“You mean that’s why you kill people and he gives you pills so that you could sleep at night?”
His grin disappeared. “Listen, People’s Choice. I was ordered to prevent you from being drafted by any means necessary. What I had to do yesterday was necessary. I wasn’t pleased then and I’m even less pleased now, because I’m stuck babysitting you and I don’t see anything in your sniveling mug that would warrant the opinion my employer seems to have about your worth. The pills Doc gives me might help me bear O’Malley’s death for the rest of my life, but your whining is this close to becoming the straw that broke the camel’s back. And if you value your health, you don’t want that back to break.”
“Let us calm down,” Dr. Young said, stopping my response. “Don’t you think Mr. Whales is under enough stress without your threats, Mr. Freud?”
“He’s stressing me.”
“You have the medicine to help. He doesn’t.” Lloyd nodded and fell silent, looking away. Dr. Young turned to me. “Speaking of medicine,” he said, changing the subject.
“I think you are already beginning to suspect that the pill you have ingested for the last several years was not a simple antidepressant.” He paused.
“Mr. Whales what was the cause of your ailment? What did the doctor say?”
I didn’t remember.
“Chemical imbalance in the brain.” Iris said that. Dr. Young turned to her.
“Quite so! The hole in your head is caused by the rock!”
“That’s most likely what he told you, Mr. Whales. Imbalance of chemicals in your brain. The rock caused your head to bleed. Never mind the kid who threw it, never mind the father who never taught him it was a bad thing to do. Is the young lady a physician?”
“I’ve done human studies. A little bit of psychology.”
“Indeed? Very interesting. But then you don’t believe that, isn’t that true?”
“Yes it is. The imbalance is the body’s physical response to psychological problems, not the other way around.”
“And what do you think the reason was for Mr. Whales’s psychological problems? A tragic event in the family? Perhaps stress at work?” I looked at Iris, realizing suddenly I knew what she was going to say. And I was right.
“The world is fucked up,” she replied, meeting my gaze. Dr. Young laughed.
“Most eloquently put. I couldn’t have said it better myself. You surprise me, Ms. Iris. Are you an old friend of Mr. Whales?”
“No.”
“Fine, then. Back to the matter at hand. The bulk of your pill’s compound does nothing more than the antidepressants of yore. It works to help reestablish the chemical balance in your brain. There are a few variations, depending on what kind of rock your doctor believes it was that made your head bleed. Nothing unusual about it. Been used for decades. And although the latest breakthroughs in the study of the brain should have made it obsolete, it is still used, and will continue to be used, because it’s relatively cheap and quite effective. However, the progress made in the field did not go to waste entirely. The little pill you took included a tiny additive that was the direct result of that progress. It is there to eliminate the real cause. The cause, so colorfully summed up by Ms. Iris just now. Its active ingredient, if you will permit me, makes the world a better place.”
I glanced over at Lloyd, who was reassembling the pistol he’d just taken apart. Dr. Young continued.
“Obviously it doesn’t do that by feeding the hungry, stopping wars, eliminating income tax or performing any of the similar noble, but terribly idealistic, impractical and disastrously expensive deeds. Are you following me, Mr. Whales? I am not going to make this interactive, because it is so very simple. Simple as all genius. The only way to make the world a better place without altering it is to alter the beholder. Convince his mind that the world really isn’t so bad. Convince him that his country is the best. Assure him that he doesn’t have to worry about direction. That he, his children and his children’s children are in good hands. There are experienced and, most importantly, good people taking care of him. And best of all, cure him without him knowing it!” Dr. Young beamed and for a moment looked even younger.
“You know, this story is very recent. By recent I mean less than twenty years old. At the end of the last century one out of every twenty Americans suffered from depression. Very privately, too. But as the new millennium started, that number began to grow. Rapidly, Mr. Whales. I would wager you don’t remember hearing about Freedom Corp. fifteen years ago. Of course not, you were too young. But you wouldn’t remember even if you weren’t. The company had a different name then. We, the saviors, were just a small lab in the suburbs.
“We thought it was a blessing. Divine intervention. Quite seriously, I might add. We, the young, brilliant scientists could not get over the fact that this major discovery coincided in such a way with the sudden increase in cases of recurring anxiety and depression. It was our destiny to change everything. It was our purpose.
“I won’t bore you with chemical formulas and details of the project. Our end result was a pill, which was supposed to be prescribed and taken concurrently with therapy sessions. At the time when common antidepressants and standard therapy failed to address the puzzling influx of new patients, our miracle pill brought immediate results. Basically what it did was open the human mind to suggestions. Make it extra absorbent. Like mild hypnosis, but without amulets, candles or finger-snapping.
“Do you understand now, Mr. Whales? Up until the end of last century, there was no need for such a pill, because your group therapy was enough to keep the number of depressions low.”
“My group therapy?”
“TV, radio, printed periodicals, all of it. Back then things were a lot simpler. I mean, nobody really knew what caused depression, but most agreed it probably had to do with stress at work, mediocrity, tragedy, childhood and so on. We had medication, therapy. In the scheme of things, we had it well in hand. But then came the new century, and all the fearsome events, and all the fearsome information suddenly available on the still free Internet, and things began to change and spin out of control. We were unprepared. These massive jolts were scaring us into a new set of perceptions. Mr. Freud here would appreciate the method.”
“I was there, Doc. Where do you think I learned it?”
“Now imagine, we were still treating successfully the normal cases I’ve just mentioned, but suddenly a whole new population of patients appeared, none of whom responded to standard diagnostics. These people were successful at work, their fathers did nothing inappropriate, their dogs did not get killed by cars, yet they were every bit as depressed, and normal pills, which only treated the “chemical imbalance,” were failing. Only later some of us would realize what had happened. That the Media Therapy had failed. That the Media Therapy had worked before that.
“At the time, however, we invented a new pill. We began replacing generic antidepressants with it during combined treatment and it worked immediately! With the increased power of suggestion, therapy sessions began to produce the results again. Previously undiagnosed patients were helped to recall sources of their conditions. Finding the roots was easy once we broke through the wall with the help of the pill. Everyone has had an event in his life that could have triggered the depression. A doctor’s job then was to simply convince the patient that it was that very event that did it. Once he succeeded, and he did every time, the treatment turned pretty much back to the standard algorithm. Faith helping those chemicals to rebalance themselves.”
“So first you make up an illness for them, then you treat it?” Iris asked.
“Not us personally, but yes, my dear. That’s what psychiatry is.