CHAPTER 8-1

When Joe returned they considered staying a few more days at the Olema, but finally decided to head back to the Pelican the next morning. They were all lost in private thoughts on the ride back. Joe, usually a swift driver, drove slowly and kept pulling over to let faster cars pass. The trip was a meditation for them all. Laura had her head half out the window and seemed to be asleep. She was wearing a pale lip gloss, another change from the red lipstick of her Hollywood days. Joe and Matt had discussed her lip gloss at length.

Matt was curled up in the back seat, enjoying a fantasy in which he and Joe and Laura all lived together in a windmill on the coast of France. They had dogs and chickens and several small children were laughing and playing. It didn't matter to him that they were Joe's children. Uncle Matt. How he would love their kids. His task of telling Laura of Gene Tierney's last days was over and rather than falling apart, she had for some reason found the life and death of her predecessor strangely liberating. Perhaps they had all made too big a deal of the need to parcel out Gene's later years. Laura was, for now at least, reveling in her new part: Twenty-First Century Woman, the heroine of her own futurist thriller. Go figure. The human spirit. Who can predict?

Only Joe had troubled thoughts. He took seriously the childlike way Laura and Matt trusted him to keep them safe. Joe had assured himself that the sniper had nothing to do with them. He had involved himself with the local police enough to know that the gunfire had nothing to do with the Pelican or Green Gulch or Plum Island or Dr. Frankenstein or Father Max or Charles and the staff of the Pelican or Rondo and Frida. Rondo and his friends had kept watch over the inn and reported no unusual activity.

They probably could have stayed at the Pelican all this time, but then they wouldn't have had the charming interlude, their brief vacation, at the Olema Inn.

Still, Joe was uneasy. He trusted his instincts. Something was off. He felt danger in his spine, in his fingertips. He drove slowly to delay the inevitable. Would they all pay the price for his having gotten emotionally involved? Love and affection were forbidden in his line of work. His professional loyalties were a mess of tangled contradictions. The Middle East needed his full attention. But what could be more important than protecting his Laura, protecting Dr. Frankenstein's miracle? Or was that just his heart speaking? Laura, the woman beside him. Laura, the science experiment, the lab animal.

Ahead he saw the line of mailboxes across from the Pelican. He turned right and right again into the parking lot. Laura and Matt woke up, stretched, yawned. Laura smiled at him. Pale lip gloss or no, her smile was radiant. He closed his eyes for a moment and centered himself.

CHAPTER 8-2

Joe and Matt laughed when tears rolled down Frankenstein's cheeks as he wrapped Laura in a bear hug. She laughed too, and kissed him gently on the lips.

Laura and Matt settled back into spacious Room 1. Joe was down the hall in Room 5. Their arrangement was working well: Matt kept close watch on Laura by sharing a bed with her. Joe and Laura kept their love affair on hold, except for a few mischievously stolen kisses when no one was looking. Rondo and Frida shared the room next to Dr. Frankenstein. Three taciturn men had moved in as well, all paid for by Frankenstein's endlessly deep governmental pockets. The whole inn was now a safe house. Several of Rondo’s friends, all with yin-yang tattoos, worked there.

Matt and Laura, sharing some new-found belief that everything would be ok, were acting like giddy kids on a summer vacation.

And so they were until Matt went up to the room and found Laura in bed with another attack of stomach pain. Joe and Frankenstein were trying to decide what to do. Knowing he couldn’t put it off, Matt asked to speak to Frankenstein privately. They went to the Snug.

Matt was so nervous he could barely speak. Frankenstein waited patiently. He said, “Take a deep breath, Matt, and tell me slowly and methodically, please, what you’re in such a twist about.”

Matt did as he was told. When he had his composure, he began what he had so carefully rehearsed.

“Howard Hughes had syphilis. Gene slept with him when he was infectious. Her daughter Daria was born prematurely with problems that could have been caused by her mother having either measles or syphilis while pregnant. Maybe Gene’s mental illness was a manifestation of syphilis. A frequent symptom of progressing syphilis is extreme gastrointestinal pain. She had other symptoms that could be syphilis as well. The trouble with her eyes. Headaches. You replicated Gene’s biome. Maybe Laura has syphilis spirochetes. Maybe Laura has syphilis.”  And he took another breath.

Frankenstein was quiet. Matt felt relief loosening the tight metal bands around his chest. No longer his secret alone. No matter what happened.

“Anything else?”

“Howard paid a lot of money for a specialist to see Daria. Howard had his doctor see Gene when she had stomach pains. That same doctor treated Howard for syphilis.”

“Thank you, Matt. I know this is difficult. I think you’re right. I think Laura has syphilis.” Matt was astonished at how quickly Dr. F accepted his hypothesis, or at least the possibility of it. All his research and pondering reduced to a few paragraphs that apparently made the case. 

“And at a time when penicillin is available and when it’s early enough to treat. So you may have solved our big worry about her imminent mental illness. In any case, it’s a hypothesis worth checking out. I’m going to go away with Laura for a few days. I’ll take the responsibility of telling her. When we return, she will have been tested and, if necessary, treated, by someone I know and trust. Joe will only know that she and I are taking a little trip. If you’re right, then we’ll tell Joe. In the meantime, I’ll tell Laura that her stomach problems and potential mental illness could be from a treatable syphilis. We will not tell her about Daria or the German measles. There’s nothing to be gained. In the meantime, act as if nothing is unusual. You must understand that today, after AIDS, people talk about these things. In Gene’s time, syphilis was a word never spoken. We will respect that.

“Good job, Matt. Thank you.”

Matt felt the rest of the bands spring from his chest and clatter on the floor.

The next morning, Dr. F and Laura left in his rented car.

“What are they up to, do you know?” Joe asked. 

Matt shrugged, something he’d learned to do since coming to the Pelican.

Five days later, they returned, both looking radiant.

Frankenstein took Matt aside.

“You were right. She tested positive for syphilis. She has had discreet treatment and should be ok. And, in case you’re worried about Joe, it was not early highly infectious disease. But we’ll have Joe tested just to be sure.”

Matt hadn’t even considered that Joe could have been at risk. Now it seemed obvious.

Then Frankenstein went for a walk with Joe. Laura went up to the room. Matt waited for their return, nervous about Joe’s reaction. If he feared anger or some other strong emotion, he underestimated his friend. Joe was as relieved as he was about the probability of Laura’s future excellent mental and physical health.

“You’re not mad?”

“Why would I be mad if Gene slept with Howard? Laura’s a different person to me—here and now. You must feel the relief, too. About Laura’s future. Makes your job easier too. What she had—just bad luck. You saved her.”

Matt nodded.

Joe put his hands on Matt’s shoulders.

“Sometimes, Filmboy, you kick ass.”

CHAPTER 8-3

Dr Frankenstein had continued to think about inviting the world’s finest minds to attend a conference to discuss the issues he’d spent his life trying to understand. Rupert Sheldrake would make clear the implications of morphic field theory.

And Ray Kurzweil was high on his list. Frankenstein reviewed what he knew about Ray Kurzweil. He wrote that the quantitative improvement from primate to human is illustrated by the latter’s big forehead. Indeed, Kurzweil has a very big forehead himself, Dr. F observed. He’s very interested in living a long life. He’s cut down, if only a bit, from 250 supplements a day. Life extension, life enhancement: he believes that in a few decades we’ll have millions of blood-cell sized devices, nanobots, racing around in our bodies, fighting against disease, even improving memory. Kurtzweil would go mad over the strudel drug. That and nanobots. Why not? Upon his death, Kurtzweil has arranged to be perfused with cryoprotectants and stored in liquid nitrogen in the hopes that future medical technology will be able to repair his tissues and revive him. As an old man, presumably, and in a dubious future world. Seriously, Ray, Frankenstein thought. Why not just let me make a few more of you to live now? Do the Parallel Immortality dance with me, Ray Kurzweil, futurist. So the curiosity could overwhelm the comfort question for him, right? Eventually people will live forever, he says. Really, Ray? Where will we put them all? What will we do about reproduction? What would a pandemic look like in such an over-populated world. The viruses would win out easily.

Frankenstein imagined hosting a lunch at the Pelican to introduce Laura to Ray and Rupert Sheldrake. What a fantasy!  All ego, though, isn’t it Dr. F? You want to show off your achievement. He let that go and went back to the invitee list for his Immortality Conference. His dear friend Father Max would handle the spiritual questions. A physicist—maybe from the CERN linear accelerator. And a cosmologist. They would meet at Green Gulch. They would discuss varieties of immortality—of the species, of the universe. He would reveal his idea of Parallel Immortality. Could he offer them a taste of his brand of immortality? Could he offer Rupert or Ray a stab at it by offering to work up a DNA sample they would donate? Introduce them to a fresh Ray or Rupert? They would ask him why he hadn’t replicated himself. Another question entirely. Why hadn’t he? What a conference it would be!

He went for a walk in the meticulously kept Green Gulch vegetable garden. And he thought about the conversation with Joe earlier about Laura’s fate if she were to be discovered by the wrong people.

And then he put it together that this conference could never happen. The only thing that mattered was keeping Laura a secret. No one could be trusted but his current circle of confidants. No one.

In his pocket, Dr. Frankenstein had six gold coins, specially minted for him with the date 1605, the publication date of Don Quixote. One for himself and one for each of the people he trusted most: Laura, Joe, Matt, Father Max, and Curt, who had been with him since the beginning of his research and who had decided to stay on at Matt’s university for a bit and enjoy the life of a student. Dr. F got the idea from Freud who had rings made specially for his inner circle. Why not? This kind of ritual made him happy.

He was leaving early in the morning. There was a Buddha statue at the end of the garden. It seemed right to leave Joe’s gold coin in the Buddha’s belly. He texted Joe to go fetch it the next day. Green Gulch was closed so it would be safe. He walked to the garden and deposited the coin. He covered it with a few leaves and left smiling at the symbolism of it all.

CHAPTER 8-4

Laura took the Prius and drove into Mill Valley to do some shopping and have her nails done. When Matt fussed that she had no drivers license, Laura smiled and showed him her fake license, in the name of Laura Macphail, along with fake passport and birth certificate. Of course Dr. F would have taken care of identity papers.

On an impulse, Matt decided to hike to Green Gulch.

Expecting to go the beach and then hike the hill trail, as he had on the crazy night when he ran, so stoned, with the sheet and the chicken statue, he was pleased when the receptionist at the Pelican told him that the entrance to the Green Gulch garden was about a one minute walk. No need to hike down to the beach and up the hill, the long way around. She pointed to a fire road right across from the parking lot and told him to look for a gate on the left. She was right. A short walk and a gate on the left. A sign on it read “Green Gulch: Closed for Retreat.”

Damn! Would he never ever ever get to Green Gulch?

But the gate was not locked. Feeling as if he was violating a spiritual proscription, he lifted the latch and slid it through the mud just enough to slip through. The hinge scraped against his belly.

Inside, he walked down the muddy road until he reached the gardens. Rows of exquisite dark chard reminded him of an old puzzle: how was organic produce raised without being eaten by bugs? When he was a child, organic food was wizened and full of holes. Now it was just more expensive. Presumably the Green Gulch garden was fastidiously organic, yet bug-free. What kind of vegetable mafia collected chard-protection fees?

A couple approached--a man with a cane, a woman seeming to guide him. Matt spun around, retreated two steps, reconsidered, turned again, advanced two steps and was just about to repeat the whole dance like a dog chasing its tail when he gathered courage and continued. Either the man was blind or this was some kind of trust walk. When they were close, Matt said “Hi,” realizing as he did so that he had probably just ruined a week of silence. He cringed. But they seemed not to notice him and continued on.

On his left was a greenhouse full of baby green things, beside him, a white Buddha, maybe two feet high, under a tree. In the Buddha belly-cup he saw something under some leaves reflecting light. He picked it out of the leaves. It was a gold coin. He put it in the palm of his hand. What was printed on the coin? His reading glasses were back at the Pelican. He felt an urge to pocket it. At once a feeling akin to the guilt he had felt sliding through the forbidden gate gripped him. Put the coin back. No. Yes. No. Yes. He felt a chill, accompanied by a certainty that this coin was a clue, a sign, an omen, the token that would send him flying through the turnstile to the eternal mystery that was playing itself out at Green Gulch. The gold coin sizzled in his palm. Put it back, keep it. Put it back!! Buddha doesn’t want coin clutter. Oh, but what is a pot belly’s belly pot for, other than storing tourist coins? But this was no simple coin. Matt thought this coin might be pure gold. So what was it doing there? Like boat anchors pulling at the two sides of his brain threatening to split his miserably deficient male conceptualizing organ apart at the corpus callosum, the arguments pro and con tortured him.

 Finally, miserable muddy Matt put the question to arbitration. He looked to the Buddha for an answer. And as if coming from the depths of the white statue, Matt heard a voice. It said:

“Take the fucking coin, Nimblewit.”

CHAPTER 8-5

It was dark when Joe arrived at the Pelican. He parked his Volvo and jogged up the fire road toward the Green Gulch garden. Dressed in black, he was almost invisible on the moonless night. It was like his last drop in Afghanistan. He slipped through the gate and continued up the path until he reached the spot where the Buddha sat under a tree.

 He felt for the gold coin under the leaves in the Buddha belly pot but nothing was there. Dropping to his knees and using his body as a shield, he shone a thin laser light on the Buddha. No coin. He searched the grass surrounding the Buddha. No coin.

 Joe cursed under his breath. Incredibly stupid to leave the coin with the Buddha, even if Green Gulch was closed for retreat, even if it was left at dusk for his pick-up only a day later, even if it was covered by leaves. He remained on his knees for a moment, allowing anger to surge through his body. First the sailing fiasco floating drugs on the beach. Now this. Sometimes Dr. Frankenstein acted like a child, pretending he was in a spy movie. Joe played along but this was too much. He cursed, so silently that he would not have awakened a field mouse, and then he was gone.

CHAPTER 8-6

Laura ordered a latte to go at the Book Depot cafe. While the coffee was being prepared, she asked the cashier in the bookstore to look up Howard Hughes biographies. Matt had a pretty good collection from his Amazon orders, but she was making a point of pretending not to be interested. But the Depot had none. She would try the Mill Valley library next. She didn't have a card but she could read any that they had there.

Joe didn't like her wandering around. She said she was getting stir crazy locked up in the inn. She bought some baggy sweats at a sports clothing store. With her short hair, dark glasses, no makeup and a floppy hat, she felt fairly anonymous.

Finding nothing of interest in the bookstore, she went back to the counter to pick up her latte. She noticed that a man who had been in front of her in line when she was ordering, and who was now sitting with several people, was looking at her intensely. He looked away quickly when he saw her notice. She took her coffee and left by the front door so that she wouldn't have to walk past him.

But he left his table and cut her off.

“Excuse me, but I have to ask. You look remarkably like an actress from the old black-and-white movie days. I don’t know her name but I’m good at faces and you look just like her.”

Laura controlled panic. Was this guy just pretending not to know who she was? She took a deep breath. Time to act. She said, ”Yes, a few people have told me I look like I’m from another time. I don’t know of any actress though.”

“Well, you are very beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

She walked quickly to the car without looking back. She was shaking. Joe was right. These little excursions were too dangerous. Whatever the Mill Valley library could tell her about Howard would have to wait. Google would be enough to find out about him.

CHAPTER 8-7

Matt went back to the room to sort out his feelings. He moved the precious gold coin from the pocket of his pants to a more secure location in the buttoned pocket of his shirt, nearer to his heart. The bed was piled high with the booty of Laura's shopping spree, paid for like everything else by Dr. Frankenstein.

I love Laura. Laura loves Joe. Joe loves Laura. I love Joe. And: I think Laura and Joe love me.

When he felt his usual internal debate going into overdrive, he went to the Snug and stared at the fire, and then to the pub, which had not yet opened for the evening. He went for a walk and when he came back, the chairs were in place and a half dozen local patrons were sipping beers. Although the inn was closed to guests, the pub remained open in the evening. A cowboy (or that’s how Matt saw him) was challenging everyone to a darts duel.

Matt, who knew how lousy he was at darts, accepted the challenge and gave his $20, or rather, he thought to himself as he took the bill from his wallet, Dr. Frankenstein's $20, to the barkeep and ordered a mug of Pelican ale. 

The cowboy was obviously adept at darts. But Matt's throws kept hitting near the bull's eye. The game was close. The on-lookers cheered both men with abandon, noticing the high level of skill being demonstrated. Matt, observing that he could slow time and direct the dart to the target, knew that he was acting with the grace of the strudel-drug.

The cowboy won the $20 by a hair. 

Matt graciously accepted defeat and waited for Laura to join him for dinner.

 Matt took his dinner plate and his apple strudel desert to the end of the long table nearest the fireplace. Every time he ordered a different strudel, he remembered the night he first took the drug as a strange flashback, a unique feeling. He wished for the explosion of brain-electricity with the first bite, the fleeting image in an unknown color, a promise of bliss, the retrieved memory full of sensory detail, odor, a feeling of accessing, however briefly, a never-used part of his brain. Was this what Proust experienced when the infamous petit madeleine threw him back to his past? Essence of Proust. But the strudel drug was just maintenance now, no fire works.

 Between bites, he flipped the Buddha's gold coin in the air.  With his glasses on, he saw it had an image of Cervantes on the back. Although it looked like real money, the impossible date stamp was 1605. Professor Matt knew that to be the publication date of Don Quixote. Am I to be Sancho Panza, idealistic, foolish tilter-at-windmills? Panza means paunch. Who put the coin in the Buddha's belly? Was it meant for him? Or had he serendipitously arrived in a place he was not meant to be when he slipped through the forbidden gate leading to the Green Gulch garden?

At dinner Laura ordered grilled shrimp and arugula salad.

Matt thought she seemed distant.

"What’s the matter, Laura?”

"Dr. Frankenstein minted special gold coins for the people he cares about most."

Matt felt the coin in his pocket. His heart took off in new directions.

"They have the date 1605 stamped on them with a picture of Cervantes. He's a Don Quixote freak. I have one.

“Freud gave everyone in his inner circle a special ring. Frankenstein thought we should have a secret inner circle with a special symbol. Joe was supposed to pick up one left for him with a Buddha in the Green Gulch garden the other night, but when he got there, the coin was missing."

Oops.

“Maybe some dumb tourist picked it up."

Double oops. The coin burned in his pocket.

What had the Buddha-voice (in his imagination--but so real) said?

"Take the fucking coin, Nimblewit."

He took the coin out of his pocket and put his fist on the table. All he would have to do is turn his hand over, open his palm, and Laura would have the precious gold coin to give to Joe. Why could he not do that?

Was it because Dr. F had not offered him one? Was he just, childishly, feeling left out of the magic circle, the in-group?

He put the coin back in his pocket.

Every Friday the Pelican inhabitants dressed for dinner and ate by candlelight, Laura’s idea. This night she wore a blue silk dress and delicate sapphire jewelry, a gift from Dr. F. The menu had been thrown out long ago; with so few to cook for, the chef had finally insisted that everyone eat the same dinner, though with side dishes to cater to the special tastes. Tonight it was a salmon dish that Matt saw on television and suggested to the kitchen. The chef served the salmon, caught that morning in Bolinas, poached, on a bed of steamed leeks with an aioli sauce on top of grilled crostini. And for color he generously spooned a puttanesca sauce over it all, made with glistening fresh cherry tomatoes and black olives, capers, and anchovies. Along the edges of the dish flash-cooked green sugar peas gleamed.

Wine flowed freely. After a group hike in the hills, everyone was in high spirits.

"So, Matt," Frankenstein said, "What are you working on with such ardor on your laptop? Is it your Pelican Inn mystery?"

"No, I can't bear to look at that miserable story. It's so boring. Poorly written. It reads like something from high school. I'd flunk any student who wrote such crap."

"What then? Matt, what are you typing away at so diligently?" This from Laura.

Matt responded without thinking. "Well, no one would believe a story about this group. So I've been taking notes on all of us in a journal format." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized he'd done it again. The little brain gremlin had done an end run, had, in a word, screwed him. He felt his face glowing red. A shiver of fear ran down his spine. Everyone at the table was silent, sound and movement had been arrested in a single frame. Matt wanted to disappear.

Finally, Joe spoke. "Matt, do you know the first rule of spydom?"

Looking at his plate, Matt mumbled, "No."

"It's never ever write anything down. Leave no trace. Now, if you've written about us, for starts you could blow my cover. You could compromise Dr. Frankenstein and Laura. In short, you could ruin everything."

The silence lengthened.

Finally Joe said, "So, I'm assuming that right after dinner, you will make sure that not a single word exists anywhere that refers to us." His tone was low, ominous. Matt trembled. And then it was over. Joe proposed a toast. "To Matt, who gets rid of all trace."

Matt looked up. Joe smiled and clicked his glass against Matt's, looking him in the eye. There was no missing the threat.

The meal continued quietly. Laura and Joe looked at each other and then let it go. Frankenstein looked amused. Matt left before dessert (a splendid chocolate mousse) and went to his room. He opened the laptop and looked at his two files. The Pelican Mystery. The Laura Journal. The one written by a child. The other, well, was not the other a work of genius, a work inspired by the mind-expanding strudel drug and written about the biggest breakthrough in the history of science? The long-quiet gremlins in his brain fought their tedious duel. One said: Laura is Dr. Frankenstein's masterpiece. This is your masterpiece, this journal, this report of a most amazing odyssey. The other reminded him that Joe's unspoken threat was real. You are with us or against us.  And that there was a reason for his caution. Listen up, dumb Matt, said the gremlin. Superspy Joe meant that he would kill you. You think Joe is your buddy? Joe loves Laura. You are a miserable pawn. You think your feeble strudel-inspired journal is worth dying for? Delete the fucking file, you moron. Go home, go away, leave it.

Matt hit "select all." One keystroke, one delete, and his 184 pages of Laura journal, his day-by- day diary of everything that had happened, would be lost. Matt's right index finger caressed the delete key.

And then he did it. Delete. Poof. Everything gone.

Joe and Matt spent the day roaming the Marin hills together. Matt walked and Joe walked with him, taking breaks to jog ahead and circle back. That evening they went to a Thai restaurant. They each ordered green chicken curry, Matt's cool, Joe's spicy, and rice, Matt's white, Joe's brown, washed down with Thai beer.

"What’s Frankenstein been working on?" Matt asked. "He seems to be typing madly into his computer from morning until night."

Joe smiled. "I guess I can tell you. He's writing a novel."

Join the crowd, Matt thought, his mind sinking to his poor abandoned wretchedly written Pelican Inn mystery and then the possibly brilliant replacement deleted on Joe's orders. Frankenstein's would be brilliant from word one.

"How much has he written?"

Joe smiled again.  "About a thousand pages."

"That's absurd! No one writes a novel that long. Who does he think he is? Thomas Wolfe? Doesn't he know Maxwell Perkins is dead?"

"He doesn't intend to publish it."

"Then why is he writing it?"

"I don't know. Because he has to. Because he doesn't have anything else to do stranded at the Pelican. Because it does something with all his discoveries. Why does anyone write anything?"

A thousand pages. And still growing. Unspoken between them was the unfairness of Matt’s having to delete his novel and Frankenstein being allowed to write his. Why was he taking this risk? Let it go. But he said:

“Joe, why is he taking this risk?”

Joe hesitated. “What Dr. F is writing has nothing to do with the nuts and bolts of creating a human being. He’s on to something new, something that would not compromise Laura.

"Does it have a hero?" Matt was trying not to feel left out. Why would Frankenstein tell Joe and not him? Did Laura know?

Joe smiled again, relishing what he was about to say.

"The hero is a film noir professor on leave from an East Coast college. He has two chums: a government operative and a young woman. It’s all science fiction fantasy. Nothing anyone would believe. And nothing, in case you’re wondering, that would compromise us.”

Matt let it sink in. His brain-gremlins took it and shredded it. One said, Wowie, you're a hero! The other said, this will not end well.

Matt said, a tad glumly, "I guess then I meant does he have an anti-hero? And what’s the plot of this Magnum Opus by our friend?

Joe thought for a moment.  "Well, it begins with a short but powerful prologue about the fall of civilization as we know it. It begins with vicious virus spread by a bat that spreads from country to country and almost wipes out civilization. Grim, frightening like Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road."

 "Something like global warming Apocalypse a hundred years from now?"

 Yes, but beginning with financial ruin. Here it is, briefly. The world system of national currencies has gotten out of control, speeding toward a point of no return. Something starts a panic, there is a run on banks, and the whole house of cards goes down, one country after another. The British banking system, the Shanghai index, it doesn’t matter which when. Food shortages, riots, a few strategically placed small but highly effective dirty bombs are detonated in major cities, and there you have it."

 "Have what?" 

 "Have the opening pages of Dr. Frankenstein's science fiction thriller, the demise of polite civilization in a couple of weeks. In which, don't forget, you are the hero and Laura and I are your side-kicks."

 "This is just science fiction, right? Dr. F doesn't really think this will happen?"

 "It's just science fiction. Dr. F has discovered the joy of writing fiction. Relax. Enjoy being a hero."

 “I don’t have a choice, do I?.”

 They ordered and split Thai green tea ice cream for dessert.

The next morning Matt and Joe came down to breakfast at the same time, before Laura. They found Frankenstein typing at lightning speed, his crystal eyes sparkling from what appeared to be a healthy dose of his private high-test strudel drug.

 Matt hadn't slept. He was eager to hear from Joe what came next.

 "The main part of the book," Joe explained, "is a Utopian fantasy, Peter Pan. Contrast to the prologue, what it would be like if everything worked out well for us."

 "And how would it work out?"

 "You can probably guess."

 "Not the strudel drug?"

 "Yep. You know Frankenstein thinks human evolution has gone astray. The brain has evolved in parts that don’t communicate well, although women, who have more horsepower in the corpus callosum, are slightly better at balancing. The heart and emotions are cut off from the brain-power. Maybe organisms in the gut really run the show. And the violent primitive brain stem generates destructive and self-destructive thoughts and actions. Testosterone gone amuck. So someone can love a baby, write a book, and take a hatchet to a neighbor. Animals are not so stupid.

 "The strudel drug balances the chemistry. It comes from a long history of trying to get chemistry straight, from Dionysus and his wine, to Shamans and their mushrooms, to designer drugs like LSD and ecstasy, to psychiatry and its antidepressants and the newer neuro-stimulants. Frankenstein's chemistry is to all that as the CERN linear accelerator is to Newton’s discovery of gravity.”

 "As the iPhone is to tribal drums."

 "As the human brain is to the amoeba. As the Sistine Chapel is to a child's drawing. Right."

 "So, tell me. In this Utopian fantasy, Frankenstein opens a world-wide strudel factory and all is well? And big pharma triumphs?"

 "No. There is no on-going profit to be made with drug production. Frankenstein has developed a microchip that when programmed and embedded in a person regulates and balances everything. Gives this person the capacity for love and compassion and wisdom. Makes alternatives to violence seem attractive. Cooperation.”

 "So that person would feel as we do?"

 "No. Frankenstein has just given us a hint. You still experience your internal worried gremlins, right?

 "I do."  Matt wondered how much Joe knew about his habit of using dialogue to solve problems. In fact, how did he know any of it? Was he that transparent?

 "Well, you would have more choice over those voices with the more advanced chemistry."

 "That would be nice. I think that would be nice." Matt was thinking of Brave New World and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, both plots about neutralizing human complexity, not in a good way.

 "It would be nice,” Joe said. He let me try it once. Truly amazing. Anyway, in this Utopia, the first step is to inject the microchip in the people who could make a difference in the way things go."

“First the human race has to get through the awful virus that threatens to extinguish most of humanity, the old ones especially. Then those remaining, the young ones, are ready to redo society on a simpler, more local level. Communities. And once the microchip is injected in those who are running to show in various ways, the world is ready for the Utopia.”

"And who injects these microchips in the world's leaders, the tyrants?"

 Joe smiled.

 “Who's the hero of Frankenstein's novel?"

Joe came back from his weekly trip to the Mill Valley library with a green shopping bag full of library books for the Pelican inhabitants. Matt noticed that Frankenstein requested a stack of Robert Ludlam novels and a carefully selected list of all the best-selling thrillers of the last ten years, which he began speed-reading.

 "What's he doing with those? Matt asked.

 "Studying style."

 Matt remembered Matt Damon in The Bourne Ultimatum, leaping repeatedly out of harm's way, missing by a fraction of a second being blown up or shot as he raced from Paris to Madrid, New York to Moscow. Although Joe reassured him that Frankenstein was just having fun, Matt was wary of his role as the new secret hero in Frankenstein's massive text. Wasn't it only a few months ago that his only concern had been what to have for breakfast or what to write next in his own mystery?  How could he trust that Frankenstein was not setting him up for some terrifying mission to implant a microchip in the President of the United States or a tyrant in Africa, or one of Joe's contacts in a Middle Eastern hotspot? Once Matt started worrying, everything else faded to background.

 "Relax," Joe said, seeing Matt's new frown. "Frankenstein has figured out a way around micro-chipping all the bad guys."

 "What's that?"

 "Instead of starting at the top, he's writing himself a grassroots solution to humanity's whacko self-destructive capacity. In the book, just the book remember, he's figured out that he only needs to get the strudel drug chip installed in one person, and then, once that person has experienced balance and happiness and wisdom, faster than you can say iPhone or Macintosh, he will start a marketing campaign that will have people clamoring to get their own. World leaders included. No one will want to be without one. Voila, world peace."

 "And who is this all-powerful one person?"

 "The CEO of Apple of course