Nick Bones Underground

by Phil M. Cohen

  Orders? What the hell?

  With a grand gesture Tanzer said, “Now, be gone. I’ve had enough of you.”

  Without thinking, I jumped from the couch and made my way to the door.

  “Professor,” Shelley roared. “Look.”

  I stopped and turned. Shelley held up a very large skeleton key attached to a chain.

  “No key for you today. The secret stays with me.” He placed the key around his neck where it dangled as I fled.

  A triple dose of Lerbs. Crap. I’d ingested a triple dose of a substance that had hospitalized tens of thousands. Would I soon be joining my daughter in a Lerbs hospital? I had no idea. I’d never taken it before, had no firsthand experience of it, no idea how a single dose would feel, much less a triple dose. I needed help.

  First, I needed to extricate myself from the Velvet Underground. I ran back to the ladder beneath Track 42 where a drone greeted me.

  “You are leaving, we see. We hope your visit was fruitful,” said the voice of the face that filled the screen.

  “Might have been better,” I said.

  “Oh. We are sorry. Sorry indeed. We hope your next visit will be more pleasant.”

  I nodded and began ascending the circular staircase.

  The drone buzzed above my head. “There is the matter of your exit fee,” said the voice.

  “What fucking exit fee?”

  “Think of it as a toll.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “We’re quite serious.”

  “And if I don’t pay?”

  “Then we’re afraid that we cannot allow you to leave.”

  I was uncertain by what means this thing would prevent me from climbing the staircase, but I had no desire to experiment. I extracted my UniPay card and aimed it toward the screen. I heard a faint click followed by a flash of light.

  “Your payment has been received. We thank you.”

  As the drone began flying away, I reached out, grabbed it, and gave it a good shove. Alas, it recovered its momentum, rose, and flew away.

  Next time, I thought.

  It took but a few minutes to return to the other side of Track 42 into the cavernous, vacant hall of Grand Central Station. I fled outside into the night that had long fallen on Manhattan. A chilly breeze filled the air with the aroma of grilling hot dogs, a vendor hunched grimly over his wares against the cold, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but there, but needing to squeeze a dollar out of a dwindling Upstairs world.

  I’d go to the first web house I could find, I decided. In the time of New York’s impoverishment, when so many people couldn’t afford technology, they’d sprung up like mold. I remembered passing one not long before I entered Grand Central. Goddamn Tanzer.

  ***

  Wally’s Wireless loomed large and dark. Bits of colored light fell helter-skelter from the ceiling, a crazy quilt of odd designs. Near the entrance stood the customary coffee bar. Absurd though it was, I stopped and ordered a coffee from the young fellow with purple hair. He sported a dramatic green-and-red dragon tattoo whose head, with sharp triangular teeth and orange pouring from its nose, emerged from his open collar and likely continued downward. Something like a bone protruded from his right cheek.

  “A double skim cappuccino and some stevia,” I said.

  “For here or to go?” he asked.

  Probably both, I thought, but pointed downward. Before you could say, “Stop and smell the java,” he placed a foamy cup of coffee swirled with steamed skim milk before me on the counter.

  All around the store groups of people had gathered to play games. I passed several people standing in the middle of a small boxing ring decked out in an assortment of virtual reality paraphernalia: elaborate headgear, breastplates, black gloves, boots. They battled imaginary enemies alone or in groups, joining people engaged in the same war all over the world. They crouched, fell, parried, and yelled as if in the midst of a real war.

  I leaned against the counter and gave the clerk, a tall, thin, ghostly woman, a look I hoped approximated desperation.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I’d like a meeting room, please,” I said. These rooms were intended for groups of two to five who wanted to play a game, do business, engage in cyber porn. They were expensive, but privacy was now essential. The clerk flashed my credit information into the record and pointed to a door on the other side of the space. “Straight ahead, room one-o-one,” she said.

  I crossed the floor again, passing other noisy warriors, and found the room– small and windowless room with minimal lighting. I went inside, shut and locked the door, and put my hand on the palm reader sitting next to a large screen to verify my identity. Four chairs set in a semicircle centered on the large screen. I sat in the center chair. “I’m ready to begin,” I said to the computer.

  So far I felt fine.

  “Hello. My name is Leonard, but you may feel free to call me Len. How may I be of help?” the computer asked. The voice was a little mechanical, masculine, with a faint British accent that lent dignity to a machine a generation or two older than Maggie. On the screen was the face of Michael Caine in his role as Alfred, Batman’s butler.

  “Get me my personal computer at 718-555-9087.”

  “As you wish,” he said. Alfred’s forehead knitted in concern.

  In seconds, I heard the beeping sound of a connection. But no answer. Of course. Maggie disappeared to points unknown in a historic snit. I sat frozen contemplating facing this crisis solo.

  In its gloomy British voice the computer said, “I see no one is at home. Perhaps I can be of service?”

  As I prepared to let the computer down gently, a persistent whirring sound filled the room.

  “Nick, I sensed you calling my number. I came immediately,” said Maggie. “What is it?” I could hear alarm in her voice. I never called her.

  “Maggie, I’ve ingested a triple dose of Lerbs and I need your help.”

  “A triple dose! My God!” Maggie said, invoking the deity as she did on occasion. “I presume this was not a voluntary act.”

  “Right. Not voluntary.”

  “It happened while you were in the Velvet Underground, didn’t it?” she said.

  “Yes,” I answered, knowing precisely what was to come.

  In the tone of my first-grade teacher she said, “Nicholas Friedman, didn’t I tell you to stay out of there? But would you listen to me? No.” She paused. “There is absolutely no point in reminding you that I know a thing or two about these matters. Now you’ve gotten yourself into a pickle and it is up to me to extricate you.”

  “It’s not exactly what you think, Maggie,” I said, hardly wishing to get into the whole story that moment.

  “Here you are, a damaged man seeking my help.” She was relentless.

  “Yes. Yes. Your help, Maggie, I need your help. Can’t we just get on with it?”

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “At the moment, okay. I’m scared. I haven’t a clue how my body is going to react.”

  “I’ll get some information. I’m accessing the National Institute of Mental Health’s complete medical library. Oh yes. There’s a great deal on this subject, as you might well imagine. I’ll need a moment.”

  In my college days I had more than once indulged in hallucinogens. What self-respecting leftist hadn’t? LSD, peyote, psilocybin, mescaline. The stuff was available like lollipops. I didn’t take too much, but I had ingested enough of that trash so that now, decades later, I could still conjure up remote images of those drug experiences. I’d heard that Lerbs was a lot like a powerful type of hallucinogen that kicked the tripper into the stratosphere, only more intense with fewer risks of having a bad trip due to the narcotic that accompanied the hallucinogen.

  Really up and really down simultaneously. That was, however, for one
dose.

  “Based on what I’ve read here, the best that I can figure is that you stand an excellent chance of going mad,” Maggie said.

  “Comforting,” I said, and felt my heart race and my breathing increase.

  She added, “But an overdose, technically speaking, is not what you have taken. If you took three pills . . . By the way, how did you ingest them?”

  “They came unannounced in a cup of peppermint tea. I thought Lerbs came in the form of tiny rats. These were sugar cubes. LSD originally was dripped onto sugar cubes. Did you know that, Maggie? Of course you did. You know everything.”

  My speech was turning to babble. “Look,” I said. “No time for this. Everyone here wants to schmooze as if we were at a picnic in the park with fried chicken and jelly doughnuts. Sooner or later my brain is going to start frying like an egg on the sidewalk in Phoenix in July, and I want to know what’s going to happen.”

  “Understood. If you took three pills of the standard dosage size, I don’t think the psychological danger is too extreme, if you’re comfortable. Are you comfortable?”

  I looked at my surroundings. A strange, dark, windowless room, not my home, and a strange Brit computer named Leonard.

  “You’ve got to help me. Without you, I may well lose my mind.”

  “You’re presenting me with quite the responsibility. I hope I can handle it, dear. I think I can help you. You know how I live for your welfare.” Then her voice rose in timbre like a preacher’s at Sunday services. “With God Almighty’s help,” she shouted, her voice filling the room, “we will save our Dr. Nicholas.”

  Leonard said, “I’ve heard about these new machines getting religion. I am by nature agnostic.”

  No time for a discussion of religion. A mortal crisis loomed.

  “What’s going to happen?” I asked Maggie.

  “From what I can ascertain, a heaviness will spread throughout your limbs. In short order, you’ll be unable to move. Your senses will then become intensified, especially sight and hearing. Colors will dazzle you. Maybe you’ll hear voices or echoes. And trails. Moving objects will pass before you slowly while your brain will travel at the speed of light. But you will at the same time experience a torpor so strong you’ll feel rooted in place.” I nodded. “Do you feel anything yet?”

  I performed a mental check. “Don’t think so.”

  “How long ago did you ingest the drug?”

  I looked at my watch. It was 9:20 p.m. “I finished the tea maybe forty, fifty minutes ago.”

  “All right, then. You’ve probably no more than another ten minutes. Then it’s going to hit you like a weight’s been dropped on your chest from the ceiling. Here’s what we must do. The computer setup in this room does not allow me peripheral vision. There must be a virtual helmet or something like it there, right?”

  “You will see a virtual helmet to the right of the door,” Len said.

  “Got it,” I said.

  “Good. Put it on. But don’t pull the visor down just yet. You’ve still got a few minutes, and you may need to see beyond what the helmet allows.”

  “Why do I want it on at all?” I asked, as I put it on.

  “We’re going into the cloud. From what I’ve learned, you’ll really enjoy yourself out there. Though Lerbs is both illegal and closely monitored, there’s enough of it around for some old Lerbs websites to remain profitable. I’m going to take you to one or more of them once this business begins. At least you’re not experiencing this in a hospital.”

  My daughter’s face suddenly appeared before me.

  “I am sorry. Sometimes I can be very inconsiderate, I know,” Maggie said.

  “What do you mean?” asked Leonard.

  “Later,” Maggie said.

  With her voice now coming through the helmet, Maggie sounded much closer, more intimate. I didn’t notice at first, but she had modulated her voice. It was calm, lower, very soothing, hypnotic. I began to calm down. This wasn’t going to be so bad. Might even be fun. She says it’ll be fun. Maggie ought to know. She read all about it in a medical library.

  Leonard said, “I understand now what has happened, Nicholas. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Not right now, Len. But stand by, buddy. You never know when we could use another brain around here.”

  “I await your command.”

  A quiet dullness started moving through my toes and fingers. “I think it’s beginning, Maggie.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Numbness.”

  “Okay. Pull down the visor.”

  I began reaching for the visor, but my arms were frozen. The drug had moved up to my shoulders with incredible rapidity.

  “I can’t, Maggie. I can’t mooove.” My speech slowed and slurred. At the same time, my brain raced at 10,000 miles an hour. No, 10,000 miles a second. No. It was traveling at twice the speed of light, and even though I knew I wasn’t going anywhere, I was traveling, man. I looked around the room, and everything around me moved at a snail’s pace—the air itself moved slowly into my lungs. The room was now drenched in light. I could actually feel it bathing me. I couldn’t reach the visor, but who cared? I felt at one with the universe, and the universe was big and bright, and I rode right in the middle of it.

  “You must lower the visor. It’s imperative.” Maggie said, an edge in her voice.

  “Can’t. Don’t care.”

  But suddenly the visor lowered itself. “It’s got a remote control,” I heard Leonard say. He had brought it down.

  “Thanks,” said Maggie. “You probably saved his life.”

  ***

  A cascade of colors and gentle whooshing brought marvelous abstract images and wave-like sounds. The effect was hypnotic, riveting, and cosmically comforting. I smiled so hard it felt like the edges of my mouth were reaching beyond my ears. Oh, I was a happy guy all right. After years of not feeling anything resembling joy, I was drowning in bliss in the space of a minute. How come I never took this stuff?

  “I’m going to bring you to a Lerbsite, Nick,” said Maggie after what seemed like several days.

  “Whatever,” was my best response. Strange—strange feeling these mental aerobics mingled with a physical torpor so strong I sank, sank into the seat, flattening into a human pancake. A smiling pancake. One happy, smiling, drugged pancake. Buckwheat.

  Before my eyes now floated a cavalcade of cartoon characters. Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Bart, Homer, Cartman, a universe of animation. All of them floating before me, jabbering, fighting with each other. Oh my! Mickey started doing Minnie. Walt would never have approved.

  “All right, campers!” a voice shouted. Amid the cartoon images a head floated before me. Just a head. Male, thin, oval shaped, short-cropped hair, thick glasses, clean-shaven, very serious, as animated as a disembodied head could be.

  It bobbled up and down in front of me like a buoy on an agitated ocean. Martial music filled the air—John Philip Sousa, I supposed. Very loud, very brassy, very high energy. The head shouted, “You there! You, Nick Friedman. Is that you sitting on that chair?”

  I tried to respond, but nothing moved.

  “You there!” it shouted to me again. “Is that you, Professor Nick Friedman, all hopped up on Lerbs?”

  I managed to blow a tiny speck of air but could say nothing.

  “Welcome to the Psycho Path!” the head shouted. “A world of motion, loud music, dazzling colors, and more excitement than any one life deserves. We’re here to make you move. We’re here to make you shout. We’re here to make you sing. So, move, you ugly son of a bitch.”

  My own smiling head moved not a bit, and I cared even less.

  The head shouted, “More music, more stimulation, this guy’s frozen. Gotta make him to move. Gotta make him move fast or he’s gonna be old news.”

  “Stars and Stripes Forever
” filled my head like jelly in a jar. The colors intensified. Images of great moving things zoomed across my visual field: roller coasters, fire trucks, missiles, racing cars, motorcycles, bullet trains, rockets to Mars.

  My brain raced along with these balls of color, sound, and moving pictures. But my body was immobile. I didn’t give a royal damn. My breathing became shallow, and then it stopped altogether.

  The head was barely an inch away. “Nick!” it shouted. “Nick. You have got to breathe. You’ve stopped breathing and you have got to breathe. You have got to breathe!”

  Suddenly everything went blank and quiet except for the head, its voice reverberating in great echoes. “Nick-Nick-Nick-Nick, if you don’t breathe-breathe-breathe-breathe, you’re going to die-die-die-die. You’re gonna die. You’re gonna die.” Then a familiar voice called, “Dad! Dad! Breathe! Please, Dad, you have to breathe!” This voice penetrated and made it seem worthwhile to breathe. I made the effort to take in some air, and got half a lungful.

  “Good!” the head shouted. “You’re breathing. Keep it up. In and out, in and out . . .” The head spoke to me in a rhythm, coaching me in the fine human art of breathing.

  With a conscious, excruciating effort, I began taking sufficient oxygen into my lungs to prevent suffocation and, one would hope, brain damage.

  Once I regained instinctive breathing capacity, the light and music and motion show returned full force.

  Mr. Head appeared in front of me.

  “Nick,” it shouted. “Nick, you’ve entered the world-famous VR site, the Psycho Path. You’re here because you’ve OD’d on Lerbs. I’m happy to report, you’ve already taken some giant steps along the Psycho Path. Well then. Welcome, my man. Sit back—as if you had a choice, you pancake you—and pay careful attention.”

  Suddenly, I was on a Harley in a Southwest locale filled with desert and cacti doing 120 down a two-lane highway, two sixteen-wheelers side by side bearing down on me, occupying both lanes. If nobody yielded, it was clear I’d become a hood ornament. Even in my current euphoric state, I had no desire to be transformed into some trucker’s trophy.