The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Read online

  And then he at once proceeded to attempt to make good his words, lunging powerfully but clumsily in Buckaroo’s direction, Buckaroo deftly sidestepping him and then planting a swift northeast foot in his groin. The kick was not without effect, momentarily doubling O’Connor over, although it would have put any “normal” man, i.e., a human being, in a hospital for a week. Still, the consequence of the blow was to provide Buckaroo an avenue of escape past the confounded beast who for a period of seconds could only shriek at a fraction of his normal volume. “Buckaroo Banzai!” he screamed, his usual basso profundo a profound treble.

  Bigbooté and Gomez, of course, came running to join in pursuit of the hero with singleness of heart. Like canines, there was a plainness and simplicity to their thinking which permitted them to tear a man limb from limb in one breath and go romping off merrily like children in the next. Naturally, this was no consolation to B. Banzai at that moment, the Lectroids’ grunts and heavy tread so close behind; the fact that they would kill him in good fun detracted not at all from his dilemma.

  As he ran, he urgently searched his pockets for his Go-Phone. I should add “with vigor” since the ungainly creatures, like heavy trucks, tended to be tireless and not at all slow once they had gathered momentum. Their kangaroolike jumping ability in addition enabled them to hurdle minor barriers that a man would run around, thus shortening B. Banzai’s already slim lead. Still patting his pockets, feeling every ply and folding of his jacket, still empty-handed, he reached another road—or perhaps the same, he couldn’t be sure—just in time to see a truck lumbering toward him. Outstretching his arms, B. Banzai charged the vehicle, thinking it might prove his deliverance when in reality it came exceedingly close to doing him in; sufficient reason for this could be drawn from the fact that the driver of the truck was Lectroid and “YOYODYNE” was emblazoned across the cab. Nearly too late did Buckaroo dodge the onrushing tons of steel and leap for the ditch, and by then the trio of Lectroids on foot were almost upon him.

  With difficulty he picked himself up and continued running, but the Lectroids only redoubled their effort. They were clearly superior to any human, physically speaking, and there was no telling whether they were tiring in the slightest. What was evident was that B. Banzai was running out of time. There are a pair of maxims often heard at the Banzai Institute which come to mind here just as they doubtless occurred to Buckaroo in those last tense moments: “A thousand pities cannot undo one thoughtless act.” and “A fool can throw a stone into the water which ten wise men cannot recover.” I mention these here not to moralize but simply to illustrate that B. Banzai is merely human like the rest of us and fully capable of carelessness. In this case, losing his Go-Phone could have proven costly in the extreme. Were it not for organizational safeguards designed for just this sort of emergency, the world might have lost Buckaroo Banzai and in the greater sweep of things lost itself shortly thereafter, as I will show.

  Out of breath, out of hope, having sprinted by now the greater part of a mile, B. Banzai determined to stand and fight. He withdrew his pistol, and as the three monstrous Lectroids came closer, he began to squeeze off shots, finding his mark repeatedly, and yet barely slowing them. Shots to the head fazed them apparently not in the least, likewise shots to the abdominal area. They kept coming, now joined by the truck, which had turned around.

  Now out of bullets as well as the two commodities I have just cited above, B. Banzai prepared to defend himself barehanded. But if bullets had been of such little use, of what good were fists and kicks against these insensible brutes? If Buckaroo Banzai had ofttimes whistled at death, he now heard it laughing back and drawing nearer. And yet greatness in a man can be in some way measured by how little alteration the approach of death makes in him. B. Banzai took a slight step back to plant his feet more firmly and assumed a fighting crouch, when suddenly . . . How many times do we humble journalists employ that word and others as dismally frayed—“suddenly,” “without warning,” “all of a sudden”? How many times do we insert them to bestow drama upon the undramatic, excitement to the ordinary? But in this instance, the circumstances warrant them all, and more, for B. Banzai stood in the jaws of death, the Devil’s own breath upon him, no guardian angel, friendly spirit, or agent of nature apparently able to save him now . . . when all of a sudden, without warning, suddenly a ladder fell from heaven and snatched him from his enemies’ midst! Buckaroo himself could not conceive of it, having no time even to utter an exclamation of surprise at it, as Jacob’s ladder lifted him skyward and the noise of the helicopter directly above could now begin to be heard over the roar of the truck.

  On the ground the Lectroids cursed in frustration (and they would curse again when they returned to the van to find their human cargo missing) at the sight of Buckaroo Banzai reaching the top of the ladder and being pulled aboard the chopper by a nine-year-old black youth wearing the familiar uniform of the Blue Blaze irregulars, that scourge upon evildoers everywhere.

  “Welcome aboard,” the youth said, helping B. Banzai into the rescue craft. “Scooter Lindley reporting as ordered, Buckaroo. Pleased to meet you.”

  For one of the few times in his life, I think Buckaroo must have been speechless. Anything would I have given for the pleasure of seeing his face, that huge smile of his that is so affecting at such moments, especially upon the young, who adore him.

  “Very well, Scooter,” he must have said, or something of the kind, as he shook the lad’s hand. “The pleasure is mine, believe me. And who is this?”

  He referred to the pilot of the craft, a handsome black helicopter jockey wearing the uniform of a gas station worker and a Blue Blaze baseball cap.

  “That’s my dad,” Scooter stated proudly.

  “Nice to see you again, Buckaroo,” the man said. “Remember me?”

  Buckaroo, who I daresay has never forgotten a single face of the millions he has known, assented instantly. “Of course,” he replied. “Last year at the desert survival school.” The man nodded. “Your name . . . don’t tell me. It’s something unusual,” Buckaroo said, and after a moment he remembered. “Casper?”

  “Casper Lindley,” said the man, astounded at Buckaroo’s memory. “That’s amazing.”

  “Why?” Buckaroo asked simply. “You remembered me.”

  That is the kind of man B. Banzai is. If Casper had not reported to me their exchange, I am certain Buckaroo would not have seen fit to mention it to me because he would have not thought the recollection of a man’s name at all remarkable. Never mind for a moment the fact there were at last count better than six thousand Blue Blaze irregulars world wide—men, women, and children who subscribe to the Blue Blaze newsletter; who attend selected symposia at the Banzai Institute, who submit their bodies periodically to rugged physical training at such places as the desert survival school in Nevada, the mountaineering school in Alaska, and a half dozen others around the globe; who are required yearly to make certain educational advancements; who are “on call” twenty-four hours a day to help B. Banzai in a pinch, or their neighbors in a natural disaster—it was only to be expected, B. Banzai would tell you, that he had committed to memory most, if not all, of their names. Blue Blazes were, after all, ordinary and yet extraordinary people.

  As B. Banzai used the copter’s radio to relay the welcome news to us that he was safe and en route to the Institute to check what progress we had made in our investigation of Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, it perhaps behooves us to backtrack slightly and note how that helicopter came to be there when Buckaroo needed it.

  19

  “The Banzai Institute, an independent, non-profit, research organization of ranking scientists, is located an hour from New York City in Holland Township, New Jersey. Overlooking a truly panoramic expanse of the Delaware River Valley, it is a one-hundred-and-twelve-acre haven for scholars of all disciplines, but the sciences in particular.” I am reading from the Institute’s brochure. Those of us who live there know it as something much livelier than it sounds,
but for a general description of the Institute’s history and function, the literature suffices. I will continue. “Founded in 1972 to fulfill a need of the scholarly community for greater continuity of research . . .” In civilian language I will interpret, taking the above phrase to mean that most researchers live and die by the government grant. When the government in its often capricious way loses interest in a given subject, it stops sending money for its study. This stop-and-go process is destructive and wasteful on at least two counts (viz.) the government seldom understands just what it is funding to begin with and therefore is uncannily apt to cut off funds at the precise moment that real progress begins to be made, and the researcher is continually distracted from the greater purpose of his work in order to “show” the government “hard results” so as not to lose his funding. There is, in other words, the constant worry over money in the back of the researcher’s mind, costing him time and energy and, most importantly, independent initiative. For when quick results begin to outweight long range possibilities, experimentation is the first casualty, experimentation by definition being unpredictable. It was this vicious cycle of reliance on the National Science Foundation that the Banzai Institute sought to change at its inception in 1972. Promising researchers would be given the time and freedom to focus their full energies on their topics of interest without the necessity of championing themselves in their roles as fund-raisers. It was believed, and has been demonstrated, that the Institute could be self-supporting if both researchers and staff lived frugally and in a familial atmosphere, donating a percentage of their royalties from any commercial applications and patents which might arise from their work within its walls. This is not to say that remunerative considerations are the paramount criterion by which proposals for funding are judged—far from it, as there exist no criteria at all and no proposals! At the Banzai Institute, it is the candidate who is appraised and not the proposal. As a scientific sleuth himself, B. Banzai knows the impossibility of predicting in advance where one’s nose will lead, as well as the exhilaration when one experiences a “sudden flash” from out of the clear blue, as it were. There is a term sometimes used at the Institute: the three Bs, meaning the Bus, the Bath, and the Bed. That is where the greatest discoveries are made in science. When one is at his most relaxed, his most receptive, that is when a foreign consciousness, a “stray bullet” as B. Banzai calls it, may pop into one’s head. B. Banzai himself has had so many of his greatest ideas while shaving that he finally has been forced to abandon his father’s straight razor in favor of the gyroscopic shaver I have mentioned, so often has he cut himself when seized by sudden revelations.

  Again quoting from the brochure, I read: “If a candidate is approved by the board—” (that twenty member group composed of B. Banzai and the representatives from various walks of life who serve without pay) “—he is given a key, a small monthly stipend, and a Spartan cell without electricity or running water, where he sleeps on a straw mat atop a wooden bunk. He arises at 4 A.M., washes in cold water—” I needn’t go on. The brochure amply makes its point. It is not the sort of place for everyone, and yet hundreds more apply to enter than are accepted, among them some of the finest minds in the world. If one is tempted to ask why—and many are, at such places as the Rand Corporation, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Hudson, Sandia, Brookings, and all the other intellectual watering troughs—the answer is predictable—Buckaroo Banzai. His message is simple and direct, the same to everyone, regardless of position: greatness is attainable only when it is not sought. When this paradox is understood, we are great.

  “A scientist, like a warrior, must cherish no view,” he has written. “A ‘view’ is the outcome of intellectual processes, whereas creativity, like swordsmanship, requires not neutrality, or indifference, but to be of no mind whatever.”

  To this end, the famous games and thought experiments so central to the Institute’s program have been designed. I will not attempt to describe these games of which so much has been written, other than to say that they employ the full complement of game elements: choice, interdependence, imperfect information, and chance. Sets of partners act as single players, and the stakes are theoretically life and death. Are these games dangerous? Detractors never tire of asking. I would answer by saying that it is the awareness of death that makes life precious, and that which heightens the awareness of death enhances the quality of life. Only a few hairbreadths mark the difference between life and death at any moment; when this is fully understood, life can only be the sweeter. Furthermore, one only learns to win (to live) by being prepared to lose (to die); for this reason if no other, games of high risk are essential to the soul.

  Games such as “Airplane and Submarine,” “Silent Guns,” and others developed by the Banzai Institute have been adopted for use by the militaries of a number of countries in their training and have even found their way into the popular culture, especially what is called “pop psychology,” as evidenced by the success of a recent best-selling book which counseled its readers to “cure the anxiety by curing the love.” In his foreword to the computer game version of “Silent Guns” (in which a player cannot know when his adversary has fired since he does not know which guns, if any, are silent), B. Banzai states: “The player, emptied of all thoughts, all desire to win, will be the winner. The hand on the joy stick must move independent of intellect and emotion.”

  Forgive me, reader, if I am obstinate in continuing to digress, but there are things I must say. I am reminded of so many things from my own past history, my own days at the Institute, that I cannot quite end the tune just yet. I am reminded of certain extraordinary successes naturally, the scientific breakthroughs in which I took part as a member, however indirectly, of the team: the OSCILLATION OVERTHRUSTER, cellular radio, the development of the drug Interferon, the computer program later adopted by NASA for assessing survival probabilities of its missions,* *(The survival probability for Buckaroo Banzai in his attempt to pilot the Jet Car through solid matter? Only 52%.) the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulator, the invention of Kevlar (five times the strength to weight of steel), DATASAT, the first data of steel, transfer satellite (capable of carrying the entire contents of the Library of Congress into space, to be accessed by any home computer), and many more, from robotics to gene technology. But I am also just as proud of those rather quixotic and yet strangely sensible projects which flourish within the portals of the Banzai Institute; ideas, or “moonbeams” as we call them, which would almost certainly only draw quizzical stares and ridicule from other, more staid institutions. I’m thinking of Pecos, my dear Pecos, and her preoccupation with the skyhook concept, a notion best characterized as a space elevator. Briefly, a cable would be strung from a geostationary satellite to the ground and people and cargo would be hauled up, reminiscent of Jack and the beanstalk. Then there was Rawhide and his quest to develop a high-protein livestock feed out of houseflies; and Perfect Tommy, who burst in on us one day and claimed with a totally straight face to have discovered a hitherto undiscovered layer of atmosphere shrouding the Earth. Judging from his excitement, we were excited also. “It’s dense,” he said, “and getting denser every day. I call it the Flatusphere. formed by all the methane gas from bullsh—s like me!”

  Tommy could fill a chapter all by himself, which he does in Bastardy Proved a Spur. His testimony before Congress on limiting the nuclear arms race contained the following scheme, which I reproduce here from the Congressional Record:

  Senator Nunn of Georgia:

  You would not then be favorably disposed to the MX dense-pack concept, Perfect Tommy?

  Perfect Tommy:

  As I have indicated in my opening remarks, Senator, I believe it to be a colossal waste of sorely needed resources and one which we need not incur in light of the Bluff Concept developed by the Banzai Institute in the study report now before the committee.

  Senator Nunn:

  Could you describe in layman’s terms, without the mathematic notation, how the Bluff Concept works
?

  Perfect Tommy:

  Senator, it is predicated upon the fact that nuclear intimidation—the real game we and the Russians play—is a game in the classic sense, in that the outcome is dependent upon the moves of the participants, neither of whom has perfect information about the other; also going on the assumption that each side seeks gain but is also rational—

  Senator Nunn:

  The “We’re both sane men” theory—

  Perfect Tommy:

  The alternative does not compute, Senator.

  Senator Nunn:

  Agreed. How do we bluff the Soviets?

  Perfect Tommy:

  Our concept of bluff comes into play only assuming we have an already credible hand, Senator—an already formidable nuclear deterrent which in fact exists. On the other hand, we would be remiss if we did not analyze the game carefully to derive maximum advantage with a minimum of risk to ourselves. It is this analysis of the parameters of the game that we have undertaken at the Banzai Institute, the result being what you have at your fingertips, Senator. It is our finding that the element of bluff—that side using it—is strongly favored by the peculiar nature of the game: namely, that it is a game of stalemate, the stakes being so high that the degree of risk-taking affordable by either player is quite small, certainly nowhere near the level of calculated risk required to “win” the game. Indeed, the concept of “winning” is limited entirely to the area of intimidation. All of this works in favor of the Bluff Concept, which I will state in practical terms: since neither side can for the foreseeable future be protected on a maximum basis from nuclear missiles, and using game theory elements developed by the Banzai Institute, we advocate that instead of deploying the one hundred MX missiles presently proposed, we employ a much smaller classified number—roughly ten to twenty, for the sake of discussion—and build ten times that number of dummy missiles. Since the Soviet cannot know which or how many missiles constitute genuine threats, they must assume they all do and will be forced to modify their own game plan accordingly, spending huge resources to match us. In any case, we will have achieved our objective, the effect of our bluff being exactly the same as if we had deployed one hundred MX missiles at a cost of several hundred billion dollars. If the Soviets seek to go ahead in the game, at our much smaller cost we can continue our mixture of real missiles and dummies ad infinitum, staying easily ahead of them while they spend their economy into ruin.