Therapy without a shred of humor, without a clue to, should I even say it? Purpose? Place in the cosmos? What is it? I'm sure the practice works for some. It gives just a little extra strength to get by. Don't get me wrong. I am strong. I am a fountain of strength. But when you go something alone, something strange and slightly alarming, it's easy to get derailed.
After the confrontation with Set I had my first major relapse since becoming a spacemummy. You know the routine. There's the denial stage. I thought for a week or so that maybe I was crazy. If I got some help, I could still lead a normal life. I could undo the damage that I had done, that the kit and Bjornix was doing to my mind. I unplugged my computer and stuffed it in the closet with my old bowling trophies and Star Trek novels. It seemed like a good idea to go to a therapist. I had never entertained such an idea even when I dropped out of school, washed dishes for a living and drank every night.
I picked a confrontational professional who was well-known for not taking any crap from her patients. I made sure that I had fresh bandages and filled my skull with rosemary and cedar woodchips so I wouldn't offend her with any corpse stench. Then I put clean clothes over my bandages, some khakis I had never worn before and a button down shirt. I looked like a geek, but I figured I should make the best first impression.
"So why are you here today?"
"Um, well, I sleep a lot. I lost all my friends when my ex-girlfriend got married. I mean, we had been broken up for nearly a year. What should I care? I lost my job as a tech support guy, a glorified customer service dork. I think I was drunk for about two weeks. No one would talk to me after that. Maybe they couldn't stand the smell. Maybe I was already dead. But that's just speculation. So instead of committing suicide, I bought a home mummification kit. Now I'm in this middle state, neither alive nor dead. I've never been very good at meeting people. I tried to start a friendship with some Mormons who came to my door, but they ran away."
"Interesting, I'm sure. Let's start over, shall we?"
After the basic talk about my childhood and angst-ridden adolescence, I started babbling. "You see, it's all Set's fault, if he hadn't cut Osiris into 14 pieces, I wouldn't be here. But praise Isis, she found them all. Well, all except one. And she improvised on that one by donating a sextoy out of her purse."
"Spacemummy. Is there anything else I can call you?"
"No, that's fine."
"Alright. I believe you are hiding something. Hence, the bandages, which are an extended diaper. Your infantile impulses are very strong. This explains why you run away from reality."
I sat there for a while. "Have you ever been blasted with an orgone amplification ray?"
She decided I was withholding too much and wouldn't have much to gain from her services. She recommended group therapy to handle my not particularly earth-shattering complaints. She said I could probably make greater gains with my peers.
In a circle of chairs, we introduced ourselves in a routine way. When it came around to me, I wasn't sure what to say, so I told the truth. "My name is Spacemummy. I like to do spacemummy things. In my pocket I've got bandages and dust. I like orgone and i don't like to answer the phone. Sometimes i think about sex on the moon."
No one laughed or shouted at me or told me I was full of shit. They all either just stared or nodded their heads. What kind of therapy was this? Here I was sitting with the human sheep, the defeated who were ready to let anyone tell them what to do and think, possibly give them excuses for not kicking themselves in their own spiritual pants.
I listened to account after account of this evasion and knew it was not for me. These folks didn't really want to get better, to see their own problems. They just wanted some excuse to go on living in the same pathetic way they always have. I stood up on my chair. "I've got something to say. And I can't hold back anymore. I've got to say this thing or it will kill me. None of you need therapy." They looked on with disbelief.
"That's right. What you need is... is... is some really good food, some love and.. and hobbies. Rewarding hobbies. Go out and show some chutzpah. Don't be afraid to be stupid or silly. And eccentric. Or completely normal and healthy. Don't be afraid of being healthy. You won't cause the apocalypse trying to be happy. And even if it breaks your heart to be a human, at least that is something. It's better than being overmedicated and forced into tight chemical spaces. Ride your rollercoaster. Get scared. Get used to being scared. Enjoy being scared."
"Sit down, Mr. Spacemummy or whatever your name is."
"It's ok to be scared."
"Sit down!"
I stayed for the coffee, stood around with a cup watching people smoke. Whenever I would walk up to a group, the conversation would slow to halt. I could start barking and get the same effect. It might have even relieved them to see that I was just a complete hebephrenic. When you drag the torch of truth out in group therapy, you can't help but singe some asshairs. Some folks just don't want you to light a fire underneath them.
I decided that I had to face up to reality. Walking home, I started talking to myself. The best advice is that you give yourself. "No amount of headshrinking in the world will replace your internal organs. You think you can just step back into some job? You think you can find some homemaker wife and raise a couple of little zombies? You're not crazy. You're not sick. You've already found your cure. Now stop fighting it. "
"Did you discover who the culprit is?"
"Yea, we found out who did it by schleping the CVS logs. But the guy is long gone. An advanced prototype also disappeared at the same time, one that did not have the same design flaw. We're reeling. I'm sorry, Spum, you're going to have to continue alone, just as you've been doing. But don't worry, it looks like some hobbyists have taken up the software part and promise to release new versions with the same feature set. They're calling it FIB, which stands recursively for Fib Isn't Bjornix. Kind of clever, really," the dog said without passion. "I'll check back in again, if I can. Hope they they don't kill my processes."
"Who's they?" I asked, but he was already gone. I thought about rushing back to Earth as soon as I got picked up, but it would have been too much risk what with Set tracking the Mummyship so well. Then it dawned on me.
"Of course, what an idiot I am!" I killed every system on board and sat waiting in the dead, drifting craft. What, you think I need life support?
Again, I lie in my waking dream, a sleepless state, a long boatride on the river Tuat. There I met the being known as Shta, the incomprehensible one, who told me:
"Take care of the heart scarab. Feed it the sap of the tamarisk."
"Huh?" He disappeared from the bank of river whose current resembled the scales of a giant lizard that I was riding instead of a boat. And what started as a kind of sexy meander turned to a rapid flow. And with this we began to wind and pitch. Soon we were spiralling and while flew. And it occured to me, as a voice, which sounded like my very own croak, "Sometimes the quickest vector is a corkscrew, navigating softspace."
Then this little chant, which unwound slowly in contrast to our velocity:
"The Mormons hate the Raelian.
The Rastas hate the aliens.
And as you while away the hours,
Conferring with the flowers,
On a star-strewn path,
the Earth is giving birth
to another Aftermath."
"Wake up, cheesehead."
Then I snapped out of my reverie and picked myself up off the floor of my quarters which I must have fallen to during mytrance. "Who's the headcheese now?"
"Sound all alerts," I shouted. "To your stations!"
"What?" Isis ran out into the corridor in a tanktop and essentials.
I stopped for a second. "Oh, hello Isis." Then I snapped back into action, "Hurry, we have much work to do! Earth is in trouble. I have all new coordinates! Sound the klaxons!"
"We don't have any klaxons."
Bill wandered up from the engine rooms. "What in the name of the slime-covered heads of the Universal Control Corporation is going on here?"
"Mutiny!" I shouted. "My crew rises against me!"
Isis frowned at Bill, "You silly old queen, look at what you did. You made the Mummy into a grade A asshole."
"Patience, darling. This will pay off in the end."
"You think I don't see you, plotting against me." I grabbed an orgone blaster and waved it around in front of me, which wasn't very threatening to Isis who used the thing for erotic recreation on a daily basis.
"Mummy, I think it's time for your trepanation."
"Trepanation? I don't need any stinking trepanation! I had my brains sucked out of my nose! Like a pimento from an olive fer Anubis' sake! You're not taking them away now!"
"It's this new brain we're growing for you, Mumsy," drawls Burroughs, a cyborgish steampowered pneumogheist, literally a mumbling pair of lungs on legs. As he was always a perverted futurist with Victorian values, a Weird Utopian misanthropist with a secret soft spot for humanity. "It requires a little more growing room. I presume your recent delusions are caused by the intracranial pressure."
"I feel fine. I think it's you who needs to let off some steam. Go smoke your laudanum, or whatever it is you do when I can't see you."
"You're behaving as if you never had to think before. It seems to be causing you some difficulty." He said without smirking. "Grab that blaster away from him, Isis."
"What, like this?" Isis tapped me between the eyes with one hand, distracting me, and grabbed the orgone gun with the other. All without me seeing a thing.
"Zap him, full power."
"Sure thing." That's when I blacked out, surely undulating on the corridor floor like a lasagna noodle in molten cheese arrest.
I awoke very slowly, feeling as if I'd shagged a dozen starjellies. That's what a full blast of orgone will do to you, relax you like Dino after a dozen martinis and a date with Julie London. I began to see the crew gathered around me. I smiled as well as I can smile. It looks like tectonic plates separating. "All of my friends."
"He's coming around," Isis said.
"Just one second. There, it's all out." He pulled a mass out of my skull and plunked it into a stainless steel pan. Longstemmed mushrooms sprouted from the mass and wound together into a brainlike shape covered with pretty buttons.
"What are you doing?" I laughed.
"Just relieving you of your misery and our mystery."
"Buh..buh..my brain."
"It wasn't a brain, Spums."
"You lied to me?"
"Only for you own good." CyberBill shrugged.
"And for our entertainment," smiled Isis.
"You never needed a brain, Mummy, just a decent rest and a few orgasms. The ship doesn't need leadership, just your creative input."
And that's how I became a chia pet to the whole crew, who ate the fruits of my skull. And if you ask me, cheese comes from outside the skin of atmosphere, from the headwound of timetravelling aliens. You want culture? We can talk culture night and day.
And so they let me officiate, in my official capacity. "From a boney dome, the mushrooms poured forth, a strange Eucharest. This is my brain, which I shed for you for the remission of your tedium. From a mummified medium and you're a eatin em."
"Hmm. Tastes like gruyere," Isis said.
"But it comes on like psilocybin."
Coagulatus montanus. Praise Amen Ra. Good night.
(Thanks to John Allegro who had nothing to do with this.)