Kevin Curry
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Psychoprotective Book 2 Chapter 11
🕑 Added 2023-06-26 14:00:09 +0000 UTC[Bob Zanotto]
It’s been seventeen years since the love of his life died, lost in a battle that should never have happened.
It’s been five years since he lost his job, fired by his own nephew.
In those five years, the days have bled into each other, a blur of brewing, farming, and drinking.
As much as he hates to admit it, he’s not actually living a life of a complete hermit. He gets plenty of stuff delivered from mail order catalogs, mostly supplies to keep him in his lifestyle; brewing and gardening supplies, glass panels to fix up his greenhouse, meat, new clothes occasionally… seeds.
He even gets letters and the occasional visitor. That last thing is what’s been different about this week: Otto decided to come by. Sure, Cassie and Compton occasionally stopped by out of some sense of obligation a few times per month, shared some of their mead, talked about old times awkwardly… but Otto came by a lot less often.
Otto was… a little difficult to tolerate, at times. He didn’t really like Bob much, but he mentions how Cassie tells him to make sure all of Bob’s stuff was in working order, so he was there out of obligation too.
But this week Otto just… Bob would say ‘moved in’, but the man did slip off to his apartment a few times to sleep off the alcohol and come back with more. Top shelf stuff, too. Took the time to fix up every single device in the greenhouse, his icebox, his firebox, his distillery… even the irrigation pumps that Bob had long replaced with siphoning water from the giant plant that holds up his land got improved to full functionality.
The man was running from his problems. Bob should know, he’s been doing that for over a decade. It was one of the many reasons why he was a loveless hermit. He’d go over the other reasons he deserves to be so miserable, but Otto was turning it into a competition, and Bob doesn’t do well with those.
“Otto…” Bob started before coughing. Ugh, he was thirsty. He took another swig of his swill. The acrid taste of mushrooms filled his senses. “What are you doing?”
“I’m making sure the improvements to the still are working properly.” Otto said, obsessively observing the device as it slowly dripped the booze into the output. He really did make the still ten times better at the job, but that wasn’t what he was talking about.
“Not that.” Bob said, his voice still rough. He looked at his flask, and decided to hold off on another swig. “I mean-” he paused with an ‘urp’ noise as some gas escaped his mouth. “Why are you up here? It’s been almost a week, and you haven’t gone back to work.”
“I’m… taking a vacation. Spending some time with an old friend. Is that so wrong?” Otto asked.
“Pull the other one. It’s ripe.” Bob said bluntly. “Something’s eating at you. No one comes up here unless they want to be miserable. Punish themselves.” Bob chuckled darkly. Back when he still had his job, being his support was seen as a punishment duty then, too. He overheard Hollis threaten to assign someone to him once. “But most people leave unhappy by now. What’s going on?”
Otto spent several minutes ignoring Bob; the awkward silence stretched long, only interrupted by more swigs of their respective drinks. Eventually, he spoke up: “I’m a terrible person. I’ve done something horrible.”
“What else is new?” Bob said, before immediately regretting it. That’s the kind of thing you don’t let out of your mouth, stupid!
“I suppose that’s fair.” Otto said despondently. “I haven’t exactly been a pillar of scientific ethics.” Bob said nothing, waiting for Otto to clarify. “But this is different!” He insisted. “This isn’t me pushing the boundaries in the name of advancement, this isn’t any kind of test or sacrifice!” Otto took out a handkerchief, dabbing at his eyes. “This is just… suffering. Unimaginable suffering, all because of my mistake.”
Oh damn. This is serious. Otto’s sense of ethics, despite how much Cassie, Compton, and Bob talked badly about it, was very rigid. His lines were in a different place than some, but they were etched in solid stone.
But… “Well, it was an accident, right?”
“It’s worse.” Otto said, “I compounded the mistake every time, over seventeen years.”
Wait, that long? That was when… “What was it?”
Otto sighed dramatically. “I… had a brain.” He said, pausing.
Well… he’s gotta. “Where’d you last see it?”
Otto chuckled darkly, taking a deep pull of his bottle before tossing it away negligently. One of his plants swept the glass into the pile in the corner. “Do you remember the day that Ford popped up? Right after Grulovia?”
Oh, it’s this kind of story. “I wish I could forget.” Bob grumbled, spotting a bottle that still had a mouthful inside and chugging it. It was more like five mouthfuls.
“On that day, I also found a brain in a jar, just sitting there in the Heptadome. It was one of the jars that was in the plane.” The one that Ford stole so the group had to buy plane tickets to get back to the states? Yeah, he remembers that plane. “The only possible person who could tell us about it would be Ford… but you know why we can’t do that.”
“Hm. Whose brain was it?” Bob asked, conversationally.
“I don’t know.” Otto admitted. What? “I never checked.”
“...How could you not check?” Bob asked.
“As I said, I found it on the same day Ford came back. We were very busy that week.” Otto explained. Ah, that did make sense, didn’t it? “I put it in some fresh fluid and ran to the funeral, and when we started trying to help Ford, I forgot all about it.”
“So you forgot.” Bob said, “That’s not so bad.”
“It’s worse than that.” Otto said as he opened up what appeared to be the last bottle of the whiskey he brought on Friday. “I found it again, discovered a lack of paperwork… and still didn’t check. I was busy.”
“Okay…” Bob said, a little confused.
“Then I just. Kept. DOING IT!” Otto shouted, almost throwing the full bottle of liquor but instead taking a deep pull of it, drinking… about three shots of it, by Bob’s estimate. “Seventeen years of isolation, of torture as time itself would lose meaning! It’s all my fault!” Otto’s tears were flowing freely, as his speech slurred from an amount of alcohol that… might actually be dangerous. That was strong whiskey he was drinking.
“Have some watermelon, Otto.” Bob said, willing one of the ones he had in the back to finish maturing and letting a vine bring it inside. “I’ll try out that new blender you got me.” He nearly drew up more water from the foundation plant, but then remembered the hydrokinetic pump that Otto installed and let it moisten his garden’s soil instead.
Cutting things with telekinesis was difficult, in Bob’s experience. It required a certain level of… they could never quite agree on a good name to call it, although they ended up using Otto’s pick, ‘aggression’, for the academic paper. Cassie liked calling it ‘killing intent’, Compton preferred ‘will to hurt’. Bob preferred Helmut’s choice, ‘Mettle’. It was something Bob lacked, for the most part. Lucy and Ford both had it in spades, of course.
He could still do it, of course, assuming he didn’t need to cut anything you couldn’t manage with an axe of questionable sharpness. He just focused on the one person he knew that deserved pain and injury, and then turned that resolve outwards to chop whatever he needed chopped.
After he cut the watermelon into quarters, Otto passed Bob his utility knife, which was a wooden handle surrounding a psitanium core, and with the blade projected from it cutting the rinds off suddenly became much easier.
Within a few minutes, the blender managed to turn the entire watermelon into eight watermelon smoothies, the six after the first two were mixed with various other fruits as an experiment. Bob thought the banana watermelon mixture turned out the best, honestly. It just needed some gin. He’ll have to order some…
After making sure that Otto had diluted all of that whiskey with the smoothies, Bob figured he should probably restart the conversation. He took a gulp from his flask instead.
Fortunately, Otto restarted the conversation without Bob needing to say anything. “The worst part of all of it… Is that instead of fixing my mistake… I’m here. I left the brain in the hands of a teenager with only incidental therapy training and every incentive to stay quiet about it if she does find a thought inside the thing.”
Ouch. “Do you think she could fix it? If there was?” Bob asked.
“Well, she managed to make Ford half as crazy as he was before, somehow.” Otto said, reaching for the abandoned whiskey bottle. “Got herself in some hot water in the attempt, but if you talk to Ford’s new mission control persona it’s almost like he’s back.” After a moment, he hedged: “At least, when I’m talking to him. Maybe eighty percent of the way back? He doesn’t remember Lucy at all.”
That girl? Hrm. Truman mentioned her in his letters, and Compton said her name… Tanya? “I heard about that.” Bob said in acknowledgement. “Does he remember the brain?”
Otto paused. “You know, I never asked.” He admitted, “I should have. Finally had a half-way sane Ford to ask about the one thing he would know that I don’t, and I didn’t.” His head twitched, like he was about to hit his head on the wall behind him, but remembered it was glass at the last second. “Who could it even be? He had days to have found it, with questionable sanity, it could be anyone.”
Bob didn’t think so. “You know… I think it might be Lucy’s brain.” It made sense. They left Ford with her body, and while Ford was more disgusted at Otto’s brain collecting habit than anyone else, if it meant he didn’t need to kill Lucy...
Otto thought about Bob’s guess. “It could be.” He acknowledged, “Yes, that would make sense. She was heavily sedated by the battle… if he was sane, bringing the brain to the Astralathe to permanently subdue her would allow him to ensure that no one could ever bring Maligula back from imprisonment… Particularly if he made sure that the brain was kept on hand… It’s also not killing her…” Otto trailed off.
“But he wasn’t sane.” Bob finished for him. “And we never saw Lucy’s body after we left Ford with it.”
Sighing, Otto nodded. “No. He wasn’t. Lucy’s brain is definitely the most likely candidate… But if it was…” He looked out toward the Motherlobe. “Wouldn’t there have been sirens at least?”
“I dunno.” Bob replied. They did have emergency sirens that would… probably be used in case of a full blown Maligula attack… but Bob wasn’t entirely clear if they could hear them from here. “Our defenses would have blocked the sound, I think.”
“Well, that would…” Otto paused, his eyes widened in shock. “Oh no.” What was it now? “If Tanya met Maligula… that would be catastrophic.”
Huh? “I’m not saying you’re wrong here.” Bob hedged, “But I’m clearly missing something here.”
Otto grimaced. “Youv’e read my paper on Lucy’s condition, of course.” Nothing good could come of him leading with that. “Lucy’s condition… It is not unique. Tanya is afflicted with something similar, although after her last episode I’m given to understand that Agent Nein successfully sealed it away.” That’s pretty bad, yeah. “Now, I must emphasize that Tanya is a very intelligent and compassionate young woman, committed to building a better world through constructive means…” This is going to be one big ‘But’. “But… if she genuinely feared for her life, that seal would break. With how weakened Lucy would be from being insensate for so long… Tanya would win that fight, and we’d have an even worse problem on the loose.”
“Worse than Maligula?” Bob asked, spooked. “How?”
“Maligula was, at her core, a domineering tyrant. She could be bargained with, placated, flattered. On top of that, she grandstanded, corralling massive quantities of water as a show of force” Otto pointed out. “Tanya’s split personality just attacks any perceived threat with lethal force, carving them up with PSI blades that can open up tank armor like tin cans. Agent Nein managing to subdue her without casualties was, bluntly, a miracle given her demonstrated capabilities. I suspect that it wasn't fully awake.”
“Jesus.” Bob swore, “What happened to her?”
“I don’t have all of the details,” Otto admitted, “-and what I do know I’m not at liberty to say. The point is, while property damage would likely be lower, the death toll…”
Bob just existed for a moment. If anyone asked, he was contemplating the horrors that Otto just said, or was thinking of a bright side, but he just needed to think of nothing for a little while. Sweet oblivion…
It was times like these, where the world decided to pile more on his plate, refused to let him suffer in peace, that he could sometimes hear him. Helmut… he could almost hear him sing.
“...can you hear that?” Otto asked.
Bob jolted out from his pleasant reverie, glaring at Otto for interrupting him: “Hear what?” He groused, before listening to his surroundings. Wait… he could still hear Helmut. Bob would know that singing voice anywhere.
But… that song was new. That didn’t make any sense.
Bob’s legs were always pretty lanky; even when his gut ballooned with the mother of all beer bellies, his thighs refused to thicken with fat like some other people’s might. It only proved that his weight was one hundred percent his own fault. He grunted as he stood up, his bones aching with the ravages of age and his poor health. Not poor enough, if you asked him. He’s still kicking, after all.
The door opened, and the two of them peered down to the bottom of the giant beanstalk that he used to hold up his greenhouse’s patch of dirt. It was a set of two little girls (was that Lili, his niece?), a teenage one, and a brain inside a mobility capsule, holding up a flower arrangement in a vase while singing.
“You can get yourself clean, you can have a good meal, you can do whatever you feel!” Sang Helmut, the joy of performing as nakedly obvious as it ever was. “Young man! Are you listening to me? I said, Young man! What do you want to be? I said, young man, you can make real your dreams, but you got to know this one thing…”
Bob’s glasses fell off of his nose, his sight long ruined by tears. Otto, the genius, immediately conveyed his own vision to Bob so he wouldn’t miss a second.
Helmut didn’t miss a beat, even as Bob’s glasses tucked themselves into his pocket without Bob doing a thing about it. “No man, does it all by himself, I said, young man, put your pride on a shelf, and just go there, to the Y.M.C.A, I’m sure they can help you today!”
The girls joined in for the chorus, all moving their hands to make the shape of the letters as they got to them. “It’s fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.!” They sang with Helmut, “It’s fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.!”
Otto laughed the laugh of the damned, someone who just learned that he just received a stay of execution.
Bob could relate.
After the song, Helmut floated up, his brain ball glowing with psychic power as happiness assaulted Bob’s psychic senses, the unfamiliar emotion burning in his chest as he sniffled wetly. Someone passed him a handkerchief and he blew into it. “Helmut?” He asked, “Is it really you?”
“It’s me, Bobby.” Helmut affirmed, “Your PSI King. I’ve missed you so much.” Telekinetic hands hugged Bob as the brain ball pushed itself into Bob’s voluminous beard.
This couldn’t be real. He was just dreaming. He thought that those hidden nightmares had ended, the alcohol removing all thought while he slept.
“Calm down, Bobby.” Helmut sent telepathically. “I’m real, I’m here.”
“So here’s where you’ve been.” Said the teenage girl while Bob was busy trying to let himself believe Helmut’s words. “I assumed you had actually visited here, but have you even left? You smell like a distillery.” He lives in a distillery.
Oh, wait. She was talking to Otto. “I know.” He said despondently. “I’m horrible.” Otto turned to Helmut and him. “Helmut, could you ever forgive me for my neglect?”
Helmut laughed joyously. “I think you’ve punished yourself enough, man. You still kept my brain alive all this time, didn’t you? Just help me get my body back and we’ll call it square, okay?”
Otto smiled widely, looking as happy as Bob wanted to feel. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
It’s been a long time since Bob’s entertained guests that weren’t one of the other members of the Psychic Six, but he still had… glasses, right? Oh!
“Does anyone want some watermelon smoothies?” He asked, and the girls all smiled. When was the last time he’s seen a stranger smile at him?
Bob smiled back.
Comments
Chris Larson
Wait that went well. I don't trust it.
