Page 82 of Going Home in the Dark

Now that Larry was smiling like a degenerate in a schoolyard and sitting up in the chair as stiff-spined as any prisoner in an electric chair anticipating thethrillof the current, his demon lover once more slinked around the parlor, expounding on the many wonders of Alpha.

“Some scientists on the Keppelwhite team feel Alpha shouldn’t be called a fungus, that an entire new genus should be founded ifit’s to be properly categorized. However, to accomplish that, the existence of it would have to be made public. Given the astonishing truth of Alpha—which I’ve yet to reveal—the whistleblower would most likely not be believed. In any case, his intentions would be known before he could act, whereupon his life expectancy would be eleven minutes. The relationship between Alpha and the Keppelwhite family is the most valuable relationship in the history of the world, and they will doanythingto protect it.”

“Relationship?” Bobby asked.

Rebecca said, “This doesn’t sound much like the family history of the altruistic Keppelwhites that every kid in Maple Grove is taught from first grade through twelfth.”

Britta’s sneer, expressing her intellectual contempt, would have made Einstein so doubt his theory of relativity that he might have hung himself in mortification. “Ms. Crane, do not play naive with me. You are not a bright bulb, but after a fifteen-year career in TV and film, you are notsostupid as to have any illusions left. Who do you thinkrunsthis country? The family’s vaunted charitable work is accomplished through the Keppelwhite Foundation. The board of directors includes nine hundred and sixty-five men and women, all relatives of politicians or major media figures, each paid a six-figure salary to show up once a year for a meeting. Keppelwhite Financial holds the mortgages on the homes of seven hundred key bureaucrats and provides under-the-table rebates of half of each monthly mortgage payment. Keppelwhite this and Keppelwhite that—they’re more ubiquitous than McDonald’s. And by the way, they have gained total control of the pickle market and are trying to become the sole source in the world for ketchup.”

Spencer shook his head in amazement. “I had no idea of their reach and power.”

“Mr. Truelove, for a visual artist of your talent, I have no expectation you would know anything significant about anything.”

“All this from an 1891 patent on the hinge,” Bobby marveled. “Does a patent last forever?”

“That one does,” Britta said. “In 1920, Senator Guenther Ohlendorf and Congressman Gottfried Himmelfurter—affectionately known to their constituents as ‘Gunny’ and ‘Frank’—shepherded through the legislature a bill making that patent eternal and expanding it to include the piano hinge and the whisk broom.”

“I guess maybe all of this puts Alpha in some useful context,” Rebecca admitted. “But you told us the truth of the fungus was astonishing. Can we get back to that? What truth?”

Britta sat on the arm of Pastor Larry’s chair and stroked his head as if he were a beloved cat. Both looked smug, as if they knew something earthshaking. Then she said, “Alpha has a brain.”

“Whose brain?” Spencer asked.

“Its own brain, of course. Keppelwhite scientists estimate that of its sixty thousand tons, its brain accounts for two point five tons.”

“Quite a large brain,” said Larry. “It’s very smart. Smarter than you, of course. Smarter than all of you combined. Far smarter than any artificial intelligence ever likely to be developed in this century.”

This news did not sit well with the amigos. They looked at one another as if they had just heard how the world would end.

“Alpha supplies the Keppelwhites with concepts, designs, and formulae that make them ever richer,” said Britta. “Larry and Idon’t care about that. We are not envious. We know who we are and like who we are, for we are at the very top of the evolutionary ladder. But ...”

As Britta seemed about to choke on what she needed to say next, Pastor Larry picked up the narrative. “Alpha—the damn thing’s noble intentions are what infuriate us. The Keppelwhites found the damn thing thirty-seven years ago. They needed a year to figure out what the damn thing was they found. They built the Keppelwhite Institute, and it took them three more years to establish contact with the damn thing. Then two more years to convince the damn thing to use its big brain for more than just dreaming and philosophizing, as it had been doing ever since it became self-aware nine thousand years ago. With some coaxing, the damn thing eventually helped the Keppelwhites in ways that also helped humanity—cures for diseases, technological breakthroughs. Over the years, the crazy damn thing decided it loved humanity and would dedicate itself to the slow improvement of the human condition.”

Britta rose from the arm of the chair and clenched her fists and shook them at the heavens or at least at the ceiling. “It does not understand humanity at all. The potential of that huge brain wasted. Wasted! Two point five tons of stupidity. It has the power to devise a thousand ways to wipe humanity off the Earth, but it wants toservehumanity. For millennia, it was indifferent to—in fact oblivious of—humanity. Then in a few short years, it morphed into a sanctimonious do-gooder sixty-thousand-ton pile of shit.”

“The damn thing. The damn, damn thing,” Pastor Larry raged, no longer sitting up straight, shrinking back in his chair, becoming a black hole of bitterness and hatred.

“Alpha possesses a form of telepathy,” Britta revealed. “It is able to radiate thought waves that can make people happier if they happen to be receptive, and most of the idiots in this town are receptive. Happy and happier—that is all they want. They are, the lot of them, perpetual infants sucking at the tit of happiness. And Alpha also can produce thought waves that make people feel guilt and remorse about doing something wrong or eventhinkingabout doing the wrong thing. It doesn’t control them—I’ll grant you that—but itencourageswhat it believes to be the right behavior. Now Maple Grove has become virtually crime-free. We can only hope that this despicable condition never takes hold beyond Maple Grove. What kind of world would it be if no one ever committed a crime? It wouldn’t be a world where a sane person would want to live. Without contempt and hatred and violence and murderous envy, life would have noflavor.”

“The damn, damn, damn thing!” roared Pastor Larry. He struggled to get up from his armchair, but his hatred and rage were so intense that they robbed him of all physical coordination. He floundered and slapped at the leather arms, at the cushion, until he collapsed once more into what now seemed less like a chair than like a huge Venus flytrap determined to swallow him.

Much more needed to be explained and understood, but before Britta Hernishen could launch into another of her stupefying performances, Rebecca asked, “Larry, I understand your late half brother, Aldous Blomhoff, was a high executive at the institute.”

At the mention of his brother, Pastor Larry twitched, and his empurpled face emptied of color as if a drain plug had been pulled open in his neck. Even before the reverend spoke, any observer alert to the emotions of others would have known that his suddenpallor had nothing to do with grief. “Thatsonofabitch,” said Larry. “That preening, people-loving, Pollyanna phony. If you counted all the time he spent virtue signaling and polishing his image, there was maybe one hour in the day when he wasn’t thinking about himself and how wonderful he was. Maybe forty minutes. Oh, how I despised that insufferable bastard. But I hid it well. He never knew. He was the head of the Alpha Project, and he brought me into the inner circle as adviser on the ethical and spiritual issues related to Alpha and the exploitation of its abilities, which is why I know everything about their research.”

Spencer held his hat on his head as if they were in such a pit of evil that someone would snatch it from him.

Britta felt it necessary to add, “Fungi, Alpha, and the hope that the creature would commit genocide and wipe out humanity—for months, that was our pillow talk.”

Favoring her with a lecherous smile, Pastor Larry said, “That was such an exciting time.”

“Such a fulfilling time,” Britta agreed.

“So tender.”

“So passionate.”

Rebecca said, “I wish I had that talking card.” Before either the reverend or the professor could ask what she meant, she posed another question. “Is what I heard correct—that your brother died earlier today of toe fungus?”

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