Chapter 6: Wilbur

To transport Wilbur, Alfred had to take himself back to the other world of course. It was unthinkable to meddle with Wilbur's life without consulting with him beforehand.

"But he will come, I am certain of that. No matter how long it takes us to set it all up, I will only be gone from here for five minutes. And then we will both be down at the beach. But you wait up here, we will make our own time."

He went into the cave to boot up his laptop, muttering softly. I just pottered about outside, tidying up a few things. When I happened to glance into the cave, Alfred was gone. On the monitor a progress bar was pulsing, moving but slowly.

I found it frustrating to try and analyse my current mental state. We had been so carefree after our healing and we got along so famously. Alfred was immensely happy to discover that I had a mad streak in my personality as well. We indulged in long silences when we would be sitting in the cave, reading whatever book appealed to us, often sharing especially well-phrased sentences or deep thoughts. We exchanged our views on a multitude of topics, finding ourselves in close sync on a lot of them, even though I found out and accepted early enough that there was no way for me to ever understand the complex physics of our adventure. So why my severe reaction to his mishap with the knife? After all, he didn't skewer himself onto it on purpose.

Ruminating, I realised how close I had been to becoming marooned on the island. But this wouldn't have been such a tragedy, since I had told all and sundry often enough that I was ready to shuffle off from the here to the wherever any time. So why then was I so very pissed off when he inadvertently attempted the same?

How stupid can one get? The obvious answer had been staring me in the face for so long that I entertained serious doubts about my sanity for not seeing it: I had grown extraordinarily fond of the little runt. He had become a true friend, my brother.

As soon as I accepted this profound truth, peace of mind was with me once more but I would certainly let him have a piece of the same and kick his scrawny tail for scaring the shit out of me, knowing at the same time that once more all was well on the island: already I missed the reckless nutter.

I got up to kindle a weed while waiting and sat down next to my cascade, under my tree, done with worrying — for now at least — and when I finally heard some voices I ambled up to meet the two of them.

Wilbur was not well, that much was obvious on first sight. As they struggled up the last few metres I ran forward to meet them and took Wilbur's left arm over my shoulder, since he was hanging on to Alfred already. We virtually carried him between us till we could lay him down gently on one of the three beds — yes, Alfred had been at it once more.

Without hesitation I took half a glass of liquid from the second pool, splashed in some multi-vitamin juice and topped it up liberally with cognac.

"Welcome on our island, Wilbur. Drink this slowly. It should put hair on your chest again."

"Thanks, Berthold, thanks," he wheezed. "But I would prefer to have a bit more hair on top, don't you agree?"

Truth be told, he was completely bald upstairs, the epitome of an egghead, yet he had a kindly mischievous face and even tired as he was he could not hide the twinkle in his eyes.

Alfred looked at me questioningly. I gave him a wink to let him know that everything was alright again.

"Eh ... Berthold, renowned Doktor Eisenbart, do you think this is the right stuff to give Wilbur? We don't know yet..."

"Oh, yes, Alfred, I do know. How do you think I fixed your wagon since there was no time to take you to a vet?"

His comments were too late in any case, his reference to the ridiculous doctor figure of folk lore superfluous, because Wilbur was busily draining the glass, licking his chops and looking better by the minute. Alfred just shook his head and mumbled something about the pupil surpassing the teacher. He took himself off towards the kitchen where he had deposited a large parcel, which he promptly started to unwrap.

"Don't worry, Alfred. It is true I haven't got a clue about your reality and wouldn't understand it if you explained it to me a hundred times over and in capital letters. But the healing is not difficult to understand at all. If it does work it would have to be effective under all circumstances short of death. And what better way to let him recover than to infuse it? Thinned down with the juice and balanced off by the brandy it must work like a magic elixir. Besides, it tastes fantastic, I am responsible-minded enough to test all my potions."

"So, are you with us again, Berthold? I don't really know what the problem was, didn't know how to approach you..."

"I am alright now, Alfred. You did scare the shit out of me, I do not know whether you had minutes are just seconds to spare before you would have croaked. And, yes, I am sorry too, but I do tend to react highly emotional every time a friend flops about in front of me, with a knife sticking in his guts, gushing blood all over the place."

"Berthold, Berthold ... If we do survive our adventures at all, we will have lots to tell to our grandchildren. But look here: time to eat. You set the table and take care of liquid refreshments whilst I do my little chef's act. I got lovely goodies here, you will see."

"Yes, sir, Alfred, boss. But this time you will do the dishes, your foolish behaviour cannot go unpunished."

Alfred started banging around pots and pans, humming as he went, chuckling sometimes, laughing outright too, in short, he was once again full of youthful exuberance, warning me that I would always have to watch out for him.

Wilbur appeared quietly at my side, he still looked to be about 80 years old but much more refreshed. We greeted each other properly then and he told me how much he looked forward to hear everything about our perilous and frivolous exploits. And he was very, very keen to look over the healing logs, since he knew about Alfred's predicaments.

But I wouldn't tell him anything about that yet. I did introduce the island to him, the three pools, the perch up on top, showed him the facilities and the small waterfall. He marvelled at the way everything was set up, agreed heartily when he checked the books on the shelves and asked Alfred about some telescope or other. Yes, there was now a 30-power telescope on a tripod leaning in a corner. I took it outside and set it up for Wilbur.

As I watched him I realised how very much like Alfred he was. Brimful of enthusiasm, with an eagerness belying his age, he swivelled the scope around, checking the bay, the plains, the lake and the beaches, exclaiming when he spotted the ostriches.

"Ah yes, Alfred told me about those birds. You caught him there, flush on the point. Good for you, and him too. He enjoys his life so much now."

He sounded wistful but brightened considerably when Alfred brought his offerings to the table. What a great joy to behold and what an incredible feast. There were blond German rolls, the finest black pumpernickel, fat pretzels, buttered of course, together with those sloppy white Bavarian sausages of such yucky consistency and such marvellously delicate taste, sweet mustard and radishes too; wonderful pastrami and pickles from his Jewish mate; fresh salted butter from Ireland; French cheeses; almost black salamis from Croatia and Hungary made of donkey ham and wild boar; Danish roll mops; fat, sweet Hanepoot table grapes from South Africa. I had poured three steins brimful with the genuine article: cool Budweiser beer from Czechia. We were one happy trio, feasting to our hearts' content, knowing that to live thusly, in perfect harmony, we were as close to the Gods as was humanly possible.

"Wilbur, I hope you will not deem it a sacrilege if, over all this fantastic catering to the gourmets and gourmands in us, we talk about the what and how of being here. Just remember, I am a layman and, as Alfred will be quick to point out at any time, astoundingly dense in all matters physical or mathematical. So — simple words if possible, but I sure would like to know more about it all."

"Berthold, it really is Alfred who should be telling you all this. It is his invention after all." He waved aside Alfred's attempt to interject. "Sure, the theory of it was my idea. You may have heard of heavy water — yes, I thought so — so then it should not be too difficult for you to accept that there can be something like heavy matter — metals or minerals. And that is at the root of Alfred's invention. My concept of heavy matter, with his refinements of mass and energy and, most important, the inclusion of time and space.

"Of course, we built the prototype more than a decade ago at the silly university where I was slaving as a lecturer, trying to teach dull students as much or as little as their dim brains would permit. Alfred was the only one pushing at the borders of known science, always asking, doubting, questing. When I realised his potential I virtually abandoned all other students. They could go through their textbooks, and to hell, without my assistance. The practical requirements of the project where formidable. Energy consumption was extremely high. So high in fact that the dolty and dim little accountants nibbling their red pencils and polishing their pants' seats would have freaked out entirely.

"Did Alfred tell you that I like to have some fun with my science? He did? Good. There was at the time an utterly senseless but grotesquely complex test series being run by the head of the physics department, making use of massive computing power in the hope of finding yet another tiny little part of the atom, which he could then describe in some obscure paper and reap immense fame. Not so, it was entirely pointless. He didn't have a clue about anything, but he was so handsome and married to one of the uglier daughters of the dean that funds were never a problem. We hid our project inside his — a stroke of pure genius and I am not ashamed to claim full honours for it! Worth a couple of Nobel prizes at least. The good, clueless professor was even heard to comment that the steady upsurge in energy consumption indicated that his experiment was close to reaching critical results!

"So we occupied an unused lab and turned it into our energy room. All our necessary power we drew from the number crunchers. Even now that the professor's experiment has finally been aborted, the whole department in disgrace — I think the dean had come to know about the professor finding some prettier solace outside of matrimony —, we continue stealing the power for our purposes occasionally. Nobody had thought it necessary to turn anything off, apart from flipping a switch on the rows and rows of computers. Alfred is officially doing post-graduate work there, walking about and smiling at everybody, always dropping or leaving nonsensical notes to keep people interested and accepting, having been around campus for so long now that he is merely regarded as one might a painting of dubious provenance."