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“Here’s another piece of paper, Darkblood,” said the art dictator. “You should start over. You’ve messed up your current picture.” She pointed to the flames I smeared when rage overcame me.
“I’m not creating something for a gallery, Susie,” I snarled. “Smears are part of any great campaign.”
“You should know better than to continue a project with obvious flaws,” she said.
“Those are not flaws. It’s art,” I said, but I took the extra piece of paper.
The art dictator. This is the zenith, the acme she has reached with her tyra
The only thing that keeps Susie alive is that stun-shield she wears. I am fortunate I saw Ziggy attack her before I decided to try. He lay twitching on the floor for the rest of the session. I was dismayed but unsurprised to discover all the staff wear these shields.
Yesterday afternoon I had my regular reinfliction of childhood damage session. When I first entered Rehab, the staff had the psych computer run a deep hypnotic regression on me, for diagnostic and forensic purposes, they said. The computer knows everything that’s ever happened to me, so it, along with every staff member and probably all the outside aides, will have to die when I put my escape plans in motion.
At first I thought the reinfliction sessions were the most effective part of the treatment. Reliving my father’s denigration, beatings, and coldness, my mother’s inappropriate desires, my two brothers’ deaths at our parents’ hands-yes, I remembered again why I became a supervillain. I was ready to leave Rehab after my first session. I had a wide array of ideas on how to lock down Ruritraya.
But they didn’t let me leave after that first session. Instead I have to endure all their other programs: art therapy, family group, twelve step group, inflating your esteem group, seminars on improved tactics for basic activities such as blackmail, stealing, politicking, manipulation, nefarious weapons updates, and conscience crushing. There is also physical therapy to beef up our bodies so we can be more imposing. PT and art therapy are the only places where they release the restraints on our arms and legs; otherwise I’m sure we’d all kill each other. If I’m going to escape, it’s got to be during PT or art therapy.
I have a reinfliction session weekly, and I’m becoming numbed and tired of the whole thing. Sure, my experience was difficult at the time, and I’ve used those memories to justify all sorts of behavior since, but anything, even one’s personal tragedy, can lose its power if one sees it endlessly repeated.
I’m so over it now that I spend the session contemplating ways I could reprogram the reinfliction computer to make it more amusing. First, I need to download its information about everyone else’s reinfliction sessions so I can blackmail them into being a cadre of useful helpers in my escape. After that, I contemplate what I’ll have the computer to do to the staff here, each program tailored to the appropriate person. My scenario for Susie the art dictator changes daily.
She just returned to the table. “You’re being too meticulous and cerebral,” she told me. “Forget those tiny brush strokes. I gave you a giant piece of paper for a reason, Dark. You’re supposed to think large. Open up. Envision world war.” She tried to snatch this drawing out from under my fingers. I unleashed a fraction of my i
She paled and backed away, stammering, “That’s-that’s all right. It’s your project.” She glanced around to make sure my guard was aware of my threat posture. His stun gun was aimed in my direction. I was glad this was only a fraction of my berserker. If I let the whole out, I would be stu
One more growl with less grit in it, and I settled back in my chair, loaded my ski
Rusty has probably discovered my stash of cocoa-coffee candy by now. I wonder if he’s sleeping in my all-comforts bed, whether he knows where the massage button is. Maybe he just rings the bell to call Layla up for a skin-to-skin session. She probably likes him better than she ever did me; it’s hard to tell whether the women appreciate me for myself or for my power. Most of the time I don’t care, but something about Rehab breaks through my indifference and makes me wonder. I’m going to need another form of Rehab when I escape this one. I want to go to a planet where it’s legal to hunt humans, and have some of them dress up as the people I most resent so I can shoot them with zero consequences.
Today is not the day I’ll put my escape plan into action. Alan the Supreme Leader is the only other patient (or client, as they call us) in the room with me; they only let two of us into art therapy at once, since this is a restraint-free activity, and few creatures are more dangerous than frustrated supervillains. I’ve created a small coalition of the unwilling in Rehab, but Alan isn’t a member. I only recruited people who know the secret hand language of the Tillia Undersea People (now extinct), which narrowed my pool of potential partners to one woman and an animal. I need to act when Bituba, Scourge of the Unworthy, is in art therapy with me. Staff cycles these things randomly, though, and she and I haven’t been paired in more than a week.
What meaningful work can I do in today’s session, below the radar of Commander Susie?
This morning I asked Rusty, right before Group and his betrayal about Ellen, how anybody got out of Rehab. “The staff get together and discuss each case,” he said. “If they’ve seen real progress, they can decide to release you. What’s the matter with you, Spiff? Why is it taking you so long to return to your real self? Aren’t you getting the help you need? What can I do to help?”
“Maybe I just need more downtime,” I told him.
What if he goes even farther back in our history? What if he talks about what happened in the fridge when his older brother discovered how we used it? The computer in reinfliction must know about that incident, though it hasn’t used it in the matrix of memories it assaults me with each week. It’s a key to both Rusty’s and my subsequent characters, how we dealt with that two days of terror and entrapment, the heat and fear when Big Bro plugged our airholes. I was the one who scraped a finger raw getting two of the airholes open again, and Rusty was the one who collapsed into whimpers about twelve hours into our ordeal when the perpetual light failed. I acted, and he panicked.
That’s the way I remember it, anyway.
I’ve drawn enough flames on this picture for now. A thought struck me I don’t want to think about. I’m going to ask the guard to burn the picture, and tell Officer Susie I’m ready to quit.
Superirritant Susie is suspicious about Bituba’s last gesture to me. As well she should be.
Today I’m painting a cityscape under a pall of reddish smog. My skills aren’t up to this project, but Susie tells us skill level is irrelevant; all that matters is flow. She’s angry at me again because I took one of the brushes and cut most of the hair off it so I can paint with narrower lines. What’s therapeutic about sloppiness?
It’s not as easy to work code into blocky city buildings. Flames gave me flow, if that’s what it was. I feel more driven to be precise in this format.
Precisely, Bituba has just signaled that she’s ready when I am.