Synthetic Savior part 3 Read online

  Synthetic Savior:

  The Series

  B. David Ferrel

  Synthetic Savior (large type), volume 3

  Copyright © 2011

  B. David Ferrel

  All rights reserved.

  Dedication

  To both my mother, the hard-headed republican Real Estate agent, and my wife, who for the most part prefers to follow my mother’s advice over mine.

  Many special thanks to Captain Douglas N. Hambleton of the Berkeley Police Department and Dr. John Carroll of California State University, Stanislaus. Police Captain Hambleton graciously provided the details of California’s legal procedures regarding a felony hit-and-run. Dr. Carroll graciously provided too many academic and perceptual angles to attempt to itemize.

  Preface

  “He who is greedy is always in want.”

  --Horace (65 B.C. to 8 B.C., Ancient Roman Poet.)

  “When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt.”

  -- Honore de Balzac

  “Balzac was right…. There is tremendous jealousy about money.”

  -- Oliver Stone, regarding Wall Street (1987).

  “Envy lurks at the bottom of the human heart, like a viper in its hole.”

  -- Honore de Balzac

  “My father was a Republican and he hated Roosevelt. And that's sort of been the battle of my life, I think. You have to understand I grew up a Republican conservative. I hated Castro. And I put my money where my mouth was because I went to war, but I understood pretty quickly that this was another place, another culture and we would never fit in there.”

  --Oliver Stone, The Observer (Guardian News and Media Limited 2011)

  The first of this series projects an ostentatious, glitzy, and shallow draw. The second book of the series furthers the illogic of the illusive hype of many false perceptions of the illustrious while highlighting the significance of ridiculously irrelevant bickering.

  This is the final of the three, and it draws to mind how the all-encompassing, invasive, and viral effect of the green eyed monster consumes these capitalists, especially since all monetary circumstances are on such a downward spiral.

  Contents

  Seventh Chapter:

  Instability

  [7.1] Instability

  [7.2] To Quit or to Expire

  [7.3] Know your place, woman!

  [7.4] Cooperative Agenda

  Eighth Chapter: The Mess

  [8.1] Citation

  [8.2] Resignation

  [8.3] Discombobulated Theatrics

  [8.4] Concealment

  [8.5] Vengeance

  Ninth Chapter: Conclusion

  [9.1] Cover Story: A Train of Fraud

  [9.2] News Report:

  Three Real Estate Salesmen Arrested

  [9.3] The Cost of Anxiety

  [9.4] Quite the Self-Realization

  Chapter 7.

  Chapter Title: Instability

  Subsection 7.1

  Instability

  The passage of a quickly traveling yet anonymous bus marked to stop next in Seattle creates enough noise to hoist Beth to an upright stance in her seat. Outside she notices this bus considerably farther down the road now, nearing but a visual speck, heading the opposite direction than the car she is riding front passenger seat.

  She glances over to notice an unfamiliar person driving. She next realizes an unfamiliar car she’s traveling inside, a dirty green 1960-ish VW bus.

  “Who are you?” She asks, once she calms down, after she immediately panics. Her mind races much faster than typical. In her mind, this driver as well as this quickly moving vehicle retains a snap-shot quality with every change of scenery, even though this vehicle is moving a bit too quickly for Beth to retain comfort when she consciously focuses. Then, before the driver answers, she decides to relax, for her own harmony, the best she can until she determines where they’ll next stop or even where they’re heading now.

  “Hey, baby,” this man responds. “You’re awake. We hear so much negative about killing brain cells altogether, but when we smoke a little dope we’re only killing the weak ones.”

  This unknown guy she discovers wearing a tank top, a pair of faded jeans, and an awkwardly misplaced flamingo hat carries a vigilant look of an Australian hunter. But he speaks with a slightly Northern-European accent instead of that of an Australian. She recognizes him as a foreigner, though she does not quite recognize any region from which he may have reallocated.

  He continues, “By my logic, smoking a little grass every so often lets us operate with more of an open mind. See, don’t you feel more alert now and ready to take on the day? How you feeling now?”

  Now Beth is saturated in pure bewilderment. She’s remembering nothing about any drug interaction of any sort on her part since her freshman year in State College nearly five years ago. But apparently she’s wrong. Consequently, she’s disoriented with her position and any responsibilities altogether.

  “What do you think?” He once again prods her.

  Now Beth is saturated in pure bewilderment. She’s remembering nothing about any drug interaction of any sort on her part since her freshman year in State College nearly five years ago. But possibly she’s wrong. Could she be? Consequently, she’s disoriented with her position and any responsibilities altogether.

  [7.2]

  To Quit or to Expire

  Never has his mind raced as furiously since he first began his real-estate career nearly eighteen years ago with Brentwood-Douglas Realty. He recalls feelings of excitement suffocated by anguish, enthusiasm suffocated by panic, along with the dozens of additional contrasting and scattered emotions, which in days past worked only to nullify each other.

  He remembers it so well, the fret and the sweat, the contemplation and near resignation, and a fear of soon revealing that he had somehow coerced himself for decades to pursue a mistaken profession. Ultimately, a misdirected life.

  He remembers those first two months of feeling so out of place. He did not belong there; he could not perform the tasks required to do what these people do. He did not successfully complete his first sale those two months. Overlooking the fact that he did ever successfully close a sale, and quite a few sales they were, all he recalls are the turbulent times.

  The turbulence he recalls far beyond those first two months. All he can now recollect are his failures and years of struggle just to scarcely scrape by economically, only to create an empty chasm of his emotional despair.

  He so frequently dreamed about the phenomenal success that he heard of proclaimed ‘real estate masters’ until it became an expectation of his. But he never became redundantly successful, in his own mind, and had never truly lived up to his initial dream. The thought had escaped his mind years ago that he had other options available: options to start a new career; to build a new dream; to start a new life.

  He never thought deeply enough to see any irony in how his dreams have been suffocating him in a liberated, capitalistic society. Rather, he never found the time to think deeply enough. His failures in real estate sales are the isolated memories he now vividly recalls and holds absolute focus.

  Now, in split-second precision, his frame of mind shifts completely and fills with practical doubts. He wonders, “What if… this chair does not fall over completely, leaving me dangling on top of a tipped-up chair, struggling for hours, while I struggle to get free solely to get a fresh start with this process?”

  Next, “What if… someone enters the home to find me in this awkward predicament?” And then, “What if… my subconscious overrides my conscious thought process, and I grab hold of that noose at the last second, by the single fiber left to salvage my miserable existence, subsequently restraining the noose from entirely blocking my oxygen intake?” Being found in this condition would be even more embarrassing than his greatest hang-up.

  His subconscious fear to again discover those anonymous salesman, as they were to him back when he started at Brentwood-Douglas, had they lived up to his insecure delusion and maliciously laughed at him about his failures before he escaped in search of a savior overpowers him now.

  Too bad he never caught on that indecision is the most deceptive dilemma to maintain. But, what if… he just cannot find the strength to kick over that chair underneath him, trembling for an even longer duration as he has been already, and he continues to live his final moments, seeming like hours, filled with successive doubts?

  Dave stands idle in the dining room of a vacant home soon to be foreclosed by the bank, motionless, with a belt strapped to a two-by-four brass dining room girder at one end and loosely stretched around his neck at the other. He contemplates the most conscious decision of his life. He’s been standing there nearly an hour, the same thoughts circling in his mind, over and over again, still indecisively searching for a solid answer, but ultimately hoping to find a savior of some form to enable him to relinquish his complete and indecisive authority.

  Suddenly, though operating with hardly any rational thought left, Dave has a foresight. He escapes into what he speculates to happen next, as it is happening, despite that still he cannot find the strength kick the chair out from beneath him.

  An Answer in the Absolute:

  Though my mind now races faster than it has ever, I cannot reap the strength to close my eyelids, to speak a single word, or to otherwise formulate any kind of bodily movement whatsoever. He’s coming. Soon he’ll tag my toe. I clearly hear him. I unmistakably feel him. I know he’s there. I ju
st fail to find any urge to let him know I know.

  Funny I don’t feel any pressure to panic. Maybe I don’t draw that red flag of notification that I’m still conscious, since I must be so thoroughly captivated by all this. Or maybe I’ve grown out of questions in life, and instead just left them all unanswered. Or maybe I’d rather observe—kind of a spectator sport this sequence has become. Or maybe it’s laziness.

  Regardless, I don’t see how I could find any intrigue in the morgue. Must coincide with that question / answer stipulation: Since I have never grown any curiosity about the morgue, and especially now since I’ve grown out of questioning altogether, just possibly a plain and simple end will be justifiable, regardless the insult to any sort of logic that poses. Anyhow, why am I hunting for any sort of justification at all, especially since I have confirmed to remain a nullity, therefore to remain justification-less? Paradoxical that I’d ever think to justify that in the first place.

  I thought I tied this justification situation all together in the moments before I justified this self-destructive leap into the soon to be (or not to be) eternal abyss. Why have I wasted a life in search of justification, since I’ve now firmly and finally concluded that I shall now continue without a need for justification, essentially that that fundamental justification must cease the reasoning for any more?

  Maybe I should continue to do what I wish I’d have learned to do earlier on and just go with the sequence and let it justify itself. There must be a reason. Must be. Possibly this consciousness is a final delusion. I need to simply retire. By all means, and now expire.

  Ironically, as my mind now races faster than it has ever, my reasoning for the need to cease any more reasoning screams for more attention than any reasoning has ever before.

  Go on, now. Close that drawer, oh master mortician.

  [7.3]

  “Know your place, woman!”

  Quite a tourist attraction – Old Sacramento, historic value of a condensed twenty-eight acres of fifty-three historic buildings. After Rick, Crystal, Charles, and Adam detail the history and get a tour of all the shops within this National Landmark, Crystal drives these guys back to their vehicles inside a parking garage a block away from the Hotel housing the conference room where they saw Professor Carlton perform earlier.

  “Wait. We do not want to bombard him,” Charles says. “You guys hungry?”

  “What, are you buying?” Crystal asks.

  “Sure. I’ll buy tonight. But I’m just saying, we should be seated first, then slyly approach him, you know? And let’s keep it cheap tonight, huh?”

  As they walk into the restaurant / cocktail lounge, they all look around for Professor Carlton. By the time Adam spots him, and turns to show Charles and Crystal, they all three also discover Rick frantically dashing toward him.

  “Why didn’t we just leave him in Old Sacramento?” Crystal scolds. “Giddy moron. We’re not going to meet him now.”

  Rick finally approaches Carlton, and blares, “whatcha know? Professor Carlton! I attended your conference earlier today.”

  “Keep it down, huh bud?” Carlton responds. Then he mumbles under his breath, “Where can I find some peace?”

  “Ha!” Then Rick says in a much quieter tone. “Oh you’re so funny! Well excuse me! Great performance earlier, though man! You know, we’re such big fans of yours and every concept you promote.” Rick notions to his crew of co-workers. Then he notices Crystal frantically flagging him back over to them. “Excuse me,” he concludes. “I’m just shocked to see you here. Mind if I send my co-workers over to introduce themselves?”

  “Yes. I do. I mean, no. No. Please don’t, especially if they’re anywhere near as hyper as you.”

  “Well, anyway, rather -- aside from your point -- it was very nice to meet you.” Rick says as he trots back toward the group. By the time he comes into straight view of them, he follows, as they’re now being seated. Once they’re all comfortably seated, Crystal reprimands him. “You act just like a teenage kid, you know it? I can’t believe you!”

  Carlton glances over to see this unknown man’s group. Upper class appearance, upright posture with each of them. They hold themselves well, he observes. Automatically his mind undergoes a transformation from time to relax and tune this whole day out, to let’s engage in this speculative profit. He’s had a plan brewing, but no Realtors to invest into this goal with him. Plus, he recalls this startling man’s comment about how they’d all been at his presentation with intent to praise every word out of his mouth. This group might just work.

  Now seated at a table adjacent to Carlton, Crystal comments on how good she feels to be seated, remote from anything else she must stress about, then on how she wants a drink. “I feel like a puppet today, and like whoever is operating my strings is testing me. You know, my husband blew up that damned dryer last night. My entire house still reeked this morning. It finally happened, and I knew it would. Unbelievable how, now matter how many times I kept angrily demanding that he simply maintain what he’s been clogging up, he showed such a blatant disregard shortly after. I forgot, I forgot, he would say to defend himself. No, he didn’t forget. He never paid any attention in the first place.”

  “That’s awful,” Charles says to empathize. “My sister just bought a new one. She probably still has the old one. If you’re in a bind and need something immediate and temporary, I can find out the details tonight.”

  “Thanks. I’ll appreciate sure that. I will not find myself out in the backyard naked frantically and angrily trying to shake my blouse dry, then,” Crystal says. Then she looks over toward Carlton. “Maybe I’ll lure him over in that direction later by offering to buy a drink?,” she remarks, making apparent notice to this man holding quite some status right now.

  Then Charles authoritatively adds in, “and Rick’s gonna sit right here, too,” as he casts an intimidating stare toward Rick. “I can’t believe you.”

  Directly after they order their dinners, Carlton stands up and heads toward these four. Crystal notices him walking toward them.

  “I think he’s heading this way. He’s looking dead in our direction.” She sternly announces to the other three; as she says this, she is sure to make direct contact with each for approximately three seconds. They all maintain seemingly painted facial expressions, signaling the looks he yearns to work into this scheme along side.