I Have A Theory

Chapter Two, Everyone's A Genius?

There are three people on the bus, not including Jeong-Su and myself. For the time being, I allow myself the assumption that they are people, because they've given no indication to the contrary. People actually do sometimes give indication to the contrary--usually with their mouths.

I take my seat next to an old, old man--cheery, with the quintessential Scottish look about him. He's got peppery-gray hair which makes an effort towards white, sending many individual, alabaster hairs to thrust triumphantly from his liver-spotted cap, just below the ill-fitted cap he wears. Green tweedish hat, and a tweed coat, as well. He's got glasses that are truly round, like little coins, and an expression of bemusement, as though his aimless gaze is hanging out the bus' window, rolling with the motion.

Interestingly enough, I actually know who this man is.

I look over at Jeong-Su. By his posture, I think he does, too.

For a good hour, as the bus rocks and shakes and stops and brakes, country roads and highway lanes... for a good hour, I study Yaren Unbrecht.

Yaren doesn't look at me for the entire duration of it all.

I try to decide why the world's weirdest metaphysicist is here--what Talcon-Riley and the rest could possibly do with someone like Yaren. This is the man who started a cult regarding the use of ears as radio dishes to receive broadcasts from inhuman sources. The man who is banned from traveling into every developed nation, and who briefly had a show in the eighties, which was later found to correlate with increased sociopathy in the kids that watched it from ages one through four.

"Did you keep any concubines in your cult?"

Words come from the black man across from us, inquiring. It's a good question. I nod pointedly at the guy and he almost seems to flinch. Just disgust--seems like a loner, dressed like an extrovert. He's definitely weird--the sort of nerdy trope most people try to hold at arm's length, but feels natural here. Fantasy novels and DnD campaigns aside, there's no way he's not a genius.

Yaren doesn't respond, so I snap in front of his nose and ask the guy's question again.

"No, no, no..." The man's words trail and flutter. "No, I didn't have sex in the cults. I didn't do anything with the cults really, just set them up so that they could do their things."

"Fuck does that mean?" Polished blonde lady with features that come close enough to a model's that it's sad. Doesn't dress like a model though--her clothes are those of a Steve Jobs wannabe, black turtleneck slithering out from straight, unflattering blue jeans. She's got cheap sunglasses with Portuguese flags around their borders. I don't think she's Portuguese.

Listening to Yaren's airy voice is like watching smoke dissipate as he says, "We're all competing already? I wish this weren't how they set it up... I don't want to be the breaker of youthful fancy."

Blonde rolls her eyes beyond my view, behind her shades. The guy across from us leans closer--I think he's going for Yaren, but goes for me. "How long have they been courting you?"

"Who?"

"The company that runs all this--they've been talking to me for a solid month, finally got me to come down, then I see they got four other people alongside me? Strange bullshit. Don't know how they expect me to work."

Jeong-Su looking affronted. I stifle some giggles, then realize that it only took them two days to get me to come up to Vermont--I look out the window, wonder if we're in Vermont.

No pine trees. No snow yet. No maple syrup? Not Vermont.

"What is it that you study?" Jeong-Su, asking the man.