The Wasonica Correction (Science Fiction - Short Story)

The Wasonica Correction

"The Wasonica Correction" first appeared in The Fifth Science Fiction Megapack (Wildside Press 2012). It can also be found in the short story collection Night Alleys, recently published by Paranoia Press. "The Wasonica Correction" © James C. Stewart 2010

Reality Environment co-ordinates: April 2, 1968. Wasonica, Ontario. 185 Laurier Street.

I slipped a hand into my pocket, reassuring myself for the second time in as many minutes the last twenty capsules of NDT were still there. My fingers found the crumpled plastic pouch and I felt short-lived relief.

The Beatles were on the radio--

(She loves you, yeah yeah yeah)

--and outside my living room window a group of long hairs stoned on youth and whatever was popular passed with petulant noises. They left staccato images in their wake. I rubbed my eyes. I tried to stay focused.

It had been seventy-two hours and still my mind reverberated with aftershocks.

Incredible.

Without a doubt the most powerful compound I've experimented with to date. It would seem Leary and those clowns at Harvard were children playing with chemistry sets.

The room tightened around me. My left arm began to tremor. I blinked and saw scan lines.

Another blink.

They were gone.

The Beatles gave way to news. Apparently the Americans had bombed a place called Tranh Hoa.

Neural dimensional tryptamine. I worried about the side effects. A balance will always be struck, and clearly NDT demanded a serious adjustment.

My arm began to shake more violently.

Another glance out the window.

There was a man sitting on a bench in the park across the street. An incongruous man-he wore a black three-piece suit and sunglasses, sunglasses though the day was a dingy shade of gray. The kids lounging on the nearby grass paid him no attention, despite the fact his silver crew-cut gave him a distinctly cop vibe.

He seemed to be watching my house. We seemed to make eye-contact. He seemed to smile. Unfortunately I was in no condition to judge such things. After all, paranoia had been my constant companion for the past three days.

The radio was playing a noisy commercial for a downtown car lot when the spasms in my arm began affecting my body.

I smiled. It was going to be another full blown aftershock.

I'd discovered NDT by accident. In 1965 I'd been researching a variety of South American plants, and found myself in the jungle rain forest of French Guiana searching for the exotic philodendron moonenii.

Instead I found a conspicuously simple looking plant I've come to call the proto ontologica. It's a small plant with undistinguished features, but it blossoms into a slightly more interesting flower of purple and yellow. The key component in neural dimensional tryptamine lay in the petals of this flower.

I discovered this watching the bizarre rituals of the Daorca tribe, who took a rudimentary compound of proto ontologica through their nasal cavities. They'd dried the petals, and reduced them to a powder which was then mixed with the more standard psychoactive datura inoxia, which the Aztecs had called toloatzin. A member of the tribe would then use a hollow reed to literally blow the compound into the receipt's nostrils. The only exception to this seemed to be an elder 'priest', who took the mixture by rubbing it in to his eyes. After this 'ceremony', the Daorca would dance as if animals until succumbing to the compound's effects, which resulted in total catatonia for three to four hours, though I'd seen it last as long as six. Within this state, the Daorca claim they "see the sideways other".