KATACLYSM: A Space-Time Comedy
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Authors: Roy S. Rikman
KATACLYSM
A Space-Time Comedy
ROY S. RIKMAN
Text copyright © 2016 Roy S Rikman (MJS)
All Rights Reserved
For Aliza, JJ and Ethan
Dear reader,
I won’t be offended if you skip this bit (does anyone really read prefaces?). But just in case:
I feel lucky that I had the chance to attend medical school and now have the privilege of practicing as a physician. You see a lot in the world of medicine. I’ve delivered babies and handed them to tired but smiling new parents. I’ve waded through gatherings of tearful family members on the way to pronouncing a loved one dead at the age of 90 or…more upsettingly, 30. I’ve done a lot in between. It’s a privilege and a joy but it can also be heavy.
They say that laughter is the best medicine. As a young person, I always enjoyed the offbeat humor of novelists such as Douglas Adams and P.G. Wodehouse and as I began my studies I found myself more in need of a change of pace and a laugh than at any other time in my life. So, I decided to write a story in my spare time on the long subway rides. It’s your classic story of intrigue, love, death, little green aliens, nuclear weaponry, feminist construction workers, apocalyptic prophecies, phony cat massage therapists and gun-toting African hedgehogs.
I’ve had a lot of fun with this and I suspect you will too. Comedy is what I needed to write for myself, but comedy is also the greatest challenge for a writer. The themes that evoke emotions such as anger, hate, fear and love are universal and, to a great degree, transcend cultural and societal barriers. Humor, however, is deeply personal; (don’t worry, this is the only semi-colon in the entire book) so it is with some trepidation that I share my humor with you. I hope you enjoy.
RSR
P.S. If the characters and depictions in this story even remotely resemble real people or events that you are familiar with then I strongly recommend that you consider hanging around with a different crowd.
The lustrous, silver flying saucer soared over Cambridge’s wintry landscape. Flying above Massachusetts Avenue, it could be seen ever so briefly from the tangle of one-way streets that filled the Boston suburb. Then, with a flash of its engines, it disappeared into the clouds. Lounging comfortably inside the spacecraft’s paper-thin walls was its sole occupant, a runty green alien whose body was as petite as a five year old human boy. This fact, however, was misleading. The alien’s name was Paroophoron the much elder. Originally of course, his name had been Paroophoron the especially younger. Nevertheless, having lived for slightly more than 100 million years, Paroophoron was going through a mid-life crisis and, just two weeks ago, had added the “much” to his title to make himself feel more important.
Now the sight of Paroophoron would have startled a great number of people, most especially academics who make their livings by lecturing about life on other planets. For years, various professors of this and that have mocked the concept of the little green man who makes high-pitched beeps, saying that a real alien would be so astonishingly unusual in its appearance that we probably wouldn’t have any idea what we were looking at. It’s a nice thought but, as it turns out, pretty much all aliens are in fact little green men who talk in high-pitched beeps. Quite how humans turned out to be large non-green men who speak in lowish grunts has always been somewhat of a puzzle to most alien scholars.
Paroophoron, for his part, was never one for academic discourse, especially when he was tired and worn out after a long day. Though he didn’t know it yet, this would turn out to be the longest day of his life. It began in the morning on Paroophoron’s own planet Adnexia, as he was violently awakened by his wife Epoophoron who wanted him to run out and pick up some soup for their dinner guests. Normally, Paroophoron was a doting husband, but on this occasion he was aggravated because Epoophoron expected him to travel across three galaxies just so that she could serve an hors d’oeuvre from Chez Supernova, the most chi-chi restaurant within a hundred parsecs. He was even more disappointed to see his wife’s reaction when he returned with the food.
“You brought that one?!” she shrieked, her eyes bulging at the monstrous package that totally obscured the upper half of Paroopheron’s body as he stood at the threshold.
“Yeah. So?” he replied hesitantly, shifting the parcel precariously to one side. “This is what you said you wanted. Can I come in now?”
“I sent you out for the soup with the red label,” she exclaimed, mortified.
“But what’s wrong with this one?” he persisted, squeezing his way past his wife and dumping the parcel on the kitchen counter.
“It’s not the right kind.”
“But you never said you wanted the red one.”
“It was obvious,” screeched an exasperated Epoophoron.
In the following minutes, a series of louder and louder high-pitched beeps could be heard coming from inside the enormous alien mansion. They culminated in a large bang followed by silence. Epoophoron had locked herself in her bedroom. Paroophoron was at a loss. Though he and Epoophoron had recently celebrated their 90 millionth wedding anniversary, his wife’s behavior could still thwart his most strenuous efforts at being understanding. Paroophoron slowly approached the door and heard his wife crying.
He mustered some courage and decided not to prolong the inevitable. “What did I do?” he asked softly through the door.
Then, like a punch in the gut, came the response Paroophoron dreaded most, the response that makes husbands everywhere cringe at the prospect of their impending and inevitable defeat. “Well, if you don’t know then I’m not going to tell you,” Epoophoron blurted in between sobs.
Paroophoron rubbed his forehead in the universal sign of an ensuing headache. “Look,” he said. “I don’t have time to go all the way back to Chez Supernova, so what do you want me to do?”
Epoophoron opened the door. “I don’t know,” she said slightly calmer. “But you had better do something because the guests will be here before long.”
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll go to Wu’s.”
“Fine,” she said and closed the door on him.
Around the universe, an alarmingly large number of nearly identical conversations were taking place that afternoon. In fact, an alarmingly large number of nearly identical conversations take place throughout the universe at every time of day on every day. These conversations owe a tremendous debt to the phrase “if you don’t know then I’m not going to tell you.” It is, in fact, the only phrase that exists in some form in every language spoken in the universe. Indeed, it was voted “Most Extraordinarily Useful Manipulative Phrase” for roughly 10,000 years straight at the Intergalactic Teen Choice Awards held annually on the awards planet Retinac II. That is until “fine, see if I care” beat it out in an upset. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the female members of a species are over 1,000 times more likely to use the line than the males. There are a few exceptions such as the great male gallbladdered beasts on Gurnifrom IX who repeatedly yell the phrase at their wives while launching huge clumps of bile at them. Most men, however, tend to take a more low-key approach which is why the response phrase “all right, I’m off to the pub” has also acquired near universal status.
The evening didn’t improve much for poor Paroophoron as he dutifully popped out to Wu’s Chinese Smorgasbord, a tiny restaurant a few subway stops from Harvard square, to pick up some more food. First, the antimatter containment field in his spaceship’s engine momentarily collapsed causing the sudden, brutal annihilation of the craft’s fine leather interior and then, when he showed up at the restaurant, he found that Wu didn’t accept his American Express card.
At this point, it’s probably worth mentioning that Wu of Wu’s Chinese Smorgasbord was in fact an alien. He was a meticulous creature who skillfully managed to hide his numerous, bizarre appendages behind an exquisitely petite chef’s apron. He was also an inflexible, belligerent jerk. Standing in the back parlor of the restaurant, Paroophoron did his best to beep menacingly and flail his many green arms about in protest but, alas, he could not convince the chef to accept his credit card. With no other recourse, Paroophoron decided to find an ATM.
A minute later, a tiny green figure emerged into the shadows outside the back door to Wu’s Chinese Smorgasbord. Paroophoron had hastily covered himself in a ridiculously oversized trench coat he’d found inside. The alien crept along the side of the restaurant and eventually found himself under a sign indicating he had arrived at Blossom Street. The late hour and the shrill February weather meant that Paroophoron found the road uncharacteristically deserted. The silence was only interrupted by the noise of a few passing cars as they slowly drifted by on the icy pavement. Across the street, he immediately saw what he was looking for. It wasn’t difficult. Massachusetts General was the largest hospital in New England. With a sense of purpose, he hastily crossed the street and darted into the hospital through a side door that had been left ajar.
Once inside, Paroophoron was surprised to find himself in a sea of utter chaos. He had entered the emergency ward and, like most Saturdays, it was a busy night. Behind a green curtain to his left, a baby was wailing uncontrollably in the style of an inexperienced Bollywood singer. To his right, he could see two residents unsuccessfully trying to extricate what appeared to be an iPhone from a shrieking man who had unwisely managed to jam it into an unpleasant orifice. It’s true, thought Paroophoron, they really don’t know how to use computers on this planet. He began to make his way through the ward. All around him, doctors and nurses were hurrying about attending to everyone’s needs. The whole situation was almost too much for Paroophoron’s delicate sensibilities. He was getting another headache and he had no idea how Wu expected him to find a cash machine in such a large and noisy place. At least, everyone was too well occupied to notice a little green alien scurrying around below them in a trench coat. After passing an unhappy looking man whose left arm was sitting in a bag of ice on the chair next to him, Paroophoron rounded a corner into a hallway that was nearly empty. The only person in sight was a dazed looking resident clad in soiled green scrubs who was plodding awkwardly down the hall. He was tall and lanky with a long face and short brown hair and he had the resigned, dejected look of a sailor who had just been diagnosed with his seventy-third venereal disease. Suddenly, another resident ran around the corner nearly crashing into Paroophoron but, instead, flew right by without seeing him.
“Eric! There you are,” she said as she ran over to the other resident, her long red ponytail bouncing away from Paroophoron.
“Oh…hi Emily,” Eric responded in a tired and depressed voice.
“I’ve been looking all over for you. You missed the guy with the cellphone up his butt. Say, you don’t look all that great,” Emily said in a slightly mocking tone. She grinned at him. Eric managed a weak smile back.
“The thing is I’ve had a long shift and I did the stupidest…”
“Yeah, I heard. You know most people don’t get the chief of medicine out of bed on a weekend for a nosebleed.” Eric’s face turned a deep crimson.
“I got confused,” he said with his eyes focused squarely on the ground. “I’ve been up for so many hours that I can’t see straight anymore. This is my sixth straight night without seeing my call room and my pager went off so many times that I haven’t gone to the bathroom since, I don’t know, yesterday. I’m on, like, my eightieth admission so far.”
Eric threw his hands in the air.
“No one would ever let me drive a car in this state but managing the sickest people in Boston, well I guess that’s a different story. I wonder if I’ve killed anybody yet tonight. Acute epistaxis…epistaxis…I guess I must have just heard wrong or maybe I lost my mind. You know what? I was having a TIA.”
Emily shook her head.
“I guess you’ll never make that mistake again.”
Eric nodded morosely.
“Look, you ought to get something warm to drink, go home and go to bed. Johnson’s covering for you. You’re not taking codes and besides, you really are in no condition to see patients. On second thought, you could hang around and cheer them up. They may just take one look at you and feel like their problems aren’t so bad. Wanna come see Mr. iPhone?” she said with a wink.
“Hmmm…” was all Eric could muster. At this point, he was looking extremely pale. Emily put her hand on his shoulder just as her pager began an off-key rendition of Strawberry Fields.
“Seriously, get some rest.” She consulted the page on her hip. “I need to get back.” Emily turned around abruptly and jogged past Paroophoron for a second time without as much as a glance in his direction.
Before the alien could decide what to do next, a slow-moving elderly gentleman rounded the corner at the far end of the hall. The man was breathing quickly through pursed lips and, as he came closer, Paroophoron saw a change in Eric’s expression.
“Mr. Alden,” he said, a smile spreading across his face. “It’s good to see you up and about. But what are you doing here at this time of night? You ought to be at home resting.” The man stopped for a moment to catch his breath, his face red with exertion as though he had been running a marathon rather than taking a slow walk.
“Hello, Dr. Silver,” he huffed. “I’m glad I found you. I was told you’d be in the emergency room. I’m sorry to trouble you so late at night, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened last Tuesday.”
Eric nodded sympathetically as though this news came as no surprise.
“And I want to tell you that after a lot of soul searching, I’ve decided something.”
“OK,” said Eric. “What’s up?”
Mr. Alden closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“I didn’t want you to have any surprises. So to be fair, I decided to come and tell you that I’m suing you and the hospital. So now you can’t say you haven’t been warned.” Mr. Alden directed a single, resolute nod at the resident.
“What?!” Eric cried stammered in surprise. “Why? What for?” Eric’s face had now turned a pale celery green that nicely matched the colour of his scrubs.
“I’m suing you for emotional distress.”
“Emotional b…?!” Eric stared at Mr. Alden incredulously as though he were a chair umpire at Wimbledon who had just blown an obvious call on a crucial point. Then, unwittingly, he borrowed a line from John McEnroe.
“You cannot be serious.”
Mr. Alden seemed unimpressed with Eric’s shock.
“Look, when I came in last Tuesday,” the man said extending a frail, bony finger, “I just wanted someone to give me something for the pain in my arm. Instead, after a stay in this hellhole you call a hospital, when I was finally allowed to go home, I left with torn clothing and two bruised ribs.” Mr. Alden gestured gingerly to his left side, clearly forcing as pained an expression onto his face as he could muster.
Eric did his best to put on his most patient and empathic tone of voice. “Mr. Alden, when we found you in the waiting room you had gone into cardiac arrest. We had to cut your shirt in order to restart your heart and, quite frankly, it’s miraculous that you were able to go home so soon. The recovery time for that kind of event is usually considerable.”
Mr. Alden shook his finger at Eric.
“I’m not interested in your medical mumbo-jumbo. It’s a matter of principle. If someone doesn’t hold you accountable then who will. You should just count yourself lucky that I’m not a little bit younger, otherwise I’d be suing you for lost wages to boot.”