Goldstein Read online

  “Valor,” she answered with a seductive batting of her eyelashes. Then she slithered back down the bar to serve her other drunks.

  Devin completed the ritual but on this round he took his time. As he poured the ice water over the sugar, he studied the milky clouds as they boiled between the ice cubes. He sipped the drink slowly. “It still tastes like shit”, he thought.

  “It works better with a fork!” shouted a vagrant-looking barfly from down the bar.

  “Pardon me?”

  “A fork!” he replied, holding one up just in case Devin couldn’t comprehend. “The water drips through the prongs.”

  “I see,” answered Devin, feigning appreciation.

  “Are you minoring this evening?” The man asked.

  “Minoring? What’s that?”

  “You know, e minor, encephalo-wave-modification.” He illustrated by pretending to jab his fork into his temple.

  “Keep it down!” Valor intervened as she reappeared.

  “What is he talking about?” Devin asked her.

  “Don’t mind him. The absinthe has rotted his brain out. It looks like you’re learning to appreciate our specialty drink.”

  “It grows on you,” Devin lied. Valor smiled seductively again and swayed away.

  Over the course of the next hour, Devin consumed two more absinthes. He spoke to no one else during that time. The drunks at the bar rarely spoke to each other, either. It was useless to engage anyone anyway as the whiny music was too loud. The drunks all sat alone, hunched over their cloudy absinthes, highlighted in bluish diode lime light.

  Devin noticed that the whiny, droning music was becoming tolerable. The tones and rhythms had not changed but somehow he began to find it complimentary to his drunk.

  The absinthe had taken hold of him but Devin noticed that it was a drunk with subtle differences. The glow of the lighted sconces that backlit the murky booths captivated him. The colors emitted from signage and personal multis seemed brighter, more intense. The bar, despite the lack of social interaction, seemed like a cozy place to him.

  “How are you doing?” Valor asked which surprised him a little.

  “I’m fine, feeling the effects.”

  “I have some friends of mine that I think you should meet.”

  “Oh?”

  “They’re over there at the corner booth. Can you see them? See the bitch with the silver hair?”

  “There’s a dozen bitches with silver hair in here,” Devin thought. He scanned the shadowy silhouettes in the corner. His eyes locked in on the faces of three gothic women, illuminated by diode light, shined against the dark background. One had silver hair.

  “Those three?” he asked, nodding in their direction.

  “That’s them. I told them you’re coming over to hang out. I’m off in a few minutes and I’ll join you. That is if you’re not some sort of fag or something.”

  “Sure.”

  Devin stood up and waded through the shadows towards the table. The three ladies saw him coming and invited him with contrived smiles on their flawless, china doll faces.

  “Come over here. Sit here.” One of the three beckoned as they created space for him in their booth. Devin slid in and sank into the plush velvet seat.

  “My name is Veronica,” said the one with silver hair. “That’s Veruca and she’s Julia.” The two smiled half heartedly. “What’s your name?”

  “Devin. It’s a pleasure to meet you ladies.”

  “He’s good looking enough, isn’t he?” asked Veronica.

  “He’s a little rough but he’ll do,” observed Veruca whose doll-like face was accented with faint tattoos. “That’s Val’s type.”

  “So where are you from, Mr. Devin?” asked Veronica.

  “Goldstein, Alaska,” he answered, throwing caution to the wind. He wondered if he would now be tainted by them as a nutcase.

  “Alaska?” asked Veronica. “Where the Eskimos live?”

  “Not exactly,” Devin answered, curious that the Goldstein reference went unnoticed.

  “Wait a second,” interrupted Veruca. “Did you say Goldstein? Goldstein, where the crazy people live?”

  “That’s right.”

  Veruca let out a roar of laughter. Julia started laughing but her laughter seemed to be more of a contagious response to Veruca’s. Veronica just stared at him.

  “Seriously? Goldstein?” Veruca asked again.

  “Seriously.”

  “So is it true what they say?” asked Veronica.

  “What do they say?”

  “That it’s a cult of drug addicts and they’re all brainwashed?”

  “You sound like you’re describing here more than there,” Devin answered.

  “They always describe Goldstein that way. It’s a compound for extermists,” Veronica explained.

  “I think you mean extremists,” corrected Julia.

  “I hear that they’re planning to attack us. Is that true,” asked Veruca.

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “I heard it on holovision. Is it true?”

  “Maybe you’ve got it coming,” he joked but the joke was lost on them. “Seriously, they don’t want to kill anyone. They just want to be left alone.”

  “Are they anarchists?” asked Veruca.

  “No.”

  “Communists?” she asked again.

  “No. Although there’s some communal types up there.”

  “I don’t believe you. What are they planning to do to us?” asked Veruca. “A bomb? A nuke?”

  The question gave Devin pause. He realized for the first time that his decision pertaining to The Delivery, or at least the perception of it, had real world ramifications. It was a power that he had failed to grasp up until this moment. What was at first shrugged off was now undeniably seductive to him.

  He grabbed a passing wench and ordered a vodka tonic hoping that the three women would change the subject. They didn’t. Veruca remained transfixed on him.

  “What are they planning to do?” she asked.

  “I told you that they don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “Yeah, so what are they planning?”

  “He’s full of shit,” interrupted Julia who was redoing her eye liner. The snap of her compact relieved the building tension. “Goldstein doesn’t exist. It’s a myth invented by the government like Roswell and the moon landing and World War II.”

  “Why would the government invent Goldstein?” asked Veruca.

  “To give them an excuse to do whatever they need to do,” Julia answered. Devin relaxed back into the velvet. “Who cares? You bitches fall for it every time. Don’t you remember last night when Val sent over those two guys who said they were astronauts getting ready for Mars III? Then what about the night before that when that guy said he was a Bollywood agent?”

  “He’s not?” asked Veronica. “But he said he thought he could get me a part.”

  Veruca seemed unconvinced. “I believe him,” she remarked.

  Just then, Valor arrived. Devin looked her over. Her tall, sleek frame, slender neck, her boney hips and her joints posed at exaggerated angles. She elegantly worked herself into the booth, intentionally grazing Devin’s lap as she slid past.

  “Your friend says he’s from Goldstein, Alaska,” Veronica advised.

  “I know. Isn’t it fascinating?” Valor replied. “Twenty minutes ago he told me he was an astronaut.” Devin wasn’t sure if she was being playful or was truly confused. “So what does a girl have to do to get a drink around here?”

  “So what’s the plan, Val?” asked Julia.

  “Sit here. Get drunk. Then high. Then go,” she answered. “If we like him, we’ll take him with us.” Under the table she ploughed her slender fingers into Devin’s thigh.

  “Go where?” asked Devin mischievously.

  Valor leaned towards Devin’s ear and whispered, “Wherever you want to go, my rebel brother.”

  The five-some sat at the table and drank for an hour or so
with the ladies exchanging stories of drug addled sexual endeavors and sparing no graphic detail. There were no inhibitions in the cougars as they topped each other’s escapades.

  Devin’s excitement could hardly be contained. Tension built with each successive narration and each groping of his thigh by Valor.

  Then Devin worked his hand up her thigh. She’d gently push him away. Then he would start over, each time working closer… then pushed away. Starting over, working closer. She made no expression of approval or disapproval of him as she traded tales with the other girls. He was caressing her, faintly sweeping the edge of his hand against her… She pushed his hand away again, this time with force.

  “So, tell me, where do you want to go, today?” she asked bluntly as she produced her purse and plunged her free hand into it. “Have you ever minored?”

  “Minored?” Devin asked. “That guy at the bar mentioned that.”

  “This should be interesting,” Julia interjected while leaning forward with interest.

  Valor pulled out a shiny gadget from her purse. It had two nodes on a split wire attached to it.

  “What’s that?” Devin asked.

  “Where do you want to go, today?”

  “What do you mean?” Devin asked.

  “It’s a simple question. Think about it.” She attached the nodes to Devin’s temples. “Concentrate,” she ordered.

  The absinthe had stripped away his inhibitions. He made no attempt to stop her.

  “Think about your favorite place. Maybe it’s on a mountain top or something. Maybe it’s you on top of something else,” she added. She uncoiled and straightened the wires that lead from the nodes to the silvery gadget.

  “Maybe its Paris,” offered Veronica. “Isn’t that where they chopped off Cleopatra’s head?”

  “Marie Antoinette,” answered Julia. “Don’t think of dark stuff. You’ll have a bad trip. Think of the jungle or the ocean. Yeah, how about the ocean, a secluded beach on the Riviera?”

  The thought of a beach resonated with Devin. He had only seen sand beaches on holovision shows and in the virtual reality sphere. The nearest Alaskan beaches were swaths of volcanic mud and un-resort-like.

  “What do I do?”

  “Just concentrate on the beach and the ocean and the dolphins and stuff like that,” Valor responded as she clicked on the shiny gadget. “Close your eyes.” Devin closed them. “What do you see?”

  “I see black.”

  “Concentrate. Think of the sand and the waves. You should see shapes and colors.”

  “Right.”

  “Do you see anything?”

  “I do. I see drifting purple shapes.”

  “What are they?”

  “They’re blobs of purple. They really don’t have any shape. Wait. Now I see geometric shapes, black and white patterns.”

  “Keep looking. Concentrate,” called Valor in a fading voice. “Do you see the ocean yet?”

  “No. Wait. I see the seagulls. They’re flying in front of me, no now they’re below me.”

  “Are you flying?”

  “Yeah. I’m flying with them, above them. This is amazing. I’m flying with seagulls over orange clouds and a giant white sun.”

  “Do you see the ocean yet?” Valor asked in a distant and barely audible voice.

  “No. But I feel the breeze.”

  A magma of rippling oranges and purples swirled beneath him. Then the seagulls became less graceful, then they appeared harsher and more angular.

  “Tell me what you see,” asked Valor but she was far, far away.

  The seagulls weren’t seagulls anymore. Geometric patterns emerged from the swirling sea below but it wasn’t the ocean, it was a vast field of interlocking hexagons. And from them emerged the angular seagulls that were no longer seagulls. They had black eyes and long, thin legs and pointed bodies. They were hornets emerging from their pods, flying up and out into the white sun which was no longer the sun but was now a bright portal out of a dark hive to the outside world.

  Devin reached towards the portal but it was unattainable. He was being pulled back down into the pods, clutched in the mandibles of a giant hornet with its black, faceted, dead eyes fixated upon him. It pulled him down, down into the swirling heat just above the pods.

  He gazed into the oblivion below and one cell grew larger as he was pulled downward. And there, waiting to devour him, writhed a monstrous white larva with dead black eyes.

  “Take it off! Take it off!” he screamed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Devin slowly opened his eyes trying not to be blinded by an intense white light. He was lying on his back and a ceiling fan came into focus. To his right was a white ceramic tile wall. He looked left.

  There was another bed with a man lying in it. The man’s eyes were closed. He had a stubbly face. His head was bandaged and there were wires protruding from it.

  Devin followed the wires along the mattress, down onto the floor, then back up and into a white box that had green, flickering lights on it. The man’s visible wrist was restrained to the bedrail with a nylon cuff and strap. His ankles appeared to be bound as well.

  Devin at first wondered if this was part of the ‘e minor’ trip that had gone awry but no, he was lucid. He was in an infirmary of some sort judging by the smell of iodine and bleach.

  “Why is this man next to me restrained?” He asked himself. “Am I restrained as well?” He glanced down. A nylon strap was affixed to each of his wrists. He noticed that his fingernails had grown long. His ankles were bound as well under the sheet. His head began to throb as if a vessel in his brain was about burst. He became dizzy. He heard voices mumbling and saw two men in lab coats with their backs turned to him at the foot of his bed. They were looking at a monitor of some sort. They looked like doctors. One looked over his shoulder at him.

  “Is he lucid?” asked the other.

  “Let me check.” A doctor came over to Devin’s bedside holding a pen-like device in his hand.

  “Where am I?” Devin asked. The doctor with the device didn’t answer. “Where am I?” Devin demanded. The man still didn’t acknowledge him. “He has to be able to hear me,” Devin thought. The doctor took the pen-like device and touched it to Devin’s forehead. It beeped. “Where am I? What is happening?” Devin shouted. The man looked at a tiny indicator on the side of the device.

  “He’s lucid,” he said.

  “Hmmm. That’s problematic,” answered the other. “You better turn him off quick. We don’t want to screw up the download.”

  “Yeah. He’s probably screaming ‘where the hell am I?’ right now thinking we can hear him.”

  The doctor went over to a white box at Devin’s bedside and touched the input screen.

  #

  Devin opened his eyes. Everything was bright white. He was still lying on his back, looking up at the tiled ceiling.

  Did he dream the doctors? If not, how much time had elapsed? Minutes? Days? Weeks? It couldn’t be weeks.

  He needed a frame of reference. He looked over at the man in the bed next to him. He was still there. His head was still bandaged but the bandages had been changed. They were smaller, now. The wires were gone from his head as well and he had grown a beard. Several days must have passed.

  Devin’s head ached but not as intensely as before. There was an I.V. in his right arm but his wrist was still in restraints.

  He looked down towards the foot of the bed. The two men were gone. The monitor they were looking at was gone as well. He looked over at the man next to him again. He didn’t move. Devin wondered if his roommate had woken up at some point and stared back at him asking the same questions.

  “Hey,” he whispered trying to get the man’s attention. The man didn’t respond. “Hey, you!” he whispered louder. No response.

  Devin looked up and watched the nickel blades of the slowly rotating ceiling fan. He felt fatigue creep over him. His eyes got heavy. “Fight! Stay awake!” It was no use. His lids closed.
>
  #

  Devin’s eyes flickered open. Everything was bright and white. He was still on his back. His wrists were still restrained. His head still ached, but only slightly.

  He allowed his eyes to adjust to the light for a moment then he looked over to his left towards his roommate. There was only an empty bed. He looked down at his feet and tried to move his ankles but they were still restrained. He noticed a doctor sitting in a chair at the foot of his bed studying images in a holopad.

  “Excuse me…” Devin asked. This time he could feel the hot air move past his vocal cords and out of his mouth. The weakness of his voice surprised him. The doctor acknowledged him by briefly looking up from his pad, then looked back down and continued studying the images.

  “Excuse me. Can you tell me where I am?” The doctor abruptly set the pad down, stood up, and left the room.

  Devin laid there in silence for some time. He was definitely in a hospital of some kind but he was also a prisoner.

  “What did I do?” He asked himself. “Did I do something while in my drugged state? Why does my head ache? Were the wires in my roommate’s head wired into mine as well?”

  He pondered these things for a few moments. Then his eyes got heavy and he drifted back to sleep. For the first time since arriving in the infirmary he dreamt. He dreamt of the ocean. It was sunset and there was a cool breeze coming off the sea. The waves gently turned over and swooshed up onto the sand. The foamy water washed the sand from his bare feet. Of all people, Ramielle was there. She was laughing.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Mr. Moore, wake up!” Devin’s eyes slowly opened. “You’re awake. Good. Here, sit up.” An official looking, but small-framed fellow with ruddy skin and meticulously combed, thin silver hair fluffed Devin’s pillow and helped him to sit up against it. He was wearing a tailored black suit.

  “What day is it?” Devin asked.

  “Today is June 13. How are you feeling? Are you comfortable?”

  “No. Where am I? Who are you? Why do you keep putting me to sleep? Why am I here? Why am I in restraints? How do you know my name?”