Watch out.
Here Comes
Howard Stern.
Peter’s slipped out of bed, pulling on his pants and shirt as he headed for the toilet. I hate it! I hate it, hate it, hate it!
He was acutely aware he was nothing but atoms and that atoms were bits of mostly nothing floating around in even greater masses of nothingness between each atom. He'd seen the pictures in the encyclopedia. How could his puny atoms possibly stop Howard Stern’s voice from zipping right through his kidneys?
Of course, he knew Howard was not the only one trespassing his body. There was an endless string of loud-mouth politicians, crazy whacked-out, window-rattling rock-a-billies, Bible-thumpers preying for little old ladies’ money and Doctor Ruth talking dirty. But it was Howard’s voice that bothered him most.
He wondered if such a parade of strangers left a residue. Were their messages getting caught in his cranium urging him to do things like eat cold pop tarts or look overly long at underage girls? Could that be why he was developing that reoccurring ache in his left elbow?
Peter gave himself one last shake, flushed, zipped his pants and turned to the mirror, his eyes squeezed shut with a sense of foreboding. He forced one eye open and breathed a sigh of relief. There he was! Despite the great voids in and between his body-atoms, he still managed to show up in the mirror. He had no idea how that could work, but, well, he winked at himself, pleased with the fact that it did.
Still …
Shouldn’t Howard be paying a toll for passing through his private parts? He had to admit it would be tough to collect. He’d have to get a lawyer that would work on contingency. Of course, Howard is making millions. So … maybe a class action suit, Yes. That would do it. One for all and all against one. We could charge a penny a word. No. Let's not be greedy. a penny a minute. Each.
The high-pitched buzz was back. He needed a timeout. He could sit in the chair in his bedroom . But what if his atoms misaligned with the atoms in the chair? He could tumble right through to the floor. Maybe through the floor, too! The buzz went up an octave.
Better not chance it!
Attempting a look of nonchalance he did not feel, Peter jammed his hands in his pockets and ambled down his stairs and out the door. Once in the sunshine, he planted his feet on the good old reliable ground.
Hurray for terra firma! The buzz did a true glissando from A-flat above high C to a much more mellow F-sharp below middle C. He could stand there in that one spot without moving — from the time the sun came up in the east until it tucked in that night in the west.
But could he really? It came to him like a peal of thunder that he was not standing still. The sun does not go around the earth. The earth spins around. It spins the sun into view and then out again at a thousand miles an hour!
Peter’s upper lip broke into a sweat. The buzz shrieked like jet-fighter on take off. There's more, his mind plunged on — the earth is also hurtling around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour.
His stomach threatened a full-scale upset as he thought of how he was both spinning and whirling at such high speeds. He grabbed a tree to keep from falling off into the sky.
Tying to clear his head, he banged it repeatedly against the tree. But that didn’t stop the next horror from leaking into his brain.
The sun isn't standing still, either. The entire solar system — sun, planets, moons, asteroids and cosmic dust, the whole shooting match — is blasting along inside the Milky Way toward nobody-could-tell-him-where at forty-five thousand miles an hour.
So, he was not just spinning and whirling — he was zooming as well!
He felt the kind of belly-clutch you'd get on the tightest, loop-de-loop curve of the world’s biggest, badest roller coaster as his run-away mind took the next step. Don’t forget, he tried to forget, the Milky Way and all of it’s billions of other star systems is smashing off in yet another direction at five-hundred-thousand mile-an-hour. He tried 500,000 miles an hour, but thinking of it in digits didn't make it seem any slower.
Spinning and whirling and zooming — and smashing! Peter whimpered. Escape, Peter. Think small, Peter, Think very small.
Bacteria, he thought. He knew his body teemed with a bacterial zoo — trillions of different kinds inside, outside and all through him. That didn’t exactly make him comfortable. But, at least they were small. And he did understand that without their help in digesting his food and killing off other more nasty viruses and what not, they contributed to his good health.
Still, it had been a happier time when Peter thought he was the only thing alive in the bag of skin his parents christened Peter. ̱He wondered if learning was always a good thing.
So now I am Team Peter, So what? He forced himself to be solder-brave and threw his shoulders back to face the fact that he was a bag filled with more little critters than he could ever count … more by far than there were people on earth. He didn't flinch.
But what if they all got together and decided to revolt! Demand their democratic rights — overthrow him in a body-wide election overseen by a real U.N. commission!
"No!" he cried aloud, hugging his tree as if it might somehow run off and leave him to face the inside world of Team Peter alone.
"I need a controllable worry," he squealed, rubbing his cheek hard against the rough bark of the tree. The pain eased his mind.
At that very moment when he feared all was lost, including his mind, he noted that his watch was off by several minutes and breathed a sigh of relief. He could fret about that for as long as he chose, then, when he was fretted out, he could reset the watch with a twist of his thumb and forefinger.
He had just enjoyed the high-pitched buzz mellowing into baritone lullaby when it occurred to him that time is measured in seconds, minutes, weeks, months, years, centuries, eras, millenniums, eons,— even geological period — but only in the future and past! The buzz screeched up two octaves
No! No! No! He banged his fist against the tree until his little finger dripped blood.
Wait a minute! Those measures are only for the past and the future! What about the present?
The only way to get from the future to the past was through the present! But how long does that take?
He pondered how anybody measure the time that existed in the present and slumped to the ground, burying his head in his arms. The present is like an atom. It’s there. But it’s not there.
Then, as fast as it had risen to a shriek, the buzz disappeared. It didn't just go to a lower tone. It disappeared!
Peter raised his head. His eyes shone with rapture. At last he knew who he was — who Team Peter was! He — they — whatever — was ... were... whatever — the invisible, un-measurably thin, sharper-than-any-razor edge that divided the future from the past.
Howard Stern's voice goes from the future to the past in the immeasurably short time it takes to flash through my liver! My goddamn liver! I'm it! I'm the difference between the future and the past!
Peter felt empowered once and for all. Pride welled up in his chest. The entire army of bacteria that was Team Peter cheered wildly and kissed strangers in the crossroads of his arteries.
A parade formed up on the linings of his stomach —with Disney character balloons, a circus calliope wagon playing on a full head of steam and a Santa Claus float bringing up the rear. It stretched from his duodenum past his bile duct, gall bladder and pancreas, all the way down to within six inches of his rectum.
Did he hear Howard Stern’s voice singing the Hallelujah Chorus in his left elbow? He was sure he did.
When the news of his importance to everything — future, past and present — reached the far away galaxies and galaxy-clusters and clusters-of-clusters out there doing their stuff, he knew they would all erupt into a gazillion celestial fireworks displays, the giant reds would burst into multi-dimensional mushrooms, the white dwarfs would grow up to become black holes and millions of novas would copulate in the sky to produce as many asteroids as he had bacteria in his body. Maybe more!
Peter smiled and stood straighter than he'd ever stood before. He patted his clinging-tree a fond good-bye.
He jigged from rock to doorstep to chaise lounge. He sat on each, his face showing no fear of their atoms misaligning. He even lay back on a hammock and pretended to snooze. All the while, he knew — he could feel it — the future flowed through him into the past without so much as a ripple.
Watching from the fourth floor of Peter’s domicile unit, his doctor shook both of his heads, all six eyes twinkling with amusement. “Humans are certainly peculiar,” one of the doctor’s heads said to the other.
“They have trouble with what they can’t see, don’t they?” the other head answered, enjoying nasal intercourse with the desk while listening to Howard Stern yakking away through the speakers in the palms of his six hands which he held in such a way that he got perfect surround-a-sound.
