Alan Glynn - The Dark Fields aka Limitless

‘ You didn’t ever use it, though?’

‘No.’

‘I see.’

I nodded my head, as though I were considering this – but all I was thinking about now was getting out of there as fast as possible and getting to a pharmacy.

‘… anyway, then, after Janine left me and I was kicked out of the company,’ Geisler went on, ‘I tried to pick up the pieces, but that wasn’t so easy, because of course…’

I drained my coffee and desperately tried to formulate an exit strategy in my head. Even though I felt sorry for Geisler, and was horrified at what had happened to him, I really didn’t need to hear this part of the story – but I couldn’t just stand up and leave, either, so I ended up smoking two more cigarettes before I found the courage to say that I had to go.

I told him thanks and said I’d get the check on the way out. He looked at me, as if to say C’mon, sit down, have another cigarette, drink some more coffee , but then a second later he waved a hand at me, dismissively, and said, ‘Oh, go on, get out of here. And good luck. I suppose.’

I found a pharmacy on Seventh Avenue, a few doors up from the café, and bought two packs of Dexeron. I then took a cab home.

Once in the apartment I made straight for the bedroom closet and took out the MDT pills. I wasn’t sure how many to take, and I deliberated on it for quite a while. I eventually decided to take three. This was my last chance and it would either work or it wouldn’t.

I went into the kitchen and got a glass of water. I swallowed the three MDT pills in one go, and then took two of the Dexeron. After that, I went in and sat on the couch, and waited.

Two hours later, my CDs were back in alphabetical order. There were also no more crushed pizza-boxes to be seen in the apartment, or empty beer cans, or dirty socks… and every single inch of surface space was polished and gleaming…

OVER THE WEEKEND, I stuck to this new dosage regime, and monitored my progress fairly closely. I decided not to go out, just in case anything went wrong – but nothing did go wrong. There were no clicks or jumps or flashes, and it appeared that whatever was in the Dexeron actually worked – which wasn’t to say that I was in the clear, of course, or that I wouldn’t ever be having another blackout again, but it definitely felt good to be back . All of a sudden, I was confident, and clear-headed, and buzzing with ideas and energy. If the Dexeron went on working, my future path was laid out in front of me, brick by brick, and the only thing that I had to do was follow it, undistracted, unrepentant. I would re-acquaint myself with the MCL-Abraxas material and then I’d go and smooth things over with Carl Van Loon. I’d get trading again and make some money, and move into the Celestial Building. I’d eventually extricate myself from involvement with people like Van Loon and Hank Atwood and set up an independent business structure of my own – the Spinola Corporation, SpinolaSystems, Edinvest, whatever.

I couldn’t get Ginny Van Loon out of my mind as I entertained these thoughts, and I tried now to slot her in at some appropriate point along the way. She resisted, however – or the idea of her resisted – and the more resistance there was the more agitated I became. Eventually, I put these feelings aside, compartmentalized them, and moved on to the MCL-Abraxas material.

I read through all of the documents, and marvelled at how I hadn’t been able to understand them before. It certainly wasn’t the most exciting material in the world, but it was still relatively straightforward. I re-acquainted myself with how the Black-Scholes pricing model worked and did up the projections on the computer. I ironed out any difficulties there’d been, including the discrepancy in the third option that Van Loon had pointed out to me that day in his office.

The other thing I did over the weekend – apart from a hundred sit-ups each morning and evening – was to get back into some serious news consumption. I read the papers online and watched all the major current affairs shows on TV. There was very little mention of the Donatella Alvarez murder investigation, other than a brief appeal for anyone who might have witnessed anything to come forward – which meant, presumably, that the police had come up with no leads on Thomas Cole and were now clutching at straws.

There was quite a lot of coverage of the Mexico story. A number of high-profile attacks had taken place – on tourists, and on US citizens, chiefly businessmen, living in Mexico City. One company director had been shot dead and two others had been kidnapped and were still missing. These incidents were being directly linked to the foreign policy debate that was raging in the press – and in which the ‘i’ word was now routinely being used. What had yet to be plausibly constructed in the public mind, despite talk of safety concerns for US citizens, not to mention threatened Mexican expropriation of foreign investments, was a rationale for any invasion that might take place – but they were clearly working on it.

I also looked at how the markets had been performing since the big drop in tech stocks the previous Tuesday, and did some preliminary research for the coming Monday morning – which was when I planned to re-activate my account with Klondike.

Late on the Sunday evening, I was restless and decided to go out for a while. It was only when I hit the warm night air, and started walking, that I understood just how much better I really felt. Unlike before, I now had a strong physical sense of MDT, an almost buzz-like tingling in my limbs and head. At the same time, I didn’t feel intoxicated in any way. I just felt fully in control of my faculties – stronger, more awake, sharper.

I went to a few different bars, drank soda water and talked all night long. In each place I went to, it only took me a few minutes to start up a conversation with someone and then a few more after that to attract a circle of listeners around me – these people apparently fascinated by what I had to say, as I talked about politics, history, baseball, music, anything that found its way into the conversation. I had women coming on to me, too, and even some men, but I had no sexual interest in these people and tactfully deflected their advances by raising the polemical temperature of whatever discussion we were involved in. I am aware that this might make me sound obnoxious and manipulative, but it really didn’t play that way at the time, and as the night marched on and they all got drunker, or more wired, and eventually started dropping out, I felt more invigorated, and – frankly – like some kind of minor god.

I got home at about 7.30 in the morning and immediately started sweeping through the financial websites. I’d shifted all of my funds out of the Klondike account on signing up with Lafayette – except for the deposit, which it had been necessary to leave in order to keep the account open. I was glad now that I’d done this, but as I eased my way back into trading throughout the course of the day, I found that I missed the company of other traders and the atmosphere of a ‘room’. Nevertheless, it was remarkable how quickly I regained the confidence to make big trades and to take considerable risks, and by Tuesday afternoon – when Gennady phoned – I had already notched up about $25,000 in my account.

I’d forgotten that Gennady would be phoning and I was in the middle of devising a complicated trading strategy for the following day when the call came. I was in quite a buoyant mood and didn’t want any trouble, so I told him I’d have the ten pills ready for him on Friday. He immediately wanted to know if I’d have them any time before then and if he could come and collect them. Slightly irritated by this, I said that no, I wouldn’t, and he couldn’t – and that I’d see him on Friday morning. When I put the phone down, I gave some thought to how I was going to deal with the Gennady situation. It had the potential to become a very serious problem indeed, and although I had no choice but to give him the ten pills this time, I didn’t like the idea that he’d be out there, probably scheming his way up the Organizatsiya ladder – and also possibly even scheming against me . I would have to come up with something – a scheme of my own – and soon.