Space Medicine

“Look, up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s the Freudian concept of the super ego emerging as a Jungian archetype!”

“We’ll be administering the Parapathine in a couple of minutes Hugo, you might want to stop talking crap.”

“Sorry Doctor Rossi, you can’t imagine what it’s like for me, after all these years, I’m finally getting my own secret origin.”

“Whatever you say Mr. Strauss, just remember that the experiment can be stopped at any time by mentally repeating your safe word. Could we run through that now, just for the wave recorders, you understand.”

“Sure, sure. What was it? Oh yes that was it. “More powerful than a locomotive.””

“Excellent, the electrodes inside the helmet are working better than I’d hoped.”

“It’s like we were talking about before, during the interview, remember? No, no, we were talking about where ideas come from. Like where your idea for this experiment came from, and where my idea that it was a good idea came from. Somewhere along those two roads of idea they became one, and we met. Funny isn’t it?”

“It depends on your perspective Mr Strauss, a rational person would argue that you volunteered because you are destitute and need the money and we chose you because everyone else chickened out.”

“Yes, yes and what a boring answer that is compared to mine, I believe two vectors of fate coincided to bring us together and further our mutual goals.”

“Sorry, mutual goals? What is your goal in this experiment Mr. Strauss? What do you hope to achieve?”

“Don’t bullshit me doc, it’s the same goal as yours, despite all the “space medicine” talk that’s being thrown around, we’re both on the same page. Consciousness expansion.”

“Oh please Mr Strauss, don’t give me that crap, most of your generation think an acid tab could put them in touch with the divine. You are not special in any way. It’s part of the reason you were chosen.”

“Bar the fact that everyone else got too scared during the prelims?”

“Yes, bar that. This procedure will be nothing like your fuzzy feel good trip of ’69. We are closing your body down for ten days and nights. Ten days of total sensory deprivation, Hugo, it will make LSD look like Earl Grey. Even the word “nothingness” will not do justice to your experience”

“So what are we waiting for doc, dose me up and let’s get this show on the road…Doc, doc are you there? I think the Parapathine’s come on too early, I’m talking but no sound is coming out. I think I want to stop Doc, I’m sorry to let you down but this…this is too weird. What was the safe word? Think! What was the safe word? Faster than a speeding bullet? No, no. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound? No, no. More powerful than a locomotive? No, no. Shit, fuck this is horrible. I’m floating in forever with just me for company, I think I need to puke.”

“It’s all in the name of science Hugo, this experiment will give us an insight into the psychological factors of interstellar travel. Deep space commerce will involve long periods of sensory deprivation, isolation, loneliness. We need at least a glimpse at these challenges before we send our brave astronauts off on suicide missions.”

“Right, right, the suicide mission, I’d forgotten completely. Can’t have our brave men out there battling the unknown, I feel privileged, nay I feel honoured, to undertake this daunting experiment. I just hope you folks back home will remember the name Hugo Strauss, that he weren’t no punk and no fuck-up. I hope Hugo Strauss’ mother is proud of her boy.”

“And all I’m telling you Sophie, is that your marvellous experiment is a foregone conclusion. Send anyone into sense-dep for more than a few days and they ain’t coming back again. The Harvard acid boys did it, the CIA and the Ruskies did it. They all say the same thing, out there is cabbage material. The only relevant data that comes back from that place is in the heads of old Yogis and Buddhists, and if it was up to me I’d section them too. No, I didn’t say fabricate the data, I didn’t say that, but the money men want definite results that they can look at, they want a test subject they can interview afterwards. All I’m saying is we give our guy an edge, use the Parapathine but give him a booster or two along with it, something that will keep him alert, stop him dropping into torpor.”

“What were we talking about before, the comics, yeah, the superheroes. All that colourful trash, the bluster and the fanfare for what was essentially just burly men hitting each other. It’s like that Goya painting I can’t remember the title of…I mean that stuff has power, real world power. Satan and Superman come out of this place fully formed, archetypes wrestle it out on the page, on the TV screen. We are all in the business of deconstructing ourselves with fiction. I am Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader reconciled into a viable lifeform. It’s all too beautiful and it hurts so much, wars and games and costumed capers tessellate inside and out, they start over and rebirth in new configurations, across new frequencies of interstellar physics. My life is bubble-gum pop fodder for sentient ultra-structures, and the gods are dead and drawn in newsprint at the foot of my bed.”

“Donald, can you believe it? I got the grant, the guys on the board at NASA were so friendly and they’re gonna back me all the way they say there’s never been a better time for this sort of work what with the Mars colony starting up and if I apply myself and get some concrete results…Donald they’re talking permanent funding and me on the posters can you believe it a psychology major making it big at NASA…No let’s go out tonight it’s too special to stay in and cook…well of course there’ll be further interviews but it’s as good as signed…oh can’t you just say that you’re happy for me?…will you not even say that?”

“I remember when I was a kid, never really had an easy time of it, but what kid does? I went through a lot for a boy my age, I was a very sensitive kid, used to think my heartbeat was a giant monster stomping around above the clouds, heavy footsteps, badoom, badoom, like how they draw words for noises in comic books, badoom badoom, he’d stomp around angry at me for some thing, some small thing, and I’d quake under my bed cover and hope against hope that he’d go away and calm down. Then the realisation dawned that it was me making that noise, not some giant stomping, or god bowling a ten-pin set, just me and my heartbeat and the universe inside it. Feels like that now, all the pain and terror, it was me all along, my future self in charge of my past education, going through the bad shit because you just fucking have to learn this lesson even if it kills you. I always wanted to be a super hero because I was fucking well born to be one, and if you can’t see that you’ve got your telescope ass end up.”

“Darling, are you crazy? Please Sophie let me help you, listen to what you’re saying. You’re proposing to go ahead, even though funding has been halved? You want to use the guy who thinks he’s a superhero with amnesia. I’m telling you straight this man is a fuck-up. I spoke with him for five minutes, it damn near broke my brain! He thinks Superman’s real Soph! He says he’s met the guy. No, not metaphorically!”

“I think I’ve been exposed to Knowing Gas again, that Suicidal Dr. Know has trapped me in a 4-D prison of pure metaphysical conjecture. I’m high on Aum Nyet Toxin, the acolytes have dosed me up and sent me down the river of dreams.”

“Your experience battling some of the world’s most outlandish criminal masterminds makes you the perfect candidate for our procedure Hugo. All those years masquerading as the Known Unknown, battling supercrime on the fringes of consciousness, you’re the only one qualified to make the leap.”

“The walls of my mind are closing in and dressing up in gaudy colours to outfox me. I remember my last fight against the Suicidal Doctor Know, a genius of such high calibre that he had seen past realities’ horizon and took the only logical step. He became a fiction, scripted himself into a million made up histories and disappeared into the black Atlantic tide swell of an old Mills & Boon novel. Doctor Know could be found anywhere, at anytime, but most especially he liked to own death scenes. Cast your mind back to any legendary death scene from your favourite book, TV Show or comic. Chances are it was the Suicidal Dr. Know driving off the cliff into the grand canyon, Dr Know blowing up the meteorite while he stood on it, Dr Know saluting bravely as the Japs swooped in for the Kamikaze strike. He is a master of disguise, but the telltale signs of a Doctor Know performance are there, the rolling eyeballs, the leering rictus of his grin. This is what gets him off, a perfect Doctor Know performance is indistinguishable from the original, bar a faint metallic taste in the back of the throat. Only he knows, that’s why he’s known as suicidal, he’s a mimetic engram for ignorance. The Zen Fascist.”

“Read his file Donald, he’s perfect for the trial. No next of kin, no social security number, the man is a ghost. Claims he’s lived on the streets fourty years but he’s still got all his teeth. Typical schizoid fantasies of self importance but we can look past that, he’s physically and mentally robust and no-one will care or notice if we screw him up anymore than he already is.”

“No doubt this is some nefarious scheme of Sophie Rossi AKA Exogenesis, or Donald Nyet, leader of the Aum Nyet Acolytes, to trap me in this limbo and deprive earth of its greatest hero. What they all forget is that in my unsung role as the Known Unknown ignorance was my mantra. I defeated the Ghost Boys of Cypress Hill by being fifty percent more “down” than they were, creating a mathematical impossibility and banishing the boys to their own pocket universe where they continue to be the coolest lifeforms in that reality. I once caught the Suicidal Doctor Know by scripting my own fictional suicide and stepping away at the dénouement, leaving the story hanging and thereby holding him in stasis. I forsook my powers and abilities, led the life of a humble stumble bum, all so that Doctor Know would remain trapped in my half finished story. Has the unthinkable happened, has some bizarre twist manifested whereby my story was completed and I am now dead by my own hand and in limbo? Has Doctor Know escaped once more into the 2-D multiverse? Can the Known Unknown escape from this hackneyed old cliff-hanger? Tune in at an unknown time, on an unknown channel.”

“Donald I’m in trouble…yes I’m crying I’m fucking terrified…he’s dead Donald. Hugo Strauss…he’s dead. No, his heart gave out he’s past CPR I’m calling the police it’s my fault you were right I was just trying to prove it to myself Oh God…just come down here please I want you here when they arrest me.”

“And that was how they killed the man with an artificial sun for a head, they made a man with a mechanical moon for a head. Don’t believe me? Do I care? It’s like this: at one end of the spectrum is the heroic Known Unknown. He’s the greatest thing that you haven’t thought of yet, the awesome and mystic power of the future. Of course he’s kind of ghostly and androgynous and creepy and all the things that the future can be, but he’s also warm and brave and so full of love that you might die of joy just to meet him. Then at the other end of the spectrum you’ve got Doctor Know. He’s the world through cut glass lenses, right and proper and empirical he is, all factors extrapolated all contingencies covered. But there’s no surprises for him either, nothing new for Doctor Know, so he goes suicidal, and the Known Unknown, being the nice guy that he is, tries to stop this unstoppable force. Now here’s where we reach critical mass with my little story Doctor, can you believe that someone can take off their fiction suit, stop being a multi mass waveform and become a regular human being? Because that is what you are looking at. The Known Unknown became an icon, he hangs on a paper cross. In one panel of one unfinished funny book, Doctor Know is the Known Unknown, and Hugo Strauss fell sideways into the gutter.”

“Well Doctor Rossi let’s just say the Mars Mission is on hold for the foreseeable future. No I can’t give you any more details…we found some things…some things. I regret to inform you we will be cutting back heavily on all side projects until the Mission is reinstated as a priority one action item. You’ll be able to conduct your initial study, but I’m afraid any subsequent tests will be without NASA approval. Yes, I’m very sorry I’ll admit to you now that the problems we are encountering are the very things your experiment was designed to explore.”

“Don’t you see Doc, it’s an admittance that inner space is as important as outer. The Known Unknown is the only one for the job.”

“Heaven help me, I think I’ve been exposed to Knowing Gas. Somehow, somewhere, that nefarious Doctor Know has breeched the boundaries of this reality.”

“Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

“How do you survive nothingness? You hold nothing in your hand.”

“What is the face of the Known Unknown? It is your face before you were born.”