Is your own brain that treacherous?
“Do you want to hear it again?” he says, and he holds out in his hand what he took from his pocket. You advance slowly, cautiously. “I can show it to you, your own language.” You look closer at his hand, and recoil at what he holds in it. “Can you be sure, Lex, that you don’t speak the invader tongue? Is it not possible you and your … comrades don’t speak it?”
Could it be possible? That for years you’ve fought a war already lost? Blinded by your deafness, unable to hear or comprehend or truly understand even your own language?
“Tell me, what good is language if you’re unable to hear it, Lex?” He says your name as if taunting you with it, that he’s fully aware you still don’t know his. “Your truth is through this door. But to find it, you must hear it.”
The thing in his hand is old-fashioned; coils of clear plastic attached to a beige module, with a switch on its side.
“What’s the matter?” he mouths, and you realise you’ve forgotten the whole conversation is taking place in dead silence, as if his voice is amplified purely by the magnitude of what he is saying. The familiar ringing in your ears becomes threatening and loud and insistent, stopping you communicating effectively. You don’t understand what is happening.
“Do you want to hear Ralaine again?”
You have no choice. Your friends were right when they called you stupid, no matter what language they thought they spoke. You look at the thing in his hand, and the profound risk that it represents falls away.
“Come and find your truth,” the man says. With shaking hands you take the little device and wrap it around the back of your useless ear.
You flick the switch on the back of the hearing aid. You experience a sensation you only vaguely remember, but that is instantly familiar. Your vision blurs with tears, and you go to rip the device from your ear and run. But then the man speaks aloud, and it is too late, because you realise the most frightening thing is not that he is speaking aloud, nor that you can hear him—it is that you understand.
Jack Schouten was born in Kristiansand, Norway, and was brought up in Surrey. He read Journalism and Creative Writing at Middlesex University London, specialising in science fiction, and his work has appeared in Jupiter Magazine, the North London Literary Gazette, and Clarkesworld (US). He lives and works in London, and can be reached on Twitter at @JackSchouten.
Possible Side Effects
Adam Connors
Art: Jackie Duckworth
My head is full of strange ideas today. Fragments. Daydreams. Memories. I buzz with them. I woke with words in my mouth that must be decades old. “Have you seen the newspaper?” “We need milk, I’m going out to buy milk.” “Soon, I promise.” I was dreaming about the woods again. Out where we used to live in the old days, before the business took off, before we moved to California, before … Well, just before.
Beech trees standing like guards over the dirt path. Black branches etched into white sky. Do you remember how beautiful it was? Somehow, in my dream, it’s always autumn. You’re with me, and we’re both young. Ben is five or six and he’s cycling ahead of us on that little orange bike he used to have.
He laughed when I told him this. He remembers that bike.
He was wobbly and you were terrified he was going to fall and hurt himself. I said something—in the dream I didn’t get to hear what it was—and you laughed and clutched my arm. In the dream I watch us and I wonder if we were ever really that happy. I was working so much back then, trying to get the business off the ground, it’s hard to imagine I had time for a walk in the woods. But it felt so real.
And then for some reason I was dreaming about Dr Merck again. Do you remember Dr Merck? “It’s not good news, I’m afraid, Mr King,” he was saying.
I always disliked Dr Merck. There was a cruelty to him. He was the kind of man who wouldn’t wait for you to sit down before giving you bad news. The kind of man who would sit behind his immense desk like he was immune to all sickness, and leave you standing like an idiot, wondering if the consultation had begun already. Of course, I know now that none of this was an accident. His performance was carefully crafted, the result of many hours of coaching.
I sat, without being invited. “I feel good. Better.”
“Steroids,” Dr Merck said, looking up. “Temporary, I’m afraid. Your cancer is very aggressive. The scans indicate significant metastasis.”
“Then we’ll go again,” I said. “Another round.”
“I have to advise against it.”
My eyes blurred, refocused, blurred again. It’s one thing to know that you’re dying. To be told so bluntly that there is nothing more to be done, no hope, no maybes, is another thing altogether. Looking back I suppose Dr Merck had been working with Rosen for a while. He’d built his business around people like me, and Rosen must have had discreet relationships with all the doctors in the Bay Area.
“There must be something—” I said.
I was trying not to sound desperate but I don’t suppose I succeeded. Dr Merck knew how much this hurt. When my company started to see its first big successes I became known as a futurist. A technologist. Some described me as a genius. One particularly florid obituary (oh, yes, I read my obituaries, who wouldn’t?) described me as somebody with: “the mind of an engineer and the hands of a poet.” I liked that one. I remember feeling for a while that I had achieved so much I must be capable of anything. But then you get sick and none of it means a damn. Is it possible that the prospect of an early death is more painful for a successful man like myself? More difficult to accept one’s powerlessness? I suppose you think me arrogant for even asking.
“There are some areas of research that are showing promise,” Dr Merck said. “Gene therapy. Nanotechnology. Some are even in early trials.”
“Then give them to me.”
“Animal trials, Mr King.”
“So?”
“They’re not ready. This is very early stage stuff.”
“I have nothing to lose, do I?”
I leaned forward in my excitement. A part of me must have known I was being led somewhere. If there was really nothing to be done why was the conversation still going on?
“I have money,” I said.
“Please, Mr King, I know you have money.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
Dr Merck spread his hands on his desk. “These treatments just aren’t ready. In twenty, maybe forty years they might… But now—” He shook his head sadly. “You should go home. Be with your family. With careful management I can give you another good six months. You should make the most of what time you have.”
The arrogant twerp. You can see how he made me sweat for it, can’t you? You can see that I never really had a chance against that. I’m not making excuses. I made the choices I made. But once Rosen got a whiff of me you can be sure he left nothing to chance. You saw how long he’d been preparing. Just imagine how the machine must have swung into action. Focus groups. Planning sessions. Poor Dr Merck briefed to within an inch of his life lest he screw this up.
