Space Magic (21 page)

“Me? Talk to myself?” He slapped his knee and laughed, not very convincingly. “Why should I talk to myself, when you’re so much more interesting than I am?”

“I’ve seen you do it. Like just now.”

“I told you, I was talking to you.”

“What about last week, when you were working on your car? I saw you from three blocks away. Every once in a while you’d wave your wrench and pontificate. It was like you were trying to convince someone of something, but there was nobody there.”

“I was... rehearsing. I’m giving a speech to the Rotary Club next week.”

Jerry hopped up on the table. “Charlie, there is no Rotary Club in this town.”

“It’s in... another town.”

“What other town?”

Charlie passed his cup from hand to hand. He stared fixedly at a point on the wall. It was as though he were staring out a window, but there wasn’t even a painting there—just the wallpaper, which was now patterned in pink and white polka-dots. His expression was grim, almost angry. Finally he brought his head down to Jerry’s level, cupped his glove to his mouth, and whispered, “I wasn’t talking to myself.”

“Oh?”

Charlie peered theatrically from side to side, then leaned in even closer. “I was talking to the readers.”

Jerry crossed his arms on his chest. “There’s nobody here by that name.”

“It’s not a name. It’s... what they do. Readers. People who read.”

“Who read what?”

A change came over Charlie then, like a cloud passing in front of the sun. He placed his hands flat in his lap, straightened his neck, and took a deep breath. “Us,” he said at last. “They read us.”

“I don’t understand.”

Charlie stood up and began to pace, his hands tightly clenched behind his back. His strides were long, and the house was tiny; he could only take two or three steps in each direction before having to turn around. “Jerry,” he began, then paused. “Look... do you ever ask yourself, why am I here? What is the meaning of life?”

“Sure. Sometimes. Doesn’t everyone?”

Charlie stopped pacing, turned suddenly and leaned down to Jerry again. “We make them laugh.” His tone was deadly serious.

“Them.”

“The readers. We were created to entertain them.”

Jerry waved his tiny paws in a broad gesture of negation. “Whoa there, big guy. Jerry the squirrel is nobody’s creation and nobody’s patsy. I’m here for
me
.”

“Sorry, Jerry, but it’s the honest truth. We’re just characters in a comic book.”

Jerry fixed Charlie with a hard, beady stare. “Prove it.”

Charlie’s eyes closed and his shoulders slumped. He turned away from Jerry. “I can’t.”

“Then how do you know it’s true?”

“I’ve always known, I think, in the back of my head somewhere. But then one day....” He turned back to Jerry, and his eyes were two black pits of fear and despair. “I had just said good-bye to Hermione the hedgehog, I turned back to go into my house, and then... suddenly everything was black. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t see. I was squashed flat. But somehow I knew that all around me, piled above and below me like a huge stack of pancakes, was everyone and everything I have ever cared about. They were all squashed flat too, but I was the only one who knew it. That went on for a moment that seemed like forever. And then I was right back in my house, as though nothing had happened.”

A thought balloon appeared above Jerry’s head: “He’s bonkers!”

“I know it sounds crazy. But it was as real as anything. And ever since then... I know we’re being read, and we’re being laughed at.”

“I get it,” Jerry said with false cheer. “When you talk to yourself you are telling them jokes!”

“No!” Charlie’s hands bunched into fists, and he pounded the air ineffectually. “I’m trying to
explain
myself!”

Jerry scratched his head, and a few question marks came out. “You certainly aren’t doing a very good job of it now.”

“Well, for instance... last week, when I was working on my car. I was just putting the engine back in for the third time, and I was explaining to the readers that this was a very delicate operation and had to be performed with the utmost care. Not funny at all.”

“Charlie, you were pounding it in place with a sledge hammer. That’s pretty funny. And calling it a delicate operation just makes it funnier.”

Charlie stood stock-still for a moment, his lip quivering. Then he collapsed into his chair, his purple neck arching high as he dropped his head into his hands. “I know!” he sobbed, big blue teardrops running down between his fingers. “No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try to be serious, it comes out hilarious. And I’m tired of them laughing at me!”

Jerry offered his handkerchief, and Charlie blew his nose in it with an immense orange HONK.

“These ‘readers’... Can you hear them? Can you see them?”

“No.” He didn’t raise his head from his hands.

“Then how do you know they’re laughing at you?”

“I just know. The same way I know they’re there.”

“Where are they, exactly?”

“Right now? Over there.”

Jerry followed Charlie’s pointing finger, but there was nothing there but the green and white flowered wallpaper. At least it was prettier than the pink and white polka-dots that had been there before. “I don’t see anything.”

“Neither do I. But they’re there. They’re always there.”

“Always?”

“Well, most of the time.” He lifted his head and tried to return the sodden handkerchief, but Jerry gestured to keep it. “I don’t think they watch anyone else. I mean, they’re watching you now, because you’re with me. And they might watch you for a while after you leave here. But eventually they’ll come back to me. I’m the main character in their little comic book.”

Jerry’s tail bristled. “Why you? Why not me?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did. That’s just the way it is, I guess.”

Jerry paced back and forth on the table for a time, thinking. Finally he spoke. “I think you ought to talk with Dr. Nocerous about this.”

Charlie shook his head, a slow rueful motion. “Okay... but I don’t think it will do any good.”

-o0o-

Doctor Nocerous’s office walls were completely covered in diplomas, from such institutions as THE SCHOOL OF AARD VARKS and WAZUPWIT U. The doctor himself was a stout gray rhino, nearly as wide as he was tall, whose wire-rimmed glasses perched incongruously at the top of his horn. He wore a white lab coat, and a small round mirror was strapped to his forehead. He never used the mirror in any way. “Hmm,” he said as he held his stethoscope to the side of Charlie’s neck, and “Hmm” again as he stood on a stepladder to peer down Charlie’s throat, and “Hmm” one more time as he held Charlie’s lapel between two fingers and looked at his watch.

“Well, doctor,” said Jerry when the exam was finished, “what’s wrong with him?”

“My examination has discovered no physical infirmities whatsoever. Superficially, he is salubrious as an equine.”

“What?” said Charlie.

“Healthy as a horse,” explained the doctor.

“I told you.”

“But he’s
seeing
things!” said Jerry.

“Indeed. These phantasmagorical manifestations are most worrisome,” the doctor muttered, puffing on his pipe. A few small pink bubbles emerged as he pondered. “I recommend that we keep your friend under observation.”

“How ironic,” Charlie said to the wall, then returned his gaze to the doctor. “I am not seeing things, or hearing things! I just
know
things. Is that so bad?”

Jerry jumped up on the doctor’s desk. “Charlie, listen to me. I’m your friend, right? I’ve never steered you wrong?”

“Of course not.”

“Then get this through your thick purple skull:
there are no ‘readers.’
You are not the ‘main character’ in anyone’s ‘comical book.’ You’re just a person like anyone else, and you’re here to muddle through your life the same as the rest of us. Nothing more.”

“The veracity of your diminutive companion’s statement is incontrovertible,” said the doctor, waving his pipe. “These megalomaniacal misapprehensions must be immediately terminated. They jeopardize your physical integrity and the overall stability of the community.”

“What?”

“You’re a danger to yourself and others.”

Charlie jumped out of his seat. “I’m no danger to anyone! So what if I talk to myself? That doesn’t mean I’m going to pick up a big mallet and start flattening people!”

“Solipsistic delusions are frequently merely the initial manifestation of a general insensitivity to the legitimacy, even the existence, of external personalities. If allowed to go unchecked, these tendencies could escalate into antisocial or even injurious behavior!”

“What?”

“He thinks you might pick up a big mallet and start flattening people,” said Jerry.

Charlie stood with his feet planted wide and his fists clenched. The white fabric of his gloves was bunched and strained. He stared at the wall. “You think this is funny, don’t you?”

“Nobody’s making any jokes here, Charlie,” said Jerry. “We’re serious.”

“I wasn’t talking to you.” He turned around, pointed at a different spot on the wall. “This has all been arranged for
your
amusement! Are you happy?”

Jerry and Dr. Nocerous looked at each other.

Charlie pulled a big mallet from his pocket and began pounding on the wall. “Are you laughing now? Huh? Are you?” The WHAM of the mallet on the wall was huge and black. “Just let me get out there and I’ll show you what comedy is all about!”

“This situation necessitates immediate incarceration!” said the doctor as he ran behind his desk.

“Ditto!” said Jerry as he dived under a chair.

The doctor pressed a button under the desk; no sound came out, but a few small lightning bolts appeared. Moments later two enormous gorillas, their white coats stretched taut over bulging muscles, burst through the door. There was a swirl of motion, and when it cleared Charlie was on the floor, trussed in a straitjacket.

“Don’t let them put me away!” Charlie cried.

“It’s for your own good,” said Jerry, and waved encouragingly as the gorillas hustled Charlie away. But as soon as they were gone, Jerry’s shoulders slumped. “What are you going to do, Doctor?”

“His prognosis is not encouraging. However, he will be the recipient of the most advanced experimental treatments modern medical technology has to offer.” From his pocket, the doctor drew one end of a set of heavy jumper cables. Sparks flew from the sharp copper teeth as he touched them together, and a small strange grin appeared on his face.

-o0o-

Charlie’s sad, desperate eyes peered through the slot in the metal door. “You’ve got to get me out of here, Jerry.” His word balloons squeezed through the slot like bubbles from a sinking ship.

“Hang in there, buddy. Dr. Nocerous tells me you’re coming along nicely.”

“He’s been saying that for weeks.” Charlie shook his head, bringing his blackened horns briefly into view. “But I know the score. I’m not going to get out of here until I show some improvement, but since there’s nothing wrong with me I’m never going to get any better than I am now.”

“Charlie, you must accept that you have a problem. It’s the first step on the road to recovery.”

Charlie chuckled ruefully. “I have a problem, all right. I’ve learned that there are worse things than being laughed at.”

“Nobody’s laughing at you, Charlie. You need to understand that these ‘readers’ are nothing more than a projection of your own feelings of self-doubt and inconsequentiality.”

“That’s just what the rhino told you to say. But you’re right—nobody’s laughing at me. The
readers
aren’t laughing at me. And that’s the problem.”

“I thought you didn’t want them to laugh at you.”

“I didn’t. But since I’ve been here in this padded cell, tied up in this straitjacket all day long with nothing to do... They’re
bored
.”

“Well, that’s an improvement, isn’t it? Maybe now they’ll watch someone else instead.”

“They’ve tried. But—no insult intended—none of you guys are as funny as I am.” Jerry’s tail bristled. “So they’re leaving. They’re going away completely. And that scares me.”

“You should be glad to be rid of them!” Jerry fumed.

Charlie’s eyes closed for a moment. When they opened again, Jerry saw a bit of the old manic fervor. “Listen... do you ever think about the nature of time?”

“What?”

“Time. How it passes, from moment to moment. Haven’t you ever noticed how some things change when you aren’t looking at them?”

“Like the wallpaper?”

“Exactly. I believe that time is... divided. Into moments, or segments. Within each segment we are alive and awake, but in between... there are gaps. That’s when things change.”

“What does this have to do with anything?”

“I think the readers live their lives in the gaps between our time segments. They live in our time too, somehow—I know because they can see us. But in the gaps... they have the universe to themselves.”

“Charlie, you’re not making any sense.”

“I know it sounds crazy. But I’m dead serious. And here’s the important part: when the readers aren’t watching us...
we don’t exist!
”

Jerry shook his head and turned away, but after a moment’s thought he turned back. “OK. Suppose I accept this theory of yours. Suppose there
are
gaps between moments. But time still
feels
continuous to us. See?” He waved a paw rapidly back and forth. “So it doesn’t really matter!”

“It doesn’t matter as long as they keep coming back. But if too many of them get bored... if they all go away and don’t come back... then the gap will just go on and on, and we’ll never exist again. It’ll be the end of the world, Jerry. Squashed flat in the dark, forever.” Charlie’s eyes were desperate, sincere, pleading. “You’ve got to get me out of here. I’ll joke, I’ll pratfall, I’ll do anything to keep the readers coming back. To keep us all alive. Please.”

Jerry closed his eyes, unable to bear his friend’s gaze. “There are no readers, Charlie.”

In the end, he was right.

David D. Levine and Sara A. Mueller