Magic Gumball

Magic Gumball

Gingham’s Magic Gumball

By Luke J. Morris

 

She was lying.

“But I love you!”

Lying again.  He’d always suspected it, but now he knew.  Knew, without a doubt, that she had never been honest with him, not once, for years.  It was intoxicating.  “What were you doing with him, then?”

“Nothing!  We’re just friends.”

Another lie, this one almost too easy.  A week ago he would have believed her – he’d have convinced himself she told the truth, because he wanted to believe, wanted to quash his doubts.  He had robbed himself of that luxury now.  He had no more doubts.  But the payoff was worth it.

“Get out,” he said.

She cried, falsely, and left.

 

He got to the lab early, before the technicians could bother him.  The formula, the materials, the product, he needed all of them, he couldn’t let this get out, couldn’t let the –

The phone rang.  Answer it?  They knew he was there, of course.  “Hello?”

“Gingham.  Glad you’re in.  Could you stop by my office?”

“Kinda busy today, John.  What do you need?”

“I need your feedback on something.”

Not a lie, not entirely.  They were going to question him.  “Be up in a bit.”  Dr. Gregory Gingham hung up the phone and started to twitch.  He needed a fix something bad.  He opened his supply closet and pulled a glass bowl from the back shelf, reached inside for a small rainbow-striped ball, and popped it in his mouth.  Then he sunk into his desk chair and relaxed and let his mind fly.

So many lies for such a small world.

 

John Silecki enjoyed the finer things, and his office showed it.  From the black leather couch on one side to the solid oak bookshelf on the other to the polished mahogany desk in the middle, the room screamed ‘expensive taste’.   He offered Gingham a cigar.  Cuban.  The doc shook his head and sat down.

“CIA is on me, Greg,” Silecki said.  “They want results.  What have you got so far?” 

“Making good progress.  We’re narrowing down the ingredients, working to get the formulas just right.  Sodium pentothal was an effective solution, John; one-upping it isn’t exactly a walk in the park.”

“I know that, dammit!  Just… give me what you have.”

Hiding something.  Hmmm...  “What do they want this for, John?  Don’t their old solutions work?”

“I don’t know that, Greg, you know I don’t.  We’re just here to serve the customer.”

A lie.  Silecki knew everything.  Someone must have found a way to beat the old methods, to lie to the government undetected.  They couldn’t let that pass, of course.  But they also couldn’t let John Q Public know what they were up to, so they contacted a small but productive branch of Introchemical to do the work, gave the company unlimited funding in return for non-disclosure agreements for all personnel involved.  A small group, at that.  Probably planning to use us as guinea pigs for our own drug, Greg thought.  “Well… we do have something.  Not sure of its efficacy yet, but – ”

“It’s ready for human testing?”  Silecki leaned forward, elbows on his desk, teeth biting into his cigar.

Greg sighed and leaned back in his chair.  “Maybe.  We’ll want to be careful with it, though.  I need to run a few more tests first, to make sure it’s not lethal.”

Silecki rubbed his temples and closed his eyes.  “I can only hold them off for so long, Greg.  Another week and they’ll have their own people in here supervising your work.”

You mean, you’ll tell them to.  “Not to worry, John.  I’ll have test samples ready by the end of the week.  Probably have to work ‘round the clock to do it – ”

“Yes, yes, fine!  Sleep here, for all I care, just get it done.”

He wasn’t lying about that.  Good.  Dr. Gingham smiled grimly as he walked out. 

 

Midnight came.  The security guard sat in his booth upstairs, pretending to keep an eye out for intruders.  He was actually cheating at online poker, but Gingham wouldn’t complain. 

The project had reached its final stage.  He emptied his glass jar of product into a plastic baggie and tucked it in his jacket pocket.  He took what raw materials remained and flushed them, making sure to jumble the labels in the lab.  The formula he had stashed tightly into his brain; he destroyed all physical copies and wiped his hard drive.  For information security purposes, they hadn’t wanted him to post any data on the network.  He laughed at the irony. 

He waved to the guard on the way out.  “See you in the morning,” he lied.  As he started his car, he popped one of his magic gumballs.  The colors melded with his mind, and everything became clear.   His hands and his feet and his wide-opened eyes guided the machine toward the highway.  He could drive all night now.  He would.

They’d wanted a new ‘truth serum’.  They expected a new and improved drug to pry facts from their victims’ mouths.  But he had done them one better.  Approaching the problem from the other end, he had found Truth itself, cracked its head open, and spilled its mindstuff for he and he alone to enjoy.  He knew the curse that came with the blessing: no one could deceive him, yet he would never again know the bliss of ignorance.  He didn’t care. 

Dr. Gregory Gingham was a junkie.  And he was a god.  He floored his accelerator toward life, toward liberty, toward death, toward Washington.  He laughed at all the liars as the sun rose on an honest new day.