“How do I sound? What language do I speak?" Jonathan Relevant spoke the questions aloud. He had no difficulty understanding himself. But that didn’t answer the questions. His language was Relevant; it communicated—inwardly and outwardly—but it defied categorizing.
Yet Jonathan Relevant already knew that when he was with someone else there was an inner sense of how he looked and sounded, of who and what he was. It was as if the other person brought him into focus with himself. And if there was more than one other person, the focus changed quickly, snapped from one identity to the other, and yet the sharpness didn’t blur. Only when he was alone, he couldn’t define himself.
And there was more to it. He felt an instant rapport with whomever he came in contact. He knew that this was mutual. Still more. He became an idealization of what the other person wanted to see, the personification of that ideal to which the other person could most comfortably relate. Yet, even as he melted into such identities, he remained Jonathan Relevant. He knew that too!
He remained Jonathan Relevant. —“whatever the hell that is!” he sighed.
There was only one place to look for the answer. “Know thyself!” Jonathan Relevant advised Jonathan Relevant.
“Up yours!” Jonathan Relevant replied wearily.
“Now don’t get nasty,” he told himself. “You’re all you’ve got!”
“Narcissist!”
“You have to identify with something. Figure out what it is and go on from there.”
Finally he thought of something. It was an Abner Dean cartoon portraying a wild party. Right in the middle of the wingding, in the center of the living-room floor, was an igloo. A naked man was peering out of the entrance to the igloo. Jonathan Relevant could identify with that naked man.
The caption of the cartoon was “What am I doing here?”
“Why was I born? Why am I living? . . .” Jonathan Relevant hurnmed what he knew was his favorite song.
“Don’t be maudlin.” He stopped singing. “You can't talk yourself into feeling alienated. The way you relate to people, you’re probably the least alienated person in the whole world!”
“Sure. I relate great to everybody except me!”
“You’re not alone in that.”
“Ohmigod! I hope I don't turn out to be a shrink!”
“Don’t always be thinking of yourself.”
“You just told me to ‘know thyself.’ How can I know myself if I don't think about myself?"
“Don’t be rigid. Be flexible. Look at the larger picture. A naked man who defies description and categorization pops up on an Arctic iceberg following a nuclear explosion. What’s the significance? What does it mean to the world?”
“You’re asking me? Jesus Christ!”
“Doubtful! Very doubtful! Still, there must be a reason why you’re here. A mission of some sort? Find out what it is, and maybe you’ll find yourself in the process.”
“A mission? Like a quest? That’s a pretty moralistic idea. But what kind of morals do I have?"
“Sexually elastic.”
“And my ethics?”
“Situational.”
“Do I believe in anything?”
“In doing right.”
“What's right?”
“That depends.”
I believe in doing right. . . . “Well, at least I’m not a vegetable,” Jonathan Relevant decided. “Even if I am defined by others, I’m not just a reactive mechanism.”
“So now I know what I’m not. But what am I?"
“Well, I sure hope you like solving puzzles,” Jonathan Relevant told Jonathan Relevant. “Because you’ve got a doozy to work on: yourself!”
Who is Jonathan Relevant? What is Jonathan Relevant? Why is Jonathan Relevant?
These questions also concerned the Americans and Russians who interviewed Jonathan Relevant. The first of these interviews was conducted by Lieutenant j.g. Crispus in his role as naval intelligence officer of the Wartoy. The recommended procedure was to gain the subject’s confidence. The black interrogator felt such immediate and strong rapport with the black man being interviewed that this was achieved effortlessly.
“Man, I dig your cool!” Lieutenant Crispus was frankly admiring.
“Baby, you park your ass on an iceberg, you gonna be cool too!” Jonathan Relevant replied.
“That’s for sure.” Lieutenant Crispus chuckled. Then he got down to business. “The way my official report reads,” he told Jonathan Relevant, “I saw you slide down a sunbeam and land on this iceberg. Is that right?”
“Shoot, you a trained military observer, ain’t you? So you seen what you seen.” Thus Jonathan Relevant confirmed that the lieutenant had seen him slide down a sunbeam without acknowledging that he’d actually done so.
Lieutenant Crispus didn’t notice the evasion. Subsequently his perception was accepted by certain members of the scientific-military community. From it they evolved the “Sunbeam Hypothesis.”
The “Sunbeam Hypothesis” was based on Einsteinian measurements of the speed of light and the molecular changes which take place in a body traveling at such a speed. It was postulated that Jonathan Relevant had invented a method of teletransportation, that molecular rearrangement accounted for his sudden appearance, and that the process had scrambled his brain cells, which would explain his seeming amnesia. Photosynthesis was probably involved, which would explain the role of the sunbeam in the reassemblance.
“Photosynthesis . . .” Jonathan Relevant mulled over the implications of the “Sunbeam Hypothesis.” “I’m always chasing rainbows . . .” he sang to himself.
“Photosynthesis . . . are you animal, vegetable, or mineral?” he asked himself. “Are you bigger than a breadbox?” he added.
“God, you’re an introspective bastard!” he answered himself.
“Photosynthesis . . . good thing it wasn’t a rainy day! I might have missed the whole planet altogether!”
The “Sunbeam Hypothesis” was never accepted as widely among scientists as the “Messiah Theorem” proposed by the world-renowned Professor Klauss Von Schweindrek. The “Messiah Theorem” (alternately known as the “Genesis Postulate”) stemmed from Von Schweindrek’s first view of Johann Relevant through the Wartoy periscope. The professor-—who, incidentally, had been reared very religiously in his pre-Nazi childhood-—saw the naked figure walk on the water and then step up on the iceberg.
“Johann Relevant is an instant mutation formed on the spot by unplanned bionuclear interaction.” This was one part of Von Schweindrek’s logic. He expressed it to the intellectual-looking young German during their first interview.
“It wouldn’t be the first time that scientists researching in one direction came up with an oppositional result.” Johann Relevant thoughtfully traced the outline of the dueling scar on his cheek.
The comment puzzled Von Schweindrek. “We were testing a nuclear missile. . . .”
“You were testing an ultimate weapon designed to wipe out whole populations. And that’s called—”
“Genocide!”
That’s a No-No! Johann Relevant thought of the Nuremberg trials. I believe in doing right. And that’s definitely a No-No. It felt good to realize that he only conformed so far.
“I see.” Professor Von Schweindrek continued, “We were researching an economical means of genocide, and instead we came up with-—”