The Last Words

From the journal of Dr. Montgomery Gates 12/21/2012

We don’t really encourage the patients to watch the news, but we don’t forbid it either. After all, the general feeling here is that we are helping them to adjust to living in the real world, not trying to protect them from it. As Jude was placing that last ring on the tower of Hanoi there was a commotion from the TV room and he felt the need to go and check it. I suppose it makes sense that he was not as excited as I about completing the tower so easily, after all, he doesn’t’ even remember working on it all these weeks.

The news was ominous, but not completely out of the ordinary. A professor at Oxford had gone on a shooting spree, killing several people with a double barreled shotgun before being taken out, and apparently, he didn’t go down easily. A shooting at Oxford, even in England itself, seemed so odd. I supposed the shotgun had been for pheasant hunting, having lived in England for a time in my youth I knew that there really weren’t many guns there.

For some reason this seemed to particularly upset Marcus, who then upset the other patients, pointing at the TV and making some inarticulate noise. Why Marcus, and why this? Marcus is, in my opinion, autistic, and shouldn’t even be here, but in a different institution altogether that is better suited to his needs, but alas, he isn’t my patient. The peculiar thing is Marcus has never even indicated that he really understands the news, or anything else on television before. He often repeats things he hears, but never in a way that indicates he actually understands what he is saying. Even his journal entries, done entirely on a computer, are just, as they say, copy pasta of things he sees online: news reports, tweets, Chuck Norris jokes, pictures of cats, etc. I have often wondered if it all meant something to him, if he was trying to communicate through this medium, but have never seen a pattern to his entries.

From the journal of Jude Guerrero 12/22/2012

Started today as I suppose I do every day; jumping out of bed, looking at my watch, seeing my tattoos, reading my damn journal. It seems like I get through the days OK. My memory can last a few hours, depending on what I’m trying to remember, so I can still know I know someone, even if I can’t always remember their name, and I know I’m in a hospital, even if I don’t always remember it’s in New York.

But, the mornings are hard, because after sleeping 7 or 8 hours, I don’t remember anything, at all. Not where I am. Not what has happened. I see those damn tatts, and I read the journal and I feel the scar on my head and I cry because my platoon is dead then I pull myself together and get on with the day, because I’m a soldier and that’s what I do.

And I get to know the locals, something I’ve always been good at. My skin color and language abilities made it easy for me to blend in over in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was always my specialty, so it’s what I continue trying to do; talk to people, chat them up. Some of them are barely coherent, some seem perfectly normal and fine, and most just don’t want to talk. Cassie loves talking, talking about how the internet and TV and radio have subliminal messages and are trying to get inside all of our heads and control us and drive us insane. Marcus talks about movies, actually, he talks in movies, repeating them word for word. Eric bitches about all the things he hates, which is all the things. But I always end up talking to Tim, or Tim Tom as everyone here calls him and he calls himself.

Big guy, huge, used to be in construction until an accident put a rod through his head. That’s why he’s here, because of the rod. It damaged his — what did the Doctor say? – Broca’s area, and now he can speak and write just fine but can’t understand any written or spoken language. Crazy, what the brain can do. But boy can he talk. I end up just listening to him talk about damn near everything and I have to admit, it calms me. It’s damn hilarious, but also oddly soothing, the way he just never shuts up.

Today I was just listening to him talk about welding some statue of a dragon when everyone seemed to get really upset over something on the news and I had to go see. Have to admit, it was odd. There was a shooting at Cambridge, which is sad, but I didn’t think much of it until someone told me about the shooting at Oxford the day before and I checked my journal and sure enough, a shooting at Oxford. But then they started talking about the shooting at Oxford earlier today. Today, but my journal said yesterday. I asked the Doctor, and he confirmed, yes, there was a shooting yesterday and another one today, and now this shooting at Cambridge. He was silent, he didn’t fall silent that often, and he left the room.

From the journal of Timothy Lorne 12/22/2012

I was talking to Joe today about my art when everyone started raising a rumpus in the boob tube room. I saw what looked like a really nice university, really old looking, and they were wheeling people out of a building on gurneys. But of course I had no idea what was going on so I asked Joe and he pointed at the TV and made a gesture like a gun shooting. So, another shooting, that was sad, and probably at some nice college. That’s why I like Joe, not just because he listens but because he uses his body to communicate a lot. He even uses these military gestures that I’ve picked up. I guess he used them a lot as a soldier when they had to be quiet or he was trying to talk to someone in a different language. I knew he had been in Iraq, he had pointed to it on a map for me once and I had assumed he had just gone there cause he don’t really look Arab, he looks Mexican to me, or maybe Puerto Rican, or maybe Argentinian, hell, I don’t know. But I could understand him better than all the others because he gestures so much.

So, then later I was talking to him about this girl I’d know once or twice or thrice, a really pretty girl, way too pretty for a big hairy lug like me, and then everyone gets all upset again and we are all watching the news and I see Harvard. Now I know Harvard, I’m a Boston boy. Not that I went there or anything, nope, I’m just a blue collar guy who worked construction. But also, I’m an artist, or at least I was, back before the accident. Made things out of metal that just came straight out of my brain — dragons and centaurs and Pegasus, stuff like that.

And there’s swat teams there and everything and I ask Joe again what’s going on and he makes the gun gesture again and then shrugged his wtf shrug and holds up his hands saying five and now I see what the big deal is. Does he mean five people dead? Or five shootings? Either way I know there was at least two shootings today at nice schools and that is a big deal — really weird stuff.

From the journal of Cassandra Morgan 12/22/2012

So Jude decides to tell me what’s been on the news, even though I told him I don’t care and it’s all lies anyway just to get us to watch so they can beam the messages, the damn messages, into our head. But, he decides to go ahead despite my protest. So, five different shootings in two days; two at Oxford, one at Cambridge, one at Harvard, and now one just now somewhere in Norway. Crazy stuff, but it is a crazy world out there, beyond these walls, much crazier than it is in here. The people in here, at least they aren’t liars, they may not always tell you the truth, but they at least think they are telling you the truth. Even Dr. Gates, even he tells the truth. But five shootings, that is some crazy stuff, and at nice prestigious universities, where they teach people to lie, and they put messages in their heads.

So I think it’s here, what I’ve always known was coming. What exactly “it” is I don’t know for sure, but I’ve always known it would be through the internet, the TV, the radio, the cell phones, that’s how they would do it, that’s how they would get to you. And I’ve told people this over and over, and what did they do? They put me in here. Guess I shouldn’t complain though, at least I have food and a bed, more than I had before when I was living on the streets, stealing to live ’cause I don’t beg. But, now it’s here, and I’ll have to fight it, even more than I always have. I’ve got some ear plugs I keep in my room in case the TV gets too loud and just to make sure I’ve wrapped some ripped sheets around my head to cover my ears more. I’ll fight it, I’ll fight those fucking bastards.

From the journal of Jude Guerrero 12/22/2012

It’s been an odd day, I suppose probably odder than most, but hey, I can’t really remember so I’m just going by what I wrote in my journal. Six shootings now; in England, Norway, Boston and now in Japan. Though Japan wasn’t a shooting, some guy just went crazy with a knife on the subway, started stabbing people. The only reason the news connected it with the others is that he was a professor too, just like all the other mass murderers.

I get the feeling that something is going on, something’s not right, but it’s kind of hard for me to trust my feelings when I don’t have a memory to really build on. Maybe mass shootings are becoming more common and I just don’t remember them? But no, I don’t think so, just scanning my journal I don’t see anything else about them so I decide to ask Dr. Gates.

“No, this is really, really strange, quite ominous in fact, I’m not going to lie to you Jude.” He was solemn. Was this the way he always was? “This is scary stuff and I’m debating for the first time on whether it’s really a good idea for all the patients to be seeing this on the news.”

“So you’re going to turn it off?” I asked.

“No, but I should. I don’t know. It has really upset them and I’m not sure that is what they really need, not all of them at least.”

“Maybe Doc, and it may not be my place, but they are adults.”

“I know, and I had never considered censoring what they watched before. But, I will say, Jude, I know you and Cassie are friends.”

“Which one is she?”

“The blond, and I think you are playing with me Jude. I now you are friends, but I’m not sure you should be telling her about what is going on. I’m afraid it will just reinforce here delusions regarding media and mind control.”

“I’ll think about it Doc, of course, you know, I’m going to forget you told me this.”

“I know, but I also know that you will write it in your journal, as you write every…”

And that’s when it hit home. People were screaming, I mean really screaming, at the TV and we ran in there.

Cornell, a student this time. No guns, but he had driven his car into a crowd of people on campus. Right here in New York. It was here.