The Happy Hat

Content warning: mention of depression/suicide

1

Dr Rowan’s practice was based on the 1st floor of a 19th century terrace, just off the corner of Spadina and Willocks in downtown Toronto. From the outside, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a warm family home, a place filled with model trains, fluffy beanbags and unfinished math homework. But on the other side of those red-brick walls and grand bay windows, guests were met with the sterile, off-white soullessness of a functioning clinic. For Seth, that made arriving for his bi-weekly appointments all the more depressing. He sometimes liked to imagine, as he stood waiting on the top step for the buzzer to sound, that he was a revered husband and father returning home after a fruitful day of graft at some fancy Bay St outfit, and that any moment his kids would come bounding towards him with open arms. Then he’d be taken out of this reverie by the fuzzy sound of Dr Rowan’s secretary on the intercom, and the contrast between his dreams and his plight felt like a rusty knife twisting in his stomach. 

The waiting room was infused with citrus and lavender, flowing from the candlelit oil burner on the glass coffee table, around which sat a ragtag bunch of dishevelled looking characters. This pungent gesture was a rather lazy attempt at aromatherapy, intended to soften up clients before they were seen. But its actual impact was to further turn the stomachs of the already queasy, and Seth had long blamed this for the often perilous state of the clinic’s washroom. As he sat on the grey vinyl sofa staring listlessly at the TV in the corner, his sweaty hands writhed and rubbed and picked at the patches of dry skin under his nose. He’d once had faith that these sessions would help, but after 4 months he looked and felt more drawn, pallid and hopeless than ever before. 

His name appeared in bright red caps on the LED sign above the receptionist’s desk, so he rose labouredly and made for the white door across the hall. Even his knock was devoid of any semblance of life as he stared at the reflection in the silver name plate on the door, his worn, unkempt locks and bushy beard staring back at him. As he entered the room, the tall, handsome silver fox stared at him from behind the desk, sharp features and a lively countenance. Everything in the room was either glass or metal, sparsely populated and severe.

“Nice to see you Seth, take a seat,” said Rowan, in a voice oozing with the manufactured sincerity required from a man of his station.  “How have things progressed since we last spoke?”

It was at this point that Seth would usually feedback on his thought patterns over the last two weeks. He was expected to highlight any ‘suicidal’ or ‘self-destructive’ incidents that had occurred, their frequency and severity, and whether he felt the latest concoction of pills was having the desired effect. That sort of thing. But this time, he couldn’t bring himself to play along with the usual routine. He scrunched his eyes tight in a sort of nervous tick, revealing thick valleys on his brow, and let out a deep sigh. 

“I am willing,” Seth muttered. 

“Excuse me?” replied Dr Rowan, his bright blue eyes sparkling and expectant. 

Seth’s gaze wandered around the room, searching for something to focus his attention. Anything to avoid Dr Rowan. He was drawn to the Newton’s Cradle that sat on the middle shelf of a large industrial style steel rack, and was mesmerized by the shards of light reflected on the shiny metal spheres. Rowan was saying something, but Seth was somewhere else, pondering whether he could cause the collision of the balls with his bare will alone. 

“Seth!”, exclaimed Rowan, the absence of his usual poise forcing Seth back into the room with a fright. He picked a spot near the centre of the doctor’s forehead, a fleshy skin tag which he always struggled to ignore, and hoped that by looking at that he could avoid eye contact. 

“I’ve heard that you can...that there might be...other options,” Seth stuttered. 

“You don’t feel the current treatment is working?”

“Do you?” asked Seth.

The Dr began fidgeting with his fingers, rubbing his thumb and middle finger vigorously as if trying to light a fire with two damp sticks. They were both silent a little while, the only sound a bass rumble of a diesel engine seeping through the small opening in the window. The garbage truck doing its rounds. Seth recognised the sound, and he imagined his soul rising from his body, out through the window and into the hopper filled with decaying matter. He felt it belonged there.

“There’s something I can offer you. Though it would require your absolute discretion.” An almost imperceptible nod of the head let the doctor know to continue. “To be quite frank with you Seth, I’m tired. Tired of seeing my patients fail to get the respite they deserve, because of our reluctance to abandon archaic treatments that are no longer fit for purpose,” Dr Rowan snorted. “If indeed they ever were!”

Seth looked up with dewy eyes, but a glint of hope was welling up from within. “New pills?” he asked. 

The doctor pushed back in his chair and rose, a new energy pulsing through his veins. He made for the window and stood, hands pressed to the back of his head, as though contemplating whether to cross this dangerous threshold. Seth watched the statuesque figure, standing against the backdrop of the midday sun and lit up like a messiah.

It’d only been a few minutes, but it didn’t feel like that to Seth. He started thinking that perhaps he wasn’t the only one in the room who’d lost it. After all, what sort of maniac sets up for a life trying to solve the deficiencies of the human mind? Just as he was about to get lost in that thought, he looked up to see Dr Rowan’s head craned back, smiling at him. 

2

Rachel was the senior secretary of the clinic, and as such had an intimate knowledge of operations. When called in and told to cancel the rest of the day’s appointments, she knew not to ask questions. The sweaty neurotics in the waiting room were sent on their way, and once they were gone she opened up the cabinet that housed the surveillance system. After pressing some buttons, she closed it again.

35 minutes later, a matt black Caddie Escalade pulled up to the kerbside on the leafy street. A meaty Sherman tank of a man stepped out of the driver side door, and circled round to the rear to retrieve two large aluminium cases from the trunk. From the kerbside passenger door stepped a skinny, middle-aged man, average height, bespectacled, with no more than a wisp of thin black hair covering his pale pate. 

*

The meathead struggled to fit through the doorway leading to Rowan’s office, but Loefler had no such trouble following in his wake. 

“Seth, I’d like you to meet an old colleague of mine. Dr Loefler.” 

Seth's eyes darted back and forth, first to the cases which had been placed on the desk, then to the three men now sharing the room with him. Ostensibly they were here to help, but the frosty, muted atmosphere seemed to suggest otherwise. 

“Shall we get started?” queried Loefler, composed and businesslike. 

Rachel had brought in another chair so now there were three, Rowan in his, Loefler and Seth on the other side of the desk. The other fella had already served his purpose so he camped out in the waiting room, making Rachel more than slightly uncomfortable. 

“Look,” Seth stammered, “I appreciate you coming over here, but I haven’t committed to anything. I don’t even…”

“Let’s not get away from ourselves here son. You’re in good hands with me,” said Loefler. 

“He’s right. We go back a long way, me and Keith. You can trust us," added Rowan.

Loefler rubbed his hands ravenously, and proceeded to flip open the clasps on the first case, the clicking sound firing up Seth’s nerve endings. He took out a large black laptop computer, clearly designed for something far more advanced that minecraft and cat videos judging by its heft and space-age appearance. As Loefler set up the computer on the desk, Rowan noticed the sweat pouring from Seth’s brow, and offered a reassuring smile to try and calm his nerves. Loefler then moved to open the second case, removing what looked like a black skull cap dappled with circular holes, dozens of thin wires protruding from them, and placed it on the desk. 

“Look, you tell me what this is right now. Please,” said Seth, the attempt at assertiveness thoroughly unconvincing. “I don't like the look of this.”

“What do you think is wrong? I mean, with your mind of course,” chuckled Loefler. 

Seth hesitated, sensing a trick question. “Depression.”

“Well fine, but on a more, shall we say, elemental level,” quipped Loefler, pausing for a response before deciding to go ahead without one. “Your brain is a complex piece of computing machinery. 100 billion neurons, extensive circuity, a plethora of interconnected networks. You’re struggling to operate the thing. Nothing to be ashamed of. But it’s time to call in tech support.”

“What is this for?” Seth asked, gesturing at the equipment on the desk, his lip quivering. 

“We’ve discovered a method, a mapping process if you like,” Loefler said with arched eyebrows. “We realised that there is in fact a recognisable happiness algorithm. After that, it was just a case of extracting the algorithm from our test subjects, and finding a way to map it into another subject. And now we have,” he smiled. 

“Woah. No no no. I’m not having you reprogram my brain. No way.”

“You’ve been trying to do that already, have you not? SSRIs, SNRIs, NASSAs. Good god even I lose track of all of the damn things.” 

“Pills are one thing, but this? I’m not a sports car, you can’t just plug me in and change my software. Is this even legal?” 

“The pills were an attempt to do that very thing. The difference is they didn’t work. Best case scenario they would level you out into a numb, lifeless mannequin. But this!” shouted Loefler, pointing to his contraption. “This is completely revolutionary! This is a guaranteed, constant state of happiness.”

Rowan sat in silence with his arms crossed, watching the sparring play out in front of him. He’d seen it all before, 14 times to be precise, and he knew how it would end. He knew Seth would submit. 

“We’ve seen the results. The board won’t approve it because the politicians are all hung up on so called “ethical issues”. But we’ve seen it. Poor souls beaten down and broken by life, ready to cut themselves off from existence, transformed, brought back from the dead to live in endless joy. It’s a miracle, god damn it.” 

“So I’d effectively be a robot? A really, happy, robot.”

“What are you now? When you were on the bus on the way over here, sapped of all energy, vitality, staring into space. That’s some people’s idea of a robot, is it not?”

Loefler’s last comment penetrated Seth’s defences, and it felt like he'd been hit in the head with a concrete slab. His head dropped into his hands and he rubbed his eyes.

“Constant? I’d be just as happy when I wake up as I would be after lunch? After sex?”

Loefler nodded. “It’s early days Seth. We haven’t yet developed the functionality to incorporate healthy variance. But isn’t this enough? You’d be happy. When was the last time you felt that?”

He thought long and hard to answer that question, but he couldn’t say. It’d been so long that any past happiness lay beyond the reach of his memory. 

“Nothing would be left to chance. If happiness is guaranteed, there would be no mystery any more, right?”

This was Rowan’s moment. The patient was on the ropes, and it was time for the finishing blow to be administered. He loved this part. “Seth. You’ve spent your life leaving everything to chance. Look where it’s got you?” 

3

An ocean blue clinic chair was wheeled in from the storage room by the meathead, who left it in the centre of the room. Seth spent a few moments in solitude gazing out of the window, wanting to experience his ruminations for the final occasion. The next time he looked out that window, all the pain and sadness would be gone forever. He did this for maybe 15 minutes, before turning to the two doctors and giving a wistful nod. He was ready. 

He got into the chair and lay back, his dandruff-flaked hair pushed back hard against the headrest. Loefler secured the leather strap restraints on the wrists and feet, while Rowan returned with the syringe and administered the anaesthetic that would bring the curtains down on a life of pain. Seth closed his eyes and drifted away. 

Once the skullcap was secured on Seth’s head, the wires from the cap were fed into a terminal that was plugged into a socket on the monstrous laptop. The cap was awash with luminous blue dots, and they reflected on the ceiling to create a magnificent light show. The fans on the laptop were working overdrive to support the software that would change this sleeping man’s life. 

Everything was in place. Loefler booted up the program and tapped away at various commands, reaching for the glass of water that Rachel had placed on the desk next to him, wiping his brow now and again with his shirt sleeve. He looked to Rowan, lifting his left thumb to his old friend who returned the favour. With his right index figure, he pressed ‘Enter’. 

*

Seth shook hands with all who had played a part on this fine day. Dr Rowan, Dr Loefler, Rachel, Meathead. And as he was about to step out of the office, he realised these gestures were far too modest. He insisted on warm squeezing hugs all round. 

Stepping out into the cool, light breeze of the city, his eyes were instantly drawn to the birds flitting between the gently swaying trees up above. A young mother pushed a gorgeous blonde baby boy in a stroller on the other side of the street, and a teenage boy with a Toronto Blue Jays cap hopped from sidewalk to street on his bright orange skateboard. Everywhere he looked there was life, pure, singular life. 

He decided right there and then to take the longest walk of his life, to absorb the city and its wonderful denizens whom he now loved with all his heart. He bounced along the sidewalk like a toddler, and approaching a junction he noticed the most beautiful black and tan little terrier crossing the street ahead. He wondered how it was possible that such a creature was not the product of God’s design. As he processed that thought, the rumbling of a V8 came from down the block.  Seconds later, a red Ford Mustang ran the stop sign doing 50, sending the little terrier into doggy heaven. 

Seth walked on, the corners of his mouth turned up in a coy smile. He was thinking of ice cream.