by Horia Hulea
Chapter 3
Currently Bob sits on his ass in the sand. Better said, he sits on the same perfect beach, with the most perfect sand, with the most perfect blue waves rolling in the distance.
Exactly the same way we found him when we started the story.
But right now Bob is not involved in any staring competition or exploring what the bunny aliens are doing across the alley.
No.
None of that.
Instead, Bob is wondering.
Well Bob, you should be wondering!
Remember the Fat Bunny suit? The one you wanted to use to escape from this place? This place where everything is perfect and you can have practically anything you want just by calling it? Just by making no other effort except naming the stuff.
You say "Stuff" and bing! stuff is there!
"Pink snow falling and three moons rising!" Bing! And you are running around catching pink snowflakes with your mouth.
And, for some reason, you are willing to trade this wonderful place, this closest thing there is to heaven, where all these amazing opportunities come popping with a bing!, where everything becomes true and everything is going well . . . trade all these for who knows what sinkhole of a planet you came from, where you don't have a clue what is waiting for you!
"Maybe Dude is right. Maybe the bad stuff is outside, and there is actually a positive conspiracy that put me here!"
(Small side note: Have you noticed that every conspiracy theory believer has in his inventory only negative conspiracies? If you go to the Annual Convention of Conspiracy Theories [yes, there is such a thing, and no, entrance is not forbidden to the evil masterminds] you will listen to all the believers from all over the world gathered together sharing their newly found conspiracies and their proofs [or lack thereof]. And every year, all the conspiracies are . . . negative ones.
"The big organizations want to take over the world," "the evil geniuses want to enslave mankind," and so on and so forth. But nobody comes with "the masterminds of the universe want to make electricity free" or "the evil geniuses want to make chocolate more chocolaty." I also wondered why the negative conspiracies are also the most popular ones.
Small side note over.)
Back to Bob and the existential thought that just smacked him. Again.
A positive conspiracy can't be right.
The whole point of a conspiracy is to have only bad results for the guy believing in said conspiracy. Not only that, but it would mean that he, Bob, is wrong! And Bob knows he is always right, no matter if reality contradicts him.
And as the evil purple bunny overlords pass in front of the window pointing and wiggling their ears, his ingenious plan starts to grow to unimaginable proportions. Not only will they not see it coming, but they won't even be prepared for what he is about to do!
He will escape their tyrannical furry paws and will return home, victorious and with the most extraordinary story to tell to the future generations. In his mind, he is already surrounded by adoring and curious people all trembling with excitement and awe, looking at him telling the story of his great escape!
"Don't do it, maaan. I can smell a bad idea from here," the voice of Dude is heard somewhere in the background. (I know that Dude never moved from his hammock, but I like to give him an indeterminate location by saying "somewhere in the background," because I like to think he is not a totally useless character that never moved his ass from that single position in space.)
"Do what?" Bob jumps up.
"You know that a smart guy said once: 'The source of all man's misfortune comes from one thing and one thing only . . . which is not knowing how to sit stress free in one place.'"
"Oh please, don't come with stuff you made up and pass it off as philosophy quotes!"
"Not lying to you. Someone smarter than me said it. And it happens to be my philosophy also: non-action causes no action. You can go ahead with your stupid plans of escaping and being a hero and all . . ."
"Which I will do!"
"Ok, I’m done convincing you! Go knock yourself out outsmarting your evil overlords and breaking out and whatever. Not going to stop you."
"Gaah, don't you see that the system is putting you down?"
"You're making noise again. Wake me up when you make sense."
The evening comes and together with it the time of mischievous doings.
The long zoo corridors are all deserted and sleepy with silence and not a whisper is heard. But while all creatures are going about their own evening habits (those that have diurnal cycles on their home planets, that is), behind the window of the human habitat stands a fat rabbit suit with a sweaty Bob inside.
And Bob is not sweaty because he is nervous or excited, but because he couldn't figure out how to make a furry overall costume that wouldn't cause him to overheat.
"First, let us see if one arm can go through," Bob is thinking out loud. And the arm in the pink fur goes further and further until it reaches the window.
But it doesn't stop dead at the window. Instead it passes through the window. As the furry paw is going where no man has gone before, the fat bunny is squealing like a little girl (and jumping worse than a real bunny on a sugar rush).
"DUUUDE" (this is still a whisper, if you didn't realize). "Wake up! Waaake uuuuuuup."
Dude is moaning. Turns around and scratches his ass.
Bob rolls his eyes and just leaves him and goes back to his victory jumps.
After he gets tired of being happy with his little secret, he goes back to the window and slides through the arm, then the leg, then the body, then the head . . . and he gets back in.
But this is just to test if he can get back. What if the window is tricky and leaves him and the stupid suit outside? See? Bob is a smart human, and he doesn't want to get trapped outside!
Now that the tricky window test is done, nothing keeps Bob from taking one big leap and going free. Freee!
One small step for man, one giant leap for humankind!
"Oh yeah, oh yeah! I'm smart! Who's smart? I'm smart! Oh yeah, Oh yeah."
This is still in a whisper, if you didn’t realize.
An hour later, the long, deserted corridors of the zoo are no longer deserted since one fat rabbit is running around panting and sweating and searching for something that is nowhere to be found. Is it carrots that the bunny is searching for? Juicy roots? Nuts? All we can do is look at the curious ritual of putting his ears against the walls, then against the floor, knocking gently, sniffing the air, then going to another corner and repeating it at every step. After many fruitless efforts, the fat rabbit goes way out to the back where the entrance should be, sniffs around, checks something interesting in front of him and he has the most puzzled expression found on a human face.
Where there should be a door, there is nothing like a door! And no matter what Bob is doing, it seems that the supposed door is not responding to his actions. Can it be that the limit of human intelligence has met its match with an alien door? I mean, a cat can’t open a human door (which for us is the most basic, common sense thing to do), so to make the analogy, a human like Bob will post a dumb stare at an alien door.
It seems that Bob’s expedition of brave exploration is ending with him going back in front of the human habitat. But instead of joining Dude, he stops twiddling his fingers and wondering . . .
"I just wonder. . ."
And the stupid-looking rabbit goes to the koala window and the furry paw lifts and touches the window.
And my oh my, would you look at that! The furry paw goes straight through the window . . . followed, of course, by one leg. And one leap later Mark's box has a surprise guest in the shape of a purple bunny.
"Hello Bob!"
The little koala speaks! Not only that, but Bob understands!
"Do you want a cup of hot chocolate? I know you like it."
"How do you know my name?"
"This time I got the milk enzymes to disperse the chocolate crystals w
hen they are not at the melting point."
"How do you know I like hot chocolate?"
"Come on, Bob, try to keep up, you're one question behind."
"How do you know I like my chocolate with milk?"
Mark makes a sign with his hands as if introducing the next question.
"How do you know . . . Oh."
Then, very excited, Bob has the discovery of the secret beaming all over his face:
"You read minds, don’t you! Are you a telepath? You must be! Nobody knows so much about me!"
Mark is turning around with an unmistakable "really?" written all over his face.
But Bob is unstoppable:
"What are you doing here? Are you a prisoner? You must be a prisoner. Do you have superpowers? I mean apart from telepathy, which is obviously a superpower . . ."
"I don't have telepathy. Or superpowers. Or any of that stuff!"
A dead silence takes hold of the excited Bob who is trying to process the answer.
"No way."
"Yes way. I'm just your usual grade 6 sapient living the happy life and pursuing his dreamy dreams."
"But you are here all alone . . . and lost, little koala! Away from your kind!"
"First, I'm not a koala any more than you are a monkey. Actually, let me rephrase that. I am not a koala any more than you are a . . . nematode. Second, thank the science gods for being all alone!"
Bob is scratching his head with his paw. While his face seems unable to lose its amused and bewildered look.
The little "koala" continues regardless:
"No more nosey assistants who only want to piggyback on my inventions. No more accidental info leaks to the greedy corporations who are too cheap to sponsor a grant! I mean . . . really, J-Lum, really? You think I'm that stupid to think you just misclicked and sent the entire technical spec to a 'wrong address' that happens to be the address of the head of research for the planet's biggest auto company? And he misclicked in turn, after just one day, a couple of million into the 'wrong account' that so happens to have the name of your wife? I mean, you didn't even bother to hide your tracks!
"Oh, and no more moronic, shit-brained excuses of colleagues whose sole purpose in life is to fuck every first year assistant that comes into the lab! And using the only neuron they have to share in all the prizes . . . while I do all the work? I don't think so, mister! My work is my baby, my child, my sweat! My soul! Blood of my blood! And you want to steal my baby from under my nose just because you happen to sneak a signature on my paper? You can't even draw a sugar molecule right, and you assume that your simple presence here solves all the problems of the antigravity engine?"
Bob is now retreating slowly under the torrent of ranting and doesn't know if he should sit down or get out.
"And don't even remind me about Mom!" Mark points his finger angrily at Bob, who is wondering when did he remind the infuriated alien something about Mom.
The little "koala" switches to a squeaky voice, making what appears to be a mom impression:
"'Why don't you get a girlfriend? Why don't you want to start a family? K-pu, remember K-pu from your kindergarten group? He is already on his eighth girlfriend! And he also washes his ears and wears clean shirts. Will it hurt you to wear some new shirts?'"
Then he switches back to his own voice in his imaginary dialogue.
"'But Maa, I don't want no girlfriend! I don't want no clean shirts! I don't want no stupid friends and all the social useless meaningless shit.'
(Squeaky voice again:) "'Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? Weee-weee-wee.' And if I do this, then it's 'WHY did you do that?' And if I did something else, it's again 'Why don't you do this?' All day long, if I do this, nobody is happy. If I do that, nobody is happy again. So if everyone is not happy, why do I even bother? Because in all cases, with all certainty, both everyone and ME are not happy. So doing what I want, at least ME will be happy."
Going back to squeaky Mom voice again:
"'Why can't you be normal? Like all the other kids? I knew I shouldn't have smoked mushrooms when I was pregnant. All day long you sit with your nose in that laboratory. You should get out more! Get real friends! Get a life! Kids your age play together with colored cubes and learn boo-boo songs. Only you stay out all night . . . working!'
"'But Mom, I am having a real life. I like the EMG synthetic fields' fluctuations better than real people, I love multidimensional space translations better than any girlfriend! I don't want friends! I don't want stupid social status! I don't want stuff so you can brag about it in front of all the other retard mothers. I bet all you know about K-pu and P-lu is from their halfwit moms, who don't do anything all day except:
"'Ooooh look at my cute K-pu picture playing in the mud with his girlfrieeeend!'"
Bob decides not to leave and sits down. The show of this little koala jumping around with his hands in the air, talking with himself, in multiple voices impersonating all the halfwit moms is very interesting.
"And the more you grow up and the smarter you are, the more absurd society becomes. All the mind-numbing rules and twisted rituals and dystopian constraints . . . eating up every spare second of my life, filling up every single corner of my precious time.
"I dreamed of doing science from the moment I woke up picking my nose and I want to have written on my tombstone: 'Go away, busy doing science!' I want science when I pee, science when I eat, science when I sleep! But noooo! It's all about what the others want for you! It's not enough you won the prime medal in all eight fields of science when you were four years old, they need someone in a clean t-shirt to pick up the prize! They need someone with clean hands to shake hands with! The hands dirty with strawberry jam are below their standards!
"And of course . . . Mom!"
Now he goes back to squeaky voice (yes, again) and swinging hands.
"'Look at the house P-lu has made from bamboo sticks! All the girls in his kindergarten class love him! Why can't you make something like that? Who do you think will love you if you are so smart?'
"'And? Your point, Mom, is?'"
And now Mark leaves a dramatic pause and starts faking the most heartbreaking sob a koala mom can have when she realizes that her four-year-old wonder genius son will have no girlfriend!
"'Buhuhuuuuu! Sniff, sniff, I will die with no nepheeeeeews!'
"Gaah! What is this obsession of others to have control over you when you are a toddler? Why would I live my whole life just to die realizing I didn't do anything of importance except follow rules. Just rules, rules, rules from waking up to falling asleep. Stuff you cannot even imagine! From brushing your teeth, to the stupid polite 30-minute conversation about NOTHING when all you needed was a simple yes or no answer. I mean, you couldn't just say Yes? You couldn't save me 30 minutes? You just felt like wasting my time on blah-blah-blah, how is your day, blah-blah-blah how is the weather, blah-blah-blah is that a new tooth? Who came up with all these norms? Who made up all this nonsense? I can't imagine the actual guy that literally sat down and started thinking of all these rules out of nothing. Why should I tell you 'Good morning' if it's not a good morning? Why should I eat with my spoon? Why shouldn't I pick my nose? And why, oh why, should I get a girlfriend? Think of all the free time you get just by erasing this time eater!
"I don't want to worry about wearing the same t-shirt for three months in a row. I don't want to care if I didn't take a bath or not, or if the food is getting cold, or if this 'friend' I don't even know his name wants to present his latest brain fart as an innovative idea, or how many pointless meetings I have to force myself into attending just to get a grant, or how K-pu or P-Lu or some other moron has more colored cube houses or bigger ears than mine! Why should I care about this crap? Why should I even concern a single brain cell with this . . . NOISE?"
Silence.
Marks is staring, recreating the face of the revelation he had.
"And then I understood!
"Why should I live like that? Who is for
cing me to live in this society? Why should I have a social life and all those horribly annoying little things standing between me and my science? Why spend my life miserable, caught in the prison of others' expectations and the hell of others' rules when all I needed was JUST my laboratory and an unlimited supply of candies! So behold, the best deal I could ever imagine!"
Bob is looking around.
At the best deal ever imagined.
And all he can see is an endless lab full of every imaginable technical gizmo and component. An endless lab where the echo of ' . . . could ever imagine' fades slowly in the deep.
"And you really don't want to get away?"
You can feel the limp hope in Bob's voice. A koala kid genius would have been very much the key to "getting away."
Mark picks up calmly from where he left off.
"Bob, I wanted in all along. This is a dream come true! I don't want to ever go back. Just look at this luxury! I have an entire laboratory all for myself.
"No! I stand corrected! I have The Laboratory all for myself. There are no nosey parents to snoop in my room, no annoying friends to literally drool over my 'toys,' no other so-called 'scientists' to compare prizes and titles against, no pressure, no stress. Just me and my science bravely moving forward one invention after another, discovering the secrets of the universe."
Mark is in a Zen zone with a halo of self-fulfillment around him.
"But . . . Are you sure you don't want to get away? Like in . . . one small percent probability?"
"Owww, Bob, you're so cute and fluffy with your puppy eyes."
Followed by a sharp-voiced "But no."
The long zoo corridors are all deserted and sleepy with silence even if the human Bob in a bunny suit is dragging his ass out of Mark’s box. But in all that silence, a small bitter whisper can still be heard:
"Just wait until puberty strikes!"