Dragons With Cancer

Squeezing juice from oranges and grapes is easy enough, and with adequate pressure even apples and pears will release their sweet fluid, but only the mad inventor Karl Mondaugen ever managed to make a refreshing drink from the days of the week.

His laboratory is a chaotic place, because he likes to work on many different projects at the same time, and frequently the scattered components of abandoned prototypes will accidentally join together on the floor and form something new. These random creations are mostly useless but occasionally a miraculous device will be spontaneously generated.

This is how the juicer of days came into being. Karl Mondaugen glanced down and there it was, an ugly thing but remarkably original.

Original, yes, but would it prove useful? The answer to this question depended on whether days tasted good or bad. With only one way of finding out, the mad inventor lost no time in extracting the juice of the day he stood in.

He raised the glass to his lips, sipped and grimaced...

In the evening he went to take a stroll along the esplanade. He was mildly cheered to encounter his friend Izaac Spoilchild fishing for messages in bottles with a large net. Karl joined him and asked pleasantly, "Anything new?"

Izaac shook his head sadly. "But you should have seen the one that got away! An enormous green bottle big enough to hold a man. Can you imagine what sort of message that might contain? In fact the glass was so opaque there might well have been a man inside. At one point I thought I heard a voice but it was probably just the crash of waves. I trust your day has been more productive than mine?"

Karl snorted and answered, "Not at all. I squeezed the day and sampled the juice but it wasn’t very nice. I would welcome a second opinion, however."

Izaac agreed to follow the mad inventor back to his laboratory and taste the experiment for himself. He swirled the liquid around his mouth for a whole minute before swallowing. "You’re right, it’s not too pleasant, rather muddy in texture. If it was a color instead of a drink it would be brown, but in fact it’s completely transparent."

"That surprised me as well," Karl Mondaugen admitted.

"I’ve drunk nicer sea water. On the other hand I won’t describe it as ‘vile.’ I can’t see much of a market for it, if your plan was to sell the stuff."

"No matter. I’ll dismantle the juicer and recycle the parts."

Izaac Spoilchild raised his hand. "Don’t be too hasty! Today is Wednesday and maybe it’s the worst flavored day of the week. Why not try again tomorrow and see what Thursday tastes like? In fact I wouldn’t accept defeat until you’ve juiced all seven possible days."

Karl was impressed. "I hadn’t thought of that."

The following morning he rose early, ate a hasty breakfast, and decided to finish his meal with a mug of something invigorating, not tea or coffee as was usual for him, but the juice of Thursday. True, it was still the morning and it might be argued that the day was not yet ripe, but the operation was so simple that very little time or energy would be wasted if the concoction proved sour. He risked only disappointment and perhaps a stomach ache, not a major disaster.

The juice of Thursday was also transparent and only a little fizzy.

He sipped and swallowed, an ambiguous expression appearing on his face. Thursday tasted better than Wednesday, without doubt, but could hardly be described as delicious. "My doubts remain," he told himself, "but my hopes are not entirely vanquished."

He remembered the comment Izaac had made and added, "If this drink was a color it would be mauve." Then he nodded and set the glass aside.

For the remainder of the day, the dried husk of that squeezed Thursday, he went about other business, refining other inventions and scuffing together scattered components with his slippered feet but creating nothing viable either by design or chance. In the evening he wrote a letter to a friend in Munich, then settled on a sofa with a book and finally dozed off.

In the middle of the night he awoke, staggered to his bed, and slept away the crick in his neck that the sofa had given him, for it was a gift he did not want.

The dawn of Friday did not rouse him. An hour passed and then he opened his eyes and yawned at the sun, which has never choked anyone, and swivelled himself to the ground and shuffled to his kitchen. Pumpernickel, sauerkraut, sausages: the same breakfast as always. This time he demonstrated patience, brewing coffee and waiting until noon before applying the juicer.

Friday was far sweeter than the juices of the previous two days. He licked his lips, eyes bright, drained half the large glass before making a judgment. "Very nice. It tingles on the tongue with anticipation, with promised excitement, and would be electric blue in color if it wasn’t clearer than the purest water. But in the final analysis, it’s not perfect. Indeed it’s hardly superior to pink grapefruit juice or a mix of lychee, papaya, and passion fruit. I’m still not convinced!"

Despite this little speech without an audience, he removed his slippers and laced on his boots and went for a walk along the esplanade. Izaac Spoilchild was in his usual place with his usual net and Karl offered him the half full glass. The fisher of bottles accepted it and sampled the liquid and made a smacking noise that might have been a wave striking the seawall. Karl wasted no time getting down to business and forestalled Izaac’s response by saying:

"Not bad, the juice of Friday? But I suspect the juice of Saturday will be even better, utterly delicious in fact, for everyone knows that Saturday is the favorite day of the week. It should have occurred to me sooner than it did, but because I don’t have a proper job, I mean a job with a boss to answer to, I forgot how important the weekend is to most people. The same applies to you, my freelance friend. Saturday is sure to be uniquely refreshing!"

Izaac digested this news. "All very well, but what part will I play in your project?"

"Bottles!" Karl chortled. "Many, many bottles. My juicer is rather inefficient at the moment because it’s one of my accidental inventions. With a few minor adjustments, maybe only the tightening of a screw or two, its performance will surely be enhanced. I intend to squeeze every last drop out of Saturday and there’s certain to be a lot of liquid in total. I need your bottles to store it in."

"Shall I remove the messages first?"

"That’s probably a wise precaution. We’ll open a booth on the esplanade and sell the stuff. I’m sure our profits will be considerable. The pure juice of Saturday!"

"A business deal? I have no objections. Let’s shake hands on it."

"And drink a toast too..."

"With the juice of Friday? Fair enough, there’s a little left. What color will Saturday resemble? I’m tempted to say alternating bands of green and yellow."

"Not bands. Vertical stripes."

"You’re right, of course," Izaac agreed.

In fact both guesses were wrong. Saturday produced a juice no less transparent than earlier days but it tasted of golden stars in a silver sky. Karl had spent most of the morning making the necessary adjustments to his juicer and then wheeling it to the house of Izaac, which was a sort of private museum of seaborne bottles. They waited until early afternoon before liquidizing the day. Only when all the bottles were full did they switch off the machine.

Neither man enjoyed transferring the bottles to the chosen spot on the esplanade, but the final results were worth the toil. Their booth was little more than a table on which were arranged the bottles for sale. A sign proclaimed the simple truth about the contents of these glass vessels: FRESH SATURDAY JUICE! Customers were slow to approach at first but after a few brave souls sampled the drink the report of its excellence quickly spread. Every last bottle was sold.

One customer was familiar to both of them, Paddy Deluxe from the far side of town, who remarked, "This day feels a little husky to me, so its juice is exactly what I need!"

Karl and Izaac sniggered together when he had gone.

"We’ve discovered the perfect formula for success in the soft drinks industry: make a day uncomfortably dry by squeezing it thoroughly, then sell the juice back to the people who live in that day. We’re the cleverest capitalists who ever existed! It’s a kind of tangy thievery, but wholly legal. As long as we choose a tasty day to squeeze we can’t lose. We’re destined to be rich!"

Sunday proved to be not quite so delicious, thickest, and creamiest of the days so far, too stodgy to be entirely refreshing, like yogurt soured with piety. In fact both Karl and Izaac described its nonexistent color as white. But some people liked it, mostly older folk, and it was clear that it held a real minor appeal. Monday, by contrast, was utterly vile, the blackest and bitterest of possible juices. And Tuesday was only a slight, slate gray improvement.

"Now we have all the data we need," Karl Mondaugen declared to his accomplice.

"Yes," Izaac Spoilchild agreed, rubbing his callused palms together in melodramatic glee. They decided not to waste time juicing Wednesday and Thursday, because they already knew what those days tasted like, nothing special. Better to wait and concentrate their efforts on juicing Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But in fact they soon decided to ignore Friday also and focus mainly on the two weekend days. Izaac explained that his number of bottles was limited.

While he went to fish for more, Karl planned the precise way he would spend his money when he was a wealthy juice baron. Perhaps in the construction of an enormous laboratory. Or even better: a factory that made laboratories. He was happy to dream the remainder of the week away until Saturday arrived, and then he rushed out, slamming the door behind him harder than ever before.

With Izaac he repeated the procedure of the previous week, setting up the booth on the esplanade and rapidly selling every bottle. But this time there were complaints.

"What do you think you’re playing at?" demanded a man named Frothing Harris. "This juice is foul. I want my money back without argument or delay!"

Other customers were quick to follow his example.

"I don’t understand," Karl lamented. "We juiced this Saturday in exactly the same way as before."

"We’re going to have to reimburse every single customer," Izaac groaned, "which means we’ll make a loss. No money and no juice."

There was a little fluid left at the bottom of one of the returned bottles. Karl sipped it and twisted his face. "Disgusting! We should have sampled some before selling it. We assumed the juice of every Saturday would be identical. What a mistake!"

"There are only seven flavors in a week," Izaac countered, "and Saturday is the best."

Karl shook his head. "Not so. The cyclic nature of weeks is an illusion, a wholly artificial conceit. In fact every new day is entirely different from all the others that precede it. The pattern exists only in the imposed names, not in the days themselves. What fools we were to forget that! The flavor of any new day can never be predicted. The juice of that first Saturday is gone forever, every last drop drunk. Just because the Earth circles the sun means nothing: the sun is also in orbit around the centre of the galaxy, and the galaxy itself is constantly moving!"

Izaac scratched his head. "You mean that our planet is always in a new location, at a point in space it has never been before, and that’s why each day is unique?"

Karl wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I wish each new day had its own name. I’m sure there are enough objects in existence to make this feasible. Cupday, Laughday, Sockday, Jumpday, Drumday, Snakeday, Upday, Downday, Eyeday, Humbleday..."

"And on and on," Izaac said, before crying, "I have an idea!"

Karl arched an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"There’s still a mouthful of the original Wednesday left, right? Remember how we described its color as brown, a color made of all other pigments mixed together? Maybe we did that because it potentially contains all other days. I mean, that was the same day your juicer accidentally came into being, wasn’t it? So the juice that remains contains the squeezed essence of everything that existed in that day, every object, including the juicer itself!"

"Inspired," Karl agreed, "but I’m not sure how that helps us."

Izaac hopped from one foot to another. "If you devise some method of reversing the polarity of your juicer, we can pass the remaining juice of that first Wednesday through it, turning the juice back into part of a solid day, a part that hopefully will include the old juicer. Then we can use that juicer to re-juice today. Don’t you see? With the juicer we already have we juiced this Saturday, but with a juicer existing more than a week in the past we can juice last Saturday again!"

Karl spoke not a word in reply but rushed back to his laboratory, Izaac puffing close behind. It was almost inevitable they would arrive to discover that the juicer of days had vanished. In its place stood something else, a different machine, also spontaneously generated, whose scattered components had come together on the floor in the breeze generated by Karl’s very hard slamming of the door earlier that day. At its base stood a glass of oily liquid.

"This device is a juicer of juicers! It juices only other juicers. Our juicer is juice!"

This outburst had caused Karl to dribble generously. Izaac used the subsequent pause to pluck at his friend’s elbow with his gnarled hands and whimper, "But what if you reverse its polarity?"

"I simply can’t be bothered," Karl huffed, lunging for the glass and drinking down its contents in a single gulp. Then he stood still and glowered.

After a minute, Izaac ventured the question, "What does it taste like?"

"The best part of a fortnight and half our combined futures!"

"Anything else?"

"A metallic tang. Like melted robot thumbs."

They regarded each other sadly.

"Care for a beer?"

"Yes."