But after hours, when its work was done, it was time for the brain to punch out. After all, the mind was a terrible thing. Sure, you had to use it, like a lawnmower or a flamethrower or a chainsaw, but if you overused it—if you got excited and played around with it too much—you were gonna hurt yourself. That's just the way it was.
That was how Topper understood Edwin. Something, many things in Edwin’s life had caused him pain, and he tried to run away from it by thinking. Topper was okay with running away from painful and unpleasant things, but running by thinking? That was the worst trap of all.
Tonight, though, Topper's brain just didn't know when to quit. He was smack in the middle of a full-tilt evening of hedonistic mind-annihilation—celebrities to the left, hookers to the right—when he realized it wasn't working. It wasn't working at all. No matter how much he drank, his brain wasn't turning off. He just couldn't enjoy himself.
Why did this keep happening? This was wrong. In fact, doubly wrong for Topper. He was a professional. He was better at enjoying himself than anyone else he knew. People genuinely liked and admired him for it. Topper was so good that, when he was in full swing, it was hard not to have a good time around him. Only Edwin seemed to be able to resist his powers.
So it was that fateful night that Topper said something he never thought would come out of his mouth, "I gotta go. I can't hear myself think."
Outside, he had to pound on his car window to wake up Stevie. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing?" said Topper.
"You just want to go home?" asked the chauffeur.
"No."
"You just wanted to talk?"
"Nah, just drive."
"Where to?"
"The office."
"Burning the midnight oil there, boss?"
"Just shut up and drive," slurred Topper. This worried Stevie. He had never before seen Topper when he wasn't in a mood to joke around.
By the time they got to Omdemnity Building One, the cumulative effect of all the substances Topper had put in his body was peaking. He was a little man who was wrecked in a big way. As he staggered through the lobby clutching a bottle of bourbon, the security guard said, "Sir, you're not allowed to have alcohol on the corporate campus."
"Well, why the hell not?"
"Sorry, sir, I don't make the rules," the security guard said, invoking the procedurally strong, yet morally weak, I-was-only-following-orders defense.
"Do you know who I am?" Topper asked.
"Yes, sir, you're Mr. Haggleblat, Vice President."
"Vice President of what?"
"Uh..." The security guard furrowed his brow and his law-enforcement-issue bushy mustache in concentration. Topper held up his plastic access card. Even worse than he hated the card, he hated the little retractable cords everyone in this monstrous insurance company/extortion racket seemed to use to carry them around. Maybe if you could garrote someone with them, but other than that, they were just the wrong end of the leash.
The guard read from the card, "V.P., Extraordinary Operations."
"That's right, Extraordinary Operations," Topper said waving his arms wide and stumbling a little bit. "And you know what this is?" he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. In spite of himself, the guard was drawn in by this ploy.
"EXTRAORDINARY!" yelled Topper with an expulsion of boozy fumes. Not only was it loud enough to make the security guard jump, it was loud enough that Topper hurt his own head. He held up a finger and repeated the salient point, "Extraordinary. It means the rules don't apply to me, you get it?"
"I'm sorry, sir. Rules are rules."
Topper rubbed his eyes. Rules! Security Guards! He was in no mood for this. For the first time since he could remember, he didn't want a fight. But what to do? When you'd fought every step of the way, how to do something else? Topper sought inspiration in a slug of bourbon. "Come on, it's not serious, it's only like 80 proof. I got shoe polish that's stronger than this."
"I can't let you upstairs in this state, sir."
And there was the loophole. Topper dove for it. "That's okay, I'm not going upstairs."
"What?"
"Above your pay grade, sunshine. Is it okay if I use the bathroom before I go?"
The guard gave him a stern, slightly-above-minimum wage look.
"Hey, I promise, I won't do anything extraordinary in there. Just take care of business and be on my way. No more hassle."
The guard gave a stern nod that made Topper want to break the bottle of liquor over his head. But, instead, he walked around the corner towards the bathroom. Where a normal person would have taken a left turn into the restroom, Topper made a right turn into a solid stone wall. He pressed three or four indentations in the correct sequence (having to jump to reach one of them) and a section of the wall slid open to reveal a waiting elevator. He stepped into the compartment and disappeared into the earth.
There were a precious few people who knew about the secret complex below Omdemnity Building One. Pretty much all the rule-following schleps were left out of the secret. Most of the Adjustors didn't even know.
When the elevator doors opened, Topper stepped out into a concrete hallway bathed in a gentle red light. It was always like this down here. Cool and easy on the eyes. No loud noises. A nice quiet place to come and think. This was where they kept all their secrets.
Lately, Edwin had done a pretty thorough job of tidying up the secrets between people's ears. Omdemnity didn’t have a non-compete agreement so much as they had a non-quit-your-job-and-walk-away-alive policy. It would probably prevent them from ever making the list of Best Companies in America to Work For—but Edwin didn't like publicity, so he wouldn't care.
They kept the Cromoglodon down here, in a pit deep in the earth. It was in this pit that Topper now stood, with a pain in his heart and a quickly evaporating bottle of booze. When the rest of the world looked at this creature, they saw only a relentless engine of destruction. But as Topper watched him sleep, all he saw was Barry. A strange, sad creature who didn't fit in the world.
Barry slept on the large foam mattress that was thrown on the floor of his pit. It would have seemed more ordinary to keep him in a cell, but there was a good reason to keep him here. Giant electrical cables ran into the pit and attached to the Cromoglodon. If ever Edwin decided that Barry had outlived his usefulness, he would have the monster quietly electrocuted in the darkness beneath the earth.
Topper loved to see the Cromoglodon tear things apart. He loved that strength and savagery that he possessed in his own heart but would never possess in his body. And he felt a strange, sad kinship with Barry.
Topper took a pull from the bottle and felt the angry butterfly of liquor open its wings in his chest.
"How did we come to this, eh, Barry? You and me? Hunh?" Topper's voice rang harshly against the concrete walls, but Barry did not stir. When he wasn't needed, policy was to keep the creature under heavy sedation.
As Topper looked down on Barry, he felt guilty. This was a new emotion for Topper, so he didn't quite recognize it. He just knew that it wasn't the way things were supposed to be.
"S'not the way things are supposed to be, y'know," he said with the earnest obviousness that an adult can only manage while too drunk to enter into a legally binding agreement.
"Ya loved him once, didn't ya, ya poor sap?" Topper could only be talking about Edwin, but this idea was ridiculous. Edwin had destroyed this man-child's life. Topper continued to project himself onto the world. "So did I. So did I. But ya can't love somebody who doesn't love himself."
He took another pull on the bottle.
"You know what's good about me? I love me. No, I really do. See?" Topper asked as he gave himself a hug. "I'm awesome."
Barry started to snore.
"Yes, I am. Awesome. And screw him if he can't have a good time. 'Cause that's not what I'm like. I can enjoy myself anywhere. I can have a good time just being me, y'know? 'Cause being me is the best time there is."
Tears streamed down the small man's face.
"'Cause I bring my own party, wherever I go. I mean, you wanna step out with me? That's fine, c'mon. Bring your friend, or mattress, or whatever down there. You don't? That's fine. I'm gonna have a good time anyway.
"See, that's the difference between me and Edwin Windsor. I have a good time. He has a JOB. But I'm working on him." He sighed deeply. He had been trying with Edwin, but it never seemed to do any good. It's all lies, he thought.
"Lies! It's all lies. But you know that. He was gonna make you rich and powerful and now you are down here in a hole in the earth. And if you get out of line, he's going to drown you."
The tears slowed and Topper wiped them away. He wondered if he had wound up like the Cromoglodon. He had told people that Edwin was the devil, but it had been a joke, or maybe a compliment. Edwin had promised that he and Topper could be bad guys. Villains. Evil. Get to do whatever they want. But the only person who got to do what he wanted was Edwin.
Topper realized, for the first time, how truly unhappy he was. How had he gotten himself into this? It was supposed to have been fun. But it wasn’t any fun. Topper couldn't remember the last time he had fun.
Even stomping the architectural model and strong-arming the guy, that wasn't fun. That was just a release of anger. Something Topper had done to keep his sanity. But fun. The pure, maniac fun that had sustained him through all of his revels and excesses—it was gone. He didn't know where it went. "Fucking suburbs," he said, taking another swig from the bottle.
"He's the devil Barry. He's the devil. He's always working! None of his promises come true!" Topper wondered if Edwin had implanted something inside his brain to keep him under control. He didn’t think so, but he knew the way Edwin worked. And by the time he found out about it, it would be too late.
"He's the devil, Barry. But he's the only friend I've got. I just don't know how to talk to him. How to make him hear me, Barry. How do I make him hear me?
"Okay, okay. I'm gonna try this out on you, because I trust you." The Cromoglodon’s snore grew a little louder. "We're gonna play make-believe. We're gonna pretend that you are Edwin and that I am, well, me. Ah, while we are at it, let's pretend I'm taller. I've always wanted to be taller. OK?"
Topper shuffled around the concrete floor of the pit, shaking his arms and legs, trying to loosen them up. Even the thought of speaking his heart—what he really felt, deep down inside—to Edwin Windsor terrified him. He told himself, this was make-believe. That no harm could come of it. If it didn't come out right, he wouldn't say it to Edwin. But all these things that were wearing on him, he had to do something with them. Or else he would burst.
The way Topper looked at it, other guys could hold things in but he just wasn't big enough to swallow his emotions.
"Okay, okay. See, Edwin, the thing is... look, there's more to life than business."
As he stared into the darkness, listening to the Cromoglodon's short, troubled breathing, he imagined how Edwin would turn his head just so, raising an eyebrow in a gesture of confusion that demanded clarification. How could he say that there was more to life than business? What evidence could Topper provide?
" ...uh, yeah, more to life. Because, what you're doing is..."
Making money? That is what Edwin would say.
"Yes, but..."
The “but” echoed through the empty hollow space. His objection swallowed by the darkness and lost underground. Topper stared into the blackness. The utter void from which he now tried to forge an argument against Edwin's cold rationality.
"Okay," he said, his tiny larynx producing a note of confidence at last, "here's the deal. Ya got things, right? And every thing has a purpose. A sports car is supposed to go fast and get you laid, right?" This would be the point where Edwin's eyes would start to glaze over, "RIGHT? Right! And the faster the car goes, and the faster it gets you laid, the better the car is, right? Un-hunh, you can measure it, you can put a price on it.
"But there's another kind of thing in the world, Beanpole. There are things that don't have a use. That you're not supposed to use. Like a sunset. It just is. It's not supposed to do anything. It is complete in and of itself.
"And there are other things like that. Like me. Like you. Like friggin' EVERYBODY! You don't have to be judged on what you do. You can just be! Right? You can just be. Even if there's no policy or procedure—just sitting your lanky ass in the sand and watching the sunset—that's enough.
"You don't need somebody to tell you if you are doing it right or not! You don't have to find something productive to do... You can just… just..." He trailed off. Even the invisible, imaginary Edwin in his head wasn't buying it.
Tears streamed down Topper's face. This was hopeless. He couldn't even think of anything to try to say to Edwin that might make him understand. He had lost his only friend (or the closest thing to a friend that he had ever had) and he couldn't even figure out something to do to try and get him back.
In frustration, Topper stamped up to the control room above the pit. He slammed his fist down on the electroshock button. The Cromoglodon awoke in fear. He cried out and convulsed against the rough floor of the pit as fear penetrated every fiber of his being. He whimpered clawed at the cement floor of the pit as if he was trying to dig a hole in which to hide.
His weeping having replaced by anger, Topper took his finger off the button. Jesus, thought Topper, there's just no talking to this guy. Even an imaginary version of him.
As he made his way back to the secret elevator, his heart was a little lighter. Sure, Edwin was hopeless. But now he didn't feel so guilty. It wasn't like Topper had betrayed him. There was just nothing else he could do.
As Topper swaggered towards the lobby exit, he took the final pull off the bottle of liquor. The security guard gave him an angry and confused look. He had gone to look for Topper in the bathroom and there was nobody in there. Now he was back? It just didn't add up.
