Stoner, you need to stop taking those, they’re no good for you.

Well, then what? What do I do. Guide my hands, Bresson, I am just a little man. I do not know what I do.

Listen, you have to stop taking the pills. You’re not even supposed to have them, the pharmacy mislabeled something. You sleep for at least 10 hours a day, you don’t need the pills, you’re fine. Do you understand this?

Well, I guess I can understand that. But the pills make me feel good, Bresson, really good. Or something like that.

I understand that, but we don’t know what the pills are doing to your brain, or your circadian rhythm, like that thing that determines when your body does things, or what it could do to your body elsewhere. I understand the pills make you feel good, but there’s more than just feeling good, you have to take care of yourself Stoner. I know we here do a lot for you but we can’t help you if you can’t help yourself. We just can’t.

But, Bresson, I feel like one of Caulfield’s ducks. I don’t know where to go, the lake in the park is all frozen over. The pill is a place to go, it provides for me a place I can go.

Stoner, Caulfield was lost and confused and dealing with things someone his age... Look. You’re not just lost and confused, sometimes we just don’t know what to do with you. You’re just a little man! You said it yourself! I promise we will figure things out, but you must understand that we have a whole lot of people on whom you depend, people who are all saying you shouldn’t be taking the pills. And, of course, you know they can’t be here to see you, that would mess it all up, you understand? We couldn’t do that.

But Caulfield was right, we don’t know where they’re supposed to go! They just waddle and waddle, and swim, and have fun. But they’re all in the water, and when it freezes over, what are they supposed to do? Where are they to go?

(A slightly-too-cold-for-comfort draft blows through the stout vent stuck into the bottom corner of the wall to their right. Both of them wrap their arms around themselves in different ways. Bresson, in a cardigan, pulls his arms slightly acrost his midsection while keeping them mostly on his lap, where they were prior. Stoner just sort of retreats into himself, much like a turtle or pill bug who’s been picked up suddenly. They look at themselves, individually, for a moment, then back up at each other.)

I mean, it’s their home. Maybe not like the fish, but not far off either. They waddle up and see the lake and they cry. Maybe not. Can ducks cry, Bresson?

I’m not sure, Stoner, I don’t think animals have a real capacity for emotion, especially not under such unclear circumstances. Perhaps I should phrase it thus: if I were a duck, and I saw such a thing, I would probably just quack and waddle away.

I mean, maybe you’re right but-

Listen to me Stoner. The pills are a serious misstep, they will not help you. Our people, and trust me, they’re good, made a minor mistake in giving them to you, it is remarkably similar to another medication, the one I was discussing last week. The one to help with your new symptom.

You mean the hand thing? The shakes?

Yes, the tremors. The counterclockwise circular movements which appear primarily in your right hand which after you’ve eaten more than a certain number of calories. They require immediate attention of the prescribed sort.

I don’t know if you remember my saying so, Bresson, but the shakes are pretty minor, you even needed some instrument to see them in detail, and they’re not a big deal. I told you I didn’t really want the meds because of the side effects, we talked about the side effects, I think, and-

The tremors are medically relevant to the general state of your… condition. Listen to me, Stoner, really. We have told you this a million times, but we might have to tell you a million more times. This condition you have - it’s never before been documented. Not even in nonhuman species. You are the only one who’s ever had it. You are totally one of a kind -

(Bresson raises his hand to softly stroke Stoner’s cheek, the same way he has done to his own son many a time, a motion with which his hand is remarkably well-acquainted. Stoner does not react.)

we will never have another Stoner. You are our own one-of-a-kind little man and we love you dearly. We have to, we must take care of you and see to it that your condition is treated not just with the array of medications and therapies but also that you are looked after and treated accordingly. And it is the whole team’s opinion (including my own) that you ought to stop taking the pills. The medication inside of them is still in an experimental phase, they haven’t even been given to humans yet, we only even managed to get them by accident because we have a sort of priority in a pharmaceutical system as a part of our medical grant to take care of you.

Bresson, you have to listen to me. I understand you, and everyone, have the best of intentions for me, I know, I do, really, and that my actions under these circumstances have been concerning, perhaps even to the extent that you are beginning to question my intentions. I promise. But I need you to imagine something. I need you to close your eyes for this.

(Bresson closes his eyes tentatively, as though he is waiting for something, although Stoner has not begun speaking. His eyes are closed, but not really, they are just closed enough that only the softest off-white trickle of light can bleed through his eyelids, as opened as the eyes can get during REM sleep, the stage, the mirror of hallucination.)

Imagine my mind is the duck I speak of, and that the world is the lake. That is surely what our good friend Caulfield had in mind, this theme of world-abandonment, of being left behind, the alienation of the younger years, told about in hushed whispers and blurry photographs? I have not once in my short life had the occasion to feel these things, the alienation and stupidity of the younger years. I could not expect you to understand this part, Bresson, but my life is now a table of numbers rounded to the sixth decimal point. I must take the wide, oblong orange pills on Thursday mornings after breakfast, not before I eat. I must finish the next book, the next quiz of reading comprehension. I must complete the video series intended to integrate me into this wide world outside of this little offwhite box as a person who is… dissimilar from the company I could take. I must attend the next video meeting for people who have similarly socially debilitating physical conditions to my own. There is no escape from this, my days are planned to the segment of each five minutes, there is no room for anything else. I am under such strict regiment that-

(Bresson begins sobbing uncontrollably, clawing at his face with his hands, catching Stoner quite off-guard. He does this for maybe half a minute before falling off of his leathery stool onto the ground, where he retracts into a fetal curl and turns towards the other wall, facing away from Stoner. He continues to do this until he appears to simply give up - there are no more tears inside him, or perhaps his ducts have stuffed up from the constant overuse. He thinks of a brick wall, of a quiet meadow at sundown, of his son in varying degrees of adulthood. He pictures this adult son describing, from a leathery stool of his own, how it is physically impossible to freehand draw a perfect circle, how the flicks of the wrist and the contours of paper, pencil, and writing surface all force imperfection onto the poor little shape, and that there is nothing we can do to overcome it. He thinks of his wife, of the wife before her, of long nights spent at kitchen tables, whispers of little quiet nothings ricocheting off of the yellowy linoleum lining the floor in his house’s kitchen. His house was built in 1948. He thinks finally of nothing, a vast expanse of colorless void, before rolling onto his back and staring straight into the ceiling.)

Bresson?

Yes, child?

How many days are in a week, Bresson?

There are 12 days in a week. A mathematician, an American I believe, came up with a new system which was named after him. His name was Singer, the new week system was called The Singer System for a while when it was first introduced, so people would remember it. Weeks used to just be seven days, but Stone figured out a new way, a new way which would revolutionize the whole temporal system here, as it led to a cascade of new things changing - the amount of weeks in a month, the amount of both in a year, and so on. Your assigned reading on it is coming up in a month or two. Why do you ask?

I don’t know. I’m just trying to think.

What are you trying to think of?

I don’t know that either. We will just have to see when it comes to me.

You know, this little thought of yours would be a great opportunity to start journaling, Stoner. There’s an intimacy to the written word that the face-to-face often misses. Just think of our friend Caulfield! He would be so proud of you, you know.

I will give it my best, Bresson, but, as usual, I make no promises, I have very little to speak of, you know.

I know! I just appreciate the effort of it, it would mean a lot to all of us back up there if you would tell us more about what you think, how you feel, how they interact. I would help us out more than you know. I’ve told you this plenty, I’m sure.

Yes, Bresson, I will give it my best, you have my word.

That’s my boy. I’m getting a page, but I will come back down later on to check on you. As always, you can also page us if you need anything.

Yes, Bresson, I will. Thank you very much for taking this time with me.

(As soon as Bresson gets up and leaves the room, Stoner gets into bed, flattening himself out against the mattress and staring straight up, arms flat by his sides, breathing through his nose. He’s done this thousands of times, finding a new way to do it nightly. When counting the number of ceiling tiles, he usually goes around the edges first, getting the ‘stragglers’ as he would call them when later recounting the activity to Bresson in their daily meetings. This particular night he traces through a more obvious, rational pattern. He is unsure why he hadn’t tried it before. It ends in a nearly perfect, snaking, inward pattern toward the center tile, with a few imperfections. As he retraces his steps through the final progression of the pattern, he sees a little black shape hanging around the corner of his vision, one of the ambient lights inside the wall’s paneling casts a faint glow around its edges. He looks towards it. It is an aging man, sitting on a stool of some sort, not dissimilar to Bresson’s. He is speaking very faintly. Stoner slips out of bed slowly, the man either does not notice or does not react - he just stares straight ahead, just past him. As Stoner nears the man, who, he quickly notices, looks shockingly similar to Bresson, he begins to pick up the whispered moments of words and phrases and ideas bubbling out of the cottony white noise he could hear before. The man is saying something about perfect circles, how the human body is not capable of producing them. Of how they cannot appear in nature. Of how we will endlessly labor and toil under the illusion that we will someday be able to eliminate these magical errors, gaps in the numbers. Stoner was originally trying to make eye contact with the man, but as time goes on and the man continues to discuss more and more of the finer details of this issue, he begins to stare straight into the wall, trying to understand.)