Alternate Gerrolds (11 page)

The sound of something creaking, cracking, crackling as it broke—

The ancient floorboards came away in ragged chunks. The hole widened. Something was chewing up through the ground, widening the hole in quick, malicious bites. And then it was climbing up and into the cellar of the house. Bug-Man was here! Inside the house of his arch-enemy! He scrabbled purposefully across the floor, sniffing the air with his antennae. He slid up the stairs, not bothering to open the door at the top, breaking through it instead like a flimsy construction of cardboard.

He was in the pantry! The overwhelming pantry, reeking with conflicting flavors and aromas—all the spices and ingredients of a thousand differentmeals, coffee-chocolate-butter-garlic-sausage-cheese-pepper-bread—they all repulsed him now. He moved swiftly to the kitchen, to the dining room, to the stairway in the hall, and up the stairs, breaking away the banister as he climbed to give himself room.

There was no dark at the top of the stairs. The light came on abruptly. Someone was moving up there. Bug-Man’s glistening multifaceted eyes caught the image in a shattered reality. There—silhouetted against the glare of the electric lamp beyond—stood the terrible demonic form of Sigmund Freud, the
PsycheMan!

He stood alone, wearing only a nightshirt, a robe, and fuzzy blue slippers. He rested one hand on the top of the broken banister to support himself. He looked incredibly frail, but his eyes gleamed with turquoise power! His high forehead bulged abnormally, the fringe of white hair around it was not enough to conceal its freakish expanded shape. His predatory chin was concealed by the long white beard. His bony knees stuck out from beneath the hem of his garment like awkward chicken legs.

The transformed Kafka lifted himself up, as if about to leap. He uttered a low sound, a moan of anticipatory lust, a growl of warning, a challenge, a chittering of danger.

“Ach!” said Freud. “It’s only you. Well, come in, come in. I’ve been expecting you. You’re late again.” He waggled his finger warningly. “You superheroes, you think you can come calling any time, day or night, without an appointment—”

He started to turn away, then suddenly, turned back toward Bug-Man, his eyes blazing with red fire!
“Well, I won’t have it!”
He knocked the ash off his cigar into his hand and carefully pocketed the residue. Then he lifted the cigar like a baton, holding it outstretched toward the man-bug. With his other hand he stroked the cigar, once, twice, a third time—suddenly the cigar emitted a crackling bolt of blue-white lightning down the staircase. BugMan ducked his head just in time. The blast of fire splattered off his back singing the walls, scorching the wallpaper, striking little fires among the chips and sawdust of the broken banister all the way down and leaving the air stinking of ozone.

Kafka was stunned. For a moment, he almost forgot that he was Bug-Man. Freud was much stronger than he had thought. He must have been gaining converts faster than they had realized, far more than they
had estimated. He must have been draining the life force of hundreds, perhaps thousands of hapless souls, distilling their very being down into his own evil essence.

Bug-Man recovered himself then. He stopped thinking, stopped considering, stopped caring—he remembered his purpose. To
feed on the flesh of Sigmund Freud!
He charged up the stairs after the monstrous little man. But Freud’s frail demeanor was only another deceit. The old man scampered away like an animated elf, disappearing into the darkness at the far end of the hall.

Bug-Man followed relentlessly, his six long hairy legs scrabbling loudly on the hardwood floor. His claws left nasty scratches in the polished surface. He plunged into the darkness—

And found himself in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. A maze. The maze. Twisty little passages. A twisty little maze. All alike.

His eyes swiveled backward and forward—and he hesitated. For a moment, he had to be Kafka again. Had to rely on his innate human intelligence instead of his insect instinct. Reminded himself.
Freud has no power of his own. He borrows the power of others. He summons monsters from the id and lets them fight his battles for him. But it’s all illusion.. You will destroy yourself fighting empty manifestations of your own fears. Ignore the illusions. Concentrate on what’s real!

Bug-Man’s hesitation stretched out forever. His chitiny shell began to soften. His mandibles clattered in confusion.
But—but how do I know what’s real?
he wondered.
Everything that a being can know is ultimately experiential. I have no way to stand apart from the experiential nature of existence! So how can I access what is real and distinguish it from illusion?

It seemed as if all time was standing still. Kafka’s mind raced, his thought processes accelerated.
Be who you are!
he shouted to the Bug-Man!
Don’t let him define you! He is a walrus. You are the Bug-Man! You are the greatest superhero ever! Ignore the lies! Anything that contradicts the Bug-Man is a lie! Remember that!

The Bug-Man snarled. Unconfused. He knew himself again, submerged himself once more in crimson fury and fire; the hunger and rage suffused his body like a bath of acid. He clicked his mandibles, reached out with his pincers and started pulling down the ugly twisty little walls and their dripping veins and wires, started pulling down the twisty little maze of darkness and fury, sending creatures of indeterminate
shape scuttling out into the fringes, started pulling down the twisty little passages all alike, pulling and chewing and breaking through—

He was in a tunnel. Blackness behind him. Blackness ahead.

The tunnel slanted downward into the bottomless dark. The walls were straight; they were set wide apart, but the ceiling was low. Everything was cut from dark wet stone. The water dripped from the walls and slid downward into the gloom ahead. His eyes refocused. What little light there was seeped into the air from no apparent source.

Far in the distance below, something moved. He could smell it. His antennae quivered in anticipation. He lifted his pincers. He readied his stinger, arching his tail high over his head. His venom dripped.

The thing ahead was coming closer. In the blackness below, a formless form was growing. It opened its eyes. Two bright red embers, glowing ferociously! The eyes were screaming toward him now!

Bug-Man remembered just in time.
Ignore the lies!

The red eyes went hurling past him, vanishing into darkness. The screams of rage faded into distant echoes that hung in the air like dreadful memories—

I could have stung myself, right behind the brain case
—he realized. And then, realizing again how narrowly he had escaped the trap of the Freudian paradigm, he warned himself again.
You are the Bug-Man! Don’t let him define you or your reality! Monsters from the id aren’t real!

The Bug-Man headed down the tunnel. Its angle of descent increased abruptly, getting steeper and steeper, until he was slipping, sliding, skidding, tumbling—

—onto the hard-baked surface of a place with no sun, no moon, no sky and no horizon. Tall black cylinders surrounded them, leaping up into the gloom and disappearing overhead. They looked like the bars of a cage.

Freud stood beside one of the bars, surveying him thoughtfully. “You are resisting the treatment,” he said. “I can’t help you if you do not want to be helped.” He waggled his finger meaningfully.
“You must really want to change!”

Bug-Man roared in fury. It consumed him like volcanic fire. He became a core of molten energy. The blast of emotion overwhelmed him. Enraged, he charged.

Bug-Man galloped across the space between them, tearing up the
floor with his six mighty claws. He thundered like a bull, hot smoke streaming from the vents of his nostrils. The black leviathan leapt—

—and abruptly, Freud was gone!

Bug-Man smashed against the bars of the cage like a locomotive hitting a wall, his legs flailing, his body deforming, the air screaming out from his lungs like a steam whistle. He shrieked in rage and frustration and pain. He fell back, legs working wildly, righted himself, whirled around, eyes flicking this way and that, focusing on Freud again. The
PsycheMan
waited for him on the opposite side of the cage. The Bug-Man didn’t hesitate! He charged again—

—and again, he came slamming up against the bars. Helpless for an instant, he lay there gasping and wondering what he was doing wrong. Transformed Kafka shuddered in his shell. But he pushed the thought aside, levered himself back to his feet, focused again on his target, readied his charge, sighted his prey—

This time, he would watch to see which way the
PsycheMan
leapt. He would snatch him from the air. He held his pincers high and wide. Instead of charging, he advanced steadily, inexorably, closing on his elusive prey like some ghastly mechanical device of the industrial revolution gone mad. His mandibles clicked and clashed. His eyes shone with unholy fury. A terrible guttural sound came moaning up out of his throat—

—came slamming hard against the bars of the cage as if he’d been fired into them by a cannon. The discontinuity left him rolling across the floor in pain, clutching at his aching genitals and crying in little soft gasps. He pulled himself back to his knees, his feet, trying to solidify his form again. He stood there, wavering, almost whimpering.

“What’s wrong?” he asked himself. “What am I doing wrong?”

Kafka looked across the cage. Freud stood there grinning nastily. The old man laughed. “You battle yourself!” he said thickly. “The rigidity of your constructed identity cannot deal with events occurring outside of its world view. You become confused and you attack shadows and phantoms!”

Kafka took a deep breath. Then another, and another. “I am Franz Kafka, superhero!” he said to himself “I am here to destroy the evil paradigm of Dr. Freud! I will not be defeated.”

No!—he realized abruptly.
That way doesn’t work! I am the master of metamorphosis. I must metamorphose into something that the doctor cannot defeat!
At first he thought of giant squids and vampire bats, cobras
and bengal tigers, raging elephants, bears, dragons, manticores, goblins, trolls—Jungian archetypes!
But, no
—he realized.
That would be just more of the same! Just another monster! To fight a monster I must change into something ELSE—

He stood there motionless, staring across the cage at his fiendish opponent, considering. His mind worked like a precision machine, a clockwork device ticking away at superfast speed. His thoughts raced, exploring strange new possibilities he had never conceived before.

Ego cogito sum—he considered.
I have been reacting to his manipulations. Reactive behavior allows him to control the circumstance. Proactive behavior puts me in control. I should attack him, but attacking him is still reaction. Yet, if I don’t attack him, I cannot defeat him. How can I be proactive without being reactive?

Bug-Man wavered. His confusion manifested itself as a softening of his shell, a spreading pale discoloration of his metallic carapace. His mandibles began to shrink. His arms and legs began to plump out, seeking their previous shape.
No!
he shrieked to himself.
No! Not yet! I haven’t killed him yet

Bug-Man felt himself weakening, growing ever more helpless in the face of his enemy. He felt shamed and embarrassed. He wanted to scuttle off and hide in the woodwork. His bowels let loose, his bladder emptied. His skin became soft and pallid again. He stood naked before Freud. Franz Kafka, superhero. But the Bug-Man was defeated, discredited—

No!
said Kafka.
No! I won’t have it. I am Franz Kafka, superhero! I don’t need to be a giant cockroach to destroy the malevolence of Freud! I can stop him with my bare hands.

—And then he knew!

“Your paradigm is invalid,” Kafka said. “It’s powerful, yes, but ultimately, it has no power over those who refuse to give it power; therefore, it is not an accurate map of the objective reality, only another word-game played out in language.” Freud’s eyes widened in surprise. Kafka took two steps toward him. “You’re just a middle-aged Viennese Jew who smokes too much, talks too much and suffers from—your word—
agoraphobia.
You can’t even cross the street without help! ” Freud held up a hand in protest, but Kafka kept advancing, continuing his unflinching verbal assault. “You’re a dirty old man. You can’t stop talking about sex, you want to kill your father and copulate with your mother—and you believe that everybody else feels the same thing, too! You’re despicable, Sigmund Freud!”

Freud’s chin trembled. “You—you don’t understand. You’re functioning as a paranoid schizophrenic with psychotic delusions. You’ve constructed a world view in which explanations are impossible—”

“That won’t work, Siggie. It’s just so much language. It’s just a load of psyche-babble. The distinctions you’ve drawn are arbitrary constructions that only have the meaning that we as humans invest them with. Well, I withdraw my investment. Your words are meaningless. I will not be
psychologized
. You are just a disgusting little man who likes to talk about penises!”

The old man made one last attempt to withstand the withering assault of Kafka’s logic. “But if you withdraw all meaning from the paradigm—” he protested, “—what meaning can you replace it with?”

“That’s just it!” exulted Kafka, delivering the death blow.
“Life is empty and meaningless!”

Horrified, Freud collapsed to the floor of his parlor, clutching at his chest.

Kafka stood over him, triumphant.
“It’s meaningless, you old fart!”

Freud moaned—

“Please, no. Please, stop—”