David Larson - The Myth of the Anal Probe

“Look,” Bob said as he regained his composure, “the simple fact that you so quickly absorbed your current situation and made the snap decision to carry the ball all the way to the goal line proves, in and of itself, that you have the capacity to make this work. You’ll be allowed to mingle fairly quickly, and you can go home whenever you want to.”

“Whenever?” Mike asked pointedly.

“Yep, just say the word and your chariot awaits.”

“How long do you think this trip is going to take?” Mike asked.

“Interesting question,” Bob said scratching his beard. “You have to understand that time doesn’t really work the way you understand it to work out here. There’s no sun rising or setting. Well actually, there isn’t on Earth either; the Earth rotates. The sun just sits there and burns. But I digress.”

“How long?” Mike persisted.

Bob stood up and looked at Mike for a few seconds then looked at the back of his bare wrist. “Wednesday,” Bob said “Right around 2 PM. Taking traffic into consideration, of course.”

“Thanks,” Mike said blankly.

“Not a problem old hoss,” Bob said with an air of officiality as he patted Mike on the shoulder “not a problem at all. Sit back, enjoy the ride. Maybe take some time to decorate your space a little. It looks like a shit storm of misery blew through here.”

Mike sat on the Iron Throne in one corner of his quarantine room. A life-size replica of the Master Chief sat directly in the middle of the room complete with Cortana sitting pensively on his shoulder like Tinker Bell on Peter Pan. Various paintings came and went on several of the walls, sometimes in rapid succession, and occasionally they would hover there for a few minutes before being replaced with something new.

Mike was getting tired of decorating his space, although he was actually getting pretty good at it by now. The transition from minding his own damn business as he drove home in his pickup truck to “think renovating” his space was breathtaking. At first, he simply had a bed and a lazy boy in his perfectly round and white “cell.” The he realized that his miserable living conditions were entirely of his own making. For a few hours he simply existed in his apartment back on earth. Just sitting in his own grubby, but comfortable chair, staring out the window at pigeons as they had an endless crap-leaving contest.

It took him a little while to understand that he could clean up the fertilizer ridden sill simply by disappearing the pigeons. Then it hit him he could simply disappear the crap. Then the beautiful crystallization of reality hit him that he was only stuck by his own inability to be creative. To actually think outside the box. He wanted a new chair. There was no reason to travel to the furniture store, or spend countless hours clicking through virtual store fronts on line. He hated that anyway. Once he fired up the laptop it was way too easy to slide into Facebook hell, just for a peek mind you, and get into an all day long pissing contest with a bevy of unseen thought harassers about the color of a dress, or the competence of a specific world leader.

Instead, all he had to do was think his new chair into existence, and summarily think his old one to the realm of an invisible, nonexistent trash heap. It took a little while longer to realize that the only limit to what his personal trappings could be was the actual limit of his mind. If a chair was too lumpy it was because his mind was too lumpy. If his bed was too soft, it was because his mind was too soft. But even more disturbing was that if his space was too foreboding…

Mike was firmly in the middle of a giant pond of denial, floating comfortably on his back, as little tiny fishes of unreason swam around him. He had already, in this short amount of time convinced himself that his “space” looked exactly the way he wanted it to. He was certain that his current wade in this cesspool of eclectic pop culture was exactly what he had always wanted. But someplace, WAY back in the corner of his subconscious, locked in a lead case with ten golden padlocks (that oddly resembled the lock on his old high school gym locker), sitting safely behind a two-foot-thick steel door that was guarded by pumas in diamond collars, attended by medieval knights with AK47s, was the glimmer of an idea that he might be full of shit.

Mike had that thought held tightly in a head lock as Bob walked into the room.

“How’s it hangin’ there, padre?” Bob asked.

“Just peachy,” Mike answered sullenly.

His legs were tightly crossed, he leaned to one side of the throne with his face firmly smashed into the palm on his left hand as that elbow was jammed into one of the arm rests. His right arm rested lazily on the other.

“Come on brother,” Bob said as he sat in a chair that Bob saw as a very comfortable contemporary model, and Mike perceived as a Weber gas grill on full high. “It can’t be all that bad in here can it?”

“I mean you are basically sitting in a giant adult playhouse that’s only limited by your mind.”

Mike just stared at him through bored eyes.

“Oh yeah,” Bob said as he scratched his beard. “I can see how there might be some limitations there. We never really turned one of these things loose on one of you people.”

“You people?” Mike said sitting up straight.

“Hey buddy,” Bob said with that ever-present smile on his face, “save the indignation for people that understand it. The law of implied slight don’t go ’round here law dog… savvy?”

“Sometimes,” Mike said, “the way you talk is odd, but vaguely familiar. It’s also definitely irritating as hell.”

“Irritation,” Bob said solemnly, “it’s what’s for dinner.”

He winked at Mike for punctuation.

“Exactly the kind of crap I’m talking about,” Mike shot back.

“I come bearing some good news,” Bob said.

“I could use some of that.” Mike said “Sitting in this TV fun house is starting to take its toll.”

“Well buster,” Bob said with open arms “you are about to be released into the wild.”

“Outstanding!” Mike exclaimed as he shot out of the chair. “How did that happen? I’ve been sitting in here for days now waiting for someone to come in and examine me. But there hasn’t been a soul in here except you.”

“Actually ace,” Bob said “people have been observing you every single minute you’ve been in this room. There’s an entire team of professionals sitting in a room right now dissecting every move you make.”

“I’m never exactly sure when you’re bullshitting me, and when I should believe you,” Mike said hesitantly.

“Yeah,” Bob said as he looked at his well-worn shoes “I get that a lot. But this time you can believe every single thing I’m saying. We couldn’t just turn you lose on an unsuspecting public. And, we couldn’t necessarily let people that weren’t used to dealing with the mentally afflicted come in here and get crazy on them. That stuff is a bitch to wash off.”

Mike raised one eye brow.

“This team,” Bob went on “has a device that allows them to see how you decorate your room. It monitors your mood, body temperature, heart rate… everything. They have poured over all of the recordings of every single conversation you and I have ever had. You must understand that since we – you and I that is – share a common DNA strand we have to be careful about how you affect the rest of us. If even a little bit of crazy washes onto one of us and starts a cascade effect it would be like the zombie freaking apocalypse out there. And not all of the Rick, Carol, and Darrells in the world would be able to stem that tide.”

“I get it,” Mike said. “I knew it would be like that before I ever signed on to this freak show. It just might have been nice if you told me what was going on. I wouldn’t feel so violated right now.”