The Solution

by TA Williams

  Randal and Christopher M made their way to the end of the corridor and under the threshold which lead to a cavernous, dark lobby. The ceiling reached higher than Randal expected, and the floor space must have been roughly 2000 square feet. What interested him most was, near the middle of the lobby, a purplish red luminescence flickered like a digital spirit. He saw a chubby shadow of a man sitting behind the purplish glow; the glow, Randal then understood, emanated from a holocomputer—which he had seen Solution officials, City residents, and his boss at work use, but they were not always available to the nationwide public.

  This chubby shadow typed on the holoboard and a few other shadowed people stood near him. All of them studied the holocomputer’s monitor where delineations of the All’s schematics appeared and were accompanied by frequencies resembling a haywire cardiograph.

  “Come on,” Christopher M said to Randal, cutting his eyes. “You ain’t the first and you ain’t the last. It’s like ‘effin clockwork.”

  When the two made it to the holocomputer, the shadows took on human features, revealing Alex Treaty as one along with the chubby man and another, feminine figure. Randal experienced the Dysfunction Nervous to the point of anxiety, but no one would notice. Randal kept it hidden, his body still. There was Plum Charlie, the chubby man behind the computer and a woman named Georgia—the same woman that chauffeured Randal from the alleyway and from death. Randal hardly saw Plum Charlie or Georgia as threats. His anxiety lessened.

  “Here, Mr. Treaty,” Christopher M said.

  Alex turned away from the holocomputer, purplish glow highlighting his face, saying to Randal, “Fantastic. I see you’re well.”

  “What makes you think that?” Randal said.

  “Because you’re still alive, for one.” Alex grinned and his eyes brightened.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you realize what’s happening?” Alex asked. He stepped closer, placing a hand gently on Randal’s shoulder. Randal shrugged the hand off and stared Alex dead in the eyes. Randal never had this degree of aggression building inside him. He wanted to hit something. Up until this point in time, he had been rather content with his life. What was wrong with coming home from work to a small (but neat) apartment and watching TV? Tending the fern? Reading a book? Absolutely nothing. To the contrary, Randal wrestled with, what was wrong with hearing voices in his head, being attacked by a nightmarish creature and held hostage by some outlandish people he’d never heard of telling him he’d been streaming something called the All and he had to go through a series of purgatory to withdrawal from it? Quite a bit.

  “I don’t think he does.” Georgia said. She had an athletic frame and long brown hair, big and deep brown eyes, Her face was square-shaped and her lips looked to be perpetually pouting. Randal liked the way that her right hip poked out, and her jeans and gray jacket. Her black boots. She looked surprisingly clean and well-kept considering the way she’d probably been living, Randal thought.

  “Do you?” Georgia asked.

  Before answering, Randal scanned the dark at the edges of the lobby. He saw outlines of around ten more people.

  Randal answered, “Not exactly.”

  “Well, Mr. Randal Markins, I’ll tell you the deal,” Georgia said, “Your life has just begun.”

  Chapter 5

  Expansion

  For a lifetime Mr. Spires studied the universe, time, and why the two work in such puzzling ways; and what, exactly, is time for that matter. The “what” factor had always been easier for Mr. Spires to discern, but the “why” was something else entirely. Because at this point in time, as he and two operatives escorted Elizabeth into the All’s entrance (a building that looked like an ordinary skyscraper from the exterior), Mr. Spires wondered why Elizabeth didn’t appear to him earlier in life. He’d searched for ones such as her since the State of Chaos, and found none with her potential on his own efforts—there were others like her, but he hadn’t been the Consulate to locate them. But, Mr. Spires finally did find her, and believed there’s a deep down, random perfection to it all.

  All doorways will open. All will connect that’s supposed to connect. He had run a psychological examination on Elizabeth, to insure the “Dysfunction Monsters” (as he and colleagues jested and called them) were in check, until his routine work culminated into what could be a fantastic discovery. But he must keep his Joy under control . . . Elizabeth could help change how everyone experiences reality, time—everything. She could lead the human race to unimaginative experiences beyond the reach of comprehension. It was possible she’d help open the doorway to the Ultimate Reality and expand the All’s scrutiny.

  One of the Solution operatives swiped his wrist over the wall-reader and opened the glass entrance doors. The building was spacious, black-and-white checkered marble floors and a single RMS stood to the side of lobby. The RMS was a bipedal, robotic conquest standing seven feet tall. It looked—no, felt—Elizabeth believed, as if it were made of the dark and twisted thoughts of men, from the recesses of the psyche no one wants to mention. Its metal was fashioned deep grey and purple code flashed in its chasse. This RMS had no visible weaponry, but it was lethal nevertheless—and she wondered what exactly its weapon might be. Mr. Spires had mentioned to her that RMS eat nightmares, dreams, and take away everything human.

  A tall and heartfelt operative with a bucket chin manned the desk. He saluted Mr. Spires and the operatives and let them go to the elevator. When doors slid shut, there was silence with the exception of the moving elevator. Elizabeth looked at the operatives, then to Mr. Spires. None of them had spoken much on the ride here, though Elizabeth had overheard someone call the smaller operative Tread and the big one Mix. She had asked only few questions, and there were few answers from Mr. Spires.

  “Why are we here?” Elizabeth said with her eyes flickering wonderment.

  Mr. Spires said, “You’re someone of great value. I mean you no harm, Elizabeth. But I think you understand that.”

  She did and she didn’t.

  The elevator ascended forty stories then stopped. A few minutes after trekking through a labyrinthine series of the All’s corridors, passing a few offices guarded by armed RMS, Mr. Spires and the operatives guided Elizabeth down a long, isolated hallway. They came to a large mechanical doorway. Mr. Spires ran his wrist across the wall-reader, the door slid open and closed behind them. Room 432. The room was dim and compact, which made Elizabeth uneasy. Plump networks of cables, analyzers, medical apparatus, and monitors waited with a dreary expectance. These networks, Elizabeth noticed, were connected to a console in the backrest of a stainless steel chair that was loaded with data ports. It surely wasn’t the Comfort Zone.

  “Wait, wait. What is this?” she said.

  Then the smaller operative, Tread, grabbed her by the arm. For his height he had a powerful grip.

  Mr. Spires, seeing this, darted his eyes downward as if to avoid the question and the potential for a situation. He walked to a near bare metal desk by the wall, grabbed and held up a blue hospital gown as gently as if he were picking up a baby and said, “Elizabeth, you’ll have to put this on.”

  “Why?”

  “Elizabeth, I advise you to cooperate,” Mr. Spires said grimly.

  Tread’s hold tightened around her bicep. The pressure of his grip hurt, and Elizabeth felt something like a temper igniting inside her. “I just want—”

  “Elizabeth.” Mr. Spires came closer to her, placing his weighty hands on her shoulders. She could see the graveness in his brown eyes and she began to understand the situation might be dire.

  Mr. Spires said, “I’ll tell you, but for now please just put—”

  But all this took a moment too long. The operatives shoved Mr. Spires away from Elizabeth and took control.

  “What’re you doing?” Don’t hurt her,” Mr. Spires yelled. “She came here on her own free will. No resistance. She just wants to know—”

  “That’s enough.” Tread said with a metallic voice, metallic becau
se his larynx had been reconstructed a year ago due to a wound during the State of Chaos. With a black gun in his hand, Tread spun around and pointed it at Mr. Spires’ forehead. He recognized it to be a plasmagun, which would burn a violet-colored beam of energy through his skull and everything Mr. Spires knew and everything he was would be no more than fried pulp on the floor and a singed hole in his head. If the Ultimate Reality incorporated the discorporate, Mr. Spires would find out indefinitely (or wouldn’t know the difference at all) if he went against Tread’s will. Mr. Spires could only imagine that both this operative and the big one called Mix had more experience than the sun does at casting shadows. But why are they doing this? The Solution abhors violence, he thought.

  “Stop resisting,” Tread said, “We don’t want to hurt you.”

  Mix restrained Elizabeth. Both he and Tread stripped her naked and slid the blue hospital gown over her. Mix pushed her onto the chair and strapped her arms and legs down with nylon belts.

  After the operatives finished their work, Dr. Temple entered the room like a cool night breeze and commanded the operatives to exit, and, obeying with gratification, the operatives did with the exception of Mr. Spires.

  “Dr. Temple, I want to—”

  “Calm. Find your center, Mr. Spires,” Dr. Temple said as he raised his hand, a gesture relaying the message, ‘do not speak.’

  Mr. Spires didn’t. He didn’t want anything bad to happen to Elizabeth, but he also knew his place.

  The doctor moved close enough for Elizabeth to smell his breath, which at first was sweet. He peered into her green eyes, as if searching for a deeper, more meaningful world behind them.

  “Hmm, anything change, Elizabeth?” Dr. Temple said, “What do you feel now?” His voice was soothing, like a lullaby almost or her favorite melody.

  She couldn’t be sure how to answer the question, until the next time she inhaled she smelled mold and dankness, which reminded her of her mother’s room, of the death, the suffering. A splinter of what she thought might be Repulsion stabbed at her and a sharp pain went through her chest.

  “Do you understand my question now?”

  The tone of his voice transmogrified. She suddenly hated it; it was just as awful as nails on a chalkboard. The stress of it made quick spasms stampede up her arm. Forgetting his question, barely audible, she asked, “What are you?”

  “No, what are you?” he said, his voice now at a different tone than either before, as if it were a musical instrument changing octaves and pitch. Dr. Temple was many men, or ideas of men, all into one functioning body, into one soul, and to those around him daily (including Mr. Spires) there was a hypnotic element to him.

  Wasting no more time, he then injected a sedative into Elizabeth’s jugular. Soon a warm wave swelled and arose and she rode it all the way down to her legs, back up to her brain. She welcomed the relief from her stress—from all these Dysfunctions, an onslaught of them.

  Mr. Spires said, “Is she? What are we going—”

  “I’m certain, Mr. Spires. And you do have a family to consider, yes? You do love them?”

  Mr. Spires conceded.

  Seeing Elizabeth relaxed, the doctor plugged the series of cables directly into her arms, neck, temple, and chest, then connected the network to the data ports in the back of the chair. The All was ready to download her, and so the process commenced with a pulsing hum and, with a thought, Dr. Temple flicked on the monitors. As a fractal of her energy began to drain she was reminded of the retro late-night vampire movies, and what a victim of such a creature must feel like as their essence gets sucked from them.

  The monitors flickered. Elizabeth felt a part of her brain invaded, somewhere in the far in the back where she would need a spotlight to find. She melded with the All, seeping into it, becoming a part of it as it became a part of her. Soon the All projected her memories. Mr. Spires and Dr. Temple were encompassed by a cyclorama of her digitized recollections and past.

  Elizabeth was a fetus, hearing the rhythm of her mother’s heartbeat.

  Orca whales, Orlando.

  Looked like the sky rained dead suns.

  Rocking chair.

  Her mother smiled.

  Her father with a hunting rifle.

  A tea set, crowded with stuffed animals and she was wearing a white spring dress.

  Seven years old: a cut pinky finger. Blood dripped—her first encounter with the substance.

  At age eleven, a young Randal Markins getting a chunk of his lip ripped off and caught in Elizabeth’s braces. Blood. Flesh.

  The memories oozed to another compartment of Elizabeth’s mind. She ran through a near lightless tunnel where the charred arms from her dreams burst from the walls, reaching for her with desperation. She smelled sulfur and the fingers attempted to dig in and rip her skin, to utterly tear her apart. Suddenly the tunnel dropped out from under her feet and she fell until she landed back into the stainless steel chair where Dr. Temple and Mr. Spires stood before her, watching her recent adventures playing on the monitors.

  “You’ve been gone a while,” Mr. Spires said.

  Her chest was so tight it could have snapped.

  Dr. Temple assured her, “The All likes you, and we’ll see more of you soon. You will open many doorways for me.”

  Before Elizabeth blinked the last image she saw on the monitor was of the mirrored angel figurine. Somehow it seemed more haunting to her than the previous mental bedlam.

  ***

  Alex Treaty and Georgia lead Randal from the lobby, away from the ethereal glow of the holocomputer and into a dark room that might have been an office at one time in history. The room smelled of dust and fruity aerosol. No one bothered to flip on a light switch, but Georgia placed her tablet computer on the desk, which provided enough paleness to make the three of them visible. Georgia had Randal sit on a tattered leather chair. Randal kept on the edge of his seat. She stepped back then crouched in front of him like a pleasant feline—as if to lessen any chance of Randal viewing what was to come as a so-called canary hunt. Alex, reminding Randal of a personified scarecrow, stood beside Georgia with his arms crossed. Both Alex and Georgia, in the soft blue light, looked akin to moonlit reflections over water. The tablet’s light dimly illuminated a print of Mucha’s Cycles Perfecta hanging on the wall, which Randal appreciated.

  Randal’s stomach again was near empty even though he had just eaten, and he could tell it’d be growling soon. Occasional spasms ran through his head, and he wasn’t sure how well he could pay attention, but he remained remarkably curious to learn why these people had invaded his mind, sliced his wrist open and kept him alive. The weirdness of it all, despite anger and confusion igniting a near conflagration inside of him, was that Randal didn’t feel threatened. A sense of calm and sincerity seemed to float like cherubs from Alex Treaty and Georgia, and this was the only sensation that kept Randal from becoming nothing short of a seething animal. Deep down, he believed Dysfunction Anger could be used to his benefit if needed. And it might be needed indeed.

  Alex put a hand to his bearded chin, staring at Randal for a moment, then began, “There’s too much information to present you all at once, so we’ll see how far we can get. Time goes fast. Minutes go faster lately. Your consciousness, the way you experience stuff in general, has certainly changed compared to just weeks ago, Mr. Markins. You’ve become new. Are you ready?”

  “I don’t know,” Randal said, shoving down a sort of wrath building up in him. He wanted to curse, to flail his fists madly. He wasn’t certain what stopped him. Randal dropped his head into his hands. His brain may as well have been tumbling down a rigid mountain.

  Georgia sighed. The gaze of her big brown eyes could have reached under Randal’s skin as she said, “And how could you know? Listen carefully. It’ll make or break you.”

  There was something ominous but true to a frightening degree in Georgia’s words. It’ll make or break you. Randal wondered where she might have been in life previous to the hell-hole sh
e temporarily resided. What sort of life she had experienced, occupation(s), and why in God’s name would she not strive for something better in the new world versus this.

  Alex said, “I’m sure you have an idea why we expunged your tracer chip.”

  Randal knew the answer but hesitated to respond.

  “So...?” Alex said with great expectations, blue eyes widening.

  “So I can’t be traced.”

  “Ha!” Alex belted, “Well, I’ve won that bet,” he said as he grinned and looked at Georgia; they had made a private bet whether Randal was mentally dim or not. Georgia believed him to be rather lacking. Alex Treaty believed the contrary, but wouldn’t ever wager on Randal being anything close to genius. Alex believed genius to be his own lot. Alex frequently had to scale down his vocabulary so others could understand him. And while the man only stood five foot eight inches and 160 pounds, an air about him suggested he might have been a giant.

  Georgia cut her eyes, saying, “What? Do you want me to give you ‘money’, Mr. Treaty? Really? Cash? You’d be crazy.”

  Alex chuckled. “I’m automatically assuming that’s supposed to be an attempt at morbid humor, Georgia. I’m not concerned with any money, considering. Are you? Didn’t think so.” Then Alex continued, “Your presence for a few moments longer will suffice, and you’ve brought me to a monumental point.”

  Georgia answered, “Sure I have.”

  Alex then focused on Randal and said, “I find no pleasure in…in relaying this information to you, man, because I know you’ve been in better health, but … let’s start with the basics: the Cash Disease killed three-million two-hundred-ninety-seven thousand and four citizens in the former United States alone and seventeen-million four-hundred thirty-six-thousand and six people worldwide. Did you have any loved ones affected by the Cash Disease?”