by Jw Schnarr
For several years, he thought the answer might lie with telepathy; but in the end that was just specious thinking. Telepathy was still founded in language. It relied on an exchange of concepts and thus was vulnerable to misconception. Telepathy would not have stopped Hitler or averted the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was too much a product of the conscious mind, open to interpretation; to perversion. What was needed, Professor Figwort concluded after a disheartening conversation with Joan of Arc, was something that stripped the brain of its prevaricating layers. Something that probed beyond the cerebral cortex and isolated the intent upon which words and concepts were founded. Something that tapped into the very essence of meaning.
Something that, had he possessed it in his university days, would have allowed young Phileas to connect with Miss Prunella Bonsoir—to speak his mind, as it were—and thereby avert the disastrous course of events that had since overtaken him.
Ah, to live an ordinary life; the humdrum, no conundrum. But Figwort was caught in a halfway state—impotent, verging on omniscient. If only he could solve the puzzle. If only he could spare others the torment of communication gone wrong.
For decades Professor Figwort sought a deliverance, chasing after the dream with all the manic-depressive zest of a cerebral alchemist. He muttered. He scribbled. He purchased an island in the Malay Archipelago and locked himself away, the model exemplar for crazed scientific endeavour.
The answer was there, somewhere inside his mind, and Figwort tore out most of his hair looking for a way in. He burnt the candle at both ends; became waxy in complexion. Even when he heard that Miss Bonsoir had passed away—the virgin queen of molecular sexuality, as serene in eternal sleep as she had been in her college days—still, Figwort merely pursed his lips and stared out at the rainforest beyond. Such was the way of things. Life. Death. Words without meaning, feeding off each other; malleable; ever-shifting, like the slippery vowels of ‘Ouroboros’.
Professor Figwort haunted himself in solitude, pacing the corridors of a troubled mind and occasionally popping back through history to see what Aquila had eaten for lunch that day. Outside, the sky grumbled and rain fell steadily. The orangutans held leafy branches over their heads—all except Oswald, who long since had purloined Figwort’s umbrella. Time moved on. Before he knew it, Phileas Figwort had spent half a lifetime consumed by his second great obsession.
Then came the breakthrough.
Twilight had fallen and Professor Figwort was contemplating a lone sprig of broccoli. He stared at it with the dull gaze of a man serving penance. He regarded it with solemn distaste. Observe, he told himself. A vegetable suspended in time and impaled here upon my fork. Its colour is ambiguous, just shades of green, but its taste is unmistakable. He closed his mouth around the broccoli and chewed with sour appreciation. A mistake to taste, perhaps, but unmistakable in taste. Yes.
Suddenly, Figwort’s eyes bulged and he spat the offending mouthful onto his plate. “Of course!”—he thumped the table— “It’s all about taste.” Then, eyeing the half-chewed broccoli: “Or lack of taste. Whatever. Thoughts are like food; food for thought, ha-ha! You can only tell so much from their look, shape, colour…Yes, yes…But if I can link the formation and vocalisation of an idea to its taste—to the essence of its meaning. Yes, it should be possible. All I need is to pin down the brain somehow. To isolate and impale each thought at the point of conception. After that, it’s just a matter of psycho-gustation.”
Thus was revealed the second of Professor Figwort’s great discoveries: that communication, through taste, may be filtered to the point of absolute purity.
Imagination having taken hold, Figwort worked like a Once-ler. In no time at all he had constructed three prototype devices—each capable of making thoughts tasty and then of tasting them. Tomorrow, he would test these taste helmets, and soon he would make his third great discovery, thereby ending the tragic tale of Phileas Figwort.
Merci, Miss Bonsoir. Figwort opened the window and went to bed. Thank you and goodnight.
The conclusion would be swift.
A new day dawned over Fort Figwort, as was common practice, the dawn rays travelling some 150 million kilometres from a fixed point before breaking with uncanny precision through the uppermost leaves of the glistening rainforest. The orangutans stirred in their treetop nests. Time passed slowly and, heard only by those who cared to listen, the universe spoke.
“Early one morning,” sang Professor Figwort—who was one of the many people not listening— “…just as the sun was dawning, I heard a maiden think in the valley below: ‘I can’t deceive thee. You must believe me. Phileas Figwort has caught my thoughts so.’”
Oswald had by this time snuck into the bathroom and was grooming herself with the professor’s hairdryer. Figwort lured her away with a bowl of cornflakes.
“Here we go,” he said, pulling the skullcap over her sparse pate. “Bon appétit.”
Oswald stopped chewing and rolled her eyes up, her expression one of refined deliberation. She scratched her head through one of the holes in the skullcap and then turned her attention back to the cornflakes. Professor Figwort chuckled and donned his own skullcap. He looked as if he were about to take a shower.
“It works like this,” Figwort explained, plucking an orange from atop a cannonball mound of oranges on the table. “Now, let’s pretend that you’ve just asked me for a mandarin. In the regular course of events, I would either have to assume that by ‘mandarin’ you really meant ‘orange’—in which case I’d pass you one—or that you actually thought there were mandarins among the oranges and that you specifically wanted one of those—in which case I’d have to say no. But you see, there is ambiguity. I would need to ask for clarification…”—Figwort regarded the orange, lips puckered as if he’d just cleaned out the horn of plenty— “…but not with the thought helmets. Right now, our every utterance is being pinned down at the point of conception, so that what we hear is not just the word itself but the very essence of what lies beneath it. Do you see?” Figwort frowned, a quicksilver shadow of doubt flickering at the periphery of his great vision. “Oswald, can you understand me? This is of the utmost scientific significance. Pay attention, now. I want you to reach out and shake my hand.”
Oswald regarded the professor’s outstretched palm, her jaws spread but her lips pursed. She looked to the left, then the right, and then passed him the salt.
“Very funny,” said Figwort. “Good. But listen carefully, Oswald, and behold—behold the fruit of my labour, ha-ha!—for within this orange lie the seeds of our salvation. Perfect communication. Just think: if you ask me for a mandarin then I know precisely what you mean. I know what you want and even why you want it; whether you intend to eat the orange or just throw it at my head; whether you asked out of politeness, hunger or curiosity—these things are just nuances of thought-flavour, and with the thought helmets we can taste them all. You could even ask me in Javanese, though I don’t speak it and have no desire to. There’s no need. Not anymore. Through use of the Pithwort Thought Helmet there will be no more misunderstanding. Isn’t it extraordinary?”
Oswald pulled back her lips and grinned at him. She picked up the bowl of cornflakes and drained the last of the milk.
“Hmm,” Figwort frowned, tapping at his teeth with one finger like a novice would a piano. “Given your new-found understanding, I find this lazzi act to be in poor taste, Oswald. The least you could do is acknowledge the success of my endeavours.”
Caught in a display of poor etiquette, the orangutan peered out guiltily from behind the raised bowl, head bowed, her chins bunched. Figwort gazed sternly into those dark orbs and suddenly saw reflected there the spark of inspiration.
“Ah-ha!” the Professor ignited, slapping his palm on the table. Oswald dropped the bowl. “It was you. I’m sure of it.”
Blinking wildly, Professor Figwort flapped off to the Flavian Amphitheatre, where indeed he confirmed the clue that had sheltered for so long beneath a le
afy branch of his subconsciousness: several pears were missing from the sleeping Emperor’s fruit platter.
“You can understand me, can’t you?” Figwort demanded as he popped back into absolute time. Oswald looked abashed. “Then I think I should tell you that I left a bowl full of pears on this table exactly one week ago. They disappeared, and I know it was you who took them…”—Figwort gave Oswald a shrewd look— “…but now I’m not sure exactly when you took them. Do you think you might like to travel through time, Oswald? It’s quite easy, once you understand how time works—how the timescape of the mind moves through absolute time cocooned in a bubble of linear time…”
Oswald regarded him with mouth closed and jaw dropped, her eyes searching the room. Then she blinked rapidly and disappeared, returning a few moments later with her mouth full of juicy pear, her beautiful eyes raised innocently to the heavens.
Professor Figwort smiled at her affectionately. “Oswald,” he said, “this is perhaps the single most important scientific discovery ever made. We’re going to change the world.”
Oswald nodded her head sagely and kept chewing. Time would tell.
Professor Figwort made the last of his great discoveries that night, a gun to his head as the universe sang and understanding exploded into his mind. Lightning struck. Life flashed. Figwort frowned indignantly.
“You’re me from the future,” he protested. “But this is most peculiar. I’ve only ever remembered meeting myself retrospectively, after I’ve travelled back and met me. To experience it first-person, before I’ve become the second person. It doesn’t make sense.”
“But I’m not you from the future,” the voice whispered. “I’m a part of you as you stand tonight, in absolute time. I am the product of misgivings that would have made you wise only in hindsight. But now that you wear the Pithwort Thought Helmet…”—Figwort instinctively ducked beneath hand and elbow, shielding his invention— “…you possess perfect clarity of thought. You may give voice to your reservations and heed the dire warnings of your subconscious mind. I am your new-found foresight, Professor; now understand this: I must stop you from making this terrible mistake.”
Figwort extended his middle finger and tapped it staccato against the workbench. “There is no mistake. This is mankind’s salvation. And besides…”—he gestured to encompass the scrawled notes and prototype skullcaps; his life’s work— “…what’s done is done and cannot be undone. I’ve tried it before. You can’t change anything.”
“You cannot alter the past from a vantage point in its relative future, that’s true; but I am not from the future, Professor, and this is not my past. I am you, Phileas—I am you, now—and I give you the perspicacity to make that decision—not later, but now.” Figwort pursed his lips and dropped his jaw. The air warbled once again. “Absolute purity of communication, Professor—it is indeed the most precious of elixirs; but only insofar as it allows you to destroy that very gift. You wear the Pithwort Thought Helmet, Professor, so understand this: you must muddy the waters once more.”
“Hogwash!” Figwort exclaimed. “Unadulterated pig swill. Misunderstandings have plagued the human race since time immemorial. Disagreements become arguments become fights become wars; friends fall out and loved ones turn on each other; but I hold here the solution.”—he scooped up the remaining skullcaps and screwed up his face— “Watch, I’ll prove it to you.”
So saying, Professor Figwort left his second thoughts behind and popped back in time. He reappeared several hours later, muddy and bedraggled and clasping both hands to his carapaced head. “No! No, it can’t be true.”
“But it is,” the voice hissed, swooping like a bat from the belfry above. “The Pithwort Thought Helmet isolates your doubts and pins them down for you to behold. Taste them, Professor, and understand this: language is alive and it is the force that lies behind imagination. To purify is to sterilise. To sterilise is to kill. New thoughts cannot breathe in the vacuum of certainty. Doom, Phileas—with perfect communication comes doom.”
Figwort shook his head slowly. “I suppose with prolonged exposure…But that’s abusing the process. It’s like a drug addiction. There must be other, more viable applications. Miscommunication is the problem—I know it is—so how can perfect understanding not be the solution? Perhaps if use of my device were restricted to high-level talks—to issues of great importance. Yes, yes that would do it. Perfect communication is wasted on mundane matters, that’s all.”
“But who would decide?” the voice whispered, insidious in its appeal to reason.
“I would, of course. Someone with understanding…”—Figwort paused and looked, somewhat wildly, around the silent room— “Fine. I’ll show you.”
The professor vanished once more and returned after a deathly pause, a tear welling in his eye and spilling over, his sadness as pure as anything created in this timeless universe of ours.
“I’m sorry,” Figwort mouthed. His lips moved in synch with the voice of foresight, now redundant. “I’m sorry.”
History will not record that Figwort burnt all his papers that night, or that he cauterised the open wound of time by destroying the thought helmets and flinging their mangled remains into the fiery abyss of Mount Vesuvius. Indeed, when the temporal thunderstorm finally cleared, it transpired that the good professor had left nothing to posterity beyond his early works and a short, hand-written note—an enigmatic postscript to his unwritten tragedy:
Sometimes it’s better not to know.
History will not record it, but Professor Figwort made the last of his great discoveries during the course of that long, long night. Illuminated by phosphorescent strikes and drowning in a torrent of understanding, he leapt with abandon through the intellectual maelstrom, the world sheltering in ignorance (if not bliss) as he opened himself to a knowledge best forgotten.
The end came quickly for Phileas Figwort—or so it could be said, depending on where in time one places the beginning; for, to the last, Figwort remained the product of his own actions, consumed by history and caught up forever in a digestive cycle of obsessions.
Time contraceives and the end came quickly—but not before Professor Figwort made a few lengthy digressions.
Having jumped with no specific destination in mind, Figwort emerged just west of Ancient Babylon and several feet above the earth’s surface (as it was then situated in absolute time). He looked around and honked like an overweight goose as his trousered undercarriage dropped into the Euphrates River.
“Hogwash,” he reiterated, and then clambered up onto the dry muddy banks. “Pig swill.”
It was a sweltering day in Mesopotamia, the sun lording itself overhead while rocky mountains baked off in the distance. A lone goat regarded the professor from the shade of a date palm. History shimmered.
Figwort set out in the direction of the nearby city, still muttering to himself, and soon came to a small dwelling made of mud bricks. Drawn by the sound of crying, he ducked inside, where he found a dark-skinned woman holding a struggling infant to her bare breast. The baby’s face was puckered like a stewed apple. The woman looked harrowed.
“Don’t worry.” Figwort slipped a skullcap onto her head. “The Pithwort Thought Helmet will let you talk with your child. You will understand each other perfectly.” He placed the second skullcap like a lampshade over the baby’s head. “Do you hear? He’s in pain. Trapped wind, I suppose.”
The woman turned away, transferring the little boy to her shoulder and patting him soothingly on the back. With her free hand she pulled at the coarse fabric of her open tunic. “I thought he was hungry,” she murmured, eyes downcast.
Although her speech was foreign, Figwort tasted its essence and found that he understood the woman—not merely the surface meaning of her words but also her underlying embarrassment at having been looked upon in a state of immodesty.
“Goodness me!” Figwort stumbled backwards. “Please excuse me—Ouch!”—he knocked his head on the low doorway— “I didn’t mean
to—Oh dear.”
The woman lifted her eyes and tasted the thoughts that propelled Figwort’s clumsy back-pedalling. Abashment. Self-consciousness. The essence of beetroot. She smiled. “Your words are different, father…”—‘father’ conveying more the sense of ‘strange old man’— “…but your gift is welcome. Thank you.”
“Goo-goo, gar-gar,” the child gurgled.
“Er, yes, of course.” Figwort looked up at the glutted Mesopotamian sun. “I’ll, er, I’ll leave the thought helmets with you and come back in a year’s time.”
“We will look forward to your arrival, venerable traveler…”—or rather, ‘old vagrant’— “…Don’t forget to knock.”
Figwort coughed and popped forward in time. He reappeared a year later atop a startled sheep, from which he promptly fell.
“Is that you, father?”
“Er, yes. I have returned. Um, I’ve just sat on one of your sheep.”
“Then come inside, gentle shepherd…”—Figwort tasted the honorific and blushed— “…Sit down. Rest your feet. Nimrod and I have much to thank you for.”
Life, it seemed, was going well for the woman and her son. They lived in happiness and without argument, their innate love enhanced now by perfect understanding. Nimrod was a model child. His mother was proud. Figwort judged the thought helmets a success.
But when he visited them again five years later, the professor found—and indeed stepped in—unmistakable signs of trouble.
“It’s Nimrod,” the woman sighed, wistful yet full of love. “I told him to look after the sheep and I thought he’d realise I just meant to watch over them. I was going to the Gateway, you see, so I’d taken this off…”—she pressed one finger to the Pithwort Thought Helmet, just above her temple— “And while I was gone he kept thinking about what I’d said, and he started to worry, poor boy, and in the end he brought all the sheep inside and he just kept them shut up here, waiting for me to come back. Six hours!”—she stared around in wonderment— “What a mess.”