The Treatment Program of Absurdity: 2

The Hei$t

You may recall The November 29, 2010 New York Times article “FAILED HEIST IN UTAH TREATMENT PROGRAM." ONE AND TWO KILLED IN SELF DEFENSE?” On November 28th, 2011, Luke was sleeping in his bedroom, when an intruder awoke him by breaking into the core house via Luke’s window. The intruder came towards Luke with a knife, but Luke managed to push the intruder out the window, killing him. Gleaming out of him window, Luke noticed the intruder was Harry Ramsey. Luke called the police, followed by calling on-call.
“On-call, this is Dr. Gore.”
“Dr. Gore!”
“Yes, Luke!”
“Harry Ramsey tried to break into my room, and murder me, but I killed him in self-defense.”
“Please tell me this is a prank phone call?”
“No!”
“Did you notify the police?”
“Yes!”
“OK, first, I am going to call Elizabeth, and then I am going to come over.”
By the time Dr. Gore and Elizabeth arrived at the house, the police had already shown up. There was a spectacle of students and residents, which made Elizabeth worry about the reputation that the program was going to garner. An officer showed Elizabeth a note that was found in the pocket of Harry Ramsey, which exclaimed, “I’m go in to kill Luke, because me hate him so f***in much;” Elizabeth knew that the handwriting was that of her former slave-boy.
Will had successfully broken into Polly House, and headed up for Elizabeth’s office. Once he got into the office, he turned on her computer and inserted a disk. After he had accessed the computer, Will used a walkie-talkie to communicate with his accomplice.
“Yo Randy.”
“Will, have you gotten the financial information of the parents?”
“I just turned on the computer; it will take me 20-minutes to find the file.”
“Remember, the file is called ‘Financial_Info_Emergency.’”
“Ya, I can’t wait to go to Rio with all of this money. I will finally be able to control women instead of having them control me. You are still keeping watch, right?”
“Yep! I am hiding in the back ally outside Polly House to see if anyone is coming in.”
“OK! I will call you in 20.”
“Over and out!”
Randy heard a noise coming from a back ally, so he went to check it out, in which he found Adam and Mary. Adam and Mary were waiting for me - since we were all going to set off illegal fireworks - but once Adam noticed Randy, Adam began secretly videotaping him. Randy pointed a 9mm at the duo, and told them to get against the wall. Randy told Adam, “I am glad I am finally going to get to express my loathing for you; I have wanted to kill you from the moment you made fun of me for having to work through school. It is going to work out well for Mary; she will like being my mistress more than your girlfriend.”
All of the sudden, a lighted firecracker was thrown at Randy, which merely lacerated his hand, but that caused him to drop the gun. Adam ran and grabbed the gun, which Randy tried to retrieve from Adam, but Adam fatally shot Randy. I then appeared, with 8 more firecrackers, and I then asked Adam, “Do you need another?”
Since Randy wasn’t able to keep guard, Elizabeth entered Polly House without being spotted. Will had just finished uploading the financial information to a disk, when he saw Elizabeth. Elizabeth told Will “It is all over,” and he told her, “I am tired of always being your bitch, and I am going to kill you.” Will charged at Elizabeth, but she grabbed him and knocked him unconscious. Elizabeth proceeded to call the police.
Before calling the police, Adam decided to search Randy’s contacts to look for a third accomplice, since we would be commemorated for busting him/her. I looked at the old messages and found a message: “Yo Randy, once you aare done, meet me at 5450 Kings Street, Kingsville, UT. Sincerely, TL;” I interpreted TL as Tommy Linkins. I grabbed the 9mm; got in my car; and drove to the address. I found Dr. Linkins in a 1972 Chevrolet Camaro, and I decided to break in, where I pointed my gun at him, in order to make a citizens’ arrest.
“Ok, Dr. Linkins, this is the end of the line.”
“Harry, what the f*** are you doing?”
“Your heist is over.”
“What heist? I came here to get some peace and quiet.”
I pulled out Randy’s phone, and showed it to Tommy.
“Adam killed Randy, and he just called me to tell me that Will was arrested.”
“Why do you even give a f*** about me stealing money from Great Ascendency parents?”
“You were presumably going to steal money from my family.”
“I sent Randy a message, telling him not to track down your grandfather’s financial information.”
I checked the phone and found the message.
“Why?”
“Because, you were my prodigy, my dream, whom I wanted to help and whom reminded me of myself.”
“What do you mean when you say, ‘I remind you of yourself?’”
“Like you, I too had focusing issues when I was young and 20, and a lot of the social issues that you had.”
“I have had to spend the last year having to deal with those with severe mental issues, who you take in merely for the money.”
“Well, I never wanted this. I wanted the functional people, like you. But the problem is that parents are never altruistic towards their children, unless they are f***ing retarded. If a child is functional, they are merely social currency for the parent; if a child is obscure, the parent merely feels an obligation to keep them alive, which usually means spoiling them to keep them busy and from bothering them.”
“Thanks to you, I had a hard time dealing with those who are mentally challenged.”
“The money that parents spend on sending their children here is money that could be spent to provide thousands of functional inner-city children with opportunities that they would never have had. I make half-a-million dollars a year, I may avoid taxes with my duel-Monaco citizenship, but with half of the money I make, I give it away to charity, so am I doing anything wrong? I was going to give half of the millions of dollars that I was going to steal from the Great Ascendency parents, away to numerous charitable organizations. Am I really doing anything wrong, since these are parents who are going to continue to blow the money on hopeless resources for their children?”
“What has always occurred to me about parents of children with mental disabilities is that even though they are altruistic towards their own kids, they don’t give a f*** about anyone else? They just have a spiritual obligation to keep them alive, and they will make anyone miserable in the process.”
“Absolutely, Samantha’s parents didn’t care when he made that prank phone call to you; Clovis’s parents didn’t give a f*** when he tried to murder Jared; and Harry Ramsey’s parents are going to blame Luke for murdering him, and completely ignore the fact that it was self defense.”
“So, that is why you always wanted to help me? You wanted to feel like you could accomplish something?”
“Harry, all of the institutions cater to kids who are either disabled or mentally ill. I wanted to help those, like you, who are completely functional. I struggled with many of the issues that you struggled with as a kid, but there was no help for me, and I had to struggle to overcome everything, without any support whatsoever. The money that I got from the parents wasn’t enough to make me stay at Great Ascendency; what made me wanting to stay, is the idea that I might be able to help someone out there whom could actually benefit from the program. Maybe I am venal, but any human being would become amoral if they were in my situation.”
“I guess everyone with power ends up going Solomon, so there is no reason for you to be sent to The Hague.”
“Thanks!”
“I have a question?”
“Sure, what?”
“How much did Barbara’s father pay you, annually, to hire her?”
“He paid me $50,000 annually, which I have saved up for the last 10 years. In fact, I took the last check from his right before I stepped down.”
“May I have the money?”
“Sure!”
Dr. Linkins handed me the check, and I threw the gun out the door.
“Harry, I am really proud of how much you have accomplished at Great Ascendency. I know you are going to excel in this world. Even though you may have had to deal with a lot of ridiculous aspects of being at Great Ascendency, I feel you have changed a lot.”
“Yah, except for the fact that I am still an asshole.”
“Harry, we are all assholes. It doesn’t matter whether or not you are asshole; what matters is if you are an asshole for a good reason or if you are an asshole for a bad reason.”
“I still struggle with the idea that some people in this world have it better than I do.”
“Harry, if all you know is joy, you don’t know joy; and if all you know is sorrow, then you don’t know sorrow. In order to have wonderful moments in life, life has to suck for the most part; and those with the greatest memories, are those whose lives sucked up until that very moment. What people learn to do in life is live with the few parts that don’t suck.”
“I always thought you were the treatment program version of Gordan Gekko, but I was wrong.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, greed is good.”
The two of us laughed, and Tommy patted me on the back.
“Dr. Linkins, I am going to miss you.”
“I will miss you too, Harry.”
“We should get together sometime.”
“Are you still trying to get into Yale?”
“Yes!”
“Well, let me know if you end up getting accepted.”
“I will!”
Dr. Linkins gave me a hug, as I then proceeded to exit and drive home to face the reporters.