‘That’s because with my Mojo, I go from average to anabolic,’ You retort.
I’m considering ripping off the Mojo patch even though there’s still a good bit of talk time left in it, just to block your energy kick. Trying to focus on what to do, I find myself mumbling the patch replacement routine, ‘Strip, double over, dispatch. Strip, double over, dispatch…’ I still hear in it a promise to bump You off – off of me.
‘Strip, double over, dispatch. Strip, double up, dispatch…’
I pause for a moment over the proposition in the slip of a preposition: ‘Double up.’ What if in doubling You with a second patch – a competing brand identity – I could get your split personalities to shadow-box each other into exhaustion? I would be left to commentate. To boost my confidence at infringing the single-patch dictum, I tell myself that the verbocharge Wordini gave me during the testing was also an additional patch, and it worked. I’m feeling all amino avid at the thought. Doubling up has to be better than inducing hypoxia and barely being able to complete a sentence. Especially if I’m going to convince them at the book repository that I’m a copywriter.
The next morning, I take the new patch out of my pocket. ‘Premium Insurance. The best policy.’ Its staid, risk-averse, worst-case-scenario worrier could hardly be more different from the energy drink brand’s youthful, flashy, always game persona. Off comes the patch backing and without a bungee-jumper’s moment of consideration, I slap it on. I sit, a huddled seabird, as the rancid tasture oils my feathers, robbing me of my buoyancy and letting the cold seep in.
It occurs to me that loss adjustment is key; I must adjust to my losses… No, that’s what occurs to You. I must take cover… take out cover? ‘Cover more ground with the can-do in a can,’ says Mojo You, muscling in. With three of us churning up language, it’s going to be harder to know whose words I’m thinking. And the first migraine UFOs have come into view, just like when I first visited the silents.
‘Just think energy drink.’ The words intrude loudly like a billboard I can’t not read. Stop, stop, I want to shout. These competing claims on me must be denied; meaning is sliding about like inflight drinks in turbulence.
Concentrate on walking, I think, going down stairs, moving legs up and down. Mojo makes them pump like pogo sticks. On the street, the bus to the book repository pulls up and I get on. Sweat rides the slope of my forehead. A bus ride, just a bus ride, and then I’ll be at the repository to tell them… a dread disease rider pays out a percentage of the death benefit in… adrenaline-ramping, danger-spanking thrills. My head hurts. I can’t think in straight lines.
Three stops to go. I watch a girl get on the bus. It’s me. I’m getting on the bus. I feel as if my arms and legs have come loose and are floating off. But I can’t look away. The protruding eyes and their waxy lids, which are cast down as if watching the multitude of freckles nosediving down the length of her face, are all mine. She looks exactly like me, only she doesn’t move like me. She moves like Mother and tosses her hair. The blonde highlights are new; I don’t have those. What if she’s You? You completely free of me?
I almost miss the stop at the book repository because I’m staring fixedly at the back of my own head. The pain in my skull puts me off balance. Once there, I stagger up the stairs towards the silo’s entrance. Then I see You again – just ahead of me. How is that possible? You didn’t even get off the bus when I did. Somewhere in my head there’s a memo saying it’s a hallucination, it can’t possibly be real. But out of nowhere fear spooks a herd of neurons into a stampede and that message gets lost. I start running to catch up, to get through the doors before You do. All I know is that I have to be the first to speak. When I approach the reception counter, I can’t see You, maybe because my vision is blurring.
‘I am a copy…,’ I say and then black out.
I wake up in a hospital bed. Wordini is sitting in the chair across from me. The impossibly straight crease ironed down the length of his trousers unsettles me.
‘Well, this has been a rapid dissent into disobrandience. It’s been quite the cautionary fail. First, throwing in your argot with that dumbed-down lot – you must spill the scene-by-scene on that place. There’s been wide corporate interest in behavioural economic data on the primitivist community and life expectancy without medical care. Basically, whether it’s a fizzle or a fad worth commercialising. No, no, don’t try to speak. You’re getting the silent treatment – no LipService – to allow the postictal neuronal state of hyperexcitation and brain chemistry to stabilise. Dr Bromide’s words, not mine. He wanted to bring you in after the primitivist indiscregression. The man has no feel for the psychological long game. But, I knew you’d go all desperado. All we had to do was wait and watch.’ He pauses and gives a contented little sigh.
‘I couldn’t have scripted it better myself: a two-patch LipService overdose resulting in a tonic-clonic seizure at the book repository. Those poor book wardens got into a paper flap imagining you had a nasty mutation of librarian’s lung, especially after one of them recognised you from when you used to visit your father. Unfortunately, your double-patch dabbling is not only identity fraud but also LipService abuse. The penalty is your decommunissioning – no more branded patches for you – and refusal of medical care. Without language you are virtually unemployable. Your only option would be to sign on as permanent trial subject in the maim of science. Bromide wins quite undeservedly. You see what happens when you challenge our consumptions? Of course, I can offer you an escapade clause – unbranded LipService.’
13
My full set of right fingerprints is scanned for the contract with Wordini. The icy menthol of the device’s glass surface is a knitting needle stabbing up a nostril into the brain. Maybe it’s just psychosomatic – after all, I’m consenting to having my skull punctured. In order to sign my release forms, Dr Bromide is insisting that I have electrodes implanted for ongoing neurological research. My contribution to science is in lieu of payment of medical costs incurred as a result of deliberate self-harming behaviour. Wordini was prepared to settle all accounts, but Bromide refused, saying that he didn’t expect a copywriter to understand moral responsibility but offenders must perform their community service.
We are in Bromide’s office and the doctor is toying with the hand that he’s unhooked from the model skeleton in the corner of the room. He appears impatient with the signing process and roughly curls and unfurls the phalanges until one breaks off. He pushes the hand aside in annoyance. ‘The subject should be prepped for surgery now. This is cutting into my OR booking, and time management is not an elective procedure here.’
‘And now, the index finger here, here, here and here,’ says the lawyer representing Wordini. No one gives me a chance to read anything I sign. I’m speechless so it’s assumed I’m in a state of shell shock. I try to remember what I know and pretend this is just a little quid pro owe – that Bromide gets to saw my head open and I’ll be allowed to use the unbranded LipService while at Wordini’s offices but not after hours. I still don’t know what I’ll be doing for him. Or what other forceps finagle Bromide will perform under cover of the surgical drapes. I tell myself that at least the electrodes should just lurk, unlike You. I’m hoping that with unbranded language You’ll have no identity – like a product not on any shelves, You’ll just disappear from my consciousness. And I’ll be able to write myself back into being, shape myself into a story that can look back at me.