by Paul Hawkins
He died a peaceful death and was commemorated and celebrated in that town for centuries, or at least until the inventions of television, atheism, political correctness, and compulsive exercising, which collectively purged many interesting things from many cultures, anyway.
Today there is no reminder of his fame except for a neglected plaque in a small park in the middle of a busy dirty European city. It is in the tiny kind of park that lives between skyscrapers and makes tourists wonder why it is there and makes the local people no longer notice it. But old folks believe that if you sleep next to the plaque for three consecutive nights something that is of grave concern in your life will resolve itself, and your life will once more be in balance, and you will find peace.
No one knows if this is true or not. Only homeless people sleep in the park these days – often for weeks on end. Usually, however, although they are shabby, they seem peaceful enough, and this makes the busy rushing city alpha types furious – all of which serves as a small reminder that maybe television, atheism, political correctness, and compulsive exercising haven’t made them terribly happy after all.
Chapter 12: Nihilism Sucks: Of Human Hope and Larry’s Hail Mary Pass in the Craigslist Personals
Larry’s Craigslist ad read: “Biodegradable, under-insured, single-for-a-reason male seeks sexy silicone-enhanced doweress for marriage and possible romance. No pre-nups. Please reply with your measurements and a copy of your latest bank account statement. Let's both get lucky! Must not be overly concerned about masculine ‘size.’ Serious replies only, please.”
In the far-flung future some under-fed graduate student named Phil used Larry’s ad to help destroy the notion that post-Modern society had been thoroughly forlorn. He wove a tapestry out of personal ads, movie plots, and self-help books to show that people had been hopeful, even optimistic, though in non-traditional ways.
His thesis committee gave him grief but had to pass him. They were too tired and stoned to resist. Phil went on to become a big shot in academic circles where people wrote and read papers to each other – which is to say, had no influence on society at all. But Phil was right, damn it. People always found a way to make life fun, at least in brief moments, even when the world sucked.
Larry’s descendants would have congratulated him if he had had any. His roommate Dave had poached the Craigslist ad’s replies and gone on to live a life of luxury.
Chapter 13: The Bad Astronauts
Once the spaceship's inhabitants realized they could never return to Earth because of the risk of the virus they had been exposed to, they took a vote on how to live out the remainder of their days given their limited supplies. The "party hearty/go in style" group won out and so that night they had one heck of a crazy bacchanalia, leaving the prudent astronauts to sulk in the corner. One by one, as the members of the "party hearty" constituency passed out, the prudent ones ejected them into deep space. This enabled them to make the supplies last longer and increased their predicted lifespan by six miserable months. The real trick had been to kill and eat the alien telepath before it could find out.
Bonus Question - Ethical Puzzler (For Continuing Education Credit):
Which group was really the bad astronauts? Debate amongst yourselves. There is no right answer, but I like to think that one group sucked significantly more than the other, though they both pretty much sucked.
At least the virus did not get to Earth. We can all assume that would have been really bad, right? Let’s just agree to that and take it off the table. It was a really nasty virus, twice as bad as the worst cold you’ve ever had, and since it was from space, who knows? – you just can’t take chances.
Chapter 14: Pied Piper 3000
Maybe people would have stood more of chance against Pied Piper 3000 if they had remembered what “pied” meant. Well, “meaned” – by the year 3000 it was “meaned,” not “meant.” But no one did – remember, that is. A government board had decided that the word “pied” was offensive, or could be under certain circumstances they were only allowed to imagine from the periphery but not to ponder directly much less discuss out loud, because that could be offensive, and therefore they had scrubbed the word from the dictionaries and replaced it with “special.” Like so many government workers they were lazy asses and you would be astonished (or not) to learn how many rather quaint but unfamiliar words got replaced by them with the word “special.”
Anyways, it meant (“meaned”) ‘consisting of two or more colors in blotches,’ or ‘two-colored.’ In any case if people had known to look out for a blotchy two-colored guy with a ray gun, they would have had more of a chance. But since they were told to be on the lookout for a “special” guy with a ray gun they overlooked him until it was too late. Pity, too, since he really stood out amongst all the regular folks. But instead of being alarmed folks just thought, “Hey, that crazy jittery-eyed nut job sure is special – but hell, we’re all special.”
He vaporized them in seconds. Come to think of it, even though he was the Pied Piper, time-tossed to the unsuspecting future, he didn’t even have a pipe. Maybe that ray gun was his pipe. In any case “pipe” had become a forbidden word due to its potentially unsavory connotations and been replaced with the much less offensive “substantially proportioned penis.” That threw them off too – no one bothered to check if he had one.
Let’s face it, he was a nut-job in the Middle Ages when he led the villagers’ kids away into the mountains and he’s a nut job now. He’s still pied, though, and I think it would have been good just to call him out for what he was. But next time we’ll know. Next time we’ll be ready to take his pied ass out.
Chapter 15: The New Atlantis
"Together," he had announced proudly, "we shall rule a new Atlantis!"
A few hours later, however, a dripping wet Ray found himself sneaking to the bait shop from the back way so he would not be seen and forced to admit that he had not figured out how to breath underwater after all. Under the influence of a twelve-pack it had seemed obvious that you could breathe underwater by sticking a fish's head in your mouth and then sucking in water past its gills. Then again, it had seemed obvious that spending his unemployment check on beer instead of rent each month was a good idea, too. Hence his desire to find a way to live rent-free beneath the lake.
Of course it was the "together" part of his proclamation that ended up making headlines because his friend had been even stupider than he was and had not made it back to shore. The district attorney, though pressured to “take action” by the morbidly fascinated public, was at a loss for how to prosecute "death by trying to breathe through a fish." Finally he just said "There's no law against stupid." Later on, however, California did indeed pass a law against stupid but exempted government employees.
Still, Ray decided to think of that mudhole lake as "The New Atlantis" in honor of his friend, and to this day he claims to see the phantom of his lost companion late at night, glowing wispy green above the surface of the lake, holding a fish in one hand and a trident in the other – which is to say, Ray has given up fish breathing but not huffing paint.
Afterward he often wondered what had happened to the twenty bucks he had lost to his friend after betting who could hold their breath the longest. Perhaps it was still in the lake someplace. The thought made him kind of dreamy and sentimental, like he had attempted something more heroic than he’d realized and the lake had taken retribution on him. He sure could use that twenty.
Chapter 16: The Wishing Bird
So when the family got too big for the apartment and Janet and Doug were sick of city life anyway they bought a house out in the country - well, in the suburbs anyway. It meant a longer commute, but they did it for the kids. They needed elbow room and better schools.
It was kind of grand having made the move. Doug hadn’t realized how much he’d like the suburbs until he was there. When he was younger he’d like to think of himself as hip and urban, but dang it was nice to have some space. There was
even nature out here. The house had a big back window and so they hung a bird feeder and sure enough every morning there was a delightful little show of birds fluttering, crowding, and feeding at the little redwood feeder. Their young kids loved admiring them with their parents, and all of this put Doug in an expansive mood. He felt kind of like a king, and there was one bright blue bird in particular that came to the feeder every day and so he told the kids, “See that bird? That’s a Wishing Bird. It’s magic and rare. They say that anyone who catches one can get a wish.”
“A wish?”
“Yep - a magic wish!” The kids’ eyes got big. He chuckled to himself - the world is full of so much wonder for the little ones.
The next day when he came home from work the kids had the blue bird trapped in a shoebox.
“What the hell?” Doug said. He could hear it pecking and clawing frantically inside.
“A bike! A pony!” the kids yelled at it. “A blue pony! A computer game!”
Doug snatched the box from their hands and flung open the back door and tossed the bird out into the air. It flew frantically and haphazardly away. It never returned.
“Good God, kids..!”
“But you told us..”
“Forget what I told you! Nature’s just a bunch of temporary molecular aggregations. Sense perceptions are lies. We’re all just random clouds of electro-magnetism that boil up for no good reason and spin apart soon enough. We live we eat we shit we die - now go to bed!”
The kids went off whimpering. Doug realized immediately he had gone too far. But damn - that poor bird trapped in a box! He didn’t even want to imagine how they’d managed it.
He felt awful for what he’d said, and he tried to tell himself that they were young and hadn’t understood the half of it. Still, all his rationalizing to himself was not enough, so later that night he invented the bike tree. If you’re good to birds they leave you presents in the tree each Spring, see? Basically he hung a bike for each kid from the tree with rope. Other years it was video games. The kids bought into it and left the birds alone. The present tree became an Easter tradition in their family, at least while the kids were little. After that it was just candy and clean socks and underwear in your Easter basket. Mom had brought that tradition over from her side of the family. Doug knew nothing about it - his family certainly had not done that. But he went along with it. He knew when to pick his battles. Married life and parenting took more energy than he’d thought. He sometimes wished he was a bird.
Chapter 17: Love Poem on a Grain of Rice
Thirteen years ago when they were young and in love and could hardly afford anything, Jack and Janet had been walking in the mall and came upon this kiosk that said “Your message engraved on a grain of rice – a keepsake forever!” Right then and there Jack said,
I want to put a love poem on a grain of rice for you, Janet!”
“But Jack – it’s $19.95 – are you sure we can afford it?”
“To heck with money!” Jack declared. “I want the whole world to know how much I love you!”
And so he went up to the indefinably ethnic man running the kiosk and dictated the poem to his eternal love right then and there:
“Janet you’re the one for me,
I’ve known it since we met,
And now it’s on a grain of rice
So no one can forget!”
It brought her to tears. Jack was so moved by her emotion that he forked over the extra $9.95 to have the grain of rice enshrined in a 10 carat gold(ite) necklace (not guaranteed not to break).
Well the years went by and lucrative professional success came to Jack and Janet both, in medical and legal careers, respectively, and sad to say they grew distant from each other as well. But over the course of one emotional marriage-mending retreat sponsored by their vaguely protestant stadium-sized suburban church, love sparked anew, and each sobbed and fell into the other’s arms and apologized for letting their once strong flame grow cold.
“I – I love you Janet!”
“I love you too, Jack. I’ll never take you for granted again!”
“Me too!”
Then Janet said, “Say Jack, remember all those years ago, when we were young and poor, and you spent everything you had to get a love poem written on a grain of rice for me? I wonder if we still have it?”
Jack demurred. “I’m pretty sure we lost it long ago in moving.”
“No, I think I still have it. Oh, wouldn’t it be fun to look at it again?”
“I’m pretty sure you lost it, hon. I remember you saying so years ago.”
“Nonsense!”
When they got home Janet beat Jack to her jewelry chest and sure enough, there was the cheesy locket with the grain of rice inside.
“Oh, let’s look at it under a magnifying glass!”
“I don’t know… you know how rice erodes.”
“No Jack, I don’t know.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure it does.”
She turned a suddenly suspicious gaze at him. “What are you hiding, Jack?”
“Nothing!”
“Why, this isn’t even the same grain of rice!” She looked at it closely. “This is Minute Rice!” A few minutes later she had removed it from the case and examined it with two magnifying glasses stacked on top of each other.
“Jack…”
“Okay, I got mad at you years ago and flushed the damned thing down the toilet. Then I instantly regretted what I’d done and put that in its place.”
They stood stewing and staring at each other for a long while…
*
You want an ending? Long story short: She was a lawyer; he was a doctor. Guess who won? That ended up being one darned expensive grain of rice.
About the author:
Paul Hawkins is a dad and husband who does technical writing for a living and gardening as a hobby. He also tries to fix old radios. He was born in the space age, lived through the rust age, and now wades his way through this so-called virtual age. He liked the space age better.
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