The Douglas Study of Human Greatness

Sitting on the toilet, bored out of his mind, Mickey scrolled on his phone mindlessly. His forearms were red from the weight of his body leaning on his legs as he squat; his eyes were glazed over. He couldn’t care less what he was even looking at, he was just bored. And partly out of habit, Mickey scrolled whenever he was on the toilet.

He took a slow inhale and a slow exhale, like that of one asleep, because Mickey might as well be, if this was all he was going to do with his day. He’d been laid off about three months ago and usually a sensible, eager, responsible man would have been proactive in his hunt for a new job, let alone apply for one. But instead Mickey enjoyed passive checks from the EDD and managed to rearrange his already mundane lifestyle to budget for less income and more free time. Though this was what he budgeted for. Mindless scrolling on the toilet.

Mickey heard a growing whoosh sound from outside. It suddenly began shaking the apartment he was in. A giant claw burst through the ceiling and reached for Mickey. Mickey had the decency to pull up his pants but it seemed to slip his mind that he should also try and escape, as the giant claw snatched Mickey and began pulling him up in the sky. He flailed around helplessly, finally looking up and spotting – for lack of a better word – a UFO reeling him in. The claw retracted inside the bottom of the spaceship and closed him inside.

Before the claw let him go, robotic arms gripped each of Mickey’s limbs and a fifth arm clamped around his waist. Together the arms pulled him onto a chair, and to Mickey’s eyes looked like an operational chair. Which he was probably right as the tools and gels that were scattered around the room looked similar enough to surgical tools.

The chair cuffed him, shooting clamps around his wrists and ankles, and one last belt looped around his waist, locking him in the chair. Mickey was too stunned to even attempt to wiggle free; which was fine because clearly he wasn’t going to be able to.

The door in front of him slid up and a bright true-green ball, gelatinous in texture, began floating towards him. It had no legs but it did have two long, lanky arms. And for some reason it wore a trilby hat.

“Alright,” the green alien ball said very normally. Its entire face – which was the entirety of the ball – was its mouth, with white and healthy teeth. “I know you’re probably a little scared...”

The green alien ball, despite having no eyes, paused to look in Mickey’s direction. Mickey panicked as he waited for the alien to continue. Though the alien seemingly relished in the awkward silence.

“I am scared,” Mickey agreed. “I want to go home.”

“Okay.” The alien nodded his head – which was the entirety of the ball.

“Are… were you telling me something?”

“Telling you what?”

“It sounded like you were saying something.”

“Like what?”

“You were telling me that you know I’m probably scared.”

“Oh!” the alien clapped his hands together, which only had two fingers and a thumb each. “Oh! Yep! Yeah, I bet you’re scared, huh?”

“Yes…?”

“Sucks.” The alien minded his own business as he floated over to the counter to Mickey’s left and grabbed a clipboard and pen.

“Of all the inventions you have on earth, this is my favorite,” he waved the clipboard at Mickey.

“The… the clipboard.”

“One hundred percent. It is, to me, an incredible example of laziness. Can’t even bother to put down a sheet of paper on a hard surface to write what you’d like—no, you’re not going anywhere, you’re not leaving to do that. So you invented the most boring piece of material with a clip at the top so, god forbid, you might have to get up. But here’s the thing. I love it! It’s brilliant! You know why? Because I don’t have to get up now! It’s extremely useful! All of your inventions crack me up because when it’s boiled down, the purpose of your inventions is to do less. Love it. You guys are a riot.”

The alien sighed amusedly and clicked open the pen and filled in basic information at the header of the paper. Mickey looked around in confusion, still with a great sense of fear, which was easily refueled when he looked at himself and was reminded his body was sprawled out and bounded by robot handcuffs.

“Oookaaay,” the alien finished the last of his basic information and presumably looked up at Mickey. “Hi.” The alien patiently waited for Mickey to reply.

“Hi…”

“What is your name?”

“Mickey…”

“Great. My name is Douglas.”

“Your name is Douglas?”

Douglas set down the pen on the clipboard in frustration. “Why does everyone ask me that?”

“I thought your name might have been—”

“You expected my name to be something like Zlorp or Meef, huh? Is that what you thought?”

“Actually, yes.”

Douglas raised his voice. “That is, without a doubt, the most xenophobic and racist thing I have ever heard. Is my name too normal for you? No, you never expected to be tied up by a guy named Douglas, did you? Well get comfy because I will drag this out as long as I need to, bucko.”

Douglas held his breath and exhaled slowly, calming himself down. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I just… I hate that, you know? Bad first impressions. Ugh. Sorry, I’ve had that on my chest for a while now.”

“That’s… that’s okay…” Mickey said awkwardly.

“Thank you. I really do appreciate you saying that. Phew! Alright, hey. Let’s start over, huh? We got off on the wrong foot, why don’t we take this from the top? Hi.” Douglas gestured for Mickey to reply.

“Hi.”

“What is your name?”

“Mickey.”

“Hello, Mickey. It is very nice to meet you. My name is Douglas.”

“Hi, Douglas.”

“Excellent!” Douglas lifted his hands in celebration. “Look what can happen when we treat each other with kindness, huh? Outstanding.”

“Douglas,” Mickey interrupted. “What exactly am I doing here? Why did you abduct me?”

“Ah. Yes. Yes, yes yes…” Douglas flipped his paper over and looked at the back. He then flipped it back to the front and carefully reclipped it to the clipboard. “Ah, to gut and dissect your head so we can study your braaaiiin,” he droned as he confirmed with his notes. “Yep. Brain dissection.”

“You’re going to kill me?!” Mickey shouted.

“Sorta, yeah,” Douglas gestured in the air to find the right wording. “We aren’t… killing you, per say. Rather, taking your life… uh… indefinitely.”

“Indefinitely?”

“Well it’s possible that in a few years we’d have the technology to resurrect you! God knows you don’t have that potential! So, yes, Mickey. Indefinitely.”

“Why me?” Mickey pleaded. “My brain isn’t all that great. I’m not that smart! When you abducted me—”

“Please don’t say the word abducted, it makes me feel malicious,” Douglas politely requested.

“—when you kidnapped me,” Mickey continued.

"Not better."

“I was just sitting on the toilet! I wasn’t doing anything! I’m jobless, I’ve been jobless for months now, living off unemployment checks. I’m not who you want, I’m not worth it.”

Douglas slowly nodded. “Yeah, sooo that’s why we chose you.”

“What?!”

“We want to compare great minds to the… well… I can’t think of a better word, honestly, so we want to compare the great minds to the stupid ones.”

“That doesn’t make sense!” Mickey cried out.

“It makes total sense! How are you different than someone who has succeeded in life, hm? You’re both human, you’re both the same species; so why, exactly, does one of you achieve greatness, by your society’s opinion, and others, such as yourself, fail every day in an embarrassing way?”

“Some people have it easier than others! Some people have different dreams – I never said I was failure, by the way!”

“You didn’t need to, the proof is in the pudding—I love that idiom by the way. Mickey, what the hell does that even mean? It’s incredible. The proof is in the pudding. Yet somehow it makes total sense. Love it.”

“Can we go back to part about you killing me because you think I’m stupid?” Mickey demanded.

“Oh, sure. What’s up?”

“Um… don’t!”

“Yeeeaaah… nooo. You see,” Douglas took off his trilby hat and placed it on one of the counters. “There’s got to be an explanation for why someone such as yourself has accomplished so little. You’re a bum, Mickey—and, look, I’m not shaming you one bit. But you’re a bum. A lazy, dead-beat, unpassionate, boring, bum. And there’s no shame in that.”

“Clearly,” Mickey rolled his eyes.

“However, there must be something in your brain that’s preventing you from being great. Otherwise… what, you just choose not to be? You don’t feel like being amazing? Yeah, okay, ‘cuz that makes total sense.”

“I don’t,” Mickey said solemnly.

“As if someone would just see their potential and say no thanks—wait, what?” Douglas floated closer to Mickey. “You… you don’t want to be great?”

“I do want to be great, I’ve just never… thought I could be.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone thinks I’m nothing. They think I’m wasting my life away. And now even you think so.” Mickey looked away in shame.

“Ohhh, Mickey,” Douglas put his jelly hand on Mickey’s knee. “I mean, yeah, you are, but what’s making you stop achieving greatness? Can’t you just… I don’t know… start being great? Right now?

“How? What do I do?”

Douglas pondered for a moment and then floated back the counter, where he set down his clipboard. “I’ve had a change of heart, Mickey. Tell you what. I’m going to let you go back home, okay? But we’re going to make a deal. In a few months I’m going to check in on you and see how you’re doing. I want to hear of all that you’re working on—they don’t have to be CEO level of accomplishments in just a few months, but progress. Deal?”

“Deal. Thank you.”

“If you still haven’t done anything, Mickey, I will cut open your skull without even thinking twice. No pressure, though.”

Mickey smiled as the cuffs released him from the chair.

The giant claw descended from the spaceship and returned Mickey to the toilet. Mickey look around and took in the reality of his life. It was being wasted, but it wasn’t too late to make a change. He quickly hobbled over to his laptop and began applying to jobs.

Douglas walked through the halls of the spaceship and turned a corner where he entered a room full of cubicles. He sat at his desk and turned on what we would understand to be a computer, though vastly superior to anything we’ve known.

Another ball-like alien without legs leaned back and looked at Douglas. This alien was orange.

“Hey, Douglas! How’d it go?”

“Oh, hey, Zlorp. It went… different than I expected.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“I think good.”

“In what way?”

“Well, I’ve always assumed that there must be something wrong with a human if they fail to achieve greatness. It only made sense to me that there must be something cranially wrong with them, they wouldn’t just stop trying to be great—that seemed impossible.”

“Of course,” Zlorp concurred. “Everyone wants to be great.”

“Except for this,” Douglas held up his finger. “Sometimes they’re beaten down emotionally that they no longer believe they can be great. My subject told me that everyone has told him his whole life he’s been wasting it away; and whether it was true or not, if you hear something enough times, you’ll believe it. I’m beginning to conclude that greatness isn’t inherent, it comes from the belief that they can be great. And that can come from someone else telling them so. Almost as if anybody can be great.”

“So what’d you do?”

“I let me go. Gave him another shot to prove it.”

“That’s really noble of you, Douglas,” Zlorp said proudly.

“Thanks, Zlorp.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Then I’m cutting open his head.”

“Good.”