The Partial Passing of Donald J. Newman

The Partial Passing of Donald J. Newman

Harry Buschman

Donald J. Newman lay on a flat operating table supported on two trestles in the Children’s Room. That’s what they called it here in the hospital in Bern, Switzerland. As he relaxed, he reminded himself that in this day and age senility is a curable disease and people with money, (like Donald J, Newman) could be completely regenerated at the Morpheus Clinic.

You might think reaching the ripe old age of 176 years would be long enough for anybody to put up with in this world, but it is the nature of wealthy people to not only stretch the envelop, but to tear it up, throw it away and get a new one. Here, in this pleasant sunlit room, with the snow-covered slopes of the Matterhorn just outside the window, Donald J. Newman was determined to be young all over again.

Not as young as a child of course. Who wants that? He intended to be in full possession of his potency, (such as it had been) and a college education, (with a Ph.D. in Investment Banking) ... but free of all his past marital entanglements. He made many mistakes in his 176 years – 11 marriages for one – 37 children and numerous costly business mistakes. “It will be exciting,” he thought to himself as he stretched out comfortably on what was known in the clinic as ‘the drain board’ “to see what I can achieve – knowing what I know now.”

Various tubes and probes had been inserted into his 176 year old body, and by gravity, the presence that had once been Donald J. Newman was slowly draining into a fresh corpus directly below him with zero miles on its odometer.

Most important of all was the transfer of the seat of Donald J. Newman’s ego.

After many years of investigation, Dr. Morpheus had located the seat of the ego, or soul – the thing that makes you, you ... and me, me. It is located in a very remote corner of the lower bowel, and when at last the ego is drained into a new host, the very essence of the individual, the precious ego – with all its memory and love of self intact, would be given a fresh start.

But Professor Morpheus was shocked when he entered the Children’s Room to see how things were getting on. He found both Donald J. Newman and the young man directly below him, who would have been Donald J. Newman II, were stone cold dead.

It was later discovered that the ego of Donald J. Newman was so big that it would not fit through the tube through which it should have flowed to Donald J. Newman II.

At the request of Professor Morpheus, the funeral was a quiet one, attended only by the immediate family.