120 BPM
short story
Randy had a job in tech. Now I don’t want to start painting with too rough a brush here. Before you know it, you’re looking at an entire sector in the vilest light. Nevertheless, it seems inevitable to depart with the account here. If it hadn’t been for the pool of oddity and peculiar conduct in which Randy was immersed on a daily basis, I would think at least that someone may have started paying attention sooner than they actually did. But what can you expect in an environment where endless hours of surveillance footage – if anybody cared enough to spend his time this way – would only reveal an infinity of bizarre acts perpetrated upon bodies and objects? But all of that, and more, remains shrouded in solitary work habits, in an officescape where even a sudden twist of two or three neck muscles hither or thither will be cause for alarm and an intuitive search for the easiest available HR officer.
But let’s leave all the fancy words aside – most they could do is convince you I am trying to fool you, anyway – and focus on what happened. Because there was a particular way the whole thing came about. And a man less meticulous than Randy may have just let sleeping dogs lie, ordered a new combo of food supplements, or piously acquiesced in his progressing years. And maybe it was the “hands-on” motto that his employer pasted in all messaging, internal as well as external, so lavishly that Randy simply had felt compelled to take action, even if it seemed so mild to him at first.
It had been a change in his mood and energy level. For several days in a row, upon installing himself in the gaming chair behind his desk – which chair, God knows, only his seniority had granted him entitlement to, and certainly not his sprightliness – he could not suppress the feeling that he was not there, entirely. The aggressive start of the day that after 18 years in the business he even expected of himself lay beyond his reach, behind a gummy barrier of inaccessible perceptions and responses. Then, on the fourth day, in a moment of what could just as well have turned out into a fatal moment of modest inspiration, he grabbed his headphones and searched for a playlist that could pull him over the insurmountable speedbump in his cubicle.
Even then, things might have turned out rather differently. Who knows why at that very moment of weakness he had to make a choice that was so at odds with his whole upbringing, background, even his tersely developed personal preferences. To place matters in faithful perspective, we need to specify that anything resembling disco music had always been strictly beyond the pale for Randy. Had Randy had a partner of sorts, they would have been able to confirm. Probably it was his consequent sense of shame and his genuine incapacity of admitting to the true nature of his newly founded daily routine that prevented some of the experts who were later engaged to diagnose Randy once matters had started to go seriously south. But I am getting ahead of things, because for the time being, Randy thought he had smoothly remedied the challenge to his uneventful workdays.
Unfortunately, in the months that followed he developed a variety of complaints that popped up in the farthest extremities of his body, as well as in his innermost cavities and organs – as far as poor Randy was able to identify –, all so diverse in character as well that he was quite unable to verbalize the issue any more concretely than quietly intimating to himself that something was wrong. On Tuesday, it could be a palpitation in his third left toe, while on Friday the feeling of a needle poking through his small intestine accompanied his spreadsheet hour. Certain evenings, he felt his arms glowing up like a rash after work. Had any pattern been discernible, his computational brain – when not bothered by one of those fogs that had occurred as well – would have laid it down in a moonlit spreadsheet of his own and figured out from what unheimlich angle the wind was blowing. But there wasn’t and he was stuck, increasingly bothered as much by the incapacity of his mind to keep track as he was by the randomness, and his torments by themselves.
It must have been at least two months and a half before the final straw lodged at last. It was when Bob, never one to be suspected of empathy, popped his head over the edge of the cubicle. “Hey, Rando, you okay? Maybe it’s me but you look sorta worried about something.” And for the first time since October 2019, Randy called in instantly sick, driving off to see his GP, which, at long last, he succeeded at seeing after waiting through the scheduled visits, the doctor’s lunch break, and a series of undefined postponements announced to him by the assistant. The doctor proceeded to tap in all the right places of Randy’s body, asking all the questions from the protocol, humming his acknowledgment as he ticked the boxes off on his clipboard. Then came the crowning moment of the majestic removal of his glasses as he lowered his voice and opened his verdict with a compassionate “listen Randy…”
The verdict had not been quite definitive. Gently the doctor suggested that some of these troubles may have been the inevitable drawback of the years starting to count. He added – as he explicitly deemed it his professional responsibility – a loose remark about the theory of a healthy lifestyle, while reaching over for his recipe block. “Just something mild here, Randy,” adding a theatrical period with his pen, as he looked up towards Randy. “Something to help with the anxiety.”
- “And that’s it?” said Randy.
- “What would you like it to be, Randy?”
- “Well – some answers, maybe? I would like to know what’s bugging me.”
- “So would I, Randy. So would I. But where would we start? Your condition – if we could call it that – is manifesting pretty much all over the place. And don’t get me wrong, Randy, because you do not have an unfit body for your age.” He gave Randy a little pat on the knee. “But I cannot send my dear colleagues on a fishing expedition all over your body. But I see this situation is really bothering you. So let’s start at the base, hahah. This town has some of the finest podiatrists of the country. What area do you live in, Randy?”
Seven long months commenced as Randy left the doctor’s office. After the podiatrist came the gastroenterologist. Through the haze of the painful memories of this period, Randy would later vaguely recall an endocrinologist, a hepatologist, and a dermatologist as well. His GP, who at some point started to worry about wasting all his credits throughout his esteemed network of specialists on such an unassuming patient, too colorless to ever breed hope of claiming a banner of fame from, eventually conceding a neurologist from his digital rolodex. The doctor’s inattentiveness in suggesting a colleague whose publications had gone unobserved by the weekly GP’s digest would finally mean the turnaround in Randy’s voyage of suffering.
If he hadn't been noticed, Dr. Roddemeier surely was thorough. Three entire days Randy spent passing through, across, in and on top of medical devices of all sizes and sounds. Dr. Roddemeier would enter now and then, always unannounced, to read off some data on a display, nod, take his notes, and disappear as silently as he’d come in. At the end of the protracted third day, the doctor finally spoke and told Randy to make an appointment to discuss the results of the tests they had just concluded but would still require analysis. Whether it was Dr. Roddemeier’s busy schedule or the extensive nature of his analytical process, the assistant only managed to schedule Randy a little over three weeks later. Despondent, Randy returned to the office the next morning, following the routine he thought had kept him going, even if barely so, for the past year. To his great surprise, however, he got a call in the afternoon from Dr. Ruddemeier’s assistant, asking him to come in next Wednesday.
In the day and a half separating him from his reencounter with Dr. Roddemeier, agony and relief battled over domination of Randy’s thoughts. Was he about to find out, at last, what had been rendering every next day gloomier than the one before? But why this sudden bidding? Had he been feeling the symptoms of a terminal condition, drowning out the former peace of his cubicle? The very morning of his appointment he was certain he was not going to live to see his doctor and potential savior again. Perhaps defeatism was yet another symptom of Randy’s mysterious state, because a few hours later he had made it to the faux leather seat in the doctor’s waiting room.
- “Sit down, Randy. I thought it was important to talk to you as soon as we could. We had a clear positive on one of our primary tests.”
Randy gulped. “Yes?”
- “I won’t beat about the bush, Randy. I understand you’ve been coping with this thing for something like a year.”
Randy nodded.
- “So I will be direct, Randy. You understand that, don’t you?... Good. I will have to ask you. Are you in the habit of listening to disco, Randy?”
- “D… disco? Disco, doctor?” Randy’s face was taking on the hue of a ripe tomato.
- “Yes, Randy. Disco music. I am well aware this part of our diagnostics tends to cause some embarrassment for many of our patients. But we’re among friends here, Randy. You know that anything you say here won’t go beyond these walls… There you go – have a sip of water.”
And after a sip of water and a few minutes’ further hesitation, Randy told the story of his new routine. How a streak of listless days had tempted him to counter with what had seemed an innocent remedy. And that maybe now, considering this possibility, he could see how what had started as a lack of energy had only developed into graver symptoms after he had foolishly tried to doctor himself.
- “But doctor: how come no one’s talking about this? Wouldn’t this be an exceedingly common condition? I mean, not that anyone will admit to listening to disco, but there must be many more like me? Aren’t there? And how could a bit of music deregulate your system to such an extent? This really sound a bit extreme to me.”
- “Randy, Randy… My dear Randy… Millions of people meddle with disco music, sometimes even on a daily basis. But what gave you the impression that these people were doing well? You don’t believe that yourself now, do you, Randy? You had a hard time yourself, just now, admitting that you understood perfectly well what I was talking about… Right? What you need to acknowledge is that this disco thing is very much like an addiction. It’s sugar, sugar, and you never get enough. It’s always ‘just one more song and that will be the end of it.’ But you know very well that isn’t true, don’t you? Disco never, ever is enough. Finishing one song will only kindle your appetite for the next… But all of this is just the cotton-candy side of things. The easy consumption and engulfing part. It’s still the relatively innocuous part. The real effect of disco is very-well known… and devastating. You’ve been bombarding yourself, Randy. You’ve been subjecting your delicate organs and tissues to a relentless pounding of one hundred-and-twenty beats per minute. It stuns me to this very day how perfectly decent people such as yourself will show up, confess to such gross behavior, and then pretend they can come out of it without any physical harm. The oscilloscan was horrid, Randy. I know that’s not a tone that is expected of me, as a doctor and all, but you do need to understand that certain things are serious. There are risks you do not want to entertain. Your whole body beats at certain frequencies, Randy. You know about your heart, I’m sure. But that’s just a fraction of the various rhythms at which your organs operate. They’re all singing their own little tune in there, Randy. Some languid, some brisk. Some stately and some waltzy. But you can bet the Nobel Prize none of them thrives at a God-forlorn tempo of one hundred-and-twenty. You out-of-whacked yourself, Randy. And you have felt exactly what the price of that is. You, my dear Randy, have a grave case of disco poisoning.”
For a while, Randy just sat there.
- “Is there anything we can do, doctor? Is it grave?”
- “That really depends on you, now, Randy. It will have to be cold turkey, and then we’ll see how strong you are. I’ve seen too many different cases to make any blanket predictions at this stage… You might rebound, you know. These things have happened… And on your way out, my assistant will give you a prescription for something mild, something to deal with your anxiety. But why don’t you pull out your device first now, Randy, and let’s have a look at that playlist of yours.”
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