Rational insanity, p.1
Rational Insanity, page 1
part #2 of The Suicide Society Series
The Suicide Society
Rational Insanity
Book Two of the epic horror and sci-fi series
The Suicide Society Series
Desolation : Prequel
The Suicide Society: Book One
Rational Insanity: Book Two
Kill It to Death: Book Three
William Brennan Knight
Published by Altron Services
Copyright © 2019 by William Brennan Knight
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter One
“What do labels matter anyway, Marshall?” The psychiatrist rose from his chair and walked over to a window where he parted two slats in the blinds and gazed out at the mountains. “Whether you’re classified as someone with Asperger’s Syndrome, level one or ‘high-functioning’, you’ll still be Marshall Beiner. But you’re a different person than the one who walked into my office six years ago.”
“Five years ago.”
“What?”
“Five years, three months and 17 days ago. That is how long it has been since my first appointment with you, Dr. Abrams. I saw you on a Monday, five years, three months and 17 days ago.”
“Marshall, try and remember to use contractions in your speech patterns, it sounds more natural. But I swore...” Abrams walked to his desk and picked up a file labelled Beiner and rifled through the pages. He found the document he was looking for and ran his index finger down the lines of text.
“My, this has to be a first, Marshall. I’m actually right. Your first visit here was on September 12th, six and a half years ago.”
“Let me see that.” Marshall approached the doctor, while still keeping a significant distance between them.
“Here it is. Look for yourself.”
Marshall reached his arm out at full length and took the document. He glanced at the form and focused on the date.
“This is wrong.”
Dr. Abrams shook his head. “Don’t get caught up in small details, Marshall.”
“This is not a small detail. I remember specifically when I... This is very odd. Lately, there have been several things I remember that others do not.”
“Such as?”
Marshall grew quiet as he contemplated the value of further discussion. Despite years of practice, it was still difficult to understand the concept of subterfuge. Yet, experience taught him that revealing the truth at an inopportune moment might bring unpleasant consequences. He filtered through several layers of pragmatic analysis and carefully weighed his answer. “It doesn’t matter, doctor. You are probably right. I—must be mistaken.”
Abrams smiled and quickly covered the remaining distance between them. He thrust out his hand. “Good luck, Marshall. I believe you’re ready to fully integrate into society.”
Marshall weakly returned the smile and clasped the doctor’s hand with his thumb and forefinger. He hated the feel of human flesh but learned to internalize the revulsion without flinching. “Thank you, doctor. You have been most helpful.”
As he reached the door, Marshall paused at the threshold. Without turning to face Dr. Abrams, he asked, “One more thing, doctor. Are you married?”
“Marshall, you know my wife passed away three years ago.”
“I’m sorry, it must have slipped my mind.” As he left, Marshall closed the door behind him gently.
Walking down the hallway to the elevators, he entered the first car that stopped on his floor. Marshall resisted the temptation to use his mobile phone. Instead, he focused on remaining isolated from his fellow passengers. The elevator creaked and stuttered as it moved slowly down the shaft, and he wondered if there was cause for concern.
“Jeez, this thing seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Hope we don’t die.” The heavyset man with a birthmark on his cheek went on to make sounds that mimicked an explosion. The other passengers shuffled their feet and smiled uncomfortably. Marshall looked at the man curiously and wondered how anyone could find crashing to the bottom of an elevator shaft funny. In years past, he might have asked, but over time, he learned that when exposed to inexplicable behavior, it was best to remain quiet.
For all his effort, humor was still evasive; an elusive layer of consciousness that escaped him. Wanda once explained it using a math analogy. For Marshall, calculus was as elementary and simple as tying one’s shoes. Yet, for others, it was impossible to work through the complexities no matter how much effort they exerted. Some could almost reach the threshold but never fully understood the beauty, simplicity and logic of the essential formulas. Humor was like that for Marshall, and Wanda’s explanation had provided some peace.
He noticed a woman in the corner of the elevator was trembling. She wore several layers of clothing, which wasn’t healthy or stylistically appropriate for a hot July day in Phoenix. Others couldn’t see her slight shudders, but Marshall was sensitive to movements, thoughts and actions imperceptible to everyone else. He tried to move to the other side of the small enclosure, but several people already occupied that area of the cabin, so he wasn’t able find a personal space. The woman’s shaking grew more pronounced, and when her hands went up to her head, the passengers standing closest took notice.
As she turned, Marshall saw the long angry scar that ran from her ear to her lip. She whimpered and grabbed handfuls of her stringy blonde hair and pulled hard. The rest of the passengers moved as far away as possible and pushed up against the others. They experienced this sort of thing too many times before. She slid down the perforated steel side wall until she was in a sitting position with her knees drawn up to her chest.
“I can’t stand it anymore. Make it stop. For the love of God, make it stop!”
The eyes of the passengers turned everywhere except in her direction. They looked at their watches, the rolling numbers of the passing floors and the overhead lights, but no one looked over at her as she pulled hard on her hair and shivered in tearless sobs.
“I can’t do this anymore. It’s—so hopeless. I can’t find a job; there are no jobs for me. My baby is hungry, and my mom’s got dementia or something. The thugs are in the street every night, and I feel like I’m losing my sanity. I see people in my nightmares... and they tell me to hurt myself. Why is this happening?”
A long, awkward silence ensued before Marshall cleared his throat and spoke softly.
“I don’t have an explanation. You are being vague, and I doubt that the duration of this elevator ride is enough time to dissect and solve your multitude of problems. I would say this though: the extraordinary increase in psychological disease in the general population is quite unusual and troubling, so I guess you are right in questioning that phenomenon.”
She looked at Marshall with a blank stare. Even the disinterested passengers swiveled their collective heads for a moment and gave him a variety of looks ranging from incredulity to bewilderment. Just as quickly, they returned to their disassociated state.
“What the fuck?” the woman said. “I should rip your heart out for saying something like that to me.”
Marshall backed away. “I—am sorry. I thought…” His mind raced until it accessed the mental file that stored the appropriate response for a severe faux pas. He referenced social blunders with accompanying anger and returned his attention to the woman. “Yes, I am very sorry. My remarks were insensitive and rude. Please forgive me.”
She continued to glare at him, but her face softened. “Ok, but you should learn to show some feelings for people who are hurtin’. And Lord knows, I’m hurtin’.” The sobs began again, this time accompanied by tears.
Mercifully, the elevator reached the ground floor and opened, and the passengers pushed hard to exit as quickly as they could. In these times, no one wanted to become involved in another person’s vortex of personal chaos if it was avoidable. Marshall waited until everyone left before he got out and moved over to a secluded part of the lobby. He pulled out his phone and pressed number one on his keypad. The phone rang a single time before it connected.
“Marshall, you won’t believe it. I—I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. You were right. You were right.”
“Kenny, Kenny, slow down. Gather yourself. I need empirical data not hysteria. What did you find out?”
“They all remember it the same way. Wait, I wrote it down.” Marshall heard the rustling sounds of a folded piece of paper. “Ok, here it
Marshall paused as he processed the information. “What about the professors?”
“That’s where it gets really weird. Very, very weird. I called Professor Higgins at ASU and Professor Markus at U of A, and they both remember the exact opposite of how our people believe it happened. They remember the false version of the Fermilab discovery. Marshall, how can that be?”
“What about the second item?”
“Well, only two of us remember it, but it’s the same thing. You recalled Dr. Portis McFee being named the Head of the Department of Physics at MIT, right?”
“Yes. It happened exactly seven years ago.”
“Not according to the faculty guide. If you look at that book, he didn’t become a department head until three years ago.”
Marshall paused and allowed his mind to work. The colors flowed through him and rippled like waves of air rising off the hot pavement. Red, violet, blue and shades in between rolled and mixed together, distilling his thoughts and filtering the information.
“Ok, Kenny. Tell everyone to meet tonight at my house at 7 o’clock. Tell them this is not—isn’t an ordinary meeting. We need to understand what this all means.”
“Sure, Marshall. I’ll call them. This is wickedly strange.”
“I know, Kenny. Very strange indeed."
Marshall carefully placed the phone back into his shirt pocket and buttoned the flap over it for extra security. He went through the revolving door, exited Phoenix Tower, and walked down 1st Avenue to the parking garage on Adams. Once he reached the corner, he pushed the button on the streetlight and waited for the sign with the stick figure in motion to illuminate, signaling he had the right-of-way to cross. Mid-morning was not a busy time of day, so he was alone as he walked, careful to stay within the painted lines that defined the crosswalk.
From down the street somewhere, a car started up and the engine revved, but it was far enough away that Marshall didn’t give it any thought as he hurried through the intersection. It wasn’t until he heard the screech of tires breaking from the pavement that he turned toward the source of the sound. A large silver SUV accelerated rapidly and headed directly at him.
He froze in the middle of the street and couldn’t get his legs to move. For an instant, time seemed to slow perceptibly, and in that moment, Marshall could clearly see the face of the driver. The man sat hunched over, and his hands clutched the steering wheel tightly. With his brow furrowed and mouth turned down, his eyes were focused intently on his victim.
Marshall knew he only had one chance to jump out of the way without giving the driver time to adjust. Instinct told him to dive forward and slightly to his left behind a parked car. Unfortunately, it was a fair distance, and the maniacal motorist probably anticipated such a move. Adrenalin coursing through him, Marshall feinted as though he would lunge to his left and instead leapt in the opposite direction.
Considering the speed of the vehicle, the maneuver provided enough of a distraction that it caused the driver to swerve wildly as he overcompensated. The tires screeched and protested at the severity of the maneuver, and the back end swung out as the wheels skipped laterally across the pavement. For a long second it appeared like the vehicle might recover, but he oversteered again. Turning 180 degrees, the SUV slammed into the exact parked car Marshall had considered hiding behind.
Utterly terrified, he got to his feet and peered through the driver’s side window. The man was cursing and pounding on the dashboard. He turned and looked at Marshall, and his level of anger escalated as he pulled at the door release to no avail. As a crowd gathered, Marshall quickly moved around the back of the parking garage and out of the madman’s line of sight. He walked up the stairs to the second floor, found his white Civic, and drove down the ramp, making sure he exited on Monroe, well away from the scene of the accident.
His heart beat fast as he headed toward the freeway. The level of random violence seemed to escalate every week, and a simple trip for a doctor’s appointment was now a life-threating situation. As he remembered the man’s face, Marshall became increasingly disturbed. It was a random act of violence, wasn’t it?
***
The “Group,” as they called themselves, assembled in Marshall’s living room later that evening. They always met at his house because he had the only room that was big enough to accommodate everyone without triggering Kenny’s anthropophobia or Hayden’s enchlophobia. The others lived in apartments or with their parents anyway, so meeting anywhere else was impractical.
While Asperger’s and high-functioning autistic people often had IQs higher than the general population, the social challenges kept some from developing the coping skills they needed to be totally independent. Every personality was different, but it could take years before someone with Asperger’s developed the discipline to deal with everyday challenges, not to mention the difficulties that social settings presented.
Marshall Beiner was one of those people. Over time, he perfected the ability to process common greetings, salutations, humor and idiosyncrasies that made no sense to him intellectually. Years of training and countless books on social graces finally allowed him to understand the function and purpose of etiquette on an academic level. While he never truly could grasp the concept of small talk and courtesy, a carefully constructed matrix of programmed responses provided an opportunity to interact in a way that rarely exposed his flaws.
Many of those with high-functioning autism followed a similar path to social integration, but some of the younger ones still struggled. In fact, it was part of the reason Marshall formed the Group. It gave him a sense of satisfaction to help others develop abilities that gave them an opportunity to relate to unaffected people without drawing unwanted attention.
At every meeting, Marshall offered soft drinks and crackers for refreshment, and he placed them on the kitchen table. However, most of the members had specific dietary preferences and usually brought their own food and beverages. In the early meetings, he tried to accommodate them, but this only served to encourage requests for increasingly exotic food and drink. When Hayden Barwin asked for anchovies on Don Bruno Crostini crackers topped with an eight millimeter slice of Fiscalini Bandaged cheddar, he knew that providing a suitable spread for his guests was impossible. Hence, the Ritz crackers and colas.
Marshall stood at the top of a semi-circle of chairs spaced exactly one meter apart and faced the group. Some autistic people thrived on predictable uniformity, and they were protective of their personal space. Therefore, every meeting was the same; chairs placed in a perfect semicircle. For Marshall, even setting up the chairs was exhausting since the arrangement required such precision, and he always had to move some of his existing furniture into the garage.
All seven members were in attendance tonight, and he turned and faced the assembled group. “As you know, we have a challenging problem to deal with. From an empirical point of view, nothing about this makes any sense. To be succinct, we as a group seem to recall past events differently than the way they were recorded in historical archives or remembered by other people.
“So far, we have documented three specific instances, but there are probably many others. The first relates to the discovery of Xib-prime at CERN. The second concerns the timing of the appointment of Dr. Portis McFee as the head of physics at MIT. Finally, during my last therapy session, my psychologist recorded the date I first entered treatment, which is inaccurate as I remember it.”
From Marshall’s left, a hand went up slowly. “Yes, Hayden?”
“It is actually much worse than that, Marshall. Much, much worse.”
Marshall frowned. “What do you mean? How is it worse?”
“There could be hundreds, perhaps thousands of inaccuracies if you extrapolate from this small sample.” A crescendo of murmurs spread through the group. “Wallace, please present the handouts I prepared.” Then, turning to Marshall, he continued, “The report was compiled by Wallace and me. Of course, I put the final version together. There is also a copy available on the cloud.”
