.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Part of me knows that, despite my suspicions, I might still be crazy. This could be a Total Recall type moment that’s part of my delusions. Maybe what I think is happening is really the problem, and the truth is what Dr. Golovasi wants me to believe. My counterargument is that if my insanity were that far gone, saving me would require strong medication, not therapy. And if that’s the case, being rude to my shrink is the least of my worries.
I have to hand it to Dr. Golovasi. The look of shock on her face is genuine. If her goal was to make me doubt reality, I’d give her at least an eight out of ten. But before I can get lost in my muddy thoughts again, I decide to verify my suspicions by doing something concrete and summoning the AROS interface.
Icons show up across my vision.
Good.
The icons look exactly as I remember—meaning they either work as I recall, via Brainocytes, or they’re as real as those snakes that were part of Dr. Golovasi’s hair not long ago.
Almost on autopilot, I seek out Wi-Fi connectivity, but alas, I find none. Actually, the lack of internet is a clue. Why make your networks Muhomor-proof in a mental hospital?
Next, I connect with my phone and see if Precious 3 can get onto any new Wi-Fi networks, but again, all is for naught. Seeing the cement room my phone is in tells me I’m either sane or so crazy I might as well give up and wait for electroshock therapy.
I check the video files on my phone and verify that I have my session with Dr. Golovasi in her New York office recorded on there. So I didn’t dream that up—unless I’m dreaming now. I also have recordings of some of the things they did to me in this facility, another bit of proof.
Encouraged, I begin recording our new conversation just in case and finally get around to the main reason I opened up AROS in the first place. I run the AROS app I recently wrote—the one that gives me access to the lab on the chip imbedded in my body (assuming that’s real too).
The earlier output from the chip was bisacodyl, oxycodone, and acetaminophen. I run the app again, and the output is replaced with a long list of new chemicals. I scan the list and recognize a few entries. Lysergic acid diethylamide is LSD, also known as acid—the famous psychedelic drug. Tetrahydrocannabinol is better known as THC, one of the fun ingredients in cannabis. 5-trimethoxyphenethylamine is the scientific name for mescaline, a drug made from the famous peyote cactus. Also on the list is psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”—a factoid I happen to know because Muhomor’s nickname is Russian for amanita mushrooms. He likes to correct people who think that amanita shrooms (his namesake) contain psilocybin, because they don’t. Consequently, the two hallucinogenic chemicals amanita mushrooms do contain, muscimol and ibotenic acid, are also present in my bloodstream. Finally, I also recognize sodium thiopental—a substance I came across in that TV show about spies, where it was used as truth serum.
They gave me a cocktail of drugs designed to make me think I was crazy.
The visions, the bodily sensations, the memory problems, the paranoia, and even my eagerness to chat with the shrink were all
chemically induced.
“You wanted me to think I’m a paranoid schizophrenic?” I’m so angry I barely get the words out. “After I told you about my half-sister?” Her eyes bulge, but I’m not even close to done. “You injected me with LSD?” I yell. “And THC?”
I rapidly read off the list of junk in my bloodstream, and with every substance I rattle out, Dr. Golovasi looks more and more like I punched her in the stomach.
“How can you know this?” she finally whispers. “How can you know about the medicine?”
I can’t believe she just pretty much admitted to this atrocity—but I’m glad I’m recording it. If I get out of here, her career is over.
Then another wave of revelations hits me.
She isn’t a real doctor. She’s not worried about her career. She’s just surprised I know something I shouldn’t, or perhaps she’s worried about her organization getting into trouble over drugging a detainee.
Things fall into place, and the universe all of a sudden makes sense—though it’s feasible my epiphany is the result of the drugs in my system.
Agent Lancaster mentioned he was part of a task force. They must be a cybersecurity task force with a mission to learn as much as they can about Muhomor in general and his genius invention, Tema, specifically. They had everyone Muhomor knows followed, including me. Thanks to either my brain boost or my innate paranoia, I spotted the surveillance and told the people closest to me that I was being followed—except no one believed me. When the task force got an opportunity, or became extra desperate, they imbedded a secret agent into my life in the form of Dr. Golovasi. Who better to learn secrets than a therapist? Their job is to ask questions. Hell, I recall how interested she was in my friendship with Muhomor during that first session. That should’ve stood out as an odd interest for a doctor to have, but I was too focused on my problems to notice.
The task force must’ve hacked our computers, or at least Ada’s. Maybe they managed to control Ada’s Google searches too. When Ada Googled “best psychologist in Manhattan,” the task force made sure she saw a fictional site for Dr. Golovasi at the top of the results. Muhomor has bragged about doing similar hacks, so I know it can be done, no matter how paranoid it sounds.
If all my theories are correct, the woman in front me might not even have a psychology degree, or if she does, she might be an expert in criminal profiling. More likely, though, she’s just a CIA agent or something similar.
When I was being uncooperative, I bet it was Golovasi, or whatever her real name is, who suggested they make me think I’m crazy. I told her about my private fears during our therapy session, and she thought she could leverage that against me—and it almost worked.
As my angry haze lifts a little, I realize she’s been frantically talking to me all this time, saying something about me falling back into psychosis and delusions again. Her story sounds like the plot for that film where the staff at an insane asylum playacts the hero’s delusions as a form of therapy. “You agreed to participate in an experimental treatment,” she says. “The medications—”
I tune her out and focus on my legs instead. If I leap fast enough, I can smack her in the face with the mask I think I’m wearing. Though if there isn’t a mask on my face, the impact will hurt me as much as it’ll hurt her.
Decision made in a blink, I leap forward as quickly as I can.
I brace for impact, but to my shock, Golovasi counterattacks. Her movements remind me of Aikido or another martial art where you use your opponent’s momentum against him. More specifically, while still sitting in the lotus pose, she manages to tilt her body left, grab my shoulder with both hands, and direct my motion away from her.
I plop face down onto the soft floor and do my best to regain my breath. The cocktail of drugs they gave me must dampen my pain perception, because I don’t feel much. My pride is probably more hurt than my body, since I was thwarted by an old lady in a meditation pose. Granted, she might’ve gotten CIA training, and I’m a living pharmacy of hallucinogens, which probably isn’t helping with my coordination. Still, I thought I had her, and she kicked my ass.
A needle pricks my left shoulder, and I forget about my wounded pride. I’m not sure if it’s Golovasi or someone else who injected me with whatever I just got injected with, but I know it won’t matter soon.
“You should’ve talked,” Golovasi says, not bothering to disguise the venom in her voice. “I was the good cop.”
As the drug takes away my awareness, I reflect on her words. She might actually be telling the truth. She might be the good cop to Agent Lancaster’s bad cop. And if so, I shudder to think what I’m going to face when I wake up.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I come to, and the first thing I feel is pain all over my body. Did they beat me while I was unconscious?
Actually, there are other possibilities. They could’ve beaten me after I half-blinded Agent Lancaster, but before I was tripping on every drug known to man. The drugs could’ve been masking the pain. This last scenario is likely, because I vaguely recall some bodily sensations that must’ve been echoes of pain.
The good news is my mind is clear, or as close to clear as possible without Brainocytes. Sadly, that isn’t all that clear.
I check for Wi-Fi, but it’s still as unbreakable as before. My phone is available to me, so I check if it has internet access—maybe someone moved it to a room with cell reception—but the answer is no. I look through the phone camera and see the same room with the same air vent—the only non-concrete object I can see.
The lab on the chip confirms all the drugs have been flushed out of my system. I don’t have any painkillers left in my blood either. No wonder I feel so many aches and pains.
According to my phone, it’s November 17, 12:30 p.m. Last time I checked the clock was yesterday, when I had that conversation with Agent Lancaster right before noon. The bad trip must’ve happened later that day, though I don’t know when.
Carefully, I open my eyes.
I’m back in that original cement room—though it could easily be another one just like it. It wouldn’t be hard to mass-produce a legion of underground bunker-style rooms like this.
I’m tied to a bed again, but it doesn’t look like I have any medical equipment hooked up to me, not even an IV. My throat is sore, and I wonder if I was tube-fed again, maybe even recently.
My other bodily functions are blissfully calm. If that implies I used the bathroom while unconscious and got washed again, I don’t want to know about it.
Despite the seeming lack of threats, my mind goes into overdrive with angst. My biggest worry has to do with Muhomor. If Agent Lancaster is to be believed, my friend is in a coma.
My second worry is Ada. She was supposed to leave the hospital, but I recall Golovasi (if that’s her name) saying, “Ada is taken care of.” What did she mean?
My third worry is a vague one about Mr. Spock. Where is he?
Last but not least, I have no idea if Joe survived that attack. And if he didn’t, was Gogi killed with Joe?
As I lie there ruminating about it all, my worry priorities change. I realize my primary concern should be about me. Given how badly I antagonized and hurt my captors, what will the consequences be?
Logically, when they resume their questioning, it’ll be worse than what preceded it, but it’s hard to imagine the situation getting worse. Though I’m doing my best not to think about torture, I can’t help but imagine getting waterboarded. As someone who once choked on soda, I have some idea of what the feeling of drowning is like. I’m guessing the real thing—or its approximation via waterboarding—is a million times worse. Will I talk if they do that to me? And even if I’m able to resist waterboarding right now, could I resist it after not sleeping (or eating or drinking) for a long time?
I’m not going to kid myself. Some things would make me talk for sure. Any of the more brute-force approaches would do the trick, like breaking a bone, blowtorching any body part, drilling a tooth, or cutting off
a finger.
The worst part is that even if I decide to talk, I can’t tell them anything that would make the torture stop, not if they want the Tema cryptosystem cracked or thoroughly explained. I barely understood Muhomor’s baby while on Brainocytes, and even then, only on the same level as a layman comprehends the workings of a TV. We all know there aren’t little people sitting in that magical box, but only some of us know that LCD screens work by switching liquid crystals electronically to rotate polarized light.
Something I see through my phone’s camera distracts me from my musings.
No, not something.
Someone.
I zoom the camera to make sure I’m not having a residual hallucination, and my heart rate jumps as one of my worries resolves itself.
It’s Mr. Spock.
He’s sitting behind the ventilation grill, munching on something.
When I puzzle out what he’s eating, I nearly scream at him to stop.
The little guy is eating a giant cockroach.
Frantically, I launch the EmoRat app, route the connectivity through my phone, and pray Ada didn’t recently do something clever, like routing all the EmoRat app’s traffic through a fancy server I can’t access without internet.
Mr. Spock stops munching and perks up—and I feel us connect.
I get flooded with rat happiness that proves Mr. Spock was as worried about me as I was about him.
“Where have you been?” I send him through the app. “What happened?”
Mr. Spock reacts to my words with more warmth, but also with confusion. It takes me a few moments to understand why he’s being a bit dense. Like me, Mr. Spock isn’t as smart as he used to be because his brain boost also requires internet connectivity.
“Why are you eating such disgusting food?” I ask, hoping he can understand something as simple as that.
Even more confused, he replies with the same emotions he typically does when I give him peanuts—his favorite treat. I think he’s trying to say, “Dude, this cockroach is yummy.”