“Mr. Gray wasn’t stupid.”
“Mr. Gray wasn’t stupid.”
“Not once he got inside your head, that much I agree with. Mr. Gray was you, Jonesy. He stole your emotions, your memories, your taste for bacon—”
“I don’t eat it anymore.”
“I’m not surprised. He also stole your basic personality. That included the subconscious kinks. Whatever there is in you that liked the Mario Bava horror movies and the Sergio Leone westerns, whatever it is that got off on the fear and the violence . . . man, Mr. Gray loved that shit. And why wouldn’t he? Those things are primitive survival tools. As the last of his kind in a hostile environment, he grabbed every damned tool he could lay his hands on.”
“Bullshit.” Jonesy’s dislike of this idea was plain on his face.
“It’s not. At Hole in the Wall, you saw what you expected to see, which was an X-Files–slash–Close Encounters of the Third Kind alien. You inhaled the byrus . . . I have no doubt there was at least that much physical contact . . . but you were completely immune to it. As, we now know, at least fifty percent of the human race seems to be. What you caught was an intention . . . a kind of blind imperative. Fuck, there’s no word for it, because there’s no word for them. But I think it got in because you believed it was there.”
