Crazytalk

Mister Higgins seemed like a pretty normal guy until he waved me across the street one day as I was getting The Paper. We had never really talked much and he looked very eager to speak with me. When I get over there, he leans in real close and says, "Try not to think about it but they're listening to our thoughts."

Now is a pretty good time to mention that I take medication. This medication helps to alleviate any distress I might experience as paranoia. Oh, the intricate, paranoid episodes where every random occurrence is the next logical step in a plan to kill me. Or drive me crazy. Or fill-in-the-blank. So why Mister Higgins lays a head trip like this on me is beyond my understanding. I suppose that he doesn't know about me. Maybe he had been on vacation on New Year's Eve at the turn of the century. That was when I tore down my house with my bare hands because I thought we were going to lose control of the robots.

And that's just crazytalk.

So, I try to make the smart move and respond, "Okay, I won't think about it." And I walk away. As I'm picking up The Paper, Mister Higgins shouts, "Ever been told to not do something that you'd only thought of doing?" I ignore him and go back into my house. I needed some coffee in a bad way at this point.

An hour later, it's still eating at me. Why does this guy, a guy that I don't know from Adam really, say such a thing to me? To me?!? Someone whose already proven susceptible to madness in the past! Then, following its natural tendency, my mind turns upon itself. I begin to question my reality. Had I hallucinated my exchange with Mister Higgins? After going off the deep end, one begins to lose faith in one's senses.

I ask my wife if I've been taking my meds. Puzzled, she checks the records and tells me that I have. Then, of course, she asks if something is wrong. I tell her what had been said. Then I tell her that I might have imagined it, but she shushes me. "Once you start down that path," she says, "nothing can be real anymore." Next thing I know, she is marching me across the street and rapping on Mister Higgins' door.

My poor wife. I'm sure you could hear her screams a mile away when that door opened.

Mister Higgins is a sight, some ghoul belched up by satanic ritual. A scarlet streak oozes down the right side of his neck and into his white t-shirt. The left side of his body is slack, the arm there dangles like an unmanned puppet. His right arm is bloody from the hand to beyond his elbow. There's a chunk of flesh missing from his right hand which continues to bleed freely, pooling on his welcome mat. "Hello," he croaks. But there's nothing to say, no need to ask him any questions, not as his one functioning eye jumps back and forth between me and my wife, not as the right part of his mouth twists up into a knowing smile and the left part remains beyond control. He is for sure the mental one and not me.

As if to reinforce this fact, Mister Higgins shuffles to turn around, exposing a meaty crater the size of a softball behind his right ear. Then he shuffles back around to face us and says in his half-dead voice, "I have a secret now."

My wife was still screaming hysterically when I tapped my relay and pinged Emergency to scramble. I told them that Mister Higgins had dug out both his cred chip and his Brain. They informed me that a mobile medteam had already been dispatched a few minutes ago.

I couldn't believe he had done it. Those were the two devices that made life so hassle-free these days. How do you buy anything without a chip? How do you call an ambulance without a Brain?!? Still, my fingers lingered behind my right ear on my Brain, same spot as Mister Higgins', as I wondered if my wife's screams had caused someone else to notify Emergency before I could or if someone somewhere had read my thoughts and taken the necessary actions.

But that's just crazytalk.

What I'm really trying to say is that you just never can tell about somebody. Mister Higgins seemed like a fellow on the straight and narrow. Two kids. Pleasant wife. Government job. I suppose that doesn't mean a thing these days. Times are changing and you have to be ready for anything in the 22nd century.