Afterlife Crisis

by Randal Graham

  Norm and Oan, more cut out for planning weddings than involving themselves in anything resembling a mêlée, did the shrewd thing and headed for the back of the room, doing their best to blend in with the furniture.

  The sounds of battle intensified. I remembered a line I’d read about someone or other wading into their quarry like a wolf into the fold, with their cohorts all gleaming in purple and gold. Whether or not these Napoleons came festooned with gleaming cohorts I couldn’t say, but part of me did feel the undeniable urge to bleat.

  “We can’t let zem see Jack,” shouted Nappy, and one could see what she was driving at. Try as we might, it would be hard to convince Napoleons that we ought to be counted as friends and well-wishers when we had one of their number trussed up like a turkey bound for the oven and strapped into an uncomfortable-looking chair.

  Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever been a juggler, but I’ve always wondered what would happen if you came across one in the midst of his or her act and chucked an extra couple of balls into the mix. Your consummate professional jugglers might take this in stride, calling for extra balls and bats and a few chainsaws to make it a challenge. But your amateurs and workaday jugglers might be a different story. I imagine they’d find the senses overwhelmed, and discover, too late, that they’d taken their eyes off one of the critical balls, and it would spin off who knows where, possibly arcing toward some unlucky audience member’s bean and just ruining their day. It was that way with me now, for in the spreading kerfuffle — with Vera and Isaac arguing about Climate Change, and Norm and Oan hiding in distant corners, no doubt planning how the dickens they’d salvage a wedding out of the current hullaballoo, and Nappy shouting encouraging words while standing ready to rain academic textbooks down upon yon invading Napoleons, and Zeus out in the lecture theatre fighting the good fight, I’d temporarily taken my eyes off Jack.

  They now swivelled in his direction. They didn’t like the sight that filled them.

  This Jack had, at various times and diverse places, been bound up by some of Detroit’s most seasoned binders. He’d been straitjacketed by the likes of Matron Bikerack and Dr. Peericks, he’d been well copped by the police on many occasions, and he’d been locked up by the Regent and her lackeys. It’s also possible that he’d been bound up on other occasions in his personal life, as he seemed the type who might go in for that sort of thing. But as gifted as Isaac Newton was at crunching numbers, scanning brains, and keeping syringes out of the hands of fortune tellers, he had no evident talent for designing sturdy restraints for securing loonies into brain-scanning chairs. I now perceived that Jack had weakened the ties that bind, and, straining every muscle fibre at his disposal, was now on the brink of breaking through his bonds.

  This he managed a heartbeat later, bursting every bond that stood between the Napoleonic gumboil and the free, open spaces. And before another atrium or ventricle could give even the merest squeeze, he was free and running straight at Isaac and Vera.

  I did the brave thing, shouting a word or two of warning, having seen what Jack was capable of when he set his mind to work. It was good, I reflected, that we found this chap knifeless on this occasion, he having shown a strong bias toward stabbing anyone who came within arm’s length whenever he was equipped with something pointy.

  He dove upon Isaac and Vera as the two of them carried on struggling for the syringe. A heavy book biffed off his head, and I saw that Nappy was doing her best to give whatever aid she could. The three strugglers — Vera, Isaac, and Jack — went to the ground in a sort of writhing mass of incompetent wrestlers, all three of them seeming to have given physical education a miss during their formative years.

  I won’t say PE was my specialist subject, either, but I thought there must be something I could do to assist matters. I charged toward the writhing mass, hoping somewhere along the way I might find something capable of serving as a weapon or shield. I was still surveying the landscape, and hadn’t taken more than a step or two toward the centre of the action, when Jack managed to extricate himself from the mêlée, rising victorious and holding the syringe.

  “Haha!” he cried.

  “Give that back!” shouted Isaac.

  And in a move we really ought to have seen coming, he gave it back. Business end first. He plunged the syringe straight into Isaac’s shoulder, pressing down on the plunger thingummy for good measure.

  To say that we took this move in stride would be to deceive my public. I mean, without having made this particularly coherent or explicit, Jack had been arguing in less-than-certain terms against the unauthorized use of his neural whatnots in Isaac’s experimentation, Jack perceiving that it violated his right to keep his thingummies to himself. And I won’t claim, as I think I mentioned before, that a competent board of medical ethics auditors would have disagreed. But having staked out this claim, he now freely plunged his neural whatnots into Isaac himself, wantonly pushing his own brain patterns into this proton jiggler’s person.

  Time seemed to freeze for a space.

  Isaac stared in disbelief. Jack stared with something resembling mad defiance, and Vera stared into the distance, showing every indication of being off in another one of her television-induced trances.

  When time finally spat on its hands and started to function once more, Isaac gripped his arm and cursed Jack with word and gesture, chief among his complaints being that his experiment was delayed, that he’d have to produce another vial of serum, and that non-scientists have no business messing with things beyond their ken.

  Nappy smote Jack with another one of her books, still striving to keep the rest of us unperforated.

  As if they sensed that the best thing they could do was add to the chaos, Norm and Oan chose this moment to come bounding out of the corner in which they’d nestled, adding their pair of voices to the rising chorus of commotion.

  “What shall we do?” cried Oan.

  “The experiment!” cried Norm.

  “My wedding!” cried Oan.

  Jack didn’t seem unduly concerned with experiments or weddings, his entire attention being fixated, if that’s the word, on the sharp object in his hand and the plethora of potential victims who, as yet, remained unpricked. With a cry that seemed to fall somewhere between “ayeee” and “aaaargh!” he leapt straight at me, waving the syringe in a way that telegraphed his intentions to all and sundry.

  I was aware of a “boom” or “crash” somewhere at my immediate rear and a rush of wind as about four hundred pounds of chiselled muscle sped past me. I ID’d this sizeable speedster at a glance. It was Zeus! I won’t go into the psychology of the thing, but I imagine that his keen terrier senses, now firing on all thrusters, must have informed him that his former master, if you’d care to call me his master, was in trouble, and that now was the time for all good dogs to come to the aid of the pack.

  “Sic him, Zeus!” I cried, infusing every word with feeling.

  And sic him he did. Once again those lines about the wolf in the fold came forcibly to the forefront of the mind, with the part of the fold being played on this occasion by Jack. Zeus was on him in an instant. The little chap put up a struggle — he aimed his needle Zeusward, and made some threatening noises — but Zeus paid these no mind. He grabbed Jack by the outstretched arm, spun ’round a time or two as if preparing for the Olympic hammer throw, and then, rather than chucking this Jack skyward — a project rendered impractical by the presence of the ceiling — he simply smashed the ravening loony into the floor.

  “Thud!!” about sums it up. With two exclamation points.

  Jack lay on the ground moaning some Napoleonic moans, and after expressing my gratitude in no uncertain terms, I put a question to our saviour.

  “Why aren’t we up to our nostrils in Napoleons?” I asked.

  “Oh, them,” said Zeus. “They ran off. We had a bit of a dust-up when a whack of them came storming out of the portal. Th
ey kept shouting about the Regent, and I said she’d escaped through the other door. One of them bit me on my leg,” he added, producing a thigh for inspection. “But after a bit more punching and kicking they ran out the lecture theatre’s main doors, hunting the Regent.”

  “Mon ’ero!” said Nappy, leaping down from the high ground and flinging her arms about the blushing colossus. And I’ll admit that I agreed with her assessment of the chap. I also reflected, at this juncture, that our impulsive act of releasing these Napoleons might have had a distinct impact on the average level of goofiness of the world, but an impact that couldn’t have been avoided. You can’t leave chaps locked up at the Regent’s pleasure in a house of ruddy horrors, no matter how weirdly wired those chaps might be. As I’d heard Zeus say before, you can’t just lock someone up for being different.

  Speaking of this Zeus, his sudden advent, right at the moment when he was needed, raised another important question.

  “Zeus,” I said, with genuine feeling. “Has the time finally come? Have you remembered Rhinnick Feynman? Did the thought of your friend in danger, caught in the crosshairs of a syringe-wielding yahoo, rekindle the old spark of memory, causing neurons to fire and synapses to buzz in hitherto forgotten ways?”

  He swivelled the pumpkin in my direction and furrowed a baffled brow or two.

  “Of course I remember you,” he said. “I’ve been with you all day. You just helped me release all those Napoleons from the dungeon. It wasn’t right, keeping them locked up like that.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Of course.” I topped this off with a pensive “right ho.”

  I’ll tell you why my mood was pensive. It had occurred to me, at long last, that it mightn’t be so dashed important that the big chap before me had lost all memory of our prior times together. I mean to say, he’d kept his essential Zeusness — he was still a kindly behemoth chocked to the gills with loyalty, protectiveness, self-sacrifice, and honour . . . a sort of Yorkshire Terrier in superhero shape — all he was missing were a few old stories about his past adventures. We’d have all the time in the world to make new stories.

  That is, we’d have all the time in the world to make new stories just so long as Vera was wrong in her diagnosis that Isaac’s plan could bring about the end of the world.

  Vera remained on her knees, still staring off into space, once again muttering rhyming couplets about two chairs. An uninitiated observer could be forgiven for believing that the vicissitudes of life had finally gotten to this Vera and that the rush and strain of events had left her a spent force fit only for kneeling on floors and babbling. But I knew better. She was still firmly in the grip of television, and would soon, no doubt, emerge and spout off a few details about future events.

  Future events, however, not being inclined to wait around for soothsayers to announce their arrival, barged in upon us before Vera could snap out of her trance. They arrived in the form of Isaac, once again fiddling with the knobs and switches on his computer, announcing that he’d reinitiated serum production and would have another batch in about two minutes.

  “Friends and colleagues,” said Norm, now standing cheek-by-jowl with Oan beside the Regent’s storage unit. “We are gathered here to send our emissary to the Great Omega, and also to join the Hand of the Intercessor in wedlock to—”

  “W-wait a moment!” I cried, trying to stall the headman’s axe.

  Oan beckoned me to her side, extending a languid hand and blushing deeply.

  “Two chairs!” cried Vera.

  “Why hasn’t Isaac reincarnated?” said Zeus — something none of us had been expecting to hear. But now that we’d heard it, and now that you’ve seen it in print, I think one has to admit that it amounted to an excellent question. It certainly grabbed Norm’s attention, and it distracted Oan as well. It seemed to pull Vera out of the grip of television, and it made me raise a curious eyebrow in Isaac Newton’s direction.

  “My colossal gendarme has a point,” I said, inclining the bean. “Why in Abe’s name are you here? I thought that anyone who was injected with a Napoleon’s brain patterns would shuffle off the immortal coil and shoot off toward the beforelife.”

  Isaac didn’t seem to welcome the inquiry.

  “Why must I be surrounded by such fools,” he cried, raising an exasperated arm toward the ceiling. And then — possibly because these professor chumps can’t help themselves when given a chance to lecture — he offered an explanation.

  “The neural patterns are only part of the equation,” he said, annoyed. “You’re forgetting the basic nature of Detroit. The whole place,” he added, not bothering to hide his disgust at what he was about to say, “is driven by desires and expectations. Not expectations alone, but desire as well. The element of desire is of the essence. If you’re going to cross the veil to the beforelife, you can’t merely believe it’s going to happen. It has to be your heartfelt desire — your most deeply cherished wish. Two minutes to serum production.”

  “As I was saying,” said Norm, “we’ve gathered here not only to send our emissary to the Great Omega—”

  “Come stand by my side, Rhinnick!” said Oan, in that weird tone of voice that sounds like a whisper but is intended to be heard above other chatter. She reached out a hand and made grasping motions at me.

  “. . . but also to join the Hand of the Intercessor in blessed wedlock to Oan . . .”

  “Ninety seconds to serum production.”

  “Zey are in here!” cried a voice from the door, once again delaying the wedding-bomb that kept threatening to detonate in the Feynman life.

  There was no mistaking the source of this distraction. It was a Napoleon — one who’d clearly noticed a marked lack of Regents about the campus and had returned here to try to pick up the scent. Nor was this dogged Napoleon alone, for at this moment he and a handful of bellowing colleagues burst into the room and headed straight for the Regent’s chamber.

  Norm and Oan, rather than doing the sensible thing, seemed too caught up in their fervour to retreat to the cozy corner in which they’d previously hid. They moved out of the line of fire, ensuring that the Regent’s freezing thingummy was between them and the charging Napoleons, but carried on reciting the words that I’d hoped never to hear.

  “As I was saying,” shouted Norm, “we are gathered here, not only to send our emissary to the Great Omega, but also—”

  “Charge!” cried a Napoleon, leading Zeus to throw himself in their path, forming a roughly human-shaped wall of burly flesh between the Regent and this pack of Napoleonic piranha.

  “. . . to join the Hand of the Intercessor in blessed wedlock—”

  The sound of a few Napoleons bouncing off Zeus’s sternum seemed to penetrate Vera’s ear canals and wake her from her trance.

  “What’s going on?” she cried.

  “Quite a lot!” I shouted.

  “. . . to Oan, in the holiest of unions—” cried Norm.

  “Why hasn’t Isaac reincarnated?” shouted Vera.

  “He doesn’t want to!” I cried. “That seems to matter a good deal.”

  “Of course he wants to!” cried Vera. “It’s all he’s ever really wanted!”

  “. . . and their union will be blessed—” shouted Norm.

  “What are you on about?” I cried, shouting at Vera, not Norm, who was pretty dashed clear in what he was on about.

  “Isaac wants to live in a world controlled by scientific laws!” shouted Vera. “It’s all so clear to me now!”

  “Stop biting me!” shouted Zeus.

  “. . . and Oan shall henceforth be known,” shouted Norm, above the din, “as She Who is the Spouse of He who is the Hand of He—”

  “OH, DASH IT ALL!” I cried at the top of my lungs. And such was the force of my conviction that the chaos that surrounded me suddenly froze in one spot, all eyes turning toward yours truly.

  For
reasons I cannot fathom, I stepped atop a nearby chair and gave tongue to the gathered masses.

  “Stop calling me the Hand of the ruddy Intercessor!” I cried. “That’s not who Rhinnick Feynman is! I’m not a man defined as the piece of another man, or a chap who merely served as the Hand of someone else who interceded on some Omega person’s behalf. I’m Rhinnick Ruddy Feynman, a human being in my own right. I mean to say, the Author may keep changing my biography, and deleting all recollection of my adventures from those who had played roles in them, but I still know who I am. Which is more than I can say for some of you.”

  Seeing that they all appeared transfixed by my spot of soapbox preaching, I carried on.

  “I mean — why not follow Zeus’s example? Here’s a chap whose eggs have been scrambled, whose marbles have been lost, and who’s had his memories forcibly ripped from his bean, and he still knows precisely who he is: strong, loyal, brave, and an all-around good boy, as the expression is. And Vera, another unlucky popsy who had her memories taken, also carried on being the best Vera that she could be. She was the only one with the clarity of vision — if you’ll pardon the expression — to see who Isaac really was.”

  “I can see who Isaac is,” said Zeus, corrugating the brow. “He’s the fellow right over there.”

  “But dash it,” I said, “he’s not a chap who wants to tinker with quantum googaws, peer into the beforelife, and then reorganize those googaws to align with what he sees.”

  “I’m not?” said Isaac with genuine interest.

  “Of course you’re not!” I said. “You’re a chap who wants to live in a world governed by physical laws, like Vera said. Physical laws you can discover by calculation. Not some mirror-like, dreamed-up world that can replicate whatever laws you find in the physical world — but an honest-to-goodness physical world for you to figure out. You don’t want a . . . what’s the word . . . a simulacrum. A world that bends to the will of the ancients, or whomever it is who dreams up what passes for reality in Detroit. You desperately want to be in the beforelife.