“They killed all those Jews and Polacks and Gypsies and shit.”
“Sure, but then they lost the war. The winners, the Allies, became the dominant social group, and in their view, the Nazis were evil. This isn’t new. Rome was corrupt, but because there is more well-documented Roman history, the historians who wrote the history books talk about the ‘sack of Rome’ as if it was an evil act by barbarians. You get where I’m coming from?”
“Sure,” said King. “But so what?”
“So,” said Prospero after a very long toke and an even longer withhold, “so why should we — the two of us — have to accept being the school’s bad boys? Why do we have to accept being the black sheep of our families? Why do we have to feel guilty whenever we get caught doing things?” He paused, watching the smoke swirl and tangle like the tentacles of some amorphous sea creature. “And why do we have to feel that we’re sick, or mentally imbalanced, or socially fractured just because the school therapists tell us we are?”
“Well, dude,” said King with a laugh, “let’s face it — we’re not normal. They busted me for setting cats on fire. I had to pretend I was sorry, but you know I’m not. And they don’t get it that I like cats. I really do. I wouldn’t burn them if I didn’t. It felt so right. Hell, it was right. They’re just too stupid to get it.”
Prospero turned to him, his face lit by the glowing coal of the joint. “That is exactly my point. It is right for you. It isn’t evil for you. It’s not even wrong for you. You understand what happens when something that’s alive burns. You can see into that fire and you know.”
Leviticus King sat up and looked at him. He wasn’t smiling anymore, and even the glaze in his eyes seemed to harden. “Yes.”
“When I tell you about the things I see in my dreams, you don’t make fun of me.”
“Nope.”
“Why not?” asked Prospero.
“Because that’s your stuff. It’s in your head. It belongs to you.”
Prospero nodded. He wanted to hug King, but this wasn’t that kind of moment. “You know what those things in my dreams tell me, right? You know what they want me to do. What I must do… right?”
“Yeah, man, I know.”
“If I did them… would you think I was wrong?”
King took a moment with that. Then, very carefully, said, “Not if you did it because it was right. For you, I mean.” Then he stopped, paused as if listening to a thought, and he smiled, too. “Oh. That’s what you mean by all this good and evil shit. If you believe it, then it’s not evil. Even if someone else thinks it is.”
Prospero gripped his friend’s arm with both hands. “Yes!”
“Wait, wait,” said King quickly, “there’s something else, isn’t there? If you believe this stuff—”
“And I do,” swore Prospero. “You know that I do. I have to.”
“—then what your old man did… that was evil. He took the God Machine away from you. He — what’s the word? Sinned? He sinned against your beliefs. And he made it worse by taking something from your, um, church, and selling it to the fucking Department of Defense. Shit. And he keeps you in here so you keep working on new stuff, and he knows that you have to because it’s part of what you believe. That you have to keep working on the God Machine project.”
“Yes,” said Prospero.
“So he’s exploiting you and pretty much pissing on your religion and waving his dick at your god. And he’s doing it to make money. From your perspective that makes him evil as shit.”
“Yes.”
“And we both know he’s leaning on Stark to make you keep working in the lab. He’s turned you into a slave. That’s some evil shit right there.”
“Yes,” said Prospero again.
King nodded. “Same goes for my dad when he beat the shit out of me after I torched my middle school. I was doing something important and he didn’t see it. Or couldn’t see it. Or whatever. He hurt me because he doesn’t share the same perspective. He sinned against me.”
“Yes.”
“So, what we’re saying here,” continued King, working through it slowly but definitely getting there, “is that they are sinners and by our personal standards they’re evil.”
“Yes,” said Prospero once more. “And history shows that anyone has the right to create a new moral, societal, or religious code as long as they have the power to enforce it.”
“Which we don’t have,” sighed King.
Prospero laughed. “That’s because we’ve been in here rotting. It’s because even we’ve half believed that we’re the freaks and they’re the righteous ones.”
“I’m not sure I ever really believed that.”
“Sure you did. So did I,” said Prospero. “If we truly believed all along that we had been sinned against and that whatever gods we each pray to empowered and sanctified us, and demanded of us that we assert our rights… then nothing would have stopped us from breaking out of here.”
“Dude,” said King, “this place is a military academy. They have armed guards. Soldiers. There’s no way we’d ever get out of here without killing someone.”
He laughed as he said it. But the laughter faded when Prospero did not join in. After almost a full minute, Prospero Bell said, “And that is the next thing we have to talk about.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I slept and the nightmares came back.
This time I was there in my hospital bed, feeling sick and strange, staring at the darkness on the other side of the room’s single window. There were orange sodium vapor lights in the parking lot and they painted the undersides of a row of palm trees in Halloween colors. The palm fronds looked like the talons at the end of black arms.
It was an odd dream because it felt exactly like being awake, and I couldn’t figure any way to tell if I actually was awake or if this was truly a dream. Ever since I’d been hit by the blast of air from that machine there seemed to be no way to pin certainty about anything to the wall.
When my door opened and Rudy Sanchez stepped into the room, I felt immediately relieved and reassured. If anyone could help me through this and guide me back to solid ground, it was Rudy. Stable, reliable, practical, wise Rudy.
He came over to the side of my bed and smiled down at me. He wore a summer-weight suit and a Jerry Garcia tie I’d bought him for his last birthday. He leaned on his walking stick, the silver wolf head newly polished and gleaming.
“Joe,” he said.
“Hey, Rude. I had a weird night,” I said. “I keep thinking I’m dreaming. It’s freaking me out.”
Rudy raised his cane and laid the heavy silver head over one shoulder as he studied me. “Do you think you’re dreaming now?”
“I… I thought I was. I mean, until you came in.”
“But now you believe you’re awake?”
“God, I hope so.” I laughed. “I can’t tell which way’s up.”
He nodded. “That makes sense. It takes at least minimal intelligence to understand what’s happening.”
I grinned. Rudy seldom makes jokes at my expense, but he got in a good one every once in a while.
“I am awake, though,” I asked him. “Right?”
He canted his head to one side, appraising me. “Do you know why things went wrong down at Gateway?”
“I—”
“It’s because the Deacon sent the wrong man down there,” said Rudy. “He should have sent the best, but instead he sent you.”