Distinguishing Features Part 7/8

Julie chose the second night after the dumpster debacle to take Matt aside and speak to him about it all. She loved Jack and Austin, she loved them so, but they were incorrigible. Matt didn’t have to do crazy things just to be liked, and he could change. She was worried about what would happen to them all. Matt thanked her for her advice, and then she told him that she also loved the t-shirt that he wore.

           That night it was a t-shirt from the film ‘Anywhere’. Not the award-winning blockbuster of the same name about a city-state spared from the apocalypse to become an empire of unscathed human overlords both served and threatened by a more populous breed of mutants, but the knockoff version out of the Esperan Republic; set on the Tur Steppe. Many in Notstalgia agreed that the female lead, featured on the shirt, was better looking than the A-lister in the original version, but no one could find a copy of the Esperan film.

            And Matt thought that he was the one who could be bad news for Jack and Austin. He wasn’t down on himself, but if he had shown up at the dumpster at the right time, as needed, the cops would have found the three young men walking down the street carrying bags minutes later, instead of Jack toppling to the ground beside a dumpster. They accepted Matt, shirts and all. He still thought that he could be a moderating influence on the two. He felt that his input might be needed at some crucial point.

            Matt owned so many printed t-shirts that he didn’t have to worry about any kind of rotation. He just had to keep them carefully stored. He would pause at his closet door Notstalgia evenings, not exactly hating, but disliking this situation he had found himself in, vis-à-vis shirts. Notstalgia was, by definition, not a place to stir things up, but he was the one called upon to push the limits.

            On The Fateful Climactic Evening, Matt chose a large black shirt which was both manufactured and proudly packaged locally. It had the HD face of race car driver Wuzz Bizzco. John and Austin had told him to wear dark clothes that evening, and the shirt would certainly do. He would have to turn it inside-out at Notstalgia, though. Car racing wasn’t a problem; they even had a slot-car set at the bar for particularly boring evenings. The problem was that Bizzco insisted on nothing but domestic producers for his sponsors, and, as time went on, it came off more and more as cultural/economic straw-grasping.

            On the shirt was the face of the driver, with a race car behind him. There was also a barn, a picket fence, a pump windmill and a corn silo. The sponsors were clearly featured on the collar of his racing suit and along his shoulders and chest, running down an arm. There was Corn, Beef and Corned Beef. Buzz’s main sponsor, shown on a large patch on the breast, was the Hoodlyhoo Flip Drive Plus. This was a device that could make an automobile leap ahead at well over 100 mph during city driving for a fraction of a second. It happened so fast that the car wouldn’t even leave skid marks on the road, and the car would still only register the average 35 mph on speed radar. The trick was for the driver to assume a devil-may-care expression during that third of a second. The plus was that the flip drive now included a cup holder.

            Other sponsors shown on the shirt within a shirt were ‘Apple and Clanahan, attorneys at law’ (It’s your money. Get it!), the SEC-ordered Benson-Jillett spin-off ‘Grand Euphemism’ (Logistics, Security Solutions and Certified Protection Systems) and an energy drink called: ‘Holy Shit! This Ain’t Meth, You Say?’

Jack and Austin knew that Matt and Julie had a ‘talk’, and Matt knew that they both understood how everyone could be ‘bad news’ to everyone else- to a degree. He joined his two friends at a vintage kitchen table, which Jack liked to sit at and rub his hand along the stainless steel ridges on the side. They didn’t drink. Others noticed the unusual situation unfolding at that table that night. The tension. So, Jack made a speech.

            “Due to recent events, whether we will succeed at this mission or not has been called into question, and rightly so. So, if anyone wants out of it…”

            He had been avoiding looking at Matt much, and, oddly, nodded to Austin at this point. Austin was just trying to keep a straight face.

            “…nothing will be held against you.”

            Then he nodded to Matt. Both Austin and Matt chuckled, and Matt said,

            “The sooner we go, the better.”

            The young men left Notstalgia in the wee hours that morning and headed for the compound where John Doe had been transferred. And the question comes to mind: Exactly how old were these three young men? (Who were about to infiltrate what was a municipal installation without a hint of a plan.) What is known is that their respective ages averaged 28. Old enough to know better.

On the outskirts of the compound they found roads and paths that didn’t lead to the buildings right away. So they had to weave, and weave they did. The grounds were more of a place, officially, for patients and visitors. But the out-of-the-way benches and tables were used mostly by the staff, and good for them. Jack led them on a course that cut across all that. He had ‘inside information’. They nearly cut through a pond, then went to an exterior corner of one of the many buildings there. The man in question, John Doe, was said to be on the first level. The three crouched in the mulch, still taller than the tiny bushes there; just beneath a top-hung window which itself was beneath a larger one, both made of plate glass.

            “This it?” Austin hissed.

            “This is it. I’m almost certain this is it,” Jack answered. “Matt. Would you check?”

            They hadn’t used the LEDs as they walked through the bushy grounds. Much of what they perceived of each other at that moment was what they felt. That, and they did see glints of each other’s hair and eyes.

            Matt asked, “Why me?”

            “I don’t know for certain…” Jack began.

            “What. Do you two seem to think that I'm the token perv here?”

            “This isn’t the time…” Austin tried to interject.

            “All I’ve gotten out of this so far…”

            Jack and Austin caught a shiver of indignation from Matt between them.   

“I get it.” Austin continued, staccato laconic.

            “I don’t think you do,” Matt said. “Three donuts choked down in the comfort of an interrogation room. I don’t believe this.”

            “I Have The Solution!” Austin hissed.

            “Okay, but it better be good.”

            Jack, not being the leader, waited for ‘Austin’s Solution’.

            “We need you, please, to look in the window to see if we’re at the right place…”

            Matt grumbled gutterally, but Austin continued.

            “…because you are the junior member of this group…”

            Jack sighed a sigh of relief and nodded rapidly on Matt’s other side.

            “…which is a group of which Jack is not a leader.”

            Matt looked past Austin’s shadow against the night sky sans light pollution, the curly hair a dark halo. All read each others glints intently. Matt shuffled a foot in the mulch and rose slowly to the window.

            “Okay, then. Oop! Someone’s comin’.”

            Matt ducked back down, wide-eyed and lit by a new source of light that flashed on through the window.

Now it was exactly 3:30 AM. A time of bleary chaos. The time is, for us, the most unnatural period. This time of day is one, where, at least for a second during it, being awake is as implausible as flying to Mars. And what happened over the next five minutes was so strange, as perceived within and without that room, that it can only be represented in transcript form, to recount the physical events in a more accurate perspective. So, the scene begins with what can be counted upon in such a facility at that time of night: Someone barreling into the room.

Intruder: Hello Mister Doe!

Mister Doe: (silent)

           The intruder tosses a clipboard, with paper and pen clasped, onto the nightstand beside Mister Doe. He drapes his lab jacket over the back of a chair and then doffs and tosses his fedora onto Mister Doe’s left foot, which rests beneath a blanket.

Intruder: I must say, Mister Doe, that you are the most mild-mannered client we’ve had here for quite some time.

Mister Doe: (remains silent)

The intruder leans forward over the side of the bed and presses the corner of a small bandage on Mister Doe’s forehead down.

Intruder: Don’t go changin’.

Mister Doe: (does not respond)

The intruder takes the remote from the nightstand and lowers the already low volume on the television. As an afterthought, he switches the channels from ‘Casablanca’ to a skin cream infomercial.

Mister Doe: (refuses to be drawn in)

           The intruder retrieves his clipboard from the nightstand and stands ready, pen in hand.

Intruder: The spiritual mission of this facility has narrowed sharply in recent times, so now it is my job to simply determine what pressing spiritual needs each client has, no matter what their physical state. Do you understand what I have said so far?

Mister Doe: (does not respond)

Intruder: (looks to sheet on clipboard) Well. I understood what I said. We’ll mark that as a ‘yes’, then, shall we? (looks again) Where to now? Flow chart…flow chart…okay. (clears throat) On a scale of zero to ten, what do you feel your spiritual state is at this moment? (he raises his pen to make a point) Zero being, say, Vibrio Cholerae, and ten being the Dalai Lama.

Mister Doe: Hrmph.

Intruder: Oh! Hm! Hrmph. (checks the next page on the clipboard, obviously the instruction sheet)

Voice From Just Outside Window: Brother.

[Author’s Note: The intruder had a particular regard to that voice which he obviously heard from just outside the window- a regard different from that of the average person. Such was his own consistent spiritual state. If a pixie would have lit on top of his clipboard, for example, he would have had the same reaction. Which is none, since the pixie wouldn’t be him, you see. If the reader has any question about which number that the Intruder might have applied to himself, through his own scale, sadly, they are on their own, as the intruder found himself at that moment.]

Intruder: (looks at front sheet again) ‘Hrmph’ is not a number.

Mister Doe: (silent)

]Intruder: I’ll just write it down verbatim, then. (presses bottom of pen to lower lip) (looks up) How do you spell ‘hrmph’?

Mister Doe: (remains silent)

Intruder: Look who I’m asking. (jots on sheet) Thus ends my little visit.

With a flurry, the intruder scoops his jacket off the visitor’s chair and his fedora off Mister Doe’s bed, but not without a goodbye pat to the toe it had been resting on. He felt that quick action was necessary, namely, retreat, in case Mister Doe would ‘hrmph’ again, thus establishing a Hrmph Baseline and ruining his study.

Intruder: Thank you, and goodnight. (departs, turning the overhead light off as he goes)

All three peered into the room from beneath the swing window after the Intruder left. Austin asked the others what just happened.

            “I don’t know, but we’re losing time,” Jack said. “Hey, Matt.”

            “Huh?”

            “John Doe has your stomach.”

            Once Matt understood what Jack meant, he issued a strong but quiet denial and averted his eyes. It’s true, from the window you could see the lump beneath Mister Doe’s blanket. It looked like Matt’s tummy. It rose clearly from under the covers like a medium-sized salad bowl set upside-down. Like the type they bring along with the breadsticks. However, Matt was correct in denying all of that. He was the ‘odd man out’. The ‘new guy’. Austin agreed with Jack.

            “Matt. Got any brothers?”

            Matt then deflected attention from himself by mentioning that Mister Doe’s hospital personal possession bag was sitting right next to the window that they were peering into.

            Jack pressed on the window screen. It didn’t give.

            “No hope there.”

            “What do you want to do anyway. Drag him out of there?” Austin asked him.

            “I don’t know.”

            “That’s still an option? All on the basis of ‘hrmph’?” Austin was in full opposition mode.

            “The bag might have some answers,” Matt turned to Jack. “But it’s his.”

            “I’m not gonna steal anything…” Jack prodded the top of the screen with the pick on a pen-knife.

            “What the hell,” Austin growled sotto-tenor. “That’s an offensive weapon! Where was that?”

            Jack just chuckled and leaned back on his heels.

            Matt fell softly against the building, feeling the cold steel window frame on his forehead, and listened to the debate.

            “Every cop is a criminal.”

            “Not true. And I’m not a cop.”

            “Yer not much of a criminal either.”

            “We’ll start with the bag, then,” Jack said. “If I knew where the latches are on this screen, it’d go easier. If anyone has Pseudo AI Search Assist, speak now.”

Matt shrugged. "I just have voice and text."

"Finding this screen manually would be fifteen minutes, at best. But it'd be cleaner." Jack looked to Austin, who just got all wide-eyed and glinty.

"You know my ring's as dumb as yours."

"I resent that," a fourth voice chimed in, with just the faintest digital twang.

"Highgh!" Matt looked back, behind them all. Jack cocked his head somewhat calmly and looked upward, perplexed, perhaps. It was Austin who jutted his head like a pigeon recinding a unit of saunter, toward Jack's ring.