When last we left Dr. Know he spoke of having been in the midst of fleeing human authorities for some reason involving organ harvesting. Oh look: another transmission is incoming. Let’s listen . . .
[ Static, followed by a click ]
“Shhh, be quiet dearest. Those men are down there, beneath the foliage. Can’t you see their flashlights shining upward? There, see? Beneath the trees, in the shadows there. There!”
“Hoo.”
“Have they been following us all night Edna, and now have they found us? And are they hunting us now, only to be satisfied in seeing our corpses lay at their smelly feet? Their thirst for cold justice is unquenchable, isn’t it darling? Ah, damn. They’ve spotted us, they raise their weapons: let’s flee, dearest.”
[ Whooshing sound ]
“Edna, come on! Quickly!”
“HOO! HOOOO!”
[ A short scuffle, followed by a dull thud. ]
“Edna! Nooooo!”
[ Moments pass with an occasional whimper . . . ]
Hoo-hoo-hoo. Hoooooo-oo-oo-oo. A-hoo, a-hoo, a-hoo. Hoo — he-hello? Oh, for Pete’s sake, I’ve left this contemptible transmitter running all this while, have I? Well, I suppose it’s for the best to have an audio record of the events that have occurred here tonight. For those of you just joining us, Edna, my wife and the love of my life, bless her soul, has just been murdered by you humans. I always knew you to be a despicable species and now you’ve proven yourselves to be heartless as well, figuratively speaking of course.
It’s a fitting middle to this night I suppose. As the Earth turned its cold shoulder toward the sun earlier this evening I began my descent into madness. And now — what time is it? Three in the mourning! Well, now, as the gleaming love of my life has departed, and as that gleaming source of light in all our lives, the sun, is at its deepest setting straight on the other side of the whole world, here I sit, swimming in my own pathetic tears. I can feel my mind letting go of reality, plunging into a carnal darkness.
Curse this insanity! Why Edna? Why did you not follow me this time? Now here I am left without even a shred of my mental strength. Hoo!
Oh cruel world, why have you cast me to the dirt? My mind, at one time so strong, so agile, now sits beneath a great depression and an even greater paranoia. I feel psychotic with the rage and the fear and the loss. Is this the end for old Dr. Know?
Oh Dr. Know, you’re a martyr, that’s what you are! This is what you get for trying to teach. You old noble professor of great charity, do you really deserve to be downturned and trodden upon by the steel-toed-boots of a thousand rugged simians? Never! But in the end, that’s your story.
Here I sit in this mud, this dirty ground with all of you mammals and all of your dirty decomposers in all of your fecal matter all over the place. It’s as though I have become what I have despised and have yearned to improve all this time.
Oh cruel temperament. My nature was corrupted at birth perhaps — corrupted with a sense of generosity, a need to help those inferiors of the universe. Had only I recognized the foolishness of my cause. Oh, how it has taken its toll on my mind. Still brilliant mind you, yet now encumbered with the grief and the wisdom of a thousand failures; I am but a rogue gypsy, gliding off — no, limping off — into that foggy mourning of tomorrow.
If you could see me now, captivated listener, you would most certainly weep.
Yes, quite an epic I’ve lived thus far, quite something indeed. But I really must be strong. I shall now overcome this madness I have found myself in. Tomorrow is a new day! You see, tragic human, these matters of the heart, these inconveniences of life, they are what you make of them. Edna, bless her heart, has left this world and that’s the end of it. Weeping will neither prove nor achieve a thing.
My experiments on — er — with Edna recently gave me an idea. This world of genetics is fascinating; it’s like a fun code game. Just imagine; all the information of an individual tightened up into a band and twisted into obscurity: it’s a puzzle perfectly suited for a mind such as mine.
Indeed, “a mind such as mine,” one that can speak intelligently on the topics of nature and the universe, it’s exactly what I have been searching for with these banal lessons with you cretins. I need to be challenged!
So what I’m going to do is create an exact replica of myself to replace old Edna — Oh poor Edna; woe is me, and so forth. As another example of the charity of which I am capable, you, listener, can tag along and see what you can find out abut genetics along the way.
Not a moment to lose; to my genetics lab!
