Mmmemories!

by Daniel M. Cojocaru

"So, how did you feel, when you first noticed that a carrot was growing out of your belly-button?" What could have easily been a question asked by his shrink in his previous life, was in actual fact asked of Helmut Krauthammer by a reporter from TIME Magazine, for the person of the year interview.

"Well, it didn't happen overnight", explained Krauthammer in a thick German accent, "so I had a little bit of time getting used to it. But then, it also happened kind of really fast. I guess you can compare it to growing--what do you call them", Krauthammer consulted his notes, "callouses or warts. Their growth feels somehow natural and they become a part of you. But here of course the analogy ends, as we all love our Krautbelts and would not want to part with them, I mean as a whole at least. But now, of course, everyone knows how it feels."

Krauthammer, a non-descript, average German citizen in every way, had been what with diseases is known as patient zero, the first to develop a pathology, the one to start a pandemic. Yet with his condition the term sat oddly, as some considered him to be a new messiah, a messenger from God in a time of dire need. How exactly it had occurred, let alone why, is known to few and understood by even fewer. It had been distilled to popular science as an unlikely and rare genetic mutation, something that, if at all, occurs every ten thousand years or so, depending on who you'd ask at any given moment. If nothing else, it didn't stretch the public's belief more than let's say a Higgs boson being created in a giant particle accelerator. Krauthammer's fruit-and-veg belt at least was observable by the naked or mediated eye and so most people shrugged, accepted yet another scientific paradigm shift and focussed on the more practical and sensational ramifications of the Krauthammer story.

In the many interviews that followed, Krauthammer admitted to feeling like Kafka's Gregor Samsa, yet without the accompanying social angst, since this was a tolerant, enlightened age where everybody was accepted; if at all, he was Gregor Samosa, albeit a turned inside-out one at that, what with the fruit and veg protruding from his waist, he added in almost every interview with a slightly embarrassed chuckle that made him oddly likeable.

The carrot did not remain an isolated phenomenon. Soon Krauthammer had been sprouting a zucchini on its left, a pineapple on its right, then a dragon fruit, several litchis and a baby cucumber. Once he recognized the buddings of a watermelon, however, he finally decided to consult his GP, as he realized that even his most airy clothes could no longer hide what would have constituted a mid-sized fruit basket just a few years before.

Wrapped in his giant cycling poncho to the doctor's he went, who, utterly perplexed at his patient's condition, referred him to a specialist--although it took him quite some time and all his wisdom acquired in his long years of medical study and practice to decide on which of the various candidates would be able to help Krauthammer best. He dismissed his gut instinct of sending him to a psychiatrist immediately, as the physical proof of his condition was not to be denied, and he probably would have to join him if he did that. An Oncologist?--but the fruit and veg looked much too yummy to be cancerous. A dermatologist?--but then the skin of the greens did no longer have anything to do with human skin as such. So, after going through a long list of possible medical specialists, he settled on a non-medical expert and sent him to a botanist.

The botanist was as flummoxed as Krauthammer's doctor had been but then he remembered that one of his friends from his university days had become somewhat of a luminary in the field of genetics and was working at a renowned research lab of one of the pharmaceutical giants, which happened to have a nearby German outpost facility. And thus, after several phone calls, e-mails containing detailed pictures and descriptions of Krauthammer's condition, a visitor's pass was printed, an appointment made and Krauthammer and his poncho made their way to yet further examinations, this time by what, as Krauthammer, having watched too many good and bad movies about scientific experiments gone wrong creating potentially world-ending biohazards, might turn out to be mad scientists.