So. This is where Bobby lived. We’d spent three months together on the ward, and in that time I learned what he was most afraid of, and the kind of person he wanted to be, and how he felt about me. I understood, for lack of a better word, his heart. But I didn’t know what his job was now, if he had a job at all, or who his friends were, where his parents lived, or what he liked on his pizza. That was the nature of bubble relationships. Prison, army, hospital, reality show—they were all pocket universes with their own physics. Bobby and I were close friends who hardly knew each other.
He smiled, embarrassed. He gestured toward the bedroom door. “My roommate lives in there,” he said. “He never comes out. Well, hardly ever. I sleep on the couch.” He quickly added, “But not tonight! That’s for you. I’m going to sleep on the floor.”
Dr. G said, “We can’t let him do that.”
I thought, Sure we can. I’m a forty-two-year-old woman. He’s a twenty-something kid with a good back. “I’ll need clean sheets,” I said.
His eyes shifted up and right. Trying to picture where, in this tiny apartment, there might be undiscovered clean linens. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and turned toward the front door.
“Wait, can I borrow your pen? I need to send some messages.”
He fished it out of his pocket. “Pull on the side-thingy to get the screen.”
“I am familiar with your advanced technology,” I said.
“Right, right.” He pointed at me. “Breakfast! What should I buy for breakfast?”
“Just coffee,” I said.
Bobby locked the door behind him—trying to protect me. I went to the bedroom door and listened for the hermit roommate, but I heard nothing but a hum that could have been a room fan.
Still, I moved to the far side of the room before I opened the pen’s screen. “Message to Rovil Gupta,” I said. A stream of faces and contact details scrolled down the screen. Dozens of Rovils, starting with those geographically closest to me. I recognized the one I was looking for, even though it had been ten years since we’d seen each other. He worked for Landon-Rousse, and his title was now VP of Sales—a promotion since the last time I’d checked. Good for you, little Rovil.
I touched the icon of his face and said, “It’s me, Lyda.” The words appeared under Rovil’s face: It’s me, Lyda. “I thought we should talk.” There was too much to say for one message. Hey, so I’m out of the crazy house for the third time, I’m on electrochemical probation, and oh, Edo’s cooking our old product.
“Call soon,” I said. “It’s about … spiritual matters.” I signed off.
I wasn’t sure the message would get through. This phone ID wouldn’t be on his white list, and Rovil’s spam filters might block me out of hand.
The pen chimed. The screen was still extended, and now Rovil’s face—streaming live, no icon—smiled up at me.
Shit. I’d sent the message, but I wasn’t prepared to have the conversation now. Who immediately calls back like that?
I put on a pleasant expression, then clicked to answer. “How you doing, kid?”
“I can’t believe it! Lyda!”
Still the enthusiast. Rovil was our first and only hire at Little Sprout, our designated Rat Boy, though we had stopped calling him that when a visitor thought it sounded racist. He was fresh out of school then, but in no time became Mikala’s right hand. The chemistry wizard’s apprentice.
“You look like you’re doing all right for yourself,” I said. “VP now?” Landon-Rousse was one of the Big Four pharmaceutical companies, with headquarters in Belgium but offices everywhere.
He looked bashful. “Everybody’s a vice president,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe the bureaucracy here.”
We hadn’t spoken since the Greenland Summit, ten years before. That meeting hadn’t ended well. I told both Edo and Rovil to fuck off and never talk to me again. Rovil, obedient kid that he was, did as I asked. Even Edo gave up eventually—before disappearing completely.
Every so often over the past few years, usually when I was drunk and feeling maudlin, I’d do a search on my friends from Little Sprout. Gil’s status was always the same—still incarcerated. And all the news on Edo Anderssen Vik was either (a) corporate PR-speak from his own company, or (b) speculation on why he’d disappeared from public view. But Rovil seemed to be leading an actual life. I was relieved when he went to grad school, happily surprised when he was hired at Landon-Rousse, then pleased every time his title changed to something more important. I wondered if he’d managed to hide his crazy, or if he was so good that the company kept him on despite it. Maybe Ganesh, the Remover of Obstacles, had cleared the way.
The small talk stuttered to a stop. He had to be wondering why I’d called him after ten years of silence, but he was too polite to ask. Did he know about my stints in rehab, the car crashes, the psych wards?
I said, mock-casually, “So, have you heard from the others? Edo, Gil…?”
He blinked. “Gilbert, no, of course not!” Poor Rovil, walking on eggshells just saying the name in my presence.
“I hear he’s allowed to have visitors,” I said.
Rovil’s eyes widened. “You’re not thinking of—?”
“No, no. It’s Edo I want.”
“Oh,” he said. “That may be difficult.”
“I tried calling him on an old private number, but it’s dead now. Every address I’ve found online for him is corporate, blocked by either voicemail or receptionists. I’ve left messages, but he hasn’t called me back.”
“I know, I know,” Rovil said. “A couple times over the years I tried to reach out to him, but he never responds.” He grinned. “Like some other people I know.”
Wow, little Rovil yanking my chain. “I’ve had some issues,” I said. “But Edo … what happened to him?”
“He hasn’t been seen in years,” Rovil said. “I’m not even sure what country he stays in. He’s a, what’s the word? Not a hermit…”
“A recluse. Growing his fingernails, storing his urine in jars, that kind of thing.”
“What have you heard?” Rovil said, shocked. Missing the reference entirely.
“Never mind that,” I said. “I have a favor to ask.”
Rovil considered this, then with complete earnestness said, “If I can provide it, it’s yours.”
“Get me Edo’s private number.”
“I told you, no one knows—”
“He’s got to have lawyers, staff, whatever. Get a message through to him. He likes you, Rovil. He’ll respond to you. Tell him it’s important.”
“What is it? What’s happened?”
My instinct was to keep him out of it as long as possible. Rovil was the youngest of us at Little Sprout, and not even a partner. He shouldn’t have been caught up in what happened at the party. But he had been there, and he’d gone down like all of us. The little Christian boy woke up with a Hindu god in his head. We were part of a very small club.
I asked, “Is this a company line?”
He processed the meaning of the question. “It’s my personal device.”
That didn’t mean that no one was listening. Landon-Rousse might be monitoring its executives’ private communications. Plenty of corporations had been caught doing the same. But if Rovil was comfortable, I decided to risk it.
“I met someone who saw God,” I said.
Rovil tilted his head, not quite getting it.
“Someone is making Numinous.” That he got. The word went off like an information grenade, and I watched his face shift through several emotions before he controlled himself and settled on an expression of Polite Doubt.
“You … did you have some of One-Ten left over?”
“No. It’s new.”
“Perhaps it’s some other drug. Do you have it with you?”
“Not yet. I’m working on it.”
He shook his head. “I don’t see how that’s possible. Little Sprout shut down before the trial. We all agreed that no one—” His eyes widened. “You think Edo is doing this?”