Cure for Sanity - Chapter Eight

Cure for Sanity - Chapter Eight - The Alchemist



Janique decided to dig a little deeper. She left Prail to her tinkering and arranged a first-ever meeting with intergalactic drug dealer High-C.



To her surprise, he was sedate and polite, contrary to the many stories she had heard about him. He greeted her with a casualness that bordered on indifference, an artifact of what she correctly surmised were drugs and the relatively early hour.



"Janique, hi. Big fan," he said.



"Oh, stop."



"No, seriously. Not just of your films. It's your empire building that interests me."



"Really?"



"It's not easy to get Prail's attention like you did. She tells me you tipped the scales in all kinds of directions. So what's up?"



"I think I need you to develop a drug for me. But we should talk, first."



"If we're designing a drug, we'll have to do a lot of talking."



"Yes, but I want to talk about other things, first."



"Like what?"



"Do you know that somewhere in the multiverse, there's a rapper named High-C?"



'Somewhere in the multiverse, there's a doorman named High-C, and a cabbie, and so on. So I'm not surprised. It's not something I spend a lot of time thinking about."



"But it's more than that. There's some sort of connection there."



"Of course there is. There are lots of unseen connections. The trick, to me, is not seeing them. It can drive you crazy, if you dwell on things."



"Were you ever a musican?"



"I may or may not have flirted with poetry in my youth. But the music industry is so low class. Rock stars? Those are my clients. Not a peer group I desire to be lumped in with."



"Suppose what you wrote showed up in his hands, somehow?"



"I don't know how I'd feel about that. It's kinda of cool, really."



"And what if what he wrote came true?"



"Then you might have a problem..."



"Really? Why?"



"Okay, I confess. I had worked on a rap persona. Everyone was doing it, at the time. But my character was pretty dark. I mostly rapped about literature, insanity, serial killers. Things like that."



"Yikes," Janique said.



"Let me get my lyrics," High said with a note of enthusiasm, and rushed off to retrieve his notebooks.



They read through them together, each highlighting passages for the other.



"Uh-oh," he said at one point. "'Go ahead and retort - I snuff MCs for sport.' I think I see how he gets famous. This is pretty dark stuff, Janique."



"Pretty dark? You wrote it!"



"Yes, but I didn't know it could come true."



"So you somehow created a persona who became real. I sort of know the feeling."



"What if it's the other way around?"



"Huh?"



"What if the rap persona spawned me, instead?"



"That's just as plausible, I guess. But if you made him, and he made you..."



"Right. That's why I don't think about these things much."



"Did you have to make him so over-the-top and powerful?"



"It's rap. You're expected to brag a bit."



"About killing all your rivals?"



"Sure. Sodomize the vanquished, and all that."



She looked at him in exasperation.



"Movie title?" he said.



"No. So I need a drug that hasn't been developed on Earth yet. On Earths? How do you say that?"



"Well, everything's been done on at least one Earth. So what you're really talking about is smuggling a drug across the borders of reality."



"It sounds romantic when you phrase it that way."



"It really is, to me. Desperado, you know. Cosmic Bandidos. Moving chess pieces in the war of the mind. Sometimes it's just quicker and easier to find a universe where the chemical already exists. Saves on R & D. What properties do you desire?"



"Um, very pleasurable and addictive. Irresistible. Soul-consuming. Life-changing. Debilitating. Incapacitating."



"You really know what you want. I like that. Does it have a name?"



"Superlove," Janique said.



"I'll look it up."



He sat back in his recliner and closed his eyes. She wasn't sure what software he was accessing, but she didn't think it was Prail's. When he opened his eyes again, he held a one-gram pack labeled 'Superlove'.



"Here we are," he said. "I'll just reverse engineer this. How's tomorrow for you?"



"Where did you get that?"



"Another where and when. You'll cross paths with it again, I promise you. How much do you want?"



"I don't know yet. Want to make some money?"



"You'll never compete with me."



"Compete?"



"Stick to art flicks and detective work. I've already got distribution options being worked as we speak."



"But-"



"But, nothing. The dope game is mine. Undisputed. Want to know why?"



"Why?"



"Because my supply chain moves product from large worlds to small ones. It's the opposite of cut. A grain from here becomes a boulder somewhere else. A patented trick of the trade. And I protect my routes."



Janique sighed. She didn't like being bested like this. He was as stubborn and driven as she was. An admirable quality.



"Fine. Let's talk after you analyze it, okay?"



"Dinner tomorrow?"



"Fine."




###


 Pex managed to make the transition from Jerusalem to Magda seamlessly, he thought. There were advantages to the general ignorance of geography he possessed. But one place pretty much looked like another, anyway.



"So where are we going?" Yeshua asked.



He collided with a young woman carrying a bundle on her head, spilling the contents to the ground. Her dark eyes glared out at him above the veil that covered her face. Her robes, thin and white, clung to her, accentuating her hourglass figure.



She stood two inches shorter than him, with a commanding presence. Before the words were upon her lips, he was scrambling to pick up her groceries.



Beets! He was elated.



Pex smiled.



"I'll see you two later," he said.



The best love stories are left untold...




###




Prail didn't like misleading Janique on the subject of singularities, but she was already too powerful for her liking. She needs her own hit points capped, she thought.



Without any real background in science, science fiction or gaming, Janique had managed to achieve her aims in other ways, trudging through situations that would have deeply disturbed others, without worrying about the implications. Prail sort of wished she could be more like that, not just disconnected, but knowing and still not caring.



In another sense, Janique was far more deeply connected to the denizens of the sim than she herself was. If she ever got a grip on the finer aspects of the physics involved, she'd be formidable. Instead, she favored biology and psychology, two subjects Prail didn't feel capable of mastering.



She considered picking Pex's brain a bit in an effort to stay ahead, but he'd been so difficult to track, lately. Physically, he was in his flophouse. Even his ridiculous contraption supported that. Mentally, however, he was nowhere to be found. That was disturbing, because there weren't supposed to be hiding places she didn't know about.



Prail knew he wouldn't cheat, but he had definitely found a loophole or gray area to exploit. Perhaps she'd send Janique to talk to him in her place. It wouldn't help Prail's situation, but it would probably slow Pex down a bit. She had that effect on men.



She also needed to sidetrack Janique. She'd already made contact with High-C, and it was only a matter of time before she'd drag President Gorlax into the fray as well.



Interesting times, Prail mused. Be careful what you wish for.




###


Pex checked in with the duo a few months down the line, to find them married, and Yeshua attending rabbinical school. At the appropriate moment, he swapped a single fertilized cell from one Mary to another.



Let Prail chew on that conundrum for a while, he thought, if she liked it so complicated. He especially enjoyed the confusion the names caused. In doing so, he gave the couple a full decade out of time, in love, unencumbered by children. 



An idyllic existence Pex was destined to shatter forever.




###


"Janique," Prail said. "Check on Pex for me."



She had acquired the somewhat bothersome habit of talking to her across the universe as though they were in the same room together. Invariably, Janique dropped what she was doing and continued the discussion in person. She also felt annoyance each time it happened, believing it to be rude on Prail's part, and a display of power over her.



"Check on Pex? Why can't you?"



"He won't tell me anything useful. He'd go gaga over you. Spill his guts, I bet."



"What can he tell me?"



"Temporal stuff. He has a hiding spot, too. I know you won't get anything tactical out of him, but he does like to brag. Act like you're impressed. That you want to learn how to hack reality like he does."



"What do I get out of it?"



"It was supposed to be a favor. But maybe you can learn something."



"The stuff you two do is too esoteric for me."



"Still. He knows a lot. He might even drop you a hint. It's his idea of a good mystery. Clues."



"I hope he comes up with something better than you did."



"He will. Don't worry."




###


 "Stimulant, appetite suppressant, mood elevator, tactile sensory enhancer, PSI enhancer, greatly-increased libido, suppression of impulse control, psychedelics and empathetics, in crystalline configurations I've never encountered before," High-C was telling Janique.



"Addictive?" she asked.



"Only in the short term, I'm afraid. Once you go up, you don't want to come back down."



"Damn."



"What's wrong with coke? Crack? Heroin?"



"I checked. They don't work."



They didn't, in part, because Pex had managed to place two books in Jason's path at a formative age. Both "Dinky Hoffer Shoots Smack" and "A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandiwch" carried strong anti-addiction messages. For good measure, he worked in a third-grade reading comprehension story about Jimi Hendrix overdosing, an unfinished song about an angel on the nightstand beside him.



"Here's the thing," High said. "Chemically, I understand the composition. But there's a biological element to it that's confusing."



"What?"



"I'd like to run some more tests. As it stands now, I can't recreate it."



"Why not?"



"It's mixed with someone's DNA."



"Come on," Janique said.



"No, really. And that's the addictive element."



"That's silly."



"Silly, but true. You're apparently onto a whole new class of drugs, biologics, I call them. More boutique than designer. Personally tailored for maximum impact."



"So what do you need?"



"Blood."



"Do you think-"



"Yes. It makes the most sense, right? A little Janique in every pack? And you are the inventor of Superlove, after all."



Janique was stunned at the revelation. She was a drug that she had invented. Her life since meeting Prail felt like a series of exercises designed to turn her mind inside out on a regular basis.



She rolled up the sleeve of her smart Oxford shirt and sweater ensemble, and High stopped her.



"Give me a break," he said.



He produced an old style straight razor, and gestured at her side. Understanding, she leaned over and pulled up her shirt, exposing her breast and side.



"Yum," High said.



She bit her lip and balled up her fists. She'd been cut a thousand times, and knew it wouldn't hurt, exactly, but still cringed every time. He placed one hand palm down on her ribcage and made a small slice across the bottom of her breast.



A soft "oh" escaped her lips, followed by a low moan.They watched the blood pool, and then High blotted it with a glass slide.



"How romantic," she said. "Dexter..."



"Under other circumstances, it would be fun, I admit."



He handed her a tissue and a band-aid, and she waved them off, opting to instead let the blood flow and drop a bit before stopping on its own. Ever since Prail had pointed out to her the complex beauty of water drops and wisps of smoke, she'd become fascinated with the way blood behaved. She loved the look of it, the feel of it, the taste...



"I'll just run this sequence and see if it's a match like we think."



"And then?"



"I corner the market."



"It's my drug!"



"I can give you a franchise. One world."



"That's all I need."



"Deal," he said.