Miette has a wonderful podcast. She reads, sometimes from the bathtub, an eclectic slew of matter that staggers me with its breadth. She is also a great writer and fearless slogger through the trenches of publishing and fiction. I was unaware of the market strength of audio books until during a recent visit we discussed her idea of turning MAN into a weekly podcast. Her concern was that i would be unable to publish it, because audio rights are such a big part of publishing these days. Well, my friends, no one in the print part of the trade wants to read, much less publish, The Man Who can’t Die. It is too long and I am an unknown. I was more than delighted and my gratitude is inexpressible. As we discussed it further I realized that e-novels, as promising as they are, are still print, and MAN is still a 700 page manuscript. But as a podcast, as an audio book, it might find an audience (remembering that Audience means a group of auditors, people who listen; Ben Jonson insisted on this aspect of the theatre over the spectacle, which he considered to be vulgar, but I have always disagreed with him on this, i am no Son Of Ben, despite what some might say)…in any event, she will devote part of her time to my book for the next year and a half or so, and our hope is that auditors will sometimes elect to download the book, and sometimes elect to donate to her site, with the idea of exploring the viability of straight to audio web publishing. At least, I think that’s what we’re up to, and no doubt Miette will correct things in the comment section.

Bryson, a cantankerous, 67 year old woman, had been studying the brain her whole life, the last several decades at Monozone, developing a class of drugs known as Euphorics, to treat everything from suicidal depression to ennui.

Transcryptasine, marketed as Paregane, was the latest and most powerful of these. For ten years she had lived in her lab, through dead ends, delays, long depressions when no ideas came and she lost most of her staff. Those that stayed were sometimes drunk for weeks on end. Finally, they made the breakthrough and produced a cure for depression and ennui, proving that by manipulating fields in the brain you could reset consciousness. People took a pill before bed and dreamed of paradise. They awoke feeling at home in the world. They liked their jobs and their spouses again; had realistic expectations about life. They didn’t feel like they had been ground down to nothing by meaningless work and twisted relationships.

There were no side effects, no loss of sleep or sexual function, no weird feeling of otherness, no bloating or anorexia, no let down or crash. She had discovered the key to a signal produced by a cluster of stars in the brain, a little universe of mood and expectation, of time perception and being.

There was only one drawback. In the trials it killed ten percent of everyone who took it, and for no apparent reason.

The little wind up dolls were clapping now, for Martin Bruce, Head of Marketing, the corporate boss of her unit. Morons, let them have their day, she thought. Her throat was dry but the glass of ice water on the table looked insipid. As insipid as her colleagues, human resources, weirdly dry beneath the sun lights, as if suffering powdery mildew.

Martin Bruce was an unlikely but true ally in the recent battle, adamant about not going ahead with a drug that dangerous. He saw nothing but lawsuits, two months out. No one had ever successfully marketed death. Contempt for the lunacy of the notion strained every word he spoke till, after a while, Martin Bruce became shrill. Martin Bruce had gone hoarse for her cause. She would remember that.

People answered his objections. It was pointed out, by one of her own people, that there would never be any way to prove that transcryptasine was the culprit if someone did die. There would only be anecdotal evidence, a statistical correlation that could easily be accounted for in other ways.

An accountant explained that 10 percent really wasn’t too bad, if you considered that ninety percent survived. It was less dangerous than war.

Well, that did it. Bruce capitulated and they applied for a patent. It should have ended there–state would never approve transcryptasine-but this afternoon she learned that it had been approved, and that they were sending a man over to take charge of the project.

Everyone was there, raked at a steep grade toward the orange and blue bulbs, seated on grey composite bucket chairs with stiff white side tables. Veal stalls for humans. Walls, floor and ceiling were carpeted in a beige substance that both contained and breathed. Seated at a table, behind the mike, were a half a dozen men and women in grey and white linen suits, with Mondrian ties of one sort or another.

Bruce’s face was permanently worried and dour. He waited for the applause to die. “It is my pleasure then to introduce to you an old friend, a man who first rose to prominence working for our company, and who has in one way or another represented our interest at state for over ten years. We old timers are certainly glad to have him back, and I’m sure members of the team who don’t know him, will come to love and respect him as much as I do. Mr. Owen Bradlee, the new Monozone/state liaison officer in charge of Paregane.”

Bryson stared at her ice cubes. Owen Bradlee. That was no surprise either. Who else fit the job description so well? No one even really knew whom he worked for, just that he was always there, on the winning side.

Owen Bradlee had a slightly stuffy English accent, one of those upper class mumbles, and he made affectation look natural somehow. She liked to drink with him in the old days; he could booze and eat, but he was a little tight. And, despite his saturnine appearance, he was a good fuck too. Big dick. Monstrous appetite at forty. She reached for the water and wanted to retch. There was no substitute for a martini. Bradlee cleared his throat.

“I want to congratulate everyone on this team. Paregane,”–he exaggerated each vowel so the word came out like a short, ironic pop song–”or, as the insiders still affectionately call it, transcryptasine,” this he made crisp and dignified, “is a triumph. Not only will it eliminate severe depression and reduce the rate of suicide, it will prove to be the ultimate Euphoric, a cure for people’s lives. We at state are particularly sanguine about it becoming the major weapon in the war on negative attitudes, which are, frankly, undermining production in many key, human resource based industries.”

He looked around the room and took in some more wind.

“Although of course no single individual can ever claim to be the sole author of such an important innovation, there is one person, an old friend of mine, a great woman, who in mid-career stands at the very pinnacle of professional achievement, to whom I think we all owe a special nod of recognition. Dr. Ruth Bryson.”

A sea of dough turned upon her and the clapping erupted. Bryson swallowed a teaspoon of bile and stood slightly, acknowledging them with a nod.

“And now, before I step back into the shadows,” he chuckled, “I want to tell you all how happy I am to be back in the old Monozone bosom.”

Crap you can’t cut, she thought. A dry lifeless stool produced by a lifeless asshole in a lifeless head. The shit of the damned. Bruce returned to the podium.

“Reynolds, would you like to make a few brief remarks about the marketing campaign?”

Reynolds stood. He was a tall, thin, stooped man with black hair and a bald spot. In a mincing voice he addressed the assembly. “At first, we only market it to doctors, in this country, as a prescription drug for the severest forms of depression. At the same time we release it in China as an over-the-counter drug, with a heavy saturation ad campaign on billboards and television. It spreads here through fashion circles, an illicit drug. That gives us that little oomph we look for at the beginning. People think they’re getting something cool. When demand gets high, we go over-the-counter here.”

Someone yelled, “What’s the slogan?”

“Yeah, give us the slogan.”

“The slogan.” Reynolds had to raise his voice a little above the buzz. “We start out with a tease. Black billboards with the words, Is this your lucky day? Later, we hit them with, Paregane…Everyone who takes it goes to paradise. Is this your lucky day?”

Someone in the back, twenty rows up, yelled out, “Ha! How about, Paregane! Everyone who takes it goes to paradise. Ten Percent stay. Is this your lucky day?”

Dr. Bryson stared into her water glass past the facets, into a mountainous abyss of frigid cliffs and blue chasms pierced with light. Form obliterated form and her eyes erupted with crystals.

From the other side, two rows down, “Ideally, the 90 percent who live envy the 10 who die.”

Bryson shook herself awake and stood. No one paid her any mind as she left the room. She needed a drink.

“Evening ma’am,” said the bartender, a man with premature wattles and eyes sagging down his face. He suffered from a rare wasting disease contracted after accidentally eating a mutant zebra mussel. The parasite was slowly eating its way through his connective tissue.

“Jim.” She looked at herself in the gold mirror. “Martini please. Make it a Razor’s Edge.”

He nodded and placed a bowl of spanish peanuts on the bar.

Seated directly across from her, at the other end of the horseshoe, was a man in uniform, with a typically coarse haircut. Even in the dolorous orange light, and at that distance, she could see raw cuts. A cheap hemp newspaper lay out on the bar and he poked at the crossword with a pencil, tongue between his teeth. He was drinking a melon ball, in a tall frosted glass, with a cherry. Drinks like that made her almost as happy as the bird did. The man looked at her and she smiled, then instinctively looked at her hands.

The first sip of the cloudy martini had been everything she hoped it would be. It was the one reliable thing in a day of make believe. Her triumph. But they couldn’t just hand it to her without all that stuff about the team. And it was no triumph at all but a loss of control. Her name would be forever associated with transcryptasine but she would never have any power over how it was used.

She played with the three olives–drab army green, with pimentos, like raw nipples on a gangrenous tit–and finally speared one with a toothpick. The lactic bight made her wince with pleasure. She tossed off the rest and called for another, hoping to have all three sheets hoisted before the meeting let out.

Tonight she’d sleep in the lab; tomorrow, she’d join her husband, Leonard, at their place in the Finger Lakes. The very thought made her sweat. The house was in a Greenhouse Mitigation Zone, on a ridge above a mosquito-infested valley near Keuka Lake, known mostly for its failed avocado farms. In exchange for a lifetime of indulgence she had indulged Leonard and bought this land. There was just no reason not to give him what he wanted. Leonard had had his share of inconsequential sluts over the years but it didn’t hold a candle to her near constant infidelity. And he was in his mid eighties.

Like many people his age he wouldn’t make 120, as she was near guaranteed. She had modified genes, and a stem cell line established by her parents. Leonard’s family were poor, and religious; they didn’t believe in manipulating the genome. In the next ten years he’d fall apart, one thing at a time.

The house was an abandoned vineyard he had restored with the help of his Amish neighbor. It was comfortable inside, large, with power to run ceiling fans, which kept the miasmic murk going in circles. The windows had screens to keep the biting night flies out. The lake was fine to swim in so long as the weeds died back in winter. The one thing she looked forward to was the artesian well; it came up at a constant 14 degrees, so she could spend hours in a claw foot tub, under an old oak tree behind the house reading detective novels. The tub was big enough so she didn’t feel like a cork in a bottle. She could really spread out. Leonard grew and prepared the food himself. It was superb. His wine on the other hand tasted like battery acid.

She was beginning to enjoy spending time in the country with him. They were both less obsessed with their work. For most of their 42 years together they’d lived apart. Leonard was an emergent ecosystems analyst, a passionate biologist. Whenever he was not teaching he was doing fieldwork in places she couldn’t imagine, Louisiana, Florida. Their time together was often brief, intense, conflicted. Big egos, exhausted, depressed or totally manic.

She sipped her second drink and stared out the windows at the arriving and departing hovercraft. Like bumble bees, she thought, shivering. Their green and red lights blinked against the pale concrete of the Monozone lab building, across the canal. The labs had no windows, just black grills to let the cool air in in winter.

Owen Bradlee walked in carrying a suitcase, in a dove grey suit, starched white shirt and collar, and a silk tie of green, gold and red chevrons. In her more objective moods he seemed like a bit of a stooge. He liked his little home in the suburbs, always dressed well, better than he earned, and knew the right people. A lover didn’t need to be smart, he needed to be fun, no challenge at all. Then you were free to love. Husbands were different. Husbands had to be hard, difficult. Everything else was boring.

Bradlee had a way of drifting into a room, like fog into headlights. Even his touch was a little foglike. The chill lay on his fingertips, in the manicured nails, the sapphire ring on his right ring finger, the two silver bracelets sliding out of his starched cuffs, and the onyx cufflinks. It was a little cold, but everything else always seemed so hot. She looked at him as he approached. Even in his sixties, going ruddy with drink and smoke, his mustache a puff of white, his hair synthetic, he was desirable. He smiled at her with recognition as he crossed the glassy puddles of light spilled down from above.

“Well Bryson, congratulations are in order. Mind if I join you?” When he spoke it was as if his reserve were meant to hide a touch of sadness. And what might in another man come off as condescension with Bradlee appeared to be mere reticence, a mastery of the pain caused by contact with other humans.

Bryson scowled at a small fleck of ice floating in her drink. A drop of sweat formed at her temple and rolled down her slightly plump cheek, stained cherry red by the sign. She had been there long enough to perspire now, it was either time to leave or take off her lab coat.

“No please, sit down. What’ll you have?” To face him, she stood and pushed her stool out a bit and wiggled out of her lab coat. She was a little heavy, and liked it that way. It gave her heft, which came in handy in the right position.

“Manhattan,” he said, with evident enthusiasm.

Bryson pointed loosely to her body and said, “I haven’t had time to shower or change.” The strap of her damp, white tank top dropped off her shoulder. She looked at the bartender. He was bent over the crossword, helping the soldier out. “Jim,” she called. He started up, craning about in sudden alarm and panic. His adam’s apple rolled up and down between the wattles like a ball on a track. He was an older man, sick and afraid of losing his job, even though he had been there so long, it was hard to imagine who would fire him. Then he saw it was only Bryson and relaxed.

“Forgive me ma’am, I was just helping Private Cooper out with the crossword. It’s his last night.”

“Where’s he going, up to the front tomorrow?” Private Copper nodded vacantly and went back to the puzzle. “Jim, you remember Mr. Bradlee?”

“Why yes I do. Manhattan dry?”

Bradlee nodded and Jim headed for the speed rack.

“Make it top shelf Jim, I’m buying,” she said.

“Everyone is quite pleased with you.” Bradlee patted her hand and smiled beneath his mustache. His warmth waffled in with his cold like a changeable day.

Jim plunked down Bradlee’s drink. The cherry swam up from the dark, plasmic bottom of the glass and stood briefly in the clear red light. With a slight grin he took a tentative first sip, gazing across the rim of the glass at Bryson. He had weepy blue eyes. Allergies were his excuse, but Bryson always suspected melancholia.

“Brutal meeting,” he said, staring now straight ahead, at the bottles.

“Stupidity at its human limit,” replied Bryson.

“I wouldn’t go that far. But you were certainly both deprived of authority and given insufficient credit for the discovery.”

She dismissed him by looking at the ceiling.

“Well, I come bearing gifts. Your work will certainly not go unrewarded.”

She said nothing.

In silence, and slowly, he opened the brass snaps of the briefcase and withdrew a small leather wallet. It contained three thin gold wafers. “A private bonus, for you.”

She lifted the wallet up and examined the discs. “What are these for?”

“Jewels. Twenty five million dollars. No one will ever know you have them, they’re untraceable.”

“Well,” she said, jocularly, “who the hell are we?”

“Ah, I knew it would come around to that. Now, you also have an option to buy, at today’s trading price of 23, a hundred thousand shares of Monozone stock.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“You don’t seem to understand how profitable all this is likely to prove. Paregane could push us up over two hundred, which would get us a seat on state council. We could bump Genetel. Do you have any idea of what that stock will be worth then?”

Skeptically picking out points on Bradlee’s face she reached for the wallet and placed it in her pocket. She couldn’t stop looking at him, at the blue dots of his eyes floating in pink, the total stillness of his jaw. “I should quit while I’m ahead.”

“But you have decades to go. Your most important work is ahead of you.”

“Oh please. I did that forty years ago, at Cornell, with Velodia.”

He snorted. “Vadge Velodia. Haven’t thought about her in years. Has she changed much?”

“It’s Quap, not Vadge. And I wouldn’t know.” It was a lie. She had plans to see Velodia the next day. They drank in silence. She ordered another Razor’s Edge and lit a cigarette.

“You don’t look so bad Bradlee,” she said.

“Neither do you.”

“Yeah, well, they can keep us alive, but they can’t make us young.”

He smiled as if the thought of being young were slightly repulsive. “I had my liver out you know.”

“So what, Leonard’s on his third.”

Bradlee looked surprised, raised his eyelids. “I didn’t think Leonard drank. Has he been hiding it?”

She shook her head and waved him off. “No, Leonard didn’t drink, at least not until we bought the vineyard–”

“The vineyard?”

“Forget about it. The first one he had out because of Hepatitis. Down in Lake Pontchartrain, some exotic river worm from the Amazon swam up his urethra. They treated him for that, but they didn’t know that the worm carried a retro virus in its digestive track. When they poisoned the worm, it released the virus into Leonard’s body and the virus attacked his liver. No one knew a thing was wrong till Leonard blew up and turned yellow. So they gave him his first transplant. Then the virus attacked his new liver, so that one had to come out too. He had a hell of a time finding the right antiviral.”

Bradlee looked distastefully away from his drink. “Does he still wear those dreadful rubber boots?”

Bryson laughed. “Yeah.”

“You’ve got one wish left Bryson. What do you want to work on next? Name your project.”

“Transcryptasine.”

He shook his head, “I can’t do that. It would be totally irresponsible. You don’t understand the importance of what you’ve done. People are unhappy. Productivity is down. There’s a plague of ennui and misery and boredom out there. The statistics are terrifying. Suicides up in all age categories, especially the young. Accidents, emotional family murders, street brawls, drug addiction, absenteeism, all on the rise. I would say consumer confidence is eroding.”

“If you want to make people happy do something about the weather. Transcryptasine isn’t snake oil, it’s meant for debilitating, suicidal depression. It’s an important finding, it has a promising future, but you know and I know that it’s insane to market a drug over-the-counter, in China or anywhere else, that kills ten percent of the people who take it.”

“That’s where you may be wrong. The gamble may prove to be exciting, give people a sense of purpose, something to feel good about, you know, I survived another day. It’s what gave our parents’ generation such backbone. The world ending. Flood, wind and fire, work to be done. All that blah. Now people are soft and stupid. There’s no risk. If we can offer them paradise in a pill, how can that fail?”

“That’s just what the angel called it,” she mumbled, feeling suddenly haggard. It was an argument she’d been having for months, and here she was having it again.

“Speak up Bryson, the what?”

“Oh, the angel.”

“Good lord, what ever do you mean?”

Wearily she explained. “When I took transcryptasine, I, like everyone else, dreamt of going to Eden. But I was the only one who saw an angel.”

“That must have been some surprise.” He chuckled and popped a handful of peanuts in his mouth.

“Scared the hell out of me.”

“And this angel, did he have wings?”

She shook her head. “No, no no. It was nothing like that. The place feels real, as real as this, as you and me right now, here. And the angel was actually kind of a hairy fellow, very, earthy, you know? Hairy red arms, bushy eyebrows, sideburns. He came out from behind a shrub, like I’d caught him napping or something and said, very sarcastically, Paradise in a pill, what will they think of next?”

“How did you know he was an angel?”

“I just did. It gave me the creeps and still does. That whole place made me nervous.”

“Sounds like transcryptasine didn’t really work on you.”

This observation prickled her pride, though she had made it

herself. “Oh, it worked just fine. I went there, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but you had no desire to stay.”

“Maybe not, but I was happy as a pig in shit for weeks after, even though I knew I would lose that battle with marketing. That’s the thing right there, isn’t it, about transcryptasine. Happiness and reality don’t cancel each other out. The real world doesn’t get to you, doesn’t destroy your confidence in things. Nevertheless, you’re right. I didn’t want to stay.”

“Well, I like it here just fine. It’s all the paradise I can stand.” As he said the word paradise he glanced around at their surroundings.

“So I can just forget about further research.”

“I’m sorry Bryson, anything but that. State’s approved the marketing plan. By next week there’ll be black billboards from Lhasa to Hong Kong, and our reps will have held virtual meetings with every doctor in the country.”

The doors swung open and people in gregarious groups of four and five began to amble in, one member of each table bellying up to the bar to buy pitchers of beer. Individually any one of them would be afraid to be near Bryson, but as a herd they broadcast a fatuous contempt.

Bryson stirred her drink around with her finger, licked the gin off and took a long sip. “Time was, on a night like this, I’d go home and fuck my husband.”

Bradlee smiled, drained his drink and said, “Or me.”

“Or you.”

“Well, shall we go to my place then, for a night cap?”

She sighed. “I was going to sleep in the lab tonight and meet Leonard tomorrow, at the vineyard.”

“The one I’m supposed to forget about.”

“Keuka Lake. About, I don’t know, nine, ten years ago I bought it for Leonard to retire on.”

“Greenhouse Mitigation Zone? How eccentric.”

“What can I say? You know Leonard.”

They headed out the door and were absorbed by a hot vapour of stale seawater. Haze drifted up into the orange sky. Cool green phosphorescent pods of hovercraft crossed above, rose and fell and moved about like dancing eggs.

They crossed a steel footbridge across the canal separating Monozone from the Lounge and she turned left, towards the elevator to the hovercraft lot.

“Not that way, Bryson. I’ve got a car.”

She followed him without the least resistance. She did not remember the last time she had ridden in a car. Pick up trucks and tractors in the country, toy cars at car parks, sure, but a car?

It was a thing with her, transportation. Hovercraft made her nauseous. It was like sitting in a bucket with windows and getting kicked around. Amphibatrains gave her hives, all those people packed in, yacking their heads off about nothing, drinking shitty booze. And the interminable card games in the smoking car. The only other reliable form of transport was Individual Commuter Pods. At least they rode on a rail and only sat one.

In the city, a car was big business. Bradlee must have gravitated to a winning side. It was maybe time to reconsider his power. “Who do you work for now? What side are you on?” She felt she could at least demand that of Bradlee. They had spent quite a bit of time together. He was never one to let on in an obvious way what his ambitions were, but they were clear enough, if not generic. Bradlee always seemed to occupy a noman’s land, between things, undecided till the last moment when he would instinctively break in the right direction, landing wherever the opportunity was, but for seemingly disinterested reasons, or as if by means of coincidence.

“Same side as always, Bryson.” He pulled out a key chain. They were in a small parking lot, back by the generators, behind the Monozone building. A single, two-story pole dusted the air with a dim bluish light. There was a garbage truck parked by some 10-ton dumpsters. Beneath them black canal water chugged. Insect shoals swam in and out of the light. Then there were a couple of modern cars, wheeled vehicles, she thought with scorn. That model year they were two-toned boxes, grey and white, like a cubist pigeon with tinted windshields and crappy batteries. Cheap as always, she thought, and then watched him stick his key into the door of a 1967 silver Cadillac.

“Jesus Bradlee, where the hell did you get this?”

“Relax. It’s a Nigerian knock off. But it’s damn good, I can tell you that. This thing can go wherever you want. There’s no programming.

You just drive fast.”

“How did you ever get permission?”

“Defense Department portfolio. I’m civilian staff. It’s an official car, but of my design.” He opened the door for her. It swung out and bumped her leg. The weight nearly knocked her over. Even closing it was difficult. The door seemed to want to bite her foot off. She sank back into the grey leather sofa seat. It roared.

“Is this a gas car?” she asked.

“Dual system. It’s a ten cylinder internal combustion engine, that runs on gasoline or alcohol and a modified hybrid solar hydrogen job, Korean design.” The air grew frigid. She reminded herself that such things shouldn’t matter to her anymore. She had twenty five million in jewel discs.

“I could live in this thing,” she said. They eased out of the security gates, and onto a narrow dark road built above the main canal into Manhattan.

“There’s nothing out there on the road anymore. I can go for days.”

They were on a long causeway, the approach to the Queensboro Bridge. The city was dark, scattered with light from a few offices, a few homes, but nestled in the middle of the island, behind the towers, was a bright glow. The streets of midtown.

They crossed the levee and circled down onto the Beltway, through warrens of damp concrete and out onto 44th street. Here they drove up a plastic composite ramp and into a small, secure parking area. He summoned an elevator. She looked at the buttons.

“Jesus, what floor do you live on?”

“Actually, it’s the 53rd. It looks south, west and east.”

The apartment was austere. The walls were various shades of white. The floor was natural stone, smooth but unpolished, cool on the feet. Water flowed continuously down one wall, over bedrock, and into a pond with three water irises at one end, the delicate sulfur blossoms opening above green spears. Two goldfish swam in languid circles. The air was 19 degrees at 50% humidity. The other three walls were windows, floor to ceiling. There was some generic metal furniture around a glass coffee table. There were no paintings on the walls or decorations of any kind. A pair of black crepe shoes stood by the door, and an umbrella stuck in a plastic elephant’s foot.

From this height, the world looked even dirtier and more remote than usual, but also less menacing, not as harsh.

Gin was only the proximate cause of her stiff neck, the flames licking her esophagus. She just couldn’t sleep off the failed trials. All the time now, even in her sleep, she probed the data, autopsy reports, prior conditions, for a discernible cause of death. But there was none. It was like SIDS for adults. A failure and an unsolved mystery. How could she just leave that undone? Nothing perfect could be real, reality is a botch job, disparate things crammed together, junk DNA, aberrant proteins that started to think. The real was Bradlee’s stretched out gut and her pendulous breasts. The sound of the universe was the sound of Bradlee’s thighs slapping against her ass.

She ground her teeth and lit a cigarette. Somewhere he had to have a bottle of vodka. She couldn’t take anything with a taste.

Bradlee padded up behind her and touched her shoulder. She seized up and hissed. “Goodness Bryson, what’s wrong?”

“Get me a drink, vodka, ice if you have it.” Now she was mad. Now she knew what was wrong. Anyone with a car like that, with an apartment like this, could make it happen. Bradlee was no one’s errand boy anymore, he was running his own show now. If she was part of it, then he owed her something, something more than 25 million bucks and a bunch of stock. He brought her the drink. She took a sip and squeezed the glass till her hand shook. “My reputation, my career, my life.”

“That again.”

“No, you listen to me. I can’t become known as the woman who killed ten thousand people just to prove a theory.”

“My goodness, we’ve all done that in one way or another.”

“Don’t be flip, and don’t pretend you’re a monster. I’m serious. It won’t do. I’ll retire. You’ve given me enough to. I can get by fine on it, with Leonard.”

He lifted and dropped his fists slowly and said, “I don’t think we’re ready for you to do that yet. But I understand your concern.” He stroked his mustache, made a point with his fingers and touched his lips. “Would it make you happy if I arranged things so that, when you come back to work, you have a little free time, a small budget, to pursue unspecified, pure research? Then you could, with your time, conduct some discreet experiments.”

In her ruined eyes there dawned a light that marked her as a daughter of the sun. “Of course it would.” She turned away from him and looked out the window, down into the low buildings.

“I’ll make the necessary calls.” He crossed his arms across her belly and kissed her ear. “You’ll need an assistant, someone from security to help with surveillance.”

She hadn’t thought about that. But it was true. She had to find someone to study. She faced him and spoke close to his lips. “Yes of course.” He kissed her and squeezed her hands. “I have to go now. I’ve got to pack.”

His face twitched. “Not staying for breakfast even?”

She broke away. “Rain check, Bradlee.”

After she dressed and left Bradlee went over to the kitchen area and made toast, which he methodically spread with french butter and grapefruit marmalade. He made black tea and downloaded the news onto a sheet of gold electraweave and sat down at the steel table in the bedroom.

He had not taken on the Monozone job to be with her, but he had looked forward to starting up again with Bryson. He was unusually drawn to her. And he had great hopes of her being there to relieve the boredom. By boredom he didn’t mean the day-to-day business. Details of his job he treated with the utmost respect, and attended to them diligently without ever appearing to do so. It was the other boredom. A sense of the attenuation of things. She was one of the few people he could be with and not feel the passage of time. Sometimes when he masturbated or went to a prostitute he thought of her in his bed, years earlier, a ripe 47, with a big hard ass, in the suburbs, when it was always hot indoors.

There was no harm in conceding her a privilege, if it made her happy and didn’t hurt him. The main thing of course was to protect Paregane from meddling. Then he could ride it for as far as it would take him. And if Bryson wanted to go for the ride, so much the better. In some ways, he was counting on it.

Still, he would have to know what Bryson was up to, if only to protect himself. If she failed, no one would ever know. And if she did manage to succeed, how could that be a bad thing? A safer Paregane was in the best interest of everyone involved.

He took a quick hot shower and dressed in a grey wool suit and called his employer, General Valdez at the department of defense. “No no,” he said to the general, “She won’t be a problem. She’s happy with the money, and is ready to move on.”

Next he called Laraby at Monozone. Laraby was Director of Security. “Hello Laraby,” he said in a jovial, sing song voice, booming, “Owen Bradlee here. I say, do you mind assigning a good man to Dr. Bryson when she gets back? We anticipate a little trouble over this Paregane business. And, do you mind, have him report to me as well. You understand?”

Laraby understood. He had just the man for the job. Jacob Boyle. He got Boyle at home, just to tell him the good news.

Satisfied at the job she had done in the living room she descended the composite steps into the bathroom-sleeping area. In the bedroom she smoothed down the white cotton sheets and matched up the corner of her book, Sydney’s Old Arcadia, with the rounded edge of the smoked glass end table. Felix’s boxer shorts and tank top lay unfolded on the clothes bar. She folded them and left them on top of his pillow. The house was clean. She had done her work for the day.

Next Veronica went upstairs and poured a double shot of Old Yeller’s Real Kentucky Bourbon into a squat juice glass. She would need it to wash down a couple of tranquilizers. She wanted to remain focused and relaxed. Clarity and calm had descended on her of late but she knew it wouldn’t last, it never did. If she could just keep it together long enough, she’d be able to get everything done.

Downstairs again she swallowed the pills. They were dry and the bourbon was hot but they went down. Two and two, she always liked to say. Enough to feel good, not enough to puke or pass out.

Across the short, narrow hall was the bathroom. It was almost as big as the bedroom. She turned on the spigots of a large, white tub with gold claw feet. It took a few seconds to get the temperature to just right. She sat on the toilet, running her fingers under the water, feeling the pills slowly take affect. Things faded just a little, she lost track of what she was doing.

As the tub filled she got out all her prescription bottles. Some were rolled up in her socks, there was one in her hiking boots, a few in a box of emerald silk folded in tissue paper on the top shelf of the closet. The most recently prescribed were lined up in order of consumption in the medicine cabinet. She took them all and laid them out on the bed so she could see the labels, sort of review her recent history by its artifacts.

Veronica went back upstairs because she had forgotten a glass of water and the chef’s knife, a big, ten-inch wedge of carbon steel, with a very sharp edge.

She wanted to die the way most people wanted to live, down to the last drop of sweat, the blind wordless greed to be. What she sought was total extirpation, non-existence, extinction of mind and body. Had she been able to she would have exterminated every memory of her that had ever been, as if her name had never been spoken on earth.

She sat on the edge of the bed, slowly unbuttoning her loose white shirt, staring at her elephantine feet. They looked squat and grey. There were the extra two toes, stubs with distorted nails, barely emerging alongside the small toe of her left foot. Her belly hung out and her breasts dropped down. Every part of her felt bloated with some hideous, mean spirited gas she could not expel. It seemed to move around the joints, making her fingers or her ankles or her chin fat. Her nails were chewed down to the pads. She couldn’t remember what it was like to be strong. She couldn’t remember what anything was like at all.

One by one she opened the bottles and swallowed the pills. Barbiturates, hypnotics, muscle relaxants, analgesics, Euphorics, narcotics. Drugs for nausea, for overeating, for starvation. For diarrhea, constipation. Mood elevators. Temporary Induced Coma. That was fun. The little amber bottles lay scattered at her feet. She burped bourbon, grabbed the knife and swaggered, naked, into the bathroom.

Veronica Clay was forty years old, tall, intelligent, beautiful. She had an advanced degree in English literature, was once operational sales manager at Intellatrawl, and could run twenty k a day when healthy. She had climbed mountains in Alaska. She had driven a car from Thunder Bay to Vancouver. She loved her husband and he loved her. Veronica had black hair that hung in gentle curls against her shoulder. Her face was long, with high cheekbones and full lips. Her nose was strong and straight. She had a high forehead and skin the color of dark honey. Out of her face shined a pair of greenish blue eyes that had the power to stop speech and breath.

Holding the knife in one hand, she turned the water off and dizzily lowered herself in. Water sloshed out onto the floor. She stretched up out of the tub and pulled a towel down off the rack and clumsily mopped the water up. It was exhausting work. She fell back against the tub and lay there with her eyes closed a minute, water lapping her chin.

She watched her body bloom and wobble, brown, disconnected beneath the blue, white and yellow reflections, limb not aligning with limb. Then she took the knife and dragged it across her wrist. But her hand and eyes were weak. The knife took a long, curved bite out of her arm. The skin split apart and blood ran out over her hand. It dripped onto the white tile. Her thoughts began to blur.

With a surge of focused energy she lifted the knife again and took careful aim. The inside of her bloody arm swam in and out of view. Finding the veins at last, she drew the knife across them. It did absolutely nothing. She had used the blunt side. Now Veronica was mad. But frustration only served to weaken her further. She felt muted horror as the aperture seemed to narrow. With short, desperate strokes she began to hack away at her arm. The knife cut the flesh, tore at it and blood began to turn the water red. Finally, sort of hitting at the air, her wrist and arm aching and growing cold, the dizziness, the black swirling took hold and she dropped the knife in the water and fell back. She lay there a while, half passed out, bleeding. Suddenly, her body seized and her eyes snapped open, involuntarily. She sat upright, vomited spasmodically and passed out, smacking her head on the wall, cutting it open. Her body sank slowly forward, into the crimson water, smearing the tile with blood. The skin flap on the back of her head caught onto the edge of the tub, halting her slide. It was, depending on one’s point of view, either her lucky or her unlucky, day.

As a child he naturally assumed an orbit at the outer edge of any group, neither despised nor accepted. He would form a close friendship with one member of the group, sometimes another edge dweller, sometimes someone close to the center. This was his in, his anchor.

These were his feelings. People meeting him for the first time saw a quiet, relaxed, intelligent man, serious enough to make good money, kind enough not to go very far in business. Felix was tall, very thin, with big joints. He had a friendly face, the color of old tenement brick, brown eyes and full, semicircular eyebrows. When he smiled his eyes creased. He kept his hair short and dressed well if conventionally, owning a few good suits–italian hemp, linen, in shades of grey and artichoke, with white egyptian cotton shirts and narrow, somber ties. He moved gently and gracefully through the world. He appeared to be a father of young children, a little league coach, someone who attended school meetings, belonged to the museum society, read quality best sellers. And in fact he and Veronica had season’s tickets to the local BroadwayInc Theatre, and belonged to the Rockland branch of the City Library. His voice was rich, considered, analytical, if a little shrill when upset. He did not get others’ backs up. If he raised no hackles neither did he raise goosebumps. Felix rode the currents and eddies of his time like a leaf on water.

In college he developed an inner direction, which absorbed most of his attention. Books fascinated him; he read the Romantics, he read the Beats, he read everything and anything that made him feel like he was somewhere else. His graduate thesis was on Spenser and Whitehead: Process and Reality in the Bower of Adonis. That was when he met his wife, Veronica. That was when everything changed and he started to feel at home in the world.

Felix sat alone, at a BioWatch Work Station, in a dark room located on an unlit spur of the Intellatrawl Office Corridor, in a forty story office building, erected on an artificial hill, sixty k north of Manhattan and four east of the Hudson River. The building was shaped like a hive, with a papery composite facade. Inside, each company had its own corridor, with side shoots, which spiraled up from the ground floor to the top, at a gentle grade. Elevators bisected the corridors, but an employee could, and often did, walk from the bottom to the top of the building, passing only his company’s offices. The building was cooled by means of nano fans and porous ceramic walls and ceilings, so that hot air was circulated out, and cool underground air, in.

Felix was a Remote Virtual Supervisor for Intellatrawl. Intellatrawl was an internet salvage company. Programs trawled the net for abandoned code, material out of copyright, expired patents, resalable content, rare ads, anything they could recover, own and sell. Turn around was important, but they kept huge inventories of junk that customers could search and buy. Felix supervised a thousand human search analysts, processors, traders and pricers.

He monitored the programs that monitored them and if necessary sent one of his three holographic aliases to have a virtual meeting. Since he himself was subject to random alias visitations, he knew how terrifying it was to have a slightly scratchy, dim puppet of light strut about and berate you and try to make you feel worthless and stupid, so you’ll work harder or not make mistakes. But he still had an alias just like that. He had worn mean looking black shoes for the sampling. Then there was the gentle caring guy, for personal crises. The third was an affable, congratulatory hand shaker, for promotions and first days on the job. Mostly though he sent out written warnings, resolved conflicts, reported scofflaws, fired shirkers.

Somewhere someone was his supervisor. He had seen the alias many times; most recently when Veronica went on Mental Health Leave and the gentle good guy popped in to reassure him that the entire Intellatrawl family was 100% behind them.

A BioWatch Work Station, which was standard Intellatrawl equipment, measures and monitors a continuous stream of information: breathing, oxygen levels, blood pressure, eye movement, posture, chair pressure, electromagnetic field activity, expression and demeanor.

Did they spend too much time watching an unauthorized crawl? Did they stay too long at lunch or take too frequent bathroom breaks? There were secret, back channel communications. Conspiracies to defraud Intellatrawl. Artificial employees, dupes and cutouts indistinguishable from the real thing, who revealed themselves through anomalous fluctuations only a human might notice. Felix monitored all of this on a forty-inch screen set in a console, his ergonomic chair bolted to the floor.

He had his own illegal crawls; a porn crawl at the bottom of the screen, business news on the right side and baseball futures gambling on the left. The futures gambling he controlled by means of plausible blinks. The plausible blinks were not foolproof of course; anyone analyzing blinks per minute would detect pattern clusters which correlate with futures gambling, but he was confident that the other supervisors would tolerate his minor indiscretions because he himself overlooked them in the human resources under his purview. It was the only way.

Felix also had his drinks timed out pretty well. The trick was to drink enough to prevent dehydration without overfilling the bladder. If he could make it to lunch without taking a piss he would have that much more time to eat, provided he started his sandwich on the bathroom line and continued to eat at the urinal. Sloppy sandwiches were a bad idea but extruded meat and mayo worked great, as did sausage sticks and raw vegetables.

So he spent his day sucking on ice chips, eyes never leaving the monitor, head covered in a transparent cap of CellPack, speaking every time the program completed a scan of the data, “Reanalyze quadrant 2,” or “Scan 120, done, no incident.” Butt pressure, blinks, palm sweat, voice range, piss breaks. Some days he felt murderous. Some days murdered.

Veronica was his great topic, object of his thoughts, subject of his daydreams, confidant, ancient opponent. The scans passed, the neon green winked and rolled up his face and across the cells of the cap. Data trance set in. All that was odious in a day was reduced to a spectre, driven off by her.

After so many years the surface of their marriage was as dented and grimy as anyone else’s. A sort of smog had settled over his feelings but he knew what lay beneath the toxic grey layers and that his first love was still there and true. It was the only thing in the world that meant anything at all. Of things and places he had his share and expected more but they gave him no pleasure. There were the embryos in Cryovac, but until one took to her womb and grew it would still be like money down.

The porncrawl at the bottom of the screen failed to arouse him. He had no control over the content. He had requested real looking naked women walking around and heterosexual, uh, ordinary situations, which he thought might be regular men and women fucking, no silicon jobs, maybe some cunt hair, or hair under the arm, people like him. It started out that way too. But over time it mutated, becoming perverse. Now it was men fucking goats and playing with their shit. He tried, everyday, to delete it but it would not go.

Men took turns sucking off the biggest cock he’d ever seen.

He blinked a twenty-dollar bet that Ralph Roister would hit three home runs in the next 32 innings.

Sick as she was she was still beautiful to him. Though he missed the luster of her hair he could still take a bunch in his hand and breathe in the scent through the pores of his skin. Her eyes could still upset the sky, with stabs of green and blue. Her serious, wary expression still broke with delight. Every inch of her body still bewitched him.

The only time he felt in sync with anything was with her. Colors were more real, sounds less discordant. Their words and feelings see sawed. They made the same compromises. He had always felt that Aristophanes had it right in the Symposium. Love reunites the divided sphere of the soul, and when they met he had become complete.

And yet and yet and yet, he could not stop thinking, turning it over. What happened? He replayed the consultations with Intellatrawl Doctor Tarlton. He tried to piece together arguments that raged over nothing at three in the morning, sitting in the chair by the bed watching her sleep, black and white movies playing on the tv.

He climbed up on her and she was eager to please–eager–but also seemed to be suffering his touch, the way she flinched a little, and it ended often with his orgasm and her tears. Sex became like draining the pipes.

He could not hate Veronica, he could only hate himself, or what their life had become, or the building, or the chair. Yet he had to maintain optimism. It was the only way, to pretend to be optimistic that Dr. Tarlton would find some cure. Veronica hated Tarlton and so did he, but what else did they have? Fantasies of moving to Alaska? But they had been there. Neither of them had the first idea of how to survive for real. Their packs had been loaded for them and they had a mountain guide who shot their meat and kept them alive. They couldn’t even keep a cactus alive at home, or a gold fish.

Sometimes they appeared to him like naked corpses stretched out on slabs in the morgue, under bright lights, bloated, skin the color of oxidized beef. Spit, like frogspawn in the mouth and ants covering his legs. He took no pleasure in eating or drinking or fucking without her.

His gorge grew restive. Hunger twitched and growled within. The end of the day was close now. Nothing had happened. Events worth noting were rare on the job. He blinked another bet. Brindsdale’s average will drop twelve more points before his slump ends. Checked the business crawl. Monozone Continues To Climb Mz 75 +2 1/2….It was the time of day he reached his most baleful thought, that his ancestors had been slaves, and he was an overseer.

They were all headed towards the Friday assembly. There were five assembly rooms, one for every eight floors. Felix’s was on the 16th floor. He worked on the third. It was a good enough walk, if he could avoid the crowd.

Monday morning and Friday evening assemblies were the kind of ritualized affairs no one even bothered to make fun of. If you were to go into a room full of Intellatrawlers and start cutting up about Chairman Aung Thwin’s Friday sermon on excellence, with dead on impersonations of his voice and slightly exaggerated pantomimes of his characteristic moves, no one would laugh, they would stare glassily and wonder what you were talking about. People showed up, took their seats, fixed their eyes upon their chairman’s cheaply reproduced three dimensional alias and watched it deliver his thoughts on a number of recurrent themes, in an emotionally distressing monotone, like a man who never blinks. Often these talks touched on loyalty, work, and life’s uncertainty.

Small spurs off the main Intellatrawl Trunk were dark, crammed with cell like offices, but the main hallways were brightly lit and the walls were painted in bold colors, the sorts of colors that make us happy, green, yellow and pink. The floors were unpolished stone, they felt cool to the foot. The air smelled faintly of the woods, of wet bark and wild flowers blooming in the first morning light. Overhead were signs of encouragement, in vibrant neon.

EXCELLENCE BEGINS WITH YOU

TO BE ON TOP STAY ON TOP

THE PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

Some were more topical or exhortatory than others:

OUR VOICE IS YOUR VOICE AT STATE

DON’T FORGET TO ELECT

RAINY DAYS DON’T MEAN DISMAL DAYS

These bright bromides passed above the heads of Intellatrawl associates without catching their eyes, but new employees were sometimes puzzled by them, getting bumped along the way if they paused to figure them out.

Felix and the others strode up to the 16th floor. It was a long, slightly banked hall. From any spot a person could see three floors in either direction. Without a murmur they filed in and took their usual seats, not assigned but assumed by custom. His was almost precisely in the middle of the raked room. The walls were brown metal rods on a white clay background, and the seats were white, composite buckets. The whole room pitched down towards the small presentation area, where a wooden podium was set up. No one wasted time in getting seated, they didn’t clear their throats or cough. The lights overhead dimmed and some serene yet inspiring music warbled out of the walls. The wall behind the podium glowed a dark blue and in walked Chairman Aung’s holographic alias, in a simple paper suit. He wore round, steel framed glasses, had a full head of black hair and skin so white you could powder it for house paint. His eyes were serious, dark, like pits beneath his brows and his red mouth was fixed. He flickered, almost at one point zipped out, and walked to the podium. Once enough time had elapsed for the entire Intellatrawl nation to come to attention, he smiled.

“Greetings my friends. It is Friday, the end of our week. I know you are all tired with your final effort, that last mile to which you always give your all, with unflagging attention and devotion. I thank you all. Not a penny here is earned unless you go out and earn it.

“This week I’d like to remind you that every effort towards excellence is its own reward and that you can expect both love and perfection to be a part of your organizational lives.

“The Motivated associate doesn’t wait for perfection to happen but seizes upon every opportunity to achieve it, to proactively perfect our workplace and take Intellatrawl all the way to the top, where we belong.

“But just as love and perfection exist in our organizational lives, so might they elude us at home. And so, as we leave each other on this beautiful Friday evening to join our families at home, let us remind ourselves that life may not be perfect. Our children cry for no reason at all. They throw food on the floor, curse and run off. Our husbands and wives betray us or we betray them. Our parents live in far off places, stubbornly refusing to come to their senses, suffering diseases and dementias caused by the long and painful decades of loss, followed by their brave reclamations.

“Though we may, through the miracle of genetic medicine, live to the Methuselean ages of 110 or 120, many of us will fail to establish stem cell lines, or will die of an unnamed disease with no known treatment.

“Accidents, disasters, and crime beset us. We do not control our world. Failure is surely a part of life and we must learn to accept and even embrace it.

“Until Monday then, I leave you all in peace.”

Chairman Aung, oscillating at his customary rate, traveled across the room and vanished in a spark.

The associates stood and left, in waves of grey and tan suits, linen, hemp and cotton, and playing above this wave, a few coats of loosely woven metal, gossamer capes of gold, bare shoulders showing through, copper headscarves and platinum wraps, pastel synthetic jackets with one belly button and shoulder pads. White shirts and crepe shoes and loose black pants stood at the doors and merged.

After about a half an hour Felix exited the Intellatrawl door. He and Veronica did not yet own a hovercraft. They commuted via Amphibatrains, to their home in Rockland, on the west bank of the Hudson.

He struggled to breathe. The air smelled of burning rubber. Hovercraft droned about in the evening light, into celadon sky. Gnat swarms caught on his eyes and lips, he brushed them off and spit. He still felt flutters of joy on Friday afternoons, walking quickly even with the late summer heat. Free of the chair, of the graphs and numbers, of the bleeps. And the feeling would persist till right before he opened his door and realized Veronica was about to offer up to his lips her medicated cheek.

He stood on the concrete platform, beneath a composite shelter, nonreflective, grey and violet and pink, watching for the Amphibatrains. The train arrived silently and hissed to a stop. It was like a glass log with dorsal, wing and tail fins. The doors popped up and Felix entered the chilly car in a crowd of Intellatrawl associates. They pushed and wiggled into position. Felix got a seat between two people.

He tried not to look at anyone directly. He looked at people’s knees and waists and rear ends. He looked at his feet. He tried looking at the bamboo and pines on the hills, and pampas grass growing thick on the slopes between land and water. No matter what he looked at, he could still smell and feel all the people. It wasn’t like he could read their thoughts, it was like he could feel the volume of internal chatter. Like insects chewing leaves.

Slowly the car filled with murmurs. The man in the black wool suit to his left spun into a restless sleep and began to snore fitfully. The train hummed and rocked, picking up speed. As the liquor went around, voices grew louder, and soon there was laughter.

Felix divided their relationship up into three stages. Stage one began imperceptibly almost, with a flickering between their eyes, of signals sent and not received, received but never sent. An evanescent thing between them that developed of its own accord into a crush. They read together in the library, drank in the afternoons at a variety of grad student dives on Broadway. They participated in a staged reading of The Tempest, rode out to New Jersey on the Amphibatrains to drive cars, spent afternoons in November wandering the gentle ruins of Central Park or the decayed halls of the Museum of Natural History.

Soon they were living together, in a crusty old apartment on 106th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam. They sweated and fucked in front of a roaring fan, watched t.v. all night and drank cheap espresso in the mornings in their underwear, watching the angry, impatient, lovely world conspire below. They were wholly for each other. No one else existed except as barrier or entertainment. The ugliness and folly of the world stood at a comic distance. All discord was resolved in the system of their boundless bodies. As the practical demands of life intruded they experienced a redivision of their collective self into two functioning, differentiated selves that nonetheless incorporated so much of the other that what they became was two complementary composites. Where one left off and the other began was permeable.

Felix looked at the sleeping man’s head, at the pores of his skin in the shaky light, the pink scratch left by a razor on his jaw, the hair growing out of his ear, the grease shining on his nose, the flecks of dandruff on his scalp. Mucus gurgled in his throat, soft palatal tissue throbbing like a bullfrog.

The woman on his right, with the dry, nearly transparent skin of a centenarian, peered through red Bakelite reading glasses at a sheet of silver electraweave displaying the news. She had black synthetic hair, glossy as if wet, and a perfect set of teeth. The rest of her was flaking off beneath and around these two formidable features. The train dipped down and headed for the river.

They had never planned on any kind of career at all. All their plans were of travel. Then school was over and they had to go to work. The first job offer either received was in sales. Veronica had applied to a small but growing company that distributed outdoor gear for hiking and skiing, located in a strip mall in the Poconos. They moved to a small studio apartment not far from work, on the edge of a state park. Here the first stage rocketed into the second, the great complacency.

It proved to be a delightful setting for the exploration of, and surrendering of, dreams. Slowly they settled into jobs, Felix processing the orders, Veronica handling virtual sales. Soon he was a supervisor and she managed all the operations.

The apartment was the third floor of a small, two hundred year-old house. They had a kitchenette, shower and toilet cubicle, double bed, dresser and two chairs around a tiny circular table. If a storm was up they could go to the basement, but the age of the house was reassuring, and the area was not prone to tornadoes. For the first time in their lives they were free of their parents’ expectations, of school, of their own crush.

Now instead of virtual mountains and virtual kayaks on virtual streams they could hike the state park and rent a canoe to take out on the relatively tame rivers in the area. They boated through townships and wooded hills, sailed on lakes, swam in reservoirs and climbed small mountains. Not far away was a CarPark with over two hundred k of road. There were stop lights and turn signals, potholes and yield signs, sharp turns and straightaways long enough to go 100 miles an hour.

They thought that one day they could buy a country house and a car of their own.

Years passed in this way, in which they took morning kisses and Sunday afternoons sprawled naked in front of the t.v. as a matter of course. But then the Intellatrawl jobs came up, through an associate they dealt with there, a buyer and seller of antique inventories. Without thinking about what they were leaving behind, assuming the additional money would give them more of what they had, time and joy, they bit and moved to Rockland.

Life on the west bank of the Hudson was more varied, more cosmopolitan. The views of the river from the levee park were grand, but the trees were genetically modified pines and bamboo, they had no smell, and they could never ride a horse. They had a Shakespeare subscription and ate out in nice restaurants and the one bedroom on the cul de sac was much larger. If the climate was hotter, nastier, more humid, at least their home had perfect air, and space for clothes and things.

With the extra money they decided to start a stem cell line and have children. They bought a cryovac package deal and Veronica produced six embryos in five years. Two would be children, the remaining four would go to the stem cell line. The package included two non-inheritable genetic modifications. They chose longevity and musical talent over dozens of options, like height, beauty or athletic ability.

It was a form of coasting, a life drifting into ritual. Friday French food, virtual book club, sex three times a week, yearly vacations somewhere in the far north or the Rockies. Christmas with her parents in Florida, Thanksgiving with his parents at a hotel in Manhattan. They were no longer saving for a car, but for a hovercraft.

The ritual, starting with work, began to degenerate into a stultifying sterility. It was in fact not a life either of them had ever dreamed of having. They had no friends to speak of because they hated people like themselves. And the selves they loved in each other were disappearing, under a load of dull routine.

Now the newspapers spread between their nude bodies were no longer flimsy hemp but copper electraweave. Even so it served as a prop for an empty voice: “There’s a rock trio playing an all Hendrix program on original equipment, Saturday night.”

“Do you want to see the Jazz Orchestra play on the levee?”

“Ellington?”

“No, Basie.”

“Look, there’s a total sound immersion at three. Your body becomes the instrument. Feel what it was to be Bach’s organ.”

Their faces, more beautiful at 35 than at 25, eyes like still drops of human pain in an endless, frigid dimension of space, the candle light between their irises, as they sat in a calm, poised against black restaurant windows. “The rolls are warm tonight.”

“Did you get the real butter?”

“I’ve never had New Zealand lamb.”

“Maybe,” he said, picking apart a chicken breast with knife and fork, “we should become vegetarians.” He often thought this while eating extruded meat products, but why bring it up while slicing into the real thing?

The train dipped down suddenly. He looked out the window. As the cars uncoupled (without slowing down a bit), he felt the moment of freefall; thrilling, to be suspended in nothingness, however briefly, before striking the water, each car heading across the Hudson to a different rail link. He never tired of watching the thick tubes with their quiet green and red reflectors at intervals on the top, the blinking tail fins and dorsals, each car nosing through the rough water while a carnival of other crafts evaded the wake. It was a silent world, hot and attractive but removed, far beyond the hard thick walls of the amphibatrains.

Veronica was the first to crack. The prolonged stasis of the second stage provoked the chaos of the third. It was like an aesthetic, a creative renaissance marmorialized in a classical period followed by decadence.

It started with complaints–work was boring, stupid–then became metaphysical, why do we work so hard, for what? But this was their agreement, silently negotiated, a future they conspired to make.

“Couldn’t we move out west?”

But everyone was moving out west, there were no jobs. That was when he unwittingly became the voice of reason. It was a voice poised against himself. He hated the cul de sac as well, and the job, and the idea of a job. In the midst of this initial churn they reacted by clinging together tighter, more desperately. They’d come home from work, bathe and then begin to fuck, wordlessly, brutally, tearing away at something they didn’t understand, trying to rend the curtain that had descended between them. One night as he was ramming away at her, as she bucked to meet his pelvis and he collapsed onto her sweating breasts, his lips pulsing in her ear and little gasps escaping he felt a trickle of hot liquid on his cheek. He lifted off and looked down. For the first time Veronica’s eyes had that raw red look that would become so familiar.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m just so afraid.”

“Afraid? Of what?”

“Of losing you.”

Gently, he said, “Oh baby,” and touched her cheek, tears brimming up in his own eyes now. “Never. You will never lose me, I would never go. Never.”

But that was probably not what she had in mind.

Over the next few years their meals became more and more catatonic. She was often ill, vomiting for days on end. She broke things, injured herself, didn’t talk but brooded incessantly over things. They saw the Intellatrawl doctor. He prescribed physical therapy, walks, swimming and meditation. Then came the medicines, anti emetics, appetite stimulants, tranquilizers. They rarely made love and when they did it was quiet and desperate or mechanical, a release of his load of semen and her load of guilt. Everything they had once enjoyed was now a source of pain.

Then came the deaths. Her father was bitten by a rabid bat while sleeping out one night on the everglades, and didn’t know it until it was too late for treatment. He went mad and Veronica’s mother shot him and then herself. A year later Felix’s father had a series of strokes and lay in a coma awaiting reconstructive brain surgery. His mother, in a paroxysm of grief, overrode the program controls of her hovercraft and it crashed fifteen k out in the Gulf of Mexico. It felt then like some monstrous beast had arisen to raven their lives.

Now she began to rave and he found himself drinking alone after work, just to avoid going home to the scenes and abuse.

Intellatrawl Dr. Tarlton prescribed her first course of Euphorics, saying that grief was natural but Euphorics could restore her balance. Nothing worked. She went on medical leave and was finally fired.

They had to live on his income alone now. Everything grew precarious. There would be no more saving up for a house or a hovercraft. No more fantasies of moving out west or to Alaska. No recreational car. His job just covered the necessities, insurance, retirement fund. It was just enough to keep them alive. He worried about everything. He worried about the embryos and stem cell line. He worried about his own dumbfounded confusion and melancholy, his need to somehow smother an outraged protest against life, his need to demolish every conscious thought with alcohol. He was worried that Veronica would do something genuinely crazy.

Of late, he began to feel jealous even. Thoughts nibbled away at him, that she might be with someone else during the day, that she might be masturbating. Even her madness made him jealous. As she drifted off he became possessive and this he experienced as a kind of insanity, as one part of him warred against the other.

The amphibatrains reassembled as they crossed in a breathtaking, technological ballet and then bumped up onto the rail at the Newburg tunnel, a brief, steep climb up through the towering levee and onto dry land. In a few minutes they hissed into the station. The snoring man sucked in breath, his eyes popped open and he stood, with Felix and the old woman. They exited the car.

The village of Rockland consisted of two commercial streets that served about 20,000 people spread out, mostly underground, over three k of constructed hills. It was one of five planned villages that made up the town of Hartland. Planned settlements had superior water drainage and protected utilities so that even in tornado and hurricane seasons life went on much as usual. Each village had a large 24-hour supermarket, retail mall, post office, gym, levee park with a small bandstand, plus assorted diners, restaurants, cafes and bars.

Felix locked his bike up at a titanium rack as close to Les Jardeen as he could get, about two blocks away, and strolled along, looking into restaurant and bar windows. They were all full and cheery, with rosy lights winking on and off, neon sculptures of various beloved characters, a figure skater spinning on glowing skates, a pink and powder blue ballerina leaping up, a cat dressed like a whore exposing her breasts, ruby nipples flashing and then emitting the words POW POW POW, a chef stir frying a colorful mess of vegetables in a wok.

Les Jardeen, his regular watering hole and dinner spot, was part of a quiet neighborhood spot chain. In the window was a neon monkey in a red beret drinking a glass of beer. The doorbells jingled as he entered the foyer and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. The room was cozy, paneled in real wood, decorated with old parisian cafe posters, lit by brass sconces and chandeliers with faux gaslight. A fake fire burned in the dining room beneath a mantel with decorative crookneck gourds and a basket of apples, pale green and dark, almost black red.

Peter Nguyen, the bartender, greeted him with a napkin. “Good evening Mr. Clay. How are you sir?” Peter was a young man, an aspiring actor, handsome, light skinned with dark eyes and a smile seductive to both sexes. He wore a red bartender’s jacket and black T-shirt and moved efficiently in the narrow space between the zinc bar top and the mahogany liquor shelves.

Felix felt quite indebted to Peter since he had, over the years, unburdened himself to him over many vodka martinis. He said, “Couldn’t be better, Peter,” and watched him load a steel shaker with ice, rinse it with vermouth and glug three shots of Gulag Potato Vodka in.

“Where’s Mrs. Clay tonight?” Peter asked, alighting the drink on a coaster and placing before him a basket of bread and a dish of olives.

“I’m not sure if she’s meeting me or not. I’ll call in a bit and see how she’s doing.” He munched the bread and olives and rinsed them down with the martini, feeling the long week’s discipline unravel like mummy bandages. Maybe he’d better call now, she might be worried.

There was no way to tell. Although fear and sorrow were her dominant moods, she was also unpredictably hostile. He pushed his empty glass forward and called her. There was no answer and he hung up, annoyed.

As he worked on the second drink a pocket opened up in his stomach swallowing all of the light and leaving only dark feelings. Maybe she was with a man and they’d lost track of the time. His call had interrupted them. Even now he was in a panic to get his pants on while she lay in a trance, perhaps thinking the man was Felix come home in disguise. It made no sense. He saw her nude body, as it had been, when they were young, on all fours sucking a strange, faceless man’s cock, his lips planted on her upraised vulva. Veronica turned to look at Felix and smile. He practically knocked over his glass. He had to shake free of it. But the image of Veronica’s arched buttocks and the man’s puckered lips on her cunt would not fade, it raced about, now shaming, now exciting, till finally he downed the rest of the drink and doused the red hot poker in a bucket of cold water.

He called home again and again no answer. Maybe she was taking out the garbage, or was in the bath or on the toilet. But these seemed silly to him. As the veil of alcohol descended, the veil of optimism was rent aside. She wasn’t fucking a strange man and she wasn’t taking a long shit, she was passed out or semiconscious, the t.v. stuttering.

He drank his third drink with equanimity then. Peter spread the evening paper out on the bar and read the news. Gangs were shooting it out in midtown. A new drug fad had hit the cities of China. He munched on the bread and olives and reflected on the fact that food was good, nourishing, it brought the world into focus. The madness of midtown shootouts, of business deals faded before the reality that he could trust her, his jealousy was a sort of paranoia. Veronica loved him, they were faithful to each other. She couldn’t even stand the sight or smell of other people, much less get into bed with them.

It was nine o’clock and he’d had five drinks. She still didn’t answer the phone. She was definitely not going to come down to meet him then. When he stood up to go to the bathroom the room did a loop around him, then he was steady. Five drinks, he thought. Let’s make it six, then I’ll eat dinner and go home.

The sixth drink was the ticket. He no longer cared or noticed who was or wasn’t in the restaurant. Peter saved him the embarrassment of having to carry the drink to the table, sloshing it over fingertips and exaggerated attempts at maintaining balance. He sat down near the fireplace and felt the linen tablecloth. A beautiful young woman, two metres tall and flat chested, with disproportionately long naked legs and a disdainful, humorless expression, took his order. He got the half a duck with currants, lentils and parsnip latkes. With it he had a split of pinot noir. By the time he was done he had ceased to notice anything in the world, not the garbage or the bath or his sleeping wife or the faceless cunt kissing man, or even the build up of rage in his own heart. The waitress brought him his bill, which he signed without reading.

It was eleven o’clock when he left. The air felt like a stocking soaked in hot water had been pulled over his head. Above he heard the squeak of bats and the thwock of flying cockroaches striking the lamps. Rowdy crowds of people poured in and out of the bars in lurching groups of five to ten. He weaved up the center of the sidewalk, storefronts and streets on a tilted plane, like refractions of a vanished reality. Ahead a man approached, also weaving down the center of the sidewalk. Felix stepped to the left to allow him to pass. As he approached he could see the man’s face–it was hard, stupid, belligerent. He had prisoner eyes and walked with his hands balled into fists.

The man stepped onto the same side of the sidewalk as Felix. That was just ridiculous. Felix had yielded the center. If the man wanted a fight, he’d found one.

The two men were on a collision course now, neither slackening their pace, nor stepping aside. They didn’t collide; each stopped and stared at the other.

Finally Felix said, “I stepped aside, all right!”

“What are you, from Mars? You stepped to the left.”

“Maybe that’s how they step on Mars,” Felix snorted.

“You’re drunk.”

“What if I am.”

“Step aside.”

“No,” Felix said.

The man swung at Felix and the punch landed square on his jaw, knocking him back. The sky circled massively and he felt and saw himself fall. It was the cunt eater, he knew it now. Fueled by an accumulation of rage he stood and the man laughed. “Drunk motherfucker in a suit. Serves you right.”

Felix slugged him in the face. The man went down and Felix leapt on him but before he could smack him around the man kicked him in the balls and the two began to wrestle on the ground. They pulled hair, bit and screamed, finally standing up. Blood poured out of the man’s nose and out of a cut on Felix’s forehead. A small crowd gathered to cheer them on as they cautiously and murderously circled each other.

“Cunt eater,” Felix growled.

“Cocksucker,” the man growled back.

They sparred, striking at chest and stomach but neither man yielded to the other. Finally, Felix, darting in, hit the man in the stomach and then the face and he fell to the ground at his feet, vomiting blood and teeth.

Quiet now spread through the crowd, a palpable disappointment. The sky lit up with hovercraft; the county police were landing. Mobilized by panic and nerves Felix pushed through the crowd, some of whom shouted, go man, go. Somehow he made it to his bike and rode home. He was sure the police wouldn’t come after him, a man in a suit, if they had a criminal in hand.

The streets leading up to his house were lit only by green and red ground lights. The headlight wobbled uncertainly over the stone composite road. He weaved towards the edge and then out into the middle. Hovercraft passed overhead, blinking. Thunder rumbled in the distance and heat lightning flashed. Insects bounced off of his face and the air was full of the sound of nocturnal bugs. Toads hopped out of his way. He rode up the cul de sac, through thickets of bamboo, each house marked by a garage big enough to house a hovercraft, the peaked solar roof a foot or so off the ground, and the tall solar tower extending up above the tree line. Every house was separated by a hedge, or bamboo, or stand of RapidPines. He parked his bike next to Veronica’s and descended the spiral stairs leading to their living room. The ambient ceiling panels were on late dusk, cool, green and amber. Felix turned them up till his eyes ached and headed for the little kitchen off the living room, a straw colored cubicle large enough for a steel table for two, a two burner stove, black toaster, small convection oven in the wall, sink and fridge. His face was broken and crusty with blood, it was hard to breathe through his nose, which felt crooked. His eyes were swollen. His hands hurt; they were scraped up. He ran water in the sink and tried to wash his face a bit, soaped up his hands, and then he drank a glass of juice and took some aspirin. The taste of blood dissolved on his tongue.

As the alcohol wore off he felt a creeping sense of shame. He had inexplicably attacked another man and left him to his fate with the police. At least he was safe and not seriously injured, but he had no idea how he was going to explain any of this to Veronica. Hopefully she wouldn’t wake up when he crawled into bed and he wouldn’t have to. He opened a beer and went downstairs to their bedroom.

The bathroom light was on, the door was shut and all of the lights in their bedroom were off, even the baseboards. He went into the bedroom and sat down on a chair in the dark and took off his shoes as quietly as a drunk man who has just been in a fight can. They tumbled off of his feet and clunked to the floor. His eyes adjusted to the dark. He rolled off his socks and took off his pants and shirt and took a long slug of beer. Then he removed his underwear and sat a moment naked in the chair. He couldn’t possibly sleep. His heart thumped. The excitement kept at him, agitating his thoughts with alternating feelings of triumph and guilt. He’d won a fight, he’d crow; he’d beaten an innocent man, came the response. Finally he put the t.v. on and casually looked at the bed. It was empty. “Veronica?” he called. “I’m home. Is anything wrong?” No answer. “Are you sick?” That might explain why she didn’t answer the phone or come, she was sick. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He smelled, faintly, vomit. “Babe,” he said, standing unsteadily, “can I come in? If you’re sick I can get you something.”

He knocked on the bathroom door. “Come to bed. I’m home now.” He knocked again and turned the handle. It was locked. “Babe?” He rattled the door. Everything slowed down. For what seemed like a long time he stood in a silent time bubble. His mind wouldn’t turn or work. Pressure built in the bubble. He pushed weakly at the door and then, all of a sudden, the bubble burst, reality whooshed in and he exploded. “Babe! Veronica!” He shouted and smashed at the door, running blindly at it from the bedroom, kicking until the wood splintered and it swung open.

Felix looked down at Veronica’s body in the tub. The water was murky, red and orange. The floor tile and sides of the tub were smeared and caked with half dried blood. Little bits of food and whole capsules floated around on the surface of the water and Veronica’s head lay tipped back, caught on the edge of the tub by a flap of skin. It was like she was watching the ceiling except that her eyes were shut. A puddle of blood had collected between her neck and the tub and had trickled down to the floor. Her lips were parted and her tongue protruded slightly.

“Oh, Oh!” he cried in confusion and panic even as his body went into action. Please please please not dead, he thought, don’t be dead, not dead, and yet he was sure, surveying the shambles, that she was. He dropped to his knees, afraid to move her, and took her scabbed, lacerated arm up in his hands. “Oh my god, my baby,” he sobbed quietly. He knew he couldn’t just squat naked in a puddle of his wife’s blood sobbing, he had to do something. Gently at first he put his hands into the cold water, one beneath her knees, spread haphazardly apart, bringing them together, and the other beneath her shoulders to gather her up as best he could and lift her. But she was slippery and heavy. He got her up a bit, enough for her head to tilt back and mouth to gape open hideously before he dropped her, sending slow sloshing waves over the edge of the tub.

Again he lifted, this time not gently but with all his strength and he carried her dripping body into their room and laid her on the bed. In a functional trance he called the Hudson County Emergency Medivac number and collapsed beside her on the floor, convulsed with tears, all thought shattered. Then he laid his head on her breast, took up her hand and prayed and waited. Sometimes he felt a heartbeat, but whether it was hers or his own he had no idea.

They had been searching for Felix and caught up with him just as he entered his living room, when the heat sensors indicated a recently ridden bike in his garage. As they landed they heard his emergency call to the county medivac. This was a surprise since they had assumed the criminal had sustained the usual minor injuries. They were there mainly to issue a court summons and evaluate the situation. If necessary they could bring him in, but neither expected to do so. They were mostly pissed off at having to chase down another brawling businessman.

If there was one thing they hated more than breaking up fights it was uncertainty. Especially on a Friday night when all the suburban towns slowly exploded with drunken violence. Approaching a home like this was always dangerous. They simply never knew what awaited them on the other side of the door.

Shannon drew down her gun while Bop Molloy knocked loudly. “Security,” he said in a commanding, amplified machine voice.

“Open up Mr. Clay. Let’s get this over with.” When there was no answer they repeated the command and then opened the door, to which they had an override key, and descended the spiral stair into the soft aura of night light.

Quickly they secured the living room and kitchen and then slowly walked down the steps to the bedroom, headlamps on high, the cold bright beam playing over the walls and steps. “Mr. Clay,” Bop Molloy barked, “Do not move at all when we enter the room.”

With a little push of adrenaline they faced the bedroom doorway, blasting Veronica’s disheveled nude body with light, wet bloody hair half across her face and pillows, legs parted unnaturally, one arm across her belly, the other entwined in Felix’s, who winced and cowered. Felix hoped they would just go away. Bop Molloy said to Shannon, “Shit,” and then, “Mr. Clay, sir, step away from the body.”

“Fucking typical,” Shannon said. “So you go and get drunk, beat a guy up and then come home and kill your wife.” She shook her head. “Typical fucking Friday night.” Felix didn’t move. The lights played over him, shined in his eyes. One of the cuts on Veronica’s arm had opened up again. Blood oozed out. It was smeared on his cheeks and forehead and all between his fingers. His eyes were swollen shut. He had a fat lip.

“I can’t let go,” he said. “I think I hear a heart beat.”

“Give it up. She’s dead. Step away from the body.”

“Then you might as well shoot me now. Without her I’m nothing.”

Shannon said, “I’m losing my patience Mr. Clay. Step away.”

The door upstairs opened. There were shouts and commotion.

“It’s them,” he said. “The medivac!”

Bop Molloy looked at Shannon who said in a sarcastic, crackling voice, “It ain’t the fucking cavalry Mr. Clay.”

“She’s all done,” Bop Molloy added. Felix stood, chest trembling, the bloody arm still in his hands. “Drop the arm sir.” Felix laid it gently across her chest. It swung down off the bed. He reached for it and Bop said, “Leave it. Raise your hands above your head, where I can see them, and lay face down on the floor, feet spread.”

Shannon aimed her gun at him, the red dot resting on the back of his head. The medivac team trotted down the stairs with a small, collapsible gurney. A young, intense redheaded woman raced to the bed, shouting.

“Forget it doc,” Shannon said. “She’s dead.”

The doctor looked at the helmets with contempt. “She’s not dead, it’s a botch job. Look.” She pointed to Veronica’s lips. A bubble of saliva was forming. She yelled instructions out to the orderlies, who set up an i.v. while she gave Veronica an intercardial shot and oxygen. With great efficiency they installed a line, hooked her up to several bottles, jerked open the gurney and hoisted her onto it.

“Alive!” Felix shouted into the stone floor. “Alive!”

“You shut up,” Shannon said.

Bop Molloy, ready to give the information to a small pad, asked the doctor, “Where’d he stab her?”

The doctor looked Veronica over. The shot, the oxygen and the i.v.’s were taking affect. Her chest rose and fell. “He didn’t. These wounds are self-inflicted. She passed out before hitting a vein is all. They wanna die so bad they can’t get it right. It’s my second one tonight. It’s like a fucking epidemic. What I don’t get is, why don’t they just use a fucking gun and get it over with?”

Bop Molloy asked Shannon, “What do we do with him?”

They looked at Felix.

“I dunno. He’s in worse shape than the other guy.”

“And he’s got a job.”

“Fuck it.”

“Mr. Clay,” Bop Molloy said, “you can stand at ease now. You are no longer under suspicion. We apologize for the mix up.”

“She’s alive. I told you but you wouldn’t believe me.”

The orderlies covered Veronica up to the chin in a copper electraweave sheet. Sparks darted across the surface. The doctor said, “Load her up boys and bandage the arms. If she wakes up, keep her awake and restrained till we figure out what she took.” She turned to Felix. “Are you done with the cops?”

He looked at the helmets.

“Yeah yeah, he’s done,” Shannon said. “And no more street brawls, Mr. Clay, or I will personally haul your ass in front of a public safety board, after kicking all of the shit right out of it.” They followed the gurney up the stairs.

“Put your clothes on Mr. Clay,” the doctor said. He was covered in blood and vomit, wet, sweaty, dirty, tired. His eyes burned. “You can wash off in the shower first if you want, I’ll wait. We’ll catch up with them at the hospital. You can tell me on the way what drugs you have lying around the house.”

Without comprehension he watched the bloody water drain out of the tub and stood beneath the scalding shower jets just long enough to be clean. Then he dressed and followed her out of the house, as if it belonged to her.

That first night Felix sat in a chair by her side, not really sleeping. The sun, advancing up the center of the windowpane, reached his eyes. She stirred, swallowed and opened her eyes, staring at the ceiling.

“Baby?” He sat up straight and whispered, “Veronica? Are you awake?” For a minute she continued to stare at the ceiling, and then her head flopped on its side, as if it had been knocked over, and he was in her line of vision.

She gulped painfully and studied Felix. She seemed to recognize him. He smiled.

Every cell of his brain, lungs and heart, every breath and thought was bent to the one task of bringing her to life, as if he could control both matter and fate by will alone. It was childish, he knew. And despite these efforts, he was too skeptical to believe that she would be all right, or even that she would live. Yet here she was.

She swallowed again and said, in a low brittle voice, “Fuck you!” Then she looked back up at the ceiling, shut her eyes, and went to sleep, with a grunting snore.

For several days they kept her heavily sedated, strapped to a bed in the locked ward. He sat in the chair, only getting up to buy food and drink, or go to the bathroom. Once a day he washed his face. Twice brushed his teeth. Her food remained untouched till it was cold and congealed. Then someone came and took it away. They measured her fields, they drew blood, spinal fluid, assayed her tears, incinerated stools, disarticulated urine.

When it was time for a consultation with Intellatrawl Doctor Tarlton, they restored her to her senses.

“I’ve fucking had it with that Intellatrawl quack,” she said, sitting up in the hospital bed.

“I know, but we have no choice.

“Can’t you just push me out the window?” He ignored her. “It’s my right to die.”

“I’m at a loss. We crossed a line here somewhere.”

She hid her disgust in her hands. “If I could take it, take you or any of it, do you think I’d want to die?”

“But that’s crazy despair.”

“No, that’s not crazy, that’s sane. This–this whole fucking planet-this organization of matter into molecules and brains and society, sexual reproduction, language, viruses and history, are insane. Woman, man: insane; the binaries and the unities; progressive division. This clade ends here. Like Christ. If we stopped fucking it would all go away and then there’d be the kingdom of god. Or Buddha. The end of passion is the end of suffering. To go and not come back. My bath was not insane.”

“Do me a favour and don’t talk like that in front of Tarlton.”

“Oh, what are you afraid of? You don’t understand. I used to think you did. I thought you knew.”

“Knew?”

“Yeah, knew. About things. Knew what was up. You don’t know shit. You just,” she mumbled.

“I do understand about things. Now be quiet. If you want to go, be quiet.”

“I’m just going to try again. By the end there, when I wasn’t scared and I wasn’t cold, I liked it. I think I’ll try again, first chance I get.”

Felix helped her into the wheel chair. Her legs were stiff. She had little white booties, and a hospital gown that came untied in the back, showing the crack of her ass. She looked forlorn and damaged, old. The bandages on her arm looked like white crosses in a graveyard at dusk. Despite her anger, she took his hand, and clung to his neck, before sitting down heavily in the chair. He pushed her to the desk, signed out of the locked ward and went through double leather- upholstered doors, down another hall and into the consultation room.

The lights popped on. An older man, in his seventies, with a grey crew cut, sat at a computer. His well-tanned head was large, larger than his small skinny body. He had heavy hands. “So good to see you both again,” he said without facing them. “Have a seat Felix, I’m just reviewing Veronica’s file.” He had a cheerful, professional voice, no hint of condescension. “Well, well, well. Here we are again.” He swirled around in his chair and looked at them. “Still hostile,

Veronica?”

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

“Just thought I’d ask. Let’s get down to it. We seem to have tried everything. You first came to me complaining about ennui, restlessness, anxiety, lack of satisfaction with life and career. The treatment option we pursued was a mild mood enhancer, increased exercise, a low fat, high protein diet. Then it was insomnia and frequent painful cramping. We selected DigestAid to relieve gas and a mild relaxant before bed, maintained the mood enhancer, increased protein intake and the intensity of exercise. Meditation recommended. Your irritability increased and you manifested hostility towards the various treatment protocols. So we increased the mood enhancer, went to a strong narcotic therapy, and advised you to seek out some form of therapeutic talk sessions, spousal communication therapy, and deep massage. Next it was nightmares and delusional episodes. Drop the mood enhancers and narcotics and add antipsychotic preventatives, SchizAvoid 9000, Norave, Comatode. Headaches, lack of sexual desire and anhedonia with incipient drug- induced anorexia. Anti-anxiety drugs, intense aerobic workouts, labial dilators. Then there’s the death of three parents, oh my, a bad stretch, that. We went straight to sleeping pills and the most potent Euphorics then available, as well as four hours of confessional psychotherapy. You changed analysts several times, Neo Freudian, Adlerian Modified, Jungian…hmmm…oh, look, a Lacanian. How quixotic. How long were the sessions?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Not bad! Chiropractic readjustments, electroconvulsive therapy, acupuncture and quantum wave analysis. Now you’ve tried to kill yourself.”

Felix and Veronica said nothing.

“You know, I’ve been at this a long time. Flus, cancers, hepatic conditions, resistant congenital defects, various manias and dementias. All sorts of things. I’ve even treated broken bones. Nearly every mental illness known to us has a treatment option. But there are a few recalcitrant disorders that respond to no known treatment. These usually end in suicide and we have to just throw up our hands and say ‘boo’.” He turned to the computer. “I suppose you are starting to despair, or you never would have done this to yourself. I don’t blame you. But I have a rather pleasant surprise for you. I’ve arranged for a consultation with the chief of psychiatry here at Rockland General.”

The computer burped and the alias of Dr. Eulenfeld materialized in the room. It looked at each of them, a stoop shouldered man in his forties, completely bald, with a face like a bellows. Periodically the alias dissolved into pixels, and reassembled into grids of color, or a grainy continuum of grey, pink and lavender. The voice was missing its bottom.

“Greetings Mr. and Mrs. Clay, Dr. Tarlton.”

“Nice to meet you Dr. Eulenfeld,” said Felix.

Veronica glared distantly.

“As Intellatrawl Dr. Tarlton was saying. There are those persnickety cases that always seem to end in death,” his voice dropped to give the next word drama, but with the lower end out, he garbled, “or tragedy. Despite our best effort. But I have been having great luck with a new Monozone Euphoric. Now, Monozone has the best Euphorics on the market, they invented the field after all. But Paregane is a step up. It is the first drug that has ever been truly effective in cases like yours, where the prognosis is grim.”

Veronica wiggled her butt around on the chair and made a face. “I’m tired of your stinking drugs. And you aren’t even real.”

“Mrs. Clay, I understand why you feel that way. Are you aware of the statistics–”

“You mean more fucking chances.”

“The numbers, Mrs. Clay, are clear. Over 90% of cases like yours end in successful suicide.”

Veronica spit. “This one kills your appetite for food. This one makes you never wanna fuck again. This one makes you feel stupid. This one suffocates you in your sleep. This one destroys your dreams. This one your hope and desire. I would like to finish what you started.”

It spread its hands apart and smiled, squatting down beside the wheel chair and speaking at eye level to Veronica. “Now,” he said kindly, “I’m aware of our shortcomings in this area. But you’re really in for quite a surprise here. There are no known side effects to Paregane. You take one pill at bedtime, have delightful dreams and awake after just 7 1/2 hours sleep fully refreshed, strong and happy. It doesn’t just restore your appetite, it makes it stronger. You have better sex, better relationships, better exercise even. Paregane makes you feel good again, without killing your energy.

“Will that be all?” the alias of Dr. Eulenfeld asked.

Intellatrawl Dr. Tarlton smiled. “That was great Dr. Eulenfeld. Thank you.”

Dr. Eulenfeld collapsed into a spark and a dank, echoey voice said, “This has been a Virtual Consultation with Dr. Eulenfeld of Rockland General Hospital. Your consultation number is 7756-3270574– 02279-565628109/udot/memcodes3H. If at any time in the future, for the period covered by the statute of limitation, you wish to file a complaint, reference all correspondence and evidence to this number, along with your case file number, name of your Intellatrawl Primary Physician, and today’s date and time.”

Dr. Tarlton smiled again. “A formality. All of that information is right here on your chart.” He waved his personal recorder around in the air. “So Mrs. Clay, what do you think? Give it a whirl?”

Veronica was phasing in and out, chewing her tongue and licking her lips.

“Dr. Tarlton. If she says yes to Paregane, can she come home?”

He folded his hands in his lap and leaned back in his chair. “If she takes it tonight, I would say she could go home in the morning. Is that soon enough?”

Felix could hardly restrain his joy. “Did you hear that babe? Tomorrow!”

“Fuck,” she muttered.

“Mrs. Clay, we need your consent.”

“It’s the only way, babe.”

Veronica, with great effort, turned to Felix and said, “Will you stay another night then?”

He wanted a shower, a good night’s sleep. “Of course. Dr. Tarlton, it’s been a long time in that chair.”

“Oh, we can do something about that. And let’s get you off the locked ward.” He turned back to the computer. “I have a private room available on the Klingenstein Pavilion. It’s small, but I think a cot’ll fit, just for one night. I’ll come by at 9 am and discharge you.

How does that sound?”

Felix stood. “Great. Thank you Dr. Tarlton.”

They settled into their new room and watched a movie about the swimming kangaroos of Adelaide. They held hands, between the cot and the bed, and ate packaged food. At midnight a nurse came in and gave Veronica a glass of orange juice to wash down a little green pill stamped with the letter P.