“Well, at Jimmy’s last checkup, his nociceptive pathways are showing some very unusual activity. We’d like to add his data feed to the child monitoring network, is that okay with you?”
“His what?” asked my mother irritably.
“His pain receptors, the neural pathways from his pain receptors.”
“And what’s unusual about them?” demanded Mother.
“It’s unusual is all. It’s like they’re in some kind of disarray. He doesn’t complain of any unusual pain does he?”
“No, of course not, do you Jimmy?” Mother asked, her smile menacing me.
Wide eyed, I shook my head.
“Okay then, good. So can we add him to the monitoring system?”
Silence.
“Patricia, we’ve been over this a thousand times before with the Solomon House staff. We have our right to privacy. This is my family, and I’m happy to be here, but there are limits!” Mother cried out, overreacting theatrically.
Despite the histrionics, she had a valid point. Atopia was founded on strict liberal principles, and with the advent of pssi, stringent security requirements had been baked into the foundations of law and electronic systems governing it.
Individuals, and by extension families, had an absolute right to their privacy, unless there was some good reason otherwise.
“Is there anything wrong with Jimmy?” asked Mother. “Is he healthy?”
Patricia sighed. “He is perfectly healthy. His mind is distracted and there is some unusual neurological activity, but physically, he’s perfect.”
“Well then…”
Patricia thought for a moment, and then stood and walked to our side of the table and sat down on the couch next to us. She put her arm around me.
“Well then, I’d like to take a more active role in Jim’s development, if that’s okay with you. As a teacher, if you see what I mean. I don’t want to intrude on your mothering, of course.”
Mother eyed her for a moment, weighing the situation.
“Oh don’t be silly, that would be an honor, of course,” she replied brightly after a moment. “Wouldn’t it Jimmy?”
Mother told me more than asked me, her eyes locking onto mine.
I just sat dumbly between the two of them, unable to say anything, cringing, thinking that Patricia was about to become part and parcel of some new awfulness in my little life. Fearful of what horrors awaited me, I dug in deeper and deeper, building my shell.
As Patricia got up and left, I slipped off quickly away to hide, sliding away into tiny worlds within tiny worlds.
Mother gave chase, eventually finding and cornering me in the Little Great Little, past fields of glowing jellies, under a thunderfall whose white sensory noise I often hid behind.
“I know you hide here, little worm,” said Mother, her voice oozing venom. “Don’t think I don’t know where you go.”
Then she appeared, finding me cowering in a corner. Hate distorted her features here, her skin flaking red and crimson and her hands turning into fearsome claws that she gripped and squeezed me with.
Pulling down a tight security blanket around us, she squeezed me until I thought I would pop. I squirmed and whimpered.
“Not a word to Aunt Pattie, little worm, do you understand? If you say anything to anyone, I will tell them all about you and your daddy? Do you want that?”
Smiling at me, she laughed from a fanged and fearsome mouth.
“No mummy,” I squealed out, “not a word, of course not.” I began to cry.
“Such a little cry baby,” Mother taunted. “None of this is real.”
She waved her claws around at the purple canyon walls. With that she was gone, popping out of the Little Great Little and into another one of her soapstim fantasies to burrow away from her own pain.
Dad must have known something was going on, because he appeared just after Mother left, looking pale and dejected.
“Don’t say anything about you and me, Jimmy. It’s secret, you know? They would put me away in the farms if you told anyone, Jimmy. Do you want to do that to your dad?”
I shook my head. Samson, who had remained quiet, emerged smoothly from his hiding place in the thunderfall to take my hand, and we sat down together holding hands. I cried. Dad just left us there without saying another word.
My fascination with pain began very early. I can remember the rare moments when we would get passes to go above, and while my parents would sun themselves on the beach, I would hang at the edge of the palms and palmettos nearby.
At the fringes of the dark forest, I would summon little creatures to venture forth into my hands. Taking great care in their delicate capture, I’d stimshare into them to feel their squirming pain as I slowly pulled off their legs, one by one.
When all of their legs were gone, I would gradually squeeze them between my chubby fingers, flitting into them to feel their spasming agony, as I crushed their legless little bodies. Feeling the pain of killing these creatures helped me cleanse my own pain.
And perhaps, I enjoyed it a little too.
20
Identity: Bobby Baxter
“Sid!” I yelled out into our private emergency channels.
“Jesus, Bob, what?” he replied as his reality instantly merged with mine.
I watched him before me, engrossed in some data mining blitz as he searched through reams of multiverse worlds. Even with the storms threatening, he was still on the hunt for Willy’s body, his dozens of phantom hands dancing through the hypercontrol spaces around him.
“You know, if you play with your phantoms too much, you’ll grow hair on the palms of your hands,” I couldn’t help joking as I watched him and Vicious working their magic.
“No more Humungous Fungus this week, I’ve had enough, buddy.” They gave me several fingers. I silently watched them fiddle around some more.
“So what has your hair on fire?” he asked after a pause.
“No more Humungous Fungus for us, I agree,” I replied. “Something is seriously wrong with this place, and we are going to find out what.”
This stopped them in their tracks. Sid looked at me.
“Now you’re finally talking turkey.”
He cracked a smile.
“Sid, drop everything.”
All his phantoms immediately dropped to the ground.
“We’re getting the band back together.”
“Jimmy too?” asked Sid. Vicious was already shaking his head.
“No, I think we’d better let Jimmy sit this one out.”
Jimmy had bigger fish to fry right now. Not only that, but something about him made me very uneasy.
“But I’m going to ping him and tell him that we’re going to mount a search of our own, to try and help figure out the situation. That way we won’t raise any alarms if we scan the perimeter.”
I thought about that for a second.
“Plus, I want him to know what we’re doing.”
