Part 13

Well, I've told you this story as evidence of the foolishness and irrationality of the human heart. For now observe the consequent:

The first young lady, naturally concerned for her safety and realizing that she possessed knowledge that her young man did not, quite reasonably chose to change the tire. However, the young man, fool that he was, was never seen escorting this capable and logical young lady again.

The second young lady, very sensibly concerned about preserving an expensive dress and realizing that she would be of little or no help to her young man, showed a similar wisdom in avoiding what she knew would be the consequences of leaving the car. But, even though her judgment was vindicated when she observed, in the form of the drenched, muddy, and bleeding young man, exactly those consequences she had predicted, the young man himself, blind and irrational as he was, was also never again seen escorting this thoughtful and discerning young lady.

Even stranger and more perverse as it must seem, however, the third young man, even after observing the silly and unreasonable behavior of his date, even after seeing her soaked to the skin, her gown ruined, her hair plastered against her neck, her mascara running down her cheeks in little inky rivulets--even after observing all this, not only was he seen escorting her frequently to other entertainments, but eventually he offered her a ring.

The History of Professor De Laix

The world had long been promised a fifty-volume definitive analysis on the meaning of life by the brilliant and internationally respected Professor de Laix. Admirers from all across the surface of the earth produced unremitting and enthusiastic requests--nay, demands--for the wise professor to bestow upon the world his penetrating insights into human nature. As the years passed, however, even though he had been begged repeatedly for the first part, or a first volume, or even a first chapter, he had always answered that he wanted to get the whole work clearly in his head before he put it down on paper.

"To rush precipitously forward without knowing precisely where one wants to go," he would tell them, "will not of necessity produce a happy outcome because it might lead to a complicative erroneity or put one on a train to a destination he would not ultimately wish to visit. After all, the most beautiful part of a given day is known only after dark, and the best path up the mountain--which I take to be the path of true wisdom--is seen only from the top."

Year after year, therefore, arrived with hope and left disappointed; new generations were born and millions of hopeful readers mingled their own dust with that of the earth without the benefit of even a phrase of Professor de Laix' wisdom.

Then one spring his colleagues and students noticed that he was gradually becoming more and more animated, and was heard occasionally to mutter, "Yes, yes, that's right, that's right." Finally one day while he was sitting in a coffee shop regaling a few favorite students with tales of fruitless thinking journeys upon which he had in the past embarked, he took a sip of coffee (or perhaps he had inadvertently been served espresso) and then suddenly opened his eyes widely, sprang to his feet, and announced excitedly, "That's it! I see it all now! Now it can be written! Everything is completely clear! So clear! Ha ha! Now I understand! Now, at last, I understand!"

After this brief speech, he burst out of the coffee shop (leaving his students with expressions of amazement and an unpaid bill) and began to run toward his office where he could finally sit down and produce his great work. Now at last he could pour forth his hitherto inexpressible wisdom to fertilize the orchards of culture and bring into being a new and wonderful fruit for civilization to munch upon.

Unfortunately, in his highly focused and externally oblivious rush toward his office, he neglected to watch for the traffic as he crossed the busy boulevard between the coffee shop and the university (for academia is often separated from the rest of life by just such a metaphor), and as a result he was tragically but thoroughly run down by a fully loaded manure truck, whose cargo had been produced after only one day's rumination, and whose owner also hoped that it would swell the fruit on the trees of a less figurative orchard.

Such was the life and death of the great Professor de Laix, a man for whom someday almost came.

How the Humans Finally Learned to Like Themselves

It is man's peculiar distinction to love even those who err. --Marcus Aurelius, VII.22

A sweet disorder in the dress. --Herrick

Once upon a time, many years from now, technology had continued its remarkable progress to the point that the construction of artificial people had finally become possible. These humakins, as they were called, were made so carefully and with such art that no one could tell the difference between a real human and an artificial one--except that the artificial ones were flawless. Physically the humakins were always young, always beautiful, always fresh; they never had a hair out of place, never a pimple, never a wrinkle, never a gray hair. Mentally they were always bright, alert, and smiling; they always got their facts right, and never took a wrong turn or got lost.

At first the appeal of the humakins was irresistible, and most humans chose them over other humans for spouses. What human female could compete with an always slim, beautiful, and lively imitation? And what human male could compete with an always confident, correct, and handsome construction? In fact, the word "humakin" quickly became a synonym for "perfect," as in, "That's a really humakin car," or "This pie tastes just humakin." At the same time the word "human" became a term of opprobrium, indicating something defective or of low quality, as in, "I never shop there because it's such a human store with human-quality merchandise."

To the consternation of many, however, while the humakins could construct more of themselves in a factory, the humans could produce more of themselves only by following the ancient method of their ancestors, so that the result of the marriages between flesh and plastic was the eventual decline of the human race.

When about nine tenths of the persons on the planet consisted of the precisely fabricated humakins and only one tenth of the really human, quite an odd and unexpected situation arose. It had become so unusual to see, for example, a woman wearing glasses or a man with wind-blown hair that such a detail now took on a natural appeal to some of the other humans.

One bright morning at breakfast in a fancy resort dining room, a human female, almost as lovely as a humakin, sat chatting with a humakin male who had condescended to sit with her. Suddenly she inadvertently spilled a glass of tomato juice onto her white tennis dress. While her humakin companion predictably stood up and stared at her with horror, across the room a human male who had just witnessed the event was so filled with ardor and longing that he almost broke the table in his rush to get over to her and make her acquaintance. His excitement to declare his affection left him without the capacity for coherent speech, so that only tentative and confused phrases stumbled from his mouth. In the midst of his babbling, though, he could see, in the welling dew of the woman's eyes, the tenderness of regard he had inspired.

As other humans, too, began to grow weary of the expectation of constant perfection in their relationships, scenes similar to this one began to be repeated with increasing frequency. A loose shoe lace, a chipped fingernail, a shiny nose--all gradually became sources of romantic and emotional attraction, and those very characteristics that had before been viewed as defects soon came to be seen as emblems of the truly and desirably human, as guarantees of that unique inner fire that no amount of perfectly crafted plastic could equal.

The word "human" now began to be associated with the genuine, the natural--and the beautiful. It became not uncommon to hear a young lady remark to her admirer as he gently put a flower in her hair, "Oh, what a human thing of you to do." The word "humakin," on the other hand, began to imply something slickly unrealistic or laughably fake and was often pronounced with a sneer.

At length, having rediscovered the amorous appeal of their distinctives like freckles and missing buttons and the inability to refold road maps, the humans began to marry each other again. It wasn't many years before a young pledge of one of these new relationships was heard to ask in a tone of frustration, "But Mommy, why must I have a crooked tooth?" To which the mother replied, "That's so I'll always remember how truly beautiful you really are."

The Caterpillar and the Bee

A bee, flying proudly around the garden, approached a caterpillar sitting on a shrub. "I don't know how you can stand to be alive," the bee said. "I'm valuable to the world with my honey and wax, I can fly anywhere I want, and I'm beautiful to behold. But you're just an ugly worm, not good for anything. While I soar from bloom to bloom feasting on nectar, all you can do is creep around and chew on a stem."

"What you say may be true," replied the caterpillar, "but my Maker must have put me here for some purpose, so I trust him for my future."

"You have no future," said the bee. "You'll be crawling through the dirt for the rest of your life. If you ask me, you'd be better off choking on a leaf."

Sometime later the flowers in the garden woke to find that the bee and the caterpillar had both disappeared. All that they could see now was a shriveled yellow body hanging from the edge of a spider web and a magnificent butterfly flexing its wings in the sun.