Green Eyes

Chapter 1

… I did not see my first ‘zombie’ until my second day at Tulane when Ezawa permitted me to witness an interview. He ushered me into a cubicle occupied by several folding chairs and switched on a two-way mirror. The room beyond the mirror was decorated in the style of a turn-of-the-century bordello: red velvet chairs and sofa perched on clawed feet, their walnut frames carved into filigree; brass urns holding peacock plumes; burgundy drapes and maroon-striped wallpaper; a branching chandelier upheld by a spider of black iron. The light was as bright as a photographer’s stage. Though ‘zombies’ - at least the short-termers - do not see clearly until the end, they react to the color and the glare, and ultimately the decor serves to amplify the therapist’s persuasive powers.

In passing, I should mention that I considered the lack of a suitable chair within the observation cubicle a personal affront. Being a compactly built man himself, it might be assumed Ezawa had simply committed an oversight and not taken my girth into account; but I cannot accept the proposal that this meticulous and polite gentleman would overlook any detail unless by design. He had exerted all his influence to block my approval as psychiatric chief of the project, considering my approach too radical, and I believe he enjoyed watching me perch with one ham on, the other off, for the better part of an hour. Truthfully, though, what I was to see beyond the mirror banished all thought of my discomfort, and had it been necessary to balance on a shooting stick and peer between the shoulders of a crowd, I would still have felt myself privileged.

The therapist, Jocundra Verret, sat on the edge of the sofa, her hands folded in her lap. She was a shade under six feet tall, slender, impassively beautiful (therapists are chosen, in part, on the basis of physical attractiveness), and dressed in a nurse’s white tunic and slacks. She looked younger than her twenty-five years, long-limbed, solemn and large-eyed. Dark brown hair wound through by strands of gold fell to her shoulders, and her skin had the pale olive cast of a Renaissance figure. The most notable feature of her appearance, though, was the extent of her makeup. Lipstick, eyeliner and mascara had been applied so as to transform her face into an exotic mask, one which evoked the symmetry of design upon a butterfly’s wing. This gilding the lily was an essential part of the therapist’s visual presentation, and similar makeup was utilized during the early stages of a slow-burner’s existence, gradually being minimized as their perceptions sharpened.

Jocundra’a movements were graceful and unhurried, and her expressions developed slowly into distant smiles and contemplative frowns, giving the impression of a calm and controlled personality. I later learned in my work with her that this impression was half a lie. Indeed, she viewed the world as a system of orderly processes through which one must maneuvre by reducing experience to its logical minimum and analyzing it; but her logical bias, her sense of orderliness, her passivity in engaging life - these traits were counterbalanced by a deep romantic strain which caused her to be high-strung and, as has been publicized, occasioned her to acts of recklessness.

I asked Ezawa whether it was difficult to recruit therapists, and he replied that though the combination of physical beauty, lack of squeamishness, and a scientific background was uncommon, the turnover rate was low and there was a waiting list of applicants. I further asked if he had observed a general similarity of history or personality among the therapists, and he said with a trace of embarrassment that many had a history of checkered academic careers and interest in the occult. Jocundra was fairly typical in this regard. She had done undergraduate work in physics, switched to anthropology in graduate school, and had been involved in a study of voodoo cults before joining the project. Ezawa, for whom the truth appeared to consist of microbiological data, exhibited little interest in the psychological puzzles posed by our subjects, none whatsoever in the therapists, and constantly sought to downplay the mysterious aspects of the project. In light of this, I found curious his use of the term ‘zombie’ rather than the official ‘Bacterially Induced Artificial Personality’ or its acronym: it signalled some backsliding from his position of scientific rigor.

‘I must admit,’ he said, ‘the process has elements in common with a voodoo recipe. We do isolate the bacteria from dirt taken from the old slave graveyards, but that’s simply because of the biodegradable coffins… They permit the decomposing tissues to interact with microorganisms in the soil.’

Once the bacteria was isolated, Ezawa explained, a DNA extract from goat’s rue was introduced into the growth medium and the bacteria was then induced to take up chromosomes and DNA fragments from the goat’s rue, thereby mediating recombination between the two types of DNA. The resultant strain was injected via a heart pump into the cerebellum and temporal lobes of a corpse less than an hour dead, whereupon the bacteria began pre-transcriptional processing of the corpse’s genetic complement, bringing the body sufficiently alive so it could begin the post-transcriptional processing. Twenty-four hours after injection the ‘zombie’ was ready for the therapist.

An orderly entered the room beyond the mirror, pushing a pale, heavy-set man in a wheelchair: jowly, middle-aged, with receding brown hair and a five o’clock shadow. He wore a green hospital gown. The orderly assisted him onto the sofa, and the man struggled feebly to rise, kicking aside the coffee table. His name, I saw from Ezawa’s clipboard, had been Paul Pelizzarro, a vagrant, though he would soon begin to recall a different name, a different history. Random fragments of the transforming DNA in the recombinant bacteria coded for an entirely new personality, or so Ezawa expressed it. When I suggested that the personality might not be entirely new, that we might be observing wish-fulfilment on the cellular level, he gave me a startled look, as if suddenly suspecting -I was addled - or so I characterized it at the time, though in retrospect it is clear he knew far more than I about the nature of our subjects and could not possibly have been surprised by my obvious interpretation. Perhaps he was simply reacting to my perspicacity.

Pelizzarro sat unmoving, head resting on his shoulder, eyes dull, mouth open. On being revivified they are all intractable and lax, blank slates, much like the zombies of folklore. They are told by the orderly that they have died and been brought back to life by means of an experimental process, and that he is taking them to someone who will help. It is the therapist’s job to make the ‘zombie’ want to please her - or him - by stimulating a sexual response, initiating a dependency.

‘Naturally,’ said Ezawa, ‘the sexual response has the side effect of increasing acetylcholine and norepenephrin production at the neuromuscular junctions… improves the motor control.’ He switched on the audio. The orderly had left, and the interview had already begun.

Jocundra stood in front of the ‘zombie,’ swaying her hips like a starlet tempting a producer.

‘Why won’t you talk?’ she asked.

He rolled his head from side to side, pushed at the cushions, still too weak to stand. When his hand impacted with the plush of the sofa, his breath came out in a soft grunt.

Jocundra stepped behind him and trailed her fingers along his neck, stimulating the spinal nerves. He froze, his head cocked as if listening to an ominous whisper; his eyes flicked back and forth. He seemed terrified. Jocundra moved around the sofa and posed before him once again.

‘Do you remember your death?’ she asked coldly. ‘Or anything afterwards?’

The ‘zombie’ floundered, flailed his arms; his lips drew back, revealing rows of perfect white teeth, small and feminine-looking in contrast to his fleshiness. ‘No!’ His voice was choked. ‘No! God, I… I don’t!’

‘Maybe I should just leave. You don’t seem to want to talk.’

‘Please… don’t.’ He lifted his hand, then let it fall on to the cushion.

I was to learn that each therapist employed a distinctive method of relating to the ‘zombies,’ but - perhaps only because Jocundra was the first therapist I observed - I have never found another style more compelling, more illustrative of the essential myth-construct at the heart of the therapist-‘zombie’ relationship. I have mentioned that her movements were graceful and unhurried under normal conditions; when working, however, they grew elegant and mesmerizing, as if she were displaying invisible veils, and I was reminded of the gestures of a Balinese dancer. The ‘zombie,’ then, would perceive her initially as a blurred silhouette, a shadowy figure at the centre of a dim candle flame, an unknown goddess weaving a spell to attract his eye until, at last, his vision cleared and he saw her there before him, taken human form. Jocundra utilized the classic feminine tactic of approach and avoidance to augment her visual and tactile presentation, and, in this particular interview, once the ‘zombie’ had begged her not to leave, she sat beside him on the sofa and took his hand.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

He appeared to be stunned by the question, but after several seconds he answered, ‘Frank. Frank Juskit.’ He peered at her, searching for her reaction, and managed a smile. ‘I was a… a salesman.’

‘What sort of salesman? My uncle’s a salesman, too.’

‘Oh, I was just an old horse trader,’ he said, assuming a character at once pompous and self-deprecating. A mid-western accent nagged at his vowels, becoming more acute as he grew more involved in telling his story. ‘At the end, there, I didn’t do much selling. Just kept an eye on the books. But I’ve sold franchises and factories, swampland and sea coasts. I’ve worked land contracts and mortgages and tract developments. Hell, I’ve sold everything every which way and backwards!’

‘Real estate?’

‘Yes, ma’am! Both real and surreal!’ He clapped his hands together and attempted a wink which, due to his lack of muscle control, came off as a grotesque leer. ‘And if I couldn’t sell it, I bought it! I turned landfills into shopping malls, treelined suburbs into neon wastes. I swallowed quiet suburbs and shat out industrial parks. I was the evil genius of the board room! I sharked through the world with blood on my teeth and a notary’s seal for a left eye! And when I get down to Hell, I’ll sell the devil two bedrooms and a bath overlooking the Promised Land and take over the goddamned place myself…’

Ezawa has labeled these outbursts ‘ecstatic confessions,’ but I find the term inexact and prefer ‘life story.’ Because the ‘zombie’s‘ senses are dim, his motor control limited, he must compress the variety of his synthesized experience into a communicative package in order fully to realize himself. The result is a compact symbolic structure, one summing up a lifetime of creative impulse: a life story.

‘This is typical,’ said Ezawa. ‘I doubt we’ll learn anything of value. Do you see the eyes?’

I looked. There were flickers of phosphorescent green in the irises, visible to me at a distance of ten feet; they were faint at first, but quickly increased in frequency and brilliance.

‘It’s the impingement of the bacteria on the optic nerve,’ said Ezawa. ‘They’re bioluminescent. When you see it you know the end’s near. Except in the case of the slow-burners, of course. Their brains retard the entire process. We have one out at Shadows who’s been showing green for two months.’

At Jocundra’s questioning, Mr Juskit - I came to think of him by his assumed name, convinced by the assurance of his memories - detailed a final illness which led to a death he had previously failed to remember. The flickerings in his eyes intensified, glowing like swamp fire, blossoming into green stars, and he made the fisted gestures of a company president exhorting his sales force. As he gained control of his muscles, he seemed more and more the salesman, the Napoleon Of the board room, the glib, nattering little man born of the union between a vagrant and the bacterial DNA. When I had first seen him in the room beyond the mirror, dazed, dull, barely conscious, I had been struck by the perversity of the situation: an unprepossessing, half-dead man was being danced for by a lovely woman in a nurse’s uniform, all within a gaudy room which might have been the private salon in a high class whorehouse. The scene embodied a hallucinated sexuality. But now there was a natural air to the proceedings, a Tightness; I could not imagine any room being made unnatural by Mr Juskit’s presence. He dominated his surroundings, commanding my attention, and I saw that Jocundra, too, was no longer weaving her web of elegant motion, no longer the temptress; she leaned toward him, intent upon his words, hands folded in her lap, attentive as would be a dutiful wife or mistress.

Mr Juskit began to address her as ‘babe,’ touching her often, and, eventually, asked her to remove her tunic. ‘Take it off, babe,’ he said with contagious jollity, ‘and lemme see them puppies.’ So convinced was I of his right to ask this of her, of its propriety in terms of their relationship, I was not taken aback when she stood, undid her buttons and let the tunic drop onto her arms. She lowered her eyes in a submissive pose. Mr Juskit pushed himself off the sofa, his hospital gown giving evidence of his extreme arousal, and staggered toward her, a step, arms outstretched and rigid, eyes burning a cometary green. Jocundra leapt aside as he fell to the floor, face downward. Tremors shook him for nearly half a minute, but he was dead long before they ceased.

Ezawa opaqued the mirror. I had been leaning forward, gripping the edge of the mirror, and I believe I stared wildly at him. Seeing my agitation, no doubt thinking it the product of disgust or some allied emotion, he said, ‘It frequently ends that way. The initial sexual response governs them, and during the final burst of vitality they commonly attempt to embrace the therapist or… ask favors.’ He shrugged. ‘Since it’s their last request, the therapists usually comply.’

But I was not disgusted, not horrified; instead I was stunned by the sudden extinction of what had seemed a dynamic imperative for the last half hour or thereabouts: Mr Juskit’s existence. It was unthinkable that he had so abruptly ceased to be. And then, as I gained a more speculative distance from the events, I began to understand what I had witnessed, its mythic proportions. A beautiful woman, both Eve and Delilah, had called a man back from the dead, lured him into vivid expression, coaxed him to strive for her and tell his secrets, to live in a furious rush of moments and die one breath short of reward, reaching out to her. The ‘zombie’-therapist relationship, I realized, made possible a new depth of scrutiny into, the complete range of male-female interactions; I was eager to take up residence at Shadows and begin my investigations of the slow-burners. They were the heart of the project! The scene I had just witnessed -the birth, life and death of Frank Juskit while in the company of Jocundra Verret - had transmitted an archetypal potency, like the illustration on a Tarot trump come to life; and though I had not yet met Hilmer Magnusson or Donnell Harrison, I believe at that moment I anticipated their miraculous advent.