“I can’t believe you,” he said once. “Man, you got that thing smokin and tokin.”
I shrugged. “Any fool can peel the Apple,” I said. “It takes a real man to eat the core.”
So Ma believed it (she might have had a few more questions if she knew the Trans Corporation was flying me out to Illinois in a private jet, but she didn’t), and I didn’t miss her all that much. But I missed Pug, and John Cassiday, who was our other friend from our Supr Savr days. John plays bass in a punk band, wears a gold ring in his left eyebrow, and has just about every Subpop record ever made. He cried when Kurt Cobain ate the dirt sandwich. Didn’t try to hide it or blame it on allergies, either. Just said, “I’m sad because Kurt died.”
John’s eventual.
And I missed Harkerville. Perverse but true. Being at the training center in Peoria was like being born again, somehow, and I guess being born always hurts.
I thought I might meet some other people like me—if this was a book or a movie (or maybe just an episode of The X-Files), I would meet a cute chick with nifty little tits and the ability to shut doors from across the room—but that didn’t happen. I’m pretty sure there were other trannies at Peoria when I was there, but Dr. Wentworth 239
STEPHEN KING
and the other folks running the place were careful to keep us sepa-rated. I once asked why, and got a runaround. That’s when I started to realize that not everybody who had TRANSCORP printed on their shirts or walked around with TransCorp clipboards was my pal, or wanted to be my long-lost Dad.
And it was about killing people; that’s what I was training for. The folks in Peoria didn’t talk about that all the time, but no one tried to sugarcoat it, either. I just had to remember the targets were bad guys, dictators and spies and serial killers, and as Mr. Sharpton said, people did it in wars all the time. Plus, it wasn’t personal. No guns, no knives, no garrotes. I’d never get blood splashed on me.
Like I told you, I never saw Mr. Sharpton again—at least not yet, I haven’t—but I talked to him every day of the week I was in Peoria, and that eased the pain and strangeness considerably. Talking to him was like having someone put a cool cloth on your brow. He gave me his number the night we talked in his Mercedes, and told me to call him anytime. Even at three in the morning, if I was feeling upset. Once I did just that. I almost hung up on the second ring, because people may say call them anytime, even at three in the morning, but they don’t really expect you to do it. But I hung in there. I was homesick, yeah, but it was more than that. The place wasn’t what I had expected, exactly, and I wanted to tell Mr. Sharpton so. See how he took it, kind of.
He answered on the third ring, and although he sounded sleepy (big surprise there, huh?), he didn’t sound at all pissed. I told him that some of the stuff they were doing was quite weird. The test with all the flashing lights, for example. They said it was a test for epilepsy, but—
“I went to sleep right in the middle of it,” I said. “And when I woke up, I had a headache and it was hard to think. You know what I felt like? A file-cabinet after someone’s been rummaging through it.”
“What’s your point, Dink?” Mr. Sharpton asked.
“I think they hypnotized me,” I said.
A brief pause. Then: “Maybe they did. Probably they did.”
“But why? Why would they? I’m doing everything they ask, so why would they want to hypnotize me?”
240
EVERYTHING’S EVENTUAL
“I don’t know all their routines and protocols, but I suspect they’re programming you. Putting a lot of housekeeping stuff on the lower levels of your mind so they won’t have to junk up the conscious part . . . and maybe screw up your special ability, while they’re at it.