When I woke up I told Dr. Connors everything. About snorting cocaine for 24 hours straight. About taking any form of amphetamine I could get my hands on. About drinking and partying for days at a time and then doing it again and again and again until I could just forget about the world. I told her about doing the BIMPT test so I could get more drugs. I told her about my time testing piss. I told her about the thrill of my adventures at Big Dale’s Auto Plaza. I told her about sitting in the chair at BIMPT. I told her about all the fucked up shit in my life. She asked a lot of questions too. She took a lot of notes. We worked out a system. I would provide her with blood/urine samples, we would do psychological analysis as best she could, and in return I got to stay at her apartment. I was allowed to leave, but if I did, I would never be allowed to come back. She still worked at BIMPT, so she had access to everything she needed and a fully outfitted lab and lab staff. We wanted to figure out what was different about me, why I didn’t respond the same way as everyone else, and hopefully use that to help others. Or at least get a head-start on preventing it from being used to hurt others.
I learned that drugs aren’t my problem. I’m a dopamine addict. That’s what cocaine does. Not feeling so great? Snort some coke! BOOM! Dopamine out the wazoo. That’s what amphetamine does too. Need a boost? BAM. Have a little more dopamine. Both of them were shit compared to the hit I got when I was hurting people. Did the Samskara choose me because of my issues with controlling my dopamine addiction? We couldn’t know. Was I easier for the Samskara to direct? Harder to direct? How come the guy that already had a problem was the guy that also didn’t get melted by the Samskara. I asked Dr. Connors a lot of questions like this. She always said she didn’t know. She said I was an “n of 1”. That meant that she wouldn’t make generalizations about the Samskara based on me alone. That she wasn’t even sure all of it would have the same effect. That I might encounter a different Samskara and it could still kill me or have any other effect. She said the Samskara were chemically different all the time. You could run chemical analyses like I used to do at the piss testing lab on the same batch and different shit showed up day to day. It was constantly morphing, changing. It was self-reactive. I asked her if it was evolving and she looked at me crossly. I guess the thought hadn’t crossed her mind, but she said if it was evolving then all this was pointless because the idea of it getting any more dangerous was basically terminal for our planet.
That stuck with me.
She told me her story too. She was an addict as well, but she was addicted to science, to knowledge. She joined BIMPT because they could scratch her itch. She had a bunch of fancy degrees. BIMPT had recruited her after she got one and she had been there for years. Apparently, they were still a pretty new company, privately held and very secretive, and she was one of their first scientists. She led an entire team on Samskara research, all hush-hush secret shit that they don’t tell people about. I asked her why she stayed if she thought they were evil. It was the same sad story you hear from people who have been chronically abused all the time. BIMPT had changed. They could be better again. She could do more from the inside. She wanted things to be like they were. If she didn’t stop them, who would? She had friends and she just needed to talk some sense into the right people. She wanted to be the inside woman. Stop the wrongs she had started. Same old shit. I think she stayed because she wanted to see it through, to see how her experiments finished. I understood that. Nothing like only getting halfway high to ruin your day.
I was never very high up at my old piss testing job, but it was pretty obvious from her stories these gigantic corporations were mostly the same. The goal is money. All the Mission Statements and Ethics seminars and all that other paper is simply cover for “fuck you, we want to make money”. It was something to show the courts so when they get caught fucking over people, they have someone to point to and say, ‘that person was supposed to stop us, they didn’t, blame them.’ I thought back to my meeting with the dickhead suit at my old piss testing job. I wondered if he still had a job. I wondered what my file said now? Did my former co-employees talk about me to the news? Was I “the quiet one?” Did they tell the whole world I got fired for smoking pot?
I lived the next week or two at her apartment, first on heavy doses of haloperidol, then on clonezapam. They call them “anti-psychotics” clinically. They block the function of dopamine. Dr. Connors had used them in the monkeys before with a modest effect. She was taking my samples to work and testing there, measuring levels of neurotransmitters. I took tests at home and she brought them back to BIMPT. We monitored my symptoms. If I didn’t have some sort of dopamine in my system I started to get this horrible sensation and my body would begin jerking around suddenly. She explained it was called tardive dyskinesia. It fucking sucks. Folks who need to block the effect of dopamine for their disease get it when they take too much of their meds. Unlike everyone else out there though, if I didn’t take enough of my medication it wasn’t like I just had a “bad day.” I literally went apeshit psycho and murdered people by the dozen last time.
I had no idea what she was looking for, what she planned on doing, if she would betray me. I don’t know if I cared. I felt like a time-bomb. At least she was helping? At least I was alive?
I spent a lot of time reading articles about myself. Some of it was wrong (I was doing it to get back at society), some of it was right (I was an addict), some of it was silly (I was Satan himself). Dr. Connors brought home one of the ridiculous magazines next to the grocery store counter who had gotten it closest. They said I was possessed by a demon. Almost right. Closest to true. I wished I could reach out to the author and tell them exactly how close they were.
I spent a lot of time thinking about the homeless guy. The guy trying to put a tent in his car. About the guys sitting on the park bench. About Pearl. A lot about Pearl. I knew Dr. Connors was right, it certainly wasn’t love, or even really lust. I never wanted to hurt her though. That’s all I ever did. I deluded her and lied to her. I got people she liked, maybe even genuinely loved hurt and killed. Then I ended up killing her myself. And others. Many others. I’ve said before I’m not the villain. I still feel like that’s true. I can’t say “I just did what I thought was right” or “I followed my heart”. I just did. Did I even have a choice? Dr. Connors was right about one thing, knowing about Pearl helped. I accepted what I was. I didn’t want to hurt Dr. Connors, or anyone else. I was willing to do whatever it took. She was teaching me how to control the impulses. Don’t get me wrong, I’d read things on the internet about myself and would feel a fire in my guts telling me to find the person and fashion their entrails into a hat, but she could always talk me down. She was half nurse and half mom. I needed her help. I owed her.
Somehow that was enough, so I became a semi-permanent house guest.
The weeks I spent confined in my beautifully ordained penthouse apartment were…happy? I guess happy. I didn’t have responsibilities. I worked hard at kicking my problem. I tried not to think of all the bad things. Dr. Connors was almost always gone. We didn’t talk much. When she was home, she read constantly and cleaned sparingly. We did treatment sessions. She took blood samples. I tried to help out around the house. I tried to be a good roommate. I knew it wasn’t forever though. Nothing like that could be.
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She was later than usual and I was agitated. I was agitated pretty often, but this was verging on grating.
“Dr. Connors, how long is this going to last? What is the next step?”
“I know you are getting restless. I get it. This isn’t a prison. I don’t want to keep you here forever. We are making progress, but science is slow.”
“What are you even making progress on?” I asked.
“I don’t even know yet. The goal is a cure. The goal is something that will allow us to determine what the Samskara are. The goal is to identify the agent in you that provides immunity to the Samskara, fix your brain problems, and solve the Samskara wasting disease. I have friends at the CDC. There are people I can call who will use what you have to benefit others. BIMPT is…BIMPT has changed John. I’ve been there for twenty years. After Pharma was deregulated, things have gotten out of control. We went from passing acquaintances with the military to handshake partners at the same counter. Studies that never would’ve received approval are now being green-lit without so much as a signature on a line identifying who would protect patients. As long as we pay people, we can do whatever we want now. It’s not completely legal, but no one’s watching and there is no way anyone could hope to sue BIMPT or any other major institution without substantial help from another powerful organization.”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
I said what I had been thinking for a while. “If we can’t cure me, if I can’t rejoin society, what happens then?”
Dr. Connors sighed. “John…I don’t think you fully understand. I don’t think there is any way that you won’t be either imprisoned or executed long term. I am sure you have seen the news streams, but you are probably the most reviled person in America right now. There are many people out there that have unfavorably compared you to Adolf Hitler. Even if we could convince everyone of BIMPT’s involvement, I would say the best case for you is lifetime in a criminal mental institution where you can be monitored. No one is going to let you out. No one. I know you don’t like hearing this, but it’s still your best option. Your only other real option is going back to BIMPT where I can only assume they will use you as long as possible before dumping you out with the garbage. That may be 2 days or 20 years. I promise you that none of it will be comfortable and at the end they may well just throw you back into society because no one is going to believe you anyway. There you will face untold ridicule until your eventual lifetime imprisonment/execution as aforementioned. What we are doing here is simply you providing me with enough of a head-start that the eventual re-discovery of your existence doesn’t result in mass casualties. There are many groups looking for someone just like you right now. Do you think China isn’t trying to figure out a way to prevent the Samskara wasting? How about our friends? England? France? You can’t unleash a new weapon and expect people not to grasp for it. Everyone is afraid to touch it right now. It’s like the nukes. If one Samskara bomb goes off, the resulting wars would be catastrophic, unless that is, your side has a major advantage. This is how wars are won, how futures are decided. Pre-emptive military might.”
“So, what do I do now? I am just supposed to sit here and wait around while you use me instead of BIMPT? Why not just go jump off that railing out there? It seems like that would solve a lot of people’s problems. Or why don’t I just walk out the front door, grab a baseball bat and start going to town. At least I could have a little fun then.” It felt like waking up sober. It felt like those moments when I thought about trying to get a new job. It felt like those moments when I wanted to stop and knew I couldn’t. It felt like I was on coke again, and I was running out. “We should stop Dr. Connors. Seriously. When was my last dose of medication? I’m feeling unstable right now.”
Dr. Connor checked the pill timer on my bottle. “John, it was recent. Maybe we need to go back to the haloperidol?”
“Haldol makes me sleepy,” I said.
“We can only continue this as long as you can stay mentally clear.”
I laid down on the couch and placed my hand over my eyes. I tried the meditation strategies I had been reading about on the internet. They helped. Clearing your mind. Think about something peaceful.
“John are you ok?” The good doctor was holding a bottle of haloperidol.
“I’m ok. I’m ok. I’m ok.” I just repeated it over and over. She left without handing me the haloperidol. I continued my meditation.
A month went by. Maybe a bit more. Maybe a bit less. I focused on meditation, and between that and the drugs I was mostly stable. I felt ready for the world. I wanted to make an excursion. All my hair had grown back. I didn’t look that much like the guy who did all the things everyone knew about. I felt like I would be safe. Like I could leave. But I didn’t. All those things that Dr. Connors showed me, said to me, they always lingered at the back of my mind. I was an animal, or worse. I was a timebomb. It was a matter of time until I went off again. I didn’t want to believe it, but I was always worried it was true.
Dr. Connors told me she had made a great deal of progress. I didn’t have the shakes, my dopamine levels were stable, and my “disease” I guess you could call it was in remission. We were using a novel combination of a mild dopamine stimulant called methylphenidate alongside clonezapem. The idea was basically to keep in an artificially stimulated stupor. The clonezapem made me a puppet, and the methylphenidate was like the proverbial hand up my ass providing me locomotion. She took daily blood draws to measure my neurotransmitter levels and we titered the dose as needed.
More importantly, she had been systematically sequencing my genomic code and in her words “identified putative coding regions that would yield splice variants that plausibly explain altered protein folding resulting in a novel phenotype.” It meant nothing to me, but after she explained it…honestly it still meant nothing. I was different and she was figuring out why.
"John, we don’t know why any of this occurred still. We don’t know why you’re different. Your mutation is random. This finding is incredible though. Now that we know what the changes are, that we have actually defined them in someone exposed to Samskara, we can begin studying so many things. We can understand the intricate biological mechanisms that make you different. Decades of research open up. We can go to my friends at the CDC. We can give this information to them and we can make sure that your mutation, your unique genetic signature is used for the benefit of mankind.”
“Aren’t we just handing it to the US government? I thought that was bad.” I was pacing around the room. Sometimes it helped to move. “Who is to say they don’t just do whatever they would’ve done anyway?”
“We aren’t selling it to the Department of Defense. The technology is there though. The sort of science that I am doing with your samples, companies do these things all the time. It isn’t complicated once you have the material. We’ve talked about this. We can’t turn back time. Someone is going to get it. If we give this to scientists, good and benevolent scientists, we can turn your misfortune into a positive. We can use this to help people. To cure illness.” Megan was compelling when she needed to be. She had talked me off this same ledge over and over.
I was still sulking though. “Then what happens to me?”
“My hope is that you turn yourself in. If you don’t, then I will find a place we can hopefully institutionalize you,” she said.
I paused. “Excuse me?”
“John nothing has changed. You are still a massive danger to anyone around you. You should be in a mental institution. You will be monitored. You will be safe. You can have a life there. You might not get married and have children, but there is a life. Safe. Away from danger. Away from others. I can’t allow you to just run free. We know what will happen.” The look in her eyes was pity. She pitied me. To her, I was a sick creature. An animal that needed to be put down, but she just couldn’t do it.
“So why did I come here? What was the purpose? Why even bother getting my disease into remission? You told me BIMPT just treats me like a lab rat and then turns me out to die. How the fuck was this any different if you are going to do the same thing. This is humane? ‘Oh John, you can help society. Oh John, all these corporations are just going to use you.’ It’s the same god damn thing with you. This is better? Because I get to spend my years drooling away in a nursing home next to a bunch of nutjobs? What about the people at BIMPT? Who is going to punish them? This isn’t my fault Dr. Connors. I am not an angel, but I didn’t deserve this. I volunteered for a god damn clinical trial, and it has been nothing but a trail of my own blood from there to here and for what? For…what’s wrong? Hey, where are you going?”
Dr. Connors eyes went dark. She ran from the room and began furiously typing into her computer. Her hands were shaking. She was logging into her worksite. She started pulling up a bunch of files. I watched her stare at her computer and then pick up the mouse and drop it. She ripped the cable from the wall, smashed open the laptop with a hammer and began pulling the parts and sticking them in some sort of magnetic bag.
“Care to explain what is happening?”
“Shit…Shit, shit shit.”
I watched her open a wall safe I hadn’t known was there, pull out a bag of materials and grab her purse and keys.
“Turn off all the lights. Don’t open the door for anyone. There is a gun in that wall safe. If anyone comes back before me…If anyone comes back before me then the code is 9847.”
“What is happening though? You haven’t told me what’s happening,” I said.
“You left a trail of blood John. Your exact words. I remember seeing your hand that day. This is my fault. I should’ve thought about it.”
“Wait, what does that have to do with anything?” I asked.
She screamed at me. The only time ever. Exasperated. Tired. Defeated. “They already have your DNA! Your protein!! From your blood!!! You bled all over their facility. All the things I’ve been doing the past 5 weeks, they’ve been doing it too. They’ve had it all along. I was so stupid. And I helped them! Hell, I did it all for them. They’ve been watching me the whole time. All my files had coded accession values from sources other than me. I assumed it was QC type stuff that can’t see the underlying data. I have to go check at work, but I think we are out of time. I need my files. They don’t know we know yet though. I am going to get the remaining files. Our only hope is Plan B.”
“What’s Plan B?” I asked.
“You always asked me what we do if we are successful, you never asked me what we would do if we failed.” She flipped a burner phone out of her bag at me. “Plan B is we do things your way. I need to make some calls. I need to go to work. I have a few things I have to get or this won’t work. Turn out the lights. Don’t answer the door. Go somewhere dark and stay there. If I call, answer. If anyone else calls, you’re “fucked” to borrow your own parlance. Do whatever you need to do. I am sorry I trapped you and I am sorry things turned out this way. Good luck. I hope we see each other again.”
“Ok? I guess? I don’t know how to do this without you Doc. Please, I hope we see each other again too.”
There was a long pause. “Your next dose is scheduled for what? 2.5 hours from now.”
I told her it was a little less. “What are you getting at?”
Longer pause. “Don’t take it. I’ll see you soon.”