The Zoo Hypothesis

            On Wednesday morning I finished memorizing “Souviens-toi de m'oublier” (Remember to Forget Me) by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched for the chords but no one had posted them, so I worked out the ones for the intro and the first line. 

            I supposedly weighed 83.7 kilos naked at 11:12. 

            I shaved and showered since I had an appointment with my doctor for the first time in almost three years. I left home at 12:15. It was a warm day. I had been anticipating feeling weak because I hadn’t had breakfast and now it was almost lunchtime, but I didn’t feel too bad at all. 

            I had to wear a mask in the clinic. I guess they really limited their appointments, since they’d removed most of the chairs from the waiting area, leaving only nine that were two meters apart. When I arrived there were only three patients waiting. I could see the door of Dr. Shechtman’s office open and the lights were out, so I assumed he was at lunch. An elderly woman who sounded like she was from the Caribbean came in and told the receptionist that she wanted to see Dr. Shechtman because she felt dizzy. She didn’t have an appointment and was told that she couldn’t just walk into the clinic. But she was persistent and so eventually the nurse said she could see Shechtman briefly after me. The lady sat in front of me and turned to chat from time to time. She said it had been so long since she saw Dr. Shechtman that she’d forgotten what he looks like. 

            Dr. Shechtman came in from the back about twenty minutes late, saw me, and immediately called me into his office. He had on a red sweater and didn’t change into his white coat. Although I’d seen him once coming out of a Starbucks near Bathurst and Eglinton, this was the first time I’d seen him at the clinic in civilian clothes. 

            He knew that I’d had a bad bike accident late last summer because St Joseph’s Health Centre had sent him a report. 

            He hooked me up to a blood pressure reading machine that read my pressure three times while he left the room. This was the first time ever that a nurse didn’t do the reading, or check my weight. My blood pressure was 116 over 63 and Shechtman said it was excellent. My pulse was 53 beats per minute, which is lower than normal but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not healthy. He checked my weight and it was close to what my digital scale said it was this morning. 

            He did most of the usual tests and then asked if I wanted him to check my prostate. That surprised me because he’d never asked before and had always just said he was going to do it. I asked him why the change. He explained that the digital check is no longer considered effective in screening for prostate cancer. 

            He ordered the poop test for colon cancer to be sent to me and used his computer to renew my psoriasis cream prescription at Vina Pharmacy in Parkdale. 

            I told him that I’d had a cold in February but that it might have been omicron. He agreed that it might have been because he had covid a few weeks ago and it felt like a cold. 

            I asked how he was and he told me that his daughter got married recently. I asked if his wife cried and he said, “Of course! I think I cried too!” He said his son has a successful business making gourmet dog food. 

            He gave me the usual form for the blood work and I went down the street to the lab. The waiting area was empty and yet I was still asked if I had an appointment. I said I didn’t but I’d been fasting since last night so I hoped they could take care of me. It was the first time in all my years of going to that lab of not having to sit down and wait. I was immediately directed to one of the rooms and the technician came and painlessly removed two vials of blood from my arm. 

            Also for the first time ever they didn’t ask me to give a urine sample. Apparently, that’s not considered necessary anymore either because everything that can be detected in the urine can now be found in the blood. Thinking about this and the fact that the prostate check is no longer standard, I felt like I’d just come back from several years in interplanetary space to find everything on Earth had changed. I think I was in and out of the lab in less than ten minutes. 

            I rode down Bathurst to Queen and headed west. At Ossington, a couple of crows flew above me. They are so rare to see downtown that after crossing Ossington I stopped to look, but they were out of sight. I got back on my bike from the right side when I usually mount from the left. I lost my balance and fell sideways on the street with my bike on top of me. I fell on my left hip and leg, with some of the pressure taken off by catching myself on my left hand. It did not feel like there was much impact but I did seem to wrench my left knee a bit. 

            When I got home my neighbour Benji came out of his place to tell me that our neighbour Shankar had found five bedbugs and he’d found three. 

            I went out to the liquor store and bought a six-pack of Creemore. 

            I weighed 83.8 before a late lunch. I had Ritz crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of raspberry lemonade. 

            I took a late siesta and got up at 17:40. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos at 17:45. 

            I was caught up on my journal just before it was time to make dinner. I had an egg sunny side up with toasted Bavarian sandwich bread and a beer while watching two episodes of Astro Boy. 

            In the first story, Dr. Goldthumb creates a robot named Future, with the ability analyze past events so as to predict the future. He predicts a train disaster so that Astro Boy is able to avert it and also the failure of a rocket to Mars. Mr. Banks wants Astro Boy and Future to accompany him to Mars to pick up a large amount of gold but Goldthumb refuses to loan Future. 

            Goldthum sends his other robot, Fireball to attack Astro Boy and tell him not to go to Mars. Future helps Astro Boy to defeat Fireball. 

            Mr. Pompus is suspicious of Dr. Goldthumb and goes to check him out. But Goldthumb takes Pompus prisoner. 

            Future goes to Astro Boy to ask his advice. He is caught between the programming which binds him to obey his master and that which forbids him from harming human beings. Astro Boy tells him he must do the right thing. 

            On Mars, after Banks’s rocket is loaded with gold, a sandstorm hits. Radar shows an unscheduled rocket landing and Astro Boy goes to investigate. Inside the ship is Fireball who again fights Astro Boy. After Fireball is defeated, Astro Boy is surprised that Future challenges him. They fight but Future has the advantage of being able to anticipate Astro Boy’s every move. Future also has rocket boots and when they fly high in the sky, Future reveals that he was only pretending to challenge him, to fool his master, who was watching below. He says Goldthumb is a criminal and he wants to be on Astro Boy’s side against him. 

            Meanwhile Goldthumb attacks the Mars patrol ships with a gun that traps each ship in a bubble. Future gives Astro Boy an anti-bubble gun fuse and says they are destined to meet one more time. Goldthumb begins to steal the gold. Future meets Banks and goes with him to Phobos to stop Goldthumb. Pompus escapes from his cell and attacks Goldthumb but he is imprisoned in a pod and ejected into space. 

            Astro Boy and Future pursue Goldthumb, whose ship is emitting deadly rays. Future sacrifices himself to destroy the weapon and Astro Boy is able to capture the villain. 

            In the second story a super-advanced civilization on the Planet Rohan, near the centre of our galaxy, has observed that our solar system has two planets with technologically advanced species. The people of Saturn and those of Earth are similarly advanced and the Rohani predict that they will eventually come into conflict. In order to avert a space war, the Rohani propose to take one Earthling and their robot; and one Saturnian and their robot and to transport them to Rohan for a contest. Whichever group wins, the planet of the other will be destroyed. 

            Astro Boy is walking when he hears gunshots. He runs to the source and sees a criminal named Scrap in an armed standoff with the police. Astro Boy is trying to persuade Scrap to give up when two energy rings descend, one on Astro Boy and the other on Scrap, and they are both transported to Rohan. There the Rohani explain that they must compete with Alphata and her robot Omegum of the planet Saturn in order to save their world. Astro Boy and Scrap; and Alphata and Omegum are transported to a desert where they must follow the arrows to the end of the contest. 

            Scrap continues to resist taking part in this competition while their rivals forge ahead. There are various dangerous living obstacles that attack Astro Boy and Scrap along the way such as giant crabs and killer vines. Scrap wishes for a rocket so he can leave and one appears. Scrap boards it but Astro Boy warns him it’s a trick. Scrap takes off but Astro Boy causes it to crash and rescues Scrap. 

            Scrap tells Astro Boy that before he became a criminal he wanted to be an engineer. 

            The next arrow points out to sea and so Astro Boy builds a raft. A water spout comes along and picks up Scrap. Astro Boy follows to another desert where a giant robot is holding Scrap and threatens to rip him in two unless Astro Boy gives it his energy. Astro Boy agrees and Scrap escapes. But when the robot tries to take Astro Boy’s energy he uses his rocket boots to damage it, then breaks free and finishes it off. 

            Meanwhile Scrap is being attacked by a winged creature with horns. Astro Boy fights it but is knocked headfirst in the sand with only his boots sticking up. One of his boots is wiggling and the creature comes forward to bite it. That’s when Astro Boy fills it up with a blast from his boot and sends it spinning away like a deflating balloon. 

            Astro and Scrap follow the next arrow into an area that seems like Earth. Suddenly Astro Boy sees his own house and his family waiting for him. Scrap warns him that it’s a trap because the figures have no shadows and Astro Boy realizes that what he thought were his mother, his father, and his sister, are cactuses and he is on a cliff above a sea of sulfuric acid. 

            Contrary to his earlier reactions, Scrap has begun to become determined to save the Earth. They hear a scream and see that Alphata is being attacked by a giant, four-headed creature. Astro Boy saves her. 

           They all reach an area where there are no arrows where the voice of the unseen Rohani leader tells them they must now battle each other for the fate of their planets. But there is an invisible wall that prevents Astro Boy and Omegum from fighting. However, Scrap and Alphata can pass. Scrap tells Astro Boy he has to stop thinking of himself as a robot to pass through and he is right. Astro Boy fights Omegum but the robot has the ability to separate and Astro Boy can’t make contact. Scrap tells Astro Boy to spin around Omegum until he is incapacitated. Then Scrap uses his ability to dismantle safes on Omegum and tears him apart. 

            Alphata throws a knife at Scrap but Astro Boy stops it. Alphata is now helpless and Astro Boy and Scrap are supposed to finish her off but neither can bring themselves to harm her. Suddenly the Rohani end the contest and say that both sides won so both planets will be spared. Scrap and Astro Boy return to Earth at the same moment they left. Scrap gives himself up to the police. 

            The idea that aliens are watching us and waiting for us to pass a test before contact is a common trope. But the fact that no new life has ever arisen on Earth since that from which we evolved, suggests the astronomically remote possibility of life having occurred on Earth in the first place. The conditions from which life emerged here do not exist anymore and when they did it was out of an unlikely perfect storm of certain chemicals and temperature. Life in the universe may be an extremely rare accident and so there are probably no extraterrestrials around to justify the zoo hypothesis.