The History of Writing (Part Three) Thalamus Geary and Dr. Milo Gollander

Men like Thalamus Geary are rarely encountered in the organic world and scarcely taken to be genuine or plausible in the digital one. Not so much for their dissimilarity to whomever they might be compared to nor the logic they imply by presence & skill but merely for the successful execution of their goals & desires, the lingering aftermath nothing less than the hard scars of trauma and their cripplehood and the legacy of villains since time immemorial. 

He was said to make devout nuns freeze in 2036 the way the advent of nuclear weapons authored the near-speechless fear of a generation in the Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon-Ford years before him. A textbook giant in anatomy and form: 6"1' in height, nearly 250 on the scale: Geary had the ready, remorseless, powerful strength of a common street-thug loaded to the gills on PCP and the undistractible focus of any hubristic general who'd draft them into a war. This deplorable, inexcusable, thoroughly educated breedling of Gollander Industries initiated and guided, on a literal moment-by-moment basis by Gollander Himself, it is not an exaggeration to regard Thalamus as a representation of condensed evil. 

Think of a hateful bodybuilder whose kryptonite was unexpected humor and you'll have a pretty sharp sense where this is going (if you don't already). 

Geary, in spite of any rumors/stories/etc. to the contrary, began his career with the company as a member of one of its many, many security staffs. Milo, the ever-hungry, lonely schmuck his purpose in life shaped him to be, was much in the habit of vetting, perusing, reviewing key members of his various enterprises and when his eyes clapped on Thalamus he visibly quivered. He visibly quivered. He's told the story at least once to virtually everyone- and thing concerned that he visibly quivered. By the convenient/default relationship of society and Gollander's inclination to control and micromanage whatever said defaults should set in his lifepath, Thalamus was like a stray dog with an uncannily remarkable reputation fully-formed and suited to meet the doctor's darkest Jungian needs. Milo skipped as much of the usual protocol that could legally and pragmatically be managed so that within less than eight weeks Geary had been assigned an army of racist, classist thugs in crisp uniforms, most of whom were political-nomads of the Trump Years, barely surviving month-to-month on UBIs and 1st World day-labor in construction & landscaping and at least one in ten with a fentanyl habit circumvented into legalization by manipulating government clauses related to healthcare and the abuse of the taxpayer's obligatory good will. 

On the surface, of course, there was nothing to justify such vigilance and paranoia. The typical addict and/or criminal could be pushed out of their bad habits, in many cases before the age of 30 and serve as living, inspiring examples to their peers, and those who'd been deprived or personally forfeited such opportunities could easily be controlled with the simple presence of a police force who'd hardly ever have to withdraw a pistol or can of mace. 

Beneath that surface, of course, there was the far-reaching legacy of the evil of men like them and those who'd enabled them to the heights of their power terrifying as a poorly-constructed skyscraper or a crucifix. 

No surprise such people are utterly bereft of mirth and humor. Their involuntary-if-direly-sustained rigidity leaves little room for the appreciation of chance. Dour-faced gamblers with hard voices and (generally) soft hands have to tendency to greet/interact with one another with an unnervingly queer consistency. Memories of names and etiquette and the performance thereof and little else. 

As the Trump Years closed out and that pathetic chapter of our history was at least punctuated, a due period of calm equanimity had transpired. Catholic faiths continued shrinking smaller than a pedophile's credibility along with the ever-unpersuasiveness and internecine hostility of Judaic communities and in that morass of human want for a meaningful sense of order, Buddhism enjoyed a brief moment of popular curiosity. Things like yoga and meditation and the mental-formations they inspired began to brim up in homes and conversations, faintly yet pleasingly from cultishly-small groups and individuals resistant to almost any sort of extroversion at all. 

Gollander and Geary and those who counted among them took notice. 

All the gun-violence in the country either disappeared behind the doors of those who'd ignored a multitude of signs or were inclined by class and familiarity towards blindness, or, what screamed and pushed like vociferous fire was gradually, sternly, confidently steered into smaller and smaller places like the newly-barren areas bordering Chicago, Detroit, Lower Los Angeles and where else bloodlust is a regular form of psychology. Places where voices like Malcolm X, Clarence Darrow and John Brown are responded to with hearts righteously hungry for justice and so rarely heard coherently. 

Geary and Gollander and those like them were certainly listening. 

And in the last week of May, 2036, they added Gollander's son and only child to their list of enemies. 

**** 

See Geary driving his Chevy Nautilus through the neighborhoods of Skid Row, the tranquil stare meaning to pick Charles Anthony from the hordes of American refugees pushing shoppingcarts carrying whatever loose-metal from delivery-trucks appliances cast away rudely or the like or sleeping in tents both store-bought and improvised from trashbags, blankets, sheets, random clothing or on their way to score or returning with the goods. See Geary turning the wheel, breathing large as a whale, and hear the radio drizzling an Alt-Right podcast so quiet it could be mistaken for memory. Midmorning light burns with indifferent ease yet the stench & filth makes it into a butane-torch when it collects into the lungs whose breath & form have been sucking the shit like embryos of some nightmarish experiment of endurance. Prayer moving like a psychic deathcloud, where even the sky feels too close to the grey-beige landscape of shops, bodegas with signs improvised from magic-markers and construction paper or newspaper or supermarket-flyers either fresh or semi-fossillike with rancid water and the heat of the sun. 

He knows at least a dozen of them by name, the drugs they prefer, their dealers, their histories, and what he doesn't know can be purchased for a pack of cigarettes or bullied with a drug-test or a casual flash of an automatic handgun. This shared angst replenished on a daily basis like an aneurysm of the soul. Geary is fairly certain that the kid won't be here but it's part of a search that runs for thousands of miles, all 48 states with nary a face beyond suspicion, not a door or tentflap he'll dismiss, up into attics and down beneath floorboards in order to bring the so-called traitor-thief into custody, into whatever the cruel and desperate Dr. Gollander means for the bastard. 

After an hour searching, he notices one of the braver peer-counselors employed by Gollander Services (kind of working-advertisements for the pharmaceutical & therapeutic division of the greater corporation) talking to a black-skinned woman on Hershey Blvd. and he pulls the Chevy behind the peer-counselor's humble sedan, parking and getting out with an unnerving grace. 

The counselor turns to Thalamus, stunned recognition on her healthy, veteran face. The junky hardly recognizes their own shoes. 

"Morning, ladies," he says. 

"Good morning," the counselor replies. 

"You know me." 

"I guess I'd better." 

The horrid smile. 

"How may I be of service?" 

"Some disruption in the flow of routine. A lab employee gone missing, and you know how we feel about that." 

"Yes, sir," she replies. "If you have a description..." The rest of the words are too hard to formulate. 

"Let's keep it short and sweet, then. If you tell me there's anyone you seen here today that you didn't yesterday, I'll tell you just what  I'm looking for." 

"Well," said the counselor, the impulse to flee gradually diminishing, "it's been about the usual run of things. To my knowledge." 

"And I guess that one doesn't have any hot tips, either." 

Lost in that far extreme from which even combat-veterans are promised little return. Strong on her feet but deathly mute inside. 

The peer-counselor puts her hand to the poor woman's shoulder, too much sorrow to say the obvious. 

Geary turns his view around the boulevard, breathing, with careful drama, all the misery and resulting futility of the first-world damned that his incomparable viscera desires. "Alright, then." Raising his eyes in a sickly friendly expression, "Be sure to call with any news if you hear it." 

"We will." 

His stare tells her she made a mistake. 

"Sir." 

"Good girl," he says. 

He gets back in the car, restarts the engine. 

He starts driving north, maybe Atascadero, San Luis-Obispo. Someone has seen, if not spoken to Charles Anthony Gollander, and the brutal detective is going to find out who. 

****