Dr Breakfast and the Polyban

Dr. Breakfast lives on the sixty-ninth floor of the Vasco da Gama Tower, in the Republic of Lisbon-Loures. From his windows he can see the whole city, or almost all of it, and what he can’t see is projected onto the multiple screens of his one hundred and fifty thousand computerized video consoles, transmitted to him by an air-force of ten thousand remote-controlled mini-helicopters equipped with micro-cameras. These machines hover low in the sky over the Republic; so low, in fact, that the population think that they are real helicopters, but flying higher than they really are. (Such are the mysteries of human perception.) To add to the illusion, Dr. Breakfast has installed toy helicopter pilots sitting at the commands.

 

Dr. Breakfast needs to see all this because it is he who controls the computer system which opens the gates of Lisbon-Loures to the neighboring republics of Damaia, Cascais and Almada-Angola. Every day, at six a.m., Dr. Breakfast decides how many people may enter the Republic, and controls who comes from where and why they may enter. Every day, at six a.m., and until the curfew at eight p.m., Breakfast is God.

 

The term “breakfast” comes from an old expression connected to the religious habit of “fasting”, or not eating, during the night, before partaking of communion at morning Mass. The first meal of the day would break this fast. According to the Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language:

 

            break.fast (brek’fast), n. 1. The first meal of the day; morning meal: A

hearty breakfast was served at 7 A.M. 2. The food eaten at the first meal

of the day: a breakfast of bacon and eggs – v.i. 3. To eat breakfast: He

breakfasted on bacon and eggs. – v.t. 4. To supply with breakfast: We

breakfasted the author in the finest restaurant. (1425-75; late ME brekfast.

See BREAK, FAST) – breakfaster, n. – breakfastless, adj.

 

 

It is commonly considered that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, given that the calories and proteins that we receive in the morning will provide us with the strength to do our work in a satisfactory manner. Doing without breakfast is actually considered to be dangerous to one’s health. A good breakfast, in a relatively mild climate, should consist at least of one part milk (or substitute), one part fruit (or substitute) and one part bread (or substitute). A breakfast of this type should prepare one sufficiently for the day.

 

Every morning, at five thirty prompt, Dr. Breakfast drinks a half liter of vodka and eats a guacamole salad.

 

            Guacamole Salad

            1 Avocado

            Lemon juice

            1 small tomato

            Garlic

            Onions

            Oil

            Vinegar

 

Dr. Breakfast has an ulcer, but his blood circulation and his defecation system are generally pretty good.

 

When Dr. Breakfast isn’t working, after the Republic of Lisbon-Loures has closed for the day, and is relatively deserted, except for maintenance staff and people who can’t afford to buy motorized vehicles, he indulges himself in one of his favorite pastimes. Dr. Breakfast makes match-stick men sculptures out of paper-clips. Given the limitations of the means he uses, these figures tend to be very similar to each other, which does not worry Breakfast in the slightest. He now has over four thousand figures, almost all of them totally the same, and for which he has had to rent a second apartment, on the forty-sixth floor, in order to allow them the space they require in order to “breathe and be themselves”, as he terms it.

 

Dr. Breakfast’s cleaning-lady, Dona Aldegundes, thinks he is a little bit strange.

 

“You are a little bit strange, Dr. Breakfast”, she sometimes thinks.

 

But she never says this out loud, as she is happy to receive the enormous salary that Breakfast grants upon her, over ten times the going rate, and so she doesn’t give Breakfast any trouble, even though she spends what seems to her to be hours and hours a week dusting and shining idiotic figures made out of worthless pieces of steel and which don’t even remotely look like human beings.

 

Dona Aldegundes is convinced that Dr. Breakfast pays her so much because, like many intellectual types, he is out of touch with what is going on in the “real” world, but this is not the case at all, and if Dona Aldegundes had any idea about the “real” world that Dr. Breakfast inhabited she would never set foot in his apartment again. For Dr. Breakfast has a deep, dark, terrible secret. Which can only be revealed through a secret code. And if anyone ever discovers this code they will be turned into Korean squirrels and forced to spend their lives eating nuts and other related dry fruit products.

 

Occasionally Dr. Breakfast receives complaints about the quality of his work from people who have to commute daily from the outskirts into Lisbon-Loures, which is the only place in this mini-Diaspora of Southern Portugal in which intellectual and office work is permitted. They send him these complaints by mail.

 

            frühstück@vasco.com

 

This is a typical complaint:

 

“Dear Dr. Breakfast,

 

I was stuck in traffic at the north entrance to Lisbon last Tuesday for over two hours. The traffic was completely stopped. I know you have a very difficult job and all that, but it sometimes seems to me that the traffic control system is run by someone who drinks half a bottle of strong liquor for breakfast and that your helicopter pilots are plastic dummies!

 

Yours sincerely

 

(XXXXXXX)”

 

Dr. Breakfast is an extremely polite man, and so he always replies to these complaints, even when they are threatening. Unfortunately, he does not have a great deal of free time, between his long working hours and his time-consuming hobby, so he sends a standard letter which he used to write when he worked as a columnist on a newspaper, many years ago.

 

“Dear User of Our Services

 

I perfectly understand your problem, and have been through the same thing myself. But you must face up to the fact that sex and sexual desires are perfectly natural aspects of our lives. If you are convinced that you smell bad and that other people notice this, it is only a question of feelings of guilt. Nothing that you are doing (except perhaps the using of a snorkel and a rabbit) should be seen as being unusual, and indeed many people enjoy this activity. If I were you I would be proud and confident about myself.

 

I hope this helps you in solving your little problem, and enables you to face the world in a happy and constructive manner.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Dr. Stanislaw Breakfast”

 

Generally Dr. Breakfast never hears from the same person again. But whether this is because they are happy about his reply or are afraid of receiving another one has not yet been discovered by his eight-thousand strong market-research team.

 

Dr. Breakfast has Saturdays off in the afternoon, and Sundays all day. This is the time when he wanders about the Republic to see how things are getting on.

 

And he sees drug addicts parking cars at every street corner, drug addicts begging for money outside every restaurant, café or snack-bar. And drug addicts sleeping in the street. And he sees that all is good and well. And Dr. Breakfast is a happy traffic controller, and occasionally sings the “Happy Traffic Controller’s Song”.

 

            The Happy Traffic Controller’s Song

 

            Do be do be do be

            When the traffic be

            And the drivers be

Keep to the right

And remember your duties.

 

 

This, among other songs, helps Dr. Breakfast to get through those difficult hours that separate ending work from beginning work.

 

Among the small number of people who actually inhabit the Republic of Lisbon-Loures there are those who ponder upon the reason why the city was closed off to outsiders and why its frontiers are so carefully monitored. No one actually remembers why, but there are three theories.

 

One is that, at some stage in the past, someone decided that there were too many cars in the city and introduced a toll system which eventually led to Dr. Breakfast’s controlling of entry. The second theory is that there were political problems between the leaders of Lisbon-Loures and the surrounding areas, but no one really believes that this could have led to such a radical measure.

 

The most widely held belief as to why the Republic closed its gates is that of the legend of the “Polyban”, the six-eyed, eight-legged, one hundred-foot tall giant who could eat a Fiat Uno or Renault Clio for breakfast and still want more. A terrific beast. A giant who could spit and fart at the same time.

 

If you were caught by the Polyban, when you were happily driving into Lisbon in the company of your most immediate family, perhaps with your wife, children and mother-in-law, he would stop your vehicle and remove you from your car and force you into performing terrible, unthinkable, unspeakable acts.

 

The Polyban would demand to hear your knowledge of the combustion engine. The Polyban would force you into sucking your mother-in-law’s big toe.

 

The Polyban would make you wear party hats and enjoy receiving socks as presents. The Polyban would make you feel sexually attracted to refrigerators and washing machines, and sometimes even dishwashing machines.

 

The Polyban would make you enjoy eating lettuce.

 

The Polyban would hold you against its face and breathe its terrible breath into your nostrils, and from then on you would appreciate French films and North African literature. The Polyban would rub your buttocks with glue, and you could never wear a pair of jeans again.

 

The Polyban would take away your marijuana and your sunglasses, and you would be sad beyond belief.

 

The Polyban would force you to read newspapers from the beginning to the end, including the classified advertisements, and would then release upon you its horde of whistling caterpillars.

 

The Polyban would make you look at yourself in a mirror and see yourself as you really are. Then the Polyban would make you wander into the woods, and when you came back you would be stricken by the curse.

 

And from then on you would never be the same.

 

Dr. Breakfast is the only living person who has met the Polyban. And he knows how the Polyban can affect you. And Dr. Breakfast’s secret remains in his multi-colored dreams, when he sees the purple and gold panorama of the night sky unfolding before him like a mantle made up of Christmas trees and salmon’s tongues covered in camel hair.

 

And you, what do you dream of at night?

(First published in "Frontiers", Simetria 1998)