Resignation

Well, I finally did it.

I was talking to Herr Doktor about some experiment or other that went South for no aparrent reason. Quite frankly, I was avoiding the issue altogether, trying not to think of it or let the fact that I wasn't thinking of it show on my face (did you get all that?). We finished an in-depth conversation about the possibility that our mice were all gay because they hadn't been breeding, and an oppressive silence seemed to settle in the office like an overweight raven settling onto a Dodo egg. I could feel blood beginning to pool in my organs, though my heart was racing like a greyhound on amphetamines, my palms sweating like the back of a fat woman's knees, and my blood-pressure felt like it was trying to get another moon-shot using my brain as the lander. Maybe it was just the acrylamide I'd been snorting all day in a vain effort to induce a coma. Anyhow, I hadn't been planning to broach the subject until Tuesday, when my Class III Bomb-Proof Kevlar Body Suit made its appearance at my home.

I began with, "I have some information you're NOT going to like..." and ended with, "...and that's my final decision." Somewhere in the middle of babbling and ranting like a death-row inmate apologizing for everything he'd ever done while the needle was sliding into his arm, the words, "...I'll be leaving sometime towards the end of May..." managed to make their way past my palsied lips.

I waited for the explosion, seeing the headlines "Pony-Nuke Devastates Medical Center; PETA Celebrates, Cancer Patients Hunt Celebrants" on the front of the Globe the next day. I prayed for a quick death.

Herr Doktor played it cool. I fairly SQUIRTED distressed perspiration from every nook and porous cranny, hoping my bowels wouldn't give way (though I'd worn Depends in case just such an unfortunate event took place.) He leaned back behind his desk, placing his feet carefully to one side and his hand behind his head, smiling slightly like the devil come to collect from Faust, with a gunfighter's grin that didn't touch his calculating eyes.

He expressed his dismay, so quietly in fact that I found myself straining to hear the words. He talked of the opportunities that presented themselves in Boston, the work that we were doing and it's importance, how much of a hassle it would be to replace me (Beelzebub and Cthulhu will be building snow-forts on the highest peak in the city of Dis before he finds some schmuck who'll do what I do for the pay I get.) He kept using catch-phrases like, "...I can't influence your decision, but..." and "...if that's the way you want it, there's nothing I can do to stop you...", all said in a mournful tone of voice that is used to inform somebody that they are dying of cancer and nobody has come to visit them in the hospital for the Death Watch. I waited for the explosion that I FELT, nay, EXPECTED was my right, my severence pay, as it were.

It never came.

We rambled on incessantly, back and forth, while my feet itched to bolt for the door, my hands fairly YEARNED to feel the door-knob in my slick grasp, and my eyes rolled wildly like a yearling veal-calf in the slaughter pen while a bloody man carrying a sledge-hammer advanced for the final excruciating release. It was NOT a pleasant wait, nor a pleasing conversation, though it was conducted in the most civilized of tones. Whoever said that diplomacy was the art of saying "nice doggy" until you found a big rock was dead on.

Finally, suddenly, like a monsoon in Bangladesh, it was over. I gathered my books and notes and, slogging through the puddle of my own exudations, made for the door. A sudden small, sharp pain made me drop my books and slap my hand to the side of my neck. I turned, and Herr Doktor pushed me out of the way and slammed the door closed with a final-sounding SQUELCH! (my sweat must have gotten in the hinges, I guess.) He was holding a syringe from which a greenish fluid dripped, and my eyes focused on a drop as it fled the needle's aciculate tip, following it down, seemingly forever, to splash quietly onto the grey carpeting. "Did you think you could REALLY leave me so easily?" I considered the question as my head decended towards the floor in a black spiral...

So here is how I now sit: You remember "The Man With Two Brains"? That one with Steve Martin where his "girlfriend" was a brain in some clear amber fluid in a jar? That's me. Oh, I've got some snazzy support systems, a little wheeled cart that operates on certain impulses, a synthesized voice box and a couple of multi-jointed tentacles that allow me to do things like hold a pipettor, do tissue-culture work and type out my agony via e-mail; it's not such a bad life I guess. Sometimes Herr Doktor will press a little button and a jolt of pure ecstasy suffuses my entire cortical region, lasting for what seems hours but, Herr Doktor assures me, is only seconds. There's another button...but I don't like to speak of it. Let's just say that I am very careful about the quality of my work and what I say around Him. I wish I could get near some stairs...

I'm lying, of course.

ETA, 1st week in June, 2000.

Free at last, free at last, thank GAWD-A-MIGHTY, I am free at last!