“Until the day I die, I’ll never forget those glassy, unblinking eyes.” I said, “I tell you now dear girl, there are some things that just stay with you! Like Dürer’s portrait of Krel – Gods! The look on that mans face, I almost feel constipated myself”
A shudder went through me as the image of that Nurembergian accountant crossed my mind, I could almost feel my sphincter clench in anticipation of creating trouble for me. The greatest war a man fights is with his own body, of that you can be certain!
“I understand sir! …I think…” said my new intern as she stumbled keeping up, “But what does that have to do with this?”
Leela was a bright young girl and had shown a certain…spark… in her writings, so I selected her. But it was clearly going to take a lot of work to bring that spark to the surface before I could even think about starting any fires!
“EVERYTHING and nothing Leela dear, everything and nothing. If you‘re to be a mathemagician, you need to remember that it’s all about knowing all and knowing nothing!”
With my usual flair I strode forth to the so-called ‘crime scene’, just barely avoiding a lovely little surprise left for my by the universe via one of it’s bovine agents. Frankly my morning had been troublesome enough without that contributing to it. Upon entering the theatre, my young protege gasped to a stop before hurrying to catch up, I must admit, I enjoy having younglings around, nothing quite like that sense of wonder to stoke the fires within oneself. As we strode down toward the stage I continued my analysis/lesson from where I had left off.
“For instance: Before us we have this Chevy Impala floating merrily over the stage, quite remarkable! Now while it makes a lovely addition and would be an inspired choice to use in their next performance of the Ramayan – (can you imagine Ram and Laxman using this to travel around and fight demons? Marvelous!) – I imagine that’s not what anyone was intending to do with it. Proof of this is that the good police-men have traced to be one missing for the past week from a drive-way in Paris, Texas. Splendid isn’t it?”
“But how did it get here? How is it floating? Why?” she blurted, all muddled and uncertain.
“Exactly! Now you are asking questions, but remember to ask as many as you can think of and if they don’t solve your problem – think of some more!”
“I’ll try Doctor…”
“Good girl! Now, look here, there’s surface damage to the body on the drivers side – combine that with the fact that the position is static and factoring in it’s position, height and engine being off, we have facts but no conclusion. BUT! Upon my inquiring via the police, the owner had the key and the car was parked for the night – no visible damage to the key-hole outside or inside and we can suppose that it was partially pushed (or pulled!) out of the regular flow of spacetime and as the Earth spun on it’s axis and moved around the sun as its right, well…”
“Well what?!” said Leela and the policemen who had gathered behind her simultaneously.
“Oh right! Well it’s clearly been frozen for just a few mere moments, locked in one position in violation of the all natural laws and is here only as a result of whatever held it in place letting go!”
“And the damage Doctor?”
“Oh that? That’s a side-effect, while it was out of sync with the rest of the universe (lucky thing!), the world passing it by must have been just close enough to sort of… graze it.”
I looked back at them all, pleased with my handiwork and deductions, only to be greeted by blank and confounded faces just about processing what I had said. It was not their fault and so I heaved a sigh, kept my stiff upper lip and carried on.
“Well that’s that gentlemen – and lady.”
“What is? What are we to do with it?” piped a slightly bright looking fellow from amidst the crowd.
“Oh the car! Yes, just leave it a while, whatever locked it is slowly fading, should crash back down in a few hours – maybe some cushioning? I’ll be in touch with the local Mathemagician in that neck of the woods and with a little luck, we’ll have our merry prankster in no time! Come along now Leela, we have much to do and little time to do it!”
———-The End———-
One Happy Monk's Reviews 
Loved all the film and TV show references 😉
Thank you – it’s always fun when people pick up on these things.
“Mathemagician” – I like that. I could use a little magic to grasps the concepts of mathematics 🙂
You and me both! 😀
What the deuce?lol!This reminds me of yesteryear’s serial on Indian TV-Karamchand jasoos and his dumb assistant Kitty-they did a rip off of the same in the movie “Race” 😀 Hopefully they manage to catch the mystical imp causing all this trouble 😉
Heh, interesting comparison and I will do my best to bring you further chapters of Doc Patient and his adventures.
Great:-)
What an entertaining story! Love the mathemagician’s personality – I can picture him striding about perfectly. Nicely done! 🙂
Many thanks, I’m new to yeahwrite and am enjoying incorporating the prompts, especially the media ones.
So creative and out there – loved it! It made perfect sense to me in a Doc Brown kind of way.
Thank you!
LOL, I love the reference to Sam and Dean from Supernatural, it’s my favorite tv show and it cracked me up to compare them with Ram and Laxman, it’d be a whole new level of crazy 😀 Mathemagicians sound interesting, I’d love to know more about them, fabulous job with the prompt 🙂
Woo! Fellow Supernatural fan! 🙂
Yes, that idea came and then I realised how awesome it could be – might work on it someday!
Thanks for reading.
“Bovine agents” — LOL!
Is this an outdoor stage, then? I love the “bovine agents” comment, but I had a hard time wrapping my head around where they were.
Fantastic use of language, and I can definitely see this character picking up speed. I really hope you continue this series.
There are a few typos, but not everyone cares about such things. I’m just a bit O.C.
Ummm… hadn’t really decided but I was leaning more to an indoor stage, like a full on amphitheatre/play-house.
This being the first was a major experiment for me so it’s been really encouraging to see how much my utter lack of caring for “good language skills” (normal ones anyway) are providing such amusement to readers like yourself.
No worries about the typos – I’m a big believer in learning by positive critique so if you ever see anything besides typos or just suggestions on what I could do better, don’t hesitate to say so and hopefully the stories will keep getting better!
Cheers!
Then where/why does the cow come into the picture? Do we have miniature pet cows in this world? Because that would be awesome.
Good language skills, in English, anyway, give a lot of leeway for creativity. Lewis Carroll, for goodness sake, made up words that are now in the dictionary. Chortle about that for a while. 😉 Your creative use of words, here, gives the story flavor. Without that, it might be fun, but it would lose more than half of its charm.
You might regret saying that, as I’m a terror when it comes to editing. That last short on my blog? Yeah, that was edited about fifteen times (I mentioned I have obsessive compulsive tendencies…). But I will happily give constructive crits in future. 🙂
Ah, well, as you notice, the um, cow-surprise was outside the theatre. Not the most unlikely of events in some parts of the world (like India, where I’m from). 😀
Honoured at the comparison, I’ve always loved the Alice stories and whimsy in general, though never felt confident in my ability to write it until the great feedback Doc Patient has found recently!
No regrets – feel free to edit away if it pleases thee. I’m honestly more concerned with story input that editorial though, because language/grammer/etc can be corrected at various stages by even non-writers – from a fellow scribe like you (with excellent taste might I add!), I’d appreciate your thoughts on how I could make anything you read better than what it’s started out as here. BUT, no expectation or compulsion from my side, follow thy compulsions as thee see’s fit and let’s just have fun with it.
Thanks again! Cheers!
Ah! That makes much more sense, now. 🙂 Do you still live in India?
I am glad I can contribute to your confidence! You really have something, here. Confidence is a funny thing for writers, though. All the one’s who actually seem to care about the quality of their work suffer from bouts of “everything I write is crap” no matter how good their work is. I say this so that you won’t get discouraged. Whenever you feel like you can’t write anything worth reading, grit your teeth and keep writing anyway.
I’m not too concerned about typos and grammar, either. As you say, those can be easily corrected. But good editing doesn’t just focus on plot and character and such. Precision of language is integral to good writing. Your Doc already has a distinct and delightfully quirky voice. Honing that voice and, with it, the tone of your stories, will have a very positive effect on everything including plot, character and readability. At least, that’s my take. 😉
Yup! Born and raised here, all 30+ yrs of my life.
Glad you think there’s something here, I’m feeling so too considering I wrote this story just as a lark but seems to be one that’s been enjoyed.
I don’t discourage easy, I believe creativity (like any profession) is a constant work in progress and to not look at it that way is self-defeating in the long run. Also, I definitely am always highly critical and unsure of what I write but like you note, I assume that’s simply because it’s my own creation and have elected to just let others judge anything I put out.
Will keep working on Doc and who knows? Maybe someday, sometime it’ll be something. 🙂
Cheers!
May I ask questions? Like, what part of India are you from?
Two thumb’s up for not discouraging easily! Nothing creative ever gets done well without persistence. 🙂
Sure, no problem – I’m from New Delhi.
And thanks.
Well that’s easy to remember. 🙂 This may seem like an odd question, but it’s the sort of thing that really interests me. What kinds of ecosystems/wildlife parks do you have nearby? Any favorite local flora or fauna? I understand that part of India is very flat, like our Midwest, but subtropical.
Well India’s a pretty diverse place ecologically, mountains, hills, lakes, deserts, swamps, dense jungles, plains, mangroves forests, plateaus, etc, etc – it’s I suppose just somewhat more tropical overall by and large due to our location? Also helps that it’s a huge place, so covers a lot of ground (literally!).
I don’t have a favourite per-se, though I do love our Neem trees, Gulmohar trees and well trees in general (I’m a greenery lover more than flowers by far!) and of course bushes/creepers like Bougainvillea which can look stunning. Fauna, well most people go for Peacock and Tiger. Personally I think peacocks are over-rated but what do I know? 😀 Tigers are pretty damn amazing – but what is a rare species that I find more fascinating are Snow-leopards in some of the mountain regions here. I even did a therianthropic story about a were-snow-leopard a few years ago as a short comic, one of my earliest published anything.
Mostly I’m a dog-loving guy so green spaces, dogs + books to read and something to write/draw on and I’m as happy as can be!
I know, I was asking about your area specifically. 😉 What is the area around New Delhi like?
Looking up pictures of those plants. Beautiful. Do they smell nice? I find that most of my favorite plants have some sort of interesting smell to them, like hickory, spice-bush, hemlock, southern wax myrtle, magnolia, and juniper. Trees tend to be my favorites, too, though I do love a lot of other plants. I love the insectivorous plants because they have some seriously awesome/quirky evolution and adaptation going on. I hope, one day soon, to have a pond and a bog in my yard where I can cultivate some of the venus flytraps, sundews, and pitcher plants that are native to my state. XD
Tigers are awesome, if scary. In my state we’ve completely expatriated our beautiful apex cat, the Mountain Lion, because we are idiots. We still have bobcats, though. I see them, now and again, though they’re pretty shy.
Snow-leopards! I didn’t know they were in India! They are gorgeous cats.
Sounds like a good way to spend the time, though my dog considers my having a book in hand to be a signal to hoist her 50-odd pounds into my lap and begin snuffling my face. 😛
Sorry for the gap, was not posting as much and checking in for a bit.
It’s that confounding mix of lots of nature and wildness and the clashing mega-modern urbanity that comes with a place developing exceptionally fast. There’s wonderful, older parts of town that are wide-lanes and loads of trees, some that show the stamp of the colonial era, some that are ultra-modern, some random middle-class economical housing projects and some that are practically slums or just utterly mad. It’s a really, really mixed bag and changes a bit every couple of years.
Most of the plants I named, well they’re not odor-giving plants, just nice to look at. At least no odor discernible by me. Neem and gulmohar trees themselves to have some distinctive smell when you’re close enough to them though. Also, nice to meet a fellow tree-lover! 😀
I used to have a wee tiny baby venus flytrap about a year ago, I used to keep it in this partially open-topped plastic wicker basket because it would have died in the open and I’d use the basket’s enclosed nature to keep water filled below the pot and keep it shaded to keep the humidity up and all. Fascinating plants indeed – though mine died sadly when I had to leave it with my parents as I had to travel for a comic-launch for a few days and being a delicate thing, it didn’t make it. Such is life!
Good luck to you if you do manage to get some of the ones you named!
Yeah, I think that culling of animal populations is pretty common – there’s always some new drama or crisis here every couple of years because the tiger population is always endangered. Like with some of the big-5 in Africa, always under threat from hunting and poaching for utterly idiotic, home-spun quackery/decadence and too often of the stupid-rich/horny clientele type.
Snow Leopards aren’t found all over the country, only in limited spots around the Himalaya’s and I picked that because I got to set the story in ancient Kashmir and I have a soft spot for it as it’s ancestral territory for me and I love it.
Your dog sounds awesome and reminds me of a few baby-like pooches I’ve met. 😀
Hickories and spice-bushes aren’t lovely to smell unless one crushes a leaf, and then they smell amazing. The evergreens, though, are all rather fragrant.
If only the pooch realized how big she is. 😛
One you might try that I have a lot of and is wonderful for smell and has a similar crushed-leaf-release thing is Lavender – the ones I had were all-white leaves and looked amazing in between the greenery.
What kind of lavender? I have one variety by my front door that has gone absolutely wild. It’s beautiful. It’s leaves are silvery-gray-green and the flowers very pale purple.I know there are other kinds, though, with other smells.
Sounds like the same one I’ve got (or close enough)!
There are a ton of varieties, but “close enough” is enough for me. ^_^ I’m not much interested in the oddities produced among domesticated plants. I tend to prefer the ones shaped in the wild, instead. Much more interesting.