The 13th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 26 Great SF Stories!

by Lake, Jay

  Blend made that low-brow pseudo-coke CAT (the Midwest’s gift to the drug culture back in the 1980s) seem kitten-tame...even as it killed or permanently disabled ten times as many users as any of the drugs that went into its manufacture within the first six months after the first of its many recipes hit the Net.

  Right in time for the still-recovering, computer-using Liane to happen upon one of those recipes while surfing a university-run web pages. Before that, no one remembered Liane using anything illegal, or even abusing over-the-counter drugs, but once she’d downloaded that first recipe, then waited until she was well enough to leave her room, her first stop was the appliance section of a K-Mart. Used her personal credit card to buy a ten-speed blender.. .as well as whatever she could legally buy in the nearest mall drugstore. The rest supposedly came from the back alleys of Chinatown.

  Only, Liane didn’t die from that first homemade hit, nor did she seem overtly “scrambled.” Not for the first few years, at least. Not until she began altering her private recipe, as if seeking a stronger high...

  Her family had noticed some changes in her; with blend, appearing normal was universally impossible, but Liane was either strong enough to hide the worst of her addiction or lucky enough not to exhibit blend’s most obvious symptoms (which could include “mania, slurred speech, aggressive behavior, self-inflicted violence, and catatonia”)—initially, those around her thought she was depressed, possibly due to the affects of the PPH gene therapy It wasn’t until the hospital that had done her marrow transplant examined her during her five-year post-therapy check-up (she’d managed to avoid two previous exams) that they discovered the roiling stew of mingled drugs in her blood.

  Then came treatment...make that last word plural. By that time, drug centers catering to blenders were common; even the Betty Ford Center had a group of special counselors for blend-heads. But when the drug really isn’t a drug, but an ever-changing mixture of them.. .as the article put it, “the cure rate for blenders is 0.5% at best, provided early intervention is a factor.”

  And while Liane’s addiction waxed and waned, her mother continued to create her gigantic works of pseudo-industrial graphic art, sometimes with a “well” Liane’s help; her father’s law practice became increasingly centered on finding new ways to shut down offending web pages and even target those systems operators who’d allowed the blend recipes to be posted in the first place. The FCC was alerted, and began increasing the regulation of materials posted on the Net, so that the kiddie pom distributors weren’t the only endangered species anymore. But publicly, the Bertrand’s were quiet about their child’s problem; when she wasn’t scrambled, Liane was still considered to be “such a sweet kid, really.. .unpretentious, just a quiet, normal person. Not someone you’d imagine hovering over a blender,” according to one of the anonymous “friends” who’d spoken about her but wasn’t quite ready to be listed as a known associate of Liane’s.

  By the time I’d reached those anonymous comments, my free hand was scraping smooth surface in my candy bowl. The plastic cup of yogurt was also spooned empty. Yet I still felt that urge to load my mouth...despite my aching tooth, despite my loathing for the very thing I was seeking.

  More articles about Liane Bertrand waited for me in the pile; but reading them from something held in hand was too.. .personal, too stifling. There was no way to click away the sad parts, no way to scroll through the thing and continually roll up the lingering ache of the text. And I already knew why I hurt:

  AND SO I HURT BECAUSE MY PAIN COMES FROM MY “SOLACE.” FOOD IS A DEMON-BITCH THAT TEASES ME, LURES ME, SUCKS ME IN AND THEN TURNS ME INTO A PARODY OF WHAT I AM INSIDE. I AM A FIREFLY SURROUNDED BY A TRAP OF FLESH AND BURIED SINEW, WITH NO WAY TO REVEAL THE GLOW. I HURT BECAUSE THE MORE I EAT, THE LESS CHANCE I HAVE TO BE THOUGHT OF AS ANYTHING BUT AN EATING MACHINE. MY APPETITES ARE A JOKE TO OTHERS. AND A PLAGUE ON MY SOUL.

  I still had my fingers poised above the keyboard when the pair of RESPONSE ACCEPTEDs replaced my words, before revealing:

  My soul Is anchored with a ballast of self-loathing, self-doubt, and selfestrangement; always nagging me is the question: If I wasn’t who I am, with all the accompanying expectations of my status, my “inherited” state of being, would anyone truly care about me? About the work I do? Would they be so concerned during my illness, and my recovery? And would any of them truly care about the blend, if I were not PPH and part of that grand, full-of-hope experiment? Daily I ask myself these questions, and daily my soul contains no answer, has none to offer. Yet, when the soul is uneasy, how can the body remain calm, remain well? And what of the mind as well? The pain of my lungs, my heart, was fleeting, of the flesh alone. The flesh has no means to remember that which pained it. But the soul, the memory, they enshrine each twinge, each lancing thrust of doubt or uncertainty, until the mere reminder of that pain doeS more than echo in the mind—it creates new resonances, new descants and counterpoints. It is as if the old ache in my body has flowed upward, to a place beyond the transcience of mere pain-sensation, to the place where pain merely is.

  If I could only find the answers, or end the questioning, I could stop the hurt. But I cannot yet create the right mixture to soothe that ache, and thus I continue to seek out the exact recipe for my affliction, for my incomplete soul. Despite the distractions of the fifth columnist lurking behind every thought, every action; that perfidious entity whose existence is synonymous with what others call my “well-being.” I hurt because I hate it, even as it is | forever a part of me. ■

  I managed to read Liane’s words twice before noticing that something else, something so subtle I almost missed seeing it, had also happened on that monitor screen. The little icon-guy had lost one leg, his base, and one large jug-like ear...only, what I’d assumed was simply an underline-mark on the bottom had to have been a slash-like capital “I”...

  And below the smiley-man, three numbers had vanished from the grids as well.

  “Good girl,” I found myself whispering to the screen, “You keyed the puzzle or whatever it is to the responses generated by the program...only I have to input something first. Clever, clever...don’t bare yourself until the other person’s taken off a piece of emotional clothing. Then reward them.. .only I think I’m missing a game piece here.”

  Wondering why I hadn’t done so before, I quickly jotted down the numbers in the grids, then tried to approximate the combination of letters and symbols that composed the kachina-like icon, before the screen emptied of letters and Japanese words and replaced Liane’s eloquent anguish with:

  HOW DO YOU MAKE THE HURT GO AWAY?

  HOW SOON DOES THE HURT COME BACK?

  RESPONSE REQUIRED BEFORE MENU WILL ADVANCE ■

  “All right, I heard you, I heard you,” I said upon reading that six-word warning/instruction; feeling slightly in control for perhaps the first time that early morning, I decided that if the “_” could equal “I,” perhaps the icon’s squiggle of “hair” and his “hat” were really more than mere “~” and “^” symbols...there had to be corresponding matching letters. The “^” was easy: “V.” And once I turned my scrap of paper sideways, the “~” revealed itself to be a backwards “S”—close enough for Liane’s purposes, I assumed, yet not too easy to guess on first glance.

  “I’ll bet you were hoping that whoever read this would just assume you were doodling, not encrypting,” I muttered, as I separated the letters into alphabetical order then paired them with their numerical equivalents:

  D G I I I K L N N Q S U U V

  4 7 9 9 9 11 12 14 14 17 19 21 21 22

  Only...something wasn’t meshing. If the “D” and two “I”s vanished off the figure, a four and two nines should’ve likewise vacated the grid—not a seven, an eleven, and one of the fourteens.

  Sucking in breath until the rush of air past my broken tooth set it to aching again, I rocked gently back and
forth in my chair, uselessly tapping my cybermouse-fitted finger against my thigh as I tried to make some sort of sense out of the letters, the numbers, and the beckoning questions hovering before me.

  The stuff on the grid and the icon above were linked directly to Liane’s program...but to what purpose? I was missing a game piece. Yet, I had to keep playing, no matter how much it chafed me in the process. Either that, or go back to those dreadful static articles, in all their unflinching sameness on the pages...

  But even touching those articles, feeling their newsprint blood rub off on my fingertips, was like sticking my bare hands into this woman’s rent flesh. First she’d died, then she’d been gutted and impaled for all to gawk at her pitifully exposed frail ties... even as “anonymous” belatedly sang her non-blended praises. And with lots of pictures, to make the imagining of her life, her deterioration, her death, all the easier for those who would never know her life but for her death.

  Liane as a little girl: ubiquitous straight-banged hair shining around a round, half-smiling face as her parents held her up to touch one of her mother’s outdoor sculptures.

  Liane as a teen: pretty, thinner than before, half-hidden behind a still-soft clay pot on a wheel. Still not quite smiling...

  Liane somewhat older: clearly unwell, halfslumped in a wheelchair after her “successful” gene therapy/bone marrow transplant. Not even trying to smile, that time. Was she already haunted by that “fifth columnist” of hers, I wondered.

  Liane and her parents, while her mother was accepting some art award: it was hard to tell if she was scrambled or merely preoccupied in that one. Her eyes were so dark they were unreadable.

  And the one where she couldn’t actually be seen, save for a still form under the protective drape of a morgue sheet on an ambulance gumey as she was being wheeled away from her parents’ home. I’d seen the picture without reading exactly how she’d died...I suppose because I didn’t want to be able to imagine exactly what was under that canvas shroud and restraining straps.

  How had she finally made her hurt go away?

  Reluctantly swiveling my chair away from the screen, I looked with loathsome longing at the empty candy bowl once more before picking up the nearest tabloid article, the one with that enigmatic last picture of her, and skimmed it until I came to the part I’d dreaded actually reading:

  ...three weeks prior to her death, Liane’s mood swings grew worse, but her family was reluctant to place her under psychiatric care, since she was not doing blend at that time. According to one close friend of the Bertrand’s, Liane luas “preoccupied with completing an interactive piece of sculpture she’d started to design after her final, and most successful, drug treatment. So none of us thought any thing # of her staying in her suite for two or three days at a time. The piece she was working on was complex, involving a great deal of physical and mental labor. But she wouldn’t tell anyone precisely what she was doing, all Liane would say was,’For once, I’ll be able to step out of Mom’s shadow...and that of her sculptures.’”

  It was only after Liane hadn’t come out of her suite for five days that her parents contacted the police—her door was locked, and the windows of her suite were also locked behind fire-grids. By the time officers arrived, smoke was beginning to seep through the edges of the windows and the door connecting her suite with her parents’ house.

  Liane had constructed a pyre of her own artwork, doused it with some of the chemicals commonly used by artists who work with metals and plastics, and lit it after positioning herself on top of it. The fumes from the fluids and the artworks killed her almost immediately. There was some damage to the studio, and all of her artwork was destroyed, but the suite itself was still standing when she was—

  That was all I could read, all I could digest. I didn’t want to picture it that clearly...

  So she’d destroyed all her artwork, all the pieces that failed to satisfy her in some way, or that she didn’t feel confident enough to leave behind intact. Was she afraid of being judged too harshly once she Was gone? Or had her work displeased that “fifth columnist” within? Yet, the article was vague on one-point: she’d been working on something, “an interactive piece.” Something involving a grid, perhaps?

  Something that might not have been used to form that pyre?

  Reluctantly, I looked at the article, averting my eyes from the really bad parts. No mention of her computer, just “physical and mental labor.” If the smoke just started drifting out of that suite when the police arrived, it might not have had much time to burn. And the barely etched carbonization of the PC’s cover told me that whatever whoever torched the thing used to light it, it wasn’t some really caustic chemical. Or something that would cling to the plastic, maybe eat into it even as the flames did their work. I’d seen crepes with less fire-damage on them...

  Spinning the chair, I picked up my cell phone and thumbed in Cyber’s speed-dial number. Cradling the phone between my shoulder and jaw, I rocked back and forth, eyes closed, listening to the rings: four, five, six—

  “Yeah?” Cyber had Caller-ID, otherwise he would’ve been more business-like for a potential client.

  “Yeah yourself. I’m partway into the file, and I think you’re holding back something. Any chance that Marian and Pascal torched this unit? After they couldn’t hack in?”

  “I figured you’d be able to access more than me. Yeah, I figured her folks for the flame-out. They claimed it was damaged when she... I couldn’t buy it. But what can you say, huh? Couldn’t ask. You didn’t need to call, though.”

  “Not about the torching. There’s something I need. Whatever it was she was working on when she... The thing this program is referring to...”

  “’Thing’?” Cyber’s false ignorance wouldn’t have fooled a newbie, and I’d been hacking and finding for years now.

  “Thing, as in the grids and the icon-guy. Who just happens to be deconstructing along with elements of the grid in some sort of pattern that refers to some what-have-you I don’t have. Something either the Bertrands have, or gave to you...”

  The silence on Cyber’s end of the line was punctuated with a tiny, rasping sound; being able to picture him easily, I knew what he was doing while trying to come up with a line or a lie—rubbing one thin cheek with the flat edge of his thumbnail and playing the stubble.

  Then, finally: “Come to think of it, they did offer me...something. In a smaller box. Claimed it ‘might help’ but didn’t elaborate. Thought it was a mouse, or some back-up parts. I figured since the unit was still intact... Didn’t look big enough to be something she’d been working on for so long. Maybe six by six or so, the box. Had to be something smaller inside. You want I should—”

  “Yeah, I ‘want.’ And as soon as it can be FedExed here. Tell her family it ‘might help.’ No need to get their hopes, y’know. I’ll keep working on it while I wait. Bye.”

  I didn’t want Cyber sneaking in one of his unavoidable food cracks. Those came a little too easily to him—easier than hacking.

  Easier than me being able to pass up a closed refrigerator...

  3

  Once I’d taken the time to pray at the altar of 40-watt rapacity, I eased myself back onto my swivel chair, when, prior to removing yet another article of emotional raiment, Liane’s first question reminded me of something that hadn’t quite made sense to me in that tabloid article: how and when was she finally “cured” of blend addiction? Shouldn’t that in itself have stopped her from killing herself?

  Not those articles, again. Selectively skimming the columns of smeared text, I focused on key words like “treatment” and “addiction” until I found something I’d never heard about before:

  ...controversial drug treatment had previously been used for long-term heroin/cocaine addiction (where the throes of withdrawal might deter patients from completing treatment) in Mexico an
d Cuba; the treatment itself is radically simple: once the patient has been placed in a medically induced coma, a detoxification process involving blood screening and cleansing, plus certain naturally occurring enzymes injected into the cleansed blood, commences, while the patient’s physical needs are carefully monitored via computer. All feeding is through tubes; the patient is routinely exercised while in the coma to prevent muscular atrophy.

  During this procedure, the patient goes through the worst of the withdrawal process while unconscious of it; during the “down’’ period, subliminal “therapy” is given to the patient, via earphones, to supplement the chemical healing process in the patient’s brain.

  Buoyed by the success of the treatment with heroin/cocaine addicts, physicians in Los Angeles, Miami, and New York began offering this procedure to blend addicts in—

  I skimmed down until I saw Liane’s name again; she’d only reluctantly agreed to try this therapy—when faced with a possible prison term for possession of non-authorized prescription drugs used in her own special recipe, medications with names like Zoloft, Nardil, Ativan, and Tofranil. Depression and anxiety disorder pills.

  Wondering if the illegal prescription drugs (albeit in unorthodox combinations) had actually been working for Liane before she went in for that coma-cum-detox, I tentatively tapped:

  I TRY TO EAT THE PAIN AWAY, SATE MYSELF UNTIL THE HUNGER IS QUELLED FOR THE MOMENT. OR ELSE I SLEEP IT AWAY.