"I looked them up." "They're aphids." "They're in my hair, on my skin, in my lungs." "And the pain, Barris, it's unreasonable." "They're all over the place." " They've completely gotten Millie too." " Ok, ok, wait, wait, wait." "Listen, you gotta get out of there." "I'll meet you over at Joe's Cafe at 3." "Calm down, everything's gonna be fine." "Put a couple of them in a jar so I can get them examined." "I'm sure they're aphids, but you never know." "Just in case, ok?" "Just do it." "Relax, relax." "Gentlemen of the Anaheim 709th chapter of the Brown Bear Lodge we have a wonderful opportunity this afternoon." "The county of Orange has provided us with a chance to hear from and put questions to an undercover narcotics agent who is out there on our behalf fighting this awful Substance D epidemic." "It's no secret we're living in a culture of addiction." "Nearly 20 percent of the population can now be classified as addicts." "And as far as anyone can tell, there is but one company that is working and helping this situation." "That company is our sponsor, New Path." "You will notice you can barely see this man because he is wearing what is called a "scramble suit."" "The exact same suit he wears and, in fact, must wear during certain parts, in fact, most parts of his daily activities of law enforcement." "This man, whom we will call Fred because that is the code name under which he reports information he gathers once within the scramble suit, cannot be detected by even the latest in voice- and facial-recognition technology." "The scramble suit itself is purportedly made up of approximately a million and a half fraction-representations of men, women, and children in every variant making the wearer of a scramble suit the ultimate Everyman." "This is terrible." "He looks, does he not, like a constantly shifting, vague blur and nothing more, am I right?" "Let's hear it for the vague blur." "If you saw me on the street without this suit on, you'd say:" ""There goes a total dope fiend."" "You'd feel aversion and walk away." "I don't look like you." "I can't afford to." "My life depends on it." "I'm not going to tell you first what I do as an undercover officer tracking down dealers and the source of their illegal drugs in the streets of our cities and corridors of our schools here in Orange County." "I'm going to tell you what I'm afraid of." "What I fear, night and day, is that our children your children and my children" "I have two little ones, very little but not too little to be addicted." "Calculatedly addicted to Substance D for profit by drug terrorists." "As many of you know, our military and their associates are actively engaged in countries where it is believed the organic component of Substance D a small, highly toxic flower, originates." "And while our troops are down there fighting for us it is up to each and every one of us here to do our part in eliminating the demand for this drug." "It's important you as citizens continue to report all suspicious activity and individuals for, simply put, if there were no demand in our society there would be no market for these leeches to exploit." "Each day, this disease takes its toll on us." "And each day, the flow of profits and where they go" "Well, it isn't about the profits anyhow, it's something else." "What'd you see happen?" "If you were a diabetic and you didn't have money for insulin would you steal to get the money or just die?" "I think you better go back to the, you know, prepared text there, Fred." "I forgot it." "I think I have a block against this shit." "Repeat after me, but make it sound casual." ""Where the profits flow, we will s" " and then retribution will swiftly follow." "At that moment, I would not want to be in their shoes. " Got it?" "You know why I've got a block against this bullshit?" "Because this is what gets people on drugs." "It's all so disgusting you want to lurch off and become a user." "Come on, Fred, just say this shit and get it over with." "Anyway" "Substance D." "D." "D is for dumbness and despair and desertion." "The desertion of your friends from you, you from your friends." "Everyone from everyone." "Isolation and loneliness and hating and suspecting each other." "D is, finally, death." "Slow death." "From the head down." "Well, that's it." "Ok, let's eat." "All right, what's your name?" "My name" "You don't know your name?" "Well, that's interesting." "Probable cause." "Out of the car, sir." "Now, you have the right to remain silent until" "And And anything you say can and will be used against you when you" "When what?" "You know, fuck this shit." " Hello?" " Hey, how you doing?" "Oh, I'm all right." "Anything wrong?" "Just this fucker stole 50 bucks' worth of shit from us today." "My boss said it was somehow my fault, and it's coming out of my paycheck which I don't even think is legal." "I mean, can he legally do that?" "Yeah, they can't do that." "At least, they used to not be able to do that." "I'll check." "Hey, Donna, can I get anything from you?" "Yeah, how much?" " Ten." " Ten?" "Yeah, I'm hurting really bad." "I'll pay you back later." " Yeah, ok." "Say, day after tomorrow?" " Any sooner?" "I'll come by later, like around 8?" "Yeah." "I'll see you later." " Ok." "All right, bye." " Ok, bye." "You see, all symptoms are purposeful, be they positive or negative." "You see?" "I wouldn't feel strangely about it." "Just the ideia of turning yourself over for rehabilitation is only naturally gonna make you a little apprehensive." "But that's just a manifestation of the fear." "It's just the:" "That's the D talking." "You know, the first thing I hear, that when you go into the New Path what they do to you, they cut your pecker off." "They could never get away with that." "You kidding?" "That's a myth." "It's actually the spleen that's remanded to their custody." " The what?" " Hey, how is everything?" "Everything is super good." "Not with me." "I got a lot of problems nobody else has." "No, no, come on." "More people than you'd think." "And more people each day." "This is a world getting progressively worse." "Can we not agree on that?" " What's on the dessert menu?" " Would you like to order some dessert?" "Like what?" "Well, we have fresh strawberry pie and fresh peach pie that we make here ourselves." " No, we don't want any dessert." " All right." "Fucking fruit pies are for old ladies." " What do you think about New Path?" " While it doesn't matter what I think, I kind of have to tip my hat to any entity that can bring so much integrity to evil." "I mean, imagine this:" "A seemingly voluntary, privatized gulag managed to eliminate the middlemen of public accountability and free will." "Wrapped it up in a bow and gave it like a gift." "I mean, come on, this is:" "This is awe-inspiring stuff." "I heard you have to go cold turkey." "Cold turkey doesn't even apply to Substance D." "Unlike the legacy of inherited predisposition to addictive behavior or substances this needs no genetic assistance." "There's no weekend warriors on the D. You're either on it or you haven't tried it." " Well, I like it." " Yeah." "How many caps do you take per day?" "Very difficult to determine." "But not that many." "Well, like the old-school pharmacopoeia, a tolerance develops, you know." "These visions of bugs, they're just garden-variety psychosis but a clear indication that you've hurdled over the initial fun and euphoric phase and passed on to the next phase." "News from the guinea-pig grapevine suggests that whatever it is we won't know until it's way too late, you see?" "You see that we're all canaries in the coalmine on this one?" "I do think I have another source." "That Donna chick." " Bob's girl?" " Yeah." "Yeah, his girl." "Although I know for a fact he never gets in her pants." "Really?" " But he talks like he does." " Oh, yeah." "That's Bob Arctor." "He talks like he does many things." "That's not the same, my friend." "That's not the same thing." "Donna has an aversion to bodily contact." "I mean, junkies lose their interest in sex, you realize due to organs swelling up from vasoconstriction." "And I have observed in her an inordinate failure of sexual arousal not just toward Bob Arctor" "but other males as well." "I can't believe she doesn't put out." "Well, she would if she were handled right." "For instance, I could show you how to sleep with her for less than 3 dollars." "I don't wanna sleep with her." "I wanna buy from her." "Donna does coke, all right?" "Three dollars doesn't get you a line of coke." "That's where you're wrong, pal." "What they've deliberately done is mix the cocaine with the oil so it cannot be extracted." "But my knowledge of chemistry is such that I know precisely how to separate the oil from the cocaine." "Now, now I will freeze it." "Cause cocaine crystals to rise to the top because they are lighter than the oil." "The terminal step, of course, I keep to myself, but suffice to say it involves an intricate and methodological process of filtering." "How long is it gonna be in there?" "Just about a half an hour." "You know, I've been thinking, Barris." "Even if we do get a pure gram of cocaine out of this deal" "I don't wanna use it on Donna to get in her pants." " That'd be like buying her." " No, it'd be an exchange." "You give her a gift, and she gives you one." "Besides, we're talking about Bob's girl here." "And this is his house." "He's my friend." "He lets you and Luckman live here." "There's a great deal about Bob Arctor you're not aware of." "How did New Path rig it?" "They're the one place in our entire country that can't be scanned." "All the rest of us can be tracked 24 hours a day but no, not at New Path." "Hey, that's their contract with the government." "But I think you're right, it would be a good place for a dealer to hide." "What about Donna Hawthorne?" "I'm systematically working up to her supplier." "The quantities I'm buying now are basically beyond her capacity." "She doesn't have enough front money to handle it." "Matter of time before she's hooking me up with the next person up the ladder." "I think soon we'll have somebody who knows something and they'll be worth busting." "What about Jim Barris and Ernie Luckman?" "Same shit." "Nothing new." "Well, what about Charles Freck and Robert Arctor?" " Up to pretty much the same old thing." " Even Arctor?" "Arctor?" "Yeah, he doesn't seem to be doing much." "Still working his nowhere, Handy Brake and Tire job." "Drops a few caps of Death cut with meth during the day." "I'm not so sure." "We just got a tip in from an informant that Arctor has funds above and beyond what he gets from his little job." "And when we checked into it we found he wasn't even working there full-time." "Yeah." "Who's this informant?" "We don't know." "Undoubtedly it's a vengeance burn." "That's how these druggies are." "I mean, phoning in on each other every time they get pissed off." "Anyhow, as of now" "I'm officially assigning you to observe Arctor." "If we're ever gonna get to the bottom of this, it'll be through this guy." "So will that mean full-time viewer recording?" "We got no choice." "We'll install a new holographic scanning system." "You'll let us know when they're out of the house." "We'll want storage and printout on everything." "Total, total, total, totally, total, total, total providence." "I am walking home, I find myself on a street I am rarely on and look what I obtain for a mere $50." " What is it?" " Oh, this would be an 18-speed bike of the all-terrain variety." "I noticed it in a neighbor's yard, and I inquired as to its availability." "They had four of them." "So I made a cash offer." " Don't." "Drugs." " Fifty dollars." "They acquiesced." "They threw in these lemon-yellow racing pants." "Even hoisted it over the fence for me, which I found to be very neighborly." "That's weird." "I didn't know you could get a 18-speed bike nearly new for $50." "It's amazing what you can get for $50." "I'll give you 60 right now, no questions asked." "You know, this bike looks a lot like the bike that this girl lives across the street had that got ripped off a month ago." "This bike could be hot." "They probably jacked it, these holster friends of yours." "Sure did, if they've got four and selling it that cheap." "Right?" "You should at least show it to her so she could see if it's hers." "Yeah." "Ok, I can do that but this is a boy's bike, ok?" "So it can't be." "Not to invalidate your intuition, but it's not possible." "Thank you." "Why do you say it's an 18-speed when it only has nine gears?" "Hein, what?" "Yeah." "Yeah." "Six right here, three at the other end of the chain." "Six plus three equals nine." " It's a nine-speed bike. - Yeah, but even a nine-speed bike for 50 bucks." "He still got a good deal." "Ok, those guys told me it was 18 speeds." "I just got Greeked." "I just got" "Wait." "Wait." "Now I count eight." "Six here and then two in the front." " That makes eight." " What do you think happened" " to the missing gears?" " Think?" "I know." "They were working on it, these gypsy grifters with improper tools, no technical knowledge." "No understanding of reverse engineering." "When they attempted to reassemble it, they panicked." "They left nine orphan gears there on the floor." "They're still there on the garage floor." "Let's just go rescue the orphan gears, dude!" "Don't you see that that's part of the plan?" "They're going to try to sell them to me, not give them as they rightfully should have as included in part of the original sale price." "Oh, my God, there's no telling what else they've bait-and-switched." "Yeah, but if all of us go together, oh, they'll give them back." "Oh, you bet they will." "Oh, you bet they will." " Let's just go as a team, ok." " Wait." "Wait, wait, wait." "Are you sure there are only nine gears on this bike?" " Eight." " Ok, eight, nine, whatever." "Don't you think that before we go over and accuse, and start some shit we should find out for sure?" "Right, Donna." "Who do we know who's an authority on this type of bi?" "Get off me!" "Let me" "We are all way too close to this." "There's only one thing we can do to thwart these albino, shape-shifting lizard bitches." "We are gonna take this outside, ask the first person we see." "Introduce some novelty." "That way we get an objective viewpoint." "Yeah." "By the way, I might take you up on that $60 offer." "No, that was for an 18-speed." "You know, for this, 18 minus 10, I'll give you 23.75." "Are you certain that's the right math on that?" "Come in." "You are Officer Fred?" " Yes." " Have a seat, please." "All right, Fred." "We're going to administer several tests and there will be no physical discomfort involved." "If this is about the speech I gave to the" "What this is about stems from a recent departmental survey showing that undercover agents have been admitted to neural-aphasia clinics during the last month." "You're conscious of the high factor of addictiveness of Substance D?" "Of course I am." "Of course, these tests in no way pertain to the addictive properties of Substance D, but to" "Well, let's start with the set-ground test first." "Within the apparently meaningless lines is an object that we would all recognize." "You are to tell me what that object is and point to it in the total field." "In many of those taking Substance D a split between the right and the left hemisphere of the brain occurs which results in a defect within both the percept and cognitive systems." "Although apparently the cognitive continues to function normally." "You located the familiar object in this drawing?" "It should just jump right out at you." "I see a Coke bottle." "A soda-pop bottle is correct." "Was it in the speech I gave?" "Maybe it seemed I showed a little bilateral dysfunction there." "I mean, might have seemed a little slushed." "Are you getting any cross-chatter?" " What?" " Cross-chatter between hemispheres." "If there's damage to the left hemisphere where the linguistic skills are located then sometimes the right hemisphere will fill in to the best of its ability." "I don't know." "I mean, not that I'm aware of." "What do you see in this second picture?" "A sheep." "Show me the sheep." "An impairment of set-background discrimination can get you into a heap of trouble." "Instead of perceiving no forms, you perceive faulty forms." "So there is no sheep here, is there?" "Was I close?" "This is not a Rorschach test, where some abstract blot can be interpreted many ways by many subjects." "This has one specific object." "In this case, a dog." "A dog." "What's that mean, that I saw a sheep instead?" "Who knows." "Only after the entire set has been run" " can we determine" " Why this is superior to the Rorschach is it's not interpretive." "There are many wrongs, but there is only one right." "You either get it or you don't." "And if you show a run of not getting it then we have a fix on a functional impairment and we dry you out for a while, until you test better later on." "At New Path?" " Undoubtedly." " Undoubtedly." "Now, what do you see in this drawing among these particular black-and-white lines?" "Plastic dog shit." "The little kind you can buy and put in someone's bed." "Can I go now?" "You know, Fred, if you keep your sense of humor like you do you just might make it after all." "Make it." "Make what?" "The team?" "The girl?" "Make good?" "Make do?" "Make out?" "Make sense?" "Make money?" "Make time?" "Define your terms." "The Latin for "make" is facere which always reminds me of fuckere which is Latin for "to fuck."" "And I haven't been getting shit in that department lately." "If you guys are psychologist-types and you've been monitoring my endless debriefings with Hank, tell me:" "What the hell is Donna's deal?" "What do I do?" "I mean how do you make it with that kind of sweet, unique, stubborn little chick?" "You could buy her flowers." "Really?" "This time of year, you can get little blue flowers at any nursery." "Give them to her." "Yeah." "Hey, Fred, glad you could make it." "This is the informant who phoned in about Bob Arctor, and I mentioned him." " Yes." " Anyway, he phoned in again and we challenged him to step forth and identify himself." "Do you know this man?" "Sure do." "You're James Barris, aren't you?" "So, Sr. Barris, what's your information?" "I have evidence that Sr. Arctor is part of a covert terrorist drug organization." "They are well-funded and they have arsenals of weapons at their disposal." "And what is this organization?" "I believe it to be political in nature and very much against this country." "An enemy of the U.S." "Can you give us any specific names of anyone else in this organization persons Arctor meets with?" "Yes." "Miss Donna Hawthorne." "On a variety of pretexts, he will go over to her place of residence and colludes with her regularly, I've noticed." "Colludes." " Colludes." " What do you mean?" "Well, I've followed him in my own car without his knowledge." " He goes there often." " Yes, as often as" " She is his girl." " Right." " Sr. Arctor also seemingly" " Hold up, hold up." "You think there's anything to this, Fred?" "I think we should definitely look at his evidence." "All right." "Bring in your evidence." "All of it." "We want names most of all." "Now, have you seen Sr. Arctor involved in any large quantities of drugs?" "To be certain." "And I have carefully taken samples" "Again, without his knowledge." " when the opportunity presented itself, strictly for you to analyze." " I can bring those in as well." " Great." "Is there anything else you wish to state at this time?" "There is." "Sr. Arctor is an addict." "He is addicted to Substance D." "And I fear that his mind has become deranged over time and he is now officially to be considered dangerous." " Dangerous." " Yes." "He is having episodes that would occur with brain damage from Substance D." "I'm quite certain, also, that the optic chiasm has deteriorated somewhat due to a weak ipsilateral component." "This sort of unsupported speculation, as I've already warned you, Sr. Barris is completely worthless." "Now, we'll be sending an officer with you to gather your evidence." " All right?" " May I?" "An officer out of uniform, of course." "No, see, I could be murdered." "As I've already said, senhor." "Arctor has this cache of weapons." "Sr. Barris, we appreciate this and the extreme risk you are taking." "And if it works out, and your information is valuable in obtaining a conviction" " then naturally" " But that is not the reason I'm here." "You see, this man is He just has a soul sickness." "His brain is damaged from the use of this toxic and most terrible substance." "Nonetheless, the reason I am here is I feel that I may have certain qualities that would qualify me to perhaps come over to your side." "To surrender and come to the side of law enforcement." " I would like an employment application." " We don't care why you're here." "We only care whether your evidence and material amount to anything." "The rest is your problem." "Perhaps at the desk I can get an employment" "You are about to witness for approximately 61 cents of ordinary household materials the perfect homemade silencer." "Barris, the neighbors are gonna hear." "No, they only call in murders in this neighborhood." "Plus, Freckledeck, it's a silencer." "They're not gonna hear anything." "Well, I'm pretty fucking sure they're illegal." "In this day and age, the type of society we find ourselves living in every person of worth needs to have a gun at all times, to protect themselves." "And we're off." "That sure is some silencer." "Yes." "What it did was augment the sound, rather than dampen it." "But I almost have it." "I believe I have it in principle, anyway." "Oh, well, the good news is, regardless of what you do next time it'll be a silencer to us, because we're now deaf!" "What happened?" "How'd I get here?" "Ok, it's your move now." "Anyone want some popcorn?" " Yeah." " Yeah." "Fuck!" "The pain so unexpected and undeserved had, for some reason, cleared away the cobwebs." "I realized I didn't hate the cabinet door." "I hated my life, my house, my family" " Are you ok, Daddy?" " What happened?" "my backyard my power mower." "Nothing would ever change." "Nothing new could ever be expected." "It had to end, and it did." "Now in the dark world where I dwell ugly things and surprising things and sometimes little wondrous things spill out at me constantly" "and I can count on nothing." "Medfly, got it." " That would be a Thelma Kornford." " Oh, yeah, Miss Big-Tits." "If I had known it was harmless" " I would have killed it myself." " I would have killed it myself." "Thanks for the mammaries." "She had such beautiful" "Daddy slowpoke." " Oh, get around him, will you?" " You know what to do." "Your move." "That's a big ten-four." "Got nothing on us." " There we go." " Get a life!" "Ok, Bob, no rush." " Not so fast." " You are flying." "Decelerate." "Steady." " Decelerate." " Slow down." " Jesus." " Son of a bitch." "Come on." "Decelerate!" "Let us over." "It's an emergency." "We're getting over." "Emergency." " What the hell was that?" " Jesus fucking Christ." "What the hell in the hootenanny was that?" "The return spring on the throttle cable, or" "Look, the gas." "Was it cut or broken?" "Let's give her a look." "Oh, my" "It's not the spring." "It's the linkage from the pedal to the carb." "See?" "It fell apart, so the gas pedal didn't push back out when you took your foot off" " but doesn't explain why" " There is a safety override on the carb." " When the linkage parts, it's" " Why'd it part?" "Shouldn't this ring hold the cable in place?" "I mean, how could it just come off like that?" "Let's have a look." "Let's probe a little." "All right." "This screw has been turned all the way out, the idle screw." "So when the linkage parted, it went the other way." "Up instead of down." "Wait." "Now, how could that happen?" "There is no way that that screw could turn itself all the way out like that accidentally." "No way." "Motherfucker!" "They did it deliberately!" "We almost died!" "They almost fucking got us, man!" "To loosen the lock ring and nut assembly that holds the linkage rods together a special tool would be needed." "Several, in fact." "It'll take half an hour to get this back together." " I have the tools, though." " Back at the house." "Correct." "We can always go to a repair center and borrow theirs or get a tow truck out here." "Here." "You know, maybe that's what's fucking us up, fucking up our brains." " We're gonna wind up like Freck soon." " No." "Ok, these are for us." "And I'm going to suggest that you take several, with the implicit acceptance of the fact that Substance D cannot screw up an accelerator" " or a carb -idle adjustment." "Yeah, dude." "Don't blame the drugs." " Come on." " Well, so much for our great road trip to San Diego, Bob." "I told you we should have gone to São Francisco." "What, like going to São Francisco would not have caused this problem with the engine?" "Yeah, because when you're going north, it screws this way." "When you're going south, it screws that way." "If we were in Australia." "This proves you got somebody out to get you real bad, Bob." "I just hope the house is still there when we get back." "Yeah, I didn't think of that." " I wouldn't worry about it too much." " You wouldn't?" "Christ, they may have broken in and ripped off all we got." "All Bob's got, anyhow." "What if they stomped the animals?" "Don't worry about it." "I left a little surprise for them." "What?" "Yes, anyone entering the house while we were gone will receive a little surprise." "Little something I perfected early this morning." "What kind of surprise?" "It's my house, Jim." "You should ask me before you start wiring up my house." "Why so uptight about protecting your house from intruders?" "Why would you care?" "I'm just saying, it's my house, that's all." "You can't start going around booby-trapping my house." "Ok, ok." "I mean, jeez." "Or as the Germans say, leise which translates to "be cool." Just be cool." "So, what did you do?" "If the front door is opened while we are in absentia thumbnail-sized, auxiliary, motion-detector digital-memory cameras start recording." "You should have told me." "What if they come in through the back door or the bathroom window like that infamous Beatles' song?" "To increase their chances of entering via the front door rather than in other less usual places" "I, fortuitously, left the front door unlocked." " Suppose they don't know it's unlocked." " That's why I left a note on the door." " You're kidding me." " No, no." "No." "Yes." "But no." "But yes." "Are you bullshitting us or not?" "I just simply never know with you." " Is he fucking with us, Bob?" " We'll see when we get back." "If there's a note on the door and it's unlocked, we'll know he isn't lying." "They'd probably take the note down after ripping off and vandalizing the house and locking the door behind them, so we don't know." "We will never know." "It's still that gray area." "Of course I'm kidding." "Only a psychotic would do that." "Leave the front door unlocked with a note on it." "What'd you write on the note, Jim?" "I wrote, "Come on in, the door's unlocked."" "He did it." "He really did it." "This is the only way we'll know for sure who's been doing this." "And is that not what is of primary importance?" "Ok, I'm still gray here." "Now, did you do it or not?" "Is it really that suspenseful?" " Did you?" " He did it." "Doesn't matter." "We'll be home shortly." " Did you?" " We'll be home presently." "Well, Barris, I can see you're right." "This scrupulous covering-over of all the signs they would've otherwise left testifies to their thoroughness." "You're an idiot." "Oh, wait, wait." "This What's that?" "Come here, come here." "Look at this, look at this." "A still-hot cigarette butt." "It sure is." "Wait a second." "They lit a joint while they were here, Bob." "Fuck it." "Barris is right, there was somebody here." "This roach is still hot, smell it." "Yes." "And that roach may not have been left here by accident." "This evidence may not be a slip-up." " So, what now?" " Maybe they were here specifically to plant drugs in the house." "Setting us up, then "phoning in a tip" later." "It could be in the phone, the wall outlets." "We have to go through this house and get it absolutely clean before they phone us in, unless they already have." "We might only have minutes." "You check the wall sockets." "I'll tear this phone apart." "Wait, hold on." "If they see us scrambling" " before the raid" " What raid?" "If we're frantically trying to flush their drugs we can't allege, though true, we didn't know they were here." "They're going to find us holding them, or maybe that's part of the plan." "Shit, shit, shit." "We can't do anything." "We're fucked, man." "Fuck." " Fucked, man!" " Barris what about the super-secret surveillance cameras?" " The what?" " The doodads, man." "Oh, yes, of course." "Right, of course." "How could I have forgotten?" "This should be extremely informational at this point." "I believe this will tell us a great deal." "Although it probably wouldn't have proven to be that important." "Let me guess: didn't record." "Allow me to suggest that it's highly likely that the tow truck was bugged thus affording them ample time and opportunity to deploy an operative to diffuse and otherwise erase the evidence obtained." "But we have no other recourse, in view of their evasive tactics." "There is, of course, one thing you could do, Bob, although it would take time." "Sell the house and move out?" "But hell, this is our home." "You could make a profit." "On the other hand, you might have to take a loss on a quick sale." "I know a good realtor." "What reason should I give for selling?" "They always ask." "Can't tell the truth." "You shouldn't tell the truth" "Why can't we tell the truth?" "We put an ad in the L.A. Times." "Modern, three-bedroom tract house with two bathrooms for easy and fast flushing high-grade drugs stashed throughout all rooms, included in sale price." "It could actually increase the value." "But they might call and ask what kind of drugs are stashed and we don't know, it could be anything." "Prospective buyers might inquire as to the quantity." "And we don't know at this point." "It could be ounces of weed or pounds of heroin, or hits of E or killer caps of D." "Hey, you guys." "Fuck!" "Jesus." "What the fuck is wrong with you?" "I came in, like the note said." "It didn't say when you were gonna get back, so I just" "I just sat around for a while and ended up crashing." " Love your sweater." " Just Don't touch me." "Man, you guys were making so much noise." " Sorry." " It woke me up." "Did you smoke a joint before you crashed?" "Yeah." "Otherwise, I can't ever sleep." "You know, you guys should seriously think about maybe locking the doors when you leave." "Otherwise you could get ripped off and it'd be your own fault." "This is all your fault." "Did I hear you say you were gonna sell the house?" "Or was that, you know, me dreaming?" "Because what I heard sounded weird." "Yeah, we're all dreaming." "Quiet." "Steady." "Steady." "Kidney." "Kidney." "Kidney." "So the information from the holo scanners installed in Arctor's house are transmitted back here, to station 12-879." "This'll be your new home away from home, pal." "It's pretty intuitive." "You'll just be watching and scanning through recorded information." "You can go live, of course, but that tends to be excruciatingly boring." "And then, you see where these holos are placed?" "What would be great is if they ever need servicing or changing out you could do that yourself while no one else is around." "But wouldn't you then see me on the tapes doing that?" "No." "For that, you just edit yourself out." "But be sure to include yourself in the tapes from time to time because if you systematically edit yourself out we can deduce who you are through the process of elimination whether we want to or not." "I'm not sure I exactly" "We take it for granted that you are one of the individuals that are in Arctor's circle of roommates and friends that frequent the house." "I mean, undoubtedly, you're either Jim Barris or Ernie Luckman" "Charles Freck even Arctor himself." "Hell, you could be Donna, for all I know." "As my superior, I figure you'd know all this stuff." "How the hell would I know?" "I'm just a little guy behind a big desk." "You'd have to go way up the food chain to access that kind of info." "You know, instead of me doing any maintenance send someone to the house once a month, in uniform and have him say, "Good morning." "I'm here to service the monitoring devices covertly installed on your premises."" "Maybe that sucker Arctor would even pick up the bill." "Actually, I think Arctor would probably kill the guy and then disappear." "If it's proven that Arctor is, in fact, hiding that much." "Believe me, Arctor is hiding a great deal." "We've got more recent information on him analyzed and there's no doubt about it, he's a ringer." "A three-dollar bill." "The guy is a phony." "So keep on him until he drops until we have enough to arrest him and make it stick." "You think he's high up in the, you know, Substance D network?" "What we think is of no importance to your work." "You report your limited conclusions, and we evaluate." " You got it?" " Ok, ok." "I got it." "I'd say Arctor is doomed if he's up to something." "And I have a hunch, from what you're saying, that he is." "The idling jets could be replaced with smaller jets that would compensate." "And with a tach, he could just watch his rpms so it didn't over-rev." "Usually just backing off on the gas pedal causes it to upshift if the automatic linkage doesn't." "What are you grease monkeys up to?" "Bob's got a bent choke shaft." " How much does this Impala weigh?" " Weighs about 1000 pounds." "Thousand pounds traveling at 80 miles per hour builds up a force of" "That's 1000 pounds with passengers in it and a full tank of gas." " For a fact?" "Ok." " How many passengers?" " Twelve." " Six in the front, six in the back." "No, that's 11 in the back and the driver sitting alone in the front." "Extra weight on the rear wheels is to keep from fishtailing." "We talking about 1250-pound passengers?" " Kids' soccer team." " Now, is that metal or plastic cleats?" " Metal cleats for safety." " Ok, my computations are complete." "You are just heckle tweak, but you are bug-bite squared." " What kind of bug?" "About-to-get-fucked-up-bitch beetle." " Hey, come on." "Cool it, you guys." " Tell me" "Step back." "Freck-and-frack, Ernie's on the attack." " What is this?" " Come on." " I'm desperately afraid." " I'm gonna knock your nads up into your nostrils for talking to your betters that way." "All right." "I'm a technician, you're an interloper." "You are constitutionally incapable of not shutting the fuck up." " Bring it!" " Shut the fuck up!" "No, no, proctology boy, I'm coming after you." "Shut it." "Hey." "Hey." "I have the perfect tool for this job." " I was only kidding him." " Fuck." "Fuck!" "What if he goes in there and he gets his gun and his silencer?" "I'm leaving." "This place has become unsafe." "No, hey, hey, Freck." "No, come on." "You're a bro, man." "Stick around." "What's the hammer for, Barris?" "No, I just saw it inside and thought I, you know, should bring it along with me." " Same with this." " You ready?" "Yeah, what do you want?" " Come on, hammerhead." " Shut up." " Make a move." " Don't like it." "Ok." "If you guys are gonna kill each other, I'm splitting." " It's getting very fucked up over here." " Hey, Freck." "The most dangerous kind of person is the one who's afraid of his own shadow." " What is that supposed to mean?" " I'll tell you." "It means that if you take too much of that stuff you not only start seeing bugs all over but you start talking like and no one can understand you." "What'd you say, Barris?" "I didn't understand." "See, you guys are fucked up." "No, no, it is y-uck-uck-ou that are fuck-ucked-ed up." "Hey, go Freck yourself." "Don't take the car, you'll kill yourself." "So this guy's been going around claiming to be a world-famous impostor, right?" "Says he's posed, at one time or another, as a surgeon at John Hopkins as a theoretical, submolecular, high-velocity particle-research physicist on a federal grant at Harvard as a Finnish novelist who won the Nobel Prize for literature" "as a deposed Argentinean president who was married to a go-go dancer from Chicago" "He got away with all that?" " He never got caught?" " Ok, you broke my flow so now I guess I'll just have to segue down to the near." "That's just it." "You see, he didn't pose as any of those." "He just posed as a world-famous impostor." "Yeah." "It came out later in the L.A. Times." "They checked up, and he was pushing a broom at Disneyland or something." "He saw that old DiCaprio movie." "You know, the one where he plays a world-famous impostor before Leonardo hit his Elvis stage." "And his first thought was:" ""Hey, I could pose as all those exotic guys and get away with it."" "But then, his next thought was, "Hell, why bother?" "I could just pose as an impostor, and it'd be a lot easier."" "They say that he made more money than the actual impostor although I'm not sure if they'd adjust for inflation." "Well, you know, we all see impostors now and then but not posing as subatomic physicists." "Oh, as a narc, you mean." "What's a narc look like?" "That's like asking, "What's an impostor look like?"" "I talked to this dealer who'd been busted." "I asked him what the narc who busted him looked like." "What did he say, he looked just like us?" "More so." "So I guess the moral of that is stay away from guys looking the same as us." "Well, there are female narcs." "Oh, hey, I'd like to meet one of those." "No, I don't mean a female." "I mean just the narc, knowingly, like, positive." "Sure." "So you could positively know." "And you will." "When he slaps the cuffs on, you'll know for sure, when that day comes." "How could a guy do that?" "Pose as a narc?" " What?" " What?" "Pose as a narc?" " No, you said it." "So yeah." " Pose as a narc." "Oh, sh Shit, I'm spaced." "Pose as a narc, uau." "Pose as a narc." "My brains are scrambled today." "Christ, Barris, what the fuck?" "Yes, hi." "How are you?" "I have something somewhat emergent to report." "I don't know if I should be summoning the inhalator squad or the resuscitation squad." "Yes, ma 'am?" "I don't know." "I don't want to say it's not cardiac arrest but it's either that or an involuntary asphyxiation of a bolus within the" "The address, yes." "The address is simple although I've never sent myself a piece of mail here." "Seven Seven Seven-zero-niner." "Street?" "Is the street relevant?" " Come on." " Tell you this much, it is a cul-de-sac." "Does that technically qualify as a street?" "I'm pleased to report we won't be needing your assistance after all." "Thank you." "Have a nice day." "There you go." "Took care of itself." " Ok." " Oh, Jesus." "You all right?" "There you go." "I must've passed out." " Yeah." " Well, you I was dreaming." " Must have almost died." " Yeah." "Shit." "And what were you doing while I was being escorted by dead relatives to the bright light?" "Jacking off?" "No, no, no." "You saw me." "I was on the phone." "I summoned the paramedics." " I sprung into action without delay." " Bullshit." "You were cleaning your pipe." "I was wrapping my pipe." "You were unconscious." "You the only person in the universe who never heard of the Heimlich maneuver?" "All right, I'm gonna give you a little feedback since you seem to be proceeding through life like a cat without whiskers perpetually caught behind the refrigerator." "Your life and watching you live it is like a gag reel of ineffective bodily functions." "I swear to God that a toddler has a better understanding of the intricacies of chew, swallow, digest don't kill yourself on your TV dinner." "And yet, you've managed to turn this near-death fuck-up of yours into a moral referendum on me." " You are a monster!" " Oh, fuck." " You are a billy goat." " A sick, depraved un" "Charles Freck, becoming progressively more and more depressed by what was happening around him, decided finally to off himself." "There was no problem in the circles where he hung out in putting an end to yourself." "You just bought a large quantity of downers and took them with cheap wine." "The planning part had to do with the artifacts he wanted found on him by later archeologists." "He had spent several days deciding much longer than he had spent deciding to kill himself." "He would be found lying on his back on his bed with a copy of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and an unfinished letter to Exxon protesting the cancellation of his gas credit card." "That way, he would indict the system and achieve something by his death over and above what the death itself achieved." "At the last moment, he changed his mind on a decisive issue and decided to drink the pills with a connoisseur wine instead of Ripple or Thunderbird." "So he set off on one last drive, over to Tiny's Liquors which specialized in fine wines and bought a bottle of 2001 Azalea Springs Merlot which set him back almost $ 70." "Back home again, he uncorked the wine, let it breathe, drank a few glasses of it and tried to think of something meaningful, but could not." "And then, with a glass of merlot, gulped down all the pills at once." "However, he had been burned." "Instead of quietly suffocating, Charles Freck began to hallucinate." "The next thing he knew, a creature from between dimensions was standing beside his bed, looking down at him disapprovingly." "You're gonna read me my sins?" "It's gonna take 100,000 hours?" "Your sins will be read to you ceaselessly, in shifts, throughout eternity." "The list will never end." ""The Sins of Freck."" "Charles Freck wished he could take back the last half-hour of his life." ""Age 6, in the first grade:" "theft of fingernail clippers." "3:08 PM Theft." "You did knowingly and with malice punch your baby sister, Evelyn." "Kicking the dog." "December: theft of Christmas presents." "One million lies." "Destruction of"" "One thousand years later, they had reached the sixth grade the year he had discovered masturbation." ""November 14th:" "Percodan." "Vicodin." "Cocaine."" "Charles Freck thought, "At least I got a good wine."" "Where did Substance D come from?" "Why can't we stop it?" "The bigger this war gets, the more freedoms we lose the more Substance D is on our streets." "Can't you figure this out?" "Look around you." "Look how far we've come." "Humanity wasn't meant to live like this." "Our every waking moment tracked and traced and scanned." "It's time to stop submitting to this tyranny." "It's time to realize that we're being enslaved." "It's our tax dollars at work." "Protect us from ourselves." "Hey, guys, I used to be one of you." "Stop selling out your own species." "Hey." "Get in." "You scared me." "Got something for you." "I'm seeing some crazy shit tonight." "What do you mean?" "That fucking Barris." "You know how he works?" "He doesn't kill anybody but he hangs around until the situation arises where they die." "And then he just sits there." "And he sort of sets them up in the first place while he stays out of it." "But I'm not sure how." "Hey, do you have that money for the stuff?" "I need it tonight." " Yeah." "I have it." " Ok." "You know, I don't like Barris." "And I don't trust him." "Guy's fucking crazy." "And when you're around him, you start acting crazy." "And then when you're not around him, you're fine." "You're acting crazy now." " I am?" " Yes." "Hey, will you take me to a concert next weekend at Anaheim Stadium?" "Sure." " Yeah?" " Yeah." "Yeah." "Which night?" "It's Sunday afternoon." "Whatever you want." "Well, I'll just drive over to my place." "You have the money, you'll give it to me." "We'll kick back, drop some Death maybe get some tequila." "All right." "All right." "Hey, Donna, do you like cats?" "Drippy little things." "Moving along about a foot above the ground." "Above?" "You mean, on the ground?" "Just dripping behind furniture." "Little spring flowers with blue in them that come up first." "Yeah." " Before the" " Before someone stomps on them and they're all gone." "It's like you know me." "You can read me." "Can I put my arms around you?" " I wanna hug you, ok?" " No." " What?" " Look, I do a lot of coke, ok?" "I just have to be really careful because I do a lot of coke." "So just leave my body alone, ok?" "Ok." "Sure." "Yeah." "You know, fuck it." "Hey, I I'm sorry." "I just don't like it when people grope my body and I have to watch out for that because I snort so much coke." "That's fucking lame." "I gotta go." "Your car's not fixed." "I drove you here, I'll drive you back." "Bob." "Bob." "Bob, wait." "Please." "Please wait." "I didn't mean I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings." "I'm just I'm so out of it right now." "I Sometimes after I've worked really hard all day, I" "Please, come back." "Come on." "With the tequila." "How much do you do?" "Not that much." "And I don't shoot up." "I never have and I never will." "I" "Once you start shooting, you got like six months, maybe." "And even tap water." "You get a habit." "You have a habit." "We all do." "I mean, so what?" "What's the difference?" "I'm happy." " Aren't you happy?" " Listen to me." "I think it's starting to get bad." "You know what I wanna do someday, Bob?" "I wanna move north, live on a farm near the mountains, in a cabin." "Can I go with you?" "I hope so." "I hope so." "All right." "You weren't kidding." "Do you have a toothbrush?" "What?" "Well, screw it." "Screw it." "Teeth are teeth." "I'II I'll brush them." "Know where the bathroom is?" "What bathroom?" "In the house." "Who are those guys out there?" "Rolling joints and rattling on and on?" "They live here with you?" "Two of them do." "So you're gay?" "Try not to be." "That's why I called you tonight." "So you're putting up a pretty good battle against it." "You better believe it." "Guess I'm about to find out." "If you're a latent gay, then you'll want me to take the initiative." "You want me to undress you?" "Sure." "Oh, Jesus, fuck." "Hello?" "Fred, we've processed some more recent material on you." "How are you feeling?" "Ok." "Any problems?" "Well, I had a fight with my girl." "Any confusion?" "Are you experiencing any difficulty identifying persons or objects?" "Any language disorientation?" "No." "Can you come back over to room 203?" "What did you find to be a problem?" "We'll take that up when you get here." "Connie." "Donna." "All right, Fred." "Very good." "And this next test, with your eyes covered reach out and feel an object with each hand." "You are to tell us if the object presented to your left hand is identical to the object presented to your right." "One more thing, Fred." "We need an updated blood test." "So go down the hall to the pathology lab, and they'll fix you up." "And by the time you get back, we should almost be through with our evaluation." "I'll be upstairs with Hank." "You certainly seem much more depressed today than you did when we first saw you." "Pardon?" "Last week, when we first saw you, you were kidding and laughing." "Did you ever get her the flowers?" "Crazy job they gave me." "But if I wasn't doing it, someone else would be." "And they might get it wrong." "They might set Arctor up, plant drugs on him and collect a reward." "Better it be me, despite the disadvantages." "Just protecting everyone from Barris is justification in itself." "What the hell am I talking about?" "I must be nuts." "I know Bob Arctor." "He's a good person." "He's up to nothing." "At least, nothing too bad." "In fact, he works for the Orange County Sheriff's Office covertly which is probably why Barris is after him." "But that wouldn't explain why the Orange County Sheriff's Office is after him." "Something big is definitely going down in this house." "This rundown, rubble-filled house with its weed-patch yard and cat box that never gets emptied." "What a waste of a truly good house." "So much could be done with it." "A family and children could live here." "It was designed for that." "Such a waste." "They ought to confiscate it and put it to better use." "I'm supposed to act like they aren't here." "Assuming there's a "they" at all." "It may just be my imagination." "Whatever it is that's watching it's not human unlike little dark-eyed Donna." "It doesn't ever blink." "What does a scanner see?" "Into the head?" "Down into the heart?" "Does it see into me, into us?" "Clearly or darkly?" "I hope it sees clearly, because I can't any longer see into myself." "I see only murk." "I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better." "Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I do then I'm cursed and cursed again." "And we'll only wind up dead this way knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too." "You show what we regard more as competition phenomenon than impairment." "Yeah?" "Competition between the left and the right hemispheres of your brain." "It's like you have two signals that interfere with each other by carrying conflicting information." "It's as if you have two fuel gauges on your car." "They're studying the same amount of fuel but one says your tank is full, the other registers empty." "They can't both be right." "And you as the driver have only an indirect relationship to the fuel tank via the gauges." "So, what does all this mean?" "Well, I'm sure you know already." "You've been experiencing it without knowing why or what it is." "Two hemispheres of my brain are competing?" " Yes." " Yes." "But why?" "Substance D." "It often causes that, functionally, and this is what the tests confirm." "Damage has taken place to the normally dominant left hemisphere and the right hemisphere is attempting to compensate." "Crosscutting, we call it related to split-brain phenomenon." "We could perform a right hemispherectomy but I'd" "Will this ever go away?" "Probably." "It's a functional impairment." "It may be organic damage." "It may be permanent." "Time will tell, and only after you've been off Substance D for a long while." "I'll never take Substance D again for the rest of my life." "How much are you taking now?" "Not much." "More, recently, because of job stress." "Death is swallowed up in victory." "Behold, I tell you the sacred secret now:" "You shall not all sleep in death." "We'll do the other half of Southern Califórnia tomorrow night." "The Air Force arsenal at Vandenberg will be hit for automatic weapons" "What about that anthrax Anwar ripped off for us?" "When do we?" "Aren't we supposed to carry the stuff to the watershed area?" "We need the weapons first." "Drugs in the water supply is step B." "Ok, but I gotta go." "I got a customer." "I can also identify the aforementioned terrorist cell." "It's indicated throughout the course of my observations." "Do you have any more material of this sort, or is this tape substantially it?" "No, I have a veritable cornucopia and much of it is directly referencing the organization and its directives." "Who are these people?" "What organization?" "It is primarily Arctor and Hawthorne." "I have coded notes here, which may be of some interest to you." "I My own cryptology is very difficult to" "As of now I'm impounding all of this." "It is our property temporarily, and we will sort through it ourselves." "You will be on hand to explain anything to us if and when we get to the point where we feel we need anything explained." "Sr. Barris, you will not be released pending our study of this material." "You will be charged, as a formality, to keep you available with knowingly giving the authorities false information." "This, of course, is just a pretext for your own safety." "I always wanted to go to the Galapagos" " Is that satisfactory, Sr. Barris?" " Not entirely." "Though I wonder, when I'm locked down may I be provided with some lotion, and perhaps some?" "So, what do you think of Barris' evidence?" "Seems like what he played The little we heard anyway." "sounded pretty genuine to me." "It's fake." "Worthless." "Made on a home computer." "Maybe you're right." "Is that my medical report you have there?" "Yep." "What does it say?" "That you're completely bonkers." "Completely?" "There's maybe two brain cells that still light up." "Rest is just short circuits and sparks." "Two?" "Listen, when you go to pick up your next paycheck there will be a substantial difference this time." "I get some sort of bônus for this?" "For this having happened to me on duty?" "No." "Read your penal code." ""An officer who willingly becomes an addict and doesn't report it promptly is subject to a misdemeanor charge a fine, and/or six months."" "You'll probably just be fined." "Willingly?" "No one held a gun to your head and shot you up." "No one dropped something in your soup." "You knowingly and willingly took an addictive drug brain-destructive and disorienting." "I had to." "You could have pretended to." "Most officers manage to cope with it." "And from the quantities you were taking" "My God, Fred, I" "Hey, you know what I would do if I were you?" "Once you get out of New Path and, you know, it's all over" "But it may never be over." "Cigarette?" "I'm getting off that too." "Everything." "Including chocolate." "Yeah." "And" "Like I tell my kids" "I've got two kids." "Two girls." "Little ones." "I don't believe you do." "You're not supposed to." "Maybe not." "Listen, is there anywhere specific you'd like to go?" "Maybe over to Donna Hawthorne's place?" "From the information you brought in, sounds like you guys are pretty close." "Yes, we are." "How'd you know that?" "Process of elimination." "I know who you aren't and we're talking about a very small group of people that we hoped would lead us higher." "And maybe Barris will." "I pieced it together a long time ago that you're Arctor." "I'm who?" "I'm Bob Arctor?" "Yeah, get me Donna Hawthorne's number or just patch me through when you locate her." "Thanks." "Bud, you are in a very bad way, my friend." "Maybe Jim Barris poisoned you." "We're really interested in Barris, not you." "The whole scanning of the house was to keep an eye on him." "We hoped to draw him here, and we did." "He is deep into it with some very dangerous people." "Then I'm a what?" "Well, we had to get to Barris to set him up." "So how we arranged it was he grew progressively more and more suspicious that you were an undercover cop trying to nail him or use him to get high or" "So he did what you or anyone would have done." "Hey, Donna." "Yeah, hi, this is a buddy of Bob's." "Arctor." "Yeah." "Listen, he's in a He's in a bad way." "Yeah, way bad." "I was wondering if I could ask a favor of you." "You're a sweetheart." "Yeah, I'm sure he'll appreciate it very much." "Great, thanks." "Good news." "Donna Hawthorne said she'd pick you up out front in about five minutes." "You fuckers." "You're a good man, Bob." "You've been dealt a bad deal." "This is not fair, but it has to be this way." "You just" "You gotta You gotta just wait it out, just get through it." "And someday a long time from now you'll see the way you saw before." "There'll be a recognition and some spark in a disguised form will reveal itself to you and guide you." " Substance D?" " Yeah." "Ate his head." "Another loser." "It's easy to win." "Anybody can win." "Goodbye." "Living and unliving things are exchanging properties." "The drive of unliving things is stronger than the drive of living things." "The living should never be used to serve the purposes of the dead." "But the dead should, if possible serve the purposes of the living." "Hey, good news." "I think I got you transferred to one of our farms." " Can I work with animals?" " I think you'll be working with plants for a while." "In the open, where you can touch the ground." " I wanna be with something living." " The ground is living." "The earth is still alive." "Do you have any agricultural background?" "I worked in an office." "Well, you'll be outside from now on." "Your name is Bruce." "My name is Bruce." "We're gonna try you on farming for a period, Bruce." " Ok." " Staff thought you'd be better off." "I think you'll like it here." "I think I'll like it here." "Come on, I'll show you where you're gonna be sleeping." "You like mountains, Bruce?" "Look up." "Mountains." "No snow, but mountains." "I like mountains." "The air is good here." "I like air." "Yeah." "We all like air, Bruce." "We really do." "That we have in common." "4G." "Yours is 4G." "Can you remember that?" "4G." "Will I be seeing my friends?" "What, you mean from back where you were?" "The Santa Ana facility?" "Mike and Laura and Mike and Eddie." "And" "The people from the residence facilities they don't come out to the farms, Bruce." " See, these are closed operations." " Closed operations." "But, you know, you might get back up there couple times a year." "You know, there are gatherings at Christmas and the next one is Thanksgiving." "Thanksgiving." "So you might see them in three months." "Hey, Audrey." "Glad you could meet." "So tell me, are they getting paranoid about him?" "No, not at all." "The guy's so burnt-out." "And we're still convinced they're growing the stuff?" "They have to be." "Who else?" "I just wonder if it even matters at this" "It matters, Audrey." "It matters when we can prove that New Path is the one growing manufacturing and distributing." "How does he look?" "I mean, do you think he's gonna be able to pull through for us?" "All we can do is hope that when he finally gets in there a few charred brain cells will flicker on and some distant instinct will kick in." "It's just" " It's just such a cost to pay." " Yeah." "But there's no other way to get in there." "I couldn't, and think how long I tried." "They got that place locked up tight." "They're only gonna let a burnt-out husk like Bruce in." "Harmless." "You have to be, or they won't take the risk." "Yeah, but to sacrifice someone a living person, without them ever knowing it." "I mean, if he'd understood, if he had volunteered but he doesn't know and he never did." "He didn't volunteer for this." "Sure he did." "It was his job." "It wasn't his job to get addicted." "We took care of that." "Look, Mike, I gotta get out." "I can't do this again." "I want it to end." "I" "I lay in bed at night, and I can't sleep, and I just think:" " "Shit, we are colder than they are."" " I don't think so." "I mean, I believe God's m.o. is to transmute evil into good and if he's active here, he's doing that now although our eyes can't perceive it." "The whole process is hidden beneath the surface of our reality will only be revealed later." "And even then the people of the future our children's children will never truly know this awful time that we have gone through and the losses we took." "Well, maybe some footnote in a minor history book." "A brief mention with no list of the fallen." "You're seeing the flower of the future." " But not for you, Bruce." " Not for me." "No, you've had too much of a good thing already." "Get up, get up." "Stop worshipping." "This isn't your god anymore, although it once was." "Gone." "Flowers gone." "No, you just can't see them." "Back to work." "I saw." "Back to work, Bruce." "I saw death rising from the earth from the ground itself" "in one blue field." "A present for my friends at Thanksgiving."