The Beginning, Where Nothing Much Happens Until It Suddenly Does

66.4K 2.2K 3.8K
                                    

In downtown Manhattan, located in a famous city in the state of New York, situated in the north-east of a country called the United States of America, on an otherwise inconsequential planet called Earth—or PxBZed Gamma, for our readers in Alfa Centauri—a man sat in his office.

That man, just like the planet, was inconsequential in the grand scheme of things: round, mostly filled with water, and annoyingly polluted with plastic debris that gave him a perpetual grin.

But unlike the planet, which was mostly floating in space without a care in the universe, the man kept busy, and unlike the planet, people weren't actively trying to poison him or mine minerals in his face.

In fact, people who knew this man often compared him to a saint. Not because they wanted to nail him to a cross, or burn him at the stake, or make several horses pull his limbs off—people adored this man because he was objectively good.

He always gave money to charity and held yearly scholarships for dyslexic kids who wanted to go to "cogelle". He gave unto Caesar and gave unto God. He was the first one to call the provided number when that sad puppy commercial played on T.V. and even set up monthly payments to help stray dogs get their shots.

He never turned away a Jehovah's Witness, even going so far as to give them coffee and crackers, which left many Jehovah's Witnesses dumbfounded. Not because of his amicability, but mostly because most of them usually never go past the door, and stage fright hits you even with a one-person audience.

He was truly a man above any man, which made him dull beyond belief.

Each day, he would go to his very dull apartment building, embraced his very dull wife and hear her extremely dull story about what their bitchy neighbor Brenda said to her about a flowerpot by the windowsill, and how she told Brenda to shove her opinions where the sun doesn't shine.

He would nod mindlessly to her tale, followed by a boring and dull lovemaking session in the missionary position, after which both would fall asleep in each other's embrace. Repeat every day, ad infinitum.

In fact, the most interesting thing to ever happen to him was that one time in medical school when he thought he had scored an A in a test, when in fact he scored an A+. He celebrated like there was no tomorrow by drinking two Light beers and half an aspirin, going to bed by 10:00 p.m. instead of his usual 09:00 p.m.

He was utterly dull in every sense of the word. Lucky for us, our story is not about him.

Making a story about him would be very short and utterly pointless. It would consist of him sitting in his office all day and moving his pens from one side of his desk to the other. On occasions, he would make patients enter his office for a talk that would go one of two ways. The first one was to congratulate them on their good bill of health, but not before wagging his finger playfully to remind them to take care of themselves.

The second one wasn't so playful. You see, this man wasn't a normal doctor. He was an oncologist, as in a cancer doctor. For our readers in Alfa Centauri, Cancer is like your Multi-Pangueusy Explosive Gorgol Syndrome, only with fewer explosions and without the incessant need to juggle your own lungs.

On that particular day, the man—let's call him Dr. George, since George is the dullest name we can think of—needed to have the second kind of talk. The bad kind.

"Send him in now," he said to an intercom on his desk, but the intercom didn't reply. He made a mental note of getting a nicer, more polite intercom.

A man soon entered his office, beet red and with scorn burning in his eyes. You could say that the man was the antithesis of the good Dr. George.

First, he was a lawyer, and lawyers are the opposite of doctors. While doctors help save lives and occasionally ruin them, lawyers help ruin lives and occasionally save them. And there was nothing more antagonistic to an oncologist than a lawyer.

Running With ScissorsWhere stories live. Discover now