Fort Building
Doctor: So tell me about this flu?
Patient: Well, the standard stuff: congestion, headache, sore throat, upset stomach, nausea, dizziness, insomnia, difficulty swallowing, fever
Doctor: all at the same time?
Patient: No, they appear to be working in two man teams, like assassin squads. Just when the congestion and headache go away, nausea and fever show up. They’ve been tag teaming me all week.
Doctor: Anything else?
Patient: Weird stuff. I woke up this morning with my ear lobes folded up and stuffed down my ear canals. Sticky too. As you can see my ear lobes look slightly longer now, from the struggle I had restoring normal.
Doctor: I see that. Anything else?
Patient: An irridescent blue, yellow, and orange rash on my chest.
Doctor: Let me take a look. Yes. It does have a kind of under-glow quality, doesn’t it?
Patient: Look closer. Listen to it.
Doctor: Hmm. It sounds like an Oktoberfest celebration.
Patient: That’s what my wife thought. You can actually pick out a voice here and there.
Doctor: Anything else particularly unusual?
Patient: My eyebrows are growing faster than I can trim them.
Doctor: Interesting. Yes. Just since you’ve been here..
Patient: On the back of my right calf, from time to time, I feel a blister swelling, and pulsing to the rhythm of Gloria Gaynor’s “I will survive.” When the blister pops, it leaves no mark, but I feel a temporary euphoria that I can’ quite contain. I yell things that are not work friendly.
Doctor: Maybe I haven’t been clear. I’m wondering if you’re experiencing anything severely unusual?
Patient: I can’t help feeling that two or three civilizations have colonized my body. Some huge Manifest Destiny experiment is being played out on my continent. My Eyebrows, for example, are being harvested for fort building. Some weak tribes are hiding in my ear canals every night.
Doctor: Well, we shouldn’t try to self-diagnose.
Patient: Can you give me anything for this?
Doctor: Look, if it were serious, I might put you on something, but..
Patient: These things just have to play themselves out?
Doctor: Sorry.