Bad Glass

He smiled and dropped his fork into his empty bowl. “Once we knew what we were looking for, the experts were able to find the source. Earlier today, they found a giant mushroom.” He let out a wild laugh, amazed at the thought, or at the sheer craziness of having to say those words. “Really, it’s some type of fungus, underground, near the shore of the river, east of Riverside Park. Apparently, it’s huge. It covers nearly a full square mile.”

“The spores are hallucinogenic?” Charlie asked. He didn’t sound willing to believe. “You’re saying we’ve been hallucinating … all of this?” He gestured, weakly toward the kitchen and, I imagined, the notebook computer still sitting on the dining-room table. The emails from his parents.

“Well, yeah. It affects mood and perception. Sometimes it’s subtle, and sometimes it’s full-out catatonia. It blocks the receptors—neurotransmitters in the brain.” He tapped idly at his temple. “Like serotonin. And norepinephrine. Just like LSD.”

“But what about the sky?” Floyd asked. His eyes darted from Danny, to Taylor, and then back to Danny. “The sky was red. And crawling. There were … there were things up there. We all saw it. That wasn’t just some fucking hallucination!”

Danny smiled. I got the sense that he was enjoying his role here, telling us this stuff, answering our questions. He was a fount of knowledge, a deity, if just for a minute or two, answering all our prayers. “That’s part of its bloom, part of its cycle. It’s been fruiting, and when enough spores reach the atmosphere, light refracts off the particles, just below cloud level … And I’m guessing it’s not really as spectacular as you think it is. The sky was red, but everything else … that’s just your brain spinning out of control.”

Danny’s expression settled into serious lines, and he surveyed each of us in turn, meeting our eyes. “In fact, everything you’ve seen or heard here in the city … I wouldn’t put too much stock in it.”

Danny leaned over and dug into the pockets of his khaki pants. He came up with a bottle of pills and shook it for a second, making it rattle. “This is Zoloft. It should help. It should free up your receptors.” He tossed the bottle over to Floyd, catching him unaware. The bottle hit Floyd’s hands and fell to the floor. Floyd quickly scooped it back up. “Take two. All of you … two a day for as long as you’re here. The experts say it should help. They’ve got us all taking it.”

I sat in silence as the bottle passed from Floyd, to Charlie, to Taylor, and then on to me. They all took the pills, but only Floyd seemed eager to bolt them down. He was the most desperate, I guess, and this was his life preserver. I poured two large white tablets into my palm and stared at them for a while.

This didn’t make sense. Danny’s explanation … It was all in our heads? But how could that be? “I have pictures,” I said, raising my eyes. I focused on Danny at first and then turned toward Taylor. “We’ve seen things. All of us have seen things. Together.”

Taylor raised her eyes to meet mine. But there was doubt there, her dark eyes quivering, refusing to stay locked on my face.

“For fuck’s sake, you’ve seen the pictures, Danny!”

He flashed me a gentle smile. “What was your state of mind when you were editing your photos, Dean?” His voice was quiet, but there was a prodding needle buried there, inside his words. “What exactly did you do?”

No. I shook my head. I hadn’t altered them. I knew that. I knew what I had seen.

“People under the influence of the spore seem prone to suggestion and confabulation. They rewrite the world around them, what they see, what they experience. And they rewrite the past. The mayor’s disappearance—we think he convinced an entire room of reporters, made them believe in a shitty little piece of special effects.”

No. I closed my fist around the pills, suddenly flush with violent energy. I wanted to throw the Zoloft back at Danny. I wanted to transform the drug into a pair of tiny little bullets.

“Is that the official line?” I growled. “Is that what the government’s going to say? That we’re all just insane? None of this is real?”

“They’ve already started torching the mushroom, Dean. It should be over soon. It should all be gone.”

“But it’s bullshit. It’s a whitewash!”

My words hung in the air for a long moment. Everyone was watching me: Floyd cowed, Charlie confused, Danny looking on with those all-too-patient eyes. And Taylor … Taylor just looked tired.

“Take the pills,” Taylor finally said. I was surprised at her voice. She sounded strong. All of her doubt and confusion had disappeared. “You don’t want it to be true, do you? You don’t want an answer to this place, a solution. You don’t want it to make sense.” She smiled sadly and met my eyes. “You want the end of the world.”

I opened my mouth to protest, then quickly pulled it shut. “No,” I finally managed. “No, I don’t.” I’m not a monster.