Chapter 1, Part 2, Episode 6

“I’m with Manny,” Romeesha said quietly. Scepter and Miss Gwen turned to look at her, curious. Heretofore, she had stayed somewhat on the sidelines. While Miss Gwen and Scepter debated ethics and extreme medicine, all she could do was look at Kit. Conversations like this were never really her strong point. It’s why she liked the yes/no world of computers. “Maybe” always led to problems. All she could think about was what constituted “life.” She knew of people living for years, hooked up to tubes and respirators. Back in Compton, a few of her friends OD’ed and ended up in comas. What they were then they came back…Romeesha honestly wondered if just dying wasn’t a better option.

Kit—Pitch Black—and ROM weren’t exactly arm-in-arm. It’s not that they didn’t like each other; they were just on two very different roads, from two very different origins. She could “upload” her mind into a computer, know everything it was doing. He could scramble bioelectrical impulses with a touch—and he lucked out when compared to Paine: Pitch Black could turn his power and on off. She was born in Compton, and was raised by her grandmother because her own mother was a gang-bitch and crack-whore. He was born in Nashville, and raised in a picture-perfect family. She went into computers, learned the ins and outs, sought out knowledge. He was a good ol’ boy high school sports star until an injury killed his football dreams and turned him to professional bodybuilding—which he rocked, by the way. Enough to actually do it full-time. Romeesha admittedly wondered how in the world he could do it with any measure of long-term security, but unlike her, or just about anybody, Kit lived in a “perpetual present.” The past couldn’t be fixed, the future couldn’t be known, so he just went with it, cowabunga-style. One day he was surfing, the next, taking Italian lessons. He even learned to juggle. Definitely a poster-boy for Peter Pan Syndrome, but then, Romeesha the Neon Minnie Mouse wasn’t on firm ground to judge.

Still, he always seemed to treat her like a little sister when she was around. It was just how he did things.

Miss Gwen turned around very slowly and focused a dagger stare on ROM through narrowed eyes, betrayed. The other woman wanted to shrivel up. And then, turning back to Manny, Miss Gwen Did It. “You have never been the same since you killed that girl.”

Were it not for the goddam beeping of the heart monitor, the room could have been a tomb.

Chapter 1, Part 2, Episode 5

“Unless we can figure out the cause," Aikins said. She suddenly did not seem quiet so bitchy, just very, very tired. "And even then, no guarantees. The longer he’s like this, less likely it is he’ll come out of it, and the less likely that he’ll be the man he was before he succumbed. The man is tank. Does he do steroids? Something black market?”

“No clue,” Guinevere lied through her teeth. A pro-bodybuilder. On steroids? Oh, how could such a thing ever be?

Manny held up his hands. “Don’t look at me. Unless it has Braille, I have no idea what it is. And besides, it’s not like I go through people’s medicine cabinet.”

“Well, that’s pretty much what we’ll have to do,” Dr. Aikins replied. “Because if we can’t figure out how he got this way, the only thing we can do is make him comfortable. His parents will have to decide what to do with him.” And with that, she left.

“Bitch,” Romeesha muttered.

Scepter rounded on the other two. “There. That second opinion change your mind?” It was always unnerving. He was blind, he could not see. But because he was a psychic, he knew exactly where everybody was.

Miss Gwen crossed her arms. “Are we at the ‘kill him’ thing again?”

“He’s already dead! He just doesn’t know it yet,” Scepter replied. “That ‘complete lack of chemical activity in the brain’ is the physical side-effect of Vagabond’s attack. His mind is in a permanent state of paralysis. Or a seizure. Whatever you want to call it, he’s in it, and he’s not coming out of it.”

“So hey! Let’s just hurry the process along!” Miss Gwen snapped back. “You talk as if resuscitation is guaranteed! 99% of the time, death is a one-way trip. You’re really placing bets on that magical 1%?” Miss Gwen then changed tactics. Holding her hands prayer-like to her mouth, she spoken levelly, with deliberation. “Manny, it’s just plain disturbing that you want to kill our friend. Didn’t you and he…?”

“Ahem. Yes. We did. And still do,” Manny replied coolly.

“Which makes it that much worse. In fact, you seem almost enthused about the whole thing. That you are a shrink makes it unthinkable. It’s wrong, you know it, and there has got to be some other way. Manny, you are talking about killing a man. Killing. Kit.”

That was an utterly fair assessment. “There is no other way,” he whispered through his teeth, grappling with his own ethics. God, if there were.

“Bullshit. You had an outlandish idea and are so desperate for a straw to grab at that you ran with it.”

            Manny’s Buddha demeanor wore thin. “So, what would you do? Can you build a machine to undo psychic damage? Good luck. Can you build a machine to help him live? We have those already; we can put a tube into every orifice and keep him going for years. And that’s exactly what will happen, by the way. He’ll eat through a tube, piss through a tube. He’s loose that magnificent body of his. He’ll be rotated for bed sores and grow old and waste away and then more tubes will go into him. He may in fact, actually die but no one will know because the machines are doing all the work!” Manny then rounded on the unusually quiet ROM, “And you. Could you develop a code to read a mind—not a brain, a mind—like a computer and fix it? Even if you could, the brain-mind it is so complex it would take you years to do it to ‘read’ the entire thing, even if you were going at it 24/7. And you wouldn’t even know where to begin.” He put his hands to eyes. “Yes, what I am suggested could kill him. But they way he is now, he’s just as good as dead. This is classic Vagabond. Destroy them but not kill them.” He gazed at Kit quietly, the only sound in the room that goddam heart monitor beep. “Virtual death.”

Chapter 1, Part 2, Episode 4

Miss Gwen tapped her foot, scowling. The idiotic thing was that she had no other idea. She was a mechanic, not a biologist. She could make from scratch any number of machines to keep him alive, but it was clear from all the tubes and screens and beeping that that idea was already done.

At which point, a doctor entered.

“Oh, thank God, a normal person,” Romeesha said. “Doc, please tell me that you can wake this boy up.” She didn’t see Manny’s suddenly very serious expression. He already knew the answer.

The woman raised an eyebrow. “This is probably going to be a stupid question, but are any of you next of kin?”

The Mexican American and African Americans stared at her, and then to the Japanese American patient.

“We’re friends,” Manny said, standing. “All of Kit’s family is back in Japan. He was born and raised here, so he stayed. When he…came here, I mean, when it looked bad, like he wasn’t going to come around, I called his parents. But it’s a 9-hour flight from Tokyo to San Francisco.”

“And you are?”

Intros again. “Doctor Emmanuel Veracruz, psychologist.”

“Oh. I see. And they are?” The doctor, a tall, trim blond woman, gave every sign that she was all business and numbers. And had the bedside manner to match.

“The family he has on this side of the Pacific,” Guinevere said, suddenly not liking the woman at all.

“So can the attitude, Miss Thing,” Romeesha added.

“Are you Mr. Kitabora’s psychologist?” It was as if the two women had just blipped out of existence, for all the attention the doctor paid them.

Manny laughed. “Doesn’t need one. In my opinion, the man’s as stable as houses.”

“Too bad,” came the reply. “It would at least give us a place to start. I’m Dr. Aikins.”

“Should we be worried that you are already using the term ‘next of kin?’” Manny asked.

The doctor sighed. “We’re stumped,” she said bluntly. “We’ve tested for everything, even a few oddballs like Klein-Levin and encephalitis lethargica. Physically, he’s fine. I’ve seen his CAT scans and the only thing out of the ordinary is the near complete lack of chemical activity in the brain. My first inclination is to say he had a stroke, but there is no bleeding or damage to his brain. Biologically, his brain is functioning normally, but it’s like all it’s mental processes have stopped. What was he doing before he got like this?”

What indeed? Manny thought.

“He had a fight,” Romeesha offered. “With an asshole.”

That perked some interest. “He was hit?”

“No,” Manny said, giving ROM a good mental bonk to the brain. “First, it was…an argument. Then he collapsed.”

“You saw it?”

“I haven’t seen anything, Doctor,” Manny replied, showing her his blind eyes.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Dr. Aikins hastily said. “Did either of you?”

“Yes,” Romeesha volunteered.

Guinevere rolled her eyes. Go on. Explain your way out of this one, baby.

“What happened?”

“Just like Manny said.”

The woman was clear not satisfied with that dead end. “This is the first time I have ever heard of someone going into a coma because his feelings got hurt.”

“Doctor, we’ve told you all we know. We were hoping you could tell us something,” Guinevere said gently.

“I’ll tell you that I have a man in a coma for no reason,” Dr. Aikins snapped, more at the situation than any of them. “And I have every indication he’s going to slip into a persistent vegetative state for the rest of his life.”

“A what?” Romeesha asked.

“He’ll spend the rest of his life as a vegetable,” Manny translated.