The Dream World Collective

32. On Anger

Otto thoughtfully cracked the cap of his two-liter bottle of Dr. Shasta and took a swig as he thumped up the stairs. He tried to think through the situation, but found himself at a loss regarding the type of actual content such thoughts would involve. It was one thing when you were dealing with a programming bug or improvement, or even raid tactics. There was a goal, and there were solutions, and some of them worked and others didn't. It was different with—he fumbled tentatively to pin down the concept—people stuff. There were all kinds of things you could do wrong, and there was nothing to think about exactly. You were just supposed to think. Think before you speak. You might want to think about that, mister. That sort of thinking.

And he was upstairs.

"Man," he muttered in frustration. That always happened. Just when he was about to get somewhere, he...well, got somewhere. He knocked on the tower room door. It drifted open. Inside Zen was balanced on a chair, pounding furiously at the wall with a hammer. Putting up a hammock, Otto realized as the door opened further.

"Zen? I, uh..." He glanced at his hands. "Brought some Shasta?"

"Not now, man." Zen didn't look back. Which was wise, under the circumstances. The chair looked a little rickety, and he was hammering pretty hard.

"Are we allowed to do that?" asked Otto.

"What?"

"Hammer stuff into the walls?"

Zen shrugged.

"You ok?" Otto prodded the words into the room ahead of him to see if they would survive.

Zen shook his head.

"No," he said frankly. "It was pretty inconsiderate."

Otto felt his face heat up.

"Yeah. Sorry. I didn't—I mean—"

Zen stopped hammering for a moment and glanced over his shoulder.

"Probably wasn't your fault. You were asleep." He waved Otto into the room and turned back to his work. "It's mostly the girls," he added after a moment.

Otto considered this in what he hoped was a sympathetic manner, not that Zen was even watching.

"It's a weird thing being actually angry," Zen continued. Having apparently beaten his current nail into submission, he got off the chair and started wrestling it through the piles of books and bedding on the floor. "You know? I get annoyed, sometimes upset. I've even been mildly indignant on two separate occasions. But I don't remember ever being properly angry."

Otto took another swig of Dr. Shasta. It was true. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been angry either, except for raid stuff, and that only sort of counted.

"What's it like?" he asked.

"Sort of a cross between wanting to punch someone and wanting to just forget it all and go home," replied Zen. He began pounding the other end of the hammock into the wall.

"Oh, that? That's normal," Otto assured him with mild surprise. "I didn't realize we were talking about that kind of angry."

Zen grunted.

"What are you going to do?" Otto asked. Zen yanked hard on the hammock a few times to test it, then swung himself up into it with remarkable agility. It was a Brazilian hammock, the kind made of soft colorful cloth that completely swallows you up and hides you away.

"Stay," came Zen's slightly muffled voice.

"What?" Otto wasn't sure he'd heard right.

"I'm going to stay. It's what you do, right? This is my big chance. There's no point being all communal and committed if everything is wonderful all the time. Just kind of sucks that I'm the one who has to live it first."

"I like wonderful," muttered Otto.

"Yeah."

"But everything's ok? You're not too...whatever?"

"No. Not ok at all. Pranks, revenge, punchings, rants, and depression. But I'm not gonna leave."

Otto smiled wickedly. "Yes, yes," he hissed like a little Igor. "I see." His mind began whirling with evil ideas. Cream cheese in socks. Sardines in underwear drawers. It gave him a moment's pause that all his prank ideas involved food and underclothing. Nevertheless, they were solid. "This shall be the dawn of a grand new era!" he declared triumphantly.

"No," said Zen sadly. "I don't think so." Something in his tone cut into Otto, leaving a sense of terrible, bottomless panic. Fix-it-fix-it-fix-it! screamed a wordless voice in his head.

"Join me, and together we will rule the galaxy as father and son," he growled in his best Vader imitation.

"Yeah," Zen responded listlessly from the depths of his hammock, not acknowledging the joke. "I'd kind of like to just read for a while." Otto, for once, recognized the hint loud and clear. He got up to leave.

"Is there anything I can—I mean, I guess—Just, if you want me to—I'll be here. Give me a couple chirps on the communicator. If you, you know..." He laid one of his walkie-talkie conglomerations softly by the door and padded out of the room.