Random Acts Part 9

"It was spontaneous, like most of the best things in life," Tom says. "Lovely hat, is it new?"

"No, just one I haven't worn for a while," she says. Her voice toward him is cold. "Hey, I like yours," she says to me.

Despite everything, I'm pleased. "It's one of Tom's," I tell her.

"Mine blew off in the wind today."

"Oh. Can I have a beer too?"

"Sure," says Tom. He pulls one out for her.

Heather comes into the kitchen, followed by Aaron. It's getting crowded. "Hey, we need refills," Aaron says. "Nice hat, Pris."

"Yes," Heather says. "I saw one like that a couple years ago, back when it was in style." She turns to Tom. "Beer me."

"Yo."

Beers are pa.s.sed around. Tsunami Beer. I drink some of mine down and then gasp --- it's as strong as h.e.l.l. "Jesus!" I exclaim. Then I notice everyone looks at me like I've made some sort of social blunder.

"Well, you've had a few already, eh?" Heather says.

"I'm standing in my own kitchen and I feel like I'm on an alien planet," I tell them.

"Maybe you'll feel better in the living room," Pris says. She smiles, thinking I was joking.

"Maybe," I tell her. I lead the way out of the kitchen.

In the living room, Felix is putting a record on an unfamiliar stereo system --- it's definitely not the one I'm used to --- and looks over at Pris and says, "It's time to Hubba Hubba!" A long, drawn out guitar chord wails painfully from the speakers, followed by a rapid drum beat.

"Is this the Streakers?" Pris asks.

"No, it's a new one by the Beatles," he tells her.

"The Beatles!?" I exclaim.

"Yeah," he says. "Came out this week." He throws me the alb.u.m. The t.i.tle is Brain Decay Marmalade by Pete Best and the Beatles. I sit down on the couch with Pris and read it over. I'm so absorbed and astonished that I don't even notice that Pris has her arm around me and one leg draped over mine. Even more astonishing is the music itself: It's horrible!

The others join us and sit around, listening to the music. "This is dessert," Heather says. "Isn't it just dessert?"

Aaron nods. "I like it. These guys have always been fun boys."

"They literally define Hubba Hubba," Tom says.

The music is horrible and I can't understand anything they're saying. Even Pris is alien in the odd, Elizabethan type dress. And her hairstyle, it's changed --- it no longer falls over one eye. It's longer in back, short in front. Her smile is still the same, though, and her voice. And she's letting everyone in the room know exactly who she's with tonight. Me. That, at least, is comforting. It's the only thing I have to comfort me.

Tom is staring at me with his camera lens eyes, his gaze intent.

After the first few songs from the "new" Beatles alb.u.m, he stands and says, "Could you help me with something."

I stand up. "Okay."

Aaron stands up, too, but Tom motions him to sit down. "We'll get it. Excuse us for a minute." Aaron looks concerned and suspicious, but nevertheless he sits down. Tom and I walk toward the front of the apartment, opening the front door and stepping outside. He shuts the door behind us and we stand in the hallway.

"What is going on?" he says. "What did Alvin tell you?"

"Tom, something really odd is happening to me."

"What? Does it have something to do with the project?"

"Indirectly, yes. Tom, I think I'm slipping between parallel worlds."

He shakes his head. "No, really," he says. "What is it. You look upset."

I don't know what to tell him. He's not going to believe me. "I'm totally disoriented. I'm forgetting things, like where I park my car and when my cla.s.s is supposed to start. Words aren't making sense. Things are appearing one way and then when I look again they're different, changed."

"You think you're sick?"

"Something is wrong. I don't know if it's me or the world."

"You told me you got up to the project building. Maybe you got exposed to some radiation or something?"

"Maybe. That was yesterday, right?"

"Yes. I think we better get you to a doctor."

"No! I hate doctors, I know too much about biology. Listen, just stick by me, okay? I need help . . . I need help getting though this.

It's like, you know, an LSD trip. Like the one that Felix went through."

Tom rolls his eyes. "Which one? No, really, I know what you're talking about. I'm with you fun boy, you know that. You can depend on me."

"Thanks Tom."

"Hey," he says, reaching out and grabbing my shoulders. His eyes peer into mine. "You know. I'm with you. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Good!" He gives me a slap on the shoulder and then turns and starts to open the door.

I stop him. "One more thing," I say.

"What?"

"What is 'Hubba Hubba?' Is it like a new type of Rock or something?"

"Rock?" Tom looks shocked, and concerned. "What?"

"Rock and Roll?"

"Rock and Roll?" he says.

"Rock and Roll music."

"What are you talking about?"

"Never mind."

"No, what are you talking about?"

"Nothing. Never mind. It's not important." I open the door and go inside. He follows closely. As we reach the living room, Heather is dancing with Aaron and Pris is dancing with Felix. "They're Hubba Hubba dancing, right?" I whisper to Tom.

"Yes!" he says, upset and concerned that I have to ask about it.

"But they're not Rock and Roll dancing?" I ask.

"No. I've never heard of that before."

"Okay, that's all I need to know." I walk up to Pris and she turns and starts dancing with me. She gets close, we're nose to nose. It's the same old movements, though, the same dancing. I don't have any problem with it. Felix, deprived of a partner, gives me a really sour look and sits down.

The dancing continues until the alb.u.m is over, and Felix takes it off the turntable and puts it back into its jacket cover. Aaron picks out an alb.u.m from Tom's collection, which of course is a group I've never heard of, and puts it on. He turns the volume down, though --- this isn't a dance alb.u.m, it's background music. A kind of fast guitar music with a harmonica and saxophone. It sounds vaguely jazz.

Tom and Aaron begin discussing politics, which makes me feel better because this at least is familiar, and I drain my current beer and go into the kitchen for another. This stuff really is strong, I think to myself, because the floor is swaying and there's odd patterns in the shadows; red and blue phosphene activity making chaotic mathematical designs in the corners and across the floor. Felix follows me into the kitchen and gives me a very evil smile.

"How do you feel?" he asks.

"Drunk," I tell him.

"Is that all?"

Something's up. I stand with the refrigerator door open, forgotten, and stare at him. "What do you mean?"

"It hasn't taken effect yet? It should be taking effect by now."

"What should be taking effect?" I nearly shout.

"The LSD I put in your beer, fun boy."

"You didn't!"

"I almost didn't, since you're acting like you're on it already.

But I thought since you're being such a b.a.s.t.a.r.d to me that I might as well return the favor." He smiles at my shocked silence. "Bon bon, fun boy. But don't worry, you'll be coming down in only forty-hours or so."

I gasp. He's serious!

"Megadose, fun boy," he says. "Have fun!" With one last hateful look he turns and walks out of the kitchen. I follow him, walking down the unsteady hall to the front door. He opens it without looking back and steps out, and I go to the doorway and watch him leave. His body stretches out across the outer hallway, growing like a tree branch, stretching out and veering off. The hallway folds and stretches out in all directions, up, down, back and forth --- every direction I look, the hallway is stretching out. Instead of floor beneath my feet, two cones of wood stretch up from a dark infinity to meet with my legs.

A horrid monster comes up from behind me, a kind of cross between a tree branch and a worm, and the voices of 200 Tom Harrisons speak out.

"Where did Felix go?" says most of them. Some of the others ask, "Where is Felix?" and still others ask, "Did Felix leave?" A part of the worm monster branches off and stretches past me and out into several directions down the cavernous hallway.

Now the voices of about 130 Tom Harrisons speak. "What's wrong? Are you okay?"

When I speak, it's like a thousand of me speaking, but all in perfect unison. "He dropped LSD in my beer."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm seeing the multi-dimensional reality."

There so many different answers from so many different Toms that I can't make any of them out. It's like a huge party filled with clones having a conversation that begins abruptly and ends abruptly. It's taking all my nerve to remain rational about it. It's like balancing on a flag pole at the top of the TransAmerica Tower and remaining rational.

A false move in any direction and I'll become very irrational very quickly.

"Mmmmayybe yyyyou betterrrrrr commmminnnn ssssssit downnnnnnn . . ." says the multiple Tom voices, all blending and out of synch.

"No, wait. Wait."

The worm monster grows branches around me, hands with thousands of fingers, and pulls part of me back into the apartment --- just what part, I don't really understand. The rest of me stands desperately still. I now know exactly what Felix was afraid of --- losing himself.

Losing himself in all this . . . s.p.a.ce. The doorway stretches away from me in every direction, and as I reach out to touch it and a cone-shaped section of it rushes up and meets my hand. I lift one foot, and the cone-shaped section of the floor that had been supporting it falls suddenly away to infinity. Balancing precariously on one foot, I turn and take an experimental step back into the apartment. A cone of floor rises up and greets my foot. It's an optical illusion, I tell myself, a hallucination. I'm not really balancing on pinnacles above infinity, I'm standing on a perfectly safe, flat floor.

Several steps into the apartment proves me wrong. I lose my balance and tumble right off the cones. Hands slip away and are gone. All recognizable shape is gone. I'm sliding out of control on curved surfaces, suspended amid spheres and cones and blobs. Giant multi-dimensional worms branching off in all directions writhe and squirm all around me. Through it all, for one brief second, I see only one straight line. It's a ruby red laser beam, cutting diagonally across the universe, from one infinity to another. I reach out for it but it's gone, and I'm lost in a landscape of chaos.

I'm huddled in a ball for what seems like days, whimpering and crying in terror. Giant worms pick me up and move me around with random whimsy, it seems, pushing and pulling and tugging at me. I shut them out, I shut everything out. The worms don't hurt me, though I expect they're going to eat me. I don't know, I don't try to make sense of it.

I just want it to end. But it doesn't, it goes on and on. I wish I would die or something and be done with it.

At some point sleep takes me, although I'm not totally certain of this, but there's normal images that are at once dreamlike and yet so much more real than the madness I've fallen into. I see myself jumping from roof to roof, with fireworks exploding in the sky above, and some dark menacing figures chasing me. I see a view of the ocean with water falling upward in streams toward the clouds, and the sun moves laterally just above the horizon. Rainbows arch this way and that above my head, crossing each other. To my left a multi-colored group of balloons drift slowly down from the sky and sink silently into the water. I'm standing on the top of a chimney as the city around me sinks into the ocean.

People thrash madly in the water, drowning. People shut up in Volkswagen bugs float past, trapped and helpless.

Then I awake into the nightmare landscape of blobs, cones and spheres again, though now everything is predominantly white, and the branched worms are tangled around me like the animated roots of a half-dozen plants. A white cone is smashed up against my face, and I blink and study it, seeing a woven surface. It's cloth. I stare at it, concentrating, even though it's only a few inches from my face. It's soft, like a pillow. Blinking rapidly, I pull my head up and away from it and I see that it is a pillow. The world around me abruptly folds back together and becomes a large white room with lights and beds. I'm lying in a bed! A bed, a real, solid, normal bed. I gasp, so relieved that tears come to my eyes. I'm afraid to blink, lest the horrible nightmare landscape should return.

There's a buzzing in my head, like a fly is trapped inside somewhere, and I relax and quietly wait to see what happens next.

Nothing happens next, I just lie there. People lie in other beds all around me. Everything is white. I'm in a hospital or something, which is okay with me, and I close my eyes and let sleep return.

6. THE STATE HOSPITAL.

I'm sitting up in bed, feeling dizzy and unreal, when a nurse escorts what appears to be a doctor to my bed and introduces me. His name is Dr. Wakefield, and he is here to "evaluate" my status. He's large, pear-shaped, bald, and has a heavy beard that makes him look somewhat like Fidel Castro. He's wearing the customary white smock of his trade, with a half dozen pens in his pockets. He sits next to my bed in a chair and holds a clipboard in his hands.