David Larson - The Myth of the Anal Probe

“No,” Bob said “That little thing in your temple that makes you understand me. It’s not just a translator, it’s a… geeze, how do I explain this?”

“A long time ago,” Bob continued “we realized that it was ridiculous to waste valuable resources and time creating and manufacturing things that were simply eye candy. Without explaining how it works, your chip just kind of realizes when you bend your knees that you’re going to sit down, and it shoots a kind of… I don’t know… force field under your ass about 2 feet off the ground. The bed works the same way. As for decorations, well, the room looks pretty much the way you might perceive it to look.”

“So, I guess I perceive the inside of a marshmallow then,” Mike said.

“Not exactly,” Bob said. “In essence you don’t actually perceive anything in this room. Or anyplace else I guess. The only thing you can see in here is the receiver sticking out of the floor. Most people automatically put something there so they don’t fall or step on it.”

“You mean everyone that walks in this room sees it differently?” Mike asked. “How the hell does that work?”

“Let’s say that back on Earth someone tells you to walk over to the red wall. You do, and everyone understands what red is,” Bob said as if he were talking to a child. “But how do you know that the way you perceive red is the same way that everyone else does? You don’t, and your mouth is hanging open again.”

“Look,” Mike said becoming clearly irritated “are you telling me I don’t know what red is?”

“No old buddy, I’m telling you that until you see red through someone else’s eyes you have no idea what they call red. These rooms work the same way. You still get to decorate it any way you want. The best part is that anyone that comes into your room feels right at home because they perceive it to be a comfortable place.”

“So you guys have taken bullshit to a whole ‘nother level,” Mike said sarcastically.

“What does ‘stuff’ do for you?” Bob asked. “Nothing, is the answer you’re looking for. Stuff is simply stuff, and the more stuff, or more importantly, the more expensive stuff that you fill your house with, the farther up the social ladder you climb. We have no need to impress each other. Our only reason for being is to add to the common good of the collective.”

Mike just stared at him.

“That get the hell out of here look you have on your face speaks volumes, buddy,” Bob said. “Once you shed the burden of earthly human insanity, you can see just how beautiful what I just said really is.”

“You think that my species is just a bunch of little clown hoarders that aren’t much more than biped packrats?”

“Come on Mike, think about how much wasted time, money, energy and resource is put into stuff where you come from. You start life on your own as adults with just a little pile of stuff. Stuff from your childhood like pictures, favorite toys etc. And maybe you have a shelf made out of cement blocks and planks to hold the stuff that you want to look at every day. Then you actively start amassing more stuff, until one day you need to store some of the stuff you have to make room for your new stuff.

“There are entire businesses set up just to store stuff. The factories that puke out hundreds of thousands of plastic containers to hold clothes, books, odds and ends, and left over food that you keep long enough to not feel guilty about eventually throwing away. After you gather together enough plastic boxes of stuff, you rent an entire new room from a building full of rooms that specialize in storing your old stuff. Occasionally you see your old stuff, but that’s only when you take a box of fresh old stuff out to stack it in your stuff room.

“You install hundreds if not thousands of dollars’ worth of security equipment in your house to keep other people away that may like your new stuff so much, they want to break in and take it back to their stuff-hole, so they can look at it every day. You have police forces and courts swamped with people being cataloged and imprisoned for walking off with stuff that we all agreed wasn’t their stuff… it was your stuff.”

“I’m so glad you brought me here,” Mike said sullenly. “I could have spent the rest of my life thinking I was sane.”

“Well… you’re not,” Bob said with a hint of sad compassion, “that’s the entire reason for this trip. You need to grasp the trueness of your genetic flaw. You can’t grow, or even begin to try and bring about change unless you’re willing to do that.”

“I know you’re right Bob,” Mike said plaintively, “but you know this is like having every single screwed up thing you are, ripped out of you and paraded around the room for everyone to see.”

“I want this. I really do. And I’m ready to make the trip, but I think I’m going to need some propping up from time to time.”

“That’s what I’m here for, brother,” Bob said smiling broadly “the powers that be have decided not only do I get to take my favorite special little buddy – that would be you by the way – home with me, but I get to be your guide as well.”

“Somehow,” Mike said, “that actually makes me feel a little better.”

“Just a couple things that I’ll need to walk you through before we get there,” Bob said.

“A couple?” Mike asked.

“Yeah,” Bob said as he sat in a large comfortable easy chair that Mike could have sworn wasn’t there… ever “First, you’re going to be in quarantined for a little bit.”

“What!?” Mike exclaimed, “you mean like in a cage, or glass prison so people can gawk at me?”

The chair that Bob was sitting in turned into a simple stone slab and suddenly Mike was in a concrete block room with no windows and a grubby floor.

“What the hell?” Mike said.

“Free your mind, brother,” Bob said calmly “and your ass will follow. Try closing your eyes and rethinking where you’ll be kept. It’s actually whatever you make it to be. Just like here. Just remember to cover up your spike.”

Mike closed his eyes tightly, and then opened them again. He was sitting in a pretty good facsimile of his apartment. The only real difference was the fairly large stuffed raccoon sitting directly in the middle of the floor.

“What the hell?” Mike said as he stared at the space the raccoon was taking up.

“The mind is a terrible thing,” Bob said “especially when you don’t have one. Self-decorating with the chip may bring out some deep darkness until you get used to working with it.”

“Lesson one,” Bob continued, “you just can’t hide from yourself anymore.”

“Anywho,” Bob said, “we all get quarantined for a little while when we get home. We’ve been subjected to a virus, that virus would be you, by the way, and we can’t take the chance of letting that virus seep out all over the rest of our population. So, we get closed up in a nice safe place for a little bit, and people that are specialized in our plight watch us for some time until they’re sure we didn’t get too much crazy on us, then we’re free to go.”

“But,” Mike asked suspiciously, “what happens to me? Obviously I’m nuts, according to you, and I can never really move about the sane people. I’ll be in a box of my own making forever. What’s the point of me going up there at all?”

Mike started laughing.

“What the hell was funny about that?” Mike asked, clearly hurt.

“I’m sorry brother, It’s just that your time and spatial references are about to be opened WAY up. Think about it, you assume that my home planet is up. What is up from your current point in space?