IRRUMATUS, a high school teacher
SUSAN, a heroine
BOB, a mentor
THE BIONIC VAPOUR BOY, a golem

A classroom, just after class has been dismissed. IRRUMATUS sits at his desk as SUSAN approaches.

[Lights up.]

SUSAN: Mr Irrumatus?

IRRUMATUS: Yes, Susan?

SUSAN: I have a question about--

IRRUMATUS: All right! I confess! I've been making a golem with which to take over the world. How did you find out? I've been so careful...

SUSAN: Um, no. I have a question about today's assignment?

IRRUMATUS: Who are you working for? Who sent you? The FBI? The CIA? Mossad? I knew the Rabbi would betray me!

SUSAN: No, really, about the assignment?

IRRUMATUS: So, you did it on your own, then? Clever minx. At last, an opponent worthy of my formidable intellectual powers! Why, if I didn't have to kill you to keep my fiendish plans safe, I could almost love you...

SUSAN: I brought you an apple?

IRRUMATUS: Is there no end to your diabolical cunning? My iron will begins to crack. Can you hear it? [He holds a hand to his ear.]

SUSAN: That's the bell...The next period is starting.

IRRUMATUS: That's the sound of my cold, black heart melting...The sound of ardour boiling my chill, chill blood.

SUSAN: I'm going to be late.

IRRUMATUS: You Cupid, you Venus, you Mothra! You have moved me as no human ever has before. How can I resist you? Dare I cast aside even you, Science, my cruel mistress, for these wholesome charms?

SUSAN: You're an art teacher.

IRRUMATUS: [stands and drops to one knee] Marry me, Susan, and together we shall bring the world to its knees! We shall crush all the nations of the earth beneath our iron heels! We shall be a force unrivalled in all of history! We shall have such power as to set us up amongst the very gods...!

SUSAN: I should go now.

IRRUMATUS: [smiling slyly, rising] But of course...I have yet to demonstrate to you the full extent of my genius. Would you like to see...my creature? The instrument of my apotheosis? The most perfect being Creation has ever seen?

SUSAN: No?

IRRUMATUS: Behold! [He pushes aside his desk, to reveal THE BIONIC VAPOUR BOY lying on the floor behind it. The BOY should be sex on wheelz.] The Bionic Vapour Boy! [IRRUMATUS cackles maniacally for some time.]

SUSAN: That's nice?

IRRUMATUS: I suppose you're wondering how it happened...It all started last year, on my thirtieth birthday. [He strides to the front of the stage, speaking out into the audience, wrapped up in his own little world.] I'd come out of college fresh-faced and innocent, an idealistic young teacher out to do some good in the world. I wanted to touch children, in a very special way. No no, much more special than that. I wanted to open their eyes to the beauty in the world, teach them how to appreciate it, and help them to create more of it for themselves. And so I came here, and for six long years I taught. With my charcoal and my trusty watercolours, I was ready to take on the world! Unfortunately, nobody cared. Woe, o woe! [He holds a hand to his forehead, regaining his composure. He assumes the tone of a drama queen.] Nobody cares about art. You kids, you've been raised not to care about anything, not that there's much left to care about in this soulless postmodern world. And your parents, they don't care about art. No, they're all about reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic. Since our public school system is putrefying around our ears, why don't we cut out anything remotely stimulating from our curriculum so we can get back to the basics? Brilliant. And the administration, do they care about art? [Does a Ronald Reagan voice.] 'Well, we're sorry, Joe, but with our budget the way it is, well,we're afraid we're going to have to make some cuts to your programme.' My name's not Joe, I tell them. 'Whatever.'

SUSAN: Is this leading up to my question at all?

IRRUMATUS: So there I was, just turning thirty, my life one long accelerating downhill plunge before me. I got in my car, and I drove. I didn't know where to turn, how I could go on living.

SUSAN: There, there?

IRRUMATUS: [He takes on a dreamy, surreal cast.] I drove for hours, along the back roads, through the backwaters, searching for a sign. Then, I found myself on a narrow dirt road, winding serpentine into the woods. It was night now; clouds shrouded the Moon; there was no sound except that of my car. I stopped; the air was still, expectant. Suddenly I felt a presence, some strange Destiny awaiting me. In its grip, I wandered off into the trees. And then, deep in the heart of the forest, I found it: a dark, looming building, there in a clearing, crude torchlight guttering in its windows, its rough timbers carved with inhuman faces, goblins and imps and creatures of nightmare. I stood before its vast double doors, yawning open, calling me on. There was a sign: 'Big Bob's Burger Barn'. I went in. I sat at a long wooden bench [sitting in a chair], roughly hewn from a single log, there amidst the torches crackling and cackling and the smoke dancing and taunting, and I looked at the menu.

[BOB enters and approaches. He speaks gruffly, hoarsely.]

BOB: Aaah, what can I get you?

IRRUMATUS: What's good, I asked him.

BOB: Aaah, there's a nice fat raccoon in the grinder. I just backed over it with my car. There's a good burger's worth of it. Two, if I throw in some dirt. You like dirt?

IRRUMATUS: I'll have that, thank you.

BOB: Aaah, you want fries with that?

IRRUMATUS: Yes, please.

BOB: Aaah, I'll go crinkle-cut some squirrels. [He squints.] Frank? Is that you?

IRRUMATUS: No, actually, my name is...[shocked] Professor? Professor Knob! It's you!

[They shout in surprise back and forth at one another.]

BOB: Aaah!

IRRUMATUS: Aaah!

BOB: Aaah!

IRRUMATUS: Aaah!

BOB: Aaah!

IRRUMATUS: Aaah!

[They pause.]

BOB: [musing] Professor Knob...Now there's a name I haven't heard in a while. These days, I'm just plain old Bob.

IRRUMATUS: [ecstatic] But Professor, what happened to you? How did you come to be...here? You were my inspiration all through college. Your physics lectures changed the way I see the world.

BOB: You flunked my class, Frank.

IRRUMATUS: But still...

BOB: Four times.

IRRUMATUS: Yeah, but...

BOB: We had a pool going in the Physics Department on how many times you'd keep trying. I lost; I thought you'd quit after three.

IRRUMATUS: Professor Knob...Bob...What happened to you?

BOB: Aaah. [Strikes a thoughtfully dramatic pose, perhaps with arms crossed.] What happened to me? Life happened to me, my empty, hollow sham of a life. One morning, as I was in the bathroom, washing my mouth out with bourbon to get rid of the taste of last night's LSD, I saw a face in the mirror. My face. I looked myself in the eyes, and I asked myself, what am I doing it all for?

IRRUMATUS: [excited] Really? That's what I'm feeling, too!

BOB: I had dreams, going into physics. Big dreams.

IRRUMATUS: [bubbling] I have dreams, too!

BOB: I was going to be somebody...

IRRUMATUS: Me, too!

BOB: And who was I? Nobody, that's who.

IRRUMATUS: [overflowing] I'm nobody!

BOB: What did I have to show for my life? I'd written a few papers, advised a few Ph.D. candidates. I had tenure at a third-rate state university. Nothing a thousand other Ph.D.'s hadn't done before me.

IRRUMATUS: [wide-eyed] So what did you do?

BOB: Aaah. I couldn't stay locked in that tiny little world any longer. I quit my job, left my wife, packed up my schnauzer and I drove off into the wild blue yonder. [He sweeps his hand out across the infinite spaces he describes.] I wound up here. I built this place with my bare hands, my place, Big Bob's Burger Barn! I learned the ways of the woodland creatures--Brother Stag, Sister Crow, Uncle Naked Mole Rat, Aunt Tree Sloth, Cousin Sperm Whale--and backed over them with my car. We respect each other, the forest and I. Here, at last, amid Nature's children, I have found peace.

IRRUMATUS: [full of existential angst] Professor Knob, you're my guru, my mentor. Please, you've got to tell me...My life is going nowhere. What should I do?

BOB: Aaah, make a golem. Oooh, doughnuts!

[BOB disappears as the flashback ends. IRRUMATUS turns back to SUSAN.]

IRRUMATUS: And so I did. With the ancient wisdom of the Kaballah, the deep mysteries of Thrice-Great Hermes, the hidden lore of Nikola Tesla, and a series of instructional videocassettes, I crafted the Bionic Vapour Boy, the self-perfecting, sin-rejecting, thought-correcting, war-directing, pain-deflecting, empire-erecting supreme being of the universe! [He cackles diabolically again.]

SUSAN: What's the difference between watercolours and tempera paints?

THE BIONIC VAPOUR BOY: [sitting slowly up, then crouching, then at last standing before SUSAN, dreamily] Tempera paints are made from egg...

[SUSAN and the BOY stand rapt, staring into one another's eyes, smiling rapturously, embracing, kissing, locking hands and skipping off into the sunset giggling.]

IRRUMATUS: Oh well, back to the drawing-board...[Turning to the audience.] But the joke's on them: I didn't give him any genitalia.

[IRRUMATUS cackles fiendishly and melodramatically. The lights go out. Eventually IRRUMATUS trails off into silence. Eventually.]

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©2001 Luke Gutzwiller. I really mean it. Violation may result in the unwanted collapse of your state vector. He's a Giga-Giga-Gilgamesh.