Friday 21st March 2003
Professor Kartoffeltasche sat upright and wiped his spectacles with a trembling hand. He had been trying unsuccessfully for an hour now. If he could not get it right soon, he would be obliged to get one of his students to do it, but he had no desire to do that. Not this time. This was his crowning glory, the feat he had been waiting all his life to achieve. He would do it on his own, without help.
The clock on the wall clicked, as it did twice a minute. Without looking around, he knew that it was four minutes before nine. The clock had been clicking all day and, subconsciously, he had been keeping track of the passing hours, marking the time of his own inadequacy.
He checked his notebook one final time and took up the pipette to give it another try. Through the eyepiece of the microscope, the needle vibrated ludicrously, shooting randomly in and out of the field of view.
Kartoffeltasche tried holding his breath, but succeeded only in causing his vision to swim. He blinked a couple of times and was astonished, when he could see clearly again, to observe that the needle had rather neatly penetrated the cell and was sitting motionless in the dead centre of the petri dish. He took a deep breath and depressed the plunger.
It was done. His life's work was complete. He labelled the petri dish and popped it into the fridge where one of his students would find it and care for it.
The elderly professor gathered all his notes and placed them in a metal wastepaper basket. From his filing cabinet, he extricated a sealed envelope and dropped that in the bin as well. Amongst the bottles of chemicals, he located some ethanol and poured it over the papers, finally igniting the whole mass with a Bunsen burner.
He stood and watched dispassionately as all the evidence of his work was destroyed in a matter of seconds. Then he pulled on his coat and went home to his wife.
Tuesday 1st August 2006
The man from Heuerpolitiken was starting to scare the nurse. Not only was he anachronistically adorned with various ostentatious Nazi trinkets, but he had been standing motionless for almost an hour now, just staring through the one-way glass, tutting to himself occasionally.
The other side of the window, the little boy obliviously hammered two toy cars together.
The man turned to the nurse. "He is not blond," he murmured, dangerously. "Why is he not blond? Why has he brown hair and eyes?"
The terrified nurse discovered her mouth was completely dry, so rather than say anything at all, she handed over the dossier. He inspected it.
"Where are all the experimental papers?" he asked. "Where is the genome map that Professor Kartoffeltasche created?"
"He burned it," she squeaked. "He burned everything, just before he died."
The Nazi turned back to the window, his floor-length black leather coat swirling dramatically as he did so. "This is no good to us," he said. "We paid the professor to create the perfect human being. This child is... flawed." He pulled his gloves on and strode to the door. “Good day," he said.
"Wait!" called the nurse, finally finding her voice. "What shall we do with him?"
"Do what you will, I do not care," he replied, without hesitating.
In the soundproof room, the boy patiently amputated an Action Man.
Tuesday 16th May 2017
"Erik," his mother called. "Your dinner is ready."
Hilde was not, of course, his real mother. He knew he had been adopted. He had been a test tube baby, created in a lab and carried by a surrogate mother who cared only for the cash and not for the burgeoning life inside her.
She was not his real mother, but she felt like it. He loved her and she loved him back, unconditionally, as only a mother can. When he came in from the garden, his father did not look up, but she smiled at him as he sat down at his usual place. He looked so healthy, so happy, so... handsome? He was growing up so fast. His voice was becoming scratchier; it would break any day now. She had bought him some razors recently and he had been experimenting with them, with no discernible effect other than some painful-looking cuts to the chin.
"Where is that boy?" his father asked, irritated.
"I'm here, Papa," he said, respectfully, but still he did not put the newspaper down.
Hilde sat down and began to eat. Her husband glanced over the top of the pages at her.
"Are we not going to wait for Erik?" he asked, impatiently.
Hilde and Erik exchanged a glance. "He's already here, Georg," she said.
Father sighed and folded the paper. "Isn't he going to join us at the table today?" he asked.
Erik frowned. "I'm right here, Papa," he called across the table. There was a pregnant pause.
"Well?" asked Georg at last.
Hilde was starting to worry. It was a gorgeous summer evening and the kitchen was brightly lit by the glorious sunshine. Erik was sitting immediately opposite his father, at a distance of not more than a metre. She reached over and laid her hand tenderly on Georg's shoulder.
"Are you feeling ill, dear?" she asked.
"Never better," he snapped back.
She looked helplessly at her son, who just shrugged and carried on with his dinner. His father had occasional mood swings; perhaps this was just one of those.
Wednesday 17th May 2017
At school, Erik was pretty average. His exam results were exactly in the middle of his year group. He was quite good at everything but excelled at nothing. He had many friends and a not inconsiderable number of enemies. He had never been in trouble but nor had he ever been singled out for special praise.
Today, though: today was different.
At first, he thought simply that he must have done something to offend his friends. His best mate, Hans, completely ignored him on the bus; passing up the aisle and sitting somewhere near the back with someone else.
That was not it, though; after a while, sitting on his own on the journey to school, he suddenly noticed that people were staring. Specifically, that the some of the girls near the front of the bus kept turning around and giggling. He wondered briefly if he had accidentally left his trousers undone or something, but a quick tactile foray revealed that this was not the case.
At school, the situation got more bizarre still. The first lesson was maths, a subject that he enjoyed; yet, despite putting his hand up several times, his teacher, Herr Flugschwein, steadfastly ignored him to answer any problems. In marked contrast, in geography, Fraulein von Katzenfraue repeatedly picked him to answer nearly every question throughout the entire lesson.
When he arrived home that evening, he immediately sought his mother's advice.
"Mama, can I ask you a question? It's about girls."
She smiled at him warmly. She had been right about him growing up.
"I think that is the sort of question you should ask your father," she said, gently.
"No, Mama. I think... I think there is something wrong with me."
"Whatever do you mean, Erik?" she asked, suddenly concerned.
He told her about his day and reminded her of the events of yesterday evening. At first, she wanted to laugh it off as a teenager's paranoia, but she had herself been greatly troubled by her husband's strange behaviour at the dinner table.
Tuesday 23rd May 2017
Events at school grew steadily worse. Most of his male friends did not acknowledge his presence, while nearly all of the girls continued to act very oddly whenever he was around. Half a dozen of them had even asked him out. This was all a bit much for Erik; no girl had ever shown any interest in him before, tending to go for the taller, more striking, slightly older boys in the form one or two years above. Suddenly to receive six offers of dates was far beyond the realm of his very limited experience of the fairer sex.
Even more odd was their persistence, even after several polite rejections. He kept finding little love notes stuffed into his bag or pocket when he was not looking.
Worse still, many of his female teachers, including his fearsome history teacher Frau Muller, were spending lessons perched on the edge of his desk and smiling giddily at him. Several had asked him to stay behind after lessons, only to tell him how wonderful his work was, which was patently false.
Several times, he tried to have it out with his friends, to see what it was that was upsetting them; but they continued to ignore him, sidestepping him in the corridor or putting the phone down without speaking to him. Even Hans, who had been his best friend for years, seemed to stare straight through him.
Most worryingly of all, his father had not spoken to him in a week. He repeatedly said things like, "Where has that boy got to now?" even when Erik was standing right before him.
By a series of experiments, aided and abetted by his mother, Erik began to realise that every adult man, that is, everyone at his home and school past puberty, was ignoring him, whilst every adult woman was suffering increasingly lustful urges towards him.
Hilde did not know what to do. She rightly surmised that their family doctor would be unable to help, for their family doctor was a man.
The final straw came when she received a letter from Erik's maths teacher, Herr Flugschwein, asking why her son had not been attending lessons. Hilde decided to do something she had vowed she never would: she telephoned the clinic where Erik had been conceived.
Thursday 29th June 2017
Erik had suffered the most excruciating month of his life. The doctors at the clinic had initially refused to take him seriously; and who could blame them, for whoever heard of a boy who disappeared? So Erik had returned to school, where he was constantly harassed by the girls and resolutely ignored by the boys. His home life was worse yet: his parents, each unable to accept that the other was telling the truth about their adoptive son's whereabouts, had parted on bad terms after many years of happy marriage.
This living hell went on until he could take it no longer and returned to the clinic, refusing to leave until he had received some answers. Of course, most of the doctors ignored this plea, as they ignored him. Fortunately one, probably the most brilliant female geneticist Germany had ever seen, took an interest in this most highly unusual case.
Hilde explained all about how Erik had been born of an experiment at the clinic but then rejected at the last moment because something had, apparently, gone wrong. Dr. Mensch listened attentively; the experiment had been well before her time at the clinic, but she was sure that there must be records of the procedure somewhere.
She was correct, although it took some considerable effort to unearth them. In this regard, she was helped by a young computer technician. He found masses of data relating to Erik's conception and birth on an old backup tape from many years earlier.
Dr. Mensch studied the notes and took samples of Erik's DNA but could scarcely believe what she found. She conducted trials, involving men and women of different ages who were asked to examine photographs of Erik and describe what they saw. Playing another hunch, she took the photographs around Berlin's underground artistic community and asked their opinions as well.
Finally, she reached a conclusion every bit as fantastic as the problem itself.
Thursday 28th February 2002
The neo-Nazi from Heuerpolitiken had, so far, visited Professor Kartoffeltasche three times without introducing himself by name. Today would be his last visit. He handed the professor a wedge of banknotes big enough to prop open a door.
"We are understood, then?" he asked, fixing the older man with an intimidating pair of unblinking, steely grey eyes.
Kartoffeltasche rifled through the notes and nodded. "It will be done as you asked," he lied.
Ordinarily, Kartoffeltasche would have been terrified of getting involved with such an extremist political organisation, but then, he knew something that the Nazi did not: he would not live long enough to suffer retribution at their hands after he ripped them off. Besides, the money would come in handy for his wife, after he died. It would pay a few of the funeral expenses, at the very least.
The Nazi stood and swirled his leather coat absurdly, unaware that he looked completely ridiculous in his parody of a fascist secret serviceman. "Goodbye, Herr professor," he said, with a thin smile.
When he was safely out of the building, Kartoffeltasche took the instructions that he had been left and sealed them in a brown envelope. He did not need them. He knew exactly what they demanded and, besides, he was planning to ignore them.
The Nazi had asked him to design the perfect human being. The professor could not accept that task. For a start, it was far too easy; just take all the dominant genes and jiggle them around in a manner that would end up being pleasing to the eye.
No, what Kartoffeltasche had in mind was a far greater challenge and would happily serve a joint purpose: it would really, really annoy the Heuerpolitiken people. He would create the average human being. This would be no elite Aryan superman; this would be the ultimate representative of all the people of the world. He would not be the fascist ideal; he would be the liberal ideal. Kartoffeltasche chuckled quietly to himself. This would be fantastic.
Thursday 10th August 2017
Erik listened to all this in silence. He certainly did not feel fantastic. He felt completely miserable. It was the middle of the school holiday and he had stayed indoors the whole time, too scared and too tired to venture out.
Dr. Mensch started to scoop up her papers.
"Wait!" Hilde cried. "You have told us where Erik comes from, but you have not told us why this has happened to him."
Dr. Mensch had rather been hoping, albeit without a high probability, that she would not be asked this question.
"It is a matter of speculation," she said. "I do not have all the answers for which you search. However, I do have an idea."
She paused, seeking the correct manner to explain Erik's predicament, without sounding cruel.
"The world has never seen a boy who is so completely average," she began. "At school, this has served him well, so far. He is a pleasant boy who gets on well and without fuss; he is not exceptional but he is entirely adequate. His test scores sit exactly on the line of the national average in every single subject. This fact alone should have shown us that Erik is a very unusual boy.
"As soon as he hit puberty, the very fact that he is so completely average has had a strange effect. As we have seen, all men – or at least, all heterosexual men – seem to ignore him. This is not Erik's fault but nor is it the fault of the other men; it is entirely genetic. Adult men are genetically programmed to ignore Erik, because he is so average."
She struggled to find an example. There was a framed photograph on the wall of her office, to which she directed their attention.
"What do you see in this picture?" she asked.
Hilde examined it. "It is a man on a boat," she said.
"What else?"
"There is a city on the shore in the background," she continued.
"What else?"
Erik peered at it. "There is a bird flying in the sky," he added.
"What else?"
Hilde shook her head. "There is nothing else," she said.
"So you see the boat, the city, the man and the bird," Dr. Mensch said. "But even when I ask you to tell me what else you see, you see nothing. Yet there is an element in the picture that you did not mention; you did not tell me about the sea on which the boat is floating."
"But that was so obvious," Hilde said. "That goes without saying."
"Of course, you saw the boat and you knew that it was floating, so you completely ignored the sea. This is precisely what is happening with Erik. Men see him but their brains tell them to ignore him. He is so average that they do not even register that he is a person that should be communicated with as such. He is more like a piece of furniture or, perhaps, something even more mundane, such as a brick or a floor tile."
She leaned forwards. "Men are not very good at observation," she said. "They only notice things that are out of the ordinary. Erik... Erik is completely ordinary, in every single respect.
"Now, you will want to know about the other situation, the way in which most women seem to find Erik sexually irresistible. If I were to be truthful with you, then I would have to admit that I myself, despite my advancing years, find him a very attractive youth, even if I am at an immediate loss to describe precisely why. Still, we all know that a woman's heart is a deep ocean of mystery, so who can explain these feelings?
"Here are my thoughts on this matter. Women are genetically programmed to seek a reproductive partner that will pass on good quality genes to her offspring. We might assume this means that the most intelligent, strongest, best-looking boy would be the most desirable. Erik proves that this is not the case; far from it. It would appear that women are programmed to be attracted to the human average in each category.
"Perhaps excessive strength or intelligence are not as sought after as we thought; maybe women feel threatened by these attributes. I do not know all the answers. I would, however, relish the opportunity to study them in more depth. Maybe I could write a paper on your most fascinating case?"
Dr. Mensch poured herself a glass of water and took a sip. It was not as chilled and refreshing as it had been at the beginning of the meeting, so she poured herself a second glass, while Erik and Hilde digested this information.
"But what shall we do?" Hilde wailed. "We cannot carry on this way."
Erik rose to leave. "It is alright, Mama," he said gently. "I know exactly what to do."
Monday 4th September 2017
It was the beginning of a new school year. The loneliest boy in the world shuffled onto the bus, hanging his head low, trying to disappear from view. Too soon, he was spotted.
"Erik!" the girls screamed. "Sit here! Sit next to me!"
"Where have you been all summer?" they called; and they wolf-whistled.
Slowly, he raised his head to face them.
The bus became silent. Everyone, boys and girls, stared at him. Some of the girls sank down in their seats and started whispering to each other. He sat down on his own.
At the next stop, Hans boarded and sat down next to him. "What happened to you?" he asked.
Erik shook his head. "An accident," he said.
Hans examined the long scar that ran all the way from Erik's left temple, across his left eye, diagonally down across his right cheek. "It must have been nasty," he said, sympathetically.
"I had to miss a lot of school," said Erik, forlornly. "And I have missed my friends. But no more. Everything is alright, now."