REKT - Chapter 3

The plane levels off at a cruising altitude of thirty thousand feet. We are over the Mediterranean and have no destination in mind. Getting out of Spain and into international waters was our primary objective. I’m not sure how planes work. I mean, I understand how they work, but the administrative aspect confuses me. Flights need destinations. You don’t just go up in the sky and then sort it out. We aren’t heading out for a Sunday drive. They don’t let you take off without a flight plan. Apparently, we told the tower Tunisia. We most certainly are not going to Tunisia.

“It’s called a re-route,” Deacon Joe tells me. “The pilot calls into the air traffic control center and gives them an updated flight plan.”

Joe does this a lot. Changes directions. In the sky and in real life. Blockstar launched as a blockchain for payments, but last month it morphed into an onchain digital frontier. I still don’t know what that means, but I’m having a hard time reconciling Mr. Peace Love and Understanding with what happened back at the restaurant. He is not giving me any clues either.

“So where are we going?” I ask.

“Ibiza.” Andy says. “We need to go to Ibiza. Get on some of those Balearic beats.”

I’ve taken to ignoring Andy. He’s said Ibiza a dozen times over. He’s not putting two and two together. Ibiza is in Spain. We need to leave Spain because Joe defended Andy’s honor by forcibly shaving a man’s chest at a business meeting. Maybe he should have been there.

“Why did you do it?” I ask Joe again.

Joe is ignoring me. I keep asking him why and he won’t answer.

“Andy, are you okay with the oystercatchers? I want to make sure that's behind us.” Joe redirects the conversation to Andy.

“Ibiza. We really ought to go to Ibiza.” Andy replies.

We are caught in a Mexican standoff of misunderstanding. The conversation goes around and around. Oystercatchers, chest shaving, Ibiza. This standoff is tedious and irrational. We are all at our worst and no one wants to be the bigger man. Andy is incapable of it, so it’s on Joe and I. This is Joe’s plane, so I ought to give him some space. We are out of that awful situation because of him, but then again, we were in it because of him. Fuck Joe. I’m not yielding on this one, in fact I am going to escalate shit.

“Wherever we are going, Andy and I are not staying long. He’s going into treatment. Icarus cannot do business like this. We are approaching a super fucking critical time, and I need Andy’s head on straight.”

“Andy cannot go into rehab. He needs to be protected,” Joe says.

“I didn’t say rehab, I said treatment.”

Andy is bipolar. This compulsion, this addiction? It’s mania. He is feeding a chemical imbalance inside his head. He’s high functioning, but he can’t always hold it together. Sometimes Andy falls down. It’s not just the mania, there’s the depression. Sometimes he can’t leave his room for a week. I’ve seen it go a lot longer. We’ve been business partners for five years. I can’t claim any insight into his head, but I can spot the warning signs. There’s a cycle to this, and we are teetering into danger. With the Swiss gold thing sorted out, we’ve got a six-week window of relative calm before I need Andy back up on the big stage tap dancing like a motherfucker.

It’s rare to catch a break like this. Inconvenience is the hallmark of mental illness. Its inherent erratic nature is why there is such a stigma surrounding bipolar disorder. In the abstract, everyone wants to be accommodating, they want to be there for someone suffering. The reality is that no one wants to answer the phone at four in the morning. No one wants to find their credit is ruined because someone stayed up three straight days investing in penny stocks. No one wants to depend on a person who can’t get out of bed and has no will to even answer your questions. These unpredictable intrusions are why people quarantine the mentally ill and cut them out of their lives.

“Andy, we need to visit Dr. Wendy.”

“No, we don’t. I’ve got everything under control Ryan.”

“You very much don’t Andy. You remember how dark it gets? How hard it is when you’re in the dark? I want you to see Dr. Wendy before the dark creeps in. It’s easier if we see her ahead of that.”

“It hasn’t been dark in a long time. It’s never getting dark again. In Ibiza the lights run twenty-four seven. The after-parties bleed into day parties. If Dr. Wendy really wants to see me, I’ll be in Ibiza.” I need a destination. If I have a destination, I can start making plans. I can book a jet to meet us at the airport. I can borrow Joe’s security guards and drag Andy onto our plane. We can dope him up and head off to Maui. He can be a hazy shade of winter for twenty hours and then I can turn him over to Dr. Wendy and her clinic.

“Andy has to be protected.” Deacon Joe says slowly, emphasizing each syllable.

“What do you think I’m trying to do?”

“Dr. Wendy isn’t protection. She’s slavery. She’s part of a system that makes people sick. In the old days, we didn’t have these problems. Society creates mental illness. You’ve seen it happen. It’s happening to you. Remember that conversation about Big Sleep?”

Joe is conflating. He’s putting two broadly similar problems in the same boat. In late capitalism, we need to monetize everything. Corporations need to win every moment. They’ve opened up a new front in their war against us, night-time. It used to be that no one spent money while they slept. Capitalism’s answer was to make it harder and harder to go to bed. Sleep is now a massive $100 billion industry. Screens are killing me. I can’t sleep at night and studies say I’ll have dementia because of that. Look at Maggie Thatcher. She slept four hours a night, then died hated and delusional. No one wants to end up like her.

“Big sleep is different, Joe. That’s environmental. Andy’s problem is chemical. He needs real treatment. Not a chill out room.”

“I’ll protect him, Ry. Andy needs to stay with me. He shouldn’t be with Wendy.”

Joe goes through these deep infatuations with people. Some sort of a protective hero complex. I’ve heard it has to do with an abandonment in childhood, but we’ve never spoken about it. He’s not the sort of person I want to be close to. Emotional codependency is a vulnerability of mine.

“Where are we going Joe?” I ask again.

“Somewhere safe.”

“Tell me Joe.”

“Only if you let Andy stay with me.”

“He can spend the weekend, but I’m staying, and we leave Monday morning. We need him to sign for something in Zurich. He must be able to leave with me.”

“Fine. We really are going to Tunisia. Bizerte. You’ll love it. Very relaxing. Did you bring a towel?” Joe asks.

“A towel? I barely had time to pack my bag.”

“It’s a joke Ryan, relax.”

Can I even get into Tunisia? It sounds like the sort of place that requires a visa. What language do they speak in Tunisia? Tunisian? That sounds too simple. Maybe Arabic. Who gives a fuck? Whatever they speak, I don’t. Are we heading out into the desert? I cannot with these crypto nomads, their crackpot plans, and unlimited wealth.

“What am I signing in Zurich?” Andy asks.

“We have to join a guild. I don’t remember the exact name, but in English it’s the Guild of Precious Metal Brokers. It’s the guild that certifies our gold. We need to sign up or else we won’t be able to sell our stuff on their exchange. Hans and Stefan say it’s the right move.”

“Cool. We’ll get to hang out with them again. Hans is cool. He’s from Cologne unlike that fat fuck Fritz from Frankfurt.”

We don’t really have to fly to Zurich. We could sign those papers anywhere, but I need a good reason to get out of Bizerte. If Andy’s really on the edge of a manic episode, I need him willing to leave the party behind. His money hunger is bigger than his drug hunger, so that will do the trick. I’m not spending a weekend trying to talk Andy into seeing Dr. Wendy. There was a time when I’d do that, where I’d try reason and rationality, but that’s long since passed. There’s no benefit to it. I’ve learned the only thing that matters is getting Andy to the other side. He never acknowledges how it happens, so I’ve stopped caring about the methods used to do it. We’ll leave Bizerte, sign papers in Zurich, then we’ll sedate him until we get to Maui.

“Andy, we are going to race jeeps and swim with dolphins in Tunisia. You should see the place we’ve got there. Wicked sound system, heavy duty hashish and the sunsets. The whole world lights up red for hours. You are gonna love it.”

Joe is sitting next to Andy, hugging it out with him. He’s playing to Andy’s mania, putting me on the outside of them. I know that move, Andy taught it to me. He also taught me how to counter it. Cut the usurper off at the legs. There’s no way Joe is getting to him on Maui. Once Andy’s inside the facility, I’ve got to hunker down with Nikola and go over the books. Andy’s been known to do some funny things with our money when manic. I want to make sure everything is where it’s supposed to be.

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