THE RETURN OF SUPERMAN
In the future, on some
day not too distant when I am there for the centenary's house, living in a
retirement home for the young rockers of yesterdays, after finishing my usual
routine exams I will be sent to the waiting room of the existing infirmary,
where I will have to wait for the results, reporting what is still left of my
health at this moment.
After lighting one of
my illegal cigarettes hidden from the nurse, Captain Thiago appears to me, an
old friend in his seventies, almost bald, in good health, but no longer as
slender as in the prime of his youth.
-D@mm it Zéca!!! Again
you waited for the nurse to come out to light the cigarette!! You have to stop
that.
-You're right, Captain.
But I'll wait for the medical result to not smoke anymore, until then, I can
finish this cigarette here.
-No, Zéca. You really
have to stop.
-I'll stop when I die,
Captain. Until then I'll be decreasing. Look, when I was your age I smoked much
less than I smoke today, so there was even a certain advance in my situation.
We both laughed at the
mediocre joke because we didn't have much else to do but check the news on our
cell phones, make small talk talking bad about politicians or remembering the
past.
-What's up Zéca? Are
you writing anything new?
-Writing always am, but
now much less because everything hurts.
"Even to write,
then I have to record it in the audio and pass to artificial intelligence to
editing all in a way that my messy ideas make some sense."
-And is it working?
-I do my part, Thiagão.
With a lot of effort, but then comes the censorship and does not allow the
publication of anything, because my ideas are old and the people today do not
need to waste time with this kind of uselessness...
-Then the service ends
up shelved?
-It ends up being
shelved, Thiagão. My luck is that I have some money left over from some jobs I
did back then and "badly" hold my retirement and this lot of exams
that I am forced to do.
-Are the works you talk
about from the time of SUCESS PILL, Zéca? At that time, the scripts you wrote
were a guarantee of success...
-Exact. What the
government didn't eat me with taxes is still there...
-Man, how I liked that
series, the SUCCESS PILL...
-It made a good amount
of money, Thiagão... It was enough for the expense.
-And there were a lot
of seasons. Many people still think that if he came back today, it would be a
success.
-It could be... The
motto of the SUCCESS PILL in each episode, being given to someone to fulfill
any personal wish or dream, can still be explored in a multitude of variants.
-I saw all the
episodes, Zéca. I did a lot of programs there on my youtube channel commenting
on everything. People still like this series a lot.
-And wich was your
favorite episode, Thiagão?
-The guy who fulfilled
the dream of living with the movie star he dreamed of since childhood, then,
after he saw how difficult the life of an artist is, he became a renowned
businessman helping a lot of other people in the business get work, in times of
crisis, ending him as her hero.
-That story was good,
but too bad the guy died in the end...
-And you, Zéca... What
was the episode you liked the most?
-What I haven't written
yet...
-Oh! But this answer is
standard, Zéca... Over me, my friend?
-Worse is that it is,
Thiagão. I have a lot of work there to publish, but this censorship of the
social democratic state, doesn't even let us think straight.
"It's just
brainwashing to educate us, eating slop food and paying high tax collections. I
don't even know how I managed to live so long like that."
"What worries me
is the future fate of younger generations like yours."
"You are still
rubber, but the State wants to do away with the elders and leave only the kids
without enough memory or knowledge."
"So captain, my
expectation is even in the works that have not yet come out. Here at the top of
my centenary, I have to look forward... As long as the eye can handle..."
-F*ck, Zéca... I always
thought a lot about that series.
"I always imagined
the situations I would get into if a pill like that appeared in front of
me."
-And what would you do
if you got a success pill, Thiagão?
-I was going to turn
myself into Superman.
-But you're already
Superman, Thiagão. When you wear the big Blue uniform, go to cosplay events and
especially to charities providing unpaid volunteer services of assistance to
the needy…
“Fellow… You become my
favorite Superman!”
-Thanks Zéca, but I'm
just an ordinary man.
"I would really
like to be the real Superman..."
"To help the world
by doing good, just as the Kryptonian original would do."
-The original
Kryptonian Superman is one of my favorite heroes too, Thiagão, precisely
because, I myself, in his place, if I had so much power, would make a lot of
mistakes, trying to correct the world in my own way, which would certainly not
be the most correct and everything would end up in a communist dictatorship of sh*t,
even worse than the one we have today.
-Superman needs to come
back, Zéca.
"They finished
with him, he is forgotten and not even released in comics anymore."
-He symbolizes virtue,
Thiagão. Azulão is one of ours. He represents virility for the sake of
something GOOD and better for the WORLD COLLECTIVITY, even if still invisible
to the eyes of the ignorant crowd.
"Then they
disappeared from the censored media, with all his references, and today nothing
is published or divulged about him and..."
I couldn't interrupt my
reasoning, because I didn't imagine where it would take me, and also because
the nurse arrived to take me to another room where she put me sitting in front
of a table.
Then she left, leaving
me waiting there, alone, who knows what.
The delay was short and
soon an acquaintance arrived.
He was not a relative
or a doctor, but one of my fictional characters in the stories I wrote.
MR. PILL.
***
MR. PILL is not just
any ordinary guy. In fact is the protagonist of the series THE PILL OF SUCCESS.
He is the one who gives
the main character of each episode the pill capable of fulfilling any wish or
dream, no matter how absurd and impossible it may seem.
Yes, it was himself.
His characteristic
outfit, with a grayish velvet jacket, pants, shirt and Fedora hat, in black and
also the characteristic sunglasses, left no doubt even because of the aura now
hovering the environment in which, Mr. PILL, who, when appeared, left
everything around, very strange.
-You know why I'm
here... - He said sitting in the chair available there.
-No. I don't know. I
can't remember much anymore.
-You met the
premises...
-Premises? Which ones?
-The ones required to
be able to obtain the reward...
-I don't remember
exactly which they were, in fact, because of the few neurons that remain intact
in my brain, I am not sure how to remember clearly what would be the conditions
required for someone to obtain the pill.
"It seems to me,
not even the writers, despite the success of the serie, have not reached a
consensus on the subject."
-Yes, but you got the
reward you deserved. Here it is!
Having said that, Mr.
Pill placed the famous SUCCESS PILL on the table, then rose from the chair
where he had been sitting, greeted me by raising his hat, and left.
-Be happy. - He said
repeating the same words as always in each episode, when he left behind the
main character of the moment to live the consequences of having his own
desires/dreams fulfilled, which could be of the most diverse orders, from a success
life, to the eventual endless mistakes and nightmares in his destiny.
It would be enough to
write down on paper everything I intended to accomplish, keeping that desire
folded in my pocket, then I have to ingest the pill waiting for the due
consequences of such an action.
That is it.
In that situation, what
to do with life, from then on?
I was in front of a
spherical range of options with infinite range capable of taking me to past,
future, or imaginary present times, and all that occurred to me at the moment
was to take advantage and smoke another cigarette, since the nurse was not yet
around.
It was only after the
flame of wisdom was lit that the ideas seemed a little clearer.
The way my life was
whipped 24/7 relentlessly by the heavy whip of Murphy's Law, certainly, what
could be a gift for any normal human being, in my specific case, would become a
hellish succession of mistakes to make me even more frustrated and nervous with
everyday’s problems.
Just as there were no
limitations to the realization of any written request on the sheet of paper,
there could also be no restrictions, avoiding probable misfortunes arising from
these wills.
I was in such a dilemma
as to what to ask for, that I even imagined that, if I simply begged for more
health, the government, as a result, would certainly withdraw from me the
retirement benefits already earned, such as pension payments, health treatments
and medications.
What to do?
I didn't ask for any of
that.
Maybe it was even life
honoring me for some good deed that I had done in the unlikely past, but
certainly, it should really be a prank of Fate wanting to apply some trick.
But maybe it wasn't...
I could keep this gift
and take the rest of my life without ever worrying about the help of such a
crutch in my success.
WHOOPS! Sorry to
interrupt you, but I remembered that this script of the main character not
using the pill was already developed earlier in the series.
Hence, my still not
very active creativity suggested that I could also follow another line... That
of passing the hot potato to someone else to risk own luck.
Yes... It wasn't a bad
idea.
Even though suffering
every day, I couldn't complain about the life.
Full of setbacks,
stumbles, headbutts, Corinthians' bad results, bills to pay, politicians who
are sons of a b*tch...
Still, I continue to
protest, not so sure of my rights to make those demands I already routinely and
insistently make, because, after all, to be absolutely true, Destiny itself
provided me, a few conditions for my challenges that great majority of people
does not have to face much greater hardships than mines.
In this way, I make a
point of continuing like this: a boring and complaining old grump.
If I take the PILL of
SUCCESS, my problems will end and there will be in life, nothing more to
protest...
My time in this world
is about to end and I don't need much more than I've already obtained.
Already, the community
that surrounds me, needs better people than me...
Someone full of good
intentions, who helps children and those in need by guiding the world to a
better path.
With some effort I went
up the stairs and passed by the room where Thiagão slept.
From there, a deafening
rumble emerged, which looked more like a truck engine running at full power
being periodically interrupted by the hiss of a hypothetical turbocharger
activated.
It was the Captain
snoring.
I entered the room and
put the pill on the nightstand, next to Thiagão's bed, left there, and went to
my dormitory where I practically fainted from fatigue in my own smelly padding,
now, with a clear conscience.
In fact, this type of
plot had not been attempted in any previous script of the SUCCESS PILL series.
***
I woke up with my
bladder demanding that I go empty it.
Almost stumbling I went
to the bathroom to fulfill this obligation and, only then, long after finishing
it, I began to be less stunned.
I drank half a can of
my favorite energy drink that was still forming champions in F1 and I went
outside the house to see the sun rise.
I sat on a wooden bench
in the garden, lit my first cigarette of the day, before the nurse arrived and
watched nature continue with its work lighting up the morning.
Then I hear screams:
-What is that?
-Is it a bird?
-A rocket?
-A plane?
-No! It's Superman. He
came back.
In my head, I even
listened to the old song theme of the movies of my always dear BIG BLUE.
People shouted in joy
while I took stronger puffs on the
cigarette, aware of the rare success from one of my decisions; the world needs
the return of a SUPERMAN, and I want to keep complaining, because...
Do you really want to
know?
My affinities are
greater and I like BATMAN much more.
***
STORY DEDICATED TO
BATMAN WHO THIS YEAR 2024 turns 85 years old!
***
MORAL OF THE STORY: NOT EVERY ELDERLY
PERSON self-deludes into reliving lost youth, contenting only with avoiding
greater problems in old age.
***
