What it Tastes Like to Be Sane
By
Sean Ahern
Copyright 2011 © by Sean M. Ahern
All rights reserved
Published online by the author at Lulu.com
ISBN: 978-1-257-83094-7
Chapter I
…and the clown disappeared in a cloud of lettuce. Epispastic was the word of the day. Baritone Juicebox, who had so recently been full to the brim with quixotic ideals, now desired so badly naught but the construction of an oceanic sarcophagus, of which he would become a permanent resident. Why he got to this point and what occurred afterwards is encompassed by a gallimaufry of tales of joy and despair, of elation and woe, of euphoria and not having access to tacos at the moment you most desire them, and other contrasting adjectives, the first of which is a positive and the second of which is a negative.
See, at this point, for our dear Baritone, the Earth’s oceans were bereft of their usual vastness. Where one could normally, on a good day, see a double, maybe triple digit quantity of miles or kilometers to the horizon, Baritone (or Bari, as will often be referred to hereafter) could see every ocean, sea, and body of water on the side of Earth that was facing him that was large enough to be seen from the moon. The Earth, as a whole, seemed extremely pastoral from this viewpoint, for everything was quiet. Naught could be seen stirring from here, though the contrary was actually true, as all the usual stirrings were occurring on his home planet. Still, from his perspective, he could easily ignore the conflicts and the multitude of strife, and the mundane regards of all the lives and deaths going on below him. Indeed, what he saw was a postcard image, one that he would be proud to send to his dearest relation or to his closest friend in order to incite jealousy of him and the wondrous places he had visited. Bari, however, had only purchased one t-shirt to prove he had been to the moon, and he wouldn’t be mailing it to anybody. He wanted to wear it to his grave, in order to provide proof of his lunar escapades to whoever found his body, should it be found before his new oceanic companions devoured him, if ever. Otherwise he would content himself with floating about, unconscious of what was happening around him, or perhaps becoming useful by becoming food for one of the throng which would cohabitate the ocean with him.
Oftentimes though, it is at the last and most crucial moment when we remember what we have forgotten, after contemplating for hours or sometimes days. In Bari’s case it was that he had never learned to swim. This of course seemed to be much more of a major issue than one realizing as they leave their house for vacation that they had forgotten toothpaste, as toothpaste could be easily acquired en route to the location of the aforementioned vacation. This was a very important detail. Now, you might that think that since his aim was to drown himself, whether or not he could swim didn’t actually matter. In fact, it almost might seem to be a better alternative, but he wanted to die in the ocean of his home planet. To drown on the way, while he was still in space, just wouldn’t do. No, he needed to die as a meteor would if it were alive in the first place: perhaps breaking up in the atmosphere, but eventually reaching the surface if it was big enough in the first place, which he hoped he was, and having the impact kill him. Mostly he just wanted to make his abode with the sharks and the whales and the rays and the sea cucumbers and the angler fish and the shrimp and the tuna and the rest of that list which could go on for much longer than the average attention span. He didn’t even desire the memory of himself that would be left were he to leave a crater, but just to plunge into the anonymity of the water, which would go on about its business, without him leaving a mark upon it. This determination, of course, must count for a good amount of points, or so he thought, but it still bothered him that he had never learned such a basic skill before he died. He had tried it once, but that attempt didn’t work out so well.
Baritone Juicebox, once upon a time, had three faces, which he would show to the world in rotation according to his current state of mind. It was an interesting ability, but one that most people have and do not realize they possess. One day, he had taken a ferry down to visit a friend of his that had taken up residence in an undersea volcano. It turned out that due to the United States Postal Sandwich’s delay in sending mail, he had not received the notification that his friend had moved until he arrived at the volcano and met its new inhabitant, a hermit crab with a most unpleasant temperament. By the time this had occurred, Bari, who had intended on staying the night, had missed the last ferry back home, and couldn’t bear the thought of taking up residence, however ephemeral, with the aforementioned crab. He acted accordingly, and shot himself out of the volcano, which conveniently happened to be erupting within ten minutes of his decision that he would not share quarters for the evening with this particular crab. Before he reached the surface, he began to lose momentum, first slowly and then much more rapidly as he grew increasingly weary, and it was at this point that he realized that he had never learned to swim. Though maybe not gifted in the swimming abilities department, our beloved protagonist was certainly no dullard, and thinking as quickly as the electrical connections in his brain would allow, decided to try, with most valiant effort, to imitate the sharks he had seen so much from watching Shark Week annually. He was, however, lacking certain components which would have allowed him to do so in a complete and accurate fashion, and it was, in the end, only by the grace of a passing armada of giant squid that he eventually reached the surface. As you certainly recall, Bari had at this point three faces in his possession, and due to the trauma of the experience, one face instantly defected and joined the first passer-by it saw when it returned to land. The other one that Bari would eventually lose was so disheartened that it was stuck, alone, with the face that it least liked (on the basis that it found the other face too ugly, not knowing that they were identical except for a minute discrepancy in nostril size.) that it, despite a complete lack of education on the subject, gave itself surgery to sever itself and hoped that, through the process of autotomy, and not autonomy, as this typing program suggests, it would regenerate a new body. Seventeen days later that new body was fully grown and well on its way to starting a successful ensaladaball league for underprivileged children in New Cow City. Bari, however, was down two faces and so traumatized that he could not bear either the thought of losing that third face or once more attempting an attempt at swimming education.
Now, being seemingly stranded on the moon, and with the desire to reach his new Benthic home growing ever more powerful, Bari began to regret the lack of swimming education in his life. For better or for worse, Bari also didn’t know how to quit. He was confident, though. He sincerely believed that, despite a complete lack of training, that if he strove, through an effort of will, he would reach the desired destination. Not a stop sign stood in his way to tell him to stop. He was confident that nothing could make him do so. He was set. He would only need to hold his breath for long enough for Earth’s gravitational pull to kick in and bring him to the sweet release of death in the desired location. He bent down, exhaled, inhaled and held that breath in, and with a mighty push jumped, defying gravity by simply telling it that it was wrong.
Some people would say that to strap oneself to a rocket and launch it into space is pure lunacy, and perhaps idiocy. It might in fact be stupidity, or other synonyms for that word, combined with others of the aforementioned. Some might claim it to be simply a ludicrous idea, one that could never work.
In the same timespan that it would take, on average, for a person to dodge a falling bucket of water after a gardyloo has been issued by the person dropping said bucket, Bari was out of the realm of the moon’s new wheat/sulfur atmosphere sandwich which had recently been acquired from a nearby moon that no longer wanted an atmo
sphere and in the vastness which constitutes space. He now had four years more experience watching Shark Week and that paid off tremendously in this case which we are now discussing. Space wasn’t as exciting as he had thought. As a child he imagined himself an astronaut, and fancied that one day he might become a famous explorer in this extraterrestrial frontier. Now he was there, and maybe it was because he was so focused on propelling himself back to earth, but he thought that it was a pretty bland place. Of course, it was because he was so focused on his goal that he missed out on all the exciting parts of space, such as the mathematical equations which randomly floated about and the various debris which had come into his region from all the infinite corners of the universe.
When Bari first arrived on the moon, he was treated kindly, but with a certain natural curiosity by most of its inhabitants. He did, after all, arrive strapped to a rocket. Most moon dwellers at least had the common sense to strap a rocket to them, as opposed to strapping themselves to rockets. Stranger things have happened everywhere though, especially on the moon, as best exemplified by their traditional Thursday night…
Doubt is often a very powerful and divisive force. And thus, when once again it was only by the grace of a passing armada of giant squid that Bari was going to be able to reach his goal, and the shadow of doubt began to creep up on Bari, followed by the body which created that shadow, reality, or the reality which applies specifically to Baritone Juicebox, split into three parts. The following scenarios will be discussed at varying lengths.
One: Bari survived. However, as extreme situations often cause a gallimaufry of extreme changes, Bari became a basketball and fell to Earth, scoring the winning point for the home team that day. This is Darwinism at its best. Not everyone is so lucky. Many times Charles Darwin, being the prankster he is, causes things to evolve in silly, often useless ways. In this case, Baritone Juicebox must consider himself to be the luckiest person to be graced by the concept of evolution, and this is not something to be taken lightly, for we must treat the gift of evolution with caution, so that it is not one day revoked because of our abuse.
Two: Bari died. What happened is this: With the aid of some passing giant squid, he made it into orbit. Being that he wasn’t flammable, he didn’t burn in the atmosphere, and thusly he achieved his original goal of plunging into the ocean and subsequently reaching a state of not being alive that is generally known as death.