The Crimson Chip

by Chris Tallant

  The audio reminder of the traumatic event sent my brain into overload and I began to cry in uncontrolled waves.  My head pulsated with my temples pounding and my heart began racing.  I could feel sweat beading on my face and someone putting something cold on my forehead.  

  The voices from the taping seemed distant.  Echoes fading down a tunnel or a hallway far, far away.  All I heard was my heartbeat in my ears and my breathing growing faster.

  I blacked out again.

  * * * * *

  “Do you know what was on that microchip he put in himself?”  One of the doctors asked Jason.

  “He had all his psychiatric meds on it, and he used it to test other things,” Jason said, “something for celiac disease.”

  “He said he was trying to use it to detect gluten in his blood stream,” Becky mentioned, “Does it help?”

  “Gluten causes celiac disease, Becky,” Jason said, leaning over and whispering to her, “he didn’t like talking about his problems, more so the psychiatric ones.”

  “Wait a second,” Becky said, “can you page Dr. Del Mar in Rheumatology?”

  Everyone stopped and looked at her for a second before someone said, “Why?”

  “He’s my dad,” Becky said, “He might help.”

  “I’ll go page him,” a nurse said, “be right back.”

  “Thanks!”

  “Jason,” one of the doctors said, “What psychiatric disorders did he suffer from or do you know what medicine he was taking?  Better yet, do you know who his psych doctor is or where he had refills filled?”

  “I can go home and look,” Jason shrugged, “but I never saw pill bottles around.”

  “Please do,” the doctor looked dire, “if this is a drop in too much serotonin or dopamine, he could go into shock and fall into a coma.”

  “Wow, really?”  Jason grabbed his coat and ran out the door yelling. “I’ll be right back!”

  “Hey, what does Matt have in his hand?”  Becky said, looking at something held tight in his fist.

  As she tried to wrestle it loose, the doctors began to move in and out in more of a rapid pace, checking different stats on beeping machines or readjusting machines to make sure oxygen flowed the proper way.

  Finally, she got the paper free.  Written on the piece of paper were a handful of random letters, numbers, and characters.  She sat in the chair next to the bed, looking at the paper containing the string of strange characters.

  A tall and distinguished black man with a greying beard walked into the room wearing a white coat.

  “Rebecca?”

  “Daddy!”  Becky jumped up and gave her dad a big hug.

  “What are you doing here?  Who is this guy?”

  “He’s a friend of mine, attacked earlier by his boss at the DMC, Dr. Roma, ever heard of him?”

  “I can’t say I have, however I’ve never worked with the DMC.  I’ve only worked here.”

  “I need your help,” Becky pleaded, “he had a microchip in him which contained medicine - psychiatric drugs controlling bi-polar, severe manic depression and God knows what else.”

  “I don’t see how I can help, sweetie,” he looked at his daughter, “However I do know some people who may, come with me.”

  “Do you…I mean,” Becky looked at Matt, “can I stay here with him for when he wakes up?”

  “Sure thing, sweetie,” he bent and kissed the top of her head, “and I have to admit, I really love the orange hair, you should let your mom see it sometime.  Maybe this weekend?”

  “Let’s get past today first,” Becky pleaded, “he’s a good friend I don’t want to lose too soon.”

  “I’ll get the entire psych ward down here to help,” Dr. Del Mar said, “you tell them everything you know about his ailments and they’ll help.”

  “Thanks Daddy.”

  “Nurse?”

  “Yes, Dr. Del Ray?”

  “Can you take blood from this young man and find out what medications he is taking for serotonin and dopamine blockers or accelerators?”

  “Absolutely, I’ll do it now.”

  “Thank you, I’ll send a team down in five minutes for the results.”

  “Thanks again Daddy!”  Becky looked at the crumpled piece of paper in her hand and fished out her cell phone from her pocket.  “Jason!  This is Becky, are you still at home?  Grab Matt’s laptop, I think I found something!”

  Chapter 5

  Jason turned north on Woodward Avenue when his cell began ringing.  He looked down and saw the name: Alexander Roma.

  “This is Jason.”

  “Hey, Jason, This is Alex.”

  “Hey Alex, what’s going on?”  Jason tried to stay calm instead of yelling at the bastard who left his best friend for dead in his own house.

  “I wanted to let you know before anyone else heard the news.”

  “Oh?” Jason feigned surprise, “what news?”

  “The DMC is pressing charges against Matthew Becker for tampering with hospital equipment, and the possible injuries and accidental deaths of 185 patients receiving microchip implants from his equipment.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Dr. Roma said, “Also, the DMC is discontinuing the microchipping program, following my recommendation that this procedure is unhealthy and open to hackers such as Matt.”

  “Matt didn’t do this and you know it.”  Jason spat back.

  “He had one in him,” Dr. Roma said cold as ice, all feeling draining from his voice, “he was caught red-handed.”

  Jason hung up the phone.  “Unbelievable.  The nerve of that man.  I hope Matt has something a bit stronger than just an audio recording.”

  He picked up the phone and called Becky.  It rang four times and went to voicemail.  “Cell service sucks in the hospital, it doesn’t surprise me one bit.”

  He threw the phone against the passenger seat and took a deep breath.

  His phone rang again, he grabbed it and looked, it was Becky.

  “Hey, you just called?  Sorry, phone was in my coat.”

  “Yeah,” Jason said, “Roma just called me, the DMC is pressing charges against Matt for 185 accidental deaths caused by his scanning machine tied with the one Roma found on him today.”

  “Oh, great.” Becky said, “You sound mad.”

  “Madder than I’ve been in years.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like getting into a car accident from speeding,” Becky said.

  Jason looked at the speedometer and saw he was doing 65 down Woodward.  “Wow, you’re good.”

  “Tell me later,” Becky said, “My dad called some friends from psych who took blood and are trying to find out what meds Matt was taking to control his various conditions.”

  “Good,” Jason said, “I hope they find more than I did.”  

  “You didn’t find anything?”  Becky asked.

  “Not a single bottle in the house is Matt’s.  I don’t know where or how he got meds or who gave them to him.”

  “That’s odd,” Becky said, “did he have a doctor he went to?”

  “Just Roma at the DMC, and he’s not one who will give out a cure to help save him at the moment.”

  “You got his laptop?”

  “Yeah,” Jason said, “why am I bringing this up there again?”

  “Just a hunch.”

  “Alright, I’m passing 12 Mile now,” Jason said, taking a deep breath, “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Good,” Becky said, “the doctors said they are going to try to wake him up when you get back to try to figure out what meds he was on or if the scripts are on the computer in digital form.”

  “Okay, Becky,” Jason sighed, “thanks again for… well, just being you.”

  Becky laughed, “And thanks for being you, Jason.  I’ll see you in a few.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  * * * * *

/>   Back in Matt’s room, Jason walked in and tossed his coat into the corner.  Matt hadn’t moved an inch since he left, still in dreamland.  He handed the computer over to Becky, who cracked her knuckles and popped the lid.

  “What are you looking for?”  Jason asked.

  “Not sure,” Becky said, “but Matt had this stuffed in his fist when we brought him in here.”  She handed the paper over to Jason, who looked at the random characters and said, “yeah, it looks like a password Matt would use.  You should see the first Wi-Fi password he made before I made him change it to something normal people could type.”

  “Be honest,” Becky said, turning toward Jason, “in terms of computers and knowledge, how is Matt in the scheme of things?”

  “Let me put it this way,” Jason said, “when he started talking about computers in-depth, Stephen Hawking would tell him to shut up.”

  “Yeah, well it’s one thing to pretend to tell him…” 

  “No,” Jason interrupted, “I mean Stephen Hawking actually told Matt to shut up because he was talking over his head.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Yes,” Jason said, “Steve Jobs of Apple attended his parents funeral as a way to get Matt to work for him.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I didn’t know who it was,” Jason said, “Matt told me he thought it was tacky and asked him to leave.”

  “Okay,” Becky said, “so why did he use the weakest attempts to break into Quicken?”

  “He told you,” Jason said. “He wanted to get your attention.  He doesn’t need money.  His parents left him enough money to never work a day in his life, he chooses to keep busy and learn for the joy of learning.”

  “So he was telling the truth.”  Becky said, staring off in to space.

  “Matt doesn’t lie,” Jason said, “the worst he does is not tell you the whole story.”

  “Okay,” Becky said, “I’m in, but what is this?  Linux or something?”

  “It’s a version of an operating system he designed,” Jason said, “I run a version on my laptop.  It runs all the Windows, linux and OSX programs in personal memory allocations so you can do all of them at once.  He called it a universal virtual native box, or something like that, so it just worked.”

  “It’s brilliant.” Becky looked impressed.

  “That’s Matt.”

  “Okay,” Becky said, handing the laptop over to Jason, “where would documents or files be on the drive?  Can you pull any up?”

  “Sure, what are you looking for?”  Jason asked, “Anything specific?”

  “Let’s try documents first.”

  “Here you go.”  Jason handed the laptop back to Becky.  She searched the various files looking for anything related to the DMC or microchips.

  “Hey,” Jason said, elbowing Becky, “are they going to wake him up?  He could tell us where they are or tell you if whatever you’re looking for is on that at all.”

  “Good point, hold this.”  She handed the laptop back to Jason and ran out to the nurse’s station.

  Jason started looking around the hard drive for various files and found some files from yesterday, one of them a video file, however skipped it because it looked too large for what they were after.

  The doctor followed Becky into the room along with a handful of nurses and other people in white coats.  The first doctor inserted a syringe into Matt’s IV and waited for him to come to.

  Jason waved Becky over and showed her something he found.

  * * * *

  I opened my eyes again; everything still blurry, however my throat felt swollen, like I swallowed a jellyfish.  Yuck, imagine swallowing a jellyfish.  

  Once again, the room began to come into focus as my eyes absorbed more of the light and adjusted to the surrounding objects.  My head throbbed and my heartbeat pounded in my ears like someone shoved me in the trunk of a car with large subwoofers, but I could see Jason and Becky looking at my laptop.

  My laptop!

  I sat up, motioning for them to hand me the laptop.

  Becky jumped up and handed me the laptop.  I opened up all the screenshots I had on the DMC and Dr. Roma.  Jason was saying something, however I couldn’t hear him.  My heartbeat was too loud.  I tried to wave him off, but he grabbed the laptop, opened up a Microsoft Word document, and typed a single line:

  “Roma is pressing charges against you for accidental death of 185 DMC patients and he cancelled the microchip program.”

  He handed me the laptop and watched as I read it.  Tears filled my eyes.  I felt anger.  A man, who called me “son” every day, betrayed me and is using his power to fuel a religious war against science.

  I did the only thing I could do.  I screamed.  It hurt like glass shards flew from my lungs.

  I made a folder on the desktop called “Evidence” and another called “Use Later” and started moving files from various locations on my hard drive to each folder.  My hearing began clearing up because I heard how fast my hands were moving over the keyboard.

  I looked up at Jason and Becky and smiled.  They smiled back.

  After moving the hundreds of files needed for the two folders, I handed the laptop back to Becky and laid back down.  Jason looked at me and said, “Bro, are you okay?  Can you hear me?”

  “I can hear you,” I whispered, my throat still killing me. “My mind is racing a mile a minute.  I don’t know what they shot into me, if I had to guess - adrenaline mixed with morphine?”  I glanced over at the doctor who looked impressed at the nurse and nodded.

  “Right again,” I whispered.

  “Matthew,” the doctor said, “can you tell me what medications you were taking for your psychological disorders?”

  I laughed, and it hurt.  “About nine or ten different ones: Topamax, klonopin, carbamazepine, nitroglycerin, Valium, thorozine, lithium, Adderall, and tramadol.”

  The doctors and nurses scribbled and looked around confused.

  “Matthew, these are not all drugs for psychological problems.”

  “I know,” I whispered, “nitro is for my heart palpitations and angina, Valium and klonopin are for anxiety and tramadol is for my fibromyalgia.”

  “We have bigger problems then,” a doctor turned to a nurse and wrote a note, and the nurse rushed out of the room, “How long have you been on these meds?”

  “Seven years,” I whispered, “give or take.  I also had a problem since the chip in me was dry for about a week. Dr. Roma wouldn’t fill any of my scripts so I was hurting every day and having chest pains doing simple things like walking up the stairs and running out of breath.”

  “We need to move you to intensive care now,” the doctor said in an urgent tone, “this is much more serious than we thought. You could go into cardiac arrest with the shot of adrenalin we just gave you.”

  “I know,” I said, turning toward a shocked looking Jason and Becky, “Guys, look at the evidence folder now, and look at the Later folder, well, later.  Take care of those papers for me if I don’t make it out of here alive and get those published.  It’s all my findings on how microchips will save modern medicine.”

  I saw Becky nod her head with wet eyes, Jason looked at me with disbelief.  

  “You can’t die, man,” Jason said, “Who’s going to teach me how to talk to women?”

  I coughed and the pain in my chest returned, “Dumbass, you’ve been talking to the prettiest woman on earth, all day.”

  The nurses pushed me back on the bed and wheeled me through the doorway and down the hallway where the lights made my eyes roll back into my head.

  Chapter 6

  “Mr. Brighton?  Miss Del Mar?”  The doctor tried to wake up Jason and Becky who fell asleep in the waiting room while looking through all the screen shots on Matt’s computer.

  “Yeah, what’s up?”  Becky woke up first, shaking Jason awake.

  The doctor sat across from them, looking down at the ground.

  “No.�
��  Jason stood up and walked around the seat he was sitting in.  “You can’t tell me…”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “There’s no way…” Jason said again.

  Becky stood up, tears streaming down her face, embraced Jason and they cried in each other’s arms for what seemed eternity.

  “The doctors and surgeons did everything they could,” the doctor said, still looking at the carpet.

  “You mean to tell me,” Jason yelled at the doctor, “that an entire hospital full of experts couldn’t fix a 19-year-old kid because his medicine stopped a week ago by the hands by a madman?”

  “His heart was not firing or beating on its own,” the doctor said, “by the time we got to the main problem, it was too late.  Even if we could get his heart beating again, his brain would never function the way it was before.  He would be connected to machines for the rest of his life.”

  “He was connected to machines his whole life as it was!”  Jason screamed at the doctor, “The only difference is he found a way to work by inserting all of them into a small microchip and making them work together!”

  “Jason,” Becky said, trying to pull Jason away from the doctor, “come here.”

  “No!”  Jason screamed, “I refuse to believe my friend is dead.  My only brother is gone.”

  Jason fell on the ground in a fetal position and cried harder than he ever cried before.

  “Doctor,” Becky said, eyes still wet, “did you guys do everything possible to save this young man’s life?”

  “Yes,” The doctor looked up with tears in his eyes, “I took this one personally because I remember the accident which took his parents' lives a few years ago.  I saved his life back then and hoped…” he choked back tears of his own.

  “Go, and thank you.”  Becky lay down next to Jason and wrapped her arms around him.  Both of them crying together, one for the memory of a long-lost friend, and one for the memory of a newfound friend lost.

  * * * * *