A Short Work Schedule

"There are so many things to do!"

For once, Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist wasn't arguing with Sarkon the Prophet or with General Kwar the Dictator about the importance or foolishness of one of his scientific projects. In fact, his complaint looked clearly like a call for help, something that Sarkon the Prophet was always ready to offer in form of kind advice. "Are you overwhelmed in some way?" he asked Dr. Qworm in a concerned tone.

"There are so many things I need to do, and it doesn't seem like I have enough time to do them all," lamented the Mad Scientist. "There's just too much!"

Sarkon looked around. The Welgon Age was such small a world that it was hard to conceive there could be too much of anything to do; usually, they spent most of their time thinking or arguing precisely because their world just wasn't large enough to do much else.

Apparently, the Mad Scientist was being very much himself once again. "Tell me what's bothering you," Sarkon proposed in the most soothing tone he could muster.

"To start with, we've a really huge pile of laundry. I'll need hours – probably even days – to get it all clean!" complained Dr. Qworm. "I mean, I have a pile of socks that gets almost up to my ceiling!"

"Socks?" wondered Sarkon.

"cookie's socks, mostly," precised Dr. Qworm.

Sarkon realized that he couldn't remember the laundry getting done even once since he dwelled in the Welgon Age, so he guessed it had to have accumulated somehow, indeed. And cookie was always running around with nice, clean socks. But where did he get them?

"And the laundry is only the smallest of my tasks: scores of unexplained natural phenomena are waiting to be rationalized by theories, theories are waiting to be confirmed by experimentation, experimentations are waiting to be done! I have so many scheduled that I don't even know where to start! On top of that I have to clean up my lab, sort out my genes -"

"Your genes? Why do you want to sort out your genes?" asked Sarkon.

"Know thyself, isn't that the kind of advice you usually give, Prophet?" snarled Dr. Qworm.

"Sure," admitted Sarkon, "but I didn't mean –"

"Whatever you meant, a thorough personal genetic analysis is how it is done best," affirmed the Mad Scientist. "Such a screening allows us not only to identify any dysfunctions our body has to live with or any diseases we might be most exposed to, or to know how old we might become, but also to know if we will tend to be violent or meek, thrifty or generous, egoistic or self-sacrificing, furious or sad, and in case of need compensate any of these tendencies imposed on us by our material constitution with the one force that we master, the force of will!"

"That's… actually impressive," admitted Sarkon. He hadn't known science was already that far ahead.

"The problem is that such a thorough personal analysis would take a few decades," sighed Dr. Qworm. "Do you see my problem now? I just don't seem to have enough time!"

Sarkon the Prophet stroke his beard. "Maybe we should draft a working schedule for you, so that you can plan the things you want to get done. This way you'd also know how much time you have available for each thing you want to do," he proposed.

"So now I have even one more thing to do," grumbled Dr. Qworm. "Draft a working schedule."

"Excuse me - I'm only trying to help!" Sarkon was getting a little angry at Dr. Qworm's attitude.

"…And I think you should do a personal genetic analysis, too," added Dr. Qworm. "Some of your behavior definitely needs conscious compensation!"

Sarkon sighed. Dr. Qworm was right: angriness seldom lead to anything positive. "Let's just try, ok?" he proposed.

"Well then," it was Dr. Qworm's turn to sigh. "Let's start." He got a notebook out of his pocket and began writing.

0. Draft a working schedule.

"At least that's something that I'll get done soon enough," said Dr. Qworm.

"See?" said Sarkon. "You just started and you can already see the end of it. The start is the biggest hurdle to overcome! Now we also need to estimate the time that each task will take."

"You don't think we'll need more than ten minutes for this, do you?" asked Dr. Qworm.

"Ten minutes could be enough… If you only want to listen the important things," guessed Sarkon.

"Ten minutes, then," agreed Dr. Qworm, and wrote it down.

0. Draft a working schedule: 10 minutes.

"Now the laundry," reminded Sarkon, and Dr. Qworm wrote that down too.

1. Do the laundry: 2 hours.

"Doing the laundry will help us solve a mystery, too," remarked Dr. Qworm.

"What mystery?" asked Sarkon.

"Well, we will then know from where cookie gets his clean socks," explained Dr. Qworm.

"How on the Welgon Age will our doing the laundry give us this knowledge?!" asked a baffled Sarkon.

"Because if we do the laundry, cookie'll get his clean socks from us, silly!" exclaimed Dr. Qworm, amazed at how he had to explain even the simplest of things to Sarkon. But then of course Sarkon was a prophet, so that he couldn't master logic like a scientist does.

Sarkon opened his mouth, but just couldn't think of anything to say.

"Then I want to clean up my laboratory," resumed Dr. Qworm. "That's going to take even longer!"

2. Clean up the lab: 4 hours.

"What is next on your list?" asked Sarkon, and Dr. Qworm answered by writing it down.

3. Finish my report on afterlife: 5 weeks (I hope).

"Afterlife? What happens during afterlife?" asked Sarkon.

"You end up in a very small cloud-like place and have to put up with… Never mind," Dr. Qworm dismissed Sarkon's question with a wave of the hand. "What did I want to do next already? Ah yes," he wrote down again.

4. Do a personal genetic analysis (and figure out why things went wrong): 10 years.

"This is getting long-term," commented Sarkon.

"Not yet," answered Dr. Qworm.

5. Do something for the advancement of humanity: 30 years.

"That's great, Dreitos," encouraged Sarkon. "A very motivating task, indeed! I guess your list is done now!"

Dr. Qworm raised his eyes from the list up to Sarkon. "I said there were a lot of things to do; I didn't say I had to do them all personally!" he explained, and went on writing.

6. Regenerate the ozone layer, solve any population problems that might arise, implement alternative energy sources, save the whales (and other friends), eradicate the most dangerous diseases, allow all children to learn and to discover knowledge by themselves, reduce poverty, understand each other: 100-1000 years.

"These are things that must get done, indeed," agreed Sarkon.

"We need to work on our survival, and we don't want our living standards to degrade too much," explained Dr. Qworm.

7. Work out the right theories explaining all natural phenomena and confirm them all by observation or experimentation (or the other way round): 100'000 1'000'000 a lot of years.

"I don't really know how long it will take," Dr. Qworm admitted after having changed his mind twice for the duration of that task, "but I can tell you that now we're getting long-term," he smiled.

8. Work out interstellar travel (or another way to get somewhere else) so that we don't get burned by the sun: a billion years.

9. Work out intergalactic travel so that we don't end in our galaxy's central black hole: 10 billion years.

"Always the survival problems," commented Dr. Qworm. "And finally…"

10. Engineer a Big Bang in case it doesn't get done by some other force so that we can start over again instead of fading into nil: 20 billion years.

"Well – that's it!" marveled Dr. Qworm. "Thank you for the advice, Sarkon! It already looks much easier this way!"

"It… still seems a lot of work to me," admitted a staggered Sarkon. "A lot. I guess…" he took a deep breath and went on, "…We better start with the laundry soon!"

"We better start with the laundry now," the Mad Scientist agreed. "cookie needs new socks, remember?"