Psion Gamma (32 page)

“These are for you,” he said, carrying the pile to Sammy. He handed the books to him one at a time. “Freud, Skinner, Lacan. You’ve heard of those guys, right?”

“I think so. Freud for sure.”

“Here are some more names. Freud Jr—his daughter, not son. Rogers, Bandura, Chin. Chin is still alive, I think.”

“Am I going to read all these?” Sammy asked with wide eyes. The books were not small. Not small at all.

The doctor smiled and handed Chin’s book to him. “Not cover to cover, but much of this you’re going to learn.”

“How will it help me?”

“The platform of the theory I’m going to use revolves around combining several different psychological thoughts into one. That’s what Chin’s books teach. You have to learn to apply the therapy, which means you need to have a decent understanding of psychology. Education begets implementation. Since you’re the one who needs the help, you have to fix yourself. I’m going to guide you and give you the tools to do it.”

Dr. Vogt was true to his word. He sent Sammy home with a reading assignment and the next day they met from breakfast ‘til dinner. For the first few days he taught Sammy psychology: psychoanalysis, behavioral psychology, brain function, humanism, classical and operant conditioning, personality construction and deconstruction, abnormal psychology . . . they touched on everything and delved deeply into many subjects.

The schooling frustrated Sammy. For someone used to picking things up so quickly, he struggled to grasp some of the concepts, and often needed Vogt to explain things two or three times. After they finished each day, he’d eat and spend time with Toad and the Byrons. Then he studied late into the night after Toad fell asleep, snoring from his deviated septum.

Dr. Vogt didn’t have patience for Sammy getting distracted or being sarcastic. He didn’t chit-chat much, either. Occasionally he had to leave for other duties involving his medicine. In these instances, he gave Sammy chapters to read or documentaries to watch on famous psychological experiments.

Their lessons went on for ten to twelve hours a day, breaking only for lunch and restroom visits. After their tenth day, when Dr. Vogt called it quits, he stopped Sammy at the infirmary door.

“Get a good night’s rest, Sammy. The easy part is over.” He scrawled something down on his notepad and tore the paper from it. After crumpling the sheet, he threw it at Sammy. “Read that.”

Sammy read it.

Who are you?

“Okay.” He looked to Dr. Vogt for an answer. “I don’t get it.”

“We’re going to have a truth talk.”

“Truth talk?” Sammy repeated. “You mean I’ll lay on a couch and talk to you about my mother?”

“Not quite.” There was no indulging smile on Vogt’s face. “Think about the question. You’re going to spend the entire day answering it.”

Weary, worn, and with heaps of undigested information floating around in his brain, Sammy went to bed. Toad asked a few questions about how the lessons had gone and told Sammy about how he’d spent another day eavesdropping with Thomas.

“It’s boring,” he explained. “I’d rather be in class with you. Really. But when our shift finished Thomas and Lara started working on my Ultra skills with me. They’re going to try to help me start learning what I can do. Lara thinks that if I’m good with a bow and arrow, I’m probably good with a gun, too.”

Sammy wasn’t listening.
How am I going to spend an entire day answering that one question?

He doubted it would be as hard as Vogt said. After all, he’d accomplished some amazing things before and after leaving Beta headquarters. Telling the truth seemed rather low on the scale of difficulty.

That was what he thought . . .

“You must talk the entire time we’re together,” Dr. Vogt explained the following morning. “If you can’t think of anything more to say, I’ll prompt you from the notes I will be taking. You can have all the water you want during our sessions, but you’re only getting two bathroom breaks. Don’t drink too much.”

The doctor pulled out a thick notebook and five pens, laid four of them above the notebook, and kept one in his hand.

“So . . . who are you?”

Sammy dragged out his answer for twenty minutes before he ran out of things to say. He stared at the doctor with a blank look, silently asking what more he wanted from him, but the doctor continued to scribble notes down onto the notebook. After a bit of pondering, Sammy talked about his favorite foods. From there he moved to other preferences and dislikes. Those took another twenty-five minutes. His forehead began to ache from searching for things to say.

After an especially long pause, Dr. Vogt commented, his eyes still on his notes, “So far everything you’ve told me is superficial. Who are you?”

Sammy’s mouth opened to answer but all that came was “deh—ah—mmh . . .” and then a long sigh.

It was the longest day he could remember. Longer even than his days walking through the plains of Mid-American Territory. Anytime he stopped for longer than a minute, Vogt prompted him to expound on something he had said. The talking took unusual turns. Sammy discussed aloud his lack of conviction of anything spiritual, mentioning how some of his friends had firm beliefs in God and an afterlife, but he had none. His parents had raised him that way, believing that if he relied on himself rather than a god, he’d be more likely to succeed. But on the other hand, he knew people like Al, Marie, and Kawai who were very spiritual and also successful.

His oratory then dipped into shallow philosophical waters and skimmed the surface of the more sordid details of his personal history, intentionally omitting some things. He knew he’d talk about them sooner or later, but preferred later. To stall for more time, he drank sips of water. After using both his bathroom breaks, he had to go again. He bore the pressure for about an hour before begging Dr. Vogt to let him go.

“You can use the restroom,” Dr. Vogt said, “but I’ll start rationing your water if you do.”

When their day came to a close, Dr. Vogt packed away his things with a satisfied expression, and gave Sammy his homework and another question. With a scratchy voice and a throbbing headache, Sammy ran for the bathroom. Later in the evening, Toad tried to talk to him through dinner about figuring out a way to teach him how to use his Anomaly Fifteen, but Sammy had no desire to speak. He excused himself and went to bed.

After reading two chapters from
Abnormal Psychology
by the light of his bedside lamp, he unfolded his little piece of paper and read:

What do you want?

 He whispered a silent swear word, tossed the paper into the waste bin, and turned off the light.

He woke early the next morning so he could do his exercises. Toad usually joined him, but Sammy decided to let his friend sleep. Toad knew where Sammy would be, anyway.

Dr. Vogt took breakfast with the group, but he never spoke to anyone about his work with Sammy. He ate quickly and then asked Sammy to join him upstairs.

Sammy sighed and got up.

He talked about wanting to be whole again, wanting to be home, wanting to win a war that he didn’t even fully understand. He told Dr. Vogt about his friends in Johannesburg who were locked up in the Grinder and how he wanted them to have good, productive lives. He wanted a family again. He wanted to make sure Stripe was dead. He discussed more intimate thoughts like how he wanted to know if there was a god. To lose his virginity before he died. To go into space. To own a dog. To live by a large body of water. He even mentioned how he wanted Toad to be able to train with other Anomaly Fifteens since he, Sammy, didn’t know how to help him.

The next several days went by with almost no variation.
Who do you want to be? What have you learned in life? What are your regrets? What are your strengths? Weaknesses?
A new question. Day after day. Each one presented different challenges. The more he relived his past, the more his memory seemed to improve. However, it was difficult speaking about his role models, many of whom were no longer in his life: his parents, his foster father, Commander Byron, and Al. He still wasn’t sure he’d see any of them again. When he told Dr. Vogt about his parents’ death, he became very emotional because he’d never mentioned before how much he regretted not being there to help them. But he got better at talking. Sometimes he went for a whole hour, and the only thing to stop him was a dry mouth or a hoarse throat . . . or tears. The longer the therapy went on, the more he grew to believe that the point of the exercise was to understand himself better. But he never got to ask because the doctor never afforded him the chance.

The questions Dr. Vogt asked became more difficult to discuss. His homework assignments had quotations of his own words matched up with chapters to read. There were rare but beautiful moments in his monologues when Sammy discovered nuggets of truth—when the things he said startled even himself. Sometimes they were dark and ugly, sometimes they were pleasant and uplifting.

When Sammy got the question that asked
What was the torture like?
everything changed.

It was like starting all over again. He couldn’t find words to accurately express what he wanted to say. The frustration mounted until he was screaming at Dr. Vogt. The demon that Stripe had created (or worse, unleashed) inside him had lain dormant for many days, but now it wanted control. On that day, he hated Dr. Vogt more than he’d ever hated anyone. He wanted to lash out and break the arm writing those endless pages of notes.

That day nearly broke Sammy’s belief that he could be fixed. He didn’t cry at all during the therapy session. His jungle safari of emotions never explored that terrain, but it came close. When the day ended, his leg ached as if it’d been an all-day buffet for reptiles, his head throbbed, and his skin experienced hot flashes every few minutes. He received his next question at the end of the day. He didn’t look at it until he was in bed. Waiting until bed had become his ritual of sorts. When he did finally look at it, he broke down bawling.

What was the torture like?

This was his topic for three days. The second day was the worst. He hated Dr. Vogt even more for forcing him to do it all again a second time, and spent half of the session yelling until his voice went out. The rest of the session, he whispered his anger. Then, halfway through the third day, he had a breakthrough. And he knew if he hadn’t sat and talked to Dr. Vogt for all that time, it would have taken him much longer to receive the revelation.

“Stripe hurt me in ways I never knew were possible. I wanted to die, but I didn’t want to die at the same time. And I don’t know if it is because of fortune, or God, or luck, or fate that I was spared. I don’t know. But I don’t want it to have more impact on my life than other things. I want my life to be about the people I love, the girl I want to be with, you know, that stuff. Not what Stripe did to me.”

Dr. Vogt made a rare comment. “Perhaps not said very eloquently, but that’s a very mature thing to say, Sammy. Especially for someone your age.”

“I still worry if I’ll ever be smart like I used to be. I guess if not, I’ll deal with it. But my body works fine. And I don’t want to kill Toad anymore.”

“For now . . .”

He and Dr. Vogt shared a laugh.

“I feel better. I mean, my dreams still suck and I still get emotional when I think about things, but that will get better, too, I think. I hope. I guess that’s it, though. You know? I have hope.”

Their work continued for a few more days. The kinship he formed with Dr. Vogt was unique to any other relationship he’d had. Through the kaleidoscope of emotions he experienced in that small infirmary sitting across from the same face, Sammy felt a great sense of respect and gratitude for what the doctor was doing.

Then one day the doctor brought Sammy upstairs at the normal time, but did not take out his notebook or pens. Simply by looking at Vogt’s face, Sammy knew their time together was over.

“I had every intention of discussing your next question today, but something’s come up.”