Gene Brewer - K-PAX

"Certainly. Ma-ma kona rampoon."

"What does that mean?"

"It means: Your mother is a gorilla."

"Thank you."

"No problem."

"And then where did you go? After Zaire."

"All over africa. Then to europe, asia, australia, antarctica, and finally to the americas. "

"And how many countries have you visited?"

"All of them except eastern canada, greenland, and iceland. Those are my last stops."

"All-what-hundred of them?"

"More like two hundred at present, but it seems to change by the minute."

"And you speak all the languages."

"Only enough to get by."

"How did you travel? Weren't you stopped at various borders?"

"I told you: It's difficult to explain..."

"You mean you did it with mirrors."

"Exactly."

"How long does it take to go from country to country at the speed of light or whatever multiples of it you use?"

"No time at all."

"Does your father like to travel?" I detected a brief hesitation, but no strong reaction to the sudden mention of prot's father.

"I imagine. Most K-PAXians do."

"Well, does he travel? What kind of work does he do?"

"He does no work."

"What about your mother?"

"What about her?"

"Does she work?"

"Why should she?"

"They are both retired, then?"

"Retired from what?

"From whatever they did for a living. How old are they?"

"Probably in their late six hundreds."

"Obviously they no longer work."

"Neither of them has ever worked." Apparently the patient considered his parents to be ne'er-do-wells, and the way he phrased his answer led me to believe that he harbored a deep-seated resentment or even hatred not only of his father (not uncommon) but of his mother (relatively rare for a man) as well. He continued: "No one `works' on KPAX. That is a human concept."

"No one does anything?"

"Of course not. But when you do something you want to do, it's not work, is it?" His grin widened.

"You don't consider what you do to be work, do you?"

I ignored this smug comment. "We'll talk more about your parents later, all right?"

"If you like."

"Fine. There are a couple of other things I'd like to clear up before we go on."

"Anything you say."

"Good. First, how do you account for the fact that, as a visitor from space, you look so much like an Earth person?"

"Why is a soap bubble round?"

"I don't know-why?"

"For an educated person, you don't know much, do you, gene? A soap bubble is round because that is the most energy-efficient configuration. Similarly, many beings around the UNIVERSE look pretty much like we do."

"I see. Okay-you mentioned earlier that-mm EARTH is a particularly lively place as seen and heard from space."

"What did you mean by that?"

"Your television and radio waves go out from EARTH in all directions. The whole GALAXY is watching and listening to everything you say and do."

"But these waves travel only at the speed of light, don't they? They couldn't possibly have reached K-PAX as yet."

He sighed again, more loudly this time. "But some of the energy goes into higher overtones, don'tcha know? It's this principle, in fact, that makes light travel possible. Have you studied physics?"

I suddenly remembered my long-suffering high school physics teacher, who had tried to drum this kind of information into my head. I also felt a need for a cigarette, though I hadn't smoked one in years. "I'll take your word for that, Mist-uh-prot. One more thing: Why do you travel around the universe all by yourself?"

"Wouldn't you, if you could?"

"Maybe. I don't know. But what I meant was: Why do you do it alone?"

"Is that why you think I'm crazy?"

"Not at all. But doesn't it get kind of lonely, all those years-four years and eight months, wasn't it?-in space?"

"No. And I wasn't in space that long. I've been here for four years and nine months."

"How long were you in spacer"

"I aged about seven of your months, if that's what you mean."

"You didn't feel a need to have someone to talk to for all that time?"

"No." I jotted down: Patient dislikes everyone?

"What did you do to keep yourself occupied?"

He wagged his head. "You don't understand, gene. Although I became seven EARTH months older during the trip, it really seemed like an instant to me. You see, time is warped at super light speeds. In other words-"

Unforgivably, I was too annoyed to let him go on. "And speaking of time, ours is up for today. Shall we continue the discussion next week?"

"As you wish."

"Good. I'll call Mr. Kowalski and Mr. Jensen to escort you back to your ward."

"I know the way."

"Well, if you don't mind, I'd rather call them. Just routine hospital procedure. I'm sure you understand."

"Perfectly."

"Good." The orderlies arrived in a moment and the patient left with them, nodding complacently to me as he went out. I was surprised to find that I was dripping with perspiration, and I remember getting up to check the thermostat after switching off the recorder.

While the tape was rewinding I copied my scribbled observations for his permanent file, making mention of my distaste for what seemed to me his arrogant manner, after which I filed the rough notes into a separate cabinet, already stuffed with similar records. Then I listened to part of the tape, adding a comment about the patient's lack of any trace of dialect or accent. Surprisingly, hearing his soft voice, which was rather pleasant, was not at all annoying to me. It had been his demeanor.... Suddenly I realized: That cocky, lopsided, derisive grin reminded me of my father.

DAD was an overworked small-town doctor. The only time he ever relaxed-except for Saturday afternoons, when he lay on the sofa with his eyes closed listening to the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts-was at dinnertime, when he would have exactly one glass of wine and relate to my mother and me, in his offhand way, more than we wanted to know about the ringworms and infarctions of his day. Afterwards he would head back to the hospital or make a few house calls. Unless I could think up a good excuse he would take me with him, assuming, erroneously, that I enjoyed the noxious sounds and smells, the bleeding and vomiting as much as he did. It was that insensitivity and arrogance, which I hated in my father, that had annoyed me so much during my first encounter with this man who called himself "prot."

I resolved, as always when something like this happens, to keep my personal life out of the examining room.

ON the train home that evening I got to thinking, as I often do after beginning a difficult or unusual case, about the human mind and reality. My new patient, for example, and Russell, our resident Christ, and thousands -like them live in worlds of their own, realms just as real to them as yours and mine are to us. That seems difficult to understand, but is it really? Surely the reader of this account has become, at one time or another, thoroughly involved in a film or absorbed in a novel, utterly "lost" in the experience. Dreams, even daydreams, often seem very real at the time, as do events recalled during hypnosis. On such occasions, who is to say what reality is?

It is quite remarkable what some of those with severe mental disorders are able to do within the boundaries of their illusory worlds. The "idiot" savants are a case in point. Unable to function in our society, they withdraw into recesses of the mind which most of us can never enter. They are capable of feats-with numbers, for example, or music-that others cannot begin to duplicate. We are still in the Dark Ages as far as understanding the human mind is concerned-how it learns, how it remembers, how it thinks. If Einstein's brain were transplanted into Wagner's skull, would this individual still be Einstein? Better: Switch half of Einstein's brain with half of Wagner's-which person would be Einstein and which Wagner? Or would each be someone in between? Similarly, in the case of multiple personality syndrome, which of the distinct "identities" is really the person in question, or is he/she a different person at different times? Are we all different people at different times? Could this explain our changing "moods"? When we see someone talking to himself-to whom is he speaking? Have you ever heard someone say, "I haven't been myself lately."? Or "You're not the man I married!"? And how do we account for the fundamentalist preacher and his clandestine sex life? Are we all Drs. Jekyll and Messrs. Hyde?