Dean Koontz - 77 Shadow Street

He returned to his apartment and poured a fresh glass of his homemade cola.

Oak View Sanatorium proved to be delightful.

The meals were tasty, and everything was pre-cut into bite-size pieces, which saved time at dinner. A spoon worked well in place of a fork because all the dishes had sides against which Mickey could scoop the food.

He could not have hoped for a more cozy room. His armchair was wonderfully comfortable, his bed a dream. They changed the linens every day, just like in a fine hotel.

His private bath featured a polished-steel panel instead of a mirror because mirrors could be broken, the pieces used as weapons. The door to the shower stall was safety glass, which if shattered would dissolve into a gummy mass of tiny fragments useless to either an amateur or a professional killer.

Care had been taken throughout his room and bath to be sure that all nails and screws in the walls, the floors, and the furniture had been countersunk and capped with glued-in plugs to make them inaccessible.

Anyway, Mickey had no intention of harming anyone. Even if he had not been on antipsychotic drugs, he would have behaved himself. He had been happy and content since he had acknowledged his insanity. All the tension had gone out of him, all the worry.

The court had barred him from using the money he earned as a hired killer. Likewise, he could not benefit from the portion of his mother’s estate that had been left to dead Jerry, his brother. But Renata had left only 15 percent to Jerry, 85 percent to Mickey, and she had been richer than anyone imagined.

Charlie Criswell, Renata’s attorney and Mickey’s court-appointed conservator, visited once a month to make sure his ward was receiving good care. Mickey liked Charlie. Charlie was diligent and kind; he was also gay; he had never felt romantically attracted to Renata.

One warm day in the early spring, another man visited Mickey Dime while he was sitting on the veranda and watching squirrels caper across the lawn, in the shadows of the enormous oaks. At all times, Mickey wore a transponder on one ankle, so that he could be tracked by satellite if he escaped. When sitting on the porch, he also wore a vest of Kevlar straps securing him to the back of his wheelchair. The wheels of the chair were locked. Only staff members had keys to unlock them. All of these precautions made Mickey feel not like a prisoner but instead safe, safe from himself. The burly male nurse, supervising the veranda from a stool near the front steps, provided a chair for the visitor, placing it close to Mickey but out of arm’s reach.

The visitor was tall, lanky, with sharply arched eyebrows as bushy as caterpillars predicting a bitter winter. His hands were pale, his fingers unnaturally long. He said he was Dr. Von Norquist, and Mickey had no reason to doubt him.

A month earlier, Mickey had sent a note to Norquist, by way of Charlie Criswell: Your vision of a transhuman civilization with a greatly reduced and sustainable population will be realized beyond your wildest dreams. You will change the world more than any man in history. I have seen it, as did Kirby Ignis .

Norquist said, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“Yes, you do,” Mickey said.

The scientist’s eyes were the color of ripe plums, but there wasn’t anything sweet about his intense stare. “You killed Kirby.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Mickey shrugged. “I’m insane.”

“You killed those elderly sisters, a security guard, that helpless blind man.…”

“That’s correct.”

“And dropped their bodies down a lava pipe, for God’s sake.”

“I guess I did. I’m not as clear about that. It’s what I intended to do, so I guess I did it.”

“Why?”

“Insane,” Mickey said, and smiled affably.

The scientist stared at him for a long time. Finally he said, “You don’t seem insane to me.”

“Well, I am. Totally. I’m okay with it.”

After another silence, Norquist said, “How did you know I’m concerned about the need for ‘a greatly reduced and sustainable population’? I’ve never shared those thoughts so explicitly with anyone, not even with Kirby.”

In a low voice that sometimes sounded like that of Kirby Ignis and sometimes like that of Witness, at other times like other people he didn’t know but that Norquist apparently did, Mickey began by recounting the waking dream that he’d experienced in Kirby Ignis’s kitchen. The Pogrom. The destruction of the cities. The swift rise of the One. The resultant, profoundly simple ecology of that world of craggy black trees, luminous grass, and a single consciousness. His words were not his own. He repeated the more eloquent narrative of the One.

Riveted by these revelations, and reacting visibly to each new voice, Norquist leaned forward in his chair, seeming loath to miss a word. When Mickey paused, the scientist said, “How do you do that—such perfect mimicry?”

“The One contains the memories of billions of people and can speak as they spoke. I guess it conveyed that ability to me. Or I’m just insane. But for what it’s worth, I have a further message for you.”

“What message?”

It was a long one, but Mickey delivered it without hesitation, without a mispronunciation, concluding with these words: “ ‘I am plant, animal, machine. I am posthuman and the condition of humanity is not my condition. I am free.’ ”

Exhausted, Mickey slumped back in his wheelchair. Listening to himself, he had been amazed at just how insane he had become. It was kind of spooky.

For a while, he and Norquist watched the squirrels on the lawn.

Spangles of sunshine twinkled through the branches of the oaks.

From his distant station near the porch steps, the male nurse frowned at them, perhaps puzzled about what a reputable man like Dr. Norquist would have to discuss at such length with a crazy person.

Mickey wondered what was on the menu for dinner. He was hungry enough to need two spoons.

Then he remembered an additional message he needed to convey. “One more thing. There’s a man named Fielding Udell who lives in the Pendleton. If you pay him a visit and ask him to help finance your research, he will be compelled to invest nearly three hundred million in the institute.”

“How do you know this?”

Mickey’s little smile was reproving.

“Right,” said Norquist. “You’re insane.”

During the next silence, Mickey realized that Dr. Norquist was not watching the squirrels. He was staring at an SUV parked along the shoulder of the county road, far out at the entrance of the Oak View driveway.

“I parked on another road a mile west of here,” Dr. Norquist said, “and walked overland, approached this place from the back.”

That statement resonated with Mickey, reminding him of the days when he had carefully planned his murders.

Norquist said, “Lately I’ve had the feeling I’m being watched.”

“Maybe you’re paranoid. You should get diagnosed.”

“Whoever it is, he’s damn careful. I never get a glimpse … but I feel him out there.”

“That SUV?” Mickey asked.

“Maybe. It’s never the same vehicle.”

“Who do you think he is?”

“I thought maybe you’d have an idea.”

“Well, it’s not my mother.”

“I never imagined it was.”

“She’s dead,” Mickey said. “But even after she died, I sometimes had the feeling she was watching me.”

“From where?” Norquist asked scornfully. “From Heaven?”

“From somewhere,” Mickey said.

Far out on the shoulder of the highway, a man got out of the SUV. He was hardly more than a shadow, too far away to be identified.