Thursday, May 4

An unreasonable amount of time had lapsed since I went outside.

Not that inside was a bad place to be—I lived in an elegant and upscale flat in the tallest residential building in the city (it also happened to have the best security, which seemed, at the time, to be the most effective sales tactic ever to be used against me—how do you say no to the promise that whatever you are purchasing will refrain from contributing unduly to your untimely death?). It took me a moment to remember what city that was—Austin, Texas, in the lower to central part of America. I'd chosen it because I was doing a large amount of work in America at the time, wanted to be somewhere warm, and lastly because it was a fairly convenient half-way point for travel to both coasts. The private aviation terminal I kept my planes at was quiet, too, yet another bonus. My driver could pull me right to the door of the plane on the tarmac, preventing me from having to make uncomfortable eye contact with any of the hawkish females who ran the terminal.

But that did not really apply anymore, as I had not ventured outside of my flat in just a few days over four months. My planes, and other homes around the world, sat collecting dust. My collections of haute couture, custom made clothing, and shoes—the mere fact that I owned these things intentionally would have astonished my nearly lifelong companion, Watari, had he still been alive—sat, in their respective closets, unworn. I had learned, upon being given incredible sums of money for solving the problems of various governments, that beautiful clothing can, firstly, be made to feel like a second skin, and, secondly, be utilized as a tool to make said governments view you both as a more valuable asset and as a Real Life Human Being. I still did not understand why people so closely linked competency and beauty, but it did give me the excuse to have some truly spectacular garments made.

Also, since Watari wasn't alive anymore, I had absolutely no idea where to find the clothing that I'd spent most of my life wearing. He'd neglected to leave the information of the manufacturer of my jeans and formless white shirts lying about anywhere, just as he'd neglected to leave any extra sets. Oh well. I didn't really mind, not anymore.

I had things made exclusively in black and white, at first, but every now and again, when I was feeling frivolous, I'd ask the couturiers to do something in slate grey. There was one disturbingly elegant all-season light coat—black, ultralight silk/cashmere blend— which the couturiers at Valentino had, against my specific request, lined in silk the color of dried blood. Unfortunately, that became my favorite coat. I still resented them for forcing me to enjoy a color. Colors were… obtrusive, even on the inside of coats and jackets.

My therapist, Wedy, thought that colors frightened me because of my traumatic childhood, pre-Time at the Orphanage. I don't know about you, but based on my rather extensive research, extreme childhood stress generally manifests symptoms such as a heightened physical stress response, difficulty connecting with others, disordered sleeping patterns, and heightened patterns of self-harm, not "a strange and semi-pathological preoccupation with the avoidance of color", as Wedy wrote on one of the many pages of notes I whisked out of her work computer.

If she were listening to me right now, she'd give me a rather overblown sigh. Not only would it be a completely justified sigh, as I was being a sarcastic and avoidant prick, playing with convenient and humorously flawed argument structures—obviously, avoidance of any attention-grabbing attributes was well within the canon of "extreme childhood stress"—but It'd make the telephone crackle, too, in a way I found to be somewhat comforting, which might be why I subjected her to my "humor" at all. I found many things about her comforting. In addition to the crackling sound the phone made when she sighed, her IQ was in the higher reaches of recorded territory, like mine. It meant our discussion did not necessitate me tearing myself open for her view. She could make do with the information I was comfortable, or able, to provide.

We always did our sessions over the phone, rather than in person, considering that she was based out of London. But we hadn't spoken in at least two months. I'd stopped taking her bi-weekly phone calls, although she still called, on time, every Monday and Thursday at 3:19.

In our "initial phone consultation", she had asked me if I had a time preference for our phone sessions. I was, as I generally am in all instances of socialization, deeply uncomfortable, so my brain decided to allow my mouth to produce the sounds that form "3:19". All she said was, "AM or PM, your time?" It was at that point that I accepted that she would be my therapist. I really, truly, did not want to have to go through the evil and humiliating slog that was an "initial phone consultation" ever again.

Over the course of three and a half years or so, she got to know certain parts of me rather well. Not my face, or my full name, of course, but the parts of me that screamed and shrieked with absolute terror when a person walked too closely on the street, the parts of me that feared sleep because of what my ever-humming subconscious might choose to bring to the fore, the parts of me that only work, or truly beautiful objects, might temporarily soothe.

It was nice, to have someone know those parts of me, and not merely because they had subjected me to a battery of tests as part of my entry into their Very Special Orphanage.

I'd loved Watari, as much as I'd ever loved a human being, which is probably less than expected, but that certainly didn't mean I had some difficulty with his methods. Or with the way he'd responded to me verbalizing the smallest of symptoms, or, even more, with the information his responses to my symptoms furnished me with. One week, in Hong Kong, during a very interesting and very lucrative assignment, I'd mentioned getting cluster headaches and back pain every afternoon between 2:15 and 4:30. He frowned slightly, allowing that heavy mustache to consume even more of his mouth, and said, I shit you not, "well, I suppose that could mean the new Modafinil and supplement cocktail I've introduced at high tea are not quite agreeing with you… I'll check your stool sample from yesterday and adjust accordingly."

This left me to wonder when and how, exactly, Watari was collecting my stool.

After his death, things did change somewhat. Living alone proved to be nearly impossible in a house, as I worried about forced entry, rape, stalkers, people standing silently over my sleeping body, and a variety of other issues. Hence the move into the vertically integrated condo system. My body had a slightly easier time relinquishing control and consciousness when it was impossible to get to my floor, let alone my door, without going through multiple forms of security checks. The armed guards, arranged by Watari, prior to his death (that strange old man certainly did know how to prepare for all eventualities, excepting the clothing situation and a few others, something that both impressed me and caused me to emote) who were always flanking my door also helped. They even checked my delivered groceries for poison, bombs, and electronic listening devices. Very sweet of them, I thought. They did not, however, check my stool, or assist me in dealing with the world. This was both good and bad, I felt. Good, because that meant I could behave like a child, and insist on solving the puzzles my line of work afforded me from my very comfortable custom Poltrona Frau sectional in my living room. Bad, because there was absolutely no one to assist me in leaving my home, and I was now consumed by relentless and incomprehensible terror any time I attempted to do so.

Life is a mixed bag, I supposed.

I also supposed I should get an assistant, but I would want to do my interviews in person, of course, to get a handle on every detail of their person, in order to determine who was most optimally compatible with the duties they would need to fulfill.

The stool thing was not something I would want on the list of duties, any existing deities bless Watari's departed soul.

But how to get myself out of the house to interview the people meant to assist me in getting out of the house? It was certainly a catch-22. Small in scale, compared to the other problems I'd solved, but it loomed more heavily, and actually… scared me. The mere fact that any solvable predicament should trigger an emotional response both humiliated and concerned me. Things were worse than I'd previously thought. I needed to move on this, and quickly. I pulled out my phone.

It was 3:02 in the afternoon. Wedy would call soon.

I stilled for a moment, trying to decide how I would tackle the call, if I would tackle it at all, and then how I would go about handling the bigger issue of getting people to interview, and how I would get out of the house to interview said people.

A quick database search provided the details of a high-end staffing agency who we'd used previously—the "we" having been Watari and I. Blast that old man. Had he not died, I would not have had to do any of this, nor would I have gotten… stuck, so to speak, in my home. Alone.

It was 3:05 when I called the agency, providing them quickly with a list of expected qualifications and credentials, along with a time and place to meet me— tomorrow, at a coffee shop merely a block from my building. Ambitious of me to leave so quickly after being in here for so long, certainly, but with the sheer amount of brain power available to me, if I were unable to force myself to leave, I would be compelled to believe, statistically, that there was a likelihood that I might be slipping into early onset Alzheimer's at 23. The agent on the phone told me that there were extremely few people who met the qualifications I'd specified, but that he'd send them the following day. I then told him the amount of pay they should expect (an "ungodly amount of money" I believe was the exact turn of phrase I'd used), to which he replied "Well, ah, in that case, they will all be there, certainly, sir… I must ask, is there any flexibility on the IQ mandate, because otherwise I'm—". I cut off that line of questioning by hanging up.

My hands were shaking violently at that point. Almost vibrating, really. It was rather funny, I thought, that I'd devolved to such a pitiful point. A phone call, lasting only four and a half minutes—it was 3:09—could cause me such distress that I'd be practically incapacitated.

I went and fetched a large klonopin from my beautiful marble topped 1903 French console, and then a flavored sparkling water to drink it with.

I had no one to spite or entertain now, by refusing to drink water or consume healthy foods, and had to watch after my own health, but I still could not bring myself to put… nasty, horrifyingly disgusting, PLAIN water in my mouth at any time. Ever. I opened the sparkling beverage and took my klonopin.

3:11.

I sat back down on my couch, and petted it. The stitching was so lovely, and timeless, and delicate, while somehow being built to sustain years and years of use. There were Poltrona Frau couches from the earliest years of their production that were still in loving use by the descendants of those who first purchased them, a fact that warmed my heart to an unreasonable degree, considering that I never intended to have descendants, or really any meaningful human connection. They were frightening and unreasonable, other people, and being able to predict and understand their behavior better than any being in history did not change that fact. People can wound you. I just really cherished beautiful and well-made objects, and their reliability.

3:18.

As I admired my couch in my now rather relaxed state, I wondered if I would pick up the phone, when it rang. Or if this would be the week she chose to not call anymore. I sipped my water, and looked at the Murakami I had hanging over my French console. I loved the clash of old and new in their pairing. One vibrant, one muted (I was not opposed to small points of color in my home, as long as they were something special—I had even had Poltrona Frau make my bedframe in a leather the exact same color as the lining of that coat, to my eternal shame) they seemed to force each other to vibrate. Or perhaps that was the klonopin.

Actually, it was my phone. It was 3:19.

On the fifth rang, I picked up.

"Hello, Lawliet," Wedy said in the voice that I knew was associated with the raising of an eyebrow, somehow. "I was sort of hoping you'd continue your trend of not answering, as I scheduled a massage for 3:45."

I knew she had done no such thing, as I was looking at a copy of her calendar, stolen from her server, but responded "Well, I suppose I could hang up, and we could resume at some other point in the future. I loathe to get in the way of good massage. It's important to keep the body balanced, after all."

There was an extended pause.

"Lawliet, if you do not stop hacking my shit, I will come find you and feed you your intestines. That is a terribly rude thing to do, and it takes the fun out of all my jokes."

I smiled ever so slightly.