Vacation

"Maybe one of those muffins with the rock salt on it and the chocolate chunks."

"Honestly, I'd kill for just like a can of Diet Coke."

"I don't think they'll do it for me though, I've burned all my goodwill at this point, they'll just razz me."

"Yeah, same here. We need someone else."

"Like an outside man," Jeff says. "What time is it?" I could tell his question was more rhetorical than anything. "Hang on," he said, rising out of his bed. He left the room for a couple minutes, and as he came back, I could her the call-thing ding, meaning someone wanted something. I bet it was a Diet Coke and a muffin."

Sure enough, within a couple minutes, Will from down the hall, who I'd met a couple days before came in bringing gifts.

"One Diet Coke?"

I raised my hand, "Thanks man."

"Klein problem," he said in his terse Teutonic tone. "I should have known the chocolate was for you ah-mee-goe," I could tell he was imitating someone but I couldn't quite place the accent. The contagion of Jeff's laugh was too much and I chuckled even though I didn't get the reference. Will was a merc from overseas who decided, instead of backpacking across Africa and leaving a fuck-trail in his wake (his words, not mine) he'd rather make a few bucks in the 'Yeahmerican War', as he always called it.

Maybe that's just what Europeans call it.

I hadn't seen any Continental News since the blackout, obviously, and the Americans had, until recently, called it a police action 'with aspects of rapid escalation', with a focus on the 'minimal use of military force'. This actually meant that any United States military forces were "Little Green Men" in anonymized, stateless uniforms, though always sporting suspiciously super-modern weapons. Or you had PMCs rolling around cities and recklessly firing 120mm shells, skipping them like stones across Lake Ontario.

I thought about the fall of Hamilton, watching Baboons from the African Lion Safari run amok. Vertical video footage saw PMCs shoot one, only to have four more enter into a hellish melee, often getting the upper hand by dismembering, blinding, or otherwise getting their fair share, shrieking with bloodlust the whole while, before, well...

My leg itched. I drained the last of my Diet Coke. I thought about that morning's very uncomfortable ultrasound. My Pfizer Nanotex were working properly, and my muscles would be back to normal in a few days, which was fine by me. Back when I snapped the tip off my elbow it was weeks and weeks of pysio. This was nothing. I mean, it wasn't exactly a vacation, but no one was yelling at me or shoving a gun in my face, and that hadn't happened in a few days. All it took was getting blown up.

Eventually Tuesday rolled around and sure enough Gil Thompson's stocky frame darkened our door.

"Mr. Buttler, you're looking well today."

"You look the same Gil."

"Yes, well, healthy diet and exercise, ha ha," he said, doing a squat little dance. I could hear Jeff snort and stifle a laugh.

"So we have some good news, we managed to get everything cleared though Ontario's Health Insurance Program, so you're off the hook mostly, and we found your SunLife insurance policy on record, and you have some prescriptions to take with you.

"So here's your Celeco... celery... Celecox"

"Yeah, my Celebrex. Great."

"Okay, and Modafinil,"

Oh my god, sweet Jesus thank you. "Oh, good."

"And to help you out with pulling off of your nice drugs we've kept you on here," his tone lowers, "that I hear you've been enjoying quite a bit, based on your lockout records," he goes back to his regular tone, "a small script and dosing guide for hydromorphone, just to bring you down. There's only a handful."

"That seems... reckless."

"Yes well, it's MerCo policy. We can't just send you out a junkie, not anymore at least. Those were not great times."

Gil keeps yammering on, but as soon as it's in my hands, I check the time, and pop two Apotex branded generic modafinil into my mouth and let them sit under my tongue for just a moment, filling my mouth with their familiar bitter tinge, oh yeah that's the good stuff, until I swallow both pills in sequence with a wad of saliva for each. I cannot wait to stop being so god damned tired.

"Bombs away."

Gil made a face and I did not care. "Right. So, Oliver and Andy here are going to take you down to meet Ulli, who is the liaison with ZeroWorries who will set you up with the next part of your adventure," which he punctuates my saying adventure with kind of a sing songy voice. Meanwhile Oliver and Andy are dressed in plate carriers and balaclavas to hide most of their face. The taller one, Oliver, has darker skin, and is toting what looks like a bean bag one-rounder based on what I'd seen on YouTube, and Andy. a white guy with freckles, has the big plastic yellow and black kind of Taser that shoots the darts. I must have made a face because Oliver and Andy both kind of looked away and from their posture didn't really feel super about the situation.

Had I been able to read their minds, I'd've known they'd rather be finishing their game of Smash Bros they left on pause in the employee lounge.

Such is life, Oliver thought at that moment, and wat a cruel twist this was. Life was suffering, he thought, am I unenlightened because I desire? How does one give up desire? Are we not desiring-machines under capitalism? Can enlightenment be achieved under capitalism at all?

Andy simply thought about how hungry he was.

I didn't know any of that though, and Gil snapped my attention back with his nattering about the set of offices and how this one was the furthest to the right.

I turned to Jeff, "Well my man, this is it."

Jeff gave me a semi-salute, and said, "Remember the Alamo, my friend."

We laughed at that, and Gil, being the shit that he is, gave a fake laugh as well. "Alamo, classic!"

I hated him so much.

Prescriptions in hand, I signed off my discharge forms at the MerCo front desk, and, under supervision from Oliver and Andy, and despite the itch and tinge of pain in my leg, I limped over to the accessibility button to open the door to the courtyard.

The blast of smoke was immediate and overwhelming, and with the added humidity, I felt as though I had been hit in the chest with a twenty pound bag of oranges. I wasn't too far from the wildfires, I guessed, as we stepped outside.

Not only was it hot and hard to breathe, it was also loud and above all else, filthy.

The hospital complex, while modest in size, had enough foot and equipment traffic from one Quonset to the next the grass had been worn to soil, any traces of sod hanging on out of spite. As a result, sandy, silty grit washed over you in waves as Medivac and SAR helicopters dropped off casualties on one of the three or four helipads that I could see. I could smell a lot of fuel, too. The Nanotex therapy seemed to work pretty well, except for the constant itching I felt as they sutured my muscles together, slowly massaging simulskin material together.

As we approached a set of trailer offices, another helicopter started to descend from overtop of us, hitting the three of us in its wash as it clumsily tried to stick the landing on the helipad to our left. It landed one skid down and at a weird angle, causing it to creak and heave heavily, which I could hear.

"Jesus christ, man," Andy shouted, "That guy fucking sucks!" He started flipping off the helicopter even though it was more or less only visible from the very top of the fuselage upward, with at tiny bit of a tail wing poking up from behind yet another Quonset hut. Seconds later three PMCs were being loaded out by a team of Little Green Men and on to stretchers waiting nearby.

I felt sick to my stomach, a bit clammy, and worst of all, the Modafinil hadn't landed yet, so my limbs felt like each weighed two hundred pounds.

Circumnavigating a set of office trailers, Oliver and Andy knocked on the one that had, what I guessed, was the ZeroWorries logo on it. The door buzzed, and Andy opened the door and gave me the universal body language of "You go in, we're waiting here for you."

The interior of the office was surprisingly nice. Several glass sconces adorned the faux-wood walls, creating somewhat of an executive feel. I guessed the person behind the desk was Ulli, who was letting me know I could sit down. He opened a box on his desk which I realized was a humidor as he spun it around to me.

"Cigarette?"

"No thank you."

"Normally they don't let us smoke in these things, but I guess with the fires and the smoke outside, hell, this probably tastes better too." He spun the humidor back around and looked at his computer screen. "Also I don't really care. All right, looks like your paperwork is all in order here let me take a look."

He tapped on a keyboard for a little while with little hunt-and-pecks, staring down at the keyboard and occasionally glancing up at the screen.

With his focus drawn to the computer, I looked around and saw the various knickknacks he had. An ashtray with a couple butts in it. A newton's cradle, one of those pin-board things. On the wall of the trailer I saw a few pictures of him, one with the President of the United States, three pictures with various game. One broke my heart, as it showed him lifting a dead ibex by the horns, grin on his face, with full-wrap Pit Viper sunglasses on.

"It says here you're non-religious... do you mind if you're around people who are?"

"Not really, no, I guess."

"Good, good."

A few more minutes, a bit of scrolling on his mouse, a few more details, and he suddenly said "Ah, great, this just came up a couple of days ago. It actually looks really great."

"I'm sorry what?"

"As part of our deal with... you know," dropping down to a whisper he said, "the Americans," back to a normal tone, "We can use some of their federated facilities here as our staging and operations base. I was afraid I'd need to send you near the fires at our camp in North Bay, which, honestly, I've been, it's not great. You'd be going to FOB Big Bay, which, believe it or not, is an old resort."

"Sorry what?"

"You're going to a vacation resort. Congratulations."

"So I'm free to go?"

"Well no, you're still with us until we make the trade– unless you want to work for us?"

I give him silence.

"So... right. You'll be 'held' for processing at this... man this is really nice. I'm actually pretty jealous. It's got a small modular reactor on site which, I guess, makes sense. Looks like religion is really high though– like 60-70..."

I didn't really understand.

"But no conversion. Okay. Great!" He cracked his knuckles as a printer under his desk started to make noise. Reaching down he handed me a few pages of paperwork. "Hand that to the flight coordinator over on the south end of the hospital, and he'll arrange your flight out."

"Flight like plane?"

Ulli looked at me with a face.

"Helicopter?"

Ulli nodded at me like I was the dumbest motherfucker he'd ever met, and I felt it. I also started to feel a bit nauseous.

"So what happens after I get settled?"

"Then we organize a way to send you south, get you there, measured up, and then sent back up here once we have a trade. We deal in high volumes though, and have a pretty good contract with some of the feds. But that's not really my department,"

He pulled a cigarette out of the humidor, and lit it with a red Bic lighter. He took a long pull before he continued, breathless for a moment, "with this new place," exhaling a smoke cloud, "I'm not sure, I would have said Grand Rapids for the changeover," pulling in a long deep drag, "But with Hamilton, Niagara, and all that, maybe you won't be going that far. Don't ask me, man, I just work here." Smoke cloud. "But like I said, this place you're going seems okay. Think about it like a vacation."

Exiting the office with a bunch of paperwork stapled together and a cloud of cigarette smoke following me through the door, intermingling with the translucent smoke of the wildfires nearby, I caught the tail end of Oliver and Andy's conversation.

"So like your brain is in your head, though, right?"

"Yeah."

"So that's the body. It's the like... actual thing in your head."

"Yeah."

"Some people think the mind, the way you think– oh he's back."

Oliver stopped gesticulating at Andy, looking up at me and said, "Hey 'sup." It wasn't really a question, more of a 'You are now done and I think you proabably have somewhere to go, and we need to take you there' type thing. I could feel my guts starting to churn a little and I felt a little bit like I had a fever coming on.

"I guess," I said, "I guess I'm going on vacation."