The meaning of life had so far eluded Viral during his short, unremarkable time on Earth. To "honor thy parents" was as far as he had gotten on the catechism of self-actualization. What came next, he wondered? How did a boy, like him, become a man, like his father?

"You got a kill him, ninny!"

"What?" Viral said.

Prof. Hackman slapped his knee and bucked like a crowning mare on the bit. "Haven't you read any Joseph Campbell?" he said.

"Like the soup?" Viral asked.

"Any Carl Jung?"

"You mean the folk rock singer?"

"Not Neal Young, ninny. Carl Yooooooong, the psychologist."

"Uhhhh..."

"My boy, have you read any Greek mythology for cripes' sake?"

Viral though back on it. He hadn't read so much about it as seen YouTube videos of people talk about it. "I've listened to Jordan Petersen," Viral said.

The professor palmed his forehead. "Good grief," he said, "I suppose a copy of a copy of a copy is still salient in a digital age." Sitting on the foot of the bed, facing Viral, and flexing his bare toes, he said, "Well, what have you learned from him about manhood?"

Viral felt his throat clam up like he had stumbled into a pop recitation. But the Professor's expression looked more curious than stern, and Viral accepted the risk that Professor Hackman was not asking the question to which he knew the answer. "Well, Jordan Petersen talks a lot about archetypes..."

"Hmm, that's good," Dr. Hackman said approvingly.

"And he says that we have to accept the demands of life as rites of passage into adulthood..."

"Okay, I'm starting to like this fella," Hackman added.

"And...um...and that to run away from life is to stay a little boy like Peter Pan --"

"And then you end up like Michael Jackson," Professor Hackman said.

"Well, sure I guess," Viral said, "But Jor--"

"Tragically misunderstood, figure," Hackman said.

Viral paused. "Wait, huh?" He asked. But Hackman stood, scratching at his growing stubble, and began to pace across the front of the hotel room. Viral pulled his feet closer to the bureau and stood to make room for the professor's amble.

"He never killed his father, that man, Michael," he said. "He sublimated all that aggression into the art -- the exotic costumes, the imposing set pieces, the suggestive crotch cupping."

Viral found himself casing the room for the nearest exit should Dr. Hackman's monologue culminate in an indecent exposure. But the Professor's fly remained taughtly clasped as he turned on his heels and wagged his finger at Viral.

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"You have an opportunity, boy, to do something your father never could."

"What's that?" Viral asked.

"Something for yourself," Hackman said.

Viral felt confused. Throughout his whole life he had never taken a look at his father and wondered at the expanse of his selflessness. In fact, Gagrat Chodha was known, to a man, as the pettiest narcicist who had never run for US President. At a Glencoe fundraising dinner in 2004, even John Edwards refused to shake his hand. How, Viral thought, could thinking of himself first, make him anything but a scion of his father?

By the turned look on Viral's face, Hackman hijacked a ride on the boy's train of thought. Waving his hands and approaching he said, "No, no, not like that. Not in the pursuit of status or fame." He placed his hands on Viral's shoulders and said, "You can surpass him by doing the one thing he never could."

Viral's shoulders fell, not only from the unwelcome touch of Dr. Hackman's mits, but also from the gravity of the cross he had to carry. Viral had hoped through his introduction of mythology and Swiss-German psychoanalysts that Dr. Hackman promised a theology of liberation, sunlight in the shadow of his father's stymying heft. Instead he offered Eucharist, the body and blood of martyrdom, indentured servitude tethered to the rolling behemoth of ambition.

Viral pushed himself away from Dr. Hackman and opened the the dresser that held Farooq's clean drawers. "I don't think so, doc. Elron told me that chasing the carrot of my father's standards would lead to libidinal enervation and deviant extracurriculars like swinging."

"This Elron is a smart man," Dr. Hackman said.

"He's just a boy, like me," Viral said. "He was my roommate at Brown."

"Well, that's the thing, Viral," Dr. Hackman said, sitting on the bed, lifting a pant leg and crossing at the knee. "You're not just a boy. You are your father's son, and sons have one thing that poisonous fathers lack."

"Which is?" Viral asked.

"Anti-venom."

Viral kept silent, waiting for more.

"Why are you staring at me?" Dr. Hackman asked, touching his face self-consciously.

"I thought you were pausing dramatically before explaining."

"Explaining what?"

"Anti-venom for what?"

"For the venom."

Viral shook his head. "Right," he said. Turning back to the open drawer he sorted through Farooq's collection of many-colored synthetic briefs. "Well, I should get going," he said, grabbing a handful of under garments from which he imagined Farooq would like to choose. "Farooq's been waiting."

"What happened with Farooq?" Hackman asked. "Is he okay?"

"I told you," Viral said, "He pooped himself."

"Oh my," Dr. Hackman said.

"Do you not remember?" Viral asked.

"Well, I suppose you may have mentioned it," said Dr. Hackman, reflexively scratching at his cheek.

Viral remembered the sound from behind him while sitting in the chemistry lab at the Bethany Women's College. Had that only been yesterday, he wondered? Had he really seen Officer Avril karate chop a white girl? Had his nose really been that close to Agent Treyna's ass-crack on the stairs leading to the cordoned section of the college's fourth floor?

Viral watched the dead, flaking skin cells drift like mist from Dr. Hackman's cheeks into the current of air waving through the room's incandescent light. Weightless, boyouant the dead cells tumbled and eddied along the whif of central air, presumably to settle amongst the collection of discarded brethren on every surface of the hotel room.

Catching himself supressing a reflex to gag on the notion of fallen folial detritus, he became aware of a low, droning rumble from above. It sounded like a generator, an industrial lowboy the kind of which his father kept stocked with chilled Cabernet in the formal dining room of their house.

Viral walked to the window and pulled back the curtains Dr. Hackman had drawn during his meditative dance. The view from the room was opposite of Viral's, overlooking the backside of the building, the service entrance and knotted alleys of the condensed business district. From above Viral saw a plume of exhaust ushering forth. Lighter and whiter than the smoke from a fire, the cloud reminded Viral of vapors from a dream. Cumulously nimbus but nimble enough to evaporate into dendrites curling toward the greater whole it wished to join the the sky. Falling like ash but rising like mist, the plume looked to Viral like what he imagined came from the surface of a swamp, from the banks of the river called Styxx.