TK Special #7 - Return to the M'Verse: An Ooorah Anthology

Ronald the Not So Mad Scientist - by @dvdvnr

Ronald the Not So Mad Scientist

by dvdvnr

Ronald is a scientist and inventor. Whether or not he is a mad scientist is open to conjecture. Inside his own head, he doesn't consider himself mad. But those who know him, few in number though they are, tend to imagine he is. Of course, if they'd had the ability to look inside Ronald's head, then their suspicions might have been more than just conjecture.

For Ronald is definitely not like other people. Far from it. He has never married, and never even held any interest in forming relationships. Such ideas are alien to him. If he has ever been interested in finding out why he is like this then maybe tests would have confirmed that he was, by all intents, completely asexual. But he has not the slightest concern for having any such tests performed upon himself. He is only interested with discovering and inventing things. But not the inventing of things for the benefits of others, more to see if such inventions are possible and to test theories for himself. He has invented many things in his life – things that would have caused revolutions in technology, physics and biochemistry had he ever thought of publishing or patenting them.

Right this moment he is inventing something to see if he can make the world a less annoying place.

It isn't the first time he's tried this. A couple of years ago he tried to invent a time machine with the intention of using it to skip the winter months. He doesn't like the cold and finds all that malarkey around Halloween, Christmas and New Year extremely tedious to endure. He loathesfireworks, too – their noise and unexpectedness have disrupted many a good train of thought, causing it to crash into unexpected buffers just when he had a good head of steam built up.

As a child he learned to read hardly any later than he learned to speak and, if rumour were to be believed, his first words were not "Mama" or "Papa" but "How" and "Why". At school, while his classmates were learning "A is for Apple" and enduring the excitement of "Seeing Spot Run", Ronald was deep into Einstein's and Heisenberg's theories and wanting to experiment to test them for himself. His teachers had no idea what to do with him. If he had taken any interest in what the other kids were saying or doing to him, he might have realised he was being bullied. But, given his lack of response, such bullying was soon deemed a waste of good energy and the perpetrators picked on others who at least appeared to be satisfactorily cowed by their efforts.

Ronald stopped going to school when he was seven. There was no point, the teachers told his parents. So his parents claimed they were home schooling him. Except they didn't need to. He home schooled himself.

Right this moment he is probably the most learned and intelligent human being on the planet. Not that anyone else is aware of this. Wrapped in a thick coat, scarf around his neck to keep the cold out, he is seated alone on a bench in the park being extremely annoyed by the lights and Christmas music spilling out from the shops on the high street not very far away. Around the shops, the crowds throng as Christmas crowds do. Ronald's eyes are locked upon 'this most excruciating hullabaloo' as he describes it to himself, and he is going to do something practical about all this annoyance.

In his hand he has yet another of his inventions. It is a small box and on it are several knobs, dials and buttons. The box also contains small lights that, depending on the setting of the knobs and dials, change colour – from green, through orange and on to red. A blue one also indicates the state of the power source – a battery of his own invention that, should he have the urge to patent and manufacture it, would devastate the lithium industry overnight.

Ronald twiddles a knob, twists a dial and presses a button. He feels a buzz go through his whole frame as he does so. That, he thinks, is to be expected.

Around him the park is subtly different, the bench is painted green instead of being stained wood; the trees and bushes, too, are different heights and placed not quite the same as they had been. On the high street the Christmas lights and music have also changed. However, they are just as loud and annoying as before. The people still throng as strongly as before. He tries a different combination and things change for the worse. This time the music is even louder, its harshness screeching upon his hearing.

"Is nowhere in the multiverse safe from this?" he mumbles to himself, as he tries yet another combination, followed by several more. In each one his senses are regaled with the monotony of festivity until...

"Ah," he says, relieved that, this time, the noise is much reduced. There are still lights but it is the quietest yet. He observes for a few moments – yes, music still echoes around and the crowds persist. But they are fewer in number.

"Can this be the best I can hope for?" he wonders. But then he frowns, noticing that almost all the people he can see, including the children, are wearing what appear to be surgical face masks covering their noses and mouths.

"Well, that's new," he says to himself.

His mind rattles through a few possibilities as to why this might be and none of the answers he comes up with appear promising. So, after making a mental note of the current settings, he twists the dials.

His eyes open wide at the next scene. The lights and music are, yet again, loudly prominent but everyone in the crowd is, despite the weather, completely naked. Looking at one individual, he notices they are covered in a fine layer of fur, not that it appears thick enough to offset the temperature. Shuddering, he quickly dials the next one up, and then twenty three more in succession.

At the twenty-fourth, he gasps at the near silence. There are still shops on the high street, there are still people using them but, of any Christmas adornment and festivities, he sees absolutely no evidence.

"Is this the one?" he asks of no one.

Rising from the bench he leaves the park and walks towards the shops to peruse their contents and those patronising them. He observes that the people purchasing goods are conversing in normal English and that the coinage they use resembles extremely closely that which he has in his own pocket. He glances in a newsagent to see that the date on a newspaper is December 22nd. He picks it up and takes it to the cashier, handing over coins that are accepted without question.

"Thank you," Ronald says to the cashier.

"Bah humbug," she says lightly.

She raises her eyebrows as if expecting a verbal acknowledgement.

Ronald considers what might be a reasonable response and, after a second, repeats the 'Bah humbug' term back to her. She smiles at him.

Leaving the shop with a similar smile on his own face, he thinks, "Yes, this will do nicely."