“You see what happens to a person when they can't make a meaningful connection?” Winona said.
“Yeah, I guess. I think it'd be easier to become a woman than a psycho.”
Winona, probing the bedroom now, heard the panels sliding back on the other side. “Psst. Positions everybody!”
Manny and Robin sought concealment in the main room and bedroom closets, respectively.
“Now remember, sweetie,” Winona said to Chad, “he just wants to feel something real. Don't turn this into a test of wills.”
She ducked for cover, as Hartman came through the hidden door.
“Hi, Chad,” Hartman said.
“Hi, professor. I must say, you've hit on a rather interesting teaching style.”
Winona shook her head from inside the closet in the next room. Maybe he’ll take the lack of political acumen as proof of philosophical aptitude, she thought. The truth and nothing but the truth, that was Chad, just like a true philosopher.
***
“Desperation is akin to inspiration.” Hartman stripped Chad’s scarf and hat off him and redressed one of the busts with it. “Speaking of which, it's been positively minutes since I've killed anybody.”
Chad retrieved his hat. “When have you ever needed to pressure me to be profound? I'm sagacity in a bottle.”
“I'm waiting, Chad. And patience is not a virtue.”
Chad stalled until he had the hat situated just right on his head to get his thinking going.
“I don't think it's possible to think deeply, anymore. I'm sorry, that's just how I see it. Our society precludes it.”
“Intriguing. Go on.”
“With sound bites, devoid of any context, exploding inside our heads every five minutes from the disinformation wars, we live in a world of fragments. We shuffle the pieces into some threadbare picture of life that never holds, because the chaos is the point.”
Chad picked up the Rubik’s cube perched on a piece of furniture pressed against the wall, which he hadn’t even noticed before, and fiddled with it absently. “Even the big-picture people who love to assemble the jigsaw for us never seem to get more than a couple of sections connected; demonstrating their own biases; their total lack of multidimensional thinking so necessary to assemble an n-dimensional puzzle that exists in fractal space.” He twisted the cube, solving for two of the sides. “How else are we to outsmart Mother Nature to take charge of our evolution when God thinks in fractal geometries, using a Mandelbrot set to construct a simple flower, but by embracing the fractal mind?” Chad threw the solved Rubik’s cube at Hartman.
“Broken people, what’s more,” Chad continued, running his hands over the Grecian sculptures, “with no capacity for integral thinking, with no coherent vision of the past, present, or future, or any sense of personal narrative and how their story fits into the big picture, can't have a sense of direction or purpose. They can't know what they stand for. So they can't be a threat to the powers that be.”
Chad was pacing and working himself up. It was something Hartman had trouble doing; venting on a daily level; he didn’t use his sermons on the mount to come uncorked. Instead he suppressed those tiny rages triggered by his comparatively dense students until he erupted badly. Hartman realized, Chad, much as the other students had learned to do either consciously or unconsciously, was role modeling how to blow up a little more therapeutically, hoping the lesson would stick this time.
Chad said, “You want to create a meaningful world, you make a movie, invite people to come see it. But it's not real. Nothing with meaning is real – you said it yourself.” Pausing and poking Hartman in the chest, he added, “You, Mr. Profundity – are the most real person I know. No wonder no one can talk to you. You're the last real person. You belong in a film – where the rest of the real people live, not in the unreal world the rest of us inhabit in this upside down universe.
“You, the last grand integral thinker, who can think across any number of specialties the rest of us are trapped in, fuse together philosophy with psychology, and sociology, and an artistic sensibility, and a hundred and one other scientific and technical professions – you are the last great holdout, the last true Renaissance man. Only, in this bottom’s up world, such a redeemer would have to assume the role of the destroyer.”
Chad kept interrupting his pacing to pause before the door to the closet that was cracked, as if staring into the darkness in Hartman’s mind. “You won’t face reality because, by your thinking, the human mind was never designed to face reality; only to transform it, bend it to its will. I understand you better than you understand yourself, doc. Only, understanding isn’t worth much where I come from.”
“If the chaos acts like an acid on our minds,” Hartman interjected, “doesn’t that favor us as much as the powers that be? If we have to keep remaking ourselves in this acid from one moment to the next, doesn’t that eliminate any coping mechanisms, any survival strategies we might adopt in dealing with this crashed economy but the most auspicious ones? Don’t mind-tricks played on us, which promise liberation but offer only enslavement, get burned off readily in the acid soup of chaos?”
“Maybe. But you forget, the tool we use to make sense of life, reason, is no longer up to the task of rebuilding us bigger and better than before. There are too many equally valid, equally reasonable approaches to life you can argue for, only to run into their limitations sooner rather than later. So what are we left with? Pre-rational and trans-rational drives. And it’s very easy to confuse one for the other. Very easy to think that our strategies are informed by some inner-voice that has a pipeline to God, when really what’s guiding reason, posing as some transcendental force rushing to our aid, is none other than pre-rational fears and emotions, which we evolved beyond, as far as the mass psyche goes, as far back as the last Renaissance.
“I find more evidence people are regressing to this earlier state under the Herculean pressures of survival than they are advancing to the trans-rational, the trans-human state. I mean, isn’t that what traumatized people do, isn’t that what the textbooks say? They regress, they don’t progress. How about you, doc? Are you progressing, or regressing?”
Hartman sighed. “You have to appreciate the irony. You could be me, if only you gave a shit about anything; if you weren't so entirely at home with the meaninglessness.” Waving his arms, he said, “How is that possible, by the way? You remain conscious – not like these other buffoons. You see clearly. You emerge out of the fog like a blinding light. And yet you make the fog your home. Help me out here.”
“It's called surrender, doc. I can't do this Don-Quixote-tilting-at-windmills thing you do. You can't win that way. But by refusing to strive, I am what you can only hope to be.” Chad locked eyes with him. “The struggle— You're into endless becoming. I'm into being. Yin and yang. We're both right in our own way. We're both safe from life.” Rubbing the back of his neck, he added, “It'll never touch either of us. As to rescuing all the other souls that lie between our extremes— In another age, maybe, they might have had a chance.”
Touching Hartman on the shoulder with genuine empathy, Chad said, “It's End Times, doc— The entire world ruled like a consortium of interlocking corporations with one will, one purpose, that we all just get along for the sake of the advertisers, who don’t like to hear about rebellion and people taking to the streets. You're the one that doesn't get it.”
“Is that your rationale for complacency? The bad guys are really scary and all-powerful? Haven't you learned anything? That's when heroes are needed most. That’s when heroes are born.” Hartman stepped closer until he towered over him. “You're not right, you're not even profound. You're just a coward. A spineless wimp, who wants to be lost to the shadows, because being a non-entity, not standing for something, is somehow more comforting.” He poked Chad. “Like death is simply less of a pain in the ass than life. God, this just destroys me.”
“What destroys you?”
“You're the prodigy I've al
ways dreamed would come along. Now, I have to put you down. God forbid, we send you out into the world to breed. The next generation will be even better boobs for Big Brother.”
Hartman realized he was decompensating, and was just as powerless to stop it. “Christ, you're their brainchild – immune to revolutionary discourse. You're the reason the game's over.” After clamping down on Chad’s face with the splayed fingers of his hand, like an octopus feeding, he squeezed. The gurgling, sputtering sounds Chad made were cue enough.
Manny darted out of hiding, with the gun aimed at Hartman’s chest. “Stop right there, doc.” Hartman turned at the sound of a pistol’s hammer pulling back, spied Robin pointing his revolver at him from the other end of the room.
“Now, let's all just calm down,” Winona said, “admit everyone's got some really valid points. Let's be a little more open minded so we can see how to meet in the middle on this.”
Hartman ambled closer to Manny, who fired a couple rounds at his chest. But Hartman had the gun in hand before he could get off any more shots.
Robin was taken by surprise at how slow Manny was to respond to Hartman, after being so fast to dispatch earlier assailants. But maybe there was something about Hartman that reminded him of his father, confounding his spinal cord reflexes. Manny looked every bit as flummoxed by his elongated reaction times.
Hartman fired the gun at Robin, not even bothering to take it out of Manny's hand, used Manny as a shield.
Hartman watched Robin go down.
He knocked Manny out with an elbow to the face.
He relieved both detectives of their weapons. Unlocked the door. And threw Robin into the hall. “Winona, I think you should give Manny and me a moment.”
“What about me?” Chad said. “Can I go?”
“Absolutely.” Hartman put a bullet in his head. At close range, his cranium split like a peanut shell. And the brain, like the nut inside, jumped up to the ceiling. Hartman caught it in his hand.
“I tell you, the kid's brains were second to none.” Hartman handed the intact brain to Winona. She walked out into the hall, presumably, to find a suitable resting place for it.
Moments later, she ran back in with a half pint of milk and a box of cookies pulled from her pockets.
“Thanks, sweetie,” Hartman said. “You're a doll.”
He closed the door on her as Manny regained consciousness.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Seated in the punchbowl in the hall just outside his former suite, Chad’s brain sparked its final transmissions, allowing his life to flash before his eyes. The key incidents, anyway. Maybe they weren’t key, just random episodes selected by a dying brain in no particular order, its management faculties shutting down ahead of the rest of the brain.
Maybe he was already out of his body, in that part of the NDE where his spirit guides showed him what he learned in this life, how he impacted others, the spiritual work yet to be done.
***
Standing in Cal Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza at one of the tables, Chad said, “We have to emulate what they do in China, get rid of politicians in congress and the senate with nothing more than a law degree. To be a member of government you have to be a scientist first, and have a background in business, so you have a clue. That’s why we’ve gone from the driving technological force in the world to playing catch up, that right there.” Chad was aware he was speaking so forcibly he was throwing spit at his sidekick manning the People’s Movement booth beside him, like a rabid dog frothing at the mouth.
Robby, maybe just in a mood to be disagreeable, said, “Yeah, but they hear testimony from the various scientific sectors, alternative energy, big oil. They have to. As long as they’re open to being consulted, I’m okay with people whose specialty is just writing laws, to keep things from getting any more complicated than they already are. Do you realize no one in America can tell you at any given time how many laws they’re guilty of breaking? Just that it has to be over a dozen or more. That’s how crazy it’s gotten.” Robby’s red dreadlocks and fair freckly skin gave him a certain cachet among Caucasians at Cal hoping to look less generic.
“Well, that’s our fascist state for you. They make sure they have reason enough to take anyone in at any time.” Chad realized he was shouting.
“Calm down. This is supposed to be a peaceful protest, dude.”
“Damn milquetoasts. We’ll see how long that lasts.” Chad had let his hair grow out to emphasize the curly locks, and sported a trim beard to play up the Moses-off-the-mountain mystique, in order to add gravity to his opinions. A little marketing didn’t hurt. “The senate is already trying to lock up the People’s Movement members as terrorists just for gumming up business operations. Forget that they’re gumming it up because they’re being oppressed by those very same business interests, who have less use for them than Southern plantation owners had for blacks back in the day.”
“What day, asshole? Try to-day.” That was bleed over from the booth next to them labeled The Help, a reference to Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling novel of the same name. They had been bumping shoulders all morning, yelling over one another for the crowd’s attention. Not that there was much of a crowd. All the shouting was putting people off. Too early in the morning for that much intensity; it was before anyone had a chance to down their cappuccinos. “We niggers have nothing better to do apparently than clean house for yous rich white folks up in them there Berkeley hills.”
“Hey, there are just as many rich black bastards in the Oakland hills only too happy to hire you on as maid service,” Chad profaned. “If you’re trying to make this about the white man, you’re missing the point. All colors are equally on the outs, as the ninety-nine percent increasingly absent a viable livelihood should indicate to you.” Chad was in no mood to give ground, and had no problem shoving her prejudice right back in her face.
And so it had gone all morning.
Welcome to Sproul Plaza, where there were so many causes competing for attention, the smart thing to do was forge alliances. But that meant first getting past each person’s personal crap. Clearly, Chad and Cerise weren’t there yet, he realized.
Forget that the only voice anyone really had anymore came from the size and the bankroll of the movement they were a part of; individuals plum didn’t matter. Not when it came to wielding influence in Washington, where lobbyists representing titanic-sized corporations ruled. You had to be every bit the titan to play in those big leagues. So if your CSO or NGO wasn’t several million strong, you were just drowned out by the roars of the big cats. Maybe Chad and Cerise drowning one another out was their way of feeling every bit as important, Chad thought. They were acting out the parts of warring titans from their relatively powerless perch in Sproul Plaza as part of their own theater therapy.
Chad turned his back on Cerise to address Robby. “Where was I? Oh, yeah… The more they tune out the People’s Movement on television, the more of us have to pick up video cameras, the more in-depth our coverage has to be across the country. We need that footage, moreover, integrated on one network-like website, where the highlights that went on in each city can be covered, and people can drill down to greater detail for each city at the city’s respective People’s Movement website.
“We need to push the pod casts to people’s cell phones by filtering the news for them the way they want it filtered. Think of them as little shocks to the brain coming through every five minutes until they wake the frig up.”
Chad was vaguely conscious of students avoiding a straight-line path past his table to stay outside the blast radius of his mouth. So much for shocks to their system doing much good; they could neutralize such things without snapping out of their daze—all from autopilot. Not one student looked less caught up in their own inner monologues than they were before Chad invaded their head-space.
“We have to create more compelling news stations than CNN,” Chad said, bringing his focus back to Robby, “right on the internet, and we need it for all the news t
hat matters, not just the People’s Movement. For everything that doesn’t make the news because it doesn’t serve Big Brother’s desire to maintain the status quo.” He rubbed his arms and stamped his feet, not sure if he had a right to be cold, or if it was on account of all the blood rushing to his head.
“The perfect example is the BSC,” Chad said, “the Big Six Conglomerates who control all media outlets. They throw one scapegoat up after another before the media eye to allow people to channel their rage against pedophiles or drug-pushing doctors, individuals being easier to understand and punish than abstract, all-powerful conglomerates that are the real movers and shakers of our world. Thereby they pretend to promulgate change, all the while ensuring the status quo gets even more dug in.”
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