The Simpatico Series Box Set (3 books in 1)

by Dermot Davis

  "Who was?"

  "The designer, Professor John Lilly. Way ahead of his time. This beauty was designed way back in the fifties; can you believe that?"

  "I actually can," Andrew answered, looking at the old wooden contraption with obvious puzzlement.

  "Imagine if you prevented all sensory data from entering the brain, what would happen?" Dowling asked. "Would the brain go to sleep? How would it affect your consciousness if you didn't see anything, hear anything, or feel anything; as if your body was asleep, but you were actually wide awake?"

  "I don't know?" Andrew answered like Dowling’s query was an actual question.

  "That's the question Professor Lilly wanted to answer. So he designed something that would cut out all sensory stimuli that would normally enter the brain: the sensory deprivation flotation device."

  "And that replaces the vision quest thing, how? I don't understand."

  "It does not replace a vision quest experience, no, but it will closely approximate. Sitting in the desert for three or four days has a very similar effect upon the brain, upon one’s consciousness, as does a sensory deprivation experience; there are no sounds, little to no movement, and, if you sit in a stable environment for a long period of time, very little physical stimuli; all necessary prerequisites for experiencing an altered state of consciousness or visions and even hallucinations."

  "Where do the visions come from?" Andrew asked, looking inside the empty chamber.

  "Well, that was the purpose behind Lilly's questioning, wasn't it?" Dowling asked, like it all made perfect sense. "He wanted to know what would happen to a person who was deprived of all sensory input and then, once that was discovered, why it was that it had happened. It is speculated that, in the absence of actual imagery and sensory stimuli from out there, externally, the brain makes up visions of its own, in here," Dowling said, tapping his head.

  “The brain makes up its own shit? Its own reality; some kind of fake reality? Why would it do that?”

  "As a compensation, perhaps? I don't think anyone truly knows. Somehow neurons fire and the person has vivid experiences. The difference being, of course, that unlike actual experience, based upon external stimuli, the visions and hallucinations that the brain composes from lack of stimuli are so much like dreams that, to some, they are considered mystical experiences. Instead of seeing them as random scenes and images, some analysts, like Freud and Carl Jung, perhaps, considered them to have deep meaning, to have significance to the individual. Just as they consider a person's nighttime dreams to have particular significance and be subject to depth analysis and deciphering."

  Literally scratching his head, Andrew made a facial expression that expressed severe skepticism. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Professor," he admitted. "But if it saves me a four-day trip to the desert, I'm willing to try it out. What do I do, exactly?"

  "Luckily for you, very little," Dowling said and snickered like he had just made a terribly funny joke. "I'll need to fill it with water and mix in enough Epsom salts so that the water becomes so dense, that your body will float. Without a stitch of clothing, you float in the water, in the darkness and... well, try to stay awake, I guess. You remain as present as possible and associate to your experience. That's not too difficult?"

  "No. I suppose not."

  "Very restful, I'm told. You'll see modern versions of this one in yuppie spas and health clinics," he said, somewhat disparagingly. "Of course, they'll probably offer to analyze your dreams for an extra charge," he said with a knowing grin.

  "Cool," Andrew said like he now knew enough about flotation tanks to last him a lifetime. "I could come back tonight, after work?"

  "Oh, I couldn't possibly have it ready so fast, I'm afraid. Besides, tonight is no good. I have a date," he then said and quickly looked pained, as if he gave away too much information.

  "A date?" Andrew asked with a wide grin. "You old dog, I didn't know you went out on dates! Not that you shouldn't but, hot darn, you're going on a date?" he asked, like it was the wildest thing.

  "It's not a date, I shouldn't call it a date," Dowling backtracked. "I'm having dinner with a lady," he said, as if he was starting over. "Hardly constitutes a date. It's just dinner."

  "You're having dinner with Abigail, aren't you?" Andrew asked, his eyes squinting.

  "Yes, yes," Dowling said, shuffling Andrew out of the garage as they returned to the main house. "Just two old friends catching up on, oh, I don't know why I have to explain myself to you," he then said, his face now flushed red with embarrassment. "It's not like we need anybody's permission to do anything."

  "Wow, what else do you want to be doing?" Andrew teased, like he was really enjoying Dowling's embarrassment. "You want to be doing the deed, maybe?" Andrew asked with a huge grin.

  "Enough out of you, now," Dowling said, smiling despite himself. "I shouldn't have said anything."

  "Professor Dowling's in lu-uv," Andrew sang as he reached over and playfully tussled Dowling's hair, "Dow-ling's in lu-uv, da, da, da, da."

  Chapter 4

  Simon walked to the cafeteria in cell block B2D and, as he did so, looked around at the other convicts to see who might be finding him of interest and, as far as he could tell, no one did. Contemplating his visit with Andrew, he wondered if indeed his safety would be threatened. What did Andrew have to gain by making up such a worrying scenario? Was the boy purely amusing himself; twisting the knife even further and emphasizing Simon’s wounded circumstance?

  Taking his lunch to sit at his regular table, with the old-timers and the lifers, Simon tried to remember what the guy Duke looked like. Ethnicity aside, he found that there was a sameness of appearance to most of the inmates. Perhaps it was the low-rent drudgery of their daily incarcerated lives or the socio-economic background that they each hailed from, but, to a tee, the inmates all looked beaten the heck up by life. As a consequence, looking at the defeated and down-trodden men around him, they each came off as generally looking angry and desperate.

  The anger and desperation of the prisoners was most noticeable in their eyes. Simon casually looked around at various convicts. If the eyes were indeed the windows to the soul, then most of their souls must be blacker than coal. Feeling a pair of such eyes glaring in his direction, Simon traced them back to the same dude that Andrew had warned him about out in the visiting room previously. Judging by the look of utter contempt and danger exuding from the man's eyes, it appeared that Andrew hadn’t been making up a story: he had been telling it like it was.

  Munching on his foul-tasting lunch of meatloaf and runny mashed potatoes, Simon casually turned to the hairy old-timer beside him who was wolfing down his food as if he were starved. "That table over there, at two o'clock," Simon said casually and added, not looking over, "the table with the scary white dudes." Then he put another fork-full of food into his mouth.

  Raising his eyes only slightly, the bushy old-timer returned his attention to the plate of food in front of him. "Racist Aryans," the geezer said, as if he was commenting on the weather. "Nah. You don't want to truck with those A-holes," he said, like he and Simon had already had prior conversations of a similar nature.

  Constantly turning his head to look over at Simon, Duke and his posse seemed to be discussing some kind of plot. Using the evidence before him as proof of the truth of Andrew's warning, Simon knew that he needed to come up with his own plan, if he were to avoid a certain beating. "How big is the gang?" Simon asked as he nonchalantly did his own head count.

  "Not many; one of the smallest in here," the older man answered. "What's your interest?"

  "They've got me marked," Simon answered. "I think I'm in trouble."

  "Good luck with that," the man said as he used his bread roll to swipe up the rest of his gravy.

  "Who are their enemies?" Simon asked quietly and looked down at his own plate.

  For the first time, the old-timer looked at Simon. "Everybody's enemies in here," he said, like it was the most obvious thing. "
As for those little shits, everybody hates them especially."

  "Then why has no one taken them out?" Simon asked, finally looking back at the old-timer.

  "Because they get the best drugs. Don't know how and I don't care but they get the best supply, best quality and real cheap. No one wants to mess with that. Folks here need that shit like their lives depend upon it, which they probably do."

  "How about the black dudes at ten o'clock?" Simon asked, referring to the meanest-looking gang in the place. "They hate the Aryans?"

  "With a passion," the old-timer replied as he finished off his lukewarm soda. "White guys hates everybody that ain't white and wants them dead. What do you think the black dudes feel?"

  "Yeah, thought so," Simon said, sitting back like he was done with his questions. "Appreciate the talk," he said as the old-timer prepared to leave.

  "Yeah, sure. It's another day in paradise," the old-timer said sourly as he stood up and left.

  Simon remained seated and watched Duke and his goons as they stood up together to return to their cells. When Duke took one final look over towards Simon, Simon didn't look away but instead, matched his gaze. Duke smiled, like now he knew that Simon knew that he was in trouble. Undeterred, Simon watched them go and, as they did so, he looked over at the mean gang of black dudes. A plan was forming in his mind.

  Biding his time, Simon followed Duke at a distance to find out the location of his cell. When he saw Duke finally enter his cell, Simon paused and took a few deep breaths.

  Duke lay down on the lower bunk and shot the breeze with three of his homeboys.

  "Hope I'm not disturbing?" an English-accented voice said. Duke instantly found the accent hilarious. Looking to see where the voice had come from, he sat up to see Simon standing in the doorway, as if he were an English gent paying a visit to his country cousin.

  "Yo, dude, what's up?" Duke asked with a broad grin. "You come to pay us a visit, English? Come on in, dude, we feel honored," he said, trying to sound polite.

  Entering the cell, Simon quickly scanned as much as he could without being obvious about it. "I hope I'm not interrupting," he said as, walking towards the desk, he turned around to casually lean against it.

  Breaking up into laughter, Duke and his homeboys reacted to anything that Simon said as if it were hilarious. "You talk like that all the time, bro, or you just use that accent to pull the chicks?" Duke asked as if he were playing to his own little audience.

  "It has come to my attention," Simon said, knowing that he could use how he spoke as a smokescreen to distract the young men from his real intention for visiting the cell.

  "It has come to your attention?" Duke repeated like the phrase was the funniest thing that he had ever heard.

  "It appears as though we may have gotten off on the wrong foot and I thought that I'd pay you a courtesy visit, so as to set things right, if indeed there is some kind of... misunderstanding," Simon said as earnestly as he possibly could.

  "Man, you're killing me," Duke said as he and his posse were unable to maintain a straight face. "Misunderstanding? Why would we have a misunderstanding?" Duke asked like he was now a stand-up comedian. "Any of you guys have a misunderstanding with this nice gent?" he asked his crew. They indicated not.

  "Nope," he then said to Simon, "looks like no one here has any misunderstanding with you, bro. Perhaps you'd like us to make you a cup of English Breakfast tea, so as to show that there are no hard feelings," he said, to the amusement of his gang.

  "No, that will not be necessary," Simon said as he walked towards the cell door. "I'm very delighted to be proven wrong, I assure you," he said as he turned. "My apologies for taking up your time," he said as he left.

  Repeating to each other everything that he had said, the gang dudes were practically bent over with mirth. As their laughter continued, Simon smiled to himself. Sneaking a look into his hand, to check on what it was that he had lifted from Duke’s desk, he knew that he hit the jackpot: a leather strap bracelet with a crude gang insignia inked on its underside.

  He smiled. For the purpose that he had in mind, it would be perfect.

  The next morning, Simon woke in his cell and listened attentively to see if there was any change in the atmospheric sound of normal prison life. There did not seem to anything unusual in the air so he decided to linger in bed for a little longer.

  In a cell towards the far end of the corridor, a large black man was awoken by his smaller, black cellmate.

  "Yo, look at this," the cellmate said as he displayed a note that he had found, which was presumably thrown into the cell from outside. "It's some kind of death threat," the man said with a sense of urgency.

  The larger man grabbed ahold of the note and read its filthy contents: it was indeed a death threat.

  "He used the N word," the immense ebony-skinned man said with utter disbelief and a subtle rage that simmered beneath the surface of his impassive face. "Who wrote this?" the man growled.

  "Found this lodged in the bars," the smaller man said, holding up the leather strap bracelet from Duke's cell. "Must have dropped it in his hurry to run off."

  "What's it?" the large man asked as he grabbed the bracelet with anger. Turning it over, and readily identifying the mark, he could clearly see to whom the bracelet belonged. "Can't believe he used the N word," the large man said, seemingly more displeased by that than the actual death threat itself.

  "We should hit them; hard and fast," the smaller man suggested.

  "Oh, we'll hit them alright. We'll hit them so hard, they won't know what hit them," the large man said, his mind already scheming.

  Sometime later, Simon’s cellmate stood up from his bunk and prepared to leave the cell. "You not going down to lunch?" he asked Simon.

  "No," Simon answered, "I heard talk of a riot."

  "No shit!" the cellmate replied, now wondering if he should leave the cell. "When? At lunch?"

  "Yeah," Simon answered. "Lunchtime sounds about right." Simon’s cellmate stood considering his hunger and the risks of being in the lunchroom while something went down. Before he made a decision, the sounds of inmates shouting and alarms blaring echoed through the cell block.

  As the alarms went off, prisoners and guards scampered all over the joint. A fellow inmate ran past their cell but was stopped by Simon's cellmate. "Hey, Skippy, what's going on, man?" he asked the other man urgently.

  "Those Aryan guys getting it from the brothers; it's a friggin' war zone down there, bloody as hell," the passing man said as he continued to the safety of his cell. "We’re going into Lockdown."

  "You hear that?" the cellmate asked Simon. "The White Aryan guys are getting hit."

  "Yes," Simon said somberly. "That's what I heard."

  "About time, if you ask me," the cellmate said as he returned to his bunk with a smile on his face. "Sounds like World War III down there," he said as he pressed his pillows over his ears to try and block out the noise of loud sirens screaming, men shouting, and overall mayhem.

  Professor Dowling had agonized over the kind of restaurant that would most please Abigail. Initially thinking that she would be impressed with some place purely classy and exclusive, he soon reconsidered. As befitting her station in life, she would feel completely comfortable eating in such an establishment and would maybe even a find the experience a little commonplace. He certainly didn’t want to give her an experience that wasn’t memorable and special.

  As for Dowling himself, he would feel very much ill at ease in such a stuffy environment. Considering that he very rarely went out on anything resembling a date with the opposite sex, choice of restaurant aside, he knew that he would be feeling nervous just being in Abigail's company.

  As she had been away from her actual home for such a long time, Dowling reckoned that she would be sorely missing both the country and authentic British food. Settling upon an upscale British bar and restaurant, that he had been to several times before, he considered it would be the ideal place to take her. Located off
of Grand Avenue, in the swankier part of downtown, Dowling could use the location as a suggestion that they some night visit the nearby Walt Disney Concert Hall or take in a play or a musical at the Los Angeles Music Center.

  "Well, this is different," Abigail said as they were being seated near a window in the cozy and civilized pub. "You have no idea how much I've been missing the same kind of tasteless food that I loved to complain about back home," she said with a smile as she opened the hardback menu. "We're such paradoxical creatures, aren't we?"

  "English people?" Dowling asked, thinking that he probably looked pretty spiffy in his new pair of slacks and sports coat.

  "Well, no I was thinking about us humans, in general," Abigail clarified with an impish grin. "But maybe, especially English people," she then agreed.

  "Thought you might be missing your fish and chips by now," Dowling hinted.

  "Ew, fish and chips, not at all, I'm afraid. I'd never touch them when I was at home and I'm not inclined to change that now. Still, I appreciate that we're slumming it, as you Yanks would say."

  "Yes," Dowling said with a smile, although he did take her slumming it comment a little too much to heart. He glanced around at the restaurant and wondered if he had made a mistake in bringing his ex-wife there.

  "Well, well, they have it all here, don't they?" Abigail asked as she perused the menu. "Ploughman's Lunch, Steak and Kidney Pie, Cornish Pasty, Bangers and Mash, Shepard's Pie, um, this one sounds quite good, Braised Lamb Shoulder with Root Vegetables," she said enthusiastically as she admired the accompanying photo. "I wouldn't say no to that one and maybe a glass of Pale Ale from the tap," she said, looking over at the bar, her eyes lighting up like an excited child.

  Warmed by her enthusiasm, Dowling smiled with the satisfaction that he had indeed, chosen the right spot, after all. "I'll have the same," he said with gusto when the waiter came to take their orders.