The Diary of Dr. Rationale
Entry 1: In Praise of the Plane
Ah, the satisfaction of a life well spent in the service of Reason! Few can claim, with honesty unmarred by hyperbole, that they have single-handedly persuaded every member of their immediate family to commit—under oath—to the Principle of Non-Contradiction. I remember the family gathering well: Aunt Paradox tried to object but, inevitably, logic won the day. It was then I realized my talents were exceptional.
Why settle for mere compliance when one can inspire the Dictate of Reason? Thus was born the celebrated Center for Applied Reason, uniting politicians, citizens, and even the taxman under the banner of rationality. Our automated Compliance Protocols ensure that no one need trouble themselves with the burden of independent thought—simply follow the prescribed rational response to each scenario, and efficiency shall reign supreme.
The world has never been so straight. So perfectly, beautifully straight.
But why stop at Earth? I have today received an invitation from representatives of the so-called "Locus of Loco"—a domain, they claim, "in desperate need of straightening out." Suitably intrigued, I have packed three rulers, a protractor, and my pride.
Entry 2: The Descent Into Curiosity
By all that is holy and Euclidean, I was not prepared.
Upon my dignified arrival in the Locus, I graciously explained the virtues of logical proof and efficient queueing. The locals responded with a parade of rubber ducks. Not metaphorical ducks—actual rubber ducks, thousands of them, squeaking in what might have been harmony but was certainly not in any known key. Then came a spontaneous poetry contest where all entries consisted solely of the word "pickle," differentiated only by volume and accompanying facial expressions.
Their laughter echoed like Schrödinger's cat in a box of whoopee cushions. Order was nowhere. Syllogisms received standing ovations—after being read backward.
Undeterred, I announced an emergency seminar, "Sensible Steps for Sensible Souls." Attendance: one dapper llama (wearing a monocle, inexplicably) and what appeared to be a sentient mop. The mop took better notes.
Entry 3: The Curvature of Doubt
Yet tonight, as I retire to my quarters (which periodically rotate between upright and sideways, apparently as a matter of cultural tradition), I find myself afflicted by a new sensation: envy.
These natives, unburdened by syllogisms, seem possessed of a joy I am struggling to rationalize. They shout contradictions at each other and embrace. They wear hats that serve no protective function. They laugh at nothing in particular and everything in general.
Is there method in this merriment? Or have my lifelong labors prepared me not for conquest, but for conversion?
Tomorrow: I attend the "Festival of Fungible Suppositions," hosted by someone named Big Babbler. I shall bring my best flowcharts—and, secretly, a sense of anticipation I cannot quite diagram.
Entry 4: The Festival of Fungible Suppositions
If there is a taxonomy of illogic, then today I have catalogued its rarest genus.
The Festival began with what appeared, at first, to be a serious debate—until the participants produced their opening statements in the form of interpretive dance atop a stage coated in jelly. Before I could object, Big Babbler himself took the microphone (which turned out to be a banana) and declared, "The suppositions, like socks, are best changed when nobody's looking. ARGUE AWAY!"
Big Babbler is a tall man with wild eyebrows that move independently of each other, and he has this habit of punctuating his pronouncements by spinning exactly one and a half times. He spun now.
The assembled Loquacious Loonies shouted contradictory slogans in unison, but laughter overpowered all. A woman in a hat shaped like a question mark yelled, "All truths are contextual!" while simultaneously a man in a cape hollered, "Some truths are eternal!" They high-fived.
Babbler spun nonsense into gold. "Let us now distinguish between the absurd and the merely wild—one wears a hat, the other becomes one!" The crowd roared, and—to my horror and secret pleasure—so did I. An involuntary snort escaped me. In public!
The effect was... pleasurable. I felt my mind—those hard-wired avenues of reasoning—start to unspool, threading through the uproar like a ribbon through a maypole.
Babbler noticed. One eyebrow rose while the other furrowed. He winked: "Laughter is just logic in a clown suit, Dr. R."
I have not stopped grinning since.
Entry 5: The Revelation
I hardly slept— —my head buzzing with paradoxes and punchlines. I tried (as per habit) to organize my thoughts, but they tumbled wildly— rhyming without reason, colliding like those rubber ducks in— what was I saying?
I find myself awaiting each of Babbler's pronouncements with a hunger once reserved for theorems. Last night he said, "If you drop a contradiction from a tall enough building, it lands as a duck."
Ridiculous. Yet.
Liberating.
I have begun doodling ducks in the margins of my reform proposals. Could it be that sincerity was always a ruse? That the only thing making existence bearable is this rolling carnival of—
Today, at Babbler's behest, I donned a hat shaped like a question mark (the same one that woman wore—she lent it to me with a solemn wink) and joined the procession of Suppositionalists.
Babbler declared, "Logic builds bridges, but nonsense gives you wings—the first gets you to the next town, the second to the moon and back without moving an inch!"
It landed not as a syllogism but as a cosmic prank on my former self. I felt as if laughter were peeling away the dull lacquer of all my "accomplishments." I found I wanted to listen, not out-reason. Not correct or improve or straighten—just listen and laugh and be.
Later, with Babbler's hand on my shoulder (he smells like cinnamon and chaos), the festival crowd chanting impossible riddles, I saw my role clearly: not the stern corrector, but an emissary of the unexpected—a missionary to Earth bearing glad tidings of the absurd.
Entry 6: The Missionary's Oath
Babbler and I, after much giggling and several buckets of metaphorical "truth pudding," sat under the Wobbletree (it wobbles).
He handed me the Universal De-Rationalizing Translation Module. It resembles a whoopee cushion crossed with a cathedral—iridescent, vaguely spherical, making a sound like distant bells whenever someone nearby thinks too hard.
"Go, Dr. R," he intoned, spinning one and a half times. Both eyebrows rose in unison, which I'd never seen before. "Bring the gospel of glorious gibberish, the celebration of the unexplained!"
His last line has twined itself in my mind: "Absurdity isn't senseless—it's sensibility without railings."
I swore then to sow unpredictability where the literal and the linear once held sway, to make the world safe for nonsense. To free them from the tyranny of prescribed responses and automated compliance.
Tomorrow, I return.
Entry 7: Earth—The Escher Descent
Returned, module in hand.
I found Earth changed—or maybe I saw for the first time.
I went first to the Center for Applied Reason, my greatest achievement. The building still stands, chrome and glass, efficient angles catching the gray morning light. I expected to find it humming with orderly activity.
Instead: silence. Not peaceful silence—empty silence.
I walked the halls. Every workspace occupied. Every person at their station. But no one spoke. They stared at screens, tapped keyboards, moved through their tasks with the precision of clockwork and the enthusiasm of rust.
I approached a woman at her desk. "Excuse me," I said. "I've returned from—"
"Nice weather," she said, not looking up.
"Yes, but I wanted to tell you about—"
"Nice weather," she repeated. Same inflection. Same hollow tone.
I moved to the next person. A man in a gray suit. "Hello! I've discovered something extraordinary—"
"Nice weather."
I fled to the streets. Surely outside the Center, people would be different—messy, unpredictable, human.
The sidewalks were full. Thousands of people moving, but not together. Each on their own trajectory, surrounded by others doing the same, never exchanging more than a glance, a fleeting brush of coat-sleeves. Like Escher's endless staircase—everyone descending, no one arriving.
I tried to make eye contact. I smiled broadly (perhaps too broadly—my face was out of practice). I positioned myself in someone's path and said, "Good morning! Have you ever considered that contradictions might land as ducks?"
A young man's eyes flickered to me for a fraction of a second. "Nice weather," he said, and flowed around me like water around a stone.
I tried again. And again. Different people, different approaches. I told jokes. I made absurd observations. I activated the Universal De-Rationalizing Translation Module—it chimed and shimmered, broadcasting waves of whimsy.
"Nice weather." "Nice weather." "How can I help you today?" "Please select from the following options." "Nice weather."
The responses came not from thought but from somewhere deeper—or shallower. A pre-programmed reflex. My Compliance Protocols, I realized with dawning horror. They hadn't enforced rationality. They'd simply... replaced it. Replaced thinking entirely.
I wandered for hours. The city stretched in all directions, an endless cathedral of descending escalators. The air buzzed with the drone of duplicated small talk: "Nice weather," repeated ad infinitum until it meant less than nothing. I heard a joke—the same joke—land with the hollow thunk of déjà vu in seven different conversations within a single block.
This was not the joyful chaos of Loco. This was not even my rigid rationality of before. This was the unreason of rote survival. The insipid void. No mirth, no marvel—only the sterile echo of things once logical, now drained of all meaning.
Not all unreason is equal.
As evening fell, I stood on a corner and watched the crowds flow past. I clutched the Translation Module and felt it chime softly against the proximity of so much vacant thought.
A thousand responses answered my attempts at connection. But not a single soul understood.
I had come to free them from the tyranny of pure reason. I discovered instead that I had helped build something far worse: a world where no one reasons at all. Where no one needs to. Where the prescribed response is always ready, the automated answer always sufficient, and the human being beneath it all slowly, quietly, forgotten.
The module chimed once more in my hands.
Then fell silent.
No comments:
Post a Comment