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The Autopsy of Brilliance PART ONE (click here for PART TWO)
Caught in a trap. A bag of literary essays in a brown sac in a forest hole. It smelled them and blindly stumbled in, enlarged head over brainy heels. Ha! So unlike the very fiber of its being. We expected better things from you. Don’t worry this won’t hurt a bit said the cocked gun. BANG! The cleaning and gutting of brilliance on a white table in front of a cast of thousands. Men and women worked for years in their respective fields for pieces of paper that told everyone how many years they worked in their respective fields. Respect! And now, vindication! Time to get to the heart of the matter! Rev up the generators! This could take all night. Everyone gets a saw or hammer. Showing it whose boss. Starting pretty raw, Dr. Henderson cracked it’s skull like a melon using a rusty railroad spike as a chisel. Easy. Putting the spike down with a clang, he affixes a pair of small binoculars to the front of his surgical glasses and stakes out the fissure. Detective work. Private dicks. Just the facts, ma’am. Trench coats. Fedoras. Belts of scotch. That kind of stuff. Something white and viscous is leaking out of brilliant’s shaved head. Not thinking of Raymond Chandler, the good doctor goes in for a closer look.
The white goo shone brightly under the harsh unyielding operating room lights. It bristled with tiny multicoloured shapes as it ate the waves and particles like a mangy dog.
The mass of Phd’s above waited with baited breath. The doctor, trying to nail down his first true observation, changed the binocular settings ever so slightly and peered again. Let there be light, the old saying goes.
And there was light.
The multicoloured shapes within the goo were swooping and diving like a high speed lava lamp. And not like headless chickens, but with timing and poise. With a strong sense of purpose. With a good bit of energy not unlike worms on a hot plate.
They were putting on a play for their one true patron, who just recently had set them free.
Henderson spent fifteen years at his post as the chief neurosurgeon at John Hopkins Hospital. He grew up in suburban Philadelphia. His parents were good, supportive people. He’d never had problems with the law, nor with drinking or drugs. His one personal cocktail party anecdote was neither lascivious nor depraved. He told his small audience about once seeing three elephants on safari in Africa. There was no pent up pressure or boiling hatred within him. He was an upstanding citizen, faithful husband, respected professional, and loving father. In fact, the closest tale within his life’s experience that could be classified as unspeakable and unpleasant was what happened to his wife years before they met: She told him a couple weeks after the wedding. She had an embarrassing homosexual experience in the all girls dorm in college. She was extremely drunk and vomited in between her unlucky partner’s legs.
And this is what he saw in the shapes in the goo.
Brilliance had nothing to show him except his wife’s unsuccessful stab at lesbianism.
To keep everyone in the audience in the loop, Dr. Henderson had on a wireless microphone headset, and promised earlier to narrate his doings and findings every step of the way.
After an uneventful silence, the first thing the important people above heard was, ‘What the hell? Charlene?’
Oh well!
Murmurs around the auditorium. Dr. Henderson is half in the operating room and half in a university campus dormitory. He pulls back and blinks his eyes. He feels sorry for his wife for a reason he can’t quite grasp and is slightly dizzy and wants to sit down for a moment. Above him the operating lights keep those hovering in anticipation shrouded in darkness. Dr. Henderson beckoned Dr. Hargrove over. Hargrove came over from England just for this. He studied a completely different part of the brain than Dr. Henderson at Cambridge University. He lives in a wonderful house in the country. Its original plans included a moat, but for some reason they never came to fruition. Now he was in here in upstate New York. Exciting!
Dr. Hargrove adjusted his glasses binoculars and looked into the white goo and saw his father throwing his mother down a flight of stairs. Fortunately this was years ago. There was no need to call the bobbies, which are what policeman in England are called. Both of Dr; Hargrove’s parents had died years ago. Still, this was little comfort to Dr. Hargrove as he had stowed this painful memory as a child at the bottom of the stairs rather well. The stench of brandy on his father as he stomped down the steps filled his nose. Dr. Hargrove was not mic’d but his gasp was loud enough to be heard in the first ten rows of scientists and professionals above him.
Oh well!
Dr. Hargrove stood upright and bought time by beckoning over the support team. The nurses came in close to the wipe the brows of the two distinguished super doctors. Sweat was pouring out of them. Position papers were falling apart in their giant brains. They could feel their raised counterparts breathing down their necks in anticipation. Despite having two different types of carefully sculpted glass in front of their eyes, they were able to stare at each other and communicate the one simple message two people always understand if they both have just done the exact same thing that confuses and horrifies them.
That message was and always will be the following: ‘Uh-oh!’
The two morally upstanding professionals did not discuss a plan B earlier as they were prepping for the surgery. The possibility that something unpleasant would pour out of the subject was not something that entered their own heads. Call them naively optimistic. Or call them stupid. Or call them rat bastards who hunted, killed and gutted the personification of all that is good and mysterious in the whole damn universe. Just be sure to call them doctors. They have framed papers that demand it.
To keep the show rolling along, Dr. Henderson did the first bad thing in his life. He loudly announced to the expectant crowd, ‘Nurse, can you please place a sample of the substance dripping out of the subject into a sanitized jar?’ Deep in his heart he hoped the nurse would see nothing or perhaps only the faces of her smiling children all in one healthy piece. The nurse came forward, unscrewing the jar and bending down most professionally. With a small steel instrument she wordlessly began scooping the goo into the jar. Then in a flash she simply lost control over her motor skills and the small glass fell to the ground and shattered. The troublesome liquid very slowly spread across the floor. The nurse shrieked and backed away, stumbling as she was not standing up. Her name was Anita Shultz. Compared to both Dr. Henderson and Hargrove, her life was a beacon to the unfortunate and horrifying. While a multitude of unsettling images could have appeared to her, it was her eight year old twin sister impaled on a large tree branch that manifested itself in the goo. They had been playing in a small park near their house decades back. Climbing trees as children are wont to do. Deborah Shultz was a natural. Her dream was to be a gymnast. Anita didn’t aim for the same heights as her sister. She was content to be a schoolteacher. High above the ground, Deborah tried to a grab a branch eight inches too far away and fell onto an unusual branch seven feet below. One that stood upright, and was beside a branch her sister Anita was straddling without a care in the world. If the upright branch was a bullseye, Deborah Shutlz’s chest was an archer’s gold medal shot. Deborah didn’t scream. She grunted like a heavyweight boxer getting the wind knocked out of him. Blood pour out of her like the juice of a squeezed orange, watering the ground below. Anita made up for Deborah’s more or less silence by screaming for a very long time.
Oh well!
Making lemonade out of a particularly sour but timely lemon, Dr. Henderson announced through his spiffy wireless microphone that they were going to need to take a break to attend to the startled nurse. Reconvene in thirty minutes! Chop! Chop! Despite his reputation and the fact that Dr. Henderson was chosen by the fine brainy people above, the people above weren’t buying it. Not a single one rose from their seat and excused themselves. They all knew sneakier things have happened in the world of classified medicine, and a freaked out nurse wasn’t going to pull the wool over their eyes.
So Henderson (microphone turned off) and Hargrove consulted with each other in the cornerless room below, ignoring the hyperventilating nurse and the corpse of brilliance on the operating table, its head cracked in two. Should we tell them the truth? Yes. No. Maybe so. Hargrove thought to himself he could use a sip of brandy, but then overly concerned himself with the possibility of turning into his father right then and there. Henderson wasn’t sure if he was more afraid of hundreds of human doctorates writhing in mental agony seeing their most horrid memories come to life in crystal clear picture and sound, or being accused of stifling scientific progress by covering the whole thing up. Neither doctor made these feelings known to the other.
Oh well!
Choosing to retain their titles, the doctors decided that honesty was the best policy and announced the secret of the ooze as the nurse was ushered out with cab fare.
A line of severely important people stretched from the doors of the operating floor, down the halls, up the stairs, all the way back to the operating room amphitheatre from whence they came. Each one bent down and peered into their own dark personal secrets that were reflected in Brilliance’s magic pus. The first few screamed or shrieked, groaned or groveled. But then decorum set in, and it became a sign of professionalism to stroke your chin and mutter philosophically as you watch some guy crossing the street get mowed down by a Cadillac running a red light, his face spilling across the pavement. Blood on the tracks. The best of the best is absorbing a new unforeseen paradigm that now includes a universal connection to the subjective unconscious. Fancy words! Published papers dancing in their heads. Tenure reigns supreme. New ways of sucking down the whole goddamn blue and green planet. Now including brilliant goo. What they saw in themselves rapidly fading. Discovery counts, personal revelation comes in further down the ladder. No time for a trivial glance today. Nothing of the sort. Move along, and let the lab hands stare at the past cutting deep and taking notes. Every decision you make has a huge wake behind it. You may already be torturing your unborn great grandchild by reading this instead of volunteering to help build homes in sub-Saharan Africa.
Yes siree. Bob.
Things then began to move fast. They usually do at this part. Samples were collected, numbered, alphabetized. News releases prepared and rehashed for the pundits. Hands were shaken and backs patted. Commerce was turning its mighty wheels for the good of humanity. It was a great time to be alive if you lived in a first world.
Scientists aren’t quality secret keepers. Like the goo that leaked out of brilliance’s brain, the secret about the goo that leaked out of brilliance’s brain dribbled onto the message boards and front pages of newspapers the world over.
Proper investigations. The masked men in club ties at retreats and estates divide the loot over cigars and brandy. -what can we do with this, if anything? -perhaps a weapon. -it’s the new napalm. It makes the mind explode. -if you look right into and never turn away. It might be useful for interrogation, but as far as battlefield use goes, it’s pretty much garbage. -perhaps a product? -who would ever buy such a thing. -that’s a question, my dear Herbert, for marketing. It gets kicked down to the rabble. The world of checks and balances. Closed door committees and open protest. -too dangerous. I got citizens calling me up and telling me this stuff should never be allowed outside a science lab. -we have science labs in our high schools, Charles. -christ, imagine if some sick kids get off on this stuff then shoot up their school? -we can just put warnings on the bottle. -don’t mess with nature! -give brilliance back its dignity! -our secrets are our own! Talk show jibes and gambols.
Scientists of scientists doubling down on the stuff in other laboratories. Hunched over samples of samples of goo, urging it to go forth and multiply. Poke, prod, eviscerate, heat. Inject, too. Don’t forget injecting! Basic chemistry is mulled over with stroking chins. Fuck makes babies. How do you make goo fuck?
-we need another brilliance. Get them to mate. -the first brilliance is dead. -we can work it out somehow. -it’s the twenty first century. Why are we using such arcane methods? Why aren’t we cloning these molecules? -can we clone? -do you mean, feasibly or ethically? -Ethically. Is it proper? -What’s the big deal about cloning anyway? -Is it even possible to clone this? -The art of reproduction. -We aren’t artists. -We’re nothing but artists. -we’re playing god. -yes, but just playing. That makes all the difference. Well, enough of a difference.
In the lab. In the board room. Through the bowels of research and development and the rectum of marketing. On the drawing board. To a bottling plant. To the store. Making the rounds on the television and sides of buses. Pop up banner ad ands fliers in the mail. Scantily clad ladies talking it up in hip clubs over pounding beats and drinks.
Dry catchphrases ad infinitum. A look inside your head. Good for up to a full year if stored in temperatures between 3 and 28 degrees Celsius. $59.99. No mail in rebate.
A year’s round of therapy in a single glance. A right spirit thrashing. Your shit childhood thrown back in your face like an angry cocktail at a heated party. A kick to the soul in a bottle.
It didn’t really spark off any worldwide protests once it hit the shelves. The anger seemed to have been reserved for the earlier hearings deciding whether even acknowledging the goo’s existence was dangerous and irresponsible. And once the benign and majestic public officials decreed that this product had redeeming social value, complaints regarding the sale of brilliance’s goo simply fell in between the concerns for billboards clogging the landscape and improperly labeled choking hazard warnings on children’s toys. It was left to the media to question the state of the goo in between ads for the goo. Menace or messiah? Angry people got better ratings than calm people, so that’s how the debate was framed. Fates worse than death. Man with glasses said it was an abomination. Visible minority lady said change is inevitable. Centre right host promised they would be right back after these messages. Old minister of this or that muttered about the kids these days. Bishop Jarndyce wondered if god could ever be brought back into modern society. But then someone pointed out with a flair for the poetic: It’s not hell if you decide to go.
If you liked that, you’ll love this. And vice versa to a certain degree.
-Souls must not be very complicated. They said. -Reactions and such, memories and this. Plus technical jargon to cover up the sheer obviousness. Subconscious tele-identity. Prescribed mental output. No reason to make joe six pack think this stuff is easy.
Re-enter Dr Hargrove. The English one. He wrote a well received paper on some vague scientific observations as he was the Buzz Aldrin of the brilliance goo. He scored a hit with a sappy memoir that sprang from his first experience with the ‘mental molasses’, watching his pop throw his mom down the stairs. A little ditty on children dealing with abuse growing up blossoms into a feel good, we-can-all-overcome-our-past-thanks-to-the-goo print infomercial. Dr Henderson considered penning a nest egg for his autumn years, too, but found his catalyst – the vomiting quasi-lesbian wife – wasn’t quite as universal as a man putting his drunken paws on the woman he promised to have and hold ‘til death do them part.
He kept working in his lab on less important things, never mentioned it to his wife, and consequently grew apart from her in a respectful but devastating silence.
Oh, cookie! We are in awe of the myriad of ways in which you may crumble!
Look at the important people we have here with names. Doctors, lawyers, talking head pundits, secretly biased writers. Isn’t history reassuring? You know these things happened because of the lack of detail involved. Simplicity rules the day yet again, and details can be left for the nerd birds. After all, who could and why would anyone make up anything so gosh darn complex?
[END OF PART ONE] Alas, the next little bit of the story enters murky waters, where respected professions don’t come as easy. Titles have to be limited to ‘Mr.’, and even that’s a generous designation. For when great things are given to average people, mediocre events with poor results inevitably follow.
An enterprising young pioneer who was familiar with the intravenous entry of a wide variety of chemicals got his clammy little hands on a bottle of goo brilliance, and in a moment of pure selfish curiosity, wondered what it would be like to shoot the hallowed stuff right into the centre of his noggin. Sending brilliance back to zero.
Enter Derek Pendavist. Pendavist was a handyman who drank. He knew Matt Hawkins, a young gentleman who also liked to drink. They drank together and apart. But Hawkins occasionally cheated on his first love, alcohol, with the incessant mistress, crystal methamphetamine. From snort to smoke to shoot. It should come as no surprise then that Hawkins was the enterprising young pioneer mentioned above.
Hawkins’ skills at absolutely nothing made him ill prepared to drill a hole in his own head. His friend Pendavist had that particular talent, along with the essential poor judgment that was bestowed upon him thanks to copious consumption of sour mash whisky. In a garage – five minutes after the subject was first broached – Pendavist shaved a portion of Hawkins’ head with a facial razor, made a mark with a blue magic marker, and placed the size three centre drill bit attached to a Craftsman MD Corded drill against the skull. Things certainly move quickly in the twenty first century.
Penadvist and Hawkins were not the types to appreciate the ease at which technology could provide random brainstorms with the necessary momentum to bring forth intellectual fruition. Instead the former pressed the drill’s trigger with thoughts of tomorrow morning’s breakfast.
Nothing happened.
A quick sweep of the dank, dusty premises revealed the tool was not plugged into a wall socket.
Yes, we are now dealing with those types of people. Henderson and Hargrove are now distant memories with their sober, buttoned down professional lives crawling on to their eventual ends.
A quick plug in and Pendavist once again loomed large over his friend’s cranium.
Industrial buzzing. Then a crack and a slurred scream in quick succession. Hawkins flailed for a moment, as if trying to swat away a bat fluttering above his head, but his arms never got higher than his shoulders. The floor inherited a constant drizzle of blood. Pendavist luckily wore a black t-shirt, and at a quick glance one might think he was only drenched in water. Hawkins suddenly became much more comatose than before. Very simple equations were finally adding up in Pendavist’s head. Apparently he was not the suave expert at the art of trepanation he thought he was. In his alcoholic stupor he concluded that his heavy leaning on the drill as at bore into his compatriot’s skull was not necessary. The Craftsman was a fine tool, and could bore through the human head with very little pressure, not the overkill technique Penadvist liberally employed.
Live and learn, live and learn.
But time for good news. Hawkins wasn’t dead yet. Pendavist put down the drill and came around to look at him face to face. Hawkins was shaking slightly, as if tossed into a winter’s night in shorts and a t-shirt and accepted his fate in a quiet stupor. The blood wasn’t pouring out of the hole anymore, now merely a slow drip. Pendavist was calm, bordering on indifference.
The concept of law enforcement and medical care was very far away from this garage. In terms of amateur scientific progress, this was a good thing.
In terms of everything else, however, it was a pretty lame situation, particularly for our Issac, one Matthew Charles Hawkins.
The Abraham that was Derek Pendavist had a one track mind. In his profession, it was quite helpful. Saw this board, hammer this nail, paper this wall. Simple tasks were his forte.
At this moment there was Hawkins’ wish. Nay, his demand. A right proper hole in his head had been made, but it was time to add what all the blogs and network newscasts were calling the greatest thing since sliced psychoanalysis. And Pendavist was the very man – nay, the only man – who could do it.
So from the fifty milliliter bottle purchased with someone else’s gas money and couch change from the pharmacy down the street, Pendavist squeezed out a couple milky white tears via the nondescript eyedropper that comes with the bottle and dangled it languidly over Matthew Hawkins’ new, do-it-yourself skin sunroof.
Old habits being what they are, Pendavist asked a quickly dying and catatonic man if he was ready.
No response seemed to be a good response, and so he squeezed the rubber bulb to excrete a bit of brilliance’s finest goo into his friend’s gaping skull hole.
Derek Pendavist didn’t know much about science. In fact, he would call the last five minutes of his life the most scientifically complex he’d ever taken part in. That being said, his only expectation for what would happen at this point was based on the only other science experiment he could recall. This was the volcano science fair project innumerable young children have procured in years past. A simple mix of baking soda, vinegar, and red food colouring for the lava.
Our hero was hoping for a frothy explosion. An old faithful geyser springing out from his faithful old friend’s noggin. He even took a couple steps back and braced himself for impact. And he continued to brace as seconds ticked by, the explosion hopefully imminent.
But this did not happen. Nothing happened. All the bits of Mister Hawkins remained more or less intact. He even kept quietly shaking as if his only problem right now was the hole in his head.
Like any good amateur scientist, Pendavist’s first conclusion was that he did not add enough goo, despite following the box’s stern recommendation of only a single drop on a person’s pinkie finger for maximum effect.
Alas instructions were for other men. Even the eyedropper was forsaken this time around. An unsteady pour got at least most of the bottle’s contents dripping into Hawkins’ brain like pale molasses.
Being the good pseudo-scientist who learns from past mistakes, Pendavist took several more steps back before bracing for impact with gritted teeth and fingers in his ears.
Nothing.
Oh well!
Perhaps not grasping what the product was for in the first place, Pendavist figured that there was either something wrong with the goo, or that the entire discovery and marketing campaign of it was nothing but a giant sham. Maybe a conspiracy. He saw a movie about conspiracies and this supposed brilliance seemed to possibly have something to do with mind control.
Not that Derek needed much help to be led by the nose.
But before he would raise his neighbours in armed revolt, he gave a frustrated peak into his quickly fading compatriot’s head hole.
Something had changed. Things are always changing, yes. And that certainly makes qualifying this change slightly more difficult, but rest assured, the change here in question is one to make a note of. A long, detailed note. A stopping of the presses type change. Encyclopedia Britannica may soon want a word.
That kind of change.
Derek Pendavist the handyman looked into the hole in his ex-friends head and saw the one and only timeless, nameless, and eternal soul. No blood no cracked skull no meaty bit of brain. Just a white glowing soup rippling with nervous anticipation. Brilliance not as an engine for others but as its own entity.
And shining on the surface was its own memory.
Specifically, its worst memory.
Which coincidentally, was its last memory.
Pendavist saw brilliance tumbling down into a forest hole. Saw shadows stand over the pits, silver guns in black gloved hands. Saw faceless white lab coats behind them, handing rubbing in anticipatory glee. Heard the guns, then heard nothing at all.
But really heard everything. Every whisper since the beginning. Every glance and giggle and twisted horrendous thought and action. All the charity and sacrifice. The highest of the highest and the horrendous wheezing grind of the very worst. The long and winding life of brilliance tumbling out of its last moments. A show within a show, and just for our fateful handyman.
There once was king, Derek Pendavist suddenly knew, that found a maiden far and true. And the years they were together were the happiest on record. Even if their story is lost to the sound of time, there it was, plain as day for our macro-cosmic handyman. But then she fell off a horse in some sort of riding accident, and died three days later from her injuries. The king’s grief is black thunder cracking the earth in two. The three days then became a symbol of mourning in many other tall tales and myths. Now ruthless king ruled ruthlessly until killed by a bodyguard under the influence of the third advisor’s purse strings. A story held tight in brilliance’s infinite fists.
The last moments of pure reason on repeat and beyond was slowly giving a hypnotized Derek Pendavist a large, cumbersome tumor. His eyes were locked in to the moment, which kept unfolding and expanding like an endlessly perfect geometric pattern. Soon the stench and failure of the garage was far away and the building blocks behind every second of the universe were deconstructing themselves for his addled mind.
Pendavist was hunched over frozen in a garage attached to a shoddy house in the bad part of town but also tumbling through the back doors of stars and galaxies at three million light years a minute, give or take.
Complication!
Oh, and Matthew Hawkins is now dead. A holy vessel, a noble lamb, an unwitting player in a game greater than himself. Over and done with. A footnote in the history of the universe would sadly mean little to our hedonistic little drug addict. A smooth floor and extra vial in his back pocket was all he sought and was satisfied with.
You can’t always get what you want.
Derek the handyman was halfway through a quasar when he felt his friend shuffle off the mortal coil. He understood. It shook his soul. It kept him human. It gave the seemingly endless consuming journey a frame of sorts.
A funeral was necessary. A tidy little ritual that kept community’s hooks right where they needed to be when things got just a little more than weird.
This typical response to the passing of loved one was held hostage for the moment as witnessing the birth of the universe tends to overshadow things like past binges and obituary costs.
Pendavist saw spirit in everything. In rocks and air and the spaces between air. He wept when these poor souls smashed into each other with such force as to create stars and galaxies. His heart bled for the partings of space dust as it leapt off mute explosions millions of miles wide. He pined for every moment lost as each was filled with so much comedy and tragedy that he was sure Shakespeare lowballed it when he suggested that only the world was a stage.
The light and heat of the memory of brilliance’s memory of the big bang was frying Derek’s cerebellum like an egg trapped in a napalm carpet bombing.
Tomorrow is now today. And even that is fading fast. Not to the next day but something else altogether. Basic concepts of existence were like plates and cutlery sliding off an overturning table.
Time was splitting into two very distinct forms of awareness for Derek Pendavist, although he did not have the vocabulary to explain this to anyone who could possibly help him.
Oh well!
Brilliance was feasting on the fading battery that was Matthew Hawkins’ brain. Giving our unwitting hero a peepshow he will inevitably forget with his upcoming metamorphosis.
Straight up death was for Hawkins. The jury was out on Derek Pendavist as his brains leaked out of the natural holes in his head. The body could stay for the earth. The mind – despite a single good idea borne mainly out of luck and circumstance – was deemed worthless and allowed to be lost. The spirit – full of ever-pregnant history and the secrets of particles and magic – was hovering on the flip of a celestial coin beyond the finger puppets labeled god and satan.
The story died in the garage. Brilliance was burnt away in Hawkins’ now empty skull. In two days the stench would alert the neighbours, and the police would arrive to haul off the decaying bodies the few uniformed men there deigned, ‘fucking morons’.
Heads.
Pendavist is floating in a constellation in another part of the ever expanding universe.
Stars have been created with less, the universe says with a dry twinkle.
END
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Liars (the band) are so good, they make me hate truth | |||