The Divining-Rod

[This is a short short story I wrote last year, one of my last. It gives a window on my view of the human condition; it was born out of a thought, so you could say it's a vessel for propaganda, but hopefully it stands on its own as a story.]

Dr. Jude Theodore awoke one morning late September. He awoke a different man. He gazed at a red leaf that had lighted on the window sill, then turned to his wife and said, “I’m not going to work today.”

“Not going?” she exclaimed. “Why not?"

“I don’t need it. Nobody needs it. We know enough already."

“Know enough?”

“Enough. Plenty. We could go on just like this for the rest of our lives and not ask for anything more. Live like kings.”

“And queens,” she added.

Dr. Theodore phoned the laboratory: “I’m not coming in today.”

“No?” said the assistant. “Not feeling well?”

“No, not really.”

“Well, take it easy, but come in as soon as you feel better.”

But he did not come in. Not the next day, not a few days later, not a week later. His wife brushed her auburn hair before the mirror every morning, wondering when he would snap out of it.

“Why don’t you go back to work?” she asked one day.

“We know too much. First we looked for homes, then we made them. We hunted for food till we learned to grow it. We weren’t happy killing one man, we had to find a way to kill thousands. Worlds we make and worlds we kill: that’s playing God, that’s why we find things out. We know too much.”

A week later she found him sitting by the window, eyes closed, brow furrowed like a wadded piece of paper. He seemed to be listening to the naked branches in the wind.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Setting an example,” he said.

“What are you doing?”

“Forgetting.”

He did not get up from that chair, not later that day, not the next day, not after a week.

She found him there, gazing out the window through the branches. She sat down across from him. Again she asked, “What are you doing?” All she received for an answer was a blank sheet of a look.

She would bring food to him, but he just stared at it, uncomprehending. She wept, shook him, screamed at him, pleaded for him to snap out of it, but – he did nothing. For a time he shook his head when she spoke, but even that disappeared.

One morning, as snow was falling in clusters onto the window sill, she sat down across from him; she stared, mumbling, “Who are you? What’s happened? Why?” Frost gathered on the pane, each question hanging like the steam of her breath. But she knew the answers inside: He is Dr. Jude Theodore, my husband. He is forgetting. We know too much. Soon they too began to fade. By nightfall she was silent, silent save for her breathing; and when the sun rose they still sat there, a king and his queen, gods among gods.