Mad Skills

by Greatshell, Walter

  “Is too. Shut up.”

  The cars passed over a fast-spinning roller and were catapulted through the swinging entrance doors, which read DANGER! KEEP OUT. Coasting along to the plunks of a banjo, they were carried up a steep incline and entered a cobwebby tunnel held up by timbers—an old mine shaft. Gleams of gold shone among the rocks, and an eerie voice chortled, “We struck gold, pure gold. It’s the mother lode, hee, hee, hee! You want some? Come on in … come take all you want …”

  The cars slowed. Flickering lanterns revealed several mangled bodies beside the track, then, bouncing up like a jack-in-the-box, their killer: a crazed miner holding a bloody pickax. A deep voice bellowed, “IT’S MY GOLD, ALL MINE!”

  Maddy grabbed Ben’s arm. Just in time, the car shot forward, clearing the ax but hurtling toward a dead end. A sign across the tracks read, BEWARE! MINE COLLAPSE. Just beyond was a pile of rubble, with arms and legs sticking out. At the last second, the car lurched sharply right.

  Then they were in a greenish-lit tunnel, passing a dead canary in a cage. Sickly-faced corpses lay in postures of agony, clutching their throats. Voices gasped, “Air … need air …” As the car approached a patch of darkness, lights strobed to reveal a host of hideous ghouls blocking the way. Stiffly closing in, the zombies all held bloody picks and shovels, having already massacred the passengers of an earlier car, whose bodies lay half-eaten on the floor. Maddy shrieked, huddling tight with Ben.

  Again, the car shot free around a blind curve.

  Their faces were so close together that it would have required only the slightest effort to kiss. Suddenly, before Maddy knew it, Ben’s lips were touching hers. She felt the warmth of his body in the dark, his arms around her, and she responded, heart hammering with fear and yearning. Fear that what they were doing was wrong, but even more that she might screw up her first real kiss—she wanted to do it right.

  He sat back. “Oh my God,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” Maddy said. “I mean, we’re not really related or anything.”

  “I know, but still …”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I must be insane.”

  “Why? Because I’m not pretty enough for you? Like Stephanie?”

  “No, because you’re gonna be my stepsister.”

  “So what? That doesn’t make you a pervert.”

  “Oh no?”

  “No—we just kissed, that’s all.”

  “Oh, that’s all, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  He mulled it over. “I don’t know, man. That was a pretty intense kiss.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I thought so, too.”

  Around them, all was red and rumbling. Lava glimmered in the crevices, and blackened skeletons littered the floor. Screams echoed as if from a deep pit. Something about the room made Maddy’s head hurt; suddenly, she didn’t feel so well. She hoped the ride was almost over.

  Entering the final straightaway, they saw the other car again. It was not far ahead.

  “There she is,” Maddy said.

  “Watch this,” Ben said, unbuckling his seat belt.

  “Ben! Don’t!”

  “No, it’ll be funny, watch.”

  As he jumped off the slow-moving car, the lights suddenly winked out. Everything went silent, and both cars shuddered to a total stop.

  “Ben?”

  There was no sound, nothing.

  “Ben, this isn’t funny. Get back … get back here buh … before you get …”

  That was weird—Maddy could barely say the words. Her head felt all woozy, and her stomach began to whirl. She could feel the blood throbbing in her temples like a kettledrum. Seasick, she thought. Nearly retching, she knew something was seriously wrong, but she was tired, so tired. Feeling her head start to droop, she roused herself to stand, hanging on to the car for dear life. The floor rocked like the deck of a ship. I have to get out of here. Steadying herself, she let go and tried to walk.

  “Help … help us …”

  Outside. If she could just reach the outdoors. Follow the tracks—the tracks lead outside. Barely coherent, Maddy clung to this basic fact like a lifeline. Feeling her way along, swaying through the dark, she saw something looming up in her path. Someone or something …

  “Ben?”

  Not Ben. The other car, with its lone passenger still seated, as though primly waiting for the ride to resume. The car sat on the brink of a gaping devil’s mouth, a leering Day-Glo-colored face with twining black horns and demonic tattoos.

  Trying to speak, to say, Marina … please … need help, Maddy reached for the hooded figure.

  When it turned, she screamed.

  TWO

  NEWS CYCLE

  FUN-HOUSE TRAGEDY

  Special to The Examiner

  Every year, millions of teenagers attend traveling carnivals, lured away from their PlayStations and TiVos by the lights, the sights, the sounds, and the smells of an earlier generation’s notion of interactivity. Like their parents and grandparents before them, they go seeking old-time fun and thrills, and perhaps the slight aura of danger: the time-honored sleaze of the traveling show.

  Sometimes they get more than they bargained for.

  Sunday night at the Denton Fairgrounds, teenagers Benjamin Blevin and Madeline Grant climbed into car four of the fun-house ride at Ridley’s Laff-O-Rama. As they clattered along the dark track, ducking plaster zombies and rubber skeletons, they could hardly have imagined that the corny fake horror was about to turn very real.

  Just as the teens jerked around the ride’s final curve, less than twenty feet from the swinging exit doors, the car stopped. They probably thought it was part of the ride. But as they waited in pitch-blackness for whatever final thrill was in store, they might have noticed a strange sensation of nausea or dizziness … or perhaps nothing at all. Perhaps they merely went to sleep, unaware that leaking fumes from a faulty generator had turned their Tunnel of Love into a Tunnel of Death—literally a gas chamber. Dozens of other cars had passed through safely, their occupants complaining of nothing worse than a sudden headache. It was the terrible coincidence of a snag in the ride’s chain drive that doomed Ben and Maddy to their fates.

  As the teens quietly succumbed to lethal fumes, the ride operator, Cecil Bluth, 27, noticed that his control lever had gone dead. The cars wouldn’t budge.

  “I thought it was kids messing around,” Bluth says. “Happens all the time. They’ll jump off the cars while the ride’s still in motion and fool around, then jump back on. Or they’ll just throw trash at the exhibits. I’m always picking off spit wads, gum, you name it. If anything blocks the track, it sets off an alarm—there’s an automatic shutdown. Usually happens at least once a night. I send Bernie to do a walk-through and verify ain’t no safety hazard, which there almost never is. This time it was different.”

  Bernie is Bernard Wornovski, 36, the carnival’s veteran mechanic, who entered the plywood archway as he had a thousand times before but never would again.

  Cecil Bluth says, “Just before he went in, Bernie mentioned it was weird that nobody was yelling for help. He called out to let them know not to panic, but there was no answer. Most folks freak out pretty quick when you leave them in the dark, so we thought that was a little strange. Then when I didn’t hear back from Bernie right away, the hair really pricked up on my neck. That’s when I called 911.”

  (See Tragedy, p. A8)

  THREE

  DREAM THERAPY

  PEPL r gud I lik thm dr. stevnz iz nis she iz mi fren soz ners claybrn and dr. wali nrs clabrn taks me swimn evre morning aftr brekfs mi favrit aktvt iz swimn i lik it

  “MADDY, are you awake?”

  “Mmmm …”

  “Maddy, wake up. Time for school.”

  “Mmmm-nuh!”

  I yuz tu b norml i yuz 2b lik yu i had mad skilz thats wat pepl sa enywa i don no i don rely rmembr bfor tha aksidnt i wish i cud but I cant thas
ok i cn stil dans

  “WAKE up, sleepyhead.”

  The voice was inescapable, persistent as an usher with a flashlight. Maddy’s mind retreated like a toad under a rock, but the more she withdrew into comforting darkness, the more that voice followed her down the hole. At the same time, some part of her knew she was being unreasonable, that it was high time she woke up, but she couldn’t help it—she was soooo tired.

  It had felt like the longest night of her life, an endless, restless sleep, densely cluttered with crazy dreams. Not ordinary nightmares of falling or fleeing, but an exhausting monotony of being stuck with needles, wired to machines, shackled to treadmills. Being walked and talked to death by infinitely patient doctors with big shiny clipboards and bigger, shinier grins. And the games—so many tedious games and puzzles, like some kind of waiting room in Hell. Then the questions! She couldn’t even understand half the stuff they asked, but they would keep after her, pestering and cajoling until she came out with something they liked.

  Showing her a picture, they might ask, “Do you know who this is?”

  “Nuh …”

  “That’s you, silly! That’s Maddy Grant. Now you try saying it.”

  “Muh-Maddee …”

  “Good, good—don’t give up.”

  “Gaaant. Gant.”

  “Try rolling your tongue: Grrant, Grrraaant.”

  “Gwaaant. Maddee Gwaaant.”

  “That’s good! Excellent! And who’s this?”

  “Nuh …”

  “That’s your mommy! Bethany Grant. Can you say mommy?”

  Then they might reward her, let her watch TV, play on the computer.

  Oh, they tried to make it fun, to pretend it was all a big sleepaway camp, but it wasn’t. Therapy, they called it. To Maddy, it was more like school … only a million times more boring than any school she remembered. Not that she remembered much—only that she used to like school and didn’t care at all for this dream therapy.

  I dont lik tu rit its boren I hat ritn this jrnel but its tharpee jus lik tokkin is tharpee bla bla bla evrethnz tharpee tharpee suks eksep swimn yr not supos2 pee in tha pool but i sed 2 ners clabrn no thas tharpee yestrda mi parnts cam tu vizit an we wen on a ltl feeltrp to see sum anamlz I luv anamlz

  HER last dream: a van ride through the country, the picnic by the river—chicken salad sandwiches, potato chips, pickles. Tepid peach tea. Danish butter cookies from a tin. Her parents, smiling and praising her … and Dr. Stevens.

  AFTER lunch, they wheeled her back in the van and drove the rest of the way, arriving at a sleek, mirrored building. A chrome cube with rounded edges, sitting on a grassy hill surrounded by pines. Maddy could see herself in the glass doors as they pushed her up the walk. She knew it was her because of her braces; otherwise, she wouldn’t have recognized the drooling, slack-faced creature in the wheelchair. Not her face. So pale and puffy, with a childish pink bow in her hair. The sight was frightening—she jerked her eyes away, wishing she could wake up. Maddy hated mirrors.

  The mirrored building was a funny place. The people there were just as nice as Dr. Stevens, but everybody talked too fast, gobble-gobbling together like turkeys. Occasionally, her mother might lean down and speak to her, “Maddy, how would you like to go back home? Back to your old room? All your things are still there, just the way you left them, and there are a lot of presents waiting for you. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  “Nyeah …”

  “That’s what these nice people want to do, honey: to help you be yourself again so you can come home. Be the Maddy we remember. To skate and ski and go to the mall with Stephanie. Do you remember your friend Stephanie? She misses you. We all miss you, honey.”

  Mom was crying again. Maddy didn’t quite know why, and didn’t like it.

  Dad stepped in. “Beth, stop, you’ll just upset her. It’s okay, honey—Mommy’s fine, see? Funny Mommy!”

  “MR. and Mrs. Grant, so pleased to meet you. Members of the press, Congressman Lawlor, welcome. I’m Dr. Plummer, the head man here at the Braintree Institute. And this must be Maddy! I’ve heard a lot about you. Dr. Stevens tells me you’re quite the character. You are, aren’t you? I can always tell. Welcome, welcome to Braintree.

  “Well, I know you folks have been briefed about our program here, but let me walk you through it so you can maybe get a better idea of what we’re hoping to accomplish with your daughter.

  “It’s been over a year since her trauma, and I know that Maddy’s therapy has met with limited success. This is not unusual for her type of injury. She’s had all the most innovative rehabilitation techniques, including alternative therapies like acupuncture, but she seems to have hit a cognitive plateau. You’re concerned that she may never function at higher than a kindergarten level. You have expressed interest in exploring avenues that are a bit more … aggressive? Perfectly understandable. That’s why Dr. Stevens recommended you to our department. We specialize in something called Deep Brain Stimulation, or DBS.

  “Now, in standard DBS, a pair of very fine wires is implanted in the brain, where they act as a kind of low-voltage pacemaker to reactivate damaged brain tissue, restoring a certain degree of lost function. It’s a proven and reasonably effective procedure. But it’s only a halfway measure—nobody expects a full recovery.

  “That’s where we come in. I specialize in an experimental form of DBS known as Remote Cortical Augmentation, or RCA. The basic principle of RCA is the same as DBS: a matter of stimulating the brain using wires. But where our work differs is in the degree of stimulation … and the precision. See, in DBS, the level of accuracy is relatively poor—you’re throwing darts in the dark and hoping to luck into the target. When it works, the results might be dramatic … or they might not. And oftentimes any improvement is temporary as the brain becomes dulled to the stimuli.

  “Just as with standard DBS, our procedure involves implanting a set of wires. Only instead of two, we implant two bundles of thirty wires each, all much finer than the ones typically used in DBS—less than a micron in diameter. The bundles are designed to unravel in a controlled way as they penetrate the cortex, sending branches into specific regions and giving us a wide range of potential targets—a nearly limitless combination. We call this the Christmas Tree.

  “Once the array is in place, we test each point of contact to measure its neurological effect. The effects are then mixed and matched to produce the most successful combinations, just like single notes combining into chords of music. Over time, using a powerful computer, we are able to develop increasingly complex formulas for bypassing cognitive deficits, awakening the brain to whole new avenues of being. It’s like conducting an orchestra. Finally, these chords are programmed into a portable, rechargeable data processor, about the size of an MP3 player, which is fitted to the cranium under the scalp and delivers a constant stream of directed pulses.

  “This is for basic functioning. But the most promising aspect of the technology is that it is not static: The patient’s personal data unit is wirelessly linked to a larger computer network, allowing the system to keep evolving, refining and customizing itself to the specific needs of its wearer. Like the human brain itself, it learns.

  “At the heart of all this is a very unusual computer. Step this way, please.

  “What you see here is our computer lab. Help yourselves to a donut! All looks pretty ordinary until you take a closer look inside our mainframe. Notice anything unusual? That’s because our system’s core is nothing less than an actual organic brain. Sounds like something out of a science-fiction movie, but it’s quite real, and will soon be coming to a store near you. A highly simplified brain, not a human brain, but a brain nonetheless, comprised of millions of living neurons.

  “See this box? This is it. Inside this shock-absorbent casing is a gel capsule containing a rudimentary form of intelligence, cultured from leech cells and sandwiched within a matrix of conductive fibers. It’s smaller than a golf ball. Nerve signals are translated into optical puls
es, which are then interfaced with specialized software. Why leeches? Leeches are used because their neurons are very, very large, and their structure is quite well understood—plus not many people have an ethical objection to using leeches. I know the thought of a leech brain might creep some people out; well, I can promise you that these leeches won’t suck your blood, but they will give you a piece of their primitive mind. You may wonder what that’s worth. Let me show you—come this way.

  “This is our Simulation Room. Up on that screen is a 3-D computer model of a hypothetical city—a composite of different urban centers around the US, with pedestrian and traffic patterns, commercial activity, weather cycles, industrial development, you name it. Even fluctuations in capital and stock projections. The Leech-Tron has been running that program continuously for seven months, factoring in a hundred random events every second, and as you can see, it has grown incredibly complex.

  “Now over here, in this studio, is an actual physical replica of the same city, made to the same exact specifications out of polystyrene foam and other raw materials, perfect down to the tiniest detail. That’s our Demonstrator. If you’ll follow me out onto our observation platform, you can see the entire practical model in operation.

  “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Rat Race.”

  IN Maddy’s dream, she was on a platform above a brightly lit toy city. It looked like the world’s most elaborate model train set: hundreds of intricate buildings that covered the entire floor area. The model was in a kind of auditorium or soundstage, with lights and cameras dangling from cranes, and a network of catwalks up in the rafters.