Copper Acropolis - Chapter 7

Here's Chapter 7.

 7

‘Exultant
Regret’

            Doctor Dewar
awoke under the autopsy table two hours after her creation had knocked her
there, leaving her for dead.  When
Lucille tried to get up, she needed the support of the table to assist the move
and was feeling very unstable, physically and mentally.

            After a few
minutes of dizziness, she was able to stand by herself.  It was then that she began to reflect on the
miracle that had occurred earlier in the night. 
She had created life! Her experiment was a success.  Yes, the experiment, the new life, had tried
to kill her and was probably now running, confused, around the countryside, but
it had been a success.

And the success was far greater, and more immediate
than she had dreamed it could be.  She
expected, at the most, subtle indications that the creation was alive.  A faint pulse; weak, steady beeps on the
heart monitor; reflexive movement to pin pricks; those sorts of things.  But this girl was immediately and fully alive
and hyper aware. She had expected great strength, but not so soon.  The way she just picked up the heart monitor
and threw it at Yune –

            Yune!  Where was he? 
Lucille began looking around the laboratory.  She yelled his name.  She remembered their hiding place, and when
she glanced in that direction, saw a pool of blood coming from under the
desk.  She slowly walked over to the
desk, walking on her tippy-toes to keep the rather copious amounts of blood
from getting on her shoes.

            When she
looked behind the desk, she found Yune Mune. 
His body was mutilated, ripped apart, torn limb from limb, and left in a
heap.  “My God,” was all the doctor could
say before she vomited.

“I must find her,” was what she was thinking as she
was vomiting.

Deep in her brain, Doctor Lucille Dewar was starting
to form the seeds of doubt about the morality of her experiment.  In her attempt to make a being that didn’t
need love from others, had she inadvertently created a killing machine?  But that thought was deep in her
subconscious, slowly percolating.  In her
conscious mind she could still, and did, justify all the death, even Yune’s, as
being for the greater good.  Even her own
death, thought Lucille, would have been worth the manufacture of a new creature
that didn’t need love.

“I must find her,” she said.

When Lucille left Copper Acropolis to search for her
‘daughter’, she took with her a shotgun and an axe.

 

            It was some
time later that night when Lucille stumbled upon the bed of crushed grass where
Birt Gill was loved to death.  His limp,
partially naked body was still lying there, just as Newgirl had left it.

She put down the shotgun and the axe and went to the body to
inspect it.

            It was quite
obvious to Lucille that this boy had been in the middle of sexual intercourse
when he died. The boy had suffered his Big Death before he achieved his Little
Death.  The evidence was standing
straight up, looking right at her.

            After her
cursory inspection of the body, Lucille looked around the field of grass,
hoping to see her creation lying asleep somewhere, but she saw nothing.  Of course, she knew that her Amalga-Girl
could not have done this killing because Amalga-Girl does not need love.  It must have been the boy that tried to force
himself on her, and she killed him in self defence.  That must have been the reason. Although that
is what she tried to believe, she knew, somehow, that that was likely not the
reason.  The seed of doubt that had
earlier percolated in her subconscious was now starting to bubble up into her
consciousness.

There, leaning over the dead innocent boy, Doctor
Dewar had, for the briefest of moments, her first conscious thought that she
had done a very bad thing. But Lucille pushed the thought away, and focused her
attention on what to do now, her next course of action.  Lucille decided she had better get rid of the
evidence, the body of the boy, until she figured out a better plan.

            She picked
up the axe, and swung it at the boy, attempting to cut the body into smaller
pieces.  The axe hit his wrist, severing
the hand.  The force of the blow caused
the hand to fly up and hit Lucille in the groin.  The pain caused her to lose her
concentration, and again the bubbling grounds of doubt ran through her
mind.  She began to cry, and once she
started, it quickly erupted into wild screaming, mad at herself for even trying
such an immoral experiment, and mad at herself for possibly failing at it.  She needed to hit something.  She raised the axe above her head, to swing
at the body again.  Tears were streaming
down her face.

            “Freeze!”
came the voice of authority through Lucille’s screams.  It caused her to stop her swing.

            “Freeze, or
I’ll shoot you right here.”  It was
Constable Maubery.

            Doctor Dewar
saw the Constable, standing about thirty yards away, pointing his revolver at
her.  Behind him stood Art Schprengel,
Guy Maddox, and about five other men, all with weapons.  There was also a boy.  It was Cecil McNeill.  He had been the one who saw Newgirl with Birt
Gill, and had run off.  He ran to get
help, hence this posse.

            Lucille
dropped the axe, and fell to the ground, unable to stand.  The strain of her emotional and moral
collapse had caused this physical one.

            “Is that the
one you saw?” asked Constable Maubery. 
The question was directed at young Cecil.

            “It coulda
been,” replied Cecil.  “It was kinda
dark’n’all.”

            “Well, is
it, or ain’t it?” yelled Art Schprengel.

            “Yeah, I
guess it is.”

            “Alright,
Cecil,” said the Constable, “you run along home, and mind yourself.”

            “Yessir,”
said Cecil, and he ran off.  He didn’t
like being there, near that death, the strange death he had witnessed, and he
didn’t need to be told twice to go.

            Constable
Maubery looked at the woman on her knees, over a dead boy.  He couldn’t quite see who it was at that
distance.  “What’s your name?” he yelled.

            “Doctor
Lucille Dewar,” came the quiet reply.

            The posse
began murmuring at that news, but the Constable quickly quieted them down, although
he never took his eyes off her.  He
returned his attention to her.  “I’m
coming over there,” he stated.

            The Constable
carefully walked towards Lucille and the body. 
Lucille never moved a muscle as he approached.  He stepped over the boy’s severed hand, which
was lying palm up on the trampled grass, reached down and grabbed the axe.  He threw it over in the direction of the
posse.  He then grabbed Doctor Dewar by
the arm, lifted her to her feet, and moved her away from the dead body.  She didn’t resist.

            They moved
down by the lake and sat on a log. 
Neither of them said a word for about two minutes, as the rest of the
posse moved as a unit, first over to look at the body, then down to the two by
the lake.

            Finally,
Doctor Lucille Dewar spoke.  “I caused
that boy’s death.”

            The
Constable looked at her.  “You’re
admitting that you killed Birt Gill?”

            “No,” said
Lucille, “I didn’t kill him, but I caused his death.”

            “If you
didn’t kill him,” said Art Schprengel, “then who did?”

            “I’ll bet it
was that yellow fornicator what was always hangin’ around her,” yelled Guy
Maddox.

            “Shut up,
boys,” said Constable Maubery.  “I’m
doing the interrogating here.”

Constable Maubery sounded like he was madder at the
boys than he was at the woman that caused the death.  The boys didn’t think that was fair.

            “While
you’re interrogatin’ her, Constable,” said Dr. Yeo, walking down to the lake
having finished his preliminary scan of the body, “ask her if she knows who all
raped that boy.”

            Constable
Maubery looked at the Doctor Yeo.  “You
don’t think someone raped that boy, do you, Doc?”

Of course, the Constable knew that the doctor did think
that, he wouldn’t have said it otherwise. 
Still, the information had shocked the stupid question out of the
Constable.

            “No, I don’t
think some one raped the boy,” said Dr. Yeo. 
He was from Mount
Stewart.  He was helping the Constable in the investigational
autopsy of the remains of the murdered girls when the Constable asked him to
join the posse.  “By the looks of that
boy, the amount of fluids on and around him, I’d say he was gang raped.  That’s what killed him.”

            “So, what’re
we after, then,” said Art, cocking his rifle, “a wild gang of homo-sexuals?”

            “It wasn’t
men who raped him,” said Dr. Yeo.  “I’d
say it was women.”

            Everyone of
the men, including Constable Maubery, looked at Dr. Yeo.  For a moment, it was quiet, as each of the
men imagined themselves as the victim of a sexual attack by a gang of wild
women.

            “It wasn’t
women,” said Doctor Dewar.  “It was
girls.”

            Everyone
looked at her.

            “What
girls?” asked the Constable.

            “My
daughter, for one,” said Lucille, looking at Constable Maubery.  “For one, and for all.”

            “You have a
daughter?” he asked, surprised.

            Doctor
Lucille Dewar looked at each man in the posse, then said, “I have all our
daughters.”

            She then
began to tell the long sad regretful story that was her experiment, her life,
and that had culminated in Birt Gill being gang raped by one person, several
beings.

------------------------------
Next - Chapter 8 - "The Long Dark Truthful Mirror"

Vote Selector Quiz

18 questions to determine which party's policies you are in tune with.

I have no idea who is responsible for this quiz, whether it's slanted in one or another way.  Some of the questions are kind of slanted a bit too much towards or against various party-specific issues, but I took it and scored 100% in compliance with Jack Layton and the NDP policies.
I scored 77% in step with Paul Martin and the Liberal party.
For both the Bloc Quebecois and Conservative party I scored 55%.

Copper Acropolis - Chapter 6

This link will give you links to the first five chapters.
This is Chapter 6

6

‘The Lake of Shimmering Waters’

             The newly
born girl ran and ran. She didn’t care or think about where she was going.  She was just glad to be alive.  While she was in the mansion, her mind and
body were masses of confusion, acting as if on their own, independently of one
another.  But now that she was in the
fresh air, outside, she was feeling better. 
When she tried to think about what had just happened, it didn’t make any
sense.

What did make sense, and what felt good to the girl
was being alive again.  Alive,
again?  Feeling was once again coursing
through her body, this strange body, and the sensations were electrifyingly
sensual.  Her hands, whose hands?, felt
like they were buzzing.  It was as if she
could feel every cell in her body breathing, every ounce of blood moving
through her veins.

As she ran, the mind of the new girl started to
comprehend the miracle of what had happened. 
It understood somehow that each piece of her body came from different
parts of different girls. In her mind, she could sense each of the girls’ own
personalities in the different body parts of this new body, and could sense
those personalities gradually dissipating as the blood and fluid’s of five
girls intermingled throughout the body. 
The new girl’s mind could even sense its own awareness of a new self, as
a new girl, growing.

Eventually, by the time she stopped running, all the
independent parts began to move, under the thoughts of the mind, as one fully
integrated mass of body parts and fluids, and began thinking, not as an
aggregation of parts, but as her own new self. 
The woman in the mansion had called her Amalga-Girl.  She did not like that name. She would call
herself Newgirl.

            After
running, aimlessly for about twenty minutes, she came upon a clearing and
stopped to more closely experience the rush of her return to life.  She felt strong and healthy.  Despite running such a distance, she was
hardly out of breath.  Her only complaint
was that she was feeling very hungry. 
“After all,” thought Newgirl, “some of me hasn’t had anything to eat for
nearly a year.”  She laughed out loud at
the absurdity of this thought.  When she
had finished laughing, she thought she heard singing.

            Carefully,
without making a sound, she moved in the direction of the song.  She came upon a lake.  Inexplicably, the storm, the wind and rain
had stopped.  The dark, ominous clouds
had disappeared, unfurling a bright, full moon. 
The light from the moon cast itself upon the water of the lake, causing
a beautiful shimmering affect.

            Silhouetted
against this lake of shimmering waters, she saw a boy, sitting on the
bank.  She judged him to be approximately
eighteen years old.  He was singing a
song about soft ice cream.

            Of the five
girls that made up Newgirl, only one of them, Pristle Schprengel had ever
tasted soft ice cream.  Newgirl could not
get a strong enough sense from Pristle’s heart, breasts and other things, to
grasp the whole concept of soft ice cream. 
It sounded heavenly divine, thought Newgirl, almost at the same time
wondering which part of her used to talk like that: heavenly divine.  Newgirl wondered if this boy had any soft ice
cream that she could try.

            Quietly, she
made her way to just behind where the boy was sitting, facing the water.  He had a beautiful voice, she decided.  “I wonder if he’s cute,” she heard herself
think.  She wanted to make contact with
him, but she didn’t know how he’d react to her. 
She didn’t really know what she looked like.  She felt like she might be pretty.  But then again, she’d just gone through some
major surgery, so she might be pale.  “I
wish I had some blush,” she thought.

            That sounds
like Pristle Schprengel, said Newgirl to herself.  Newgirl figured that because Pristle’s heart,
a major organ, was used, her personality must still be lingering, pumping
itself through the body.  “I hope that
doesn’t last long,” thought Newgirl.

            “Pristle
Schprengel sounds like she was vain.  I
don’t think I would have liked her.” 
This time the independent thinker inside of Newgirl was the orphan girl,
the brains of the operation.  Newgirl
quickly shushed herself.

            What was
going on? Newgirl decided that the orphan’s brain and Pristle’s heart must be
taking longer to assimilate due to their relative importance in the scheme of things.  She figured their personalities would
eventually die and, then, she would be fully Newgirl.  Newgirl concentrated and tried to think for
herself.  For the time being, at least,
that seemed to work, as she stopped hearing the other voices.

            Newgirl looked
at the boy again.  He was still sitting
there by the water, singing, oblivious to the fact that just five feet behind
him stood the world’s first mechanically produced human.  She decided she would risk the consequences
and make contact.

            “Hello,” she
tried to say, but the voice got stuck in her throat, and it only came out into
the world as a murmur.  Newgirl realised
that she hadn’t spoken since becoming undead. 
She cleared her throat and tried again.

            “Hello.”  It was said loudly, clearly.  Newgirl liked the sound of her voice.

            It made the
boy jump.  He quickly turned around,
looking left and right, panicked. “Who’s there,” he yelled.

            “Don’t be
afraid,” said Newgirl, impressed with the quality of sincerity she achieved
with only her second sentence ever.  “I
won’t hurt you.”

            “Who are
you?” asked the boy, still sounding scared, but less so.  “What do you want?”  He was looking in her direction, but not
directly at Newgirl.

            “I’m just a
girl.  I just wanted to say hello,” said
Newgirl, trying to answer the boy’s questions. 
“I heard you singing.”  She had
noticed the boy’s lack of eye contact. 
“Are you blind?” she asked.

            “Yes,” said
the boy, getting up.  “I don’t recognise
your voice.  Are you from around here?”

            “I am
mostly,” said Newgirl.  “You wouldn’t
know me, though. I’m a new girl.”

            “A new girl,
eh.”  The boy smiled.

            “Very.”

            He’s not bad
looking.  The thought came from somewhere
deep within Newgirl.  “I heard you
singing.  You have a lovely voice.”

            “Thank you,”
said the boy.  “I like to come down to
the lake, especially after rains, bring a picnic, and sing here.  The water and the surrounding trees gives
one’s voice a magical quality.”

            “What are
you doing here so late, and in the dark?”

            “It’s always
dark for me, so it doesn’t matter,” said the boy.  “I could ask a young girl the same question,
though.”

            “Oh, nights
like this one seem to restore my health,” said Newgirl.

            “My name is
Birt,” said the boy.  “Birt Gill.  I live in that house up there.”  He pointed in a generally Western direction.  “I have some food, if you’d care to join me.”

            With the
mention of food, Newgirl suddenly remembered how hunger she was.  “Yes, I’d love to,” she said, trying not to
sound as urgently hungry as she was.

            Birt bent
down to pick up a cloth bag.  As he did,
Newgirl’s left eye noticed, approvingly, Birt’s nice, tight bum.  Her glance at his bum took her totally by
surprise, and she wanted to quickly look away the second she caught herself
staring.  She managed to look away a
couple of seconds later.

            “There’s all
kinds of food in my bag,” said Birt. “Help yourself.”

            Newgirl
reached in and felt around.  She grasped
two long, hard cylindrical objects. 
“What are these?  Carrots?” she
asked, pulling them out of the bag.  They
were carrots, and she devoured them quickly.

            Birt and
Newgirl sat down by the lake and ate and talked.  Newgirl did most of the eating, and Birt did
most of the talking.  After the food was
all gone, and the cold settled down upon them, Birt and Newgirl found
themselves inching closer and closer together. 
Newgirl really liked Birt, and she felt that he liked her.  He was being really open, honest and sincere
about all manner of topics.  It was
obvious to her that he was intelligent.

            “May I touch
your face?” Birt asked at one point.

            “What?”
replied Newgirl, not understanding the question.

            “May I touch
your face?” Birt said again.  “It’s how
blind people see.  By touching.  I want to see if you’re as beautiful as I
imagine you to be.”

            “I would
love you to touch my face,” said Newgirl, closing her eyes.  When her eyes were closed, she could feel
something building up inside of her.  It
was as if she were hungry again.  But
that can’t be, thought Newgirl.  All this
food has satisfied that urge.

            At the
moment his fingers gently caressed her cheek, then quickly pulled back as he
felt the scars, and swollen puffy lips, Newgirl understood what this new urge
was, and before she could stop herself, she acted, fully and without thought,
on it.

            Lust had
overcome her. Pristle Schprengel’s heart had once again taken momentary control
of Newgirl. She jumped on Birt and began to smother him with kisses.  At first, he was terrified, not knowing what
was happening.  But as he quickly began
to understand what she was doing, kissing him passionately, grabbing him in
places he’d only dreamt of being grabbed, he more than eagerly went along with
it.

            Newgirl
tried to put a stop to the heavy petting. 
She tried to gain control of herself, but was losing the battle.  She could sense, as she was thrashing about,
ripping the clothes off a blind boy, the other individual parts of her rising
up to their own consciousness.  Soon, she
was not trying to control just Pristle’s wild lust, but the teenage lust and
curiosity of each and every girl that was Newgirl.  Only the orphan, the brain, refused to join
in the frenzy.  Newgirl felt like it was
feeding time in a pool full of sharks, each shark fighting for the biggest
piece of meat.  What else could she do
but join in?  Although there were only
two bodies rolling around by the lake of shimmering waters, six individuals
were having the orgy of their lives.  One
individual, the one that made up Newgirl’s brain, simply watched.

            When it was
over, Newgirl, lying on the matted grass, now back in control of herself, more
or less, was exhausted.  Birt Gill, lying
there beside her, was dead.

            After a few
moments of quiet, not quite understanding how this terrible, terrible horror
could have happened, Newgirl heard some rustling in nearby brush.  She sat up to investigate, and saw a young
boy running away fast, heading in the direction of town.  Newgirl got up and too tired to chase him
down, proceeded to lope off along the bank of the lake in the opposite
direction.  She got only three hundred
yards away when she passed out and collapsed, falling into some dense brush.

------------------------------------
Next time:  Chapter 7 - "Exultant Regret"

1 Game Lead, 3 Games Left

It's been a see-saw battle in my NFL pool, between me and reverseflash.  Last week, he went 3-1 to take a one-game advantage.  This week, I went 3-1 (lost on those stupid Colts) and regained my one-game advantage from two weeks ago.
Only 3 games remain.  I bet this is the most exciting event you've ever considered, eh?

Karate Matrix

Many have probably seen the Ping Pong Matrix video, but this is another along the same lines. It's pretty funny too.

Sketch22 Road Trip! Yee Haw!

The boys of Sketch22 (except Josh who winters in Toronto) are heading out for a road trip!  We've been asked to audition this coming weekend in Halifax for an upcoming CBC-TV comedy special.  We're pretty excited to have been asked to participate, and we're eager to see how our comedy compares to that of others in the region.
If we get selected (we're not counting on it, by the way) by the CBC to be part of the comedy special, it's on to Toronto to tape a handful of sketches to air on the special.
At the very least, it'll be a fun weekend with the boys.
Yee Haw!

Technorati Tags: Sketch22, audition, CBC, travel

The Following Takes Place Between Implausability and Entertainment

That may be my longest post title yet.
My wife and I decided to 24 another chance this season.  We were huge fans the first season, less so the second, and just couldn't put up with any other seasons, try as we might.  It's the implausability of the thing that we just can't get passed.  That and all the seemingly obvious better ways that things could/should be done in practically every tense situation.
"Why's he do that?"
"How come she's not..."
"Wouldn't the whole thing be solved if just...."

But the show can be damn exciting if you can get passed all that.  So, my wife and I have taken a vow:  No questions are allowed to be asked; no observations of incongruous time-lines, etc. while we watch the show.  That means neither of us can say "How did the former president get shot in a room of only two men, and two minutes later, there are phone calls out to all kinds of people, telling them of the assasination?"  Not to mention "A former president gets assassinated, and within half an hour, the current President is holding a press conference on the assassination? I don't think so!"

24 is chock full of things that, if you let them bother you, they will drive you away from the show.  Happened to us last season, we could only watch the first half of the first episode.  But we stuck it out for the full two-hour premiere tonight, and I'm gonna try to watch again tomorrow night.  It remains to be seen if my logical brain can be tricked into hibernating for the hour it's on each week after that, though.

Technorati Tags: television, 24

Copper Acropolis - Chapter 5

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4

And this is chapter 5

    5

‘Amalga-Girl,
Hello’

             “An
orphan?!”

            That is what
Doctor Dewar said when she first saw the child. 
“You brought me an orphan?”

            Yune was
amazed.  He hadn’t said a word about the
girl.  “How did you know she is an
orphan?”

            “Look at
her!” shouted the doctor.  “Dark rings
under her eyes, sallow complexion, a smile that so obviously hides the pain and
turmoil of being all alone in the world. 
I see that smile every day in the mirror, Yune.  Of course she’s an orphan.”

 

            At first,
Lucille was dead set against using an unknown waif’s brain as such a crucial
part of her experiment.  The brain, the
most intricate piece of the puzzle, the piece that would ultimately meld all
the other limbs and organs together, had to be a brain of a girl from a stable
background, of that she had been adamant. 
An orphan’s brain had too many untold influences thrust upon it, of that
she was certain.

            “Send her
back,” said the doctor.

            “Well, now,”
replied Yune, “why do not you get to know her. 
Maybe she will be okay.  After
all, there really are no other brains available.  Maybe her brain is a good brain.  She did tell me she was smart.  And on the way back from the train station
she was asking me all kinds of curious questions.”

            Doctor
Lucille Dewar was in a tough situation. 
She knew when she began the planning for her experiment that she would
have to make sacrifices and this might very well have to be one of them. “I’ll
give her a day.  If her brain doesn’t
seem acceptable, she’s out.  And I’ll use
your brain instead of hers!”

 

            All the next
day, Doctor Lucille Dewar spent time with the orphan girl, to find out all she
could about the girl, her history, her intelligence.  All but the final, last moment tasks of the
experiment had been taken care of. 
Doctor Lucille thought it might actually be advantageous to be diverted
from the experiment for a while, to rest before its culmination so she would be
fresh and alert.

She had to admit, the girl was a sprite.  This girl reminded her of a young
herself.  The girl had much in common
with Lucille, in fact.  While both were
orphans, and lived with many foster parents, they both excelled in
education.  They both were fiercely
independent thinkers.  They both had low
self esteem, although both imagined themselves in the future as great
successes.

Lucille had made a full 180 degree turn in her
decision to use the girl’s brain for her experiment.  Now, deciding that it must truly be Fate’s
hand that delivered such an identical being to her, such a kindred spirit, she
exclaimed (to herself, so as to not upset the child) that no other girl’s brain
would do.  It must be this girl’s brain
that was used in the experiment.  “This
girl’s brain will make the experiment,” she told Yune, who was just happy that
his brain wouldn’t have to be used.  The
doctor so loved the look of the girl’s fiery red hair, that she decided to use
it, instead of Pristle’s black, curly hair that she was planning to use.

At the end of their day of bonding, Lucille looked at
the girl, who was getting ready for bed and thought, “This girl, through her
brain and red hair, will live forever, and will become the most famous person
of all time.” Lucille kissed the girl goodnight, the first kiss she’d given
anyone since before her parents’  deaths
all those years ago.  As she closed the
door to the guest bedroom, Lucille said to herself, “Correction.  She’ll become the second most famous person
of all time.  Second, after her creator,
Doctor Lucille Dewar, that is.”

            On the next
morning, the morning of the night of the experiment, while the girl was still
sleeping, Lucille and Yune crept into her room and slit the girls’ wrists,
carefully draining the blood into sterile milk bottles.  They then carried the bloodless body, and the
bottles of blood up to the laboratory and put it all into the large
refrigeration unit which she had bought from Yune when he sold off his kitchen
supplies from the restaurant.  Doctor
Lucille Dewar then shushed Yune Mune out of the laboratory and told him not to
come back until eight o’clock
that night.  For the rest of the day, she
remained, locked up, in the dome, performing the crucial final stages of what
would soon become her greatest triumph. 
Yune spent the rest of the day polishing the tarnished dome and shutters
on the outside of the house.  He wanted
to finish before the rains started, as clouds were moving in from the North.

 

            It was a
dark and stormy night, that night, and at eight
o’clock, Yune knocked tentatively on the door of the laboratory.

            “Enter,
Yune!” yelled the doctor from inside the room.

            Yune opened
the door.  The first thing he saw that
was different about the room was the placement of the autopsy table, which had
previously been stored in a corner.  It
now had total prominence in the centre of the room.  All kinds of wires, tubes, and such were
coming from it, leading to various other medical looking machines which
surrounded the table.  On the table was
some obviously large mass, covered over by a white silk parachute cloth.  Areas of the cloth looked like they were
stained with blood.  The next thing he
noticed was that it was raining in the room.  That was because, he discovered when he looked
up, a large section of the domed roof had been retracted, and a large metal
pole, connected to the table, now emerged from the room, through the hole, and up
into the night sky.  Flashes of lightning
could be seen cracking through the hole. 
He didn’t like lightning.

            “Here,” said
Doctor Lucille Dewar, handing Yune a notepad and pencil.  “I want you to document everything you are
about to see and hear.”

            Yune noticed
how calm the Doctor seemed, on this, her night of nights.  Yune himself was nervous, yet excited.  He began to write in the pad, describing the
room.

            Doctor Dewar
walked over to one of the medical machines, turned a switch, and a low humming
sound permeated the room.  She then
trotted to the autopsy table, grabbed a corner of the silky cloth, and said,
“Behold!  Science is about to leap
forward one hundred years this night. 
For I, Doctor Lucille Dewar, present the world with a creation of my own
device.  A creation that will no longer
need the externalised love of parent, the affection of friend, the kindness of
stranger to survive.  For it will find
the love, the companionship, the camaraderie that all people need, within
herself.  It will never experience the
pain of losing a loved one, for all her loved ones shall be contained within
herself.  She will never be without a
chum with which to play, as she can play with herself.  Nevermore will she be teased by her
classmates, for she is her own school.”

Lucille grabbed tighter the sheet.  “I present to the world, Amalga-Girl!”  Lucille pulled the sheet from off the table,
and for the first time ever, another human being gazed upon the result of
Doctor Lucille Dewar’s life work.  Yune
Mune was mightily impressed.

Amalga-Girl, Yune Mune figured, was about five feet
seven inches in height.  She was wearing
a very plain, khaki green frock, which covered her torso, down to her
knees.  Her arms and legs had scars over
them, some healed over, some fresh. 
Areas of the skin on her arms and legs had different pigments of colour,
indicating that they were taken from different girls.  One foot seemed bigger than the other.  Her face was bruised and slightly swollen,
scarred, but strangely pretty.  Her hair,
of course, was fire red, having been taken, along with the brain, from the
orphan girl.  Yune Mune liked red
hair.  The woman who ultimately cost him
his restaurant had red hair, but was not, Yune reminisced, a natural redhead. 

Over the top of her head was a metal helmet, and
attached to the helmet were all kinds of wires which went to all kinds of
machines of all sorts.  Yune Mune had to
admit that, while he oftentimes doubted his employer’s ability to pull it off,
it seemed that she had created something truly marvellous.

            “I must
applaud your genius, Doctor,” said Yune.

            “There’s no
time for congratulation,” said the Doctor, making last minute checks and
changes to the instrumentation of some of the machines.  “For the moment is at hand.  The tide is high and the time is nigh.”

            Doctor Dewar
ran up to the machine that housed the base of the metal lightning rod that went
through the hole in the roof.  She
flicked a switch, ran to the middle of the room, beside the autopsy table that
held her lifeless Amalga-Girl, and looked up to the sky, through the missing piece
of dome, and waited.

            She stood
motionless for about ten seconds.  Yune
Mune was looking up into the rainy, stormy sky as well.  He jumped when the Doctor screamed, “Now!”
and a second later a magnificent, deafening crack of lightning raced overhead.  Lucille clapped her hands together and
laughed.

            “How did you
know it would lightning, Doctor,” asked Yune.

            “Because,”
said Doctor Dewar, “I am not only creating life tonight, but also lightning.”

            “You’re
causing the lightning?”

            “Yes.  Lightning will recur in five minutes and
twelve second intervals.  And we must be
ready when the sheet of lightning that will hit that lightning rod gives me the
juice to jump start my experiment.”

            “How can you
guarantee that any lightning will hit the rod at all?” asked Yune.

            “Well,”
replied the Doctor, “if you did a good job of cleaning the tarnish off, and
polishing all the copper I asked you to, then the lightning will be drawn to it
like flies to honey.”

            “Ah,” was
all that Yune could say.  Inside he was
hoping that he did a good enough job. 
The Doctor would kill him if the experiment failed because of his poor
workmanship.

            “Now,” said
Doctor Dewar, flipping the switch on a machine, “I turn on the Energy
Containment Receptacle which will store the energy from the lightning.  The potent energy will then travel down these
wires,” said Lucille, following the course of thick wires, which led to
another, smaller, machine, “and be received by the Energy Conversion Unit,
which will convert the energy from its raw, deadly form.”   She flipped a switch on the Energy
Conversion Unit and the machine began to hum. 
“Once converted, the energy then make its way to the helmet, and from
there, it will enter Amalga-Girl’s brain, and course through her body,
regenerating and rejuvenating all the various organs, tissues, fluids,
etceteras.”  Lucille had moved to the top
of the autopsy table and was stroking Amalga-Girl’s cheek.  “Then, once the energy dissipates, Amalga-Girl
will be left to her own devices.  She
will be alive and free thinking, never to rely on the love of others!”

            Yune Mune
applauded the Doctor.  He was truly in
awe of her genius and forward thinking.

            Doctor Dewar
looked at the clock on the wall.  “Come,
Yune,” she said, grabbing him by the arm, “Our work is finished here.  All there is to do is wait.  We will watch from the corner.”

            Doctor
Lucille Dewar and Yune Mune ran to the corner and crouched down behind a
desk.  From this vantage point, they
could see the whole room.

            They waited
a few moments, then the Doctor shouted, “Now!” as she had done before.  Right on cue, a flash of lightning and crack
of thunder roared over the open roof.  It
had missed the lightning rod, however, and all that was heard was the rain
falling, outside and inside the dome. 
They waited through two more blasts of lightning, both missing.  Yune Mune was starting to doubt his copper
polishing.

            The next
crack of lightning smashed into the rod, causing the whole room to light up,
blue and white, as if it were midday
in a snowy field. “It has begun!” shouted the Doctor, although no one, not even
herself heard her, due to the incredible noise of the lightning.  The lightning, the electricity could be seen
travelling down the lightning rod, humming and buzzing blue as it went, into
the Energy Containment Receptacle. 
Finally after ten seconds of electrical buzzing, the last of the power
from the lightning made its way into the Receptacle.

            Once again,
all was quiet, except for the rain.

            “Why has it
stopped?” asked Yune.

            “The energy
is travelling through the wires to the Conversion Unit. It will begin to whine
as it begins to convert the raw electrical energy into tiny but powerful
electrical impulses”

            As if on
cue, the machine started making a high pitched whine.  With every passing moment, the whine got
louder and higher pitched, until Yune was forced to cover his ears.  Then the whine levelled out and the wires
going from the Unit to the helmet on the Amalga-Girl’s head started to jump in
regular intervals.  What’s going on,  Yune was about to ask.

            “It’s the
electrical impulses travelling to the helmet, and throughout Amalga-Girl’s
body,” said the Doctor, anticipating Yune’s question.

            After a
minute of once-a-second impulses, they began to occur more rapidly, until
finally, the wires were jumping all the time, all over the place.  Then, all at once, they stopped.

            Doctor Dewar
stood up from behind the desk.  Yune did
the same.  He noticed that he now did not
hear the rain, as he expected in this quiet. 
He looked up through the hole in the dome and saw that the rain had
stopped.  When he looked back down, he
saw the Doctor carefully approaching the autopsy table.  The creature on the table had not moved a
muscle.  Yune Mune decided to stay where
he was, behind the desk.

            Doctor Dewar
made her way to the table where her creation lay still.  She glanced at the hospital equipment around
the table, the heart monitor was silent, none were showing any signs of
life.  The power must have knocked them
out, she decided.  She leaned over the
table and surveyed the body, the feet, legs, torso, the head.  Everything was in the exact same position it
was in before the impulses coursed through its body.  The body had not moved an inch.  “Maybe I failed,” Lucille heard herself
think.

            Yune saw the
twitch of the sewn-up leg, and saw that the Doctor had missed it because she
was looking at the creature’s head. 
Before he could yell to her, however, the creature sprang to life,
jumping off the table, wildly flailing its arms around, knocking into the
medical equipment.  It was as if she were
trying to move in six different directions all at once.

            “It’s
alive!” yelled the Doctor.  ‘Amalga-Girl
is -“

            The creature
turned towards the Doctor’s voice, and before Doctor Dewar could scream her
second “Alive!” the creature grabbed the doctor’s throat.  It was strangling the doctor.  The creature punched the Doctor in the head,
knocking her unconscious.

            Yune Mune
threw a book that was on the desk toward the creature.  “Amalga-Girl stop!” he yelled.

            The creature
turned to look at him, not letting go, nor loosening her breath-restrictive
grip on the Doctor.

            “Let go of
her,” yelled Yune.  “That is your mother,
Amalga-Girl, let her go!”

            Amalga-Girl
looked at the woman.  Doctor Lucille
Dewar was not moving, she simply stood limp in her creation’s grip.

            “Let go of
her you stupid creature,” yelled Yune, feeling totally helpless.

            Amalga-Girl
let go of the doctor, her ‘Mother’. 
Doctor Dewar fell to the floor in a heap.  She didn’t move.  The creature turned to look at Yune Mune, and
began walking towards him.  She looked
angry.

            Yune Mune
began to panic.  His heart was pounding
very fast.  He was short of breath. He
tried to back up but quickly found the wall impeding his retreat. The creature
was getting closer and closer.  As she
reached out to grab him, Yune screamed and grabbed at his chest.  He didn’t know it, but he was having a heart
attack.

            The creature
didn’t know it either, and if she’d known, she wouldn’t have cared.  She reached out, grabbed Yune Mune by the neck,
and twisted his head from his body.

--------------------------

Next time, Chapter 6, "The Lake Of Shimmering Waters"

The Unidentified Celbrities Paradox

So, there's this tv commercial for a show coming up called something like "Celebrity Skating".  That's not the title, I know, but I don't care what the title is, because I won't be watching it.
I'm guessing it's trying to cash in on last year's celebrity ballroom dancing craze.  I'm assuming it was a craze, because it said so in magazines.  I didn't watch any of it, yet I somehow know that Mr. Peterman won.  Or didn't win, but then was allowed to try and win again?

Anyway, back to the celebrity skaters.  In this show, it says, 6 celebrities will try to learn how to figure skate, being taught by famous skaters.  As this is said, in the ad, they show the faces of six people.  I have no idea who any of the six people are.  I honestly don't know if they are the 6 celebrities or the famous skaters.  I assume that they are the celebrities.  But I seriously have no idea who they are.  And you know me, I'm pretty pop savvy.

Which begs the question:  Should someone who is unidentifiable be labelled a "celebrity"?  Doesn't that just invalidate the value of, you know, real celebrities?
How will I sleep tonight?

Copper Acropolis - Chapter 4

Here's Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3
And this is Chapter 4

4

‘5:15 To
The Mainland’

             To get to
the Mount Stewart Train Station, Yune had to drive along Route 2.  On his way, to ease the tension, he reflected
on some of the nice times he and Doctor Dewar had had driving all along that
very route.  He enjoyed those drives
because he could enjoy the beautiful countryside, and she, because she claimed
the effects the motion of the car had on her brain enhanced her thought
power.  She had even devised an experiment
which proved such, but Yune did not understand fully how she reached her
conclusion.

            Route 2 was
the doctor’s favourite route in all of Prince Edward Island; better than the
much ballyhooed Trans Canada Highway, known as Route 1, because the Trans
Canada Highway merely crossed the Island from boat to boat, ignoring most of
Prince County and all of King’s County, starting or ending at Borden, depending
on your direction of travel, and ending or starting at Wood Islands, focusing
almost entirely on the central county called Queen’s.  And while there were some lovely sights in
Queen’s County along the Trans Canada, they were certainly not the only beauty
the Island had to offer.  Route 2, on the other hand crossed the Island
from point to point, from Tignish in Western Prince
County, to Souris,
in Eastern King’s.  Doctor Dewar felt it
was truly the Island’s Route, and Yune Mune
had to agree.

            The fast, short
drive to the train station, and Yune’s reflection on past drives, gave little
time for him to think on what he was about to do.  And for that he was glad.  Dismembering that last one, the Schprengel
girl, really made his stomach turn.  It
was so messy that he threw up.  He felt
dizzy the whole time he was carving her heart out.  On the whole, he did a sloppy job of cutting
her up.  And he didn’t take the usual
care in hiding the remains of the body that he did with the other three
girls.  It must have been an easy trail
for Constable Maubery to follow down to Fullerton’s
Marsh.  It wouldn’t have been that easy
for him to identify what little remained of the remains.  He’d have been able to tell Pristle’s body
because of the freshness of it.  The
others would’ve been all putrefied.

            Now, as he
was walking up the path that led to the station’s platform, he wondered if,
subconsciously his messiness was really a cry for help.  Maybe he wanted to get caught and end all the
killing.  But that didn’t make any sense,
because he was so sure of Doctor Dewar’s experiment being a success, and, as
she claimed, advancing the course of science one hundred years in one giant
step.  And he was confident, he told
himself, as he turned the corner around the station house, that the taking of
four girls’ lives was worth a hundred year advancement in science.

            Yune stopped
when he saw the girl on the platform. 
Make that the taking of five girls’ lives, thought Yune.  He started to approach the girl.

            “Yune Mune,”
shouted a voice, “what in the heck of Hades are you doing down here?”           Yune turned around to where the voice
had come from. It was Constable Maubery. 
My God, thought Yune, I’m caught. 
“Thank God,” he barely heard himself say.

            “Constable,
hello,” said Yune, offering his hand. 
The Constable shook it.

            “What are
you doing down here, Yune?”

            Yune found
himself wanting to tell the constable everything.  Despite the certainty of what he was doing
was right, he couldn’t ignore the heavy feeling of guilt that was weighing him
down. I’ve come to murder another girl, screamed Yune’s brain.

            “Me?  Oh, nothing,” said Yune, not able to look the
Constable in the eye.  “I mean, I am
doing something here, at the station. Yes.”

            The
Constable looked at Yune suspiciously. 
“And what would that be, Mr. Mune?”

            “I am here
for a reason,” said Yune, stalling, trying to think of a reason to be
here.  A legal reason to be here.  “I am looking for some ginsing,” he blurted
quickly.

            “What?”

            “Ginsing,”
repeated Yune.  “Sarah’s, I mean, Mrs.
Dunsford’s cousin is coming in tonight from Toronto and she may have some ginsing for
me.”

            “What’s
ginsing,” asked the Constable.

            “It’s
liquor, far as I can tell,” said Guy Maddox, coming out of the station house,
buttoning up his fly.

            “No, it is a
medicinal root,” said Yune.

            “Like a
beet?” asked Constable Maubery.

            “More or
less,” replied Yune.

            Guy Maddox
walked over to the other two men.  “You stupid
Chinaman, Yoooon.  Weren’t you listening
to Mrs. Dunsford this morning?  Her
cousin’s coming in two nights’ time.”

            “Two nights’
time?  My, yes, you are correct, Mr.
Maddox. I must have got mixed up in my nights, that is all.  I guess the horrible news about those girls’
murders has taken a toll on me.”

            “It’s taken
its toll on all of us,” said the Constable. 
“That marsh crime scene was the most horrific thing I ever seen.  The girls, all torn up, mixed together like a
human tossed salad.”

            “I’m just
glad my Josie got away, safe and sound,” said Guy.

            “Your Josie
has got away, Mr. Maddox?” asked Yune.

            Guy Maddox
nodded his head as he pulled a package of chewing tobacco out of his overall
bib pocket and proceeded to fill his cheek.

“Yes, the train pulled out ‘bout five minutes ago,”
said Constable Maubery.  “I came down to
make sure she got outta here safe and sound,” said Constable Maubery.  “I don’t want anymore girls dying around
here.”

            “It was
lucky we got here early enough,” added Guy Maddox.  “The train came in early, and was about to
leave early.  That idiot Mavor Glick
couldn’t conduct himself to his own funeral, let alone conduct the trains on
time.”

            Yune was
surprised that he breathed such a huge sigh of relief.  He realised just how heavily the murders were
weighing on him, and how glad he was that the girl was gone.  He wouldn’t have to kill her.  He tried not to, but couldn’t help thinking
about how upset Doctor Dewar would be with his change of heart.  Her experiment may well be ruined, and he
would undoubtedly be fired.  She had
worked so hard and so long on the experiment. 
Was he being selfish?

            “Not only
does he screw up the timetable regularly, but he also drops people off at the
wrong stations.  That girl,” said
Constable Maubery, pointing behind Yune, “that girl was supposed to be dropped
in Cavendish, up on the North
Shore.  Poor thing, she’s an orphan from Halifax, going to a new
home, and here she winds up in the heart of murderville.  I phoned up to Angus Ferguson to come down and
pick her up in his truck and drive her all the way up to the Shore.  Told him I’d give him some money and two
bottles of whiskey for his effort.”

            That
girl?  What girl? wondered Yune.  And then he remembered the girl he saw on the
platform before the Constable diverted his attention.  Yune turned around and looked at the
girl.  She had flaming red hair and was
sitting patiently prim and proper, on her little suitcase.  That girl. 
A girl.  Again, Yune surprised
himself with another big sigh of relief. 
Over the last few moments, all he could think about was the immense
disappointment that Doctor Dewar would have at having to call the experiment
off.  It made him realise again just how
important the experiment would be to the world. 
He couldn’t let her down, he decided. 
He must get that girl.

            “Well, let’s
get going, Constable,” said Guy Maddox. 
“We should drop up by Art’s place and see how they’re all doing.  Bring him some comfortin’ booze to make him
forget.”

            “No,” said
the Constable, “I should wait here for Angus and make sure the girl gets away
okay.”

            Yune turned
back to the two men.  “I will wait here,
if you would like to go see Art, Constable,” he said.  “I’m sure Art would be comforted by your
presence.  I will wait here for Angus to
drive the girl to her new family.” 

            The
Constable looked Yune in the eyes, and shaking his hand said,  “Thanks, Yune.  You’re a good man.  That rich lady done you a disservice giving
you your reputation like she did.”

            “You could
be waiting a while for that Angus, though,” laughed Guy.  “He’s probably driven his truck into a ditch,
drunk out of this world, the dumb Irishman.”

            “Come on,
Guy,” said the Constable, “let’s get up to Art’s.”

And with that, the two men were gone.

            Yune turned
back to the girl.  She looked over at him
and smiled.  Yune smiled back.

            “Are you
smart?” Yune asked the girl.

            “Oh, yes, I
should say so,” said the red haired girl.

            Yune walked
over to where she was sitting.  “How do
you do,” he said.  “I’m here to take you
to meet your new sisters.  And if you’re
as smart as you say,  I dare say you’ll
become the brains of the family.”

Yune shook the girl’s hand.  She’s an orphan, thought Yune. Killing an
orphan isn’t so bad.

-----------------------
Next up.... Chapter 5 - "Amalga-Girl, Hello"