Terry “Gadget” Anders — a slash of his dark sandy hair falling across his chocolate-brown eyes, his Advanced Electronics Engineering textbook open on the table in front of him next to three empty cans of Red Bull — sat alone in the kitchen of the apartment he shared with his two best friends, Zoe Deschain and Wayne “Mystikite McKracken” Schmidinger, on Saturday, April 10, 2027, at 8:45 P.M., and toyed gingerly with the .38 caliber revolver he held in his hands. He turned it over slowly, carefully, pondering its weight; the cool metal as it touched his skin; the efficiency of its design. It would be so easy, he told himself. He probably wouldn’t even feel it. He wondered what his last thought would be.
Go on, do it, said the voice of his snarky, inner critic, the Beast inside him who never seemed to shut up. Go on, do it. Put it to your temple and blow your fucking brains out. Let’s see if you’ve got the guts.
Well if you’d give me a second. I’m trying to be serene in my last few moments on Earth!
Indeed. Why continue this pointless John Hughes comedy that had stretched long into his thirties? Why keep on going when it was always going to be the same rollercoaster ride? Doing this would leave one hell of a mess for his grieving, freaked-out friends to clean up, though. And such an act would devastate his poor mother. It would tear her apart even more than his father’s death had twenty years before. He didn’t want to leave her to face the world alone, or abandon her to mourn that empty chair every year at Thanksgiving and Christmas. But there was no other path to peace, was there? What other way was there to end this horrible cycle of emotional violence that his brain visited upon him every goddamn day? He couldn’t see one.
Depression could kick your ass harder than a bat’leth-wielding Klingon drunk on blood-wine and in a bad mood. It made you care about nothing. But anxiety made you care way too much about everything, like an over-caffeinated empath from Betazed; you felt too much and too deeply, whereas with depression, you felt a sort of numbness to the world, an emptiness that could not be filled. Feeling both things at the same time was like being torn in twain by a pair of wild Direhorses. Now, the euphorias . . . those were nice. When the world seemed so alive with a burning incandescence that it threatened to immolate you in the fires of ecstasy. Those rocked. But then came the aftermath. When it all came crashing down in flames, your soul flung into the abyss. When you were flung into a black hole from which no ray of hope could escape, your mind the randomized quantum data that it spat back out but that remained trapped within its accretion disk, the debris of shattered dreams and broken relationships. Shreds of sanity would cloud the event horizon, and within its shadows, there would dwell dark elves whose cruel voices would taunt and mock you. This was schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. This was what he lived with day in, day out.
Today’s trip on Willy Wonka’s boat ride had started with the rejection letter from the American Society for Physical Sciences. They hadn’t wanted his latest paper on evaluating the potential impact of what he called “theoretical Psi forces” on the phenomenon of quantum wavefunction collapse. “Pseudoscience” was the word they had used. They didn’t care that he had observable data. Didn’t care that he had verifiable proof. Didn’t care that he had demonstrated the effects, in a laboratory, on camera. “Too given to generate undo controversy for the pages of this esteemed journal,” they had said. And on down toward the black hole he and the Beast had gone.
No one could live like this. The meds were supposed to help. The goddamn meds that his goddamned psychiatrist had prescribed, that the bastard had said would help — yes, for sure, this time they would help; these drugs were better — but that, goddamn it, weren’t helping just now. This was dysphoric mania mingled with depression — a mixed-mood state, common to his diagnosis — at its worst. Goddamn it. No. No one can live like this!
You’re right, whispered the Beast. So go ahead. Prove it.
He would. He would so prove it. If he could summon up the courage to just do it already, to get it over and done with. To simply put the gun to his head and pull the trigger. So quick, so easy. So difficult.
Go on, whispered the Beast. It’ll be painless.
Gadget forced his hands to stop shaking. He pulled back the hammer and locked it into firing position. Put the gun to his head. Closed his eyes. This was it. Game over, man; game over. No going back. Unless, of course . . .
Wait. What if . . . what if there actually is a God, and there is an afterlife? What if there is a Hell, and the Catholics are right and suicide is a mortal sin and as soon as I die, I go straight there? Or what if there’s reincarnation? What if I come back as, like, a frog or some shit? I don’t want to be a frog. I’d get stepped on. Or what if the Vikings were right and there’s a Valhalla? I’m not sure I’m ready for all that drinking and fighting. I’d get my ass kicked for sure. Maybe there’s a Sto’Vo’Kor, the Klingon heaven; though that’s pretty much just Valhalla, but with Klingons. Maybe it’s the Grey Havens, where Frodo and Bilbo are. That’d be nice. Just to sail away on a boat, into the West, to be with Galadriel and Elrond. But yeah, it’s probably Hell. But then again, holy shit, what if I’m right. What if there is no afterlife, no Heaven, no Hell, no frogs, nothing, and it’s just . . . well, nothing? Just the cold vacuum of obliteration? God, what if I do this and I just cease to exist, my consciousness just becoming so much excess heat fading into the cosmic microwave background? That’d be nice and peaceful, I guess, but God would that ever suck, to just become . . . so much television static. Dude. No way. I can’t do this.
He opened his eyes and let out a long slow breath. Still shaking, he pointed the gun away from himself and disarmed it. He opened the chamber and spilled the ammunition out onto the table. He let out another heavy breath.
Well. That had sure been exciting.
Gadget closed his eyes and sat the gun down on top of his engineering textbook, and slumped back in the chair, breathing a sigh of relief. Then he just sat there for a moment, shaking. He had always disliked guns. Like Obi Wan Kenobi had said of blasters: “So uncivilized.” Then again, that hadn’t stopped good ol’ Ben from shooting General Grievous right in the lungs with one, now had it? Nope, sure hadn’t.
Yeah, congratulations, said the voice of his snarky, inner-critic. The Beast again. You can’t even do suicide right. You fucking pussy. Why do your friends put up with you, again?
He didn’t really have an answer for that. He gripped the sides of his head, leaned forward, and moaned quietly. Dammit, he wanted to rip the thoughts out of his mind with his bare hands!
Frustrated, he leaned back in the chair and let go of his head, put his hands in his lap, and sighed. He looked to his right, to the gun, to the textbook; to his laptop computer, and to the engineering marvel that sat just beyond them on the table. There it was . . . just sitting there.
A device that — had they known it existed — the U.S. military would’ve killed for.
That the U.S. Energy Department would’ve killed for.
That the American Physical Society would’ve drooled over. (That one made him smirk.)
Yes, there it was. The thing he had spent nearly thee years constructing, perfecting, only to meet with total failure at first . . . and yet, with complete success beyond his wildest dreams. With it, he had succeeded in unlocking the door to a whole new paradigm of thought, consciousness, even entirely new laws of physics. And it promised him power — dominion, even — over a world that had been nothing but cruel to him . . . a lure of power he had to actively resist, no matter how weak he might feel: The “Mind-Weirding” Helm, as Mystikite had christened it. The ultimate in superheroic — or, supervillainous? Maybe — fashion accessories.
Mental illness was a matter of the way the brain was configured at a chemical level; certain processes went on in the brain that released neurotransmitters, processed them, and recycled them in greater or lesser amounts than they did in neurotypical people. This in turn caused differing neurological structures to develop over a number of years, causing differences in brain function: The processing of emotions, the handling of stress, the way creativity and memory and perception were dealt with, etcetera, even as variances in neurotransmitter production and processing continued. This in turn affected the electromagnetic fields produced by the brain’s operation that surrounded the head of the owner of the brain.
Gadget had reasoned that it might be possible to affect this process in reverse; that is, to reconfigure the electromagnetic fields in and around the brain, such as to reconfigure the production and processing of neurotransmitters, and thus reconfigure the brain neurologically. So he had built a machine to do just that. He had initially called this The Neurolytic Adjustment Device (a far cry from the much-cooler sounding name it currently bore).
And of course, it hadn’t worked as planned. When he had tested it on himself — wasn’t that what all good mad scientists were supposed to do? — he’d found that while it didn’t cure mental illnesses . . . it did do something else.
Something remarkable.
The fifth incarnation of the device — he’d since redesigned it, the new design fully embracing its reworked, newfound purpose — sat on the table next to him. And yes, oh yes, it beckoned with the allure of the phenomenal power it promised him.
It wasn’t much to look at: The plastic helmet of an old-fashioned hair-salon hairdryer, festooned with vacuum tubes, cables, copper coils of wire, several circuit boards stuffed with microchips, capacitors, and transistors; six cans of liquid nitrogen, their tiny hoses leading to and fro, strapped to the perimeter; bright, rainbow-colored ribbon-cables plugged into the circuit boards and running back and forth; an old-school bronze electrical gauge connected to a power supply, its innards on display; several winking status lights, borrowed from a coffee pot and a microwave oven; a USB-C port with a set of wires leading to it: a collection of ten D-cell batteries along the left side, affixed in a makeshift plastic holder with wires running to their caps; a toggle switch right next to them, stolen from a wall-plate in the bathroom (and now the fan in the bathroom no longer worked). Yes, an unassuming contraption made from spare parts and a few uncommon ones — like the “room temperature” superconducting quantum interferometry devices. It wasn’t finished yet; a blue-tinged circuit board lay to one side, ready to be attached. But what it lacked in looks, it made up for in power.
And that kind of power came with grave responsibilities attached; uncle Ben’s mantra — “With great power . . .” — and all that happy horseshit.
And I’m pretty sure, he thought, that a guy who sits in his apartment at nine o’clock at night thinking about offing himself really isn’t the best guy to be handling”great power.”
Gadget picked up the gun and bullets, and walked down the hall to Mystikite and Zoe's room. He walked in — it always felt strange, entering their room without permission; after all, he wouldn’t like it if they trespassed in his sanctum, now would he? — dug under the bed, found Mystikite’s lock box, undid the lid with the key that Mystikite didn’t know he had, stowed the gun and ammo, and then hurriedly left. Ugh. He was glad to be out there. Their room always smelled like sex and leather and awkwardness.
He sat back down at the kitchen table and sighed again. He glanced at the Dr. Manhatten Helmet and drummed his fingers on the tablecloth. Oh well. Resisting temptation had never been his strong suit, anyway. The box of Twinkies oe had bought at the grocery the day before now stood empty as a testament to his awesome willpower.
“Oh why the seven hells not,” he said. “Yeah, this’ll be fun.”
He picked up the Helm. As Marty McFly would’ve said — “Heavy.” He put it on, made sure it fit snugly, then tightened the leather chin-strap. He reached up and flipped the toggle switch.
His senses filled with the hum of the vacuum tubes warming up and the acrid odor of electricity. Gadget closed his eyes, and concentrated. And suddenly, a veil lifted. The skin of the world peeled back, allowing him to glimpse the muscle and bone beneath and the current sparking up and down its nerves. He could hear them: The other people in the building, thinking; those outside, on the sidewalk; across the street, too. Could hear their thoughts, like chatter from overlapping radio stations; a hundred different voices, some in memories, some from imaginary arguments that hadn’t taken place yet; others from thoughts of the present moment. Images and emotions flitted through his mind. The creepy guy down the hall sexually fantasized about the girl who lived across from him and pictured her in her underwear. The teenager who lived with the couple upstairs cried and pictured her boyfriend dating her best friend. The woman upstairs fretted over paying her bills and cooked spaghetti as she watched a soap opera. The guy outside walking his dog thought about getting a promotion at work. The cab driver passing in front of the apartment smelled an oil leak in his engine and thought about Plato’s Republic, and about studying for his Philosophy exam. It all ran together, yet flowed by in separate streams. It was a rush unlike any other. A tidal wave, an onslaught of voices, images, smells . . . sounds . . . impressions . . . feelings.
The monsoon washed over him — no; flowed though him — like an ocean wave passing through a hydroelectric dam. He clenched his fists, shut his eyes, leaned into the onslaught, and then did what his therapist had taught him to do whenever he had an anxiety attack.
Breathe. Just breathe. Slow and deep, in through the nose and out through the mouth. Breathe. Just breathe.
“Whoa,” he said, channeling his inner Keanu Reeves. Shit, I’ve actually gotten halfway good at this.
He continued to breathe deeply, and smiled. Yeah, this was getting easier.
Telepathy, and shutting out the other voices, was all well and good . . . but that wasn’t what he wanted to focus on just now. No. For now, he wanted to focus on one of the harder skills to master — telekinesis.
He took a look around the kitchen and raised an eyebrow. “Holy hoarders-in-a-Hobbit hole, Batman, this place is a fucking wreck!”
The kitchen looked as though a locomotive had smashed into a cooking show. Since Zoe worked as a resident at St. Mungojerry’s Kingdom Hospital, and spent the other half of her time at Morchatromik U, and Mystikite spent most of his time working on the NeuroScape project for Mechanology, it fell to Gadget to do cleanup duty. (He himself only worked part-time in the Morchatromik U computer lab, offering tech support to confused freshmen and faculty.) And since was the neat-freak, always harping on the other two for their slovenliness, well . . .
“Well,” he said, shaking his head, his smile broadening, “Carpe diem, I guess. Before someone invents a a time machine, traps you in a time paradox, forces you into a closd, time-like loop, or cancels out your existence.”
He turned to face the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. He put two fingers to his right temple, in imitation of Professor X, and visualized two wispy tendrils of plasma-like energy reaching out from his head and spiraling toward the sink. The tendrils wrapped around the faucet and turned on the water, plugged the sink, and levitated the dishes and scrub brush into the air. Another wispy tendril squeezed soap into the water and dipped the dishes into it as the other tendril began scrubbing them with the scrub brush. Yet more tendrils branched out and opened the bottom cabinet doors and got out the Windex and sponges, and sprayed the countertops and began wiping them down. A ghostly tendril opened the closet and another one dragged out the Swiffer wet-jet and began mopping the floor. The dumped over cereal box and the dirty bowls on the breakfast bar righted themselves and levitated on tendrils of power over to the sink where they splashed down into the soapy water.
Gadget moved his free hand to direct the tendrils of energy, keeping the other hand at his temple with his two fingers pressed there. None of that was, he knew, strictly necessary, but it helped him . . . so in a way, it was.
“Eat your heart out, David Haller!” He laughed, all thoughts of ending it all now only a dim, receding memory. It felt so good to laugh, after the torment of the depressive cycle he had been caught in. (His particular flavor of mood disorder was referred to as “rapid cycling”; he sometimes suffered from mood shifts within hours of each other. It could be horrific when it struck like it had.) He was proud of himself; he had gotten so much better at this in only two weeks’ time. And, he had developed a tolerance for the side-effects of the Helm; just two weeks prior, this little exercise would’ve worn him out completely, and would’ve probably given him a severe headache or a lasting nosebleed.
Then, the lock on the kitchen door tumbled and the door opened. Startled, Gadget turned around. The dishes went crashing and splashing down into the sink, splattering water — a few shattered on impact — and the Swiffer dropped in its tracks and clattered to the floor as well. The sponges all flopped to the counter, splashing. The ghostly tendrils in Gadget’s visualization vanished. The door opened the rest of the way, revealing Mystikite, a tallish lank figure standing there in a black t-shirt and jeans with a studded belt, his dyed-black hair askew from the wind outside, wearing sunglasses even though it was four in the morning and balancing a bag of groceries in one hand, his work duffle-bag over his shoulder, and a small brown delivery box under one arm.
“Mystikite!” cried Gadget, grinning, ignoring the broken dishes. “Dude! You’re home! Where the hell have you been?”
“Out, good sir,” replied Mystikite. “At the liquor store! Where else?” He sat the bag on the table and began pulling out bottles. “Let’s see, we’ve got Aftershock, Tullamore Don’t, Vodka, Maker’s Mark, and oh well shit. I fucking forgot. You’re not allowed to have alcohol with your medication, are you.”
Gadget sighed and put a hand on Mystikite’s shoulder. “It’s okay, dude. You and Zoe can still get toasty without me this week. I’ll be fine. Besides, it’s gonna be fun being the only sober person at con. I’ll just film you two on my iPhone. The footage of you two drunk off your asses will make for great blackmail material someday.”
“That’s my boy,” said Mystikite, grinning. He looked around the kitchen. “Jesus, what happened in here? Looks like somebody botched a saving throw or something.”
“Um, more beta testing?” offered Gadget, pointing to the Dr. Manhatten Helmet with a shrug.
“Beta testing?” asked Mystikite. His eyes widened. “Don’t tell me you got telekinesis working — ”
“I did,” said Gadget, beaming with pride. Now this made him feel good again. “I had about five streams going at once! Then you came in and — ”
“Dude, five streams? That’s incredible! We have to tell Zoe. But she’s going to kill you for destroying the dishes her mom gave her. You’re dead meat, dude.”
“‘Meat . . . for the Beast!’” cried Gadget in a gutteral, beastial voice. “Heh heh heh. But hey — if you two weren’t such sloppy-ass pigs and did your own dishes, maybe they wouldn’t have gotten broken in the first place. Just sayin’.”
“Gak! He insults me!” said Mystikite, and put his hand over his chest and smiling. “I used to be an adventurer like you, until I took an insult to the knee!”
“That’s right bitch. I will cut you.”
“You, sir, are a scruffy nerf herder.”
“‘And you look like a bucket of shit!’” they both declared in unison.
“Look,” said Mystikite, after they had both quit laughing. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Okay, sure. What?”
“It’s about con this year. Look. There’s going to be over four thousand attendees this year. And I know you have . . . well. Issues. Y’know. With social anxiety, and whatnot. So — ”
“Dude, no,” said Gadget. “Meesa thinkin’ you be talkin’ da bombad crazy talk, Masta Jedi.”
“Yeah,” said Mystikite, “but I know you have these . . . issues. And yousa keep-a talkin’ like-a dat, and meesa gonna punch you in da crotch.”
“Well yeah, but my issues are my issues. I’ll deal with them. I won’t let them ruin con for all three of us.”
“Well okay. But I’d totally understand if you didn’t want to risk going and, y’know, maybe freaking out.” He quickly followed that with: “I mean, not that I don’t have confidence that you wouldn’t try to not freak out, or anything. I mean — it’s just — y’know — I know how bad it gets for you, sometimes. And I don’t want you to . . . to jeopardize all the progress you’ve made. That’s all.”
“Dude,” said Gadget, carefully marshaling the anger he felt flaring up inside his chest, “I am so not going to freak out. Don’t worry, I’ve got . . . I’ve got this. I know you’re just concerned. But really. I’ve got it under control.”
The Beast whispered in his ear: Do you? Do you really?
“You’re sure. I mean, it’s okay if, y’know, you want to sit this year out and — ”
“No.” Gadget clenched his fists. “Not going to happen. We’re going”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Well . . . I also know you sometimes doubt your decisions to do things right up until the last minute. I’m just letting you know that if you decide not to go, that’s okay with me and Zoe. But by the same token, I don’t want you to miss out on con this year and then turn around and hate yourself for not going. I mean, I for one really think you should go.”
“But I am going,” he said. The Beast whispered again: Are you? “And that’s final.” Is it? Are you sure? He cleared his throat. “Me, you, and Zoe are gonna get dressed up in our best cosplay, and are gonna go to FantazmagoriCon XVIII at the Renaissance Regency Hotel and Convention Center in Boston, and are gonna have the time of our lives. Hell. I might even meet someone.” The Beast whispered again: Are you crazy? You’ll never meet anyone. You’ll die alone. He went on: “You never know. Seriously, dude. I am so psyched for this week it’s not even funny. So don’t worry about me. I can handle it. We look forward to this all year. There’s no way in hell I’d let what’s wrong with me screw that up for either myself or the two of you. Trust me on that. Besides, you already bought all this booze.”
“Well, alright,” said Mystikite. He sighed. “I’m sorry I doubted you. I should be more encouraging and positive, I guess. I suppose I’m not a very good friend, sometimes.” He paused, and then widened his eyes and grimaced, and raised his voice an octave as he intoned: “Dobby has not been positive enough! Dobby is a bad elf! Dobby must punish himself!” He picked up the engineering textbook from off the kitchen table and began whacking himself in the forehead with it repeatedly whilst chanting over and over: “Dom-in-ae-oos req-ui-em . . .”
Gadget couldn’t help it; he cracked up laughing. “Okay, er, dude, you can stop that anytime now,” he said through his chuckles and a wide grin. “That can’t be good for your brain.”
“Right you are,” said Mystikite, and he put the book down. “Whew. My brain hurts! It’s got to come out! But anyway. Where was I?”
“You were talking about me having social anxiety. Which I assure you is totally under control.” The laughter had snapped his anger apart and broken it. But still. His heart sped up. Four thousand people. Could he do that? The voice of the Beast whispered to him, No, you can’t. You know you can’t. Four thousand other people, all staring at you. All silently judging you. All inwardly laughing at you and how ridiculous you look in that stupid costume. C’mon. You know you can’t handle that, right? He swallowed. “Besides. My therapist and I have talked about me doing that to myself. Cheating myself out of things because of my anxiety. So trust me . . . I am not going to cheat myself — or you and Zoe — out of con this year.”
He pictured Renaissance Regency Hotel And Convention Center in downtown Cambridge late at night with FantazmagoriCon in full swing: Couples making out on balconies, the whole place commandeered for Live Action Roleplaying, with plenty of people up and about even though the clock had struck one. The main lobby would echo with the gleeful strums of filkers hard at work at the jam session. The game room would still rattle with dice; late-night games of Magic or D&D. The Dealers’ room would begin to empty out soon and would, eventually, turn out the lights, counting their earnings for the day while getting ready for the next. Room parties would rock on into the night and would begin to rev up to escape velocity; the booze would flow freely and people would tell slurred jokes of the geeky variety, with a lot of traffic between rooms as people coupled and split up, trysted and danced, sang and drank and played Twister; raucous laughter would bubble up and sexcapades would commence; toasts would be made. Pagan rites would be celebrated, costumes would be shed, and Mundanes would be freaked. He had to go.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” said Mystikite. “Go, we shall. And fun, we shall have. Mm, Yoda I am. Now if we can pause the conversation for just one second, I gotta prepare for work here. Gimme a second to get unpacked here.”
He sat his duffle bag down in the chair where Gadget had just been sitting, and unzipped it. He reached in and got out his laptop, and sat it on the table and opened it. It came on automatically. He then reached in and retrieved his NeuroScape “NeuroBand Headset” device. It looked like a solid aluminum visor about six centimeters wide, and half a centimeter thick in the middle; it had suffused lights beneath the metal at either end. He also removed the NeuroBand Transmitter, a silvery aluminum brick, which he hooked to his laptop via a special silvery cable. The laptop, the Transmitter, and the Headset were not standard goods from any consumer-products manufacturer; they were special-issue from Mechanology, the company that Mystikite worked for on contract as a freelance software developer; they were truly one-of-a-kind pieces of technology. Of course, they weren’t the only pieces of tech in the house to have come from Weatherspark Dynamics' labs . . .
“At least, I think I can handle it,” said Gadget. Could he really, though? Four thousand people . . .
“Let me teach you a mantra that I like to use that helps get me pumped up before big meetings at work,” said Mystikite. He began typing a series of commands into the terminal window that appeared on his computer screen.
“Alright,” said Gadget. “Go for it.”
“Close your eyes.”
“Okay.” Gadget did so.
“Now put your arms out to your sides, palms up, and tilt your head back slightly.”
“Okay, got it.”
“Now. Repeat after me: Myyyyy . . . peeeeeenis . . . iiiiiisss . . . laaaaaaarge.”
“Myyyyyy — what?”
“Just chant.”
“Alright. Ahem. Myyyy . . . peeeenis . . . iiiisss . . . laaaaarge.”
“Iiiiiiinnn . . . chaaaaaarge.”
“Uh, Iiiiiinn . . . chaaaarge.”
“Aaaaaand . . . freeeequently . . . miiiiistaaaaken . . . forrrr . . . aaaaaaa . . . baaaaarge.”
“Aaaand freeeeequently miiiissstaaaaken forrr a — is this supposed to help me with my social anxiety?”
“Well, it always helps me feel empowered,” said Mystikite. “And plus in my case, it’s actually true. You have no idea how big my penis is.”
“And I’m glad that I — “
“It’s gargantuan.”
“Er — ”
“Enormous.”
“Dude.”
“Positively Brobdingnagian.”
“You’re more delusional than a Batman villain. You know that, right?”
“Well if I knew that, I wouldn’t be delusional,” said Mystikite. He turned on his laptop and it booted almost instantly. He clicked an icon and a window opened, showing a scantily-clad pregnant woman and a man standing next to her wearing sunglasses. “Gah! Just great! I fire up Chrome and what do I get first thing? News that Kimmy Kazarkian is expecting her another baby and is showing off her ‘very fine baby-bump’ in public spaces. I don’t need to know this. Nor do I need to know that her dumbass rap-star husband Konrey East is babbling about his political opinions again. Is this what Normal People — Mundanes — is this what they find interesting?”
“I guess,” said Gadget. “I pay very little attention to what Mundanes do with their free time.”
“But I mean — Jeez — is this it? I mean, Kim Kazarkian and her baby bump? I mean, you and me — we spend our time thinking about dragons, rocket ships, time machines. . . . life on other worlds . . . medieval magic and sorcery . . . shit that actually enriches the mind and engages the imagination circuits. But Normal people? Baby bumps and rap stars, and that’s as far as it goes, I guess.”
“Well, they’re not on the same wavelength we are, dude. They’re not . . . they’re not like us. That’s why we call them ‘Mundanes,’ after all.”
“Heh, yeah, I guess so. Shit, man. If that was all there was to life — I mean, if I really thought that’s all there was — fucking gossip about Kim Kazarkian and Britney Spears, and what Oprah and Ellen were up to with their talk shows — I think I’d probably chuck myself off a bridge and just be done with it.”
You should do that, the Beast whispered in his ear. His eye twitched.
“There’s no accounting for what you wash your brain out with,” he said. “Some peoples’ paradigm of reality is a little more static than ours is. It’s no wonder we’re the ‘weird’ people, right?”
“Heh, yeah. Hey — have you got your cosplay all ready? What is it you’re going as this year, again?” He made a few more mouse clicks, and started typing out code in a new window. Another window appeared with various geometric forms in it, all rotating around on various axes, with ticking numbers beside them.
Gadget grinned. “I’m going as a mad engineer. The world is full of mad scientists, mad doctors. But you never hear about the mad engineers.”
“What do they do — calculate you to death?”
“No, asshole, smartass, they’re the ones who actually build crazy shit. Look, see, I’ve got it all planned out. I’ll wear a tweed jacket and pants, a button-up shirt, bow-tie, and sneakers, sort of like my Eleventh Doctor costume — ”
“In other words, your Eleventh Doctor costume — ”
“Uh, yeah. And my tool-belt, of course. And a pocket-protector, with my big Texas Instruments TI-192 CAS calculator shoved into it. And on my head, I’ll wear the Dr. Manhatten Helmet. Deactivated, of course. I don’t want four thousand screaming voices in my head every second I’m at the con.”
“You will be the picture of geekdom.”
“That’s the idea! And that’s even gonna be part of my ‘nym this year. My name-tag will read, ‘Gadget Gadgorak Prime.’ Gadget, because that’s the nickname you and Zoe gave me years ago — ”
“I like the other nickname we gave you better.”
“What other nickname?”
“Fuckface.”
“Oh fuck off.”
“Gotta wait for Zoe to get home for that.” He smiled without looking up from his work and wiggled his eyebrows up and down.
Gadget rolled his eyes. “Anyway. And ‘Gadgorak’ because — ”
“Anorak,” said Mystikite, raising a finger, “because you stole ‘Anorak’ from Ready Player One, and the ‘Z’. . . hmmm . . . lemme see. I’m gonna guess . . . ‘Zork,’ the text adventure? No, no, that’s not it. Hmm. Lemme think. Z. Z. Not Zardoz, you’re not that perverse. Perhaps . . . ‘Zartan?’ From G.I. Joe? A misfit who mastered the art of blending in?”
Gadget couldn’t believe it. He’d guessed it in under a minute. All he could say was, “Damn, you’re good, dude.”
“I pride myself on my detective skills. I’m Batman.”
“No you’re not.”
“I’m Batman.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m Batman.”
Gadget sighed. “This isn’t going to end until I admit that you’re Batman, is it.”
“Nope!”
“Fine. You’re Batman.”
Mystikite grinned. “Why thank you, good sir! I take that as a compliment!”
“Well, besides, I didn’t exactly steal anything . . . ‘Gadgorak’ isn’t like my character’s ‘main name.’ Gadgorak is Gadget Prime’s middle name.”
“Yeah, yeah. Thief.” Mystikite returned to his work.
“Nuh-uh!”
“Yeah-huh! Now the truth comes out! ‘Now we see the violence inherent in the system!’”
“‘Help, help! I’m being repressed!’” cried Gadget. “Speaking of virtual reality, how’s the NeuroScape project coming?”
Mystikite sighed, and glanced over the code in one of the windows on his laptop’s screen, then resumed working on it.
“Well since I’ve been sitting here talking to you, it mostly isn’t. But since you asked, it’s coming along well. We’re on track to deploy and go public by 2035, eight years from now, if all goes well. and by ‘if all goes well,’ I mean we get to actual human beta-testing by 2029 outside of ‘core personnel,’ meaning we happy few who get to be guinea pigs for the tech before it’s ready for prime time. Well, us and the people we tell about it who we’re not actually supposed to. Y’know. People who aren’t even supposed to know it exists, people like our spouses, and our . . . best friends.” He slid his eyes sideways and regarded Gadget for a moment. “You haven’t told anyone about it, have you?”
“What, who, me?” said Gadget. “Tell anyone? No, no way.”
“Not even your mom?”
“Nope.”
“Come on. You tell your mom everything.”
“Not this. I haven’t said a word about the NeuroScape to anybody except you and Zoe, and she already knows about it, so she doesn’t count. I swear upon my Klingon sense of honor.”
The NeuroScape was Mechanology’ answer to the Internet itself. It was the world’s first virtual, consensual world. But it went a step further than simple “virtual reality.” The NeuroScape — as its name implied — was neural. It plugged directly into the nervous system, allowing the system full access to the user’s cerebral cortex. Sights, sounds, smells, touch, taste . . . it was all there for the system to play with. The cool splash of water on your skin. The brush of hair against your forehead. The bitter taste of green tea with no sugar in it. The strain of your muscles as you lifted a heavy rock that had the texture of sand-grit to its surface, under a hot sun in a cloudless sky on a humid day, the sweat causing your silk shirt to stick to your skin. In the NeuroScape, the blind could see visions. The lame could walk on virtual legs. Those who had lost limbs could swim and walk and dance with their virtual bodies — called Avatars, bound to their real-world nervous systems via adaptive metasynaptic software — and could be anything they wanted to be, have any experience in any environment imaginable. Want to have sex with a famous movie star? Simply create an Avatar for them and program a game-engine A.I. to replicate their personality . . . if you had the hacking skills, that was. And it would feel real. And it wouldn’t be just polygons and pixels . . . or 3D-rendered textures and smooth lines . . . No. It would be indistinguishable in texture and substance from the real world; another “reality” unto itself. Want to go hiking on Mount Doom, from Middle-Earth James Bond? No problem. Just don’t accidentally freeze to death or fall into the lava with the Safety Protocols turned off . . . or you’d actually die in the real world too, you moron. And there was more: The ability to download information, straight into the cerebral cortex. And maybe — if the stars aligned just right and Mystikite could get the code to work — the ability to extract information from the cortex as well, and use it as the building blocks to create custom dreamworlds . . .
“Well, just remember,” said Mystikite, continuing to code as he spoke, “if Weatherspark Dynamics finds out that I’ve told anybody outside the company about it, they’ll have my head on a platter with truffle sauce and cheese wedges. This is a big deal, dude. I had to sign an NDA a thousand pages thick, in my own blood, in triplicate, promising my firstborn child as a Satanic sacrifice in advance if I ever broke it or even whispered a word about it to outsiders before they were even willing to show me the basic concept-sketches. Until they’re ready to release that stuff to the world, it doesn’t exist. Right?”
“Right,” said Gadget. “God, what would they say if they knew you actually let me use the NeuroScape? And let me work on it with you? And — gasp — let me tinker with it?”
“I don’t even want to think about it,” said Mystikite. “Pass the Pepto, please. But speaking of the shit that will get Men in Black sent to our door, how’s your work going on integrating the NeuroScape with the Dr. Manhatten Helmet? Got any new breakthroughs to tell me about?”
Gadget sighed. He picked up the blue-tinged circuit board off the table, and ran his hand over it. It contained denser microcircuitry than he had ever seen before. He had taken it out of another of the NeuroBand Headset units — the one that Mystikite had given to him, his previous unit that he had brought home from the company. The conversation had gone something like this: “Hey Mystikite. Can you possibly procure me another NeuroBand Headset if I fuck this one up?” — “Why do you ask?” — “Because I’m about to fuck this one up.” — “Who do you think you are, Tony fucking Stark?” — “No, I’m probably Peter Parker, at best. Hence why I ask if you can get me another one. ‘Cause this one isn’t going back together.” — “Fine, yeah, I suppose Weatherspark Dynamics can requisition me another one if I ask real nicely.” — “Okay. Thanks dude.”
“Well, I haven’t attached the main NeuroBand circuit board to the Helm yet. I think I’ve got the firmware interface nailed, though. I finished debugging it yesterday, and compiled it without running into any problems. And burned it to the Headset circuit board’s EPROM without a hitch. Also finished writing the extensions to the NeurOS in that funky programming language you introduced me to . . . Positronica. Still think it’s weird. They seem to work okay. No major issues. So all I really need to do is . . . yeah . . . attach this circuit board, attack the Headset’s RT-SQUIDS to the Helm, wire it all into the Helm’s resonance modulation and interference-pattern generation circuitry, like we talked about, and we should be good to go.”
“Well?” said Mystikite. “It isn’t going to attach itself. Get thee to thy work, young padawan. Or should I say, young Sith Apprentice.”
“You know, Sith Apprentices rise up and kill their masters.”
“Well, like Emperor Palpatine, I have a whole host of cloned bodies in cold storage, so if you rise up and kill me, I’ll just fucking come back and make your life goddamn miserable.”
“Gee, you’re so thoughtful.”
“I’m a helper. By the way, any word on your latest paper?”
Gadget sighed again. “They didn’t want it.”
“Aw man, that is such bullshit!” roared Mystikite. He pounded his fist on the table, got up, and began pacing back and forth. “Fucking horseshit! What you’ve discovered could change the fucking world! It pulls back the curtain! Hell, it pulls back the curtain behind the curtain! It’s fucking phenomenal! Man, if you ask me, those journals should be fighting over who gets to publish your work. Not rejecting it left and right. Fucking closed-minded idiots. Cheer up dude. It’s them, not you. They’re the problem. Your research is the key to a whole new paradigm of science. You’re the keymaster to a whole new dimension of scientific thought! You’re Bruce Banner and this is gamma research! You’re Sam Beckett and this is Project Quantum Leap! You’re Zefram Cochran, and this is goddamn warp drive we’re talking about! Fuck! Can’t they see that?”
“Eh. It happens, I guess. They’re fools. I can take it. I guess.” Gadget held in the pain he felt until his chest ached. He shrugged offhandedly and tried to make the gesture seem nonchalant, even though he physically hurt. “And hey. If I’m the Keymaster, where’s my sexy Gatekeeper and the not-so-sexy Zuul to welcome me?”
It hurt to talk, so he shut up. He leaned forward in his chair, took the Dr. Manhatten Helmet off his head, powered it off, and set it down in front of him. Using his electric screwdriver, he reached up inside it and took off the metal plating he had mounted there, exposing the “room-temperature superconducting quantum interferometry devices” — or RT-SQUIDs — and the Tesla resonators. The RT-SQUIDs were small, silver cylinders with coolant tubes attached to tiny nozzles, and the resonators looked like little vacuum tubes. These injected the quantum data and longitudinal waves into — and sucked them out of — the brain, and were mounted inside holes he had dremeled into the metal. His chest still hurt from holding in the pain of rejection. Work took his mind off the stress. He liked work.
“Hey,” said Mystikite, putting a hand on his shoulder, a concerned look on his face. “I can see that look in your eyes dude. It’s . . . it’s okay. I’m sorry I blew up just now. I can see you didn’t need that. I’m sorry. I just . . . get so mad at the Establishment, sometimes. So. Tell me. What the shit is an Anorak, anyway?” He offered a reassuring smile.
Gadget blinked at the non-sequitur. “Oh. Uh. Anorak is the British slang term for ‘nerd,’ ‘geek,’ or ‘dork. So . . . So I figure that by calling my character ‘Gadget Gadgorak Prime,’ I’m . . . I’m like pronouncing him the first among geeks and nerds. The touchstone nerd. The alpha geek.” He tried to smile, then after a few seconds, found himself warming to the subject. “Well, I mean, see, it’s not really so much about being the alpha geek . . . but more about like being the prime example of what it means to be a geek. You get me?”
“Well,” said Mystikite, resuming his coding, and offering him a sly smile. “You certainly are that.”
“Hey!” said Gadget. He grinned, and surprising himself, found he meant it.
“Well, you are.”
“Well, yeah, kinda.”
He reached over beside the Dr. Manhatten Helmet and grabbed what was left of his own NeuroBand Headset — the one that was “not going back together.” He found the device’s own version of the RT-SQUIDs. Much more advanced than his Helm’s. Small, thin ribbon cables connected them to the board, and tiny tubes connected them to the thing’s micro-pump liquid-cooling system. He gingerly plucked them loose, and removed the RT-SQUIDs. He worked in silence as Mystikite continued coding. He turned the Helm over, and got out his drill. He measured the blue circuit board, measured the distance on the helm, calculated line-length to arc-length, and used his bolt-cutters to trim the bolt mounts to fit the arc of the Helm’s curve. He drilled holes in the Helm, and put in the bolt mounts. He affixed the blue circuit board to the mounts, careful of the ribbon cables, then hooked them to the connectors he had soldered onto the existing circuit boards of his Dr. Manhatten Helmet the day before. He measured the insides of the Headset, determined where the RT-SQUIDs were mounted, and then measured the same distances insides the Helm, then mounted the Headset’s RT-SQUIDs in new holes that he had dremeled into the plates inside the Helm in just the right places; he threaded the ribbon cables through and connected them, and he connected the coolant tubes to them using the tubing adapters. Finally, he retrieved the wireless antennas and the “quantum relay circuit” — it was in an enclosed chamber inside the NeuroBand Headset, so it couldn’t be destabilized — and mounted them onto the Helm, and connected them via the included coaxial cables.
Amazingly, the Headset’s circuits had the same kind of four-wire power connector as the Helm’s other main circuit boards did, only with much smaller wires. Gadget attached a line regulator to it and a series of resistors that he calculated would suit the conversion to the smaller wires, and attached the whole assembly to the Helm’s power supply.
Gadget put the metal plates with the newly-installed RT-SQUIDs inside the Helm, and tightened their screws into place.
“There, by God,” he said at long last. He leaned back and admired his hardware hackery. “Behold, for it is done.”
The new-and-improved Dr. Manhatten Helmet sat there on the kitchen table, its new blue-hued circuit board’s silvery circuit-paths glimmering, the new ribbon cables adding a little flourish to it like delicate Christmas-wrapping bows.
“Awesome,” said Mystikite. “But now what?”
“Now,” said Gadget, beaming with pride, “we try it out. See what it can do.”
“Um, pronoun trouble?” said Mystikite, apprehensively. “I’m not puttin’ that thing on my head. It’s your invention. So you try it out.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” said Gadget. “Are you ready? Before we try the augmented reality thing, I wanna pop into the NeuroScape and work on my Avatar a little. Besides, unless we properly equip the Avatar, we can’t do the A.R. experiments anyway, right?”
“Yeah, I forgot about that part. Well, then. In the words of Perfect Tommy: ‘Okay. Let’s rock and roll!’”
Mystikite decisively pressed the “Enter” key, leaned back from his typing, and switched on the NeuroBand Transmitter unit next to his laptop. He picked up the NeuroBand Headset and slipped it on over his head, and adjusted the visor. Gadget smirked. Mystikite looked like an anemic, skinnier RoboCop with the visor down over his face like that.
Gadget flipped the toggle switch on the Helm. The vacuum tubes hummed, and the lights came on. The status LED on the NeuroBand circuitboard lit up, blinked three times, then glowed a solid green — Huzzah! The NeuroBand Headset circuits had passed their power-on self-tests! — and the coolant tanks on the rear of the Helm’s circumference began to hiss tiny clouds of nitrogen into the air. The Helm was ready to go.
He paused for a moment. He wasn’t sure. If something went wrong . . . if he hadn’t done things exactly right . . . Gulp. This thing had the potential to scramble his brain and leave him even crazier than he already was. And not just the “mood swings, obsessive thoughts, and sometimes suicidal” kind of crazy. No. The “howling mad and in a straight jacket for the rest of his life” kind of crazy. It also had the potential to land him with epileptic seizures for the rest of his life. Or give him an aneurism. Or fry his temporal lobes. Or just give him plain old brain cancer. It could do a lot of bad shit to him.
Yeah, whispered the Beast. You know you’re not that good. You know it’s your hubris that could really fuck you over here. Just sayin’.
There was also the problem of the voices. The other peoples’ thoughts. He could shut them out, sure, but for how long? And what if they broke through while he was using the NeuroScape? The flood of other, foreign thought-streams into his brain while he was jacked into the virtual reality construct might overload his consciousness and either fry his brain, or drive him utterly bonkers, or . . . shit. It could potentially even kill him by overloading his nervous system. His mind would just flash-boil out of existence, his nerves pushed past their electrical limit. Holy fuck.
Was it worth it?
Was the breakthrough — was the science — worth the risks?
Maybe the science is worth it, said the Beast. But as for you, well, you’re not worth much of anything, now are you? So go ahead. Take the risk. Nobody will miss you anyway if you totally fuck this up, right? Besides. What’re you doing except wasting your time? You’ll never accomplish anything of note. You’ll just die, a worthless and faceless idiot. Lost in history with all the other idiots. You’re wasting your time. You’re not a scientist. You’re a loser. A huge, idiot loser. Go ahead. Kill yourself for nothing. For nothing. Not science, not some noble goal; for
“Yo dude,” said Mystikite. “You in, or you out?”
“Yeah, coming,” said Gadget. “Just a sec.”
Gadget screwed up his courage, took a deep breath, and said:
“Yes, for science, damn you!”
He picked up the new-and-improved Dr. Manhatten Helmet, settled it back on top of his head — his scalp began to tingle — and tightened the chin strap. He closed his eyes . . .
. . . And flinched as the tidal wave of voices — Oh shit, here they come — crashed into him. Sweat beaded on his brow, and he grit his teeth. Their shouts rang in his mind’s ears, the mental movies rushing past his mind’s eye. He sucked in a breath, air filling his lungs, and he forced himself to let it out slowly, then did it the same thing again. And again. He pictured a gleaming rope of light, hanging there amidst the flow of images and the rushing sea of words and sounds. He reached out for it. Missed it. He grabbed for it again — ah! Got it! He held on, clinging to it, his eyes shut tight, still breathing slow and deep, each breath a calming wind that blew past him, through him. He breathed slowly, in . . . and out . . . . That was it . . . deep breaths . . .
“I will not fear,” he quoted to himself. “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
The rush of the voices subsided. Weightlessness engulfed him, and he realized he couldn’t feel his body. It had vanished. He cried out in panic, and —