Fixation
Short Story
by Derek Heid
[ March 22nd 5:40 pm ]
This idea of race superiority and the use of Germany's Jewish
population as scapegoats would continue into the 1940s and eventually escalate
into World War II. Are there any questions?
A few hands rose around the lecture hall, mostly first year students
confused as to why the Germans would allow themselves to, as a
particularly shrewd classmate put it, be played like that.
The latest issue of The Scientific Journal on the chair beside me was
open to a two-page spread about a new government-funded energy source.
This revolutionary technological leap used a satellite system to
convert radiation bouncing around the interstellar void into useable
electrical current.
I leaned forward to peer closer at one of the artist's conceptions,
vaguely aware of my own exhaustion. I hadn't slept in three days, and
the strain was starting to show. My jittery, caffeine-induced demeanor
was getting harder to sustain.
My pager went off, interrupting a classmate's question. Forty pairs
of eyes turned in their seats to stare back at me, and a gusty sigh from
the front of the room informed me that the professor must've been on a
roll when I intervened.
He'd get over it. I reached into my bag and fumbled for a blue pill
case, switching the pager off as I did so.
A problem, Mr. Sinclare? the professor called back to me from across
the cavernous classroom.
Thumbing open my pill case, I withdrew a small gray capsule and popped
it into my mouth. I didn't take my eyes off the Journal.
Mr. Sinclare, the professor pressed, louder this time.
Oh. I snapped back into the classroom, schematics and equations
gone from my mind for the moment. Sorry, my meds. I held up the pill
case as proof. Have to stay on top of them.
Let's try to be less of a distraction, yes?
Yeah. I went back to my sketchpad.
The small gray capsules in the case were meant to curb an attention
disorder I'd developed in elementary school. The doctors explained it as
a kind of attention deficit, only backward. When I was younger, I'd
get so engrossed in a math or science problem that I'd spend all of
lunch and recess just staring at the whiteboard, willing myself to solve
it. It got so bad that sometimes I refused to go home at the end of the
day.
Over the years it had gotten worse. If I forgot to take my meds, it
would get to the point where sleep became irrelevant.
I moved the pill around on my tongue, contemplating whether swallowing
it was really what I wanted to do. In the forty minutes I had been in
class, I had figured out all of the basic principles that the
supposedly theoretical energy source operated under. The only thing that
remained was how the satellites, dormant until activated, were expected to
link up without any power outside what they themselves converted.
The professor was saying something now, and I pulled myself away long
enough to get the gist of it. He went on about a test during next week's class, and I saw that my classmates were quietly packing up. A
glimpse of the wall clock told me that it was finally time to
leave.
As soon as the professor had spilled his lot, I grabbed my sketchpad
and headed for the rear door. I'd be home in forty-five minutes,
assuming traffic wasn't too heavy. By then I'd only have a half-hour until
my pill wore off, enough time to grab a bite to eat and settle in for
what would be another night of sleeplessness.
I cracked the pill with my molars, felt its liquid innards trickle
down my throat. Almost instantly the equations and rough outlines on my
sketchpad weren't as pivotal as they'd been moments before. That
numbing effect meant I could drive home without the fear of running off the
road, a victim of my own laser-focused mind. It would last for exactly
an hour and fifteen minutes, at which point the focus would return, as
strong as before. I'd be consumed by the desire to figure out that
last bit of theory, every missing piece of the grand scheme. It might
take hours, maybe even days.
If I didn't take my next pill.
I looked down at my sketchpad; saw the formulas, even the rough
outline of what the satellites would need to look like. I saw how close I
was to figuring it all out. If I took my medicine after I got home, I'd
be able to sleep for the first time in three nights. If I didn't,
there was a good chance that those extra nine hours would allow me to
untangle this mathematical riddle.
The wonders of science.
[March 22nd 6:20 pm]
I got home with no incidents, lighter than usual traffic shaving a
good ten minutes off my trip. I grabbed a Hot Pocket and a soda and
headed up to my room.
What to do for the next thirty-seven minutes?
I'd decided on the way home that the prospect of a perpetual energy
source was too much to squelch with a nine-hour gap between thoughts.
That night's pill lay on the interstate somewhere, waiting to kiss some
Firestone.
My bedside clock read 6:26. Thirty-four minutes to go.
I finished off the rest of my dinner and flopped down on my bed,
thinking about how nice it was to be able to not think, a contradiction I
thought about because I wanted to, not because my mind wouldn't let me
stop.
I'd spent a lot of my medicine-induced free time thinking about what
that meant, exactly, which is ironic; I took those pills to stop myself
from thinking so much only to willingly do so once I had the ability
not to. That action brought up all kinds of interesting questions about
the importance of free will and the nature of enjoyment. Why wasn't my
being forced to think like a kid being forced to play at Chuck E.
Cheese's?
Well, I said to my ceiling, I guess even a five-year-old would get
tired of the ball pit after three consecutive days.
All this talk of play had me yearning for something other than
thinking. My old Nintendo 64 caught my eye, gathering dust under a pile of
dirty clothes and discarded shoes.
It dawned on me: what better way to lose a half-hour than with
video games?
God dammit Slippy, shut up.
It wasn't until I was a few levels in to StarFox 64 that I remembered
why I'd stopped playing. My thumbs strained to rid my hopeless wingmen
of the pursuers even as I pondered how, with no opposable digits, a
frog was expected to pilot a space fighter. For that matter, how was a
fox? Wasn't this whole scenario built upon fallacy and misguidance?
Guess that's why it's a video game, I reminded myself.
With half of my health meter depleted and one wing destroyed, the game
suddenly got very quiet. There it was: the level boss. Before I could
react it charged up a shot and tore through my Arwing like tinsel,
sending little bitty pieces of flayed Fox every which way. GAME OVER
flashed on the screen, and with no continues left I simply watched the
infernal goliath decimate my comrades. Charge, shot, boom. Charge, shot,
boom. Charge, shot, click.
It was as if someone had found a dimmer switch in my head and was
turning it up to full wattage. Images of satellites, equations, theory, and
schematics surged forward from the back of my mind, a pulse that faded
reality so that colors were the same but less compelling at the same
time. The satellite system was Oz; everything else was Kansas.
I didn't need to see a clock to know that my pill had worn off. It's a
good thing, too; even if I had wanted to, I doubt I could've pulled
myself away from the thoughts of how I was going to get those satellites
to boot up from a dormant state.
A digitized explosion sent a twitch through me, and I realized foggily
that my last wingmen had just bit the big one. With no input from me,
the game system had begun to replay my spectacular death sequence. I
half-watched as the boss charged up, fired, and blew me out of the sky.
Wait a second.
I leapt at the screen, my face close enough that the static from the
television set made my hair stand on end. My mind was commanding me to
watch, watch for that minute detail that you can't put your finger on.
So I did. The world slowly faded out of existence as I became
completely engrossed with the game. I could've written a book: Zen and the Art
of the Nintendo. The glow of the screen burned, made my vision fuzzy,
but I blinked through the pain and wiped the tears away, so certain
that I'd miss something if I gave in to the ache behind my eyes.
It took it all in, devoted every bit of energy to that blasted game.
There were 2,009,453 pixels making up the Arwings. The frame rate of
the game slowed a fraction of a fraction whenever my wingmen or I fired.
The scenery began to repeat after fifteen seconds of flight, but the
buildings were randomly placed; the ground repeated. It was evident from
the patterns of the simulated countryside.
There were 34,000,560,023 blades of grass.
All of it true, none of it what I was looking for. I strained, pushing
myself closer to the TV, looking, peering, and hoping. The sun was an
off orange, about three shades from being a true orange
The sun. That was it.
I settled down cross-legged a few steps from the television, and
watched the level boss's attack. Just before it blew my Arwing away, I
noticed a portion of it opening up to absorb the energy from the game's
simulated off orange sun.
My bedside table shook as I pulled it open, riffling through the
drawers until I found a dry erase marker. The mirrored doors on my closet
were covered with lists and numbers already, and it was a few seconds
before I found anything that could be erased.
I exhausted two dry erase markers and half a bar of soap before I
collapsed onto my bed again, not tired but victorious. My closet door held
the finished formula, an equation that proved the theory wasn't so
theoretical anymore. I grabbed my sketchbook from my backpack and copied
it down on a fresh page. Once that was done, I scanned the page into my
computer, copied it to a floppy and a CD, and then deleted the file
from my hard drive. I placed the two disks and my sketchbook in a lockbox
behind my bed for safekeeping.
The rush of accomplishment had almost faded now, my mind calmed by the
fulfillment of its current fixation. As I turned to erase the formula
from my closet, I caught a glimpse of my reflection.
Haggard. My clothes were wrinkled and stained with dry-erase ink, my
unshaven face and hollow, sleep-deprived eyes dug at me like a shovel to
my chest. The numbers and gibberish on the mirror mingled with my
reflection, appearing as tattoos on my face, neck, and arms. I looked like
one of those holocaust survivors that they showed on A&E: malnourished,
sleep-deprived, the numbers on my face serving to sentence me just as
the numbers on their forearms had.
This was what I was turning into, I realized. It wouldn't be long
before I'd hear something on TV or the radio that would stick in my head.
If I missed a medicine dose after that, boom a new fixation. I
recalled what was in that safe behind my bed: thousands upon thousands of
files, all revolutionary. I had scribblings behind my headboard that
would turn the world on its ear. If I went public with at even a few of
my formulas, I could change the world.
So what kept them behind my bed?
I looked at myself in the mirror again; saw the desperation in the
wrinkles on my face. If I went public, I'd be accepting my transformation
into a fixated lunatic. How would I be able to explain not wanting to
help the world, them knowing I could? If I went public, I'd be
resigning myself to a life of hypothesis, experimentation, and servitude to my
own mind.
I took my next pill and turned to look at my clock, my medication
further sedating my overworked mind. The clock read 8:03, and I was
relieved; I'd solved any threat of a global energy crisis and I could get some
sleep that night. I looked again to be sure. 8:03 am.
[March 23rd 10:12 am]
Some concrete chessboards line the sidewalk a few blocks from my
house, massive granite slabs with faded checker patterns etched into them.
Most of the pieces are long gone, lost to vandals and small children
with curious little hands. There are dozen or so chessboards, but only
enough etched stone figures left for two. I sat at one of the stocked
boards, mind in a sleep-deprived fog.
How about a game?
What? I looked up and regarded the voice with slack-jawed
fascination. From the look I received in return, the twenty-something in front
of me must've noticed my expression. He shuffled his books from one arm to the other, eyeing me as if I might've been some burnt-out
druggie.
In retrospect, he wasn't too far off.
Chess. He said slowly, pointing at the board between us. You want
to play a game?
Oh. Sure. I sat up marginally, stifling a yawn. My opponent took
the seat opposite me and, after careful consideration, moved a pawn.
I moved a piece of my own, glancing at my wristwatch as I did so. Ten
minutes had passed since I had arrived. I found myself missing the
time distortion that came with being off my meds. He moved. I moved. I
checked my watch again.
Eleven minutes. I ran a hand over my face and sighed.
Already on the ropes, are we? My opponent smiled thinly at my
expression, mistaking my weariness for desperation. It's to be expected.
Chess is far from easy, my friend. Did you know that right now there's
not one American Grandmaster? He moved a third figure.
Disappointed and not at all surprised, I made my third move.
My opponent continued. Closest we've been in a while was with
Fischer back in 72, but his eyes traveled the board, and he dropped off in
mid-sentence.
It was then I noticed a familiar face crossing the street towards me.
I turned back to my baffled opponent. Listen, I'm sort of expecting
someone. You mind moving along?
He looked up at me, cleared his throat, and went back to the board.
Sure, after this move. He shifted in his seat. After my next move,
I'll go. He lowered his face to the chessboard, eyes level with the
pieces.
I sighed and reached across the board, flipping his king onto its
side. Here's another piece of trivia for you: black needs only three
moves for a checkmate.
He left just as Sam reached the table. She watched him leave, looked
at the chessboard, then to me.
I looked right back at her and shrugged. What?
Nothing, she sighed in amusement and sat down at the table next to
mine. I watched her shuffle some papers around, glance at me, smile.
I smiled back.
Samantha Louise Chamberlain was the only person with whom I'd ever felt
an honest connection - which, considering the circumstances of our
meeting, always struck me as curious. We started school together, two kids
constantly finishing our work ahead of the class. It was clear to us
both that we were special; whether that was good or not, however,
remained a variable. Ours was a comradeship of convenience that just
happened to evolve into an actual rapport. Should our differences turn out to
be a bad thing, we reasoned, there was strength in numbers.
We hadn't counted on the occurrence of both a good and bad outcome.
Sam began to show remarkable capacity for calculation early in the
first grade, and soon it was clear that she was not just another GATE kid.
My own gifts manifested themselves not long after, and the pills
followed. Through the medication I became convinced that my inherent insight
was a weakness, a distortion of my genetic code, while Sam was blessed
with true ability. I watched her hierarchal climb towards brilliance
from the shadows, wishing her well and wanting so badly to have what she
had; to be like her.
Thanks to her talents, Sam became razor-sharp reasoning machine: a
MENSA member and prominent guest lecturer by the time I was a sophomore in
high school. Now, three years later, she worked as an amateur
psychiatrist in the field of troubled teens. It was by sheer coincidence that
she had been assigned as my caseworker.
Only five months my elder, the natural stream her gifts took meant that
society viewed her as a prodigy and me as the specimen.
Sam looked at me again and smiled, then froze. Her expression turned
from alarm to realization and then exasperation. She threw down her pen
and stared at me, stone cold serious. How many days this time,
Justin?
I shook my head, pretended not to understand. She kept staring.
Four, I relented, Four days.
Sam accepted that, upset but not wanting to push. She picked up her
pen and continued to write.
I envied her sometimes.
So, what else is new? She set down her pen and turned towards me,
hands folded in her lap. Tell me about school, Justin.
What's to tell? I arched my head and stared into an empty sky. It
seemed somewhat duller than usual.
Any friends? Sam leaned forward in her seat, willing me to answer
the affirmative. She wanted so badly for things to change for me. New
friends? New relationships? New anything?
I closed my eyes against the glare of the early morning sun. No
friends save for Duke and you. If by relationships you mean a girlfriend,
nothing in that respect, either. I held up a hand, counted off the
events of a normal day. I go to school, I zone out, I get the grades, I
go home, I save the world. Oh, and once a week I'm picked apart by a
publicly acknowledged super genius who doesn't have to take pills to
keep herself mentally stable. Lucky her.
Sam scribbled some more notes into her files. And how is Duke?
I smiled at her deftly timed subject change. He's alright. The vet
says he's overweight.
Poor guy, Sam jotted down some more observations and snapped her
notebook shut. Okay, all finished. She smiled a little sourly as I
opened my eyes and sat up in my seat again.
So, I asked, how messed up am I this week?
Sam took a breath. Well - and this is just for this week, mind you
by definition, you're a reclusive sociopath. Smart; very smart, you
know that. But everything else, she stopped a moment, torn between
worry and wry amusement. Justin, you fit the psychological profile of a
serial killer.
She sat back on her bench, hands clasped in her lap. Tell me the
truth: besides me, who else do you enjoy spending time with?
Who says I like spending time with you?
Be serious for second.
I thought about it. That guy, the one I was playing chess with. He
wasn't bad.
Justin, you didn't even know him.
I nodded. Yeah.
Sam sighed and rubbed her temples.
Have you ever read A Perfect Day for Bananafish? I asked at last.
I've heard of it. Never read it.
Salinger wrote it, I explained. It's about this guy, Seymour Glass, who's surrounded by superficiality, vanity, and an overall discount for quality life. He knows what it's all supposed to be about, you
understand; he's one of the sharp ones. He and his brothers and sisters
made up this family of child prodigies that frequently appeared on quiz
shows and the like. I moved a pawn from the chessboard back to its
starting square. Really, it's his superior intellect that does him in.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sam staring, transfixed. I
continued. Seymour longs to find something reminiscent of humanity. See,
through his prodigal state of mind, he has evolved past the vanity that
tethers those around him to lives of triviality. But Seymour...he's
conflicted. I could feel Sam's gaze burning into me now, and I met it.
Although he wants nothing to do with these terribly self-absorbed
people, he also feels abandoned because he can never fit in. It's not his
fault; he didn't have any say in the matter. He's just too smart for
them.
I stood, stretched. Anyway, once he realizes the futility of his
conflict, he blows his brains out with an old army pistol.
I'm still not sure why I told Sam all that. Part of me, I think, was
tired of her attempts to get into my head when she knew full well what
was going on she'd better by now, or she was going to make a damn poor
therapist.
Another part of me simply wanted to have some fun, maybe even freak her
out a little bit. Of everything that I'd felt day today since
elementary school arrogance, hopelessness, cynicism, bitterness, loneliness,
obsession - suicide was the last thing on my mind. If nothing else, I
knew that my abilities were too important to cast away so foolhardily.
Sam sat there for a few minutes, trying to take it all in. Her eyes
flicked back and forth as she tried to make sense of something that didn't seem to fit in with her hypothesis for me. The professional
curiosity in her face was slowly replaced by a look of compassion - worry for a
friend. I got the feeling that I'd gone too far.
Hey, I knelt down next to her and nudged her knee. I'm sorry. I
just I don't know. I busied myself with digging dirt out of cracks in
the sidewalk as I spoke. I know I'm not always fun to be around. The
idea of spilling my guts to anyone, even you is something I'm still
trying to get used to. I dusted my hands off and nudged her again.
I am trying, though. I promise.
Sam nodded, more to placate me than anything else. Did you take your
meds this morning, at least?
Yes ma'am. I checked my watch. I'm completely myself for the next
twenty-five minutes.
She laughed a little and hesitated, trying to seem casual. What kept
you up this time?
I smiled. Try as she might, Sam never could keep her interest in my
endeavors at bay for long. Though her primary concern was to ensure
that my condition didn't consume me, part of her would always be itching
to get a look at my newest accomplishment. At heart she was still
scientist first, psychoanalyst second.
Do you have the newest issue of The Scientific Journal on you? I
asked.
Yeah. I picked it up on the way here. She produced a copy from her
pack. I took it, thumbed through the pages until I reached the spread
on the not-so-theoretical satellite system. I handed it back to her;
saw her skim over the page quickly. I sat, almost giddy, waiting for
her reaction.
She looked up from the page slowly, agape. No way.
I nodded. Way.
She pushed the Journal away, as if it were an accursed tome. Justin,
this, she shook her head in disbelief. Are you kidding? No, no, of
course you're not kidding. Not about stuff like this. Do you? No.
Holy shit! She took a breath and brushed a stand of hair out of her
eyes, recovering from her momentary frenzy.
I sat back on the concrete and grinned, eyebrows aloft. Want to see
the schematics?
What? Yes! She jumped up, knocking the magazine to the ground.
When? Now?
I stood, energized by her enthusiasm. This was the Sam I liked best,
not the stuffy, professional one. I liked when she was crazy, crazy
like me. No, not now. Tonight, I picked up the magazine and handed
it to her. Meet me at the bistro down the street from my house. We'll
have dinner and I'll give you a full explanation of how it works.
Sam nodded, eyes glued to the magazine spread again. Okay, yeah.
Is eight o'clock good?
Sure. Uh-huh, She picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder,
holding the magazine close as I had the day before. Does the artist's
conception measure up to the real thing?
Not even close. I pointed to the body of the machine. The middle
segment would have to be about twice this size to accommodate the
capacitor. The increased size is evened out by cutting down on mass in its
extremities. I indicated the spindly limbs to which I was referring.
Here, here, and here. All of that is unnecessary ballast.
Sam's pager went off, and she pulled it off her belt to glance at the
number. That's my eleven o'clock, she exhaled deeply and smiled. As
usual, Justin, it's been a pleasure. She turned and walked briskly
down the street, eyes still focused on the Journal. See you at eight.
You're buying.
I would love to say that I went to dinner, showed Sam the blueprints,
and had an all-around great time like the one I'd planned. That, of
course, would be a lie.
We did go to dinner, sure. Sam was done up like Audrey friggin
Hepburn, and as usual she was floored by what my disease could do. I was
inwardly elated that I could make Sam, someone I looked up to for her
normalcy, want to be a little more like me.
We'd just been brought the desert cart when Sam casually asked if she
could take the schematics home and give them a closer look. I was
hesitant at first, my innate skepticism holding me back from giving in to
the gorgeous brain sitting across from me. In the end, though, I
relented. She was, after all, my friend. Wasn't she?
I had thought so.
I'm ashamed to say that I fell for it all, calling foul a few plays
too late. When Sam didn't show up for our progress meeting the next
week, a flag went up in my mind. Calls to her house and cell went
unanswered. Her place of employment was even less helpful, declining to even
acknowledge that she had indeed worked there. Weeks passed, then
months. Finally the day came that there was a knock at my door.
That brings me up to the present. I'm here now, The Jenovah Center
for the Mentally Impaired, kept on a constant stream of mild sedative to
insure my cooperation. That doesn't keep me from recording all of
this, though. In my mind. I replay it to myself over and over and over,
by the hour, making sure no detail is omitted. I cling to the hope that
someday I'll find a way out of here. When that day comes, I'll be
ready.
Sam was sweet enough to explain everything that had happened to us as
they carted me away in chains that day. It seems that this whole
ordeal was eighteen years in the making, starting for both of us at birth.
Ultimately, the powers that be had decided I was the lucky subject and
Sam the accomplice; something to do with my body's willingness to
accept the chemical cocktail in my medication. The pills I had been
taking since kindergarten were designed not to quell my overactive mind but
further stimulate it; whoever was in charge of this twisted little game
wanted to be sure that I'd spend a lot of time thinking.
From there it was just a matter of waiting. They knew, or rather,
they estimated with a high degree of certainty, I'd eventually stumble
across that issue of The Scientific Journal and be so engrossed with the
satellite system that I'd figure it out. From there it was a matter of
convincing me to spill my secrets, Sam's part in this little game.
Now they'd reached the final phase: making me disappear. Note the
absence of any family in this account. This isn't due to any grudge or
sob story orphan motif; it's because I cannot remember, for the life of
me, by whom I was raised. The drug they've been administering to me for
the past weeks is meant to simulate the effects of a particularly bad
seizure, effectively undoing the years of cranial engineering my
medication provided. Once that's done, it's a matter of moving me into a
nursing facility and pretending I never existed.
As for the satellite system. That's the real kicker, see, because
they've got the potential to end all of the world's energy problems, but
do they? No, of course not. Because, see, that's not lucrative enough
for their tastes. Instead, they take my design, my brainchild, and
modify it. I've been watching them on the close-circuit television sets
they've got hooked up just outside my cell. I've watched as they
affixed a pointed nozzle to the underside of a prototype satellite. I
watched them activate the machine, first elated by its success then abhorred
as I realized its other potential uses. I watched when, days ago, they
put the first working model into orbit.
I watched them channel the system's energy into the nozzle, saw them
carve a hole into an island in the Philippines. The machine bucked once
as a stream of blinding white arced towards the Earth, turned the
island into a streaming mess, and drilled thousands of feet below sea level
in a matter of seconds.
Hours later I saw panic in their faces as they realized a leak in the
company had sold their technology - my technology, to at least four
hostile nations.
From my cell I saw what they, what I, what we had done. With my mind,
the simple action of contemplation, these people had effectively brought
upon the end of the world.
Fixation© COPYRIGHT 2005 Derek Heid.
Reproduction prohibited without permission from the author.
05/16/05
