Read Online The Shibboleth by John Hornor Jacobs - Free Book Online

idea? Putting me with a girl?”
    â€œNo one else seems interested in you. Might as well be her.” He jabs a thick finger at a frosted glass door. “You’ve got an appointment with Dr. Sinequa immediately following lunch.” He steps up to the window and pats the lime-green counter. The sour man glaring at the computer monitor is framed in the window and surrounded by shelves full of drugs. He’s got a Taser at his waist.
    Buster says, “I need Shreve Cannon’s morning candy, if you please, Steve-O.”
    Steve-O turns to the nearby computer and clacks on the keyboard for a few moments and then disappears back among the shelves of drugs.
    â€œYou noticed the Taser, right? Don’t know what your problem is, kid, but if any patient is found behind this counter, Steve-O is allowed to put you down.”
    â€œWhat’s with the
sturm und drang
routine, hoss?”
    He turns to me and snatches my wrist and gives a little jerk.
    â€œDon’t call me ‘hoss,’ kid. Look around this place.” He stops, puts his massive hands on his waist, and looks at me. “Seriously, take a good look.”
    I look. Robed zombies wander the hall, passing in and out of the cafeteria, the recreation rooms, the reading area.They murmur, mutter, moan, rock. Buster’s radio squelches and hisses, and a strange garbled noise comes from the tinny speaker. The air stinks of disinfectant and a whiff of raw sewage. The nurses, men and women alike, keep to the nurse station or move very fast toward their destination, as if the toddling shamblers were real zombies instead of medicated ones.
    I try, for an instant, to get out of my skin and go behind Buster’s eyes—not to do what I said, but just to understand. Time becomes elastic for that moment, and I’m out and looking from behind his eyes at me, but then the moment is up and the elastic tether that keeps me associated with my meatsuit snaps me back.
    Almost had it.
    Buster says, “This locked-down psychiatric ward has a forty-eight-patient capacity. You wanna know how many patients we have in here?”
    No, not really, but I can tell he’s going to tell me anyway. “More?”
    â€œOne hundred and twenty. You’re Mister One Hundred and Twenty-One.”
    â€œThat’s crazy.”
    â€œYou hit the nail on the head.” He stops, and then something about his expression clouds. “The whole world is going batty at the same time. It wasn’t like this a year ago.”
    â€œThe insomnia?”
    He looks at me like I’m a moron. “Bingo, kid. And these poor souls—” He taps me on the shoulder. “Including your little ass—are the first ones to stampede off the cliff.”
    Steve-O returns with a small tray holding two small paper cups.
    â€œThere’s your candy, Shreve. Take it.”
    I pick up the cups. There are two large capsules in one and a few ounces of water in the other. The pills most assuredly do not have the look of candy, and I would know.
    â€œWhat is this?”
    He bristles. “The red-and-blue one makes you smaller; the yellow one makes you larger. Ain’t got time for twenty questions. Take them.”
    â€œWhat if I don’t?”
    â€œI hold you down and make you take them.” He looks around for support. “Steve-O, this one’s gonna be trouble. Come out here.”
    Steve-O moves away from the computer station, puts his hand on his Taser, and exits the dispensary through a nearby door.
    â€œYou have three seconds to eat that candy, kid.”
    It’s all happening too fast, and I can’t tell if it’s because of the gauze of the drugs swaddling my brain and preventing me from touching the shibboleth or if it’s really just happening too fast.
    â€œThree, two…”
    Everything locks. My whole body goes rigid and there’s an electric crackling sound—
pop pop pop pop pop
—and I have no