Life of a Great Fool 4121

 

Life of a Great Fool 

By Michael McKenna 

 

Act One Scene One 

Narrator: Mr. Richard Piltower sat in a hospital lobby, his head wrapped in a white bandage. 

He'd just been implanted with a chip that could bring back a flood of memories and allow his brain to stay vibrant for decades. 

Mr. Piltower was one of the first to take part in neuro-monitoring but far from the only one. The program included Alzheimer’s sufferers and those who didn't quite have alzheimers but were risks to and afraid of getting it. 

Piltower'd begun to feel the onset of mild dementia in 2025 that could finally be addressed surgically. 

Patients in 2025 could be chipped and sent impulses from the hospital that stimulated their memories. 

Nurse: You're due back here in two weeks or sooner if your getting headaches Mr. Piltower.

Piltower: fine fine, (pause) oh wow my mind is racing 

 

Nurse: that’s normal…all very normal… you’ve basically got a brand new brain you  could say …You're going to be saying “wow” alot as you remember more and more events you’ve long forgotten 

Piltower: Oh wow

Nurse: Gradually your mind’s thoughts will ease and get accustomed to it though ….but we've never added memory to a man so young…

Piltower: Someone like me? 

Narrator : Piltower was 49.

 

Act One Scene Two 

 

Narrator: 49 year old, Mr. Richard Piltower was released to go home the very next day, along with a few million other people who left nursing homes and clinics all over the world who were treated and “in their right minds again.”

 

Long shut doors at nursing homes all across America  squeaked as they were pried open at front rear and side entrances all over the world. They creaked like the vault to a long sealed crypt…all the residents spilled out of them onto the street, resurrected by the chip in their brains. The doors would squeak for a long long time. 

 Residents with their Dementia healed came streaming out with instant recall of everything they ate for breakfast and everyone they ever knew. 

 

At his residence he felt like god suddenly. Everything he ever learned in school came to him at once. 

With that came insight. 

Narrator: With millions of people with advanced Alzheimers in 2025 needing to be told the same thing thousands of times over and over, medical science finally reached a breakthrough. AND the public was allowed in on it.

Not a pill that maintains a slow steady decline for a curable disease like Diabetes. This was the real thing. A way to enhance the brain's pathways to access thoughts and memories. Ideal for men and women who ask a thousand times a day, "when is so 

 

 

and so coming home from work?" Even though that person has passed away.

Mr. Piltower has just had his mind modified by medical science. 

On people who did not have advanced alzheimers, the effect was different. They were overwhelmed by the thoughts that filled them. As if instead of 32 colors there were 332, as if you had the nose of a canine.

Mr Piltower's memory could not stop the wave of feelings and emotions that accompanied his "new mind".

Piltower: Billy Strasser in high school really thought I was arrogant? Kevin Kraft thought I needed to be kicked out of the pack? 

Narrator: Piltower recalled his High School years keenly. Acute, random memories of that time flooded his mind and sometimes competed for attention.

 

Piltower: I really was most Christlike then. I forgave them. Yes I fought sometimes because we were, after all, spiders in a glass jar, but now I see clearly how forgiving I was and gracious towards their hatred.

Narrator: Piltower did not ask, however, why he lost that faculty as he slowly aged from 19 to 49. 

Maybe because some memories he was getting were welcome.

Piltower: Heidi...she's still 21. We danced that night, I forgot all about that dance. Then I asked her, do you have a boyfriend? Yes she had. Well I KNEW that.

Narrator: Piltower met Heidi in 1991. According to best custom, through formal introduction by a trusted mutual friend. 

 

 

Act One Scene Three 

Narrator: Mr Piltower was a know it all. He didn't even nurture his own children who couldn't wait to move out when they turned 18.

He's a worldly man, dressing to impress in the latest fashion from the fedora on his head to the buckles on his shoes. And since he knows the world is going to fail him (eventually) he is miserable deep down but he cannot help himself. 

He's more the coach type than a teammate.

You didn't talk to Mr. Piltower, you were monologued to death by him. He listened to you, but only to debate you and win the imaginary argument he projected on you.

Even a person who wanted to be liked, walked right passed him, or out on him, realized they didn't want to be liked by Piltower and would pass without saying a word. Otherwise you were trapped in a soliloquy of his own creation for as long as you could endure it and be polite. 

Piltower: Tonight the moon will eclipse Mars, do you know what that's called? It's a Lunar occultation...I am the only person who used that word way before this present occultation made headlines…

Narrator: he'd go on for hours, starved for an audience, lecturing you.

He was no hypocondriac, but both his parents died after years of suffering from advanced alzheimers and dementia. For a man who loved to call up words like Lunar occultation to lecture those unfortunate enough to subject themselves to it, alzheimers was a fate worse than death.

Yes he took outstanding care of his mind, ate beets all day long, and vegetables, no alcohol whatsoever. Neither did his parents so he knew it was hereditary, he KNEW he was gonna get stricken with the memory wasting disease, he just didn't know when.

The hospital's new neuro monitoring worked wonders but best on those who were still more or less in command of their faculties.

Very few people were immune to this KIND of fool, to this type of FOOL, (there are a few types, some are holy).

His wife of 20 years, Heidi was. But she was taken from him in a car wreck.

Scene Four 

Narrator: That night, Piltower couldn't sleep.

Mr Piltower: Light pollution! How dare that neighbor of mine ruin the cycles of day and night with his yard full bright yellow stadium lighting. The birds are wide awake as me. 

Narrator: He got up and made some coffee.

Piltower: The turtles by the lake are drawn to my front yard because they think his yard is a star!

Narrator: But the neighbor always bothered Piltower and this was nothing new. On one hand, he couldn't stop smiling. Piltower knew he would never be afflicted with the same debilitating disease his parents died of!! He felt so much power. He poured 

 

himself coffee and filled with wonder at his new found power of recollection. 

And more than memories came to him. Insights and colors he experienced back in his younger days as well. 

Piltower: I feel stronger, even immortal, I have the vitality of a cat!

Narrator: Mr Piltower stayed up all night, wandering through waking dreams of brand new colors and long forgotten emotion. 1999 was as clear at 2025. 

End of Act 1

Act 2  Scene One

Narrator: Piltower woke up and made himself a cup of coffee. His head was still wrapped in a white bandage. He didn't know it but a tiny spot of blood was beginning to form in the back, where they implanted the tiny neuro memory facilitator chip, made in Taiwan of course.

Piltower: It tastes supremely different. It's so... robust. 

I did nothing different. Just put two cups of ground coffee in the machine as always. But this time, my senses are reeling. 

Narrator: Piltower shuddered. He needed someone. He NEEDED an audience. 

The feeling cam over him like a wave of warmth then cold.

He needed to monologue and shout at someone. But he knew, before the implant, those people in his circle were more and more leary of him. They KNEW, by now, that he would just talk at 

 

them and over them. There was no real conversation with Richard Piltower. 

For example, his next door neighbor would hide from him every chance he got, the other neighbor would avoid him at all costs. Even if it meant they stay hidden in their respective houses for hours while "petty Piltower" as he was known in the neighborhood clipped his hedges and cut his grass meticulously.

Mr Schranz, his neighbor one door to the north, even risked a full blown heart attack not going to the ER when he felt pain in his chest and terrific heartburn while Piltower loitered out in front of their houses like a spider awaiting a fly.

Fortunately it passed after 6 hours.

Piltower dared not have two cup of his coffee, but did have toast. Each crunch seemed to him like the first time he ever had toasted rye bread. The taste almost overwhelmed him.

Piltower: Now now Richard, the nurse said it once, she said it a hundred times, these superized hyper sensations will settle. What's the alternative? Lose my mind and be a burden to my niece or the state?

Narrator: But it did cross Piltower's mind, while he may get accostomed to the heightened hyper sensitive feelings, would he ever find someone to talk at. (Even Piltower knew he talked at people- he couldn't help it).

 

 

 

Piltower panicked a bit. He knew it was no use to go out on his porch and hope to see either of his neighbors. There was no chance of that. He quickly made up a grocery list and ran to the store. 

He had to keep busy and there was that chatty cashier who always made small talk. He had to unload.

Let's see, I need sugar.

Act Two Scene Two 

Narrator: In the sugar and flour aisle at the grocery store, Mr Piltower stopped a housewife also shopping in that aisle.

The housewife was rather attractive and much younger than he.

Piltower: Excuse me Miss, do you buy this brand?

Shopper: Um, no.

Narrator: Normally Piltower would have recognized that women of her station in life were, you could say, wary of “creepy old men” and didn't give them the time of day. But he couldn't care less what age she was, he had to speak at someone.

Shopper: and it's Missus, “geepers creepers” and she pushed her cart quickly out of the flour and sugar aisle. 

Narrator: At the check out aisle, the normally talkative checkout girl was dealing with a long line and the younger girl in the service desk was doing nothing. Just as Piltower approached the cashier, ready to spew a rant about what was on his mind, the normally receptive cashier wanted to know why it took the service desk girl so long to come bag for her. 

 

 

This completely truncated Piltower's proposed verbal diarrhea on the rising prices for toothpaste among a million other things. 

With the long line behind him, he had no choice but be pushed and processed through and take his bag of groceries without so much as a word out of him aside from 

Cashier: Would you like your receipt?

Piltower: yes

Narrator: Back on his street, Piltower was driving along, talking to himself in the car. That's when he saw the finest sight he could possibly imagine seeing. His other neighbor from three doors down. 

 

Piltower: Eunice!!

Oh Eunice! Eunice Eunice.

 

Narrator: Tears came to his eyes. Eunice would talk to him forever, til the sun set and then beyond...and she never made any sense either.

Piltower slammed on the breaks. He couldn’t let this opportunity pass. He even rolled down the window and shouted. “Eunice!”

72 year old Eunice Carlson was going to her car for her last bag of groceries. The car behind Piltower’s in the street almost rear ended him because he slammed so hard on his breaks. 

Eunice: Rick, you better be more careful!

 

 

 

FX (Sound of car horn) 

 

Narrator: Piltower let out a moan of displeasure over the horn and slowly, methodically, on purpose and without any haste, pulled over to let the car finally pass.

If only he could channel that willpower to be calm, cool and collected all the time, like he did just then to to punish the driver behind him. He wouldn’t be having such a hard time with his new brain.

But the thought never crossed his mind!

Richard Piltower and Eunice Carlson began to chat by the trunk of her Toyota Camry. 

Eunice’s parents were born in Sweden. As hard a working couple as there were in America.Her roots always attracted Rick’s interest. His curiosity for his own family tree lead him to discover there was a hint of Swedish in him. Not much, maybe .0001 percent. But Rick heard Swedes were handy with things and honest and so he wanted to be associated with that. 

Then suddenly Piltower knew the conversation was not his cup of tea.  

Eunice: I haven't seen you in church lately Rick. 

The reading was quite profound. Did Jesus give Judas that morsel from the table at the Last Supper or hold up the morsel for any of the Apostles at the table to take? 

 

 

 

Narrator: Rick let out a sigh.

 

Eunice: Oh Rick, where has the time gone? Look at us, we are like two high school kids. I guess I better get going.

 

Narrator: In her whole life, Eunice never once ended a conversation with anyone to say she had to get going. She was a very kindly old maid who wouldn’t hurt a fly. And even if she had something to do or someplace to be she wasn’t about to stop chatting away. 

 

Narrator:  Piltower knew when Eunice brought up theology she was either ready to go…or continue talking for hours more. He sensed she was taking her leave of him. 

Piltower:  Eunice?

Eunice: Yes Rick?

Piltower: Have you ever been traumatized in your life?

Eunice: Oh yes Rick

Piltower: What happened?

 

Eunice: I used to watch my weight carefully in school. One day I was late for lunch at the school cafeteria. The little bins where the food was available were all emptied and the forks and spoons bins were too. I went back to ask the head cafeteria lady for a spoon. When she saw me in the kitchen (just a student) she got furious. The kitchen was off limits, that was her domain. 

 

 

She pulled her ugly head out of a giant oven and said to the woman stirring a giant pot of soup for dinner, “what’s wrong with her why is she back here?”

The worker near me thought I wanted silverware, but believe me, any plastic spoon would have done ! I just had a small container of apple sauce in my pocket. 

The bell rang by then and all the other students had gone. I returned to the cafeteria.

I stood there alone, famished in an empty cavernous cafeteria…

I had just a minute to eat something so I began eating the sauce in my pocket with my fingers!

Just as I brought it to my eager mouth and JUST THEN the MEAN cafeteria lady appeared to use the restroom!

She saw me eating with my hands and here I was a young girl very conscious of my weight, she looked me over carefully and as she passed by she let out the most hideous laughter I ever heard. 

I got sick to my stomach. 

 

I didn’t eat again for weeks until my mom took me to the hospital. They were all so worried about me. I never said a word about why I couldn’t eat,” Eunice said in her wilting kind of quivering timid voice. 

Piltower: Oh dear.

Narrator: Eunice's story would pull on any heart strings. For anyone else she'd go from old maid instantly to “benevolence” incarnate.

For Piltower it was different, he was merely setting Eunice up to ask HIM If he were traumatized. Didn’t she get that? 

She stood there ready to cry.

When with tears welling in her eyes (because she would never “get even” with any slight done to her) maybe waiting for a hug 

 

from Piltower whom she’d known for decades…Piltower got frustrated. 

He was not about to hug his old, unattractive neighbor Eunice, in public, in the street, knowing so many people are watching them from their front room windows. Especially when he expected to be asked if he were ever traumatized. 

Piltower: Oh Eunice! 

 

Act 3  Scene One

Narrator: Rick climbed back into his car and drove off. 

With Eunice literally in his rear view mirror, traumatized all over again by the conversation with Rick, and upset that Rick was upset with her.

The quart of milk he bought at the grocery long since went sour in the heat of his car. He didn't care that it was ruined but that he wasted $2.49 on it.

Piltower: Any moment you're going to be fine. You will calm right down and relax and this flood of images and memories will settle.

Narrator: There is a percentage of human beings who feel sensations differently, perhaps you could say, more acutely than the rest of mankind. Mostly women fall under this category but some men as well.

 

 

Loud equipment, crying babies, these noises strongly affect sentient types. More than others. (Some moms are adept at keeping their children happy and quiet, some are good at it just to keep them quiet). There are cases of men going to jail just to stop the wailing of the police siren. 

It would probably be better for that entire group if they did not undergo the memory enhancement chip implant as Rick had.

Now Rick, who normally saw the world as a callous soul and had empathy for no one, possessed no true feelings and found he had no self pity, had to defend himself with against an onslaught of memories. Good and Bad. 

He couldn't just say to himself, "boy I've been dealt a rough hand, maybe I need to talk to someone or have the chip implant reversed?

All the times Rick was neglected because he wasn't interested in sports, passed on a beer with guys for lecturing them on science, persecuted his attractive wife for nothing but that she consented to marry him, came back to him, haunting him.

He went inside his home and laid down on his bed. He began to lose himself in the most intensely colored day dreams he ever experienced.

Suddenly, he felt his stomach growl. He got up. It was midnight. He felt a compulsion to walk outside. There were three 

 

newspapers on the door step. Wednesday's, Thursday's and Friday's. Completely unawares, three days had gone by for Rick, lost in memories.

If he didn't report to his boss after 48 hours, he would be...fired.

Rick gasped.

He checked his mailbox. There was a letter from the hospital. Rick tore it open, letting the ripped envelope fall to the floor.

Dear Mr Piltower, it read... 

Pursuant to our agreement....etc. etc. 

It spelled out his obligations to prepay all chip maintenance. In this case, it came to $6,089.23 a month. Paid in advance or no impulses would be sent to the chip in his brain that stimulated Rick's memory.

Act Three Scene Two 

Narrator: Piltower walked slowly from the front door and collapsed on the leather couch in his living room. He was very hungry and the quart of milk in his fridge had gone sour. With puckered lips he poured the milk down the drain and that waste cast him into a kind of depression. Still famished, a little after Dawn 

he called work. 

Pilltower : (mumbling as phone is dialing) They never appreciated me…

 

 

 

Narrator: this was Rick’s mantra his whole 40 years with the company. Everyone there was keenly aware Rick felt unappreciated. 

No one wanted to be around him for any length of time. Though the salary was competitive, and it paid for his fine suits of clothes and fancy shoes and fedora and provided child support and maintenance of his ex-wife Rick never felt he was paid enough and he was probably right.

Piltower: was Mr Spock appreciated?

Was Tuvok appreciated? How about even Mr Sulu??

I set up routines and subroutines at this job they will be used long after I’m …(pause) gone.

Voice: Voyager Solutions can I help you ?

Piltower : Hi Reilly this is Piltower let me talk to Jay

Voice: Mr Piltower ?

Are you ok ?

It’s already Wednesday and we haven’t seen you since Friday 

Piltower: get Jay on the phone Reilly!

Voice: one moment please 

Jay: Rick where are you ?

Piltower: I’m home Jay. 

This new implant, this chip

Oh dear it’s thrown me for a whollup. 

Jay: I see. Rick I have bad news for you .

You haven’t contacted us in over 72 hours and I will have to write up a report.

I mean…

Piltower: I know you have to set up an investigation.

 

 

Jay: I’m new to this and I need to proceed according to the book. 

Piltower: I knew when French retired I’d lose the little respect I had left around there. French would never do this to me.

I’ll be in today 

Jay: (senses Ricks annoying hostility)…if you come in today I’ll have to ask you to clean out your desk. 

Narrator: Now he would never be able to pay for the first treatment from the hospital.

Piltower: sighs deeply and in echo the world doesn’t appreciate me…I do so much good for the world  People think ‘goody two shoes’ are suckers. Yes if there’s a fire or flood and you risk your life helping …or even saving a cat in a tree, you’re the paladin, but next day it’s all forgotten. 

…if you help others routinely… you’re a chump in the eyes of the world. 

Narrator: With the chip implant wearing off, Piltower began to relax. He no longer got the sensations, the magical memories he was getting. 

They all began to fade as did his recollection of where he put his car keys.

Slowly everything returned to the way it was a couple of weeks before. 

Funny, at one point he was considering ordering a stenographer to come to his home and recant all his memories to her to write down for posterity. To capture all the memories he was feeling so strongly due to the implant. Now he couldn’t even recall thinking that. 

 

No of course not, and how could he ever pay her anyway…being unemployed.

 

Epilogue 

 

Narrator: Piltower couldn’t have worked any longer even if the “memory” chip implanted in his brain were stimulated or weren’t. Aluminum and other pollutants in our air and food cause Alzheimer’s. Though there are mineral supplements that mitigate the effects, seems someone wants us to forget as we age and our kids not to be able to ask us …about the past. When we were freer perhaps. Piltower got ok’d to be on the US version of the dole as they call it in the UK. He calmed down so much from the events we relate in this story that anyone who knew him would not recognize him. 

He started indulging in a long held passion for Chinese buffets. It was a love he often fought before this station in his life. He turned to comfort foods vs, and in place of, fighting back his enemies. He added a dozen pounds in a month. 

The orneriness he possessed in spades was gone. Overnight he started becoming prey for predators he dodged so skillfully before or whom he could once frighten off so easily.

The wonder children feel for a fishing hole or a GI Joe or Barbie doll was for him of a different sort of wonder. 

 19

 

He wondered about his future and then of course forgot his past entirely.

Eventually Pillower went to 800 wing at the county nursing home. That was for severely disabled. They locked the wing at night. 

Richard Piltower lived in the 800 wing with people much older than him. He aged rapidly there. His nurses said a year in a day. No one ever visited him in the home. Either they were too afraid or too vindictive. 

He died of a heart attack that year. 

 

Music: Thin Lizzy "I Don't Want to Forget How to Jive"