CHAPTER IX BREAK ON THRU #1 # LIKE A BROKEN-HEARTED MELANIE Outside the Invisible Resthome Night unfolded her cloak of holes about fields of grain; there were purple clouds upon the Cat's Foot Hills in the silver moonlight, a full moon. I sat at the computer-screen, looking at some data Otis had just MODEMed me. The munificent Otis Bender, PhD...the world's greatest living evolutionary biologist, the interdisciplinary scholar who had extended evolution all the way down to sub-quark physics, all the way up to the lofty heights of the sheerest abstract metaphysics--it was said that there were only 3 people in the world who could understand Otis Bender...& I was 1 of them.... The screen flashed w/ gene/meme/logoi dyads--the Cosmic Chromosome. I was staring smack dab into the middle of the Mind of God. The Nous. Melanie came into the room, carrying a little plastic cupful of pills. Green, red, brown, gold--mind-medicine for the krieged; the entire regimen of medication that I'd been consuming for the past 2 months. Anti-storm pills. I looked at them w/ loathing. I told her, "Take it away. All of it. I don't need any of this stuff anymore--I'm cured now." "Sure," she said contemptuously, shaking the little pill-cup so that the whole container rattled. "You`re schizoaffective; you can't stop taking your medication! Now take this stuff or I'll force you to take it!" "You can't force me to take that!" I replied, grabbing her by the wrist, twisting so that her arm bent backwards--the pills would've spilled, but she transferred them to her left-hand, & she held them back, out of reach. "Take this...or I'll put you in Isolation!" She was indignant, her face twisted in fury. I remembered her sexy form in countless trips to the Isolation ward...tying me into a straitjacket; spoonfeeding me, soup & sandwiches, mashed potatoes w/ a little brown gravy; injecting me w/ haldol: The needle, the dribble of that 1st drop, just before they drive it into your thigh; the tranks begin to flow, shoot up to a center in my head... I screamed. I was a sane man now; I screamed as though still mad: I suppose I should've told the staff that I had mutated the de-phages out of my system, immediately...but I had wanted to wait, see if the illness really was cured; I had told Dr Rose that I thought I was sane now...she had listened, taken notes....The PET-scan had been ordered for tomorrow.... In the meanwhile, here was Melanie w/ a cupful of pills. Face contorted in rage. "Take your medicine! Either that, or I'm putting you in Isolation!" I considered my options: The stormed no longer had the right to refuse pills; Isolation was certainly 1 of her alternatives. The World Equation as gene/meme/logos flashed before me on the monochrome screen of my Tandy-Apple Red; if I let her straitjacket me I would lose precious time--Otis had MODEMEDed his version of a lock noise-gate; I was trying to come up w/ a dynamic expander that would pull the clicks up even further.... If I went into Isolation Melanie'd probably just shut my system down w/o even hitting SAVE; hours of work would be down the tubes. & I wasn't happy. I didn't like being a woman; I wanted to turn back into a guy so I could get engaged to Toni--soon as I got out of these damn casts.... Just then Toni came into the room w/ Bill; my roommate was going to bed early tonight. Bill was grouching, as usual; his back was hurting him terribly, he wanted a pain pill: the nurses here didn't give him enough pain pills; he used to take 7 at a time....Toni was saying, "This is a very good pain pill; it's prescribed a lot &..." just as Melanie was saying, "Well, I think I'll put you in Isolation anyway. For abusing Staff. You've been very abusive toward me, haven't you, Lead...?" "What the hell is going on here?" Toni asked, more than a little upset. "Melanie, what the hell do you think you're doing? If you want my opinion; this guy is perfectly normal--he hasn't done anything that deserves Isolation!" "He won't take his pills," Melanie pouted. "Aw, you can't force him to take that shit if he doesn't want to," Toni said, brushing back a few strands of short hair. The big-busted tomboy drew herself up to her full 5'9" to stand directly in front of the short little nurse, said, "You're just pissed at the poor guy because he tried to pinch your ass in the shower! Yeah, I know about that...everybody does--you've been on his case ever since then; & like so what? He was stormed, he couldn't control himself...it's like if I were a guy I'd pinch your ass, too. So leave the guy alone; if he..." I reached out & pinched Melanie on the ass. It was a queer thing to do, seeing as how I was a curvaceous blond now...I'd never meant to do anything more than tease her in the 1st place. She struck out, lashed violently at me, shouting; she must've awakened the entire floor. This sudden violence brought the rest of the staff running--& probably to, yes, put me in Isolation. Toni, super-athlete, champion of a dozen sports, pulled back her right fist, then like a super-Reality hauled off & punched Melanie. Melanie reeled back as though she didn't know what had hit her--she probably didn't--then Toni was at her w/ a left-hook. Melanie just stood there dumbfounded; said, "I think my nose is broken," then after an instant of tranquility lashed out at her foe. Mr Shaver applauded the way he always did the Prime Time Wrestling: "Now you've got her! No, don't let her up! Come on, sock her, baby, right in the ribs!" Mary, charge nurse for the evening, came sidling thru the door, 300 lbs of human blimp; shouted, "What the hell's going on here?" just as Toni had Melanie in a clench & was banging her head against the floor. "Toni McDonald, you let Melanie up this very instant!" Reluctant to abandon her display of alpha-female dominance, Toni released her arch-rival. Melanie clumsily stood, as though dizzy; she was hurt, bleeding, holding her nose she exclaimed, "I think it's broken." Vengeful death-angel w/ sun-hair, she stared at her enemy in intense hatred. Meanwhile the gene/meme/logos was dizzily evolving past the dim murk of quantum physics to the heights of metaphysics--the Unknown God. Somewhere in that immense hierarchy of evolution, including every conceivable entity, click-stops were even now being sought by a revoling d-lock. I was looking into the Mind of God: the One, the Beautiful, & the Good, then rudely drawn back to mundane reality as Mary demanded, "Who started this fight?" "She did!" Melanie said, like a 10-year old brat who has been caught brawling on the playground. Mary was a ton of avenging fury. Like a cross between the Incredible Hulk & the Death-Angel. "You're fired! Turn in your ID, then get the hell out of here! & I'll have you in the Bobo Boat, young lady, for this display of..." "I started the fight," I confessed, mostly to haul Toni's ass out of the fire. "I pinched Melanie...to tease her; she never could take teasing & I s'pose...now that I'm a woman...." Melanie ejaculated, "He's a queer! I mean, she's a queer!" "If they say I didn't love you you know they are a liar," I responded. Melanie blushed, averted her eyes, looked at the floor as though I were some brazen rapist or an axe-murderer who had killed her child. Suddenly I felt sorry for her. Up to now, I had thought she was merely stupid: As a psychiatric nurse, she knew the symptoms of manic-depression, yet when somebody acted stormed she took it in a personal way & not just as another meaningless work of a shattered mind. But now I had some idea of what my teasing did to her: I was facing my own dreaded gay androgyny. Smack in the face & it licked cherry-o lips & laughed. "Melanie, I'm sorry," I said to her, though her eyes were still turned as though I were a demon, filth, stained by sin that no church or confession could remove. "I really am sorry, Mary...." The heavy-set lady turned her attention to me now. "I don't think I'm insane any longer since I turned into a woman, &..." "Schizoaffection is not gender-linked," Mary said authoritatively. "Why does everyone keep telling me that?" I asked. "Otis Bender thinks I'm onto something here w/ my signal-processing developmental lock; Dr Rose has agreed to do a full positron emission tomograph tomorrow...& I refused to take my pills; Melanie started threatening me w/ Isolation & injections...I flipped out &, well...I pinched her cuz I know she hates that & she flipped out & started beating the crap out of me & Toni was just defending me...." Now Mary Grierson turned her wrath on Melanie. "You attacked someone in a wheelchair? & why the hell did you do that?" Hell was a strong word coming from the mouth of a devout Baptist. In a world where Christianity was devolving into gnosticism & paganism: Somewhere in the Invisible City there were temples where outlawed idols were worshiped, the idol Yog-Soggoth; here a bordello where rites of sexual magic were practiced; there some obscene cult where humans were sacrificed so that rain might come despite the greenhouse effect. In spite of all this, Mary clung to Fundamentalism as though she some internal Shaft propelled her. Melanie turned an even deeper beet color. "He refused to take his meds; the law says you're krieged & we've got a right to force you--I was only doing my job!" Something beyond Teleology appeared in the screen. All-Father, All-Mother, Androgyne...what was it? It was beyond all Duality, beyond good & evil, life & death--they were brother & sister here. Out here at the perimeter beyond the farthest star.... It was the Monad. The thing I had named my gizmo after. It contained all, knew all, lived in every 1 of us down to the quark-level & indescribable depths beneath...it was Saccinadanda. Suchness. The coming-to-be & passing away of all things in the Void.... I forgot the fight for a moment, looked at the S/N rati- os...infinite. Total complexity. Then in an instant they went full circle to 0: All-signal & no-signal. I was seeing God & the stupid nurses didn't have the slightest idea what this vast, shimmering area of shadow & substance on my computer screen was...I had to get on w/ my work before I lost the Source. "I'll take the damn pills," I said. Melanie jubilantly reached for a cupful of water, for the little pill cup containing God knows what ungodly mixture of medicine.... Mary stopped her. "You're not working here anymore, Melanie. I'm firing you instead of Toni...cuz you hit a man in a wheelchair!" Toni gloated as I thought, she's an alpha female, she just won in a contest of dominance. Protecting her mate...leader of the pack...then suddenly realized I was still a woman. It was a dizzying thought, a vertigo. Melanie turned over her ID, turned to leave w/ bitterness flaming in her eyes. Everyone left except Toni. I could barely drag myself from the dizzying vistas on my computer screen but I had to; Toni's presence demanded that I speak: "It was queer what I did," I said. "Pinched her on the ass...I'm a she-bop now; you & I are going to have to get used to just being buddies, maybe going out to the Corner Bar for a drink w/ the girls...." She put her arms around me. There were tears in her eyes. "I love you anyway. Maybe I'll turn into a lesbian so I can still be your girlfriend!" She laughed, tousled my hair, which still had its boyish cut. "Just giving you a hard time!" I returned my attention to the computer. It was late; I was probably going to be up all night. Reeling, infinite vistas receded & advanced upon me like some Escher drawing. Then the system crashed & I was confronted only w/ the cursor. I'd forgotten to SAVE. # MAY THE SOURCE BE W/ YOU I drank the cup of bitter fluid. Radioactive salt mixed w/ some awful juice to hide the flavor. In a minute my brain would be a positronic hot-bed, positrons colliding w/ neural electrons to emit gamma-rays to be picked up by the scanners attached to my skull. I felt like I was wearing a vorkle-ball helmet. I looked at Rose w/ kool indifference. Mania brings lust & I remembered the pass she'd made at me....She'd probably been a little stormed herself, had gotten carried away.... The attractive older woman fiddled w/ her computer as though it were the very machine of her lust-quest. Her hair was neatly coiffed & sexy; her large breasts played peek-a-boo w/ an eyelet at their bottom, a sequined black shirt; her lips were rimmed w/ dawn-lipstick, a sign-stimulus promising, again, what she had 1st offered. Krieged, I might've taken her up on it; sometimes you think that you could get out of the suicide death-trip if you could only get laid. The machinery hummed, whined, & beeped as it operated. It read complex data off my brain, reduced it to simple form, a holo-vid display showing the presence or absence of various neurotransmitters. I'd been thru this routine a thousand times...I knew before she said it that I was normal. She got out her notepad & asked, "So you're a woman now? How does that affect you & Toni? & what about this Melanie character--what do you think you're going to do about her?" "Melanie got what she deserved....I mean, she's such a stupid bitch, she hates me for something I did when I was stormed--pinched her on the ass in the shower....If she can't take white light/white heat she shouldn't be messing w/ fissioning minds....I'm just going to forget about her. She's a jerk & an asshole, anyway." Dr Amber Rose tilted her glasses back on her upturned nose, said, "She had a talk w/ me before you got here...she says you tried to pinch her again...she's scared shitless of homosexuals, & now that you're a woman...you've really got her scared. Again. Do you think maybe you should try & call her, straighten this mess out?" I reflected. "I don't know. I know I wouldn't like it if a guy pinched me on the ass...but I'm not a woman, damn it, I'm a man!" "Can you change back, though? You've already explained the developmental lock to me & you'd have to abort an entire chromosome, an entire section of cylinder...." "Bender & I are working on it," I said. "I had...God...I had the ultimate metaphysical Source, Saccinadanda, Manda d'Hayye, the Monad...I had it on my screen last night, & then the system crashed!" "Do you think a computer can handle that level of complexity? You've got maybe 360 terabits to work w/, God has got to be...well, infinite...." "We don't need all that!" I exclaimed. "I mean, a computer can tap into God the same way that the man Jesus, a limited thing, could be God, the infinite--if you're Christian...but it's really a matter of the application of noise-reduction technology to pulling the clicks out from where they're buried...." Rose said, "Instead of trying to Shaft your way back to being a man...wouldn't it be simpler to have a sex-change operation?" I considered the possibility. "I never even thought of trying surgical techniques...but this work Otis & I are doing on simplifying the backwards lock...it's got to be done!" "Why?" "Because if we can run the FTL-drive off of a simple lock instead of a complex lock...we can eliminate devolutionary force from the cosmos! We won't need the orbiting Shaft satellites to keep civiization from plunging into chaos...& we can Shaft the Galactic Empire into a united human civilization...& if we can ever get back in touch w/ the God gene/meme/logos, we may even have a world religion!" "Wow!" she said. I guess she hadn't thought of any of this. Psychiatrists just aren't cut out to be evolutionary epistemologists. "Yeah..." I said. "Superkool...but what am I going to do about Toni? She said she wants to be my girlfriend &..." "Seems you've got a Duality of girlfriends...if I may make a gnostic allusion: Toni...& Melanie...." "Melanie hates me!" I exclaimed, remembering how she had lashed out at me...yeah, when I had pinched her butt. Dr Rose bit her pencil, then scribbled some more. "Seems that what you've got here is a love-hate relationship. I can't break confidentiality...maybe I'm already going too far in telling you this...but from my professional opinion; you frighten her, yeah, but that fear is also mixed w/ a great concern...like all the Nova Nurses, she's a former mental patient, someone who was immune when the 1st schiz-kriegs hit--no longer immune, w/ bio-psych warfare escalated to m-virus & de-phages...she's manic-depressive herself; she's taking lithium...well, I suppose I shouldn't've told you that...you're making her paranoid, & pinching her in girl form...she's afraid she's a lesbian; you frighten her! "I should'nt be telling you any of this...but you've got to make up w/ her...even if she never becomes your girlfriend...why don't you tell her that Toni wants to be your girlfriend? Give her a call, try to patch things up? She's stormed...God knows I got hypersexual w/ you when I was manic--she's really no different than you...or I. The saners...until you get your super-Shaft operating everyone's insane! "I never thought of that," I said. "When you're insane it's like you're the only person it ever happened to...the others, they just don't understand...no matter how crazy they get! Or sometimes it's like the world or God is insane...I never thought a Nova Nurse could be..." "Give her a call," Rose said. "& try to remember...she's frightened of you." The digits in the clock turned to round numbers: The session was up. I left Rose to deal w/ her notes & my new-found sanity & pushed the buttons on my control panel that moved me from the room like Hoppy Harrington on his phocomobile. # End of file Press RIGHT ARROW (#6 key) of the numeric keypad to load the next file.