I woke up cold and groggy. It felt like a hangover. My head was pounding, my body was hurt. I was mostly naked, sitting in what I guessed was a utility room. The walls were lined random chemicals, cleaning products, and other household goods. This was an odd place for corporate interrogation, but honestly, it had been a pretty odd day. Was it still “today?” I guess I had no idea how long I was out.

I had a dressing on my side. I pulled it back gently to reveal a bullet sized hole. I had been shot? I had been shot. I found the hole’s counterpart on my back, also dressed. The bullet had gone through me. I assumed this was related to the hangover feeling. Was I dying? It certainly felt like it.

I tried to reach up to feel my head, but something was providing resistance. I realized both arms were strapped down onto the sides of my chair and bound by multiple layers of plastic zip-ties. Crude, but effective. I tried to call for help, or maybe just attention. I looked down. My underwear were covered in both shit and piss. My chair was placed inside some sort of child-size bathtub to contain my waste. I retched repeatedly at my own smell and began yelling louder. The breath required to pull in the air made the smell worse and I vomited over myself. The shit-piss-vomit vicious cycle was extremely uncomfortable, and was definitely magnifying my headache and overall poor condition.

My savior arrived shortly after.

“John, my name is Dr. Megan Connors. We have a lot to discuss. I need you to answer some quick questions though. How do you feel?”

“Hurts. Tired.”

“You are on a very high dose of a drug called haloperidol. It’s going to make you very sleepy. I had to drug you. You were in a very dangerous state.”

“Hurts. Tired.”

“If I let you out, are you going to try and hurt me.”

It was a profoundly stupid question coming from a doctor. I could barely move. The world was swimming. I just wanted to get out of my own shit.

“No. Can’t.” I said.

“There is a bucket of water and some towels behind you. Here’s a change of clothes. I am going to cut your ties. When you are ready, get clean, get changed. Forget the mess. We have a lot to talk about. The door will remain locked and barred. Let me know when you are ready.”

She cut the ties on my arms. I fell out of the chair, rolled off the edge of the tub, and lay motionless. The cement floor was cold, but it felt amazing. I laid there until I fell back asleep.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don’t know how much longer I was asleep. A while, I guess. When I awoke I did what I was asked to do gladly. The smell permeated the entire room and I kept gagging and choking on my own filth. I washed myself as best as possible and begged to be released from my prison to meet my new master.

I walked cautiously into what appeared to be a penthouse apartment decorated with all of the latest and greatest accoutrements. A baby grand piano in one corner, a sitting area in the next. The entire space was open. Paintings adorned the walls. An open kitchen with an island bar, meticulously clean. The walls were mostly windows with the city’s skyline available in almost 360 degrees. I assumed that wherever we were, not only was not in some dingy basement at a BIMPT black ops site, but it was probably far nicer than anywhere I had been previously.

“Welcome to my home John. I am…”

“Dr. Megan Connors. I remember.” The tall blonde lady was his actual recollection. She was in the stairwell? And on the phone? And other places? Had she been watching?

“You probably have questions,” she said.

“Yea. I have a lot of fucking questions. Where am I?”

“My apartment,” she said.

“Why?”

“When I was informed that BIMPT had located you, I followed them and was forced to extract you before BIMPT or the police could. You killed many people, and if the police or BIMPT caught you that was going to be a great number more.”

More? I didn’t understand. “Again…why?”

“We’ll get there later.”

“Okay…uhhh…what are we doing here?”

“I am keeping you safe,” she said.

“Where are my old clothes? Can I leave?” I asked.

She gestured towards the door. “You are welcome to leave. My recommendation if you do so is to go directly to the sky bridge and jump. To say you will be tortured if BIMPT finds you would be putting it lightly. You will become a lab rat. You will be alive, but I promise that you will not ever see the light of day again. They will use you, as they need, until they don’t, and then they will euthanize you, probably in a humiliating and painful way.”

I paused. “What the fuck is going on here?”

“We’ll get there too. Anything else before I take my turn?”

“Coffee?”

“Coffee, sure.” She said.

She brewed coffee and we set in silence. It smelled amazing. I poured a massive amount of cream and sugar into it and then drank the coffee slowly, savoring what I figured would be the last enjoyable thing I ever experienced in life.

“Last question, why am I here?” I asked.

She smiled. “The million dollar question. John I understand you were a scientist before your recent trip to BIMPT. What do you know about neuronal chemistry?”

“Scientist. Ha. Hardly. I don’t know anything about neuronal chemistry.”

“Corporate Science. Figures. John before we start, let me explain a few things to you. I am taking an immense personal risk in keeping you here. You killed 47 people yesterday. You are partially responsible for dozens more deaths at my soon-to-be former employer. You…”

I interjected. “It wasn’t 47. It was like 7. And it would’ve been zero if not for BIMPT.”

She sighed. “We will revisit the number later.”

She stopped and sipped her coffee. She was refined, elegant, and obviously intelligent. She left me feeling stupid when we spoke. But what the hell was she talking about 47 people? Even if…even if the park went worse than I thought there is no way it was that many. Maybe more people at BIMPT died. Fuck ‘em. Not my fault.

“John you have been infected with a biologically active technology of unknown nature, structure, and function. We don’t fully understand the effects, but it seems like it has broadly reprogrammed your neurochemistry. We believe humanity has known of its existence for eons. Its presence remains somewhat shielded throughout history, although you can see its mark at many points. Ancient Norsemen held the ideas of Thought and Memory as the constant companion of Odin, their primary God. They were portrayed as two ravens, and always depicted as pitch black. The God of War and Violence in Ancient Egypt was named Set. He was depicted with the body of a man, but his head was a mixture of multiple animals, designed to mimic chaos, and always painted jet black. We believe this is all linked to ideas that man stumbled on over and over again. Mostly recently, a man named John Semon coined the term Engram as a means for defining the biophysical space that compromises a human memory, and suggested these might represent a sort of tangible programming unit for the human brain. While these aren’t memories you have been infected with, they are biologically active units with their own biophysical space inside your brain and the ability to largely rewrite or code your brain’s actions at a very basic and intrinsic level. At BIMPT, we call it Samskara. It’s from a Hindu term that roughly translates to an imprint of a psychological compulsion that cannot be escaped. You have been infected with Samskara. I can surmise the long-term and short-term effects of this, but I want to discuss with you how you’ve been feeling first.”

“I feel… like shit,” I said.

“Yes, likely that’s the haloperidol wearing off. Prior to our immediate circumstances, how did you feel. When you escaped from BIMPT and afterwards?”

“I guess I felt good? Like I was alive.”

“Did you enjoy killing those people John?” she asked.

“What the fuck is this? No. I am not a psychopath or whatever,” I said.

“Actually John, it’s very likely that you are now a ‘psychopath’ or whatever.” She used air-quotes around psychopath. “Psychopath as you use it would be wrong, although there is relevancy as to how we think of it clinically, but there are broad and noticeable differences between you and a ‘psychopath’ as you call it. The same faulty chemistry that powers many of them to commit atrocities I am afraid bears chemical signatures that are similar to what the Samskara is doing to you now.”

“You keep saying Engram and Samskara? Is this like the Scientology shit? Look lady I don’t have any money so if this is Scientology then just let me out now.”

“No John, not at all. Those are just terms, words we use to describe this thing we don’t understand. What we do know is that your mind makes memories. We still don’t fully understand this, but they have a physical housing space in your brain. Consider it like hard drive space in a computer. The neurons that compose that space have a set of instructions they follow for you to access that memory. It’s all quite complicated but suffice to say highly functional as made most obvious by the fact you and I create memories all the time.” She stopped and sipped her coffee, and then she stood and continued. “The substance you were injected with is something we have recently discovered functions as a biological reprogramming unit, or another way to put it, it’s a pathological code that has infected your brain. It has functionally reprogrammed aspects of your physiology. It intercalates into your cells and functionally alters how you think, feel, and function. The hard encoded functions that are normally carried out by that neuronal space has been fundamentally altered. It is likely permanent. I say likely because we don’t really know anything about it yet. We believe these things based on experiments. So please just pretend that I ended all of those prior sentences with “we think.”

“You think?”

“Yes John, we think. We don’t know because it has been very difficult to research. The problem is that when this code touches most people, it just sort of annihilates them instantly. What is colloquially termed Grey Plague is most similar to what you were injected with.”

Grey Plague. When I watched those people fall apart I knew it, but it was still hard to hear. “If they injected me with Grey Plague, why am I not dead?”

“John, please try to pay attention. I understand that without…well nevermind, we will get there.” She walked away and set her coffee down before coming to sit down before me.

“Grey Plague is just one of many highly similar biologically active substances that were isolated years prior to the Kansas City disaster by a team of scientists working at BIMPT. The exact location of where we originally found the Samskara remains a secret to all but the highest rankings officers, myself excluded as well. Really a better way of thinking about it is that the sum of the agents dropped on Kansas City could be called Grey Plague, but more realistically, this represents many hundreds of individually complex chemical structures of undefined purpose and composition. We call them Samskara as they have a common mechanism of action and appearance, although chemically they are very different. The Samskara we have found and isolated have limited effects on species other than humans. We have assumed these species neural complexity is insufficient, but notably, dolphins are quite intelligent and also unaffected entirely. We also tried on chimpanzees, ants and numerous other creatures, none of them are affected at all. This is mostly a human specific pathogen…of sorts.”

“So it is growing inside my brain? Like killing me?” I said

“Not at all. It doesn’t grow. It doesn’t get bigger or smaller like you are thinking. The amount can change, but the structure is the same throughout. It just is, and sometimes there is slightly more of it and sometimes slightly less. Think of it more like a bacterial colony or a polymer. It is many instances of the same one thing, although there are different numbers of each of those things. The colonies aren’t identical, although to the naked eye we don’t see much difference. We don’t understand how or why they are this way. And as I said earlier, we are unsure how it will affect you long-term, although currently we can likely make some inferences based on your behavior and prior experiments. You are the first human who has contacted any of the Samskaratic substances that hasn’t decomposed. You are something BIMPT has been desperate to find. A means to understanding Samskara. Our current basis for understanding the Samskara has come from experiments in rhesus monkeys. Rhesus monkeys do not undergo the very well noted rapid skin decomposition when affected by Samskara. Instead, it does seem to alter their neurochemical function. The problem is that we don’t really know how the Samskara work, nor can we determine what any specific strain or substrain does, or if there even are strains or substrains or really much of anything. We have a very limited time frame to work with the animals…” she trailed off and stared out the window drinking her coffee.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“We have a limited time to work with the animal before they become hyper-violent and rip each apart. Or kill anyone that enters their cage. Usually within 6-24 hours all but one animal will kill every other one. After only 3 minutes, any infected monkey will fight to the death. Even against creatures several times its size, including humans. If we isolate them, they will literally kill themselves trying to escape their cage. The animals die of cerebral hemorrhage secondary to attempting to headbutt their way out of the cage.”

“What happens to the last one. The last monkey. You said all but one…”

“Tardive dyskinesia eventually resulting in a massive serotonin release and mortality.”

I paused briefly. “What the fuck does all that mean exactly?”

“Are you familiar with Parkinson’s disease? While people associate it with jerky movements, that’s actually an effect of the medication. You give dopamine to treat Parkinson’s and the massive dopamine concentrations eventually overwhelm the body. Dopamine levels in monkeys exposed to the Samskara were many hundreds fold higher than they should be, far higher than a patient being treated for Parkinson’s. They began twitching and shaking until eventually they began seizing and died. The common antidote for such a scenario is called phentolamine. For reasons we do not understand, even heavy doses of phentolamine are not capable of reversing the effect. Eventually we found we could sedate the monkeys to halt the ramp up. That only lasts briefly though, and without failure, they eventually re-enter into the cycle of violence until their death.” She paused as this point and watched me.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Realizing what she was suggesting, I became increasingly concerned for my own health and well-being.

She continued, “Dopamine is one of the brain’s ways of rewarding you for things you like. It’s like a long-term pleasure center. You get dopamine for doing things the brain considers good. The Samskara hijacks and redirects your neural chemistry. It provides dopamine for one thing and one thing alone though. Violence. Unfettered violence. We tried other ways to entice the animals: sex, food, toys, etc… but none of them matter. The Samskara only has one interest. It releases dopamine in massive quantities whenever the monkeys commit violent acts. It fundamentally reprograms the monkeys, and now you, into an unflappable thirst for death. The longer it continues, the more dopamine released. I think that is its way of saying ‘thank you, good job, great work, let’s do it again’ ‘Oh you killed someone, here have some more’ ‘Hey, remember that wonderful stuff your neurons secrete? I have a bunch ready to go, but I need you to kill that guy.’ Samskara infection begets violence and murder in a condensed and transmissible form. It is a transmissible unit of concentrated violence.”

“It made me crazy?” I asked. Seemed like the basis for a legal defense if nothing else.

“You aren’t crazy. Crazy implies illogical. You’re just violent. Extremely violent. And extremely dangerous.” Dr. Connors said.

I didn’t feel violent or dangerous. None of this made sense. I vocalized said concern. “None of this makes sense. If you put Grey Plague in me why didn’t I die like all those other people?”

“Once again, Grey Plague is a public perception of a number of independent substances which are likely highly heterogenous. ‘Grey Plague’ if you insist is no more a plague than gasoline is. It is infinitely more complex though. But if you are referring to the typical human response to contact with any of these Samskara then we once again are left to hypotheses and not facts, but let’s just say that your theoretical existence has been one of the major driving forces at BIMPT for almost a decade. As I told you previously, Rhesus monkeys also do not undergo the characteristic epithelial apoptotic event that most people associated with the Samskara.” I started to interrupt to figure out what those words meant but she saw it coming. “Epithelial apoptosis is simply epithelial cell death. The uhhh..the melting as you call it. Your skin dies. It’s a totally normal part of developmental biology gone awry in this case. Anyway, we traced this to expression of an ancient and highly conserved protein called Bcl-2. When the human body encounters Samskara, it results in a novel splicing event for Bcl-2 that is proliferated throughout the body almost instantly. This causes essentially all epithelial cells in the body to undergo a protein splicing event that causes almost instantaneous apoptosis. While people commonly refer to this as “melting” this is actually an energy dependent event wherein your body is programmed to immediately die. Heat is released due to the amount of chemical reactions occurring hence the steaminess of it all. Regardless, while all humans have Bcl-2 as you cannot develop without it, we believe you are one of potentially a handful of people that cannot splice Bcl-2 to activate the apoptotic cascade, likely due to a spontaneous and otherwise banal mutation. Because of this, you undergo neural reprogramming like the monkeys instead of the apoptotic cascade, or ‘melting’ if you prefer. You are probably a one in a million or more probably one in 10 million event. In fact, it is extremely likely based on one of my colleague’s research that the splicing mechanism is so evolutionarily conserved because of the nature of the Samskara themself. Societies that found themselves susceptible would be torn apart at the seams, particularly in ancient times without the benefit of science or public safety. While the apoptotic events the media associate with Grey Plague are visceral to watch, it is a highly effective means for preventing Samskara susceptibility, proving the incredibly potent evolutionary force these compounds likely had.” She said the last sentence with a weird pride.

“What does that have to do with me? Am I going to live?”

“Likely no. You will probably die extremely painfully of a neurochemical overload, or more likely, the Samskara will take over your brain and body and you will die in some violent combat. Probably the latter.” She said this flatly and without concern which sort of hurt given how happy she had been with her previous thesis.

My mind started to swirl. This couldn’t be right. She was full of shit. I remembered her at BIMPT. This was all some sort of psychological torture shit. They were fucking with me. I had to get out of here. I stood up.

“I don’t believe you. Fuck this, no. You said I could go. If I am really as bad as you say, then you won’t try and stop me.”

“John, you can’t leave. Not and live. Please don’t get upset. John listen to me. Listen very carefully. If I let you leave, it will get us both killed very quickly. I have put my neck out here because I am deeply scared, terrified of what will happen if BIMPT finds you. There are military considerations for your DNA, your protein structures, your very existence, that will likely result in global catastrophe that I am very sure BIMPT’s Board of Directors are prepared to deal with. I have worked tirelessly to get where we are to prevent this. Please, sit down. I have one more thing I have to show you, something that I think will help you understand the implications of what we’ve discussed, but I have to ask a favor. I need you to agree to take another dose of haloperidol before I show you this. For my own safety. You owe me your life, and I know that seems terrible to say at this point, but if you leave without my assistance I can promise you the only options are a short death or a long and terribly more painful life.”

“What do you want to show me?” I asked.

“John you said you killed about 7 people. I want to show you some video footage. This is all caught from cameras, cell phones, etc… None of this is from the news. None of this faked. I can assure you, having bore witness to many of these events, this is all true. There is no cover-up, there is no conspiracy. Can I administer the haloperidol now?”

What was she saying? What did she mean?

“Ok” I said.

She jabbed me in the thigh with a needle and I started to feel an overwhelming calm come over me. It was a good idea. The next five minutes were torturous. I watched videos of myself labeled “cold-blooded kill on the loose.” I watched videos of myself that said, “Man identified as John S. Brunsen goes on rampage.” I watched videos of myself with titles like “Most heinous massacre in US history” and “Death Toll Climbs”.

I saw security footage outside the gas station I bought my burners. I saw the homeless man I had given my old phone. I watched myself walk away, and then I heard him say something. I saw myself turn around and pounce on him. I watched myself pry his right eye out of his head with my fingers and throw it back at him. Was this real? I saw me strangle him to death, viciously, his other eye now protruding from skull. I watched me bounce his head off the wall behind him as my grip tightened around his throat.

I saw me exit the Sporting Goods store and walk through the parking lot. I watched store camera footage as it followed me across the parking lot. Halfway across the lot, I watched me pull a knife and stab a man putting a tent in his car in the chest. I left the knife and the man there to die. I later found out he was a schoolteacher. He had 5 children. He never said a word to me. The school raised money to cover his funeral costs because his family couldn’t afford it. His wife didn’t work. I don’t know what happened to his kids, or his wife. They probably hate me. They probably should.

I saw a news report on Big Dale. I knew about that one. About Rhonda. I knew about that one too. Another man had come though. The man I told to leave. Hadn’t I told him to leave? I watched a self-filmed clip uploaded live to the internet of the man screaming for help. He had been attacked. He had been mauled. Another man, naked as the day he was born, had hacked his left leg almost clean off with a handaxe. The man had called 9-11, was desperate for help, but was clearly falling unconscious. The phone fell to the ground, left focused on a sign for Big Dale’s Auto Plaza as gurgling noises were heard in the background.

I saw events for which I have no memory. Terrible, violent events. Have you ever seen yourself kill people at random? I’m sure not. Do you know what it looks like when you smile? Imagine that same face stabbing someone to death. Imagine that smile while you wipe blood off your face. Imagine that smile while you are using someone else’s shirt to clean the blood off your axe.

I’m awful.

I’m horrible.

My God, I’m evil.

It gets worse.

I saw myself enter a park.

“Turn it off.”

“John this is the important one. I don’t think you will understand the nature of our situation unless I show you this.”

I started to remember.

“Please…” I heard my voice quiver. I didn’t need to watch. I felt it all coming back.

“I remember just please don’t turn it on. I’ll do it. Whatever you want. I don’t want to watch.”

Dr. Connors shook her head no. She was crying now. She was crying a lot.

The images still flash in my head sometimes now. The ones from the video at least. I don’t really have memories of my own, just a second-hand nightmare starring Yours Truly in one horrifying sequence.

First image – the man’s skull flies out the back of his head. I just shot him damn near point blank with the .45 from Dale.

Second image – Pearl screaming “no”.

Third image – blood shoots out of the second man on the bench’s neck.

Fourth image – Pearl screaming. She is saying “Not them, not them.” I don’t remember that? That didn’t happen. This isn’t real.

Fifth image…

I plead, “Turn it off. Turn it the fuck off please. Please!”

Fifth image…

I scream, “No, no, no. Fuck this isn’t right. This didn’t happen. No Pearl no!”

Fifth image…

Pearl dives towards the men waving her hands. The only word I make out is “friends.” This isn’t right. This didn’t happen. This isn’t right. Why are you showing me this? How did you make this? This isn’t right. This didn’t happen. Why is Pearl there? Pearl wasn’t there. I didn’t see her. Pearl ran. Didn’t she?

This didn’t happen.

Did it?

Sixth image - The bullet catches her in the chin. The impact shatters the bone and rips her mandible halfway off her face. She falls face first in the dirt, the gaping hole in her face choking on dirt and grass. The autopsy would state she actually suffocated to death because the impact forced her hyoid bone into her pharynx and punctured it destroying her airway. I sometimes see her struggling, grasping at her throat in the other images. She died slowly and painfully. A mutated and grotesque version of herself, porcelain skin covered in red, her face no longer beautiful but now a jawless mess.

I killed her.

I killed Pearl.

I did that.

Seventh image – I turn and fire. I miss the man charging me, but a bullet ricochets and hits a child in the foot. His mother scoops him up. They run off screaming. I later find out he lived but was permanently crippled. One of my gifts to the world.

Eighth image – I am on the ground. I kill the charging man with the last rounds from the .45. It turns out he didn’t work for BIMPT, he was just trying to stop me. He was there with his daughter. She got hit too. Stray fire, barely nicked her. She’d go on to make a full recovery. I don’t know what happened to her, but I wish I did.

I think about him sometimes. I read in the paper he was divorced, and it was his day with his daughter. It was probably the best day of his week. He probably thought about that day all week long. Every week. The hours he got to spend with her. Pushing her on a swing. Riding down the slides with her. That was their thing. Hours a week at the same playground, laughing and playing until he had to give her back to her mom and go back to the shit-miserable existence he lead outside their perfect playtime hours.

They had a funeral. The ex-wife/mom killed herself a few years later. I don’t get the credit for that one, but it’s probably my fault too. Mark it 48.

Ninth image – A man is charging me from behind, he has a rifle on his back. He won’t use it because BIMPT wants me alive.

Tenth image - I duck when he leaps for me out of pure luck. I fall on top of him in the scuffle.

His rifle is automatic.

Eleventh image - The crowd has bottlenecked at the exit to the park. I watch myself scream as I pull the trigger on the man’s rifle. Half the crowd falls. I watch myself throw my head back into him over and over. He’s bleeding and broken. He falls limp. I continue to bash my head against his face, pulling on his shirt for leverage. I am talking, screaming while I do it. It’s happening faster now. The welt on my forehead is bleeding. He’s dead.

But right now, right now, I am just a guy sitting in an apartment and it’s still the first time I am watching this. I say, “This wasn’t how it happened? I don’t remember any of this.”

Back in Dr. Connor’s apartment I say, “This is bullshit. You are making this up.”

Back in Dr. Connor’s apartment I scream, “Turn it off. Turn it off. TURN IT OFF!”

Back in Dr. Connor’s apartment a burning wells up inside me. It’s like pain but different. My heart races. My hands quiver. My dick hurts. My toes burn. It’s like something is inside my top layer of skin and its trying to come out everywhere at the same time. I want to scratch and let it out.

What’s happening to me?

I am gripping the arms of the chair as hard as I can. Something snaps. I look down in my hands. I ripped the arm of the chair off. I want to put it through my leg. I want to bite into it as hard as I can until I rip my own teeth out. I press the jagged end into my forehead as hard as I can until the blood drips down. Doc gently pushes it away from my face.

I want to die.

I look at the doctor. She looks scared and now rage turns to sadness. That’s bad. I thought I was supposed to be the scared one. I hold out the chair arm for her and she takes it. She throws it aside. Probably smart. A smarter idea would’ve been to throw it out a window.

Twelfth image - Another spray of bullets, this was just done at random, half a dozen more people fall. My own head is bleeding profusely. I’m smiling. I look…happy.

Back in Dr. Connor’s apartment, I feel the back of my head. There is a scar.

Thirteenth image – the three guys from BIMPT charge me. I fire on them. One is hit in the knee. I splatter the other guy’s head as he tries to help his buddy.

Fourteenth image – I’m burying the axe in the face of the guy that followed me to the truck, my mangled and disfigured face contorted into a smile typically reserved for family vacation at Disney.

Fifteenth image – a cell phone falls into the backseat of a car. I see my own body thrown on top of it. I am unconscious.

I was so groggy. I knew it was the drug. I knew why she did that though. I wanted to kill her. To make it stop.

“Why did you show me that? That isn’t real. Not real. Not real.” I was struggling to stay awake. “I wouldn’t do that. I liked Pearl. I loved her.”

“John what is Pearl’s last name?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“What’s her favorite color? Her favorite food?”

“Doesn’t matter!” I screamed now.

“What are her hopes? Her goals? Her dreams? I looked her up, her name isn’t even Pearl. She told you her stage name! What do you have in common that draws you to her? You don’t even know this woman. You wanted to have sex with her at some point? That’s got nothing to do with this and you know it. You went to her because you wanted the exact violence that you found. She was nothing more than a pawn, a play to draw out the violence that you needed to sustain. She was an excuse, a reason for doing the thing you needed to do. Now she’s dead for it, and so are a bunch of other people who went to a park where kids play.”

“It’s not true. It’s not real,” I said.

Dr. Connors was still crying but was brushing away the tears. “It’s true. I promise you. The last video is my own John. My own sin. My own inability to help. To save those people. To stop you. I saw it all. When you wouldn’t stop hitting that man I ran up and tazed you. I brought you back here.”

“Why?”

“Because I am worried that BIMPT is going to make a 1,000 people just like you. Or worse a million. Or sell your genetics to North Korea.” She’s sobbing now. Words come sputtering through crocodile tears. “Or they use you to make a cure against the Samskara sickness and sell it to the highest bidder. John you…” I saw her face contort itself into a very serious and vicious frown. “You are a weapon. And whoever finds you is going to use you. I need your help. I need you to let me figure you out, so I can stop them from using you.”

“No…not a weapon.”

“You will be systematically broken down and turned into a means for destruction at levels you cannot even comprehend. Let me throw a few scenarios at you? BIMPT finds you and isolates the protein in your body that prevents the Samskara from killing you. They make a drug that makes everyone like you. It has the same effect, prevents Samskara-mediated cell death or ‘melting’ as you like to call it. How long before they sell that compound to the US government and we invade China while dropping Samskara-laden bombs all over the population. Imagine 500,000 hyper violent soldiers mass murdering a society as it literally melts from within. What is the death toll there? 1.2 billion people in China and I bet not half of them make it out. And then what? Who takes care of them? Where do the survivors go? There is another few hundred million who are left with no one and nothing. Who is going to keep them alive?”

“That won’t happen.” I began feeling faint, losing consciousness. It was hard to focus on her words.

“You’re right I bet it won’t. Actually, a smarter play is to go into the Sudan or Kosovo, or any one of a few hundred other places in the world where there has been a thousand years of conflict and offer the drug up there. Ethnic genocide is always a popular human past-time. Why not make it better, faster, more refined?” Dr. Connors continued. “But this is all peon thinking. I promise you the guys that run BIMPT have much better ideas on how to push product and let me tell you, morality is out the window with these folks. When I say they are pure Capitalists you can’t even comprehend how much I mean that. How long until BIMPT starts bombing people themselves? Dirty bombs galore. Then who can save us? Oh, the company with the drug they just happen to have perfected? Every government on the planet now forced to either buy the product and mass distribute it or be viewed as uncaring and watch their citizenry burn and die. That’s not a billion dollar blockbuster drug. That’s a trillion dollar drug John. That’s more money than most of Western Europe makes in a year combined with the power to control who lives and who dies. So you see, it’s not whether or not you are a weapon, it’s whether or not the people that are going to use you, your DNA, your body, use you as a weapon are greedy enough to kill everyone on Earth, or just greedy enough people to keep themselves fat and happy for a few hundred years. Go back in time and look at prior instances of absolute power, when Rome had the most powerful army in the world, when the Hittites invented forged iron, when Oppenheimer made the first A-bomb, go back to where and when this happened and tell me how evolved you think we are. Remind me how good humanity is at handling new weapons. Tell me about how civilized and thoughtful we are when we know we have an impossible advantage.” She stopped. She had been screaming at the end. It didn’t help my situation. I think she knew that.

I tried to tell her it was a business, but the world was getting hazy. I couldn’t respond. I was barely conscious. I think she knew. Maybe she was talking to herself.

She started again. “You have to let me help you. And if you can’t do that, then I have to remove any trace of you from this world. And I don’t think I can do that, but I have to. Because you’re dangerous.” She’s really crying now. Weeping. Her tears make me sad. “Everything about you is dangerous and scary to me and I’ve done a lot of really stupid things to prevent you from causing a lot of harm to a lot of people. And I know I’ve failed already, but I can’t stop now.”

She was still talking, but the haloperidol took hold and I fell into a deep and restful sleep.