Just a Couple of Days

by Tony Vigorito

“I overheard a student talking about a class she was taking. She said there’s probably a single mycelial network beneath the entire Green. One organism. Pretty cool, huh?” Before I could nod, he continued, quickening the tap of his foot. “And you know what else? There are more connections in this mycelial network than there are in a human’s neural network. That means it’s aware.

  “She said she learned that in her class?”

  “Well not the last part. I added that on. But it makes sense, don’t you think?” He hopped in front of me. “You think for one minute this humongous fungus under our feet isn’t observing us right now? Think about it. There must be more than a hundred billion connections underground here. This thing is humming with awareness. You can even feel it if you pay attention.” He closed his eyes and made a show of feeling the ostensible hum of the mushroom. After a moment he popped them wide open in theatrical excitement. “Man,” he gushed. “People don’t even realize they’re being scanned by an extraterrestrial as they amble across the Green.” He nodded his head and looked around the ground. “Yeah, it’s got us all figured out.”

  This last embellishment marked a new direction for Blip’s eccentricities. Heretofore, his delusions had been confined to the surface of the planet. “What’s this now?” I asked.

  “This giant mushroom is an extraterrestrial probe, man. It’s called a von Neumann probe, a self-replicating machine. That’s what the space cadets at NASA and SETI theorize would be the logical first step in space exploration. The way it works is you send a few off into space in different directions, and whenever one of them detects a planet with favorable conditions, it lands and collects materials to build a duplicate of itself. The duplicate then takes off to another planet, and the original stays behind to search for life and collect and transmit data. For efficiency, the probes would have to be small, no bigger than a hockey puck, according to the astrophysicists. With a gizmo like that, they say the entire galaxy could be explored for signs of life in no time, relatively speaking of course.

  “But here’s their mistake: They’re right on with the theory, but they’re wrong about the size. What they missed was right in front of their faces. The best example of a self-replicating machine is life. An advanced civilization, as a molecular biologist like yourself would no doubt agree, would have mastered the appropriate use of biotechnology by the time they engaged in interstellar exploration. So why would they build it out of metal or plastic? And guess what else? Mushroom spores are so small and light they can drift right off the planet. And their shells are so hard they can survive outer space until they meander across another planet. The beautiful part of it is that they’ll only self-replicate—reproduce, that is—if there’s life on the planet. That’s what fungi do. They’re really more like animals in that they live off the energy and nutrients of other life-forms. So, the spores won’t germinate until and unless there’s life on the planet. If there is life on the planet, it germinates and fruits.” He held up his mushroom. “And don’t you think the mushroom cap looks suspiciously like some sort of antenna or transmitting device?”

  I shook my head more in amusement than necessary disagreement, although his reasoning was certainly absurd. “It’s an interesting theory.”

  “It’s very interesting,” Blip nodded gravely, scrutinizing the mushroom in his hand. “But it’s not a theory.”

  I marveled at the internal validity of his figments, and that all of it was inspired by a few stray remarks of some college student. “So do you always eavesdrop on other people’s conversations?”

  “Of course!” He tossed the mushroom aside. “There’s nothing better than walking around catching little snippets of the conversations of others. You wouldn’t believe how many different things are being talked about out there, and all at the same time. Hell, I hope someone else heard what I was saying and spreads the word.” He paused, waiting for an approaching student to draw near. “Little snippets of conversation,” Blip spoke to me as the student passed. Blip broke into a smile so broad the corners of his mouth were patting him on the back. “Little snippets of conversation,” he said to me again as an uptight-looking woman walked by. She put on her headphones.

  “Come on,” I said, growing irritated with my best friend–cum-lunatic. “Let’s see what’s going on over there.” I pointed to the crowd, which had grown to be quite large and raucous.

  Blip eyed the crowd warily. “Yes, let’s do that.” He led the way immediately, as determined as Don Quixote embarking on yet another fool quest. True to form, he stumbled as he strode off the sidewalk onto the grass, then yet again over an exposed root of the tree the squirrel had darted up earlier. The squirrel, sitting on a branch above him fluffing its tail, seemed to laugh at Blip’s lack of grace before leaping and skipping along ever smaller boughs and twigs until it was in the limbs of another tree. There it stopped and turned around, just in time to see me, captivated by this rodent’s gymnastic ability, stumble over the very same root.

  3 “Hearken unto the Lo-ord, all ye fornicating heathens! Jeyzus is coming!” A preacher, wearing a T-shirt with read the bible printed on the front and druid hills baptist church on the back, stood in the middle of the crowd, hollering about hell and gesticulating like an inept stage magician all the while. “Jeyzus hates this copulating campus, all you whoremongers and masturbators!” His ranting canting delivery was constantly interrupted by heckles from the mass of students gathered, but he was nonetheless thoroughly enjoying himself. This was very clear. I had seen him on the Green before, and he seemed to thrive off the ricochets of his damnations and denunciations like any sadist grinning at the blood spattering off his whip.

  “Jesus said, Judge not lest you be judged yourself,”1 a female student bleated, attempting to argue with the preacher.

  “He was not referring to those of us without sin!” the preacher boomed back. “I, Brother Zebediah, am without sin, ladies and gentlemen. I have entered the Kingdom of Heaven, and I am here to tell everyone in this infected flock that you are heading straight for the lake of . . .” He rotated his arm as if playing an air guitar. “Fi-yurrrrr!”

  “All right, Brother Zygote! You tell ’em!” A large male student jeered and cheered. The congregation followed his lead.

  “You’re like a bunch of copulating rabbits! Just spill your seed anywhere you feel like it, governed by your penises!” The crowd burst into laughter. “Worshipping your penises! Letting your penises rule your lives!”

  “You just like to say penis!” the heckler yelled back, much to the amusement of all assembled. “Say hey, where’s the little woman today?”

  “At home, of course,” Brother Zebediah snorted.

  “She pregnant?” someone else called out.

  “Not yet, but the factory’s still open. Sister Sally and I are going to repopulate the Earth with people who think like us.”

  “Seig Heil!” Heckler clicked his heels together and saluted him with an outstretched fist.

  “Sir, you’re being rude!” Brother Zebediah thundered at him. “I’m trying to preach a message!”

  “Sir, you’re going to hell! How’s that for rude?” Heckler responded. Other members of the herd contributed less belligerent protests. “Tell us again about the time you did acid!” Heckler’s voice boomed above the rest.

  “It’s true,” Brother Zebediah admitted. “I lost half my brain to LSD in the sinful sixties. But that just makes things fair, children, otherwise I’d be so far above you kids that we couldn’t communicate! So listen carefully and be not deceived!” Brother Zebediah picked up a bright orange laminated poster board and began to recite what was on it. “Masturbators, Feminists, Adulterers, Whores, Homosexuals, Lesbians, Hippies, Buddha-heads, Evolutionists, Blasphemers, Drunkards, Pro-choicers, Pagans, Potheads, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, Hare Krishnas, and especially Fornicators are going to hell!”2 He hurled the poster of the damned aside and roared in self-congratulatory fury, “Jeyzus is coming! Jeyzus is coming!”

  “Jesus is
coming?” Heckler retorted. “Is that some kind of dirty joke?”

  “Let’s take a little survey.” Brother Zebediah ignored the laughter and began anew. “How many masturbators do we have here?”

  Heckler raised his hand, followed by others. “Wait, does it count if I masturbate by myself?”

  “Masturbators! Be not deceived! You’re going straight to hell!”

  “Do you masturbate?” Heckler called back.

  “No, I do not masturbate, you pervert!” Brother Zebediah pointed at him, flinging righteous lightning from his fingertip. “You sinner! You covet my godliness! You’re jealous ’cause you’re running around jackin’ off! You could lay one of these cheap campus whores every night and still go home and smack your monkey!” Uproarious laughter prevented Heckler from responding immediately, and Brother Zebediah quickly continued. “And how many pot smokers do we have here?”

  Heckler and his buddies cheered enthusiastically.

  “Well I got bad news, children. You fail. Go directly to hell! Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Smoke that pot, you’re gonna rot! Drink that booze, you’re gonna lose! Fornicate, and you’re not gonna see that pearly gate!”

  “But God made marijuana!” one of Heckler’s comrades yelled.

  “God made poison ivy, too, that doesn’t mean you should roll around in it!”

  “Well, what if you eat it?”

  Brother Zebediah furrowed his brow a moment, considering the question, then replied, quite seriously, “Well, you’re still ingesting it, so yes, you qualify for hell.”

  Heckler’s comrade, not terribly swift, crossed his arms and shook his head, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. Brother Zebediah took advantage of his upper hand and immediately resumed his evangelical survey.

  “And how many feminazis do we have here?”

  “What if I like women to dress up like Hitler and crap on me?” Heckler came back strong, and I laughed out loud with everyone else. I glanced at Blip, perhaps to share a smile, but he seemed oblivious of everything but a cup of tea resting near Brother Zebediah’s feet.

  Before the laughter dissipated, a female student, wearing combat boots, lots of leather, and a buzz cut, pushed out from the crowd and sauntered into the middle of the circle. “You think you’re some prophet and we’re the jeering heathens, don’t you? But you’re not; you’re just the village idiot, do you understand that? You don’t know anything about spirituality, brother. You’re not preaching love. What you’re preaching is hate.”

  “‘Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness!’”3 Brother Zebediah quoted his Bible to the woman and the crowd. “Love is the fulfillment of the laws! See what sin, what feminism, will do to you girls?” He pointed at the woman. “It’ll turn you into a whorish butch bull dyke feminazi witch! God’ll pick her up and skip er across the lake of fire like a flat smooth stone!”

  The woman paused a moment, then, to everyone’s astonishment, slugged Brother Zebediah square in the jaw, knocking him flat. Scarcely had the collective “Ooooooooo . . .” escaped the lips of everyone when three large men, apparently plainclothes security guards, tackled the woman. Instantaneously, three of her similarly clad friends jumped into the struggle. The crowd, including Blip and myself, stood dumbfounded. A fourth security guard entered the clearing, eyed the coed wrestling brawl (which was still anybody’s match), and yelled into his radio, “We need backup on the Green!” Then he grabbed ahold of Brother Zebediah, who was dazed and getting up slowly from the ground. “Are you okay, sir?”

  Brother Zebediah nodded, looking slightly stunned, and reached for his cup of tea on the ground.

  “Come with me then,” the guard said. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to place you under arrest.”

  Brother Zebediah nodded, wiped his brow, and took a sip of tea. It was at that moment that Blip cracked, as suddenly and dramatically as an ice cube fracturing in a hot beverage.

  “No!” he screamed, racing toward Brother Zebediah. “It’s poisoned!” He slapped the cup out of the preacher’s hand and into the face of the security guard, who then grabbed Blip seconds before the crowd rushed inward like a collapsing star, and pandemonium was born.

  I was jostled backward, and eventually stumbled out of the melee. I ran to a bench and stood on it to try and find Blip. I needn’t have bothered. A great wind suddenly descended, radiating everyone’s hair out from the center and startling the throngs back into individuality. A stealth helicopter, an inexplicable presence, hovered directly overhead.

  “DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY,” came a disembodied, steely command from the bullhorns mounted underneath. “DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY OR YOU WILL BE GASSED.”

  Everyone more or less dispersed, as much as was possible under the circumstances, and pandemonium became panic. I located Blip, still in the center, struggling against the wind and the grip of a security guard who had him in a bear hug. Shortly thereafter, the helicopter began moving in larger circles around the area, and the wind died down. The other security guards had lost the women they were originally combating, and instead arrested Brother Zebediah and Blip with a vengeance. Blip spotted me and hollered, “Flake! Call my wife!” just before being dragged off with the preacher to a nearby patrol van.

  Brother Zebediah, also struggling against the guards, screamed rabidly at the fleeing students. “I am your spiritual alarm clock! Don’t hit that snooze button! I’m your wake-up call! I hope you all run home and are tortured by nightmares of hell!”

  4 The average ocular distance, that is, the space between a set of human eyes, pupil to pupil, is 6.5 centimeters. Tibor Tynee, the president and CEO of Tynee University (so renamed at his financial insistence), has an ocular distance no greater than 4 centimeters. A lifetime of narrowing his eyes and tightening his lips has left his face decidedly pinched. The expansive facial features of Blip’s wife, Dr. Sophia Carthorse, are precisely the opposite. This was apparent even over the telephone as I called her and relayed the news about Blip. She did not seem surprised, and asked only that I meet her at the police station in an hour. I agreed, allowing that I’d be a little late due to a 1:30 meeting that had been scheduled for me with President Tynee.

  Tibor Tynee is a short man. He has short hair, a short body, and a short temper. Small but powerful, he is a dinky Lilliputian who nevertheless manages to manipulate everyone around him into following his orders. Disrespected by all who are yet humble in his presence (Tiny Tynee, the students, and sometimes the faculty, call him), he is nonetheless comfortable wielding his power. He enforces his will on others and enjoys doing so, rattling sabers like a teenage boy jingling his car keys for all to hear. New rumors emerge and circulate monthly concerning every aspect of his character, from doubtful assertions that he wears a hairpiece to plausible claims that his carnal habits tend toward masochism. In particular, it has been alleged that he has a self-flagellation fetish, and is known to slap himself during intercourse.

  At the risk of further coloring your assessment of him, Tynee is just thrilled with who he thinks he is. What he does not realize, however, is that he is actually a whoopee-cushion windbag, and that everything he says sounds like so much blustering flatulence. Possessed by a gluttonous pride, the voracious cravings of his ego demand the admiration of others for their vile nourishment. Approval is not nearly enough. He has to convince others that he is special, unique, and, most of all, superior. His breathless gasconades not only have to be accepted, but applauded. With such a covetous appetite, it was inevitable that he would become rather fatheaded, and he is, yet his hunger has never slowed. It is as if he nurses a tapeworm at the core of his soul that leaves him in perpetual need of more attention. It is a conceit borne of a Brobdingnagian insecurity, constantly seeping through the ersatz netting of his vanity and launching horrific hernias of introspection that threaten to burst the entire supercilious membrane sustaining his delusional self-concept. He dares not let this happen, for the decre
pit web of his narcissism holds back nothing but a depraved and vainglorious mass of wormrot.

  The effort required to expel such a soul-sucking leech is less than the effort required to maintain its decaying rind. However, this necessitates facing the nauseating prospect of pulling the parasite out of his own being and thus witnessing what truly motivates him. And Tynee’s motivation is disgusting, make no mistake. I do not like him, that should be clear enough, but it is difficult for me to believe that anyone would care for the company of such a gusty, muckety-muck schmuck. There is nothing appealing or attractive about compulsive public masturbation, jerking off in a haughty display of self-gratification. I once made the mistake of paying him an admittedly obsequious compliment and was utterly disgusted when I saw that my congratulation had been perverted into so many sickening strokes of his already engorged ego. His cocksure arrogance increased a degree, bathing his consciousness with self-lust and pushing him one step closer to a climax where all memory of kindness and consideration will vanish, ultimately collapsing him into a solipsistic orgasm of megalomania.

  5 Tibor Tynee moves very fast, a high metabolism fueling his slight frame. He wastes no time whatsoever. In fact, he steals time from those around him. He’s known for starting his meetings fifteen minutes ahead of time, so that someone arriving five minutes early is actually ten minutes late. Owing to the fracas on the Green, I was twenty minutes late in Tynee time. His secretary was just about to call his 2:00 meeting when I arrived at his office. It was 1:35.

  “Flake Fountain!” He announced my presence in his office as if I’d just entered a debutante ball. He stood up in his hot tub, exposing an unwelcome portion of his gaunt and pasty frame to me as he toweled off.

  “Sorry . . .” was all I could manage before a bellow ridiculously out of proportion with his flimsy build cut me off.

  “Save it!” he roared, stepping out of the tub and disappearing behind a partial wall.