by HAL MOUNTSAUERKRAUTEN, Alternate Reality News Service Court Writer
It was the Everest of dramatic moments. The homeless man, John Doe, stood in the dock, awaiting sentencing for vagrancy. "He didn't have a licence for begging," the prosecutor had argued. "They only cost $50. If you cannot afford $50 for a licence, you really shouldn't be asking people for money on the streets!" John Doe, all bedraggled beard, shabby clothes and an inability to remember anything beyond yesterday, had nothing to say in his defense. Just as the judge was about to pass sentence, a man burst into the courtroom and shouted, "That's not John Doe! That's my wife!"
Well, that's how it will be portrayed when this article is adapted into a movie of the week. However, the truth is far more prosaic.
One night, a man appeared at the Ronald Reagan Homeless and Tax Shelter. His clothes, though they may have once been fine, were a mess and he seemed dazed. Nothing unusual about that. However, Cassandra Szklarski, a doctor who made weekly rounds at the shelter, had a premonition that he was not their usual client. The chewed up remnants of an American Express Dilithium Crystal Card in the remnants of his wallet may have had something to do with it.
Giving the man a thorough physical, Szklarski noticed that there were distinct gleoat hoof prints in his scalp. "The combination goat/leopard is a magnificent creature with great powers," she stated, "but flight isn't one of them. I couldn't figure out how a gleoat could have landed on his head."
Under heavy prompting, with much gesticulating and soft mutterings of encouragement, the man said that the last thing he remembered hearing before he lost his memory was the distinctive roaring bleat of the gleoat coming from above. "I thought I must be hallucinating," the man said. "I mean, as god is my witness, I thought gleoats couldn't fly!"
This would have stayed one of those mysteries of life if Szklarski hadn't been dragooned into going with her sister's children to see the Burnum and Breakem Circus the following weekend. Although, owing to strict animal cruelty laws in many states, they do not advertise the fact, the Burnum and Breakem Circus features animals on the flying trapeze; not only gleoats, but liaardvarks and salmants fly through the air with the greatest of ease. Except, of course, when they plummet to the earth like sacks of wet cement.
The police were called in. In a stroke of good fortune, Detective Irene "Chopper" Funstable took the call. After arresting the owners of the circus for disturbing the peace, reckless endangerment and, inexplicably, driving while under the influence of George Strait, she immediately recognized the befuddled homeless man as Ho-Lee Krackauer, a member of Google's Flying Sasquatch Squad who had gone missing several months before.
"I made the rookie mistake of reaching for a metaphysical solution to the mystery of Krackauer's disappearance when a concrete solution was available," Detective Funstable admitted. "We were warned of this trap at the academy, and I fell right into it."
"Told you so," The Skeptical Inquirer inquirer James Randi said.
"Don't gloat," Detective Funstable responded. "It was perfectly reasonable to come to the conclusion that Krackauer had disappeared because he had used a computer programme to run through his 10,000 lives and achieved enlightenment. Any other person confronted by the set of facts known at the time would have come to the same...the, uhh, same...
"Oh, okay, go ahead and gloat."
Under heavy prompting, with much waving of truncheons and loud threats of carnage, Burnum and Breakem Circus Ringmaster Roger Thweakus admitted that a gleoat had fallen on Krackauer, who was taken out back of the main tent for the duration of the performance. Afterwards, Thweakus looked through his wallet - with no ulterior motive, only to find out who he was, you understand - but a gleoat had chewed up most of the man's identification.
They did the only reasonable thing they could under the circumstances: they left Krackauer's stunned body by the side of the road as they folded up their tents and moved to another part of town. This had nothing to do with avoiding the law - it was a...a humanitarian gesture.
Back in familiar surroundings, Krackauer soon regained most of his memory. He said that he had gone to the circus because his online partner, Glinda, had told him that he wasn't spontaneous enough. "So, I got hit with a flying genetic monstrosity and lost my memory for six months," he bitterly commented. "Is that spontaneous enough for you, Glinda?"
When asked why he connected the lives of various people and animals in his toy universe across almost 10,000 generations, Krackauer explained that, "I was bored."
In the made for TV movie version of the case, the part of Hal Mountsauerkrauten will be played by George Clooney; that makes it all worthwhile. Somehow.