Receptor

by Alan Glynn

  “No, I’m afraid I’m here on false pretenses, but it sure is a swell gathering this evening, isn’t it? Throw a rock and you’re bound to hit someone with a PhD.”

  “Well, I—”

  The clip cuts off at that point. There are others from the same event, brief interviews with von Neumann and Herman Kahn, but the Monroe clip—the Ned Sweeney clip—is mesmerizing.

  I watch it ten times on a loop. There’s something electric about Ned’s presence, something irresistible in his tone. I also see a clear resemblance to my father, to Tom, it’s in his eyes, and after the fourth or fifth viewing of this thing, I can’t help feeling that I could meld into the screen and become Ned Sweeney—there in that ballroom, on that balmy evening so long ago.

  When Molly’s done with the book, we come together in the middle of the room, and just stand there for a moment facing each other.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Which?”

  “Both. This. And the book.” She shakes her head. “It’s incredible.”

  “Which?”

  “Shut up.”

  We start laughing.

  Then we compare notes, on the lookout for anything unfamiliar or irregular. But basically I feel amazing. There is a heightened awareness of … everything, sense perceptions, intellectual clarity, intuition, emotions, and all in perfect proportion.

  To which Molly goes, “Check, check, check.”

  Though maybe not perfect proportion, because I soon find that I’m consumed with an overwhelming, heart-quaking desire for every inch of her, and while I have to believe that this would be happening anyway, since it’s happened before, there is a gathering rhythm and intensity to it now that is undeniably new.

  And, luckily …

  Check.

  We fall into each other’s arms. Spinning lightly, whispering, we trace a slow arc across the floor toward the bedroom.

  * * *

  “And then there’s my kid sister,” Molly is saying. “She missed out on the worst of the drama, so she’s, I don’t know, smoother, like a version 2.0 with all of the bugs removed. But then again she had to grow up without a dad, I suppose, and that’s … that’s … oh my God, I can practically see it now, if I picture her face, it’s there, like a seam or a vein, it’s always been a part of her.”

  She sits up straight now, her back against the pillows.

  “Ray, you have to tell me to shut up. I could go on talking all night. I know you asked me about my family and stuff, but this has been like the equivalent of fifteen years of therapy, in what, twenty minutes?”

  I stroke her arm. “I wouldn’t yield the floor just yet, Mol, if I were you.”

  “Why? Coz then you’ll start up?”

  “It seems inevitable, doesn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  Eventually, though, we move on to talking about the manuscript on the table in the other room. Which we’ve both now read. Somehow, and with uncanny accuracy, Ned Sweeney—or Tom Monroe—managed to describe a scientific, technological, economic, and sociological paradigm that today we may only just be reaching the outer limits of, namely the great delusion of infinite expansion. He saw in Eisenhower’s America what was happening with consumerism and how that could only ever go in one direction; he saw what was happening with the nerds at the RAND Corporation and how their hard-on for the exponential growth curve could only ever result in an infinite winter of automation; he saw what was happening in the university laboratories and how the exquisite flowering of learning and insight they’d achieved over the centuries could only ever lead, in the end, to the bleak realization that this supposedly grand dance humanity is caught up in is merely a mechanistic, tick-tock interaction of chemical impulses.

  And if he’d left things there, it would indeed be bleak—but he didn’t. There’s a whole final section where he proposed what was effectively a taxonomy of human intelligence, and at the apex of this he placed intuition, or unconscious intelligence. He defined this as the organic seat of disruption and creativity, and identified its source as some possible combination of the biological and the metaphysical.

  “It’s pretty scary, the amount of stuff he predicted,” I say. “Under normal conditions, you can only extrapolate so far before things will go a little off course, and then, pretty fast, way off course. But he steers a clear line right through.”

  Molly sits up straight again. “My impulse is just to ask how he did this,” she says. “But right now I almost feel as if I know, as if I could imagine doing something like it myself.”

  In the stillness of the room, I can’t be sure if the insistent thump of our side-by-side heartbeats isn’t actually audible.

  “Let’s go out,” I say.

  23

  Sweeney wanders around for the next hour, tormented again by the irony that if he actually had MDT in his system, he wouldn’t be doing this. More than likely, he’d already be on the train home.

  But here he is.

  The Fairbrook is a stately old redbrick pile, built in the 1890s. It probably has about fifteen hundred rooms. It’s stuffy, dark, and oppressive.

  Sweeney walks across the lobby to the elevators. He tells the operator which floor. Soon, he’s stepping out onto a long, empty, thickly carpeted hallway.

  He starts counting down the room numbers. 1412, 1411, 1410. He only has a few moments left to change his mind. 1409, 1408, 1407. The good outcome in this scenario is that Mike Sutton actually meant what he said. And, for him, what he said isn’t all that implausible—that he’s willing to siphon off some of the drugs that come his way and make a bit of extra money.

  1406.

  But how much of his own money is Sweeney willing to siphon off for a vial of MDT? That’s the question. He guesses he’ll find out in a minute.

  He knocks.

  Sutton holds the door open and Sweeney walks in. As hotel rooms go, it’s dingier than most. The lighting is dim, coming from a single bedside lamp, and there’s a musty smell in the air. It takes Sweeney a moment to realize they’re not alone.

  A man is standing over by the window. He’s in a dark suit and is partly obscured by the heavy burgundy drapes.

  Sweeney’s heart sinks. “Hello, Clay.”

  “Hello,” Proctor says. “So what are you going by now? Tom or Ned?”

  Sweeney ignores this.

  Sutton stays where he is, as if he’s waiting for someone else. Then, on cue, there’s a light rap on the door. Sutton opens it and George Blair slips in.

  Sweeney throws Sutton a look. “Was he following me?”

  “What do you think?”

  Fixing his gaze now on the stained, olive-green carpet, Sweeney says, “Okay. I’m here. What do you want?”

  Sutton doesn’t answer.

  Sweeney looks at him again. “I assume there are no ten vials of MDT.”

  “Not in this room.”

  “Well then, I should probably be on my way.”

  But he doesn’t move.

  “What do you want?” he repeats after a moment, this time in a whisper.

  “Look,” Sutton says, “people are upset. You make calls to Eiben Laboratories with some story? You show up out in Hoboken? Then you contact a journalist, a high-profile magazine writer like Vance fucking Packard? And tell him the same story? Christ.”

  “Except, the thing is,” Clay Proctor says, taking a step forward, “it’s not a story, is it? Bill Cordell can attest to that. Since you were up there with him, he’s carried out a few more trials on individual patients, and it’s definitive.”

  “What is?”

  “That it works. MDT. Cordell’s report has been making the rounds, and let me tell you, it’s got a lot of people scared shitless.”

  “Why?”

  “Come on, Ned. Why do you think? Tobacco is a multibillion-dollar industry. I mean, all the medical research into cancer these days is bad enough, but this?” He makes a snorting sound. “If this gets out, it could knock the industry stone-cold dead overni
ght.”

  Sweeney looks at him, puzzled. “Why do you care?”

  Proctor shrugs and makes a face, but it’s unclear what he means, and Sweeney feels a twitch of panic. “What about Eiben Laboratories?” he says. “Surely MDT is a huge opportunity for them?”

  “Maybe. In theory. But things aren’t that simple. Eiben is a small company and there are competing interests here. And questions of ownership. It’s…” He waves it away. “Let’s just say that a lot of very influential people are paying close attention to this.”

  “What people? I don’t understand. The tobacco companies? The government? Who are you working for, Clay?”

  Sutton clears his throat loudly. “Jesus, enough already.”

  Sweeney tries to regroup. “No, wait, listen to me. This isn’t just about cigarettes or money—you do know that, right?” His hands are shaking. He takes a deep breath to steady himself. “I mean, let me ask you a question, Clay. Do I seem like a smart guy to you? Not particularly, right? Not smart like I was out in Santa Monica, that’s for sure. So how do you think I was able to keep up a conversation with someone like John von Neumann? How did I second-guess all those nuclear physicists at that test site on Bikini Atoll?”

  “When you were a kid you ate your greens. How do I know?”

  “It was the MDT.” Sweeney leans forward. “It makes you smart. It’s like a nuclear explosion, only inside your brain.” He throws his hands up. “It won’t just eliminate the craving for nicotine, it’ll eliminate the craving for all those things that make us anxious, and drive us insane, and push us over the edge—power, control, money.”

  Proctor stares at him, a flicker of uncertainty behind his eyes.

  “Oh boy,” Sutton says. “I bet that’s just what all those CEOs are dying to hear.” He clicks his tongue. “Right. Let’s get this over with.”

  Sweeney turns around. “Get what over with?”

  “You should have kept your mouth shut,” Sutton says. “It’s that simple. You were home and dry, but you couldn’t leave it alone, could you?”

  “Oh God.” Sweeney turns back. His voice is shaking. “You don’t understand.”

  Proctor is still staring at him.

  “What I said is true, Clay. If you don’t believe me, take some yourself.”

  Proctor swallows nervously.

  “Come on!” Sutton shouts. “We haven’t got all night.”

  “Seriously, Clay.” Sweeney is pleading now. “Try it.”

  Proctor hesitates, then gives a quick, determined shake of his head. Taking a step back, he reaches up and pulls the heavy drapes to one side. He opens the window, letting in a stream of sounds—traffic, distant voices, a whispered breeze.

  Sweeney’s gaze moves beyond Proctor now, to something across the street, a neon sign flashing on a building. He stares at it in disbelief: on, off, on, off, it’s like a pulse … his life as it could have been, his life as it is now, his life as it could have been, his life as it is now …

  Behind him, there’s a ripple of movement, and something new in the air: a smell, it’s sweet, but it’s also pungent. Before Sweeney can react to it, a hand—Sutton’s or Blair’s—reaches around and wraps a chloroform-soaked handkerchief over his mouth. Sweeney struggles, kicks, flails, but the sounds streaming into the room become muffled, and the throbbing light across the street settles into a blur.

  He’s sinking.

  And soon, emerging briefly from the darkness, he knows he’s falling.

  24

  Talking nonstop, we get up, put on some clothes, and head out into the night. The city is pulsating all around us, and we fall in with its rhythm of sounds, of light, of movement. I don’t feel high, or drunk, or intoxicated. It’s more a preternatural clarity of mind. Everything is quick and frictionless, every thought I have, every connection I make. But I can’t help wondering what this must have been like for Ned—especially that first time, when he had no idea what was going on. He seemed to cope pretty well, though. Later, according to Clay Proctor, he stole a quantity of MDT before heading out to Santa Monica, but … who did he steal it from? And how? And why did he end up calling himself Tom Monroe?

  These questions make me realize how little I still know about any of what happened back then. Clay Proctor was maddeningly selective in what he told me.

  But maybe I’m beginning to understand why.

  We’re just coming out onto Lexington Avenue and I turn to Molly. “I think I want to go to Forty-Third Street.”

  Her brow furrows. “The hotel?”

  “It’s not there anymore, but still…”

  Next thing I know, her arm is out and a yellow cab immediately pulls up. In the back, we retreat into our phones for a few minutes, burning through texts and emails, until Molly says to the driver without even looking up, “This is good.” She pays and we get out.

  We walk a couple of blocks to the spot where the Fairbrook Hotel once stood. So many of Manhattan’s old hotels are gone now—long demolished and replaced by steel-and-glass office buildings. The Fairbrook came down in the late sixties after a fire and this thing was erected in its stead, an anonymous, international-style high-rise. As we stand in front of it, gazing up at its geometric lines, I try to calculate where the fourteenth-floor window of a stuffy Beaux Arts heap might reasonably have been located. It’s unverifiable, so I just settle on a position and conjure up a tableau of flickering ghosts …

  Again, there’s no way of verifying this, but my intuitive sense is that Clay Proctor lied about not being in New York when Ned Sweeney came out of that window up there. I think Proctor was in the room and I think he knew exactly what happened.

  It was the one thing he couldn’t admit to.

  I look down at the sidewalk now, and as with the building, it’s different. These aren’t the same paving slabs that were here sixty years ago. But I choose a spot anyway and then see it happen, feel it happen, the sudden whoosh of impact, the already misshapen body, limbs twisted, shards of broken bone protruding … eyes, nose, mouth, all oozing blood.

  The final breath, so much of the story going with it.

  * * *

  I wish I could have learned more, a lot more. All of the facts. But when does that ever happen, really? The key thing I know now that I didn’t know before is that Ned Sweeney didn’t commit suicide—a fact that itself rewrites history. But would my father have been any less angry or tormented if he had known? Would his life have been any less miserable? Or just miserable in a different way? And how about Jill’s life? How about mine? There are no answers here.

  We walk on and get another cab. We head downtown. We flit around for an hour or two, going to bars and clubs, weaving in and out of different conversations, different orbits, but always circling back to each other, where the engagement is sharper, denser, deeper. We end up walking home, back to my place, which is over sixty blocks, but this is nothing, each block passing like the mechanical flick of an old taxi meter.

  And we talk the whole time. Mainly about the possibilities of MDT-48—where we could go with it, where we could take it.

  “The biggest land grab in history is taking place right now,” I say, “and it’s for our data. Companies are silently amassing it, harvesting it, and storing it, and whoever owns it will end up owning the future. But so far, none of these companies has shown that they’re capable of behaving any differently from Hertz or Philip Morris or Eiben or Nike, because they all end up having to do the same thing, turn a fucking profit—the same way all politicians end up having to sell themselves in order to get elected. MDT could short-circuit that whole system and rewire it.”

  But Molly is focused on the practicalities.

  “That bottle has, what, maybe sixty pills in it? Split fifty-fifty, you, me—that’s a month. Even if we cycle it out to one dose each a week, that’s still not much more than six months. Say we cut each pill in two, and do the same, that’s still only a year. So we need to determine what this stuff actually is. We need to put on our lab
coats and go from Chemistry 101 to advanced chemistry, and fast…”

  Our levels of excitement are at fever pitch now, but once we turn the corner at Sixty-Fourth, once we’re within a few feet of my building, I can tell that something’s not right. Molly puts a hand on my arm.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And I don’t, not yet—but it feels like I’m doing some sort of rapid calculus based on factors I’m not even aware of. Temperature, maybe? Air density? I enter the lobby and immediately detect a slightly stronger note of whatever it is I’m picking up on. I hurry over to the elevator and tap impatiently on the panel. Once we’re inside the car and moving up, I realize what it is.

  “Shit.”

  Molly deflates, knowing now in essence what I know. The details aren’t important. How could they be?

  She doesn’t even ask.

  I have to say it anyway. “It’s faint, but … do you get that?”

  There’s a trace of something in the air.

  Molly pauses. “Cologne?”

  “It’s Dean’s. Proctor’s security guy. Maybe he wasn’t Proctor’s. Maybe he’s Eiben.” The elevator stops and the door opens. Stepping out, I release a heavy sigh, and whisper, “Of course he’s fucking Eiben.”

  We move slowly down the hallway to my apartment. I can already see from here that the lock has been tampered with—hairline scratches from a bump key. I get my own key out and open the door. I flick on the light switch. A couple of pieces of furniture have been turned over, some drawers have been pulled out and shelves have been cleared, but all in a line to the bathroom, where—predictably—the contents of the medicine cabinet have been tossed and spilled on the floor.

  I get down on my hands and knees and sift through the items. Needless to say, the MDT is gone.

  I turn and lean my back against the toilet bowl. Through the doorframe I can see Molly in the living room. She’s perched on the end of the sofa with her head down.

  I close my eyes.

  I left it in the fucking medicine cabinet? Why didn’t I put more thought into this? There were signs I should have read—even Proctor was paranoid. He didn’t say it in so many words, but it was obvious.