“I tried to erase you from my mind, but I can’t,” he stuttered, his cheeks burning frosty red. “What if I go back and what if I can’t change things?”

But it was too late to back out now. Nothing and no one could stop him from the childhood drive for love and acceptance. No one could convince him that it could be found in the present. So disgusted with himself was he that the wish to die was not anything out of the ordinary. But damn it! He was exceptionally handsome, incredibly smart and stupidly sober. How can such a man end up like this? After realising that the young woman was not convinced, he rushed over to the bed, slipping his hands under its sheet, pulled out the many coloured optical cables and started jabbing his face with them. “Look, look,” he gasped, staring intently at her with pleading eyes. “I’ll do anything – even this – if it means you’ll forgive me.” There were three cables, or four, for he was not sure what was exactly real or not: a red cable and a blue cable... where we the other cables? He wasn’t sure. Surely, he had gripped them, felt their hard metal body in his own fingers. Where were these supposed to go, anyway? He didn’t care – that’s how serious he was about fixing things. He felt utterly shattered. His thoughts were like a blaze across the Amazon rain forest; he hardly looked at himself, the condition of his own body as she scrambled to activate the System, all the while talking deliriously to himself about the past. He often, or rather, all the time, in fact, imagined himself in scenarios where he could make great changes, where he could impact people greatly. Well, this was a time he could actually do that. He would go back and change things – that's what he thought over and over again as he tirelessly worked over the bed...the bed... “the bed is the System!” he exclaimed. He suddenly got the idea to lift the duvet sheet from the sides, uncovering a series of knobs and switches on the side. He pressed one button, which looked bigger than all the rest, and a drawer suddenly shot out at his waist, revealing even more buttons and knobs and sliders and switches. He worked quickly his eyes over each and every one of them, thinking, wondering, beating himself up that he did not know what he was looking at, or what he was even looking for. He felt considerably hot, his heart pounding terribly, and his legs as weak as his sense of self, sweating drippily over the console.

“What the hell am I supposed to do?” he said in disarray, his brain melting under the stress.

“It’s too late,” she said from behind, but louder and with a slight concern in her voice. He could hardly see with how dark it was in that basement, but still her pale white and roundish face was visible like an obscure cloud.

He ignored her. He was afraid that she was right, he was afraid that he would be caught by Aleku, by Jam, by the teenage girls, by Lena. They didn’t believe in him. Well, he’ll show them. His senses were now acute: they were on blaring alert for any shift in the stale air current. He was afraid that he was running out of time. Suddenly, something – a sound, perhaps – made his ears stand at attention. “Father, father, father,” he said over and over. Thoughts of the past he never had flashed into his mind like a brilliant lightning. They would kill him, no doubt, rather than have him succeed in life. He could fix himself – he was sure of it! At all costs, he must fix himself. He can go back and fix himself. He must go back and change his behaviour so that he can have friends – many friends; so he can have all those experiences he was so denied because of something he could not even explain to this day. He must do this while he still has the passion, the energy, the self-belief that he was wronged and that he has the power to change it only if he can go back. He has extraordinary intelligence, so much so, that he has avoided complacency, avoiding sinking into acceptance of his miserable life. It was because of what happened to him that he was now a miserable man living a miserable life... How would he go about it?

That already had an answer: “I’ll do whatever it takes,” he shouted; and he started to strip to the groin. “You know what,” he muttered to himself breathlessly, “I thought for the longest time that I suffered because of my sins; and I looked around and saw more and more all the people sinning even more than me but enjoying friendships and companionships. No, my suffering was not because of my sins. I was so obsessed with my own sinful nature – whether I sinned or did not on a particular day, at a particular hour – that I made it my ultimate mission to rid myself of my own imperfection. Ha! Everywhere I looked, there was sin. Even in those who professed themselves of the faith – there was sin. But then judging those for having sin was in itself a sin; and thinking of oneself without sin is in itself a sin as well. But we are meant to be perfect. It is impossible to even think of where to start. Ah! Around and around, we go. Do you hear that? That’s judgement, right there. Judgement. The human race ought to die. Why not? Why is that such a terrible, unspeakable thing? When has anyone ever in the history of man challenged the presumption, the preposition, that man has a justification for his existence? Well, righty ho, off we go, there we are then. These thoughts won’t stop. They won’t. Not until I go back in time and correct whatever defect I had. It was they hurt me. They pulled themselves off the sticky wall of the summer camp, when all the adults weren’t there as they should have been to supervise a class of thirty young children, and they all ganged round and tormented me. All my friends. They all looked at me with pity as they stood by to whip and lash me. Oh, I was destroyed by them. I was so destroyed by them.”

And he broke out into a maniacal laughter as he threw his clothes into the corner. “Go on, kill me,” he screeched. “Go on, stab me!”

"People have laughed at you for your whole life,” the woman confirmed bitterly.

“Yes...yes they have,” muttered Rod, hopping on one foot as he struggled to remove the remaining sock.

“Why don’t you just stop acting in a way that people don’t like, then?”

“Are you fucking stupid?” spat Rod. “Do you think I choose this? It is they that are hypocrites. They talk about ‘values’ and ‘equality’ and shit but they treat me horribly with no explanation, except to blame me for my behaviour.”

“No wonder: you are egocentric.”

“Well wouldn’t you be egocentric if you were in my position? If all the words that came out of your mouth was deemed wrong and untrue by all those who heard it?”

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“You act like you are the only one who has suffered, Rod.”

“Fuck you. No one has suffered like me.”

At once, he leapt into the surgical bed like a beached whale coughed up by the bellowing sea to lie down. “I am so tired,” he said. He was flinging himself around as though there were bugs crawling on his skin. His anxiety was impalpable.

He rolled out of bed and began hurriedly dressing himself. “I am a bad person, I am a bad person, I am a most despicable person! I do not deserve to live. I do not deserve to be alive! I am an awful human being. Oh, oh, let me die! Kill me!” And he began quivering tremendously as though all his insides were crawling with intelligent bugs. Then he began singing in a singy-songy way, “I am a bed bug.”

He managed to get one leg through the corresponding pant-hole when his laughter died out like a spark. He was hunched over, balancing pathetically on one leg, as he craned his neck to the woman in the corner. “I thought you quit smoking,” he said with a disappointing air.

“I thought you grew the fuck up,” she replied readily.

“Wait... are you...? Why are you here? Who are you?” he asked, his face distorted into one of perplexity.

“Fuck, you are exhausting,” she said, taking out the cigarette in her mouth and blowing smoke in his direction. “Why do you want to go back? What the fuck do you want?”

He crossed his eyebrows, frowning in thought, as he slowly put his second leg through the other pant-hole. “What do you mean?”

“It takes a lot of energy to use the System,” she snapped, “so not every bozo who wants to use it gets to, you feel me?”

She still stood there holding that damn cigarette like she used to do eight years ago. She wandered with her tired eyes in boredom the whole extent of the basement dwelling, before settling them on his again. Rod pulled himself up, straightening his back and puffing his chest out like a bird, his eyes blank with desire and shame. She pulled the cigarette to her lips and suckled on it sweetly, cupping its tiny, budding flame with her childish fingers.

“What must I do to use it?” he asked.

“Just why should you be able to use it?” she snapped. “You ain’t gonna change nothing.”

“Yes, I am,” he said, crossing his eyebrows in defiance.

“You what?” she creased her forehead like a crumpled piece of paper, so white and pristine was her skin. “You’re just a sick man.”

“Perhaps I could save you, too,” he said, his voice crackling like a prepubescent child.

She raised her eyebrow and scoffed. “And what if I don’t want to be saved? What if I already am?”

But he knew that she wasn’t saved. None of them were. He had eventually realised this after several years and more miserable, wretched relationships in which he was the villainous character, the self-proclaimed victim of fate. He and every other young child was duped into believing in such socially constructed concepts as ‘true love’ and ‘romantic love’. It was just that for him it took much, much longer to wade out of that lie. But damn, if he did not want to return into that conceptual womb!

He rushed over to her, threw his arms underneath her armpits, pulled her close and embraced her warmheartedly. She struggled immediately, resisting half-heartedly, growled even, hardly meeting his eye she was so upset and confused and bewildered and annoyed – all at once, that her heart panicked profusely, but eventually, quickly, meltingly, she gave in, if only to satisfy him for the moment: it didn’t last for very long; not to her did it last for very long, but to him it lasted for an eternity. There he felt as a child would feel in the arms of his mother, his head pressed against her warm breast, her beating heart thudding against his eardrum...thud...thud...thud...thud - his own heart skipped along with it as though they were brother and sister! He squeezed her tighter into him, feeling as light as ever, as though he could simply float to the top of a mountain range instead of trekking it like he would have had to have done before. He pressed his chin, his mouth, the tip of his nose into her shoulder and smelled the deep Heliotrope fragrances of the valleys: that vanilla, cherry and almond scent which satisfied him utterly. Everything vanished: every concern, every worry, every resentment – it all vanished. All his life, all the bad things that happened in it, all the sufferings he had endured, all of it, was, to him at that moment, justified now. He was, for all intents and purposes, purely happy. A warm, fuzzy feeling soaked him entirely from the inside out like melted butter on warm, golden toast. At once, desire pervaded throughout his being; his heart picked up speed and he started to sweat profusely. He tried not to let her go. But he eventually had to let go. He was afraid to let go.

“You’re a nice guy,” she admitted quietly, thinking, her cold, distant eyes staring at the bed.

He grunted.

“What do you want?”

“I want people to like me.”

“But there are people who like you...”

“No there isn’t,” he said. “And you know there isn’t anyone who likes me: the real me, I mean.”

“That’s a strange belief you got there.” She pulled away slightly, biting her lip, and turned her head a little to the side in thought, and then back again to look directly into his eyes. Then she cracked a soft smile until her cheeks dimpled and the brown bulbs of her eyes glittered like sun-dropped water. Rod was not used to being looked at like he was something to be looked at with worth. It was because of her that Rod had a great interest in helping young people with emotional dysregulation problems. He deeply resented that, however, because he at the same time wanted to go away, to be done with his old life. He felt trapped... What was he supposed to do? He wasn’t like other people.

That had been decided long ago: “I look around at all these beautiful and attractive women at university, in the city, and all the natural desires in a young man awaken all at once, and all the traces of individuality seem for a moment obscure to my own awareness.” But more and more quickly as time and experience wore on the feeling of genuine connectedness to the human race seemed to dissolve. So, he decided to go back and dominate highschool to get the same experience, more or less, as everybody else. He would go back and excel in every area of highschool: not only would his grades be perfect, but his social life would be the equivalent of the typical teenage comedy. No longer would he be bound by internal rules designed to suppress his will, but by the full force of his intellectual prowess. He would be a lion in a sea of lambs. Not only would he have lots of friends, but he would have girlfriends as well. He would be the most popular boy in highschool. He would stand up to bullies and get into fights, knowing that the repercussions for such were miniscule in the grand scheme of things. He knew better than to listen to the lies of his teachers. He knew the truth about people, now. When he suffered at the hands of his bullies, he knew now that the teachers gossiped about him in the staff room. Oh, he would have his revenge!

At last, the desire, the impulse, the self-belief struck him with such force that his limbs were filled with an intense and mortifying fire, and he thought that he would rather die right then and there a most violent death than to return to his contemporary life as a wasted man.