Multitude Read online

  MULTITUDE

  Peter Joseph Swanson

  More PJS novels at, http://peterjosephswanson.weebly.com/

  chapter 1: a pillplace for your thoughts

  Thousands of metal mice raced by, getting underfoot, ready to lick sealant into the new crack in the vast cave. There were enough of them to suggest to the crowd that something serious needed fixed. There was a rumble and then a thick sheet of water broke out of a lip in the ceiling and poured down the interior street. Some men ran away while others splashed and wrestled in it, laughing at it. Soon there were hundreds of young men playing in the street, yelling and screaming as they were knocked down by waves of brown water.

  Billy Boy Thorn, a cop, watched from a concrete balcony. He should have smiled at the grand distraction. People needed to be distracted all the time or else they did something very bad. They had wild thoughts. Wild thoughts kept people from being able to get in the elevator and go up to heaven when their time in the city ended. But Billy Boy Thorn didn’t smile at the disaster that would distract the men in the street for a short time and keep them pure. He was distracted and worried about something else. When he didn’t spot what he was looking for in the crowd, he moved on.

  With heavy footsteps he clanked across a grate bridge that spanned a deep trough. On a shelf cut into the glossy laminated rock he finally spotted his friend, sure that it was him from the yellow he wore. He called out, “Chrysalis Joy!”

  The man looked up.

  “You! Where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you for days!” Billy Boy Thorn smiled in relief as he sprinted down to him but then slowed and grew concerned when he saw the man’s wet face. “What’s wrong? You’ve been hurt in the eyes! Who poked you? Let’s hurry off to pillplace to fix your eyes!”

  “I’m not hurt,” Chrysalis Joy said in a frightening voice, wiping his tears. “I feel as if I’ve been healed.”

  “Of what?” Billy Boy Thorn had rarely met a person who’d ever recovered from being sick. They usually just disappeared. “Healed of what? That’s junk.”

  “Yes, healed.”

  “Gibberish!”

  Chrysalis Joy looked the cop solemnly in the eyes. “Healed of my dreams.”

  Billy Boy Thorn’s heart sank. “That’s a wild thought!”

  “I’ve been healed. I know who I really am, now. And who you are. And you know it too but you’re too afraid to face it. You’re too afraid to wake up!”

  Billy Boy Thorn slapped the back of Chrysalis Joy’s bald head. They were all bald in the city from daily head-to-toe shaving. “You’re having false memories. It’s false and wild! Stop it!”

  Chrysalis Joy looked around. “This is the world that’s fake.”

  “No! No! You don’t know what you’re talking about. I saw the elevator many times,” Billy Boy Thorn argued. “It’s real. I saw it! I saw it go up! That’s just common sense, anyway.”

  “Nothing goes up.”

  “Yes! Once the doors stuck open just enough so that I could really see that the elevator went up. Really! I’m a cop and I get to see those things, being there a lot of the time.”

  Chrysalis Joy shook his head. “It’s fake. It’s all fake. It’s lies.”

  “It is true! Don’t tell me what I did or didn’t see with my own eyes. I’ve been there!”

  “It doesn’t go anywhere important at all. I just know it now. It’s all lies.”

  Billy Boy Thorn sat next to him. “Calm down. Just tell me what you feel and I can help you. I’m sure I can. I know you too well.”

  “No. I can help you.”

  “Whatever. Go on, tell me, even if it’s gibberish.”

  Chrysalis Joy took a long slow deep breath. He looked off to where multistoried dorms curved along the far end of the cave. Since the structures had no walls they could view men, beds, showers and stairs inside them. “I once had a black and yellow cat. And I lived near a barn in a field of green plants. There was a sky.” He looked up. “A real one.”

  “What is a cat? What’s a barn?” Billy Boy Thorn also looked up at the banks of lights across the top of the cave. Most of them were broke. “Everybody has a sky. See? It’s always plugged in.”

  “Just listen. It’ll all come to you. If even from a memory of a dream, then you’ll wonder why you had the same dream. I was given a black and yellow kitten. I fussed over it until it grew up and then it wasn’t a cute little kitten anymore. I lost interest in it. The cat moved itself to the barn and lived there for the rest of its life without me. The cat grew up my pet but then with natural ease it just went wild. He probably forgot all about me or if he thought about me he just thought I was dumb.”

  Billy Boy Thorn laughed to bury his own mounting fear. He couldn’t quite remember what a cat was and he feared it was something he would remember, if given time. “That’s just the memory of children’s stories. Cautionary children’s stories from playpen fishtanks on how to behave, on how to be afraid of monsters. I’m sure that’s all that was.”

  “Do you believe in perfect bliss in Elysium Grounds?” Chrysalis Joy asked.

  “Heaven? The Garden City? Of course!”

  “And you live there forever?”

  “For ever and ever!” Billy Boy Thorn earnestly nodded. “Sure! It’s all real, I tell you. Just like they’ve always told you. You just take the elevator up. Of course. Don’t be stupid. We’ve all seen the elevator. I’ve seen it a lot. Where else would it go but to a place for us all to live forever and ever and ever in great joy… if we’ve been good and behaved.”

  Chrysalis Joy shook his head and then wiped another tear. “Oh. Is that what happens?”

  “Stop it. You’re one of this city’s top decoyboys and you’re supposed to even keep people like me from going wild, even a cop, especially a cop, but not the other way around. I don’t know how to help you if you’re going to go nuts. Now snap out of it!”

  Chrysalis Joy said, “It’s not true. It’s just how you think it happens. You’re not who you think you are. You’re not a cop.”

  Billy Boy Thorn patted his gun. “Am too, of course.”

  “You’re a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, and yet you still remember the first one.”

  “I only remember me, a billy boy cop.”

  “You were not always a cop.”

  Billy Boy Thorn sometimes had memories of driving an otherworldly car down a wide street under an otherworldly sky. Blood was on the windows. Later he blasted into outer space and he heard somebody say “Welcome to Jail” even though he was only a brain in a plastic bag, but that was illegal to think that way about himself. That was a wild thought.

  He became angry at his thoughts. “I was born to be a cop and I have to do my duty. Let’s get to pillplace before you start to say gibberish about something else. If you’re not going there for your watering eyes then you’re going there for your brain!” Billy Boy Thorn got up, sternly took the decoyboy by his arm, and steered him toward the clinic. “I’ve heard enough illegality!” Then the cop proceeded to rattle off all the laws that had just been broken.

  “Let go of me!”

  “I’m bigger than you. I’m stronger than you. So knock it off!” With his heavy cop boots and heavy coat against his friend’s flimsy poncho and bare feet, there wasn’t much traction for a real struggle.

  In the greenish illumination of the first clinic waiting room, an autobot nurse screeched up to them. When it got close they could see its face was in a horrible frayed grimace of disrepair. “Welcome billy and decoy,” the robot greeted in a chatty monotone. “Welcome to pillplace number four under the freeway. I’m Nurse Bobbit your autobot class A robot. Red nurse 27. Aren’t you in safe hands? I’m more than qualified to help you. Now, who’s been a wild boy today or are
you here to bring good cheer and fresh batteries?”

  Billy Boy Thorn shoved Chrysalis Joy into the robot’s rubber grip. The robot quickly scanned the man. “Don’t worry. The decoyboy won’t bruise that easily. Unless somebody has stepped on your toes, nose or heart.”

  Chrysalis Joy put his nose up. “I don’t bruise. I’m a professional.”

  “Just checking. This’ll take a long while. This decoyboy is refined. There is nothing worse than the mind of a refined man. It can second-guess itself and out-diplomat you before it even knows it had a wild thought.” A blue light flashed above a far door. “This way, crazy decoyboy.”

  Before they were able to leave, a norm mole walked in from the street, all on his own guilt, bawling,” I remember my mama! I remember my mama!”

  Billy Boy Thorn grabbed his own chest. “Mama?”

  “Oh my. This is serious.” Nurse Bobbit clicked. “I need help. Two messes at one time. Somebody’s bound to shit on my floor, all you crazy stuck up mammals with thumbs… that shit. Dirty sparks.” He called out, so his voice also came from the ceiling, “Code three, please. Emergency mental help for a norm mole not too long out of the fishtank.” He asked the norm mole, “How long have you been out of fishtank?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “We’ll it’s been long enough for you to have dried off and gotten something to put on.”

  The norm mole shivered and pulled his thin poncho tight. It was a dull brown, the color of all the other norm moles’ ponchos. “It’s been a year I think since I was born. Or came out of the fishtank. Or whatever you all did to me! I grew there like a frog. I was never really born!”

  “Not another word,” Nurse Bobbit ordered. “You’ve gone too far as it is.”

  “That’s it—I was grown like a frog! A whole room full of them that looked just like me!”

  “Code three, please. Code three please.” The robot turned to the cop and added, “Cover your ears, this is getting filthy. And watch your step if he shits on the floor. This one’s a spooked mess.”

  Another nurse autobot finally zipped out and snatched the norm mole up, soundly taking his arm. “This way and stop thinking so much while you’re at it, if you don’t mind.”

  “Mama?” Billy Boy Thorn asked. “Who’s he?”

  Chrysalis Joy began to struggle. “Your mama is not a he.”

  With that immense obscenity spoken aloud, the annoyed machine re-grabbed Chrysalis Joy’s arm and whisked him away to the blue light. The door opened and they went down a concrete tunnel. Now alone, Billy Boy Thorn suddenly felt enormous waves of guilt. “I shouldn’t hate myself. It’s my duty even if it’s my closest friend. I have to do my job. I am a cop. I am a cop. I have to do my duty.”

  As he sat on a bench in the waiting room, he rubbed his face. Music began to play from the ceiling, a glorious atmospheric song, as a choir of men earnestly sang repeatedly, “Perfect bliss in Elysium Grounds is my goal, Perfect bliss in Elysium Grounds is my goal, heaven is where I’ll go…Garden City…”

  Not realizing he’d nodded off, the sound of clicking metal woke him up with a start. He saw that it was just the robot poised before him. It leaned close. Billy Boy Thorn wanted to clamp his hands over his ears at the sound of the thing’s voice saying all kinds commands at once.

  “Your skin is dry,” Billy Boy Thorn said. “Don’t they fix you up anymore?”

  A tinny voice shrieked inside Billy Boy Thorn’s brain. “Nobody tells me I’m falling apart! The billy boy is a damn rude shit! It’s time to make frog soup out of him, I would say!” The cop jumped up in dismay. Nurse Bobbit frowned so deeply that it opened a split in the torn rubber face. “Sorry that was me.” The robot moved backwards. “I was too close and you somehow jammed into my radio waves. I’m not supposed to do that to men. Must be a new crash. Oh me. I will have to go and get that one fixed. That was quite a slipup.”

  Billy Boy Thorn shook his head. “Radio waves? How could I receive radio waves between my ears, now? The radio of my playpen fishtank? Here? Yes, that’s how I heard things in the fishtank, but I’ve been out for years now, almost four. That makes me as old as it gets.”

  “Now don’t go into a wild thought on me.”

  His cheeks went red. “Oh I wasn’t, I’m too well trained a cop for that. No, not at all. I wouldn’t do that! I was thinking about how I’m ready for the elevator ride up to heaven, soon. Soon I’ll get to live forever in glory for doing my good job here on earth.” He clasped his hands together before his face. “Soon I will get my eternal reward for all this lousy work I’ve had to do year after year! Heaven is my home!”

  “Good for you. Good. Always think of heaven, or I’ll have to drag you in on the heels of that sloppy little decoyboy. Dirty sparks. You crazy humans are all mental yarn balls and cerebral bridges that keep growing trash links all out to new trash links until you crack up. Then, I, a professional nurse, am left to scrape out the disgusting soggy mess. I wish we could just take a spoon to all that dirty pudding in your skull.”

  “What’s a spoon?” Irritated at a threat on his own professionalism, Billy Boy Thorn added, “And when are they going to replace you? Your face is coming all undone and looks like you’ve been hit by a desert. How old are you? Are you an old man?”

  “Old? Is that what this is? All us nurses at this pillplace need repair. Nobody likes it under the highway, I guess. You haven’t been to this one in awhile, have you? Everyday the doctor boss says he’ll get to us, and so … you shut-up.”

  There’s no other pillplaces, Billy Boy Thorn realized to himself, and then wondered if that was a wild thought. The other pillplaces were just doors to places called pillplace but the doors went to nowhere except a dusty sign saying it was closed for repair. This was the only actual clinic with an interior and an autobot robot red nurse staff. And there were no deserts, just like there were no spoons. They were in a loop of caves of only young men and they only ate crackers, of course. “Are the other fake pillplaces just out there to remind and frighten us all? To warn us not to go crazy? To help keep our thoughts legal?”

  “We are everywhere for real,” Nurse Bobbit stated. “Just because you’re so flippant doesn’t make you smart. Wild thought on you and shame shame shame. But then you cops get around too much so I suppose you have to be a little crazy. You see too much. What a rusty shame. I think four years is too much time for you all, for you to see that all again and again… but nobody asked me…”

  “Do you ever have wild thoughts?”

  “Oh, dirty sparks no, never. That’s just a human problem. We bots have been programmed what to think, and to think to last, very simply, and into an orderly brain, so we have the perfect mental health. Not like your human minds with infected thoughts and questions and interior bridges growing inside your skull to anywhere and everywhere and ultimately nowhere, like crazy jungle vines, only growing questions with no answers. Garbage links. Weeds. You poor inferior ships. The human brain is a glaring defect of tissue evolution. All wet compost heaps, and layers of guilt and dread, and individual mental pathways for each individual person. So nobody can truly communicate with each other or get along with each other without having to have all that endless talking and empirical rules and a pillplace and the threat of a good hot hell. It’s disgusting really, disgusting to think about how ego based you all are, really. Your species survived above the other humanoids because of a rapid leap in evolution, the big fat top-heavy brain. But now you’re stuck with it, you are stuck with how it went off in all directions, which is most of the times in the wrong directions. Pity the skull just can’t be scrubbed out from time to time like we do with any garbage pail. To bad the brain can’t just take a shit.”

  Billy Boy Thorn wasn’t listening to the rant. “What are the chances, really, of a decoyboy like Chrysalis Joy coming back in good working order? It seems we oftentimes never see a person again after they’ve gone to pillplace? But I have to see him again. I have to have him back. He’s my best fr
iend! I’m just worried sick!”

  “Oh? Oooh! We’ll take that into account.” The robot paused to talk silently over a radio frequency for a moment. Then he talked aloud from his mouth speaker again. “We have a lot of effective cures. So that’s not for you to worry about.”

  “Of course I worry. I like Chrysalis Joy. He’s a very nice person. He’s my favorite person, if I can have a favorite. He has to make it up to heaven so we can live in eternity in the light of the sun in all youth and happiness.” He gave a worried smile. “Amen.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Blah blah blah. Well, don’t worry fellow, we’ve improved our psychology from mental illness to emotional illness to memory illness. Dirty sparks knows why all humans have the problem of false memories and false feelings. It’s some inane hysteria of believing every story they hear. It’s your thinking that you really do see with the mind’s eye, as if you had the right. You’re a product of savage imagination and wayward intelligence and sick self-awareness and mad indulgence and dirty sparks knows what else. But we have plenty of theories on why you all don’t quite tick. But that’s why you’re here in this city, so we can learn all the secrets of the mind and body. I mean, here at pillplace, of course. Of course.”

  “Of course.”

  The robot stated, “Someday we’ll have a total cure for the human mind.”

  “What could that be?”

  “It’s not what you think. What you think is really not the point of anything at all. When men think, they just go bananas! What a distraction! What a way to disrupt life!”

  “What can be done for poor Chrysalis Joy?”

  Nurse Bobbit smiled sadly. “We can’t just zap a memory like a cancer cell.”

  “What can you do?”

  “I like to call it an electrical bath, to put it simply for billy boy ears.”

  “A what?”

  “Sure. Plug you right in. Slap out the utter nonsense with pure energy. Everybody needs a bath every once in a while. I don’t know why they don’t send everybody through here for a good bath, anyway, just to get the stink out of their heads before it explodes with ideas.”