The Thot Plickens

Compiled and Edited by Steven Solomon © 1992

When we most recently encountered the Doktor at his home in Florida in 1991, the elderly gentlemen bore a ragged scar across his throat and a teflon tube inserted therein, niether well-concealed by his paisley ascot. To speak, he placed a finger across the open wound. With a rasping whisper, his only words to our representatives were: "Go away, or you'll be talking to my fucking lawyers." He then slammed the door and could be heard shuffling back into the silent darkness of his anonymous retirement.


In the Autumn of 1954, however, both Saurian and Doktor D. remained blissfully ignorant of the falling out that would eventually cloud their historic relationship. Whatever the Professor's enhanced mental abilities might have been, precognition was not yet in his repertoire. His correspondence with the Doktor resumes as follows.

Ed.

Dear Doktor,


How profoundly amazing it is, the changes our lives and minds may undergo in so brief a span of time. I have found a new and crucial piece of the Great Puzzle. It is one that I had not even suspected to exist, but now understand to be central to my Quest to create the Ultimate Human Brain.


As I begin my newly re-energized research, two things are very clear. First, getting the General's shlong hard is hardly an important avenue of inquiry. Secondly, that very project (and it is a big project, gonna take lots of money, plenty of time, I'll need to travel lots and collect many specimens), will provide cover for my True Aims.


With this in mind, I approached Stroessner with a plan to survey the planet for useful botanical and animal specimens. Horney and dim-witted, he was amenable to my proposal.


Thus, following our mutual, psychenautical guide star, and pursuing those tantalizing reports regarding the Philippino shamans, I plan a great journey. Soon, I shall venture to the rain forest of the Philippines. There my Quest for Vegetable Intelligence will resume in earnest. As I write, I am awaiting confirmation of my itinerary. My bags are packed and I require only the properly forged papers and the bribe money required to gain my visa.


Ho-ho, today, I stand once again at the cross-road to a new direction for my life, and perhaps for all Humanity. I am very excited! Perhaps you might join me for a trip to the Pacific? I'm looking for a new assistant, you know.


Yours in Exaltation and Reverence before the Truth,


Anton Saurian

Having secured the necessary funds and papers required to venture abroad to the Philippines, Saurian set off by freighter on October 4, missing the Doktor's response by several days. The good Doktor did not, in any case, accept Saurian's generous offer. As of the time of the following letter, Doktor D. was deeply involved in a controversial effort to revive the ancient cult of the Eleusian Mystery Rites. These activities would eventually lead to the his arrest on charges of drug dealing and animal sacrifice, and the subsequent loss of his license to practice medicine. After a lengthy and highly public legal battle, and some three years of incarceration, this noble man's reputation and means of livelihood would never be fully restored to him.


What follows is among the most facinating, tantalizing and enigmatic of Saurian's letters to Doktor D. sent from the rain-forest.

Ed.

Who is The Doktor?

Compiled and Edited by Steven Solomon © 1992

To the best of our knowledge, a single transcription of the Doktor's rambling reply to the preceding plea currently exists. A bequest of the Katherine Anderson Foundation, named for the widow of legendary psychenaut and co-founder of the now infamous Adelphion Club, Karl Anderson, this document may be found at the renown Fitz Hugh Ludlow Library. Although independently substantiated, Doktor D. has consistently refused to confirm the transcript's authenticity. Similarly, he will not discuss in any way his current or past opinions regarding experimental neurochemistry, theology, nor Professor Anton Saurian. Nor does he acknowledge that the two had ever made even a passing acquaintance. Still, according to those close to both men during the mid-fifties, the Doktor is said to have relayed the following message to Saurian.

Ed.

August 23rd, 1954


My Dear Saurian,


As you probably know, events have conspired to hasten my removal to a more congenial, less high-profile venue. In so doing, I've found temporary emotional oasis, while paying some price in physical comfort. Well, so long as my picture stays out of the papers I won't have to worry about the New York State Medical Board for a while.


Heat and humidity? Here I am in Florida, a hot, moist and swamp-ridden place. It's teeming with organic anomalies that infect the air itself. That air, by the way, was best characterized by the great writer, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, as being "Oxygen 21%, Nitrogen 79%, Mosquitoes 65%". It's hard to believe that Paraguay could be any less conducive to our Great Work, compared to late August in southern-most Florida.


The Great Work? Alas, I've been temporarily forced to take up more directly remunerative endeavors. Astonishingly, the Florida real-estate market is currently booming. In this economic environment, my role has been "Transaction Specialist". Yes, in my proprietary blend of sub-tropical vegetation and grain alcohol, I've found a reliable tool enabling the keen negotiator to lower the client's decision-making threshold to a properly business-like level. The happy result has been my participation in a number of limited partnerships, each seeing my small equity stake rapidly accrue significant value.


With a few more months of applied pharmacology and shrewd investment, I'll be able to return to more pure and sublime ratiocinations contributing to our deeper understanding of the Human Mind.


Which brings me to those eschatological matters raised in your last missive. I'm humble and pleased that you seek my counsel! I'd first offer that our life upon this mudball is, as Hobbs said, "short and brutish". Still, upon reflection, I'd add that such is not the end of the matter. To wit, many of the Major Experiments in which we've shared the role of both experimenter and subject, have illumined realms of the human unconscious, heretofore largely unexplored.


The terrain revealed in our mutual yet solitary quest is a place of stark beauty and limitless boundary. In the antipodes of the mind, we find a coherence and majesty which seems to bear no correlation to the biological brain from which they derive- according, at least, to the mechanistic view of mind as epiphenomenon of a warm, wet glop sloshing between our ears.


I conjecture that the mortality of your corporeal being isn't the closing of accounts that you fear. I hesitate to speculate beyond the data, but you understand my metaphysical bent- now overarching as my purely empirical inquiries are curtailed for a nonce. So, I'll cautiously propose that our mutual groping toward Higher Knowledge feeds on itself and so extends the reach of our earth-bound speculations. It may also serve to build momentum (in the space-time field sense) enabling such mapping of the Ineffable well beyond the normal limits of the human interval upon this soggy, spinning ball of dirt.
Oh, I know that you're thinking the old Doktor's melon has gone soft. Just the same, perhaps you'll find some comfort in the optimism of my theory. I don't expect you to accept such speculation without experimental confirmation. At present, I can only begin in this regard.


Now, as to your inquiry re; the Philippines. You may know that I've yet to voyage to the great Pacific archipelago. It ranks, however, very, very high on my list of neuropharmacological destinations. In fact, Honey and I had hoped to vacation there, back in 49, after the war. That was before she encountered her unfortunate cerebral difficulties, of course, and even today she is precluded from traveling beyond the walls of the Ganzfeld Sanatorium.


Nonetheless, in preparing for our journey that was not to be, I had been led to understand that the remote Philippines harbored natives who, upon consuming particular roots and barks, allegedly transformed into animals, insects, birds and reptiles capable of feats quite impossible for humans. I learned that in the northern forests, there were Shaman capable of eating poisons with no ill effects, walking through fire and copulating for days on end. There are reports of one great Shaman able to sustain horrible and even terminal injuries such as hanging, burning and dismemberment, and yet still survive. I cannot presently verify these reports, nor provide you with any greater specifics.


No, I'll have to delay the delivery of concrete ethnopharmacological data until, among other things, I've constructed a satisfactorily rigorous transmission path for the pharmacopia of the Philippine animist cults. I will, however, venture that the psychoactive mushroom, Stropharia Cubensis, was first introduced to Mexico by colonial Spaniards bringing cattle from the Philippines. I hope to confirm that the New World and Pacific varieties are identical, and presently seek specimens for our scientific delectation and experimental consideration. Thus, True Science moves a step at a time along the Great Path of Knowledge.


Saurian, despite my innate optimism, I long for a day when our work might proceed without interference from small minds, large egos and a restrictive legal environment. The very nature of our investigation breeds those forces that impede our progress. Case in point; I believe that the denouement of our first collaboration was the result of unreasonable expectations on the part of our volunteer, Honey. Surely, an approximate restoration of her mental faculties would suffice to make amends. Alas, we may never have such a chance.


So it goes. I doubt that the world of opera suffers from the loss of but one Wagnerian voice, though I do regret the loss of those happy moments of connubial bliss. Oh baby, when that fat lady sang...


Enough- enough nostalgia! Forget the past- look to the future- Yes! Look confidently to a future where we may crown that edifice whose foundation we now lay. My friend, I wish you the best of luck in your queries.


Yours in the Bonds of a Shared Quest,


D.

Moving On…

God, Life, Death, Whatever

Saurian now flees the United States for safe haven in Paraguay, utilizing entree gained from his brief tenure with the CIA. There, exchanging exclusive services to the up and coming General Stroessner, he secures the type of working environment that he had so long had coveted. Nonetheless, his goal of creating the Ultimate Human Brain remains on an ever receding horizon. Indeed, it is difficult to determine if his self-experiments of this period yielded any results, whatsoever.


Still, Saurian's restless mind continues to wander into ever wider fields of inquiry, and through his research, he comes in contact with a small cadre of confidants and co-conspirators around the globe. Notable among this group was one Herr Doktor D. He and Dear Doktor, as the Professor invariably referred to him, quickly form a deep friendship born of a common passion for rigorous intellectual challenge and high frontier neurochemical research.


As Doktor D. still survives and practices medicine in Dade County Florida, for reasons of confidentiality and legal liability, his true identity shall remain unknown.

Ed.

August 13th, 1954


Dear Doktor,


The weather is beastly hot. I don't know how these fucking people ever lived down here without air conditioning. Even at full blast, maximum chill, the temperature in the lab hovers well above ninety-degrees and eighty-percent humidity. I am forced to conclude that the hellish climate is at fault for the otherwise inexplicable failure of my latest cerebro-glandular preparation to take proper effect.


Today, I received a transmission from USSR; sad news about poor Evgeny. I once knew him well but now must disavow any knowledge of our relationship, except in the most confidential quarters. My correspondents inform me that he was arrested by GRU shortly after my flight to the Americans. His family have been made "non-persons" and his own fate must be, by now, far more grim.


They will kill him, or he shall die of "natural" causes, while in their custody. I know too well how They work. At this very moment, his bones may be roasting in the kiln of the Minsk Meat Rendering Plant, District #08, his hide transformed into a bar of cheap soap, lending chapped skin and the scent of lavender to the over-ample thighs of the mistress to the Regional Commissar, Comrade Popov. Alas, They have no concept of the True Scientific Value of human tissues. They are barbarians.


You know, I'd like to send his family a card, flowers, or something. This is difficult; they have a non-address, you understand.


In any case, these sort of things tend to make one think of one's own mortality. How fleeting is our passage through this veil of tears and mortal travail. How fragile is the membrane that separates the Living from the Dead, and there is nothing but a breath between this moment and Doom.


Oh, there I go, down into the pit of despair. Things are just not working out very well. I am very, very concerned about my recent lack of success. General Stroessner is not the most compassionate nor patient employer. He wants results and he has his own ways of dealing with failure. I've learned that they're not very pretty.


Last evening, I was invited for dinner at the palace; just me, the General, the American Ambassador, his wife, and half a dozen hookers. There were evidently some problems in the kitchen. Dinner was served late. The rolls were hard. The entree cold. The frozen desert melted. The coffee tasted like dish-water. It is thus with an odd mixture of glee compounded by horror, that this morning I received a steel drum full of fresh specimens. They take their coffee quite seriously, down here in central South America.


I am, frankly, rather desperate. I cannot run. I am watched constantly. Stroessner will have me killed if I make so much as a move toward the airport. Mortality has become a very real specter haunting my every waking moment. It interferes with My Work and clouds my sleep with dreams of dissolution and decay.


Perhaps you might give me some insight, here, Dear Doktor. I am, you well know, not a religious man. Things are as they are, and there is so much to learn in the brief time given us to see the Greater Plan. It is a struggle and I must hurry in my inquiries. I, like long deceased Fr. Bacon, strive to be precise in my interrogation of Nature, brooking Her no quarter.


You, however, tend more toward the subtle consideration of the Divine. Please, send me your thoughts on these matters. They weigh heavy on my mind and heart.


Well, struggle on, I must. I know that I will solve this momentary conundrum. Of course, I've told the General that if he is to have any hope of having an erection again, I must be provided with an improved air-conditioning plant. He's told me that they will soon be bringing in a Soviet designed unit. It will be capable of chilling even this fetid miasma that passes for Paraguayan summer air. This, combined with my newly arrived and perfectly fresh specimens, offers some promise of renewed progress.


So, I continue to self-experiment. For my part, I have no problem achieving an erection and am grateful, if for nothing else, for the constant presence of my loyal lab-assistant, Rosa. She's quite an intellectual and real handy with a surgical clamp. I must go now. The General's aid is summoning me to yet another state dinner. Tonight, it will be a small group of influential businessmen (expatriate Germans), the Vatican Ambassador, and half dozen hookers. So, as they say in Paraguay: take it easy, or take hostages.


Yours in Mortal Fear & Spiritual Confusion,


Anton Saurian

PS: Please send any info on Philippine animist cults utilizing indigenous fungus or other psychotropic vegetables. Such literature is painfully scarce here, but I am told by reliable sources that it may contain essential leads toward my Major Objective. I eagerly await your next neurotransmission.


A.S.

On the Run!

Our man is now embarking on the fight of his life…

Compiled and Edited by Steven Solomon © 1992

January 5th, 1953

Dearest Evgeny Sergeivich,

What a lousy New Year's! Bambi is now completely bald over her entire body... she hates me... the hell with her, I say! The Boys in the Company have been on my back, complaining about my lack of attention to "serious" research... bah! They wouldn't know serious research if it came up and bit them on the testicles, assuming that these western brats have any... the hell with them all, I say! To hell with those bastards!!!

Yours in the Foulest of Foul Moods,

Anton Saurian

Then, weeks later…

February 14th, 1953

Dearest Evgeny Sergeivich,

I have fled; I could take no more! Those bastards with the CIA lied to me at every turn. Even Bambi had turned on me. Ah, poor Bambi; she perished during a hair restoration experiment gone horribly awry. I will miss her, but her glands, safe for now in a Thermos® jug, will live on in my continuing work. I'm going freelance!

Yes, my good friend, I am on the run and seeking self-employment as an undercover neuropharmacologist. In my brief time with the Company, I picked up quite a few tricks... how to create a new identity utilizing make-up and disguise, subterfuge, espionage, and best of all, the covert transaction of large amounts of cash and contraband... radio-isotopes, dope, human body parts, what have you. I plan to put these new skills to use on my own behalf. I've already spread my wings in that regard, effecting escape from the hands of those clods, those bastards.

They promised me all the specimens and any equipment that I required, and vowed no interference in my work. But, when it came down to it, they had some very specific ideas in mind. They began to telling me what to do with my time and boundless curiosity; meager, boorish inquiries into chemically assisted interrogations, neurochemicals to keep soldiers awake for days on end and allowing them to move their two eyes independently, pharmaceuticals to repress fear and potentiate extreme violence, a medicine to help a certain elderly and rum-soaked Paraguayan general maintain a hard-on. Kids stuff; Bah!!! To hell with them, I say!

No, there are greater things in store for me. I believe that I am close to achieving the True Grail; Super-enhanced Human Intelligence through Better Neurochemistry. Just think of it! Behold the doors that will open; telepathy, kinesthesia, precognition at last within reach of the ordinary man. Why, if my theories are correct, within the next few years, we will see the creation of The Ultimate Human Brain, capable of mental and sensory feats previously unimaginable; seeing through walls, hearing the sound of a butterfly flapping her wings on the other side of the planet, factoring pi to the millionth decimal in the time it takes to play a hand of gin rummy... while playing a hand of gin rummy! Ho-ho... I am very excited!

Of course, as a True Man of Science engaged in the Adventure of Real Discovery, I shall continue to test my experimental chemicals on my own brain. As you can no doubt tell, they are already having some effect.

Well, in any case, it is good to be out from under the boot heel of my former task-master. I made my escape as they watched me go into the neighborhood liquor store, ostensibly to purchase a gallon of what passes for wine around here. I cannot presently provide too many details, but suffice it to say that the death of the store's proprietor was an unanticipated tragedy. So it goes. I was, however, grateful for the opportunity to pick up some much needed currency, ID, and a late-model Buick Road Master.

Someday, the world will remember poor Emmet Groster as a True Hero of the Neurological Revolution. Certainly, his survivors will be duly proud of his unique contribution, paid for, albeit inadvertently, with his lamentable and foreshortened life.

Today, I am on the run, and have yet another identity. I like this game. It is exhilarating. I've met some nice people on the road, and have stolen their cars and money. I am now in the company of a sweet young lady; she was hitchhiking as I happened by. Her name is Sara Jane Kowalski, she's seventeen, run away from home in Missouri, and quite drunk on that jug wine. I smell romance in the air!

I cannot tell you of my next stop, other than to say that Sara Jane and I will probably find a comfy motel and turn in for the evening. From there, I will venture toward my next connection and a situation where the extradition laws are favorable. Before then, I'll have to figure out how to lose Miss Kowalski, of course. She can't go with me, and I'm afraid to leave her behind. Oh well, I'll figure something out.

Alright, my friend. I must close now. I hope that this correspondence makes it to you. I have attempted to arrange secure transmission, but one never knows, aye.* I shall be writing again, as soon as circumstances permit.

Ever in Pursuit of Knowledge,

Anton Saurian

*Evegeny Sergeivich Nedo never received the preceding letter; it was intercepted by Soviet GRU, military intelligence. He was immediately arrested and imprisoned, and is most likely to have perished in a labor camp. The fate of his family is unknown, although a middle aged woman claiming to be his daughter has recently filed suit both against the former Soviet regime and Professor Saurian, seeking damages for wrongful imprisonment and death. As this volume goes to print, the case is in litigation and her claimed identity is still unproven. Ed.

Compiled and Edited by Steven Solomon ©1992

We next hear from the Professor as he undertakes, with great enthusiasm, his new life in the West. The pivotal transitions vis a vis loyalties East or West revealed in the following letters are striking. They may be seen to cast the dice that would inform the pattern of his life for the following two decades. Ed.

December 23rd, 1952


Dearest Evgeny Sergeivich,


I am in Las Vegas. Ho-ho, this is the Good Life! I will tell you Evgeny, these Capitalist Dog Americans know how to do a country... big sky, wide open spaces, fast cars, free liquor and cheap dope, legal gambling and drive-in whore houses every tenth of a mile up and down every highway in sight. As say the American cowboys; "Yeea-hah!"


I was debriefed over the past month by eager, young CIA operatives. All in all, it was a delightful affair featuring massive doses of crude pyscho-active substances; phenylbarbitol, sodium pentathol, nitrous oxide, and Dr. Hoffman's Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. Goodness, they really make a guest feel at home! I liked the LSD the best, but I wish they'd tried out one of those newly isolated phenethylamines on me. There's a young fellow named Shulgin on the, ahem, "Company" staff; I understand that he's doing very exciting work with these new substances. I'll have to meet him. Yes!


In any case, they asked me many questions and got me terribly stoned as I did my best, under the circumstances, to provide coherent answers. A rather strange method of interrogation, don't you think? It is hard, you know, to exactly recollect complex neurobiological information while flying on 1500 mics of acid and a serious load of downs. I'm sure, however, that if they actually to made any of those preparations, they would first test them on the monkeys.


I'm equally sure that all those monkeys would die horribly. I did not.


In any case, they've since set me up quite nicely. I've got a new identity. I'm supposed to be a veterinarian, but I never actually see any patients, only my lab monkeys. They gave me a lovely ranch-house on the edge of the desert. There's a beautiful and fully equipped laboratory in the secret sub-basement.


My new assistant, a Phd in Neuropharmacology and ersatz wife, Bambi, is a relatively inexperienced but very capable woman. A recent alum from the less than renowned Santo Domingo School of Medicine, whatever she lacks in seasoned lab skills, she more than makes up for in eagerness to learn. I've made it my personal responsibility to teach her everything I know.


Meanwhile, the boys at the Company, are happy to fulfill my every request for equipment and specimens. Glands and brain parts usually arrive at the post office box in plain brown wrappers, no return address. Recently, I did receive an entire human head in fairly good condition; strangely, it came with an odd note attached to a knitting needle jammed through ear to ear. "Next time, we kill your mother." It was signed "A friend of Anthony 'Big Ears' Tuzzio". Probably some sort of mix-up at the lab, or something.


Well, I'm not one to look a gift head in the mouth. I got the thing down to the lab, cracked the skull, peeled off the neocortex and popped out the pineal gland with a speed and dexterity that prompted Bambi to swoon in clinical admiration. It was not an hour later that we together tasted the fruit of our first great experiment. The result was moderately encouraging. Quaffing the decantation of cerebro-glandular essences, we soon noted a marked psychological, even sexual, stimulation.


What ensued was several hours of enthusiastic fantasy-play; though Bambi, for professional reasons, declined the opportunity to let me actually shtup her. She did, however, genuinely relish the chance to play Lone Ranger to my faithful Trigger. Best of all, she came equiped with her own set of sterling spurs.


Unfortunately, I must note that since our experiment, Bambi has experienced some minor side-effects. She has developed a marked case of hirsuitism, which, while rather attractive (reminding me of the gals back home, you know), has brought a black cloud over her normally bouyant personality. I think she blames me. I'm now working full-time to develop a cure in the form of an orally administered and all natural, hormone-based depilatory. That should set things right, aye.


It is now late and my duties in the lab call me away. There is important work to be done at the Frontier of Neuroscience! Of course, I cannot be sure that this missive will ever reach you. I have sent it by the most secure method available; one which I cannot describe other than to say it has been surgically implanted deep within the brain of an unknowing operative programmed to recite its contents to a Company controlled telegraphy operator, upon a previously agreed upon cue. If all goes well, you should be reading this transmission by the Month's end; if not, you will be in prison or worse. Good luck in this, Evgeny, and a very merry Christmas, happy New Year, to you and yours!


Yours in the Good Life of Science Fun,


Anton Saurian

Moving Forward…

 Nasty Recriminations & Flight West
Complied & Edited by Steven Solomon © 1992

We rejoin Professor Saurian only thirteen months after his return to Moscow. Over the course of those months, Saurian and his assistant Evgeny Sergeivich had engaged in a series of apparently doomed efforts to halt Stalin's mental decline. The exact nature of these experiments remains a closely held secret, even in this post-Soviet era. It is safe to say, however, that Saurian had become increasingly desperate and fearful of the inevitable consequence of failure. Both Stalin's allies and his enemies within the Kremlin made ready for the chaos that would follow the Secretary General's impending demise. Ed.


October 31st, 1952


Dearest Evgeny Sergeivich,


By the time you read this, I shall have gone over. I have no other choice. Stalin is completely mad. There is no longer any doubt about it, and even I, Professor Anton Saurian, can do nothing to rescue the man's fevered, festering, and lesioned pia and dura maters.


As you know, over the past month, our Great Leader's been doing nothing but bumbling around the Kremlin attic in his pajamas, masturbating incessently and muttering darkly to the imagined ghost of Leon Trotsky. When not babbling, he dissolves into alternate paroxysms of manic laughter and sobbing tears. The facial ticks have become poetically grotesque, as though the shadow of a great, black bird of prey flutters across his brow. The entire left side of his body goes rigid with hysterical paralysis and he messes his pants.


Stalin is insane and he is doomed.


As his physician, Chief Neurologist to the Party Chairman, I will take some measure of the blame for this pitiable state of affairs. This I know. I must therefore also take all necessary and appropriate precautions against the likely actions of my colleagues in the NKVD¹; those bastards.


Oh, sure, there will be plenty of blame to spread around, and many a head will roll when Crazy Joe finally kicks the bucket. Mine might well have been among them. On the Night of Long Knives, however, I shall be long gone from these parts. I have made plans for such a contingency, and they are now in effect.


Still, I must wonder, what has gone wrong? My cerebral injections of human gland extract cannot be at fault. I've been using them myself, and surely I am not insane!


Indeed, I find the treatments to be most efficacious; wonderfully salubrious. My mental and physical reaction times have improved two-hundred percent from base-line. IQ is up a full thirty points and rising! The injections should have had the same effect on The Chairman as on myself and the experimental monkeys. Perhaps, Crazy Joe's habit of consuming bad vodka by the liter interferes with the uptake of essential neurochemicals.
Hmmmm- now, there is a subject for further research.


Ah, but more's the pity that I must so soon make haste away from the capitol and thence to the West. I would dearly love to have a look under the hood when they autopsy the Idiot Czar's brain-pan... what a pile of mush they will find in there. I would, of course, culture it and feed it to the monkeys... just to see whatever might develop or decay.


Yes, I do love the adventure of Science!


Right now, however, my concerns are more pressing. I fear the footfalls proceeding down the corridor. The jack-booted knocking on the door is surely to come. My contacts in the West have assured me of safe haven and the opportunity to continue my work under ideal conditions. In any case, you know as well as I, that I am born for greater things than to tend to a geriatric, whacko despot in his besotted declining days. I am a Scientist, not a sop nurse to the mentally incontinent!


Evgeny Sergeivich, I send you this transmission only in the greatest confidence that it will remain our secret. Were it within my power, I would take you with me. Alas, there is but room for one on the mini-sub.


Someday, hopefully, we shall meet again and on that day, spill neurotransmitters in great celebration. If, on the other hand, you reveal my secret, rest assured that my new friends will find you and do you and your family terrible, terrible harm. They are not nice people. They will kill you slowly and take weird pleasure in doing so. Yes, they are true professionals, in their own right.


I truly wish you and yours the best in the coming hard days. Take care of yourself and your lovely Alexis. Give the children a kiss for me. Please, if you will, be sure to look after the monkeys. Whatever comes, forever, I will always be your Comrade and Fellow Explorer in the Quest of True Science. At present, however, I flee!
I Remain Yours in Fraternal Compassion and Self Salvation,


Anton Saurian

The Letters Unfold…

Compiled & Edited by Steven Solomon © 1992 
 Wherein We Meet the Good Professor

The following letters are the earliest known correspondence from the Professor. They are addressed to Evgeny Nedo, Saurian's confidant and lab assistant during his years behind the Iron Curtain. Evgeny is believed to have died or been executed in the Soviet gulag during the Kruschev years; this apparently for his close association with Saurian, the traitor-genius. These documents have been made available thanks to the great strides made during the recent period of openness and restructuring within the former communist block. (Ed.)





 "Those Bastards!"
September 12th, 1951


Dearest Evgeny Sergeivich,


I am free! My jailers, those bastards, have at last released me from the dark night of incarceration, hunger and relentless beatings. I am free, free at last!!!


As the cell door opened, and sunlight graced my continence for the first time in one-hundred and fourteen days, I actually believed once again in the true and just nature of Soviet justice, the law of my adopted land. At that moment, in the dour face of Club-foot Ivan, my sadistic caretaker, I thought that I detected the glimmer of a smile. He wiped the drool from the corner of his crusty mouth and said "Mm-uph-shme". I don't know what it means, and it probably means nothing. He has no tongue.


In any case, as it turned out, my release had nothing to do with the proper resolution of those utterly groundless allegations regarding murder and sadistic bodily mutilation... bah! Of course, I had nothing to do with that old woman's demise nor her missing body-parts. They were briny and stringy and of no use to me.


The charges were all trumped up, you know; a mere and unfortunate happenstance that Helga Kirov should turn up dead and sans endocrine ducts, brain stem, pituitary gland and most of her liver. My misfortune, alas, to be experimenting with advanced neurological medicine just as the elderly victim became the latest in a series of grisly and difficult to solve murders in this socialist paradise where crime does not occur. The good folk of the village set upon me like hungry dogs.


As ever, it was all too easy for the petty, jealous and uneducated to blame a True Man of Scientific Inquiry for their incomprehensible misfortunes. The fuck with them all, I say; those bastards!


Well, that is all behind us, now. Praise the ghost of Lenin, word of my important research finally made its way to the Kremlin! Stalin's own doctors secured the order for my release. They need my help. There is nowhere else to turn... not a single scientist in the entire communist block has carried out extensive and practical investigations comparable to my own. If anyone can solve the problem of our National Savior's rotting brain, it is I, and I alone!


It seems that our Leader has recently, since, oh, the past decade, become rather distracted. He is given to nervous fits; something to do with alcoholic lesions on the brain. He exhibits increasingly paranoid behavior, even by his own standards. How paranoid, you ask: better to query his last neurologist, the venerable Dr. Mishlove, now presumed rolling at the news of my being on the case, in an unmarked, mass grave.


Whatever! The Politburo has grown concerned enough to bring me in as a specialist in the field of Chemical Brain Amplification and Reconstruction. They promise me the best and latest in laboratory facilities, all the help I need and an unlimited supply of anatomical and chemical samples with which to experiment.


As soon as I arrive in Moscow, we will be that much closer toward a cure for Stalin's case of disappearing intelligence. I'm sure that this is a job that I can handle. There is, no doubt, a medal of The Order of Lenin awaiting me in some few months. Why, I'll have our Beloved Socialist First Comrade back in fine fettle in no time at all.


Evgeny, I need you to return to Uralsk and secure whatever equipment remains in the ruins of our old lab. Also, find my notes. Little Riasa, the Commissar's daughter, has kept them safe for me. Be careful, however! Her father, Misha Alexaevich does not know that I was shtuping her. If he finds out that she and I were in any way involved, he might make trouble. I would have to kill them both. I would have to kill the entire family. I am, of course, now a man with a serious reputation and interests to defend. I would probably have to kill you, as well. Yes sir, that's how old Joe would handle it!


For both our sakes, let's just try to avoid it coming to that, eh.


Well, we have quite the excellent opportunity before us, don't we. I am so looking forward to the chance to be working closely with you, once again. Please stay well and have the best of success in your errands on my behalf. I will be seeing and your family in Moscow, very shortly!


Yours in Scientific Zeal & Real Enthusiasm,


Anton Saurian