zaire
a K-PAX fan story written with love for both gene brewers the real and the unreal
for imitation is surely the sincerest form of flattery. When you review this, I appreciate spelling errors being pointed out. Thank you.
by
liz hensley
&
madam foogie
Explanations for story if you are not familiar with K-PAX
Robert Porter is a mental patient who is either a multiple personality with a "secondary dominant persona" who thinks he is from the Planet K-PAX, (and keeps proving it to his compassionate but flustered psychiatrist), or else he is the willing but seriously disturbed host to a real symbiotic alien named, "prot," (rhymes with boat.) The author Gene Brewer, (same name as the psychiatrist in the books but not the movie), and the Universal Picture's movie, cleverly never make it quite clear what "Prot," is a real alien, or a highly intelligent but delusional savant with a mysterious and touching ability to communicate heart to heart with animals, children and individuals so disturbed no one else can reach them. He can also see ultraviolet light and can diagram what night sky looks like from 64 extra-solar planets including his own claimed origin planet K-PAX (which no one knew about except Dr. Brewer's brother in law who is an astronomer and a few others like himself who had just discovered it). Because of his over sensitivity to light prot must wear dark glasses at all times unless in really dusky conditions. In fact that is what gets him committed. In the movie a cop asks him to take his glasses off, and he says, "if you don't mind I'd rather not, because I had forgotten, but WOW your planet is really bright!"
Our prot is a mixtue of the movie's Kevin Spacey prot and the wonderful books by Gene Brewer, with of course, a little our ourselves too, of course.
Prot can also use a little flashlight and a hand mirror to mirror beam anywhere he wants to on Earth, or at least he claims to be able to do this, "but interstellar travel must be co-ordinated for safety reasons just like your air planes."
Fan opinion leads in favor of prot deliberately acting just crazy enough to get committed so he could get help for his seriously disturbed friend. For prot is Robert's friend, not a body snatcher. They both think the world of each other.
Fan opinion also leans heavily towards prot being a real alien. The running joke is no matter what prot does, dr. gene brewer (dr mark powel in the movie), will never believe prot is an alien, his own defenses against reality are just too strong!
Robert was indwelt by prot off and on, or is a multiple most of his life. Prot first showed up after being called by lonely little Robert at his father's funeral. Then off and on again as he needed help, Robert would call his friend from the stars to come comfort him, and like a flash, prot would always be by his side, or in his skull, giving him the emotional strength he needed to live a seemingly perfectly normal life. No one knew about prot until one awful day.
Robert Porter came home from his awful detested job as a knocker, ( a cow killer), to find an intruder in his home. This monster had just finished raping and killing Robert's wife, Sarah and little six year old daughter, Becky. Robert loses control. With the strength of a knocker and the skills of a high school wrestler, he snaps the monster's neck as if it were a tooth pick, and then cleans up his dead wife and daughter, puts them in bed, washes and drys their swimsuits (they had been out playing in the sprinkler) and then in his grief and guilt decides to go drown himself in the river behind his house. He calls out to his friend from the stars for comfort one last time, takes off his clothes and jumps into the river.
Prot is now very much over his head literally and figuratively. His almost water less world afforded him no chance to learn to swim, and while he is a comfort to Robert he is not a trained mental health professional. By sheer accident Robert and prot survive their plunge in the river, are washed down river for a few miles and are flung helpless and exhausted on the riverbank.
A clerical error enters the incident into official records as a drowning. So, though prot does not know it, he is NOT being chased by the police. But he doesn't know that. Neither does he know Robert had a secret hidden even from him, two other personas.
My story is being told to a newspaper reporter named Giselle who came to the mental hospital to do a story on mental illness, picked prot as an interview subject because of his cheerful friendliness, lucidity, insight and lack of fear at talking to a reporter. Of course she falls promptly in love with this mysterious alien from the stars, for though prot is celibate he is NOT without the ability to love. Unlike his beloved psychiatrist who vacillates, Giselle is firmly convinced prot really is from K-PAX. And so are we! 8-)
The lack of capitulation when prot is speaking is deliberate. Prot capitalizes only the names of PLANETS, GALAXIES and the UNIVERSE. Everything else is always lower case letters.
The as told too part of our story takes place during the time space of the second book, where Robert had started to emerge from his catatonia with the combined help of prot and Dr. Brewer working together to reach him. Robert proves to be a genuine character innate and as of himself, so these are happier times for the both of them, then my little flash back story. For that is all prot ever wanted, to have his friend back.
The flash back port of our story picks up on the riverbank, the day after their near drowning. I think you will like it.
zaire
"The next morning I woke up and tried to rouse robert. His eyes opened but they were glassy and he would not say one word to me.
"I shook him and I actually hollered. I cried! I begged! I pleaded! I used every pleading word and every colorful curse in every language that I knew, and I made up some of my own!
"Not one word would my friend speak to me, and this mental condition continued until dr. brewer managed to coax him back to us.
"I finally ran out of breath and stopped my expletives long enough to gaze around. This is when I had an oh we oh moment of my own.
"When robert jumped in the river he had been buck skin naked and I also had been wearing a baby jay bird suit because I had been on K-PAX during our warm season and clothes were not needed. But now I realized we were wearing some of robert's old hiking clothes. I put my hands in my pockets and found precisely twenty FIVE dollars and six TY eight cents. I knew that was about the amount robert kept in an old cookie jar on top of his own childhood bookcase. I sniffed the cash. Yes it did smell faintly of old chocolate chip cookies.
"My pocket search also revealed a notebook and robert's old half broken off penknife that had been a fifth birthday present from his father. That knife was very dear to robert and I was glad we had it, especially since it had a practical use to me. For I also found an entire handful of pencils beatrice had been collecting from charitable organizations down through the years.
"More amazing than that, I found my flashlight and hand mirror, the very two robert and I had found in a freebie box while beatrice went garage saleing. I tested the flashlight. Plenty of bunny juice! New batteries obviously. Someone KNEW us, that is, not just knew robert, but knew me, or else why include the flashlight and mirror? Robert was supposed to keep me a secret, but someone knew! This was very disquieting, but whoever it was had been our friend and not our enemy, for they had equipped us to the best of their ability with the very things that would give robert and me a fighting chance to survive on this primitive savage SAVAGE PLANET!
" 'Who was this being?' I said to myself I said. I made a new file in my organic disk operating system, what you homo sapiens superstitiously call a soul, and labeled it 'Unknown mystery,' and placed this phenomenon neatly inside. There. Now I didn't have to deal with it right away. I had more important matters to intend to: Survival."
I asked prot gently if he had any idea who this possible benefactor could be.
Prot nodded, "It puzzled me for years but I know now. In one of our REALLY more interesting sessions together dr b and robert gently informed me that robert really is a multiple, and we have two other hitchhikers in our collective brain. Now I know I REALLY am from K-PAX but these other two apparently really are manifestations of robert's subconscious. I find it quite a coincidence that an alien symbiont such as myself would just happen to pick a human that is already possessed, but this very fact might explain why robert was for so many years, and is again (thanks dr b!), such a cheerful, eager and welcoming host. He already had a crowd. What's one more?
"Dr b played his little tape recorder for me. There is no doubt. 'We is a crowd!' "
Prot didn't seem too upset by this.
"But anyway one of the two, harry or paul, probably harry, must have gone back to the trailer while we were asleep and did the best he could to equip us for the robinson crusoe like existence that was to be our fate for the next four and a half years.
"I knew I couldn't stay in montana. Whatever had brought my little robin to the decision to kill himself, it probably meant the law was after him.
"But I couldn't get robert to get up.
"Finally I did something reprehensible by all the ethical laws of every PLANET I have ever been on or even been vaguely aware of. I slammed my own consciousness into every neuron in robert's brain and nervous system. I forced him to get to his knees!"
Prot looked angry and self-hating here.
I tried to comfort him. "Its ok, prot. You couldn't help it. You had to help your friend."
Prot nodded, "I felt robert lurching. He did not like this, but when I let go of him to see if this had done the trick to motivate him to start moving on his own, it had not. In fact now his eyes were closed and he had such a terrible frown on his face it broke my heart!
"So I became my little robin's puppet master. Or as dr b so kindly calls it, I took 'dominant position.'
"Ever see that scene in star man where jeff bridges as an alien has to learn to adapt to a human body? Well that was like I had to do now." Prot gazed at me with a fond grin on his face, "Didja ever notice how much jeff bridges looks like our very own beloved dr. brewer?"
I nodded. Prot was absolutely right about this. In fact the resemblance is remarkable!
"So there I was, bambi trying to learn to walk. Except there was no thumper or happy forest full of furry beings to lovingly urge me on. Instead I had a dead weight inside of me, an angry human who just wanted to die, and that river was still very dangerously close.
"Like any baby recapitulating evolution I tried being a quadruped first. I crawled at least 50 feet away from the river before I tried to be a biped. And robert was fighting me every step of the way.
"I should have just let rob die and found a new host, one who wanted me! But I just couldn't abandon robin. I just couldn't! Its not that I couldn't. I couldn't, understand?"
I nodded sympathetically.
Prot continued. "After all it's like I grew up with this kid, went through a second childhood with him. I took a weird sort of courage in the fact some nameless benefactor had brought us money and stuff and perhaps in some strange way I heard dr. brewer's voice quantum tunneling towards me from the future saying, 'For god's sake prot! Help him! Save him!'
"So I continued my struggles. I finally got control of robert in a jerky sort of way and mirror beamed us both to zaire."
Now unlike Dr. Brewer I KNOW prot is an alien, so I was not surprised that he claimed he could mirror beam. I know he can. It was his choice of destinations that surprised me. "Why Zaire, prot?"
Prot said, "It had been my first point of arrival and I liked the place so I thought maybe the beautiful peace FULL ness of it would bring my little robin back to me."
"We arrived instantly.
"It was night. So peace FULL giselle. The stars were out like only they appear on a monostarred solar system in a land without other lights to drown them out. I looked up. There was my home, so close and yet so far away. I put out my hand. I could almost touch home. I started crying.
"Robert's hair was longer then. The african breeze ruffled though it. It brought the scene of many different furry and feathered beings. Company!
"I don't like to be alone, giselle. In fact in my first therapy session with dr b when he asked me if I liked to travel through space alone, I asked him if that was why he thought I was crazy. For to want to be alone, IS crazy in a conscious state. Well I'm not crazy or at least not like that, or antisocial in any way. Deep space mirror beaming light travel is like going into a dream. Who needs company in a dream? But when I'm awake I like company. I'm not picky like a homo sapiens. It doesn't matter what kind, or who, but I do not like to be alone.
"I started walking towards the smell and mind scent of life.
"I came across a pride of lions.
"No, I'm not insane, giselle. Lions can be very dangerous, so kiddies, don't try this at home. But I was 333 years old by then. I do have some ex PER ri ence and some common sense. I was downwind of them. They did not know I was in existence. I crept closer, close enough to determine with my eyeballs and with...other senses that they had fed recently. They were relaxed and happy, just goofing off, being biologically related friends with each other, what you call a family, rolling in the grass and the cubs were playing with papa, pulling on his mane and just being too darn cute to stand.
"I felt like a shivering, starving orphan looking in a shop window full of honey cakes on a cold christmas.
"I stood up and put my hands in a non threatening position at my side, what dr b calls my little lamb position. That is the most nonthreatening position you can take with an unknown life form. In fact there are parts of the galaxy where mrs. carl sagan's voyager picture of a human with his hand up in what you think is a friendly wave, is an obscene gesture. It means 'your mama gurgles leech with low life foobs.' "
I stared at prot.
"Don't ask!
"So I made myself appear as nonthreatening as possible, and emotionally contacted the father of the group, I shall call him romba, and informed them that, while I was edible, I would be more interesting to them as a friend. Did he agree?
"He was puzzled. He had never encountered a two-foot before who could communicate with his kind.
"I explained, 'My friend is a two-foot but I am inside of him and I am from the sky.' "
" 'Oh, did your friend eat you?'
"Now how do you explain what robert and I am to a lion? I felt to him 'close enough.'
" 'Come join us,' he felt to me, 'but if you are still here at next SUN down we shall have to eat you too.'
"I came and lay down beside romba and his family. Romba's wives snuggled next to me too. I was grate FULL for that because, believe it or not, it was a bit chilly, or at least I thought so. Or I could have been in shock. I buried my face in romba's warm, wonderfully musty dusty mane and cried until near dawn, until I ran out of monohydrogen bi oxide to make tears with."
"Monohydrogen bi oxide?" I asked.
"H2O, giselle, water." Prot gave me a gentle and loving grin.
"So now on top of everything else I was dehydrated.
"My new friends indicated to me where the water hole was. After robert's near drowning I wasn't too keen to go near water. But my thirst was beyond endurance. I headed towards the water hole.
"Romba and his family walked beside and around me, protecting me from what they did not know. All they knew was that I was scared and in distress. They kind of remind me of how roman and the other orderlies firmly but lovingly escort us mental patients around. The lions, like the orderlies, were protecting me from all harm including that of self infliction.
"I felt loved by that. At least some EARTH beings still wanted my company.
"We came to the water hole. Water is such an interesting phenomenon, giselle. It can kill and yet without it most life would not be.
"I got down on all fours and sucked the wet life force back into me. Romba and his family drank with me.
"The sun was coming up. It turned the starry velvet sky into a blaze of scarlet and fiery orange. It illuminated the dangerous water making it beautiful. How can the UNIVERSE be so beautiful and yet so deadly? I sat with my new furry friends and watched the sunlight dancing on the waters, and the birds, and the wind kissing robin's long hair and the manes of romba and his family.
"And through all of this robert would not even open his eyes.
"Remember that scene in the broadway version of lion king where simba sings 'father, I feel so alone,' and the SUN comes up and he feels better? Well that's how I felt, better, not by any means well, but.... better.
"Well, I couldn't stay with the lions forever. Soon they would have to feed off the flesh of their fellow beings. They were trapped by their horrible biology, and soon hunger would overcome their compassion.
"Romba sensed what I sensed. He felt to me, 'I am so very sorry that we have to eat beings like you, but we must.'
" 'I know,' I felt to him, 'You cannot help it. The mother of my friend who ate me believes someday the lions and the grass eaters will lay down together and be friends and all of them will be able to make their bellies happy and full on grass.
"Romba felt to me sadly, 'I hope so.'
"I thought to myself, 'From what I've been reading about what homo sapiens are trying to learn to do with genetic engineering it wouldn't be too hard to modify the grass to give it a higher protein content.'
"I thought to myself. 'This could explain the galaxy-wide homo sapiens obsession with genetic engineering. It may be an attempt to overcome the horrible psychic and moral damage caused by their three-tiered plant/herbivore/carnivore eco system. I wanted to write this down. Well, our mysterious benefactor had provided me with a notebook and plenty of pencils, so why not?'
"I took the notebook out of my pocket, used robert's knife to sharpen one of the pencils and made my first entry. It felt good. Up until then my plan to study EARTH had involved my settling in with robin and his family for five years to help to raise becky. In fact that was why I had thought he was calling me to Earth this time. That is why I had picked a five-year irrevocable window. I was settling in for the long haul. I planned to become becky's extra- terrestrial uncle, so to speak, a role I was eagerly anticipating. Just because we dremers don't keep track of whose kids we are nurturing doesn't mean we don't enjoy nurturing them, and we get so little chance to. Now, this wasn't possible. For some reason robert had abandoned his family or something very bad had happened to them and the terror I sensed in him kept me as well as him away from trying to find out what had happened to them. But I could still study EARTH.
"I had plenty of pencils and could probably get other notebooks. Twenty Five dollars and sixty EIGHT cents oughta buy me a bunch, I thought to myself.
"Romba sniffed the notebook curiously. 'Why are you using that stick to scratch marks on that plant material?'
"The lion's brain was hardly complex enough to comprehend writing. I tried to explain it, to feel it to him.' I am roaring to the cubs of cubs of cubs.'
"Romba did not understand.
"I tried again, 'I am using the stick to pee on this plant material so others of my species may come along later and learn about me from sniffing my stick scratches.'
"Romba was satisfied with that explanation. 'You pee in a strange way, my friend.'
"I just hoped I could get out of there before I had to really pee. How could I explain I had two ways of peeing?"
Prot grinned an impish grin here.
I asked, "Was it true what you said about the genetic engineering, Prot?"
He shrugged. "Could be. No one on my WORLD knows anything about genetic engineering."
Off key he started to sing, "My ma and pa couldn't read or write, they ain't got no learnin, but they raised a family, doing what comes naturally!"
I started to giggle and prot just sat there grinning at me.
"Who knows?" he continued. "Homo sapiens keep popping up and killing themselves off and popping up and killing themselves off. You guys are like toadstools. When conditions are right up you come, pop pop pop. But the UNIVERSE is big, very very big, .." A grin went across his face, as if he were remembering something funny.
"Maybe one of these days somewhere, somewhen, one of you pos IN nous toadstools will genetically or mentally mutate into a mushroom, something useful to the UNIVERSE. And with your aggressive carn NIV ver-ous ape, run em onto exhaustion, hunting technique instinctively still inside of you, you'll just might amount to something some day! We herbaverreristic dremers certainly don't have that drive."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Robert has this REALLY crazy idea that his species, you guys, will figure out a way to evolve into some kind of being that will be able to stop this insane, obscene, useless, over and over again expansion and contraction of the universe that has us caught in it like cartoon characters in a savage looney toon. It's all just a big bad obscene joke, you know, but robert actually thinks homo sapiens can get us all out of it."
"You mean like evolve into God, prot?" I was astounded.
Prot grinned, a little embarrassed. "I have to live with a crazy human in my head 24/7! It's bound to affect me some! He thinks madmen and dreamers like himself created god just like he did paul and harry or like dr brewer thinks he created me, and this god of rob's gradually takes on a life of his own and over a great many billions of years, gets bigger and bigger, growing slowly and spreading like all life spreads until he can do something about the useless, runaway merry-go-round we are all on."
I was astounded. "Could that be true?"
Prot shrugged, "Now how could that be true? We are both lunatics!"
I said reassuringly, "prot, you are the sanest person I know."
"I'm not a person. I am a being, and I am sane," he said calmly. "I know right from wrong and chose to do right. I can comprehend my environment and my present situation, legal and otherwise. But being legally sane is not the same thing as not being crazy." But he gave me a little grin to show me he was not concerned about his mental state, and neither was I.
"Anyway I was sane enough to bid my carnivorous friends goodby before they got hungry again, or before I had to explain to them I had two different ways of peeing!
"I brushed romba's mane with my fingers, and said to him, 'farewell, my new friends. I must go before I become lunch.' I took control of my reluctant, still-won't-even-open-his-eyes, EARTH friend and headed North, walking towards egypt."
"Why Egypt, prot?" I asked. "And why walk when you could mirror beam?"
He shrugged, "I just felt like walking. And when one place is as equally good or horrible as any other, what difference does it make how long it takes you to get from one place to another? I had no real set goal in motion at that time, other than to survive and try to wake robert up, and I was slowly forming an idea of keeping a journal of my adventures, mostly just to comfort myself, really. At that point I didn't even think I would survive long enough to reach my scotty date."
"Your what?"
"Can't help it, giselle. Seen too much star trek. Blame that on the florins. I meant the date when it is coordinated that I can go back to K- PAX.
"Five years is a long, long time to spend on a primitive savage planet with a sick EARTH person living inside of you, who wants to kill himself, and I had no experience whatsoever with dealing with homo sapiens on a one to one basis.
"Everyone comments on how socially skilled I am. Well, those didn't just pop into my brain like someone installed a com-PU-ter program. I had to learn those skills, and it took me years to do it. I almost got myself killed several times, jailed, shot and stoned."
I added here. "I am surprised you didn't get committed earlier than this."
"Worse! I tried to get myself committed and they wouldn't keep me!. They said I was too normal, to really believe the weird story I was telling them, that I was faking it to get out of the cold, and I had no insurance."
"Why did you try to commit yourself, prot?"
Prot leaned real close to me and whispered in my ear, "Ah, giselle, in case you forgot, I have a crazy human living inside of me, remember?"
Then prot lurched a little and said, "Ow robert, quit punching me! Uncle! Uncle!"
I started to giggle.
Prot grinned at me. Then he got sadder.
"I had not been expecting robert to go try and kill himself and go catatonic on me. I was expecting to spend the time helping robin to raise becky and getting to know the EARTH family structure intimately. Instead here I found myself doing Kwai-Chang Caine's bit.
Here I asked, "I read K-PAX. Under hypnosis you revealed to Dr Brewer that when Robert called you, even if you were on other worlds thousands of light years from here, you would hear his call and be there in a few moments. And yet you couldn't go back to YOUR world for five years? Why was that?"
"Well, giselle, deep space light travel requires reverse time travel too, or else it would take us thousands of years to get from here to there. Robert would call me, and I would still have to wait a considerable length of time to be able to get a window, but once I had that window I would be at robin's side, or if necessary inside his skull, in seconds of when he called me.
"And I had reserved for myself a long window, because as I said, I was expecting to play uncle, not penniless global traveler."
"You didn't explain that to Dr. Brewer while under hypnosis."
"How could I have? He didn't know how to ask. He was asking where were you on this date, and this date, and this date? So if I'm on K-PAX on such and such date, and I hear robin call me, and I'm only hypnotically ordered to tell the doc about what I did on that date, naturally he's not going to hear me explain about the months I spent waiting with sticks in my mouth (The florin term for chewing nails) until finally I get my scotty time. Then using time travel, naturally there I am at robert's side, in moments, on the date the doc told me to tell him about.
"It's the same way when I go back to K-PAX. No matter how long I'm gone I get back in seconds of when I left. So there is no emotional oh gee glad to see you again prot, long time no see! Far as they are concerned I was at the library eating yort blossoms and burping with them that morning.
"I once spent a morning at a medical clinic picking up a big mess. An ap had knocked a whole cart full of medical herbs down. I picked them up, and realized oops I have a just a few moments to make my window to EARTH, robin needs me. I left for there, straightened him out (that was when his dog died), got a little lucky, got a quick beam up window that time, but it still aged me seven months to get back even though it feels like only a moment. So I got back to the clinic only to hear just as I arrive, before I can even get my land legs back, 'Prot will you hurry up picking up those herbs. I never saw someone take so long!'
"He didn't know the half of it. He didn't even realize I'd been gone!"
I started giggling here.
Prot grinned at me.
But then something occurred to me, and it made me a little hurt and angry. "If you can use time travel to arrive in seconds of your leave time, than why, prot, did you abandon us for five long years? What was that bit you told us about, 'due to the nature of time there is a tradeoff for round trips.'
"Remember, giselle, robert could hear every word I was saying to you guys. That limited what I could explain."
"Oh, I hadn't thought of that."
Prot went on with fervency, like he had wanted to talk about this for a long time. "Why the five year wait. Easy! To give robert a darn good long hard time to think about whether he wanted help or not. When I'd left him he'd told me in so many words, that he...."
Prot got such a sorrowful look here. I can't even repeat what he said to me.
He looked like he was gong to cry!
"So in a way it was revenge. He gave five years of hell. I gave him five years of hell! And it worked! The big lunk decided to live!"
Suddenly prot closed his eyes. I could tell he was consulting with robert.
Prot opened his eyes and I never saw such a look of relief and joy on prot's face ever before or again.
He explained, "Robin just said, 'Thanks for the "shock treatment," and for keeping me alive!' "
Prot actually hugged me and then he stood up and started snoopy-dancing around the ward. This startled absolutely everyone, the patients, the orderlies, the floor nurse, and even the cats.
Then, as suddenly as his joyous outburst started, it was over. He sat down again, a pleased cat-who-dined-on-canary grin on his face, and said, calmly. "So! It WAS worth it." 8-)
a K-PAX fan story written with love for both gene brewers the real and the unreal
for imitation is surely the sincerest form of flattery. When you review this, I appreciate spelling errors being pointed out. Thank you.
by
liz hensley
&
madam foogie
Explanations for story if you are not familiar with K-PAX
Robert Porter is a mental patient who is either a multiple personality with a "secondary dominant persona" who thinks he is from the Planet K-PAX, (and keeps proving it to his compassionate but flustered psychiatrist), or else he is the willing but seriously disturbed host to a real symbiotic alien named, "prot," (rhymes with boat.) The author Gene Brewer, (same name as the psychiatrist in the books but not the movie), and the Universal Picture's movie, cleverly never make it quite clear what "Prot," is a real alien, or a highly intelligent but delusional savant with a mysterious and touching ability to communicate heart to heart with animals, children and individuals so disturbed no one else can reach them. He can also see ultraviolet light and can diagram what night sky looks like from 64 extra-solar planets including his own claimed origin planet K-PAX (which no one knew about except Dr. Brewer's brother in law who is an astronomer and a few others like himself who had just discovered it). Because of his over sensitivity to light prot must wear dark glasses at all times unless in really dusky conditions. In fact that is what gets him committed. In the movie a cop asks him to take his glasses off, and he says, "if you don't mind I'd rather not, because I had forgotten, but WOW your planet is really bright!"
Our prot is a mixtue of the movie's Kevin Spacey prot and the wonderful books by Gene Brewer, with of course, a little our ourselves too, of course.
Prot can also use a little flashlight and a hand mirror to mirror beam anywhere he wants to on Earth, or at least he claims to be able to do this, "but interstellar travel must be co-ordinated for safety reasons just like your air planes."
Fan opinion leads in favor of prot deliberately acting just crazy enough to get committed so he could get help for his seriously disturbed friend. For prot is Robert's friend, not a body snatcher. They both think the world of each other.
Fan opinion also leans heavily towards prot being a real alien. The running joke is no matter what prot does, dr. gene brewer (dr mark powel in the movie), will never believe prot is an alien, his own defenses against reality are just too strong!
Robert was indwelt by prot off and on, or is a multiple most of his life. Prot first showed up after being called by lonely little Robert at his father's funeral. Then off and on again as he needed help, Robert would call his friend from the stars to come comfort him, and like a flash, prot would always be by his side, or in his skull, giving him the emotional strength he needed to live a seemingly perfectly normal life. No one knew about prot until one awful day.
Robert Porter came home from his awful detested job as a knocker, ( a cow killer), to find an intruder in his home. This monster had just finished raping and killing Robert's wife, Sarah and little six year old daughter, Becky. Robert loses control. With the strength of a knocker and the skills of a high school wrestler, he snaps the monster's neck as if it were a tooth pick, and then cleans up his dead wife and daughter, puts them in bed, washes and drys their swimsuits (they had been out playing in the sprinkler) and then in his grief and guilt decides to go drown himself in the river behind his house. He calls out to his friend from the stars for comfort one last time, takes off his clothes and jumps into the river.
Prot is now very much over his head literally and figuratively. His almost water less world afforded him no chance to learn to swim, and while he is a comfort to Robert he is not a trained mental health professional. By sheer accident Robert and prot survive their plunge in the river, are washed down river for a few miles and are flung helpless and exhausted on the riverbank.
A clerical error enters the incident into official records as a drowning. So, though prot does not know it, he is NOT being chased by the police. But he doesn't know that. Neither does he know Robert had a secret hidden even from him, two other personas.
My story is being told to a newspaper reporter named Giselle who came to the mental hospital to do a story on mental illness, picked prot as an interview subject because of his cheerful friendliness, lucidity, insight and lack of fear at talking to a reporter. Of course she falls promptly in love with this mysterious alien from the stars, for though prot is celibate he is NOT without the ability to love. Unlike his beloved psychiatrist who vacillates, Giselle is firmly convinced prot really is from K-PAX. And so are we! 8-)
The lack of capitulation when prot is speaking is deliberate. Prot capitalizes only the names of PLANETS, GALAXIES and the UNIVERSE. Everything else is always lower case letters.
The as told too part of our story takes place during the time space of the second book, where Robert had started to emerge from his catatonia with the combined help of prot and Dr. Brewer working together to reach him. Robert proves to be a genuine character innate and as of himself, so these are happier times for the both of them, then my little flash back story. For that is all prot ever wanted, to have his friend back.
The flash back port of our story picks up on the riverbank, the day after their near drowning. I think you will like it.
zaire
"The next morning I woke up and tried to rouse robert. His eyes opened but they were glassy and he would not say one word to me.
"I shook him and I actually hollered. I cried! I begged! I pleaded! I used every pleading word and every colorful curse in every language that I knew, and I made up some of my own!
"Not one word would my friend speak to me, and this mental condition continued until dr. brewer managed to coax him back to us.
"I finally ran out of breath and stopped my expletives long enough to gaze around. This is when I had an oh we oh moment of my own.
"When robert jumped in the river he had been buck skin naked and I also had been wearing a baby jay bird suit because I had been on K-PAX during our warm season and clothes were not needed. But now I realized we were wearing some of robert's old hiking clothes. I put my hands in my pockets and found precisely twenty FIVE dollars and six TY eight cents. I knew that was about the amount robert kept in an old cookie jar on top of his own childhood bookcase. I sniffed the cash. Yes it did smell faintly of old chocolate chip cookies.
"My pocket search also revealed a notebook and robert's old half broken off penknife that had been a fifth birthday present from his father. That knife was very dear to robert and I was glad we had it, especially since it had a practical use to me. For I also found an entire handful of pencils beatrice had been collecting from charitable organizations down through the years.
"More amazing than that, I found my flashlight and hand mirror, the very two robert and I had found in a freebie box while beatrice went garage saleing. I tested the flashlight. Plenty of bunny juice! New batteries obviously. Someone KNEW us, that is, not just knew robert, but knew me, or else why include the flashlight and mirror? Robert was supposed to keep me a secret, but someone knew! This was very disquieting, but whoever it was had been our friend and not our enemy, for they had equipped us to the best of their ability with the very things that would give robert and me a fighting chance to survive on this primitive savage SAVAGE PLANET!
" 'Who was this being?' I said to myself I said. I made a new file in my organic disk operating system, what you homo sapiens superstitiously call a soul, and labeled it 'Unknown mystery,' and placed this phenomenon neatly inside. There. Now I didn't have to deal with it right away. I had more important matters to intend to: Survival."
I asked prot gently if he had any idea who this possible benefactor could be.
Prot nodded, "It puzzled me for years but I know now. In one of our REALLY more interesting sessions together dr b and robert gently informed me that robert really is a multiple, and we have two other hitchhikers in our collective brain. Now I know I REALLY am from K-PAX but these other two apparently really are manifestations of robert's subconscious. I find it quite a coincidence that an alien symbiont such as myself would just happen to pick a human that is already possessed, but this very fact might explain why robert was for so many years, and is again (thanks dr b!), such a cheerful, eager and welcoming host. He already had a crowd. What's one more?
"Dr b played his little tape recorder for me. There is no doubt. 'We is a crowd!' "
Prot didn't seem too upset by this.
"But anyway one of the two, harry or paul, probably harry, must have gone back to the trailer while we were asleep and did the best he could to equip us for the robinson crusoe like existence that was to be our fate for the next four and a half years.
"I knew I couldn't stay in montana. Whatever had brought my little robin to the decision to kill himself, it probably meant the law was after him.
"But I couldn't get robert to get up.
"Finally I did something reprehensible by all the ethical laws of every PLANET I have ever been on or even been vaguely aware of. I slammed my own consciousness into every neuron in robert's brain and nervous system. I forced him to get to his knees!"
Prot looked angry and self-hating here.
I tried to comfort him. "Its ok, prot. You couldn't help it. You had to help your friend."
Prot nodded, "I felt robert lurching. He did not like this, but when I let go of him to see if this had done the trick to motivate him to start moving on his own, it had not. In fact now his eyes were closed and he had such a terrible frown on his face it broke my heart!
"So I became my little robin's puppet master. Or as dr b so kindly calls it, I took 'dominant position.'
"Ever see that scene in star man where jeff bridges as an alien has to learn to adapt to a human body? Well that was like I had to do now." Prot gazed at me with a fond grin on his face, "Didja ever notice how much jeff bridges looks like our very own beloved dr. brewer?"
I nodded. Prot was absolutely right about this. In fact the resemblance is remarkable!
"So there I was, bambi trying to learn to walk. Except there was no thumper or happy forest full of furry beings to lovingly urge me on. Instead I had a dead weight inside of me, an angry human who just wanted to die, and that river was still very dangerously close.
"Like any baby recapitulating evolution I tried being a quadruped first. I crawled at least 50 feet away from the river before I tried to be a biped. And robert was fighting me every step of the way.
"I should have just let rob die and found a new host, one who wanted me! But I just couldn't abandon robin. I just couldn't! Its not that I couldn't. I couldn't, understand?"
I nodded sympathetically.
Prot continued. "After all it's like I grew up with this kid, went through a second childhood with him. I took a weird sort of courage in the fact some nameless benefactor had brought us money and stuff and perhaps in some strange way I heard dr. brewer's voice quantum tunneling towards me from the future saying, 'For god's sake prot! Help him! Save him!'
"So I continued my struggles. I finally got control of robert in a jerky sort of way and mirror beamed us both to zaire."
Now unlike Dr. Brewer I KNOW prot is an alien, so I was not surprised that he claimed he could mirror beam. I know he can. It was his choice of destinations that surprised me. "Why Zaire, prot?"
Prot said, "It had been my first point of arrival and I liked the place so I thought maybe the beautiful peace FULL ness of it would bring my little robin back to me."
"We arrived instantly.
"It was night. So peace FULL giselle. The stars were out like only they appear on a monostarred solar system in a land without other lights to drown them out. I looked up. There was my home, so close and yet so far away. I put out my hand. I could almost touch home. I started crying.
"Robert's hair was longer then. The african breeze ruffled though it. It brought the scene of many different furry and feathered beings. Company!
"I don't like to be alone, giselle. In fact in my first therapy session with dr b when he asked me if I liked to travel through space alone, I asked him if that was why he thought I was crazy. For to want to be alone, IS crazy in a conscious state. Well I'm not crazy or at least not like that, or antisocial in any way. Deep space mirror beaming light travel is like going into a dream. Who needs company in a dream? But when I'm awake I like company. I'm not picky like a homo sapiens. It doesn't matter what kind, or who, but I do not like to be alone.
"I started walking towards the smell and mind scent of life.
"I came across a pride of lions.
"No, I'm not insane, giselle. Lions can be very dangerous, so kiddies, don't try this at home. But I was 333 years old by then. I do have some ex PER ri ence and some common sense. I was downwind of them. They did not know I was in existence. I crept closer, close enough to determine with my eyeballs and with...other senses that they had fed recently. They were relaxed and happy, just goofing off, being biologically related friends with each other, what you call a family, rolling in the grass and the cubs were playing with papa, pulling on his mane and just being too darn cute to stand.
"I felt like a shivering, starving orphan looking in a shop window full of honey cakes on a cold christmas.
"I stood up and put my hands in a non threatening position at my side, what dr b calls my little lamb position. That is the most nonthreatening position you can take with an unknown life form. In fact there are parts of the galaxy where mrs. carl sagan's voyager picture of a human with his hand up in what you think is a friendly wave, is an obscene gesture. It means 'your mama gurgles leech with low life foobs.' "
I stared at prot.
"Don't ask!
"So I made myself appear as nonthreatening as possible, and emotionally contacted the father of the group, I shall call him romba, and informed them that, while I was edible, I would be more interesting to them as a friend. Did he agree?
"He was puzzled. He had never encountered a two-foot before who could communicate with his kind.
"I explained, 'My friend is a two-foot but I am inside of him and I am from the sky.' "
" 'Oh, did your friend eat you?'
"Now how do you explain what robert and I am to a lion? I felt to him 'close enough.'
" 'Come join us,' he felt to me, 'but if you are still here at next SUN down we shall have to eat you too.'
"I came and lay down beside romba and his family. Romba's wives snuggled next to me too. I was grate FULL for that because, believe it or not, it was a bit chilly, or at least I thought so. Or I could have been in shock. I buried my face in romba's warm, wonderfully musty dusty mane and cried until near dawn, until I ran out of monohydrogen bi oxide to make tears with."
"Monohydrogen bi oxide?" I asked.
"H2O, giselle, water." Prot gave me a gentle and loving grin.
"So now on top of everything else I was dehydrated.
"My new friends indicated to me where the water hole was. After robert's near drowning I wasn't too keen to go near water. But my thirst was beyond endurance. I headed towards the water hole.
"Romba and his family walked beside and around me, protecting me from what they did not know. All they knew was that I was scared and in distress. They kind of remind me of how roman and the other orderlies firmly but lovingly escort us mental patients around. The lions, like the orderlies, were protecting me from all harm including that of self infliction.
"I felt loved by that. At least some EARTH beings still wanted my company.
"We came to the water hole. Water is such an interesting phenomenon, giselle. It can kill and yet without it most life would not be.
"I got down on all fours and sucked the wet life force back into me. Romba and his family drank with me.
"The sun was coming up. It turned the starry velvet sky into a blaze of scarlet and fiery orange. It illuminated the dangerous water making it beautiful. How can the UNIVERSE be so beautiful and yet so deadly? I sat with my new furry friends and watched the sunlight dancing on the waters, and the birds, and the wind kissing robin's long hair and the manes of romba and his family.
"And through all of this robert would not even open his eyes.
"Remember that scene in the broadway version of lion king where simba sings 'father, I feel so alone,' and the SUN comes up and he feels better? Well that's how I felt, better, not by any means well, but.... better.
"Well, I couldn't stay with the lions forever. Soon they would have to feed off the flesh of their fellow beings. They were trapped by their horrible biology, and soon hunger would overcome their compassion.
"Romba sensed what I sensed. He felt to me, 'I am so very sorry that we have to eat beings like you, but we must.'
" 'I know,' I felt to him, 'You cannot help it. The mother of my friend who ate me believes someday the lions and the grass eaters will lay down together and be friends and all of them will be able to make their bellies happy and full on grass.
"Romba felt to me sadly, 'I hope so.'
"I thought to myself, 'From what I've been reading about what homo sapiens are trying to learn to do with genetic engineering it wouldn't be too hard to modify the grass to give it a higher protein content.'
"I thought to myself. 'This could explain the galaxy-wide homo sapiens obsession with genetic engineering. It may be an attempt to overcome the horrible psychic and moral damage caused by their three-tiered plant/herbivore/carnivore eco system. I wanted to write this down. Well, our mysterious benefactor had provided me with a notebook and plenty of pencils, so why not?'
"I took the notebook out of my pocket, used robert's knife to sharpen one of the pencils and made my first entry. It felt good. Up until then my plan to study EARTH had involved my settling in with robin and his family for five years to help to raise becky. In fact that was why I had thought he was calling me to Earth this time. That is why I had picked a five-year irrevocable window. I was settling in for the long haul. I planned to become becky's extra- terrestrial uncle, so to speak, a role I was eagerly anticipating. Just because we dremers don't keep track of whose kids we are nurturing doesn't mean we don't enjoy nurturing them, and we get so little chance to. Now, this wasn't possible. For some reason robert had abandoned his family or something very bad had happened to them and the terror I sensed in him kept me as well as him away from trying to find out what had happened to them. But I could still study EARTH.
"I had plenty of pencils and could probably get other notebooks. Twenty Five dollars and sixty EIGHT cents oughta buy me a bunch, I thought to myself.
"Romba sniffed the notebook curiously. 'Why are you using that stick to scratch marks on that plant material?'
"The lion's brain was hardly complex enough to comprehend writing. I tried to explain it, to feel it to him.' I am roaring to the cubs of cubs of cubs.'
"Romba did not understand.
"I tried again, 'I am using the stick to pee on this plant material so others of my species may come along later and learn about me from sniffing my stick scratches.'
"Romba was satisfied with that explanation. 'You pee in a strange way, my friend.'
"I just hoped I could get out of there before I had to really pee. How could I explain I had two ways of peeing?"
Prot grinned an impish grin here.
I asked, "Was it true what you said about the genetic engineering, Prot?"
He shrugged. "Could be. No one on my WORLD knows anything about genetic engineering."
Off key he started to sing, "My ma and pa couldn't read or write, they ain't got no learnin, but they raised a family, doing what comes naturally!"
I started to giggle and prot just sat there grinning at me.
"Who knows?" he continued. "Homo sapiens keep popping up and killing themselves off and popping up and killing themselves off. You guys are like toadstools. When conditions are right up you come, pop pop pop. But the UNIVERSE is big, very very big, .." A grin went across his face, as if he were remembering something funny.
"Maybe one of these days somewhere, somewhen, one of you pos IN nous toadstools will genetically or mentally mutate into a mushroom, something useful to the UNIVERSE. And with your aggressive carn NIV ver-ous ape, run em onto exhaustion, hunting technique instinctively still inside of you, you'll just might amount to something some day! We herbaverreristic dremers certainly don't have that drive."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Robert has this REALLY crazy idea that his species, you guys, will figure out a way to evolve into some kind of being that will be able to stop this insane, obscene, useless, over and over again expansion and contraction of the universe that has us caught in it like cartoon characters in a savage looney toon. It's all just a big bad obscene joke, you know, but robert actually thinks homo sapiens can get us all out of it."
"You mean like evolve into God, prot?" I was astounded.
Prot grinned, a little embarrassed. "I have to live with a crazy human in my head 24/7! It's bound to affect me some! He thinks madmen and dreamers like himself created god just like he did paul and harry or like dr brewer thinks he created me, and this god of rob's gradually takes on a life of his own and over a great many billions of years, gets bigger and bigger, growing slowly and spreading like all life spreads until he can do something about the useless, runaway merry-go-round we are all on."
I was astounded. "Could that be true?"
Prot shrugged, "Now how could that be true? We are both lunatics!"
I said reassuringly, "prot, you are the sanest person I know."
"I'm not a person. I am a being, and I am sane," he said calmly. "I know right from wrong and chose to do right. I can comprehend my environment and my present situation, legal and otherwise. But being legally sane is not the same thing as not being crazy." But he gave me a little grin to show me he was not concerned about his mental state, and neither was I.
"Anyway I was sane enough to bid my carnivorous friends goodby before they got hungry again, or before I had to explain to them I had two different ways of peeing!
"I brushed romba's mane with my fingers, and said to him, 'farewell, my new friends. I must go before I become lunch.' I took control of my reluctant, still-won't-even-open-his-eyes, EARTH friend and headed North, walking towards egypt."
"Why Egypt, prot?" I asked. "And why walk when you could mirror beam?"
He shrugged, "I just felt like walking. And when one place is as equally good or horrible as any other, what difference does it make how long it takes you to get from one place to another? I had no real set goal in motion at that time, other than to survive and try to wake robert up, and I was slowly forming an idea of keeping a journal of my adventures, mostly just to comfort myself, really. At that point I didn't even think I would survive long enough to reach my scotty date."
"Your what?"
"Can't help it, giselle. Seen too much star trek. Blame that on the florins. I meant the date when it is coordinated that I can go back to K- PAX.
"Five years is a long, long time to spend on a primitive savage planet with a sick EARTH person living inside of you, who wants to kill himself, and I had no experience whatsoever with dealing with homo sapiens on a one to one basis.
"Everyone comments on how socially skilled I am. Well, those didn't just pop into my brain like someone installed a com-PU-ter program. I had to learn those skills, and it took me years to do it. I almost got myself killed several times, jailed, shot and stoned."
I added here. "I am surprised you didn't get committed earlier than this."
"Worse! I tried to get myself committed and they wouldn't keep me!. They said I was too normal, to really believe the weird story I was telling them, that I was faking it to get out of the cold, and I had no insurance."
"Why did you try to commit yourself, prot?"
Prot leaned real close to me and whispered in my ear, "Ah, giselle, in case you forgot, I have a crazy human living inside of me, remember?"
Then prot lurched a little and said, "Ow robert, quit punching me! Uncle! Uncle!"
I started to giggle.
Prot grinned at me. Then he got sadder.
"I had not been expecting robert to go try and kill himself and go catatonic on me. I was expecting to spend the time helping robin to raise becky and getting to know the EARTH family structure intimately. Instead here I found myself doing Kwai-Chang Caine's bit.
Here I asked, "I read K-PAX. Under hypnosis you revealed to Dr Brewer that when Robert called you, even if you were on other worlds thousands of light years from here, you would hear his call and be there in a few moments. And yet you couldn't go back to YOUR world for five years? Why was that?"
"Well, giselle, deep space light travel requires reverse time travel too, or else it would take us thousands of years to get from here to there. Robert would call me, and I would still have to wait a considerable length of time to be able to get a window, but once I had that window I would be at robin's side, or if necessary inside his skull, in seconds of when he called me.
"And I had reserved for myself a long window, because as I said, I was expecting to play uncle, not penniless global traveler."
"You didn't explain that to Dr. Brewer while under hypnosis."
"How could I have? He didn't know how to ask. He was asking where were you on this date, and this date, and this date? So if I'm on K-PAX on such and such date, and I hear robin call me, and I'm only hypnotically ordered to tell the doc about what I did on that date, naturally he's not going to hear me explain about the months I spent waiting with sticks in my mouth (The florin term for chewing nails) until finally I get my scotty time. Then using time travel, naturally there I am at robert's side, in moments, on the date the doc told me to tell him about.
"It's the same way when I go back to K-PAX. No matter how long I'm gone I get back in seconds of when I left. So there is no emotional oh gee glad to see you again prot, long time no see! Far as they are concerned I was at the library eating yort blossoms and burping with them that morning.
"I once spent a morning at a medical clinic picking up a big mess. An ap had knocked a whole cart full of medical herbs down. I picked them up, and realized oops I have a just a few moments to make my window to EARTH, robin needs me. I left for there, straightened him out (that was when his dog died), got a little lucky, got a quick beam up window that time, but it still aged me seven months to get back even though it feels like only a moment. So I got back to the clinic only to hear just as I arrive, before I can even get my land legs back, 'Prot will you hurry up picking up those herbs. I never saw someone take so long!'
"He didn't know the half of it. He didn't even realize I'd been gone!"
I started giggling here.
Prot grinned at me.
But then something occurred to me, and it made me a little hurt and angry. "If you can use time travel to arrive in seconds of your leave time, than why, prot, did you abandon us for five long years? What was that bit you told us about, 'due to the nature of time there is a tradeoff for round trips.'
"Remember, giselle, robert could hear every word I was saying to you guys. That limited what I could explain."
"Oh, I hadn't thought of that."
Prot went on with fervency, like he had wanted to talk about this for a long time. "Why the five year wait. Easy! To give robert a darn good long hard time to think about whether he wanted help or not. When I'd left him he'd told me in so many words, that he...."
Prot got such a sorrowful look here. I can't even repeat what he said to me.
He looked like he was gong to cry!
"So in a way it was revenge. He gave five years of hell. I gave him five years of hell! And it worked! The big lunk decided to live!"
Suddenly prot closed his eyes. I could tell he was consulting with robert.
Prot opened his eyes and I never saw such a look of relief and joy on prot's face ever before or again.
He explained, "Robin just said, 'Thanks for the "shock treatment," and for keeping me alive!' "
Prot actually hugged me and then he stood up and started snoopy-dancing around the ward. This startled absolutely everyone, the patients, the orderlies, the floor nurse, and even the cats.
Then, as suddenly as his joyous outburst started, it was over. He sat down again, a pleased cat-who-dined-on-canary grin on his face, and said, calmly. "So! It WAS worth it." 8-)