Freedom is a Lie (204 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 1 review (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Slovin (View user info) at 2005-07-25 12:35:13 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
"More coffee, sir?" asked a high-voiced employee named Chip.
"Summation... gravity... no, no that should be feet..."
Eddie waved him away and continued scribbling furiously on a napkin. He had to get these ideas out quickly, due to his mild ADD and short term memory loss. He was quite sure that he was on to something here. He reached for a second napkin and continued, confidently placing his elbow in the butter dish.
"Most people use a notebook," said a casual voice from across the wooden coffee shop table.
Jon had a knack for pointing out the obvious. Eddie was about to yell at him for this, until he realized he had been interrupted. He decided instead to yell at him for making him lose his immediate train of thought, but not before he tried and failed to find it again. He started to yell: "JON, DAMNIT," but realized he couldn't remember why he was yelling, and finished "WHAT do you... I mean... damnit. What? What do you want?"
If the previous paragraph made sense to you, the American Medical Association would like to extend their deepest sympathies and some Ritalin, as it came directly from the mind of Eddie.
"I'm just saying, most people use a notebook to write stuff down on, instead of napkins."
"OF COURSE!" he yelled, immediately looking down and writing furiously again. "I think I've got the answer," he said finally, adding another Calculus formula for good measure. He reached for his coffee, grabbed the bottle of maple syrup, and took a long drink from it.
"More... uh... syrup, sir?"
"The answer to what?"
Eddie swallowed with a sour face and slammed down the syrup. "THE answer! The ultimate philosophical and mathematical answer to free thought, choice! I've reduced it to this formula," he said, copying it down onto another napkin. "It proves that true free choice doesn't exist," he added, writing in bold at the bottom, "FREEDOM IS A LIE." He handed the napkin, with a shaking hand, to Jon.
"If you wrote '42' in big block letters I'm going to punch you," he said, annoyed.
"It's not."
Jon started to reach for it, then drew his hand back and said, "Because seriously, after that sandwich incident - "
"Shut the hell up and read it," Eddie assured him.
With a seemingly great effort, as if he was doing Eddie the biggest favor in the world by it, he took the napkin and read it with a sigh. After a few moments, Jon's eyes grew uncharacteristically wide.
"I've got it, haven't I?"
Jon didn't respond. He froze, his left eye twitching strangely, pupils dilating.
"... Jon?"
Jon fell slowly to the floor, attracting looks from nearby patrons. Eddie fell backwards over his chair in a failed attempt to do something useful. Chip called 911.
"That boy's going places," remarked his grandparents once.
The next day, after the paramedics had taken Jon's body away, Eddie hoped his Calculus professor would have a better reaction. Being the cautious type, sometimes, he warned him of the possible dangers beforehand.
"Coincidence," Dr. Rebu remarked, copying the formulas for his next lecture onto the blackboard. "A math formula cannot induce a brain aneurysm."
"Can you just take a look at it, then? I want to know if I've got it."
"You can't quantify it, Edward. The idea of reducing life and the human mind to a formula is both archaic and foolish."
"You said that about my last assignment, too. I still think it was brilliant."
"You stapled a sandwich to it."
"THUS PROVING CHAOS THEORY! Can you just take a look?"
Despite Dr. Rebu's dismissive voice and seeming disinterest, he turned around and gestured for the napkin. Eddie handed it over and he put on his glasses.
"Damnit. I'll never get credit for this thing if my audience keeps dying," Eddie said, stepping over the body of his Calculus professor and reaching for the phone.
Chatting lazily to the frantic medical switchboard operator, Eddie decided to take an additional precaution, and added a warning line to the upper left corner of his napkin:
WARNING: DO NOT READ
Surely, anyone else who died from it would be one of those fools who never follows instructions and thus deserves to die. He underlined "DO NOT READ" heavily.
Eddie walked slowly back and forth across campus, trying to make sense of his situation, and enjoying a Yoplait Gogurt. Both his best friend and his teacher were dead due to aneurysms his napkin had caused. Why didn't it affect him? What was so special about his mind? Was it all the time he spent in the coffee shop? They have good coffee there. Better than Starbuck's, if he had to choose. Maybe he'd stop in and have some. WHOA! Who plays Frisbee anymore? Don't those kids have work to do?
Eddie stopped. He's supposed to be thinking about his napkin. This is pretty important, he told himself.
Obviously, freedom is either a lie, or it isn't. If a human being wants to act, he has to believe that it isn't. So what if his napkin were absolute proof of the nonexistence of the freedom to choose our own actions? It would, in theory, render any action impossible at a fundamental level in the mind. A person would literally die from the question "Why," much like they did in droves when the final sequels to Police Academy were released.
Upon arriving at the coffee shop and being unable to remember why he came, he got a cup of coffee and sat down to read the newspaper. He wiped his lower lip with a napkin and - oh, right, the napkin. Why wasn't he affected? He had seen what it could do; he knew he must be special. Was he impervious to nihilism? After several long minutes of thinking to himself, he came to the most reasonable conclusion, which he decided to share with everyone else in the vicinity after jumping up onto the table:
"I'M GOD," he yelled, "AND YOU ARE ALL MY PUPPETS!" Eddie jumped down, quickly grabbed his napkin, and ran out.
"Art students," Chip muttered.
"BEWARE MY DEADLY NAPKIN!" Eddie yelled at passing students, running down a paved walkway and holding it in front of him like a banner. "I AM THE ALMIGHTY!"
The limitless possibilities that come along with divinity are enough to focus the attention of even the most scatter-brained youths. Eddie, who was widely regarded as the dumbest genius anyone had ever met, made a few bad choices.
First, he marched into the offices of all the professors he hated (coincidentally, all the living ones), and relieved himself on their important paperwork. His trips to the coffee shop assisted him in this endeavor. Then, completely dry, he walked into a bank and angrily demanded 10 dollars cash.
"Would that be from checking or savings?"
"NO, YOU IDIOT, I'M ROBBING YOU! OBEY THE NAPKIN!"
Eddie pushed the napkin in front of the clerk's face. It was blank.
What followed was probably one of the swiftest responses by the police to a silent alarm in the history of banking. It was also a strong contender for the briefest. Eddie tasted carpet most expediently.
Sitting against the padded wall of a room in the Happy Sunshine Insane Asylum, Eddie wept softly into his straight jacket. Somewhere in a coffee shop far away from there was a napkin containing absolute proof of the nonexistence of freedom. Clenched in his right hand, which was tied to his side, was a plain white napkin he snatched off the table by mistake. Eddie pondered the meaning of the word 'irony' but decided it probably didn't apply.
The following year, Chip S. Sendam was nominated for a Nobel Prize for his discovery of the Law of Thought. He failed to receive his prize when the King of Sweden, in charge of awarding all Nobel Prizes, died of a mysterious aneurysm. Doctors around the world called it an unremarkable case.
Eddie's outrageously out-of-character actions following his self-realization of divinity had the effect of violating the law he created on the napkin. No one noticed.
The world can only hope it will never be published publicly.
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Submitted by FunnyAsCancer (user info) at 2005-10-30 05:28:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
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