Old Stories

Geoffrey

          Dr. Sieker looked around his lab wearily. I really need to clean this place up, he thought as he saw papers scattered everywhere, tools not put in their proper place, and a green chemical oozing idly on the floor. He looked at the clock and discovered the time: 1:55 a.m. He sighed. I've been up for 27 hours, doing nothing but playing games on the computer while everyone in town thinks I'm doing science. What a funny term. How does one "do" science?

At that moment, someone opened the squeaky lab door. Sieker quickly shut the laptop and turned around. Across the room, he was staring at a potato. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head. It was still a potato. It was standing on roots that seemed to replace arms and legs, standing around four feet tall.

"Hey, Doctor, long time no see!" The potato was talking. Sieker blinked. He blinked again. He stared hard at the potato. He could not find a mouth anywhere. Or eyes. Or anything but a potato with roots sticking out of it.

The potato walked and then sat on a chair. I need to get some sleep! Sieker stood up and started to walk to his bedroom when suddenly he slipped on a green chemical and hit his head on on the countertop, instantly rendered unconscious.

He came awake with a start, remembering everything with a jolt. He frantically looked around and saw that the lab was completely clean. Then he found what he was searching for: the potato. It was sitting in a chair, reading something off a piece of paper.

"Now wait just one second!" Sieker said as he stood up. "Who—er, I mean— what are you?"

"I'm a potato, obviously." It said it with a voice that sounded like a thirteen-year old boy; not too deep, not too high, almost as if it were smirking. "And I'm reading what I consider to be the best poem written by Walt Whitman. "

"You're not a potato and you're not reading!" Sieker said defiantly, walking to the door that connected his bedroom and his lab. "Potatoes can't read! You're a figment of my imagination! I'm going to sleep, and when I wake up, you'll be gone!"

"If that were true, I wouldn't be here. You were sleeping for about five hours while I cleaned everything."

"No I—" He paused and looked at the clock. It was 6:07 a.m. "Well, I'm going to bed anyway. Good night."

"The proper phrase for this time of day is 'good morning'."

As Sieker lay down, he dismissed the matter of a giant potato being in his lab. When he woke up, the potato was gone, and the lab was still a mess. He went about actually doing science, but had a nagging feeling in the back of his mind that the potato would return. Further unstabling his mental state, he found a sheet of paper with the poem "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman printed on it. He didn't even like poetry.

Some weeks later, he created a model of a battery. He was going to the mayor to ask for government funding to help produce this battery, one that he would claim would last forever. He really just wanted to use the money to buy things for his games, though he would save some of it.

As he came into her office, he placed his model on her desk and sat down. "Mayor Lily, I present to you a model of a battery that will last forever."

Lily looked down at the model. She slowly replied, "So... you are making it out of a potato?"

"What?" Sieker looked at it. Yes, it was a potato. His model of a battery had turned into a potato. "There's been a mistake made..."

"Yes, there has been. You may go now." She dismissed him with a wave of her hand.

Dismayed, he returned to his lab to find the big potato again in his lab, sitting in a chair, reading. "What do you want now, potato?" He said wearily, getting tired of potatoes being everywhere.