Now he was using all of his brain.
Gary felt a flicker of distress and concern as to what might be physically happening to him during this time of brilliance. But this fleeting worry quickly passed like a puff of steam. It really didn't matter, it was all worth it. This was the high of highs, the ultimate thrill, better than any drug, more pleasurable than sex. He felt mentally invincible, not physically damaged in any way. To worry would be a waste of precious energy.
And to think that up until hours ago he had contemplated suicide--it had seemed the only viable solution to his problems. His life had been nothing but a series of adversities and misfortunes. Social problems abounded as he grew up, carried well into college. He barely passed his classes, and when he graduated, he fell face first into the real world, going from job to job until he thought he found his niche at Royce Mills.
Damn Stroebecker!
His looks hadn't helped his cause either. Glasses, acne, an unmanageable head of hair thinning at the top. Now a transformation was taking place. Looking into the mirror he noticed his complexion clearing. His hair miraculously filling in. Removing his glasses, he could see more clearly now.
And, most importantly, his academic retention had expanded to gigantic proportions.
All of this made him so incredibly horny.
Never in his life had Gary Riddell ever been so happy.
Wednesday Morning, 3:45
A knock at the door.
The apartment's a damned mess, Gary thought. He gazed at the books scattered every which way about the floor, looking as if someone decided to play a game of 52 Pick-Up with his bookshelf. He'd read the entire volume of dusty encyclopedias in the last hour, and was now halfway through Webster's Dictionary, memorizing every last detail, every word of every phrase. After the dictionary he considered tackling Roget's Thesaurus but thought it might be too repetitive since he already knew what all the words meant. He contemplated purchasing a computer in the morning, but how much could he really learn from that? The screens would load too slow for him, and that would be wasteful time spent unless he could find a way to hack into a government or corporate computer. That might be interesting.
More knocking. "Gary? Answer the door!"
Carolyn.
Shit.
"I'll be right there."
He'd maintained a powerful erection since he'd been smart, writing it off to another one of Hogarth's unmentioned side effects. While reveling in his newfound greatness, the hard-on seemed natural, a non-sexual form of passion resulting from his unleashed zest. But with Carolyn now suddenly in mind, it became a whole new ballgame. The hard-on had a more tangible purpose.
Ignoring the mess, he scurried up and paced to the door, wondering if Carolyn had shaken off the ills that had disturbed her earlier in the day. It seemed illogical that she could have suffered such a course for distress. The high levels of greatness perpetuated from the smart pill caroused the ultimate in exhilaration, without room for discouragement.
He peeked though the peephole. Carolyn was there, her temptful smile pulled wide.
When he opened the door, Gary knew at once that the old Carolyn had returned. She had donned the lovely yellow silk robe with that favorable gap at the breast, her tears long vanished, her makeup and hair completely restored to her full height of sexiness. She silently slinked in with the charm of a snake, smooth legs and ass prancing back and forth with pure womanly enticement. By the time Gary shut the door, Carolyn had planted her soft buttocks on the couch, the slit in her robe riding the high altitude of her tanned thigh.
Gary's ode to brilliance at once took a backseat to his more fervent urges. Carolyn's crystal gaze pinned him, but she received no locking contact. Gary couldn't keep his eyes from coasting her exposed skin, the soft dappling of perspiration glossing her near fully-exposed breast, the unblemished curvature of her smoothly shaven legs.
"Hello Gary."
Yes. The new Carolyn had returned: beautiful, classy and brilliant.
And horny?
"Hi...you look splendid." Splendid. How funny was that? Gary had never used that word before, but it fell from his mouth like a purposeful charge of electricity, powerful and igniting.
"You called them, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"So how does it feel to be amongst the omnipotent?"
Omnipotent. All knowing, all powerful. "Right now I feel like I could conquer the world."
"You can, Gary. If you choose to do so. But I gather the Smart, Inc. people don't give these pills out to anyone with such self-serving purposes."
"They don't?"
She giggled. Her smile was loving. "Absolutely not. In the wrong hands, they could prove to be ruinous. Only those of us who will make good use of them. I'm a lawyer now. Have you decided what you plan to do?"
Gary shook his head. He'd only been smart for a few hours, and his overzealousness had him simply glorifying in its wake. Once the initial high came down though, he'd have to take some time to think about it.
"You know what I think you should do?" Carolyn asked, opening the sash of her robe.
For the first time since taking the smart pill, Gary was at a loss for words.
"I think you should make love to me."
Wednesday Morning, 4:45
What a difference a day makes, Gary thought as he rolled off of Carolyn's naked body. The pleasure of the last hour made him laugh at all those once-important things in life that really didn't matter anymore: Stroebecker and his job, all those people in his life that laughed at him and made fun of him and told him that he'd never really get anywhere. Now he would be the one doing the laughing. He had the brains of a genius, good looks, and now had a lawyer girlfriend that just about made him see God. Three, count them, three all-powerful orgasms. Omnipotent ones, if you will. He'd never come close to imagining pleasures like the ones he'd just experienced. The world shook in earth-shattering ecstasy, all right. It felt as if the walls would come tumbling down around him.
Surely the neighbors would display grins of amusement on their faces the next time he saw them. Hey, did you hear the racket in Gary's apartment last night? The kid finally got laid!
He ran a cold finger across Carolyn's sweaty torso, tracing the muscular curvature of her abs as they slowly rose up and down in expended breaths. Unbelievably, he felt himself getting hard again and wondered if ordinary, un-smart sex would have had this long-lasting, virile effect on him.
"This is simply amazing," he said, breaking the jaded silence. "This must be a side effect of the pill."
Eyes closed, Carolyn said, "What is?"
"Well, being horny like this. I feel as if I could do this forever." He leaned over and kissed her cheek. She stayed unmoving. He laughed. "Wore you out, huh?"
A slight smile rippled across Carolyn's stoic face. "Gary, I need a big favor."
"Anything, my love." Enchanted, Gary would just about die for Carolyn at this moment.
"I need to borrow five-thousand dollars."
Wednesday Afternoon, 3:15
Cash, she'd said.
The bank hadn't been all that crowded; the line only kept him inside for seven minutes, thirty-six seconds. In addition to a photographic memory, Gary found that he also obtained the keen ability to keep track of the exact amount of time it took to do things. It wasn't as if he had to mentally count his fingers, but more as though he had a clock inside his head that he could check the time on after completing a certain task. He played with this newfound feature for a good part of the morning in between sessions of high-energy memorization.
His hand remained buried in his front pocket as he walked about the town, a tiny piece of his mind consciously dedicated to the money balled up in his tight grasp. It felt like five thousand dollars, fifty one-hundred dollar bills--a little less than half his life savings. As he paced throughout the city soaking up information like a sponge, a few items of information eluded him: why? Why did Carolyn ask to borrow the money? Had she not any money save
d? And wasn't she earning a lawyer's paycheck now? And most importantly, what did she need the money for? Gary was at a loss. With all the knowledge bursting inside his head, he couldn't surmise the answers to these simplest of questions. And with all the smarts he maintained, he wondered why hadn't he had the common sense to ask her these questions last night?
Is love really all that blind? he questioned himself, looking for another answer.
Wednesday Afternoon, 4:05
The building on Fifth Avenue stretching between 41st and 42nd was a marvel of modern architecture, huge etched columns standing across the forefront like sentries guarding a castle, a great staircase fanning out from the middlemost point down to the street: a splaying frame of strength. In contrast to the day before, the temperature had warmed to a comfortable forty-five degrees, a pleasure for January. A multitude of people were taking advantage of the moderate weather, sitting at various places on the stairs, eating, reading, catching up on a few rare moments of relaxation and enjoying the preview of the spring to come. Gary tackled the steps one by one, the cement crackling underfoot, each footfall bringing him closer to virtual omnipotence, guiding him into the walls of knowledge and information. Here in this place he would enter smart, and in an explosive vow to absorb as much information the New York Public Library had to offer, he would exit one the most brilliant men in the world in just a few short hours. He was sure of it.
The sounds of the city escaped behind him as he entered the library's domain.
A number of people gathered in the antechamber, some observing the bulletin boards, others waiting to sign out books. A heavy-set woman with poorly dyed orange hair sat stationed behind the front desk, assisting the clientele. She nodded her approval after eying a young girl's card through black horn-rimmed glasses. Gary paced into the solemn environment of the main area to the left, then quietly mazed his way past the multitude of tables and their occupants towards the rear of the library, to the computer room.
Closed off from the rest of the library by a glass partition, the large room held a series of long desks, eight to ten computers on each one available for public use. Each computer had at least one user stationed at it, some having two, three, or four people crowded around each screen. Quietly pacing about and pretending to mind his own business, Gary looked closely at the people using the computers rather than at the computer screens themselves. Most of those positioned at the CRT's seemed normal, studiously at work with whatever assignments they had, slowly laboring throughout their projects as their eyes strained to contemplate the glowing digits.
Then he noticed something odd.
He counted three users displaying unusual demeanors, much different than most of those in the room--yet alarmingly alike one another. They appeared frantic at their stations, punching in data with remarkable speed and accuracy. And even though they were seated at different locations about the room, Gary could see them looking up and around the room every few seconds, repetitively observing their surroundings with what could be interpreted as paranoia.
These three individuals were all visibly perspiring.
Dead giveaway, Gary thought. Some of the computer users here are on smart pills.
The possibility of this theory startled Gary. Drawing from the people in the computer center and using them as a general aggregate representing the entire city could very well mean that a fair percentage of the population had visited with someone from Smart Inc. at one time or another--perhaps Brett Hogarth himself. That could be hundreds of thousands of people!
Was that really a possibility? Or did Brett Hogarth really hand-pick individuals for the smart pills just as Carolyn mentioned, and now they were instinctually congregating in the library--the most accessible place of knowledge retrieval?
Gary suddenly found that he was thinking too much like a smart person, and not enough like a logical one.
Carolyn had insisted that Smart Inc. did not service many people. If for some reason this wasn't true, if Smart Inc. had indeed been distributing their pills for some time now, then Gary wasn't all that special after all--he had simply become one of the crowd. Again. Like one of Dr. Suess' Star-Bellied Sneetches. Theoretically, he thought, one person could tell a few friends, and they in turn could each tell their friends, and so on. It was a fatal cycle. Everyone would be smart in no time!
He stood behind one of the suspect users, a man of about thirty. Gary watched him pouring over his work in a frenzy of perspiration, observing his quickened mode of study. Facts and data flickered across the screen like a videotape in fast-forward, numbers and letters racing against one another in a super marathon of information. The guy absorbed the flashing information at the same rate and accuracy as Gary had earlier in his apartment, studying the histories of high-risk stock performances. It became immediately apparent to Gary that the guy was looking to make a real quick buck. Am I just one of the crowd? Or am I part of a new breed of superhuman? Part of the Smart Society?
Feeling the claustrophobic need to relieve himself, Gary escaped the confines of the computer room and brisked down the hall to the men's room. He entered, stationing himself in front of a wall urinal, wondering how many "smart" people there really were.
From behind, he heard a low moan.
In mid-piss, he quietly twisted his neck around to investigate the source of the grunt. The wall behind was lined with four private toilet stalls and he could hear feet shuffling vigorously about in the first one. More groaning ensued. He shook out the last drop, zipped up and tiptoed along the length of the remaining three stalls, arching forward and peeking underneath the one-foot space between the doors and floor. Feet. Next stall, feet again. He reached the end of the line, bumping his head against the wall. All four toilets were occupied.
But strangely there was no foul smell.
He thought back to his evening last night, how horny he got after taking the pill, how when he laid eyes on Carolyn he felt he had no choice but to quell his feral urges, feed his carnal desires.
No way was all he could stutter inwardly to himself as he realized what might be going on in the stalls.
Gary got out of there quick. As he exited, not knowing whether to laugh or be sick, another man walked in, sweating.
Wednesday Evening, 5:15
When Gary arrived home, he found a note pinned to the door:
Place it in an envelope and slide it under my door.
Carolyn
For the first time since Carolyn asked to borrow the money, Gary felt his common sense waking up, and the whole goddamn thing annoyed him. He again wondered why Carolyn had been so elusive about her motivations, why when he even went as far as thinking about asking her what she needed the money for, she would kiss him and start rubbing his pecker, expertly distracting him. Why couldn't she have just skipped off to Atlantic City with her photographic memory for a few hours of blackjack? That'd be a lot more fun than simply borrowing the money, and a lot less burdensome than having to pay him back. Unless she was in some sort of trouble and needed the money right away. That was a possibility. Wasn't it?
Being smart sure didn't make things less confusing.
Then something shocking occurred to him: what if Carolyn's ulterior motive last night was to use him so that she could get her paws on his money?
Of course she used you, Riddell. Why all of a sudden would she find you attractive enough to have sex with? Sure, the smart pill helped a bit with your looks, but damn, you're still no Richard Gere.
This sobering theory made sense, and the possibility of it being true sent horrors through him.
How can I be so smart, and then be so dumb at the same time?
Hey Gary, there's a big difference between book smart and street smart. You may have all the knowledge in the world now, but you're still the same old dummy. Gary Riddell. The same zitty kid that used to get taken advantage of in school all those years ago.
Provoked by anger, he charged out from his apartment across the hall and banged ferociously on Caroly
n's door, like a big bad wolf. "Hey Carolyn! You in there? We need to talk."
No answer.
"C'mon, Carolyn. I know you're in there. Come to the door."
He waited. No answer.
Finally a bit of street smarts kicked in him. "If you don't answer, then you won't get what you asked me for."
Silence. Then, "W-wait...I-I'm coming. Don't leave."
Her words were faint, but Gary could still hear sheer desperation in them, like the cries of help from a desert survivor just feet from a cool glass of water. The knob turned, clicked. The door fell open an inch.
"Carolyn?" Gary gently pushed the door forward, entering slowly and carefully. Once inside, Carolyn was nowhere to be seen.
"Hands up, don't turn around."
The sound of her voice came from behind, startling him. It was the voice of Carolyn the waitress. She was back.
"What's the problem, Carolyn?"
"Slowly, place the money at your feet and get out."
This turn of events was highly unexpected, her unpredictable behavior leaving Gary in a position to believe anything could happen at the moment, even the cold fact that she was committing a serious crime. "What, do you have a gun to my back?" he uncomfortably joked.
Seriously, she replied, "Maybe."
"C'mon Carolyn...is this some sort of--"
"Do it now."
Gary had had enough. He decided at this very moment that he was too smart to be taken advantage of anymore. Unless she was naked and wanted to do him again, he wouldn't give in. And that scenario seemed unlikely now, given the current circumstances. If she wanted to shoot him, so be it. The shot would ring out through the entire building. She'd never get away with it. After all, it was her apartment.
"No," Gary said and turned around.
His mouth fell open at the sight of her, immediate feelings of astonishment and disgust gripping him and freezing him, falling in complete utter contrast to those feelings he felt last night when she first seduced him.
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