The Ant – Chapter 10 – Schroedecker Explains (657 hits)
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Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2005-01-21 12:57:20 EST
(Chapter 1 http://www.ubersite.com/m/56777)
(Chapter 2 http://www.ubersite.com/m/56855)
(Chapters 3-5 http://www.ubersite.com/m/56884)
(Chapter 6 http://www.ubersite.com/m/56930)
(Chapter 7 http://www.ubersite.com/m/57042)
(Chapter 8 http://www.ubersite.com/m/57139)
(Chapter 8 http://www.ubersite.com/m/57139)
(Chapter 9 http://www.ubersite.com/m/57238)
CHAPTER 10 - Schroedecker Explains
"....and so," Schroedecker said, "Even though I tried to stop Doctor Pfaltzer from going ahead with his experiments, I was ignored. And now you are the way you are."
"Which is what, doc?" Rob asked. He was sitting on an examination table. Schroedecker was standing in front of him. He looked like a sprinter about to bolt. Rob was beginning to realize that the older man's strange, tensed posture was normal.
Rob had called Megan. She had been frantic, on the verge of calling the cops. Whenever she had called the Institute, she had only been told that Rob was under observation in the isolation ward and could not be disturbed. He told Megan he was okay, and he would be home soon.
Rob was now in Schroedecker's office. The door was locked. He was undergoing a series of tests.
His vision, hearing and other senses were measured. He was asked to crush this and lift that. Schroedecker had poked him with a pin and Rob had yelped. He was made to solve a few math problems, play a game of chess, study inkblots, run, jump, walk on his hands, stand on his head.
Blood, saliva, hair, skin and tear samples were taken. A fingernail clipping was collected. He peed into a plastic cup and crapped into a bedpan, the cup and a wooden stick dipped in the shit taken by the doctor.
Standing behind a cloth screen set up against one wall, he had jerked off into a short plastic flask. Sounding uncomfortable, Schroedecker had asked Rob if he wanted a magazine, "To make easier the task of obtaining this sample? Normally, I have the nurse here who could give you a hand..." the doctor paused, mortified, hating every American idiom and his lack of understanding their proper application after all these years.
"That's okay Doc," Rob had replied with a laugh, "I've got a pretty good imagination."
When he was done there was a hole in the bottom of the plastic flask and another hole beyond it in the wall a few feet above the floor.
"Sorry," Rob had said.
Schroedecker had studied Rob a moment. "This may lead to difficulties," he'd muttered, hoping nobody saw him as he slipped out into the hall to collect the sample which lay steaming on the linoleum floor. The tests had lasted well into the evening.
"You have superhuman strength," the doctor said. "You can run fast and jump quite high. You are incredibly quick, with alarmingly developed reflexes. Your vision and hearing are a little more sensitive, while your sense of smell is now fantastic."
"That's not exactly a plus, doc." Although Schroedecker had last moved his bowels early this morning, after which he showered fastidiously, to Rob he smelled like a big sauerkraut-saturated turd wrapped in starched linen.
"In time you will be able to educate your nose," Schroedecker said. "You will be able to block out unnecessary sensory data. You will also be able to control your body in such a way that it does not hurt you. You could pick up an automobile and throw it like the comic book ubermensch, but if you dropped it on your foot, you would swear so much, such swearing, because it would crush your foot. Yet if you flexed your foot you could in theory bounce it away without harm. You will learn, must learn, how to control the more automatic bodily functions, to curtail the potential for damage or harm while sneezing, defecating, urinating, ejaculating."
"Jeez," Rob said.
Schroedecker studied Rob a moment. "There is one more thing the tests have revealed." He hesitated, scratched his pointy beard.
"What is it, doc?" Rob asked. Although he had been sitting and talking with the doctor for a few minutes now, Rob suddenly broke into a sweat as if exercising strenuously. He wiped his brow, realizing his skin was cold, clammy. "Ah, fuck," he whispered. "Fucking shit."
Schroedecker nodded. "Jah, fucking shit indeed." He turned, opened a cabinet door and produced a syringe and a vial of insulin.
Rob was staring beyond the doctor. He felt like he was wearing his own skin, that his body was a cumbersome costume, like the big characters that pranced around at Disneyworld while some minimum-wage actor sweated his or her ass off inside the suit. Next up at the Magic Kingdom - Mickey, Goofy and Rob! He grinned and blinked slowly. He remembered a time years ago when he'd first heard the oft-repeated rumor that Walt Disney had been cryogenically frozen after death. Not long after that Rob had seen a TV promo for one of those agonizing unions between the Ice Capades and Walt Disney Productions, called Disney on Ice! For a moment, Rob had been absolutely convinced that they were going to roll out a big blue-white oblong of ice, inside of which would be a grinning and quite solidly frozen Walt Disney. In fact, he could imagine what it would be like, frozen in a cool, block of ice, your body becoming stiff and unresponsive, your vision slowly clouding as your eyeballs glazed over, every breath becoming more and more of a struggle-
Rob was suddenly jolted back to reality by another pinprick. Schroedecker was stepping back from him holding the empty syringe. His mind was clearing rapidly. He hopped down from the table and stretched, feeling like he was awakening from a deep, dark cat-nap.
He remembered what they had been talking about. "It didn't work?"
Schroedecker swallowed, looked at his shoes. "Doctor Pfaltzer changed the formula. The active agents have mutated. I believe that all those who took the compound except you, are insane, and to different degrees, all are dangerous. Their diabetes was cured, but they have suffered drastic alterations to the balance of the chemicals in their brains. Now some of them are delusional, schizophrenic, manic-depressives on a permanent, enraged downswing. But you are completely sane. I believe that the new insulin being produced by the others is carrying such an utterly new and unknown series of chemical, cellular and DNA messengers through the body that when they reach the brain-"
Rob interrupted. "But do I still need to stay to my old schedule?"
"No," Schroedecker said. "For now, you will only need a shot every forty-eight to seventy-two hours."
"Kind of a wide window there, isn't it?"
The doctor shrugged. "Until your system stablizes, that is the best I can say."
"This whole situation sucks," Rob said quietly.
"Jah," Schroedecker said. "It is a sucking mess you are in... but the sooner the facts are faced, the sooner they can be dealt with." He slipped out of his lab coat. Underneath was a wool suit the color of a healthy turd. He hung the lab coat on a hook by the door, taking an overcoat from another hook.
"Where're you going?" Rob asked.
"We." Schroedecker said.
"Huh?" Rob asked.
Schroedecker frowned. "We. We."
"Wee-wee? You going to the can?"
"No. We as in, 'not me'," he replied, "We. I'm getting you out of here. As of now, I am resigning from the Pfaltzer Institute. Too much of what has gone on is against my wishes- and against common sense and the well-being of the volunteers."
Schroedecker went back into a far corner of the office, and returned carrying a tiny cage containing two white mice. He gestured to the cage.
"Much like you," he said to Rob, "Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Adams were the only two mice which were not driven mad by the new drug. They are 'improved and new' as everyone on American television likes to say, but they are still diabetic." He glanced at his watch. "It is now time for all for of us to leave- before Pfaltzer comes looking for us."
"Where will you go?"
"I have a home in the city. Comfortable. Small. And I have money in the bank. I invest where Doctor Pfaltzer spurts."
"Splurges."
"Yes."
"What about me?" Rob asked, following Schroedecker out the door and into the hallway. It was going on 10pm, and the halls were quiet.
"You I will take in my car to your home. There you will see your wife and get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow, I will come for you and we will go to my house- I have a workroom at home where we can begin your training."
They slipped out a side door and scuttled to the doctor's car. Soon the old BMW was humming down California Street.
"What about my job?" Rob asked, as they turned onto Van Ness, heading down towards the Pier.
Schroedecker shrugged. "I have money. What has happened to you is partly my fault. Any financial needs you have, tell me, and I will make them go away."
Rob felt a little uncomfortable. That sounded like charity. Or sponging. And he didn't like the idea of either. "What about a lawsuit against the Institute?"
Schroedecker shrugged. "It would be, I think, a waste of time and money. Doctor Pfaltzer's release-forms are fool-clad. Iron-proof."
Rob nodded, smiling in spite of things.
"And think of the unwanted attention," the doctor said. "If you were to begin court proceedings, you would have to be examined by impartial physicians. Think of the madness that this country's media would stir up if it came to light that a genetically mutated superman was in their midst. I do not believe that you would enjoy it."
When they finally reached Pier 39, Rob threw his door open and was halfway out of the car, desperate to see Megan again, when Schroedecker said, "One thing more, Robert."
Rob paused.
"You cannot, excuse my bluntness, must not, make love to your wife."
"You shitting me?"
"You could snap her in two if your held her too hard. Break her neck with a strong kiss. Shall I speculate on other potential unpleasantness?"
"No," Rob said. "Shit. G'night."
"Tomorrow, eight o'clock," the doctor called, putting the car in gear and easing away from the curb.
Rob walked to the dock gate, pissed off. The tourists had vacated the pier, so no one but a seagull with an attitude saw Rob kick a Coca-Cola can in frustration.
The can soared across the sky as Rob passed through the gate and walked down to the boat. By the time he was holding Megan and explaining everything that had happened to him, the Coke can had passed out of the Earth's atmosphere and drifted into orbit.
The space shuttle Atlantis was docked at the Mir space station*, and inside the Russians and the Americans were chatting.
The Coke can drifted by one of the small portholes, and one of the Russians remarked that the Americans were now littering space as well, not only with the usual detritus that cluttered earth orbit -cold, dead satellites, discarded bits of metal, tools that slipped out of thick-gloved fingers- but with litter that was a statement, 'Coca-Cola, the American drink,' litter that was propaganda and advertisement in one.
The Americans took issue with this. They were careful with their litter, they said, and one of them suggested that maybe one of the Russians was sucking back a capitalist cola and had jettisoned the can out of an airlock when the Americans made their rendezvous, afraid of being mocked as a hypocrite.
A live video feed to NASA captured the ensuing arguments. The feed was picked up and broadcast by many cable companies worldwide. NASA cut the live audio feed, but that didn't hamper the enjoyment of radio operators who were listening to such gems as a Russian saying, "And now, the National Anthem of America," and breaking wind, or the unidentified American who asked, "Hey, how many Russians does it take to satisfy a woman?" and supplied the answer, "Nobody knows. It's never been done!" NASA was slower cutting off the video transmissions, thinking the astronauts would vent and get it out of their systems. So it was that the world saw pictures of a Russian pantomiming wiping his ass with the Stars and Stripes, or an American taking a package of Gummi-Bears out of a flap pocket, plucking one from the bag and enacting a little play which could have been entitled The American Eagle Meets The Russian Bear,' in which one beak-like hand pecked at the Gummi-Bear repeatedly, finally biting its head off, after which a great many people saw the very first fist-fight in space, complete with eye-blackening, nose-breaking and ball-kicking.
The zero gravity brawl would for years afterward be referred to as the first extra-terrestrial war.
*Remember, this story was written a few years back.
User Reviews
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-08-03 11:41:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Supreme Overlord damage control...
Submitted by Supreme_Overlord (user info) at 2005-07-21 22:21:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
shite
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2005-02-08 12:54:45 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-01-25 13:06:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I think this would do well as a sort of tongue-in-cheek comic book, but it's a little too unrealistic for a serious story -- which is fine, unless that's your intention. Rob's reactions are too calm and collected and everything is too cut-and-dried. It's a cool story though, with lots of potential.
Though, I wasn't keen on the USA-Russia thing.
Submitted by codpeener69 (user info) at 2005-01-21 16:53:57 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-01-21 15:12:46 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-01-21 14:49:19 (#)
Ranking: 0
excellent.
I'm getting ahead of myself here - but I'm hoping some of the other mutants do cool, crazy stuff, eh?
--
Rob will have his first showdown with the bad guys soon (that chapter will be posted Sunday). In tomorrow's chapter he will spend some time learning how to control his new super-strength, so he can avoid tragic accidents while performing simple everyday acts, like taking a dump.
Submitted by ess-arr (user info) at 2005-01-21 15:04:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
great stuff as always jack.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-01-21 14:49:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
excellent.
I'm getting ahead of myself here - but I'm hoping some of the other mutants do cool, crazy stuff, eh?
Submitted by iamhewhoisnot (user info) at 2005-01-21 14:36:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
this series is fantastic...
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2005-01-21 14:34:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You should definitely try to publish this. even if it was as a graphic novel it's great!
Woo! More! More! Yes, yes yes!
Submitted by Falconer (user info) at 2005-01-21 14:18:48 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Fuck yeah.
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2005-01-21 14:03:17 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I have issues with seriousness, but if I were being serious I would say your storytelling "voice" is amazing and your rythm is exceptional.
Oh and...
Woo! More! More! Yes, yes yes!
Submitted by TigerLilly (user info) at 2005-01-21 13:19:12 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Great!!!
Submitted by TigerLilly (user info) at 2005-01-21 13:19:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Are
Submitted by TigerLilly (user info) at 2005-01-21 13:18:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2005-01-21 13:15:47 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 for the phrase "sauerkraut-saturated turd"