The sound a scalpel makes as it slices through skin is quite faint. But properly calibrated listening devices affixed to video cameras can hear and record the sound in parallel with video images. Tiny video cameras, attached to the scalpel just behind the blade, capture the intersection between stainless steel blade and flesh at precisely the moment the cut is made. Listening to the amplified sound while watching greatly magnified high definition video of the surgery is akin to skating on the end of the knife.
My first opportunity to participate in this incredible experience was on the occasion of the amputation of Elmo Squiggle’s tiny hands. Several noted psychiatrists had recommended the surgery as a means of restoring decency to the American spirit in the aftermath of Squiggle’s disastrous presidency. But the surgery did little to calm the man’s rampant narcissism, thus the impact of the dual amputation was not as ‘huge’ as hoped. Subsequent to the unsuccessful surgery, Timothy Skulptamere, who was the brand manager for Squiggle Pharmaceuticals/ Squiggle Vaginal Exploration as well as the neurosurgeon tasked with finding a more impactful route to recovery, offered an alternative: lobotomy. “While a transorbital lobotomy will not cure his schizophrenia, the psychosurgery will give him, and the American people, a far greater sense of serenity,” Dr. Skulptamere explained. “We can use Squigglefy to arrest the psychotic symptoms after the lobotomy.” Some medical professionals objected to the use of Squigglefy, saying Skulptamere was simply promoting a Squiggle Pharmaceauticals‘ branded version of aripiprazole, naked capitalism in its worse form. Despite reservations among the medical community, though, the decision was made: Squiggle would be lobotomized, the reverse of what his pre- and post-presidential rants had done to the American people.
The same device used to record the audio and video of Squiggle’s hand surgery was used in connection with the ice pick surgery (so called because the originator of the transorbital lobotomy used a tool, the orbitoclast, that resembled an ice pick). It was during the procedure, broadcast live on closed circuit television on large screens in the theater overlooking the operating room, that I noticed what appeared to be tiny circuit boards adjacent to the point at which the tip of the orbitoclast was breaking through the thin bone behind the eye. At that instant, I heard a distinct buzz and high-pitched whistle, as if the tiny circuit board was active.
Being a dedicated investigative reporter, I could not let that sight and sound go unexplored. I demanded Dr. Skulptamere stop what he was doing for a moment while I replayed, in hyper-slow motion, the videocast to the point at which I had seen the tiny circuit board. Because of my position as an investigative reporter; he had no option but to accept my legitimate order. Using a macro-enlargement processor, I got a close up view, magnified one thousand times. There, as clear as a bell, was a circuit board just two hundred micrometers wide. Printed across the bottom were these words: “Property of Squiggle Pharmaceuticals; programmed by Timothy Skulptamere.” As I watched frame by frame, I saw beyond the circuit board, through the hole made by the orbitoclast; there, where a brain should have been, was an extraordinary complex of computer chips and drives, all miniaturized in the extreme.
Following completion of the sham lobotomy, I interrogated Dr. Skulptamere at length. He revealed the entire ugly history of Squiggle’s transformation from human to humanoid and the manufactured device’s ascendancy to the presidency. Squiggle became simply a product of Squiggle Pharmaceuticals, used to maximize the company’s revenue. Before clamming up and calling for his lawyer, Skulptamere claimed the entire plot had been hatched by Squiggle’s campaign manager. I reported my experiences to Glynda Ifillatank, the anchor of the Public Bereavement Service News Hour, who promised to report on the matter that evening.
Evelyn Ivanna Squish—Squiggle’s campaign manager, attorney, and courtesan—responded as expected when Ifillatank questioned her on air about Squiggle’s robotic nature: “Glynda Ifillatank, you broodish dark animal, you pray to satan every night at midnight and drink the blood of slaughtered children. No one believes a word you, nor anyone like you, say.” Glynda Ifillatank, finally fed up to the gills with racist comments directed at her, used a claw hammer to club Evelyn Ivanna Squish until her brains melted into blood pudding.
At least that’s how I recall it playing out. But I may have been hallucinating, as I often do. Actually, I don’t think Squiggle made it to the White House. He was incinerated, on the way, by voters’ seething rage at his very existence.
