Lisica Chapters

Thanks for joining us for the third volume of our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!

Audio for this episode:

34 – You People Are Wonderful

“Yes, of course such a thing is possible,” Flavia tells Katrina and Pradeep when they present their idea to everyone at dinner. “I am already making similar filters in Plexity. In fact, if you hadn’t spoken of it I am sure I would have gotten around to making one based on the day and night cycle in the next few days. It is really not that special.”

“Well, sure, mate,” Katrina allows, “but it is when you’re out in the actual web of it, the overlaid matrices in the water with the bull kelp all around. The connective tissues. Bloody hell. I tell you, Alonso…” She turns her attention to the man sitting in his camp chair, his belly like a beach ball stretching his t-shirt. “Plexity is deeply changing the way I look at things for sure.”

“Good. Excellent.” This briefly enlivens him. His energy has not been the best lately. He hasn’t shaved in three days now and the bristles on his cheeks are like entropy, unspooling his carefully-preserved self-image into that of a loathsome old man. And what is the deal with this giant goddamn gut he is suddenly carrying? He was a skeleton in the gulag, and not much more in the hospitals. Gaunt was the word everyone used to describe him. And now he is fat. Is that progress? Well, it may or may not be, but Katrina seeing the world through the Plexity lens sure is. “Tell me what you saw.”

“Well, it’s less about what I saw as much as what I imagined. Lines of influence stretching out in every direction, the past and future, the sea and sky and air, the kelp growing a meter every week and then dying back again, over and over. All these cycles and feedback loops. It really is its own supercomputer, ain’t it?”

“Yes.” Alonso holds his hand up like a conductor about to call for the first notes of Haydn’s Requiem in C Minor. He opens his mouth but the strings do not play. He reaches for his usual grand thoughts but fatigue prevents him from formulating them.

Miriam watches his struggle, knowing too well that she can’t help. If Alonso is unable to reference a masterwork then he will never be satisfied with anything less. But for once she doesn’t sympathize. He needs to dig himself out of this depressive relapse himself. He needs to work on his inner strength. His resiliency. She goes back to her own notes, only half-listening.

“Yeh, it was great…” Katrina finishes lamely, not understanding why Alonso had suddenly fallen silent, visibly unhappy.

But Pradeep isn’t tuned into anyone else at all. Plexity is giving him new returns on his queries and they all blow his mind. “Oh, my god! Alonso. Oh, I’ve never seen…!” Pradeep claps a hand over his mouth, brow furrowed, trying to make better sense of the data.

Alonso turns his heavy head toward the beautiful young man. No, not even Pradeep’s dashing good looks can stir Alonso now. But perhaps his discoveries can. “Yes? What is it, hermano?”

“It’s a, well, it’s just this innocuous cyst. I found it on a stalk of the kelp while I was out on the water. Like an infection. Or a… You know how trees get fungal growths and things? So I found this discolored bubble on the kelp and when I cracked it open I found this thing like a fat splinter inside. Like a dark seed.”

“Yes? And did you send a sample into Plexity?”

“I did! And it just confirmed that it was indeed a fungal infection of the kelp, and identified the fungus down to the class and order. But it had never seen this family. Neither have I. It’s a class of fungal endophytes that may be entirely novel!”

“Congrats, Pradeep!” Amy squeezes his shoulder. “I can’t think of a more fitting thing to name after you.”

A chorus of laughs and reminders that Mandy has a plasmodial slime named after her are called out.
“But that’s not the interesting bit. Look, Alonso.” Pradeep gets up and sits beside Alonso, sharing his screen with him. “Here’s a genetic profile of the little beastie. And here’s a molecular visual. God, these programs are so powerful. Now. Look at this table. These are its environmental interactions.”

“What am I looking at?” Alonso frowns, knowing next to nothing about fungi. “Why are all the values at zero?”

“Because, according to Plexity, it doesn’t interact with anything in its environment. It found no trace of local water or nutrients from the kelp. The fungus doesn’t appear to respire. Or metabolize energy stores. We can only assume it derives its energy somehow from the sun, as all things basically do, but in this case it’s unclear.”

“Wait. What are you saying? Of course it interacts with its environment. That is the hallmark of life!” Now Alonso pulls Pradeep’s machine into his own lap and looks more deeply at the data. “No water, no nutrients, no energy source? Then how does it replicate? What makes it alive?”

“It does seem to be in like a polyp or spore phase. Perhaps it’s just in suspension, waiting for different conditions. But yeah. Ever since you described Plexity and the web of life I’ve been thinking about this. Could we find a counter-example? Would we even recognize it if we did? Would it look like life if it was an isolate?”

“Isolate?” Alonso shakes his head, unable to conceive of such a thing. “I mean, let’s say it doesn’t eat or drink. It is still captured in the substrate of the seaweed’s cells. It is interacting with it, no?”

“Well, what I saw was that it formed a kind of protective sheath around itself. I think it was the sheath that the kelp was reacting to. The spore itself seemed, well, untouched. That’s what I’m saying. Can it be alive if it isn’t connected at all to its surroundings?”

“This is preposterous.” Alonso’s emotions stir, deeply offended. “And I believe you are just playing semantics. It will be a timescale issue, not a—a biological one. We keep this for two years or ten and then it fruits. Isn’t that what a fungus does?”

“Well, yes, but most of the fungi and molds I study are actively feeding and storing energy when they are in their suspended phase. It seems obvious. There’s free energy all around us. Here’s a billion years to figure out how to harvest some of it while you wait for the right conditions to, yes, fruit. But this endophyte isn’t utilizing any of them. Unless Plexity is broken or…”

“There is nothing wrong with Plexity!” Flavia looks up from her dinner of clams and seaweed and noodles. “Perhaps you collected the sample wrong.”

“Perhaps I did.” Pradeep isn’t interested in a fight. He knows he followed all protocols. “Running the sample again is definitely the next thing to do. So I did. Six times. Same results every time.”

“Eh… I guess I don’t understand the problem.” Esquibel has little patience for these highly theoretical discussions. “We seem to have identified it quite properly. It is like a seed, yes? You would not say that the sunflower seeds on my bagel are feeding off it.”

“Well, yes, actually you would. Seeds are alive, only dormant, and their cells are active.” Pradeep shrugs. “They feed off their stores of sugars and starches and wait for the right time to sprout. Now this endophyte also has active cells. The problem is it has no known stores of fuel or resources. It is only a collection of genetic blueprints. But somehow it is humming right along like, like a perpetual motion machine. Immune to its environment. Completely disconnected. I think it’s an alien.”

This is too much for Alonso. An unreasoning irritation shoots through him. “I think you’re the alien.”

Amy rubs her chin. “Are we sure that it fruits? What if this is its mature phase?”

“Amy, please.” This is too much for Alonso.

“I mean, talk about proving the rule. What would even the point of such life be? No reproduction. No respiration. Just… a splinter in a piece of seaweed forever.”

“I think,” Flavia says loudly, “there’s a small matter of the second law of thermodynamics that is having a problem with all of this. If something is producing activity, then they are expending energy. And if there is no energy source then the entire universe collapses because nothing works that way. I thought we all knew this?”

“It’s a mystery, for sure.” Pradeep is delighted at the discussion his endophyte has caused. “And I can’t wait to someday figure out the answer. Until then, I think we can all agree…”

But Pradeep is interrupted by a crash from within the bunker. They all instantly fall silent. Its door swings open.

Jay stands there, his entire left side stained in blood. He falls to his knees and groans. “Home again, home again, jiggity jig.”

Ξ

Maahjabeen returns from the lagoon with a reader, which she is beginning to seriously despise. She almost lost it again. Using one in a kayak is nearly impossible without losing hold of her paddle. She needs a lanyard on it, but there’s no attachment point to the case. She’ll have to figure out something…

Flavia eats a bowl of oatmeal and watches her return to camp. She admires the muscles bunching beneath Maahjabeen’s tight white rashguard. Flavia has never been so fit. She calls out, “You know, Maahjabeen, you remind me of a girl from university. A real beauty. Her name was Flore and she was from Brugge. Every boy in class tried to date her. And some of the girls too. But she was just too shy.”

Yet Maahjabeen is in no mood to hear about the adolescent failings of Flavia’s childhood. She glares at her as she passes. So Flavia gets up and follows her, perversely delighted in the reaction she’s provoking.

“For me, the men I have ever liked, they did not know. I always keep my crushes secret, you know? And the girls. If a girl is pretty, she gets so much attention. I do not want to be just another person bothering them.”

Maahjabeen gives a disbelieving grimace to Flavia. Surely the Italian woman can’t be so dense that she doesn’t even hear what she is saying? She stops at the tables to unload the reader and find a mug for tea.

“So, with Flore, I became her friend instead. She never knew that I had as big a crush on her as anyone. And I listened to all her worries about how the Italian boys were like rubbing up against her in the halls and humping her leg like dogs. She hated all of them. But after she had been there nearly all year she finally told me about the boy she did like. He was quiet, a small and dark boy from Sicily. He was a very serious student and he would never speak unless he had considered his words very thoroughly. His name was Ennio. Nobody knew him well. Nobody thought about him at all. Except Flore.”

Maahjabeen has found her mug and filled it with a sachet and some hot water. Now she retreats to her platform. But Flavia still follows her.

“She made me ask him out the first time, for her. She was too scared. But I didn’t care. I thought it was funny. And it didn’t matter because he was harmless. So one day I stopped him from leaving class and I took him to the benches outside. I told him that Flore liked him and I waited, very excited, to see if he would laugh or throw up or run away. I don’t know. But he did none of these things. He only looked at me and his face grew very serious. Then he looked down and his eyebrows came together. And he thought for a long time before he said a thing. But during that silence I became impressed with Ennio for the very first time. I saw a little bit of what Flore saw in him. Finally, after he was finished with all his thinking, he said, “Okay lo farò. I’ll do it.”

Maahjabeen disappears into her tent to change out of her wet clothes and Flavia sits on the platform outside, nibbling on her oats and continuing her story. “And it was so fantastic. I mean, the way those two fell in love. And I got to have like a front row seat. I was the confidante. They both told me all their big hopes and dreams and all the secret thoughts about how much they really loved the other one. It was like we were a little family for a whole semester…”

The memories silence Flavia and she shakes her head, bemused.

Maahjabeen’s voice calls out, “Yes? And then what happened?”

“Ah.” Flavia remembers why she brought this all up in the first place. “Yes, well, after our third year Flore had to go back to Belgium. And Ennio, oh he thought and thought about it. For weeks he wouldn’t think about anything else. Then when it was time for her to go, he decided. He left behind Torino, which was a very big deal, and joined her up there in Leuven. I visited once on break. They were so happy to see me but it was so cold up there and it rained the whole time. After they graduated they moved back to Sicily. Now they have two kids and she teaches French to adults. A good life, no?”

Maahjabeen pokes her head out of the tent and stares at Flavia with suspicion. “And what does this have to do with me? And, eh, Pradeep, yes? What are you saying?”

Flavia shrugs. “I just hope that I can be a friend. Sometimes I believe it is the closest I will ever get to true love. No, those two ruined me forever. I have had a few modern like relationships, you know? With lots of contracts and mutual agreements and meetings with therapists. Very neurotic. But once you see true love, la! You can’t accept anything less.”

The hostility in Maahjabeen evaporates. Her face softens. “You know… You are right. I am ruined too, but…” She laughs a bit at herself. “You know, Flavia, I want to talk to Pradeep about my mother, but I don’t know how yet. I feel…” Maahjabeen sighs in frustration and falls back into the tent.

Flavia sees this as her invitation and scrambles in after. They sit cross-legged facing each other in the cramped space, sharing the length of Maahjabeen’s sleeping pad. It is salty in here, as if the oceanographer brings the ocean home with her. And there’s a musky scent beneath which somehow accentuates her beauty.

Maahjabeen shakes her head, eyes worried. “I feel like… I think my Ama is a ghost and she is watching over me. And she is, well, my mother would not have liked Pradeep.”

“What? Not liked him? But he is so wonderful!”

“I know!” Maahjabeen squeezes her fists and drops them in her lap. “But to her it wouldn’t matter. He isn’t Muslim. And he isn’t Tunisian. Even if he was from the wrong side of Tunis she would have disapproved! My mother was very modern in many ways but with family, no. Even if he converts she would never love him.”

“And she is watching over you?”

“Sometimes I can feel her and…” Maahjabeen shrugs. “She is not happy. And if I told him about her, and how much she had always been, you know, at the very center of my life, it would be so hard. It would be like she is on the phone listening in. How can I talk about her in a way that will satisfy both her and him?”

“What if you told him what you are telling me right now?”

“I don’t know… That is the other thing about Pradeep. My mother would have hated his… you know, his…” Maahjabeen holds up a trembling hand, “…his anxiety. She would see it as weakness. She would be worried he would pass it down to her grandchildren. And if he fell apart in front of her, ehh…” Maahjabeen throws her hands up, hopeless. “I am glad they will never meet. I am not sure Pradeep would have survived it.”

They sit in companionable silence. Maahjabeen finishes dressing, Flavia completes her meal.

“I did not know you liked girls, Flavia.”

“See, that is what I mean. The people I fancy never know.”

Maahjabeen favors her with a dimpled smile, acknowledging the implication. “I like that I can talk to you about my mother. She loved Sicily. One of her closest friends was from Palermo. Sophia. We went several times when I was young. She would like that you are such a strong woman, Flavia. You do not compromise. And you stand on your own two feet. But she would be worried that you are not married.”

“Ech. No, don’t worry about me. I have a wonderful collection of battery-powered devices and a big dog at home. My life is all in here anyway.” She taps her temple. “Now. Changing subjects, I have some questions for you that are actually about science, if you can believe it. Katrina has set me a problem, well two problems actually. First is the Plexity filter she wants me to develop. And then there is the weather-modeling program we are making for Mandy. I need your input as an oceanographer for both projects. How… eh… how is your maths?”

“I love maths!”

Flavia claps her hands in pleasure. “You do? Oh, that is ingente! Huge! I did not know! Beauty and brains! Wow wow wow. Now I can see why Pradeep is wandering around after you like a dreamy little lamb.”

Maahjabeen rolls her eyes, easing into the familiarity of her new friendship. “Oh, la. You want to talk brains? I can’t even keep up with Pradeep when he starts—”

“No no no, right now we are talking about you, you and your big beautiful brain. These are data science problems so we need to isolate factors that emerge from marine sources, sì?”

“Of course. Alonso keeps making me focus on what he calls the threshold species and conditions. It makes me think a lot about the interactions. I’ve been building water column data for the lagoon.”

“Yes! That! That is what I need. Can you send me your files? Any format. And the more data the better.”

“Of course.” Maahjabeen blanches. “Oh, no. Is that what I think it is? DJ Bubblegum is getting started early tonight, isn’t she?”

Flavia starts moving to the soft disco beat wafting through the camp. “Well, why shouldn’t she? We are celebrating, now that we are all safe and together and happy again.”

Ξ

Alonso walks through the camp in a white sarong, expansive and care-free. His feet don’t even hardly hurt. Ah! What a beautiful night! Windy and cold with a gunmetal ceiling over the sea. Very Sturm und Drang. A Wagnerian kind of night. In this flowing fabric he is both Tristan and Isolde. He is the happiest man alive!

Jay has returned. And Pradeep has recovered. The entire project is back on track! The worries that had been eating away at him can kindly fuck right back off. They can scurry back into the shadows and cracks of his foundation. While things are going so well he can ignore how shaky his base is. Or, rather, he can shake it! “Katrina! Do me a favor and mix in some Bocelli! He is my guilty pleasure! E Pi’u Ti Penso, if you have it!”

Katrina frowns and searches her database. “I… don’t. Real light on the opera tracks, I’m afraid.”
“Well, that is not from any opera. It is a piece written for a movie by the very famous composer—”
“Here. Well. How about… I’ve got Marilyn Horne sings Rossini. Will that do?”

“Will it do?” Alonso makes a grand gesture. “I ask for comfort food and you offer me a—a dinner at a five star restaurant! Yes! Please! Marilyn is a genius. And I am very much in a Rossini kind of melodrama mood.”

And with deft technical wizardry, the mezzo-soprano’s crystal voice weaves seamlessly into Katrina’s lush instrumental beats.

“Ahhh…” Alonso spins slowly in the center of the camp, arms outstretched. Anxieties slough from him like old skin. He is new again. Re-born. Not Teutonic Tristan and Isolde any longer. This torrid Italian tale has swept aside the clouds. Now he is Bianca and Falliero both, demure maid and tragic hero. Passionate and noble. Now if he can only do something about this appalling gut…

He opens his eyes to find Mandy, of all people, dancing before him. She sways awkwardly, unable to embody the lyrical currents of the piece at all, but still Alonso is happy to see her. “Olé! Mandy is here! Arriba!” He claps to have her dance around him, but she evidently doesn’t know the convention. She only stares at him with a goofy smile and sways back and forth in time.

Katrina calls out to her, “Ask him!”

Alonso gives Mandy a face filled with mock-suspicion. “Ask me what? What are you two cooking up now?”

“We were thinking…” Mandy reaches out to Alonso and he mirrors her movement until they’re holding hands. “This might be a good night to resume our therapy.”

“Therapy…” Alonso is so transported he doesn’t even remember at the moment what the word means. But when he does, instead of the darkness it normally brings, he is touched by their persistent concern. He lifts Mandy’s hand to his lips and kisses it. “You are angels. Angels of light and love. I thank you. Yes, if that is what you think will be best, I submit to your expertise. But first we dance!” And he spins her.

Mandy squawks and falls away as Esquibel marches outside, her face preoccupied and cross. But when she sees Alonso drop Mandy she laughs. “No no, Mands. That is no way to properly dance. It’s like this!” And Esquibel gives her hand to Alonso. When he raises it to spin her she pirouettes prettily away.

Mandy gasps from the sand and claps her hands. “Oh my god, Skeeb! I didn’t know you could dance like that!”

“The remnants of a colonial education in Nairobi.” Esquibel rejoins Alonso and they dance lightly together to Marilyn Horne’s soaring voice. He is delighted.

“Oh, Doctor Daine! You are a woman of many surprises!”

“And you…” Esquibel responds to the change in mood she finds out here. She laughs, letting her own cares fall away. “Alonso, you are the craziest Principal Investigator I’ve ever met!”

“What a compliment!” He spins her into an embrace and dips her. They both laugh.

Miriam appears through the ferns from the creek, holding one of the recorders. She exclaims, “Oh, my days!” Then Triquet appears at her side and they both cat-call the dancers.

Alonso gasps and stumbles in the sand. Esquibel falls from his grip. They do not stop laughing. Neither does Mandy as she pulls her lover up.

“Here.” Esquibel holds Mandy in a formal pose. “It is very fun. Let me show you.”

“Oh, Mirrie…” Alonso struggles again to his feet, covered in sand. He slowly gyrates his hips like a hula dancer, beckoning to her. “They’re playing our song.”

Miriam looks at Triquet. “I’ve never heard this song in my life.” She grabs Triquet by the hand and hauls them onto the dance floor to join Alonso. “But that’s never stopped us before.”

Ξ

Cool. Life without a phone. Cool cool. No worries. He can do it. He’s been off-grid before, like down in Baja every Thanksgiving. Come on, Jay. Just four weeks with no electronics. You got this.

But the thing about those times is that he still actually had his phone, he just couldn’t connect with it. But it still had all his stuff on it. Now he has nothing to read. No music to listen to except what Katrina shares. And that’s cool and all. None of it matters. He’s got dope aplenty. And as soon as he gets Esquibel’s stitches out next week he can run and swim again. Katrina speared a goddamn barracuda while he was gone? He needs to get in on that action. And he’ll definitely need something new to do with his downtime. Maybe he could… learn to weave?

See. Normally, recuperating in his hammock here, he’d be listening to Katrina’s beats and playing one of three games on his phone. He has one puzzle, one platformer, and one RPG going at any given time and he cycles through them depending on his mood. Like right now he’d definitely be up for some bullet storm madness. He’s getting restless just sitting here with nothing to do.

Flavia approaches and sits on the edge of the hammock beside him, holding a glass of wine. He grunts as her weight shifts them toward each other. She smiles, already a bit glassy with alcohol, and grabs his arm, squeezing the muscle. “How are you, Jay? I am hoping, per favore, for some of that herb you smoke.”

“Heh.” Jay moves gingerly, trying not to tug on the closing wound. “That’s right. Step right up for your magical herbalism here. And I could use one of those glasses of wine if you—”

“No drinking!” Esquibel calls out from the dance floor as she and Mandy pass by. “Not until you’re off the painkillers. So stupid. Don’t you know anything?”

Jay falls back with a wince. “Yeah yeah. I know. Just looking for a bit of oblivion, Doc, if you don’t mind.” His practiced hands pick apart a nug and sprinkle it across an open rolling paper.

Flavia’s hand slides from his arm to his rib. He is surprised by her familiarity, but Jay is the kind of boy who has no real physical boundaries and doesn’t understand why others do. “They tried to kill you? They really did? It wasn’t just like a… a warning?”

Jay chuckles. “Warning? Nah, dude came at me full force. I’m just super glad the girl screamed. Woke me up just in time. He was definitely going center mass. But I twisted, like, I don’t know, just reflexes, I guess. Hella clean wound, though. I’d like to see that blade. Maybe obsidian, but Miriam said she doesn’t think so.”

Flavia confides, “You know, I do not like this island. And this island, she does not like us.”

“Aw, what? Are you kidding?” Jay smirks in disbelief. “This place is fucking paradise. Come on. Everywhere’s got sketchy locals. An island like this is always gonna have someone claiming it. Just a fact of the modern world, yo. And it’s all settled now. I paid my blood debt. The scary village is like punishing their hunters. The golden childs, the four of them in their masks, we said goodbye. It’s over.”

“I do not like that you saw Wetchie-ghuy.”

“Yeah well I don’t think anyone is ever happy to see that fucker. Must be tough going through life like that. Imagine everyone hating the sight of you. Here. Just a little binger for ya. Should smoke right up.” He holds up a needle thin joint, expertly rolled.

“Aw, grazie, grazie mille.” Flavia plucks it from his fingers and kisses him on the cheek. The wine is definitely making her more emotional and touchy. She should watch herself or something. But the boy does not seem to mind. She remembers sleeping on top of him that one night, taking such comfort in his big frame and strong arms. She wants, somehow, a deeper connection. How do people do that? Flavia gropes for something meaningful to say. “Oh, Jay. How… how is the pain?”

“Sucks. But oh well. Wicked scar, I guess.”

Flavia shakes her head in frustration, his statement so devoid of data she doesn’t know how to proceed. Ai, why can’t the human languages be more like logic languages? She thinks it a dozen times a day. Why must it always be so indirect and messy? He’s so dear, this one. She remembers him and Pradeep showing up at the door of her cell to pledge to defend her. Maybe that is what she can do. “Hey.” She jabs him in the chest. “When they were after me, you swore to protect me. Well. Now it is my turn. If they come for you, Jay. I will protect you. Okay?”

“Thanks, dude. But, you know, I just want my phone back.”

“You understand? We have our backs. Eh. How do you say it?”

“I got your back, Flavia. And you got mine. Ride or die.” He holds up his fist for a bump. She leans in and kisses him instead.

“Cool. Cool cool.” Flavia pulls away, glistening and desirable. Jay has no idea what’s going on. But he’s learned long ago to just roll with it when it comes to girls. Her hand drags across his lap and for a moment he wonders if she’s about to unzip his pants right here in front of everybody. But she snares his lighter instead.

Flavia stands unsteadily and lights the thin joint. She feels stylish, sipping on its smoke like a cheroot. Then Miriam and Triquet spin past and an outstretched hand pulls her into their laughing dance.

Ξ

Alonso is soaked in wine. It perfuses through his tissues, releasing his fears and muddling his thoughts. Oh, if he had only had a cask like this in the gulag! He would have laughed the five years away!

Well, not really. But still. Here, here is his happy place, where his tongue hardly works and thoughts are like deep underwater creatures rising from the void. He is all heart, not head. When all is said and done, he is a creature of emotion despite all his intellectual achievements. Mandy on one side, Katrina on the other. These two sweethearts, working so hard to make sure he gets better. How lucky can he be?

They deposit him in his cocoon in the bedroom of his tent and he snuggles under the covers like he’s about to hear his favorite bedtime story. But he is nowhere near sleep. He is… well, excited. For the first time in about thirty years he’s actually excited to take drugs. He’d forgotten what a pleasure MDMA could be.

Katrina hands him one white pill and he swallows it dry. Then she holds out another, but a percentage of it has been shaved away. “Esquibel and I agreed that one isn’t enough but two may be too much. So your dosage is like 1.8. Here.”

Alonso dutifully swallows the second smaller pill. Katrina hands him a bottle of water. Then she holds out the crumbled sliver that remains to Mandy. “Want just a taste? This will probably just give you a bit of a glow…”

Mandy shrugs. “Sure. Why not.” She pops it into her mouth and immediately gags. “Ugh. So bitter.” She pulls the water from Alonso’s hands. “Gah. How’d you do that, Alonso?”

“Yes…” He realizes he must be very drunk indeed for the bitterness of the pills not to affect him until she mentioned it. He grabs the water back and rinses his mouth. “Very bad. Of course.”

“Lie back.”

“I don’t want to fall asleep.”

Katrina laughs. “Oh, you won’t be sleeping for a good long time, mate. Pretty sure about that.”

“Knock knock.” Miriam enters the tent with Triquet. “Hello, all. Just checking in on the patient.”

Triquet sings, “Ground control to Major Tom… Commencing countdown, engines on…”

“No no,” Katrina giggles. “He just took it. And I was about to join him. Anyone else?” She shakes a couple extra pills into her palm. Triquet and Miriam both accept the offer. They choke the bitter little pills down. Katrina takes hers too.

“Should you, I mean, as the like person in charge…?” Miriam begins, casting a worried glance at Katrina.

“Eh? Oh, mate, I operate far better when I’m rolling than when I’m sober. I’ve got a lot of experience with this drug.”

“I trust you, haiku triplet.” Triquet claps their hands then places them on Alonso’s barrel chest. “Now. How can we help? Is this like laying on of hands? A bit of faith healing for the wicked?”

Alonso laughs and mutters something none of them recognize. They share a few puzzled grimaces and turn to Miriam.

“I haven’t the faintest.” She leans in and pulls the gray curls away from her husband’s face. “What was that, Zo? I think you’re speaking Spanish.”

“Ah.” His eyes slowly come into focus. “I was just saying I love you all and I wish I could just have this experience in my brain. Just this one. Not… all the others.”

“How’s it feel, Doctor Alonso?” Mandy gets in position at the foot of the bed. “Can I put my hands on you?”

“I am…” Alonso sighs wetly and waves vaguely at them all. “A piece of meat for you all to… carve and cook and serve on a platter. Do with me as you will.”

Mandy approves. “What every massage therapist wants to hear.”

But Katrina frowns. “No, it’s not really like that. I mean, for this therapy to be successful you can’t just be… asleep or passive or whatever. This isn’t just massage. We need your help. It’s about what’s within you, yeh? The deepest scars.”

Alonso belches loudly and fills the tent with an unpleasant odor of wine. “Sorry. Forgive me.” He waves the air clear. Then he stares at his upraised hand. It trembles slightly.

“What is it, Zo?” Miriam studies his hand with him.

Katrina laughs at the look in his eye. “Coming online, I’m pretty sure. He should be a few minutes ahead of the rest of us.”

Alonso can’t stop staring at his hand. This hand, this object that he knows better than any other object in the world. His right hand. It has stayed with him throughout his whole life. He remembers it when it was soft and childlike, without all these lines and scars and mismatched skin tones, without the hair on his knuckles and the squared nails that now look like his grandfather’s. He lifts his left hand too, remembering digging in the field as a graduate student. Or throwing a futbol in and racing up the sidelines. These hands. Dios mío, he has done so much with these hands. He has built an empire. A deep, worshipful love for his own hands wells up from within him. He owes these hands everything. They have done so much for him, taken so much abuse for him.

And then he recalls the one they called Sergei fighting his hand into restraints so he could burn his palm with a glowing red wire…

Alonso bucks and his left hand thuds into Triquet’s chest, knocking them back with a surprised grunt.

Miriam snares Alonso’s right hand and kisses it. She says to the others, “Careful now. This is how his dreams have gone these last few weeks. Just make sure he doesn’t hurt you.”

Mandy shares a worried glance with Katrina, who puts a calming hand on Alonso’s shoulder. “We’re fine. It’s all fine. Do you know where you are, Alonso?”

“Yes…” He opens his eyes and tears suddenly stream from their corners. “This is Heaven.” Then he shrugs and his eyes clear. “I mean, do I still know I’m in a tent? Yes. But I can’t remember where the tent is at the moment. Is that okay?”

“It’s fine. Not too clear on it myself. And whooo…!” Katrina rocks back as the drug catalyzes in her blood and brain and sends her rocketing into space. “Here we go! All I know is we’re all on this spaceship together. I just wish I knew who was driving.”

“You are.” Mandy gives Katrina a meaningful glare. “You just told us that you’re more capable on this drug than—”

“Oh, right. Right. The therapy. Alonso! The therapy!”

But he only looks at her face hanging upside-down above his. “Oh, Katrina. I love you so much.”

She kisses his forehead. “Right back at ya, big guy.”

“What is it like…?” Alonso reaches up to her, trying to put his thoughts into words. They wait patiently for him. “To… to… have straight blonde hair? I always wanted to try. So fine. When I am feeling fem and I want anything other than this big thick Cuban forest on my head!”

Now they’re all laughing at him. Miriam pushes his arm. “Oh, Zo. You are such a shallow slut. Remember that time…?” And the memories flash through her, of a warehouse party and a fashion show, with banging techno and a long runway. Alonso had stalked the length of it in a velvet boa and a black satin sheath. Very Tim Curry. Stopped the show in its tracks. But as she tries to describe what she recalls, the memories vanish, leaving only the ache of nostalgia and a deep satisfaction that her life has been so rich.

“I had a dream.” The corner of Alonso’s mouth rises into a scowl. “A nightmare. Over and over.”

“In the goo-log?” Katrina stretches the syllables out into a silly cartoonish sound. “What a dumb word. Goo. Log. Russian is such a weird language. Russkiy takoy strannyy yazyk.”

Alonso talks over her, describes the dream. “I’m in the house of my father’s parents. My Oppy and Nina. And I am very young. But their house is surrounded by Nazis, like real Nazis from World War Two and they are unspooling wire around the house, turning it into a prison, a concentration camp. And we are trapped and cannot leave. Then the doctor, with the black uniform and the white apron, he finds me in the bathroom. He holds a spatula that he has been heating up, until it is white hot. Then he slices into my skull, like he is cutting slices off a block of cheese. And it is so painful. Oh my god, Mirrie, I couldn’t stand the pain.”

“I know, Zo. I know.” She and Triquet both grip Alonso’s shaking hand.

“You would think, in such a terrible place as a gulag, that when I was unconscious I could escape? But no. My poor brain needed to torture me as well. Ah! I hate that dream so much.”

“Okay. So here’s the thing.” Katrina’s eyes open wide and her pupils slowly dilate into focus. “Ehh… What was I…? Yeh. Right. Okay. So that Nazi doctor. The one who sliced your head open. Think about him now.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Well that’s the thing about rolling like this, Alonso. You can. You can think about him all you want and he can’t hurt you any more. You’re safe. You can tell him whatever you want.”

“You know… every time it happens I have the same thoughts. I see the spatula and I think that I am hungry and maybe he will feed me. Then I realize he is going to torture me and I argue with him, mostly that he shouldn’t do such a thing in the bathroom. He will make a mess and my Nina will yell at us.”

“But what do you say to him, Alonso?” The drug charges into Triquet and convinces them that with the force of their words they can invest Alonso with their own strength and courage. They grip Alonso’s arm tight and whisper it again. “What do you say?”

“Eh? Say to him? Uh. Fuck off, Nazi doctor. This is not your house. Leave me alone. This is not your brain to play with.”

“That’s it,” Katrina encourages him. “Tell him what you need to tell him. And then say goodbye. You won’t ever see him again.”

Alonso shakes his head in wonder. “Oh, but I have seen him so many times… ‘Go. Vamos. Get out of my head, you fucking creep. Goodbye. Forever. Go.’” He rolls his eyes up to Katrina. “But he is still here. And I can still feel…” Alonso seizes his head with his hands. Katrina and Miriam cover his face and hair with caresses.

Finally Mandy ventures to touch him. She places her hands against the soles of Alonso’s feet. He barks in surprise.

Alonso sits up, his face clear, his mind forcibly altered. “How did you do that? What did you do? Uh, uh… What is your name?”

“Mandy. I just touched your feet, Doctor Alonso. I grounded you. That’s all.”

“Yes. Yes, you did. Grounded to earth. Huh. The Nazi doctor, he went poof! In my head like a magic spell, he just disappeared! And I… Ah! What is wrong? Why do my feet hurt so much?”

They all share glances, none willing to remind him.

“Ah. They really hurt! Like, they always hurt, you know? But I don’t know why! I don’t understand. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No, no you didn’t.” Triquet grabs Alonso’s arm again, trying to share more strength. This is a tremendous figure, this man. Triquet never thought they would be so close to him, to actually wrestle with his demons alongside him. “Look, brother. It’s just original sin, okay? You and me, we were just born this way and for some reason the whole world has to take all their anger out on us. Life is pain, right? But we’ve got each other. And together, we can… I don’t know… We can do anything! Stop time. Stop all the abuse. Build our own empire of love here in this…”

“Love Palace!” Katrina finishes with a giggle. She leans over and kisses Triquet. “Thanks, Triq. That was glorious. You’re the best. The very very best.”

“I am…?” Triquet covers their mouth with a hand, touched. “Not sure I’ve ever been the very very best before.”

“Oh, but you are…” All their voices chime in, with Alonso sitting up again joining them in fawning over Triquet, petting their face and telling them in fast, slurring Spanish just how incredible they are, mind and body and soul.

“Whoa whoa whoa.” Triquet finally falls back a bit and wipes a tear away. “Wait. We’re here for Alonso. We can give me therapy some other time. In fact, I think I’ll make my appointment right now. You people are wonderful.”