One, two, five!

Sometimes it seems like the members of my family communicate with each other primarily via movie quotes.

In that way we're a little like the Tamarians from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Darmok," except instead of using edifying legends, mythology, and folklore from our history and culture to explain ourselves, we use quotes from Monty Python, Doctor Who, Arrested Development, Miranda, The X Files, and Looney Tunes.

And yes, I am aware of the irony of using a reference to a television show to explain our obsession with references to movies and television shows.

So, Shaka when the walls fell, I guess.

There's pretty much a quote for every occasion.  I can't hear an announcement in an airport without thinking (or often saying aloud), "Don't start that 'red zone/white zone' crap with me, Betty."  (From the movie Airplane, surely one of the most quotable movies ever made.)  If I fuck something up royally, my response is either "Missed it by... that much" (from Get Smart) or "Back to the old fiasco hatchery" (from the inimitable Wile E. Coyote).  If someone makes an egregious misstatement, there's always "That word... I don't think it means what you think it means."  (From, of course, The Princess Bride.)

This habit of making connections between real life and on-screen events also explains why there are times when I'll find something funny that no one else does.  This is why I burst out laughing when I read a new piece of research published in the journal PLOS ONE last week entitled, "Composition of Trace Residues from the Contents of 11th–12th Century Sphero-conical Vessels from Jerusalem," by a team led by Carney Matheson of Lakehead University.

From the title, you'd think that not only would there be nothing whatsoever funny about it, but that it'd be an article of interest only to people fascinated with obscure archaeological trivia.  But I suspect some of you will get why I thought it was funny when you hear what those "trace residues" were.

Gunpowder.  Matheson et al. believe they have discovered...

... medieval hand grenades.

Yes, Monty Python fans, what we have here is clearly the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

There is, unfortunately, no evidence that they were brought out in order to deal with a murderous fluffy bunny, nor that their use was preceded by monks chanting "pie Jesu domine, dona eis requiem" and a reading from the Book of Armaments ("And the Lord spake, saying, 'First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three.  No more, no less.  Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three.  Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceedest on to three.  Five is right out.  Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.'")

I feel obliged to state up front that I mean no disrespect to Matheson et al., and I have the greatest regard for scholarly research, so any connections I'm making to Killer Rabbits and monks who wallop themselves over the heads with boards is purely a function of my rather loopy brain.  And I suppose it's only fair to show a photo of the actual artifact:

[Photo credit: Robert Mason, Royal Ontario Museum]

In my own defense, I'm sure you'll agree that this looks a great deal like what was left when King Arthur didst lob the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch at the Beast of Caer Bannog and blew it to tiny bits.

So, there you go.  A post that's more about the workings of my bizarre neural connections than it is about the actual research.  I've been sitting here trying to think of a way to wrap this up, and I think it's only fitting to go with a quote from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Ship in a Bottle," the last line of which is Lieutenant Barclay saying, "Computer: end program."

**************************************

Beneficiaries

Bars are frequent settings for stories -- and bartenders commonly the ones who draw the story out of the teller. "Beneficiaries" is a bit of an homage to two writers who set a series of delightful stories in a pub, L. Sprague deCamp (Tales from Gavagan's Bar) and Arthur C. Clarke (Tales from the White Hart). I hope I did the idea justice.

*********************************

Beneficiaries

“Scotch.  Double.  Neat.”

Jim Quick, for twenty years the bartender at O’Donnell’s Irish Pub, wiped his hands on a towel, tossed it on the counter behind the bar, and turned to his newest patron with a smile.  “Do you have a favorite, then?  Single malt?  Blend?”

“It doesn’t matter,” the man said, slumping on the barstool and running his hand through hair still damp from the rain.  “Whatever’s handy.”

Jim selected a bottle, and filled a glass with amber liquid.  “Here’s a Glenfiddich.  Always popular.  Cheers, mate.”

The man held up the glass to Jim, and took a sip.

It was a quiet night—the only ones in O’Donnell’s were the regulars.  And this guy, who Jim had never seen before.  Despite having the downcast look of a dog that had been left alone in the back yard during a thunderstorm, and being just about as wet, there was something curiously compelling about him.  Jim leaned on the polished mahogany bar.  “You look like you need some cheering up.”

One corner of the man’s mouth twitched.  “I suppose.”

“Let me guess.  Problem with the ladies?”

“Oh, no.  They beat down the door to my bedroom, honestly.”

Jim looked at him, smiling and frowning at the same time.  The man in front of him was completely ordinary-looking, and in fact, the most striking thing about him was how nondescript he was.  If he’d had to describe this fellow to the police, Jim would have been hard-pressed to name one feature about him that didn’t begin with the word “average.”  But even so, there was no doubt in Jim’s mind that the man was speaking the literal truth.

“Lucky you.”

“I suppose,” the man said again.

Jim gave him a crooked grin.  “Hey, if you’ve got more than you want, you could send one or two over to my place.  It’s been too long since I had a nice tumble.”

The man shrugged.  “Okay.”

“Come on, then.”  Jim layered on all of the kindly reassurance that he’d learned from twenty years of dealing with despondent drinkers.  “Out with it. What’s eating at you?”

The man raised an eyebrow.  “Did I tell you that my name is Ted Cruz?”

Jim’s eyes opened wide.  “Seriously?  As in the weaselly Senator guy?”  He shook his head.  “That must be a bit of a burden, having a famous name like that.”

The guy slumped down even further.  “No, it’s not really.”  He stared into the depths of his scotch.  “I lied.  My real name is Britney Spears.”

Jim stared at him, and then burst into guffaws.  “Oh, mate, I’m sorry to have a laugh at your expense, but… oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, whatever can your parents have been thinking?”  Then he dissolved into helpless laughter again.

The man put both hands over his face, and leaned into them, sitting motionless for nearly a minute.

Jim finally got a hold of himself, and wiped his streaming eyes with the back of his hand, then reached out and thwacked the man on his shoulder.  “I’m sorry for laughing, mate.  That was unkind of me.  Next round is on the house, to make up for my bad manners.”

The man didn’t move.

“Ah…”  Jim frowned, and tapped the man’s shoulder.  “Are you all right?”  There was no response.  “I’m heartily sorry for laughing at you, um… Britney.”

The man dropped one hand, and glared at Jim with the one exposed eye.  “My name is not Britney Spears.  I was lying again.”

Jim shook his head.  “You were just having me on?”

“Yes,” the man said, one hand still covering half of his face.

“Well, you’re the finest liar I’ve ever met, and I’ve met a few,” Jim said.

Finally the other hand moved.  “No, I’m not.  I’m a terrible liar.  I just make stupid shit up.  It’s not even halfway to believable.”

Jim shrugged.  “Suit yourself.”

The man gave a harsh sigh.  “Look. I’m going to tell you something, and see if you believe that.  Tell you a story.  Okay?”

Jim looked down the bar.  The other patrons seemed to be in no imminent need of refills, and no one new had come in since the conversation had begun, so he leaned on the bar.  “Sounds worth hearing.”

“My uncle Harry died three months ago,” the man began.

“A pity,” Jim said.  “My condolences.”

“Thanks.  Uncle Harry was a bit of an oddball.  He was my mother’s brother, and was filthy rich.  He never married, and so when he died we inherited a good bit of his money, his house, and his stuff.”

“Lucky,” Jim said.

“Funny you should put it that way.  I’d always been jealous of Uncle Harry, because he had everything.  My mom and dad always just barely scraped by, but Uncle Harry made money without even trying.  My dad used to say that he could mint gold coins with his fingertips.  He always seemed to succeed at whatever he tried, and had a new girlfriend every week—and each one was always prettier than the last.  But even so, he never gave us anything while he was alive.  Not one cent.  I remember at one Christmas dinner, he came over, ate our food and drank our wine, and didn’t give a damn thing to anyone—not a single present to any of us.  He even told us that he had no reason to give away what was his, why should anyone expect a handout?  And the funny thing is—at the time, we all just sort of swallowed it.  ‘Harry’s a rogue,’ my mom said, in this kind of indulgent way.  And my dad said, ‘He’s a charmer, that’s for sure.’”

“Bit of an asshole, sounds like.”

“Well, maybe it seems that way now.  But no one was saying it then.”  The man nodded toward Jim, as if to point out how significant that was.  “He almost seemed to make a point of saying outrageous shit, just to see if anyone would challenge him.  Nobody ever did.”

“And you inherited his money when he died.  So you got the best of him, in the end.”

“Yes and no.  Just from his bank balance, my parents will never want for anything again, and that’s a blessing.  But the kids… he specifically willed each of us something.  He gave my sister a silver ring, and my brother a suave-looking felt hat with a leather hatband.  Me… he gave me a necklace.”

“A necklace?”  Jim peered at the man’s neck, which was bare.  “Not your style, then?”

The man gave a mirthless laugh.  “Actually, it was beautiful.  A gold Celtic cross on a thin gold chain.  When my mom gave it to me, said that Uncle Harry had wanted me in particular to have it, I thought it was pretty cool.  But I don’t wear necklaces much, so I just put the box in my pocket and forgot about it.”

Jim smiled.  “A nice keepsake of your uncle, still.”

[Image is in the Public Domain courtesy of its creator, Petr Vodicka, and the Wikimedia Commons]

“I got woken up by the telephone the morning after we got the gifts from Uncle Harry’s estate—it was a Saturday, I remember.  Seven o’clock.  It was my brother, calling me up to tell me he’d won the lottery.”

“Your brother won the lottery?” Jim said, in awe.  “That’s stupendous!”

“Yeah,” the man said, without much enthusiasm.  “But what I didn’t tell you is that he was on the verge of bankruptcy.  He’d gone out the night before with some friends, sort of as a last fling.  He was so embarrassed by his financial problems that he hadn’t wanted to ask any of us for help.  But he said that evening, he’d put Uncle Harry’s hat on, and suddenly had this feeling like… he couldn’t lose.  He bought one lottery ticket—just one—with the last dollar in his wallet.  And now he’s a millionaire.”

“That’s quite a story.”

Again there was that momentary twitch in the corner of the man’s mouth.  “Yeah.  And my sister… I didn’t tell you about her, either.  She recently was diagnosed with ALS.  You know, Lou Gehrig’s.  She had the tremors, weakness, and all… she was pretty despondent about it.”

“Isn’t that…”  Jim stopped, bit his lip.  “Terminal?”

The man nodded.  “Yeah.  Two years, they said.  Five, tops.  Most of it you’re bedridden.  One of the most horrible diseases around.”  He paused, took another sip of his scotch.  “Only, thing is—she went to the doctor two weeks ago, and he said she’s cured.  No sign of illness.  In fact, they’re looking into whether she was misdiagnosed in the first place, because no one, he said, ever is cured of ALS.  If you get it, you die.”  The man looked up at Jim, his eyes intense.  “She was wearing Uncle Harry’s ring when she went in for the checkup—the one where they told her the disease was gone.”

Jim stared at the man in astonishment.  “That’s… that’s fantastic.”

“We were all thrilled about it.  First my brother strikes it rich while wearing Uncle Harry’s hat, and then my sister is cured of a fatal disease while wearing his ring.”  He looked at Jim, his eyebrows raised.

“So… the necklace?” Jim prompted.

“It went missing.”

“No!” Jim said, aghast.

“When I found out my sister had been cured while wearing his ring, I thought, ‘I wonder if there’s something about Uncle Harry’s stuff that’s making all this happen?’  So, I took the necklace out of the box, and put it on.  I slipped it inside my shirt, and wore it all day.  I didn’t notice anything different.  Then, that evening… I suddenly realized that it was gone.  I turned my apartment upside down—I looked inside the sofa, under chairs, everywhere I could think of.  It was gone.”

“Well, that’s devastating,” Jim said with feeling.

“Mmm-hmm.”  The man didn't sound particularly devastated.  “So, anyway, that night, I was in the bathroom, and getting ready for bed, and I took my shirt off.  And I saw this.”

The man stood up, and lifted his shirt.  In the center of his upper chest was a small mark, shaped like a Celtic cross—a circle with a cross through it.

“Tattoo?”

“Not one I asked for.  But it’s the same shape as the design on the necklace pendant.  So I called my brother and sister, and we got together the next day for lunch.  And guess what I found out?”

“I wouldn’t try,” Jim said.

“Both the hat and the ring had had a Celtic cross design—it was on the hatband, and engraved into the band of the ring.  Both the hat and the ring had gone missing, too—the hat the day after my brother won the lottery, and the ring the day after my sister was given a clean bill of health.  And then they told me the best part—my brother now has a tiny Celtic cross mark on his temple, right at his hairline—you have to look close to even see it—and my sister has one on her right ring finger.”

“Sweet mother of God,” Jim said, under his breath.  “Wealth, health, and…?”  He looked at the man, a question in his eyes.

An attractive young woman, a cosmopolitan in one slender hand, came up to the man, and said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I couldn’t help but notice…”  She laughed nervously, reddened, and set her drink down on the bar.  “This is… this really isn’t like me.”  She stopped, and looked at him, smiling.

“It’s okay,” he said, as if he already had the script memorized, and was just waiting for her to recite her lines.

“It’s just that… when you had your shirt pulled up, I couldn't help looking at your bare chest, and I thought, Wow, he is so hot!  It just… it just came over me so suddenly, and I thought, hey, you only live once, right?  So I thought…”  She looked down coyly.  “Are you doing anything this evening?  I thought maybe we could go to my apartment, and you know… get to know each other a little.”  She looked up, smiled.

The man looked at Jim.  “Wealth, health, and I sure as hell would just like to be believed because I’m actually telling the truth.”  He sighed, and glanced over at the woman, who was hanging on his every word, even though there was no way she could possibly have had any idea what he was talking about.  “Not to mention women finding me attractive because I actually am.  The brother who was poor gets money, the sister who was sick gets well, and you know what that implies about me?”  He shook his head.  “Oh, well, I guess there’s nothing to be done about it.  Uncle Harry did the best he could, all things considered.”  He looked up at the woman, managed a smile, and said, “I’m really good in bed.”

She wiggled her eyebrows.  “I’m sure you are.”

“My name is Margaret Thatcher.”

She gave a coquettish laugh.  “That’s fine with me.  Mine’s Terry.”

The man slid a ten dollar bill across the bar, told Jim to keep the change, and Jim watched as the two of them exited into the rainy night.  Leo Corcoran, one of the bar’s regulars, came up, pint of Guinness in hand, and said, “It’s a right quiet night, Jimmy boy.  Who was that nice-looking young man you were talking to?  Dashing sort of fellow, I thought.  I’ve not seen him in here before.”

“Interesting gentleman.”  Jim picked up a towel and polished a glass with it.  “Quite a lady’s man, I fancy.  I think he’ll be scoring a nice little home run this evening, with that sweet blonde who left on his arm.  But odd thing, you know?  Fellow’s name is ‘Margaret Thatcher.’”

“Is that a fact?”

“It is,” Jim said.

“Never know what you’ll hear next, some days.  Stretches your capacity for belief, sometimes.”

“That’s God’s honest truth, lad,” Jim said.  “God’s honest truth.”

*******************************

It's obvious to regular readers of Skeptophilia that I'm fascinated with geology and paleontology.  That's why this week's book-of-the-week is brand new: Thomas Halliday's Otherlands: A Journey Through Extinct Worlds.

Halliday takes us to sixteen different bygone worlds -- each one represented by a fossil site, from our ancestral australopithecenes in what is now Tanzania to the Precambrian Ediacaran seas, filled with animals that are nothing short of bizarre.  (One, in fact, is so weird-looking it was christened Hallucigenia.)  Halliday doesn't just tell us about the fossils, though; he recreates in words what the place would have looked like back when those animals and plants were alive, giving a rich perspective on just how much the Earth has changed over its history -- and how fragile the web of life is.

It's a beautiful and eye-opening book -- if you love thinking about prehistory, you need a copy of Otherlands.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Bad Blood

The moral of this short story is either "Don't judge a book by its cover" or "Be careful who you piss off."  Both of them seem like decent takeaways.

***************************************

Bad Blood

Melba Crane looked up as Dr. Carlisle entered the room.  She smiled, revealing a row of straight, white, and undoubtedly false teeth.  “Hello, doctor!  I don’t think we’ve met yet.  How are you today?”

Dorian Carlisle looked at his new patient.  She was tiny, frail-looking, with carefully-styled curly hair of a pure snowy white, and eyes the color of faded cornflowers.  “I’m fine, Mrs. Crane.  I’m Dr. Carlisle—I’m looking after Dr. Kelly’s patients while he’s on vacation.”

Mrs. Crane nodded, and raised one thin eyebrow.  “My, you look so young.  It’s hard to believe you’re a doctor.”  She giggled.  “I’m sorry, that was rude of me.”

“Not at all.”  Dr. Carlisle lifted one of Mrs. Crane’s delicate wrists and felt gently for a pulse.  “I take it as a compliment.”

“It will be even more of a compliment when you’re my age.  I just turned eighty-seven three weeks ago.”

“Well, happy belated birthday.  I hear you had kind of a rough night last night.”

Mrs. Crane gave a little tsk and a dismissive gesture of her hand.  “Just a few palpitations, that’s all.  Nothing this old heart of mine hasn’t seen a hundred times before.”

“Still, let’s give a listen.”  Dr. Carlisle pressed his stethoscope to her chest.  Other than a slight heart murmur, the beat sounded steady and strong—remarkable for someone her age.

“How long will Dr. Kelly be away?”  Mrs. Crane asked, as Dr. Carlisle continued his examination.

“Two weeks.  He and his family went to Hawaii.”

“Oh, Hawaii, how lovely.  Such a nice man, and with a beautiful wife and two wonderful children.  He’s shown me pictures.”

Dr. Carlisle nodded.  “They’re nice folks.”  He pointed to a small framed photograph of a somewhat younger Mrs. Crane with a tall, well-built man, who appeared to be about thirty.  The man was darkly good looking, with a short, clipped beard and angular features.  He wore a confident smile, and stood behind Mrs. Crane, who was seated, her legs primly crossed at the ankle.  The man had his hand on her shoulder.

“Your son?” Dr. Carlisle asked.

Mrs. Crane nodded, and smiled fondly.  “Yes, that’s Derek.  My only son.”

“Do you get to see him often?”

“Oh, yes.  He visits me every day, especially now that I’m here in the nursing home.”  She paused and sighed.  “His father was Satan, you know.”

Dr. Carlisle froze, and he just stared at her.  She didn’t react, just maintained her gentle smile, her blue eyes regarding him with grandmotherly fondness.

He must have misheard her.  What did she say?  His father was a saint.  His father liked satin.  His father was named Stan.  His father looked like Santa.  But each of those collided with his memory, which stubbornly clung to what it had first heard.  Finally, he said, “I beg your pardon?”

“Satan,” Mrs. Crane said, her expression still mild and bland.  “That’s Derek’s father.  Lucifer.  He used to visit, too, quite often, when Derek was little, but I expect he has other concerns these days.”  She giggled again.  “And I’m sure he’s had dalliances with other ladies since my time.  Quite a charmer, you know, whatever else you might say about him.”

“Oh,” Dr. Carlisle croaked out.  “That’s interesting.”

“Well, of course, you couldn’t ask him to be faithful.”  If she heard his tentative tone, she gave no sign of it.  “He isn’t that type.  I did have to put up with a great deal of disapproval from people who thought it was immoral that I had a child out of wedlock.  But after all—” she tittered—“what else could they have expected?  He’s Satan, after all.”

"Satan," from Gustave Doré's illustrations for Milton's Paradise Lost (1866) [Image is in the Public Domain]

Dr. Carlisle cleared his throat.  “Yes, well, Mrs. Crane, I have to finish my examination of you, and see a couple of other patients this morning, so…”  He trailed off.

Mrs. Crane gave her little wave of the hand again.  “Oh, of course, doctor.  I’m being a garrulous old woman, going on like that.  I’m sorry I’ve kept you.”

“It’s no problem, really.  And I wouldn’t worry about the palpitations—usually they’re not an indication of anything serious, especially if they don’t last long, as in your case.  Your blood pressure is fine, and your last blood work was normal, so I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

“I tried to tell the nurse that.  But she insisted that I see the doctor this morning.  I’m sorry I’m keeping you away from patients who need your help more than I do.”

“No worries, Mrs. Crane.”  Dr. Carlisle hung his stethoscope around his neck.  “Take care, and have a nice day.”

“You too, doctor.  It’s been lovely talking to you.”

Dr. Carlisle opened the door, and exited into the hall, feeling a bit dazed.

He stood for a moment, frowning slightly, and then came to a decision.  He walked off down the hall toward the nurses’ station, and set his clipboard on the counter, and leaned against it.

“Excuse me, nurse…?”  He smiled.  “I’m covering for Dr. Kelly this week and next.  I’m Dr. Carlisle—my office is up at Colville General.”

The nurse, a slim, middle-aged woman with gold-rimmed glasses and short salt-and-pepper hair, gave him a hand.  “I’m glad to meet you.  Dana Treadwell.  If there’s anything I can do…”

“Well, actually,” Dr. Carlisle said,  “I do have a question.  About Mrs. Crane, in 214.”

Dana gave him a quirky half-smile.  “She’s an interesting case.”

Dr. Carlisle nodded.  “That’s my impression.  She’s here because of advanced osteoporosis, but is there anything else that you can tell me that might be helpful?”

“Has periodic mild cardiac arrhythmia.  She had a full cardio workup about six months ago, showed nothing serious of note.  Some tendency to elevated blood pressure, but nothing that medication can’t keep in check.”  She paused, gave Dr. Carlisle a speculative look.  “Some signs of mild dementia.”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about.  Is she… is she delusional?”

“That depends on what you mean,” Dana said.  “Mentally, I hope I’m as with it when I’m eighty-seven.  But she is prone to… flights of fancy.  Particularly about her past.”

Dr. Carlisle didn’t answer for a moment.  Should he mention the whole Satan thing?  He decided against it.  “She does seem to like telling stories,” he finally said.

Dana's smile turned into a full-fledged grin.  “That she does.”

***

The following day, Dr. Carlisle was making his rounds, and passed Mrs. Crane’s room, and heard a male voice.  Curiosity did battle with reluctance to talk to her again, and curiosity won.  He knocked lightly, then stepped into the room.

Mrs. Crane looked up from a conversation she was having with a man who was seated at the edge of the bed, gently holding her hand.  When the man turned toward him, Dr. Carlisle immediately recognized him as the man in the photograph—noticeably older, perhaps in his mid to late fifties, but clearly the same person.  He still had the same carefully-maintained short beard, the same dark handsomeness, the same sense of strength, energy, presence.

“Oh, doctor, I’m so glad you’ve stopped by!” Mrs. Crane said.  “This is my son, Derek.”

“Dorian Carlisle,” Dr. Carlisle said.  “Nice to meet you.  I’m going to be your mother’s doctor for the next two weeks, until Dr. Kelly returns.”

Derek got up and extended a hand.  “Derek Crane."  They clasped hands.  Derek’s hand jerked, and a quick flinch crossed his face.

“Sorry,” Dr. Carlisle said, almost reflexively.

“It’s nothing.  Three weeks ago, I hurt my hand doing some home renovations.  I guess it’s still not completely healed.”

“I didn’t mean to…” Dr. Carlisle started, but Derek cut him off.

“It’s nothing.  Mom has been telling me about your visit yesterday.  It sounds like she talked your ear off.”

Dr. Carlisle smiled.  “Not at all. It was a pleasure.  I’d much rather chat with my patients and get to know them—otherwise, all too easily this job starts being about symptoms and treatments, and stops being about people.”

Mrs. Crane beamed at them.  “Well, it’s so nice of you to take time from your busy schedule to stop in.  I haven’t had any more palpitations.”

“That’s good,” Dr. Carlisle said.  “I just wanted to see how you were doing.  Nice to meet you, Derek.”

“Likewise.” Derek smiled.

Was there something—tense? speculative? about the smile?

No, that was ridiculous.  Mrs. Crane had just primed him to be wary of her son because she’s delusional.

Dr. Carlisle exited the room, and then stopped suddenly, his face registering shock.  He looked down at his hands.  On his right ring finger he wore his high school class ring, from St. Thomas More Catholic Academy.  He raised the ring to his eye, and saw, on each side of the blue stone in the setting, a tiny engraved cross.

***

That night, Dr. Carlisle told his girlfriend about Mrs. Crane over dinner.

“Now I want to meet this lady.”  Nicole grinned.

“Can’t do that. I can’t even tell you her name.  Privacy laws, and all that. I probably shouldn’t have even told you as much as I did.”

“It’s not like I’m going to go and tell anyone.  And I want to hear about your job.  It’s a huge part of your life.”

He took a sip of wine.  “And this one was just so out of left field.  I’ve dealt with people with dementia before, but they always show some kind of across-the-board disturbance in their behavior.  This was like, one thing.  In other respects, she seems so normal.”

“You didn’t talk to her that long.”

“No,” he admitted.  “But you learn to recognize dementia when you see it.  There was something about the way she looked at you—you could tell that her brain was just fine.”

Nicole raised an eyebrow.  “So, you think she really did have a fling with Satan?”

He scowled.  “No, of course not.  But I think she believes it.  But then…” he trailed off.

“But then what?”

“Her son jumped when I shook his hand, like he’d been shocked, or something.  Then he made some excuse about how he’d hurt his hand a couple of weeks ago.  But I noticed afterwards—I was wearing my high school ring.  It’s got crosses engraved on it.  And it was probably blessed by the bishop.”

“You’re kidding me, right?  I thought you’d given up all of that religious stuff when you moved out of your parents’ house.”

“I did.”

“Maybe you didn’t,” Nicole said.

“All I’m saying is that it was weird.”

“You’re acting pretty weird, yourself.”

“I just wonder if it might not be possible to test it.  See if maybe she’s telling the truth.”

“You do believe her!  Dorian, you’re losing it.  Satan?  You think she got laid by Satan?”

He sat back in his chair.  “I dunno,” he finally said.  “All I can say is, she believes it enough that it made me wonder.”

***

The next day, other than a quick walk down the hall in the early morning hours, Dr. Carlisle avoided that wing of the nursing home until after lunch.  When he finally went down the hallway toward room 214, he found that his heart was pounding.  But he was stopped in the hall before he got to Mrs. Crane’s room by the nurse he’d spoken to two days earlier, Dana Treadwell.

“You missed some excitement,” Dana said.

“What happened?”

“A bad spill.  Broken leg, possible fractured pelvis.”

Dr. Carlisle swallowed.  “Which one of the patients?”

“Not a patient,” Dana said.  “Mrs. Crane’s son.  Slipped on wet tile right outside his mother’s room, and fell.  Hard to believe you could be so badly hurt from a fall.  They brought him to Colville General—I heard he’s still in surgery.”

“That’s too bad,” he said, trying to keep his voice level.

“Mrs. Crane was really upset.”

“I’m sure,” Dr. Carlisle said.

Dana seemed to pick up the odd tone in his voice.  She raised one eyebrow.  “Yeah.  She was completely distraught.”

“Really?”

Dana nodded.  “Especially after her ex-husband came by.  We finally had to give her a sedative.”

Dr. Carlisle tried to think of something to say, and finally just choked out, “That’s too bad,” and turned away, hoping that Dana wouldn’t notice the ghastly expression on his face.  He stuck his hand in his lab jacket pocket, and fingered the small glass bottle, now empty, that he’d filled early that morning at the font in the nursing home’s chapel.

“Oh, and Dr. Carlisle?” Dana said, and he turned.

“You might want to know that before we finally got her to go to sleep, your name came up.”

“Me?” Dr. Carlisle squeaked.  “What did she say?”

“Something about your ‘needing an ocean of holy water.’  You might want to let Dr. Bennett handle her case from now on.”  She smiled.  “Just a suggestion.”

*************************************

It's kind of sad that there are so many math-phobes in the world, because at its basis, there is something compelling and fascinating about the world of numbers.  Humans have been driven to quantify things for millennia -- probably beginning with the understandable desire to count goods and belongings -- but it very quickly became a source of curiosity to find out why numbers work as they do.

The history of mathematics and its impact on humanity is the subject of the brilliant book The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilization by Michael Brooks.  In it he looks at how our ancestors' discovery of how to measure and enumerate the world grew into a field of study that unlocked hidden realms of science -- leading Galileo to comment, with some awe, that "Mathematics is the language with which God wrote the universe."  Brooks's deft handling of this difficult and intimidating subject makes it uniquely accessible to the layperson -- so don't let your past experiences in math class dissuade you from reading this wonderful and eye-opening book.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

The Germ Theory of Disease

When you think of werewolves in the state of Washington (if you ever do), what probably comes to mind is a certain trilogy of books That Shall Not Be Named.  For this week's Fiction Friday, here's a different take on the idea of werewolves in general, not to mention love stories.

************************

The Germ Theory of Disease

Olivia Tanner realized it wasn’t going to be an ordinary ride home from work when a middle-aged businessman turned into a werewolf on the #217 bus from downtown Seattle to Bellevue.

It was very late at night, one of the last bus runs of the evening, and there weren’t many people aboard – just herself, a nice-looking, well-built blond guy in jeans and a sweatshirt sitting across from her reading a Stephen King novel, a sleeping teenager in the back row, and one or two others.  Near the front was a suit-clad, overweight businessman, his balding head sporting a rather pathetic attempt at a combover.  He had a briefcase sitting on the seat next to him, and was looking at some papers in a manila folder.  There was no conversation, only the swish of the traffic, the whining of the bus engine, and the occasional burst of static and unintelligible talk from the bus driver’s intercom.

They were on the middle of the I-90 bridge when it happened, which was an atrocious place for a werewolf to appear suddenly.  Even if the bus had stopped, there was nowhere useful to run, and given that it was night the choices would have boiled down to being eaten by the werewolf or getting run over by a car.

She was staring out of the window into the darkness, thinking about how glad she’d be to get back to her apartment and her bed – when she heard a noise, like someone tearing a bedsheet.  She looked around, wondering what had happened, and that’s when she saw it.  Standing up from the seat where the businessman had been seated was a creature that was unmistakably a werewolf.  Its forehead was sloping, with dark, almond-shaped eyes and bristling brows.  It had a long, tapered snout, and as she stared at it, one side of the muzzle lifted, revealing a sharp yellow canine tooth.  Pointed ears, rimmed with coarse hair, stood up from the side of its head.  It gave a low snarl, and turned toward her.  Their gaze met, and the creature’s eyes narrowed.  As it turned, she saw that its body was still basically human, but muscled like no one she’d ever seen.  It was naked, its chest and back hairy, and was prodigiously male.  One hand came out – its nails were long, pointed claws, like an eagle’s talons – and it grasped the seat, steadying itself.  She heard the little popping sound as its hand closed on the headrest and the claws punctured the plastic lining.  Muscles in its abdomen and legs stood out, tensing, as it readied itself to jump at her.

[Image is in the Public Domain]

Through all of this, Olivia sat completely still, transfixed, like a mouse mesmerized by a snake.  She shrank back, never taking her eyes off the werewolf, and tried to push her body backwards against the seat.  A whimpering noise came from her open mouth, but she couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream, couldn’t do anything but sit and wait for the thing to spring.

Then she caught a second movement, from the blond man across the aisle, and she turned to see him rise from his seat.  But it wasn’t him – was it?  The man who now stood next to her, also mother-naked, muscles rippling, his face shining in its own light, had wings.  And a sword.  The sword was glowing so brightly in the dimly-lit bus that Olivia could hardly look at it.  The wings, huge, feathered wings, speckled brown like a hawk’s, arose from broad shoulders.  His eyes were fixed on the monster in the aisle.  The werewolf swiveled its horrid head away from Olivia, and looked at the angelic figure blocking its way.  It gave a rough, angry growl, almost like a cough, and leapt at the winged man.

As the werewolf passed Olivia, it made a sweeping pass at her face with one clawed hand.  She ducked, and felt the wind as it missed her by inches.  The winged man brought up his sword, and there was a swish and a thud, and the werewolf’s head flew backwards, landed in the aisle, and rolled under a seat.  Dark blood gouted up from the severed neck.  The werewolf’s clawed hands rose for a moment, as if to investigate this strange condition of being headless.  Then it realized it was dead, and tumbled forward with a crash.

The angel figure let his sword drop to his side.  His other hand came up, and smoothed back his blond hair. Olivia just stared, her eyes perfect circles of terror.  The man looked down at himself, seemed to realize that he was being watched by a strange woman while wearing nothing but an embarrassed smile.  He shrugged, and said, “Oops.”  Then he sat down in the seat, his wings giving a little rustling sound as they folded inward, and he once again became the tall, lean man with the Stephen King book, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt.  He looked over at her, smiled and shrugged again.  Olivia looked at the floor.  The body of the werewolf was gone.  Once more the businessman was sitting in his seat, his balding head shining a little in the light from the overhead fluorescents.  He seemed to be feeling ill.  He was sweating, and as she watched, he passed a hand across his face, and coughed.

There were still puncture marks in the seat headrest two rows up.

She looked back at the blond man, opened her mouth, and tried to think of something to say.  Nothing came out.

“Hey,” he finally said.  “You want to go to the Starbucks in Eastgate and talk?”
Olivia just nodded.  Afterwards, she was never sure why she acquiesced, but at the time, it seemed like the only possible thing to do.

*****

The blond man, whose name was Nathan Hendrickson, sat across from Olivia in the Starbucks, drinking a mocha cappuccino with extra whipped cream and cinnamon sprinkles.  A raspberry danish, so far untouched, sat on a plate in front of him.  At first they engaged in small talk.  Nathan said that he worked as a manager at Chili’s downtown, and Olivia responded that she was a clerk in a clothing store.  Both of them lived in Bellevue, took the bus because they hated the traffic, and had a serious sweet tooth.

“But…” Olivia began, setting down her cup of vanilla chai and trying to think of how to phrase the question.

“What the fuck just happened on the bus?” Nathan said, in a conversational voice.

“Yeah,” Olivia said with some feeling.

Nathan took a bite of his raspberry danish. “It’s kind of hard to explain.”

“I thought it would be.  But you’re the one who suggested we come here.  I figured you wanted to explain it.”

“Well, let me just say this – check out the obituary columns in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer tomorrow.  The following day, at the latest.”

“Looking for who?”

“The bald guy.  He’ll be dead in twenty-four hours.”

Olivia frowned, looked down, shook her head.  “Can you tell me what happened?  It looked to me like you saved my life.  But… Jesus.  You had wings.  And no clothes on.”

Nathan blushed.  “Yeah, sorry about that.  It just happens.  I can’t take my clothes with me.”

“It’s okay. I mean, you…”  She stopped.  She’d been about to say, “You look just fine naked,” but decided that wasn’t something you said to someone you’d only met a half-hour ago, even if that person had just saved you from being ripped limb from limb by a werewolf.

“The issue is, you weren’t supposed to see all that.  Most people can’t.  Didn’t it strike you as a little weird that no one else said anything, screamed, nothing?  The kid in the back didn’t even wake up.  The bus driver didn’t slam on the brakes.”

“Of course.”  Truthfully, it hadn’t really registered with her until that moment.

“Most people can’t see these… events.  When they happen.  Which isn’t often.”

“So…that bald dude wasn’t really a werewolf?”

“Well, he was.  But not what you probably think of when you think of the word ‘werewolf.’  You know, some dude who turns into a wolf at the full moon, rips people up, and so on.”

“What is it, then?”

“Well, you know about the germ theory of disease, right?”

“It’s a theory?  I thought it was true.”

Nathan smiled.  “Well, back in the nineteenth century, it was just a theory.  People had this idea that these little things, these blobs you can only see under a microscope, caused things like scarlet fever and cholera and diphtheria.  Other people said, ‘Bullshit.  Little things like that, causing people to cough their lungs up?  Ridiculous.’  There was one Scottish doctor who was so contemptuous of the germ theory of disease that he used to sharpen his scalpel on the sole of his boot before surgery.”

“He must have had a hell of a lot of malpractice insurance.”

“No such thing, in those days.  But the point is, what you can’t see can kill you.  It just took a while for them to figure it out.”

“And this werewolf thing I saw…”  Olivia stopped, ending with an implied question mark.

“It’s a disease of the mind.  A fatal one, sadly.  When you’re infected, your spirit becomes the beast that you saw.  It’s transmitted by… well, I guess you could call it psychic bites.”

“Sort of like rabies.”

“Sort of.  If that guy’s werewolf had bitten you, or scratched you, you’d have turned as well.  But I killed it before it could.”

“And now he’s going to die?”

Nathan nodded, looked down.  “Yes.  You can’t live without your spirit, or at least not very long.  The werewolf is a diseased spirit, but you still die if it’s killed.  Even though it’s diseased, it’s somehow keeping you alive.  Without it, you die.”  He paused, then said, “It’s like with heart disease.  Heart disease can kill you, but taking out your heart would kill you a lot faster.”  His face became serious.  “The difference is, heart disease doesn’t try to jump to innocent people around you.”

“So the bald guy…”  Again she trailed off.

“Will be found dead.  Soon.  It’ll probably look like he had a heart attack or stroke.  His death will be attributed to natural causes.  But it’s one less werewolf out there, biting people and spreading the infection.”

“What would it have been like if I’d been bitten?”

Nathan’s eyes narrowed.  “I don’t know.  It’s weird.  You could see it, and you could see me… or at least me as I, um… really am.  Most people can’t.  Most people… if they’re bitten, they just have a sudden twinge – a pang of pain, it feels like a pulled muscle or a sore joint.  But then within two weeks, they turn, and they’re out there biting others and spreading the infection, without knowing it.”  He paused.  “How it would have been for you, I don’t know, given that you would have seen what the werewolf was really doing.”

Olivia didn’t answer for a moment.

“That’s horrifying,” she finally said.

“Yes.  That’s why I try to stop as many infected people as I can, before they can infect others.”

“They have no idea they’re doing it?”

“Not consciously.  But it does change their behavior, just like the rabies virus does.  Did you know that the rabies virus makes carnivores more aggressive, and herbivores more docile?  The virus does what it takes to spread – making a raccoon bite, or making a deer stand still and let itself be bitten – both of them serve to spread the virus to a new host.  In the case of this one, the person who’s been turned becomes more social.  They want to be around people.  They actually feel fit and energetic.  Their personalities become forward, pushy, extroverted.  You find a lot of ‘em in bars, dance clubs, at athletic events.  Eventually, they die – but it can take a year or two, and by that time they’ve usually infected hundreds of others.”

Olivia shuddered.  “And you?  What are you?  Some kind of guardian angel, or something?”

Nathan laughed.  “An angel?  Hardly.”

“You have wings.”

“Yeah.  So do sparrows.  That doesn’t make them angels.”

“Okay, if you’re not an angel, what are you?”

He grinned.  “I work for the Invisible Animal Control Department.  Or the Center for Psychic Disease Control.  However you want to look at it.”

“So… you’re, like, the Naked Winged Werewolf Avenger, or something?”

“I like that.  Can I use it?”

Olivia just stared at him for a moment.  “Look,” she finally said.  “Be straight with me.  Am I losing my mind?  Because if I am… fuck.  I just want to know, okay?”

“You’re not losing your mind.  What you saw was my spirit standing up and challenging the bald man’s werewolf spirit.  That’s why we were…. um, you know.  Naked.  No clothes allowed in the spirit world.”  He brightened.  “Your spirit is naked, too, you know.”

“I’ve never seen it,” Olivia said, dryly.

“Yeah, that’s a puzzler.  You weren’t supposed to see what you saw, and I honestly have no idea why you did.  But you’re not crazy.  You saw what was really happening.  It was the other people on the bus that didn’t.  All they would have seen is me and the bald dude, sitting there minding our own business.  No one else saw anything.”

“Including that sword of yours cutting the werewolf’s head off?”

“Yup.” He grinned.  “And by the way, that sword only hurts werewolves.  No worries about my being armed and dangerous.”

Olivia rolled her eyes.  “Trust me, at the moment that’s the least of my worries.”

Nathan just grinned at her.

“Now what do I do?  I mean, assuming that I actually believe all of this.”  And she suddenly realized that she did believe it.  There was no disputing what she’d seen, and Nathan’s explanation made as much sense as any other she could come up with.

“I guess, we finish our coffee and pastries, and we both go home.”

“And tomorrow, I just go to work, and you go back to… werewolf hunting?”

“I have to work, too.  Werewolf hunting doesn’t pay my rent.”

“Oh.”  She looked up at him.  “How do I avoid getting bitten?  I mean, you’re not going to be there next time, probably.”

“Given that you can see them, you’ll at least have more of an advantage than other people.  But honestly, not that many people are werewolves.  I kill maybe three, four a month.  Five in a good month.  And that’s with going out to look for them, hanging out in werewolf-friendly places.  I get at least one a month right in Chili’s.”

“Convenient for you.”

 
Nathan nodded.  “Yup.  But you shouldn’t worry.  Your likelihood of getting bitten, even if you couldn’t see them, is pretty small.”

She looked at him, one eyebrow raised.  “Any chance I could take out some extra insurance?  You want to have dinner together some time?”

Nathan gave her a dazzling smile.  “Sure.  I’m free tomorrow evening, in fact.  How about that new Japanese restaurant up in the University District?  I’ve been wanting to try it.”

“Sure.”

Nathan stood, and then went over, and gave her a light kiss on the mouth.  Olivia felt a tingling sensation, like a static shock.

“You’re pretty forward yourself.”  She smiled up at him.

“Can’t let the werewolves have all the fun.”

*****

Olivia found the bald man’s obituary in the Post-Intelligencer two days later.

It read:

MARTIN 

Douglas J. Martin, 47, of Bellevue, died suddenly Tuesday morning.  He was a valued employee of Rush Life Insurance Agency of Seattle, where he had worked for fourteen years.  He was a graduate of Pacific Lutheran University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1985.  He was awarded an MBA in finance from the University of Washington in 1990.  Martin’s passing is mourned by a brother, Thomas, of Tacoma, and a sister, Mary McWilliams, of Tukwila.  He was preceded in death by his parents, Nelson and Denise (Trudell) Martin.

Olivia looked down at the photograph of the suit-clad man, with his neat wire-framed glasses and his combover.  A shiver ran through her frame as she remembered the rippling muscles and yellow fangs of the werewolf he’d become.  He could have bitten or scratched her, infected her.  If he had, in a week or two she'd be out partying at bars, looking for victims without even knowing it.

Or maybe she was losing her mind.  At the moment, those two possibilities seemed equally likely.

*****

One date with Nathan became two, then three, and pretty soon Olivia’s roommate, Andrea, was asking when she’d get to meet this blond god that Olivia was so taken with.

“Soon,” Olivia said.  “I’ll have him over here for dinner some time.  Once we run out of new restaurants to try.”

“That could take years.”  Andrea wiggled her eyebrows.  “Maybe you’ll be having him come over for, you know.  Other reasons.  At some point.”

“Maybe at some point.”

 
“You certainly have been seeing him a lot.  When have you been one to run off after the night life?  I always thought of you as being more of the come home early, cuddle up with a nice book type.”

Olivia shrugged.  “I’m just having fun, that’s all.  Are you jealous?”

“Yeah.  A little.  And if he turns out to be as gorgeous as you say, I’m going to be a lot jealous.”

*****

A little under three weeks later, she woke up on a Saturday morning with a sudden, stabbing pain, right behind both shoulder blades.  She yelped a little and reached back, but the pain was gone, as instantaneously as it had occurred.  After lying still for a moment, she wasn’t completely convinced that it’d been real, that she hadn’t dreamed it.

She tried to relax, to go back to sleep, but she felt restless, with a fiery energy that was completely unlike her usual reluctance to get up on her days off.  Finally, she stretched, yawning, and went into the bathroom, and turned on the shower.

As she was drying herself off, there it was, that jolt of pain again.  Once more she slid her hands over her bare shoulders.  Her skin felt normal, smooth, unmarked, and she massaged her shoulder muscles a little – but honestly, there was no reason to.  She felt fine.  Better than fine, actually.  She felt wonderful.  But why did she keep feeling that sudden twinge?

She glanced in the mirror.  And only for a moment – in a flash nearly as quick as the pain had been – she saw a reflection of herself, her face shining from its own light, and behind her a pair of long, tapered wings, streaked like a falcon’s.  She gasped, and looked again – and she was back to being herself, just regular Olivia.  The whole thing had taken less than a second.  She reached back, feeling behind her, but there was nothing there.

She leaned toward the mirror, mouth hanging open a little, and her image blurred, and there were the wings again, as if her body had hung back just for a little, had taken a while to catch up.  Then there was a shimmer as she became an ordinary human again.  Every time she moved, there was a quick image of a naked, shining, winged woman, who was clearly herself and yet so obviously not – and then like an image coming into focus, the vision would go away, and all she’d see was her own familiar form.

And that was when she remembered their first kiss, when she’d felt an electric zing as their lips touched.

Heart pounding, she turned off the shower, pulled on her bathrobe, and went into her bedroom, and picked up her cellphone and dialed it.

“Hello?” said a sleepy voice.

“It's Olivia.  Goddammit, I’ve… did you know you were contagious?”

He sounded genuinely mystified.  “I am?”

“Nathan, I’ve got wings.”

“You do?  How’s that possible?”

“Well, I think you’re the one who can tell me that.”  Olivia tried to keep the indignation out of her voice, with only marginal success.  “You’ve infected me.  With, I don’t know, Contagious Naked Winged Werewolf Avenger disease, or something.”

“I didn’t know it was contagious.”  He paused.  “Look, I’m sorry.  You already could see the werewolf, three weeks ago.  Maybe you were already infected somehow.”

“I don’t think so,” Olivia said.  “I’m sure that this came from you.”

“Sorry,” he said again.

“Look, I’m not mad at you.  It’s more that I’d at least have liked to have had a choice in the matter.”

“Germs don’t ask you if you want to be infected.  Remember the Germ Theory of Disease?”

Olivia felt her wings flex, rustle quietly, and then with a shiver she sensed her newly winged spirit reintegrating with her body.  Really, she felt remarkably well.  Well enough to fly.  Maybe well enough to hunt werewolves.

“Well,” she admitted, “I guess you have a point.”
“I gotta say it’s kinda cool.”  His voice rose with excitement, and she could virtually hear him smiling.  “I never thought I'd have a girlfriend who was... you know.  Like me.  Don’t you think this could be fun?”

“Fun,” she said, and was silent for a moment.  Then something in her seemed to shift, and she hoped it wasn’t just the wings.  “Okay, fine.  What the hell.  You know where I can get a sword?”

****************************************

I remember when I first learned about the tragedy of how much classical literature has been lost.  Take, for example, Sophocles, which anyone who's taken a college lit class probably knows because of his plays Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Oedipus at Colonus.  He was the author of at least 120 plays, of which only seven have survived.  While we consider him to be one of the most brilliant ancient Greek playwrights, we don't even have ten percent of the literature he wrote.  As Carl Sagan put it, it's as if all we had of Shakespeare was Timon of Athens, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Cymbeline, and were judging his talent based upon that.

The same is true of just about every classical Greek and Roman writer.  Little to nothing of their work survives; some are only known because of references to their writing in other authors.  Some of what we do have was saved by fortunate chance; this is the subject of Stephen Greenblatt's wonderful book The Swerve, which is about how a fifteenth-century book collector, Poggio Bracciolini, discovered in a monastic library what might well have been the sole remaining copy of Lucretius's masterwork De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), which was one of the first pieces of writing to take seriously Democritus's idea that all matter is made of atoms.

The Swerve looks at the history of Lucretius's work (and its origin in the philosophy of Epicurus) and the monastic tradition that allowed it to survive, as well as Poggio's own life and times and how his discovery altered the course of our pursuit of natural history.  (This is the "swerve" referenced in the title.)  It's a fascinating read for anyone who enjoys history or science (or the history of science).  His writing is clear, lucid, and quick-paced, about as far from the stereotype of historical writing being dry and boring as you could get.  You definitely need to put this one on your to-read list.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Menagerie

For this week's Fiction Friday, here's an odd little short story I wrote a while back when I was pondering what my life would be like without the anxiety and emotional ups-and-downs I've dealt with since I was a child.  Would you simply delete unpleasant feelings if you could?  And if so, would you end up losing more than you gained?

************************************

Menagerie

“Your body is completely relaxed.  You are tranquil, floating, totally comfortable.”  Fay Devillier’s soothing voice was the only sound in the room, other than the soft breathing of her client who sat, legs crossed, on a yoga mat, hands on his knees, eyes closed.

“You can still hear my voice, and are able to respond to my questions.  You are not asleep, just very, very relaxed.  Do feel relaxed, Jesse?”

Jesse Goldman’s lips opened, just a little, and he said, “Yes.”

“Excellent.  Now, without losing your sense of peace and relaxation, I want you to become aware of your anxiety.  Picture it.  Keep it in front of your attention.  But your anxiety is not you.  It is something you are curious about, something you are observing.  Think of your anxiety as an animal, some small animal in front of you.  It can’t harm you.  You are watching it.  Can you see it?”

“Yes,” Jesse said again.

“What do you want to say to it, Jesse?”

“Get out of my body,” Jesse said, his voice barely audible.  “I don’t want you any more.”

“That’s very good.  How did your anxiety-animal react when you said that?”

“It didn’t like it.  It’s glaring at me.”

“But you know it can’t hurt you, right?  It can only go back into your body if you let it.”

“Yes.”

“Good.  Now, go deep into your breathing.  Let your vision of the anxiety-animal fade away.  Give your attention to your breathing.”

Jesse sat quietly for several minutes, breathing.

“When you are ready, let your awareness rise like a bubble rising in water.  Expanding, floating to the top.  When it reaches the top, open your eyes.  You will awake feeling no anxiety, only peace.”

In a few moments, Jesse opened his eyes, blinked a few times, and then smiled.  Fay, seated in the lotus position in front of him, smiled back.

“How do you feel, Jesse?”

“Great.”  He stretched, his back cracking pleasantly.  “That was awesome.  I’m not feeling jittery any more.”

“Now, remember, you may feel your anxiety trying to sneak back in.  When you do, just close your eyes and breathe.  What you did today, you did—not me.  You can go into yourself any time you want.  Any bad feeling you have, you can banish this way.”

Jesse nodded. “I’d like to try to get rid of a few others.  I have other feelings I’d like to get rid of.”

“We can work on those next time.”  She reached out and touched his shoulder.  “But just remember that you don’t have to try to tackle everything at once.”

***

Jesse rode the bus back to his apartment feeling lighter than he had in months.  Maybe years.  Anxiety had been part of his life as long as he could remember.  The nervous clutch in the belly, the sweat breaking out on the skin, the heart racing—all were familiar sensations, sure to come any time he was faced with a challenge he thought he couldn’t achieve, which was often.  This probably explained why Jesse, the prep-school-educated only child of a lawyer father and a doctor mother, was working for twelve dollars an hour as an aide in the public library.

When he got back to his apartment, he met his roommate, Dale Warren, leaving for work.

“Hey, Goldman.  What did you think of the hypnotist chick?”

“Pretty good,” Jesse said.

“Told you.  Rachel said she was amazing.”

“Tell Rachel thanks for recommending her.”

“We’re going to see a movie tonight.  I’ll tell her.”  Dale grinned.  “Rachel’s friend Sarah is still available, dude.  You think the hypnotist could help you get over your being too big a wuss to ask her out?”

Previously, such a question would have made Jesse’s heart give a nervous little gallop, but now, all he felt was calm.  He gave his roommate a confident smile.  “Yeah.  Yeah, I think she might.”

Jesse had two hours before his shift began at the library, so he went into his bedroom, figuring he’d take a quick nap—his feeling of relaxation was really extraordinary.  He hadn't felt this good in a long, long time.  He was caught between astonishment and happiness at the well-being that washed over him.  He felt like he could actually sleep soundly, something that had never been easy.  But when he opened his bedroom door, all thoughts of sleep vanished.

Sitting in the middle of his bed was a squirrel.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Nickomargolies at English Wikipedia, Common Squirrel, CC BY-SA 3.0]

The squirrel was just sitting there, shivering.  It didn’t look cold, it looked more like it had a disorder of the central nervous system.  Its entire body was vibrating, almost as if it were being subjected to periodic electric shocks.

Was this what rabies looked like?  Then he glanced over at his window, which was closed.

So how had it gotten into his room?

Then he realized two other things, in increasing order of bizarreness.  First, he didn’t feel at all alarmed by the fact that there was an apparently diseased squirrel in the middle of his bed, and second, the squirrel looked a lot like the way he had imagined his anxiety during hypnosis.

Without taking his eyes off the animal, he reached over and picked up his tennis racket, which was leaning against the wall behind the door.  He walked slowly toward the bed, and then extended the racket, and poked the animal in the side with the end of it.

“Shoo,” he said.

The squirrel looked up at Jesse and said, in a high-pitched but perfectly clear voice, “Fuck off.”

Jesse dropped the racket.

“You talk?” Jesse said.

The squirrel just gave him a sour look, and its face twitched.

“Are you the animal I visualized when I was at the hypnotist?”

“Bright guy.  Got it in one.”

A thought floated through his head, wondering why he wasn't freaking out about this.  Any normal person would be beyond freaking out by this point.  “How can you be real?”

“You did it,” the squirrel said, a bitter tone in its voice.  “You figure it out.”

“I’m having a hallucination.”

“Suit yourself.”

“So, you really are real, then?”

“Look, I’m not going to spend my time discussing existential issues with you.”  The squirrel looked up at him.  “Say, you got some of those anti-anxiety meds you always pop like candy?  I could use a couple.”

Jesse frowned.  “Is this… is this why I feel so much better?  Because you’re not inside me any more?”

“Oh, sure.”  The squirrel's voice cracked as its body shook.  “Lord it over me.  Think about how I feel.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Jesse said, and then realized that he didn’t actually feel very sorry at all.  “But you were the one making me upset, making it so I couldn’t cope.”

“Seriously?  That’s what you think?”  The squirrel snorted.  “Try again, buster.”

Jesse sat down on the edge of the bed.  “Well, whatever. I feel better, so I really don’t care if I’m hallucinating you or not.  Now, move over, because I’m taking a nap.  I feel like I could sleep for days.”  He set his alarm clock for two hours.  “But I still have to go to work, so I’d better just make it till eleven o’clock.”

***

Jesse woke up, after one of the soundest, most refreshing sleeps he could remember, just before his alarm went off.  The squirrel had moved to the top of his bookcase, where it sat, shivering and glaring at him.  Jesse changed into his work clothes, and twice had to stop himself from breaking into whistling.  He did feel a twinge of guilt about the squirrel’s apparent discomfort, and didn’t want to rub it in its face too obviously.

While on a break at the library, he called Fay Devillier, and asked if she had any openings later in the week—that he felt so much better, he wanted to see her more than once a week.  She sounded pleased, and surprised, but cautioned him against being too aggressive.

“Don’t push things too fast, Jesse.  I’m happy you feel our work has been helpful, but slow and steady is best.”

“No, I really want to try this again.  Can we?”

“I have an opening Thursday at ten.  Can you make that?”

“Yes.  And I know just what I want to work on.”

***

“Shyness is not necessarily a bad thing,” Fay said, at ten o’clock on Thursday morning.  “What we think of as negative or unpleasant emotions can sometimes serve a purpose.”

“It’s a problem to me,” Jesse said.  “I can’t face asking a girl out.  I’m totally awkward at parties.  I hate it.”

“Well…”  She sounded hesitant.  “If you find it to be that big an impediment to your life…”

“I do.”

***

When Jesse returned to his apartment, he was not really all that surprised to see that there was a little bird sitting on his dresser, which put its head under its wing when he looked at it.  The squirrel was splayed out on its back on Jesse’s pillow, a cool, wet washcloth on its forehead, its body still wracked by tremors.

He barely gave them a glance.  He went to his telephone and picked it up, and dialed a number he’d written on a slip of paper next to his nightstand.

“Hi, Sarah?  This is Jesse Goldman—I’m Dale Warren’s roommate.  I was wondering… would you like to go catch a movie or something tonight?”

***

Fay Devillier looked at Jesse doubtfully, as he walked into her office at ten o’clock sharp the following Tuesday.

“You look… good, Jesse,” she said tentatively.

“I feel great.  Hey, I’ve already had two dates with Sarah.  She’s great.  I haven’t had a panic attack in over a week.  I’m doing awesome.”

“That’s good.  I mean… yeah, that’s good.”  Fay paused and shook her head.  “Look, I have to tell you that I have some misgivings about this.  You seem like you’re… changing too fast.  Like you’re imposing your will over your problems—forcing yourself to make big changes quickly.  I’m worried that it won’t be permanent, that you could have a setback.”

“I’m not.  And it’s not me imposing my will, or at least in the way you mean—that I’m somehow just submerging my feelings.  Your hypnotherapy hasn’t made me able to control my bad feelings—it’s taken them away.  I had therapy for years that was designed to help me control my feelings.  It never worked.  What you’ve helped me to do is to remove the feelings entirely.”

“Feelings aren’t bad things, in and of themselves,” Fay said.  “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. Feelings are there for a reason.”

“They’re making it too hard for me to do what I want to do.”

Fay looked at him uncertainly.  “Are you sure…” she began, and then stopped.

“I’m sure.  I want to do it again.”

She bit her lip.  “Once more.  Only once.  And then you need to sit back, and let yourself just be for a while.  The whole point of this isn’t to tear yourself apart, you know.”

“Maybe not.  But I sure don’t mind tearing away the parts of me that cause me pain.”

Fay frowned at him, and then took a deep breath.  “All right.  One more time, then.  What will it be this time?”

“Fear.”

***

Jesse caught only a glimpse of the rabbit’s white tail as it zoomed under the dresser when he walked into his bedroom at a little before noon.

The bird was standing in front of the mirror on his dresser, both wings over its eyes.

The squirrel had somehow opened the bottle of Southern Comfort Jesse had sitting on top of his bookcase, and lay next to a mostly-empty glass in an alcoholic stupor.  It was still shivering.

This was awesome.  No fear.  No anxiety.  No shyness.

Of course, there were other parts of him that he could sure do without.  Wouldn’t it be nice not to be angry at his parents any more for all of the head trips they put on him when he was a kid?  Wouldn’t it be great not to feel sad any more about his beloved grandma dying last year?  Wouldn’t it be easier if he didn’t feel jealous of Dale for being better-looking than he was?

He lay back on his bed, and cupped his hands behind his head.

Fay said she wasn’t going to help him any more, that what he was doing was dangerous.  But he didn’t feel afraid to do it, so what exactly was the problem?  He peered over at the rabbit, which had poked its whiskered face out from under the dresser.  As soon as he turned its way, it dashed back into the dark space and disappeared.

He closed his eyes.  Focused on his breathing, made each breath deep and deliberate.  He concentrated on the air moving in and out of his chest, felt his heart beating more slowly as relaxation seeped through his body.

Anger. Sadness. Jealousy. Pain. Loss. Grief. Rage. Laziness. Destructiveness. Greed.

How much better it would be, how much more peaceful and quiet and calm, without any of them.

Jesse Goldman sank back, descending, his awareness pulling one emotion, then another, then another, out into the sunlight for him to watch and then to banish, until finally there was nothing left, nothing but an empty beam of sunlight with only a few particles of dust swirling in it to give it substance.

***

Dale Warren got home from work at a little after seven.  He dropped his lunchbox on the counter, chucked his keys onto the coffee table, then went over to check voicemail.  He’d left a message with Rachel about going to a party that evening—a yes from her would make what had been an otherwise fairly boring day have at least the promise of a good end.

The voice on the only message, however, wasn’t Rachel’s.  “This is Jessica McVeigh,” came a pinched, annoyed female voice.  Dale recognized the name of Jesse’s boss at the library.  “Jesse, where are you?  Louise is sick today, and we’re short-handed.  Call me when you get this.”

Dale frowned.  Missing work without calling in wasn’t like Jesse.  It wasn’t like him at all.  He went to Jesse’s bedroom, and knocked on the door.

“Yo, Goldman, you in there?”

There was no response, so Dale opened the door.

Jesse Goldman was lying on his bed, his hands still behind his head, a beatific smile on his face.

“Goldman?” Dale said, and walked over to the bed, and shook his roommate’s arm.

Jesse didn’t awaken, didn’t even stir.  His chest still rose and fell, slowly, rhythmically, the only thing that showed that he was still alive.

And that was when Dale noticed that he and Jesse were not alone in the dimly-lit bedroom.  In every corner, on every surface, there was an animal of some kind.  A large snake was coiled around the base of Jesse’s floor lamp, its forked tongue flicking, watched him through lidless eyes.  A monkey sat beside the bookcase, systematically tearing up one of Jesse’s old college chemistry textbooks.  A basset hound, its long ears drooping, gazed at Dale for a moment, then gave a heartfelt sigh and curled up in a pile of dirty clothes on the floor next to the bed.  A packrat was scurrying back and forth, picking up objects in its mouth, and bringing them back to pile them up in the corner by the window.  It already had a small stack of coins, several paper clips, a flash drive, a keychain, and Jesse’s wristwatch.  There were others animals there, too—he could make out several different kinds of birds, a frog, a scorpion, a lizard of some sort, and most alarmingly, what appeared to be a black panther, sitting inside the closet, looking out at Dale through the half-open door.  As their eyes met it gave a low, throaty, dangerous-sounding growl, and Dale caught a glimpse of white teeth.

Dale backed toward the door, his heart jittering uncertainly against his ribs.

“Jesse?” he said again, his voice coming out as a squeak.

A squirrel raised its head from a spot on the bookcase, and regarded Dale through bloodshot eyes.  “Don’t bother,” the squirrel said.  “He can’t hear you.  He thought he’d be better off this way.  Moron.”

Dale turned and ran out of the room, and was dialing 911 when he heard the squirrel’s shrill voice call after him, “Don’t blame me.  I tried to tell him.”

*****************************************

I've mentioned before how fascinated I am with the parts of history that still are largely mysterious -- the top of the list being the European Dark Ages, between the fall of Rome and the re-consolidation of central government under people like Charlemagne and Alfred the Great.  Not all that much was being written down in the interim, and much of the history we have comes from much later (such as History of the Kings of Britain, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, chronicling the events of the fourth through the eighth centuries C.E. -- but written in the twelfth century).

"Dark Ages," though, may be an unfair appellation, according to the new book Matthew Gabriele and David Perry called The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe.  Gabriele and Perry look at what is known of those years, and their contention is that it wasn't the savage, ignorant hotbed of backwards superstition many of us picture, but a rich and complex world, including the majesty of Byzantium, the beauty and scientific advancements of Moorish Spain, and the artistic genius of the master illuminators found in just about every Christian abbey in Europe.

It's an interesting perspective.  It certainly doesn't settle all the questions; we're still relying on a paucity of actual records, and the ones we have (Geoffrey's work being a case in point) sometimes being as full of legends, myths, and folk tales as they are of actual history.  But The Bright Ages goes a long way toward dispelling the sense that medieval Europe was seven hundred years of nothing but human misery.  It's a fascinating look at humanity's distant, and shadowed, past.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Frames of Reference

For this week's Fiction Friday: a short story I wrote a while back about not judging a book by its cover, even if the cover is kind of ugly.

*****************************

The day Tommy Schallenberger met the orc started out normally enough. 

It was during the soft midsection of summer vacation, some indeterminate date in the middle of July, the time when twelve-year-old boys ignore even the day of the week into non-existence. It was long enough after the end of school that the frantic desperation to cling to every moment had passed, and not yet near enough to the beginning of the next school year that a new, and altogether different kind, of frantic desperation had begun.

Tommy was splashing his way down the creek bed, clad only in a disreputable pair of cargo shorts, his brown hair streaked with sun-faded gold and his shoulders and cheeks bronzed and freckled. There was nothing purposeful about what he was doing. If an adventure presented itself, that was fine. If not, he could pass an agreeable afternoon doing nothing but exploring the creek and trying to catch frogs.

He jumped down from a flat rock by a shallow waterfall onto a projecting shelf lower down, and almost lost his footing, but with that preternatural grace that some pre-adolescent boys have, he regained his balance after teetering for a moment on the ball of one foot. There was a rustle in the bushes, off to the side and downstream, but Tommy paid it little heed. Deer were common and unafraid, and if it wasn’t a deer, the other possibilities didn’t seem all that alarming. The last black bear seen near Tommy’s house had been ten years ago, and for a boy who had been raised on Bear in the Big Blue House, even that thought seemed more intriguing than frightening.

Tommy jumped from the shelf down to the lower creek bed, where the water recommenced flowing after bubbling for a bit in an oval pool. He miscalculated the depth of the pool, however, and found himself suddenly immersed up to the waist in remarkably cold water. Reflexively, he tried to scramble out, and his natural sense of balance failed him. His bare feet slipped on the algae-coated surface of the rock, and arms flailing, he fell over backwards.

Tommy was a good swimmer, and the water wasn’t that deep. so there was never any real danger. But he inhaled a big gulp of water, and came up gagging and coughing, and as a result slipped again and went back under. And that was when a strong hand grabbed him by the wrist, and lifted him bodily out of the pool, to hang there like a caught fish, dripping and sneezing and spitting out creek water.

Tommy looked at his rescuer. A shriek rose from his gut, got caught halfway, and came out as a thin whine.

A thick-set, broad body, arms far too long and legs too short to seem human, was surmounted by a nearly spherical head of such amazing ugliness that Tommy immediately wondered if he’d drowned in the pool and been summarily sent to hell. The eyes were small and piglike, the hair scanty but coarse. The ears were long and pointed, and stuck out from the side of its head like wings. Like Tommy it was only clad from the waist down, and its skin was a rather alarming gray-green. The creature’s mouth was impossibly wide, and pulled into either a grimace or a smile—it was hard to tell which it was. 

Tommy coughed again, and tried to yell for help, but his vocal chords were still in open rebellion, and it came out as a faint “Eeep.”

[Image of an orc has been released by the artist, Mathias Panzenböck, into the Public Domain]

“If that was an attempt to call for help,” the creature said, in a remarkably cultured voice, “what the hell do you think I’m currently giving you?”

“What are you?” Tommy said, finally mastering his own voice enough at least to form words.

“What do I look like, a garden gnome?” the creature said, the irritation clear in its voice. “I’m an orc.”

“Orcs aren’t real.” Tommy tried to make his voice sound braver than he felt.

“Oh, yeah?” The orc swung Tommy effortlessly up onto dry land, and set him down. “Tell that to my parents, siblings, cousins, and so forth.”

“There are more of you?” Tommy massaged his shoulder.

The orc rolled its eyes. “Kid, do you know where babies come from?”

Tommy scowled and drew himself up, trying to look taller than his five-foot-two. “Of course I do.”

It shrugged. “Well, then?”

“Yeah, okay,” Tommy admitted. He looked more closely at the creature. “You’re not planning on killing me and eating me, are you?”

The orc sighed. “You humans and your propaganda. Why would I have rescued you if that was my plan? Wouldn’t it be easier to let you drown, and then eat you afterwards? Why rescue you, and then chase around a live boy and try to kill him?”

Tommy looked defiant. “Maybe you just like to make your victims suffer.”

The orc made a little “pfft” sound. “Bloody nonsense."

“Well, in The Lord of the Rings…” Tommy began.

“Oh, don’t get me started. Tolkien kind of sucked as a historian, frankly.”

Tommy goggled. “The Lord of the Rings is history?”

The orc regarded him for a moment, raising one eyebrow. “You think he made all that stuff up? Like, invented languages and so on? Get real.”

Tommy stared at the orc, tried to think of something to say in response, and failed completely.

“Well, of course,” the orc said, his voice thoughtful, “history is written by the victors, and all that sort of thing. It’s not like he was exactly biased to present us orcs in a positive light.”

“He said you liked to kill humans and elves and dwarves just for fun.”

“Yeah, like the dwarves and elves were innocent.” The orc's voice sounded bitter. “You know what happened when the dwarves got back to Moria? From the way Tolkien talked, the dwarves were helpless victims. What a crock. You know what the first thing they did was? Just guess.”

“Killed some orcs?” Tommy ventured.

“Of course!” shouted the orc. “What else? It was all, ‘Khazad-dûm belongs to the dwarves!’ in spite of the fact that they hadn’t lived there for hundreds of years, and they proceeded to run up toward a few orcs who were in the entry hall, and chop them into dog food. I ask you, does this sound fair?”

“Not really,” Tommy admitted. “But look. Some of the orcs did bad things. Like the ones that captured Merry and Pippin. And that big ugly dude who shot the arrows into Boromir.”

“Fair enough. There are orcs that aren’t very nice. Are all humans nice?”

“I guess not.”

“So, if I wrote a book, and picked out a few—Adolf Hitler, let’s say, and Stalin, and Genghis Khan, and so as not to appear sexist, Marjorie Taylor Greene—and used that to argue that humanity was the filthy spawn of mud and evil, you’d think that was unfair, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose.”

“You know what that’s called? That’s called an overgeneralization. Do you know what an overgeneralization is?”

“I do now,” Tommy said.

“You know, I sometimes wonder if human schools ever teach critical thinking.” The orc paused. “Anyhow. Tolkien took the orcs that sided with Sauron and Saruman, and decided from them that all of the orcs were evil. Hardly fair, I’d call it. All of these other orcs, ordinary orcs, are at home minding their business, raising their kids, and just wanting to be left alone, and along comes Tolkien and basically says that the only good orc is a dead orc.” He paused, and looked a little sad. “No wonder there’s so few of us left.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

“It never occurred to you to ask the question of how an entire species could be evil?”

“Well, no,” Tommy admitted. “But now that I’ve met you, I can see that I should probably think more about it.”

“You’re not just saying that because you’re scared I’ll eat you?”

Tommy’s brown eyes met the orc’s small gray ones. “I’m not scared of you any more.”

The orc gave Tommy a speculative look. “You seem like you’re all right, kid. What’s your name?”

“Tommy. Tommy Schallenberger.” 

“Mine’s Globnorg.” The orc reached out a huge, rough hand, and briefly engulfed Tommy’s small one.

“Globnorg?” Tommy asked incredulously.

Globnorg scowled. “Yeah, that’s another thing. Tolkien made it sound like just because our language doesn’t sound as nice as Elvish, that means we’re the bad guys.”

“Well, you have to admit it doesn’t sound very pretty.”

“Huh.” Globnorg snorted. “Ever listen to German? It’s not exactly the language of love.”

Tommy didn’t say anything. His grandparents spoke German, mostly when they didn’t want him to understand what they were saying, and he had to admit they always sounded like they were arguing, even when they probably weren’t.

“Listen,” Globnorg said. “Elvish may sound all soft and silky, but that doesn’t mean much. I can tell you that their arrows aren’t soft and silky, they’re hard and pointy, and some of those Elves are serious badasses.”

“Legolas sure seemed to be, in the movie.”

“Legolas.” Globnorg gave a dismissive gesture with one huge, craggy hand. “Since when do Hollywood and reality have to be the same? Upper-class privileged pretty-boy rich kid snot, that’s what Legolas was. So far as I’ve heard, anyway. I never met him, though, it was a long time ago.”

“You’ve seen the movie?”

“Of course. We may be orcs, but we’re not backwards. We’ve got culture. But we’re smart about it. We’ve borrowed the nice things from you humans—movie streaming, computers, microwave ovens, cellphones. We avoided the traffic jams, nine-to-five jobs, and spam emails. And we’re not screwing up the environment like you humans, either. I just finished installing solar panels in front of my cave.”

“That’s cool,” Tommy said. His science teacher from fifth grade, Mrs. Wilkinson, had been very much in favor of solar panels, and he’d thought Mrs. Wilkinson was awesome. Anyone who agreed with Mrs. Wilkinson couldn’t be all bad.

“All it amounts to,” Globnorg said, “is your frame of reference. If all you hear all the time is orcs are bad, orcs are evil, orcs will kill you, then every little thing you hear about us afterwards—every time some misguided orc teenager knocks over a convenience store—it becomes evidence to support what you’d already decided is true. It’s another critical thinking thing—this one’s called confirmation bias. Ever heard of that?”

“I have now,” Tommy said again.

“Well, good. So you read Tolkien’s slanted, biased take on our culture, and you make your mind up, and after that everything that happens just makes your opinion set deeper into cement. That’s why you expected me to eat you.”

“Well…” Tommy paused. “There’s also the way you look.”

The orc grinned, exposing way more teeth than Tommy thought possible. “Judging by appearances. You’re a veritable textbook of logical fallacies, you are.”

“That one, I knew about already,” Tommy said meekly. “Sorry about that.”

“No harm done.” The orc shrugged. “It’s not like it doesn’t happen all the time. Anyhow, I’ve used up enough of your afternoon, talking philosophy. You probably want to get back to whatever you were doing.”

“I wasn’t doing anything,” Tommy said. “I was just walking.”

“Nothing wrong with that. Actually, that’s something my people could have used some reminding about, way back in the day. When did they get in trouble? When they let Sauron and Saruman talk them into these type-A personality Great Big Important Plans, and somehow convinced them that just being wasn’t enough, that they had to somehow Do Something Grand. Look what happened. Lot of good that did us, in the long run.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“Anyhow, Tommy, nice to meet you. Oh, and one quick request—you may not want to mention to your family about meeting me here. Not meaning to cast aspersions on your relatives, but these things have been known to end badly. Packs of dogs, people with torches, shotguns, and so forth. Ugly on all sides.”

“Don’t worry,” Tommy said. “I don’t think they’d believe me, anyhow.”

“Oh, okay, well, then. That’s all right.”

Tommy turned and walked a few feet away, then turned and looked back at Globnorg, half expecting that he’d be gone. He wasn’t. He raised one lumpy gray hand, and wiggled his fingers briefly in farewell. Tommy waved back.

“Watch your step on the rocks,” the orc shouted at him. “They’re slippery.” And just as he passed out of earshot, Tommy heard the orc say to himself, “Humans. Actually, they’re kind of cute when they’re little. In an ugly sort of way.”

***********************************

It's astonishing to see what the universe looks like on scales different from those we're used to.  The images of galaxies and quasars and (more recently) black holes are nothing short of awe-inspiring.  However, the microscopic realm is equally breathtaking -- which you'll find out as soon as you open the new book Micro Life: Miracles of the Microscopic World.

Assembled by a team at DK Publishers and the Smithsonian Institution, Micro Life is a compendium of photographs and artwork depicting the world of the very small, from single-celled organisms to individual fungus spores to nerve cells to the facets of a butterfly's eye.  Leafing through it generates a sense of wonder at the complexity of the microscopic, and its incredible beauty.  If you are a biology enthusiast -- or are looking for a gift for a friend who is -- this lovely book is a sure-fire winner.  You'll never look the same way at dust, pollen, algae, and a myriad of other things from the natural world that you thought you knew.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]