Episode 16.5: Il mio nome è Dante

“You got me enrolled to Star University?” asked Arthur, his face twisting into a grimace.

“Yeah! Why, what’s wrong?” asked Crane.

“Doctor, I have already graduated! Why would you make me suffer that hellhole again?”

“Well, this time, you are the right age for attending. And second, you need a degree to get a proper job. Your Arthur Stark identity is gone,remember?”

“And you thought by enrolling me in an university would help me create a new one?” Arthur asked, frustrated with the conversation. “Doctor, can’t you see? Now you have thrown me back into the public world again!”

“That’s a good thing, right?” Crane asked.

“NO! No, that’s not at all a good thing. Up till now, I just existed on paper. One faceless man living in his uncle's basement. And now, with the university enrollment, you essentially made the world look! Now I need to have fake high school grades, fake high school photos, complete fake identity! I need to be out there, have a social profile! I can’t be doing my job if I attend the University!”

“Doing your ‘job’? Excuse me, but it’s me who can’t do his job, babysitting a NEET!” Doctor scoffed back. “Look at this way. You needed a fake identity sooner or later. And this way, you actually get to build up your past!”

“My past?” Arthur asked.

“Yeah, your past. You cannot be Arthur anymore. You need to be someone else. Didn’t the thought cross your mind?”

“Someone else? Who?”

“Well…” said the Doctor, handing him over a sheet of paper. “This is what I gave them.”

Arthur read the first line. “Name: Dante Angelo.”

“Cool, right?” asked Doctor.

“That’s the name of the main character in ‘Devils Don’t Cry’.” said Arthur, completely poker faced.

“Voted the coolest video-game character of the last decade!” Doctor gleefully replied. “You can’t go wrong with that!”

“You named me after a video-game character?”

“Your fake parents did. They were big fans of the game, and that’s why they named you such. If there had been another son, they would have named him Virgil. If a girl, then Mary. But unfortunately, before they could-”

“Wait, wait, wait. You wrote a backstory for my fake parents too?”

“I have got an entire family history. Not too detailed, but, wait-” Doctor said, as he clicked on a document. “See?”

It displayed a total of sixty-seven pages.

“You have been planning this, haven’t you?” asked Arthur, suddenly weary.

“Yep.” He grinned.

“For how long?”

“Well, ever since you came back, I knew you were going to need a new identity. And now it pays off!” He grinned again.

“So, what’s my fake father’s name? Sparta?” Seeing the Doctor about to reply, he hurriedly continued. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

“How can you not know your father?” said the Doctor. “Let me just give you a short-”

“I will read through your… fan fiction later, alright?” said Arthur, motioning him to stop. “Let’s just go through this… character sheet first.” He said, pointing to the paper in his hand.

“Country of Origin: Italy.” Arthur looked at the doctor again. “ITALY?”

“Oh come on, it fits with your name. Dante was born in Italy!” replied Doctor. “And you can speak Italian.”

“Excuse me?” asked Arthur.

“You’re a genius. Surely you know, like, twelve or fifteen languages, right?”

Arthur sighed in exasperation. “I may know Italian, but that doesn’t mean that I can just start speaking naturally in it!”

“Alright.. we’ll add a accident in your past which caused amnesia. Happy now?” asked Crane, his voice cranky.

“Amnesia. Wow.” said Arthur, staring at Crane. “Are you serious?”

“What? Amnesia is the memory loss one, isn’t it?” asked Crane, confused. “Don’t tell me it’s schizophrenia. I always get mixed up between the two.”

“Yes, Amnesia is memory loss…” Arthur sighed. “Look, just it make simple. My fake parents spoke English, and so do I. Italian, not so much.”

Doctor considered it for a moment. “That works, I guess.”

“Moving on… don’t care about birthdays… still male (thank God)... this looks alright.” Arthur said.

Then his eyes fell on the next line.

“High school.. 93% ? Isn’t that… ” began Arthur.

“What about it? You’re going to complain about that too?” the Doctor angrily remarked.

“No. Did you tinker with the government sites to create this?”

“Maybe…”

“Very good, Doctor. Hypocrisy at the finest. Embraced your evil side.” said Arthur, jokingly.

“This is no way comparable to what you did!”

“Yes. Yours is worse.” Arthur replied, pretending to be serious.

“How so?” challenged the Doctor.

“Making a false data, you tainted the official census.” He paused for dramatic effect.

“So?”

“You pushed up the median for the high school average, making students appear better than they actually are. And when next year comes around, they will find it worse.” He again paused.

“So?”

“So they will look for someone to blame.” Arthur whispered.

“They?”

“The parents, Doctor, the parents! The hungry, blood thirsty monsters will reveal their true form, looking for prey… ”

“And they won’t blame themselves.” He jabbed the air, emphasizing his point. “They won’t blame their children. No, Doctor, they will blame the teachers.”

He lowered his voice even further, forcing Crane to lean in.

“And their blame will get the teachers… fired.”

The Doctor gasped in horror. He knew intimately what that meant.

“And once the unlucky teacher is fired, he will fall into depression… become an alcoholic… and eventually become a NEET, doomed forever by you...”

“No! Not because of me!” Doctor’s voice turned shrill in the end.

Arthur continued in a fake sympathetical voice. “But no one will blame you, Doc. You shouldn’t worry.”

The doctor stared in horrified silence.

“Or it might all be baseless conjecture. Nothing will actually happen, because one result actually changes nothing.” Arthur shrugged his shoulders.

“What?” The Doctor blinked, his face a mixture of confusion and surprise.

Arthur couldn’t control it any longer. He burst out laughing.

“I was joking!! Seriously.. Doc,” ‘NO! Not ...because of me!’” He imitated the Doctor’s voice.

Realization dawned on Crane’s face, as it started to turn red. It further prompted Arthur to burst out again.

“You should see your face… ” Arthur said, between gales of laughter.

“That wasn’t funny at all.” crossly replied the Doctor, after Arthur stopped laughing. “It was mean.”

“Mean? That’s the word you could think of? Mean? Are you in kindergarten?” He asked, still chuckling.

“Ha ha. Very funny, Dante. Perhaps I will change your goals and dreams from being a cryptographer to a comedian. How would you like that, huh?”

“Alright, alright… Continuing on…”

He focused again on the paper. Silence prevailed for a minute.

“Everything else seems okay.” said Arthur, after reading through the paragraphs.

“Really?”

“Yes. Seems inconspicuous enough. They will buy it, I’m sure. Good job on this, Doctor.”

“So you are going to go, Arthur?”

Arthur smiled. He had been troubled at first, but now he felt differently. He felt something that he hadn’t felt for an eternity. Something that he never expected to feel again.

Hope.

“I am.”

“YES!!” Doctor jumped in the air. “This is great! Yeaaah!!”

“Woah… don’t get too excited. If I don’t like it, I will quit.”

“Yes, of course.” The Doctor had already turned away on the computer, typing away details.

“If I want to bunk a few classes, I will.”

“Okay.”

“And I don’t want to join any clubs, so change the interests-”

“Sure.”

He isn’t listening, Arthur realized.

“I will be needing a fake mustache.”

“Whatever.”

“Wear a red shirt everyday.”

“Alright.”

“Run for president.”

“Of course.”

“Be a tap dancing champion.”

“Will be done.”

“You’ll do my assignments and help me cheat on the tests.”

“Yes, yes.”

Arthur paused, waiting for the sentence to sink in.

“What? Nononononono --- I meant, no. Seriously, no.. I mean I wasn’t listening. This doesn’t count, alright? It doesn’t count. If I wasn’t listening... I mean, you can’t-”

Arthur laughed. “It doesn’t count, Doc.”

The Doctor sighed in relief. “Well. You got me there, Arthur.”

Arthur laughed again. Another prank came to mind.

“Il mio nome non è Arthur, contadina. Il mio nome è Dante, figlio di Sparta, e tu mi chiamerà in quanto tale!”

Back to Main Page