Dr. Treekenstein, Page 2

hat, Einstein" Chimney stopped to think, nodded in agreement and sat down to rejoin the others.

  Treekenstein got up from the table and went to sit under the tree and prepare his cetula pipe for some relaxation. He could not believe his eyes and ears and only cetula leaves could ease his mind from the contortions and confusion he was now experiencing. How could this be made to happen?

  In the weeks and months ahead he continued to watch them at the picnic table, at lunch and at breaks, talking about the impending crisis and what the various politicians and scientists were saying needed to be done. He read about many of his colleagues jumping on the bandwagon and being given press and government grants to study the tree extinction while others railed against it with no funding and little media attention. He was old and tired and had not been interested to speak up about it himself. He had media inquiries but had declined interviews, having nothing new to say about it all and wanting only peace in a world gone mad.

  Once in a while he would try to talk with Woodpile, Chimney and Stone as well as the others, but he had been labeled a conspiracy theorist and Chimney had decided to no longer join him under the tree during their breaks.

  One day at break he suddenly put the pipe out, knocked it on a nearby rock to its empty but still burning contents and ran over to his hovercraft.

  Treekenstein was ignited and he was about to explode.

  He ran over to the table, a pen and pad of paper in his hand. He sat down and anxiously started scribbling weird symbols down on the paper, periodically stopping to look up and quietly think. He was ignoring the conversation that went on around him. He began to scribble down more even weirder symbols. Woodpile asked him if he was writing in a foreign language, he quietly put up his hand and dragged his finger across his throat signaling Woodpile to shut up, and not bother him, he was working on a problem.

  Every break and lunch hour Treekenstein could be seen sitting against his favorite tree in the shade scribbling down equations, occasionally pausing to think. He was no longer smoking his cetula pipe. Life had gone back into his eyes, life had meaning again. Treekenstein had found happiness and purpose but no one knew how or why or understood what he had been writing, which had grown into pages of strange and incomprehensible symbols.

  The weeks and months continued with Chimney, Stone and Woodpile all talking about the tree extinctions during breaks and lunch while Treekenstein quietly sat under a tree scribbling his symbols and leafing through the pages he had already written. He now had books with him and could be seen loading those into his intercranial fusion device, his eyes rolling back into his head to expose only white as the intercranial fusion device fused the knowledge of the books he had put into its fusion compartment into his head. After that he would continue to write equations, occasionally looking up to the sky.

  Treekenstein was onto something and they all knew it and he seemed more open to accepting the science of tree extinctions. Chimney spoke up when they were all absorbed in reading their magazines, "Maybe Treekenstein has finally figured out that science was right after all and that therefore 97 % of the worlds scientists cannot be wrong and he has a solution to the problem." The others nodded in hopeful agreement as they all looked over at Treekenstein, the worlds most famous and illustrious tree sturgeon, who was too busy writing and thinking to notice them looking over at him.

  Suddenly, he jumped up, picked up all of his papers, and ran back to his hovercraft. He went over to the table and exclaimed to all of them "We can fix this! We can rebuild the trees! I am going to be rich and famous again!" Chimney said "Don't forget the little people on your way up" Treekenstein replied "Of course not, I'll buy all of you new holographic generator sets and hovercrafts one day!"

  They all started to bang on the table "Tree - ken - stein! Tree - ken - stein! Tree - ken - stein". Treekenstein would save them from the tree extinction. They knew it. Only Treekenstein could save them. Woodpile would be able to build his house. They were all happy as they went back to work, patting Treekenstein on the back and telling him how much faith they had in him.

  "When do you start Treekenstein?" asked Chimney. "As soon as I get approval for the grants I can buy a bigger intercranial fusion device, fuse more books into my head, build a giant shack and start nailing those trees back together!" He happily replied.

  The following day Treekenstein had called in sick. They knew he had papers to fill out, bureaucrats to please and a sack full of taxpayer money to collect. It would take months before the hovercraft delivering the sack of money would come in and Treekenstein worked every day with the others in anxious anticipation of endless taxpayer funds as he watched and listen to the others discuss the tree extinction.

  Not a shred of guilt bothered him, they wanted this and they couldn't be convinced otherwise. He had tried, others had tried. It was no use. They wanted to believe. They needed to believe. They needed something to believe in. He now understood why his colleagues had jumped onto the bandwagon. It was no use...

  The supervisors had hired a replacement, Little Jimmy, a massive country hick, to take Treekenstein's spot at the saw as soon as his sack of taxpayer money arrived. He could start building his giant shack that would create his lab that would enable him to begin the process of nailing the trees back together.

  2. Little Jimmy

  Treekenstein trained Little Jimmy to cut and stack lumber, his old job. He frequently noticed Little Jimmy looking over at him out of the corner of his eye as he stacked the wood that Little Jimmy had cut.

  Little Jimmy got along well with Woodpile, Chimney and the others. Treekenstein had never heard him mention anything about trees or their extinction but had seen them all sitting at the picnic table, the other guys frequently in opposition to what Little Jimmy had to say.

  One day he overheard Little Jimmy asking them: "What do you think will happen if Treekenstein's plan works? Do you think he might come knocking at your door to tear down your house so he can use the lumber to nail a tree back together?" Their eyes just glazed over and they started talking about science as if they themselves were the scientists and knew something about science when in fact they were only being guided by their faith in Dr. Treekenstein.

  They did not know that faith could be blind, especially when misdirected or guided by the inferior science, which was based only on observation, and not reason itself, such as the case with faith. They never considered that scientists themselves could be fallible to the lures of money, power and fame.

  Treekenstein decided to build a listening device that looked just like his portable intercranial fusion device and wear that for a few days as he sat under the tree during breaks, to listen to the conversations between Stone, Woodpile, Chimney and now Little Jimmy as they sat at the picnic table during lunch and breaks.

  Mostly Little Jimmy talked about things like his hover pickup, his dawg, his hunting trips on the weekend and the court battles he endured to have the right to visit his two young boys who had lived with his ex wife. Little Jimmy had no use for intercranial fusion devices and liked to do things the old fashioned way. Little Jimmy seemed like a typical country hick to Treekenstein and he soon began to write of his observations of Little Jimmy as little more than a product of his own sometimes overactive imagination.

  Treekenstein decided to give the listening one more day and on this day the conversation at the picnic table turned to trees and their extinction. Little Jimmy spoke up and said "Can't you idiots see the trees when you hover into work in the morning?" Woodpile stated the case of the numerous scientists that had spoken of the tree extinction. This pattern continued and over the next few days until finally Little Jimmy gave up, not wanting to lose the respect and co-operation of his co-workers but he began to look at Treekenstein even more suspiciously, and in a way that Treekenstein could no longer write off has a product of his own imagination.

  Little Jimmy was twice as tall, twice as wide and twice as thick as Treekenstein. It was an ongoing concern to Treekenstein. Treekenstein had bo
oks to infuse and he soon began to use his intercranial fusion device every lunch break to continue his study of abstract mathematics all the while keeping one eye on Little Jimmy. He would soon create and solve the complex equations that would be necessary to nail the trees back together from the lumber and make himself once again the worlds most famous and illustrious member of the now most noble, honorable and distinguished calling of all, tree sturgery and saving the trees.

  Treekenstein recognized that Little Jimmy was no fool and could become a force to be reckoned with if his employment continued at the lumber yard. Something had to be done or his plans could be ruined.

  Treekenstein believed that the world was fundamentally a subjective place and that no objective truth could be found. In conversations with his colleagues, he often compared some as milking a he goat while the others held the sieve while they discussed the meaning of absolute truth itself.

  People needed an objective understanding from which to be governed and it was up to members of the elite ruling classes, of which he would soon be one, to supply that objective truth. It gave the plebeians hope, happiness and a sense purpose to continue their lives supporting the elite ruling classes. It wasn't fair,