io9 is proud to present fiction from Lightspeed Magazine.
Once a month, we featurea story fromLightspeeds current issue.
This months selection is Does Harlen Lattner Dream of Infected Sheep?
© Lightspeed
(Part 2) by Sarah Langan.
You canread Part 1 here.
Does Harlen Lattner Dream of Infected Sheep?
The Attorney General of Virginia, which has jurisdiction, says it has no comment.
Congo released a statement this afternoon:We at Congo believe in the essential value of every human being.
Weve devoted our lives to making the world safer and more efficient for their benefit.
All deceased are Congo interface users.
Congo denies any connection.
That night Lattner had a panic attack.
Still, it felt like he was changing.
It felt, for just a heated, sweaty moment, that his organs had slipped and realigned.
He called his kids and neither answered so he took a deep breath and called Lorna.
I can see them through the camera.
Send me the password for the stream on them or Im calling the cops.
I have a right.
Our whole lives together I dont think you changed a single diaper.
What are you talking about?
She could be such a pain in the ass.
He really hated her sometimes.
And then he thought: Was he supposed to have changed diapers?
Did she have a point?
Jesus, Im sick with worry.
I think I might even be worried about you.
Help me out, here, Lorna.
I am, he said.
I had a nervous breakdown.
We never called it that; you couldnt stand to hear it, but thats what it was.
I was in a mental hospital for three months and you never visited me.
Do you remember that?
You werent so worried about me, then.
I visited, he said.
No, she said.
I used to sit there on visitors day like a jerk.
You never even brought the kids.
I missed them so much.
Thats impossible, Lattner said, his heart beating fast all over again.
We decided you needed the time to yourself.
You decided, she said.
I never got a say in anything.
Lattners heart thudded in his throat.
I feel so sick, he said.
I feel like Im dying.
Lattner, she said, her voice soft.
Whats wrong with you?
Why cant you talk about anything important?
I dont know, he said, and now he was crying, his speech broken and shaking.
I dont mean to be this person.
Okay, she said.
Im sending the link.
Theyre okay and Im okay, she said.
Thanks, he said, weeping now.
Soon after, he watched them in their rooms through ceiling mounted cameras.
They were aware of these cameras but had mostly forgotten about them.
Bea was tuned to a streamie in her bedroom.
Lattner counter her respiration.
Nine breaths per minute.
This was low, even for a resting rate, but not alarmingly so.
He zoomed in, tried to see her skinwas she pale?
But the resolution wasnt strong enough.
Dylan was jerking off, his respiration slightly elevated.
Lattner felt a measure of compunction about this.
Still, he zoomed to see what the kid was looking at.
This, too, was out of focus.
But they were alive, at least.
A kind of trilling panic inside him suddenly eased.
What was this emotion?
Jesus, hed never felt this way about any of his family while he had them.
Lornad asked a good question: why now?
A kind of compulsion took over after that.
He wrote Bea a letter:
Honey,
Its your dad, Harlen Lattner.
I wonder now whether I erred.
I should also tell you that you are not alone in your sadness.
I was on the very same medication you are now taking for depression.
I have always felt very badly that you inherited this from me.
Fondly,
Dad (Harlen Lattner)
Dylan,
Its your dad, Harlen Lattner.
It occurs to me that we have never had a good relationship.
Ive always felt its because you hate me and believe Im a bad husband to your mother.
I assumed Id earned your hate and so accepted it without ever questioning it.
It lately occurs to me that perhaps your feelings are your own and not entirely due to my existence.
So I suppose I should ask: why are you so angry?
Additionally, Id like to let you know that my own father was a malignant presence in my life.
I absented myself from knowing you, I assumed that my absence could only be an improvement.
But sons ought to have fathers.
These fathers ought to approve of them.
They seemed self-indulgent and he couldnt get the words right.
What he did realize, through writing them, was that he loved his children.
It was absurd that hed ever convinced himself otherwise.
Feeling calmer, he searched the streamies that night for news, then scoured the social networks.
Theyd developed flat affects.
They didnt remember personal information.
The posters were attributing this to the Congo update.
The name the group gave it wasThe Great Amnesia.
When dawn arrived, he called Lorna.
She didnt answer the first ten times, which seemed fair.
When she finally did answer, she was pissed off, which also seemed fair.
Are you hearing anything in your department about the Congo update?
She had this way of never being surprised.
Aliens could jump out of their ship and present her with petunias and shed say:Thats nice.
Im late, though.
And then he remembered that she hadnt always been like that.
It was only after her breakdown that shed disconnected from him and the rest of them.
Before that, shed been eager and interested.
Uh, all these dead people?
Theyre attributing it to the Congo update.
Thats just crazy people.
You should stay home.
Let me come over.
She lowered her voice as if someone might be listening.
Even if there is a connection, what do you think you might do about it?
Other than the update?
But theyre working on it.
Everyones working on it.
No one wanted this outcome.
How long have you known?
I dont know now.
He leaned into the wall.
The hospital is about to make consoles mandatory.
Were you even going to warn me?
No, she said.
I told you; theyre fixing it.
The media has it all overblown.
Its a few isolated incidents.
Theres no reason to warn anyone.
Can you take their consoles away until this is sorted?
Im serious right now.
I want a real answer.
Why do you suddenly care about them?
Is this all to punish me?
Why cant you just let me have them?
I always cared about them.
I care about you.
I just didnt know it, he said.
She sighed deep and long.
Then, she hung up.
He was at work an hour later and what he did when he got there was ill advised.
He buzzed himself into the morgue.
The bodies in the freezer were stacked in long drawers, none locked.
A few medical examiners were hanging around but they stayed in their lanes and didnt ask questions.
He opened the chest-high drawer in the center.
He unzipped the black bag and conducted an autopsy.
Janes chest cavity was a wild growth of pink tissue.
A tube ran from throat and then went spherical, its gills upright in a protean stew of fluid.
The human body is very complex.
It needs an endless supply of oxygen.
It has to eliminate the waste products of metabolic reactions at least five times a day.
But this system wasnt complex.
Pink fluid pulsed, replacing the heart and its blood.
Gills received this fluid and presumably extracted oxygen.
This digestive, circulatory, and pulmonary tract was much simpler.
He stitched Jane up, went through five more bodies.
One body looked normal.
The other two had this same fungal-bang out disease.
He took a tissue sample under the microscope.
The cells were clearly defined and cholesterol rich.
It would probably take a few days before anyone reported that hed broken into the morgue.
The Congo algorithm was great when things were predictable.
In randomness, it was molasses in winter.
At work, triage was a mess and so was surgical.
The floor was wet with Pepto Bismol-colored blood.
The patients werent making it to surgery in time; were dying in gurneys.
Before his shift ended he found himself in surgery with the same procedure.
This time he didnt hesitate.
He reached in with his hands and untangled the intestine.
Jane Does body stopped seizing.
He visited Tucker Rhodes office once his shift was done.
Any news on all this?
Did anybody ever call you back?
Tucker took a second to process what hed said, and Congo answered.
The system cannot process the information.
Right, Lattner said.
But did you hear anything from your dad?
Tucker bent down, listening to his headset.
Im not on break right now.
seems as if the tool has had a physiological affect on the majority of users.
In addition, .01% of users experience intestinal knotting during metamorphosis, which is fatal unless addressed surgically.
Another .01% experience psychotic episodes resulting in suicide.
Its imperative we keep this secret to prevent widespread panic.
As I pop in, our brilliant researchers are working toward cures.
Guys, this was a total accident!
Lattner documented everything hed learned and seen since opening up John Doe and sent it to the anonymous website.
The kids were coming for their bimonthly weekend visit the next night.
Gerry arrived carrying a bag full of weird sex paraphernalia.
Possibly some of it was ordinary sex paraphernalia.
Lattnerd spent most of his life too afraid to investigate such things.
My husbands gone, Gerry said.
Theyre flushing us out.
Congo raised our rent.
It owns the building.
He moved into the warehouse.
Congo offered these sleep pods for everybody.
He says he doesnt care about material things anymore.
Or Congo says it.
Who knows, he never takes those headphones off.
They had crazy sex that night.
Sex Lattner had never imagined.
Sex that answered questions.
Sex that meant nothing.
Sex that meant everything.
I should quit my job and move in with you, Gerry said as they lay in bed.
Same old Harlen, Gerry said.
Lattner felt that, and felt bad about that, but couldnt bring himself to do anything about it.
Gerry said he wasnt hungry.
His stomach had been sour.
He hadnt been sleeping well, either.
Lattner placed his hand on Gerrys belly.
You might have that thing going around, he said.
He was panting suddenly, his forehead slick with sweat.
Why dont you come with me to the hospital.
I can run some tests.
Im not your obligation.
The hospital the next day was quieter.
Fewer patients were exhibiting abdominal or cardiac symptoms.
The employees seemed especially quiet, too.
In the absence of the emergent or new they tuned out, let their headsets do the thinking.
At last, the day had come and mandatory headsets were issued to all the docs on staff.
The voice inside lulled literal sweet nothings (shoo be do la lume di lee).
He spent the day like this, in a kind of floating, even as his body moved.
His kids arrived late that weekend.
Shed been promised once again that the kids would be safe.
This nanny in particular had been debriefed and would verify they didnt get infected.
Shed also been told that the headsets represented zero threat.
They could all continue wearing them indefinitely.
Were too old for a nanny, Dylan said.
Lattner wondered if this changed the custody agreement.
If the kids would now stay at his house.
Though he wanted them around, he wasnt sure he was ready to have them full time.
Worried hed mess it up.
Also, where would he be able to meet-up with Gerry?
The nannys weird, Beatrice said.
Even when shes on break her implants glow green.
You clap your hands in front of her and she doesnt blink.
She doesnt laugh, Dylan said.
She doesnt smile, Beatrice said.
Yeah she does, but its a creepy smile.
Like the interface told her to.
Youre like that sometimes.
No, you, asshole.
Theyd hardly walked in the door, were still bantering.
He noticed their pallor was green and they moved too slowly for healthy kids.
It set off alarms.
Had Congo done this?
And how could they know for certain that the headsets werent a threat?
I have good news and bad news, Lattner told them.
My house is a no screenie or interface house.
We can read books or talk or whatever we want.
Beatrice and Dylan went simultaneously ballistic.
It was like manifesting a tornado.
There was literal screaming.
He covered his ears at the horrible high-pitched-ness.
Hed played this out in his mind.
Theyd rebel, grabbing interfaces and ignoring him.
Bewildered, hed throw up his hands and give up.
Nothing would change but at least hed be able to tell himself hed tried.
What happened instead was almost worse.
Over the following hours, they broke down, weeping.
They made him feel like a total dipshit.
But they never disobeyed him.
He went to bed Saturday night close to tears.
By Sunday, they were all tired.
Listless, they sat together at the kitchen table and played gin rummy.
A funny thing happened.
The first hour of rummy was excruciating.
They werent the only ones who missed the fucking screenies.
But the second hour went very quickly.
And somehow, they played into a third hour.
Nobody knew what to do.
Typically, the kids showed themselves out.
Lattner made the first move.
Then he hugged Dylan.
What surprised him: they hugged back.
His eyes were unreasonably wet.
He was sniffling, trying not to cry.
He looked away from them.
It was too hard.
Still, he said the words.
Im sorry I havent said it more often.
Neither Bea nor Dylan answered that.
Then they were out.
He followed them to the street, waved to the car.
They looked out, watching him as it carried them away.
Dylan offered the tiniest of nods.
The rest of the day felt strange and terrifying and wondrous.
He imagined this was how real dads felt all the time.
Had Lorna endured this weight, this terrible, responsible love all alone?
Was that what had broken her, then changed her for the worse?
The loneliness of carrying the emotion of an entire family all on her own?
Work the next day was quiet.
The people were quiet, the routines were quiet.
There werent any new patients with abdominal issues.
The nurses moved with emotionless efficiency.
So did the admins.
Only Ocean seemed her usual self.
Watching her enter the surgical lounge was like watching a daisy in a windy field of orchids.
It bent differently; swaying with greater, wilder life.
She saw him right away and sidled up.
Im going to ask you the same question I asked last time.
You noticed it, too?
Only, its hard to remember.
I keep thinking I should do something but everythings so fuzzy.
Maybe were becoming pod people, he said.
They both looked at each other, and yeah, maybe that was the exact truth.
Youd think, under those circumstances, that theyd both have run screaming from the hospital.
Theyd have tossed Molotov cocktails through windows, shouted from bullhorns.
Probably, thats exactly what some people did.
To break the tension, Ocean made a raspberry at him.
Then the bell rang, signaling the end of their break.
His shift ended before Oceans and a funny thing happened.
They must have threatened her job, because she was wearing her headset.
He watched her wind through the halls just like everyone else, her steps preordained to maximize efficiency.
Did he look like that?
He didnt remember his shifts anymore.
They blurred, a set of instructions and music.
He didnt remember his patients faces, either.
If the intention of 5.0 was to make life more pleasant, it had failed.
When the day was done, he didnt feel accomplished.
After work, he retrieved the photo hed taken on his phone of that first patients Congo employee badge.
The first numbers represented a warehouse numbera local one, and the same at which Gerry worked.
Lattner ordered a car and took it there.
The warehouse was a mammoth building about three city blocks wide.
He drove up and parked in the employee lot.
He knocked on the locked main door but no one answered.
But this was a new life for Lattner.
Hed had sex with Gerry.
Hed fought with his kids.
Hed told a waitress he was gay.
So when he saw the open window, he climbed through with great and pleasant grunting.
The building had a utilitarian appearance.
No decoration; plaster walls.
There was only a sliding plastic barn door ahead of a low desk.
He showed the man at the desk his John Does number.
Im looking for this employee.
After a long pause, she said: Hes in acquisitions, Warehouse C.
He followed that direction.
The building was labyrinthine.
Got to a door markedacquisitions.
Inside, a mammoth warehouse stocked with boxes upon boxes of goods.
Employees in Congo uniforms bussed around, plucking items like bees in a hive.
He found the foreman, showed the number.
Wait, the foreman said.
The guy didnt answer.
He was routing someone, relaying someone.
A half-hour later, John Doe appeared.
He was green-faced but alive.
This was the same man.
I was your surgeon, Lattner said.
You walked out of the hospital.
Congo answered, monotone and dead.
Thank you for saving employee 24601.
But his breath was markedly slow, about six respirations per minute.
Did the air directly interface with the gills?
Can you turn your implant off?
Do you know what happened to you?
Employee 24601 must return from break.
Then he began pulling boxes.
Parasite, he said out loud.
He arranged a car to his wifes house the next day.
Like all of them, the driver looked glassy eyed and dead.
The thing about glassy eyes, you assume its calm underneath.
But it occurred to Lattner that something turbulent was hiding in there.
Something sentient, trapped.
you’re able to feel sentience.
You know, even when it doesnt speak or hear or see.
Lattner counted the drivers breaths: about six per minute.
The woman at security scanned them both using retinal display.
Permitted, she said in Congos voice.
Her breath was slow, too.
The community was unchanged from when hed left.
Green grass, freshly recycled air.
People still kept dogs for pets herethey had access to enough soy to feed them.
But the dog he saw didnt appear healthy.
It languished against a see-saw in the childrens playground, ribs prominent.
The houses were all widely separated and two or three stories.
He used his handprint to kick off the door but Lorna had changed the locks.
Then the camera became a screen, and Lorna was looking back at him.
She wasnt home, but at her office.
She looked overwhelmed, her desk covered in paperwork.
Are the kids home?
I want to see them.
Its not your day.
Her voice wasnt Congos.
She wasnt wearing a headset.
She was too high up, making too many decisions still.
like, he said.
She looked at him with what he realized for the first time was hate.
I should tell you that it wasnt fair of me to marry you, he said.
I was in love with a man when I met you.
Her eyes watered but no tears fell.
He waited, knowing shed come around in a second.
I wasnt seeing you as a person.
I wasnt seeing the kids as people.
There was something wrong with me.
Ive always been afraid.
Im working on it.
The failure is mine.
Someone else would have made you very happy.
It wasnt as simple as that.
He could still have been good to her.
But if she liked that answer best it seemed like a fair one.
You knew that the whole time?
I dont know what I knew.
I dont think I thought that deeply.
I just wanted to be settled, to do everything I was supposed to do.
And now its almost twenty years later.
It kept you from living.
Youre still not living.
She made a sour face at him.
Oh, fuck you, she said.
Just for that, you might wait until Friday.
He tried the bell a few more times.
Stalked around the house, saw the nanny through the window.
The house appeared clean and tended, the windows opened for fresh fall air.
The kids didnt seem to be home, or if they were home, they were in their rooms.
There wasnt anything for her to do, but she was on the clock.
Like a turned off machine, she was standing in the middle of the room.
As he looked at her, calling Hey!
through the open window, he knew she heard him.
But she was receiving orders not to answer.
As he was leaving, the skinny dog followed.
It was a mutt; some kind of mix between a greyhound and pit bull.
He was allergic to dogs.
They gave him a rash.
He got to the car.
Okay, he said, leaving it open for the dog to climb in.
He named the dog Buster.
It seemed like a dog kind of name.
He walked him when he could and when he couldnt, left the door open for him to roam.
It would be temporary.
Hed find someone to take the dog or return it to the village.
But over the following days he found no takers.
Instead, what he saw were more and more strays, combing the streets in scraggly, hungry packs.
He didnt belong with that crowd.
Lattner went to work all that week.
More and more, the people became the same.
Excess hospitalizations went down to zero.
His fellow docs stopped taking off their headsets in the breakroom.
He left messages for Lorna, who wrote him a 5,000 word letter about how hed ruined her life.
I only married you because I was insane.
The children hate you, too .
Was that a lie, too?
It took him a while to remember the state fair and he had no memory of winning the panda.
But he thought that it probably had not been a lie.
Lattner was a lot of things, but a master manipulator was not one of them.
So he wrote back to her, ignoring all the cruelty.
The panda was earnest.
I should have visited you at the hospital.
I should not have driven you to a nervous breakdown.
He called Gerry, too.
But Gerry wasnt getting back, either.
So Lattner wrote to him, too:My whole life Ive been hiding.
I cannot say I love you.
I do not know you.
I can say that I want desperately to see you because you make me happy.
He didnt hear back from Gerry, either.
Meanwhile, the social networks had quieted.
Most, he assumed, had been scrubbed by Congo, which owned the servers.
He read through these, poring over each comment from some unhinged voice in the dark.
The invasion had not come from outer space, but from within.
The assertion was crazy.
He showed up for his shift at work.
No one ate much in the surgical lounge anymore, he noticed.
It was all protein bars, no hot food.
No coffee, even.
The microwave was clean for the first time in two decades.
Right before it was time to report to surgical, Ocean walked in, wearing her headset.
She sat on the couch beside two other nurses, all squeezing close, none talking.
Their breaths and squishing pulses soon synchronized.
He imagined an orchid swallowing a daisy.
He went to put on his headset.
Heard the soft, lulling voice.
Was it the soul inside him, crying out?
Maybe Tucker heard him, maybe he didnt.
He spent days home at his apartment with Buster, alternating doomscrolling and reading.
The threads about body-snatched loved ones had dwindled and the old ones were locked and deleted.
What theyd gained in efficiency, theyd lost in quality.
For instance, workers could now stand on assembly lines for sixteen-hour shifts.
They rarely ate or needed bathroom breaks.
However, they couldnt run.
They couldnt laugh hard or cry loud, either.
Similarly, they were much better at taking orders, but they could no longer logic.
Logic, and serious thought in general, demanded too much energy.
Gerry wasnt answering any of Lattners messages, but at least hed see his kids.
The guy sitting behind the wheel was staring without blinking for so long that his eyes welled.
You okay, buddy?
The guy didnt suddenly become alert, like a spell had been broken.
He face-planted into the wheel.
The car kept driving, like this was irrelevant.
Lattner drew the headset near, heard a voice whispering softly.Youre sleeping.
The world is asleep.
A voice lulled.Remember being born.
Fuck that, Lattner said, dropping the headset.
The community was quiet.
No kids playing ball.
No cars arriving from work.
No lights, he realized with surprise.
All the houses were dark.
The nanny answered the door, looked at him dumbly.
Are the kids here?
Theyre supposed to be at my house.
She cocked her head, let the words go to Congo.
Yes, she said as she stepped back.
As soon as he entered, he could see that the house was wrong.
He opened the first bedroom door.
Dylan was on the floor, interfacing with his console.
Didnt you hear me?
Always before, when hed asked this question, hed known the answer was yesDylan had been ignoring him.
This time was different.
Dylan was greenish, his breath slow.
Lattner snapped his fingers in front of Dylans eyesno response.
He felt his abdomen.
Do you know me?
Lattner pulled the headset away.
Dylan made a kind of keening, animal sound.
Slow, docile, he reached for the headset.
Do you know your name?
Dylan looked at him blankly, the question seeming unrelated, somehow, to the present circumstances.
He was afraid to knock on Beatrices door but did it anyway.
She was hanging from a noose.
Lattner wasnt sure what happened after that.
There was an ambulance, a visit to the hospital.
He checked Dylan, whose vitals were slow, his metabolic process about 10% normal.
A CT of his abdomen, which would have shown a new anatomy, was denied.
There were dead eyes, so many dead eyes.
There was a walk, somehow, through the city.
He found himself back home, finishingThe Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Buster licking him.
It was a comfort but also an irritant, as his skin blistered.
Lorna didnt come home.
Congos retreat turned into a five-alarm emergency.
They pulled all their top executives behind a tall wall and were flying them out to a hidden shelter.
Youre a real cocksucker, saying something like that.
The nanny would have called me.
Those kids are fine.
Listen, I gotta go, she said when he finally tracked her down.
He considered sending her a picture, something that would force her to believe, but this seemed cruel.
Days passed and he didnt come out of his apartment.
He read his books.
He raided neighbors strangely unlocked apartment kitchens for himself and Buster when hungry.
There ought to be a law against what had happened to his children.
There ought to be something supernatural that reaches through reality and prevents such things.
He forgot all about the date hed scheduled with Gerry.
It came and went.
But a week later, his grief lifted long enough for him to remember.
The demand had dropped out of the market.
The streets were empty of people as he walked to the Congo warehouse and asked for Gerry.
Then waited until Gerry was on a break.
He knew even from the walk, that this wasnt Gerry.
Gerry blinked, let Congo answer.
I appear to be!
Do you know me?
Youre employee 5757393 from the hospital!
Lattner put his hand on Gerrys shoulder.
You were the love of my life, and I didnt know it.
But Ive never known myself very well.
Gerry cocked his head.
Waited for Congo to translate.
It appears the condition is irreversible.
Nonusers account for about .5% of the population.
But we can make lemons out of lemonade.
Weve solved food scarcity.
Affected citizens are still capable of reproduction.
We will continue to have a thriving workforce for generations to come.
There wasnt a funeral for Beatrice.
Without his consent, the nanny signed the orders to have her cremated.
The ashes were divided.
One half remained at the house for Lornas eventual return, the other half to Lattner.
That this brief stint on earth is a lease.
He thought about how children are supposed to be your legacy.
His son was there, but not there.
His son was gone.
His whole life, hed arrived too late, if at all, for his most important things.
He tried to console himself that at least hed shown up.
Im sorry, he said to Lorna when he finally got in touch with her.
By now, she believed him.
The news had broken her.
Her voice was cold.
Psychological rejection of the Congo update happens .01% of the time, she answered.
She was always like you.
Youll probably do it, too.
Onscreen, Lorna appeared healthy.
You knew this would happen?
I cant believe that.
Youre telling me, but Im still finding it hard to believe, he said.
There was a possibility of physiological change.
Someone wrote a hypothesis.
But it had as much likelihood as nanobots taking over the earth.
The hypothesis called it dissonance.
The body and mind out of harmony caused a physiological response.
But it makes better workers, happier people.
She looked at him pointedly, It ends attachments and pain.
You dont feel bad?
You dont want to give a shot to stop it?
She looked confused, as if this question bore zero significance.
How could I stop it?
Lorna, he said.
Not in the way I should have, but that doesnt make it any less real.
For a moment, she appeared to be drowning.
The gravity of it all hit her, overwhelmed her.
Dont say that, she whispered.
Lattner spread Beatrices ashes over the river.
He wanted to cry, but the desire was like an avocado pit trapped inside his chest.
It would have hurt too much to try.
In the month since the update, everyone he saw had turned a shade of green.
The streets were quiet.
The roads were quiet.
In the absence of anything else to do, he went back to work.
As soon as he got to the docs lounge, he heard humming.
He thought it was a person, humming, and his eyes brimmed with emotion.
Whod have guessed that such a mundane thing could be so lovely.
But then he saw that it was a consoles hold music.
He thought aboutThe Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.
He thought about all humanitys cruelties, which had been outsourced now to a program.
He thought about free will.
We dont choose to be born.
Most often, we dont choose to die.
He thought about the pain in his abdomen hed been having.
He thought about his dog, who needed him.
If this wereLonely Hunter, he knew how it would end.
Hed notice the pain in his side.
He would join the myriad masses, and in that way, reform himself.
More apt, hed fill a syringe and join his daughter.
He considered all this.
Thinking there had to be others, like him, whod reformed too late.
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