You Are a Ghost. (Sign Here Please)

by Andrew Stanek

  Subsequently, Nathan had visited the Dead Donkey Psychology Department and they had declared him perfectly sane, which probably told you something about the quality of the psychologists there. As Nathan, Travis, and Brian walked down the corridor in the psychology department, a psychologist in a white jacket was pushing a restrained patient on a gurney rapidly down the hallway. She could not maneuver past them.

  “Would you move, please?” she asked testily.

  “I am not Napoleon!” cried the wide-eyed man strapped to the gurney.

  “He thinks he’s not Napoleon?” Brian inquired, examining the patient closely.

  “Sadly, yes,” the psychologist confirmed. “He’s suffering from delusions of not being Napoleon and various other severe psychiatric difficulties. Nothing we can’t handle.”

  Brian leaned over to inspect the man. He was about six feet tall and black.

  “Are you sure he’s Napoleon?” Brian asked.

  “Oh yes, quite sure,” the psychologist confirmed.

  “I am not Napoleon!” the patient repeated.

  “You are Napoleon Bonaparte,” the psychologist insisted. “You are the Emperor of the French! You were born in Corsica in 1769 and seized power as First Consul of France in a coup in 1799, and were crowned Emperor of the French in 1804. You invaded much of Germany by 1805, but were defeated at the Battle of Trafalgar by Admiral Horatio Nelson, whereafter you invaded Spain in 1809 and had seized most of Europe by 1810, but were defeated in a disastrous offensive in Russia in 1812 and subsequently exiled to the island of Elba in 1814. Then you escaped from Elba in 1815 and returned to France but were defeated at the Battle of Waterloo. Afterwards, you were exiled to St. Helena, where you remained until your death in 1821. Remember, Napoleon, remember!”

  “I am not Napoleon,” the man said hoarsely.

  “No, that is a delusion - you are Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French!” the psychologist continued to bark.

  “I don’t think he’s Napoleon,” Brian said, inspecting the tall, black man more closely.

  The psychologist looked very annoyed and offended.

  “Are you questioning my judgment? I will have you know that I’m the world’s leading expert in my field!”

  “You are the world’s leading psychologist?” Brian asked, raising an eyebrow.

  The woman did not immediately answer.

  Naturally, every scientist wants to be the world’s leading expert in his or her field because of the respect and prestige that such a title carries, and because the university pays you a lot more if you are. The problem is that it’s actually very difficult to become the world’s leading expert in any of the established fields, because there are a lot of other people in them who also want to become the world’s leading expert and are working very hard, and are probably smarter than you, and on top of that the field probably already has a leading expert who has won one or several Nobel Prizes - that is to say, real Nobel Prizes from Sweden, not ones from Dead Donkey - and is several decades of experience ahead of you. Therefore, actually becoming the leading scientist in an established field is very difficult and typically not worthwhile, especially when you think of all the tiring and terrifically laborious work you’d have to do to get ahead. Usually, all desire to try to become a leading expert is stifled once you further realize that even if you put in all the work and make fantastic discoveries and so forth, you might not even get to become the world’s leading expert because some hoity-toity prodigy might always come along and discover something revolutionary that never occurred to you and grab the title for himself.

  Therefore, the quickest, easiest, and usually best route for an intelligent person to take to become the world’s leading expert is simply to make up a field to be the leading expert in. The young woman they were talking to was the world’s foremost aero-literary thermopsychologist, a field that she had invented herself. Dead Donkey University was also home to the world’s leading cement bacterial sociohistory researcher and the world’s top exo-geo-meta-meta-cosmo-anthropologist. They used to have the planet’s finest nuclear herpetological poet, but sadly he was poached by Johns Hopkins and was subsequently able to successfully flee to safety in Maryland with much of the rest of the department.

  The aero-literary thermopsychologist did not want to have to explain this because she was busy doing aero-literary thermopsychology, so she just shook her head and repeated herself.

  “I am the world’s leading expert in my field,” she said, and tried to ram her way past them with her gurney and not-Napoleon. Fortunately, it was Nathan she tried to ram her way through and the gurney slipped easily through his spiritual form, allowing the researcher and patient to continue merrily on their way.

  “She said he died in 1821,” Nathan recalled as they walked on. “Do you think he was a ghost, like me?”

  “No, he just wasn’t Napoleon,” Brian said.

  “I do not believe in Napoleon,” Travis said.

  “Then who do you think lost the Battle of Waterloo?” Brian demanded.

  Travis shrugged his shoulders and did not answer.

  The men continued down the hallway until they reached the end of the Psychology Department, where a string of janitors serving as guards parted to allow them into the Biology and Biomedical Departments, which was where Nathan’s doctor could be found. It was slow going down the corridor. As ever, everything was very interesting and Nathan kept stopping to watch proceedings in adjacent rooms. Once, he paused for a particularly long time. He’d never seen a surgeon use a frying pan in an operating theater before.

  “Can we keep moving, please?” Brian asked in irritation. “Any more delays and I will have to file additional paperwork.”

  He gave Nathan a push, but his hands passed straight through Nathan’s ghostly body.

  “How did Donna manage to shove you?” Brian wondered aloud. “I can’t wait until you get back into your body so I can push you.”

  They continued down the corridor until, near the end, they found the office they were looking for. A little plaque on the door marked it as the office of “Dr. Vegatillius.” Little balls of glitter, shimmering silver children’s stickers, and plastic hearts surrounded the name on the plaque like a swarm of angry wasps. Dr. Vegatillius was Nathan’s doctor.

  “Well, we’d better go in and see this nut and ask if he can get you your body back,” Brian said irritably, and pressed down on the handle of the door.

  Chapter 14

  Political correctness is essentially the semantic process of revising terminology so no one is offended anymore. Let me give you an example.

  It used to be that there were two classes of countries in the world: those that were eating their own dirt for food and those that weren’t. Eventually, due to improvements in navigation, transportation and cartography, all of the countries in the world became aware of one another, and the second half named themselves “civilized countries,” and the ones who were eating their own dirt were termed “uncivilized countries.” While this seemed obvious to the civilized countries at the time, a lot of wars were fought over who was civilized and who was uncivilized, and it became clear the terminology was rooted in racism and chauvinism and lack of appreciation for advanced and sophisticated cultures which had not developed in the same direction as Europeans, so the terms were eventually changed to “westernized” and “not westernized.” This too drew considerable controversy over the years, because it made it sound like being like the western world was something to be aspired to and a lot of countries didn’t want to be westernized, thank you very much, and preferred their local traditions, and alleged the new terminology was just as corrupt and offensive as the old one. So then the Cold War came along and the nations were rebranded “first world,” “second world,” and “third world.” This too eventually attracted the suspicion of the people in the last category because it made it sound like they were third class citizens of the world, or worse, living on a different planet altogether from the other two and
thus would never achieve anything great. No amount of pleading from astronomers who said that the third world in the solar system was actually Earth, which was the good one to be on, while Mercury and Venus were a scorching hothouse and a scorching hothouse with the lovely addition of sulfuric acid air, respectively, could change the opinions of the third world countries, so they demanded new names. Now we separate countries into “developed” nations, “developing” nations, and “least developed nations,” to make it sound like they’re all on the path of progress and it’s really all just a matter of time before everyone is fat and rich. While this may well be true, the “least developed nations” are still looking at their new label with no small amount of suspicion that it might be disparaging in some way, insinuating that they are losing some sort of race, so the labels will soon change again. In the near future, the designations for countries will be “developed” nations, “pre-developed” nations, “pre-pre-developed” nations, which are the ones eating their own dirt, and lastly “pre-pre-pre-developed” nations, which are the ones who can no longer afford to eat their own dirt and now view the practice with a sort of fond nostalgia, as a luxury that was enjoyed in happier times. While all this shifting of labels hasn’t actually changed who falls into each category very much, and the developed nations are still overwhelmingly the ones who were the civilized nations back in the day with only a very small number of additions, the point is that everyone feels good about the system and no one is offended.

  While civilization has long since politely excused itself from the city of Dead Donkey, so no one argues about who is civilized and who isn’t, political correctness has nevertheless been embraced warmly by the elite and media of the city. This may seem a little strange because political correctness is not unlike bureaucracy from a certain point of view. A big part of bureaucracy is finding obtuse and inscrutable ways to phrase perfectly normal happenings, which allows bureaucrats to transmute the act of buying a car into a Form 63A - Mandatory Vehicle License Registration and Notice of Transferral of Ownership, which no one except the initiated can understand. Political correctness turns terms like “civilized” nation into “developed” nation, so it shares some marked similarities with bureaucracy. Dead Donkey traditionally eschews everything even remotely to do with paperwork and bureaucracy, but absolutely loves political correctness (PC), and all of the city’s politicians and newscasters have happily jumped on the PC bandwagon.

  Communications professionals sanitize all official statements from the government, scouring the usual string of racial slurs and insults that find their way into such communiques. Out of racial guilt, Dead Donkey has opened an Indian Reservation despite the fact that no American Indians have ever lived anywhere near the city of Dead Donkey and don’t want to, given how terrible it is. (The city government has conveniently ignored complaints that this action was, unto and of itself, quite offensive.) Mayoral candidates now refuse to make speeches altogether for fear of offending someone, not that the corpse and the smiley face were ever big speakers to begin with, but it has put a stop to the incumbent mayor’s drunken tirades.

  As a result, people can now demand to be called whatever they please and everyone in the city has to call them that for fear of offending them. For example, arsonists are now “fire manufacturers.” Taxi drivers have become “transportation engineers.” Immigrants to the city (what few there are) are now called “new residents,” instead of their previous designation, “lunatics.”

  Nathan’s doctor, Dr. Vegatillius, insisted on being called a neurobiologist, so that is what everyone called him. His degree was in art history, but out of fear of offending him, the Biology Department gave him a large office in the Milton Prodmany center and allowed him to begin seeing subjects/patients/victims. People like Dr. Vegatillius, who prefer to be thought of as having a doctorate in a field that they don’t have a doctorate in, are called “transdemics,” and are much discriminated against in the academic community. Dr. Vegatillius can hardly ever get other neurobiologists, or even other scientists in general, to treat him like a neurobiologist, and sometimes it makes him very offended and sad. He plans to one day write a book about the struggles of people who identify as a major other than the one they graduated with, and can’t understand why everyone looks at him oddly whenever he brings this up.

  Brian, Travis, and Nathan entered Dr. Vegatillius’ office to find the good doctor poking a rat’s head with a stick for very important and highly technical scientific reasons. Dr. Irving Vegatillius wore a lab coat. He was short with dark eyes and was obviously going bald owing to the large number of experiments that he had attempted to conduct on his own brain, most of which had ended badly. In order to direct attention away from this baldness and for other critical purposes, Dr. Vegatillius was also wearing a very silly hat. I will not mention it again, but try to keep it in mind, as it helpfully contextualizes everything Dr. Vegatillius says.

  The moment he saw Nathan, Dr. Vegatillius sprang to his feet and quickly dropped both the rat and the stick, the former of which quickly scurried away with the latter between its teeth.

  “Ah, Nathan,” Vegatillius said, and sprang forward to shake Nathan’s hand. Like Ian the bureaucrat, Vegatillius had the habit of shaking someone’s hand for much too long, but because Nathan was a ghost, Vegatillius’ hand passed right through Nathan’s without any contact. This is one of the other major advantages of being a ghost, and some ghosts would go so far as to say that they enjoy being ghosts just so they don’t have to shake hands with people they don’t like.

  Nathan, however, was still determined to get his body back.

  “Hello, Dr. Vegatillius,” Nathan said. “I hope we’re not interrupting, but I have a small problem. I have become a ghost.”

  “Oh, just a simple case of ghostitis, is it?” Vegatillius asked, as he plopped a pair of powerful spectacles that he absolutely did not need on his nose. He picked up a hammer from the nearby table and swung it at Nathan’s head. It passed straight through Nathan’s head, slammed into the wall, dented it, and bounced off and up and cracked the ceiling. “Yep, you are a ghost, alright,” Vegatillius said as the hammer fell back down behind him and also damaged the floor.

  “I am,” Nathan agreed. “But I’d like-”

  At just that moment, they were interrupted as the phone on Dr. Vegatillius’ desk started to ring. Vegatillius picked it up.

  “Hello?” he asked, then handed it to Nathan. “It’s for you,” he explained.

  Nathan carefully picked up the phone in his ethereal hand.

  “This is Nathan,” he said cheerily, then his expression darkened. “No, I don’t want a dog riding an elephant. Stop calling me!”

  He tried to slam the phone down but failed because it passed through his hand and ultimately the receiver ended up dangling uselessly over the side of the desk. Vegatillius gingerly picked up the device and put it back. The doctor peered at Nathan.

  “Hm, you do seem to be experiencing a little bit of intangibility, but that’s perfectly normal in cases like this one. We should step into the neurobiology laboratory and take a look at you there - or hey, what the heck, why not conduct the exam here? The chlorine leak isn’t that bad.”

  “Chlorine leak?” Brian repeated, and stared nervously at the floor.

  “Yes, the one I just created when I slammed the hammer into the wall. Forget I said anything. We’ll be done long before it kills us.” Vegatillius reached into his desk and produced one of those tiny flashlights that doctors shine in your eyes so they can prove how much power they have by forcing you to sit still while they do so. He turned it on, shone it into Nathan’s eyes, and hummed. This wasn’t a quizzical sort of hum, but rather the humming sound that Vegatillius made constantly whenever he was performing any kind of procedure. The humming was very important for more highly technical and scientific reasons. After a while, he directed Nathan onto a scale, then failed to fasten a blood pressure strap around Nathan’s arm, then stuck an otoscope in Nathan’
s ears and up his nose. After doing all this he noted down a few key statistics.

  “Your height is unchanged, but your blood pressure is zero over zero and your weight is zero pounds or kilograms or whatever that scale is set to. The good news is that it doesn’t matter when it’s zero. Either way, it’s a very dramatic weight loss. How long have you suspected that you’ve been a ghost?”

  “I guess I became a ghost shortly after I was murdered this morning,” Nathan answered cheerily.

  “And have you had any other symptoms other than intangibility?”

  “I was invisible until the economists fixed me.”

  “So you’ve already been to see the economist. Good, good. That’s a necessary step in cases like these. So, other symptoms include... invisibility...” Dr. Vegatillius wrote it down on Nathan’s chart. “Any other symptoms? Nausea, dizziness, general malaise?”

  “No.”

  “Sense of distance, detachment from the world of the living, urge to haunt structures?”

  “No.”

  “Any sore throat, sneezing, fever, rash? Coughing up blood or ectoplasm?”

  Nathan shook his head.

  “Have you noticed any change in your voice? Maybe a shift of several octaves to make it spookier?”

  Again, Nathan shook his head.

  “Was there any change in your desire for revenge? Maybe you decided that you needed to get back at some particular person in order for your soul to rest.”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any desire to put on a white sheet, cut out the eyes, and float around jumping out at people?”