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Trant had always found comfort in the psychedelic crowd. They didn't judge, not even his more obtrusive personality quirks. He was, in some senses, lucky. It took him a while to figure out that his frequent bouts of loopiness and energy were not typical human experiences. Hanging onto the energy of the crowd, Trant could fall into those states more easily. He didn’t need to take any of the powders or pills. He could believe he was a god, the same way you could trip into any self-realization.
He had been involved with the club scene back home, in Vaasa, when he was a teenager, but he got a scholarship to study abroad at the University of Königstein, where he completed his undergrad education in geotechnical engineering. He was offered an internship position, as well as a postgraduate scholarship in Oranjenrijk, and transferred eagerly. He left everything behind a second time.
As an intern, Trant wasn’t doing much except noting measurements from Geiger counters and pale-latitude compressors (that seemed too far from any porch collapse to be useful) and putting them in a ledger and a log. He often found himself wandering around equipment that was far too big for him to truly understand. A training recording noted the symptoms of radiation sickness and directed people to report to their higher-ups if they were experiencing symptoms.
That was probably why they gave out full scholarships.
If he thought too much about what was happening here, he thought he’d swallow a stone he couldn’t throw back up. It would punch a hole right through to the bottom of him.
There was one place safe from those thoughts. After classes, if he didn’t have to go to his job, he would dive into the club scene. In the warm smoke and smog, his theories didn’t sound as crazy as they would in cold daylight. People were drunk enough to listen, smile, and nod, and no one looked funny at him.
“I’ve never tried pyrholidon,” a girl said. “Just the normal stuff. I’m an MDMA kind of guy.”
“You should. Hard to get, but you know, it’s something else.”
Trant’s ears perked, and he leaned in between them. “You know, I think I could get you some. It’s not a sure thing. But I could try.”
“Would you?” the second one said. “That’d be amazing. I’d pay you, obviously.”
Trant nodded, smiling broadly. “I’ll see what I can do!”
He snuck in syrup of ipecac, and ate a handful of red cherries before going to work that evening, all so he could take a secret swig of the emetic and vomit dramatically in an office trashcan, which was a frightening red colour visible through the bag when they went to toss it in the dumpster.
“Are you alright, Heidelstam?” one coworker said, leaning over the big boxy reader Trant was writing numbers for.
“I’m fine. Just– still a little dizzy!”
“You’re dizzy, and you just threw up blood? You sure you don’t have radiation poisoning?”
“Do you think?”
“I think you should go and ask.”
So, with witness testimony in hand, Trant walked out with a pyrholidon prescription that his job had to pay for. He had a prescription for a two-month intensive treatment that couldn’t be refilled if he didn’t continue showing symptoms.
But until that two months? He’d save all of it over the week, and take it all on his Friday, take it down to the club and sell the rest, and trip for hours on the purple wave. It made your body feel gently toasted like you had too much energy to get out just through your limbs. The world became liquid. It dripped over your hands and feet and you waded through warm syrup. Your energy left you behind. You stumbled forward, and looked back at your hands catching up to you.
He was hooked when his prescription ran out.
But, his brain chemistry kept him from fear, from decay, even from guilt or wariness, and with ipecac in his pocket, he enjoyed his breakfast of cherries, ready to puke it up on the office floor for dramatic effect.
However, as he was taking off his jacket, and putting on his short, white coat with a little name badge, he was waved over by someone.
“Eftink wants to see you.”
“Eftink?” Trant quickly scrolled through his last work days in his head. No, he couldn’t remember neglecting anything on purpose. If it were an accident, then obviously, he wouldn’t remember, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. “What about?”
“Don’t know. But she wants to see you now.”
“Alright. Take care,” Trant said. He shimmied up the staircase. At the director’s office, he knocked at the doorframe, and then when she looked up, he ducked in apologetically. “Hello, Dr Eftink. What can I do for you?”
She looked up for a moment, nodded, and then looked back down at her paperwork. “Ah, yes, Heidelstam. Sit down.”
He did.
Dr Eftink was a very sharp woman, with silver and black hair cut close to her scalp, square readers, and a wardrobe that consisted of her lab coat and various shades of black. She wore no nametag.
“I saw the filed incident report, and I thought I should check up on you personally.” The scratching of pen underlined her words.
“Incident report?”
She didn’t look up. “Radiation poisoning.”
“Ah, yes, that. Well–” Trant’s smile became awkward as he felt the heavy weight of the bottle in his pocket.
“You have gotten better, haven’t you?”
“Well. Uh–”
She looked up, and he was frozen by the intensity of her dark eyes. “Or are you going to vomit fruit into the trashcan again so you can get high, Mr Heidelstam?”
Trant was silent. His face was either going pale or very, very red.
He took a slow breath in. He let it out. “...I don’t know what to say, director.”
“When I saw the prescription filing, I knew something wasn’t quite right. Of all people, you are least in the way of any dangerous dosages, especially to be vomiting blood. If you were really at that point, your insides would have been liquified and we would not have been able to save you. So,” she took off her glasses, folded them, and put them next to paper and a pen. “With the full knowledge that you committed prescription medication fraud to steal Moralintern resources, do you have anything to say for yourself?”
Trant Heidelstam, age twenty-three, was asking himself if he was ready to die.
“It… won’t happen again, ma’am.”
“Really? I see your prescription’s run out.”
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”
Eftink sighed, leaning back in her chair. A damp silence suffocated Trant as she rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Well, let’s just say this isn’t something I can let slide. It’s a gross abuse of trust. Really, I should fire you, revoke your scholarship, and have you prosecuted.”
She left space for Trant to stick his foot in his mouth. He didn’t speak.
“But, against all odds, I do like you, Mr Heidelstam.”
“Thank you, director.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I would prefer to keep you around. But, that requires some professional finagling.”
“What do you mean?” Trant was sweating under his collar.
“I mean I need permission to seal up your file, make you exempt from public information requests so people can’t see that slip up in your medical records.”
“How would you do that?”
“If you were passing along information or something of the like, it could be redacted and written off as a tactic of some kind. But, you’d need to still pass along information.” Eftink sighed. She picked up a stack of papers and tapped them in line. She handed them to Trant. “Just to make it technically accurate.”
“So, you’re asking me to what?... Spy ?”
“No, ‘spy’ is the wrong word. Just… a wallflower. You wouldn’t have to pass along anything bad, just– reports. If you hear anything. And that would make sure this whole thing doesn’t affect your academic career, Mr Heidelstam.”
Trant looked at the papers in his hand. He squinted between the lines, but he was still so caught off guard that he could barely read the actual text, let alone what he was being asked to do.
“It’s just a little step to keeping everyone safe. Just so you technically qualify to have your records sealed up.”
She picked up the pen she had been writing with, turned it over in her hand, and then presented it to him.
“You have a bright future, Trant. You do. I don’t want to be the one to ruin it.”
He took a deep breath. Then, he took the pen.