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eBook Category: Science Fiction/Suspense/Thriller
eBook Description: It's 1979. Aspiring rock musician Ken Orlando has something he doesn't want: the power to kill people with his mind. Government agents want to send him to Iran to help rescue the hostages, and his best friend is having an affair with his girl. It's hard for Ken to believe it all started with a piece of toast.... In Detonator, A. L. Sirois takes us on a wild, darkly comic ride through history has it could have been--or may have been, for all we know--with a secret Government project involving explosive mind experiments and long-range killing that evokes the paranoid spirit of the late 20th Century. From exploding tomatoes to Middle Eastern intrigue, from dangerous romance to rock 'n roll CIA style, Mr. Sirois spins a yarn that keeps us spellbound to the last pop.

eBook Publisher: Clocktower Books and Far Sector SFFH (magazine), Published: Clocktower Books, 2002
Fictionwise Release Date: August 2002

16 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [617 KB], eReader (PDB) [213 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [207 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [184 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [193 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [239 KB], hiebook (KML) [463 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [251 KB], iSilo (PDB) [171 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [213 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [250 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [279 KB]
Words: 62000
Reading time: 177-248 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"A.L. Sirois has primed an explosive, a weapon of blood and bone, one out of control and ready to shred yesterday's headlines, rewriting the history you think you know. "--Robert A. Metzger, author of Picoverse

"With the madness of the 20th Century finally a closed book, Sirois feels free (and does it very well) to shine the light of his fiction into the dark corners of that doomsday epoch. Perhaps, like me, you'll sense the pounding rock music, the pulsing strobe lights, the gyrating bodies, as A. L. Sirois's odd heroes take us on a Pynchon-like excursion into a staged past in which reality and drama switch places until we don't know which is which."--John Argo, author

The day after the American Embassy in Tehran was taken over by Iranian "students," I was quietly working in my darkroom when someone started pounding on the door. I couldn't afford a real darkroom, so this set-up was in the basement of my apartment building in what used to be an old utility closet. It had running water courtesy of a hose connected to the building's water heater. Lights were your basic Luxo lamps swathed in red cellophane. I shared the place with spiders and cockroaches.

"Labroe?" came a muffled voice from outside. More pounding. "I know you're in there!"

"Orlando? What the--? Why aren't you at work?" I covered my trays and opened the door. It was Ken Orlando, all right, looking red-eyed, pale, and worried.

"What's happenin', man? You look like hell," I said, motioning him in. I began cleaning up after my work session.

He took a quick, deep breath. "Steve, I'm in trouble. I think I'm in some bad trouble."

"Huh?" I was always quick off the mark.

"I think I...killed Tony Pelvo," he said softly, as if it had just occurred to him.

"Killed?" I goggled at him. "Killed? Who? Tony--" I sagged against my worktable. "The guy you said looks like Jimmy Durante?"

He licked his lips and said, "Right, the cretin I cursed out for not emptying his trash last month."

"But what do you mean you killed him? How, for chrissakes? When?" Ken didn't go in for practical jokes. Plus, he appeared genuinely shaken--freaked out, as we used to say. Totally freaked out. Normally unflappable, low-key and laconic, he looked now like he'd been walloped with a 2x4.

Ken went on, "Today, at work. I came in and all anyone was talking about was this hostage thing in Iran. Pelvo and some of his goombas were all for nuking Tehran, although they gave that up when they figured out that it would kill the hostages, too." He grinned sourly, his small hazel eyes narrowing. "Anyway, it's blah-blah-blah, blah-blah, all day long. Pelvo had the shop radio set to WCBS; all news, real loud. He's yapping on about it, and he's right, you know--those Iranians suck. That doesn't make him any less of an asshole, though. I fled to the lunch room for coffee, but he wanders in for some, too, and starts in again soon's as he sees me."

Ken sighed, frowning in concentration. He had a very strange look on his face, one I'd never seen before, of intense concentration despite his reddened eyes.

He said, "I mean, I'm just thinking we need to be really careful so none of the hostages get killed. Those damn Iranians are obviously crazy. Pelvo couldn't see that, of course. He's always on my case anyway."

"Because you are such an endearing lad and not at all insensitive to the feelings of others," I murmured. My attempt to lighten the mood bombed.

He acted utterly convinced that he had killed this old stunod Pelvo. I couldn't get my head around it. Ken had a temper, but it was rarely displayed. He was a very slow burn. I doubt he had had a fight since he was a child. In fact, I remembered the last fight he'd been in--

"Anyway, I got fed up and went back out into the shop." Ken scrubbed his face with his hand and ran the hand through his hair. "He trailed along after me, sloshing his coffee like he always does. Follows me right back to the polisher. You know? And so I turned around and said, look, Tony, I got work to do. I knew that if he didn't take his yap somewhere else I'd tell him to go screw himself, and then we'd get into a big whoop-de-doo. I just wanted to get away from him, but as I was walking away he says, 'Hey, whatsamatta, you don't like talkin like an American? You damn longhair!' I said 'Piss off, man, I gotta do my work.' I turn my back on him, so he grabs my shoulder, swings me around, and belts me in the mouth!"

"Shit, man--he hit you?"

"Yes, he fucking hit me. It's a good thing I have a beard." Ken rubbed his jaw. It was large, as was the rest of his head, and under his close-cropped black beard, to me it looked bigger and redder than usual. I waited for him to continue.

Finally, I prompted, "Well?"

"Yeah, sorry--I want to get it right in my mind. I want to be as clear as possible.

"Anyway, okay, he hit me. I was knocked back, but not down. You know there've been problems with the band, and Rica's been on me about getting into a profession with a future, and...well, I lost my temper. When Pelvo socked me, everything turned orange. I mean, it was this color all around me. Like some filter on one of your lenses, but I could feel it, like it was...really thick smoke. Sounds weird, I know."

"Yeah, it's pretty far out, but go on."

"There was something happening in my stomach, too, like when you go over a hill in a car? I don't know how else to explain it. This orange stuff and this whoopsie-car feeling. But I was so furious I hardly noticed. I started to go for him, with my fist up like this--and my back felt funny, I thought maybe I'd hurt it when I staggered after he slugged me. The orange and the thing in my stomach both came up through my spine."

"Wha--?"

He made a helpless gesture. "You've seen bulbs in a theatre marquee, going around? My spine went from orange to yellow to blue to white, up in my brain. Like fucking Godzilla, man. That's what it felt like. I was this big ball of hate and pain and rage, my head was spinning. Pelvo was rearing back to hit me again, so I braced, and sort of aimed this big blast of hatred at him--

"Then he started choking, gagging. He stopped in mid-swing, just staring through me with his mouth open. Then..." Ken turned a little green. "Blood starts pouring out. I mean like he was puking it up." He shook his head. "Then it's dribbling out of his ears, from his nose, even his eyes go red!"

Eyes? Red? Something about that combination rang a bell, but I didn't have time to rifle through my thoughts so I made a mental note to take a shot at it later.

Ken went on, "I mean, I couldn't believe it. I saw red stains in his shirt material, his pants...the skin around the veins in his forehead. Well, you get the idea. He staggered out into the middle of the shop, spewing blood all over. Everyone is shouting and hollering, John runs over from the forklift, Slim comes in from the plating room. And Tony collapsed, like the air was being let out of him, trying to grab it to hold himself up." He shook his head, his eyes fixed on a point in the distance. The look in them made my skin buckle up. He added, almost casually, "I fainted."

"Fainted?"

"Hell, man, wouldn't you?" He sighed. "First time in my life. Unless you want to call my little epileptic fit a faint." He sighed deeply, and looked around. "Yeah, John--my supervisor--sent me to the company doctor when I woke up." He shuddered. "I was happy to get out of there--they were mopping up this big splatter of blood on the shop floor." Pale already, he turned a whiter shade.

That epileptic fit--there had been something connected with that, too. I filed it away with the image of the red eyes. "Look," I said, "let's go upstairs to the apartment and talk this out. I wanna get a beer."

Ken acquiesced readily enough. While ushering him into my digs and snagging a couple of cold ones from the refrigerator, I had time to search through my memory. I felt uneasy now because I thought I was starting to see a pattern.

I brought the beers to the "living room," which was really only a wide portion of the hallway between my bedroom and the kitchen of my small roach-infested apartment in Bridgeport's student ghetto. As I handed one of the bottles to Ken, he said, "God, I'm never gonna get the picture of him bleeding like that out of my head."

"What, Pelvo?"

"Yeah. I'm glad I fainted and missed most of the clean-up."

"So Rotograf sent you to a doctor?"

"Yeah, but he was more interested in what I told him about Pelvo than he was about me so I managed to get out of there quick. Then I drove around for a while, trying to figure out what to do. I don't want to go home, so I came here." He lit a cigarette with slightly shaky hands. "I didn't know what else to do."

"The doctor didn't find anything wrong with you," I said thoughtfully, staring at his hands. "How do you feel now?"

He considered. "Whipped. Emotionally exhausted. I'm getting high from the beer. Otherwise fine."

"So what makes you think you killed Pelvo? I mean, that's what you said."

"I dunno...I felt it happen." He shrugged.

I licked my lips. "Do you remember George Gintoff?"

Ken stared at me. "That oaf, sure. What about him?"

"Remember that big fight you two had, when his blood vessels burst?"

It had happened when we were about eleven years old.

George Gintoff was bigger than Ken, and as dumb as a box of rocks. He had scraggly blond hair, thick red lips, buck teeth, and a bad temper. The neighborhood kids didn't like him much because he got his kicks by bullying the younger ones. George was a good football player, though, so he was usually around in the autumn.

On the day of the fight, he and Ken were captains of opposing teams. I was on Ken's team. George thought I was a sissy because I wore glasses and was skinnier and more bookish than the rest of the kids. George kneed me during a scrimmage, and Ken called a foul. George denied that he'd done it. I was crying anyway, but I called George a rat-bastard liar (something I'd heard Ken's mother say about President Johnson), and George punched me in the nose.

Jesus did that hurt! He didn't break my nose, but it felt that way at first.

So there I was, crying and bleeding. Now, Ken didn't like George to begin with, and he didn't like bullies because he himself had been bullied by a bunch of third graders when he was in first grade.

He walked over to George and belted him. George blinked, snarled, and slugged him back. They exchanged punches until George, who had been having the worst of it, managed to get Ken in an armlock, with Ken's left hand twisted up behind his back. Ken gasped in pain.

George found himself in a real dilemma. He couldn't hold Ken forever, but as soon as he released him, Ken would start pounding him again. What George should have done was let go and run like hell for home, because he was faster than Ken. He was too mad to think straight, though, and thinking had never been his strong suit anyway. He was surrounded by a ring of screeching pre-adolescents, egging the combatants on. I was probably the most vocal--at the start of the fight I forgot all about my own injuries.

So George applied pressure, probably figuring that Ken would holler "uncle." But he'd forgotten that Ken was as stubborn as a dog with snatched garbage. The pain in Ken's shoulder became agonizing, he told me later. George applied more pressure. Ken howled, and made a supreme effort to free himself.

That's when it happened. No one saw Ken touch George. Apparently, even George didn't realize what had happened at first.

One of the kids watching the fight shouted "His eyes! Look at his eyes!" Then everyone was hollering and yelling. Confused, George let go of Ken, who wriggled free.

Both of George's eyes were red with blood. The vessels in the whites had burst. George of course couldn't see his own eyes, and his sight was unaffected. Frightened by what the kids were yelling and by their looks of shock and disgust, George peed in his pants and ran for home.

I saw him in school the next day. He looked like something out of the pits of hell, with his bloody eyes. No one would have anything to do with him, and he slunk around for days until his eyes returned to normal. He stayed far away from Ken after that.

"So what, Steve? I--Wait a minute. You think I did that, popped his blood vessels?"

"Well, I never thought about it until right now," I said. It was one of those rare serious times we had, the sort of time when you feel a friendship working. Even so, I was starting to sweat. If he had done George, and if he had done Pelvo--what, then, did that make of our boy Ken Orlando? "I can see some connections."

"Oh, man, this can't be happening to me." He took a deep breath, looking as if he were about to puke. "If this is true, it means that if I get mad enough, I -"

For the first time, a quiver of fear traced a finger up my backbone. Simultaneously I felt deeply ashamed of myself for that fear. This guy was my friend! My best friend! All of a sudden, however, he had become an entirely new person, even to himself. It struck me that I couldn't know what he could do. And neither could he.

I saw in his eyes that he realized this, too.

He shook his head. "No. It's idiotic. It's all just some kind of a weird coincidence," he said, holding his hands palm out to me. "I couldn't..." He couldn't say what he couldn't do, is what he couldn't do.

"But you said you felt it, though," I said quietly.

"Well, yeah." He shook his head again.

Then something else occurred to me. "Hey," I said, nervously. "You don't suppose this could have anything to do with drugs, do you?"

"Oh, crap, that's just fooling around."

"Are you so sure? So--" I ticked off the points on my fingers, "--LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, mushrooms--" I kept the fingers up as I ticked off the mind-altering substances he had ingested over the last several years. "--all those things work by altering brain chemistry."

"You took plenty of 'em, too."

"That's not the point. And what about that business with the toaster?"

"Nuts. That was just good timing." Ken swigged at his beer and owlishly examined the empty bottle. I noticed that his hands were still shaking. He got up to fetch another, saying, "The drugs, though. You think maybe there's some kind of neurological damage from all that crap?"

"I don't know." I tried to drape myself over my favorite chair, but I was too tense, so I put my feet on the floor.

"Who does?"

"Hey, that's a good question," I said. "Who does know about this, besides me and you?"

"Uh--no one...no one at all," he said, settling back down in his chair.

"Not even Rica, or your mother?"

He shook his head.

"Hmmm. Good, I guess. No one suspects that you...did anything to Pelvo?"

He shook his head again. "Everyone at work thinks it was some kind of fluke, some weird sickness or disease he had. Even the doctor who examined me afterward thought so, as far as I could tell." He cracked his knuckles nervously. Each crack echoed like a small detonation off the plaster walls of my little living nook. "Steve, I don't wanna have done this."

I sighed. "Relax, man. We have to think our way through this. So there was the toaster, and there was George. Now, do you remember that business with the birds, at Seaside University?"

"Oh yeah, those goddam birds."

I was majoring in Graphic Design, which was as close as the University would let me come to an actual major in photography. Ken was majoring in Music, soaking up theory and composition. Academics bored him, however. He was spending more and more time in the Industrial Design building, partly because of his interest in machines and tools, and partly because he had friends among the students who were in that program.

During the second semester of our freshman year he took a course in the ID building. Engineering 101 was taught by Professor Woolf, probably the biggest douchebag on the faculty.

Ken played mechanics by ear, and viewed engineering as akin in spirit to jazz improvising. He would or could not compose or repair according to set rules. His lack of discipline (which was how some of his instructors saw his free-form, intuitive approach) lead to direct conflict with his engineering professor.

For a term project, he was supposed to design a small servo-mechanism that had to perform a particular task. Stack a small plastic barrel on top of another, I think it was. Busy with his band, he put the project off, and then put it off some more. A week before the project was due he took a stockpile of amphetamines into his basement along with a portable radio and several cans of Coke. Three days and nights later, his project was ready.

Professor Woolf stressed design elegance in the work of his students. Ken, however, had little patience with surface slickness. He could take apart such things as refrigerator motors--had, in fact, once turned one of these into an electric marijuana pipe capable of sucking up an ounce of weed in about thirty seconds and forcing the resulting smoke into your lungs--but could not read blueprints. His design project as a result could do two additional functions beyond the one Woolf had specified--but it was ugly and noisy.

Ken was aware of Woolf's biases, but had to work his own way. He figured that Woolf would be able to see how much work had gone into the project. Ken expected a C or maybe a B.

On the day the projects were to be presented, Ken brought his in early, feeling a little nervous. As the other students filtered in Ken's contraption caused conversation and chuckles among them. He was beginning to feel that he'd made a mistake in bringing it. Then the professor walked into the classroom.

Of late, Woolf had been putting the moves on a comely young sculpture instructress who conducted a class in the basement of the ID building. What this meant in terms of class time was that the prof would come in of a morning, give an assignment, and then vanish downstairs to hang out with the teacher babe while his class worked. He wasn't around to actually teach, if you see what I mean.

Ken expected that Woolf was going to ream him out in front of the other students; and, being ornery, Ken was also kind of looking forward to it. He thought Woolf was a jerk and he was itching for an excuse to tell him so. I figure that Ken can be excused somewhat for this attitude because he'd been awake for three days on speed and was definitely not his usual self.

Woolf walked in. His lady friend continued on across the room and downstairs. Woolf walked once around the room giving grades after the most cursory of glances at a given piece. He paused at Ken's display, said "A," and walked on.

Ken was astounded. He knew that the piece wasn't worth an A, even though the high mark would bring his QPR up to 3.6 for the year. Most of all, though, he felt as if he'd been ripped off. There had been no teaching involved. Despite Ken's general lack of respect for authority, he'd learned (as most of us had, usually unwillingly) that some of the professors were capable of having good ideas.

Whereas Woolf had not even made a pretense of being interested in imparting any kind of knowledge to his students.

Ken followed him downstairs.

I was hanging around outside the building, waiting for Ken. I knew that his project was due that day, and that he had been having misgivings about it, so I was prepared to greet a sullen individual. I'd armed myself with some particularly potent grass with which to take his mind off his troubles.

The day was bright and sunny, with a stiff breeze coming in off Long Island Sound; all in all, an invigorating May day. I was sitting on the porch of the ID building watching the girls walk by as Ken followed his professor downstairs.

Ken began to ask Woolf how such an off-the-wall project could possibly deserve an A. As Ken told me later, he was so angry that he could hardly talk. His throat was raw from three days of no-sleep and cigarettes and coffee.

Woolf didn't want to be bothered by some unkempt, ill-smelling student while he was trying to chat up his sweetie downstairs, so he tried to brush Ken off with, "Go away and don't bother me. You got your A."

Everyone in the class had gotten an A, objected Ken, simmering with anger and frustration.

Out in front meanwhile, I was starting to feel a little sick to my stomach. I chalked it up to the tacos I had had the night before, having no idea of the dispute that was going on downstairs or of Ken's growing anger. Looking up, I noticed a dozen or so starlings sitting on the phone wires leading to the building. They were cocking their heads at one another in a most unstarling-like manner.

In the basement, Woolf turned away from Ken and ignored him.

Ken told me later that he remembered saying something critical to Woolf, and slamming out of the basement in a fury, so mad that he punched the wall on the way upstairs.

Outside, I slipped off the building's front porch, certain I was going to heave up my supper into the bushes.

Then, like a strand of Christmas lights subjected to a power surge, the starlings started to burst one at a time, with audible pops. They went off like red and black popcorn!

I was rather amazed, to put it lightly as hell. Literally, I'd never seen anything like that--bang! bang! bang! bang! bang! bang! bang! bang! bang! bang! bang! bang! I know my jaw dropped, which was the first time that had ever happened to me. I was still sitting there unable to make up my dazed mind what to do (if anything), when Ken stormed across the lawn, not pausing to speak to me. It was one of his rare displays of temper, and I doubt I'd ever seen him so mad before, even when fighting George Gintoff. Vaguely, I realized I was no longer feeling sick.

Ken took no notice of the few final feathers fluttering down to the ground. Apparently, no one else had seen the starlings blow up.