The Bomb Factory

Jack woke up sweating from another nightmare, having again dreamed that Karl was in his house. He knew it wasn’t uncommon for therapists to dream of their patients, and that a great deal of problem-solving happened in the unconscious, but after only two sessions, Karl’s ominous presence in his sleeping mind felt more like an omen than an attempt to sort out his issues.

The Karl dreams were worse than the ones Jack had been having a few weeks prior after that rabble-rousing journalist had been dismembered by the despotic regime. Those night terrors had been bad enough that he had called his own psychiatrist as he found he’d been drinking too much before bed again, having convinced himself that oblivion was preferable to being paralyzed on the floor while a man with a saw lurked at the edges of his vision.

That poor guy had been as safe as one could get, hiding under an assumed identity in a friendly country and they had still gotten to him through tracking his emails or something. Sometimes Jack felt like the modern world was scarier than when bandits and highwaymen lurked on the roads, but he also knew he suffered from confirmation bias and that this was certainly the best time in history to be alive. He was also taking his recent breakup harder than he cared to admit.

Karl hadn’t done anything other than unnerve Jack, but there had been incidents in the past where patients had crossed boundaries. He sometimes wondered if he invited this by asking them to call him “Dr. Jack,” instead of something more formal, but had decided time and time again that the benefits of familiarity outweighed any possible downsides in the long run.

When he was newly in practice, working out of a shabby office space next to a tax preparer, a young woman with Borderline Personality Disorder who’d canceled her last two appointments had shown up at his apartment with What About Bob on DVD and alcohol on her breath. Jack had sent her pouting on her way and had not seen her again. He’d been shaken by how easily she’d found him, but he’d only dreamed of her once, returning to that hallway in his sleep after hearing from a colleague that she had taken her own life. In his dream he let her in.

Jack had no reasonable suspicion that Karl had ever been in his house, or even knew where he lived, but every time a loud car drove past, the hairs on the back of Jack’s neck stood up as he thought about Karl’s souped-up Civic. Then again, Jack knew that if what Karl said during their sessions was true, he wouldn’t need to enter the house to overstep his boundaries.

Karl was a spidery, intense young man in a hoodie and cargo pants who’d said he worked in IT and clutched his vape in his pocket the whole first session. When Jack had opened the office door to let him in, a cloud of root beer scented haze hung in the air in the waiting room, but Jack said nothing, mostly because he was struck by a sense of familiarity, but couldn’t put his finger on where he might have seen Karl before.

Karl had said he had decided to seek therapy when he found himself thinking too much about the Mandela Effect. He’d said he’d been seeing things on the internet and had impulsively gone to his parents house to retrieve his childhood video games to play through again to see if they were how he remembered them. Whether they were or not, he couldn’t say. His memory blurred around these things and he couldn’t tell what was real anymore.

Jack decided to start him on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and inquire about possible trauma in his past during their next session, as that can result in memory issues later in life. He also asked him to leave the vape in his car next time.

Like many therapists in private practice, Jack did not take insurance. His services were not outrageous, but they were expensive enough that he was surprised, at the end of the session, to see Karl withdraw a large roll of hundreds from his pocket. Based on what Karl had said earlier about his parents, both of whom were teachers, it seemed like a lot of money to just be walking around with.

Coyly eyeing the roll, Jack had asked Karl what exactly it was that he did for work. The lanky young man had regarded him intensely and asked, “Can I trust you?”

“That’s why you’re paying me,” came Jack’s reply. The joke fell flat, and sounded less hip and confident than he had hoped, but Karl barked a laugh anyway.

“I’m a hacker,” said Karl.

Jack started to explain how patient-doctor confidentiality worked but Karl stopped him. “I don’t do anything illegal, I just code,” said Karl. “There’s a sorta Craigslist with people looking for this tool or that tool,” he added, “Sometimes they just want a list of files on a server, sometimes they want access to social media or email. It’s easy to whip up a bit of custom code and it pays well in Bitcoin. Let’s say I made a knife and you stabbed somebody with it. I wouldn’t be responsible, would I?” He looked a little sick as he said it.

Jack knew that his next patient, Kia, was sitting in the waiting room eyeballing the clock, listening to the hum of the white noise machine. She was a stickler for schedules and Jack didn’t have time to get into the inevitable debate about the second amendment, so he had decided to simply accept this explanation for the time being. As Karl was passing him the handful of hundreds he suddenly snatched back the bills and examined them. “Wasn’t Ben Franklin wearing glasses?” he asked. Jack had realized he had his work cut out for him.

This presumption was confirmed during their second session. Karl had not brought his vape, but he had brought a list of Mandela Effects that he quizzed Jack on, checking to see if their memories matched. Jack steered the conversation to a deeper place and Karl admitted that his fascination with the subject hinged on the idea that it was evidence that Simulation Theory was correct. He said that he thought these misremembered elements of culture might indicate that the “system,” by which he meant “our reality,” periodically gets “restored from a backup,” and that these discrepancies are artifacts from previous iterations of the system.

Jack had said that he certainly couldn’t disprove such a theory, but asked even if it were true, would it really change their day-to-day lives that much? Karl had said it might, if they could figure out how to restore from the backups themselves they might even be able to bring the dead back to life. Jack made a note to test Karl for schizophrenia.

Jack prided himself on his poker face. Years of hearing patients say outlandish things had steeled him, but something in his demeanor must have changed as he made the note, because Karl suddenly bristled, leaning his spindly form forward in his chair. “You’re not taking me seriously!” he accused.

Jack assured him that was not the case, but he felt a bit flustered. There was a fine line between acknowledging and encouraging a patient’s delusions, and coming across as dismissive was generally to be eschewed, but this was new ground for him. The truth was that many of the Mandela Effects Karl had listed off had unnerved him and caused him to question his own memories in a way that made him uncomfortable. Plus he couldn’t prove the young man wrong about any of it.

“Who would you want to bring back from the dead, Karl?” Jack asked.

Karl blinked at him for a few moments while the anger and tension left his body. “No one,” he said, just above a whisper, “It’s only an idea.”

Jack got him started on CBT and suggested that Karl get out of the house this weekend. He said he was going to an open mic night at the local hip coffee shop on Saturday night, and then immediately regretted sharing his plans. Karl said he’d think about it, that they did have good coffee. Jack was suddenly struck by an image of a nondescript young man wearing a hoodie, hunched over a laptop in the back of Perkatory and the scent of root beer hanging in the air by the bathrooms, competing with the heady, bitter smell of roasting coffee beans. He thought that might be where he recognized Karl from.

The things that Karl had said stayed with Jack for the next several days. He didn’t want to admit he was feeling haunted by them, but bad dreams had started in earnest, despite the pills his psychiatrist had prescribed to help him sleep. Saturday, while going over patient files, he googled the Mandela Effect on a whim.

The phenomenon, which he was peripherally aware of, now encompassed thousands of instances of product packaging, movie quotes, and historical events that had somehow been collectively misremembered by the population. He’d been a bit unnerved some years ago to realize that The Berenstain Bears were not, in fact, Jewish, something he had accepted as a fact since childhood, but this list was comprehensive and many of the entries filled him with eerie dread.

Jack could see how easily thinking about this sort of thing could become unhealthily overwhelming. In part, because it was so appealingly creepy. Just then he got a text from Karl, “Discrepancy in SpongeBob episode 53b?” Jack was less than thrilled that a new patient was texting him so casually on a weekend, and slightly concerned at the relevance to his current internet search, but decided it must be some coincidence, and chose to ignore the text and watch aviation disaster videos on YouTube.

The thing about plane crashes is that they are the only modern tragedies that people are actually invested in preventing. When an aircraft goes down, a comprehensive investigation, often involving multiple counties, goes to exhausting lengths to understand what happened and prevent the same thing from ever happening again. The international aviation industry doesn’t rely on thoughts and prayers, it sends mountain-response teams and deep-sea divers to recover wreckage and then pieces together the evidence like a jigsaw puzzle in a hangar until the mystery is solved. Most everything else gets a shrug and a “Hey, what can you do about it?” but not when a plane goes down.

Jack woke up in a dark house with some man on a webcam ranting about contrails on the tv. He cursed the YouTube algorithm for filling his sleeping brain with such nonsense and paused the video, suddenly thrusting the house into an unnervingly deep silence. “Abode, Living Room Lights,” he said. His home automation system illuminated the space. Checking his phone, he saw six messages from Karl about aerosolized drugs and the Moscow Theater Hostage Crisis. One asked if he remembered the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in November 2001.

More spooked than he cared to admit, Jack simply responded, “Save it for your session, Karl.” Bubbles indicating a response popped up immediately and remained for a while, but all that came in way of a reply was “k,” which made Jack frown. A frowny face emoji appeared followed by a laughing one. He put down his phone and took a shower. It was open mic night and Lila was playing. It was well-worth suffering through the offputting comedian “Chester the Clown” who was there every time to see her play in front of an actual audience.

Lila was an ethereal young woman who could often be found strumming her guitar, singing soulful evocative songs she had written on the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop, and it was nice to see her play with a PA system in front of a real audience once a month. Jack felt that if the right person ever heard her music she’d be signed in an instant. When making new friends Jack was always paranoid that he’d be accused of trolling for new patients, but he had done his best to get to know the attractive blonde with the angelic voice, because who wouldn’t?

She didn’t seem taken aback when he’d finally offered to buy her a coffee, as was clearly used to attention. By now he’d brought her enough environmentally-conscious, sustainable, free-trade, organic oat-lattes to hear some stories of her wild life of adventure, from monkeys in Mozambique to surfing San Somewhere. Despite the hardships, she’d remained the gentlest of souls and that was reflected in the music she made. Lila was a refreshing change not just from the darkness of Jack’s patients, but also from the bleakness of the world at large. Jack considered psychotherapy to be an art, but struggled to reconcile what that meant when weighed against the power of music.

Jack had been drawn to psychotherapy because he liked the raw realness of dealing with complicated problems head on. Reality bites like a snapping turtle when you’re sitting in a room next to a person with real problems and the infinity of their pain washes over you. Music was another facet of the same transcendent experience, an opportunity to be awash in infinity of another’s joy, and so he forgot all about bad dreams and Karl and headed to open mic night with a smile on his face, double checking to make sure the door with the numeric keypad for security was locked behind him and the outside lights were on.

The event was well attended, owing, in part, to the gaggle of food trucks parked under bistro-lights strung up outside the coffee shop, two of which sold alcohol. Even awful Chester the Clown got a hearty response from the crowd, but that may have had to do with the “Stalker’s Tears IPA” flowing freely on $1 special from the “Criminal Minds Brewery” matte-black school bus with flames on the side.

Jack wandered in after the clown was done, sipping his second Stalker’s Tears. He’d shown up dehydrated and drank the first one too fast. The sign said it was 8% abv, but it had a bite like a spirit and reminded Jack of an 18% IPA he’d had once in Maryland. His head was swimming a little bit as he made his way inside. A band was setting up and he saw Lila at the edge of the room, standing in front of a stool she was using as a merch table, set with a stack of CDs next to some cards. He made his way to the counter and purchased an oat latte. When he said it was for Lila, the barista inscribed a musical note in the foam on top.

Chester was nearby, leering at some college coeds and making gross comments to them about the effects the coffee they were drinking would have on their digestive systems over the roar of the tipsy crowd. Jack wondered how much of his act was schtick and how much was diagnosable. Sidestepping the grease painted creep, he suddenly thought he heard someone call “Dr. Jack!” behind him, but then the bassist on stage hit a chord and even the clown was silenced. He turned, but saw no one he recognized, then approached Lila.

He handed her the latte and she seemed genuinely touched by the foam art. Jack admitted he couldn’t take credit for that, but said he was happy to see that she’d set up a SoundCloud. She’d said that because this was the first open mic to be live-streamed and recorded, it was time to think about her next steps.

Later, beaming under the lights, with her blonde hair glowing like a halo, Lila sang three songs, one about the ocean, one about the sunset, and one about heartbreak. After the final number, while the last note of the song hung in the air Jack thought he heard something, but it was suddenly drowned out by the raucous applause of the rather drunk crowd. Uninhibited, they whistled and cheered and Jack was happy to join them.

He drove home gingerly, still feeling the effects of the beer, but when the entry code didn’t work on his front door, he knew he couldn’t put it down to the alcohol. Resorting to his key, which he struggled to find, suddenly noticing that the exterior lights were off, Jack reminded himself to change the passcode later. Stepping over the threshold, he said, “Abode, All Lights on,” but the house remained dark. The clock on the microwave, and LEDs on all manner of devices remained illuminated, so the power was clearly on. Jack mused about pitfalls of the modern age and tried to remember where the light switches were.

A short time later he sat on the couch with a glass of wine in hand, having taken two of the sleeping pills as well. This was a bad idea and he’d feel it in the morning, but the realization that he’d been signed out of every service and device required further dulling of his emotions, lest he lose his mind with frustration. An hour later the damage was mostly undone, having clicked the link to “reset your password” a dozen or more times.

As he’d regained access to his accounts he’d gotten a slew of messages from Karl, which he ignored. He’d put the recording of the night’s performance on the tv in the living room and fast forwarded past the clown to Lila’s finale. Opening Instagram he considered sending her a message about how moving he’d found her performance, but got distracted at the close of her third song by that noise again. He rewound the video.

During the last note of the song about heartbreak, loud enough to be picked up by the microphones inside, a car engine roared to life. Jack rewound and listened to the unmistakable sound. Just then, a demonically loud vehicle raced by outside. He stumbled to the window to try to get a look, but it was too late. Just then a text came in from Karl reading, “Some people remember the Blonde Dahlia murder.” He dropped his phone on the way back to the couch.

Jack awakened after noon the next day. His mouth felt like he’d been sucking on steel wool and he staggered to the kitchen to drink deeply directly from the faucet. Most of what had happened the previous night was a blur. He was hoping he hadn’t sent any gushing, embarrassing messages to Lila when he suddenly remembered Karl’s last text. Returning to the living room he scooped his phone up off the floor. There was no message from Karl, just a text from Kia from 9 AM asking to reschedule a session three months in the future. Jack’s anxiety fought with his hangover and he spent the rest of the day watching plane crash videos and eating canned soup.

The next week was spent anticipating Karl’s session with dread. Jack had no proof whatsoever that his relationship with this particular patient was unusual in any way, yet the young man made him incredibly uneasy. On Monday news broke that no sanctions would be sought against the despotic regime, and it was unlikely that the dismembered journalist’s murderers would ever see justice. The world was full of bad news, but he’d been listening to Lila’s SoundCloud and, though it was tinny and low-fidelity, it was like a candle against the darkness.

All of Karl’s intensity was absent during his next session. He seemed despondent, but refused to answer specific questions about what was obviously bothering him, instead choosing to ask Jack about various hypothetical scenarios and how guilt should factor into each.

“Say you work at a factory,” he asked, “and all day you make widgets, but later on you find that the things you’re making are components for bombs that are being used in a war. Does that make you responsible for the deaths?”

Jack said he thought Karl might need a philosopher more than a therapist, and asked about his social life to direct the conversation in a more productive direction. Karl said most of his friends were guys he knew from various forums, and that none of them lived nearby. Sometimes he’d game with them, but he said he was mostly too busy working or driving around aimlessly to pursue any sort of local friendships.

Jack asked if he dated, but Karl just scoffed and said that girls weren’t interested in guys like him, no matter how smart they were or how much money they had. As his therapist, Jack wanted to assure Karl that this couldn’t be a universal truth, and that there was someone for everyone, but he, himself, had struggled in that department as well. Not to mention that there was something decidedly unappealing about Karl’s arachnid-like aspect.

Karl asked if you’d be obligated to give the money you made working at the bomb factory to charity. Jack said he didn’t know, but that the world was a complex place and maybe the scales of good and evil had to be balanced on a personal level. Karl said he’d always been an agnostic, but he’d started to feel like there was a programmer at work behind the scenes, changing reality without his consent and it made him feel powerless. Jack’s mind flashed to the Black Dahlia, whose killer had never been caught.

Treading lightly, Jack offered that he thought it was incumbent upon the individual to try and put as much goodness into the world as possible, that living a good life greased the wheels of fate and made the future easier. He said this earnestly, but scoffing, Karl took it as some flat platitude and asked Jack if he’d ever killed anyone. Jack said he had not, and Karl asked if he had ever been responsible for someone’s death.

Sometimes patients turned the tables and took over a session. Jack inhaled deeply and thought about how to respond, but all he could think about was that night in the hallway of his apartment building. He wanted to say that the world was a complicated place and maybe the beating of a butterfly’s wings in the Amazon basin can cause a monsoon in the South Pacific, but he didn’t know. All he knew was that if you spent too much time thinking about what might have been it could drive you crazy, and he wasn’t supposed to say “crazy.”

Before he could respond Karl asked him if he came into a bunch of money that he was required to use to make the world a better place, what he’d do with it. Jack was supposed to say that this session wasn’t about him, but he replied before good sense could take over and said that he’d help someone he knew release a record, that he thought it would be a way to bring some light into the world, and that might assuage some of the guilt he felt over things that were well beyond his control. Karl asked if it was the blonde girl from the coffee shop, and Jack knew he should say no more, but instead he nodded meekly.

“I don’t like her music,” said Karl, “I went to see Chester the Clown the other night, but I left after his set. I like techno, her music sounds like a bowl of cherries.” Jack thought he was right.

They sat in silence for a while, then Karl spoke, saying he had things to do and he was leaving, though there were still twenty minutes left in the session. Jack didn’t try to stop him.