You Are Dead.

by Andrew Stanek

  However, Brian never knew or saw any of this, and was much happier for it.

  After another block, where the only peculiarity that Brian saw was an advertisement for a Weight Loss Fork (now including a free Weight Loss Spoon with every purchase; safely destroys your soup before you can drink it), Nathan pulled up to the side of the road and parked. He got out and went up to the nearest of the nearby parking meters and pressed a button on it. It ejected eight quarters, which Nathan took from the coin return, and flashed the message “thank you for parking here!” on its electronic screen. Brian stared at it.

  As they walked down the street towards (Brian assumed) the university, an impeccably dressed man rounded the corner in front of them. He rapidly walked up to them and held out some pamphlets for them to take.

  “Hello,” he said brightly. “I’d like to talk to you about atheism.”

  “Not today, thanks,” Nathan said.

  “There is no God and life is a series of meaningless tragedies,” the atheist replied cheerily.

  The man went away but had somehow managed to push a pamphlet into Brian’s hands. It read, “Church of Particularly Cynical Atheism, Services Friday, Saturday, Sunday, English, Spanish, Urdu...”

  Brian shoved it into his pocket.

  “They have been having a turf war with the Church of Atheist Absolutists,” Nathan said matter-of-factly.

  “You have two atheist churches in the city?”

  “No. We have one atheist church. The members of the Church of Atheist Absolutists do not believe the church exists.”

  “Ahh...”

  They continued down the street. Looking up, Brian could see a very tall, stately building in the distance that was much more eye-pleasing than the rest of the vomit-colored monstrosities around him. It seemed to be getting closer.

  “Is that where we’re going?”

  “Yes. That’s the university’s spire. It’s the tallest building in the city.”

  “How tall is it?”

  “Oh, twice as tall as something and more than half as tall as something else.”

  “Very impressive.”

  The university’s gate was only a block or so distant now. As they approached it, they passed a group of masked men with a rather large array of rifles slung over their shoulders and a picture of a slightly blurry dot on the backs of their shirts. Brian was sure he had seen the blurry dot before, but the significance did not come to him. The masked men had a video camera, and they were actively filming the side of the building, where they had lined up a large array of clothes mannequins and one terrified looking young man.

  “Let’s wait for them to finish,” Nathan whispered.

  “Who are they?” Brian hissed back.

  “They’re the PLF - the Pluto Liberation Front.”

  Brian suddenly realized what the little dot on the back of their shirts was.

  One of the men, apparently the leader, was now standing in front of the camera, brandishing his rifle in the air and shouting, “we will execute one hostage an hour until Pluto is restored to its rightful planetary status!”

  All of the men around him gave a huge cry of exultation, and the one man on the side of the building whimpered.

  The camera shut off. The leader turned to Nathan and Brian and winked at them.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “They’re only mannequins.”

  “I told you I’m not a mannequin!” the terrified young man shouted.

  “Oh yes you are,” the leader said, frowning at him. “I’ve been fooled by mannequins before. I’m not making that mistake again.”

  Nathan nudged Brian.

  “We’d better move on.”

  They started to walk away quickly.

  “But that man-”

  “Quickly, before they decide you’re a mannequin too.”

  Chapter 13

  They reached the gates of the university, where a green field and a handful of distant building complexes spread out. Several perfectly normal-looking students with bags slung over their shoulders chatted merrily and walked past them. The cries of the PLF faded into the background as Nathan - who apparently knew exactly where they were going - walked into one of the buildings. Written on the side were the words “The Dead Donkey Milton Prodmany Center For Biological and Biomedical Sciences.”

  Nathan stopped in front of a large list of locations within the building posted in the lobby. He peered at it. Brian, meanwhile, was left examining the bust of an insane-looking man labelled “Milton Prodmany.” Prodmany was grinning broadly but only had two teeth, and what appeared to be an iguana was chewing on his hair.

  “It says here that Neurosciences - that’s where we’ll find my doctor - is right next to Molecular Biology.” Nathan tapped the shoulder of a passing researcher to stop her. “Excuse me - which way is Molecular Biology?”

  The researcher chuckled.

  “That’s a good one,” she said. “Very funny,” and walked away without further explanation.

  It should be explained for readers who might not know that many people assume large tracts of science like evolutionary biology, immunology, climatology, etc., must be fake. In fact, these scientific disciplines are all completely factual, and evolution, vaccines, and climate change respectively are verifiably real and/or efficacious.

  However, there is no such scientific discipline as molecular biology. In much the same way that Jermaine the banker is actually a con artist, molecular biology is in fact a scam for grant money. It is a marvelous scam, a scam in which a man in a white lab coat calling himself a molecular biologist could write a paper riddled with completely nonsensical mumbo-jumbo like “DNAzymes Autocatalyze Genome Replication Through Irregular Hairpin Motifs.’ Then later the men in labcoats would announce that eating too many bananas causes acne or something, and then people would simply throw money at them based on the presumption that it was incredibly important, while the men in lab coats claimed they could predict your acne based on banana intake.

  This is of course totally different from being a psychic. Psychics wear turbans and rarely, if ever, mention proteins.

  People claiming to be molecular biologists are (much like Jermaine) con artists, who are supplying the public’s insane demands for a never-ending list of highly technical reasons that their butts look big and they can’t stop eating cake and whatnot. They spend most of their days playing tetris, and write three or four papers a year - these days mostly produced by computerized random word generators plus random insertions of the words “motif” and “protein”, with the addition of an internal competition to see who can get away with the silliest name for something - then reap huge paychecks. Then they all buy subscriptions to each others’ journals on the university’s dime and go laughing all the way to the bank (Jermaine).

  The only other two scientific fields that are scams are cosmology and deep sea oceanography.

  Cosmology is basically the study of objects that are too far away to see (astronomy being the study of things that are close enough to see). It is therefore by definition impossible for cosmologists to discover anything, because they can’t see them, and if they do see them it instantly becomes astronomy and is no longer their problem. While the cosmologists did try to research the universe for a few decades, after a while they were forced to admit that they didn’t really understand anything and the universe was incredibly huge and terrifying and they couldn’t identify the vast majority of the things in it. Most cosmologists now spend the bulk of their time arguing with astrologers (who are part of the aforementioned turban-wearing class of people) and producing TV documentaries about the universe. This is also why most discoveries in cosmology are now made by a single wheelchair-bound man who has great difficulty looking up unassisted. Thanks to him we now know that the universe started with a bang but it all pretty much went downhill from there.

  Deep sea oceanography is the other scientific discipline that is complete nonsense. It is the study of the ocean and consists, mainly, of sit
ting in unimaginably small submarines at depths that are not quite deep enough to crush them into even smaller tin cans. It is a complete waste of time. The deep ocean is mostly empty, and those parts that are not empty are exclusively filled with things like the previously mentioned and as-yet undiscovered Sinistra hagfish, which are all at the same time ugly, stupid, and totally irrelevant to the proceedings of science. The field of deep sea oceanography was invented by claustrophiliacs (people who enjoy being confined in small spaces, the opposite of claustrophobics) and people who are willing to go to particularly extreme lengths for some peace and quiet.

  Arctic exploration used to be the fourth quasi-scientific discipline that was a total scam, but it is now defunct. Arctic explorers never really wanted to explore the arctic and in fact only ever discovered what they knew before they started: that the arctic is cold, lonely, and desolate. The field began as an attempt to engineer a circumstance in which it is socially acceptable to consume sled dogs. They succeeded, but due to lack of interest and growing public demands to know what happened to all the sled dogs there used to be running around all over the place, the relevant institutions hastily disbanded and happily no longer exist.

  Brian and Nathan didn’t know any of this. They still believed that molecular biology was a real science, and were therefore left baffled when the young woman they had just spoken to started to giggle uncontrollably at a nearby bulletin board. The bulletin board announced that the molecular biology lab had published a new paper “Hoaxer Ilyushin Protein Shishkekabs Malachite Poetry Complex.”

  Nathan calmly stepped over the laughing woman and began to walk down the hallway.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” Brian asked him.

  “Let us say, for the sake of argument, that I do.”

  This answer somehow rattled Brian even more than a no. They were going deeper and deeper into the laboratory complex and the air seemed to be getting colder. The stark concrete walls seemed to be closing in on them, and the distant animal squeaks grew more distinct and louder. A room full of lab rats and researchers came into view. The dumb creatures scurried around, unsuccessfully navigating the maze before them, sniffing the odd bit of cheese at the end of one corridor or another, before occasionally settling down and taking a measurement of the rats’ behavior.

  Brian was quite sure that they were going in the wrong direction. In point of fact, they were going in the right direction, though, and a few minutes later they passed a sign that said, “Molecular Biology Department and Broom Closet,” which told them they were on the right track. It regarded them in silent, judgmental contempt as they passed it.

  “And is there any point in my asking why your doctor works in a laboratory?”

  “I am told that my condition is quite unusual and is worthy of research.”

  “What have they found about your condition?”

  “I think they have discovered that I’m not quite right.”

  “Someone had better get the nobel prize committee on the phone,” Brian said sarcastically.

  They stopped in front of a large room with the words, “Neurobiology,” written across it. Nathan knocked and entered. No sooner had he done so than a large white blur bounded up to Nathan and started shaking his hand.

  This white blur was Nathan’s doctor, a middle-aged research scientist and doctor named Dr. Irving Vegatillius. He was short with dark eyes and was obviously going bald.

  Like all scientists he was wearing a lab coat to display his seriousness. It is a little known trade secret in science, but all scientists except oceanographers, arctic explorers, cosmologists, and molecular biologists wear white lab coats. This is a handy way to tell their disciplines apart from the rest of science, and is in fact how funding authorities differentiate between real scientists and one of the aforementioned four disciplines. Never tell an oceanographer, arctic explorer, cosmologist, or molecular biologist this simple fact or the entire foundation of science will come crashing down and subsequently send the human quest for understanding into considerable disarray. If you ever see a molecular biologist wearing a lab coat, you should alert the authorities immediately and, as an interim measure, spill ink or paint onto their coat to render it less white and claim it was an accident.

  In addition to his lab coat, Dr. Vegatillius was wearing a very silly hat. This hat was of no further significance whatsoever, but owing to its large size, irregular shape, brightly colored pink feathers, and rainbow rim, it did rather undermine the respectability of the lab coat. While I will not bring it up again, note that the impact of the silly hat underpinned the rest of the encounter.

  “Absolutely wonderful to see you again,” Dr. Vegatillius exclaimed, shaking Nathan’s hand like he was panning for gold in his knuckles.

  “Good to see you again too,” Nathan said appreciatively. Dr. Vegatillius still had not let go of his hand, which was now shaking like the head of an epileptic woodpecker. “I have come to see you about my mind. I would like you to certify that I am not insane.”

  “Well, I’m not a miracle worker but I’ll have a crack at it anyway.” Finally the doctor let go of Nathan’s hand, which had turned an unnatural shade of maroon.

  “And what about you?” he asked, turning to Brian. “Are you insane?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like to be?”

  “No.”

  “Well, if you change your mind let me know and I can change your mind.”

  Vegatillius led them into a room with a man swearing at a parrot.

  “This is our language sciences lab,” Vegatillius explained as he led them swiftly past. “We have to share the space with them. Most other animal studies are upstairs. Graduate housing is the floor above that. Nuisance but there you have it.”

  He guided them through a second room filled with microscopes, Petri dishes, chemicals, and up a flight of stairs. This room was very spacious and open. It seemed they were back on the ground floor. Light was streaming in through the windows. It had several large and sophisticated medical-looking machines, with huge shiny white parts and smooth contours and computers and such. Dr. Vegatillius ignored all of these and sat Nathan down in a grubby chair with a desk in front of it. He put three items on the desk. They looked to be a colander, a flashlight, and a hammer.

  “What’s that?” Brian asked, pointing at the colander.

  “That’s an EEG cap. The inside is coated with a variety of high sensitivity electrodes that will allow me to map neural activity and transmit it to the computer system.”

  “Oh. And what’s that?” He indicated the flashlight.

  “That is an extremely powerful and experimental tool called a handheld diffuse optical imaging - or DOI - scanner. It uses the scattering of infrared light and biophotonics to scan the patient’s brain when I press it against his head.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “That’s a hammer, in case the patient gets any funny ideas.”

  Dr. Vegatillius then measured Nathan’s brain with the EEG cap and the DOI scanner while periodically threatening him with the hammer. While this was a hideously technically complicated and sophisticated process, it appeared to the two laymen that Dr. Vegatillius just ran the scanner all over Nathan, then plopped the EEG cap down on his head, all the while making a very loud and obnoxious buzzing noise with his teeth and lips.

  The buzzing noise was absolutely necessary for a myriad of reasons that there isn’t enough time to go into right now.

  When he’d finished making the buzzing noise and pulled off the EEG cap, Dr. Vegatillius began to explain.

  “Now, you asked me to certify that you are not insane. I cannot, strictly speaking, do that. I can take pictures of your brain and certify that your brain lesion will not - by itself - cause you to be insane, but that doesn’t mean you’re not insane. You still could have gone insane normally, like the rest of us.”

  “Really?” Nathan asked. “Darn it. I was really hoping that you could demonstrate I wasn’t insane. I hav
e to avoid filling out some paperwork, you see.”

  “And I sympathize entirely - half of what I do must be avoiding paperwork - but what you really want is a psychologist.”

  This, coincidentally, marked the only time in the history of human civilization that a neurobiologist has ever said, “what you really want is a psychologist,” but the occasion went mostly unnoticed by all but a few media outlets.

  “So you can’t certify me as not insane?”

  “No. You need a psychologist. Unfortunately, my doctorate is in art history, and I can’t help you. Ah, and I’ve got some lovely pictures of your lesion,” Dr. Vegatillius said, showing them on a nearby screen. It was blank.

  “There’s nothing there,” Brian complained.

  “Yes. That is what makes it a lesion.” He paused. “I’d like to get a few functional images of your brain. Would you just sit down in the PET scanner? There we go. Nice and slowly. Don’t make me use the hammer.”

  Nathan sat down in the PET scanner, an apparatus which dwarfed his head.

  “This is a positron emission tomography scanner. Now put out your arm. I’m going to inject you with a fast-acting radiotracer.”

  The doctor pressed his needle into Nathan’s arm and a dark dye shot into Nathan’s bloodstream.

  “That was a contrast dye,” Dr. Vegatillius explained. “It is a radioisotope that emits a form of antimatter called a positron. When these positrons collide with nearby electrons, they annihilate each other with an amount of energy that is greater per unit mass than a nuclear warhead. Then I pick up the little explosions on my radiation scanner.”

  “Really?” Nathan asked.

  “Yes, really?”

  “Really really?”

  “Really.”

  This is not really how positron emission tomography works. In real PET, the radiotracer is administered further in advance and, generally speaking, by a man who knows what he’s doing.