A bad think is like an infection. It's like you're a fish caged in a tank of glass. Someone drops a small drop of black paint into the water. It spreads slowly but surely over the entire surface. You can no longer see. You lose your sense of direction and keep hitting the glass again and again.
Eventually, you hit it so many times that it knocks you out (or at least makes you numb) and you start to sink to the bottom of the tank. You just lie there. Not thinking about anything now, not even one bad or good think. Not thinking may be even worse than thinking bad thoughts.
People start to notice when certain things disappear, as the result of not thinking. Inventions, songs, poems, mathematical equations, whole tribes of people. Gone.
You may have noticed it in small ways. Stories on sitcoms get recycled, the news becomes duller. The radio sounds like a record on repeat. Food in restaurants taste bland. Life becomes boring in small ways that add up fast.
Arlan lived with just his mom before she was institutionalized. Arlan has no dad. His dad left the family before he was born. Arlan was okay with that, he didn't need or want a daddy.
Arlan's mom was occasionally mom-like, as in she provided food and clothing for him. However, it took Arlan a while to realize that certain things, such as accusing the neighbors of spying and invading her privacy every time the refrigerator started to hum or calling the police when something gets misplaced in the house, are not necessarily normal modes of behavior for parents or anyone, for that matter.
The teacher was speaking but Arlan was only picking up on batches of words here and there. He left his mind to wonder. When the teacher caught him daydreaming, she said his name, he looked up. Pleased with having caught his attention (for the time being), she continued on lecturing. When this happened, he couldn't remember what he had just been thinking about. Like going into a room to find something but never remembering what the thing needed was.
The teacher was now passing out the tests and every child in the room was hurriedly bubbling in the answers, racing against time.
The boy looked down at the words and discovered, that's all they were. Just words connected together in some nonsensical way, nothing making sense.
The boy lazily bubbled in answers, an A there, a B there, and so on. The odds of passing were in his favor.
The boy got to the last page of the exam and read the instructions at the top. He was able to pick out phrases here and there, “...writing your essay...be half your grade. Please select one...questions to answer...”
The boy glanced down at the questions. All words again.
“I can't do this. I can't do anything,” he thought.
He got behind in his classes and he kept thinking that same thought over and over again until it became true.
Now, he really couldn't do anything and doctors couldn't explain why. Perhaps these were the doctors of the body and not of the mind. So the little boy lays in bed all day long, not doing a thing.
It's starting a chain reaction. One infectious thought attaches onto others. Other children are starting to fall ill, perplexing doctors all across Minnesota. It will eventually spread slowly across the country and soon it will travel across the ocean. Unless the Fixer can find the source (namely the boy). Only trouble is, when an infectious think becomes a real thing, there are no dandelions to follow.