Rocket smiles and tells me the half-naked caged man is about to be set free. Musky air twirls about the room. There are no windows. No doors. Only a splintered stairway leading down here—the basement of the warehouse. All that’s saving the caged man from full nudity are faded white boxer briefs, a streak of yellow down the crack. A thick strip of electrical tape covers his mouth. The hair on the sides of his head juts out parallel to his shoulders. Rocket or Caris or someone else within their network probably stole the cage from a zoo. The man moves around on all fours, knuckles down like a silverback. He sits calmly, folding his legs underneath himself as if he’s about to meditate.
Enzo stands off to the side of the room, facing Rocket and me as we sit in rickety wooden chairs, separated by a card table speckled with dust. It’s the only furniture in the room unless we’re counting cages. In the back corner, to the side of the staircase, are racks of artillery. Machine guns straight out of the Vietnam War—M16s and AR15s and boxes and boxes of ammo. Machetes and knives hang from the top rack, the blades glistening against the light, perfectly displayed like Fenders and Gibsons dangling in front of you at Guitar Center. Where the wall meets the racks are six waist-high crates, hay poking out of the slits between wooden planks. There is no way to discern what’s inside.
Glitch sits back on his rear, upright and alert, pressing tight against my chair. He maintains his gaze on Rocket. I keep my hand rested on his neck. His ears pull back tightly every time Rocket moves his hand while talking.
It’s close to one in the morning. About an hour ago, Enzo woke Glitch and me by pounding on my door. Enzo often makes everything about the Subterraneans seem normal—like there is nothing to worry about when we’re talking about detonating the past or breaking into people’s homes or handing over their identity information to Rocket and Caris. But his face has been strained all night. As we walked to the pier, he only responded to my questions with one-word answers. He was more like a security escort than a friend offering company.
“Are you not curious about him, my little Dash?” Rocket’s gold-capped front teeth smile my way.
The man in the cage remains motionless, holding his meditation pose. But he is not finding nirvana. Drool oozes out from underneath the tape, dripping off his chin, thick like sweet-and-sour sauce. I start to wonder if this will be me in a short while. If my news story has somehow pissed off Rocket. Made him wonder if I’m a liability to his entire operation. There is no escaping this situation if that’s the way Rocket wants it to go. He has men upstairs in the warehouse if I even made it that far. Only choice is to play the string out. So I respond.
“Is he being punished?”
“You only see someone trapped behind bars, don’t you?”
I nod.
“But what you’re witnessing is not a man caged,” Rocket says, his jaundiced eyes melting me. “What you’re seeing is a creature being born again.”
Caris comes down the stairs and heads for the cage, his brown trench coat without a single crease or blemish—meticulous care for the only clothing that matters in his life. He takes out a pocket flashlight and clicks it on, probing the man’s eyes. He likes what he sees because he turns back toward Rocket and nods his head.
“We’ll resume the rebuild later,” Rocket instructs.
Caris heads upstairs.
“You made him like that?”
“He made himself like that. Because he earned it.” Pride consumes Rocket’s tone. “He earned the new life that is just beginning.”
“Did he know that’s how it begins?”
“Dash-y, bird. I sense tension in you.” Rocket stands up out of his chair. Takes a couple of steps toward me, dragging his razor pinky nail across the table. Glitch growls. Deep and gurgling, born from the gut. He scuttles away as Rocket approaches. “Have I ever given you a reason to tense up in my presence?”
Rocket’s eyebrows are cut with vertical slashes. His dreads wrenched in a ponytail tied at the back crown of his head. His posture tilts forward. His arms and hands cradle up near his chest like Nosferatu.
“Of course not,” I lie.
“Good.” Rocket runs the back of his hand across my cheek, the knuckles frozen. “But I’m afraid I now have concern for you, little bird.”
The momentum of our decisions can barrel forward before we are able to process where they’re heading. One innocuous decision leads to another questionable decision, which carries you to the present moment, the total sum of weeks, months, or even years’ worth of seemingly forgettable actions. For me, right now, it’s too late to retreat. Too far downriver to turn and swim the other way from the bizarre and dangerous situation I’ve earned and now find myself in.
“You became a big star today.” Rocket’s hand pauses against my cheekbone. “I only worry that your new fame will garner unnecessary attention to our cause.”
I swallow a tractor. “I’ll make sure it won’t.”
“Good.” Rocket’s hand slides off my cheek. “I hope you catch him.”
“Me too.”
He turns and walks toward the caged man. “I don’t believe you’ve met Phillip.”
I take this as an invitation to rise and join Rocket at the altar of imprisonment. One light bulb hangs by a long extension cord, dangling over the man. He opens his eyes, but there are no signs of intelligent life.
“Never met him.” I take my place next to Rocket, eye level with his shoulder.
“Phillip completed his journey. This is his reward.”
The man scratches at his inner leg, a milky section where the hair has worn off from too many occasions when one thigh rubbed against the other. His falling drool accumulates on the dusty concrete on which he sits. But he doesn’t care. He’s a hop, skip, and jump away from an upright coma.
And this is his reward.
“It takes four doses, each spaced a week apart,” Rocket explains. “You feel no pain, but your memory fades away in consistent tranches, starting from your earliest memories and working its way to the present. But that last dose is a pisser, baby.”
“Dose of what?”
“Let us show him,” Rocket shouts over his shoulder. Caris comes charging back down the stairs, cradling a small wooden box in his hands. He sets it down in the middle of the table and leaves.
I look toward Enzo, hoping for some nonverbal communication. He remains stoic. Arms crossed behind his back. His leather jacket strained taut.
“Please,” Rocket motions for me to sit back down. “It’s time for you to see exactly what you’re after.”
My legs, heavy with anxiety, take me toward the table. To the box. Rocket lingers behind me. He’s a father watching children sprint toward Christmas presents. The box is unmarked. The wood, dark mahogany, bounces my reflection off its smooth surface as I pick it up. A small metal clasp comes undone by the flick of my thumb. The top opens and I set it back down.
Rocket whispers into my ear. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
Four green pills—perfectly circular and the size of over-the-counter Tylenol—lie within clear dime bags. Each pill has an etching of a brain in its center.
“This is what you’ve been searching for, my little bird. These pills are your transport. Your vessel into a new future. A new you.”
“What are they?”
“These are the Lobotomy Pills.”
I pick one up, hold it in front of my eyes, and twirl the bag around.
“This will make me forget everything?”
“They will wipe your slate clean.”
“What’s in them?”
“Pixie dust and tears of elves, my dear.” Rocket laughs. “Only the finest chemical composition neuroscience has known. It’s not poison, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Why have I never heard of these?”
“The Subterranean network is vast and full of promise. Our solutions are not meant for the light of day. Only for souls like you.”
“I swallow these, and I forget everything about myself—just like that?”
“One a week, little bird.”
Rocket tells me how each pill eradicates approximately a quarter of our memories. The process, by virtue of how our brains store memories, works in a linear fashion. The first pill removes the first quarter of our earliest recollections. The second takes out the next 25 percent, and so on. By the time you’re ready for the fourth pill, you should only have a few of the most recent years or even months’ worth of memories.
“The final dose will put you in a state that requires observation—ergo, our beautiful boy, Phillip.”
“What happens to us once our minds are totally blank?”
“We enter the rebuilding phase, my little bird. We must reconstruct the mind with a new identity, free from what previously ailed you. The mind is wired for narrative, so we bind a process of selective storytelling with new medication that reinitiates memory storage.”
“You give us a new past by telling it back to us?”
“In a manner. We provide a new biography—where you grew up, familial history, all of the odd things we tend to remember over the years, and so on.”
“And after the rebuilding phase?”
“We assign a handler—a guardian angel, if you will. They will relocate you far away from here. We even help with a new occupation. Witness protection from yourself.”
Glitch lets out the kind of sigh that only comes from dogs when they forfeit their guard and dismiss the potential threats. He lies down and rests his head between his two front paws.
I think about all the poison I currently consume. My cocktail of a dozen prescriptions. Taking them time and again. Bile bubbling in my gut each time. The sleepless nights. Constant daytime irritations. Pressure in my chest born from amphetamines. All of it with only mixed results. And here, before me now, is the streamlined solution. The dark back-alley shortcut to get me home much, much sooner. The ultimate cheat code.
“Is there any way you could show me what my life will be like?” I ask. “A way to prove this is all real?”
Rocket asks Caris to bring him a few “recent examples.” Caris walks over to a filing cabinet and pulls out two manila folders. Hands them to me. Inside I find the before and after of two Subterraneans. Their lives before they met Rocket. Their lives after taking the Lobotomy Pills. New names. New jobs. New homes. A woman in Munich. A man in North Dakota. According to the doctor’s notes in the files, neither remember anything about who they used to be before the pills. The man in North Dakota is now married with two kids. The woman in Munich owns her own Bavarian breakfast restaurant. I close the folders because there is nothing left to see. This is the answer.
“I’m ready.” I start to unseal the pill.
“No, no, no,” Rocket says, grabbing me by the wrist. “Your conviction is impressive. But you have not earned this yet.”
Holding anger from setting across my face, I place the pill back in the box. As I do, something rattles on the underside of the container. There is a second compartment at its base. I press on it. It is spring-loaded, moving inward for a centimeter before popping out. There, lying on plush material, contained within a similar-sized dime bag, is a red pill.
“Crafty little bird.” Rocket laughs. “That’s the Emergency Pill.”
“What’s it used for?”
“Only extreme circumstances.” Rocket’s tone has hardened. “There have been rare occurrences when someone experiences negative reactions to the Lobotomy Pills. The Emergency Pill reverses the effects of the Lobotomy Pills. But it only works if taken before the final Lobotomy Pill has run its course.”
I close the box. Run my hand over the top. If brand executives were involved in naming these pills, incorporating the word “lobotomy” would never have been considered. But there are necessary risks to take in this life. Fees to pay for what we truly want. That what we truly need. And even as the slightest trepidation seeps into my consciousness about swallowing these pills, I feel that night on the farm rush back through my memory bank, displacing me from the here and now and back into the torture of its remembrance. Don’t relive it, I tell myself. Don’t let the sense memory take you back. Make you feel that pain again. Force you to revisit those decisions.
For the moment, I win the battle. Shove the memory back down into the locked chamber beside my heart where it belongs.
“I only care about those four Lobotomy Pills,” I say. “Tell me what I have to do.”
Rocket smiles. “You will begin new ventures. Upgraded means for our information gathering.”
“How?”
“Enzo will seek you out when the time is right.” Rocket turns and smiles lovingly at Enzo. “He will usher you to your next set of missions.”
“What are they?”
Rocket squints at me. He bites down on his bottom lip. “Do you agree to these missions?”
I only think of those Lobotomy Pills. Not Rocket. Not Phillip. Nothing else.
“I do.”
“Good,” Rocket says slowly. “Commitment is so, so pure. You either see it in one’s eyes, or you do not. I have no patience for those who do not broadcast their committal nature.”
“I’m committed. I promise.”
Rocket picks up the box and walks it with him to the other side of the table. “And aside from your new missions, the time has come for something else. A most critical step on your journey toward those perfectly concocted pills. Are you ready to meet this requirement?”
“Whatever it is—let’s do it.”
“Then it is time to take your ‘testimony.’”
Within minutes, we’re seated at the table, and Caris has come back—this time with recording equipment. An old analog tape recorder the size of a boom box. Two wires run from the side of the recorder, both connected to microphones, one held in Rocket’s hands and the other in mine.
Before we begin, Rocket tells me about the group’s practice of testimony. The importance of recording an individual talking through their worst act and their motivation for starting fresh. “Withholding details is an extreme foul,” he tells me. Instead, he wants the entire memory. “It is not for Caris or me or anyone other than yourself,” he says. “In moments when you are uncertain you are doing the right thing, when the next Lobotomy Pill feels frightening—it will be your testimony that you will review. It will serve as your life jacket, keeping you afloat through a storm on the seas of rebirth.”
It turns out that I will relive the memory tonight after all. The microphone’s handle dampens from my palms. My mouth goes dry. I’ve never said any of this out loud. Rocket presses the record button. The wheels on the tapes start spinning. Hissing.
And I start to feel it at the base of my spine.
A charge of sensations rising through my central nervous system. André the Giant squeezing my skull. A hush of static in the distance, faint at first but growing nearer and nearer, louder and louder.
A glitch is approaching.
“We are here with participant number seven-twenty-one. Goes by Dash.” Rocket looks up at me. “Will you tell me why you’re here?”
Rocket, Enzo, Caris, Glitch—my dog, not my cognitive impairment I normally welcome—and Phillip, whatever’s left of him, remain present as I summon the courage to begin.
Take a deep breath in. Let it out.
Your past is a parasite sucking the life out of your future.
With waves of static electricity orbiting within my head, the memory of how it all began on the farm splashes across my mind like a bucket of water to the pavement.
God is love.
The muggy summer day spent with my younger brother, firing footballs against trees in the front yard of my parents’ farmhouse. A day away from college. One semester from graduating. A three-hour road trip from Monterey to the barren San Joaquin Valley—over the rolling hills and two-lane highway of Pacheco Pass, down Interstate 5 with cow pastures and alfalfa fields in the periphery.
The black-and-white speckles start to blind my view of the room. Of Rocket. The glitch is nearly here in full power. All that I hold firm is the rest of the memory.
God is life.
My parents’ car slowly coming home, rolling over the dirt road, kicking up pebbles and dust. I look into my father’s eyes as he sits in the passenger seat. He says nothing. But he tells me everything I need to know at the same time. It was late July at that point. By the first of November the evil will have won. The trauma and its fresh wounds coagulate into scar tissue soon thereafter.
The glitch is about to take full control any second. But before it can, I find willpower within my body. Cull my remaining autonomy. I lean in toward the table. Press my lips into the microphone. And tell them about a time of murder.
God is a bomb.
The Next Chapter Begins in 3, 2, 1 . . .