Gerhard, CroDonald: The Sad Life Of

No reconstruction of Harrican Syldanade's life would be complete without mention of his incredibly unfortunate genetic half-twin, Gerhard CroDonald.

From five minutes after Gerhard's birth (when he, as opposed to his placenta, was accidentally placed in the trash) to his sad and preventable death at the hands of giddy schoolchildren, CroDonald's entire life was one of total misery, abject failure, and probability-shattering misfortune. His life is all the more terrible when viewed against that of his more famous sibling.

Odd Birth and Early Life of Gerhard CroDonald
Gerhard's two fathers (Mickey Cromaran and Telvver Donaldson) had the best of intentions for their yet-to-be-concieved child. Wanting the choicest genetic material possible, they looked to the most promising potential donor: Harrican Syldanade, who at the ripe age of nine was already a child prodigy famous for mapping Terra's second moon.

For reasons we are all aware of, Syldanade could not be cloned through traditional means. And besides, the father who would actually carry the child (Donaldson) had broken the only patient-client rule of the Medicus Mimeticus ("Do not suspect us of ulterior motives"), and thus was barred from the Galaxy's largest health provider. So Cromaran and Donaldson spent a vast sum of money investigating the fringe medicines of various nations and planets, finally retaining the services of physician-arborists from the reclusive Opi-Opai race.

After ascertaining that I was not pursuing a malpractice claim, the descendants of the original physician-arborists agreed to send me documents relating to Gerhard's conception process. From the records of Pin-Lil Many-Flowers, lead surgeon:

"After obtaining moist permission, we took several cuttings of the man-child Syldanade-Harrican. Most promising cutting was budded in nutrient-rich hydroponic solution, before grafting onto healthy root-stock, in preparation for implantation into father-mother. New child in all ways like original, except one: unlike Syldanade-Harrican, Crodonald-Gerhard never bear fruit. This is tearful but unavoidable consequence."

This could be read as a metaphor for a more traditional cloning procedure, filtered through the language of the Opi-Opai. And the line about fruiting could certainly be read as a metaphor for the rest of Gerhard's tragic life, in comparison to that of Harrican's. Except for two things. One, the Opi-Opai are neurophysically incapable of speaking or understanding metaphors, similes, or other abstract comparisons. And two, Gerhard did in fact bear literal fruit once, due to a terribly rare autoimmune malady.

In any case, after Gerhard was born and the mix-up with the placenta was corrected, another peculiarity of Gerhard's life manifested: his name was listed as "Gerhard, CroDonald" on his birth certificate (and would, through computer failure and finger malfeasance, be listed as such in every official document to ever bear his name. Including this one, apparently). This in and of itself would be nothing but an odd if irritating coincidence, except it resulted in poor Gerhard regularly being confused for one Crodonald GerHard, notorious horse molester and self-described "most prolific tax evader in the universe."

There are few records of Gerhard's young life, aside from several insurance claims resulting from his family's home burning down on more than one occasion (once while being flooded during an earthquake). The first major record involves the death of both of CroDonald's parents in two separate freak laser accidents during a family trip to the Clampwych Zoo.

Finding himself orphaned, CroDonald went to work for Paulson & Veerk Wood Pulp Co. as a handler in their splinter-processing factory. This is a job he would hold for most of his life, although eventually he was promoted to papercut tester (which paid the same, but allowed use of the company automobile on alternating weeks).

The Tragic Love Life of Gerhard CroDonald
CroDonald, as will be described shortly, had literary aspirations. While his job at the splinter factory left little time for writing (and often left his hands all but useless for typing), he cultivated a number of contacts ("friends" would not be the correct word) in Terra's bohemian circles. It was through these contacts that CroDonald met the first love of his life: artist Glennis Agintrope, creator of the famous Agintrope Portraits.

How Glennis looked past Gerhard's mysterious body odor, and how Gerhard overcame his inexplicable-yet-crippling fear of paint for long enough to court her, we will never know. Reportedly Gerhard was a much more adept poet than his half-brother, so that might have had something to do with it. In any case, they became engaged, and would almost certainly have married if fate had not intervened.

Enroute to his marriage, CroDonald's transit ship was attacked by Syldanade (then a pirate) due a mistaken belief that the ship was carrying a semi-valuable cargo of Ertian bush-beans. Harrican overestimated the number of torpedoes required to cripple the ship, and Gerhard was forced to take the last escape pod (which was sized for a midget) and became stranded for a week on a planetoid composed mostly of acid-ice. Agintrope, believing herself abandoned at the altar, fled to her homeworld of Pfelt and denied all contact with Gerhard from that day forward.

The second love of Gerhard's life is somewhat more tragic.

Two decades later, Gerhard (who due to constant assaults based on mistaken identity, frivolous arrests, lawsuit subpoenas for things he hadn't done, random animal attacks, and other incidents of the universe crapping on him, had taken to staying home when at all possible) began corresponding via ansible-radio with a woman named Asdfgh, who lived on the remote planet Beldanjat. A review of their communication logs reveals that not only was Asdfgh completely normal (aside from her name), she seemed to genuinely love CroDonald.

After a year of courtship over the ansible lines, Asdfgh asked CroDonald to marry her. Gerhard made the perilous voyage to Beldanjat to meet her (and arrived, although the ship he was on exploded in the atmosphere due to a coolant leak, forcing CroDonald to evacuate in the only remaining escape pod .), only to find that this his perfect woman did not seem to exist. Angered and confused, CroDonald hired a local sleuth to find out the truth of the matter. From the diary of Urghorn Sloam, the sleuth in question:

"Well, I found out all this lady's communications was coming from a public ansible terminal in the Beldanjat capital library. So I has CroDonald, poor bastard, log on somewhere else and talk to the lady.

''Turns out, next to the terminal, there's a potted ficus. And over the ficus, there's an air conditioning vent. And every time CroDonald logs on, it just happens to be during a cooling cycle, the air conditioning kicks in, and that ficus starts tapping away. Turns out every communication was just random leaves hitting the keyboard in a breeze. Everything she says, every answer to his questions, is by pure random chance. Sweet hairy gods, can you imagine the probability math on that chain of events?''

''Anyway, I tells CroDonald the truth. And he... well, he'd already been crying a lot, so now he stops crying. And he just gets this look in his eyes that I ain't never seen in a man. He picks up that ficus, politely hands me payment plus a tip, and walks out of the library. I never seen him again. Poor bastard."''

Gerhard's Literary "Career"
Gerhard CroDonald is widely regarded as having the most prolific body of unpublished work in the known universe. Every one of his books (generally speculative fiction) were picked up by a publisher; and in all but one case, some kind of disaster (flood, earthquake, murder-bees, lasers, murder-bees with lasers) destroyed the publishing house and/or printing press involved, and with it, every copy of Gerhard's latest novel. Often the disaster in question was, traced to it's source, ultimately Harrican's fault.

An example of this phenomenon, and the way Gerhard's life continually crossed with his more famous sibling, can be found here: Gerhard's one work of non-fiction ("Life is an Ice-Cold Buttplug", his memoirs) was picked up by Valiance Brothers Books on Spissium IV, who held both the manuscript and all advance copies. The very next day (and before Valiance wired Gerhard's advance), half of Spissium IV was accidentally carpet-bombed by Harrican Syldanade.

CroDonald's one successfully published novel was, surprisingly, a run-away success and cultural phenomenon. The book was a collection of stories about his more famous sibling: mostly embellished second-hand annecdotes and outright lies. It was titled "Nobody Believed Him: The Travels, Trials and Tales of Harrican Syldanade". The book was an overnight smash hit, and was responsible for both the revival of Harrican's public image as a hero, and also many of the misconceptions which we are currently attempting to clear up. It is from the title of this ancient book that we take the name of our own (better researched) scholarly work.

Alas, even in this instance, Gerhard couldn't catch a break. The publisher on Omurton XI believed (perhaps correctly) that the work would be much more popular if authorship was attributed to Syldanade himself. Due to a computer error followed by an ill-timed military coup on Omurton XI, all traces of Gerhard's involvement were erased, and all the considerable royalties were passed to Harrican during the book's long print run. It is only recently that linguistic analysis has managed to confirm Gerhard as the true author.

To his credit, Harrican denied authorship of the book, claiming it the work of a "brilliant mind and wonderful talesmith, whom I hope one day to meet. But it is certainly not mine." He was likely unaware of the book's true author, as the two individuals never actually met (but were often unintentionally near each other, generally to Gerhard's detriment).

Awards and (Non-)Recognition
Aside from posthumous investigation finding him to be the best-selling author of all time, Gerhard CroDonald was the recipient of several other awards and honors.

Vexley's Grok It Or Yes awarded CroDonald with a Galaxy-wide Record for "most times stuck in an elevator while the building that elevator is in, is burning down". Vexley's declined however to invite Gerhard to that year's award ceremony due to advice from their insurance department. In a twist of irony common to Gerhard's life, the awards ceremony building burned down (during the awards ceremony) while Gerhard CroDonald was stuck in an elevator located several star-systems away (in a building which was also burning down).

Gerhard also saved the Galaxy once. His unlikely (but intentional) role in the events following the maximum-security prison break of the Graviton Legionnaires, and in the short but brutal Supernova War that followed, was very highly disputed at the time. And too lengthy to recount here. But it has since been shown that, without any doubt, his brave actions saved the entire Galaxy, a feat of distinction replicated by no other known sentient.

Due to the controvery, questions, and disputed nature of his actions in the Supernova War, Gerhard was intentionally not invited to the multi-government "Holy Shit, We're Alive!!!" celebration (nor indeed ever publicly thanked during his lifetime). CroDonald snuck in anyway, and was seen by one witness "clutching a photo of Glennis Agintrope in one hand, a potted ficus in the other, and weeping openly while slow dancing alone" before being ejected by security.

Later Life and Awful Death
After saving the Galaxy, records show that CroDonald devoted himself entirely to what he believed were "good causes", perhaps to leave some kind of concrete legacy. Most of these ventures were failures (including his stint as a marriage councelor for the Anti-Tribes). Gerhard finished out his days working as a volunteer teacher for at-risk youth on the backwater moon of Volmwurg, a place mainly famous for the variety and density of indigenous parasitic organisms.

Elementary school principal Momor Vesk, one of the three recorded guests at CroHard's funeral, gave this eulogy: "He was the finest man I knew. He'd been through nine kinds of hell, but he just kept on going, trying to do the best he could. His smile was amazing, and nothing made him smile like seeing the kids happy. If only we'd known he was trapped in the pinata before it was too late. "

And then Gerhard CroDonald, age 145, was buried in the icy ground of Volmwurg next to the grave of Asdfgh, his ficus.

Post-Script
During the course of researching Gerhard CroDonald's life, I became depressed to the point of slamming my hands into things in an attempt to feel something other than despair. Seeking solace in religion, as men are wont to do at times, I accidentally obtained an interview from Karma Adjucator and Sister of the Pure Flame Melanie Ovalott. She gave the following perspective on Gerhard CroDonald:

"I find it likely that, due to unknown metaphysical laws, Gerhard served as a kind of karmic sump for Harrican Syldanade's activities. If Gerhard had not existed, Harrican would never have gotten away with half of what he got away with. And while that might mean a great many more people would be alive now, we'd have far less interesting stories, far fewer interesting places to visit, and a far shorter supply of previously-unknown alien races to fuck.

''Speaking of which, if you want another go, it'll be 20 astro-sheckls. 25 if you want me to do that thing with my feet again."''

Gerhard CroDonald, you lived a truly horrific life. And this article only serves to tap the keg, to pour a meager foamy cup of the awful drink that was your existence. I have no doubt that many more examples of your ungoldy unluck wait to be discovered. But without you, and your services, and your one uncredited book, this important project would not exist, and the Galaxy as it is would not exist. We leave you this tiny legacy, even if we cannot get your names to show up in the correct order on it.