Archive for the ‘Series’ Category
The Mad Scientist Builds a Substitute
Tuesday, June 5th, 2007
Success! The Mad Scientist had to admit she looked good. All available images of the original had been input to a sophisticated CGI program written for the purpose in the waiting rooms of congressional offices. (He’d already begun lobbying for android rights.) Her metal skin captured the hues of the original; he had even reproduced the dear blemishes he remembered so well. As for proportions, and the distribution of synthetic hair, few nude photographs existed. Newly crafted methods of psychiatric self-interrogation had brought forth all available memories. (A paper describing the technique would net him a Ph.D. in psychiatry.) He had striven, in the main successfully, to refrain from changing physical features he’d thought less than ideal in the original. He had consulted with those who knew her well, pretending to be creating a sculpture. Alas, responses were not to the point.
“She’s dead,” her mother said. “We all appreciate your efforts, but you must move on.”
Her brother. “It’s a little obsessive. She was my sister, but find somebody new, for your own sake.”
His best friend. Mad scientists do not have best friends. Laboratory assistants do not speak freely. Ultimately, he had to go with his instincts, so he made the left breast just a little bit smaller and perhaps infinitesimally more symmetrical.
Too much of the relevant literature and his own bitter experience with cloning warned him that any attempt to reconstruct her personality would lead to disaster. He was quite prepared to “go with the flow” here. He instilled some basic ethical principles and personality traits, as well as a familiarity with recent history, the arts, and historical trends. Personal integrity and high sex drive. Every imagined contingency had been prepared for, yet the unforeseen could still happen. She could leave him. Even worse, she could stay, but be unattractive to him. He booted up her system.
At first things went really well. Of course there were problems. The new version just did not like scrambled eggs. Her “digestion” produced some unexpected odors. They adjusted. She was, perhaps, a little too strong and had to exercise restraint in the kitchen (“Crockery’s cheap, Dear.”), and of course in bed. Fortunately, this was not difficult. She was witty, attentive, even-tempered, eager to help out in the lab. In short, the perfect mate for a mad scientist. But things came to a head at Thanksgiving.
He squeezed her shoulder. “It’s time.”
She sighed and laid down her magazine. “Can’t we wait till next year?”
“You have to meet our family sometime.”
The end
Parthenia Rook, Episode 3: Fallen Lepidopterists
Friday, June 1st, 2007
The android toddler, Parthenia Rook reflected, had in the end been more dangerous than the zombie photographers. But far more dangerous than either was the kirchenstreuselkuchen at the Café Gefahrlichefrau in Vörpalsberg, where Parthenia was seated in a small, private room with a piece of the cake in front of her. If she didn’t restrain herself, she could eat enough kirchenstreuselkuchen to burst an anaconda wide open. She knew this from experience.
“Excuse me, Fraulein Doktorin, but aren’t you Parthenia Rook?”
Parthenia looked up to see a handsome young man of about her age at the door holding a copy of The Journal of Theoretical Lepidoptery.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you, Dr. Rook, but I’ve read your monograph on Zemeros dinonoctis and I’m afraid I’m a hopeless fan. It was the most fascinating work I’ve ever read on any butterfly whatsoever.”
“Please sit down,” said Parthenia guardedly. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” She took a small vial she kept for special occasions out of her pocket and tapped a few aromatic drops of its contents over her kirchenstreuselkuchen.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said the young man.
“Lepidoptery symposium?” she said. The young man shook his head.
“Martial arts fight-to-the-death benefit performance?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Family event?”
The young man smiled slowly. It was not a nice smile. “Closer.”
Parthenia lurched up from her chair, but the young man appeared to be at least as fast as she was and shot her in the chest with a burst of some electrical weapon. She collapsed to the floor, quivering.
“It’s a new type,” he said cheerfully. “That shot should keep you paralyzed, though fully conscious, for oh … call it twenty minutes,” he said. “More than enough time, actually, to eat your kirchenstreuselkuchen for you. I can’t resist these, I don’t mind telling you. But you should know that. You see,” he said, sitting and forking up a huge bite of the cake, “I’m your identical twin brother.”
Parthenia said nothing, but the young man raised his eyebrows. “You don’t believe me? Despite father’s remarkable skill with genetics? But it’s true, dear sister.”
He continued to eat the kirchenstreuselkuchen, making little humming noises of pleasure. “Of course,” he mumbled through a mouthful, “I was raised by the Bonobo King.”
Then his eyes glazed over, and he collapsed on top of Parthenia. He should be out for at least 30 minutes, Parthenia calculated, if he’d ingested enough of the knockout drops she had put on the cake.
Parthenia spent the remaining seventeen minutes gazing wistfully at a crumb of kirchenstreuselkuchen that had fallen only three inches from her face.