Matt Ruff - Bad Monkeys

I was in a coma for ten days. I woke up in a darkened hospital room with a television playing somewhere nearby. Tom Cruise was talking about a priest who’d died giving last rites to a fireman at Ground Zero. Then Mariah Carey started singing that we all have a hero inside us, and I thought maybe I’d died, and this was hell. But the show went on, with more celebrities coming out to sing and tell stories, and there were calls for donations, and eventually I realized I wasn’t in hell, I was just in America.

The cops came around. I told them I didn’t know who’d attacked me. Then Phil came to see me, and I told him the same thing, but he knew I was lying. I told him to mind his own business.

I had another visitor, too. I first noticed him about a week after I woke up, and for a long while I wasn’t sure he was real. I was in a lot of pain, but because of the coma the doctors were nervous about drugging me. But I kept after them, and eventually they put me on a morphine drip. And I was floating on that when this guy showed up.

He was black, with a round face. He sat in a chair over by the window, watching me.

What made you think he wasn’t real?

The way he was dressed. He had on this cheerleader’s uniform: pink checked skirt, pink sweater with OMF across the chest, pink pom-poms, plus this wig—a yarn wig, like a pink mop head with pigtails.

That does sound a little strange. On the other hand, San Francisco…

Yeah, I thought of that too, but the other thing about this guy, nobody else seemed to be able to see him. The woman I shared the room with had end-stage brain cancer, so she was out of it, but there were nurses and doctors coming through all the time, and they never so much as glanced at him. I tried to draw attention to him without, you know, actually saying anything—if it turned out he wasn’t real, I didn’t want my morphine drip pulled—but no dice.

So finally I gave in, and tried talking to him: “What do you want?”

“What’s the magic phrase?” he said.

“What?”

“What’s the magic phrase?” He lowered his pom-poms and puffed his chest out.

“Omnes mundum facimus,” I said.

“That’s it…Now look under your pillow.”

It took some major maneuvering, but eventually I slipped my good arm under the pillow. My hand closed around a coin. The coin.

I was more relieved than I could say, but I was also pissed off: “Now you show up? Where the hell were you when that asshole was beating the shit out of me?”

“That was an oversight,” he said, frowning. “Not my department, you understand, but I am sorry—it was a busy day, and details got missed.” He brightened again, and laughed. “‘Get fucked, killer…’ I like that. That showed spirit. Not a lotta brains, but spirit.”

“So why now?”

“Well I know you got hit in the head, but you are aware of recent events, right? The organization I represent—that that coin represents—is holding a recruitment drive.”

“You want me to help fight terrorism?”

“No! There’s people all over the country lining up to do that.”

“Well what, then?”

“Well the thing about one big evil taking center stage, it tends to draw attention away from all the other evils. So now somebody’s got to swim against the tide, to make sure those other evils don’t flourish from neglect. You could be a part of that, if you’re interested.”

“But why now?” I persisted. “Those other evils, they were always there, so why didn’t you come for me sooner?”

“Omnes mundum facimus,” he said. “You looked up the translation for that, right? You know it doesn’t mean ‘Wait for further instructions’ or ‘Stand around with your thumb up your ass.’”

“No, but…”

“Let me lay another saying on you: ‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’ Now the implication is that the few are special—brave enough to answer the call, or worthy enough to be chosen. But there’s another way of looking at it. If many are called, and few are chosen, maybe that’s because most of the many have better things to do.” He shook a pom-pom at me accusingly. “You had a life. It was hoped you’d do something with it.”

“Great,” I said. “So you’re telling me you’re the booby prize?”

He laughed again. “I do like that spirit. I—we—can use that spirit. So the question becomes, are you willing to let it be used? Are you ready to be one of the few?”

“You know I am.”

“All right, then…Tomorrow night, between seven and seven-fifteen, you’re to go to the top floor of this building. Turn left out the elevator, and look for a door marked Examination One. If you come early, or show up late, it’ll be just an empty room. But if you come on time, you’ll meet a man named Robert True, who’ll tell you what the next step is.”

That was all he had to say to me, but still he sat there, watching me and smiling. “Go ahead,” he finally said. “Ask it.”

“OK. Why are you dressed like a cheerleader?”

“You know what a nondisclosure agreement is, Jane? This outfit serves the same purpose. What do you suppose would happen if you told the hospital staff about our conversation?”

“They’d cut off my drugs.”

“You got it,” he said, and winked. A few moments later a nurse came in and gave me a shot; I fell asleep, and when I woke up again, my visitor was gone. But the coin was still there, safe under my pillow.

The next evening, I made sure I was awake. At quarter to seven I hauled myself out of bed, and wheeled my IV stand to the elevator. I went up to the fourteenth floor and found Examination One, and at 7:01, I knocked.

“Come in,” a voice said.

Inside, the room was a lot like this one. Spare, I mean, with just a table and a couple of chairs. Robert True was standing when I came in. He was wearing a gray flannel suit that might have been stylish back when Ozzie and Harriet was a hit TV show; he was short, and heavy, and didn’t have much hair.

“Welcome, Jane,” he greeted me. “I’m Bob True.”

“Hi,” I said. “Omnes mundum facimus.”

“That’s all right. I don’t need the magic phrase. But as long as we’re on the subject, have you worked it out yet?”

I had, finally. “It’s a comeback,” I told him. “To that thing people say when they don’t want to be blamed for a bad situation: ‘I didn’t make the world, I only live in it.’”

“Very good.”

“So that’s what you’re about, your organization? Making the world a better place?”

“By fighting evil in all its forms,” True said, nodding.

“Are you the government?”

He seemed surprised by the question. “Does the government fight evil?”

I thought about it. For some reason, the first thing that came to mind wasn’t the FBI or the justice system, but my last trip to the DMV. “Well,” I said, “it can.”

“Lots of things can fight evil,” True replied. “Cinderblocks, for example—if a cinderblock had fallen in Josef Stalin’s crib, the twentieth century might have been a bit more pleasant. Even if one had, though, I doubt most people would say that the purpose of cinderblocks is to fight evil.”

“So you’re not the government. What are you, then? Vigilantes? You hunt bad guys, right?”

“The organization pursues its goal through diverse means, most of them constructive. We employ Good Samaritans, Random Acts of Kindness, Second and Third Chances…” He went on, ticking off more than a dozen of what I eventually understood were division names, actual organization departments that fought evil in positive, life-affirming ways. My eyes must have glazed over, because suddenly he stopped and said, “Am I boring you?”

“A little,” I admitted. “So which are you, a Good Samaritan or a Random Actor?”