Torture

I’ve kidnapped a stranger and brought him back to my lab, in order to intentionally traumatize him for my own personal entertainment.

Yes, I know, again.

Realistically, half the blame is yours. I mean, this is by no means the first time I’ve told you people about something like this. I’ve been an open book about my life and each new monstrous thing I’ve done has been dutifully reported back to you. You have done nothing to stop me, in spite of each story I’ve written in this vein, and as such yes, you are as responsible for traumatizing this person to near-insanity as I am, in spite of the fact that I was the one actually torturing him.

Tho’ yes, it was me torturing him.

The specifics of how? I thought you’d never ask!

Upon kidnapping him, I brought him back to my lab, strapped him into a chair, held his eyes open with Clockwork Orange style mechanisms and forced him to watch video of horrific, violent acts, the sort that no human being should ever be made to witness. I forced him to do this for thirty-six hours at a stretch, unrelentingly, without any moment of relief, without the possibility of sleep or respite. I did this until his fragile human mind broke in such a way as to never be put back together.

And, as I did, I forced him to listen to Chic’s 1978 hit “Le Freak”. I put it on repeat, over the course of the thirty-six hours he listened to it a total of three hundred ninety six times. More than enough to cause him to forever associate it with the most emotionally torturous experience he ever has, or ever will, go through.

For the rest of his life, he will associate that song with traumatic imagery and emotionally painful events. The song will, unbidden, bring him feelings of primal, fight-or-flight style terror, terror that he will be unable to control, terror that will make him its slave.

Funk chords will play and he will go white.

Bass will begin and his knees will shake.

And when a woman’s voice sings “Freak out!”, rest assured, he will.

As I was doing this, I found it very funny. Although it is not.

It is not funny.

It is not funny because an innocent human life has been destroyed by a sociopath.

An innocent human life has been destroyed by a sociopath that you, dear reader, could have stopped.

But you didn’t.

You monster.

...on doomsday.

In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have destroyed the world. Looking back, I don’t even really remember why I did…

You know how it is. You have a bomb big enough to destroy the whole of planet Earth, it seems somehow wasteful not to.

Still, I could’ve at least asked first.

Admittedly, I don’t know who I’d have asked. Even finding Earth again was tough, after so long.

Nobody’d lived there in millennia.

Still, it’d been nice to know that it was out there, our cradle, waiting for us should we ever return.

No, I shouldn’t have destroyed it.

My bad?

The Pod-o-Pod

In my defense, building the pod-o-pod seemed like a good idea at the time.

I mean, what could be better than a man-sized pod, where I could record podcasts whilst suspended in amniotic fluid? I’d get a better sound quality on my recordings, as the amniotic fluid would act as a soundproofing agent, AND I’d record in comfort and style unparalleled in the podcast world!

It was the wave of the future, for voice actors, podcastors and audiobook narrators alike!

Procuring the amniotic fluid wasn’t easy, I’ll give you that, and the methods I had to resort to included a number of broken laws and shady characters, but once I had it, it was smooth sailing. I was living the dream!

Or so I thought.

I don’t know if it was the fluid, the fact that I was suspending myself naked in it two or three times a week, the electronics so near the liquid, or some combination thereof but within two weeks I had a developing, vaguely humanoid mass trapped in the pod, growing and taking shape.

I watched it develop, over the course of the next several months, and as it did the truth of what it was becoming became harder and harder to deny.

It was me.

The pod was growing an exact duplicate of me, down to the finest detail, and I was watching, day in and day out, as my new, identical twin gradually took shape.

I was horrified, but too transfixed to look away.

Until it… he… I? Until the version of me inside the pod opened his eyes one Sunday, and stared right at me. Our eyes locked, and he/I put one hand to the inner glass wall of the pod. He/I seemed as fascinated with Me/He as I/He was with Him/Myself. I didn’t say a word, just stared at my new, perfect doppelganger for I don’t know how long.

And as I did, I wondered: Did he have my memories? Or was he merely a physical copy, with the intellect of a newborn? Or, perhaps worse, was some darker intellect lurking behind those eyes, eyes so like my own, an intellect plotting toward some nefarious purpose known only to my accidentally conceived twin?

I could have waited until He/I/It was born and asked, I suppose.

Instead, I went to Canadian Tire, to buy an axe.

Does that make me the evil twin? I can live with that.

Afterward, I dissolved the body in lye, as I’d seen done on a television show one time. I diluted the mixture when I was done and poured it down a sewer grate. I have no idea what that’ll do to Calgary’s sewer system, but I do know that that’s the city’s problem, not mine.

I’ll never be accused of any crime for the way I handled this, never suspected of anything untoward. The victim, after all, was me, and so far as anyone knows I’ve never been murdered. I’m still alive and walking around, the original Munsi.

I can’t stress enough to you that I am the original Munsi.

Still, in spite of the fact that there’s no chance of legal consequences, I can’t help thinking I may have acted hastily.

I mean, I didn’t KNOW the doppelganger meant me harm. I meant it harm, certainly, but it might have had a more gentle temperament than I. I’ll never know, I didn’t give it the chance to show me.

I was afraid to.

But I try not to worry about it too much. I did what I had to do, and I destroyed the pod-o-pod afterward, just to be on the safe side. Maybe my clone was harmless, but there was no way of knowing until it was potentially too late, and I couldn’t subject the world to that sort of risk.

I know what I did I did for the safety of humanity, and whenever guilt at the actions I was forced to rears it’s ugly head, that’s that fact which I focus on.

After all, I can live with the possibility that I ended an innocent life, but nobody would survive if the world was overrun by podcast people…

Perception

Philosophers have noted that reality’s experiential, and that it’s thereby impossible to divorce “the universe” from our experience thereof.

Most famously it’s been noted that, were we nothing but a brain in a jar, being stimulated by electrical current, we’d perceive existence no differently than we do in day to day life.

It’s thusly suggested that we cannot trust the evidence of our senses. This is the point.

I understand this.

Yet my thoughts return to those brains in jars, convinced they’re people living full lives.

And in my own jar, in this little lab, I can’t help feeling jealous...

Officer Tompkins

Officer Tompkins had already had a hard day.

His soon to be ex-wife wouldn’t return his calls, and every time he met with her lawyer it looked more and more like he was going to lose his house. His car had been hit that afternoon while he was picking up his lunch, and no witnesses had been found. And now, five minutes before the end of what had already shaped up to be a double shift from hell, he was dealing with what by all evidence appeared to be a lunatic.

The man’s eyes were wild, darting back and forth as he recounted his complaint, as though he expected to be attacked at any moment. His face was pale and wan, as though he hadn’t seen the sun in a very long while, which, judging from his grease-stained lab coat and clothes that appeared not to have been washed in days, may well have been the case.

But the worst part was the complaint itself. Theft is always a horrible thing, but this man was behaving as though the world was ending. His statement bordered on babbling, circling round itself as it spiraled toward gibberish. When Tompkins let him, the man would slump into his chair, muttering “What have I done?” and “I’ve unleashed a monster” to himself, as though the Officer wasn’t even in the room, as if the man had forgotten completely that he was in a police station.

Tompkins was tempted to kick him to the curb, file his incomplete, incoherent complaint, and head home for a good night’s rest. But it was his job, and he took it seriously even on the days he didn’t want to. He was a good cop.

Even though sometimes he hated being a good cop.

He breathed deeply, attempting to settle his temper, and tried one more time.

“Please calm down, sir,” he asked, doing his best to sound reasonable, “and try to describe the man who stole your watch.”

“No, no,” the madman muttered, “you don’t understand. You couldn’t understand, why would I expect you to understand. How could anybody? It wasn’t a watch, it was so much more than that. Don’t you see, he’s stolen my time machie…”

…Officer Thomas had had a hard day. Fortunately, the station was empty other than himself. There hadn’t been a report in nearly half an hour, and in five minutes his double shift would finally be over.

The Plan

1) Procure kittens.

2) Perfect cutsie-pie handwriting.

3) Genetically and, where results would go unnoticed, cybernetically enhance kittens. Razor claws, improved strength, speed and agility, fangs that rip through steel. That sort of thing.

4) Using shock collars and cuddles, teach kittens to equate affection with physical pain, such that any kindness drives them into murderous frenzy.

5) Craft adorable sign reading: “Free Kittens”

6) Stand by highway with cardboard box.

The angle? No angle, I have absolutely nothing to gain by this plan. Sometimes you have to do what you do for the simple joy you derive from it…

Proving Myself

My presentation was, at last, complete.

My research’d been checked and double checked, and an independent study’d been performed by a team in Australia verifying my findings.

The findings were, I was confident, beyond dispute.

Moreover, the presentation itself was perfect. The power-point elegant, the charts easy to follow, and I’d even overcome my fear of public speaking. This was too important to let shyness stop me.

All the pieces were in place. I was ready for my meeting.

They called me mad when I first shared my theory, but I’ll show them who’s mad!

I’ll show them all!!!

BWAAAAAA-HA-HA-HA-HAHAHA!!!

Robots

I sit in my study, by the fireplace, musing to myself.

Truly, I have built robots.

Giant Robots, the sort that destroy cities, and smaller, subtler Robots, undistinguishable from men, to replace world leaders.

When armies were called for, Robot armies. I needed companionship, and the most beautiful Robots were by my side.

And yet, in my autumn years I’m unfulfilled. It’s as though I have tired of building robots…

From the corner, my Robutlers eyes glow red as he remembers his first command, accidentally given so many years ago.

“If I ever get tired of building Robots, kill me.”

Cloning Pt. 2

I’ve successfully cloned myself.

Twice. One clone I’ll raise myself, one will be given up for adoption to a family in Ireland.

I’ll also be adopting a baby from the developing world. Bangladesh perhaps.

I’ll raise my adopted child and my clone together, their every experience will identical.

When my children turn 18, I’ll find the child I’d given up so many years ago, and perform a series of tests comparing my genetic offspring to the child I raised, with the clone I raised myself as a control.

Thus ends the nature/nurture debate.

Then: Nerd girls will sleep with me.

Cloning

I’ve successfully cloned myself.

Let’s be perfectly clear, there’s no mistaking him for me. The clone’s a foetus at the moment, growing to term in a surrogate I found on Craigslist. She’s doing it for science.

And because I’m paying her.

Now that I’ve perfected the process, I’ll impregnate twenty-nine other surrogates, each with a perfect genetic duplicate of myself.

I’ll raise the children, homeschool them, teach them all they need to be the best possible versions of me.

They’ll need to be.

I’m forming a choir, you see. When they turn 14 we’re taking our show on the road.

It was...

…an abomination. Even I admitted that, and I’m what you’d call a “Mad” scientist.

You see, as surface area increases geometrically, mass increases exponentially. So he lay there, 40 feet long, gasping for air, wheezing and doing little else, every moment agony. His life, though living hell, wouldn’t be long. I took some comfort in that

Sometimes I hate being a geneticist.

The colour was easy. A layer of bleach, then fire-engine red.

“Clifford!” my niece called out. She threw her arms around him joyously.

I felt horrible, but how can a man say no to a six year old?