No Dominion

– I don’t remember too many tribunals, Terry. I just remember you taking me aside and whispering names in my ear.

– Well. Well, that’s true.

He gets up, walks to the sink and dumps his dregs down the drain.

– But that was a different era. Due process wasn’t a luxury we could really afford back then. And we do things differently now.

– Uh-huh. Not whispering in Tom’s ear, Terry? That what you telling me? Murder by decree out of style?

He rinses his cup, puts it on the dish rack, leans his hip against the sink and looks at me.

– Look, Joe, let’s not dig into some irresolvable past issues. There’s no benefit to anyone in going that route. Did we have a different way of doing things back then? Sure we did. But that has no bearing on things today. Living in the past. That’s not healthy, that’s not how you get things done. And the Society is all about getting things done. Anyone can talk, but it takes action to change the world.

I think about the building around us, the tenement that he has managed to legally purchase through whatever series of blinds and cutouts. I think about the other properties the Society has locked up down here. I think about the partisans he has bunked out in the barracks upstairs, the soldiers he can mobilize. And I think about the way it used to be, back in the seventies when I came on the scene, just ten years after the Society was born, after Terry’s little Downtown revolution had forced the Coalition to concede this territory.

It was different back then: Coalition spooks everywhere; scrapping with the smaller Clans to keep the turf intact; trying to build our own major Clan out of the fringe elements: the socialists, the women’s libbers, the anarchists, whoever else would listen. Terry had the numbers when I got infected, but he had a hell of a time keeping them all pointed in the same direction. I did more than my share in getting them all unified, had more than my share of names whispered in my ear. I know what kind of action it takes to change the world, all right.

– Sure thing, Terry. I got no interest in talking old times. So why don’t you cut to the chase? Tell me what you want.

He pushes away from the sink and comes back to the table.

– That’s it, man, that’s it, right on. Let’s get grounded in the now.

He sits down.

– So here’s the deal. Let’s just say that no one really knows much about this particular situation right now and we can kind of talk about it in pretty simple terms. OK? Talk about it more as a social concern than as a Society security issue.

– Fine by me.

– Great, that’s great. So that guy last night, and spaz isn’t really the term I’d like to use, but, in any case, he was, you know, pretty much a kid. In all senses, I mean. Young in years and also just very recently infected.

– So he was a new fish.

– That’s right. And you know how they are, the new ones, they need lots of supervision. I mean, sure, some people, you, for instance, some people take to it right away. Others, they need some help adapting. This one, he was still in the adapting phase. Not even supposed to be out on his own yet.

– OK.

– But he slipped out a couple days back.

– How many days?

– Three.

– He stayed low for three days?

– Yeah, yeah, I know. Doesn’t seem like a new fish should be able to keep such a low profile, does it?

– OK. So, what, you want me to find out where he went to ground? Make sure that crack is sealed up? Doesn’t sound like a gig that’s gonna pay out the way I need.

– Well, thing is, yeah, I’d like to know where the fish was, but that’s not really the gig.

– What is?

– That scene you described at Doc’s? The way he “spazzed” out? He wasn’t the first.

– Say what?

He runs a hand over the top of his head, smoothing loose strands of his long hair.

– We had another case just like it earlier this week. A new fish went kind of haywire. This one had gone through his, you know, adjustment period, but he was only out in the population about a month. Then he just went…well, I guess spastic is the word.

– What’d you do with him?

– Hurley was there.

– Oh.

– So that was that.

– It’d have to be.

He pulls his hair free of the rubber band that holds it in a ponytail.

– Yeah. But that’s not the whole deal.

He collects his hair, pulls it back.

– What I’m hearing, there’s been others.

He redoes the rubber band and fiddles with the new ponytail until it sits the way he wants it to.

– So when I say that I don’t think we have to deal with this as a security problem, but as a social issue? I mean social with a lowercase s. ’Cause I think what we may have here is, I don’t know for sure, but it looks like kind of a drug problem in the community.

Junkies. They get infected, they go one of two ways. First way, they couldn’t be happier to be off the junk. Second way, they can’t believe how hard it is to get high.

Sure, the blood is a rush, it’s a rush like no other. But it’s not the kind of thing you can do recreationally. There’s too much demand and not nearly enough supply. With a few thousand of us trying to make it on the island, and all of us needing at least a pint a week to get by, there’s just no way to get your hands on enough blood to keep a steady natural high going. You might get your hands on enough to gorge for a week or two, but the havoc you’re going to wreak doing it is gonna beat a path to your door. And someone’s gonna follow that path. Could be the local Clan looking to get rid of a troublemaker, could be a Rogue looking to get what you’ve stocked up, or it could be a Van Helsing. Any way you slice it, that kind of deal won’t last. So a junkie who wants to keep getting high? It’s gonna be a problem.

You pump enough junk, crack, crank, x, morphine, special K, LSD, or whatever else into your veins and you’ll get high. But soon the Vyrus is gonna clean it right out. Your everyday junkie has enough trouble keeping himself in dime bags. Now what if that same junkie needs a week’s worth of skag just to put him on the nod for a half hour?

Bleach, Sterno, gasoline, formaldehyde, glue, cleaning products of all types; all those standard alternative highs get a run for their money. I’ve seen a junkie with the Vyrus so desperate for a good old-fashioned high, he shot Prestone into his eye. Didn’t give him a buzz, but it sure as shit distracted him for awhile. These types tend to weed themselves out of the population.

But if it was out there, if there was a readily available substance out there that could cut its way through the Vyrus and get you dependably high? Everybody would be trying it at some point.

Lot of time on your hands in this life. Hard to punch in on a nine to five. Hard to make a regular living that lets you go take in a movie or grab a bite out. Hard to fill the hours when the sun is up. Something that could make the time pass a little more quickly, I’d give it a shot. And Terry, he’s no prude. Check out the aging hippie look he’s sporting and you got to figure he tried it all back in the day. But he has other concerns.

Terry’s trying to change the world. That takes time. And it takes subtlety; so he says. Not only is a bunch of guys spazzing out in public bad for the cause, it’s also more than a bit perplexing. These are new fish, for Christ sake. How the hell are they tapping into this shit? There’s some new way of banging DMT, or some new cocktail of industrial solvents out there, word should have gotten to Terry before the fish stumbled across it.

– So you want to know what it is and who cooked it up.