Mr. Ed had been in business for the better part of thirty years and with the years it had started to fit like an old leather jacket. Mr. Ed had what it took to get to the top of the frozen pizza industry. Was he a good cook? Maybe. Did he do whatever was needed to succeed? Definitely.
Thirty years can also be a very long time, long enough for a man to get stuck in a position and for him to allow himself the kind of liberties that wouldn’t cross his mind when he started out. If it was just skimming a bit off the top, then it wouldn’t be too bad, because that was the kind of thing that happens more often than you might think.
The kind of liberties that Mr. Ed had started to grant himself had more to do with not getting caught. It causes a man to start taking more risks, until he reached that point when he had become almost reckless. This time it had gotten him in a jam, a man had almost died and the cops had been involved. It also had to do with that split second when Mr. Ed had lost control and his number one had dragged him away, assisted by his number two. The number three and four dealt with the situation.
*
The next morning the poor sap still hadn’t talked and the cops figured that they needed to be creative. Luckily for them, the guy didn’t know that the cops didn’t have anything on him, which also meant that they couldn’t hold him in custody any longer. They escorted him to the interrogation room and they might tell him about this fact, depending on the outcome of the talk.
After processing, the guy had been send to the hospital, under police protection and they had send one of there own guys, a criminal pathologist, with him to find clues as to where and how the assault had been committed. The guy was too far gone to be asking any questions.
The next morning, the guy was still as talkative as the night before, but what helped was that the report of the criminal pathologist had come in.
“Do you know what this is?” the first cop asks.
“A report?” the guys says in a smug voice.
“It is,” the first cop says, “It’s written by our criminal pathologist.”
“You know what it told us?” the second cop asks.
All kinds of thoughts flash through the guy’s head: did I talk? Was there blood of someone else? Am I going to die?
“Tell me,” the guys says, trying to keep his cool.
“We had a sample of the dirt under your shoes analyzed,” the first cop says, “And of the same dirt under your nails.”
“….”
“Bauxite,” the second cop says.
“There was an aluminum plant at the edge of town,” the first cop says, “Closed about thirty years ago and the area has been used for other industries since then.”
“Do we need to spell out what this means?” the second cop asks.
“And you plan to ask around in that area,” the guys says, “And what exactly will you ask: did you see a beating recently?”
“You’d be amazed what people see,” the first cop says, “Or what can be heard through a cracked window.”
“You do what you got to do,” the guy says, “But I can already tell you: you won’t find what you’re looking for.”
“Just like you didn’t expect to get into a jam,” the first cop says.
“We can see how that worked out,” the second cop says.
*
The cops let the guy go.
They visited the sight, but no one talked. They weren’t at all surprised and it gave the cops this notion that they might have been silenced with money.
The next day a note came in through the mail: ‘Dig and you’ll find out.’
“What does this mean?” the first cop asks, “Are they trying to deter us or to get us to sink our teeth in?”
1
Coming back to The West had been different than Jep imagined. On the flight back he had seats next to Frankie and despite the fact that they had just spend three of the best weeks together, they couldn’t find a single thing to talk about. He had asked Frankie if the murder was on his mind as well and he had said it was. His mind must have been with his girl as well, because he kept going through pictures of the two of them together on his phone. Maybe it was just something to hold on to and to pass the time.
Jep’s thoughts went back to Phyllis, although the strange thing was that the sweet times that they had over the last three weeks had already started to mix with those when they were 17 and about to leave Rokset Island for what seemed to be forever. The thing that he couldn’t wrap his head around was the fact that he had never felt for a girl what he felt for Phyllis, but at the same time he couldn’t imagine a viable future with her, at least at this time. He just couldn’t imagine living on the island at this point in time: on a professional level there just wasn’t enough going on.
The math was easy enough though: coding he earned five times what he earned as a therapist, which had led him to plan to code for five years to get some cash. It did mean though that he needed to perform at least some maintenance on the whole psychology-part and this meant that he both needed to keep on reading the books, but also that he needed to stay in analysis to get that ongoing first hand experience of what it means to be on the couch.
To stay more anonymous he applied for online counseling, which meant that he would basically have a video-conference in virtual reality with another therapist to perform this basic chore. His regular therapist wasn’t available that week, but he had been referred to a guy by the name of Mr. Ed.
*
The virtual reality component was something that the company that he works for had created parts of. Every time it’s quite an experience, because both participants in the conference call find themselves in a modeled room that gives an experience that’s like being on a holo-deck: you will literally find yourself in a whole other world. After a few minutes you just forget that you’re in a virtual reality and that’s where this system is both powerful and powerfully deceptive.
*
It seems to Jep that this guy who calls himself Mr. Ed is a slick guy who tries to make a bit of money on the side. It’s not exactly clear to him what kind of profession this guy is actually in, because Jep somehow gets this vibe that this is the kind of guy that’s used to giving orders, instead of listening to other people’s problems.
“This is a first for me in this setting,” Mr. Ed says, “Technology, huh.”
“Is that so?”
“When I was a kid we all watched those science-fiction shows where they had these holo-decks, which is basically the same thing, minus the headset and cameras,” Mr. Ed says, “I honestly thought that the phaser or the warp drive would have been discovered way before this.”
“Not the transporter?”
“Turning all the molecules in a body into energy and then reconstructing them somewhere else,” Mr. Ed recaps, “No way. I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. That’s like that idea that we can make artificial copies of our brains, but then a zillion times more complex.”
Mr. Ed pauses and studies Jep for a moment.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Jep?”
“Maintenance,” Jep says, “I’m not practicing at the moment, but I anticipate I will at some point in time.”
“I see,” Mr. Ed says.
Mr. Ed keeps studying Jep.
“There’s something on my mind though:” Jep says, “Something besides the regular.”
“Let’s have it,” Mr. Ed says.
“At New Years I was attending a party and something bad happened,” Jep says.
“….”
Jep’s face looks worried, “Bad as in really bad.”
“An accident?” Mr. Ed asks.
“I wouldn’t exactly call it an accident:” Jep says, “Someone was murdered.”
“I see,” Mr. Ed says, “That’s a big one.”
“I know, right,” Jep says, “We see it in movies all the time, but when it happens right in front of you: that’s something else entirely.”
“I may have read about it in the papers,” Mr. Ed says, “You were on Rokset Island.”
“The one and only,” Jep says.
Mr. Ed sits back in a listening pose.
“I didn’t know the girl and I didn’t even know any of the girls she was friends with,” Jep begins, “I just can’t stop thinking about her and those close to her. And in some way it’s keeping me from getting back in the groove over here.”
“….”
“….”
“Seeing something like this up close is a reminder of our own mortality.”
“Of course and I have thought about that,” Jep says, thinking, “It’s just…. How it can be so hard for me to shake it, even though this girl was a stranger – I can’t imagine how it must be for those that are close to her. I mean, for me it was just in and out: I was back home for three weeks and all we did was having a good time: partying, boozing, eating. For this girl and her friends it might have been the same thing and, well, you know how it ended.”
“It’s a tough one,” Mr. Ed says, “For now it might completely change how you look back on the time that you spend there and it will always be part of that time spend there, but I have a feeling that it’s significance will change. If anything, it will be a reminder that the premises of life are not limited by time and space. Life and death occur in the same way as anywhere else.”
“You mean that this may turn into a kind of memory that will give, what…. urgency?”
“That’s what it may become for you,” Mr. Ed says, “But for those who were closer to this girl it will be pure detriment: they will try to look for meaning or a bigger picture and they will discover that there isn’t any – at least not in that situation.”
Mr. Ed leans forward and continues to study Jep.
“You might also find out that life on the island and life in The West aren’t so different after all.”
“The bad stuff still happens.”
Mr. Ed leans back.
“You said you aren’t practicing at the time,” Mr. Ed says.
“I’m a practical guy,” Jep says, “I earn a whole lot of money doing what I do, so I just plan to wing it for as long as I can.”
“Then where do you get your buzz?”
“Sports and liquor,” Jep says, attempting a fake laugh.
Mr. Ed leans back again.
“Therapist to therapist:” Mr. Ed says, “What do you think troubles our times?”
“That’s a big one,” Jep says, thinking, “It looks like that whole equilibrium between the working life and our private life has become unbalanced, but that’s not the key,” Jep says, “But it does have to do with this whole depression-anxiety-thing that’s going on…. You can’t tell me that those two aren’t related.”
“The current times are complicated,” Mr. Ed says, “I must admit to that.”
“But the solution isn’t to make things more complicated,” Jep says, “I think it’s more like the opposite…. At some level I think that we should live more primitive, re-wild or something like that.”
“Re-wild. You may have something there,” Mr. Ed says, and his expression turns primal, “At heart we’re still cave-men.”
For a split second Jep can see that this hit some primal chord that in a way defines what makes him seem off. Jep thinks: just what kind of primitive are you?
“We can’t just deny that part of our nature,” Jep says, trying to get Mr. Ed to show some colors.
Mr. Ed is too quick though to show any.
2
When Jep takes off the virtual reality gear he isn’t sure what to think about the whole experience: this Mr. Ed guy talked sense, but at the same time he gave this vibe that something was off. There was something that he wasn’t telling or running away from. Or maybe that was exactly what made him a good therapist: he was messed up himself.
Then there was the murder of the girl. Mr. Ed talked some sense into the whole experience and how Jep’s perception of it might change over time, but the simple fact was that he hadn’t been there. It were all platitudes that Mr. Ed relayed to him, but still it had helped him, because of the simple reason that you sometimes need to hear certain things from different people for it to feel more true. Somehow Jep made a connection between this Mr. Ed guy and what had happened on Rokset Island. He just hadn’t figured out yet what it was.
It hadn’t been something mundane, because a murder never was, but the fact that it had happened on the premises of that haunted mansion made it even more spooky. Come to think of it: what did bear traps even do on Rokset Island: bears are creatures of the arctics and below, not of the tropics. Those traps were either imported or manufactured somewhere on site, either way, it was an extreme length to go for hunting equipment that would most likely never serve its intended function, unless that function was…. Something reeks for true.
Then there was this one bizarre story that Tony had told them the other day about the End Dream. It wasn’t how we know it -- that those who are nearing the end can feel it and are somehow ready for it. The End Dream was what the Shaman had about people in their tribe. The story went that it somehow came true and the person actually died a natural death or got speared or knifed in some sort of conflict.
In most situations this dream didn’t come true and if it took more than a few days the tribe elder would send his man after this poor person to lynch the person in the way that it had appeared to the Shaman. It obviously also happened that Shaman would use his dreams to settle personal vendettas.
The thing was though that this Shaman was usually coked out of his mind or stoned on some kind of weed that his visions were most surely a total fabrication. They were tough fellas though. Those Shamans wouldn’t smoke a pipe or something like that, but instead they build a fire inside a tent. Then they literally placed a bag of weed on top of the fire, killing the flames and instantly producing a whole lot of smoke. The elders and his friends usually joined him in this ceremony.
Then there was the other thing that Mr. Ed had said: in death we like to look for reason and there usually is none. Jep had somehow mixed this statement with the story about the End Dream and it got Jep thinking about the killer: what if he had some sort of insane system of right and wrong that oiled his gears. What if he had some sort of coked out vision like the Shamans of back in those days or some sort of insane code. The easier explanation was that this guy was just plain crazy. The Crazy Cowboy.
Jep decides that he needs to speak to Phyllis.
3
Phyllis answers his call in that soft airy voice that he knows so well, “Back on the other side.”
“I am,” he says and he instantly realizes that he misses her more than he thought at first, “Your life is back to the same old thing?”
“I guess so,” she says, “You missed me?”
“I did and I do,” he says, “You can hear it in my voice?”
“Yes,” she says, “And I can’t remember you ever making a phone call.”
“You think we will ever end up together?” he asks, “Like when we have reached some ripe old age?”
“You want to wait so long?”
“I don’t know,” he says, thinking: I wish I knew.
“It’s alright,” she says, “I guess I understand.”
“Any news on what went down?”
“The girl had only been on the island for about three months, some kind of intern,” Phyllis says, “Other than that I don’t know anything new.”
“You don’t know of any other strange deaths?”
“You’d have to ask Tony,” she says, “But as far as I know there hasn’t been anything like that in the news.”
“It’s just that there’s something about it,” Jep says, “The fact that it happened to a young girl, on New Years, but also the fact how it happened: she was literally bled dry.”
“Would she have felt that, you think?”
“I don’t know,” Jep says, “I think your brain just shuts down when the blood level drops.”
“But still.”
“Yeah.”
“When will we see each other again?” Phyllis asks, “Or maybe I shouldn’t ask that question….”
“I wish I could have you here with me now,” he says and he thinks: it may be a while.
“And I want the same over here,” Phyllis says, “I guess things weren’t meant to be easy.”
“The pond is just a killer.”
“All 5000 miles of it.”
----
NEXT WEEK MR. ED RETURNS: WE WILL THEN MEET A NEW CHARACTER NAMED MARTY -- AVAILABLE NEXT WEEK FRIDAY JANUARY 18
