by Conti, Gene;
“Well, some quarters of the scientific community believe that life came from outer space, and the earth was seeded by aliens bringing DNA or intact organisms, or possibly even fully formed humanoids.”
Matt, our sci-fi guru, was beside himself. “Yeah, ancient aliens, man. That’s the ticket. They came to the earth eons ago and seeded life here,” interjecting, clapping his hands.
Jude was bulking up and ready to re-engage now. Speaking with assurance, as if it was already proven. “Absolutely, a superior race of beings came from some distant galaxy and planted life on earth.”
“Really!?” I responded with a slightly doubtful tone.
I looked down at Maria and gave her one of my winks. She winked back. I believe she knew the tact I was going to take.
Matt was still babbling. “Yeah, real aliens. Cool. I really would like to meet one of my ancestors.”
“Jude, question. Where and how did this superior race of beings originate?”
“Huh?” was Jude’s response.
Meanwhile, Pete leaned over and smacked Matt a few times on the arm to get his attention. “Chill out, Matt, I think the Doc has something up his sleeve.”
“Okay, it seems Philip and Matt, and of course you Jude, are changing course that no evolution was capable of occurring on earth, correct?”
“Yeah,” Jude conceded. I saw he was a bit nervous, as his eyes shifted around the room looking for someone to supply supportive evidence for his position.
“So if there is no evolution, how did this race of superior beings come about?”
Jude was repeatedly wetting his lips, as his mouth was becoming dry, and he was fidgeting with his fingers.
“They were seeded by another even more superior race from some other planet.”
“Even farther out in space, I suspect.” I narrowed my eyebrows with doubt. “And who seeded them?” I asked as I leaned my elbows on the lab table twiddling my thumbs.
“I … uh …”
“Jude, we could play this game ad infinitum.” I stood up placing my outstretched arms on the lab table. “The problem is, you eventually will have to fall back on the evolutionary model as the starting point for one of these distant societies, which supposedly began the seeding process planet to planet. And you and Philip agreed that evolution doesn’t work, right?”
Matt was completely bummed out. He had his head in his hands and seemed to be staring at the top of his desk. “I get it now. The discovery of water on other worlds is just not enough. And I really did want to meet an alien; I really did.” He was shaking his head while still holding it. “There is no life in outer space. There will be no contact. No aliens. No E.T. They don’t exist.” He looked like he was about to cry.
Santi, who actually felt bad for Matt, tried to use himself as a joke to pick up Matt’s spirits. He turned in his seat toward him. “Oye, hombre, I’m an alien; I’ll be your friend.”
Matt, dejected and still looking down at his desk, said, “Santi, I didn’t mean an illegal alien.”
The class broke into uproarious laughter.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
THE ROD
It was premature of me to think that the class had ended on a positive note. I thought I was going to have a few minutes to collect my thoughts before taking the class over to the quadrangle to meet with Fred.
We all heard a loud thud. Jude had not taken the day’s lesson lightly and had slammed his fist down hard onto his desk. I thought I heard a crack. Was it the desk or the bone of his right fifth metacarpal and digit?
“Jude, are you all right?”
He mumbled something incoherent and just ignored me and the class; he turned his gaze out the window, massaging his hand.
I figured it was best to just leave him be.
Then Maggie, the libertine and exhibitionist, started in. I noticed during the class that her left wrist had a professionally done bandage. Maggie was right handed.
She stood up and took out the small rod that I gave her when she entered the class. She had been the recipient of one part of the mousetrap puzzle; the hold down bar that attaches to the clasp that keeps the spring and hammer in place.
She turned to face the class and began to caress the three-inch rod seductively.
“I like poles,” she purred, as she rubbed the tiny object up and down. Then, in an almost imperceivable motion, she quickly thrust out her tongue toward the little shaft. She partially opened her red lips and curled the tip of her tongue behind the back of her upper lip and slowly slid it across her top teeth while moving the little rod up and down between her breasts.
All the guys in the class were bug-eyed, fixated on her. Claudia’s nose was so out of joint and up in the air, she could catch flies in it. Maria squeezed her gold cross so hard that it likely left an imprint in her hand for quite some time. I was dumbfounded, never having had to deal with anything the likes of this while teaching decades ago. I just stared in total disbelief.
Tom, who hadn’t participated at all during the lesson, stood up.
Maggie didn’t see him at first, as she had turned toward the front, facing me.
Tom began to mimic her actions and took his hands palms up, placed them at the sides of his chest moving them up and down, as if to imitate Maggie’s large heaving bosom movements. “Hey Maggie, that would be all well and good, if those things were real,” he chided, laughing at her expense.
Maggie turned to confront him, her green eyes ablaze and her ruby-colored nails extended like claws. She recoiled very slightly into a subtle crouch as though poised to pounce on her prey.
Tom’s eyes grew big with fear. He cowered and took a step back.
Maggie’s lips retracted revealing her pearly white teeth, gritting, almost fang like, while spitting out - “You bastard.” She threw the little rod at him. It missed his head by bare inches and cracked the window. I heard the metal hold down bar tinkle down, lost among Brother Francis’ plants on the window ledge.
“You never had any complaints when we were in bed together— with your twin sister,” she spewed.
Somehow I managed to clear my head sufficiently to coalesce some words into a sentence. Then exerting some baritone authority, I announced, “That will be enough from the both of you! Class dismissed. Maggie, you stay!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
MAGGIE’S CONFESSION
The students exited the room by both the front and rear doors, some glancing back at Maggie, who was seated quietly in her desk at the very front of the room.
As the last student left, I asked him to leave the door open. I walked around from the back of the lab table and propped myself on the left front corner of my wooden desk.
Maggie was still silent, blankly staring at the back of my desk, obviously ignoring me as I was almost directly in her line of sight. The whites of her eyes were becoming slightly red and puffy and starting to glisten. She wanted to cry, but was holding it back.
With her eyes still fixed on my desk, she spoke slowly in a very low, almost inaudible voice. “I’m dying from the inside out.”
“Maggie, why don’t you tell me about the self inflicted cuts.” Delivering my statement in as compassionate a tone as I could, I pointed at her left wrist.
She immediately looked up at me. “Who told you? How did you know?”
“No one, Maggie. I’ve been a physician for years and have seen this kind of thing many times.”
“My whole life has been one big mess,” she confessed as tears started to run down her cheeks.
“When did this all begin?” I asked, again in as amiable a voice as I could effect.
“Trust me, you don’t want to know,” she said, looking back down at my desk in an attempt to avoid a very painful part of her life.
“Try me,” I said, mustering a tone that conveyed I really did want to listen to her.
“Whatever,” she indifferently responded; still looking at the back of my desk, feeling that it won’t make any difference one way or
the other.
“Did you have a pleasant childhood?” I asked, trying to kick-start the conversation.
“Yes,” she looked up at me, responding in a very positive tone to pleasant childhood memories.
“Any favorite times?” I continued, trying to get her to engage.
“Oh I remember very clearly, like it was yesterday, when I was about five or six years old, I had a small bit part in some forgettable Hollywood movie.”
“Really!” I exclaimed, wanting Maggie to give me more info.
“My dad had a catering business, which fed the cast and crew on the sets. He often went on location with them. He also ran a transportation leasing company that supplied trucks and other vehicles for the movies. One period film took place in the early 1900s and they needed one of those open-carriage type Model T cars. You know the ones they needed to crank up in the front and the driver would wear a long coat with the funny hat and goggles?”
“Yes, I’ve seen a few of those types of movies. So your dad furnished the car?”
“Yes, and the scene called for the couple to have their daughter with them in the car. I happened to be on the set that day. My dad would take me with him sometimes. It was exciting to be on a real Hollywood movie set.”
“I wound up playing the daughter in the scene. They dressed me all up in a fancy dress with a big brimmed hat with a giant bow on it. Everyone said I looked like the little girl in Gone with the Wind.”
“That sounded like fun.”
“I still have some of the photos that were taken on the set that day,” her face beamed as she reflected on those happy times.
“But it didn’t last for long.” Maggie’s face suddenly dropped with sorrow.
“My dad and mom were always fighting like cats and dogs. Mom had a very weak personality and my dad had an arrogant and abusive ego. He was very good looking when he was young, and had a roaming eye. He cheated on my mom with a lot of the young up-and-coming starlets.”
“He would come home drunk many times and berate my mom, throwing his male macho conquests right in her face. He didn’t even try to hide his affairs. My mom internalized it all, regressing into her own small world of anti-depression pills. Before my mom became totally withdrawn on her drugs, she took my sister and me to church sporadically. I even attended Sunday school off and on for a few years.”
“What happened to change you?” I asked.
“I felt that the whole religion thing was a phony racquet. Where was God? Wasn’t he supposed to help my mother? She was just getting worse and worse. Then the Sunday school teachers and even the minister couldn’t answer my questions.”
“Such as?” I queried.
“Who did Adam and Eve’s children marry? They can’t marry each other; that’s incest. Why do people have to suffer with diseases, like Ali? How did Noah squeeze millions of species of animals onto the ark? Where do ape-men and dinosaurs fit into the Bible? It doesn’t even mention them.”
“What did your Sunday school teachers and the minister tell you?”
“Nothing! Just trust in Jesus or ask your science teacher at school. What a load of crap. I eventually wound up on psych meds like my mom, including lithium for a while. I always felt like a zombie.” I could hear the frustration and anxiety in her voice.
“Then the California school system, by this time, was teaching gender neutral identity and pushing sex on us, as early as the first grade.”
“Yes, I remember when that started. It’s pretty much spread around the country now. Letting children choose whatever gender they would like to identify with and which bathroom to use.” I shook my head.
“I thought to myself, why identify with only one sex and only have half the fun? By eleven years old I was having sex with both my male and female classmates.” Maggie looked down at the floor, shaking her head, knowing that what she did was wrong.
“Then my mom OD’d on her psych meds and died. At that point, I was about ready to end it all myself. By fourteen or fifteen I was attending Rave parties, getting drunk, doing all kinds of illegal drugs, and having sex with whomever. Nothing mattered to me.” Maggie’s eyes were watering heavily now.
“Would you like a napkin or something? All I have are these rough brown paper towels.”
“I’ll take one. My makeup is a disaster by now, anyway.”
I handed her a couple of the paper towels. Her eyeliner and mascara were a mess.
“How did you manage to do so well in school? I’ve seen your records.”
“I was lucky to get a good brain. My dad was smart and an excellent businessman, although a bit of a wheeler-dealer. I just needed to hear something once from a teacher and I got it. I was bored to death in classes, and half the time I came in with a hangover or strung out on drugs, legal and illegal.”
“And now? Why choose my class?”
“No particular reason, perhaps for kicks. The name and description sounded intriguing to me. But after the first few sessions…” Maggie really started to break down and sob. I waited for her to regain her composure.
Still sniffling and dabbing her eyes, she continued, “For the first time in my life, you made me think that there was something else. Something … maybe, just maybe, beyond ourselves. That we are not just a jumble of chemicals. That we are not just born to live, die, and go to nothingness.”
Maggie continued, “Otherwise, if nothing means anything, then the strong powers that be, the Matrix will dominate and control us, knowing we have no other superior power we can turn to. And I’m not the only one thinking this way in your class. At lunch, some of us have had some real philosophical discussions about what you’re teaching us. The turning point for me was when Santi broke down about his sisters. At that point, I decided to literally absorb everything you are teaching us.”
“What did you do to change?”
“I swore off all the booze, all the drugs, and … and all the sex, at least for the time being.” She looked down again at the floor somewhat embarrassed.
“I’m really, really sorry I lost it today in class; and I take full responsibility for it. It’s just today was rough for me. It was last year that Tom and I—”
“Maggie, you don’t need to explain that to me,” as I cut her off.
She looked up at me somewhat relieved as well as a bit surprised, and still sniffling a bit. “Somehow Doc, I have a feeling that you are going to help us get our heads straight by explaining about diseases, pain, and suffering; Adam and Eve and Noah; cavemen, dinosaurs, and … and life’s purpose and meaning.”
I slightly nodded my head, giving her a faint smile. “I guess you’ll have to stay sober and straight … and celibate for a while longer, until you get all your answers.”
Maggie gave a slight smile and laugh, but the tears and mucus half choked her up in the process.
“Maggie, I’m going to ask you something in all seriousness. Would you be willing to meet with Dr. Dorothy Mercurio? She’s the head of the religious studies department. She is also a qualified Christian psychologist who has helped many students. By the way, NO psychotropic drugs to zombify you!”
Maggie looked thoughtfully at me for only an instant. “Yes, I would,” she stated very definitively. “Doesn’t her husband, Vince, teach Tai Chi?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Some of my friends take Tai Chi with him.”
“That’s nice,” I said perfunctorily. “I’ll let her know that you will be contacting her.”
I looked at my watch. “Wow! Fred should already be there by now,” I announced with an anxious tone.
“Could I still go?” Maggie pleaded.
“Of course, Maggie; I really believe you‘re going to be fine,” smiling at her and giving her a thumbs up.
“Would it be okay with Mrs. Lucci if I gave you a hug?”
“Yeah, she probably would be giving you one herself if she were here.”
Maggie stood up, came over, and gave me a modest hug.
“We
better get hustling over to the quadrangle.” And as we were both leaving the classroom, I looked at Maggie. “Your makeup!” I exclaimed loudly.
She turned in the opposite direction toward the lady’s room. “I better fix my face before I freak everybody out,” she stated while running down the hall.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
MISTER FRED
By the time I reached the north side of the quadrangle, Fred was already in rare form. Most of the students had decided to come, especially Claudia. She was sitting on the grass in front of Fred with her skirt hiked up, showing Fred some leg with conspicuous alluring bedroom eyes. He was ignoring her.
All were there with the exception of Simon/Ali, Jude, and Tom. I was pleasantly surprised that Matt showed up, even after the “sci fi” mental trouncing he had sustained in class. Some were sitting on the grass, a few on benches; others leaned against the large shady trees. Andy and Pete had secured possession of a very massive boulder and were both sitting on the top. Probably it had been excavated during the construction of the Sports Center and placed there by the landscaping committee.
To everyone’s shock and amazement Maggie appeared, and quietly and unpretentiously sat on one of the benches. But something was different about her.
“Fred, go on, don’t let me interrupt you,” I said as I sat down on the bench with him. I gave Claudia a bit of a frown, and she pulled her skirt down, but just a little.
Fred had been talking about irreducible complexity when Matt asked him about mutation and evolution, which caught Fred off guard, but just momentarily.
“Don’t bacteria mutate and evolve when exposed to antibiotics?”
“Good question, young man,” Fred responded.
“It’s Matt, sir.”
Not missing a beat, Fred looked at him. “Okay then, Matt Sir.”
The group laughed loudly.
“I told you he was quick,” I said to the class.
“Guess I must be getting old, Doc. First time I’ve been addressed as sir.”
“But to answer your question, Matt, let’s look at it objectively. What is one bacterium that is wrecking havoc in hospitals?”