History Lesson

Watson gets data for his dissertation.

approximately 1200 words

History Lesson

Max Griffin

         You're going to think I'm just making things up, or maybe that I'm crazy, but I've got to warn people about this before it's too late.

         It all started a week ago when I unboxed my new laptop. You know how that goes. Endless boxes-in-boxes, all covered in impossible-to-get-off shrink wrap. This started the same way. It was only later, after I'd used some of the advanced AI features, that I began to realize the danger.

         Thing is, I really needed those AI features. My PhD dissertation on the psychopathology of Samuel Pepys had bogged down. I'm mean, the guy was clearly crazy, right? In a 1669 entry in his diary, he gloats over kissing the frigging corpse of Catherine de Valois, Henry V's Queen. She'd been dead for like two centuries. How creepy is that? I'll tell you how creepy. The kiss was his birthday present to himself, and he committed this act of necrophilia in front of his wife and servants. 

         He was obviously a narcissist, too. He goes on and on about celebrating his own birthdays but doesn't once bother to mention his wife's. I guess there were no birthday cakes or necrophiliac kisses for her. Then there was the time he buried his most prized treasures to save them from the Great Fire. You think that's not crazy? What would you think if I told you his treasures included a wheel of Parmesan cheese? 

         He was also an embezzler who weaseled his way out of the Tower of London even though in his diary he admits he was guilty. He's even more or less bragging about it, in his usual sneering, upper-crust way. I guess smarmy, rich guys have been getting away with crap since before forever.

         Anyway, despite the obvious evidence, my PhD advisory committee wasn't buying it. The outside member, Frau Doktor Hausdorff, had squeezed up her fish-face and sneered, "Really, Mr. Watson. It's impossible to apply the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual to behaviors based on a mere diary. These are complex, nuanced things. You have to interview the patient, face-to-face, to do that." 

         I knew it was a mistake to put her on my committee, but my advisor had insisted. "If you're going to write about psychopathology, you have to have a psychologist on your committee," he'd pronounced. And now she was insisting I interview someone who died in 1703. Talk about psychopathology.

         Then I saw the ad on the back cover of the Journal of Psychohistory. It promised AI tools that brought historical figures to life. Hear Lincoln telling dirty jokes, it said. Smell Marilyn's perfume while JFK whispers sweet nothings in her ear. All for the low cost of $2949.99. Pricey for a laptop, but not if it did what they promised.

         So, I ordered one, charging it to my credit card. If it worked as promised, I'd interview that creep Pepys face-to-face. I could even give him ink blot tests or whatever old fish-face would accept in order get a "proper" diagnosis. It would be worth the money to finally be able to defend my dissertation and get my degree. I'd only been working on the blasted thing for over twenty years. 

         If only I knew then what I know now.

         Anyway, my new laptop finally arrived. The unboxing was more complicated than usual, since it included setting up a holographic projector and a ScentZone 1000. The adhole flyer for the latter claimed that it would "faithfully reproduce the atmosphere of any era between 1000 BCE and the present." Whatever. The main thing was to interview Pepys in all his whack-a-doodle wonder.

         The software's menu was clear. I didn't even have to read the manual. All I had to do was type in a name and a date, and the AI software would do the rest. I entered "Samuel Pepys,"  August 16, 1665, sat back, and waited.

         The screen showed that little whirly-gig thing and flashed "WORKING." Then an empty bar appeared. The left-hand bits at the end filled in and it read "1% done." 

         There it sat for at least a minute before it eventually changed to "2% done." 

         Maybe I should have spent the extra thousand bucks for the faster processor. I went back and tore the shrink-wrap off the instruction manual. Sure enough, the manual said the simulations could take as long as two hours to initiate.

         Well, I'd waited twenty years for this moment. Another two hours would be a piece of cake.

         Two hours was plenty of time for lots of things. I could clean up my crappy room, for example. But I could have done that last month if empty pizza boxes, dirty underwear, and crushed cans of Doctor P really bothered me. Maybe I should change the sheets on my bed, but they'd also been good enough for the last couple months. 

         Or I could get high. 

         That sounded way better. Smoking some whiz was the perfect way to prepare for interviewing a seventeenth-century sociopath.

         Two hours later, a prim, nasal voice woke me from where I'd passed out on my bed. "I say, good chap, what is this place?" An overweight dandy, wearing a frilly waistcoat, a powdered wig, and holding a lace handkerchief to his nose stood next to my new laptop.

         The simulation had finished, and Pepys had arrived, in all his glory.

         In all his putrescent glory, that is. I wrinkled my nose at what smelled like perfume-scented horseshit. I could swear there were even gnats or fleas flitting around him. Bathing in the seventeenth century was at best a hit-or-miss event, even for the rich and powerful, and Pepys stank like a West Viriginia outhouse. Apparently the ScentZone 1000 had worked its magic. Awesome.

         I spent the next couple of hours administering standard tests for psychopathy, the TripM test and the ICU inventory. Sure enough, his scores were off the scale. Same with the revised Hare Psychopathy Checklist. I had the evidence that old fish-face Hausdorff demanded. It was worth having my room stink like death warmed-over to get it, or so I thought at the time.

         Now I wonder. I've spent the last week writing up my results and getting ready for the next meeting of my committee. It was tough, because I'd picked up a bug somewhere. A couple of days after I sent the AI version of the malodorous Pepys back to the electronic netherworld, I'd started running a fever and having chills. This morning, my armpits and crotch started to swell up. By noon, they'd sprouted apple-sized bulbs that hurt like hell.

         I got to thinking about what the ScentZone 1000 was supposed to do: reproduce the atmosphere of the era. I thought that just meant, you know, like the smell. But now I wonder.

         Maybe invoking Pepys and the atmosphere of London during the Great Plague wasn't such a good idea. 

         One of those bulbs in my armpit just burst, and now my sheets are blood-soaked. It's probably too late for me. It might be too late for you, too. No one is immune to the plague in 2024, and no one is looking for it, either. I only hope that whoever finds my body reads this before it's too late for them. And for everyone else.

         

         


         
                                       
Author's note.
The narrator in this story is inspired in part by the hapless Slackenerny in https://phdcomics.com/comics.php.  I'd thought about using his name instead of Watson, but the reference seemed too obscure.  I settled on Sherlock's physcian sidekick instead.