The Great Alien Mind

by Robert E. Keller

I awoke to a frosty dawn. The walls were grey. The coat I was using for a blanket didn’t do the job because my feet were cold and my nose stung. I could see my breath, and that was wrong. You shouldn’t be able to see your breath inside your house.

Fuel — how would I get some? Who knew? Not me. My mind wandered this way and that as the day’s writhing torture began. It didn’t take long after waking for my brain to twist with torment. Right on cue. It was time to start thinking!

I sat up and a shiver ran through me from the cold. Grey walls like bland mud. Shadows without comforts. Wood, stone, and choking stuffiness — a city trap. My mind raced beyond the walls to the icy streets, where everyone was doing something — except me.

I glanced at the floor to where my blanket lay, and then at the coat I had slept under, and then back at the blanket. I was acting for the great observer. The people out there wouldn’t understand how a guy could be so smothered mentally he couldn’t bring himself to pull a quilt over himself. Hell, I didn’t even understand it.

I needed to call McDonalds, because they hadn’t called me. They were a petty wall, blocking a petty man on some petty whim. Maybe they didn’t like my poor work history: two brief jobs at mind-killing factories after my mother died, and none before. Maybe they hadn’t even looked at my application.

I pictured a tired, overweight girl in a dark-blue manager’s shirt looking skeptically at my words and then smiling as she said something jokingly to a coworker before tossing the application onto a pile. Rejected by fast food.

I groaned, certain the vision would come true. If I couldn’t even get a job at fast food, I was going to end up homeless. Red alert! Thinking in progress!

“Well, what should I think about today?” I said aloud, my voice breaking with bitterness. But I already knew the answer. First, I would think of immediate concerns — money, job, need for a woman, my age of forty, my lack of friends. My horrid lack of a life. Didn’t lepers even have friends and family around them? Was I the only one this alone?

I shook my head and sighed. Of course, I did this head shake/sigh act on purpose because I was in a movie — the great movie of life, and someone was watching. A powerful alien mind was studying my every move, and I was quite aware of it because even a loser like me still had a huge, human ego that allowed such knowledge to take root.

Splat. Back to reality. I was freezing cold. I needed fuel. My mother was no longer around to take care of me. What to do? What to do? I was mumbling aloud while the great alien mind took notes and nodded to his fellow researchers as if my life were somehow revealing something interesting. And to him, it most definitely was.

What to eat? I had a carton of eggs and a chunk of polish sausage. That was low carb. Might take some fat off my gut so I could feel better about myself. But low carb made me sick to my stomach. And sugar sounded so good! Once I escaped into eating — for about an hour, if I took my time — maybe I could find the will to go out walking and find a job.

I was sick from the anticipation of it. It was exhausting and it hurt my head. Eat, shower, dress warm, find work — be humiliated, be humiliated, be humiliated. But I had to. I had bills to pay. The great alien mind did not pay the subject it chose to research.

On the other hand, I could crawl under the covers and sleep the day away. I wasn’t a drinker or a drug user. I was just fat and lazy... or something. Something was wrong with my mind, really. I had no will to do anything, even get drunk or pop pills. Couldn’t finish school, couldn’t stand fighting all the time with my mother — couldn’t go to her funeral.

A stab of guilt snapped me to attention. I was a coward to have hidden away. If anyone had liked me when she was alive, they sure didn’t now.

How could I turn things around? How could I get a woman, a life, a job that didn’t make my brain throb? Maybe I never would. Maybe this was how the homeless got started. I would lose the house, my brain would rot, and I would spend my days begging to survive.

Thinking was in full swing. Yee haw!

But then a great revelation flooded through me. What would happen if I no longer thunk? I mean thinked? Or rather, thought? My problems would still be there, right? Or would they?

I blanked my mind. Thoughts tried to intrude, but I blocked them out. I got up and my back throbbed with pain. For a moment I was alert to the muscle aches, and then I relaxed myself and didn’t think. Not thinking was more difficult than I had... thought blocked.

I went to the kitchen. I didn’t think about the disgusting conditions like the moldy dishes in the sink. I scrubbed out a pan. A thought interrupted: it was hard to wash dishes without soap. I blocked any following thoughts. I cracked a couple of eggs in the pan. One was bloody with what looked like baby chicken parts. My neighbor Connie had given me crap eggs again.

Caught off guard, I thought about it for a moment. Then I blanked my mind and let both eggs cook. Not thinking demanded not getting grossed out over a... thought blocked.

The great alien mind tried to make its presence known. I blocked it out so thoroughly I felt a surge of triumph, which I then had to block out. I shut the eggs off and left them to rot. I ate the chunk of polish sausage cold on bread.

A surge of grief arose. Blocked. My feet were cold. Blocked. The great alien mind was studying my responses to tortured stimulus. Blocked.

I was a nobody, a nothing, and I was going to lose my home and never make love to a woman again because I just couldn’t get my head clear of fog! Blocked? No, that last one had definitely slipped into the thunk zone.

The more I tried to block the thoughts, the more aggressive they became. The great observer did not give up on his subjects so easily.

“I’ll fight you! You can’t make me think!”

I blanked my mind with all my might.

* * *

Twenty years later, as I lay freezing to death on the sidewalk, I could still feel his presence. He was still watching me, as he had been the day I walked into McDonalds and started screaming. It was all his fault — the great alien mind. He was the one who drove me crazy like a maze-trapped rat just so he could measure the results.

My life was a movie, and at last the reel was rolling to a stop. Had someone just stepped over me? Yeah, I think so. They had muttered something and their boot had dragged snow across my head.

I was dying, because I couldn’t get anywhere. I couldn’t walk anymore. I was going to freeze right there on the sidewalk. But I was smiling, because I knew I wasn’t going to think at all in those last few moments. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. I was human, and he had no right to take away my life. He had no right!

I was going to deprive him of his greatest moment. I could feel his frustration, because he knew what my scheme was. He fought with all his might to make me think, to save a lifetime experiment from a disastrous conclusion. I’ll give him that much: he tried damn hard! For a moment he had me going with that spreading warmth that shouldn’t have been there and those peaceful feelings, but then... thought blocked.

* * *

It has been thirty years since I disrupted the great experiment of life and changed the destiny of the human race. When I unraveled that single thread, the whole tapestry fell apart. Disease, hunger, suffering, and even death became things of the past. Now humans lived like gods, free of all pain.

And what of the great alien mind? He packed up his lab equipment, and he and his cronies moved on to another universe, where hopefully — for his sake anyway — someone like me doesn’t exist.

to Challenge 360...