Life Support - Chapter 1
The shrill ringing of the alarm clock on the bedside table cut through the silence of the bedroom with unrestrained vehemence. Kyle Broflovski was shaken out of his slumber by the deafening singular pitch, the sound seemingly amplified by a thousandfold on this very morning. Wincing in pain, Kyle hugged his head in his arms as he tried not to scream at the feeling of a wooden spike being driven between his neural hemispheres.
This was, by far, the worst hangover ever.
Faintly grasping for his blanket, Kyle kept his eyes firmly shut, knowing that he had probably forgotten to close his curtains last night and that uninvited sunlight was probably streaming indiscriminately into his room, ready to flood and simultaneously destroy his fragile retinas. As he felt desperately for the inconsiderate clock, his fingers made contact with its cold metal before accidentally pushing it off the edge of the table, sending it tumbling to the ground. It didn't stop ringing.
Kyle swore loudly in the confines of his own bedroom as he turned to his side. Placing his feet gently on the ground, he forgot about his eyes for a single second, and by instinct, opened them.
The lobotomy had begun.
"Sonofabitch!"
Stringing together a series of choice swear words that his mother would have instantly grounded him for if he had been ten years younger and still living with her, Kyle found the silver lining in his dying cone cells and quickly identified the location of the clock on the ground. Snatching it savagely from the ground, he shut off the blaring alarm and tossed the clock at his bed, sending it bouncing innocently onto his pillow. Gritting his teeth as he took a few painful steps forward, Kyle reached for the curtains and pulled them shut.
Silence and darkness had never felt more welcome.
Kyle had known that his alcohol tolerance wasn't exactly the best in the world, but the exact extent of his social handicap had apparently been lost in the extended length of time he had spent away from the substance and the celebrations of the previous night. His excuse to his diabetes-weakened liver was valid: his adopted little brother had returned to South Park after his first year in college for his summer break, and the Broflovski family welcomed him back with open arms and a tiny celebration with beer and kosher food. Kyle's liver had taken the excuse in stride, however somebody had apparently forgotten to notify his head of the potential intoxication, judging by the dull pounding interspersed with sharp pains that ran through his skull.
Dragging himself fitfully to the bathroom, Kyle pushed his curly orange-red hair out of his eyes. His favorite green ushanka, a memento from his childhood, lay quietly at the back of his closet. As Kyle silently considered the implications of calling in sick to work for the day, a feeling of panic hit him straight in the gut, a feeling that was most decidedly not lingering nausea from the previous night. As he hastily checked the date on his watch, Kyle groaned in exasperation.
There was no way he could call in sick to work even if he wanted to.
Laboratory schedules were as competitive as entry to some university fraternities, and Kyle had booked the entire functional genomics laboratory at the South Park Institute of Research for the week to complete his most recent experiment. The work would need one hundred percent effort, and if he were to not show up at the laboratory for any reason whatsoever, he could almost guarantee that his laboratory time slots would be permanently gifted to another result-hungry biologist working at the facility.
In the exclusive yet viciously competitive world of biological research, there was no way Kyle could afford for that to happen.
Cringing with every step, Kyle began the painful process of getting ready for work, starting with a well deserved and necessary pop of aspirin.
"You have no idea how glad I am to bump into you, Butters. Seriously, I can't thank you enough for this."
The steering wheel in front of him, coupled with Leopold 'Butters' Stotch's insistence on vehicular safety, were probably the only things stopping the almost eternally joyful manchild from throwing his arms around his friend in happiness.
"Aw shucks, that's no problem at all, Kyle! I'm just happy to see you, we haven't talked in a long time!"
Butters' happiness was infectious, even to a hungover and almost persistently uptight Jew. Kyle couldn't help but return his old friend's smile. Even after many years of misfortune, brought about primarily by his parents kicking him out of the house due to his homosexuality and a sadly unreciprocated love, Butters had carried his childhood practice of happiness and goodness into adulthood. His ability to find a silver lining in the midst of every thundercloud was ironically a deterrent in him finding more close friends due to the innately untrusting nature of the majority of people in the town, but Kyle had always admired his old friend for that very talent that made him the "Butteriest Butters" that he knew.
"Yes, we haven't. I'm really sorry about that, its just that things have been so busy at the research facility, its hard to find time for anything else."
"Aw, shucks, Kyle! There's no need to apologise! I'm just glad you're doing well at your job! It's super cool that I have a genius scientist for a friend!"
The smile thrown in Kyle's direction brightened his mood exponentially, alongside the compliment, which sounded so confident and positive that it made him blush slightly.
"...I'm not a genius."
"Well sure you are! Shucks, Kyle, you don't have to be so modest. You were the smartest kid in the class back when we were all kids, remember?"
As his mind glazed past what he recalled was happening in Butters' life since the last time they had talked, Kyle felt somewhat guilty for alienating himself from his friends. Whilst he would have liked for an ideal group of friends as mirrored in popular American sitcoms, reality, with its brutal honesty, had thrown multiple wrenches in the friendships that Kyle had spent his childhood nurturing. He still remained in contact with a sparse number of his childhood buddies, and proper meetups were even more sparse, thanks to Kyle's budding career and the tiny excuses he made to himself whenever somebody from his past asked to meet up.
As he tried to remember what his momentary savior had mentioned during their last encounter, an important detail stood out. A detail that he couldn't believe he had forgotten in the first place.
Kyle was, as far as he was aware of, the only other person besides his parents that Butters' had come out to.
Kyle was surprised at being Butters' confidant regarding his sexuality, especially when considering that the two boys had never been best friends, albeit being relatively close for a period of their lives years back. Butters' reasons for his decision were well thought out. As childhood friends moved away from South Park to pursue their dreams, Kyle had been one of the few that had stayed behind, and the only remaining one that Butters' regarded as trustworthy and relatively non-judgmental. Eric Cartman had disappeared off the South Park radar for a long time, and even if he had been around, he would have never been an active choice. The other boys of South Park Elementary back in the day used to pick on him, and were therefore out of the question. The girls would have ensured that his coming out would become the hottest gossip in the town within the next day.
Kenny McCormick was completely out of the question, for blindingly obvious reasons.
"So...how are you and Kenny doing?"
Kyle's innocent probing into Butters' life appeared to have touched a nerve, as the seemingly permanent smile on Butters' face faltered for a split second.
"Huh? What do you mean, Kyle? There's nothing going on between me and Kenny. Nothing's changed."
And therein lay the problem.
Snatching a fresh lab coat from the rack of newly sterilised lab gear, Kyle approached the genomics laboratory and pressed his employee's pass onto the electronic card scanner affixed on the side of the glass door. Upon hearing it beep in affirmation, Kyle gave the door a strong push, the smell of formaldehyde used to disinfect the laboratory surfaces instantly snapping him into work mode.
South Park's only research facility, BioSPolis, was set up whilst Kyle was still in high school. The effort made by the city council to place South Park on the map as a research hub turned out, against all expectations, to be the most successful venture ever conceived by the town's substandard city council and inept mayor. The facility put South Park in the spotlight for something that was beneficial to the country, a contrast from its prior reputation as a redneck town and disaster magnet.
The setting up of the facility was the only reason Kyle had decided to return to the town after graduating early from college. A budding scientist needed an outlet, and Kyle's innate Messiah Complex drew him, against his initial plans, back into his laid back "quiet mountain town", with the dream that he would be the scientific savior of a town that seemed doomed to eternal mediocrity.
"Project Code: 0149. Date: 1st of July, 2018. Time: 9:07am. Project Status: Classified."
Kyle threw a quick glance onto the wall-mounted audio recorder in the room to confirm that it was recording the sound of his voice before returning to his experimental setup.
"This is Kyle Broflovski's experiment on functional genomics, day one of experimental phase. This recording is being taken from the genomics laboratory of BioSPolis. All documentation from here on out is confidential property of aforementioned researcher until indication is given otherwise."
Speaking to himself had been an activity that he had to get used to when he first started work at the facility, which made yet another surprisingly good policy when it declared that all researchers were to take down consistent documentation of their work in progress to ensure proof of their endeavors, in the highly likely possibility of other scientists staking claims on similar projects first. Kyle had initially felt silly speaking loudly to an empty room, but eventually found the documentation process somewhat liberating, especially when he played back recordings of his own work to check for discrepancies.
As he set up the machine for microarray analysis, Kyle absentmindedly found himself speaking to no one in particular, setting the tone for yet another serious yet snarkily comical monologue, recordings that his superiors had gained much amusement out of in the past as they heard their youngest charge divulge the inner workings of his mind without restraint.
"Finally...I've managed to book time in this infernal lab. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to gain access to this damn place? This facility is huge, but it has only one functional genomics laboratory. Fucking horseshit, people. Allocate your money better."
The recorder continued to beep at a steady rhythm as it took down all of Kyle's harmless ranting.
"Did I just swear into official documentation? That's right. That was probably the most badass thing I've done since I was in high school, so don't mind me. I might be a professional, but I'm allowed to be badass too, right? This is a redneck town, after all. Well, since all this ranting is going to be edited out later by you bureaucrats later I don't suppose you lot will mind me speaking my mind about some things. If I were to be honest, this recording is the only intelligent conversation I can get out of anyone these days."
Kyle carefully extracted his pre-prepared sample of spliced DNA and loaded it into the machine. His voice switched effortlessly between mindlessness and professionalism.
"DNA sample one is being loaded into the microarray sequencing machine for initial testing. Will proceed with PCR if sample size proves to be insufficient."
Biting thoughtfully onto his lip, Kyle shook his curly red hair out of his eyes as he brought up his self-designed data collection spreadsheet on his laptop.
"I'll have to be honest, I'm still slightly hungover from last night. I know scientists don't usually spend nights chugging alcohol, but my little brother just came home from college, so sue me. It was nothing special, really, just us two and our dad mindlessly emptying a few cans of beer in my childhood home whilst my mother prepared food in the kitchen. Kosher, of course. If Judaism had forbidden alcohol, I still think my family would have partaken in it. Especially myself, since I don't really practice Judaism anymore. My mother would have a heart attack if she found that out about her little bubbe."
He swallowed.
"I'm not sure how much you people edit out of these recordings, but cut out that last bit, please. That was somewhat embarrassing. I'm bringing up old data from a few months back on my computer now. Will proceed with comparative analysis as I wait for the machine to return results."
Kyle took a tentative sip from a glass of Mountain Dew (checking carefully if he had confused it with some lethal chemical) to quench his thirst as he waited for his laggy computer to open the file.
"You know what, I'm actually somewhat glad I'm doing this. Sure, it's still a little ridiculous that I have to speak everything that I'm doing, but it keeps the atmosphere in here active. I knew what I was getting into when I decided on this path, and I know it's thanks to my own decisions that I'm busy all the time, but hey, at least I'm doing something meaningful."
He pursed his lips.
"Something...meaningful…"
Closing his eyes, Kyle allowed himself to be immersed in the peaceful solitude of the laboratory as he waited for the machine to finish its work.
Author's Note - Welcome to Life Support. I have big plans for this story (which is supposed to be a comparative reflection of idealised life and reality), though how far I manage to go about completing it will depend on factors in my own life that are not entirely under my control. I absolutely adore South Park, and I'm glad for this opportunity to tell a story of my own conception based around these characters. Stick around, and I do apologise if my manner of storytelling is too complex. It's sometimes difficult to properly leash the idea monkeys wrecking havoc in my head.
Reviews appreciated.
~SUITELIFEFAN