Protect the flock! From JP and Hachette!
What are you doing right now?
Besides posting on here and replying to this thread. Original credit for this goes back to Fate and Nathan on MX.
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Permalink Reply by nathan_p on
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This is kind of silly sketchy bullshit. Ahem.
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Better Living Through Chemistry
“You feel like you’re ready to leave?”
“Sure, Dr. Weissman.” Reilly jingled his car keys -- God, it was good to have them back. Smiled. “If you’ll let me go.”
“I just want to be sure.” She smiled back at him. “You’ve made great progress during your time here. I’m... glad to see you ready to face the world again.”
“I just hope the world’s ready to face me.”
She nodded, still smiling. “You have my card -- just call if you need to talk. You’ll be seeing someone where you’re going?”
“Sure.” He put his sunglasses on. “I gotta get going. See you.”
“See you.”
She walked off towards the main building, and he watched her go for a moment before getting in the car. The air inside was musty, and he cranked the window down. Get some fresh air flowing.
The last time he’d been in this car... fuck but it was forever ago... Kyle had been driving.
He remembered that -- Kyle’s hands white and steady on the steering wheel, a long night drive and the sun coming up in the morning over the mountains.
Their favorite radio station -- Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, and all -- and his own voice calmly, sanely, rationally, fucking logically telling Kyle how he could use Subject Eleven to save the world.
His wrists duct-taped together when he wouldn’t stop scratching his hand where she’d bitten him, makeshift-handcuffed to the door when he started trying to beat on Kyle in a fit of sudden rage because dammit he just didn’t understand.
There was a dry brown stain on the passenger seat.
Gonna have to clean that up sometime.
He started the engine -- for having sat in a garage for so long it started right up. She’d probably run just fine, too. He patted the dashboard affectionately. Meryl was a good car. Damn near almost as old as he was, too, and she still ran fine. Testimony to good... well, not American, but good engineering.
Hadn’t he wanted to be an engineer, once?
He pulled out of the parking space, drove up into the sunlight, turned onto the main road going south towards the School.
...Nah. That was Kyle’s thing. Reilly liked biology and chemistry, Kyle liked physics. Reilly liked squishy things that gave you a little leeway when you were fiddling with them, Kyle liked things that ran on equations where if you fucked up one number you were shit out of luck.
He flipped down the sunshade, swiveled it over to keep the light from glaring in his eyes. It was still pretty early, not much past nine, but the sun was only going to get higher. He’d call Kyle’s phone once he got to Darwin, the first place he was confident there was a working phone -- say hi, maybe get him to jump a little. Hi fuckface, I’m outta the nut hut and coming home to you. Bake a pie or something.
Then again... when it got down to DNA and all that shit, or surgery, Reilly’s line of work could be annoyingly precise too. And Kyle talked about his computers, his programs, almost as if they were living things. You had to be delicate with them sometimes, rough sometimes. Like dogs, he’d explained it once. You trained them up and then they did what you told them to.
Come to think of it, would they be expecting him back?
He adjusted his sunglasses, squinting against the light.
They’d probably be expecting him. Probably. He’d never really said he was leaving for good, but man... he’d been gone almost half a fuckin’ year! More than that. He ran the math in his head. Yeah. Six months, almost to the day -- half a year.
Damn, but he’d been gone for a long time. They’d have brought the Voice into operation by now. (He wished he could’ve been there to read off the inaugural transmission. You can’t win ‘em all.) Elsa would be almost three already. Huh. Jesus.
He’d missed Thanksgiving by a while, but if he stepped on the gas and the wind was right, Reilly could still make it “home” for Christmas.
It was good to have a solid handle on time again. Knowing what day it was, remembering what had happened yesterday... yeah, that was pretty rad, to tell the truth.
He turned up the radio -- still tuned to his favorite station -- and stuck his arm out the window for a minute, letting the sun warm up the back of his hand. It was still a little chilly out -- well, for the desert, anyway -- but more than likely it was going to get hot later. Good. He was cold a lot lately. Some kind of weird side effect, maybe.
Would anyone back at the School have missed him? He had to wonder. Kyle would’ve -- it takes guts to help commit your best friend to a mental asylum, even for a while. Prescott, probably not. Harrison wouldn’t have noticed he was gone. Jeb and Roland and Elsa... yeah, they’d have missed him, though there was no telling whether Elsa would even remember him.
It was nice, knowing he’d been missed -- meant he had somewhere to go, if only for a while. Doctor Weissman had gently suggested that he start looking into medical schools to attend, and he’d caved. So he was just dropping by, really -- visiting. After that, back to school.
He looked out ahead of the car, into the desert. Same as always -- sand, some scrub bushes twisting up out of said sand, blue sky, and the mountains in the distance. Two turkey vultures riding a thermal, far enough away that they were just dots against the sky.
Once he got a little further down the road... the land was flat enough he was sure he’d see the School glittering faintly on the horizon. Well, he’d see Darwin first, being that he was coming down from the north, but... still.
A road sign came up on the right side of the road and slowly passed him -- NOW ENTERING DEATH VALLEY followed by the elevation. Thrilling. According to the road sign, he was almost home.
No sign of even Darwin yet, though. Maybe a twinkle on the horizon, but that was probably just heat haze tricking his eyes. He had good eyesight, but when the desert was determined to fuck with ya, as Kyle would have put it, the desert was determined to fuck with ya.
It was going to be good to see Kyle again. He’d get the chance to make a proper apology, rather than an indirect one over the phone -- there was no way to say “thank you for committing me” over the phone and sound honest. Or at least that was how Reilly felt about it.
There was a lot to look forward to, really. “Stay on your meds,” Doctor Weissman had told him when he’d said he felt ready to leave. He was a fairly reasonable person, after all, and that was the only advice she’d seen fit to give him before letting him go -- and he did plan to stay on his meds. Too much of a hassle going off them again, he figured.
What was it Kyle had said to him in high school -- or sometime, and he thought it had been Kyle, though it could’ve been someone else...
Better living through chemistry. Life is better with complex chemicals in your system -- after all, aren’t we just complex chemicals ourselves? In us they’re all cooperating to make a whole, though. What harm could adding a few more do? The body’s a very adaptive system.
That had all been a very long time ago, though.
He turned up the radio, taking advantage of a few miles more of radio coverage. It wouldn’t start fizzling out until he’d passed through Darwin, but if he remembered right there was a dead spot somewhere on the highway here.
Sweet staticky silence -- yeah, right about here. You could practically hear the wind on a vulture’s feathers in the silence where the radio suddenly wasn’t.
He checked his mirrors, looked out ahead of him past the faint mirage of water on the road. No cops in sight. No other cars.
He stepped up the gas. The road was pretty ruler-straight out here. He’d see someone coming a couple of miles before they passed him -- plenty of time to slow down.
The car was surprisingly well-behaved. Had someone been taking care of it while he was... gone? Probably. Who?
He decided he didn’t much care. There was a lot of road ahead of him, and he had places to be.
Just not at any particular time.
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Permalink Reply by Kayte on
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Hmmm, it's very...poetic sort of, just as a short story should be. I like that it was mostly told in memory, and especially about who would miss him, and whether Elsa would remember him... and the parts about Kyle... and everything pretty much...
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*doesn't think you are* I think ti was really good. Kind of different from a lot of your stuff, but still you. I can always hear you.
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Permalink Reply by o0_flying high_0o on
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*same*
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Permalink Reply by Lamp Post on
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*loved*
"There was a lot to look forward to, really. “Stay on your meds,” Doctor Weissman had told him when he’d said he felt ready to leave. He was a fairly reasonable person, after all, and that was the only advice she’d seen fit to give him before letting him go -- and he did plan to stay on his meds. Too much of a hassle going off them again, he figured.
What was it Kyle had said to him in high school -- or sometime, and he thought it had been Kyle, though it could’ve been someone else...
Better living through chemistry. Life is better with complex chemicals in your system -- after all, aren’t we just complex chemicals ourselves? In us they’re all cooperating to make a whole, though. What harm could adding a few more do? The body’s a very adaptive system."
Really loved that part. ^
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Thanks.
There's a similar idea used in Zodiac by Neal Stephenson. The main character is a chemist who occasionally uses drugs, mentioning that oxygen is the best, nitrous oxide a close second.
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"Would anyone back at the School have missed him? He had to wonder. Kyle would’ve -- it takes guts to help commit your best friend to a mental asylum, even for a while. Prescott, probably not. Harrison wouldn’t have noticed he was gone. Jeb and Roland and Elsa... yeah, they’d have missed him, though there was no telling whether Elsa would even remember him.
It was nice, knowing he’d been missed"
This. Incredible.
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