RAPTURE OF THE NERDS
By Robert Borski
As I told the police, the first and
only time I ever saw Miss X was at Faraday's, during the joint's weekly Rapture
of the Nerds contest. The theme that night was cineaste and for my entry
I'd just done a quick little mash-up with both versions of the movie Psycho,
showing first how in the Hitchcock version Bernard Herman ripped off Dvorak's
Sixth Symphony for the score, then comparing various of Van Sandt's scenes with
those of the master's original, and using both film and soundtrack to explain
why clones would never have the same fingerprints. I'd done worse before, but
also knew I wasn't likely to win the night's prize.
I was down in the concessions pit then
with my usual post-appearance follow-up (pork rinds, nachos, beer) when the
next contestant was introduced and so I didn't exactly catch her name. But even
as semi-distracted as I was mid-nosh, it was still hard not to be impressed
with the actual participation of a woman on stage. First off, while there have
often been young ladies in-house on Rapture night (mostly Lisa Simpson types
from the Polytechnic), almost all of them came as spectators or to hustle
drinks; in fact, if memory serves, I believe there's only been one other female
contestant in the past two years—an owlish thickset type who attempted to
demonstrate an optics program that would, she claimed, calculate with near
exact precision the number of leaves on a tree (the theme that night was Joyce
Kilmer). But whereas she had been rather drab in appearance, her successor was
much more flashily dressed, with an off-the-shoulder silk tunic and micro mini
that seemed to be made from some sort of chronodynamic foil. I'd not seen her
earlier, but had I done so, I probably would have assumed she was here for the
retro-disco event that was scheduled for later. Garb notwithstanding, however,
I have to admit I wasn't particularly impressed when, with a clearing of her
throat mike, she started her PowerPoint presentation and announced she was
going to be riffing on the old 50's sci-fi classic, This Island Earth.
"Bad idea," I told no one in
particular. "MST3K sent up Island Earth back in the
day, and it's killer."
Somewhere behind me, a scuttling Todd
Reynolds, my longtime rival at Rapture night, said "Argus, dude: chill.
This babe's got serious presence."
But even before I could chuck a pork
rind in his direction, the noob was showing a rapid montage of stills from the
flick. "I am so not going to dwell on the obvious implications of
scientists named Adams and Cal," she began, and with just maybe the trace
of an Eastern European accent, "or any possible 'tempest in Eden' submotif.
Ditto for why all the Metalunans look alike, including even the lone female we
see, an obvious y-variant female—we've already, after all, had one
over-the-top presentation tonight on clones."
"Over-the-top?" I heard
myself say. "It was freakin' genius, blondie. And you're missing a
great opportunity by not discussing why the only human female in the entire
movie is named Adams. Maybe later, over drinks--"
Shooshes all around as my
fellow rapture addicts zoned in on the pale figure commanding the stage.
"No,
my colleagues and fellow savants, instead I hope to spend the majority of my
time decoding the name Exeter gives his war-torn planet: Metaluna."
Still shot of the Zagon-besieged alien
planet, with obviously fake meteors flaming down from space.
"Me-ta-lu-na," the
would-be disco babe said, with exaggerated slowness. "Or maybe it's metal
Luna. Both are a little too obvious in my opinion, given the planet's
lunar-like, cratered, aspect. It's also hard for me to fathom any metallic
connection when the planet is quite clearly composed of rock and turns into a
ball of flaming gas at the end."
Though still peeved by the noob's
over-the-top remark, I declined to say anything about iron boundary layers and
supernovae.
"As for the 'meta,' well,
hey--" shrugging her lissome shoulders, one of which remained enticingly
half-bare "--where exactly do you want to go with it? Meta-fictional?
Meta-phorical? This was the 50's, after all, and during the
height of the cold war, when most cinematic menaces from beyond—"
She clicked the remote and now we saw
the movie's crab-clawed, bulbous-headed monster.
"—were all pretty much from one
red planet or another, if you know what I mean."
"Hey, Argus," Todd said,
slapping me on the back. "Looks like your last date. Or maybe the big-ass
cootie he left you for a going-away-present."
I gave Todd my killer-fu look.
"Yo: cheetohs-breath. When your standard rap about why you choose
not to date is because women hold back evolution, you should bow down to your
dating betters, not belittle them." ("Think about it, my
friends. One monodic egg vs. ten million genetically different attack modules—I
ask you, where's the variability?")
Meanwhile, back up front, the dazzling
femgeek continued with her presentation. "'Une mutant' almost works
as well, but leaves us with a dangling 'l'. Yet perhaps therein lays the rub.
Or at least the dangle. Any of you brainiacs advanced enough to have studied
Latin in either kindergarten or grade school?"
"Latin," sneered
Todd. "Give me a break. The poor-schlub's-Greek. Strictly arriviste in my
crèche."
"Taught myself," I confided,
raising my hand. "The Berlitz School of Me." A slight lull in the
crowd noise at least allowed for the possibility of my being heard. Moreover,
the noob-as-in-nubile now appeared to be smiling as she looked in my direction.
Said she with another click of the
remote, and the reappearance of the white-haired alien patriarch: "In
another medium the noble Exeter could be Jor-el, hoping to save his doomed
planet by kidnapping the best and brightest of Earth's scientists. But once
again this is Metaluna, not Krypton. Please note the name
and how it can be unpacked, with two duplications, to spell m-e-n-t-u-l-a-t-e.
Mentulate. Or to translate from the original for all you
non-Latini: 'well-hung.'
"Should have known,"
chortled Todd, attempting to toss a small handful of fried orange turdlets into
his mouth. "She's a size queen. Well, there go your chances, Argus."
I managed to grab three suborbital
cheetohs for myself, but failed in my attempt to relocate them in Todd's
nostrils. "So, where's the bliss then?" I shouted out. "The
Metalunans are big in the private parts department? Ooooh, the tingling in my
lateral hypothalamus and medial forebrain is almost too much to bear."
"Dude," screeched
Todd Reynolds, clasping my forearm with clawlike vigor. "You're
embarrassing yourself. Obviously, she's talking about orthogenesis. Only
instead of Irish elk and skull-crushing antlers, she's talking ginormous
schlongs and entry failure. Verpa gargantua. Coitus impenetralis."
Poor Todd. Despite his DOD research
grants, if ever the term 'high IQ moron' applied to a more apposite figure, I
doubted the individual in question could tie a boot lace without getting lost
in the complications of skein relations and Alexander polynomials. And yet
later that night, after the winning contestant had been given her prize (quel
surprise), he seemed to be energetically discussing one or another
of his crazy theories with her. And still later, when the lights from the
silver disco ball began to float about the joint like a flotilla of miniature
suns, I saw them leaving Faraday's together.
"Carpe noctem," I
lip-synced across the crowd, flashing him the finger.
But truth to tell, the smile on the
guy's face was enough to make even me dance a little bit inside.
* * * *
Flash forward now to the first Rapture
of the Nerds contest held after Todd's funeral. In his honor, since he was
lefthanded, I did a little performance piece about how, like the words gauche
and sinister, "skeevy' derived from another word for left (scaevus,
Latin); whereas Todd's left-handedness was more in the nature of a-ristos,
from whence aristocrat derived. (Yes, I knew this was totally bogus, but we
were all a little bit in our cups by then; besides, the one person most likely
to call me on this was in fact its benefactor.)
"Speaking of left and
right," said Caleb Martin, one of Todd's other rivals and a pallbearer at
his funeral, "you, ah, don't happen to know which testicle Todd was buried
with, do you? I mean, I heard she'd cut off most of his package and one of his
'nads when the police arrived and she somehow mysteriously vanished in the
confusion."
I'd managed, of course, to score a
preliminary report via the usual cyber, if illicit, means, but still thought a
few of the details needed to be ironed out; perhaps if at least one more
officer recovered his memory, I'd try again. As for the pornographic pictures
of the crab monster and Judy Jetson, a few more drinks and I hoped they too
would vanish mysteriously into the ether.
"Dude, the Todd-meister only had
half a set. The other 'nad never descended. So, in answer to your question, and
hoping you'll forgive the 'no man is an island' riff..."
But by then everyone was already
cheering on the next contestant, hoping for yet another dose of Rapture.
#
Though
Robert Borski is primarily known for his poetry and literary
criticism, he has also written short stories, appearing in both Analog and
F&SF. A retired state university worker, he lives in Stevens Point,
Wisconsin.
