Zero History

56. ALWAYS IS GENIUS
Milgrim, on his side in the sleeping bag, on the medicinal-looking white foam, was
caught in some frustrating loop of semi-sleep, slow and circular, in which exhaustion
swung him slowly out, toward where sleep should surely have been, then overshot the
mark somehow, bumping him over into a state of random anxiety that couldn’t quite
qualify as wakefulness, then back out again, convinced of sleep’s promise …
This was, his therapist had told him, on hearing it described, an aftereffect of stress—
excessive fear, excessive excitement—and he was there. That it was the sort of thing that a
normal person could escape with the application of a single tablet of Ativan added a
certain irony. But Milgrim’s recovery, he’d been taught, was dependent on strict
abstinence from the substance of choice. Which was not the substance of choice, his
therapist maintained, but the substance of need. And Milgrim knew that he’d never been
content with a single tablet of anything. It was the very first single tablet, he told himself,
rehearsing these teachings like a rosary, as he swung back out toward the false promise of
sleep, that he was required not to ingest. The others were no problem, because, if he
successfully avoided the first, there were no others. Except for that first one, which, in
potential at least, was always there. Bump. He hit the random anxiety, saw those few
sparks thrown off Foley’s car’s fenders as Aldous drove it back, through that narrow
space.
He tried to recall what he knew about cars, to explain those sparks. They were mostly
plastic now, cars, with bits of metal inside. The surface of the body had been ground
down, he supposed, to a little metal, producing sparks, and then perhaps the metal had
been abraded away … I know that, stupid, his mind told him.
He thought he heard something. Then knew he did. His eyes sprang open in the small
cave of the MontBell, the office faintly illuminated by the dance of abstract shapes on the
screen of the Air.
“Shombo, always,” he heard Voytek say loudly, the accent unmistakable, growing
closer, resentful, “is genius. Shombo is genius coder. Shombo, I will tell you: Shombo
codes like old people fuck.”
“Milgrim,” Fiona called, “hullo, where are you?”