Peericks stood in the doorway smiling genially. A lesser physician might have been expected to round on the intruder and bark clichéd questions along the lines of “What are you doing here?” or “How did you get into my office?” Peericks was not a lesser physician. He had been at the helm of Detroit Mercy Hospice for some four hundred odd years — emphasis on the odd — and had therefore grown accustomed to the detours from normality that make the care of delusional patients such a rich and varied career. He no longer rattled easily. He had become immune to weird, and approached his patients’ jaunts away from the beaten path with a sense of curiosity and clinical detachment. In this particular instance he was aided by the fact that this was the fourteenth time that Rhinnick had burgled the office this year. While this was the first intrusion since the installation of new, state-of-the-art magnetic locks, Peericks still wasn’t surprised. Rhinnick’s own patient records indicated a resourceful and remarkably agile mind with a tendency to look upon locked doors as invitations.
“To what do I owe the pleasure this time?” asked Peericks, navigating carefully through the scattered papers, stepping around the desk and helping Rhinnick to his feet. He stepped back politely once both Rhinnick and the chair had been returned to position one.
“Ah,” said Rhinnick, brushing himself off. “Popped by for a spot of light reading, what? Specifically, the file marked Brown, Ian. An interesting read, though I do think you’ve rather missed the boat on this Penelope person,” he continued, gathering up some of the papers from Ian’s file. “For one thing,” he said, “Penelope is not the idealized archetype of womanhood. I’ve met the idealized archetype of womanhood, and she is a resident of Detroit. Goes by the name of Tonto. No doubt you’ve seen her image in magazines and attributed her appearance to airbrushing or trick photography. Perfectly understandable. But rest assured, good doctor, that this Tonto is as real as the throbbing pimple on your chin — you’d think a physician could prescribe himself an ointment for that, by the way,” he added, grimacing.
“Secondly,” Rhinnick continued, “if an ideal popsie such as Tonto can exist here in Detroit, no doubt some lesser model named Penelope might exist in the beforelife, though I agree that her association with Ian boggles the mind. It could be the fact that he’s a policeman. Women are mad for coppers, you know,” he added, nodding sagely.
Dr. Peericks leaned back against a bookshelf and extracted a notebook from his pocket, slipping into the posture known worldwide as “psychotherapist in session.”
“And why did you feel the need to read Ian’s file?” he asked.
“Ah, well there you have me. No need at all, I suppose. It simply struck my fancy. I believed it might be of interest. And it turns out I was correct. These notes, I’m pleased to report, are a goldmine of useful information.”
“How do you mean?” asked Peericks, scribbling something in his notebook.
“To begin with, there’s this business with the mindwipe.”
“Ah,” said Peericks, stepping forward and setting his notebook on a shelf. “I can understand if that came as a bit of a shock. But —”
“A shock? Goodness no,” said Rhinnick, dismissing the idea with a nonchalant wave of Ian’s folder. “I’ve known about this mindwipe bunk for ages. Overheard you discussing it with that Inspector fellow weeks ago — dashed difficult thing to do, I might add, eavesdropping on conversations while spelunking through a duct. What interests me, Dr. Peericks, is the fact that these notes contain proof-positive that the beforelife is real.”
Dr. Peericks gave Rhinnick a look. The look is hard to describe. The best description comes courtesy of the Nukuk-urik people of northern Canada who, lacking a written language of their own, have developed an oral language of such sophistication and subtlety that leading ethno-linguists have suggested that they have as many as two hundred words for “cold” and three hundred words for “snow.” What isn’t widely known is that they have four hundred phrases for “putting one over on ethno-linguists.” More importantly, theirs is the only language with a word that is capable of describing the look that Peericks levelled at Rhinnick. The word is Beetuniswaks’it-yirukstek. It isn’t easily translatable. According to linguist Jessica Till (who lived among the Nukuk-urik people for five years), the nearest translation is “Our seal supply has been decimated so that wealthy white women can wear fur coats in warm weather, but an aged British, vegetarian pop musician has started a protest to stop the hunt.” While most Nukuk-urik scholars claim that this translation fails to capture the subtle contours of brow-furrowing skepticism and disbelief encapsulated by Beetuniswaks’it-yirukstek, it is the best translation available given our present linguistic powers.
Dr. Peericks gave Rhinnick that look now.
“Don’t just stand there looking all Beetuniswaks’it-yirukstek, man” said Rhinnick who, whatever his failings, was a man of wide experience. “Admit your error. Your entries in Brown’s file make it obvious to the meanest intellect that your misguided denials of the beforelife were wrongheaded, and that —”
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Dr. Peericks, who didn’t. “You’re thinking that if Ian was mindwiped, if Ian isn’t really suffering from BD, then perhaps Beforelife Delusion is generally a misdiagnosis. You’re thinking that all princks may have experienced mindwipes, and that the beforelife is real in the sense that the memories that you think you have are drawn from real-world experiences that you’ve had before a wipe. But you must understand that —”
“Goodness no,” said Rhinnick, beaming at Peericks and offering Fenny a linty filbert from his pocket. “All of this mindwipe business is complete and utter twaddle. No man of sober habits could subscribe to it for the merest sliver of a second. I mean to say, mindwipes, forsooth! I’m merely pretending to go along with this mindwipe farce, if farce is what I’m driving at, to guarantee that Tonto tags along with me on my quest. But that is a side issue which need not detain us. What matters, Peericks, is this: these notes make it obvious that you, the world’s leading so-called expert on the Beforelife Delusion, are a dismally incompetent and utterly hackneyed boob. No offence intended of course,” he added, brightly. “I mean to say, you’ve completely misdiagnosed Ian, you’ve gullibly fallen in with this mindwipe rubbish, and yet you — despite your incompetence — have managed to single-handedly convince Detroit’s populace that the beforelife is not real. But how will said populace feel, Dr. Peericks, once it has taken the merest peep at Ian’s files? Weigh the evidence: Item 1: Everard Peericks is Detroit’s chief denier of the beforelife. Item 2: Everard Peericks is a fathead. It follows, as a matter of formal logic, that the beforelife must be real. QED, as the fellow said. Of course yours truly didn’t require these notes to tell me that, my misguided loony-wrangler. The Author imbued me from the start with the unshakeable knowledge that the beforelife exists, if imbued means what I think it does. And He wrote me in this way, I imagine, so that I could unearth proof of the beforelife and expose it to the masses. These notes will aid the cause by —”
“Rhinnick,” said Peericks, smoothing out his lab coat and peering over his glasses, “I know it’s hard for you to accept, but we’ve been over this before: the beforelife is not real. It is a fantasy. A delusion. The same is true of the Author. All that Ian’s file proves is that his own case is unique. In a sense he’s just like you. Your own ego fabularis mimics the symptoms of BD. Ian’s mindwipe is similar. The fact that Ian was briefly misdiagnosed as having Beforelife Delusion says nothing about patients who truly suffer from BD, and nothing at all about the existence of the beforelife. Ian’s memories come from a life here in Detroit — from a time before his mindwipe — not from some mythical life he lived before his manifestation. There’s just no —”
“My dear Peericks,” Rhinnick began, drawing himself up to his full height, “I shall never understand your blind devotion to this mantra that the beforelife isn’t real. Some sort of psychosis, possibly, or
perhaps you biffed your head on a rocky bit of shoreline during your own manifestation. One can’t be sure. But poll the electorate, my good man: I say the beforelife exists, Zeus says the beforelife exists, the Napoleons say the beforelife exists, and we remember it. You do not. And, if you’ll permit me to venture a guess, I assume you can’t remember the beforelife not existing, either. So as it stands, illogical healer, princks have the credible evidence of our memories, while you, my skeptical doubt-monger, have no evidence at all. Princks: 1, fatheaded chumps: -238.”
Rhinnick smiled a triumphant smile and crossed his arms in front of his chest. Fenny grrmphed, which Rhinnick took as endorsement.
It was two o’clock the following morning, after the dust had settled and the rest of the nail-biting events of Chapter 18 were far behind him, when Rhinnick sat in an unfamiliar bed and wrote the following in his journal:39
My arguments in favour of the beforelife were airtight. I mean to say, you can’t disprove that a thing — a thing which Zeus, Ian, Self, and several Napoleons would swear to in any open court — simply by asserting that the thing doesn’t exist. Res ipsa loquitur, I believe the expression is. My own memories, while not so vivid as Ian Brown’s and subject to occasional fluctuation in response to the Author’s revisions, provide all the confirmation one should need. Yet the fathead Peericks seemed unwilling to roll over and accept that he’d been beaten. “Rhinnick,” he ought to have said, shuffling his feet and cooing mildly, “you have bested me. I bow to your unassailable powers of reason.”
Yet did this chump admit defeat? Did he concede his own fatheadedness and agree that, through his own lifelong incompetence he had proved the very thing he’d always denied? He did not. On the contrary, he blathered a bit of meaningless psychiatric lingo ending with something involving the phrase “neural flows.”
“The neural flows, my bum!” I riposted, rather cleverly. “You can’t hide behind mere science to sidestep truth. The beforelife exists, Dr. Peericks. It is real. The Author wrote it.”
Peericks, though ordinarily as long-suffering a chump as you’d care to meet in a brace of Sundays, made an exasperated face that did nothing to aid his ghastly appearance. “Mr. Feynman,” he said, as though hoping to woo me with formality, “what you’ve been putting forward as evidence of the beforelife isn’t evidence. Not really. These . . . these memories, as you call them, they can’t be real. Look at it this way,” he continued, now striding around the room exhibiting mild agitation, “all the princks I’ve interviewed believe that they’ve left their bodies behind in the beforelife. They say that what they have in Detroit is a new body, an immortal body, one that is free of injury or disease. At most, your current body is a replica of the mortal body that you’re supposed to have had in your past life. You’re with me so far?”
“Say on, physician,” I said, indulgently.
“So how do princks account for memory?” babbled Peericks, repeating a tired refrain I’d heard from the matron many times before. “We understand how memory works. I’ve spent centuries studying it. Memory is stored on physical structures in your brain. Structures,” he added, gesturing at one of his vulgar models, “located here, here, and here. If, as you’ve agreed, you’ve left your physical brain — the seat of memory and thought — in the beforelife, where it’s been buried or burned or otherwise destroyed, how is it that your memories, stored on physical structures in that brain, have managed to travel to Detroit?”
He stood there trying to look long-suffering and congenial, but I knew his kindly face belied the heart of a first-rate git.
“Allow me to respond to your irritatingly long-winded question with a question,” I began, setting him up for a bit of logical jiu-jitsu. “Answer me this, Dr. Peericks: how many years has it been since you manifested?”
“Eight hundred and sixty-four,” he said. “Eight hundred and sixty-five next week.”
“Congratulations,” I responded, for the niceties must be observed. “And tell me this, Aged Physician, do you remember your, oh, eight hundred and fiftieth manifestival?”
“Not really, no.”
“Your eight-hundredth, then — quite a milestone, your eight-hundredth.”
“In fact I do,” said the doctor. “Some friends of mine held a party and —”
I waved off the loathsome details of this pill-pusher’s celebrations. “And correct me if I’m wrong,” said I, honing in on the coup-de-grâce, “you science-minded types tell us that every single atom, every microscopic bit of the human body, is replaced every seven or eight years. That by eating, by drinking, through the sloughing off of skin, and by the general bouncing about of teensy particles, all the bits comprising the human body,” I continued, slapping my tummy by way of dramatic demonstration, “are replaced by other bits as time wears on.”
“That’s basically true,” said the incorrigible fathead in a doubtful tone of voice, clearly wary of whatever trap I might be laying before him. “On the whole you’re correct: the atoms making up organic objects, humans included, are replaced by other atoms over time.”
“So no atom,” I continued, looking for all the world like one of those clever sleuths you read about in your better class of pulp novels, “not a single atom that is in your body now was actually present at your eight-hundredth manifestival.”
“Well, no,” he said, looking a bit perplexed, “that’s almost certainly true, but —”
“And how is it that you can remember that manifestival? You weren’t there. That is to say,” I continued, smiling a smile of razor-like reason, “none of the particles of your body — none of the bits that bind together to make the chump I see before me — none of those specific particles were present at a manifestival you purport to recollect. If that is the case, my medically trained ass, then how do you account for your memory? Neither your current, physical body nor your current, feeble brain — as presently constituted — were at the party you describe, yet you remember it. Doesn’t this bespeak something other than your physical body — some fundamental Peericks, some other element of youness undetectable by your science? This, my short-sighted physician, is what comes from the beforelife — the essential you that carries memory and character into the future, whatever happens to your meagre physical whatnots.”
I saw at a glance that I had stymied the good physician. He had that vacant, puzzled, thunderstruck look that people often get once I’ve vanquished them in the cut and thrust of debate. Here was my chance, I surmised. The fathead Peericks, having been stunned into submission by my unmatched feats of logical pugilism, was in no position to stop my quick egress from his detestable lair. He would stand there, utterly smitten and immobilized, while I collected Fenny, packed up various books on mindwipery and clasped Ian’s file to my bosom, following which I could saunter merrily to freedom, pulling such fire alarms as I might pass on my way to the free and open spaces. This, I could foresee, was going to be a stroll in the daisies.
But dash it if the fathead didn’t spring to life once more, raising an admonitory finger and suggesting that I wait a moment while he found something pertinent in one of his neuro-somethingorother texts. This was the absolute limit. I mean to say, all that I asked of this Peericks was that he, having been thwarted in debate, stand there in a bit of . . . a bit of . . . what’s the word, I believe cats come into it somehow . . . yes, a catatonic state, while I got on with fulfilling my legitimate aspirations. But did he stand there in a convenient coma? No! Did he obligingly glaze over with the dim and vacant expression Zeus displays while doing sums? He did not. He turned to a ruddy bookshelf and started rummaging for a text. This man was, as I’ve said before, one of nature’s consummate asses.
Though tides may change and the winds of fate may alter course, as the fellow said, Rhinnick Feynman can adapt and overcome. And so it was that, when the doctor had turned his back with a view to pinpointing some pertinent book, I chanced to espy a heavy-ish looking tome b
earing the title Cranial Trauma perched seductively on a shelf within my reach. This, I gathered, was a sign. The Author was speaking to me. Silently commending the Author on his creditable sense of irony, I snatched up Cranial Trauma, and, with a hearty cry, brought it crashing down upon Peericks’s bean with so much force that it laid him out instanta. Crashed to the floor, I mean to say — wholly unconscious. He was an insentient pusher of pills.
Generously leaving my blunt instrument on the floor beside the smitten Dr. Peericks (in the hope that it might serve as a useful reference while he recovered), I helped myself to such texts on mindwiping as I’d been able to gather earlier, placed Fenny in my pocket, secured Ian’s file in the recesses of my robe, and fled for open country, tipping an imaginary hat to Dr. Peericks. “Let this serve,” I might have said, had anyone been awake to listen, “as a warning to all who’d trifle with those who do the Author’s will!” And thus it was that I biffed off, leaving the hospice behind forever.
Exit stage left, as the fellow wrote, pursued by a bear.
* * *
37This explains the fact that most bill collectors have no offices at all.
38Detroit’s periodic table is a good deal like our own, starting out with the basic elements and moving on to include exotic rarities that have been named after the scientists who discovered them. Because Detroit is somewhat more scientifically advanced than other worlds, its periodic table includes an extra sixteen elements, among them Isaacium, Isaacion, Isaacine, and Isaacogen.
39Rhinnick was well aware, by this point, of Tonto’s claim that writing this journal was not, in fact, a service to the Author. But the Author, Rhinnick reasoned, might actually enjoy writing Rhinnick writing himself. Who was Rhinnick to deprive the Author of this simple pleasure?
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