You Are Dead. [Sign Here Please]

by Andrew Stanek

  Fulcher sat up very stiffly. “I think you will find that is wholly the fault of the badger in question, and this department is not at all liable for any injury you might have suffered, physical or otherwise.”

  “Oh, but Mr. Fulcher, I was only attacked because I was left waiting in line behind the badger. I understand you circulated a memorandum to have me brought directly to your office if I arrived here again, but Ms. Jeanne failed to do so because of a communication error. I was subsequently attacked by the badger. If your staff had properly executed their duties I would have been fine. Isn’t that negligence on the part of your department?”

  “Damn your eyes,” Fulcher swore.

  Nathan smiled. He felt very clever for once. Indeed, this was all very good reasoning for a man who had just had a stroke.

  Fulcher whipped out a form and filled it out furiously.

  “We will settle the matter of the badger later,” he said angrily. “In the mean time I am sending you back.”

  “Good. When I get back I will find a psychologist to declare me sane and healthy.”

  The director snorted. “No psychologist in the world would declare you sane. The whole field of psychology is built on the concept of finding things wrong with people.”

  With that he signed the form and the world started to fade around Nathan. But Nathan, who felt like he was on something of a roll, decided he wanted the last word.

  “You have never met a Dead Donkey psychologist,” he called into the void.

  And then he was back.

  Chapter 17

  Physics holds that the faster you go, the slower time goes, and that if you go close to the speed of light time goes very slowly, and that you cannot go faster than the speed of light but if you ever do you go back in time.

  This idea was first introduced by Albert Einstein a very high speed ago. He was able to demonstrate that it was true through empirical observation, but his explanations for why exactly it worked the way he said it did tended to involve analogies with people bouncing balls in elevators or staring at moving trains, and were therefore very confusing and/or dangerous.

  While it is pointedly true that time moves slower the faster you go (as any person who has ever been on a jetliner cross-continent can attest), it is not for the reasons Einstein said it was. The real reason time moves slower the faster you go has nothing to do with either balls bouncing in elevators or staring at moving trains and is instead a product of bureaucracy. If you are simply moving, then the cosmic bureaucrats only have to fill out a few hundred easy forms about why you are going to Atlantic City, why you are going in a 1990s Chevy, why you have a corked baseball bat in the trunk, etc, and things run fairly smoothly. However, if you go very fast (say, close to the speed of light), things become much more complicated, because the bureaucrats have to fill out the forms faster, and explain not only why you are going to Atlantic City but also to Reno, New Orleans, Atlantic City again, and ultimately Blackpool in the UK, which has a whole and spectacular new set of forms associated with it. The fact of the matter is that the bureaucrats can only fill in so many forms so quickly, so they generally agree to slow time to give themselves time to process the paperwork. While it still looks like you are going very fast to everyone you left behind when you converted the 1990s Chevy to a near-lightspeed-capable supercraft, you are moving very fast so they can’t see you very well, and the bureaucrats have in fact sped up everything else so they don’t get suspicious and it all averages out to normal.

  It was exactly this sort of trick that Director Fulcher now proposed to play on Nathan. Nathan’s reply had spooked him, and he was afraid that Nathan would in fact be able to find some complete quack of a psychologist to certify him as sane, therefore ruining all of Director Fulcher’s careful efforts and shaming his department. However, the paperwork to slow down time is so immensely complicated and involves so many circuitous forms (such as Form 99493 - Authorization To Temporarily Distract All Physicists and Form 62344 - Instrument To Hide Luminous Ether) that Director Fulcher realized that it would be both faster and easier to simply fill out the forms to declare Nathan insane.

  However, he was still worried about the psychologist, so he decided to play an entirely different sort of trick on Nathan.

  Chapter 18

  Nathan popped back into existence exactly where he had died, quite near the bathtub manufactured by his second grandfather that had recently crushed himself and a mostly innocent if very angry badger. Happily, the badger had not been returned to life with him.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Oh, er, you’re back,” Dr. Vegatillius stuttered. He hurriedly hid the insidious instrument he had been about to use to probe dead Nathan’s brain behind his back. “Brian told me that you might be, but I didn’t really believe him.”

  “What were you doing with that little wire?”

  “Um - nothing. Nothing at all. I mean, I enjoy holding little wires near corpses. It’s my hobby. Coincidentally, do you think you will be needing your old body?”

  “No,” Nathan said.

  “Splendid,” Vegatillius said brightly, and turned back to the body to do some other things that would appear horrific to less scientific minds. He started to make the loud humming noise again.

  “Do you have a psychology department around here?” Nathan asked.

  “Oh yes, just down the hall. Past the karekliology lab.”

  “The what?”

  “The karekliology lab.” Vegatillius gestured energetically.

  Just as there are fields of study in science that the public assumes to be real but are in fact bunk, there are areas of science that the public knows nothing about but are highly legitimate research subjects. Karekliology is the study of chairs. It is one of the most aggressive, profitable, and it must be said comfortable areas of science, and has propelled our understanding of chairs forward enormously in the past few years. Karekliology seeks to answer the big questions about chairs - why do they exist? Who made them? Where are they going?

  Members of the general public tend to derisively answer these questions, “to sit on,” “Ikea,” and “nowhere,” respectively, which is why karekliologists keep to themselves. If your son or daughter ever says they have decided to pursue a liberal sciences degree (which they will endeavor to convince you is the science equivalent of a liberal arts degree), note that this is code. They have entered the noble field of karekliology, and are probably doing splendid work on any number of top secret government karekliology projects, like developing a new and even lazier Boy Recliner, or a comfy chair that can be lounged in in zero-gravity so America’s astronauts are well equipped for space leisure. Do not question or disrupt their efforts. It is vitally important that they be allowed to finish their work as quickly as possible to keep our country ahead of the communists.

  Dr. Vegatillius showed Nathan where the karekliology lab was. Outside, Brian was watching a man being swung around a giant spinning machine in an armchair.

  “You understand that it is very important that the chairs be tested under the most extreme conditions,” Vegatillius said. “All very hush-hush. Let’s not linger.”

  He hurried them on.

  Near the end of the hallway they saw a sign that indicated they had reached the Dead Donkey Milton Prodmany Center Psychology Division. Due to an extreme shortage of space, the psychologists had been placed in the same building as the neurologists, even though neither group could bear the other. Border friction had culminated in the great First Floor War of ’08, in which the neurologists had attempted to annex the psychologists into neurology but had eventually been convinced to withdraw after the psychologists started asking them about their mothers. Thereafter the janitorial department had been sent in as peacekeepers. Two janitors were in fact standing guard in front of the Psychology Division now. They crossed their brooms to prevent Dr. Vegatillius from entering.

  “I’m afraid this is as far as I go,” he called out, “I’ll just go back to the lab and probe-
er, I mean, properly bury your body.”

  “Good idea,” Nathan said. Dr. Vegatillius withdrew rapidly. Nathan and Brian were left to enter the psychology department alone. There was no waiting room or laboratory area in the psychology department that Nathan could see. Instead, all there was in the front room was one of those long couches with the inclined heads that psychologists always seem to have. (This flies in the face of the advice of karekliogists, who insist they should use a different model for optimal effect, but the psychologists have a bulk discount at this point and aren’t willing to get new ones.)

  No sooner had Nathan and Brian entered the room than a man with a little beard and psychologists’ spectacles emerged from the corner, where he had apparently been hiding.

  “Tell me about your parents,” he demanded of Brian.

  Brian stood very still.

  “I hate my parents,” he said stiffly.

  “Indeed! Well, we must admit you at once. Come, come.”

  And the bearded man steered Brian into a back room at great speed.

  Nathan was now left alone in the psychologist’s office. The cereal jingle he had been hearing earlier started to play in his head, though it was now accompanied by Dr. Vegatillius’ buzzing noise for some reason.

  After a few minutes, a dark-haired woman in a heavy suit entered the room. She, like the psychologist from before, was wearing a pair of little glasses and a little false beard.

  “Tell me about your mother,” she demanded of Nathan immediately.

  “I never knew my mother,” Nathan said.

  “Goodness, we must admit you at once.”

  “I was hoping that you could certify me as not insane,” Nathan continued.

  “Of course, of course,” she replied. “Just pop into this straightjacket for me.”

  She held up a straightjacket covered with buckles and things.

  Nathan thought about this for a while.

  “You know, I think I’d rather not,” he said, after due consideration.

  The psychologist whipped out a notepad.

  “Displays... irrational... aversion... to... authority,” she wrote on the notepad.

  “I don’t think that’s quite fair,” Nathan said.

  “Questions... the... judgement... of... experts,” she continued.

  “Anyway,” Nathan pushed on, “I must have a piece of paper saying that I’m not insane or otherwise the bureaucrats who run reality will declare me insane and the next time I die they won’t have to ask for me to sign my 21B - they’ll be able to sign it for me! I’ve died three times today already, you see.”

  “Oh yes, of course,” the woman nodded, without writing anything. “Well, we’ll get you fixed up in no time. Come with me.”

  She led him into a room that was in every respect identical to the one they had just left, except that there was a watercolor picture of an almond on the wall of the new room, and there had not been in the old one.

  “Why is there a picture of an almond in this room?” Nathan asked as the woman directed him onto the couch.

  “Because this is the room for nuts,” the woman said calmly.

  Nathan felt insulted and indignant, but on the other hand it was a very good picture of an almond, so he didn’t get too worked up about it. In fact, it made him feel a little hungry.

  “My name is Dr. April. Please tell me what you see.” She held up a white canvas with a large black ink blot.

  “It’s a large black ink blot,” Nathan said.

  “Correct!” Dr. April said brightly. “You’d be surprised how many people don’t get that right.”

  “Am I sane then?”

  “Not quite yet I’m afraid,” she said apologetically. “We’ve only just started. Let’s do some simple word association. I say a word and then you say the first word that springs to mind. Here’s the first one. Banana.”

  “Banana,” Nathan said immediately.

  “White.”

  “White!” he replied enthusiastically.

  “Star.”

  “Star.” Nathan started to smile. He felt he was rather good at this.

  “Very interesting,” Dr. April scribbled down on her notepad. “Now, when did you first start to worry that you might be insane?”

  “When Director Fulcher said that if I were insane that he would be able to sign a form without my consent.”

  “And why did he think you might be insane?”

  “He found out about my brain damage. I have a lesion, you see. You must ask Dr. Vegatillius about it. He has the results of my PET scan. I had a stroke, got mauled by a badger, then was crushed by a bathtub during the scan though. Still, it must be worth a look.”

  A rather pained expression crossed Dr. April’s face.

  “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Cooperation between the neurology and psychology departments hasn’t been very good recently.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear about it.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It will all be over soon. In fact, it’s only a matter of time before we expel the janitors from the buffer zone and then march upon the neurobiologists and take revenge for the humiliation they inflicted on us during the War, and the corridors will run atrocious crimson and stink of their fetid blood.”

  “Well, good luck with that,” Nathan said brightly.

  “Thank you,” Dr. April said equally brightly, adjusting her fake beard as she spoke. “Now, are you married or unmarried?”

  “Unmarried.”

  “I noticed you came in here with another rather attractive young man. Do you think you could be compelled to seek out male company because of your latent homosexuality?”

  “Oh no, I don’t think so,” Nathan answered conversationally. “I wish Brian would go away, you see. He’s following me without my consent. He was sent by the bureaucrats to monitor me.”

  “Are you sure? Have you kept the company of any other unmarried young men recently?”

  “I was mauled to death by an unmarried badger,” Nathan recalled.

  Dr. April scrawled something down on her notepad.

  “Were you made to feel guilty about things as a child?”

  “Not at all. In fact, I hardly did anything out of the ordinary. My father used to worry that I wasn’t committing arsons like the other boys.”

  There was more scrawling.

  “And how would you describe your relationship with your father?”

  “I think he and I got along very well until he died choking on that candy.”

  “Did that make you feel angry? Scared?”

  “I was very sad. I wasn’t angry, and as I was trying to say earlier, because of my condition I don’t feel fear of death. I suppose that normal people must be very scared of candy. I guess they must just think to themselves, ‘why I could choke on a tiny piece of candy any time and that would be the end of me.’”

  “But you aren’t scared of candy?”

  “I’m not scared of death at all because of my lesion. Also, I’ve died three times now and it wasn’t so bad. There was a lot of paperwork involved, though.”

  “So you’re not scared of death?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think about killing yourself?”

  “No. I don’t really like Director Fulcher so I don’t want to see him very often. Besides, I’ve already seen him three times today. Why do you ask? Do you think about killing yourself sometimes?”

  Dr. April paused in her scribblings.

  “Oh, all the time but only so I can be with my husband and brother and beloved pet dog Rover.’

  “I’m sorry. Did they die?”

  “Oh no. They’re all at home. I just work long hours. But let’s talk about you, not me.”

  “If you like,” Nathan said pleasantly. “I do wish we could hurry it up a bit though. I suppose Director Fulcher could finish having me declared insane at any moment.”

  “Don’t worry. We’re almost done. Do you hear voices?�
��

  “Lots of voices.”

  “Whose voices do you hear?”

  “Yours, for example.”

  “I see. And do you ever feel that other people are watching you?”

  “I suspect that lots of people are watching me all the time,” Nathan said.

  “And why is that?”

  “I don’t know, but they somehow manage to not bump into me when I walk through crowds of them, so I think they must be looking at me.”

  “And do you feel safe in your own home?”

  “Oh yes. Mr. Fletcher kills nearly everyone who comes onto the street who might be dangerous, although a serial killer did break into my home twice today. He was such a nice serial killer though. I hardly think we can count him.”

  “Do you think people are out to get you?”

  “I know they are. I’ve spoken to them.”

  “Have you been sleeping well recently?”

  “Yes, except that Mr. Fletcher keeps waking me up. He has a shotgun.”

  “Are you sick? Do you feel well?”

  “I just had a stroke a few minutes ago. Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “No, no, just a routine question. Coincidentally, who is your healthcare provider?”

  “I’m afraid I live on a disability pension related to my brain damage.”

  “Oh dear, well then that’s about all we have time for,” Dr. April said, quickly closing up her notebook. “I’ll have to ask you to agree to let me publish an article about all of this to make it worth my while.”

  “Am I insane?” Nathan asked.

  “You have an Oedipus complex and Asperger’s syndrome; you are a latent homosexual, a paranoid schizophrenic, violently psychotic, and a hypochondriac. But other than that, yes, I’m happy to say you are completely sane.”

  “Hooray,” Nathan said happily. “Could you give me something to show to Mr. Fulcher so he can’t declare me insane?”

  “Yes, of course, I’ll have it prepared straight away. Just go out and wait in the lobby and I’ll send my nurse to bring it to you.”

  “What about all those other things you said I had?”