Gabriel Jeroschewitz, June 12th, 2026, dedicated to Professor Drake Utonium, the brilliant, gentle-hearted scientist and adopted father in The Powerpuff Girls. As the quintessential deuteragonist, he serves as the perfect moral anchor,
The Beaker That Wouldn’t Settle
It happened to be a Friday when the beaker finally exploded. It didn’t blast into a million pieces or emit a loud pop or whoosh as it broke. Instead, the beaker burped, a faint violet vapour drifting out of it that smelled peculiarly of existential anxiety.
Professor Utonium stared at it. The beaker stared back at him, as though somehow capable of understanding him and his professorial life. From the beaker’s opening he perceived a faint luminescence, as though his creation was breathing, and figures within the glow that seemed to study him with deep concern – though that glow seemed to come from the beaker itself.
“What,” said Professor Utonium, combing his perfectly straight part with his index finger, “have I done?”
What he had done was create three of the most dangerous authors active in the Western literary tradition: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, and Albert Camus. Each of them would take up residence in his laboratory and his head for the foreseeable future.
The first to approach him was the tall one – the embodiment of Dostoevsky.
He showed up at six in the morning, restless and insomniac in his approach to the life of a professor.
“You see,” said Dostoevsky, who wandered around the beaker of water that Utonium had filled for a morning cup of tea, “the question is not whether the water is hot. The question is whether the water deserves to be hot. What is the relationship between water and its own temperature? Does the water suffer, Professor? Does it know of the suffering of others?”
“I just wanted to boil some water for tea,” said Professor Utonium
“Tea!” said Dostoevsky, his eyes stretched wide with such realization and joy that Utonium almost thought he was possessed by religious zealotry. “You reduce the cosmos to tea! When you boil water and drink it, you allow the hot water to interact with your tongue, your cup, your table, the floor, the building, and the earth. Professor, meet God!”
The kettle screamed in the Professor’s kitchen.
The second to arrive was the one without announcement – Kafka himself.
Sitting in the corner of the laboratory was a thin man in a suit that did not appear to fit him properly. He looked up when Professor Utonium entered the laboratory.
“I have been told,” said Kafka, “that you are the one responsible for my existence.”
“I – I mean, technically -”
“No,” said Kafka, “you are not responsible for my existence. I require Form 27-B, but I have not been provided with a copy. Instead, I have been provided with a beaker. The beaker, I suspect, is insufficient. I have filed a complaint with the Administration, but it has been routed to a nonexistent department. They have also told me that I do not exist.”
“They have?”
“They have.”
Utonium never did discover what Kafka desired of him. He suspected that Kafka did not know himself. Every morning Kafka would appear with a new form. Every morning the form would be rejected by the Administration. Yet every morning, Utonium would find forms in his own handwriting, submitted to the Administration in a language he did not understand, but with a signature that approximated his own.
The last to arrive was the third – the embodiment of Camus.
Camus showed up with two mugs of coffee and a smile that was either peaceful or unhinged.
“You’ve made a mistake,” said Camus, placing one of the mugs into Professor Utonium’s hand. “All three of you have made a mistake. But that’s all right.”
Utonium investigated the coffee. It was perfect. The fact that it was perfect was the most unsettling element of their existence.
“How is any of this ‘the point’?” asked Professor Utonium.
Camus kicked his feet up on the laboratory table and gestured at the other two.
“Look at them. Look at us. We have been given one beaker and one counter in the world, and for the rest of our lives have been given these questions that have no answers. Dostoevsky seeks an answer through suffering. Kafka seeks an answer in the Administration that created his existence. I seek coffee despite the existence of suffering.” He took a sip. “The rock will roll down the hill, Professor. It always does. The only question is whether you roll it back up the hill with a smile.”
“That’s -”
“Don’t say that” said Camus. “You’ll spoil the moment.”
The three of them established a routine within the laboratory. Dostoevsky would spend his mornings with Professor Utonium engaging in moral dilemmas that left Utonium questioning the very existence of his conscience. Camus would spend his afternoons in the kitchen, preparing elaborate meals for the trio in a demonstration of rebellion against an absurd existence. Kafka would spend his evenings standing in the doorways of the laboratory, waiting for a call that never came, sighing intensely with each passing hour.
There would be arguments. There were big ones.
“The human soul is a battlefield!” Dostoevsky cried. Camus’s coffee jumped into the air in concern. Kafka’s form was splattered with coffee and instantly voided.
“The human bureaucracy is the battlefield,” said Kafka, “and the battlefield is located within Form 9-C, which Professor Utonium has incorrectly filled out.”
“There is no battlefield!” Camus cried, laughing. “Look around you. It’s Friday. There’s a hill and a rock and a man. The man rolls the rock down the hill. The rock falls. The man rolls again. That’s not suffering. “But Now it’s Tuesday.”
“Tuesday is suffering!” Dostoevsky shouted.
“No,” Camus said, almost gently. “Tuesday is absurd. Suffering is the idea that Tuesday is supposed to mean something.”
Kafka looked up from the voided form. “I filled out a form once,” he said, “that stated I was not suffering. The Administration rejected my form and stated that I was, in fact, suffering for having denied suffering. It required that I suffer in a different wing of the Administration facility.”
The room went silent. Even Dostoevsky didn’t have anything to add to that.
It was a Thursday when Professor Utonium finally sat down across from the three of them and admitted what had been eating at him since the beaker first glowed.
“I don’t know what to do with you,” he said. “You’re all too much. You’re loud, and sad, and confusing, and you won’t leave, and I think—” He paused, fixing his immaculate part. “I think you broke my ability to have a normal thought.”
“Good,” said Dostoevsky.
“That’s the process,” said Kafka.
“That’s the point,” said Camus, and raised his coffee cup.
Utonium looked at the beaker on his desk—still faintly glowing, still slightly violet, still faintly ominous. He thought about the forms, the suffering, the rock, and the hill. He thought about the way Kafka stood in doorways, waiting for permission that was never granted. He thought about the way Dostoevsky’s eyes burned with questions that had no safe answers. He thought about the way Camus smiled, not because everything was fine, but because smiling was its own answer—a small, defiant, absolutely unreasonable act of defiance within the face of a universe that had no obligations to any of them.
He picked up his own cup. It was cold. He drank it anyway.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “someone is going to have to explain to the university why I’ve been filing my lab reports in triplicate and weeping into a kettle.”
“Welcome to the team,” Camus said.
And the beaker, as if in agreement, gave one final, quiet glow—then settled, at last, into repose.
