Babayaga

Jake shrugged. “Beats me. I ain’t the pharmacist. As I understand it, the prime ingredient of the drug is extracted from a common root, one plant, and in some way we are both somehow connected back to that single source. I guess this is what lets it blend the different visions of its visitors. Impressive and very deluxe stuff, light years ahead of what the other guys have got. I mean, putting aside how incredible it is that we’re commingling our individual and unique hallucinations, there ain’t many drugs out there can conjure up a decent breakfast, am I right? That doctor is a genius.” He leaned over to the window and pointed past the faded gingham curtains. “Your vision out there. What is it, Chicago?”

“Mmmn, no, iz Detroight,” said Will, his mouth full.

“All right, well, see, we’re also in my grandparents’ house, up in Accord, New York. Upstate. So, this here is a mishmash of pieces of your unconscious world mixed with chunks of mine. Now, I don’t know why my mind would conjure up this sad sack memory for me, I’ve been in plenty nicer places, but I guess it’s some sort of symbolic recollection for me. Like I said, it’s fascinating. When Bendix described what he was up to, I volunteered right away.”

Will mostly wanted more breakfast, but he thought he should ask more questions first. “How do you know Bendix?”

Jake shrugged. “He’s been doing various tests with us ever since the war. Initially, he was mixing up Thorazine with variations of crank to try to change a soldier’s sense of time, you know, so that things would seem very slow while the GI was actually moving very fast. It had potential, but there were big physical setbacks, massive strokes and coronaries. Then he had an idea for how to interrogate suspects under doses of lysergic acid. That went kinda badly too. Bendix sent over some LSD batches from Bern that were way past the point of potent. Test subjects were flying out of hospital windows to escape the purple dragons and pink elephants. Two strikes were enough, and Washington sent me back here to smoke him. Then he pulled out this ace from up his sleeve, right in the nick of time, too, ’cause his number was up. But he put this on the table and everyone saw the potential right away. This could be huge. If he’s got what he says he’s got—and it sure the hell looks like he does—then it’s going to be the biggest thing since ol’ Madame Curie discovered radium. But like I say, I don’t know what it is exactly, Bendix is using some mix of ergine, DMT, ibogaine, and other stuff. I don’t ask many questions, the guy spooks me, honestly. The lab boys can sort out the details, all I care about is what we can do with it.”

“Yes. Very interesting. Really, fascinating,” said Will, only half listening while slathering butter on his toast. He felt entirely at ease; it was nice to be back in the States again, even if it was only in a fantasy. He liked Jake too; the man spoke with a down-to-earth straightforward style that reminded him of home. It made sense to Will that Jake came from good upstate country people. He wasn’t like the other New Yorkers, with their obtuse, long-winded ways. Will wondered how Oliver and Jake had ever become friends when their personalities were so clearly miles apart.

“It is fascinating,” Jake went on. “Think about how a drug like this could affect the entire topography of war. I could be at one latitude, see, and you could be thousands of miles away, but if we’re dosed at the same time from the same batch, shazam, we’re sharing a single stage together. Like we are now, get it?”

Will nodded, only vaguely understanding.

“What this means,” Jake continued, “is that you can fly over one of Ho Chi Minh’s camps in the deepest, thickest jungle and dose them by air, like you’re irrigating crops. At the same time you carefully dose up your own GI force that’s sitting back in, say, West Germany, all gunned up and ready for action. Talk about your goddamn ambush, the Commies will be loony-eyed and drug dreaming, wandering through their ancestral mud-hut homes, when—ka-bam—good ol’ Yankee Joe kicks down the bamboo door and scorches a flamethrower in their faces. Then it’s like ‘Oh, hello’ and ‘Sayonara, buddy!’ all in the same breath.”

Will shook his head. “Wow, incredible. I never imagined stuff like this was possible.”

Jake smiled. “Right now Bendix is the only one who can do it, no one else is even close. Mark my word, once the kinks are ironed out and the army labs start cooking up their industrial-sized batches, boy howdy, it is going to be a whole new ball game.”

“Seems like it works pretty well already. I mean, this bacon tastes really good,” Will said, loading up his fork for his last big bite.

Jake nodded. “Yeah, well, the clinical tests are almost done. But like I said, we still have some kinks.”

“Like what?”