Beast Machine

  Cover art by Sean Robert Carver

  Acknowledgements:

  I want to thank my family and friends for their support. I love you all.

  Chapter 1

  Appleton, Wisconsin

  A gargantuan man briskly made his way through a dreary, unkempt cemetery toward a rotten mausoleum engulfed in vines. The entrance to the mausoleum was accessible after the man cut away several thick vines. He tossed aside any foliage that dropped upon him. The man rubbed his hand on a bronze plaque resting on a pillar that read Captain of the United States Marine Corps. The words, once a shimmering reminder of dedication, lost their sheen over the years on the feeble pillar that kept the mausoleum standing. He entered the mausoleum with a peculiar calmness.

  Inside the mausoleum the man found a less than modern light switch. It was a thin metal, possibly aluminum, switch. He flipped the switched and was pleased when all the light bulbs burned bright. The man knew he must have been the first visitor to this particular mausoleum in decades, as the light bulbs were rinky-dink, old models, which meant that what he was looking for was likely immaculate, or at least untouched. His skin began to faintly glow.

  He examined dust covered portraits of a white politician standing next to other white politicians at golf outings, at The White House, around a circular wooden table, at an execution by electric chair and at a segregated water fountain. Each politician wore a serious face in every portrait, except the electric chair picture where they all had satisfied smiles. These portraits did not stir an ounce of emotion, one way or another, in the man – he was mostly devoid of that kind of thing.

  Next to the portraits stood a glass case holding achievements of the deceased resting in the tomb: a large bible with stellar golden letters, a photo of a white politician with Red Grange, an unopened bottle of scotch, five bottles of Schlitz beer and a bizarre drawing of the Soviet Union, specifically Moscow, ablaze. The words My Favorite Place On Earth were captioned on a small tile in front of the picture.

  The man came to a casket perched atop a marble stand at the end of the dank mausoleum. A chintzy, unlit chandelier hung directly over the casket. The chandelier was made of mini-Jack Daniel’s bottles and ruined the serious demeanor of the mausoleum.

  The casket was made of a rich mahogany and had not lost the luster it had when it was created years and years ago; it remained dustless in a somber museum of super dusty items. The casket had never been opened once it had been closed years and years ago. The man noticed an old style lock keeping the casket closed, peculiar for even a politician’s casket. The man, being more brawn than brains, ripped the lock clean off with the ease of a toddler ripping a noodle in half.

  On the wall behind the casket, red letters began to slowly glow and form words. The electricity from the aluminum switch finally had reached the lights to produce the red letters.

  “He has lighted the spark which is resulting in a moral uprising and will end only when the whole sorry mess of twisted warped thinkers are swept from the national scene so that we may have a new birth of national honesty and decency in government.”

  The burly, glowing man opened the casket and was greeted with a skeleton of moderate size in a drab suit and considerable stench. Only a thin layer of what looked like skin remained on the skeleton. He covered his mouth and nose with a surgical mask from his back-pocket, then pulled the skeleton out of the casket and hurled it down the hall. The skeleton broke into several pieces, leaving the skull and rib-cage the most intact pieces. Click-clack-click-clack as the bones rolled through the tomb. Click-clack-click-clack. The leftover skin slid off the bones and left large swatches of the decomposed skin in the hall.

  That skeleton was not what he was after; rather, he was interested in what was under that skeleton’s casket. He ripped up the bottom of the casket with his gorilla sized hands. The casket was lined with lovely velvet, which must have felt lovely even to the dead, but the glowing man continued to rip up the casket.

  Under the casket was a sizable hole with a steel ladder protruding out, and the man, slightly agitated about the dark below, began to climb down the ladder. The glow he had mere moments ago had vanished. Did the glow disappear from his growing fear? The hole began to widen even further as the man slowly climbed down and down into the dark.

  Down roughly twenty-five more feet of ladder, the man had reached the room he needed to find. In the room sat an upright casket with tubing connected to a power supply elsewhere in the cemetery. It was made of an unknown metal, but shone brightly when the lights in the secret room were flipped on. The lights in this room were more modern and coiled tightly, thus taking a minute or two to shine as brightly as possible.

  The burly man crept toward the metallic casket while swatting spider webs left and right. The metallic casket, not touched in years, had zero blemishes on it. It was as if the spiders and other vermin avoided the casket out of pure respect. All the tubing appeared to be working as intended too.

  He grasped his hand on a small handle before looking up at more red glowing words.

  Above the casket, the ceiling read:

  “FEAR THE RED SCARE, FOR IT SHALL CONSUME YOU.”

  Chapter 2

  Gora’s Beast Machine

  Gora raised a vial above her head into the fluorescent lighting. A faint purple liquid began bubbling near the neck of the vial; suddenly, it was glistening. The liquid slowly oozed down the neck, ceased bubbling and rested at the base of the vial – still glistening. Gora smiled.

  “Perfection!” she said. “Simply perfection!”

  Gora walked over to a table with seven other vials, all the same size. Inside these seven vials were not bubbling liquids that would glisten in the light, but pint-sized animals that were seemingly stuck in time – they were in stasis. Gora picked up the vial with a tiny brown bear inside. She put the six remaining vials back into a cooling station and locked them inside.

  She took the vial with the brown bear and the vial with the glistening liquid over to what she liked to call her “Beast Machine.” The Beast Machine was her first working invention after over seven years of failure trying to invent something for the betterment of society – or just to invent something that worked. Gora had once been a prodigy of an inventor, creating mostly emergency products for less developed countries, but failed to recover from an extremely rough patch in her career.

  Gora thought she had hit the jackpot and reignited her inventive ways with her Muscle Expander. The Muscle Expander was supposed to do exactly as its name stated – expand muscles. Expand muscles for looks and for strength purposes; it was to be an invention to improve health and to improve looks – a surefire moneymaker. The Muscle Expander was only supposed to expand the muscles of a human being to their max anatomical capacity, which would vary depending on the human, but instead the muscles of each user of the item kept expanding and expanding and expanding and… pop went their muscles. Her Muscle Expander resulted in 34 busted biceps, 23 torn triceps, 39 costly calf muscle injuries, 2 blown glutes, 16 pectoral tears and at least 12 deaths. In her haste to create an invention, she forgot to test the Muscle Expander on anyone or anything.

  Gora’s next invention – the Beard Regenerator – was supposed to be a godsend to all males that failed to grow facial hair, a truly horrible affliction for men. Soon the world would be filled with billions of men with suave beards, right? Her Beard Regenerator fell flat after it became known that using the Beard Regenerator actually left the user impotent, angry and with no facial hair – symptoms that most of the users had already gained through subpar genetics and poor life choices. One man even developed extra long armpit hair from the invention, while another man grew eyebrows the size of a chinchilla. Gora, again, forgot to test this pharmaceutical invention on
anyone or anything in her haste.

  Her most notorious invention to date – The Speedy Reader – has been used as a prime example of what not to try to create as an inventor. The Speedy Reader was supposed to increase a child’s eye speed and concentration while reading a book. The Speedy Reader was going to be a magnificent tool to increase worldwide education and literacy. Children were going to be able to read the works of Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Hemmingway, and so forth without needing to consult with a teacher. The eye speed of each child did increase, but, unfortunately, the speed increased so much that their eyeballs fell out. It was a mess across the nation. Glass eyeballs were being sold at an incredible rate after many used The Speedy reader, though, so there’s the only positive of that invention. Gora, once more, forgot to test The Speedy Reader on anyone or anything in her haste.

  Gora had a slew of other inventions, but none more worth noting because they all ended with the same results – the user being maimed, killed or left impotent.

  The Beast Machine was different! Gora wouldn’t let her haste ruin another invention. She made sure to run tests on animals, plants and a strange man named Algernon. The plants and animals were mixed with unknown humans from photos found in the various magazines Gora could get her hands on. The plants never came out correctly when merged with a human, another plant, or an animal. Each of those samples was incinerated. Gora rightly nixed ever using plants with the machine. It was a crucial step in her new inventing process to nix products that don’t work.

  Animals that were combined with other animals survived several rigorous tests and were later incinerated too as they were useless to Gora, but Algernon and a hippopotamus were killed after Algernon merged with the hippopotamus and charged wildly at Gora. The instinct of the hippopotamus overpowered Algernon’s human instinct and made him bloodthirsty.

  Gora used the Muscle Expander on Algernon the Hippo-Man to kill him. Gora’s lab resembled a ripe slaughterhouse after that incident. She didn’t have to make a trip to the butcher shop for two weeks, however. “Hippopotamus tastes a lot like lamb,” Gora would recall.

  Gora removed the tiny brown bear and put it in a plastic container the size of a soup can. She then poured the purple liquid on the tiny brown bear. The liquid seemingly vanished into the fur of the tiny brown bear, but the tiny brown bear started to move! The bear let out a shrill growl. Gora grinned at the cuteness of the growl.

  M’rowwlll!

  Gora took the miniscule brown bear to a triangular opening near the Beast Machine. She picked the tiny brown bear up with her finger and thumb then dropped it in the triangular opening. Down slid the tiny brown bear into the waiting area inside the Beast Machine.

  The Beast Machine was a mixture of a kiln and a 3D printer that had the power of bioengineering. It took Gora several months to even begin to understand the basics of bioengineering, let alone being able to master the science of it. Over a year was lost trying to perfect the machine.

  The front of the Beast Machine had one large orange handle on a door that Gora used to pull open the contraption to release the newly formed creature. A knob was placed on the inside of the Beast Machine, so the creature could exit on its own after being ‘cooked’ – if the creature were smart enough. A control panel to the left of the contraption stood five feet high and was adorned with buttons, knobs, dials and even a nifty slider to adjust the light inside the Beast Machine – an extra addition Gora made at the last minute.

  Situated in among the buttons, knobs, dials and the nifty slider was a screen. Flickering on the screen was an unfathomable wall of text with an emphasis on certain memories, personality and desires to be placed into the beast’s mind – an untested option. She quickly glossed over the words and then nodded as if she was satisfied with what was in the wall of text.

  She turned a timer – similar to an oven dial – to six hundred and sixteen minutes. Right after she set the dial, she inserted a picture of an adult Adolf Hitler in a tiny slit on the right side of the Beast Machine. It was an actual picture of Hitler, not one from a history book or one found online. The picture was scanned by the machine as it slipped down through the tiny slit. She hit the big yellow button on the control and the process began.

  During the cook, Gora decided that it would be best to take a long worthwhile nap since she had not slept in several days. Blankets, two goose-down pillows and a pair of slippers were grabbed by Gora as she drudged through the laboratory. She fell upon her bed, merely a large mattress, before tossing the blanket on herself. It felt just like yesterday she was cleaning her bed of the blood and guts from Algernon exploding. She still missed the free hippo meat Algernon had provided. She sighed at the thought.

  Her mind began to wander all over the framework of her dream world. She saw herself in front of a crowd accepting a Nobel Prize for science – “Thank you, all, for giving me this spectacular award! I couldn’t have done it without my fierce determination!”; she saw herself dancing on the graves of her doubters, wearing red stilettos; then she saw herself up on the balcony of a high-rise building holding a martini glass surrounded by other intellectuals holding martini glasses; her mind finally fell black.

  After a peaceful nap that lasted nearly two days, Gora awoke to a hairy, bipedal creature inspecting her globe and atlas collection – twelve feet in front of her. She rubbed her eyes quickly to acclimate to the real world and to make sure what she was seeing was not an illusion.

  The creature had a shitty haircut and wore no clothes, but was quite the biogenetic specimen. He towered to nearly seven foot tall when standing on his hind legs and had to weigh around half-a-ton. Soft, but thick, brown-red fur covered him from head to toe, but he had what appeared to be a white mustache right under his large black nose. His paws were massive and his claws were sharp, but his genitals were hidden quite well by the fur as there was nothing protruding from its crotch.

  “Excuse, me?” asked Gora. She leapt from her bed. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  The creature turned slowly and immediately began laughing at Gora. “What sort of person sleeps through the birth of one of her greatest creations?” the creature scoffed. He vigorously shook his white mustache.

  “Bear? Hitler? Bear Hitler? Is that really you?!” Gora gleefully stated. She rubbed her eyes again and walked slowly towards the hairy creature, his genitals still tucked under the thick bear fur.

  “I prefer Adolf Hitbear! The greatest strategist the Kingdom of Earth has ever witnessed!” proclaimed Adolf Hitbear as he stroked his tiny white mustache menacingly. “I should have been the King of Earth, or at least that’s what my memory tells me…” He placed one paw on his noggin.

  “Why don’t you have a German accent? Er… I mean Austrian accent?” asked Gora, completely ignoring Hitbear’s greatest strategist comment. She walked closer to Hitbear, neglecting the possibility of being mauled by the creature. Her defenses were down and she didn’t have a care in the world as she looked Hitbear up and down. She barely came up to his chest.

  “You used an American brown bear to create me… That’s all I can surmise on the accent, however, I am now ready to take over-“

  “Oh wow!” grinned Gora. “I can’t believe I created something that works! Something that is so beautiful and smart! So perfectly perfect! It’s been too long!”

  She hugged Hitbear tightly, causing slight pain to the bipedal bear. She began to pat him on the head, but he brushed her away softly. Hitbear was mildly embarrassed by the small human petting him like a mere servant dog.

  “Enough, creator! You must inform me on what am I to do, then leave me to plan our attack on our enemies! Harrumph!”

  He walked back over to the globe and map collection. He stared for a few moments at the maps while furiously scratching his backside. Gora, still in amazement, sat down in a nearby chair and started to giggle uncontrollably because of how happy she was for finally creating a working invention after so many failures. It was the first time in years she had fe
lt this proud. Her powerful giggling caused Hitbear to become anxious.

  “So… uh… who exactly are the enemies?” asked Hitbear while squinting at an unnecessarily large political map of Lesotho, a tiny sovereign nation found inside of the country of South Africa.

  “Not in the continent of Africa, Mr. Hitbear. Our enemies are scattered across three continents: North America, Europe and Asia. Though, they can switch locations.” Gora pulled her hair back and placed it in a messy bun. “Each enemy is a cruel member of this idiotic scientific community that consistently lambasted any and all of my creations, not to mention all of the personal things they put out in the open.” She looked down at the ground and up at Hitbear’s eyes. “They hurt me. They hurt me real bad.”

  “Excellent,” smiled Hitbear. “They will not lambast this creation of yours.” He held his fist to his chest in appreciation toward Gora. He looked like a warrior ready to defeat any opposition that stood in his way, or his creator’s way in this instance.

  He looked around the room, more bearlike than manlike with his long neck lowered, and dropped himself into a prone position. Being brought into existence was a tiring prospect, just ask newborn babies.

  He began to think about mauling deer and clawing at trees – the thoughts of a brown bear were taking over him before he fell asleep. His brown, wet nose kept instinctually smelling the air of the laboratory, a place that gave off the faint scent of death mixed with determination.

  “When should preparations begin for battle? And, erm, where are our troops? Our tanks? Our ships?! How do you expect me to lead if you give me nothing to lead?!” growled Hitbear, now fighting severe drowsiness. “Where will the soldiers come from?”

  “We create them.”

  Chapter 3

  The Rosenbergs

  Two people stirred in a ragged, small house next to a lifeless hillside. A slight breeze rumbled through, pushing tree branches back and forth. Capacious gray clouds swamped the night sky causing only a few stars to be visible to the naked eye. The house had few shingles left on the unkempt roof and was flanked by a handful of feeble looking evergreens, spruces and willows that had not been tended to in many years. Only flecks of white paint were leftover from the days when the house was wholesome and something to be proud of; now it is only used for shelter and warmth. The house appeared to be standing on sheer will alone as the next slight breeze brushed the house back and forth like the surrounding flora.