Why You Were Taken

DON’T ASK DON’T TELL ₃

Johannesburg, 2021

Seth sits in the lab. It’s late, but he feels as if he is on the point of a breakthrough in the project he’s grinding. It’s his second last day at the smart drugs company and he wants to leave with a bang. It would be good for his (already enhanced) ego. He adds another molecule to the compound he is configuring on the screen of his Tile, subtracts one, then adds another. It’s almost ready.

Seth is the best chemgineer at Pharmax and he knows it. No one can map out new pharmaceuticals like him. To add to his professional allure – and to his considerable salary – he is known to be mercurial. No one company can pin him down for more than a year, despite offers of fast-tracking and bonuses. Some colleagues blame his exceptional intelligence, saying he bores easily, others, his drug problem. While both hold some truth, there’s a much more pressing reason Seth moves around as often as he does, which he keeps well hidden.

In the short ten months he had been at the pharmaceutical company he had already composed two first-class psychoactive drugs, and was now on the brink of a third. His biggest hit to date had been named TranX by the resident marketing team. It’s a tranquiliser, but modelled in such a way that while it relieves anxiety, it doesn’t make you feel detached or drowsy. After the tranquiliser hits your bloodstream, making you feel warm and mellow, it’s followed by a sweet and clean kick.

It’s all in the delivery system, he told his beady-eyed supervisor and the nodding interns as he showed them the plan. All about levels, layers, the way they interact with each other and the chemicals in the brain. The molecular expression was beautiful, they all agreed.

The drug before that was a painkiller. It didn’t just take your physiological pain away, it took all your pain away: abusive childhood, bad marriage, low self-esteem, you name it. It was one of his favourites, but then he always had a soft spot for analgesics. Based on the ever-delicious tramadol, Seth had used the evergreen African Pincushion tree for its naturally occurring tramadol-like chemspider, allowing for a rounder, softer, full-body relief, without the miosis or cotton-mouth.

Genius, if he didn’t say so himself. The formula wasn’t perfect though: too much of it was taxing on the liver. And he wasn’t sure what the long-term effects on the brain would be, but that was for the Food & Safety kids to figure out.

He knows he can babble about synapses and neurotransmitters all he likes, but the main reason he’s so good at this job, apart from the fact that he is an excellent mathematician, is because he tries all the prototypes on himself. Seth knows the company knows this, but they have a don’t-ask-don’t-tell arrangement, which suits them both well.

He moves to an appliance on the counter, clicks ‘print,’ and after a rattling he takes out a tray of pills. Shakes them down a plastic funnel and into an empty bottle, catching the last one before it disappears and popping it into his mouth. The bottle makes its way into his inside pocket after he scribbles on it with a pen. These particular pills are green; they look innocuous enough, like chlorophyll supplements, or Spirulina. His latest project involves experimenting with salvia, or Diviner’s Sage, as the hippies used to call it. Mexican Mint.

On his way out, his tickertape blinks with a news update. A minister has been fired for having a secret swimming pool. The NANC is contrite and apologetic; they don’t know how this could have happened. They have hard lines for mouths and use words like ‘shocking,’ ‘unacceptable,’ ‘unconscionable,’ and say they will certainly press charges. The journalist reporting the story looks familiar: a young, uncommonly attractive woman in cornrows and a tank top; leather bottoms. Biker? A white lace tattoo covers her shoulder; she has kohl eyes and an attitude. Just his type.

He thinks of the swimming pool and remembers a sunblock-slathered childhood of running in the sprinklers, drinking from the hose, water fights with pistols and super-soakers. Having long showers and deep bubble baths. Flushing the toilet with drinking water. Chlorine-scented nostalgia: kidney-shaped pools, dive-bombing, playing Marco Polo. The feeling of lying on the hot brick paving to warm up goose-pimpled skin. Then one day they weren’t allowed to water the garden, then domestic pools were banned, then all pools were illegal, then, then, then. It had been so long, he’d do anything for a swim. For a tumble-turn in drinking water. How decadent that all seems to him now.

He shrugs off his lab-coat, replaces his eyebrow ring and snaps on a silver-spiked leather wrist cuff. He puts his black hoodie on, squeezes the gun in his pocket. Applies some Smudge to his eyes, ruffles his hair into bed-head and checks his appearance in the glass door on the way out. His mood starts climbing; he can feel the beginning of the slow-release high.

The Algaetrees detect his movement and flicker on. The back street smells like tar and trash. A rat scurries out in front of him, but he doesn’t flinch. He takes it as a good sign. He expects the drug to peak in 2 hours, maybe 3. Optimism in a bottle. He clicks his earbutton and all of a sudden his life has a soundtrack. He’s ready for a bright night.