Notwithstanding the initial alarm, lockdown woes, economic backlash, whole ridiculous vaxer vs anti-vaxer beef and obvious loss of life, the COVID-19 pandemic did little to really teach humanity a lesson regarding airborne viral disease prevention. Humanity itself was witness to the arguably quick return to the old normal and business as usual, as the infamous social distance prevention practice was nimbly dragged and dropped aloofly onto the recycle bin. Man -- or rather – mankind -- or rather, humankind -- is a lover of socializing. No finger will be pointed at someone who loves to consort; fingers will be pointed at someone who chooses to abstain from interaction, if you can find him. Or her or it or ham. In any case, this lesson to humanity that COVID-19 did little to really teach? Regarding the prevention of airborne viral diseases? The fact that COVID-19 didn’t really teach humanity anything? No need to worry. COVID-33 came along soon after and deftly took care of that. The disease proved far ‘stronger’ than its kinder, gentler 2019 cousin. After just six months starting in early February 2033, over 1.45 billion people had succumbed to it, mainly dying at their homes and on the streets and in the wild, some of them, some of maybe the least “social” ones, as, of course, COVID-19 really had done nothing much in teaching the humans about the advantages of being prepared for a pandemic that, just like the one brought on by SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, sprang up out of nothing, out of humans’ la-la land infectious disease mentality during the fortysome years after the eradication of smallpox in 1980. Well, today things are taken more seriously, and the social distance and the videoconference and the today-more-in-vogue hologram visit and all the rest are really things, not really fads. Thankfully, especially for all those already self-conscious about their aquiline nose, masks are not a thing, as they’ve been replaced by a Vicks Vaporub-like ointment the person just dabs each nostril with once every day, preferably in the morning. Or, if you’re a vampire or otherwise nighttime personality, you can dab your nostrils in the evening, no problem at all. In the end, COVID-33 was surpassed only by the Plague of Justinian and the big bad Black Death itself, with around 17% of the global population wiped out. But in terms of total death toll, it does garner the award of The Deadliest Pandemic Humanity Has Ever Faced, with a death toll over two and a half times higher than all of humanity’s previous contagious diseases combined, and that’s considering the top range of all of those diseases’ widely-ranging death toll estimates. So, as you may well imagine, the anti-vaxers dropped drastically in their numbers, and Earth’s leaders at every level – at the financial, at the political, at the religious, at the professional, at the social media influencer level - this time took very to heart the health authorities’ recommended distancing of one given individual from another. So among many other adaptations, all interior spaces were huge now, relatively speaking, as allowable occupancy capacity limits were reduced to a tenth of the fire occupancy load values and both indoor and outdoor circulation patterns were rigorous, profusely demarcated and signed, almost military. Public spaces were increasingly serviced and populated by robots who, of course, didn’t carry diseases. Their uprising was still far in the horizon, according to the pundits, and they and humanity got along well enough. They the robots, that is. A.I. is not advanced enough, even yet, regardless of everything the early 21st century philosophers promised. Not advanced enough for art of any kind either beyond its results’ potential only-worthy-because-of-its-weirdness or hilarity factors. So there were still plenty of artists around, as well as programmers and scientists. One such scientist is sitting alone at vast, a brightly-lit institutional cafeteria in the Northern Hemisphere, lost in thought and fixated on a lone surviving petit pois at the center of his plate he’s gently tapping along with his fork into a puddle of browner-than-usual mashed potato gravy. He’s average height, upper-middle-aged, lacking muscle tone, freckles on bald spot, soft-spoken, subdued, bespectacled, Burkhart Wilhelm Huegli, Jr., MD, FAPM, DFAPA.
The brightly lit, 100,000 square foot, robot-serviced, state-of-the-art LIME Center cafeteria is very quiet. Over the sound system we’re getting Raining Blood by Slayer, from their 1986 Album Reign In Blood… only not really that version, but rather the Music Broker’s (yes, yes… it still exists) own bossanova version… it’s playing very low, anyway, through the sound system. Huegli was not concerned at all about his peers’, few friends’, wife’s, daughter’s, frequent teasing about how passé, anachronistic, really, his use of classical eyeglasses for the purpose of sight correction was. Akin to, maybe, yet possibly less impractical than, using a monocle eyepiece in, say, 1995. Sure, today you still see glasses around. But almost overwhelmingly non-prescription and for purely aesthetic or emotional purposes. Say, as part of a disguise. Say, as part of a throwback style. Sunglasses, understandably, were a whole different story, with little decline in use over the last century-plus. So Huegli – scientist and all – is a pretty nostalgic man. There’s something about his square, gunmetal-toned, thin frames, he says, that yells out the persona of so many of his predecessors in his field -- he likes the warmth of the company he associates with that. Take his 2022-purchased Brooks Brothers BB 222’s. He still wears them every day, and they have never failed him. “I mean,” he’s fond of saying, “just look at Adler, at Fromm, at Rank. And, of course, Freud. Jung.” Plus, it’s not like he’s not taking advantage, like practically every other living human in the civilized world (they still got the thriving, remote, ‘protected’ populations of protohumans here and there – whom by the way, not surprisingly, largely avoided the latest plague), of his LENS device (in spite of the fact that it’s really two smartlenses -- one on each eye -- the fact that the pair operates in tandem, providing a single, integrated perceptual experience [Smartsight] led the industry to refer to ‘smart contact lenses’ as a single entity. Also, this convention allowed for consistency with alternative-styled smartglasses and smartsunglasses devices), only he did not activate its eyesight-correction capabilities, again, thus allowing his BB 222’s to do the job. As they did for It’s been the logical next step up from handsfree; why have people hold smartphones in their hand with their eyes figuratively ‘glued to the screen’ when you can have the smartphone screen itself literally ‘glued’ to their eyeballs – and have them keep their hands free to dangle about aimlessly along with their arms or, maybe -- the more productive among them -- to use them to code, create social media content, not shake many hands nowadays hopefully; engage in questionable sexual practices, or even unquestionable ones perhaps; to pray for a second coming of H.O.P.E., squeeze some material out, have them manicured; to have one of ‘em non-A.I. palm-readers read them, to have them have an ice pick stuck through them, get a sunburn, air thumb text à la 20’s, and whatnot.
Some, like tanked draftsman Jarvis Orr, used them to EMT and to communicate with his therapist. States today go to extra lengths to preserve whatever life they can. And provide as much care and humane treatment as they can for the sake of these peoples’ quality of life. Huegli is among the few taking on a new therapy type called Enhanced Memory Therapy or EMT, which is, really, an immersive experience unlike any other virtual perception experience developed to date. Lately, this is how Jarvis spends his days.
For the state it’s cheaper – than beds and their incessant cleaning and maintenance and the laundering of the blood-borne pathogens off – in the case of the quadriplegic patients they sign off a contract or clearance and they are allowed lives in the vats. And the _ year old Mr. Orr had preserved quite well in the Vitasquous vat.
Another good use for the Smartsight devices is psychoanalysis itself. Today instead of the patient laying down on the couch, it’s the doctor laying down in the couch if he wants – or anywhere – as an interaction can take place via augmented reality and it’s like having the patient directly in front of you, across a table, or wherever. But there’s still something about the transcript printouts that he is partial to. It’s an unpopular option nowadays, namely for the ecological reasons. The way he counters for this and that LIME has accepted is he prints out in card size and zooms in via his LENS. This is what he’s doing right now. He’s looking at the end of the last transcript:
Therapist: Uno. What would you have me do? What’s that you said about the end?
Patient (via MIGID): THE PERFECTLY EVEN, SANDY LANDSCAPE WILL BE BLANK, ONCE AGAIN.
[END OF TRANSCRIPT]
A woman comes walking toward him, heading towards his table. She’s dressed in 60’s garb – a simple, off-white, puff cap sleeved scoop neck satin dress to mid-calf. Her reflection, like a mirage on the seamless floor (recently no such reflection occurred, that was an upgrade). She’s not wearing a mask even though she’s going to sit at his table. The reason in today’s COVID-33 world is that she won’t be sitting at his desk at all. But it will be a minute anyway till she gets to his table. She’s still far. She’s an inch tall from where he’s sitting, around the height of half his upturned thumb, arm extended; still time to muse.
He’s outgrown that old insecurity he felt around her whenever discussing – informally as it might be over dinner at home after work or in the kitchen or side by side in bed – his work, especially patients. Those years just after making M.D. were rough identity-wise to the young doctor due to the increasing perception by both the public and colleagues in related fields and even in his own field that his chosen specialization – psychiatry – was really not a science at all but a pseudo-science, one commanded by anecdote, superstition and folklore, lacking science-as-substance. Its status as a branch of medicine was thus put increasingly under scrutiny. She’ll ask how’s work and he’ll talk about work, and especially about this case he’s currently racking his brains over.
The tall, tan, beautiful thirty-year-old that’s now in front of him grinning widely, holding her tray, has no idea his husband’s chosen to see her that way. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her he’s that shallow. He wouldn’t want to hurt a gorgeous spirit, and that spirit is quite his age.
“Hallo mein Mann!” she says, setting her tray down at the table and sitting down. There’s a reason why there’s no kiss or embrace, or even holding her hand in welcome, even though he does get up to receive her. The clarity and utter realness of these latest augmented reality entities did not cease to amaze him. It really, literally is like she was right there in front of him – twenty-five years younger, by the way. He did very much miss, however, the feel of flesh against flesh – his hand brushing her arm, his hand grabbing her leg, her lips against his lips. Her breath in his lungs. That hard weight of her forehead against his forehead. Skull against skull. What’s realer than that? The technology’s simply not arrived yet to allow for the images, these quasi-holograms, to be paired sensorially with touch, smell, taste. Same old audiovisual as with the first talkie. They had to make do with looks and sound alone. But he did very much miss the feel. Yes, her lips against his. Even if it meant not that pair of luscious things he’s beholding at present but inevitably her chapped, contemporary-with-his-own, 56-year-old ones. Dr. Huegli’s wife continues, “Wie gehts?!”
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“Alles gut, meine Liebe, arbeite hart, wie du dir wahrscheinlich schon vorstellst,” he responds. Then, “Und dieser zierliche Poi, der in Scheißsoße ertrinkt, hat auch keine Ahnung von den Dingen.”
She says, “Oh, Burkhart,” and, as in a movie – at least as in one not released between 2004 and 2006 and directed by the acclaimed, New York-born, actor and director Mel Columcille Gibson -- they switch back to English. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, my love. Is it Escudero this time? Or still Jarvis?
He looks up at her with a lopsided smirk. “Still Jarvis.”
She chuckles as she chews behind her nondescript hamburger. “Figures. What’s up?”
Their daughter doesn’t bother to do the ceremonial make-believe walk to the table, she just materializes on the empty seat by her mother.
“Hey, Pfeffernusse!” Huegli, momentarily cheerful.
“Hey Dad,” she smiles back. Boy, was she gorgeous. And no filters here. And while through his LENS she and her artificially-made-younger-looking mother looked much closer in age, their type of beauty was different. She didn’t really resemble her mother at all. So he liked to take credit for their daughter’s good looks – albeit he never considered himself a good-looking man. Maybe she takes after some stunning Kellnerin at some Bavarian beer hall in Weimar times… who’s the great-grandmother he never knew? Who knows? So the Weimar-times stunning Kellerin’s great-great-granddaughter is today eating a big, overflowing bowl of Fruity Pebbles with milk and wearing a white t-shirt that reads, in big bold block letters, 69: AMOUNT OF YEARS BY WHICH YOU WERE BEATEN TO THE MOON, JEFF. SEXY, HUH? She’s a Sociology major. The rest of her attire is, at minimum, Neo-Punky-Brewsteresque. Except for her untied hip-hop Adidas that actually match, Huegli can see through the hard-coated Polycarbonate tabletop.
He says, “Nice style, that. It sort of reminds me of how kids used to dress for high school back in Frankfurt in the late 80’s. Except for your untied hip-hop Adidas that actually match.”
“I’ve seen the pics, dad… and I disagree?” She grins and looks back at him. “So how’s work?”
“I was hoping to hear first a little about what you’re doing, Pfeffernusse,” says Huegli, as his wife now also turns to ‘look’ at her daughter.
...
***
Dr. Huegli is cleared to walk the five-hundred-foot-long, twenty-foot-wide LIME Center Psychiatry Department tract of corridor between his office and the exam room he’s been assigned to for the psychotherapy session he’s about to conduct. It is Exam Room 23. This is the only place, under the circumstances, the Center is legally permitted to conduct such a session. It was time to up the ante and have a real -- well, ‘real’ -- face to face cross examination of Uno. So he was ecstatic when permission was granted to do this. And so as he gets the notice of clearance through the LENS notification system – customized in his case as a toonish little icon of Sigmund Freud with a large light bulb appearing above his head – he gets up from his desk, a ninetheenth century Austrian physician’s bureau he bought in 2009 through Ebay – and out of his office which he hired an Indian (cheaper) ‘interior decorator’ coder to generate an A.I. that would CAD/CAM his dreams (three sessions) combined with historical photographic, drafted and written data on Sigmund Freud’s Vienna office at Berggasse 19 into a fully-functional and Huegli-appropriate eclectic cross between tokens of the doctor’s subconscious and said office space, fit into a twelve foot by fifteen foot gross area space. It cost him $142,555.70 in 2039 dollars; he exits to the corridor, the pristine, ultra-well-lit, institutional corridor through which on his way he passes by Dr. Ramira Karamañitis’ office who he’s secretly had the hots for for years; she’s waiting behind her glass door for him to finish his jaunt so that she may be granted clearance herself; she nods at him, mouths the words, ‘think I’m locking myself home with my big-ass vibrator today,” he thinks; then he’s startled by this man-sized, wheeled robot that whizzes by him -- just another one of those obnoxious ORDER LEE R ‘OUND’s he has to deal with every day now -- this one in particular, ‘375-E4’, he’s not familiar with – and he finally comes up to the designated door and shows his palm. And the door automatically slides open and he enters a dark room, maybe twenty foot by twenty foot with all surfaces – floor, four walls, ceiling – the same opaque black glass. A single downlight shines dimly on a simple grey table, maybe four feet by four feet in size. The sliding door automatically closes behind him. He makes his way to the table and to the metallic blue metal folding chair on the near side, and sits down. An identical chair is placed across from him, on the table’s far side.
Huegli takes in a deep breath -- inhale, count the seconds, exhale on six. Through the routine eye-movements he commands his LENS units to commence the psychoanalysis session. Instantaneously, Jarvis Orr appears sitting before him, on the other side of the table. He’s wearing a white T-shirt and sporting a well-cared-for beard. The doctor greets Jarvis.
--Good evening, Jarvis.
----Hello, doctor.
--So, today, as we’ve agreed, I will again try to make contact with Uno. Will that be okay, Mr. Orr?
----With the parasite, you mean?---- Jarvis’ features expose his anger.
--Jarvis. We’ve talked about this. Level head. Don’t let emotions get in the way. Okay?
Jarvis looks down, shaking his head, sighing. ----Okay.---
-- So again, as we’ve agreed, I will today again try to make contact with Uno. Will that be okay? Mr. Orr?
----Yes, that will be okay.----
--Okay. Let us begin by going backwards in time… we’re going backwards in time, little by little. More and more… very good. Keep going back, back in time. Good. As I count backwards now, from five, to one, go back to your childhood, to a peaceful, happy, wonderful memory from that time. Five. Four. Three. Two. One... Good. Uno?--
There’s no answer from Jarvis.
--Are you there, Uno?--
The A.I. now starts to manifest itself, as it purportedly attempts to concoct the likely image of Uno through the LENS device, and thus Jarvis through Huegli’s LENS is now morphing, and a larger, taller, more muscular man is now appearing before the doctor -- one that regardless of his larger and more menacing presence is for some reason being given by the A.I., not only a larger-than-expected head, but not the face of a baby-faced adult, but also the face of a baby but with not the skin and facial hair of an infant but with that of a perhaps typical Caucasian twenty-year-old adult. The A.I. assigned voice is equally menacing – aggressive, and booming.
----Here I am. What else do you need to know?----
Huegli, despite his years of experience, is slightly unsettled. --Thank you. You’ve been harassing Mr. Orr, correct?--
----You bet. You bet I’ve been harassing that asshole.----
--Uno. Did you have anything to do with Mr. Orr’s accident, on August 10, 2019?--
----You fucking bet I had to do something with it.----
The doctor takes a moment to continue. --Okay. Uno, you hold Mr. Orr accountable for your condition.--
Uno chuckles. ----Of course I do. Doctor.----
--Why?--
----He created me! That’s why! Then he let me rot for forty-two years in a fucking crib as an infant!----
Despite his slight fear and tenseness, it takes everything Huegli has to keep a straight face. But he immediately feels ashamed. --How do you know this?--
----I’ve had a lot of time to think, doctor. Going on forty-two years, eight months, nine days, twenty-two hours, fourty-six minutes and counting.---- ----Okay, I’m going to stop playing dumb with you.----
--I appreciate that.--
----And let me tell you something. The only reason we’re having this conversation is because I made a breakthrough, not you. I broke through to you, not you to me. As I did back on that day in August. After which I was able to torment him in his vegetative state too, the enemy within, insulting him, yelling at him, not in his ear, from within his own pathetic puny mind.----
The doctor just stares back in silence. Uno continues:
----On to yours. On to your pathetic, puny mind now. As you’re too dumb or too incompetent or simply too dependent on your false science or all of the above to figure things out on your own. The pathetic excuse for a man that you refer to as Jarvis Orr is also as you know a total fuckup, a failure as a professional, a frustrated, mediocre draftsman who once dreamed of becoming an architect. And in college, for an assignment, in early 1997, he designed a house with a floor plan in the shape of what he would later call a shallow arch. And as props during his design process and to test out his design decisions he created these four imaginary individuals -- a fucking family. Okay? The cliché head of the family, whom he referred to as The Man of the House, the clichéd trophy housewife, aptly dubbed the Pretty Amazing Housewife, the cliché female teenage brat bitch he christened The Angst-Ridden Teenage Daughter, and then me, the cliché baby boy, whom the asshole fucking called Hans -- the Heir-Apparent Newborn Son. Collectively, the Wangs, he called us. And then---- ----Uno chuckles bitterly---- ----those three clowns – they made up their own names for each other that they use in their time off, which there’s been a lot of of late – those three clowns have no idea who or what they are or where they come from or even who that asshole Orr is. They were busy doing, however confined to that house, busy doing – nothing productive, I might add -- while I was busy thinking. You know what to do. If you don’t do it, I will eventually find a way to kill, both your friend the so called mister Orr, and me. Just like I broke through twenty years ago and made him jump down and onto his subsequent and current and seemingly-to-him eternal paraplegia. Time he felt what it felt like to be me. Just like I broke through to him, just like I broke through to you.----
The doctor takes more than a few seconds to respond. --What exactly is it that you would like me to do?--
----In the subconscious space and time are non-linear, doctor. In the subconscious space and time are infinite. But you wouldn’t know this. They don’t know this. Once able-bodied, once beyond the Shallow Arch House, our experience in his subconscious of any place, of any moment, of any of his memories, of any of his devices, can last as long as we want them to. A second can be millennia. Millenia can be one second. And what I know now… is that I can end it all whenever I choose. The next time I break through, perhaps. This is what those idiots never got. Too busy doing. Doing nothing... not that theirs wasn’t a prison too. I’ll give ‘em that. But they could DO. DO NOTHING. But now, I will get to... heaven. I will find it, and I will... snug comfortably in it. And that will be... the end.----
--What? Ah, what is it… that you would like me to do, Uno?--
----I'm the king, sitting in the dark, hiding from the shadows of the wind. Wafts of might, wine of fire, I was called to taste.----
--…Uh…Uno… what would you have me do? What’s… that you said about the end?--
----The perfectly even, sandy landscape will be blank, once again.----
[END OF TRANSCRIPT]