David Larson - The Myth of the Anal Probe

Tawny stopped and waited for Mike to catch up.

“Wait,” Mike said when the realization hit him. “You mean… she was here?”

“Not here Mike. You know you’re the first one here. But she was on a ship. Fascinating woman really.”

“What about him,” Mike asked.

Tawny laughed that beautiful lilting laugh. “No, of course not. Can’t you tell?”

“Where do these kids go when they’re three?” Mike asked.

“They go live in the children’s complex. It really is a beautiful place Mike. I’ll have to take you there. I really think it would be mind opening.”

“I’d like to see that,” Mike said showing genuine interest.

“If you think about it it’s not much different than the way you do things in your country on earth.”

“How’s that?”

“Your children spend all day at school starting around the age of 5. Then they come home and stay with their parents. At night they’re sleeping in their own rooms. So the only real contact the parents have with them after they start school is for about five hours in the afternoon.”

“Think about how much time you spend on Earth, thinking about how horrible parents are. Or if you see a child that is acting up, what you would do if you were responsible for them.”

Mike thought about how many times he had been in a restaurant or at the movies, and wanted to beat parents to death with their petulant child.

“Quite a lot,” He said.

“Exactly,” She said “I spend time with Axel every day. So does his father. But these kids are constantly learning. Constantly being creatively reinforced. They learn the concept of community from the time they enter the children’s complex, and every single member of that community spends time nurturing all of those children. Think of how well-rounded people would be if they had the availability of every single person’s knowledge, and experiences, from which they could constantly learn and grow. It makes for a very stable person.”

“Who’s the father?” Mike asked, and Tawny was a little concerned with his tone.

“Well… Bob is,” She said. “Is that important?”

Mike wanted to physically reach up and pull the lightning bolt out of his forehead. Bob, the guy who had become his best friend on Hale. Hell, Bob was his best friend on either planet. Bob had been dorking Mike’s girl, and he never had the slightest intention of mentioning it to him. Were they still doing it? Did Bob just stroll over to Tawny’s place in the middle of the night for a booty call?

He had the horrible image in his head of Tawny and Bob naked, rolling around on a giant feather mattress covered with white mosquito netting. Tawny moaning in the throes of ecstasy, as Bob made sure that she reached a climax. Over and over again.

Then he caught himself. She had given him the answer to everything that was important. Of course they weren’t still together. There was no such thing as together here. Well, except for in certain cases. But Mike was sure that this wasn’t one of those cases. So what if they had a son together? That didn’t mean anything. She and Mike could raise Axel together. He was willing to be man enough to let Bob be a part of that. After all, if he hadn’t learned anything else during his stay here he had certainly learned to be magnanimous. And that was exactly what he was going to need to be here, so that he could have the life that he desperately craved.

Mike was plodding through the desert of irrational justification on the worn-out camel of denial. His camel was dangerously close to death, and soon the angry horde of Bedouin reality was going to overtake him, and beat the shit out of him with a club, as he hung from the lone palm tree of a broken heart in a secluded oasis.

“Are you ok?” Tawny asked. “Maybe this is all too much for you.”

“No, really,” Mike said, snapping back into his Hale persona so fast he should have been in a cervical collar for a week. “I’m fine. I just never would have guessed Bob. I should have I suppose. He’s a great guy. Funny too. And plays a mean keyboard.”

“He is all of that,” Tawny said felling a little more relaxed.

The tram came to a stop in the now typically beautiful pasture and the door whooshed open.

“Here we are,” Tawny said brightly. “You are going to love this.”

“I could be standing neck deep in a shit pile and be deliriously happy as long as I was there with you,” he thought.

“I’m sure I will,” He said as they stepped off the tram.

Mike and Tawny walked to the back of the tram pasture and through a white arched trellis that was covered in what seemed to be wisteria in full bloom. As they walked down the winding pathway, other people passed going in the other direction. No one really said anything; only nods and smiles were exchanged.

“This seems to be a pretty popular place,” Mike said.

“It is,” Tawny answered. “Only the children’s center has more people visiting it. It’s really kind of ironic when you think about it.”

“I guess it would be if I had any idea where we were.”

Tawny motioned to a bench near the path, and they both took a seat.

“You’ve asked me about every aspect of life here on Hale,” she said, “and I know we’ve only touched the surface of your understanding about how we live here. We talked about child birth and raising children, about music, relationships, and work. But you never asked me about death.”

“Wow,” Mike said, a little surprised. “I guess I never really thought about it.”

“Most people don’t,” she said. “But if you do think about it, death and the way you handle death on Earth encompasses almost everything about life.”

“If someone dies on Earth people take comfort in knowing the person that is no longer with them is in heaven, or heaven’s equivalent, looking down on them and still being a major part of their lives. Most people will be adamant about the fact that they don’t believe in ghosts, and yet those same people believe that the spirit of dead loved ones are all living someplace beautiful, and blessed with powers that can help or hinder life on earth.”

“It’s a coping mechanism,” Mike said. “I would guess that most of those people really don’t think their ancestors are sitting on a cloud someplace, watching their every move.”

“I think you’re talking about the difference between what humans will admit to the public,” she said, “and what they think in their hearts. People say they don’t believe the cloud thing, but in their real subconscious… in the place where the real them lives, most people are completely superstitious, and believe they’re being watched by people that have ‘passed on’.

“And that’s the other part of this equation,” Tawny said. “The euphemisms that people use to describe death should tell you everything you need to know how people really view it. Passed away, gone home, called home, is with the lord, gave up the ghost, called to a better place. None of those things speak to the finality of death. None of them allow the grieving to grasp the fact that the person they loved is gone and is never coming back.

“On the other hand, how do people describe someone they hate dying? Dead, gone, wasted, kicked the bucket. Those people are comfortably cast on the trash heap of unwanted bodies,”

“And what’s the difference here?” Mike asked. “Do you know what happens after you die?”

“The better question is, ‘what happens after the body dies,” Tawny said as she took both of Mike’s hands in hers. When she was doing that she could have told him that a snake could play the piano with its penis and he would have believed it.