First Sign of the Badger

by Brock Rhodes

Out at a bar is a scientist, if that's what they're still calling them these days. He's wearing jeans and a polo shirt his wife bought for him. He hates polo shirts, but she thinks they look nice on him. He's never found out whether or not she means just the shirts, but, as he puts it, "Whatever." She doesn't seem to care about him at all sometimes, which is exactly why tonight he has driven his Ford Pinto to what he finds to be the most tolerable place in which to both purchase and consume responsible portions of alcohol.

  He likes to hide in the booths the best he can, but when he sees they're at capacity he's forced to take the only empty seat at the bar. He proposes going home, but rejects it on the basis that it would mean going home. He squeezes in between an unattractive, portly and noticeably unhealthy, foul smelling and loud, woman, who appears to be somewhere between middle-aged and elderly depending on when you look at her, and two twenty-something men who appear to be engaged in an in depth conversation.

  The bartender knows the scientist, a regular, and points like his finger is a switchblade, "Galileo, Lavoisier, Newton, no ice?"

  The scientist smiles in response to the bartender remembering the content of his rant a few nights ago, and answers, "Certainly." His brain is fried, he's tired and stressed, and while the scientist feels guilty about not trying to think while at the bar he has no other choice. The conversation the men are having is teasing his nerves.

  The man with glasses, sloppily poking his head with a crooked neck, "Too bad we're not scientists. We can't get any grant money. We don't have any equipment, or anything."

  The other man is fat and slouches on his barstool with his fingers crisscrossed on his jello belly and his legs spread. "Yeah. This fucking scientific aristocracy. They're just a bunch of assholes who exploit other people, their needs, and make us look like a bunch of dumbasses who can't figure out anything."

  The man with glasses agrees, "Yeah, haven't they read the Constitution? Freedom of speech, Goddamn it. They're oppressors."

  The fat man agrees, "They are oppressors. They're trying to change the world into The Matrix so they can eat more babies."

  The man with glasses agrees, punching, "Scientists are Godless, baby-eating, pieces of shit."

  The scientist can only smile at the men. He's heard all of this before. All scientists do whenever they hang out in public. They don't hang out in public much.

  Glasses rants "Yeah. They're just people who know each other. It's all political. Only people who know scientists get to be scientists. It's just a big good ol' boy club. That's why science doesn't know anything. They're just kicking back and stealing all of that grant money."

  Fat, frustrated, "Yeah, while we can't do anything scientific because we don't know any scientists."

  The scientist decides to test a hypothesis, "I'm sorry for interrupting. What do you guys want to do research on?"

  Glasses, nicely waving his hand at the silly pseudostranger, "Oh, you wouldn't understand."

  The fat man laughs, as both grin at the scientist in recognition of what they consider to be the brilliance of their current grand scheme.

  Neither of the two offer anything else but they do keep their eyes on the pseudostranger, so he continues, "Have you done any research on it?"

  The fat man says, "That's the problem. We can't do any research on it. The scientists won't let mavericks like us do anything."

  The scientist offers, "Yes, there are people who are scientists, believe it or not. They do exist, I swear. They do do research."

  Glasses snorts, "They do do, do they?"

  Fat laughs.

  The scientist continues, "They publish. These publications are various and span a wide range of topics and can be used for information on similar information and similar topics. I don't know what you two want to research about, but there may be papers out there on the exact same topic. Looking at those may help you."

  "They won't let us look at those. They probably don't even really exist."

  "They do. They're pretty easy to find considering their null commercial appeal. Libraries vary in what they have, but some university libraries have fairly far reaching electronic resources. Some of the more specialized ones are hard to track down because of their obscurity, but they can be found."

  Glasses laughs, "Yeah, right."

  After receiving good supporting evidence for his hypothesis, the scientist keeps pushing while careful of how he articulates, "I'm serious. If you don't want to do that get on Google. Click on their Scholar tab. Just type in words that you think might have something to do it in the search box. You two have done Internet searches before, right?"

  The two men look at the scientist blankly.

  The scientist continues, "Sure you have. Google Scholar isn't as good as SciFinder or even a good library, but they're better than nothing. It could save you some time. Somebody might have already done what you were thinking about doing anyway, so maybe you won't have to do it. Maybe it'll already have an answer."

  Glasses blurts, "Yeah, their answer."

  The fat man mumbles, "Yeah, if they already have an answer there's no point in doing it. There's no way we can get them to accept the truth."

  The scientist asks, "What truth?"

  The bartender puts the scientists drink down in front of him, and the scientist mouths and nods a thank you.

  Glasses says, "Our results."

  The fat man grumbles, "They'd never accept our results. We're not one of them."

  The scientist says, "If you don't agree with what the journal says you can run their experiment or do your own and if you get something else you can send it to a journal. But I'd only send a scientific article in a scientific format before I'd expect anything."

  Glasses says, "Yeah, we could send it to a journal but they wouldn't publish it because it'll make them look like idiots."

  The fat man agrees, "Yeah, scientists don't like to be wrong, and they won't respect anyone who has a different opinion than them."

  The scientist laughs, "Yeah. Tell that to any scientists that either of you have somehow managed to have heard of."

  Glasses says, "Einstein wasn't a maverick. Scientists won't let anyone say relativity is wrong."

  Fat man defiantly giggles, "'E' equal zee square, my ass."

  The scientist says, "You have to show relativity to be wrong and provide better theory than it is. It has to explain everything relativity did and more and/or better. If you can do that, you're a hero."

  The fat man pfffs, "Yeah, they've snowed you."

  The scientist proposes, "You have to earn the right to have an opinion or else it's not an opinion. It's just garbage."

  Glasses says, "I don't know what you mean."

  The fat man says, "Yeah, man. You're making more and more less sense to me."

  He could see they were already offended and in defense mode. Disappointed in losing this game of chess, the scientist flexes his brow, "You have to earn an opinion. Earned opinions are the only ones that can have any meaning. When you run a scientific experiment and follow scientific methodology you earn a right to a scientific opinion."

  Glasses and the fat man smiles fade with the thought that the scientist is insulting their intelligence.

  "At this point, I have to thank you both because you made me realize how much I miss my wife and kids. Good night now."

  The scientist throws a few dollars on the bar and exits alone.

  Glasses smirks, "Jesus, what an arrogant prick."

  Fat, sad, "Yeah, he must have nothing better to do than to just go around and make shit up to try and make other people look stupid."

  The scientists takes a step back into the door, "By the way, if you want a grant you have to earn being considered for it. When people have money, it's usually because they don't throw all of their money away on bullshit. If you want to be a scientist, go to school, do research, learn something about it. Otherwise, stay the fuck out of our way."

  The scientist laughs a subtle laugh at his own failure in the hopeless
situation, then hurries out the door when he realizes that it could be interpreted as an evil laugh. Angry mobs are something he wants to avoid in order to keep 16 hours a day free to cure cancer.

  ENEMY MIME