Karma
Karma
Dr. Abel Kane, a thoughtful, stoic man, was shaken. The first time Dr. Kane ever heard mention of it was at his grandson's funeral. While admittedly grown old somehow, and out of the loop, Abel Kane did try to stay in tune with the world, and with its goings-on. Abel scrolled through the trending internet news sites while drinking his coffee in the mornings, and he fell asleep at night with the Channel Five News, so that he was nor completely out of touch. His work at the clinic required long, stressful hours. There was simply not much time to worry about the world outside of his own little bubble. It is always so easy for things to squeeze by a busy man.
But this "Karma" thing? What was this? A drug that had destroyed a bright young man's mind to where he had cheerfully thrown himself from a city roof-top while his friends and family watched? That was the frightening part. The boy had appeared happy when he took the running start, hopped lightly onto the low, brick wall, and dove head first from ten stories up. And this at his own high school graduation party? Dr. Kane knew drugs. He had spent the pasty forty years making and testing drugs. He knew how they effected the brain, sucking away its oxygen until it is choked dry. He knew how they hardened and weakened the heart, the liver, the kidneys, and the arteries that carried them nutrients, but the drugs were also necessary, weren't they? Surely the drugs, when properly used, were enriching more lives than they destroyed? As a doctor, having taken the Hippocratic oath, Dr. Kane grappled with this question every day as he waved his badge, and walked with practiced importance through "Life-Line Pharmaceutical's" automatic security doors. The drugs Dr. Kane made were intended to aid in healthy living, not to destroy the life itself, but they could do that too, could they not? Sometimes even the good drugs did harm to people. And what about these other drugs? These bad drugs? Drugs that were mutations, or byproducts, of the good drugs made at "Life-Line"? What sort of man could even make those drugs, much less pedal them?
All Dr. Kane knew about the "Karma" was that it was a synthetic drug, a drug made from chemicals. They were not so uncommon, drugs made from poisons; poisons issued in small doses, so as to kill tiny pieces of the body, and not its entirety. Poisons designed to target the specific cells that a doctor wishes to kill. Poisons acting as tiny assassins on a "Fantastic Voyage" to kill the malignancies and parasites that grow in an animal, and to save a body from its own genetic missteps. Of course, they also killed collaterally, destroying unintended cells, and permitting us the somewhat humorously long list of disclaimers at the ends of the television commercials. "Call your doctor immediately if you experience any of the following symptoms..." Those disclaimers which are really only funny until they became personal.
As "good" as Dr. Kane knew his work to be, as humane, and as holistic as the drugs he made were, there were always those who would mutate the good to suit their own "Wacko" needs. That was Dr, Kane's word for those who used drugs recreationally. "Wacko!" What kind of Wacko would willingly poison themselves for a few hours of entertainment, inserting God knows what, God knows how, into their nostrils or veins for a "high?" Really? Leaving themselves sick for it afterward, and then calling it a party?
And Justin?
Straight "A" Justin?
Accepted at MIT Justin?
How does a good kid like Justin get mixed up in all of this? Dr. Kane felt the anger well up inside so that he wished he was the kind of man to seek out and kill those who made this happen, the drug dealers, and the manufacturers of the "bad" drugs, whomever they were, but he was not that man. All the same, there must be something he might do, some way he might make a difference?
"Karma." Something called Karma had killed Justin, but it was not only Justin that Karma killed, it was also the other important members of Dr. Kane's own happy family. Abel Kane's daughter Melissa was absolutely distraught, so lost that she might never again be found. Melissa was taking her own "meds" now, and so many people never stopped taking them these days, once started.
Melissa was the apple of Abel Kane's eye. When Dr. Abel Kane looked at Melissa, he still saw the curled pig-tails, the bright eyes, an the freckled nose of thirty-five years ago, but in the past two weeks that happy girl-child had slipped away. Now there was a hurt inside those eyes that manifested itself over the entirety of her yet youthful face, drawing the skin tight around the eyes themselves, and around the corners of her mouth. There was a plea in those eyes... a plea for what cannot be, for what will never again be. A mother's plea for her lost child.
Someone should pay, but how? What could he do to make the loss of his grandson right? How could he exact revenge for the kidnapping of his only daughter's happiness? What could an old man do? What could a scholarly man do?
k a r m a
Dr. Kane carefully typed the letters into the search bar. He tapped the enter key before choosing the "Wikipedia" definition. It was, apparently, not an overly complicated drug. Strong Beta-blockers to slow the heart rate, mixed with hallucinogenics and Nootropics to keep the mind alive. The "Wacko" sleeps for two to four hours and awakens crazy. That was how the definition of the effects of Karma read to him on the screen. Abel Kane clicked on the link to a story, a story of a young man who had survived the drug. The boy spoke of being in Heaven, and of seeing God. He spoke of an unflinching desire to get out of the facility he was confined in so that he could taste Karma again. He longed, "to return," he said, "to find God again!" Dr. Kane tapped the escape key. "Stupid kid! Saying stupid shit like that will not get you out of any facility on God's Green Earth. What is the matter with the damned kids these days, anyway? Have they all gone crazy?" Dr. Kane felt a tingle in his spine, a tiny tingle of guilt. It was the drugs making them crazy, was it not? In all of history young people had never been as crazy as they were now, as lazy, as angry. They had never died at a faster rate than they did today, and by their own hands. And who was it who made those drugs?
He did. Dr. Abel Kane, at Life-Line Pharmaceutical.
He was now on his sixth internet story about Karma, tapping on the links in the order they were listed. The stories were all similar. The kids taking this Karma were either killing themselves, or they were being locked in padded cells before they could kill themselves. The truly strange part was how happy the ones locked up in the cells were. They were happy, insanely happy. Happy to die?
He had just finished reading about a kid who had used his father's pistol to blast his life away when a crazy little dream of an idea popped into Abel's head. It was a little idea at the start, a tiny, minuscule, slip of an idea. An idea that floated up to him from below, like in a speech bubble from a cartoon strip. "Try it," the bubble said. Dr. Kane shivered. What would happen to him if he did try it? Would he go crazy too? Certainly not! He was a strong man, "man" being the key word. He was not some young, impressionable kid. He was educated. Not only was he educated, but he was educated about drugs, and their effects, he could deduce those effects as they happened... and he was atheistic. He would not be cowed by any hallucinogenic visions.
But still the shiver? Every kid who survived the drug spoke of seeing God.
"Try it."
Dr. Abel Kane's hands grew cold on the keyboard. From what place inside him did the words come? Why would he even think to try it?
But then, how would he ever know what it was that threw Justin from that roof-top if he did not try it? How could he know if he did not try it? He should try it. He needed to know, and then he could tell the world what was really happening to these children.
It came from the police station, not from the streets. Well, originally it came from the streets, but it was Judge Trimble's court order that secured it for "Life -Line Labs." It was late afternoon when Dr. Kane got it back to his desk. He carefully slit the manila seal before sliding the vial from its envelope. It looked like a blob of polluted clay in the plastic tube with the taped down stopper, its contents identified by a number scrawled in red ink across the tape. It looked nasty, "yucky," like sulfurous chalk clumps, a sickly brownish-yellow. It looked like the poison that it was.
Dr. Kane checked his watch. Hs colleagues would soon be heading home. He would wait until 5:00 to do the deed. That was the term he had given to injecting the drug into his veins... "doing the deed."
It was a lab. All of the necessities were handy. He removed the label, and the vial's plastic lid before tapping the moist clumps into a mortar, the better to pound it smooth. He lit the burner early, simply because he had always loved the sound and smell of a Bunsen's Burner, the gaseous, intelligent smell of it. He then poured the churned powder into an Erienmeyer flask, which would do nicely for cooking so long as he did not let it get too hot.
Soon the powder was liquid brown, like a Guinness stout, and with the same frothy head. He removed the flask from the burner to cool. His teeth pulled the medical tourniquet tightly onto his arm. Almost immediately an obliging blue vein popped at the ready. Abel's heart went slow and steady, thumping against his chest, and against his common sense. His heart thumped at his ears, and against his banded arm like the metronome on a grand-father's clock. He supposed that he was ready. He dipped the needle's point deep into the chemical broth, pulling the plunger back, watching as it sucked the Karma in. When the liquid filled the syringe he drew a deep breath before pushing the air in the syringe out, along with the air in his lungs. He told himself that there was no need to fear, but his breathing was labored all the same. He was a scientist, and a doctor. Granted he was also about to be a guinea pig, but this was how he could understand, and this would allow him to teach. He climbed up onto the lab table. Taking a deep breath, he waved toward the security camera. The Board of Directors would get a kick out of that if something bad were to happen.
The needle pinched sliding into the vein. Dr. Kane pushed the plunger in. He pulled off the tourniquet and let himself lie back on the table, waiting. "Nothing yet," he told himself.
But there was something, wasn't there? A cold tingle inside. He did what he always did when bored, or nervous... he began to recite. He chose the longest poem he knew, hoping to get all the way through:
"Once upon a midnight dreary
while I pondered weak and weary..."
And then the end began.
At first there was only sleep. Deep sleep. The deepest of sleeps. His heart rate slowed, and slowed, until his body, for all intents or purpose, lived no more. He saw the body there on the table. His body. It was dead. He was dead. He watched the body as he drifted away. He watched it get smaller, and smaller. He watched it not because he cared what happened to it, but because he did not want to turn. He did not want to know what was behind him.
But then he did turn, or rather, was turned. Slowly. Something behind called to him and he turned, something from out there in the darkness, something calling from the deepest depths of the darkness, and from a pinpoint of light. He moved toward the pinpoint, but he did not walk, as there were no feet, on no ground. There were no arms to swing, no voice to sing. There was nothing. A vacuum. He realized that he was being analytical! It was a vacuum! He clung to that. He clung desperately to it, because he had thought of it! He had thought it!
"I think, therefore I am."
Had there been a mouth, it would have smiled. He had remembered his Descartes. He could still remember!
The light was closer, but it was no longer light. It was colors, now. Prismatic and bold colors. Rainbow colors wrapping around him, embracing him, touching every part of whatever it was that was him. Warm and wet were the colors, like lotion caressing, squeezing softly, like vaginal walls pulling. Like wet, warm vaginal walls massaging, and squeezing him inside to a place that he did not even know that he could never have resisted.
Had he a mouth, it would have kissed. Had he a dream, it would be this.
And then it was done. And then he was there, where the ears were music, the eyes light, the mind was wonder, and the body was no more. There was nothing else that mattered.
Abel Kane had come full circle, born of the Mother, taught to suffer, and returned to the Father.
Ka-BOOM!
"What?"
Ka-BOOM!
"No!"
Ka-BOOM!
Had he a mouth, it would have screamed!
Ka-Boom!
Had he only a dream?
Ka-BOOM!
It was the heart that brought him back. The damned fool's heart. The heart that knows not what it wants, and so searches for anything that looks like a sugary-tit to suckle. The battered, broken heart. The heart that beats not in glorious Heaven. The pitiful heart, the lost heart. The heart that aches, and wishes, hungers and waits. The foolish heart that beats when it could stop. When it should stop. It was the heart that brought him back. His damned, fool's heart.
Dr. Abel Kane was an intelligent man. Being intelligent, he knew enough to know that he now knew nothing. He also knew enough to know that he now knew all. Yes, Dr. Abel Kane was an intelligent man. He would take what was left of his Karma and he would give it to Melissa. It was the last, and the best thing he could give to her. She would find happiness in it, as he had.
Abel Kane had found happiness. Abel Kane had found God, but that happiness could only be had when he was with that God in His Heaven. Every moment away was a moment wasted... and so Dr. Abel Kane must go.
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