The Solution (6 page)

She couldn’t be sure how to answer the question, until the next time she inhaled she smelled mold and dankness, which reminded her of her mother’s room, of the death, the suffering. A splinter of what she thought might be Repulsion stabbed at her and a sharp pain went through her chest.

“Do you understand my question now?”

The tone of his voice transmogrified. She suddenly hated it
; it was just as awful as nails on a chalkboard. The stress of it made quick spasms stampede up her arm. Forgetting his question, barely audible, she asked, “What are you?”

“
No, what are you?” he said, his voice now at a different tone than either before, as if it were a musical instrument changing octaves and pitch. Dr. Temple was many men, or ideas of men, all into one functioning body, into one soul, and to those around him daily (including Mr. Spires) there was a hypnotic element to him.

Wasting no more time, h
e then injected a sedative into Elizabeth’s jugular. Soon a warm wave swelled and arose and she rode it all the way down to her legs, back up to her brain. She welcomed the relief from her stress—from all these Dysfunctions, an onslaught of them. 

Mr. Spires said, “Is she? What are we going—”

“I’m certain, Mr. Spires. And you do have a family to consider, yes? You do love them?”

Mr. Spires conceded.

Seeing Elizabeth relaxed, the doctor plugged the series of cables directly into her arms, neck, temple, and chest, then connected the network to the data ports in the back of the chair. The All was ready to download her, and so the process commenced with a pulsing hum and, with a thought, Dr. Temple flicked on the monitors. As a fractal of her energy began to drain she was reminded of the retro late-night vampire movies, and what a victim of such a creature must feel like as their essence gets sucked from them.

The monitors flicker
ed. Elizabeth felt a part of her brain invaded, somewhere in the far in the back where she would need a spotlight to find. She melded with the All, seeping into it, becoming a part of it as it became a part of her. Soon the All projected her memories. Mr. Spires and Dr. Temple were encompassed by a cyclorama of her digitized recollections and past.

Elizabeth was
a fetus, hearing the rhythm of her mother’s heartbeat.

Orca whales, Orlando.

Looked like the sky rained dead suns.

Rocking chair.

Her mother smiled.

Her father
with a hunting rifle.

A tea set, crowde
d with stuffed animals and she was wearing a white spring dress.

Seven years old:
a cut pinky finger. Blood dripped—her first encounter with the substance.

At age eleven, a young Randal Markins getting a chunk of his lip ripped off and caught in Elizabeth’s braces. Blood. Flesh. 

The memories oozed to another compartment of Elizabeth’s mind. She ran through a near lightless tunnel where the charred arms from her dreams burst from the walls, reaching for her with desperation. She smelled sulfur and the fingers attempted to dig in and rip her skin, to utterly tear her apart. Suddenly the tunnel dropped out from under her feet and she fell until she landed back into the stainless steel chair where Dr. Temple and Mr. Spires stood before her, watching her recent adventures playing on the monitors.

“You’ve been gone a while,
” Mr. Spires said.

Her chest was so tight it could have
snapped.

Dr. Temple assured her
, “The All likes you, and we’ll see more of you soon. You will open many doorways for me.” 

Before Elizabeth blinked
the last image she saw on the monitor was of the mirrored angel figurine. Somehow it seemed more haunting to her than the previous mental bedlam.

***

Alex
Treaty and Georgia lead Randal from the lobby, away from the ethereal glow of the holocomputer and into a dark room that might have been an office at one time in history. The room smelled of dust and fruity aerosol. No one bothered to flip on a light switch, but Georgia placed her tablet computer on the desk, which provided enough paleness to make the three of them visible. Georgia had Randal sit on a tattered leather chair. Randal kept on the edge of his seat. She stepped back then crouched in front of him like a pleasant feline—as if to lessen any chance of Randal viewing what was to come as a so-called canary hunt. Alex, reminding Randal of a personified scarecrow, stood beside Georgia with his arms crossed. Both Alex and Georgia, in the soft blue light, looked akin to moonlit reflections over water. The tablet’s light dimly illuminated a print of Mucha’s
Cycles Perfecta
hanging on the wall, which Randal appreciated.  

Randal’s
stomach again was near empty even though he had just eaten, and he could tell it’d be growling soon. Occasional spasms ran through his head, and he wasn’t sure how well he could pay attention, but he remained remarkably curious to learn why these people had invaded his mind, sliced his wrist open and kept him alive. The weirdness of it all, despite anger and confusion igniting a near conflagration inside of him, was that Randal didn’t feel threatened. A sense of calm and sincerity seemed to float like cherubs from Alex Treaty and Georgia, and this was the only sensation that kept Randal from becoming nothing short of a seething animal. Deep down, he believed Dysfunction Anger could be used to his benefit if needed. And it might be needed indeed.

Alex
put a hand to his bearded chin, staring at Randal for a moment, then began, “There’s too much information to present you all at once, so we’ll see how far we can get. Time goes fast. Minutes go faster lately. Your consciousness, the way you experience stuff in general, has certainly changed compared to just weeks ago, Mr. Markins. You’ve become new. Are you ready?”

“I don’
t know,” Randal said, shoving down a sort of wrath building up in him. He wanted to curse, to flail his fists madly. He wasn’t certain what stopped him. Randal dropped his head into his hands. His brain may as well have been tumbling down a rigid mountain.   

Georgia
sighed. The gaze of her big brown eyes could have reached under Randal’s skin as she said, “And how could you know? Listen carefully. It’ll make or break you.”

There was something ominous but true to a frightening degree in Georgia’s words.
It’ll make or break you.
Randal wondered where she might have been in life previous to the hell-hole she temporarily resided. What sort of life she had experienced, occupation(s), and why in God’s name would she not strive for something better in the new world versus this.

Alex said
, “I’m sure you have an idea why we expunged your tracer chip.”

Randal knew
the answer but hesitated to respond.

“So...?”
Alex said with great expectations, blue eyes widening.

“So I can’t be traced.
”

“
Ha!” Alex belted, “Well, I’ve won that bet,” he said as he grinned and looked at Georgia; they had made a private bet whether Randal was mentally dim or not. Georgia believed him to be rather lacking. Alex Treaty believed the contrary, but wouldn’t ever wager on Randal being anything close to genius. Alex believed genius to be his own lot. Alex frequently had to scale down his vocabulary so others could understand him. And while the man only stood five foot eight inches and 160 pounds, an air about him suggested he might have been a giant.

Georgia cut her eyes, saying,
“What? Do you want me to give you ‘money’, Mr. Treaty? Really? Cash? You’d be crazy.”

Alex chuckled.
“I’m automatically assuming that’s supposed to be an attempt at morbid humor, Georgia. I’m not concerned with any money, considering. Are you? Didn’t think so.” Then Alex continued, “Your presence for a few moments longer will suffice, and you’ve brought me to a monumental point.”

Georgia answer
ed, “Sure I have.”

Alex
then focused on Randal and said, “I find no pleasure in…in relaying this information to you, man, because I know you’ve been in better health, but … let’s start with the basics: the Cash Disease killed three-million two-hundred-ninety-seven thousand and four citizens in the former United States alone and seventeen-million four-hundred thirty-six-thousand and six people worldwide. Did you have any loved ones affected by the Cash Disease?”

Randal shook his head no, relieved
for a short time. Relief was a rather new sensation; near everything opposite of complacency was new for Randal, since recently a whirlwind of emotions coursed and collided through him. His mother and sister were still alive, as far as he knew, hopefully still tucked away in Montana. Was he feeling a Function or Dysfunction, Randal couldn’t be certain, but the experience played him much like he believed a Function would, to the point of briefly assuaging Anger. But the alleviation didn’t last long enough.

As the anger crept its way back in
like a gluttonous caterpillar, Randal had an epiphany, that his internal fluctuations were similar to an Alaskan crabbing boat in a tumultuous Bering Sea that he’d only ever seen on one of his television programs. Rising, falling, and close to crashing.

Alex let a lull fall over the room
for a moment until Randal appeared to gather himself, then said, “You have any idea where the Cash Disease came from, where it originated?”

“
No, I don’t,” Randal said. His stomach growled long and he placed a hand over it.

“
Being we’re ‘baffling and mysterious strangers’ that hold you captive, do you think we concocted this disease in some secret laboratory and placed it on cash ourselves—Georgia and I— our little group of heretics in an abandoned styled hotel somewhere in the City? Do you?”

“I don’t know,” Randal said.

Alex said, “Well, we didn’t, man. Something like that would kill my Zen. Now, do you believe the Solution manufactured the disease? The type of stuff conspiracy theorists climax over?”

Randal looked at Alex
with vacant eyes and said nothing, then rubbed his forehead.

“He’s not ready, Alex.” Georgia stood up and turned her back to Randal.
“He’s not ready at all.”

“He has to be…
Well,” Alex stepped closer to him, “Man, if you’d believe that poppycock you’d be wrong. It just wouldn’t be true.”

“He’s not getting it, Alex.”

“I think he is, and I won our last bet, Georgia. So shush it. You know what my running theory on all that is, Mr. Markins? It’s that we have no clue who or what is responsible. And who
would
be responsible? Who would cause such an abomination to humankind? Maybe it was Mother Nature Herself, buddy. A cleansing possibly? Natural population control. We only know that the Solution arose and quarantined. They prevented more mass death. The Cash Disease is a paradox, and the Solution rather mystifying in both presence and principle. So, sadly, the Cash Disease isn’t the biggest of our puzzles to solve, but our current state of affairs is a problem, see? The whole world has changed, in some ways better, yet in others it’s a transmogrification, man—like
Frankenstein’s
monster. Not good on maintaining the Zen, man.”

Georgia turned to her side,
looking at Alex, and Randal took in her shadowed, thin profile.

Alex said, “
Here’s the real bummer; global savior or not, the Solution typically influences the way we experience life, making it no longer up to the way of things, right? How do they do that? Tracer chips? No, not at all. Tracer chips. A good damn idea if you ask me. So, all your information is in your chip, yeah? Bank accounts. GPS. Damn wi-fi in it. Great. Ok. Clever. I did it once.”

Alex held up his wrist, showing a scar where a tracer chip used to be implanted.
“Wouldn’t you? You did. It’s convenience at its finest.”

Dys
function Anger/Frustration suddenly took Randal over. “Then why the hell take it out? What the hell is this?” Randal said. “What the hell do you want from me? I didn’t have a damn thing to do with any Cash Disease.”

Georg
ia spun back around to face him, checking him with an alert glance to assure there’d be no violence. She quickly realized there wouldn’t be. Randal wasn’t that type of guy. Randal remained in his chair. He could see the moisture of her eyes gleaming and the corner of her lips angling to smile. Something about her made Randal want to win her attention.

Alex nodded and shrugged his shoulders, saying,
“Excellent inquiries, Mr. Markins. Pretty ultimate. Tracer chips will become obsolete soon. That’s a fact, and that’s because of the All. And the All is what permeated you and what now permeates near everyone in the City—kept you under an influential hex, so to speak.”

A huge part of Randal certainly missed
that hex. There was comfort in it, like a constant way of life. No ups or downs. He wasn’t sure what was ever so bad about this alleged hex, or the Solution. “How did you find me? What happened? And what was that monster that tried to kill me?”

“For starters,” Alex said, “The
thing that tried to kill you…it’s name is Tetrax. I have my ideas where it comes from, and none of them are particularly appealing. We don’t know everything sadly. Georgia, tell him about how we found him.”