Elizabeth Hand: 12 Monkeys

Cole stared blankly as the door clanged shut. With a muted roar, the van pulled into the city street.

When the van finally stopped, someone came and removed the manacles. Someone else dragged him, less roughly this time, into another grim building. There were more gray corridors, another white-tiled room. Two attendants stripped him, tossing the straightjacket into a metal bin, then arranged him beneath an institutional shower. Cole stood there obediently, grimacing as the hot water raced across his bruised face and chest. One of the orderlies turned off the water. The other, a broad-shouldered man whose ID tag read BILLINGS, handed Cole a towel.

“C’mere,” he said, his fingers digging into Cole’s scalp. “Lemme see your head, Jimbo, see if you got any creepy-crawlies.”

Cole stared dumbly at the towel, then looked up at Billings. “I need to make a telephone call.”

“Gotta work that out with a doctor, Jimbo.” The orderly’s hands kneaded Cole’s forehead. “Can’t make no calls till the doctor says.”

Cole’s eyes flashed. “It’s very important.”

Billings drew back, but his hands remained on Cole’s scalp. “Whatcha gotta do, Jimbo, is take it easy, relax into things.” His fingers tightened until Cole’s eyes burned with tears. “We all gonna get along fine, if you just relax.”

Cole gasped with pain. Billings watched him, then finally withdrew his hands. “That’s better,” he said, smiling. “Now let’s get you some clothes, Jimbo, introduce you to your new pals.”

He stood while they dressed him in brown polyester trousers and a cheap Orlon shirt. “Nice.” Billings grinned, tugging at Cole’s sleeve. “Now let’s go on down to the clubhouse, okay, Jimbo?”

He shuffled through a long, cheerless hallway, passing people dressed like himself in ill-fitting clothes, their expressions slack and incurious. At the end of the corridor a door yawned open onto a bright dayroom.

“Here you go, Jimbo,” Billings said, ushering Cole inside.

Light poured through grilled windows onto the linoleum floor. A dozen men and women in basic Kmart castoffs and ratty bathrobes milled about, staring blankly out the windows or watching the raucous cartoons blaring from a wall-mounted television. In a corner a woman desultorily pushed puzzle pieces around on a table. But Cole saw only the light — brilliant sunlight streaming through the windows like golden syrup.

“Hey, Goines!” Billings beckoned to a young man in a plaid shirt pacing in front of a window. “Yo, Jeffrey, come here—”

The man named Jeffrey Goines bounded across the room. Billings clapped a hand on Cole’s shoulder and said, “Goines, this here is James. Whyncha show him around? Tell him the TV rules, show him the games and stuff, okay?”

Goines rocked back and forth on his heels. “How much you gonna pay me, huh? I’d be doing your job.”

Billings grinned. “Five thousand dollars, my man. That enough? I’ll wire it to your account as usual, okay?”

Goines but his lip thoughtfully. “Okay, Billings. Five thousand. That’s enough. Five thousand dollars. I’ll give him the Deluxe Mental Hospital Tour.”

Billings walked away, chuckling. Jeffrey turned to Cole and said conspiratorially, “Kid around, kid around. It makes them feel good, we’re all pals. We’re prisoners, they’re the guards, but it’s all in good fun, you see?”

Cole stared at this odd young man, nonplussed. Goines was young, dark-haired and blue-eyed, and as restive as a golden retriever. Compared with all those slack-jawed, empty-eyed patients staring vacantly at the TV, he looked like a preppy young intern, except for a certain furtiveness about his deepset eyes.

“C’mon,” Jeffrey said. Cole nodded and followed him to the tables set beside the windows. “Here’s the games,” Jeffrey announced disdainfully, flicking at the edge of a Monopoly set. “Games vegetize you. If you play the games, you’re voluntarily taking a tranquilizer.”

Cole said nothing, turning his head to stare down at a partially completed jigsaw puzzle showing a lion, sheep, birds, and bored-looking wolves all huddled together beneath some trees. A woman orderly patiently helped a man with trembling hands put two pieces together. THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM, the puzzle box read.

“I guess they gave you some ‘chemical restraints,’ huh?” Jeffrey asked, darting a glance at him. “What’d they give you? Thorazine? Haldol?” Cole stared at him blankly. “No? How about Meprobamate? How much? Learn your drugs, know your doses.”

“I need to make a telephone call.”

Jeffrey gave a barking laugh. “A telephone call? That’s communication with the outside world! Doctor’s discretion. Hey, if all these nuts could just make phone calls, it could spread! Insanity oozing through telephone cables, oozing into the ears of all those poor sane people, infecting them! Wackos everywhere! A plague of madness.”

Abruptly, Jeffrey lowered his voice. “In fact, very few of us here are actually mentally ill,” he whispered slyly, leaning in close to Cole’s face. “I mean, I’m not saying you’re not mentally ill — for all I know you’re as crazy as a loon. But that’s not why you’re here. Why you’re here is because of the system.” He gestured at the television. “There’s the TV. It’s all right there. Commercials. We are not productive anymore; it’s all automated. What are we in for, then?”

Jeffrey Goines drew back, gazing at Cole expectantly. When Cole said nothing, he stabbed a finger in the air.

“We’re consumers!” Jeffrey cried triumphantly. “Okay, buy a lot of stuff, you’re a good citizen. But if you don’t buy a lot of stuff, you now what? You’re mentally ill! That’s a fact! If you don’t buy things — toilet paper, new cars, computerized blenders, electrically operated sexual devices—”

His voice grew more shrill, almost hysterical. “— SCREWDRIVERS WITH MINIATURE BUILT-IN RADAR DEVICES, STEREO SYSTEMS WITH BRAIN-IMPLANTED HEADPHONES, VOICE-ACTIVATED COMPUTERS!”

“Jeffrey.” The orderly at the puzzle table looked up and shook her head. “Take it easy, Jeffrey. Be calm.”

Jeffrey’s mouth snapped shut. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, then continued in an utterly tranquil voice.

“So if you want to watch a particular program,” he said, oblivious to the fact that Cole was staring, mesmerized, at the television, “say, All My Children or something, you go to the charge nurse and tell her what day and time the show you want to see is on. But you have to tell her before the show is scheduled to be on. There was this one guy who was always requesting shows that had ALREADY PLAYED!”

Cole jumped, startled, as Jeffrey began picking up speed again.

“He couldn’t quite GRASP THE IDEA THAT THE CHARGE NURSE COULDN’T JUST MAKE IT BE YESTERDAY — TURN BACK TIME! HE WAS NUTS! A FRUITCAKE—”

“Okay, that’s it, Jeffrey,” the orderly said, exasperated. “You’re gonna get a shot. I warned you—”

Miraculously, Jeffrey calmed himself, smiling benignly at the woman and nodding. “Right! Right!” He laughed merrily. “I got ‘carried away’! Explaining the workings of… the institution.”

Cole stared at him, amazed at Goines’ transformation. Just then someone tapped him on the shoulder. Cole turned to see a somber-looking black man impeccably dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and elegantly subdued tie.

“I don’t really come from outer space,” the man said by way of introduction.

Jeffrey gave Cole a sly glance. “This is L.J. Washington, Jim. He doesn’t really come from outer space.”

L.J. Washington shot Goines a wounded look. “Don’t mock me, my friend,” he said, then went on to Cole. “It’s a condition called ‘mental divergence.’ I find myself on the planet Ogo, part of an intellectual elite, preparing to subjugate barbarian hordes on Pluto. But even though it’s a totally convincing reality in every way — I can feel, breathe, hear — nevertheless, Ogo is actually a construct of my psyche. I am mentally divergent in that I am escaping certain unnamed realities that plague my life here. When I stop going there, I will be well.”