Chapter 1
Garcia sat alone across from Counselor Rossi. This was her office, on the New Constitution. She owned this office. This was her. Semicircular room, with one squared corner. Round couch for conducting group therapy. Expansive windows. Potted trees. He looked at the dish of candy, spicy cinnamon in the center, round coffee table. They were illuminated from underneath. He liked the glow. He missed the butterscotch candies. He wanted to ask her why the switch, but let that alone as Rossi broke silence first. She rarely did that.
“You wanted to see me so you could sit there and not speak?” Rossi asked. “Trini died by suicide,” Garcia said. “The message hasn’t come in yet. You’re going to need to counsel with some folks.”
Rossi was silent. Garcia was aware that she was experiencing conflict. She didn’t cry. Whatever she sorted, she did it quick, then returned to work.
“And you?” Rossi said.
“Nice,” Garcia said. “Always on point. I’ve had time to adjust.”
“Do you blame…”
“Of course I blame myself,” Garcia said. It wasn’t angry. “I get it. We’re free to make choices. All of us are free to do this. We can’t stop people who are determined to die. But this is still a failure. We failed. I don’t know what that one more thing is we could have done or tried… My set point doesn’t take me back far enough to fix this. That, too, feels personal.”
“I can see that,” Rossi said. “But most people feel like life is personal. Most the time, it’s not, and we don’t have control…”
“Well, when you have lived as long as I have, that sense gets amplified,” Garcia said.
“You’re experiencing paranoia?” Rossi asked.
“It’s hard to tell, seeing how there are actually quite a few people out to kill me,” Garcia said. He tried spinning that as joke. Paranoia is a real thing, and one can have it and actually be under threat of harm at the same time. His voice was disturbingly calm:
“People I love trying to kill me.”
Rossi waited for him to fill in the blank.
“I am not being blocked from protecting people I love. But it feels like a block.
Like someone is rubbing loss in my face to make a point. What’s the point of all of this if
I lose everyone I love? Everyone I ever worked with?”
“Great questions,” Rossi said. “What sort of answers have you come up with?” Garcia frowned into that, not responding to it. “I remember my childhood. All of them. Simulated lives, over and over and over. Some of them were even simultaneously. Probably to save computation time. Pff. As if they needed to save resources. That early life had a flavor. Where I am at now. This life, it has a distinct flavor. A metallic taste. It feels like I am back in the simulation.”
“We’ve gone over this,” Rossi said.
“Yeah, well, if you find this repetitious, imagine what’s it’s like in my head,” Garcia said. “How many stories have I told over and over? How many lives have I loved over and over telling the stories I have told over and over? How do I get off this fucking wheel?!”
“Even in a single life episode, how many loves have you taken on and lost to take on new loves?” Rossi asked.
“It’s not about sex,” Garcia said.
“Everything is about sex,” Rossi said.
“If we make this section about my poly life style, I will leave…”
“Oh, so you admit, you’re a polymath?” Rossi asked. Garcia laughed.
“I don’t care about that, Tam. You assume I care about that. And you’ve had some partners that are more poly than you. Genuinely loving people. And I still get this flavor, if you will, that for you sex is a distraction from true intimacy. Take your inner companions. You have more transparency with them than anyone in your physical life, and yet, I don’t hear about your inner romps.” “You want to?” Garcia said.
“Would it help you to speak it?” Rossi asked. “There’s nothing to speak,” Garcia said. “I feel stuck.” “Sounds like you’re in hell,” Rossi said.
Garcia nodded. “Where I was last, that was sweet. I would stay there.” “Did you have love interest?” Rossi asked.
“No,” Garcia said, frowning. “I don’t expect you to believe it. I think I went six years being celibate.”
“Yeah, I don’t believe it,” Rossi said.
“I was busy. Kids. Working at the university in my spare time,” Garcia said.
“And you didn’t have any offers to indulge?” Rossi asked.
“No, I had offers,” Garcia said.
“And you said no?” Rossi asked. “To all of them?”
“Not no, precisely,” Garcia said.
“Damn it, Tam, I am not a Dentist. Why are you making me pull teeth to get answers?” Rossi asked.
“It’s complicated. A couple students hit on me. A soccer mom. I shot down the casual inquiries and subtle flirting. That’s usually enough, but sometimes casual blocking escalates the flirting. If they got past the blocks, I discouraged them directly, and if they got past that, I then gave them The Speech.” “The Speech?” Rossi asked.
“Come to think of it, everyone should have the speech before intimacy,” Garcia said, thinking about it profoundly. “The sex talk. The consequences. The risks. The advantages. The expectations. Personal needs. Anyway, my speech includes important information like there is a 98 percent chance the encounter will result in a pregnancy and a 67 percent chance of a permanent telepathic link being created. Most people hear the speech, they’re done. They find an excuse to retreat and think about it. A very small percentage say damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. I am so turned off by that, I shut it down.”
“So, you’re saying your selection parameters has matured,” Rossi said.
“No. I didn’t say that. But my head is full. I am no longer dreaming my dreams but the dreams of others…”
“Tell me more about that,” Rossi said.
“I find myself dreaming of things that don’t pertain to me. Other worlds, other beings, aliens physiologies and alien cultures,” Garcia said. “I wake up with humorous anecdotes, but don’t know why I am amused. They’re not things I can share. No one else would find them funny. I experience sadness. The whole gambit, really. Lucid dreaming is gone. I don’t question the dreams or the activities or the people. I am just… there.”
“But you’re not dreaming about past partners?”
“Yes, I am. And sometimes the dreams seem like mix of all it,” Garcia said.
“Sex in the dreams?”
“Wow, sex on your brain?” Garcia said.
“Sorry. Yes,” Rossi said. She sorted that. “What the hell. Yes, pregnancy has increased that wanting. But also, I am just curious because sex has always been one of our…”
“Hot topics,” Garcia said.
“Therapeutic centers of focus,” Rossi corrected.
“I wish my critiques would stop comparing me to Kirk,” Garcia lamented. “I am not Kirk, a girl in every port.”
“You are not Kirk,” Rossi agreed. “You have a girl in every port, and take every port with you.”
“Ha ha,” Garcia said.
“Tam, suppression of libido can result in negative outcomes, unwanted behaviors, or psychological manifestations,” Rossi said. “Are you at least using toys, or the holodeck?”
“I am tired,” Garcia said. “I want sex, but I just don’t have the energy, the time. I want…” He stopped himself. When did he get so old? He sounded as if he were single and raising kids. And he had just had sex. Really good sex. Was it make up sex because he had gone so long without? His brow furrowed as he sought out the memories and something was clear, he had gone without sex, but he had not been alone. Lal had been there for him the whole time.
Rossi was quiet while he processed.
“Lal is absolutely brilliant. If Norman and I can tease her out of my brain and give her a permanent body, I want her to raise the twins in my absence, and any of the babies that don’t get adopted out,” Garcia said. “I can’t imagine a life without her and the kids.”
“So, you did have a love interest?” Rossi said.
“Please. It’s Lal. Why would she want to be with me? I am older. I am human. I am friends with her father. That’s completely out of line,” Garcia said.
“Oh,” Rossi said. “Because, she can’t make those kinds of decisions? You’re her parent?”
“Yes, I am. No. No, I don’t want that in my head. You don’t know how hard this is. Everything in my head gets adulterated. There’s no safe place. I am not her parent. I am her protector? A warden? A dragon protector warrior. I don’t know what I am?! Keeper of souls? Guardian of forever? What am I? Who am I? What will I be?” Garcia said.
“I think that theme song is taken,” Rossi said. “Buck.”
“Nice,” Garcia said.
“You said dragon,” Rossi said.
“Yeah. I don’t know where that came from,” Garcia said. “Rogers didn’t have any existential angst. Why can’t I be that…”
“Caviler?” Rossi said. He frowned at the word, but processed it. “You always ask the best questions, but you rarely speak the answers.”
“Yeah,” Garcia said.
“If this life was so good, why did it end?” “I died,” Garcia said.
“Everybody dies,” Rossi agreed. “How did you die?”
“Not relevant,” Garcia said. “It ends in death. That’s it.”
“Okay. Doesn’t all life end in death?” Rossi said. “How is this death different than any of the others?”
“I don’t know,” Garcia said.
“I hate that phrase. Use it again, you will have homework. So, let’s do some math together,” Rossi said.
“This is not a math equation,” Garcia said.
“Oh, then why the long face, and hours spent in therapy trying to figure out what to do?” Rossi asked.
“What?” Garcia asked.
“If it’s not math, then go live your life,” Rossi said. “You don’t need me to figure out how to live.”
“It’s not that simple…”
“Oh, then, we’re doing math,” Rossi said. “Depression is just math, Tam. The reason people have less physical energy when they’re depressed is because their brain is crunching more numbers than it normally does. How many life times and ways to die are you processing? How many paths have you traveled now? What’s the longest path you have navigated before death found you? How many dreams of others are you sorting? You’re processing a lot of information, and that’s not including the brain power used supporting the other personalities, and the neural suppressors and the tech interface to slow down the passenger.”
Garcia nodded. “I have something new. Something in my head. I don’t remember how it got there. Maybe you gave it to me. Maybe that Jon character gave it to me. He is annoying. And I like him. I don’t know why.”
“Gave you what?”
“The formula. Fight, flight, or love,” Garcia said. “A new magical formula for all
of life’s math. All things can be reduced to this function.”
“Interesting,” Rossi said.
“Stages of grief, for example,” Garcia said. “Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Denial, flight. Anger, Fight. Bargaining, fight, depression, flight. Acceptance, love.”
“That seems pretty powerful,” Rossi said.
“I am not sure why Kübler-Ross didn’t see that,” Garcia said. “Or Walter Bradford Cannon. Seriously, all the people between Cannon who coined the phrase fight or flight till now, why hasn’t anyone stepped up and reminded humans that we have this other capacity. We don’t have to fight, we don’t have to run, we have this… Superpower.” Garcia realizes there were tears tracking down his cheeks. His eyes went distant as he tried finding the source.
“Tell me about the tears,” Rossi said.
“I loved Trini so much,” Garcia said.
Rossi got up. She crossed the circle and sat down with him. She rested her head on his shoulder, took his hand, and she allowed herself to cry with him.