Hystopia: A Novel by David Means Read Free Book Online Page B

with the facts and figures and the basic stage directions of what had to be replicated—a mass shooting, a booby trap, he didn’t really know anymore—during the enfold, reenacted into memory with the help of the go-to drug, Tripizoid, and doubled back on itself hopefully forever. One peek in a file—it was said—and the memories would rush back and the fuzzball in the head would explode and you’d be back in the shit again. Treatment failed if the treated knew, or even suspected, that the treated material, the information, could be accessed again. Without a sense of privacy, reenactment failed. Klein went on about Rake’s noir tendencies and how it was clear in his actions, in the blood paintings, in the traces he left behind, that he had an inclination to instill his actions with drama, and that this was key—this might be the key.
    “Brando,” Singleton said.
    “Yes, Brando syndrome. I’ve thought of that. And Dean. Most of the dramatic types imagine themselves as inheritors of a great rebellious tradition and see no need to find a cause for their rebellions, so they lean toward Dean. Auden said, ‘It’s the insane will of the insane to suffer insanely.’ Something like that. It’s the same with actors. The line between what they’re presenting and their own inner life thins, if they’re weak of will, and the character they’re embodying becomes the body they’re presenting, something like that. When you consider the fact that Rake is a failed enfold and he has dramatic inclinations … I hope you’re listening to me, Singleton. We’re talking about grunt-level thinking, and to get to that you have to go to the random particulars, or the particulars that seem to map out the random. Like I said, it seems to me—and this is an example of trusting your gut—that it bears repeating that Rake came back from Vietnam and was enfolded in the early experimental station down in New Mexico, most likely at the Las Vegas facility, which I’m sure you know was considered substandard, although there wasn’t a standard at that time because it was the only facility. Not the gambling Nevada Vegas, but the New Mexico Vegas. Then he escaped to Amarillo and, as is typical for these men, made his way here to Michigan.”
    “Yes, sir. Then we lost his trail,” Singleton told himself to say, and said. He had learned over the last two weeks to beat the dead horse, and keep beating it. Kick the can down the road. Fill up these training sessions with as much of his own verbiage as possible.
    “Then he popped back in April, made his mark. Now every random killing up north, every psycho killing, every gang-related draw-and-quarter gets pinned on him whether he did it or not. We’ve got these dinky, small-town cops, these half-assed sheriff deputies flashing badges, talking to the liaison, who comes here with his pleas, his missives that imply that we must know where the guy is. Cops want to shoot him dead. Command wants to get him back in for another round of treatment.”
    He plucked the string—a shooting in Petoskey on April 5 to a shooting near the Indiana border, an old man shot in the head on April 6.
    “There was something in her file about a man named Billy Thompson, a.k.a. Billy-T, a vet who was killed in the war,” Singleton told himself to say, and said.
    Klein went to his desk and opened a file. “Here it is: Billy Thompson, a.k.a. Billy-T, came back out of rotation for a stateside visit, fell in love with a girl—name redacted, but we can assume it’s Meg—took her away to California on a wild road trip, was AWOL for ten weeks and then got sent back with limited disciplinary charges on account of his sharpshooting abilities, or something. He was KIAed on his second rotation and his trail ended. Whereas her trail ends in this shit.” Klein pointed at the map, the pins, the strings.
    “He came home in a bag,” Singleton said.
    “A casket with a flag, as simple as that.”
    “Then the girl