by Karlin
'If I can't have it, nobody will!' I couldn't believe it. The next thing he was supposed to do was shoot his ex-girlfriend, who was sitting across the room, then half-a-dozen innocent bystanders, and finally himself. Sure enough, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a squirt gun. Yep, a toy that shoots water. A green plastic job, didn't even look real. Then he starts squirting everybody in site.
"There was a gasp of relief when he started squirting. It was just a practical joke. Nothing to worry about. He used up his water after a couple of minutes, nodded politely to his co-workers, and walked calmly out. After a few minutes of joking and laughing, we all went back to our meals. He had pulled it off perfectly, getting his dramatic moment without hurting anyone.
"It took two days for the virus to incubate. Two days before the symptoms showed up. Two days in which people had gone home to their families, gone out to meals, movies, you name it. Two days in which in had spread out of control.
"The second day I was feeling odd. I couldn't quite place it, but I knew that something wasn't right. I asked my buddies at work how they felt. I thought that maybe the flu was going around, or food poisoning or something. They said mostly that they felt odd, but couldn't quite nail it down.
"Then a bunch of bad shit happened to me. The jerk I shared my office with had one of his interminable loud phone calls with one of his many girlfriends. I spilled my coffee, getting a bunch of paperwork all wet. While I was cleaning up the mess, I knocked your mom's photo off the desk. I got down on my ands and knees to retrieve it, and when I got back up I banged my head on the corner of the desk. I was getting ready to explode in a fit of cursing and pounding on the desk – my usual little fit of anger. Then I realized something. I didn't feel like it, I didn't feel like cursing, or stomping outside for some fresh air. Truth was, I didn't really feel angry.
"Now, I knew myself. A series of dumb incidents like that would really get on my nerves. But this time I hardly noticed. I didn't feel angry or upset. I didn't feel anything. That's when I realized what had happened.
"I grabbed my cubicle-mate's phone, and hung it up. I had wanted to do that for years, but was always afraid. Now I didn't know what fear was.
"'Mickey', I said, 'don't ask questions. Come with me.' He didn't say a word, just followed me into the hallway. That's when I knew my hunch was right.
"I led him downstairs to the labs, into the cold storage area, where we kept our frozen experimental viruses. I showed my ID to the guard, and he gave me the key to the right freezer. He would give the key to anybody who was authorized. Henry, for example.
"Sure enough, the fix-it virus was gone. Henry had sprayed us all with it. I made for the nearest phone, called the emergency number, reported the missing virus and my suspicions. They wrote everything down, and started their investigation. They were pretty quick. It only took them a couple of hours to shut the place down and declare a quarantine, and a few more to convince the authorities to shut down the airport. Two days had already gone by, though, and the airport wasn't the only way to leave town. There were no quick tests to diagnose carriers, the symptoms were not typical disease symptoms, and there was no vaccine. The virus had been specifically engineered to spread quickly, and it did.
"By the time foreign governments were informed, it was too late for them as well. It reached every country inside of a week, and a couple of weeks later it was all over.
"So here we are, not because some government decided that we would be better off this way, but because some hormone-driven fellow wanted his revenge.
"The worst part of it is that we know we are missing something. I know it, because I lived back in the old days. You know it too. You know that something is missing, that you are not whole. That's why all of those poor slobs line up for their shots. 'Oh, I need to be sad', 'I need to be happy', 'I need to fall in love', 'I need to be angry'. Poor slobs, they can never have what they really need, only a quick fix that will let them experience for a few hours what was once theirs to experience for their entire lives. Not only that – they charge them for it.
"Turns out that there is a real cure. No, don't get excited. It won't bring emotions back. It will just take something else away. That need. That feeling that you are missing something. Yeah, I know what you do for a living. You process emotions. Folks show up, and they want to feel this, they need to feel that. You ever wonder why they need, why they want? It's chemical, like the rest of it. Their emotions have been deadened, but deep inside, buried in their molecules, they know that the emotions should be there. It's all imbalanced.
"When we worked on the fixit virus, we knew this would be a problem. So we designed the antidote – the molecule that would balance things out, at least in a way. So you wouldn't have that awful need.
"Here, follow me. Yeah, to the kitchen. Bear with me. It's slow going with the cane. The story's not over. I'm not going to make a cup of tea now just to keep you in suspense.
"OK, open the fridge. No, the top part, the freezer. Take out the ice cream. Now, in the corner – what do you see? Just a coffee jar, right? Pull it out. It's full of cotton, you see that. Open it up. Pull out the cotton. Go ahead. Just be careful. There's a test tube in there. Hold it up.
"See that white powder? That will fix everything. Nobody will even notice that they are lacking emotions. That white powder will kill that last bit of humanity, that feeling that something is missing, that there has to be more. I took it when I left the lab. To make sure that it stayed safe, that we didn't all turn into complete zombies.
"I guess I hadn't completely lost my emotions at that point. I still cared a bit. Enough to bother saving that virus. I thought I would keep it safe, make sure that it never got released. Who knows, if people realize that they are missing something, maybe the day will come when they'll figure out how to get it back.
"A few weeks after I left Los Alamos I thought of destroying the virus. It's easy enough. Just need a decent incinerator. But by then I didn't care enough to bother. So I left in my freezer, and here it is. I don't think that it makes much difference now. You don't get real creative thinking without emotions. Nobody's going to figure out a way around this. Nobody will really put their heart into it.
"Yeah, that's the kind of thing we would say then. You didn't just think things, you felt them in your guts.
"Put the test tube on the table. Yeah, just lay it there. Nothing to be afraid of. There really isn't, since you don't know what fear is. They used to say that about brave men, that they didn't know the meaning of fear. Now nobody does. Then again, nobody is brave today either. It's a wonder that people don't just stop eating and die. I guess that there is some survival instinct still left. Or maybe they managed to educate everybody so they know cognitively that they should stay alive, have children, whatever.
"If I could feel bitter, I would. We don't feel anything. We don't even care. We could leave that test tube on the table, taking the risk that the cat will knock it down. Or we could put it back in the freezer. Or take it to the incinerator. And we would feel exactly the same about all of the options. We would feel nothing, as usual. Unless we go to your silly clinic and buy some emotions for an hour or two.
"We could have a nice rational discussion about the best course of action to take. But we wouldn't care about it. Terminal apathy. If the damn thing fell on the floor, we wouldn't care. No guilt. No remorse. No sorrow. We might feel that we ought to feel remorse, and go the nearest clinic and buy some. But once the virus has spread, even that luxury will disappear.
"So the future humanity depends on what we do or don't do. And we don't really care. Wish we could, but we don't.
"Ah. You've come prepared. Didn't know what you'd find out, but knew that you'd need some help. So you pull the little vial out of your bag. A whole handful of little vials. So which will it be? Anger? Concern? Maybe you need a little love of mankind?
"Confusing, I guess. Which do you need? You know you shouldn't do that. Taking a full dose of so many at once. There's no tel
ling what you'll do. If I still loved you, I would stop you. Maybe you can give me a shot of love, if you've got a spare vial. Then I could stop you.
"So you're taking the virus with you. Where to? Watch out. You've shot up a full load there. You're not used to it. For the next two hours you'll be normal, and it ain't easy.
The Flask of Amaretto
Stanley was saying kaddish for his father. He’d never had a good relationship with him. To be honest, he’d never liked his father, and sometimes positively hated him. But now that it was too late, he was beginning to realize that it wasn’t as simple as he’d thought. His father was from another generation, and simply didn’t understand him. He couldn’t say that his father was really a good man- that would mean ignoring a fair number of shady business associates and a few run-ins with the law.
He now realized that under it all, his father did love him, but had no way to express himself. He had probably rejected his father’s efforts at reaching out, till they both got in the habit of not communicating. And now it was late, far too late to change that history.
The only thing he could do was to say kaddish. It was supposed to help the dead person’s soul somehow. Stanley wasn’t sure of the details, but people’s souls could start