S.M.A.R.T. (The Subject of Mind Altering Research and Testing)

Chapter Eighteen

The following test day, Michael waited around for the General to come get him, but he never came. He didn't come at all that week. Why the hell isn't he coming? He was starting to get stir crazy. Everything in his head constantly cycled back to the little blue and white pill and his next test like some disease eating away at his insides. He could feel some demon inside him screaming for more. He wanted to know everything, and this wasn't getting him any closer to that goal. How was he ever going to become like Blanco if they weren't consistent with the dosage and schedule? How could the General be so clumsy to let all this time go by unused? The thoughts raced as his brain ached. Or maybe it was me. Maybe all of this acting I've done has made them think I'm faulty somehow. Maybe they're debating getting another test subject. Michael didn't like the options that kept running through his head, but he would have to start to show more results now - the General had forced him, somehow.

Michael paced around his rooms and his tiny little hall for weeks, trying to keep his mind occupied with other things, but is brain started to bore of anything he did. Everything was lacklustre, and nothing was the same as it had been before he had taken the pill. He felt like a part of him was missing. He read over his writings, over and over again, but they didn't help, and it made him angrier, to know how much he had understood before, and have it all erased.

Blanco was his only comfort. For some reason, the helpless little creature was the only thing that he could calm him. No matter how many times he had to clean out his cage and flush the droppings down his bathroom toilet, he could never get upset with Blanco.

Nearly a month passed and Michael started just sitting on his bed and staring at the door for most of the day. He tried to read but his brain would wander. He could not focus on anything. He felt so... Normal. He had been here for six months now, and the only part that kept him going anymore was the thought of the imminent knowledge he craved; more than he had ever craved food back in the caves - more than he had ever craved anything. He would eat beans every day if it meant he could fulfil the lust for knowledge that devoured him, like he had devoured so many pills.

Jim came in one day and tried to counsel him out of the spell he was caught in.

"Michael, you have to start eating. You can't just give everything to Blanco, look at him, he's getting fat." He tried to joke at first, but jokes weren't working either.

Michael just grunted back, staring at the cage and said "So what, he's a rat. A big fat rat, aren't you?" As he tossed a piece of the meal Jim had brought into the cage.

Jim stared in disbelief of the fraction that Michael had become of himself.

"That pill isn't making you any damned smarter if you ask me!" Jim shouted at him. "Not if these are the damned effects."

"What the hell do you know, Jim, from New York." Michael said.

"Chicago..." Jim looked down.

It wasn't hard for Michael to interpret the look on Jim's face. "I'm sorry. I know it's Chicago. Maybe you're right Jim. Maybe sitting around here feeling sorry for myself isn't helping, but what choice do I have? Besides, it isn't the pill that did this to me, it's not having it that is making me like this." Michael tried to justify. The words didn't even sound true to himself.

"Lack-of, or caused by, it's irrelevant Michael. What words go at the end of both of those sentences?" Jim asked. The pill. Michael knew what it was, but he didn't want to say it.

"Thanks, Jim, but I've had enough of your advice for one day. Remember who the older one is here." Michael said, pretending that it made any difference. Experience, as he knew best, provided more wisdom than age ever could.

Jim sauntered out of the room with his cart. He wondered if Michael had forgotten everything about him. What about our promise? Did he forget that, too? Should I still make a move when the time is right? The door opened and he wheeled the cart out. Maybe this was the sign to make one, or maybe it was a warning not to.

Michael waited until hear heard the slide and click of the door, and then fell onto his bed and buried his head under his pillow. He was acting completely callow, and he knew it, but everything in him couldn't help it. The drugs. That's what goes at the end of either reason. He doesn't know that it's also the same answer to the question of how to leave this place, or is that an excuse I'm making, too? I just want to feel it again, one more time.

Michael fell asleep, skipping, and stepping over the stones of both the truth, and lies, that battled inside him. The rest of the week when Jim came, he would just leave his cart out in the hall, and take it away when he dropped off the next meal.