Collective Mind (28 page)

“Isaac,”
said Pascal, rubbing his neck: the mark from the sedative injection was no
longer visible, but it still hurt a bit, “Please forgive me and thank you, my
friend, for saving me. Give me the number of your account at the hospital and
I’ll pay off everything today. I’ll have a lot of other things to make right,
too. I’m sorry I keep asking, but where is Eva now?”

“She’s
still living in Monaco. Only she doesn’t mingle and party anymore. She got
herself a job.”

***

That
day at lunch the administrator did call the Agency after all. She saw the note
from her ward and decided to seek advice. The elderly woman realized
immediately that Pascal hadn’t spent the night at home: the bed was still made
up from the previous day, the TV remote control was in the wrong place, and the
same food as yesterday was still on the shelves in the fridge. He definitely
hadn’t gone to bed and he hadn’t eaten breakfast…the first time in two years.
Her other wards had never disappeared like this, and they always laid out all
their things neatly in the right places.

She
didn’t go to the police since Pascal hadn’t disappeared after all, and he
answered her call. He said he was OK and would be back soon.

After
spending half a day with the team at Wolanski’s place, at almost five in the
evening, staggering slightly, Pascal went home. To a home that he didn’t
recognize. Half of the bottle of whisky he had drunk with Isaac was sloshing
about in his stomach and raging fury with the Agency had matured in his head.
For the lost years, for the loss of Eva, for being awoken purely by chance. He
transferred the money to the hospital account as the first step in correcting
the mistakes he had made. It was the very least he could do for the time being.
Link had carried out another dozen measurements and tests and was finally
convinced that he was right: Pascal was healthy, and the amnesia was the result
of being a Happy.

Approaching
the villa, he saw through the window the anxious administrator in the sitting
room. He didn’t remember her, but he recognized her from Isaac’s description:
constantly red face, plumpish, with grey hair in a bun. Pascal opened the door
and walked in, glanced round at his home, at his computer, which had obviously
not been touched for a long time, and at his “nanny”, who wanted to ask him
something, and walked into the bedroom without saying a word.

The
administrator, astounded by the smell of alcohol, called the Agency and told
them everything was alright, the Happy had come home.

That
evening at the villa, Isaac’s team triumphantly celebrated their great victory.
Initially, he wanted to invite Peter and Michelle but then changed his mind.
First, he had to discuss everything with the professor and Bikie. He and
Michelle had arranged to have dinner the following evening.

But
at Pascal’s villa, there was only Pascal himself, alone with his second bottle
of whisky. He could have joined Isaac later, when it got dark and the
administrator has left, but he wasn’t in the mood. He was drinking alone and
did not want anyone anywhere near him. Apart from the girl who had left long
ago.

It
was already sometime since he realized that he was not dreaming and that Eva,
his beloved Eva, for whose sake he had downloaded his creativity, was not with
him for two whole years. It would be wrong to say that he did not remember his
Veggie period very well. Rather, that period didn’t seem to have taken place at
all. His memory stopped dead at the moment when he downloaded his OE. When he
woke up he was the same as “yesterday”, a twenty-something-year-old guy,
head-over-heels in love with his girl. “Yesterday” she hugged him and kissed
him, they made love, he cracked jokes and she laughed vibrantly in response. It
was impossible to grasp that she had left and was living with someone else,
eating breakfast with someone else, having supper with someone else, sleeping
with someone else, screwing someone else. The pain was appalling. Pascal flung
his unfinished glass at the mirror above the fireplace. A spray of glass and
liquid flew across the sitting room and the mirror tilted over and cracked
right across, with a gaping hole at its center as if from a gunshot.

Monstrous
cubic pictures goggled down at him from the unfamiliar walls of his luxurious
home. A few old photos on a chest of drawers, only one photo of Eva, but
before, in the little old apartment, there had been lots of them.

Pascal
picked up the photo. Eva was so dear to him, so precious, so unbearably
beautiful. That smile of hers… Pascal poured himself another glass.

Isaac
told him she has been seeing a doctor for a year already and had moved in with
him. That gave Pascal a strange feeling. Betrayal? Almost. Something like
betrayal, probably. His rational mind understood that a lot of time had gone
by, that it was really all in the distant past. But for him it was all as if
she had dumped him just yesterday. Yes, dumped him! That was the way it was for
him. Yesterday he had hugged Eva, said goodbye cheerfully and promised to get
rich before the evening came. He wanted to surprise her.

That
bastard of a doctor! The Count of Monte Cristo and his Mercedes surfaced from
the depths of Pascal’s memory. His Eva did not wait for him either. The feeling
of hurt consuming Pascal was amplified sequentially by love, hate and a whole
slew of other emotions. He compared himself to an abandoned cripple, a missing
person, a shipwreck survivor cast away on an uninhabited island, whose love had
left him for someone else. His heart refused to accept that he had been a
living vegetable with no chance of experiencing emotions and mutual affection.

How
long had she waited for him, how long had she been with that doctor? Why? Where
did they meet? These pointless and agonizing questions were literally eating
Pascal. The bottle was empty. His body, not used to alcohol, had struggled to
get through it. Pascal suddenly felt sick, and he went dashing to find the
toilet.

After
taking a shower, Pascal went back to the sitting room. He felt dizzy and he did
not want to drink any more. He would not be able to get a drink down. There was
a foul, bitter taste in his mouth. And in his soul.

For
a while Pascal pondered over whether he would get her back, even though she was
with someone else. In his despair, he had decided that he wanted and was able
to forget. But the alcohol had embittered him. No, she used to be his woman,
only his. Now he couldn’t say that anymore, remembering that lousy, rotten
doctor all the time. His mind conjured up pictures of her in passionate
embraces. Her and that creep of a doctor. No, he could never come to terms with
that, he could not live with it, he was too self-respecting. If he has lost
her, then let it be. An egoistic inner voice whined despairingly: you’re a
smart, attractive young guy, you have money now and you will forget and find
yourself another one, lots of others. The voice of reason argued: forgive her,
she is not to blame! It is all your fault! His feelings muddled reason, he
wanted only her, he wanted to turn time back and delete this period from his
life. A kaleidoscope of love, hate, grief and alcohol…

Pascal
fell asleep in an armchair in the sitting room. He had a dream that had no
torments or love in it. But it was still some kind of a nightmare. He dreamed
of airplanes, crashes and wrecks, a conflagration. All in color, and all so
lifelike. His brain could not blank out the anguish, but it had blocked out the
original cause, in an effort to protect his nervous system the best it could.

Isaac
came to wake Pascal at half past eight in the morning, half an hour before the
arrival of the administrator. He had to help his friend to convincingly imitate
a Veggie. They have not yet decided what to do next, so for the time being it
was best to keep everything secret. The door was not locked, so Isaac walked in
and saw the terrible mess in the room.

“Pascal,
what have you done? Get up, your nanny will be here soon! Where do you keep the
vacuum cleaner? God, you reek of stale whisky, like an alcoholic. You’ll give
yourself away and all the rest of us too. Veggies don’t drink!”

Pascal
jumped up and looked around. A completely unfamiliar pad. He remembered
absolutely nothing about living here for more than two years. All this
electronic gear everywhere. He didn’t have any clue where the vacuum cleaner
was, or even the mop.

Ten
minutes later the mop had been found, the broken glass removed and the bottles
thrown into a garbage can in the street. Isaac poured half a liter of strong
coffee into Pascal and forced him to eat two cheese sandwiches to make the
smell of alcohol disappear.

The
administrator was five minutes late. Walking into the sitting room, she stared
in surprise at Isaac, then turned her eyes toward the broken mirror and
Pascal’s slightly puffy face.

“Hello!
I broke that, I’m sorry,” Isaac said confidently. “How are you doing?”

“Hello,
Isaac. I’m doing fine. But what are you doing here so early?” The
administrator’s voice was thick with suspicion.

“Pardon
me, but I came to see Pascal, not you” Isaac snapped back. “We’re going out for
a stroll. Will be back this evening. Or tomorrow morning.”

The
administrator glanced at Pascal in surprise, but he nodded in confirmation.

“Let’s
go, Pascal. You wanted to visit Vicky, right?”

And
before the administrator could ask another question, they left.

***

Commissioner
Pellegrini read the report on the call that Pascal’s administrator made to the
Agency reporting his overnight disappearance. Strange that she haven’t called
the police. Pellegrini already knew that Pascal reappeared.

“This
is getting interesting,” he thought. “He didn’t spend the night at home, and
that smell of liquor. Veggies don’t drink. This needs to be figured out. I’ll
have to go back to Monaco and have a talk with this Pascal and the
administrator, too. And with that liar Isaac, of course. These events could all
be connected.”

The
commissioner rummaged through the summary police reports for the last few days,
and everything seemed normal. A couple of broken windows and a stolen scooter.
He checked UNICOMA’s records just in case. All quiet there, too. There’d been a
minor computer glitch at the Paris storage server, probably an electrical
surge, nothing of interest.

***

The
leather couch which Pascal was sitting on all alone seemed to sway from side to
side. He poured himself another whisky. The upholstery stuck annoyingly to his
arms, legs and back. His entire body, outside and inside, was turning flabby
and unresponsive, but not his brain that carried on erupting, neuron by neuron.
Alcohol is a conductive medium and its thoughts are the electric current. Even
if you get as drunk as a skunk, it can’t be helped, as your brain still keeps
working.

Pascal
felt as if he had offended Eva so he gave in and called her. He was not able to
control his contempt and fury and tried not to give himself away, but he
slipped into barbed, acrid sarcasm and tossed from one extreme to another. In
the end they quarreled. He could tell Eva was relieved to end the conversation.
They agreed to keep in touch. Eva said they’d better not see each other just
yet, Pascal’s absurd grievances were too fresh and there were too many
emotions. She did not feel guilty at all and was not prepared to listen to any
reproaches, which she did not think she deserved. At the end of the
conversation Pascal had almost said what his aggrieved ego wanted, that he was
not a Veggie any longer but he had checked himself with a struggle and limited
himself to simply saying: “OK, see you, talk to you soon!” Eva had wished him
all the best and hung up.

The
phone fell out of his hands, clattering loudly on the tiled floor.

“Hey
you, lush, who did you just call?” Pascal heard Bikie’s menacing voice ask.

“No
one.”

Bikie
picked up the dropped phone and looked up the last number dialed.

“Fu-uck
it, are you totally mad? You idiot! We’re risking everything here for your
sake! Want to go back to being a Veggie?”

“You
risked my life, too,” Pascal protested weakly, already quite tipsy.

“We
have to keep an eye on this jerk! Isaac!” Bikie was in a violent fury.

He
dashed to fetch Isaac, who was tidying up his room in preparation for his
sister’s imminent arrival. Isaac rushed back with his infuriated friend, tried
to calm him down, said he would sort everything out and sat down beside Pascal.

“Old
buddy, hold out for just a little while. Soon you’ll be able to drink as much
as you want whenever you want. You’ll get to see Eva whenever you want…but not
right now. We’ve got a lot to do, and you can help. I’ll make a quick trip to
the hospital to see Vicky, have a word with the doctor, then come back and I
promise you we’ll booze. Today. Just the two of us, like in the old times.”

Having
promised this, Isaac sighed and dialed Michelle’s number. He had to put their
meeting off again. This made her terribly offended and she told Isaac what she
thought of him. She reminded him there were four people at their first date
that Isaac was always disappearing, did not answer her calls and generally did
not make much of an effort to see her. Isaac tried to make excuses, citing
urgent and important business, but he could not explain what it was. In the
end, Michelle snapped: “Forget about me!” and hung up.

Isaac
tried to call her back several times, showered her with texts, apologized and
implored forgiveness, but all in vain. Michelle did not reply to a single text
and did not return his calls.

Isaac
was quite sure that this time he had ruined everything completely. This put him
in a stinking bad mood. Even the fact that he had finally paid for Vicky’s
surgery couldn’t make him feel any better.

In
the end, he and Pascal started getting drunk together at lunch by the pool.
Just the two of them, drinking sincerely, going the whole hog. And both out of
love. Even Bikie stopped being angry, seeing how pitiful they both were.

“The
thing is, Pascal, all this whisky, vodka and rum doesn’t help. On the contrary.
At first, you drink and you feel better, but then the heartache only gets
worse, so deep that you think all the problems you had before were bullshit.
Nothing runs as deep as heartache. Feelings are infinite and nothing compares
with heartache except more heartache. You think you still have everything ahead
of you and life goes on. Your reason suggests all sorts of solutions but
everything collapses again. Heartache is a mudslide that smothers your heart
and your soul.

“This
mudslide sweeps away the flowers of love. But they grow back again, even on
rocks, even in the desert, even in a nuclear dump! The flowers of love are the
most resilient ones in the world. They grow out of your heart, out of nowhere,
they build beautiful castles in the air, and your reason immediately moves in
there. You live within an illusion and hope moves in there, too.”

“Right,
hope never dies. It’s immortal!”

“So
right! Faith and love can die, but not hope. It survives again and again and
resurrects love.”

“I
don’t have hope any more. Only despair. I lost everything. I lost Eva. I did it
myself!”

“But
you can get her back. Or, at least, try.”

“I
don’t want to. It’s disgusting. She betrayed me in any case. And she’s a
bitch.”

“No
she didn’t. It wasn’t her who forced you to download, was it? You went on your
own. What do you blame her for? You’ve seen the video of yourself. Can anyone
live with that?”