Calvin’s alter ego Spaceman Spiff wakes up and discovers that he has been abducted by aliens and is now restrained in a sterile laboratory in their ship. It is obviously an interrogation room, but Spiff is stoic and defiant. They have assumed the thin guise of humanoids, and this, Spiff decides, has been done to trick him into being docile as they perform their hideous experiments.

They poke needles into him and draw blood and ask him questions about the workings of his mind. At first Spiff refuses to give them what they want. He sees them conferring, deciding on the torture best suited to making him speak, and eventually they make him confess to everything.

Spiff despairs of his plan to save the world from a hostile takeover.

*   *   *

That’s how it was, Bill. One minute I was this normal kid who uses his mind, and the next minute I was transmogrified into a kid whose mind uses him. I tried to figure it out, but how do you use your mind to figure something out if your mind is the problem?

I just kept thinking, me my name is Calvin, and why do I have a tiger purring in the corner of my room? I kept thinking this over and over until it occurred to me that it was possible something cosmic was happening here. Maybe Calvin was so real to so many people that on the day I was born, which was the day the last Calvin and Hobbes comic came out, maybe all that love and sadness people felt … I opened up my mouth to get my first breath, and I just sucked it in.

I wasn’t sick. I was Calvin come to life!

Thinking about it like that, it was like all these pieces came together.

Of course, people probably wouldn’t believe me. But hey, anytime something amazing happens in the universe we should pay attention, shouldn’t we? When something is hard to believe, maybe it’s the universe shaking things up a bit. Maybe it’s saying, you haven’t got me all figured out by a long shot. It’s saying, I have a sense of humor, too.

*   *   *

I was lying there thinking about that, Bill, when my mom came in looking like she forgot to wear makeup and brush her hair. I knew she looked like crap because she was worried about me. Dad was right behind her, looking like he did at tax time, sort of tight and spooked.

Mom: Hi, Calvin.

Me: Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad.

Dad: Son.

Mom: I love you, Calvin.

Mom wasn’t the gushy type, so I knew things were pretty bad when she said she loved me so early in the conversation and it wasn’t even my birthday or anything.

Mom sat down on my bed. Dad didn’t say anything, just kind of smiled, ruffled my hair.

Me: Dad, don’t be sad. You were a good dad. Sometimes the polls were pretty low, but you weren’t about the popular vote—you were about building character.

He bent down and put his forehead on top of my head.

Dad: My boy.

Me: Maybe if you weren’t so strict. Maybe if you’d gotten me all the Christmas presents I asked for every year.

Dad: That must have been it.

Me: And TV—if you’d let me watch more TV.

Dad nodded.

Me: And making me take baths and go to bed at a reasonable hour and not letting me chew tobacco when I was six. I always thought it might push me over the edge. Oh, and don’t forget you never built me that backyard ski lift. Ultimately everything is the parents’ fault.

Dad: Everything.

He said it low and soft.

Me: But remember: just because your polls were low a lot doesn’t mean you don’t have big fans. Doesn’t mean some people don’t love you so much.

A man came in wearing civilian clothes—jeans and a golf shirt.

Man: Hello, Calvin. I’m Dr. Filburn.

Me: Doctor, huh? Where’s your degree?

Doctor: I have my diploma framed on the wall in my office. Would you like to see it?

Me: I hear those can be faked.

Dr. Filburn smiled. He was tall and had great muscles and looked like the kind of guy all the women in the world would probably want to date. He asked my parents if he could talk to me alone.

They went out and then the doctor asked me about what happened at school. Soon I was spilling the beans about Hobbes and my projects and Spaceman Spiff. I opened up about all that personal stuff, and he comes back with, you probably suffer from maladaptive daydreaming and the auditory hallucinations indicate you may have a more serious illness.

I decided to be polite.

Me: I’ll take your thoughts under consideration, Doctor, but you should know that I wanted to go into neuroscience. I know brains. I might even have some.

Doctor: I’m sure you do. Let’s invite your parents back in.

He asked them questions about their parents and siblings, and if I did drugs, and if they had noticed this or that or the other, and then he said he suspected that I may have had a schizophrenic episode but it would take observation over a period of time to confirm his diagnosis.

Mom listened to the doctor and nodded and tried to look like he’d just said I had a bad case of hangnail, and Dad looked like he wanted to punch him.

I kind of drifted off while he explained all about the brain to my parents and told them that schizophrenia was a family of psychiatric disorders, how it can be confused with other disorders, how symptoms range from slightly to totally disabling. Every time he said the word schizophrenia it felt like needles in my eyes, but then there was Hobbes sitting just out of my sight, yawning and licking his chops.

Dr. Filburn stopped talking and all three of them looked at me.

Me: Am I still going to grow up?

Doctor: I’m pretty sure you aren’t terminal.

Me: Okay. So can I go home now?

Doctor: I’d like to keep you for a few days—to run some tests, come up with a plan for therapy and medication that will help you manage your symptoms and get you back to school. It’s important to start treatment in young people as soon as possible. We’ll change the course of treatment if the provisional diagnosis is wrong.

I thought it was time to reveal my new brilliant idea.

Me: This could all be cleared up pretty easily without medication. I just need Bill Watterson to make one more comic strip. Only one more comic strip, or even just one panel, of Calvin at age seventeen, healthy and well, with no Hobbes in it.

Doctor (staring):

Mom (staring):

Dad (staring):

Me: I’ve thought about it a lot, and I figured out that Bill Watterson and I have some universal connection. He made me this way and he could unmake me this way.

The doctor looked at my parents.

Doctor: This is one of the common symptoms of schizophrenia: delusions of inflated worth, power, knowledge, identity, or a special relationship with a famous person.

Me: Okay. But listen. I was born on the day, the very day, Mr. Watterson published his last comic strip and wrote a letter to the public saying he was done. Isn’t that right, Mom?

Mom: Well, but we didn’t know—

Me: And then! My parents named me Calvin!

Doctor:

Mom: Yes, honey, but you know we named you Calvin because your dad had just finished his PhD thesis on Calvinism. We’d never even heard of Calvin and Hobbes.

Me: Okay, but tell the doctor what Gramps did.

Mom: Well, he brought you a stuffed tiger—

Me: And put it in my bassinet right there in the hospital and said he wasn’t going to have a grandson of his named after a man like John Calvin and by putting the tiger in my bassinet and calling the tiger Hobbes he renamed me even though my name was still Calvin.

Dad: This is all true, but—

He meant real.

Doctor: You have an interesting family. That does not mean Bill Watterson controls your destiny or can help you in any way.

Dad: Seriously, Calvin. You think you were made by Bill Watterson? I mean, I was there when your mother and I made you, and you don’t want to make me tell you about it.

Me: I’m just like Calvin. You can’t argue with that.

Mom: You’re not like him. You—

Me: Have you read the strip?

Mom: Yes. Once. Your grandfather made me.

Me: So how am I different?

Mom: You have five fingers.

Me: Four fingers were symbolic.

Mom: Of what?

Me: Of how hard it is to draw hands. I have blond hair like him. I still have my red wagon.

Dad: Everyone’s wagon is red.

Me (to Dad): You wear glasses.

Dad: So does your mom, unlike Calvin’s mom.

Me: Maybe she wore contacts. I build the best snowmen on the block. And my first-grade teacher’s name? Miss Wood! How close can you get to Miss Wormwood? Huh? Huh?

Mom: I admit, it’s unusual, all those coincidences, but that’s just what they are: coincidences.

Me: Is everything weird and unexplainable that happens in the world a coincidence? Are you sure?

Mom: Yes. I’m sure.

Doctor: Calvin, Bill Watterson has no ability to help you, and he doesn’t have any wish to. Unlike me and your parents. We’re going to do everything we can to get you well.

I didn’t argue anymore. I didn’t want Mom to be even sadder than she already was, watching her son Spaceman Spiff crash and burn as he entered the atmosphere of Planet Schizophrenia.

Doctor: I think Calvin needs some sleep. We’ll talk again in the morning.

Mom: Yes, sleep sounds good.

Dad: We’ll see you tomorrow, okay, Calvin?

Me: Okay. G’night.

My parents and the doctor left the room together, and Mom started crying before she was out the door.

*   *   *

Midnight, and I was still thinking about you, Bill, and me, and Hobbes, and Susie my ex-friend or frenemy or whatever she was. She was part of it, too. Half the night I thought about how I could convince you to do just one more comic strip, one starring seventeen-year-old me, alone without Hobbes. Just me, but without this illness. That’s when I came up with my plan to prove my ultimate fandom so you would draw me that strip. I knew it would make me better. You could make me better, and make Hobbes go away.

Once I had my plan I could fall asleep, even though Hobbes was snoring.