“How are you doing that?” I said.

“How did you do it?” Geist responded.

"I don’t have a fucking clue. Look man, you gotta go, any second now I am going to lose control and it will be do or die for both of us.”

“That won’t be an issue. I gave you a bolus dose of the same thing I take and your condition should mellow shortly. The twitching and vision blurring and the erections should stop too.”

"Erections?” I was confused.

“You don’t get erections during it? During the violent periods?”

“No…what? Hey, fuck you man, I get an erection just fine just it doesn’t happen…it doesn’t stay that way forever. You have to call a doctor about that anyway.” I thought a second. “Honestly man, what’s that even say about you? Are you some sort of sex criminal or something?”

He stared at my crotch. “You don’t have an erection currently? You appear... tumescent.”

I was fully erect but that was beside the point.

“Look, it’s been a weird day.”

Before he could respond, the building behind me fell inside itself sending embers into the air. We both scrambled away. I swatted at what felt like bee stings but was likely burning rubble. I followed Geist a short ways, maybe a few miles. We ended up in an abandoned gas station.

Geist spoke first. “We need to hide. They put out the fires with drones. The suppressant will include gunfire if they spot us. More importantly, John, I’d like to talk with you. To guide you. As you have probably surmised we suffer from the same ailment. As we are the only two people in the world who are cognitively fit for conversation that fit into this exact category, and I think we can help each other.”

"Just so you understand, about five different groups of people have attempted to get me to help them, and those who aren’t currently dead are probably looking for me, and the only reason they want to find me is to kill me. I am not really into helping people anymore or being helped or even really people.”

“I understand. I feel much the same.” Geist opened a bottle of water, one of hundreds that he had piled against a wall.

“Is that how you ended up here? Our affliction?” I asked.

“Yes and no. Mostly yes. I was a scientist. I worked at BIMPT for many years. I was a member of the Samskara research team. That was a long time ago. You know, I’ve been following you in the news John. I think you know one of my former employees, Megan Connors?”

“How the fuck do I keep running into you people? I am getting super sick of scientists. I don’t even like science, I sucked at it. I liked Social Studies. Maybe that’s my problem.” I could feel the drugs taking hold. Everything started to blur. I tried to get back on topic. “I liked Megan. She was helping me. She was going to get me somewhere safe so we could save everyone.”

“I am sure not John.”

I frowned, “I would never have hurt her.”

“Oh, you misunderstood me. I am sure she was not being kind to you. Megan was at BIMPT a long time, honestly everyone there eventually catches the bug. If I had to guess, she was being paid a healthy amount of money to keep you in the dark. Did you have sex with her? Certainly, it wasn’t beyond her to use her looks to get where she wanted to go. Maybe not with you though, and that was a long time ago and even Megan probably could not ward off old age.”

“Who the fuck even are you man? You show up out of nowhere and now you start saying crazy shit and jabbing me with needles, and look, that’s been my life for a while now,” I pulled my shirt up to him my port where BIMPT had injected all the Samskara into me. “But seriously, I don’t need to hear this shit about Dr. Cooper. I can count the number of people that were good to me in my life on one hand, and she would make the list. She was helping me. She was going to get me somewhere safe, to a group at CDC.” I got up to leave.

"I’m sorry John. I am. I didn’t mean to upset you. Before you go though, think about this. If Dr. Cooper was going to deliver you to Federal Authorities, then why not just call them? If Dr. Cooper was working under the noses of BIMPT and they knew it, then why did they let it go on? How did a scientist access a trained mercenary group? It takes an hour to order pizza, how long did she need to find them? The news report on the radio said she was found dead in her car on the street. That you had somehow killed her, although the same report says you hid in a panic room? Can you teleport John, that would be truly interesting? A better question - how many people do you know with panic rooms? How many people do you know that live in Penthouse apartments in downtown Atlanta on a scientist’s salary? BIMPT pays well, but she works there, she doesn’t own the company. Does any of that add up to you John?”

“It…she…she helped me.”

“Did you ever see her go to BIMPT? Did you ever see any of her results?”

“She showed me on a computer that they accessed her files.”

“Do you have any idea what that looks like? What the BIMPT operating system looks like? Can you really say that wasn’t just fabricated to get you to comply?”

“She wouldn’t do that.”

“She would. I can almost guarantee you she did.”

I thought about what he was saying. “I don’t believe you.”

“Let me ask you another question then, how do you think BIMPT, scratch that, how do you think any number of governments, corporations, and other institutions came to know about the possibility that a small subset of people were immune to Samskara sickness?”

“Megan said they worked on Rhesus monkeys.” I told him what she had told me about finding the last remaining monkey alive and its illness.

“Rhesus monkeys? I had wondered what they had been calling me since I left. Very funny. We aren’t Rhesus monkeys John, only a small group of people living the life that will shortly overcome this planet a bit earlier than the rest of you.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “You’re full of shit.”

“John, we aren’t related, you don’t know me, and I can’t really provide you anything. But do you ever recall seeing any monkeys at BIMPT? Or cages? You are free to leave if you want, but ask yourself this before you go...”

“Megan offered the same thing you know!”

Robert’s voice became tense. “Did you ever try to leave? I promise you would have not gotten more than 20 feet. You may leave here as I said but let me explain to you why I have made myself available to you first. Like Megan, I was a research scientist at BIMPT. We were amongst the first to try and find a cure for Samskara sickness. We had accidents in the beginning, even small amounts are incredibly toxic. Trace amounts would inevitably end up places they shouldn’t or were not properly incinerated. Someone would touch it and then they would die. It happened a few times a month. One day, I was one of the lucky ones. I was in the lab doing nothing much. There wasn’t supposed to be any Samskara in the area. Someone made a mistake. I stood and watched as it fell onto my hand. I looked up at the grimacing faces, and nothing occurred. Nothing at all. I spent the next several years trapped in BIMPT’s facility. My family was told I had died in a tragic accident and my body could not be returned due contamination. I…I don’t have to tell you I guess."

Geist took off his lab coat and shirt.

He had a port in his arm. “We probably have more in common than you think.”

I looked at the port. I knew what it meant. His was old, it was larger and more cumbersome looking. I hadn’t ever thought about it, but they had clearly spent the time to try and outfit me appropriately with modern tech. Investing in their prize, I guess.

“When? How many?”

“A few years after the island disaster. Maybe a decade ago. How many? I lost count. Enough. Enough to turn out like you. Did you know that you cannot metabolize the Samskara? They never leave you. After a while you start to lose your mind. You talk to them. They talk to you. They make requests.”

I stopped him. “Not requests. They make one request.”

Geist paused. “This is true. They make one request.” He stared down at his hands. I knew the emotion. Wondering how your hands had done all the things you had seen them do. I wondered what his hands had done, and what he would give to undo it.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“How did you stop them? Get out of BIMPT? Wait, if they had you why did they need me? And what about all the people out here?”

“Ah yes, many questions. Maybe some information first. Well, I was quite mad for a while. So much so, that they had to stop giving me Samskara. I was reduced to a homicidal state I am sad to admit. I attacked anything that moved. I was a beast, truly. This is why the medication regimen that you and I take was generated, to control the dopamine imbalance that occurs during Samskara toxicity. You see, originally, BIMPT meant to release the Samskara globally and then sell the antidote. Your friend Megan was working with someone who had the same idea surely. If I had to guess, there are many out there that are aware of both the Samskara and that some of us are resistant to the epithelial wasting syndrome. There are probably those outside of BIMPT who are even aware of the associated mental illness that comes with Samskara poisoning. For any of these companies, amidst global panic, they would become the most powerful and wealthy company in the world if they were able to capitalize on this observation. If you think of BIMPT as evil for this, you should know that they were one of dozens if not hundreds of institutions that had the same idea. This is just good business.”

“How can you say that?”

“Morality and profit are separate things John. If your views are pure, you either want one or the other. That hardly matters here though. You have to understand that the men that run my former employer are not interested in making money, they are interested in accumulating power. They speak of Capitalism, of shareholder diligence, of trying to make the world a better place, but quite simply, they do not care about any of those things. Their only interest in dominance. Think about it this way, simply selling the antidote to a problem you created is a highly functional way to make money. Just think of any number of things. Religion, high fructose corn syrup, home shopping channels – all of these things were designing a problem for which you could sell a solution that already existed. BIMPT just needed to make the solution, an antidote to Samskara toxicity, and then widely administer the problem, the Samskara. Their plan was thrown a hitch when they figured out that most people taking the antidote ended up as mentally ill, either essentially lobotomized by neurotransmitter overload or alternately they turn out like you and spontaneously murder everything around them when unfettered. This period, before their plans changed, and they were still trying to find an antidote is also when I met your friend Mr. Grady, slightly before actually. We would go on excursions into the greater Kansas City area looking…”

I jumped in before he could say it, “…looking for Samskara. I was doing the same thing.”

He looked annoyed. “No. Looking for people. There have been people living in this area continuously since the nuke happened. Nuclear bombs are highly effective, but those at the edge of the blast commonly survive. Most of those remaining people, they are the ones who are naturally resistant to the Samskara, same as you and me, as most of the rest were already dead. Kansas City had a population of several million. Now it is several hundred. BIMPT quickly realized this meant that up to 1 in 50,000 people are natively resistant to Samskara. Do you really think BIMPT just went out into the world and started giving people this incredibly dangerous poison on a hunch? Your existence wasn’t hypothesized John, it was known. Who knows how many others like you went into a BIMPT building and never came out? People without families, people without next of kin. I know your backstory, what I can pick up over the radio at least. You were an ideal candidate. You had exactly what they needed. There is virtually no one left here that is usable at this point. BIMPT has decimated the population that was here. All dead or lobotomized. That is why they went searching for others, for you. It’s a shame, truly. Most of the people here were good and decent people who just didn’t want to leave. Because of the level of Samskara toxicity in this area, the only groups left were those that were like us. Those that could survive Samskara poisoning. When the government laid down the law, many of them just couldn’t leave. BIMPT simply paid the US government to trap them with subjects. My job was to round these people up and we did just that. While Grady and his men struggled to avoid the Samskara solutions, I could walk freely. I scouted and reconnoitered and then Grady and his goons would come pick them up. He always said I moved like a Ghost, a play on my last name Geist.” He stopped and thoughtfully drank water. “The ‘Rhesus monkeys’ as they called them. Called us. Those experiments all happened out here. This is when their plans changed.”

“But they said they had identified an antidote from my blood. A protein that would prevent the Samskara wasting disease. That’s what Megan said she was looking for too.”

“Precisely. I am sure she was. I can assure you that BIMPT needed no such thing. Their only need was identifying very specific Samskara, those they believe resulted in the mindless nature they crave.”

“Yea, they said the Samskara sometimes made people uhhhh…pliable was their word.”

“Ha! Perhaps you know more than I thought. Yes, while I was working with Grady, and subsequently in others such as yourself it has been noted that eventually Samskara toxicity’s end result was what could only be described as pliable as their word is. While I worked for Grady I experienced this and I have little recognition of the events. Certainly, were I in charge of my own mental faculties, I would not have participated in this sort of barbarism.”

“Me too,” I said. “It was like watching my life as a movie. I could see things but I wasn’t in control. When the violence comes on, it’s sort of the same. Like an out-of-body experience. It feels so good though. Like I am finally doing right in the world.”

"Yes, you will find it very difficult to control that feeling. I want to ask though, when you were in your pliable state, what is it that snapped you out of it?”

“I don’t know. I guess I saw Grady shoot those people.” I said.

“This was my guess. It seems like Samskara toxicity has a natural self-resolving mechanism.”

“I don’t follow.” I said.

“Do try to keep up John.”

“Grady shooting those people…holy shit, you’re saying that seeing him killing those people drew back out my side? My brain? Or whatever? Made me start thinking or gain control again?”

“Possibly. It is a testable hypothesis, one for which I believe you would find that your conjecture is correct. The Samskara’s molecular structure is unlike anything on our planet. It has taken years to figure out even the remotest aspects of its function. This is why BIMPT eventually gave up and just started dosing people with anything that looked different, what happened to both you and me. They are trying to re-create this pliableness, but let’s call it what it is, John they want an army of worker drones. Unfortunately, what they want is impossible. For a number of reasons. The pliableness, this listless feeling that you and I both suffered from is the result of excess Samskara levels in the body. This substance is almost totally unmetabolized and unexcreted. When it accumulates to a significant degree, it more or less takes over. You are left helpless and compliant with any request. All Samskara toxicity eventually yields this problem if the patient does not succumb to the wasting or violently die beforehand. If they release their product, eventually it will mentally neuter the entire population…well, that’s not entirely true. The majority of the population will kill each other violently. The remaining ones will be pacifists who care little for than anything other than basic survival. A cycle. Infection, violence, pacificism. The perfect way to eliminate a population without any work.”

“So, without any sort of violent stimulus, like when I was in BIMPT, I turned into a dummy, and then when Grady shot the guy I snapped out of it.”

"As before, this is the most logical testable hypothesis, yes. I’ve managed to avoid the listless state for a number of years. The last time I fell back into it, I don’t know how long I was out. Your body takes care of itself during this period. Years maybe. I was drawn back out when I watched a woman tear apart her son. Literally rip his limbs off. It sent me into a similarly violent state in which I existed for a number of days. When I finally stopped, I did my best to put together what was happening. I ransacked local pharmaceutical stores until I could manage my dopamine levels as best as possible without any actual measurements. Since then, I have been living off the remnants of pharmaceuticals I could find.”

“Eventually I will just turn back into one of the meandering aimless things?”

"Possibly. We can artificially manage your dopamine levels as has been done by both Megan and I. When I injected you in the hand, apologies, it was the only thing I could find. My supplies run low. But none of this means you will end up lobotomized, many people end up dying before they reach this state. You may end up like one of them next time.”

“I am not sure that isn’t better some days.” There was a long pause. I was guessing he had the same thoughts at points. “So what do we do? We have to stop BIMPT. If they really inject the whole populace it will be outright chaos followed by something worse.” I said.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Enjoy what remains of your life.”

"We just wait?” I asked.

"No need to wait. Go out and enjoy yourself. Find things that make you happy. The Samskara is a de-evolutionary force that is simple, brilliant, and powerful. I believe its entire purpose is to kill off the majority of the population and leave the remaining bits a pacificist colony. I can think of a number of reasons that an alien species would use it. Preparing a planet for takeover. Preventing competition in the galaxy. It is most definitely a weapon and it has already been deployed against us. I think BIMPT has the same idea. If I had to guess, their only goal is to beat the outside forces to the eventual end-game. Maybe it’s for the best? I don’t know what is in the galaxy, but I can tell you, that it probably doesn’t need us. And now the likelihood that we as a species can avoid it seems almost impossible. Moreover, John, to be quite frank, I can’t tell that you have ever accomplished much of anything in your life. It seems like combatting the opposition is well beyond you here.”

“We are just going to sit here and watch the world implode?”

“Yes, this has been my plan for a while.”

“You have no interest in doing anything to stop this.”

“No. Pointless.”

“So, what do you do with your days?”

“Honestly, not much. At this point the only things to do are maintain my neurotransmitter status and wait on the inevitable end of time. I am too cowardly for suicide. Besides, I still find joy some days.”

“So, you just take those injections and sit here.”

“No, mostly I am forced to use insufflables such as amphetamine, cocaine and various synthetic compounds to amplify my state and then I mostly use quetiapine and other such compounds to prevent myself from entering a violent overdose state.

“So, you snort coke and take Qbars?”

“Yes. I procured very large quantities from the interior of one of the local police stations I have to assume was acquired during some sort of raid. Unfortunately, many of the pharmaceutical supplies were destroyed or available in limited quantity. The illicit compounds, not so.”

“Then you just sort of sit around and do nothing.”

"Correct.”

“And I can join you?”

“If you are willing to abide by a stringent set of ru…”

“I’m in. Fuck the world, where’s the coke at?” I began rummaging around the gas station.

“John, I should warn you, there is a lot of danger in mixing stimulants and sedatives.”

“Yea, I’ll manage. You got a dollar? and a mirror? Or uhhh, oh yea what we need is…”