Chapter Text
“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another til I drop.”
― Jack Kerouac
Have you ever got a tune stuck in your head? An earworm? It happens to me all the time, but only once literally. This is not the story of that one time. This is a story about a planet that got stuck in my head. It's still there.
The regular patrons, the die-hards, of the Terraluna Cafe, like to say they've been to "the dark side of the moon" when they mean either that they've had an unusual experience they're dying to share or that they've been indulging in mind-altering substances, prime among them alcohol. Often they mean both at once. I've heard cruder comparisons; there's nothing wrong with this popular phrase apart from the fact that Earth Four has no moon, and if it did have a moon, that moon probably wouldn't have a dark side. It would rotate freely, not being tidally locked as Earth Proper's is. Earth Four is gigantic, with an impressively extensive atmosphere that just dares anything to come close enough to smell such a thing as a tide, if only there was such a thing as an ocean.
Fortunately for the human colonists who make up a small but powerful majority of the planet's population, there are lakes scattered about, connected by some few overground rivers and an immense network of underground ones. It's a strange formula for the sustenance of human life, or any of the other earth-originating life so favored by humans. It is odd, though, that they are so favored, since back on Earth Proper, humans and most other life, be it animal, vegetable or somewhere in between, are at such odds with one another that the entire planet seems embroiled in a deadly war against itself.
Well, it doesn't hurt that Earth Four orbits its sun safely bouncing around in a Goldilocks zone, or none of those other considerations would matter; humans would either freeze their tushies off or be ashified. I suppose the latter would indicate a Cinderella zone rather than a Goldilocks zone. I'm not that picky, myself.
Truth be told, I like humans, generally, when they're not being all stubbornly parochial. and when they're not being so anti-intellectual that if you tried to explain to them something simple, such as why a duck, or how water evaporates into vapor, they'd not only refuse to learn it, they'd deny the veracity of it, deny the very existence of water, in fact, and die of severe dehydration while, to their last, weak, cracked-lipped breath, insisting that ducks are just cats with wings, webs and lip implants. Don't ask me why I like them. (Humans, not ducks.) Maybe it's just a natural affinity most creatures have for other creatures shaped approximately as they are... and, of course, kittens.
None of this explains goats prancing all over Youtube in pajamas, but not all of life's mysteries are meant to be unraveled.
When Earthlings colonize, and I don't mean terraforming and preestablishing governments and all that, but rather when people actually start to move in, so to speak, they form the oddest ghettos. Earth Four, unlike all the other Earths, attracted not people all of one skin tone or height or handedness, or an origin myth in common, or mainly tenors. No, it attracted people who identified strongly with the apparent ethos of 1950s America: the Cleaver family, the beatniks (mostly Kerouac, a little Krebs), a television in every pot, a red under every bed and a chicken in every garage, teenaged angst, hip-swiveling rock 'n roll and a window featuring a dog without a price tag.
I started hanging out at the Terraluna almost the moment I arrived on the planet, which I did, as usual, completely by accident. We'd materialized in downtown Klad, the capitol of Little Vesuvio. The whole lake/river configuration made border disputes rare, since they formed such natural borders. Little Vesuvio was defined by Lake Cassady to the west, Beshkan Beach to the east, the Georges to the north (it was named by the inhabitants of Méliès, the country on its north shore) and the Donets Reed to the south, named by Russian émigrés from Alaska and up and down the west coast of the continental United States. Klad was bustling at midnight and we materialized in the alley behind the cafe, so I just wandered in through the kitchen and, noting the apparently de rigeur beard on every single man therein, wondered whether the dishes would be somewhat hirsute as well. I thought that even a stray hair floating in a cup of tea might be acceptable, thirsty as I was, so I smiled winningly (I hoped in vain, as my smile was not reciprocated) at them all as I strode on through into the dark, smoky, half full front of house, where a comedian was attempting to make some pretty dour customers smile.
Maybe I was one of those dour customers. At that time, that moment in my life, I guess you could say I was burned out, even bummed out. I'd been through a thoroughly intimidating, even terrifying experience that I had just survived by the skin of my teeth, and my teeth were still aching. You'd think I would find a nice, quiet place to hang out, maybe a cave, or the Eye of Orion. At one point I thought that if I survived, I would need to spend time in a hospital or at least a convalescent home. Then I thought, no, I don't want to be with people, and by people I don't only mean humanoids. I didn't want to be with any people, of any sort. I wanted to be alone.
And then I found out that alone was the opposite of how I wanted to be. When you... no, I'm not going to talk about it, not in detail, but let's just say that no matter who was around, even if they were not actively hurting me (and they often were), alone was the overriding characteristic of my being. "Alone" defined me. It should have been my name. It should have been my shoe size.
Those were the shoes that carried me into that room where the comedian was struggling to get even a minimal reaction from the bored audience. They were ignoring him, talking over him, calling loudly for waitstaff to bring drinks, and not appreciating the poor fellow on stage any more drunk than they had been sober.
I decided to help him out. I immediately pretended to be terribly drunk and, for some reason, terribly old, and I began to heckle him. "You young whippersnapper!" I shouted. Everyone, including the startled comedian, who actually looked older than I do, turned to stare at me. "Why don't you tell some real jokes?"
"Real... jokes?" he stammered, not getting it.
"Yeah, real jokes! Like why did the chicken à la king cross the road?"
"To get to the other side?"
"Because my wife threw it at me!"
That got a titter from the room. "Why did your wife throw the chicken à la king at you, sir?" He was beginning to catch on.
"Because I gave her a rose. It was our anni... anni... anniversity."
"Don't you mean your anniversary, sir?"
"Yeah, it was my tenth year enrolling in a four-year program."
"Oh, sir, that's pretty bad, but it couldn't have been much of a surprise to your wife. Why was she so mad all of a sudden?"
"We got married the day I graduated high school and I told her we'd go on our honeymoon as soon as I got my degree. I guess she was tired of waiting."
"What took you so long, anyway?"
"I couldn't afford to take her on a nice honeymoon."
"How come?"
"Because university was so expensive."
"University's not all that expensive. You're a vet, right?"
"Sure am!"
"Well, what about the G.I. bill?"
"Half of my clients don't pay their bills and none of the patients do."
"Huh?"
"You asked if I was a vet...."
Little by little I started feeding him straight lines and he started improvising funny answers, so the focus shifted to how funny he was instead of how funny I was -- and I was able to be funny because he was improvising the right straight lines. By the end of his act, which was not the act he'd planned, the patrons were solidly on his side, and there were more of them, too; it is possible their laughter could be heard from the pavement in front of the cafe.
When he stepped off the stage and the M.C. announced the next act (a folk singer who, as it turned out, could sing decently but apparently had no idea how to tune his guitar -- I stepped up and did that for him) the comedian handed me half of the pittance he'd been paid -- a pretty decent replica of a five dollar bill. "I didn't know it fifteen minutes ago," he told me, "but I guess I'm looking for a partner."
"I'm just looking for a cup of tea," I replied. "By the way," I added, as he sat down and waved over a waiter, "I'm the Doctor."