“It’s an experiment in natural selectivity. We’re breeding a hardier genetic strain of American to build on the Forty-niners and Plains settlers in Conestoga wagons. The new Florida Sooners, Jimmy Buffett’s Grapes of Wrath Tour. Thousands come every year but few make the cut. Most are on vacation, but others are on business. And some are simply running toward the light. Men with beaten-dog looks driving carloads of dirty-faced kids. None of this is new to the old-timers. The outsiders just started coming here in big enough numbers to get the word out. But it’s been going on for hundreds of years, ever since the Europeans hacked and diseased the Indians in the name of God and gold, searching for the Fountain of Youth, which was recently discovered in the middle of a roadside attraction in St. Augustine. From the conquistadors and the Seminole Wars to the Civil War Battle of Olustee. The two Henrys-Flagler and Plant-running train tracks down both coasts. The railway that went to sea figuratively in 1912 and literally in the hurricane of 1935. Hemingway stumbling, scribbling and brawling his way through the Keys. German U-boats off Fort Myers. Jackie Gleason with a pitching wedge, launching divots the size of toupees. Cape Canaveral became Cape Kennedy until we said, ‘What were we thinking?’ and changed it back… The ’68 Republican Convention. The ’72 Miami Dolphins. Claude Kirk, Reubin Askew, Walkin’ Lawton. Sinkholes, phosphate, citrus canker, Anita Bryant…the horror…the horror…”

And Serge passed out.

The technician turned off the tape, and the Austrian psychiatrist was stunned. “We must help him!”

The next day the Austrian met Serge for a one-on-one. Serge sat on the edge of the couch, rocking back and forth, listening to his Walkman. The psychiatrist leaned down and took the earphones off Serge’s head and pressed the stop button.

“Can we begin?” the doctor asked with a smile.

The session was unproductive for the first hour. Serge wanted to talk about the fall TV lineup. He said he’d submitted a script to Friends where everyone gets killed, but he hadn’t heard back yet.

“I’m sure it’s a fine script. Now about your childhood…”

Shortly into the second hour, the doctor stopped talking and began looking around the room. He inspected his own hands, front and back, in minute detail. Serge knew it was time. He had scored some acid off a minimum-wage bedpan polisher and slipped the microdot of orange barrel LSD into the doctor’s coffee at the beginning of the session.

“I hope this has been helpful to you,” said Serge.

The psychiatrist looked up from his palms with a question on his face.

“This role reversal,” said Serge, getting up from the couch. He began taking off his patient’s uniform. “I think you’ll make a fine doctor someday. Now, if I can have my clothes back…”

The psychiatrist got up slowly. He took off his shirt and slacks and handed them to Serge and put on the patient’s clothes.

Serge got dressed and adjusted his bow tie and glasses in the mirror, looking spiffy. He slicked his hair with mousse. He looked back at the doctor and saw a quivering mass of Jell-O.

Serge had anticipated the possibility.

“Okay, I have to escape now. But I want to make sure you’re all right,” said Serge. The doctor was suffocating with dread. Serge clipped the Walkman to the doctor’s elastic waistband and pressed play.

“This is the Sergeant Pepper’s album,” said Serge. “You’ve got the right guys in the control tower to talk you down-they’re pros. A lot of positive messages. Just keep playing the tape over and over.”

Serge placed the earphones on the doctor’s head and checked the clock. Shift change fifteen minutes ago. New staff. They hadn’t seen Serge and the doctor come in the room. Serge pressed the intercom, and two large guards arrived.

The guards were suspicious anyway. “Hey, you look familiar!”

Just then the Austrian started running around the room making British ambulance sounds before perching on top of a desk like a gibbon and chattering his teeth.

Serge shook his head sadly and made notations in a patient file.

The guards wrote off their doubts and grabbed the psychiatrist and dragged him back to Serge’s cell, where he listened to Sergeant Pepper’s twenty-two times.

Serge flushed his medicine down the toilet and walked out the front door of Chattahoochee, disappearing into the general population of the state of Florida.

A t daybreak, Serge opened the door of room one at Hammerhead Ranch and took a deep, satisfied breath of salt air.

“Another day of life. Thank you, God.”

He went jogging up Gulf Boulevard, not for exercise but from impatience. He ran across the drawbridge, waving at the cars and the fishermen. The tide was just coming in and the shorebirds scurried on the shoals in the pass. A deep-sea fishing boat motored back from an overnight cruise, loaded down with mackerel, tuna and sharks. Serge waved from the bridge, and the captain sounded his air horn. The more Serge saw, the more he wanted to see, and he ran faster.

He was in a full sprint when he came off the bridge, and he ran up to the row of news boxes in front of a breakfast diner shaped like an Airstream. A fat man wearing a baseball cap that said “Old Fart” came out of the restaurant, working a toothpick in his mouth like he was picking a lock. Serge smiled and pulled a quarter from his pocket as he bent down to a green newspaper box.

Serge suddenly jumped back and made a startled yip. There it was again, his face on the front page, third day in a row. “Manhunt Widens for Keys Killer.” Can’t they give it a rest? You go and do a little spree killing and they never let you forget about it.

Serge ran back to Hammerhead Ranch double-time, looking over his shoulder. He locked the door, watched Florida fishing programs all day on TV and took a nap.

He awoke after dark and poured himself a tall glass of orange juice. He sat up at the head of his bed and leaned back against the wall. He grabbed the remote control and turned on the TV.

Serge’s picture immediately filled the screen, and Serge spilled juice in his lap. Florida Cable News correspondent Blaine Crease said the suspect, Serge A. Storms, had been sighted in the Tampa Bay area and a team of FBI agents was en route from Quantico, Virginia.

“That’s the problem with the media today,” Serge complained out loud. “Too much bad news-always focusing on the negative.” He clicked the TV off and made a mental note to write a letter to the station, requesting more upbeat stories.

“I gotta get out of this room.”

Serge jumped in the scorched Chrysler and headed for the Howard Frankland Bridge. As he started over the bridge, he took in the sparkling lights of Tampa across the bay, the rivulet of cars cresting the bridge’s hump, and the jets landing at Tampa International. He was in his zone. He turned on the radio, to add a soundtrack.

“…We interrupt this program to bring you an update on the manhunt for the spree killer from the Florida Keys. Authorities are now certain he’s trapped in the Tampa Bay area. They’re setting up roadblocks on all major highways out of town and posting agents at bus stations, train depots and the airports…”

This is getting ridiculous, Serge thought. Time to hit the eject button. He hated to do it, but he would have to leave Florida, at least for a little while, until things cooled down.

After the bridge, Serge got in the exit lane for the airport. As he approached the terminal, three police cars raced by. I’ll have to hurry, he thought, but I still have a chance if I can get through before they establish a perimeter.

Serge skidded into long-term parking and took the Tony Janus Shuttle to the terminal. Serge held on to the subway-style pole in the shuttle and involuntarily recited from memory. “Tony Janus: Aviator who began the world’s first regularly scheduled airline route, St. Petersburg to Tampa, 1914.”