K-PAX IV
A New Visitor From The
Constellation Lyr
Gene Brewer
Copyright © 2007 by Gene Brewer.
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-4257-1889-3
Softcover
978-1-4257-1890-9
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
A DECLARATION ON GREAT APES*
SUGGESTED ADDITIONAL READING
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Anything is possible.
—prot
PROLOGUE
This book can be understood and enjoyed by those who have not yet read K-PAX (1995), K-PAXII:OnaBeamofLight (2001), and K-PAXIII:TheWorldsofProt (2002). To fully appreciate the context, however, I urge you to read the trilogy prior to, or immediately after, reading fled.
The aforementioned series describes the appearance, in 1990, of a man who claimed to have arrived “on a beam of light,” from the planet K-PAX, some 7000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra, and records my attempts, as a staff psychiatrist at the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute, to determine his true origins and treat his apparent delusion, which continued until the time of his final “departure” in 1997.
For those of you who have read the first three K-PAX books, it should be mentioned at the outset that prot makes no further appearance in the present work. This should come as no surprise, however, as he himself stated that he would not be making a return trip to Earth.
Six months after prot’s departure I retired from active practice, and my wife and I moved out of the suburbs and into a lovely cedar-shingled home in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. I did continue to visit the hospital from time to time, and occasionally gave a lecture at Columbia University, where I held the rank of professor emeritus. Aside from those forays back into the clinical and academic worlds, my wife and I have enjoyed doing all the things we would have liked to do earlier but never had time for—travel, reading, gardening, socializing with family and friends. I finally took up flying, a hobby If enjoy very much (to the horror of my son Fred), but which turned out to be far more expensive that I had imagined. (Q: What makes an airplane fly? A: Money.) And—owing, no doubt, to prot’s influence—astronomy. For a retirement present Karen gave me a four-inch reflecting telescope, and over the past seven or eight years I have become quite familiar with the planets, moons, and stars in our galactic neighborhood. I even found time to write a couple of novels (see www.amazon.com or www.amazon.co.uk).
The entire family, incidentally, is doing fine. Karen is totally free of cancer cells and is more active, if possible, than ever. Abby is now the mother of college men, Rain (Princeton) into computers, while Star (NYU) wants to be an actor, like his uncle Fred. The latter has found a comfortable niche in Broadway musicals, and has appeared in two major films as well. He’s confident a starring role will come along soon. Jennifer is the busiest of the brood, intimately involved in the testing of the first vaccine against AIDS. Will runs a close second, though, as the newest member of the psychiatric staff at MPI, and he loves to discuss his patients with me as do I, of course, with him. He even takes my advice from time to time! I have been told that he looks a lot like me, and I suppose that’s one of the reasons most of us have children: to do it all over again, in a sort of vague and distant way. (On the other hand, I’ve also been informed that anyone with a beard looks much like me.)
I should also mention that we have another member of the family, a mixed-breed dog obtained from the local animal shelter. Flower is seven now, in the prime of life, and she’s a clumsy, hilarious, canine oaf, whom we love dearly.
As an aside, the excellent film version of K-PAX didn’t do as well at the box office as had been expected and, as of this writing, a sequel is still up in the air. (If you know of a studio or producer who’s interested, please ask them to contact me through my website.) There’s a ray of hope in the strong videotape and DVD sales and rentals, however, and as prot pointed out on numerous occasions, anything is possible. Whatever happens, I think the movie was a good adaptation of prot’s story, and brilliantly played by both Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges (as well as Mary McCormack and the rest of the cast). Karen and I were privileged to meet the stars during the filming (look for me at the end of the “bluebird” scene), and both are fine gentlemen as well as great actors.
But the point I was making is that when prot departed the Earth at the end of 1997 I was pretty sure we would hear no more about K-PAX, certainly not in my lifetime, and especially not from an entirely different visitor from that faraway planet.
As usual where alien visitors are concerned, I was wrong.
CHAPTER ONE
On a lovely spring day in 2005, while I was answering some e-mail, there came a knock at the back door. Actually, it was more like someone was banging on it. Flower ran from the study, barking as usual (she even barks at falling leaves). Karen was out doing some shopping, and I thought it was probably her standing there, arms full of grocery bags. I left a note unfinished and hurried to open it. But when I looked through the window in the upper part of the door I saw something so strange, so unbelievable, that I froze, unable to turn the knob. I attributed the apparition to some ordinary portobello mushrooms (i.e., not the psychedelic kind) I had eaten the previous evening. I love the things, but they sometime make me feel a bit peculiar and see things a little off-kilter.
The hairy creature standing outside stared grotesquely in at me. I stared back. Finally she yelled, over Flower’s barking, “I have a message from prot!”
Still stunned, I opened the door a crack. That was all she needed. With an enormous foot she barged her way into the kitchen and gazed around with interest, as if we weren’t even there. Flower, for her part, gave her a good sniffing and ran hopefully to get a toy to play with, as she does with every visitor we have. I couldn’t help but notice that this one was wearing nothing. Finally she looked at me with her huge black eyes and said, “Prot told me you would put me up.”