Prodigious

Prodigious
(as told by "Steve", a genetically-modified, super-smart monkey)

While the double-wide was parked just outside Dallas, Mark took Arabella to see Dr. Elmore Wonder, the greatest neurologist in Texas. Outside his office, Arabella jabbed my side with a fountain pen and kicked me with the shiny red shoes bought especially for the appointment. Mark hissed for her to "Behave!", then pointed to the brass plaque on the door: M.D., Ph.D. in neuroscience, PhD. in Psychology, Ph.D. in Xenobiology, Diplomate of the American board of Neurology, licensed therapist and clinical counselor, Professor Emeritus of exotic neurodegenerative diseases, certified developmental specialist, Fellow of the Transatlantic Academy of Neuropsychologists; the plaque was almost as tall as me and the string of small letters, capitals, commas and periods after his name advertised his expertise.

"She used to be smart, an infant Leonardo," Mark explained to the doctor, "Now she's not even average, not even ordinary."

Arabella stared blankly at the two men; I shrieked, clapped and bounced up and down on my tip-toes.

"Oh, we don't usually allow pets in here." The doctor scowled at me.

"Oh Steve?," Mark hastened to explain. "He's not a pet, he's Arabella's special companion. She doesn't go anywhere without him."

Arabella reached for a magazine and tried to hurl it at me; i dodged aside and it landed, pages crumbled, on the floor behind the doctor's desk. I darted behind her and pinched her butt while she wailed "Smart ass monkey, smart as monkey, smart ass monkey!" until the doctor silenced her with a lollipop jammed in her mouth.

"So she used to be special? But is no longer extraordinary?" The doctor flicked pages in the open textbook on his desk, leafing past pictures of sliced brain and swollen neurons. "In here,' he mused, nodding towards his book, "We have pictures of tragedy, extraordinary tragedy. Children with rare genetic diseases whose neurons started swelling with fat and exploding before they were six. Children who met the wrong virus and had brains full of holes, like sponges, by age eight. But your daughter?" The doctor shrugged, then raised both palms by his upper arms in an "oh, well!" gesture.

"My daughter's a unique case,"Mark protested, and began tugging out the photographs and news clippings he'd stashed in his pockets.

"Of course," the doctor soothed in the voice of a trained peace-keeper. "She's unique, I'm unique, the ape's unique; we're all genetically different, and so, unique. You'd be surprised how many mothers come in here, convinced that their kids are geniuses, there's an epidemic of misunderstood geniuses in the world today. If the kid turns out average, the mother claims that he used to be brilliant, a prodigy traumatized by the environment, and wants me to restore the kid to his old state. Maybe your daughter's a little slow at reading or has trouble with her times tables; maybe you, being a proud father, thought she was brighter than this. Those are just little glitches. I deal only with exceptional cases; you'd be better off spending your money and time elsewhere."

Arabella, finished with her lollipop, spat the tacky white stick onto the floor and glared.

"Steve's not an ape, he's a monkey," Mark snapped, then dumped a pile of cut-out, yellowed news articles on the doctor's desk. One drifted to the floor; I snatched it up before Arabella could crush it under her grimy soles. "You want proof, here's proof!"

The doctor picked up the clipping closest to him, leaned back, and began to nonchalantly read aloud:

"Arabella Gorman, daughter of Mark Merlin-the-Magnificent Gorman, is only one, but she's no mere pretty babe; when she recited the English, Greek, hebrew and Cyrillic alphabets before an astonished full house at our very own Theater on the Green, she showed all the makings of a future scholar. 'She just sucks up knowledge, sticks her nose in a book and sniffs in information,' her father, a professional magician, commented, 'I don't know how she got the gift; neither of her parents even like to read. I forget everything a minute after I finish the book, so why bother? But she's already reading magazines and can recite a few poems by Longfellow; she didn't do that tonight, because she has stage fright'. When asked about the prodigy's mother, Mark said that she had 'vanished, done another disappearing act, was probably spending his money somewhere in Mexico.' "

The doctor pulled out a magnifying glass and held it over the clipping.

"The photo doesn't look much like her," he observed. "Those rows of ribbons and those puffs of lace are hardly slimming. But, even taking the dress into account, this is the fattest baby I've ever seen."

Mark nodded.

"We tried putting her on diets, but nothing worked. She ate more than a sumo wrestler, and always figured out how to open the locks on the refrigerator." Mark sighed. "She lost the weight at the same time as she lost her smarts. Maybe, all along, the fat in her belly was thinking, not her brain."

"Things don't work that way, Mr. Gorman; fat cells don't think." The doctor smiled wryly. "You're a circus man, aren't you?"

Mark nodded. Not just a circus man, he was a magician. Modern magicians had lost many of the powers taught in the secret schools of the alchemists, but they retained the ancients' reverence for mystery. The world was not always how it seemed; sometimes, we saw only facades and reflections of our own delusions. Sometimes, lead was not merely lead; sometimes, fat cells were not merely storage sacks for lard. If a Celtic sorcerer could talk the trees into mid-winter blooming, if an old world witch could convince a prince to transform into a frog, maybe ordinary fat cells could fuse into a lumpy, pulsating mass greater than all its ingredients - an organism that thought and remembered and wondered; a mouthless, limbless organism that communicated its thoughts to its host, who had a mouth to speak and arms with which to implement the ideas in the real world.

Wasn't the brain composed largely of fat? Maybe Americans were wrong to revile fat; perhaps, instead, they should view it with awe, set up societies for the protection of cogitating blubber.