Poison Control

by Ryan P. Dalton

“Poison Control, this is Jerome. Please state the nature of your emergency.”

“Hi, I uh...I guess I must have drank some...uh...”

Jerome covered the mic on his headset and stifled his laughter. He already knew exactly what was coming: three pairs of cherries to herald a mountain of coin, worth pulling at the levers all day for. Kicking off from his desk, he cleared two full rotations before his chair creaked to a stop.

“Uh,” the caller finally went on, “windshield wiper fluid?”

Nine times out of ten, windshield fluid meant an impetuous suicide attempt by a Ghost-someone who’d been automated into Early Retirement. Ghosting came courtesy of OmniMind and their Dumb Waiters, Dumb Cashiers, Dumb Sailors. A Dumb-Something for every job, doing work that no human could or should do, and doing it better than a human could have anyway.

But adjusting to Ghost life was not without its challenges. And every Monday morning at eight thirty on the dot, while the server farms were firing up and the Dumb Accountants were starting at their adding, some number of the newly-Ghosted were scratching at painted-on door handles and pushing painted-on elevator buttons, their stacks overflowing at the realization that their services were no longer required here or anywhere else.

Jerome imagined them back in their cars, driving home through the Grand Canyon Enhancescape, a vibrant scene painted holographically and dynamically across the interior of the windows. It was a soothing scene, one meant to impart a sense of gravity and time for the Newly-Retired: the millions of years of charging water, the great dunes at the river’s terminus, the minuscule and indistinguishable grains of sand. We could make this trip twenty-two million times over, their Driver might remind them, in the time it took the canyon to form.

It was as good a reminder as any that even if life is pointless, it doesn’t have to be endless. And that one of life’s most common alternatives can be found in the nearest bottle of poison, a blue bottle of windshield wiper fluid in the trunk. Taking a drink from that bottle is a bold choice, and one that Ghosts often want to take back once they’ve made it. Lucky for them, in our Advanced and Just Society, even suicide has a return policy. It comes in the form of the following label, affixed to the back of the bottle: “If accidentally consumed, immediately call a Poison Control Center.”

“Could you repeat that?” Jerome asked, calming himself.

“Um... windshield wiper fluid?”

“Yes, sir. I understand. An accident of course.” Jerome looked above his desk at the flimsy plastic shelf, bowing under the weight of hundreds of tiny, undigitized poison manuals in alphabetical order: Benzene: A Guide; Mamba Venom: A Guide; Wild Mushrooms: A Guide. And, of course, the timeless and classic Methanol: A Guide.

“I feel fine, totally fine,” the caller went on. “But I thought I’d be on the safe side. Am I okay? Am I going to be okay?”

“Yes, sir, just fine,” Jerome answered half-truthfully. “Let me just get a little bit more information. Can you confirm your location?” Jerome noisily paged through his binder, assuring the caller that all necessary documentation was at hand.

“I’m somewhere in the Norwegian, the... oh. I guess I’m pulled over, on the 405, on... the west side, in my car. I used to work out here, and I guess I must have just been driving around. You know how it is... I didn’t quite know where I was, until I had pulled over and got out of my car. It doesn’t look the same down here now, as it used to.”

“Just to confirm, sir. You’re in the Norwegian Fjordscape, where the 405 hits the ten? And not in the Grand Canyon Enhancescape, where the 405 hits the 105?” Jerome asked, annotating the call file.

“Well, yes, but... don’t you just want to know where I am... in Los Angeles?

“Yes, sir, both are important. The more data we have, the better.”

The air stirred behind Jerome; he looked up, straight into the hirsute nostrils of his supervisor. Covering the mic on this headset, Jerome whispered, “Methanol, in the Fjords. Classic.”

“Come see me after,” the supervisor mouthed, giving Jerome an unsmiling thumbs up and pointing over his own shoulder, back towards the office.

Jerome took his time wrapping things up with the caller, having waited for most of the day to have something fun to do. “I’m going to direct your Dumb Driver to the nearest Omni-issue liquor store. One second,” Jerome paused, looking up the caller’s records, which listed his terminal income as: intermediate. “Yep,” he continued. “Anything from the middle shelf or below. And then you’re going to want to get back in your car, and drink until you can’t see anymore.” He would wake up no worse for the wear, with the exception of a savage hangover.

“Wow!” the caller gushed, “that was so helpful. I’ll definitely be calling you again.”

Jerome’s face warmed. “I certainly hope so.”

* * *

“What’s up, Georgie?” Jerome asked, poking his head through the open door of his supervisor’s office, a tiny cinder block-enclosed box. The office walls were adorned with mock blinds painted in bubbling white latex, atop mock windows painted in bubbling blue latex.

“Come on in, Jerome, and close the door behind you,” Georgie answered.

Oh hell, Jerome thought, instantly beginning to sweat. It wasn’t a light day; the calls were being routed somewhere else. Looking back over his shoulder, he found the concentric cubicle farm totally empty. A Dumb Janitor sat inactive in the corner, its services no longer required.

“Jerome... the reason I called you in,” Georgie droned, pausing to blow his nose, “was because a couple of months back, OmniMind reached out to corporate, looking to place a couple of Dumb Operators. These things answer the phones just like you, understand poisons better, cross-reference your groceries and everything. It’s something, really...” He trailed off, picking crumbs from his tie. A bit of free cellophane from the pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket came loose and floated slowly down to the plastic desk.

“And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Georgie went on, changing tact and employing an upbeat tone as the blood drained from Jerome’s face. “We all got into this job to save lives anyway. So in a sense, this is the best possible outcome for everyone, because it means that you don’t need to worry about what’s happening back here. It’s going to go better than we could have made it go.”

Georgie stood, and Jerome involuntarily followed suit, ready to leave the office. “No, no, it’s okay. You sit. I’m just going to make good use of my time here. We humans are going to have to multitask if we’re going to stay relevant, you know.”

He produced a paper box with handles from under the desk, and then set to filling it with mementos: his name placard: faux wood etched with faux gold leaf: George ‘Georgie’ Holt, Supervisor; his World’s Best Dad coffee mug; a photo of his Family, fully synthetic and exactly to spec with the life that young Georgie had imagined he might lead one day. “Me? I’m going to spend more time at home, with my family. So should you. You can tell them how much good work you did over at Poison Control of L.A. How about the playdough crisis, huh? In the tariff wars, when they swapped out Orange 6 for Orange 2? What a shake-up that was! Very nearly a whole generation of brain-dead kids.”

Georgie lowered his voice, taking on an earnest tone. “This one’s for you. Here.” Georgie handed over a thick three-ring binder, its cover projecting a holographic image of two fathers and a son joyfully rolling down a grassy hill together.

“You should be in and out of Universal Wellness in just a few minutes, if I understand correctly. The whole thing is totally painless. Anyway,” he said, standing again and sticking his hand out. “Happy Retirement, friend.”

* * *

Jerome sat in his driverless unit in the parking lot, his paper box of mementos beside him. Most of its bulk was made up of tiny folded paper footballs. Encased in an orb of glass atop them like a poisonous insect was his first Poison Control cigarette stub.

Opening the Universal Wellness brochure on his lap, Jerome found someone about his age, seated on a plush couch and illuminated by a television in front of him and out of view. From the side, a beautiful man walked in and dropped down onto the couch next to his husband; the two of them pointed in the direction of the television’s light, their other arms around each other. They laughed so hard their popcorn spilled. The scene repeated over and over, every three and a half seconds.

“Universal Wellness, please,” he commanded the Dumb Driver.

“Happy Retirement, friend! Which route would you like to take?” the Dumb Driver asked.

“Just the City, please.”

“Rendering the City.” As the Enhancescape populated the windows, the other driverless units were painted over with classic cars: mint-condition Shelby Mustangs, souped-up Camaros. The homeless encampments were replaced by street-side parklets, where kids in clothes with permanent wrinkles sipped Gibraltars under the shade of broad-leafed trees hung heavy with green bananas. The trash fires under the bridges were removed altogether; a Dumb Cop needlessly breaking a kid’s arm was replaced with a human cop needlessly doing the same.

“In the distance, the Palos Verdes, where the city meets the mighty Pacific...” his Dumb Driver droned on, as they reached the apex of the freeway. The scene on the Universal Wellness brochure played out again, again, again. As he watched it, Jerome’s heartbeat grew faster, louder. The lover appearing. The popcorn spilling. The lover appearing again.

Looking up from the brochure and out of the window, Jerome could see straight across the Channel, all of it clear blue. Impossibly, vertiginously blue. In the window he saw his own reflection, now a part of the Enhancescape. Fixed there, he was permanently and lavishly glossed.

“Pull over, Driver.”

The Driver smoothly pulled out of traffic and onto the shoulder, perfectly minimizing turbulence and discomfort. Jerome didn’t wait for the door to open; he pushed it up and out himself, and stepped out of the car. His first step crushed a plastic hypodermic needle into the sugary glass left on the pavement from a violent carjacking at this spot, who knows how long ago. The air was acid, toxic, hung thick with a milky blue haze. “Pop the trunk.”

With a soft shifting noise, the lock disengaged, the weather seal opened, and the trunk of the car unhatched and lifted. The car was pointed due west, straight towards the late afternoon sun, and the hatch of the trunk cast shade over Jerome as he took a seat atop the wheel well.

He looked back towards the city, where the traffic mindlessly and silently chased up the freeway, a continuous mechanical semi-consciousness, a Brownian haze. OmniMind headquarters rose in the distance. Monolithic, as though every building that had previously occupied the skyline was no more than an old cave dwelling. The building was afire in copper light where the afternoon sun reflected back towards the ocean.

Jerome pulled the blue plastic bottle from the mesh net in the trunk and threw its cap into the street. He tipped his head back. Once the bottle was empty, Jerome waited a moment, already knowing what was coming. And then, staring into the blazing copper sun of OmniMind, he dialed the number.

“Hello, Poison Control.”

It was his own voice speaking back to him. Some better version of himself, who never came in late, still drunk from the night before. Who didn’t need smoke breaks, or bathroom breaks — who had no need for running water or soap or toilet paper, or an elevator that ran in compliance with safety codes.

Jerome said nothing; he just listened, his throat and his eyes burning. On the other side of the line, his better self paged through a Poison Control manual, perhaps Chlorine: A Guide, the noise intended to assure Jerome that the necessary documents were at hand. “I’m not sure I got that, Jerome,” the voice finally came. “You can say—”

But Jerome had already dropped his phone, letting its plastic turn to dust atop the hypodermic needle, the old window glass. And without another thought, he tossed the empty bottle of windshield fluid into the roadway, right into the path of a speeding car.

As the car passed him, Jerome looked right into the eyes of the passenger inside. The passenger stared out of her window, straight back at Jerome and right through him, without ever registering the presence of another human being. She was too entranced with her own traversal, too possessed by the ancient, milky-blue glaciers below as her little maroon gondola climbed up to the peak of her own Enhancescape.