Crazy Bobby
A concerned mother takes her teenage son to a psychiatrist. The boy is an artist, but he talks wacko sci-fi stuff all the time. Unexpectedly, his futuristic philosophy changes the life of the old shrink.
Crazy Bobby belongs to the following groups:
Sci FiCRAZY BOBBY
By Bob Bello
Editor: Rob Preston
Illustrator: Murphy Art. Elliott
MAY 12, 1977, 09:45 GMT
SOL SYSTEM, MILKY WAY
WHEN BOBBY TURNED sixteen, his mom took him to a psychiatrist. He was a restless young man, growing between divorced parents and his grandmother’s care, and that was reason enough.
“All adults ought to check their heads once in a while,” his mom said, attempting to ease his apprehension.
“Not that I think you’re crazy, son. It’s just a prophylactic checkup with a mental-health physician.”
“Cool.” The teen smiled. “Let’s see if I’m psycho.”
They laughed on the way, and then entered the specialist’s office.
After exchanging the usual greetings and verifying that Bobby was the “patient” in question, the prominent institute professor asked the mother to wait outside. Twenty minutes later, he called the accompanying parent and this time asked the “test subject” to wait in the corridor.
“Dear Mother,” the doctor began, “would you mind me asking why you think your son needs my services? Besides what you told my secretary on the phone when making this appointment.”
“He’s an artist,” the woman hesitated, “sometimes he acts strange.”
The old man nodded. “I see. Don’t we all?” He asked this rhetorically, as though his years of wisdom had bestowed upon him the undeniable answer to that question. “In this hectic world of the 20th century,” he continued, “all of us are a wee bit crazy. Today there’s no such thing as perfect mental health, mother. Especially when it comes to intellectuals. All artists are a somewhat cuckoos. ‘They’re not alone,’ as the old saying goes. Instead of enjoying life or having a date at a nice restaurant, they stay at home, nose in the paint, creating what they call … art. Does this sound normal to you?”
“Uh … I’m no artist,” the mother lost her words.
The psychiatrist nodded. “Yet we all marvel at their art in museums and exhibitions, don’t we?” He took off his glasses, began slowly cleaning the lenses, and then continued, “We do a standard test here, which helps us determine what we call the individual’s ‘intelligence quotient’ and mental capability. We show them pictures, ask them questions, and if we detect a disturbing or very non-standard response, we have the technology to read their distorted brainwave patterns, and go on from there.”
The mother wriggled her fingers on the other side of the desk, trying to decipher a straight answer from the old doctor’s cryptic musings.
“You see, ma’am, your son’s test results are outstanding. He has acute memory, a great and healthy imagination, and he is well outspoken. You have done a great job in his upbringing.”
The mother smiled in spite her uncertainty. “Thank you, Professor.”
“People with poetic souls,” the gray-haired man went on, “are often not satisfied with diurnal reality, because life is really quite repetitive: we wake up, we eat, we work, we sleep … However, when we get bored, what do we do? We go to a movie, opera, or concert—even visit an art gallery—to vent our overloaded souls, right? Frankly, these are the people that entertain us. They are the ones who fascinate every individual with their unique stories, adding sense and meaning to life, sweetening our banal existence. Let him dream, mother, let him write; let him create art and music. Moreover, to try and stop him may just push him over the edge. Yes, all geniuses are a little bit eccentric. Take for example Van Gough, Mozart, Newton, Hemingway…”
The professor’s eyes fogged as he began telling her what had actually happened in his office a moment ago…
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“What do you see here?” the psychiatrist asked the teen.
Bobby looked at the blotted ink graphic. “A moth.”
“And this?”
“A staircase.”
“Going upward or downward?”
“Both ways, of course. Is that a trick question?”
The professor put down the IQ test drawings. “Very good, son. Let me ask you now a few questions.” He removed a rubber band from around a set of flashcards and read aloud, “Do you love to use underpasses? Answer with Yes, No, or I don’t know.”
“Love?” The 16-year old Bobby frowned at the old man, scanning his pale-blue eyes beneath those white, bushy eyebrows. The man wore glasses, but the morning sunlight didn’t care whether his face was wrinkled or not. It shone at him just as it would’ve done it in the days of Vermeer—the Dutch maestro of light—as Bobby called the famous painter in his mind, with whom only Rembrandt dared to compete. “I … don’t think the word ‘love’ is appropriate here, Professor,” he finally answered, quite steadily.
The psychiatrist looked at him over his reading glasses. “How would you formulate the question, if our roles were reversed?”
“Um … ‘Do you prefer,’ or just ‘Do you use underpasses.’ I don’t think I can ‘love’ or even ‘like’ going through them.”
“Why not, Bobby? Does the darkness bother you?”
“No, of course not.” Annoyed, the teen sensed the prying nature of the doctor’s question. “I simply don’t see how I could say ‘I love’ using them. That would mean that the moment I spot an underpass I run through it up and down like crazy, just to satisfy my … romantic feelings for it, or something.”
“Oh, I see what you mean. Why can’t you use the word ‘like,’ then?”
Bobby chuckled. “What’s there to like about ‘em, Professor? This isn’t a painting or music piece, or a beautiful girl. It’s just a simple, functional passageway, not even a great architectural landmark, though some of them today have shops and cafés inside, even small galleries.”
“So you can’t answer with Yes, No, or I don’t know?”
“I can,” Bobby chuckled again, “if you were more specific.”
The psychiatrist nodded, greatly amused. “Specific how?”
The young man didn’t want to sound weird. He knew why he was here. “Professor,” he explained, “if I say ‘No,’ that means I hate underpasses. If I say ‘Yes,’ that means I’m somehow attracted to underpasses. And if I say ‘I don’t know,’ then I’m lying, because I do know. If the question were, ‘Do you risk to use them when it rains heavily,’ or ‘Do you prefer to use them when you’re in a hurry?’ then I would answer right away. But ‘Do you love?’ I’m sorry, that’s ridiculous. I know, people say, ‘I love ice cream.’ Even so, who can love an underpass? It stinks of drunkards’ piss, not to say of what else.”
The professor laughed full-heartedly, putting down the questionnaire flashcards as well. “Boy, did you bring your mother for a checkup or vice versa?” Trying to hold in his laughter, he continued, “Bobby, you’re perfectly sane, I can see that. But let’s talk about death.” His face turned serious. “It bothers your mom that you speak a lot about it, frightening your friends away. She’s concerned you may end up lonely, closing yourself in dark thoughts or maybe even turn suicidal. Forget I’m a doctor. Can we talk man to man?”
Bobby’s expression changed. The last time he was in a hospital they told him he’d had to be resuscitated while in ER surgery. He sighed, shifting uncomfortably in the patient’s chair. “We’re all on a death roll. People are mortal. Life’s the very thing that kills us. Isn’t that a paradox?”
“Is that why you became an artist?” the psychiatrist inquired.
“Yes. Because everyone acts like we’re not going to die. They avoid the most important question of all. It’s … stupid. Reckless. People think life has a meaning only if we have to fight an aggressor, or something. But after that they forget about it, as if they’d won a victory over death itself. And why do we accept it’s normal to lose relatives to death, and not normal to lose them to cancer? To me death is sickness—the biggest of them all. The chief illness, if you will. Where’s the great glory in being a king, for example, and end up with the peasants in the same old dirt, eaten by worms? We all turn into soil and then the future generations literally eat us … in the fruits of the earth. That’s quite alarming, to say the least. Are we just soil? No intelligence? How long are we going to stand there and let this happen to us as ‘the circle of life?’ This is tragic. No, to me this is … irresponsible, if I may be frank.”
The professor clicked with his pen, taken aback by Bobby’s existentialistic philosophy, then shoved it into the front pocket of his lab coat and leaned back in his leather chair, covered with brass tacks. “Son, how do you think we can fix this problem humanity is facing? You must have a rational idea, right?”
“Art won’t help us,” said Bobby, feeling like a fish in its own waters—now that he had the advantage in this discussion. “We need science. And not just any science, but one that can create miracles of transplanting organs every time a body part fails. Better yet, force our DNA to grow everything we need: from lost teeth to lungs and hearts, and maybe one day even brains.”
“Wow, slow down, sonny,” the psychiatrist halted him moderately. “What if none of this ever happens, huh? What then?”
“It’s worth dying for,” said the 16-year old. “I don’t want to perish just because I’ll grow old; that’s total waste of the knowledge we gain. Why should I, if our physiology practically begs us to fight death on all fronts? Life’s waiting for us to harvest our nature-given possibilities, even to enhance ourselves like we cultivate trees or genetically engineer garlic that doesn’t smell.”
“What about overpopulation?” the old man inquired. “What about feeding and clothing billions upon billions? What about energy problems? When all the coal and petrol end—and no other resources are left—what then, young man?”
“Develop chemical fuel and synthetic foods,” the boy insisted. “Beside science and medicine we also need immediate space exploration. We can build orbital cities floating in zero gravity and move our factories there, freeing Earth from the pollution and nuclear radiation of power plants. People can work and live there for a month, then come back home with a space-bus and have a nice picnic in the clean forest, or go for a swim in a pure sea. We can colonize the Moon, build launch facilities there, which don’t require so much fuel to overcome Earth’s gravitational pull. Then we can go for Mars and other solid planets or asteroids, or even build artificial planetoids in our own orbit. Eventually, humanity will achieve interstellar travel and undertake mining activities all over the galaxy. Who or what can stop us, Professor? Huh?”
The old man frowned, muttering, “Eh, money and politics.”
Bobby squinted at him. “What?”
“If we don’t kill one another,” the psychiatrist put it plainly. “Good will is not enough, sonny. Look at the bigger picture: our world is at Cold War. To achieve what you say, humanity needs to be united. But around whose flag and whose ideology—theirs or ours? Will Capitalism or Communism rule the global society? Something in between? Socialism? Ahhh, you’re way too young to see the huge problem.”
Indeed, Bobby was too young to see that. There was much more than good will, he figured out. There was also … bad will.
And that, he knew, was why people would continue dying all over the world every second! Yet considering the threat of nuclear holocaust and armament proliferation, which existed after two world wars of unsolved political differences, he knew it was better to die from old age, than from WWIII.
The boy sighed again, as if he were an old grandpa. “That’s why I’m only an artist, Professor. I could become a doctor, or engineer, even astronaut. But … first we must change the world. Art, I believe, is the best way of doing it. It’s like international language to me. No need of translators. It speaks to all.”
The psychiatrist glanced at his watch. Bobby’s session was about up. Yet the old man couldn’t just leave it at that. “You know what,” he said, standing up. “Why don’t you write about it instead? Words can say so much more than silent paints. Why speak with colors and symbols, when it could be … a novel, for example? Yes, write a science fiction book and publish it. I have a few friends in high places. Who knows, maybe they’ll listen to what you have to say.” He walked around the desk and shook Bobby’s hand. “Agreed?”
“Agreed.” The teen lightened up. “I’m glad you like my idea, sir.”
“Like it?” The doctor chuckled. “I love it, sonny. This will be the underpass I’m going to run through any time I see it. Don’t forget”—he wagged an index finger—“I want your book autographed…”
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His recollection fading, the professor wrapped it up, “Dear mother, people like your Bobby have a destiny to follow. This is what we call ‘spiritual culture.’ Let him paint, write, compose music … maybe make movies. He’s not a person who’d work at a factory conveyor closing boxes for 7 hours in a row, and then be happy that it’s good money. No, no, he needs wings! Wings to carry out his imagination and free his soul from the banality of our existence.” The man added quieter, “For the sake of all humanity. Let him do it, mother, or he really might go crazy. Food, sex, and money aren’t everything for him. In fact, I encouraged him to write a novel. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll really live in space stations, sending our sons and daughters to conquer the galaxy. Oh, I do wish your Bobby is right, ma’am. I wish it so dearly.”
The mother, herself a television bibliographer with a wide worldview, gaped at the prominent psychiatrist. No, this wasn’t the old man talking anymore. It was … her “crazy” Bobby fantasizing now through the old professor’s mind.
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Copyright © 1984-2009 Bob Bello. All Rights Reserved! http://scifialmanac.ning.com
Bob Bello
Here’s an indirect respond from Dr. Michio Kaku:
What Type of Civilization Are We?
In other words, if we don’t spread out into space, there’s no point flirting with sci-fi and human imagination at all, correct?