• Ballgravy: Blow me
• Trepan: What's wrong with you, Ballgravy? We're having a grown-up conversation here
• Ballgravy: Just don't like Brits.
• Trepan: What, all of them?
• Ballgravy: Whatever — all the ones I've met have been tight-ass pricks
• ##Colonelonic: (private) He's just a troll, ignore him
• /private Colonelonic: Watch this
• Trepan: How many?
• Ballgravy: How many what?
• Trepan: Have you met?
• Ballgravy: Enough
• Trepan: > 100?
• Ballgravy: No
• Trepan: > 50?
• Ballgravy: No
• Trepan: > 10?
• Ballgravy: Around 10
• Trepan: Where are you from?
• Ballgravy: Queens
• Trepan: Well, you're not going to believe this, but you're the tenth person from Queens I've met — and you're all morons who pick fights with strangers in chat-rooms
• Colonelonic: Queens==ass
• Trepan: Ass ass ass
• Ballgravy: Fuck you both
• ##Ballgravy has left channel #EST.chatter
• Colonelonic: Nicely done
• Colonelonic: He's been boring me stupid for the past hour, following me from channel to channel
• Colonelonic: What are you doing in London, anyway?
• Trepan: Like I said, waiting for the cops
• Colonelonic: But why are you there in the first place
• Trepan: /private Colonelonic It's a work thing. For EST.
• ##Colonelonic: (private) No shit?
• Trepan: /private Colonelonic Yeah. Can't really say much more, you understand
• ##Colonelonic: (private) Cool! Any more jobs? One more day at Merril-Lynch and I'm gonna kill someone
• Trepan: /private Colonelonic Sorry, no. There must be some perks though.
• ##Colonelonic: (private) I can pick fights with strangers in chat rooms! Also, I get to play with Lexus-Nexus all I want
• Trepan: /private Colonelonic That's pretty rad, anyway
• ##Ballgravy has joined channel #EST.chatter
• Ballgravy: Homos
• Trepan: Oh Christ, are you back again, Queens?
• Colonelonic: I've gotta go anyway
• Trepan: See ya
• ##Colonelonic has left channel #EST.chatter
• ##Trepan has left channel #EST.chatter
Art stood up and blinked. He approached the desk sergeant and asked if he thought it would be much longer. The sergeant fiddled with a comm for a moment, then said, "Oh, we're quite done with you sir, thank you." Art repressed a vituperative response, counted three, then thanked the cop.
He commed Linda.
"What's up?"
"They say we're free to go. I think they've been just keeping us here for shits and giggles. Can you believe that?"
"Whatever-I've been having a nice chat with Constable McGivens. Constable, is it all right if we go now?"
There was some distant, English rumbling, then Linda giggled. "All right, then. Thank you so much, officer!
"Art? I'll meet you at the front doors, all right?"
"That's great," Art said. He stretched. His ass was numb, his head throbbed, and he wanted to strangle Linda.
She emerged into the dawn blinking and grinning, and surprised him with a long, full-body hug. "Sorry I was so snappish before," she said. "I was just scared. The cops say that you were quite brave. Thank you."
Art's adrenals dry-fired as he tried to work up a good angry head of steam, then he gave up. "It's all right."
"Let's go get some breakfast, OK?"
10.
The parking-lot is aswarm with people, fire engines and ambulances. There's a siren going off somewhere down in the bowels of the sanatorium, and still I can't get anyone to look up at the goddamned roof.
I've tried hollering myself hoarse into the updrafts from the cheery blaze, but the wind's against me, my shouts rising up past my ears. I've tried dropping more pebbles, but the winds whip them away, and I've learned my lesson about half-bricks.
Weirdly, I'm not worried about getting into trouble. I've already been involuntarily committed by the Tribe's enemies, the massed and devious forces of the Pacific Daylight Tribe and the Greenwich Mean Tribe. I am officially Not Responsible. Confused and Prone to Wandering. Coo-Coo for Coco-Puffs. It's not like I hurt anyone, just decremented the number of roadworthy fartmobiles by one.
I got up this morning at four, awakened by the tiniest sound from the ward corridors, a wheel from a pharmaceuticals tray maybe. Three weeks on medically prescribed sleepytime drugs have barely scratched the surface of the damage wrought by years of circadian abuse. I'd been having a fragile shadow of a dream, the ghost of a REM cycle, and it was the old dream, the dream of the doctor's office and the older kids who could manage the trick of making a picture into reality.
I went from that state to total wakefulness in an instant, and knew to a certainty that I wouldn't be sleeping again any time soon. I paced my small room, smelled the cheerful flowers my cousins brought last week when they visited from Toronto, watched the horizon for signs of a breaking dawn. I wished futilely for my comm and a nice private channel where I could sling some bullshit and have some slung in my direction, just connect with another human being at a nice, safe remove.
They chide me for arguing on the ward, call it belligerence and try to sidetrack me with questions about my motivations, a tactic rating barely above ad hominems in my book. No one to talk to-the other patients get violent or nod off, depending on their medication levels, and the staff just patronize me.
Four AM and I'm going nuts, hamsters in my mind spinning their wheels at a thousand RPM, chittering away. I snort-if I wasn't crazy to begin with, I'm sure getting there.
The hamsters won't stop arguing with each other over all the terrible errors of judgment I've made to get here. Trusting the Tribe, trusting strangers. Argue, argue, argue. God, if only someone else were around, I could argue the definition of sanity, I could argue the ethics of involuntary committal, I could argue the food. But my head is full of argument and there's nowhere to spill it and soon enough I'll be talking aloud, arguing with the air like the schizoids on the ward who muttergrumbleshout through the day and through the night.
Why didn't I just leave London when I could, come home, move in with Gran, get a regular job? Why didn't I swear off the whole business of secrecy and provocation?
