Young Writers Society

“Alright, this is it; I am tired of finding mammoth bones, dinosaur bones, prehistoric pointy sharp things, wooden bowling balls, Babylonian clay tablets, ancient Indian pottery, the first manuscript of Hamlet handwritten by Shakespeare, the oldest map to an African obelisk, the ancient crown of a Majapahit Emperor, the headwear of an indigenous Australian tribe, the teeth of the first Tonga people - whenever I go out of the front door! Like, Jesus! Stuff like this MUST have a limit! The next day, I will throw a baseball so hard that - what’s it called again, Minato? (“Quantum tunnelling.”) - Oh yeah - It’s like I will throw a baseball so hard that it quantum tunnels through the bat and the keeper and the net, and the stadium itself! What are the chances!!! (“To be honest, the chances are infinitesimally small.”)

“It all started one day when I was digging up a manhole. It was just another Tuesday for me. Then I struck a millennium-old bronze chest which had lost works of Livy, Tacitus, Cicero and Caesar and some Cat guy (“It’s Cato”). Great, now I’ve got my name and picture on the front page of the state newspaper and some nice cash. Awesome - I thought, alright - I thought, great day - I thought. Well, well, well - the next day, I went jogging in the park and fell flat on my face and found a buried Florentine fretwork of a frame of fretting flamingoes flapping their flimsy wings - that cost me a bloody nose, but it was still a nice find. I have no idea why or how a wooden fretwork was buried in a local park, but the calligraphers think it’s legit. Although I am pretty sure I had seen it somewhere before, like, an article in a local newspaper about a stolen artefact from a museum or something like that… (“Uh, how did YOU notice that but not THEM?”)

“Anyway - This has been going on for days, weeks, months, and years - I wake up every day and go out for jogging or for work or for vacation or for buying groceries or for chatting with some guys, and I end up finding something of incredible historical significance. It started when I was twenty years and three days old, and now I am twenty-four years and three-hundred-sixty-four days old (“Uh, why do you have to be so accurate?”). I have been to astrologers (“What - why?”), I have been to astronomers, I have been to astrophysicists (“Damn, you must have met some cool guys.”), I have been to theoretical physicists, I have been to pseudoscientists (“Jesus!”), I have been to ghostbusters (“What the-?”), I have been to psychiatrists, I have been to psychologists - but no one, literally nobody on God’s Green Earth knows why or how have I been discovering artefacts - Every. Single. Day. (“Uh, sad life, I guess?”)

“Except a week ago, when I contracted COVID. I was too sick for a week to notice that I hadn’t discovered anything in a week! When it was all over, I started discovering things again, like Archimedes’ lost death ray or something like that… I don’t remember its name.”

“It’s heat ray, Steve,” said I, “now, just wait a sec till I complete my notes from your rant. This is exhilarating!”

“How the hell do you find this ‘exhilarating’, Minato?” Steve replied, “This is super-duper-ultra-mega - uh, get me another word - (“Get some Greek letters or something.”) Oh, hell yeah - gamma-zeta-omega irritating!”

“Dude, you are not twelve anymore, grow up and get a girl or something and let me complete my PhD. thesis for God’s sake,” I smirked, still writing down notes.

“What the hell, bro? I lead the good life, digging manholes, hauling bricks, smashing stuff with big machines, blasting things with dynamite - life’s fun as a construction worker! And then there’s you. YOU get a life! - “ Steve snatched my notebook (“Hey! What the -”) and looked at the mirror as if he were looking into a camera.

“Oh, look at me! I am the smartest guy in the town!” Steve bent over, looked under the sofa, found my second pair of glasses that were lost five months ago (“Wait, how did you find that-?”), wore it in persiflage, and continued, “I keep inventing gadgets, I keep messing up my hair all the time, but I am so handsome that I get girls anyway (“Wait, no, that’s not how it is-”), I have Stephen Hawking-like glasses, I write bestsellers on the latest who-is-who and what-is-what of quantum physics - all the while living in a dinghy, cramped apartment in Downtown Brooklyn because I am too lazy to buy a big mansion!”

“Uh,” I was dumbfounded after that corny yet accurate description of me, “That’s kinda correct… To each their own, I guess?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Goddamn, these glasses make everything so fuzzy that your nose looks like a dick! Take this back!”Steve tossed me the notebook and my long-lost spectacles, sighed, and sat on the sofa.

“I am tired, Minato! I am so tired!”

“Uh,” said I, while finding the box I used to keep my spectacles in, “Of what, exactly? Being famous?”

“No, not at all, I love the attention, that’s not it - The box is under the pile of clothes under your microscope-like thing.”

“That’s a spectrometer,” I said, “And thanks - wait, how on earth did you know what I was looking for?”

“Exactly,” He sighed again, “That’s my problem, dude. I don’t know until I know.”

“Ah-hah! There’s my box,” I said while putting the specs in the box, “Wait - what does that even mean?”

“Listen, man, I am not the science guy - You are. You better know what I am talking about ‘cause I definitely don’t. You are my last hope.”

“Alright, bring me some ice cream from the fridge (“Dude, you’re so lazy!”) - it’s beside the bed (“You officially have the title of the laziest genius on the planet.”) - and let me mull over the stuff you’ve said for two minutes.”

He said as he opened the fridge, “‘Kay, as you say - Uh, Minato, why do you have an alligator with a hat and a smartphone in your fridge?”

“Oh yeah, I kept a specimen - Wait, what?” I rushed towards Steve, “I didn’t put a hat on it! Nor a smartphone! ‘The hell?”

Someone, or something, said with a croaky voice, “And darling - darling! Stand! By me! ~eeeee! This Lennon guy’s good! Y’all got a decent musical taste in this universe!”

Steve jumped back before a reptilian-looking alligator-like figure walked out of the refrigerator on its two feet, wearing a top hat and a wireless headphone, holding a smartphone, and grooving to ‘70s music.

Steve asked - well, to say the least - a valid question, “Are you from Florida or outer space?”

“Uh,” said the alligator, “Neither. I am not from this plane of existence, I created y’all - y’know?”

Steve, startled, said stubbornly with a strange air of satisfaction, “You are god, then?”

“I mean,” the alligator replied, “Not really, but kind of - yeah. Anyway, give me back the possibility reverse-inator - or whatever he named it.”

Steve said, “The what?”

“Oh - OH - OHHHH!” I screamed in realisation.

[Note from Steve who’s reading this: “‘Screaming in realisation’ is not a phrase that exists, you know?”

Note from me after punching Steve: “Shut up, Steve!”]

“What is it, Minato?” Steve asked.

I asked him, “Five years ago, did you find something that looked strange?”

“Uh,” Steve thought for a second, “Not really…?”

The alligator said, “Ah, come on, give it back, I’ve got stuff to do! Let’s see where it is,” it tapped a few times on its smartphone and said, “Ah-ha! It’s stuck in your vermiform appendix… I guess I have no choice but to extract it.”

I said, “Ah-hah! Steve, did you eat something weird that day?”

Steve replied, “Not really, I don’t think - Wait, what do you mean by extraction?”

“Uh, there are two choices,” said the alligator, “I can extract it indirectly from your anus, or I can blow a hole through your back. Which one do you prefer?”

“EW,” Steve said, disgusted, “how about neither? I am not into that stuff!”

“I mean,” said the alligator, “I gotta get it back though, or I am gonna be in trouble. Hurry up and tell me which one you prefer!”

“I told you already! Neither!”

“Alright,” said the alligator before summoning a gun from thin air, “I’ve got no choice then.”

“Hold up, Rally the Alli’!”

All of us turned around and saw a little frog jump out from a rift in space-time.

The frog said, “You aren’t runnin’ away THIS TIME!”

A long tongue came out from the frog’s mouth and tried to grab the alligator, but it dodged the tongue and said, “Not this time, boss. I ain’t your lackey no more!”

“Alright, enough of this charade through all the different planes of existence,” said the frog.

The frog summoned a tablet from the aether, tapped it once, and trapped the alligator in a force field.

Steve whispered to my ears, “Uh, what’s going on? Are they your lab experiments or something, genius?”

I chuckled silently and said, “I wish they were!”

The frog brought out a headphone and music player from its pocket, and said, “Hmm… So, what’s the greatest piece of music created by your species, Minato?”

“Ode to Joy - Ninth Symphony, Final Movement, Ludwig van Beethoven. Now,” I said, “tell me how on earth do you reverse the Law of Large Numbers?”

“The what?” Said Steve, confused.

“Thanks for the music suggestion,” said the frog, “I am too lazy to explain it to you - I will just transfer the Theory of Everything to your brain while I listen to music. You are gonna be in a trance for a minute though.”

“Uh,” said Steve, “Remember me? I exist too. Are you too gonna drill a hole in me too or what?”

The groggy frog replied, “Nah, you can keep it - Ooh, I like the music! - by the way, don’t you have bacteria and germs on this planet?”

Steve looked at me, hoping that I would reply, but since I was in a trance, he himself replied, “Yeah, I guess. I read about it in school or something.”

The frog replied, “So, why the hell did you pick it up from the pavement and eat it, five years ago? - Damn, this is really good! La-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la, la-la-la!”

“Wha - What are you talking - Oh,” Steve facepalmed, “I... think I remember something of that sort... Are you talking about that weirdly hard M&M?”

“Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium! - It’s not an M&M, it’s a probability reversor that reverses the Law of Large Numbers. Basically, it makes you the luckiest person in reality. You are so unsanitary, dude, no one picks up a random M&M from the ground and then eats it,” the frog said and continued humming, “Wir betreten feurtrunken, himmlische dein Heiligtum!”

Steve, now offended, asked the frog, “Did you make this reversor-thing?”

The frog replied, “Yeah - Deine Zauber binden wieder… Hey, what are you -”

Steve picked up the frog in his palm and slapped it across the face, “You stupid god! If you didn’t want anyone to eat it, THEN WHY DID YOU SHAPE IT LIKE AN M&M for GOD’s SAKE - wait, you are god - for YOUR SAKE!!!”

The frog fell and landed on its feet, unharmed, and said, laughing, “You have no sense of self-preservation, do you? Ha! I like you. I would have retrieved my lost probability reversor from any other finite being, but you can keep it.”

I came back to my senses after processing the Theory of Everything and kneeled on my feet to honour God.

Steve said, “Why the hell are you kneeling to a frog?”

“Steve, you dumbass!” I shouted, “It’s just a random finite form It took to communicate with us. In Its true form, It has infinite dimensions!”

It said, “I can confirm that. Anyway, great song, it’s definitely in the top sextagintillion of all the songs I have ever listened to. I have things to do, you know. I gotta go, see ya in some googolplex years!”

Then, It disappeared, along with the alligator. My mind was screaming at me to go clattering away at my laptop to write down the Theory of Everything. Steve, however, just stood there, dumbfounded and stupefied.

“Minato.”

“What is it, Steve?”

“If this were a story, it’s the worst one ever.”

“Why though?”

“It introduced the characters, built up the conflict, did some weird comedy with sci-fi and overpowered beings, went to a climax, and then explained everything - But it had no resolution for God’s sake!”

“What do you mean?”

“I will still keep finding stuff for some reason!”

“Dude, just get an appendix surgery if you hate it so much and give me the Probability Reversor for research.”

“Oh, I can do that?”