by Eirik Gumeny
“Hey, Denby, it’s Mark.
“Yeah, doing good. How’s things with you?
“No, I hear ya. Hey, listen, are you still running that, uh, ‘hot dog’ stand?
“What? No! When would I ever narc on –
“No, no, I get it. Completely. But, look, I’ve, uh, I’ve got some ... ‘ingredients’ you might be interested in.
“Yeah.
“I don’t know, at least three dozen. Pirate raid. They’re all piled up in my hotel right now. Wanted to get them out of the plaza before the kids –
“Pretty good assortment, I guess. Bunch of guys, couple girls, even got an ape.
“No, the ape wasn’t with the pirates. That was something else.
“I know, right? We’d be completely fucked.
“The girls? College age, mostly. Would I ... Yeah, I guess you could call them lithesome. At least most of – Wait, why would you ...
“You know what, don’t answer that. In fact, pretend I never called.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Yes, Always
A few hours later, Thor, Catrina, Ali, and Chester A. Arthur XVII’s corpse cleared the last of the dead and occasionally burning cottonwood trees and reached the base of the El Mal Muerte volcano. They looked up. And then up some more. The jagged rock peak reached nearly half a mile into the dark blue night, with dozens of outcroppings trying really hard. The volcano was the dried throat of an eruption, made pointy and angry by years of erosion, and then pointier and angrier when Sir Scales filed down some of the points to make it even more imposing before he put it up for sale.
After the First Robot War ended the world for the ninth time and most of humanity was enslaved, a small number of scientists fled to the technological and intellectual stronghold of Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was here, in the crucible of nuclear and aerospace engineering, and amid many heated debates about Babylon 5, that The Resistance was formed.
The robot uprising was put down by The Resistance in short order and the scientists lived like kings. Literally. The scientists of Los Alamos ruled over the reinstated United States of America in what was its first and only democratically-elected poly-monarchy.
After the Third Robot War ended the world for the twelfth time and humanity was once again cowering in fear of crazed, homicidal automatons, the United States decided screw all this science bullshit, un-elected the kings of Los Alamos, and then pulled their funding. For good measure, the new United States government also ceded the entire southwest portion of the country to the robots with the Treaty of Albuquerque, creating the independent territory of Las Máquinas and leaving the scientists to fend for themselves.
They did. Hard. By embracing their freedom from governmental oversight, the billions of dollars of equipment now up for grabs, the thousands of robots with nothing to do in between wars with humanity, and the many, many nuclear testing grounds and volcanoes that dotted the landscape.
It took exactly two weeks before the first supervillain emerged.
It was a fun time to be a scientist.
The thunder god and his friends stood on a welcome mat, laid out in front of a large metal door wedged into the base of the volcano. It was an extremely wide welcome mat.
“I hope this is the right one,” said Thor, staring up at the door. “I don’t see a name or anything anywhere, and there were a lot of volcanoes out here.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m about to pass out,” said Ali. “I vote that we knock and see what happens.”
“As someone who’s never seen a mad scientist’s lair before, I thought you’d be more awestruck.”
“I would very much like to be, but Catrina dropped me a few times on the way here. I’m almost positive my shoulder’s dislocated and I’ve been trying not to vomit for the last hour.”
“I appreciate that more than you’ll ever know,” replied Catrina.
“You’re luck may be running out,” gulped the donut merchant.
“Message received,” said the hotel employee. She knocked on the door. The only sound was her knuckles fracturing.
“Fucking hell!”
And then her swearing.
“What is that fucking door made of?” Catrina tucked her broken hand between her arm and her chest, leaving Ali to stand on his own two feet. As he only had one good one, that didn’t go so well. The man from Dunkin Donuts fell to the ground. Again. Catrina continued to mumble obscenities under her breath.
“Right ...” said Thor.
The former God of Thunder knocked heavily on the metal door, the nearby rock trembling slightly.
A few moments passed.
“Do these guys actually live in their lairs?” he asked. “Or are they only here when they’re doing supervillainy stuff?”
Ali muttered incoherently into the ground in reply.
“I’ve never actually been to one when they weren’t actively trying to cause problems,” continued the thunder god, staring up at the volcano again. “They should put a light out or something so you can tell.”
A sharp squeal of feedback cut through the air. Then a voice crackled through an unseen intercom:
“Who’s there?”
“Us,” said Thor.
“We’re friends of Chester A. Arthur XVII,” added Catrina, her hand still tucked into her body.
“Did Charlie send you?” asked the voice, rising slightly. “I didn’t have a delivery scheduled.”
“Charlie’s dead,” said Catrina. Thor waved Charlie’s hand in the general direction of the door. “We were hoping you could help.”
“Oh,” said the voice. “I’ll take a look. Come on in.”
Slowly, the door slid upwards.
***
The recently-deceased Chester A. Arthur XVII was dropped unceremoniously across a cold metal table in the middle of a cold metal room. All kinds of medical equipment, computers, what appeared to be nuclear warheads, and crap that Thor, Catrina, and Ali had never seen before lined the walls surrounding him.
In between the walls and the lifeless body were the aforementioned thunder god, as well as a now-bandaged Catrina and Ali, and a smallish Asian man. Despite his faint wrinkles, the man had a boyish demeanor, helped by his shock of jet black hair and the fact that he was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt. The man was Dr. Arahami, and he was currently circling the table, peeling away duct tape and examining Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“So,” said Dr. Arahami, “what exactly happened here?”
“He exploded,” said Thor.
“It looks more like something exploded into him.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“It’s a very different thing.”
“Technically, I guess,” said a confused thunder god. “An explosion’s an explosion, isn’t it?”
“Not even a little,” said the doctor. “There are hundreds of different kinds, with varying degrees of damage and range and ...” The doctor removed a sliver of grenade from Charlie’s sternum. “ ... shrapnel.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be evil?” asked Thor. “Why are you helping us? More importantly, how do we know we can trust you? Evil people generally aren’t the most trustworthy. They lie a lot.”
“I’m not evil,” said Dr. Arahami, lifting Charlie’s arm and examining his armpit more thoroughly than was probably necessary. “I’m ... misunderstood. I’ve never wanted anything other than to help people and advance the world. Charlie knew that. That’s why he was helping me.”
“I don’t know if I’d say he was helping you,” said Catrina. “You were a client. You paid him.”
“No. I didn’t,” said Dr. Arahami, peering intently into the scabbed cavity that used to be Chester A. Arthur XVII’s stomach. “He invoiced me, sure, for inventory purposes, but after the first few deliveries he started refusing to take my money. He sympathized with me. He understood that despite our best intentions, scientific experiments sometimes take a turn, one we couldn’t have foreseen, and one we certainly didn’t intend. He kn
ew my robots were never supposed to hurt anyone.”
“But they did,” said Catrina sharply.
“Not mine,” said Dr. Arahami even more sharply. “The first robot I ever created was a comedian for a late-night talk show. He told jokes; he never hurt anyone. The next robot I created was a football player. And, OK, he hurt people, but it was well within the realm of what was normal. He was a defensive end.”
Dr. Arahami lifted Charlie’s leg.
“There was demand,” continued the doctor. “The football players became senators became firemen became scientists. I only ever did what was asked of me. And I did it well. Too well, maybe.
“One day the science-bots created their own robot. With better artificial intelligence than I’d ever been able to create. But that one robot became many became too many. And soon enough the robots outnumbered humans. That’s when they revolted.
“I was blamed for all of it, so I changed my name, went into hiding. I still did what I could to help, built even better robots to help the humans, but the Android Coalition reprogrammed them remotely. Turned them into suicide bombers. So then I built even better robots. Robots that could never revolt, that didn’t have a self-destruct that could be remotely accessed. But they built their own robots and they revolted and we were right back where we started.
“That’s when I gave up on robots entirely. I started to create better humans. The robots had piggy-backed on my work to make better versions of themselves, so I piggy-backed on their cybernetic experiments to make better versions of us. I was going to make humanity faster, stronger, better in bed.”
Catrina stared at Dr. Arahami, distrust evident in her eyes.
“They were volunteers,” continued the doctor. “I only ever used volunteers. They came to me. Wounded soldiers from The Resistance, people born with disabilities ...
“The robots, though ... they were still creating their own cyborgs. The Android Coalition, they didn’t want to improve humans, they wanted to weaken them, make them programmable, turn them into the slaves they felt the first robots were. My robots. The Coalition did ungodly things, distorted the proportions, turning prisoners into walking washing machines. Literally.”
The doctor pointed to a photo on the wall. For all intents and purposes it was a compact washing machine, only with stubby legs on the bottom and a man’s terrified, perpetually screaming face in between the cycle selector and the start button.
“Why would you frame that?” asked Catrina, holding back a small amount of her lunch.
“My name, and then my changed name, got tied up in all of it,” continued Dr. Arahami, “by the humans, the robots, the cyborgs. I was blamed for every atrocity, in every war.
“Eventually the fighting stopped. The Berlin Accord, the Albuquerque Treaties ... Finally, we all decided to live happily ever after.”
Dr. Arahami pulled a clump of donut from Chester A. Arthur XVII’s ribs and dropped it on the table.
“But the stories still needed a villain.
“I swear I never did anything wrong,” said Dr. Arahami solemnly, placing his hands on the edge of the table and bowing his head. “Never.” A single tear began rolling down his cheek.
“I believe him,” said Ali.
“Me too,” added Catrina softly.
“OK, sure,” said Thor. “Can you fix Charlie?”
“Technically, yes,” said the scientist, standing straight and wiping his eyes. “But he might not be how you remember him. The human soul is ... special. I can bring a body back from the dead, but the person ...”
“Charlie doesn’t have a soul.”
“Oh, right, clone,” said Dr. Arahami. “In that case, yeah, no problem. Do you think he’d like a cannon in his chest?”
“Yes,” said Thor. “Yes, he would.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Tonya Harding of the Dinosaur Kingdom
“You’ll never take me alive, you mongrel tools of the patriarchy!” shouted the artificially-aged ninety-year-old Susan B. Anthony III from behind the spiked crest of a rearing styracosaurus. She charged down the front lawn of her dilapidated mansion, a variety of horned ceratopsians swarming behind her.
“You said this would be easy!” yelled Queen Victoria XXX as she climbed a half-fallen beech tree.
“She’s a million years old!” replied Andrew Jackson II, scrambling to the top of a defunct fountain. “We should have been able to knock her over in the shower or something.”
“She’s got an army of fucking dinosaurs!”
“No one told me about them!”
“How could they not know about the dinosaurs?!”
“It’s entirely possible my source lied to me after I knocked up his sister.”
“Jesus Christ, Andy.”
A triceratops barreled into Vicky’s tree, lodging its eyebrow horns into the trunk. It began to snap its head back and forth. Queen Victoria XXX wrapped both arms around the nearest branch.
“This is the last time I ever assume an old person isn’t going to try and kill me with some ridiculous progression of science.”
“That’s probably a good rule,” said Andrew Jackson II, getting a boot behind the crest and stomping on the neck of the tiny protoceratops biting at his feet.
Susan B. Anthony III whistled sharply. The horned dinosaurs regrouped behind her, snorting and pawing at the ground.
“It’s time for a history lesson,” she barked.
“I hate history!” shouted Queen Victoria XXX.
“VELOCIRAPTORS! ATTACK!”
On Susan B. Anthony III’s command, two dozen tiny, feathered reptiles charged forward from the shrubbery on the sides of the mansion’s lawn. They looked like turkeys with claws. Or a chicken, as drawn by an eight-year-old boy. A scary eight-year-old boy, seeing as how all the dinosaurs had swastikas branded onto their thighs.
“What the fuck is this?” asked Queen Victoria XXX, casually dropping from her tree. Three of the dinosaurs began circling her, snapping their jaws.
“That’s adorable.”
She kicked the closest velociraptor in the face.
“Velociraptors may be small,” said Susan B. Anthony III, “but they’re still nature’s most perf–” She didn’t finish. The cloned femiNazi fell off her styracosaurus as Queen Victoria XXX hurled a tiny dinosaur into her ancient chest.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
He Should’ve Joined the Corpse Humpers Union
Two bullets lodged themselves into the front of the desk counter behind which an increasingly irate Mark Hughes was hiding.
“Guys,” he shouted over the desk, “can you take this outside?”
“You are in direct violation of union rules!” shouted the Lovett Association of Corpse Bakers official, crouched behind an overturned armchair in the hotel’s lobby. “Turn yourself in now or we’ll be forced to ... use ... force!”
“Never!” shouted Mark’s friend, Denby, from behind the leftmost section of the hotel’s front desk.
“You’ve been regularly procuring product from unregistered sources! And then you ... do things to the product. Corpses are for eating, not fu–”
“You can’t prove anything!”
“Yes, we can! We have video!”
“That’s a lie!”
“And victim testimony! One of the corpses you stuffed was a zombie! He has civil rights, Denby!”
“It was consensual!”
“No, it wasn’t!” shouted the union official. “You’re making us all look bad! Turn yourself in and we’ll def–”
Denby hurled a computer monitor at the corpse baker from behind the front counter.
“Denby, what the hell?” shouted Mark. “Those are expensive!”
“You’ll never take me alive!” shouted Denby.
“Your funeral!” shouted the union guy.
Denby and the man from the Lovett Association simultaneously rose from their cover and fired, the bullets passing one another in the hotel lobby and striking their intended targets
squarely in the forehead.
Denby and the union official collapsed to the increasingly corpse-covered floor.
“What the actual fuck, guys,” Mark mumbled.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Most Awesomest Brownies in the World
There was a brownie recipe, handwritten by Satan himself and stolen from Hell by Alexander the Great, so perfectly diabolical that to look upon it caused one’s eyes to bleed for a week, so unnecessarily convoluted as to make memorization impossible, so incredibly fucking delicious that no one cared about the drawbacks. This Index Card of the Damned passed from the bloody fingers of one conqueror to the next, from megalomaniac to megalomaniac, through the ages. It was a history smelling sweetly of atrocity and genocide, coated with a crunchy layer of carnage. A history filled with strife, tumult, war, and anger. Lots and lots of anger.
Attila the Hun rampaged his way across Europe in order to take the recipe from the hands of the Roman Empire. Genghis Khan, accidentally murdering his own mother in a fit of rage after she burned a batch, rode his hordes into China solely to find someone as skilled in the kitchen as she had been. And it goes without saying that Ivan the Terrible was a fan.
“How’s the foot?” asked Catrina.
“Shattered,” said Ali. “How’s your hand?”
“Mild fracture,” she answered. “Does it hurt at all?”
“Dr. Arahami had some serious painkillers, so I can’t complain.”
“Well, I’m sure you could,” said Catrina with a smirk. “But you’d sound like a pansy.”
“No, seriously, Catrina, I can’t complain. I have no idea how anymore.”
“That ... doesn’t sound right.”
Catrina Dalisay and Ali Şahin were sitting in neighboring armchairs in Dr. Arahami’s living room while he attempted to bring Chester A. Arthur XVII back to life. The room, despite being in the lair of a mad scientist deep within an extinct volcano, was pretty boring. It looked kind of like it might have been decorated by someone’s grandmother.
