Kaleidoscope by Erika

He looked out of the window, he looked at his big shiny car. It was a Maserati. Not like that piece of

shit his father had bought for him on his 18th birthday. His father was a lowlife, it’s true. It had taken him 30 years to realize that horrible statement with a terrible clarity.

The ”Palindome”. That was what they called Stanley’s new paradise. The beginning is like the end, they said, related to life and the type of word. That was the cult center. They didn’t call it a cult of course. It was the “Core” headquarters, where you worked out your anger, where you got rid of your tension. Where you stared into the hole in your heart until you became whole again (clever, Stanley knew how to play with words).

You were greeted with soft lights, gentle words, attractive women and men with easy ways of being. They knew how to suck you in.Stanley actually was a scientist. And he knew that humanity was fundamentally a mistake, one which he had dedicated his life to correcting.

Vaccines, yes, medicine, that was the answer. Anyone who was against it was certainly a backwoods, backwards freak. A hillbilly. A nobody. An ignorant louse (that was what he had instructed the newspapers to say, of course, not in those words. He had a lot of friends in high

places who liked to throw around 50 cent words. They called the no-vaxers people who were fixated on utopia, made sure to mention historical resistance to now widely accepted vaccines such as those for polio).

The new vaccine was also dubbed “Kore”,

dedicated to eradicating depression and other mental health disorders, including bipolar disorder and ADD. Mental health had become such an emergency in the US, and loneliness was the new enemy. It had also become a fantastic gold mine for investors and businessmen. The Kore had been widely accepted by the medical community, embraced by the alternative press, dubbed the next miracle drug of 2023. Stanley had succeeded in his intent. He had arrived. He was going places.

The changes induced in personality were very slight, but there was a certain placating effect that was undeniable. A certain desire to please, a particular wish to become the same as everyone else. With the proper training, the brain could be altered to induce happiness in anyone, only that what could be called the pathos of human existence had been eradicated.

There was a flattening effect. Humans had been reduced to trained dogs, responding to a set of parameters. Creativity had been eliminated,replaced by a sense of sterile satisfaction disconnected from any happening, any achievement. A shortcut had been taken to reduce the disastrous effects of ambition, lust,and desire. Instant buddhas were the result.

Humans were much easier to control if they were pliant, and also flexible and resistant to change. Stanley had seen the opportunities, and had banked on them. With the Core, he had acquired a large group of eager volunteers for his association, mostly highly educated professionals willing to donate their time for any cause Stanley chose.

He wasn’t Stanley to them. He was known as Master Moon, complete with long robe and grand sweeping gestures, as all the followers placed a great deal of trust in the phases of the moon. As they were near the ocean, many different ceremonies were carried out to capture the energy of the water and transmute it. He was very good at taking advantage of all the trends to

fuel his cause. And to appeal to vulnerable individuals.

Shannon was an example. 45, wealthy, disillusioned. Married but may as well have been single. Her husband was constantly on vacation, and she was going mad inside in her Hollywood mansion adjusting the sofas and staring at the mosquitos bouncing off the surface of the pool.

She had come to the Core to get saved, and that’s exactly what happened. She participated in weekly meetings, volunteered her time in soup kitchens and charity fundraisers, chanted, sang, meditated. It was surprising what faith could do.

Her friends said she was transformed. She had a new lease on life. It’s true, she was different. But those closest to her said it wasn’t a positive sort of change. She had a strange glint in her eyes, a vaguely glassy stare. A twist to her lips when anyone asked why she was spending her every

waking hour at the center. Could it possibly be more important than her husband, her children, her friends, even her successful real estate business? It was if her mind had been wiped clean.

It was hard to understand people, Stanley knew that because as a child he had had a terrible disappointment, the kind that doesn’t exactly qualify as abuse but that nonetheless, slightly skews your perspective. Those people that you trusted, your parents, were actually fallible. And they didn’t actually prefer you. You were nothing but a hindrance to their plans.

He remembered exactly the sound of his breaking heart. It was the sound of the paper tearing under his mom’s fingers, when she had torn up the daisy he had spent a day making, wanting it to be the most beautiful thing in her life, as she was to him, that woman who floated through his life like a wild angel.

“Do it again, Stannie, come on…. You’re not even trying!! Look at what your brother made!”

On the wall was his brother Ed’s masterful painting of a lily of the valley, in oil paints. Ok, he was a few years older, but it really wasn’t fair, and mom didn’t care at all about him. He might a s well have been dead to her.

Could you die of a broken heart? Certainly, it was not the end of the world, but in that moment Stan felt all the blood drain out of his face. He had been assassinated, and somehow, even if he tried to deny it, his worldview changed completely in that very moment. He realized the idiocy and fickleness of human beings, and the stupidity of human hopes in that moment. He became cold, calculating. He changed.

People came and went in his center, came and went, but a quiet sense of desperation hovered around the entrance. That sense of concealed pain, of fear, of need, that was what fueled the whole operation. The participants needed a sense of belonging. And that was what was provided for them. Any lie will do, as long as it is proposed in the right way, at the right time.

Stanley knew it. Even though as far as he was concerned, the truth was far more satisfying, if a bleak consolation. It was the sound of money and bills fluttering through the counting machine, hour on the hour. The center permitted him to have a private helicopter, a yacht, an army of servants. He was going worldwide. The mental health crisis had been his salvation. Even though he had never solved his own.He liked to watch them at his lunch hour, when some crazies sweat it out at the exercise ring.

They jumped and sighed and even cursed on command. It was a type of liberation, and everyone was encouraged to say and do whatever they felt like. It was terrifying and funny to watch the bizarre grimaces of these people, for the most part middle aged and wealthy, grimacing and contorting their bodies and making faces, in the name of this release they were supposed to find. After they had spent  half an hour expressing their darkest needs, the lights were cut and soft music played. They

splayed their limbs out on the floor, and the teacher wandered around, giving a gentle touch here, a soft word there. It was all in the name of calming and suppressing those who may have been the first to ask questions about why they felt so weak in the morning, or why they were slowly forgetting everything. Because it was part of the plan. The medicine and the brain scan were designed to calm them, to keep them in check. They were willing fodder for Stanley’s grand scheme. They didn’t realize that all the printouts were falsified, that they were all being showed the same meaningless diagram of the same imaginary brain. They were willing fools,

and he was content to make his money off them, to design out of them anything that would be a disturbance. He wanted an army of willing fools for his money machine, and they had absolutely no idea what was happening to them. Any questions were immediately put down to

ignorance and foolishness. And who wants to be labeled a fool? They all toed the line with blissful ignorance. And strangely, Stanley watched without a trace of remonstrance.

Katleen actually thought he was kind of cute, but then again, he kind of reminded her of those

creepy friends of Hitler’s who put people through experiments. She asked him questions sometimes, but made sure to play dumb to avoid getting him up in arms about something. Once he started getting annoyed he was impossible to deal with. He didn’t back down over anything.

“I think you’re lonely. Can’t you take loneliness out of DNA?”

He didn’t even bother to respond to her, and pretended to be distracted. But it was hard not to respond to her physicality. Even though herwomanly arrogance was tremendous, he

thought. He would just ignore her. That would certainly irritate her.

But she wouldn’t be put off by his tricks, and just to prove that she wasn’t afraid, she offered to join the Core groups to discover what it was all about.

“I’m going to be one of your guinea pigs!” She smiled at him with a provocative stare, but hedidn’t want to give her any kind of pleasure.

“The hours are listed below” he gave her theroster of events at the palindrome. “Feel free tooin on your free hours.” His eyes revealed no trace of emotion, but she was sure he was a fake.

She would get him to beg on his knees sooner or later, she was sure. She was gorgeous and she knew it, had a figure to die for and a luscious, smooth body.

She snatched up the sheet and gave him a quick thanks. Little did she know.

…………………

Monday came, and she tried the class. Crazy kaleidoscope lights, long hair flowing everywhere, sweaty people twirling around. A break where creamy smoothies were passed

around. A speaker who told them all to lie on the floor, to let go, to give in.

She felt absolutely nothing.

After a week, however, something changed. She saw that her hair started to thin, at least that was her impression. Her mood took a sudden downturn, and she felt weak and nauseous in the morning. But she didn’t put two and two together. Maybe she just had PMS. That must be

it. He knew Kathleen was stupid, he was sure of it. Typical beautiful female who has no idea what she is doing or who she is. Her weak point is her absence of empathy and her totalizing vanity.

She was similar to himself, in fact. Except that he had lost every ounce of joy. He had given himself over to the joy of numbers, objects, money, and collecting. Collecting people as if they were flies.

Butterflies to paste on the wall. Their stupidity and pettiness amused and disgusted him, if he could have been said to have any emotion anymore.

Breaking through his idle thoughts Kathleen plopped her handbag down on her desk and stared straight in his face.

“It’s in the smoothies, isn’t it? The medicine?

That’s where you try out your new concoctions?”

She reached her hand up to her smooth auburn head and showed him a handful of hair.“How do you explain that? And the fact that Ican’t even find the strength to walk up the stairsafter those goddamn drinks?”

Stanley looked at her with a slight nervousness.

“I hope you’re joking. You know everything at the Core is FDA approved. This operation is the hallmark of success. We’ve been solving mental health dilemmas…”

“Since 1998” She finished his sentence for him with a violence that disturbed him.

For the rest of the day, she didn’t say anything.

But Stanley wasn’t about to be fooled. He gave orders for her to be fired, and when the newscame, she had to be escorted out by the guards.

She screamed at him, but he simply closed his smooth sliding electronic doors and sat by himself, contemplating nothing. She would have to be removed from the association with him. He would have his media goons start to work up a story about her, because she was sure to go to them with a story. They all did. Attention hungry bastards desperate for fame. Mediocre people, all of them. So predictable.

Sometimes Stanely wondered about the ultimate futility of the human race, about their stupid little pleasures and their ugliness, their pitiful lives. It was a miracle that they found the strength to go on.

To soothe himself he would visit the lab, and somehow, looking at all those experiments and lab rats and smooth shiny bottles filled with various serums calmed him down. There was an order in the world, in a world where beautiful

women like Kathleen couldn’t intervene because they didn’t have the vision, the intelligence, to imagine a world where misfortune, ugliness and stupidity couldn’t enter. Stanley was going to eradicate misery from the world. He was going to

create a docile race of men who knew how to accept their fate with a smile, who didn’t put up a fight. Who kept a stiff upper lip, just the way he had, all his life, ever since his mom tore apart his heart like a broken flower.He only saw Kathleen once again, bumped into her at the supermarket. As usual, it was a strange meeting.

Obviously, she didn’t have the same income, she looked a bit poorer, he thought, almost amused.

But she still had that sparkle in her eye, she was still hot. He wished he could eradicate her, she was simply an aberration.

“Hey you, how are you feeling after you dumped me out on my ass?” She didn’t even seem angry.

“You know, I feel sorry for people like you.”

She looked at the cans of beans with a glassy stare.

“I would say the same of people like you, who don’t know their place.”

Stanley tried to move on down the aisle, but Kathleen stopped him.

“Let’s make it all up Saturday night. Your treat!”

She slipped him her number with a lascivious stare. Stanley felt a tingle down his leg and in his groin, one that he wished he could ignore. He moved away, but he held on to the number. He would sleep with her then leave her. He would

eliminate her, he would win. He was sure of that.

Kathleen laughed and Stanley felt sure that it was in fact the whole universe laughing at him, because at his core he had a hole in his heart that went down and back to the beginning of time, and if she couldn’t help him, no one could.

But Stanley moved towards the checkout with a set face. At home, he would cry like a baby, and remember Kathleen’s face. He wouldn’t call her.

But he had to.