Doctor Rat Read Free Page B

There’s a chance the teeth may actually grow right up and pierce your brain. Come along and sing with me! Sing:
    Irregular ovulation and
    destruction of the thymus
    chronic lymphedema and
    amputation of the penis!”
    Excuse me, the Learned Professor has picked me up and is tying a string around my upper incisors at the moment. I am now permitted to hang by my teeth in the air as part of a new Insight Therapy Program—what fun, swinging back and forth here.
    “Fight them, Doctor Rat! Bite them!”
    A young radical rat shouting from his cage. Thus has our youth been corrupted by that goddamn blabber-mouth dog with his intuition-pictures. A rat may be waiting for decapitation, and suddenly he will see an intuitive play of pictures in his brain, sent there by this infernal dog on the treadmill. The rat will seem to participate in the scene, running with the wild dogs. The high intelligence of the dogs makes them very potent broadcasters, and being here under stress conditions adds power to their wavelength. Our lab is buzzing with revolutionary feelings. “You cock-sucking cur, how dare you sow dissent among these happy rats!”
    The revolutionary mutt looks at me with red and squinting eyes. You perceived the subtlety of his broadcast, didn’t you, with his sly insinuations of some sort of freedom to be gained by following a peculiar scent? But I know the truth and I’m shouting it to all: “The scent is five percent formaline, Brother Rats, and the only freedom you’ll ever have is death! Death is freedom, that’s the slogan!”
    “Hurray for Doctor Rat!”
    “You tell ’em, Doc.”
    “Thank you, friends and fellow supporters, thank you for your confidence. As you know, the rat is man’s best friend. You’ve seen the advertisements in Modern Psychology Magazine: “The Rat Is Our Friend.” Are we going to allow this wonderful friendship to go down the drain along with the cerebrospinal fluid? A rat must give his all! That’s our purpose, that’s why we’re here on earth!”
    My throat is certainly getting inflamed from all this. But I can’t allow seventy-five years of laboratory experimentation to be pushed aside by a few revolutionary voices. This dog is in a powerful position, however, running here in our midst, tongue hanging out, legs flopping as the treadmill turns him, on and on. I’ve told the Learned Professor to jack up the heat in the dog’s cage, so we can be finished with him soon. But the Learned Pro turns a deaf ear toward everything I say.
    In the meantime, the dog has made numerous converts to his revolutionary cause. The whole Hemorrhagic Sore Cage has gone over to him. And I taught those ungrateful rats how to sing! What betrayal!
    “Brother Rats, how can you be so easily swayed by this dirty dog? Look there, to your left. Look at the recipient rat on the surgical table. He’s having a hole bored in his head. Listen to him screaming. The fresh tumor is being plunged into his brain tissue. In two or three weeks he’ll be groveling around, the tumor increasing, obstructing all his bodily movements. That’s reality, foolish rats. That’s scientific reality, not a lot of stupid doggie drivel.”
    “Ah, go chase your tail, Doc. You’re washed up around here!”
    Those rats need to be shocked a few times down Maze Alleys A and D. They’ve lost all respect for my office. But I’m happy to see one of those rowdy rebel leaders being led to the cardiac puncture table. He’s struggling, his teeth showing white and vicious.
    “Fellow rat, now that your supreme scientific moment has come, don’t you want to have a change of heart? Give your all to science happily. Set an example for these other young rats.”
    Several revolutionaries quickly move in front of me. “Don’t say another word, Rat. Don’t mock him in his agony.”
    “Mocking? Who’s mocking? I’m here to eulogize the fellow, to write him up in glowing terms in the Newsletter. If you’ll permit me to pass…”
    The