Oscar's Story - a sequel to ‘It’s Rocket Science’

I can’t believe I’m here. I assured my wife, Valentina, that I had learned. That Pablo was bad news. That I wasn’t going to get drawn into his schemes ever again. Last time, he was creating a fish paste that he promised to be ten times better than eating regular fish. I thought he was a genius. I wanted to help however I could. I needed to make sure the Antarctic could see his vision fully realized.

I put myself out there. I stood by his side as he promised the moon to any penguin that listened. “Are you sure we can pull this off?” I’d ask, a little skeptically.

“Of course we can!” he’d shout, without any real substance behind the promise. “Why is it that my own assistant is also my biggest skeptic!!?! Maybe I need to enlist George’s help instead!”

He knew that I couldn’t stand George. Such a brown-nosing “yes” penguin. And a creep. We penguins mate for life. I had mated with Valentina for three years at that point when all of a sudden he thought he could step in and steal her away. Thankfully she’s loyal and the two of us chased him away, but his intentions were clear. I definitely didn’t need him getting into my business again. 

Pablo always knew how to push my buttons that way. He kept me compliant. I hated him for that. Even more, I hated myself for that.

He had me at his side day and night marketing his nonsense. Then we spent a couple of hours doing “product development.” It just involved him sitting there barking orders as I ground up a whole lot of fish. 

We had pulverized the colony’s investments and returned it to them in a perishable paste. He didn’t even have the sense to remove the bones or the guts. Or to preserve it. He promised us all that it was shelf stable. It could last months with little to no care, he said. Clearly a lie. We all ended up with major indigestion. Next to an oil spill, it was the biggest natural disaster the ocean ever saw.

But that was months ago and penguins have short attention spans. Everyone forgot. I forgot. And in forgetting, we accidentally forgave the guy. In the end, Pablo was a tough penguin to hate for very long. He had undeniable charm.

And so I find myself back into his mess. “A JETPACK!” he announced. “WE WILL FLY!” he promised.  

“This is just Pablo, making crazy promises he can’t deliver on.” I told myself. And I should have listened. But flying… it had such an allure. I couldn’t deny it. Within minutes, I was fully on board.

Just as before, he managed to talk the entire Village into giving us all of their fish. At least last time, it made some sense. It was what he was using to create his end product. I don’t know what he intended to do with that much fish this time around. I think he just liked the feeling of having everyone hand it to him. The fish did nothing more than feed his ego before rotting in a heap. Now here we are again, hiding from the village in shame while he insists he has everything figured out. 

I better make it back to the village before mating season, I told him. I couldn’t stand the thought of George alone with Valentina. She’s loyal, but if she thinks I’m not going to make it back to mate, there’s no telling what might happen. We had been here for a month now and had nothing but some ocean trash to show for it.

He nearly lost his mind one afternoon. I couldn’t tell what he was shouting and carrying on about before he grabbed my wing and tugged me from the ice floes where we were doing our scavenge back to the mainland. Then he hopped like a madman toward a vehicle that already appeared to be moving.

“Hurry up, tubby! This is the opportunity of a lifetime!” he shouted.

I hopped as quickly as I could. But I couldn’t stand to see all of that good fish go to waste a month ago so I ate my share. And while we were isolated from other penguins out here, there were plenty of fish. I guess I had been doing some comfort eating. I packed on a few pounds and Pablo wouldn’t let me live it down. Anything he could find to poke at me and ruffle my feathers… 

He yanked at my wing and ripped me into what turned out to be the bed of a pickup truck.

“Where are we going?!?! Have you thought any of this through?” I was annoyed. This was the next level of hairball schemes.

“We’re headed to the international science facility Osky-boy!” 

“You know this… how?”

“Well, where else WOULD we be going?!?! It’s not like there’s a condo development or a shopping mall up this way!” 

I suppose he had a point. The humans in this area were only here for one purpose and that was to do scientific research. But they were hardly rocket scientists… “Will this lab even have what we need? We’re getting awfully far from the village. What if the truck doesn’t go back that way? We could end up stuck out here.”

Pablo seemed allergic to thinking two steps ahead. He was driven by pure impulse. And I was at his whim.

The truck stopped and he started yanking at my arm and pushing me around a bunch. Before I knew it, we were stuffed inside a dark closet and he told me I couldn’t make a noise.

Pablo had gotten me into a lot of figurative tight spots. I suppose it was poetic that we spent the next 6 hours stuffed inside a closet that already seemed overly full. Just as I was ready to read Pablo the riot act and try to find my way back to the village by myself, he said we could leave the closet.

And then things really got out of hand. The menace claimed he was “practically a scientist”. Whatever that means. His eyes bugged out. It was like he was possessed. He started grabbing at things and mixing things in a plan that seemed most defined by its total lack of planning. He seemed to think I was a part of all of it. He insisted his goal was to create an explosion. Who in their right mind TRIES to make things explode? Pablo was not in his right mind.

I tried to distance myself from him as much as I could. But each time I stepped away, he had a way of drawing me back to his table. I had to know what was going on. Each time I returned, I was thrown from the table in explosions he deemed “not powerful enough.” It was a yo-yo of curiosity meets chemical reaction.

Eventually, he found an explosion that he liked. Truth is, there were about 8 explosions before it that looked just like the one he declared “the one.” But I didn’t have it in me to argue. I was just relieved that he was finished.

Or at least I thought he was finished. The lunatic realized that in all of his madness, he hadn’t written down his “formula”. And in an ever more harried state, he insisted we figure out how to reproduce the results.

Now he got truly reckless. “Pablo.” I started. “Can we just slow down a minute. Think this through?”

“Think this through, Oscar? What do you think I’ve been doing this whole time, Oscar? You think that I haven’t been thinking? That's all I’ve been doing. This is science! Science is so much thinking! Science!!!!!!!”

At this point, he was just grabbing anything in reach and dumping it into a tub and lighting it on fire. His movements were too frenetic to track. I backed up quickly this time. The explosions continued in the same vein as the dozens before them.

And then I saw something I had never seen from Pablo before. As quickly as he was moving, he fell to the floor, suddenly bursting into a fit of sobs and wails. “I”m a failure! A fraud! I can never do anything right!”

I assured him, “That’s not true at all. There’s not a single penguin in Antarctica with your creativity. Your vision. If anyone can make penguins fly, it’s you!” I suggested he take a break. Back off. Regroup.

He would hear no such thing. But for a while, he did shift his focus. He went on to feverishly work the rest of the night on creating a beautiful artistic piece that would surely present as the perfect jet pack. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that without a propulsion system, it was nothing more than a fancy handbag.

Dawn was on its way and Pablo would be dragging me back into the closet again soon. In a last ditch effort, as he started to hear murmurs outside the door, Pablo grabbed everything from the table and scooped it into the bag. Then he scooped me up and we ducked into the closet just as the humans entered.

I really wasn’t sure about what he expected to do from here. We needed to get back to the oceanfront and well… given that we had never SEEN humans before yesterday, I was pretty skeptical about that being a regular trip.

As luck would have it, we heard the jostling of some keys and Pablo and I hurriedly snuck out of the closet. Ducking between lab benches, we made it out of the room unnoticed. We walked through the short corridor. It was empty apart from the humans ahead of us, but there was nowhere to hide. Thankfully, they never looked back.

We made it back outside and hopped back into the bed of the truck. I made it in first try, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I knew better than to question out loud whether the truck would be going back to the area surrounding our village. But I spent the next 20 minutes staring out the bed, questioning whether the scenery looked familiar. Newsflash: Everything looks the same. It’s Antarctica. A bunch of jagged ice on repeat.

It wasn’t until I saw penguins walking on the ice that I breathed a sigh of relief. We had actually made it back to the village! It had been too long. I immediately scanned the crowd for Valentina. She looked over before her sister turned her away from me. Her family hadn't forgiven me, it seemed.

Pablo started shouting, trying to gather everyone around. I wanted nothing more than to sink into the ice and disappear. What was he up to now?

It worked, of course. Pablo was nothing if not charismatic. The entire town had eyes on him. And me, by extension, as I stood next to him, uncertain of what was coming next.

Pablo held up the backpack he’d designed the night before. “Behold, my jet pack” he announced.

“Pablo… what are you doing? That’s just the pack you threw everything into as we went into hiding!” I asked Pablo quietly.

“DOES IT EVER STOP WITH YOU?!?!” Pablo shouted in a whisper. “Could you just have FAITH in me for a change?!”

And with that, he put the backpack onto his back, handed me some matches and shouted to the crowd, “Fire me up, OSCAR!”

Feeling every set of eyes from the Village fixed on us, I couldn’t think. I could only do what was just asked of me and what the crowd expected me to do. I went up to Pablo, Lit the match, and threw it toward the backpack as I ducked backward.

Pablo was replaced by plumes of smoke and a deafening explosion. I looked up to find him thrown at least 30 feet into the air.

And then began the high pitched screams as Pablo came crashing back down toward the earth. I ran over to check on him and as he began to sit up, I looked out to the crowd. Everyone was smiling. Clapping. In awe.

Valentina’s sister loosened her grip. Valentina ran over. We hugged. Everyone went on for years about how Pablo was the penguin who could fly. Nobody seemed to remember my role. I went on to live a quiet life. Just how I wanted it.