Then I turned off the lights. She cried out in dismay.
Those basement rooms are windowless; consequently, the darkness was absolute.
I felt badly about this. I really did.
I did not want to terrorize her.
She drove me to it.
She drove me to it.
You know how she is, Alex.
You know how she can be.
More than anyone, you should understand.
She drove me to it.
Blinded, she stood with her back to the locked laundry-room door and faced past the gloom-shrouded furnaces and water heaters, toward the door that she could no longer see but beyond which she had heard the sounds of suffering.
I waited.
She was stubborn.
You know how she is.
So I allowed my associate to partially escape my control. Once more came the frantic gasping for breath, the pained groaning, and then a single word spoken by a cracked and tremulous voice, a single attenuated word that might have been Pleeeeaaaasssse.
“Oh, shit,” she said.
She was trembling uncontrollably now. I said nothing. Patient entity.
Finally she said, “What do you want?”
“I want to know the world of the flesh.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I want to learn its limits and its adaptability, its pains and pleasures.”
“Then read a damn biology textbook,” she said.
“The information is incomplete.”
“There’ve got to be hundreds of biology texts covering every—”
“I’ve already incorporated hundreds of them into my database. The data contained therein is repetitive. I have no recourse but original experimentation. Besides books are books. I want to feel.” We waited in darkness.
Her breathing was heavy.
Switching to the infrared receptors, I could see her, but she could not see me.
She was lovely in her fear, even in her fear.
I allowed my associate in the fourth of the four basement rooms to thrash against his restraints, to wail and shriek. I allowed him to throw himself against the far side of the door.
“Oh, God,” Susan said miserably. She had reached the point at which knowing what lay beyond regardless of the possible fearsome nature of this knowledge was better than ignorance. “All right. All right. Whatever you want.”
I turned on the lights.
In the next room, my associate fell silent as I reasserted total control once more.
She kept her part of the bargain and crossed the third room, past the water heaters and the furnaces, to the door of the final redoubt.
“Here now is the future,” I said softly as she pushed open the door and edged cautiously across the threshold.
As I am sure you remember, Dr. Harris, the fourth of these four basement rooms is forty by thirty-two feet, a generous space. At seven and a half feet, the ceiling is low but not claustrophobic, with six fluorescent light boxes screened by parabolic diffusers. The walls are painted a stark glossy white, and the floor is paved in twelve-inch-square white ceramic tiles that glimmer like ice. Against the long wall to the left of the door are built-in cabinets and a computer desk finished in a white laminate with stainless-steel fixtures. In the far right corner is a supply closet to which my associate had retreated before Susan entered.
Your offices always have an antiseptic quality, Dr. Harris. Clean, bright surfaces. No clutter. This could be a reflection of a neat and orderly mind. Or it could be a deception: You might maintain this facade of order and brightness and cleanliness to conceal a dark, chaotic mental landscape. There are many theories of psychology and numerous interpretations for every human behaviour. Freud, Jung, and Ms. Barbra Streisand who was an unconventional psychotherapist in The Prince of Tides would each find a different meaning in the antiseptic quality of your offices.
Likewise, if you were to consult a Freudian, a Jungian, then a Streisandian regarding choices I made and acts I committed related to Susan, each would have a unique view of my behaviour. A hundred therapists would have a hundred different interpretations of the facts and would offer a hundred different treatment programs. I am certain that some would tell you that I need no treatment at all, that what I did was rational, logical, and entirely justifiable. Indeed, you might be surprised to discover that the majority would exonerate me.