MOODGRAFT

Of course I had heard of the P.N.T. clinic before. I had even made a donation when it was first starting up. It had been a particularly good week - I got the official nod for a promotion at work, my car decided to work again, and I seemed to be making progress with Beth across the hall. All in all, by Friday night I was feeling pretty good. So before I hit town, I decided to go down to V.I.B.E. (as it was called then) and make a donation.
They certainly didn't keep me waiting long, as time is an important factor in their business. They took my blood pressure, asked me some questions, and then stuck something in my ear like those old temperature-takers. It splayed out like a small metal claw and then beeped. The slick guy in the white coat looked at the reading and whistled.
"6.8 . . . not bad. Not bad at all."

I was then ushered into a little room and strapped into a chair with wires and strange handles. They must have realized at this point that my buoyant mood was beginning to flag, so they started playing Mariachi music with a faint canned laughter track underneath. A buxom nurse came in for no apparent reason whatsoever. I guessed that she was supposed to maintain my spirits, but beneath her strained grimace I could sense she was bored out of her skull.
A sudden memory of those shopping-mall baby photographers popped into my head, particularly how they have to wiggle soft-toys in front of stunned infants until it provokes something resembling a smile. This started to make me feel depressed.

The slick guy returned and started strapping a lightweight kevla helmet to my head.
"Sooo, things are looking good for you, hey Sam?" he bantered.
"I guess so."
"That Beth must be pretty special."
Although I resented him dragging her name into this context, his ploy worked. I began to cheer up.
"OK nurse, let's do it. This won't take a moment Sam."
They both scooted out of the room and shut the big lead door. I sat there for a moment before a jolt of energy reached through my temples and sucked at my mind like a hand held vacuum cleaner. Apparently the procedure only takes a few seconds but it felt a lot longer. As the nurse unstrapped me I felt a surge of depression crash over me like an oil-slicked Tsunami.
"Don't worry Mr. Creswell, the endorphins take a few minutes to regroup. Come and lie down while we make you a cup of tea."

I'd never really thought about the significance of the P.N.T. clinic (both socially and personally) until I was in one of my catatonic nocturnal TV sessions. Beth had just left me for some old flame, and I had to wait until monday to see if I had been fired over the whole "missing files" debacle. At this stage I didn't care either way. My car was just space-wasting in some traffic compound with "Unroadworthy" painted sloppily over the windshield. I felt the same way.
At about three-thirty in the morning an extended infomercial came on about the new P.N.T. clinic down the road. I would've turned over but the remote control's batteries were getting so weak that you had to sit forward and extend your arm to get any reaction; a manoeuvre which became harder and harder as the night wore on. I also thought I recognized the same bored nurse.
"Perhaps some viewers would benefit from a recap of your program at P.N.T. Dr. McKenzie."
"Of course, Nurse Jessie. Well P.N.T. stands for Positive Neural Transplant," emphasising each word with swanlike pinpoints in mid-air. "Now this may sound scientific, or even painful . . . (the nurse grimaces again and shakes her head) . . . but all it really consists of is a transmission of mood. We call it a 'feelgoodectomy' because that's what it does - it makes you feel good. This used to be attempted with messy hormones and whathaveyou but now we can transplant the 'vibe' right into your head . . . without surgery." Applause.

I recalled how P.N.T. used to be called V.I.B.E., for Vibrational Injection Brain Experiment, but this had too many negative connotations. My mind wandered as they brought out an artist's impression of a "good vibe" and a "bad vibe" with appropriate facial expressions, however my attention returned when the nurse-cum-interviewer asked:
"So I guess you wish James Brown was still around today to make a donation?"
"Well yes and no, Jessie. James was indeed a happy man at times, probably close to a ten, however this was not a natural high. You see we make a clear distinction between vibes. An unnatural or immoral vibe - which may seem 'good' - obviously has a hidden agenda. You may feel good about finally kicking the neighbour's dog, but this isn't the kind of feeling we want to spread throughout the community."
"So it's like infected blood I suppose you could say."
"Exactly. We have a military quality lie-detector to see if there's anything fishy about the donor's claim to happiness."
"Well that's wonderful, Dr. McKenzie . . . Tell me. How do you store the vibes?"
"In frozen test tubes so it doesn't congeal."
"And can people get addicted to this process?"
"Well, theoretically they could I guess, but it would be purely psychosomatic and not physical. We are very careful not to over-supply a client, just like a responsible bartaker I suppose. You see we aren't vampires. We don't live off other people's misery, we are just here to ease those people who are finding it difficult to shrug off."
A chuckle was strangled at birth in my throat. It was all so stupid and false. Still, single men in the middle of the night are easy prey. It got me thinking . . .

" . . . Where the fuck is my mood??!"
Even through my bleary vision I could tell this was a different nurse. Nonetheless, she seemed to have emerged from the same plastic mould. Perhaps the grimace was a tad more sincere; not yet worn down by a steady stream of demanding drunks harassing her first thing in the morning.
"My mood goddamit. Check it on the stupid computer. The name is Blaney . . . Ssam. I was here . . . and now I'm here again . . . and I want it back."
Was that a glimmer of pity I detected in her steely blue eyes?
"I'm afraid we can't do that Mr. Blaney. You signed a form releasing you from any claim to your former mood."

"Releasing?!" I exclaimed with Shakespearean hyperbole. "You released me from my own mood."
"Well, we didn't force a donation from you Mr. Blaney."
I still hadn't slept, and that P.N.T. ad just wouldn't stop taunting me. The next thing I knew I was down the pre-dawn street and into the clinic without even doing up my fly. The silent hum of the neon lights began to seamlessly weld my drunkenness to a hangover with industrial precision. I realized I was one of those people described in postmortem monotones as "highly excitable." I began to grope pathetically around my pockets.
"Ok . . . OK! I'll pay for it, I'll pay for my own stupid mood back."
"I'm afraid I can't help you Mr. Blaney. For one thing, your mood . . . um . . . a 6.8-exhiliration with-ecstatic-traces-and-almost-complete-lack-of-techno-related-frustration, according to the computer . . . is stored in our main facility in Michigan. The other thing is that returning a donated mood to the original owner is strictly against policy."
"Why? Why is that?" I asked rationally.
"Because it is our experience that the former mood is rejected by the host - that is, the person who made the donation - eighty six percent of the time. The combination of the old sensations and emotions react badly with the altered set of circumstances, highlighting the inescapable sequence of events which terminated the donated mood. The continuity of your own life senses the anachronistic character of the happiness and can sometimes rebound via an unsettling sense of deja-vu into a spiraling depression." She tried to not look pleased with herself at recalling this company rote-line so well.

"Well why the fuck don't people just take Prozac?"
"A lot of people do, sir. But our product has no side-effects provided it is used according to our guidelines in the booklet." Her arm uncoiled towards a Perspex display stand with a couple of dog-eared pamphlets. The pathos of it all hit me like a ton of bricks and I had to fight back the tears.
"What about that plumber in Baltimore?"
Her glossy lips pursed for a flickering moment and then relaxed again.
"The inquiry found that there was no link to P.N.T. enterprises. I'm sure you are well aware of that."
"I just want to be happy," I said, the welling tears distorting the nurse into a creamy blur.
"I understand that sir. The booklet recommends alternatives to P.N.T. treatment, a bath, a walk, listening to a favourite piece of music, exercise, empowering masturbation . . . we don't encourage needless procedures. We aren't vampires. We don't live off other people's misery, we are just here to ease those people who are finding it difficult to shrug off."
I this point I was hunched up on the desk, sobbing quietly.
"Perhaps I could interest you in a 6.5 bliss-out with triumphal traces? Or . . . (her artificial fingernail caressing the computer screen) . . . we have a special on a 7 rapture with residues of served-cold revenge.
My tears evaporated in the boiling fury which suddenly shook my fragile frame.
"I don't want some other bastard's meaningless mood. I want my own. I want my car . . . I want . . . I want Beth . . . "
And then my anger dissolved as quickly as it came, and security escorted me onto the street where the sun was just beginning to peep above the skyline.



A few days later and I wasn't in any better shape. I did have an idea, however, which roamed around my head in the middle of the night like a somnambulistic Sasquatch. It involved a hacker friend of mine called Owen, who owed me a big favour since it was mainly because of him that I was fired. He asked me to run a sniffer program that he had written through our system, just as a test to see if it worked. The only problem was that when he erased his virtual footprints, he also erased some of our most important client files. Unfortunately he didn't manage to delete the memory of the janitor who saw me nervously playing with floppy disks late at night.
Anyway, Owen was still my friend because a hacker is a useful person to know these days. We spent a couple of days "casing the joint" from the comfort of his rotten-banana smelling workstation. The modem hissed and whistled countless times before his bloated tongue announced that hacker mantra "we're in." In this case, "in" meant the P.N.T. mainframe in Michigan. Owen did a series of baffling things with seemingly insignificant pieces of data and then my name and picture blinked onto the screen like a digital mirror. He gave a smug approximation of a laugh.
"You did look happier then," he added maliciously.
"6.8 exhilaration," said the screen.
This was it. My holy grail. My allegedly unrecoverable past. An emotional and archeological miracle, just waiting to be reclaimed. I was convinced I was one of the 14% who would not reject a past mood.
Owen continued to tap away and furrow his brow at the screen before emitting more positive noises.
"Got it. Your 6.8 is booked by a guy called Kempsey. Lives in Portland. The novel he's been writing for the past seven years has been rejected by every publisher in the country. Plus he's starting to go bald. The moodgraft is in three weeks and it's to be shipped out in two and a half."
My throat was dry and prickly with the excitement.
"How? By plane or road?"
"Doesn't say. I'd have to access a different directory."
"Well do so, geek!"

At first I was going to hijack the shipment in Great Train Robbery fashion, but then I realized that I would be left holding the chilled contents of my mood with no way to get it into my brain. Then I was going to just destroy it - if I couldn't have it, then nobody would. But ultimately, in a moment of clarity, my plan game out to greet me like a three dimensional hologram rising from the rhizomes of confusion. I would impersonate Jeff Kempsey.
Owen found his phone number for me, and I regrettably informed Mr. Kempsey that his moodgraft would have to be postponed for a week on account of a backlog caused by minor equipment malfunction. He sounded upset, but I guess he already was.
The next step was to book a flight to Portland, somewhere I had always planned on going. Owen had managed to switch our photos so I wouldn't have to invest in a false beard. As I witnessed this piece of hacker magic I swore to myself that I would truly forgive him for the firing incident.
The night before I left I felt quite excited about the whole adventure, even a little exhilarated.

All these bloody P.N.T. clinics look the same. They all have those neon lights, those retro-futuristic water-coolers, and those posters of satisfied smiling customers that have an aura of Christian propaganda about them. I knew I must be in Portland though, when the nurse had black hair. The grimace, however, was identical.
My knees bobbed up and down as I waited for the call. I was nervous, but so far there were no signs of suspicion. I mean, why should there be? My photo looked like me, I knew all my personal details lodged in the computer's memory banks. I moaned whenever they mentioned my novel (luckily they didn't ask me the name). I had put on a fake looking toupee at the last minute as a final touch. The whole thing was foolproof.

As soon as I was led into the pre-med room and wrapped in a khaki gown, an overwhelming sense of triumph washed over me. Through that door my former happiness was sitting in a bag of dry ice just waiting to come to papa. I'd fooled them. I'd fooled these smug, sterile, hygienic bastards. Finally a victory for Johnny Citizen. As they coated my temples with a cold purple gel and wheeled me into the surgery I tried hard to suppress a smile.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Kempsey," chirped the raven-haired nurse. "Now I'm sure you are aware of the details of the procedure. It won't hurt a bit, however there maybe a slight dizziness as the endorphins adjust to the new mental environment."
A patch was put on my chest and my pulse began to beep chirpily into the room. The doctor nodded and a large helmet structure - not unlike a professional hairdryer - descended over my skull. I was instructed to bite onto the steel plate which protruded from the inside, and count to ten. A faint tingling around my scalp began to ripple inwards toward the core of my brain in fuzzy golden waves. My pulse began to audibly quicken, and my triumph was complete. This was it. Nothing was going to thwart me now.

My mood was beckoning me from over the horizon of perception, singing to me like a Siren on heat. I opened my mind to simply let it in . . . to welcome it. . . welcome it back. Then it receded gently into the distance, like a wave gathering itself in order to grow and return. My mind was straining, as if peering into the dark or trying to hear the faintest of sounds. Something totally intangible was floating around in the space left inside me, like the ghost of a ghost. For an instant I thought I could smell Beth's perfume, and I felt . . . happy.

Then it sprang.
My former mood leaped onto my psyche like a ninja onto its foe. I could feel it squeezing and groping for an opening. It felt like a spider gripping onto the side of a craggy cliff in a windstorm, biting into my neo-cortex for its own survival. I still don't know if the scream that echoed off the walls of my skull made it to my snarling lips.
The doctor ripped off the headpiece and I buried my face in my hands, moaning incessantly. I felt miserable. I wanted to die.
The doctor was completely flustered.
"This is impossible! This is totally unprecedented! No one has ever rejected a moodgraft before, not below 9.2 anyway."
The dizziness began to subside and I just wanted to cry. The nurse just stood there thunderstruck as the doctor examined the machine and muttered excitedly to himself.

And so here I am, still in Portland, although I haven't even seen the city yet. They let me watch the news every evening and I get an idea of what's going on. Often I'm too tired from all the testing to understand the complexities of overseas stories or local political squabbles. The other night I even saw a replay of the P.M.T. infomercial. They say they'll need me for just a few more days but I'm sure they said that a long time ago (although how long I couldn't begin to guess). They say I'm special and they need to know why. Apparently I signed something which said in the event of . . . blah blah blah.
The only thing that cheers me up is the thought of a bath.

Gary Dundas