Distress

been overwhelmed by emotion, because I hadn’t lost control… in her eyes, I was somehow less than human.

I wrapped a towel around my superficial wounds, then told the pharm what had happened. It buzzed for several minutes, then exuded a paste of antibiotics, coagulants, and a collagen-like adhesive. It dried on my skin like a tight-fitting bandage.

The pharm had no eye of its own, but I stood by the phone and showed it our handiwork.

It said, “Avoid strenuous bowel movements. And try not to laugh too hard.”

8

Angelo said glumly, “I’ve been sent.”

“Then you’d better come in.”

He followed me down the hall into the living room. I asked, “How are the girls?”

“Good. Exhausting.”

Maria was three, Louise was two. Angelo and Lisa both worked from home—in soundproof offices—taking the childcare in shifts. Angelo was a mathematician with a net-based, nominally Canadian university; Lisa was a polymer chemist with a company which manufactured in the Netherlands.

We’d been friends since university, but I hadn’t met his sister until Louise was born. Gina had been visiting mother and daughter in hospital; I’d fallen for her in the elevator, before I had any idea who she was.

Seated, Angelo said cautiously, “I think she just wants to know how you are.”

“I sent her ten messages in ten days. She knows exactly how I am.”

“She said you stopped suddenly.”

“Suddenly? Ten acts of ritual humiliation is all she gets, without a reply.” I hadn’t meant to sound bitter, but Angelo was already beginning to look like a peace envoy stranded on a battlefield. I laughed. “Tell her whatever she wants to hear. Tell her I'm devastated… but recovering rapidly. I don’t want her to feel insulted… but I don’t want her to feel guilty, either.”

He smiled uncertainly, as if I’d made a tasteless joke. “She’s taking it badly.”

I clenched my fists and said slowly, “I know that, and so am I, but don’t you think she’d feel better if you told her…” I stopped. “What did she say you should tell me if I asked if there was any chance of her coming back?”

“She said to say no.”

“Of course. But… did she mean it? What did she tell you to say if I asked if she meant it?”

“Andrew—”

“Forget it.”

A long, awkward silence descended. I considered asking where she was, who she was with, but I knew he wouldn’t tell me. And I didn’t really want to know.

I said, “I'm meant to be flying out to Stateless tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I heard. Good luck.”

“There is another journalist who’d be willing to take over the project. I’d only have to make one call—”

He shook his head. “There’s no reason to do that. It wouldn’t change anything.”

The silence returned. After a while, Angelo reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a small plastic vial of tablets. He said, “I’ve got some Ds.”

I groaned. “You never used to take that shit.”

He glanced up at me, wounded. “They’re harmless. I like to switch off sometimes. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing.”

Disinhibitors were non-toxic and non-addictive. They created a mild sensation of well-being, and increased the effort required for considered thought—rather like a moderate dose of alcohol or cannabis, with few of the side effects. Their concentration in the bloodstream was self-limiting—above a certain level, the molecule catalyzed its own destruction—so taking a whole bottle was exactly the same as swallowing a single D.

Angelo offered me the vial. I took out a tablet reluctantly, and held it in my palm.

Alcohol had almost vanished from polite society by the time I was ten years old, but its use as a “social lubricant” always seemed to be lauded in retrospect as unequivocally beneficial, and only the violence and organic damage it induced were viewed as pathological. To me, though, the magic bullet which had taken its place seemed like a distillation of the real problem. Cirrhosis, brain damage, assorted cancers, and the worst traffic accidents and crimes of stupefaction had been mercifully banished… but I still wasn’t prepared to concede that human beings were physically incapable of communicating or relaxing without the aid of psychoactive drugs.

Angelo swallowed a tablet and said admonishingly, “Come on, it’s not going to kill you. Every known human culture has used some kind of—”

I mimed putting the thing in my mouth, but palmed it. Screw every known human culture. I felt a momentary pang of guilt at the deception, but I didn’t have the energy for an argument. Besides, my dishonesty was well intentioned. I could imagine more or less what Gina had told her brother: Get him D’d, it’s the only way he’ll start talking. She’d sent Angelo here in the hope that I’d unburden myself, spill my guts, and be healed. It was a touching gesture— on the part of both of them—and the least I could do in return was reduce the number of lies he’d have to tell her to make her believe she’d done some good.

Angelo’s eyes glazed over slightly, as the chemical shut down various pathways in his brain. It occurred to me that James Rourke should have added a third disputed H-word to his list: honesty. Freud had saddled Western culture with the bizarre notion that the least considered utterances were always, magically, the truest—that reflection added nothing, and the ego merely censored or lied. It was an idea born more of convenience than anything else: he’d identified the part of the mind easiest to circumvent—with tricks like free association—and then declared the product of all that remained to be “honest.”

But now that my words were chemically sanctified, and would at last be taken seriously, I got straight to the point. “Look: tell Gina I'm going to be okay. I'm sorry I hurt her. I know I was selfish. I'm going to try to change. I still care about her… but I know it’s over.” I hunted for more, but there really was nothing else she needed to know.

Angelo nodded significantly, as if I’d said something new and profound. “I could never understand why you were always breaking up with women. I thought you were just unlucky. But you’re right: you’re a selfish bastard. All you really care about is your work.”

“That’s right.”

“So what are you going to do about it? Find a new career?”

“No. Live alone.”

He grimaced. “But that’s worse. That makes you twice as selfish.”

I laughed. “Really? Do you want to explain why?”

“Because then you’re not even trying!”

“What if trying is at other people’s expense? What if I'm tired of hurting people, and I choose not to do that anymore?”

This simple idea seemed to confound him. He’d taken up Ds late in life; maybe they addled his brain more than they did for someone who’d developed a tolerance for the drug in adolescence.

I said, “I honestly used to think I could make someone happy. And myself. But after six attempts, I think I’ve proved that I can’t. So I'm taking the Hippocratic oath: Do no harm. What’s wrong with that?”

Angelo gave me a dubious look. “I can’t exactly picture you living like a monk.”

“Make up your mind: first I'm being selfish, then I'm being pious. And I hope you’re not impugning my masturbatory skills.”

“No, but there’s one small problem with sexual fantasies: they make you want the real thing even more.”

I shrugged. “I could always go neural asex.”

“Very funny.”

“Well, it’s always there as a last resort.” I was already growing sick of the whole stupid ritual, but if I threw