by Joel Arnold
“What’s this I hear about a new project? Hard at work again, are you?”
Normally, Harry’s years of industrious seclusion made him wary of social situations. He didn’t trust people. But tonight was different. He had done something good for the world, made something that people wanted, and they were all here to congratulate him.
But it was mostly the wine that caused Harry to blurt out, “Sound! Vibrations!”
“Oh?” The man’s breath smelled of fermenting raisins. His tongue caressed his gleaming teeth. “Sound?” He laughed. “Vibrations?” He slipped another glass into Harry’s hand.
“Yes.” Harry took a large swallow. “Actually, the lack of vibration.”
The man nodded, a complete lack of comprehension spreading across his lips in a smile. “Hmm. Yes. I see.”
“Sound and vibration and its lack thereof,” Harry slurred. “I’m sorry sir, but this wine has gone straight to my head.” He took a deep breath. Then another. He grinned as he realized the air he breathed was produced in part by his own invention. “I’m working on a way to produce sound with no vibration.” He quickly finished off the glass of wine.
“But isn’t that what sound is? Vibration?”
“Yes. Technically. At least that’s what we’ve always thought of it as.” An excited giggle escaped him.
The man pulled Harry to the edge of the crowd and grabbed him another wine. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
Dr. Moore looked at the man’s lapel, trying to bring it back into focus. “What about dreams?” he said. “You have the illusion of sound in dreams, do you not?”
“Well, yes. I suppose so.”
“And what vibrations produce those sounds?”
“But they’re just dreams.”
“They seem real enough when you’re dreaming them, and yet your tympanum is quite dormant. Quite content to sit there and register the occasional creak of the house, the snores of your sleeping partner.” Harry pointed to his head and turned his finger in a quick, wild circle. “What if there was a way to stimulate those same brain cells that give the illusion of sound to your dreams? What if there was a way to bypass the middleman? Go straight to the brain without bothering the ear at all?”
“Sort of like hearing voices?”
“Exactly.”
“But that’s preposterous.”
“Absolutely.” Harry smiled.
Of course, afterwards, with a large hangover, Harry remembered exactly why he never discussed his projects before they were ready. He remembered why he was always so careful in choosing those few people he spoke to.
He trudged out of bed, took an aspirin for his throbbing temples, and jumped as his phone played Tchaikovsky.
He had the terrible feeling that if he answered, his troubles would officially commence.
He took a deep breath and answered.
“Hello?”
* * * * *
Harry walked dejectedly over the respiring sidewalk to the office of the Mayor of Bushton. He knew what was going to be said beforehand, and again, he swore to himself he would never ever touch another drop of wine again.
“Harry! Damn glad to see you! What’s this I hear about a new project in the works?” The Mayor smiled and winked. “And you didn’t even let me in on it? C’mon, Harry. What’s the good news? What’s the low-down on that brilliant brain of yours?”
Harry uttered the words he had rehearsed on his walk over, although now, they didn’t seem so convincing. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” he said.
Gone was the confidence, the feeling of acceptance he’d felt the previous night. Now he was just Dr. Harry Moore. Dr. Harry Moore, who craved isolation, basked in solitude, blossomed in seclusion.
“Not sure?” the Mayor laughed. “Come now, Harry. I have it all right here.” He pulled out a sheet of paper and read from it, as if it were a trial manuscript.
Harry held up his hands and shook his head. “Is this some sort of joke?”
The skin around the Mayor’s eyes creased. His irises glistened a bit too brightly.
Harry went limp.
“Care for a drink?” the Mayor asked.
“Look,” Harry said, staring at his feet. “I’m not ready to discuss this yet. It’s in the preliminary stages. Very preliminary.”
“Aw, hell,” the Mayor laughed. “You said that about Oxycrete. And look how wrong you were.”
Harry shot a cold glance at the Mayor.
“Harry, Harry, Harry,” the Mayor clucked. “You need your successes yanked from you. You’re too much of a scientist. If it wasn’t for me and the Foundation, your organic cement would still be in the preliminary stages.”
“We don’t know its long term effects,” Harry sighed.
“Take a deep breath. Look up in the sky. There’s your effect.”
“We can’t be positive.”
“I’m positive.” The Mayor waved his hand in the air as if brushing away the long lost smog. “We’re not here to discuss that, anyway. That’s already entering the history books. Let’s talk about this vibrationless sound of yours.”
Harry slumped into a chair.
* * * * *
For some reason, Harry couldn’t catch a cab. Even the Bushton busses pulled away at the last minute, the doors shutting indignantly in his face. Even before opening the lab’s door, he had an awful premonition of what he would find.
The place was ransacked. Just like last time. His hardware was gone, too. The various headsets, the vibrationless amplification systems. All of it.
Although he still strongly believed his concrete experiments were taken and put into use too soon, this was worse. The applications of something like this...
Harry shuddered.
The Mayor had needed the concrete formula to clean up the city. Show the Bushtonites how serious he was. It hadn’t hurt that the election was just around the corner, either.
But this - who knew what he’d use it for? Harry shivered. He walked over to the file cabinet and opened it, expecting a mess. It was, except -
Harry’s eyes widened.
They didn’t take the folder. The important one.
He couldn’t believe it. A smile crept across his lips. With shaking hands, he pulled out a folder labeled BLISS ARCANA. Bliss Arcana was one of Harry’s first projects, one he took on years ago. It was a study of ancient techniques to obtain bliss. The project had been pure research, the only palpable outcome a kind of chewing gum Harry invented for fun. When chewed, it released a long lasting chemical that directly affected the brain’s pleasure centers. The chewing motion of the jaw increased the experienced pleasure. The harder you chewed, the better you felt.
It was pristine chewing satisfaction.
But that was years ago. Harry had all but forgotten about it. Bliss Arcana was still a favorite at children’s illegal chewing parties, and it was still quite legally used at mental health institutes to keep the patients happy and occupied. There were no side effects, other than a dropping out from society and a tremendous amount of drool coursing down the user’s chin.
But the reason Harry’s eyes lit up when he saw the folder was because it no longer contained the Bliss Arcana research. In his haste to clean up his office for an upcoming visit from his mother, he had stashed a large stack of his Vibrationless Sound project notes into the old, empty folder.
The Mayor’s thugs took the headset schematics, the headsets themselves, but the important gizmos of the headset - the things that transmitted the human voice directly to the correct brain frequencies - were explained in detail in the papers Harry now held.
The bastards won’t know what to make of it all. Harry walked out into the sunshine, papers held firmly in his hands.
As he strolled along the breathing sidewalk and his eyes slid across the organic road, he was suddenly wary of a slight change in the coloration of the Oxycrete. What was once a healthy green had become a bit - dull.
Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him, or perhaps
it was shadows cast by the sun, but it seemed all the newly erected buildings were letting out a collective sigh.
I told them it was too soon. Not enough research. Not enough time.
He clutched the folder and stepped gingerly over the respiring sidewalk.
That was when the voices in his head started.
- What the hell. It’s a headset.
- Transmitter of some sort.
Harry cringed. Of all the headsets, they had to try the one tuned to his own frequency. He had forgotten that the one he’d been testing on himself worked just fine. It had all the proper parts in place.
- What does it do?
- You talk into it.
- No shit.
- Supposedly, it’s tuned into someone’s brain waves.
- No shit?
How long will this go on? Harry’s thoughts tried to rise above the transmitted cacophony in his mind. Aside from the two morons talking into the headset, there was the sound of a television in the background and the sound of tools tinkering on the transmitter.
- I might as well be talking to a wall.
- It wouldn’t be the first time.
The sound of the headset being dropped to the table made Harry wince.
- I was kidding! Let go of my shirt.
- No more cracks about me talking to walls.
- Okay, okay.
* * * * *
Somehow, Harry managed to get through the days that followed without pounding his head against anything solid. He gathered from the conversations in his brain that there had been no progress made on his invention. It was next to impossible without the notes.
And suddenly –
Silence. It spread soothingly over his brain. The transmitter had been turned off.
They must have given up, Harry thought. Of course, they’ll soon be knocking on my door asking all sorts of questions. But at least it’s quiet.
He began thinking of evasion tactics.
The next day, as he was jotting down excuses for a vacation in the synthetic western forests, another voice chimed in.
- Roger. Roger. Do you read me? Am I coming in?
The voice of a child.
- Mission one. Mission one. This is base command. Ready to commence engine pulse on cue.
The child began a countdown starting from one hundred.
By the end of the day, Harry was well acquainted with Bobby, the child who was unwittingly talking directly into Harry’s brain.
Harry also became acquainted with Bobby’s mother (‘Maaa-aah!’) and father (‘Daaa-aaad!’) and their lack of effective discipline.
- Bobby, take off that damn headset and sit up at the table.
- But Daaa-aaad! Can’t I wear it while I’m eating?
- Just until your mother gets home.
Later -
- Bobby, take off that damn headset right now!
- But Maaa-aah! Can’t I wear it to bed? Just tonight? Pulleeease?
- Well - just don’t let your father catch you with it on.
And to top it all off, the little shit snored like an off-key chain saw.
Harry gritted his teeth. Tossed and turned in bed. Pounded his fists against his pillow.
“I have to find that boy,” he thought out loud. “Or I’ll go crazy!”
* * * * *
He went crazy within the week. One of his lab assistants found him huddled in a corner of his lab screaming, smelling of urine. He was taken to St. Clinton’s Mental Health Institute that same night and put on a diet of vitamins and Bliss Arcana an hour after checking in. As he chewed his own invention, the child’s voice didn’t sound so bad. The snoring became music. The child’s conversations with make believe astronauts and invisible animals became a series of warm, tender notes as Harry chewed. A psychiatrist asked him why he was swaying his head back and forth.
“I’m listening to my inner child,” he replied.
Harry was placed in a ward for dangerous psychotics and began to chew his prescription gum all the harder. The entire ward was redolent with the percussive sound of chewing and lip smacking. Unfelt erections were plentiful as drool dribbled down numb chins. Yet everyone smile pleasantly. Even many of the interns hid in closets full of cleaners and disinfectants, sitting on piles of clean rags, chewing their shifts away. It was indeed true bliss.
After a month passed, they inexplicably stopped giving Harry his gum and put him in a straight-jacket.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Harry bellowed, wiping dried spittle from his cheeks onto his confined shoulders. “This is inhuman!”
While they explained to Harry that he was getting visitors the next day, little Bobby was still in Harry’s head, singing an off-key and grating song.
- You’ve got a big butt,
A very hairy pig butt
A stupid, stinking ugly butt,
A smelly, gooey, fooey butt.
Little Bobby sang it over and over, sometimes whispering it, sometimes shouting it.
- You’ve got a big butt!
A very hairy pig butt!
Oh, Christ, Harry thought. I’m in hell.
By the time the Mayor came to visit the next day, Harry was writhing on the floor of a padded cell, the straight-jacket keeping him from pounding his head into the shape of a squashed melon.
“Harry,” the Mayor said. “Harry! Snap out of it, boy! We’ve got a problem.”
“You’ve got a problem?” Harry grunted through clenched teeth.
“It’s the Oxycrete. It’s turning bad. It’s beginning to stink. The smog is coming back in waves. My constituents are up in arms. What the hell am I going to do?”
Harry’s head lolled around to face the Mayor. A large malicious grin crept onto Harry’s face.
“It’s hungry,” he said. “You have to feed it.”
“Feed it?” the Mayor blustered. “What the hell do you feed it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know? You’re the guy who invented the stuff. It’s your baby. What do you feed it?”
Harry’s eyes rolled in a circle. He began to chant;
“You’ve got a big butt.
A very hairy pig butt.
A stupid, stinking, ugly butt.
A smelly, gooey, fooey butt.”
“My God!” the Mayor said. “You sound just like my son!”
Harry’s jaw dropped.
* * * * *
After removing the headset from his son and removing Harry from his straight-jacket, the Mayor set Harry back up in his lab.
“Find me something to feed it,” the Mayor pleaded. “That’s all I ask.”
Harry got right to work.
The high points of Oxycrete were its durability under pressure, its release of oxygen into the atmosphere, and its consumption of not only carbon dioxide, but carbon monoxide as well. It even purified acid rain.
But what to feed it? Harry knew this would come up eventually, but not this soon. It was supposed to be fairly self-sufficient.
He felt a tenderness in his back and shoulders where the straight-jacket’s constraints had pressed especially hard.
If they want me to feed it, he thought, then feed it I will.
Meanwhile, the Oxycrete’s color turned to a sickening vomit green. It smelled bad, too, as if all the pollutants it consumed were stagnating in its cells. The Mayor called Harry every day, every night, sometimes ranting, sometimes pleading.
When Harry finally came up with a solution, he went directly to the Mayor’s residence. He was greeted at the door by young Bobby.
“Here kid,” Harry whispered, slipping the boy some Bliss. “Have a piece of gum.”
The Mayor appeared. “Harry! Thank God.”
Harry told the Mayor of his plan, while Bobby slouched in the corner, drooling happily.
Two weeks later, the slow moving rain-hovers poured oceans of water onto the city of Bushton far below. Water mixed with Harry’s special Oxycrete Feed Formula.
* * * * *
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br /> Soon, the buildings took root, their walls creeping with vines. Parking lots became carpeted with thick, tall grass. The streets of Bushton grew slick with moss.
The Oxycrete, luxuriating in its new food source, excreted not just oxygen, but oxygen rich with a fine mist of Bliss Arcana extract. Despite the difficulty going to and from work with the pavement sprouting flora left and right, and the buildings becoming self-contained jungles, the citizens of Bushton found themselves quite content. Very content. Very happy. They smiled a lot. They giggled as fortresses of trees surrounded their homes. Even though their automobiles became useless, the busses and subways unable to maneuver through the incredible growth, Bushton’s citizenry didn’t seem to mind.
As the city’s inhabitants happily drooled, the streets, the buildings, the parking lots of Bushton, breathed like never before.
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Coffin Bell
St. John’s Lutheran Church sat a mile out of the town proper of Vidar, a small Minnesota town whose weekly newspaper announcements were filled with Norwegian names. A cemetery spread out from the back of the church, and the gravestones, too, were heavy with Norwegian names; Isaksons and Johnsruds, Morstads and Wolds, Ullands and Sandviks. Beyond the cemetery was an apple orchard, and beyond that, forest. n front of the church a dirt road took carriages and those on horseback and foot all the way to Mankato, where one could catch a train if one so chose.
By now, Amund Grotberg was comfortable among the gravestones. The first few nights had been hard, and he was spooked more than once by owls hooting and deer treading on the dry grass, but now he was used to it. The job paid him in food – a pint of beer and a lard sandwich made by the pastor’s wife for the night (and any apples he desired from the orchard) and a nice breakfast in the morning when his shift was over; coffee, eggs, a hunk of cheese, bread, the occasional slice of ham. It was the breakfasts that kept him from running those first few nights. He was all of sixteen and done with school. His parents were both gone; mother dead long ago and father – at least according to the town’s gossip – had run off with a caravan of gypsies.