STRANGE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY OMNIBUS

by Benson Grayson

  Into this foundation, Sterling put his entire fortune. Now he faced a problem. All of the logical humanitarian missions for such an institution had already been taken. Andrew Carnegie had already financed all the public libraries that were desired; the Rockefeller had already provided all of the medical research projects necessary. Sterling then recalled Alfred Nobel, the famed Swedish inventor of dynamite. Nobel had donated the bulk of his vast fortune to provide for prizes to be awarded individuals for their outstanding contributions to humanity. This gave Sterling an idea.

  The problem with the Nobel Peace Prize, as Sterling saw it, while it rewarded a few admittedly outstanding individuals; it left the great bulk of mankind feeling worse about themselves. For example, while only a handful of physicists around the world could be logically considered as eligible for the annual Nobel prize in physics and only one actually win it, scores in every country would be left disappointed. Sterling concluded that to help remedy the problem; his foundation would award prizes each year in all the prominent areas of human endeavor to the individual whose performance or achievements had been the worst. Taking physics, for example, many physicists in every nation had come up lacking and might be considered, and the really incompetent ones would receive needed recognition.

  Each year the annual award of the Sterling prizes was awaited with even greater anticipation than that of the Nobel prizes. The cash award in each case was so great that the fortunate recipient would become fabulously wealthy. Little wonder that when the panel selecting the winners gathered in Stockholm, the event was covered by hundreds of journalists.

  Naturally there was some debate over the choices. The award of the prize for the worst political judgment to the president of a once great power.He had destroyed the wealth and population of his country by embarking on a series of unnecessary and disastrous wars was attacked. The choice as was attacked as rewarding the wrong individual by those who argued it should have gone to the monarch who ordered the abolition of all alcoholic drinks at the start of a major war, although his government was dependent on the government tax on liquor provided almost all of his government’s revenues. Similarly, the choice of the Hanson prize in economics was bitterly contested by those who argued to should have gone to the central banker who convinced his government to go off the gold standard and print whatever amount of paper currency was thought necessary and the other economist who succeeded in implementing a rigid series of price and wage controls to curtail inflation and then provided that it be enforced by asking the population to observe the honor system.

  It is sad to think that Sterling’s prize intended to help the progress of mankind became the cause of so much harm. The size of the annual awards was so great that individuals began to strive to achieve disastrous results in order to compete for it. Political leaders, who always had the propensity to make unwise decisions and introduce programs clearly flawed now tried harder to worsen their performance in office. Most business decisions represented a senseless investment of company capital. More and more pharmaceutical products not only had little prospect of being effective but usually carried with them a host of grave health threats.

  In the wake of these developments, the economies of all nations in which potential Sterling prize winners resided plummeted. Unemployment soared, wages plunged, and most corporations declared bankruptcy. If Sterling had still been alive, there was some chance he might have stepped in and altered the charter of his organization. Unfortunately, he had passed away and so could longer be appealed to. The situation grew so grave that the leaders of the world’s great powers gathered to discuss the problem and hopefully to solve it. An effort in all of their highest courts to break the Sterling will. Once again, the provisions approved by Sterling proved unchallengeable.

  It was clear that extra-legal methods had to be employed. The G-7 members and NATO passed identical resolutions authorizing “the use of whatever means might be necessary” to deal with the problem.” Under the leadership of the US, a joint task force was formed made up of Navy Seals, British Special Forces and French commandos. It was carried in ultra-fast American transports that were designed to elude radar. They arrived in Stockholm on the eve of the meeting of the panel chosen to select the year’s winners of the Sterling prize. He team took them into custody and dispatched them to the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena, where they were given every possible comfort but barred from leaving or communicating with the outside world. Thus, with the panel unable to announce the prize winners, interest in pursuing s prize would decline and the world return to normal.

  Alas, this brilliant plan failed. Unknown to the nations of the world, a secret codicil in Sterling’s will provided that in case the panel was unable to meet for any reason, a substitute panel would meet secretly in Copenhagen, Denmark and designate that year’s Sterling Prize winners. When the panel announced its choices, the world was astounded both that the brilliant effort to silence the panel had failed and the names of the winners. The vast sum awarded annually would be shared this year by the world leaders who had thought it possible to curtail human avarice and stupidity somehow.

  MAD SCIENTIST

  From his earliest years, Chesterfield Cooper knew what his life’s ambition would be. Let the other little boys prattle on about becoming a policeman, a fireman or a jet pilot. He knew he was going to be a mad scientist. Naturally his parents were naturally appalled when they learned his ambition. When they found that he had pasted a large posture depicting Dr. Frankenstein to his bedroom wall that they determined, action had to be taken. His father, a prominent Wall Street broker, took Cooper with him to his office, hoping to interest the boy in finance. The elder Cooper was pleased by his son’s avid interest until he learned the reason. The boy wanted to learn how to manipulate the stock market to secure sufficient funding for his work as a mad scientist.

  His mother now tried her turn at diverting him from his obsession. A gynecologist, she took him with her to the hospital, think that his interest in science might incline him to pursue medicine as a career. Alas. All Cooper was interested in was how medical science might be used as a starting point for research by a mad scientist. His desperate parents took him to one after another child psychologist and even to two psychiatrists. His was given numerous IQ and psychology tests. All the findings were the same. The boy was extremely intelligent and perfectly normal except for that one peculiar obsession. They usually recommended that the parents relax and give him time to grow out of it. One prominent, Viennese trained psychiatrist suggested that the parents remove the poster of Dr. Frankenstein and replace it with one of Louis Pasteur. However, the normally obedient child threw such a tantrum that they decided it was better to return Dr. Frankenstein’s posture to its position on the wall.

  As he grew older, Cooper learned to conceal his ambition. It was not from concern over antagonizing people but rather because it might impede the pursuit of his career goal. His high grades enabled him to gain admission to Harvard, where he took a double major in chemistry and physics. During the summer, rather than relaxing at his parent’s beach home or taking a job as a counselor at a summer camp, as so many of his class-mates did, he took college courses in physics. He believed that to be a successful mad scientist it was necessary to be well trained in physics as well as in chemistry and biology.

  Cooper graduated from Princeton at the age off nineteen. His parents were pleased when he applied and was accepted to continue on at Harvard for a graduate degree. They, fortunately, were unaware that his decision was due to the belief that no one will pay any attention to a mad scientist who does not affix the title of “Doctor” before his name. Whatever illusions they might have had that he had changed his ambition were cruelly shattered when he legally changed his last name from Cooper to Xorba. “Cooper,” he explained when they pressed him for the reason, “Is inappropriate for a mad scientist, whereas Dr. Xorba carried with it all the right implications. He saw no reason to mention that he had also considered changing
his first name at the same time, but had decided against it because most people do not know or care what a mad scientist’s first name is. He cited as his rational that he had never heard any mention of Dr. Frankenstein’s first name.

  Xorba received his Ph.D. degree in biology, and then took a relatively low-paid job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a lecturer in biology. His aim was not to perfect his teaching skills or his expertise in biology, of which he was already unusually proficient, but to informally acquire the knowledge of physics he would have obtained if his doctoral studies had been in that field. Four years later, he left MIT, although he had been pressed to remain on as an assistant professor. He then took a highly paid position as a senior researcher with a large pharmaceutical company in New Jersey. His parents were overjoyed, thinking that their eccentric son had finally grown up.

  Little did they know. Upon saving up as much as he thought needed to achieve his ambition he resigned, again ignoring pleas from his employers to remain on. He purchased a dilapidated farm in an isolated corner of upper New York State and refurbished the barn, transforming it into a suitable facility to house a research laboratory. Sparing no expense, he installed in it all the equipment and supplies he might need and then set about his work.

  To be a successful mad scientist, it is necessary to have accomplished some highly sensational research. He carefully considered all of the possible projects he might pursue and decided upon the most suitable. After four years of four years of sixteen an hour work, with nary an hour off to relax, he perfected his discovery. It was a transmitter with two terminals, which projected from one to the other a high frequency beam. Because of the particular parts within the terminals, most of which had been hand crafted by Dr. Xorba, the ray had the unique quality of being able to switch the head of one living organism onto the body of another.

  Dr. Xorba prepared carefully for the announcement of his discovery. He waited for a stormy night, with lots of abundant thunder, believing that this atmospheric condition was appropriate if not necessary for an announcement by a mad scientist. After a few days wait the weather cooperated, and Dr. Xorba gave his presentation to a hall packed with representatives of the media and the scientific community. The high point of his presentation came when he raised the curtain and revealed the two transmitters and caged between them a mouse and a monkey. Turning on the transmitters, the beam sped between the two transmitters and instantaneously the head of the mouse appeared on the monkey’s body and the head of the monkey on the mouse’s torso. Both heads were alive and made their sounds expressing their surprise and alarm over the change in bodies.

  Dr. Xorba settled back to await the expected shouts of fear and rage which customarily follow a mad scientist’s announcement. None came. Obviously, he thought they were too shocked to speak. He left the hall and returned to his hotel, confident that the expected reaction would not be long in coming. Poor Dr. Xorba. The next morning when he eagerly searched the newspapers and watched the TV news show for the torrent of abuse and rage against him he expected to receive he was cruelly. disappointed. Not only was he not threatened with lynching nor even with being ridden out of town on a rail. To his shock, no one mentioned the horror of his invention. Instead, he was praised by the entire scientific community for inventing a device which might provide life and health to individuals with bodies racked by such diseases as cancer and stroke. Now, thanks to Dr. Xorba, their heads could be switched to the bodies of individuals who had been killed by injuries to the head.

  Dr. Xorba was so depressed by this failure that although he did not normally drink, he got himself drunk and remained in that state for almost a week. A lesser man would have been crushed, but not Dr. Xorba. “After all,” he told himself, “Success does not always come at the first try>” He girded his loins and returned to his research. He was even more optimistic about his eventual success than before, notwithstanding, the discouraging treatment he received as a “boon to all mankind” and the many offers, all of which he rudely rejected, from donors anxious to finance his research.

  . This time it took him six years to complete the project. Having learned from his earlier experience that the weather was not an important factor in the reaction to a mad scientist’s announcement, he did not bother to wait for a night with thunder and lightning. His second presentation was attended by an even larger audience that before, such was his fame.

  To the packed hall, Dr. Xorba announced that he had modified his transmitters so that they could now change one living organism into another. To gasps of awe and disbelief, he raised the curtain behind him to reveal a rabbit and a single transmitter. He then turned on the transmitter and the directed the beam at the rabbit. It instantly was transformed into a man-killing alligator which Dr. Xorba had not restricted in any way to heighten the shock effect if it pursued any of the audience. Unfortunately, Dr. Xorba had neglected to order that the rabbit not be fed. The alligator, having a full stomach from the rabbit’s meal was sluggish and not desposed to attack any of the spectators.

  The reaction of the audience to Dr. Xorba’s presentation was, like the previous one, one of shocked silence. This time he was prepared but not discouraged. He went back to his hotel confident that in the morning he would be hated as the worst mad scientist ever known. Poor Dr. Xorba. When he awakened the next morning and learned the public reaction, he realized he was a total failure. Every newspaper in the country hailed his achievement. The “New York Times,” not known for hyperbole, referred to him in a full-page report on its front page as “the greatest living scientist in the world.” The only critical comment came at the end of one paper’s story. It which noted that there had been some feeling that Dr. Xorba had used sensationalist tactics by placing a ferocious alligator on the stage in an effort to impress the audience with his admittedly historic discovery.

  There was no doubt that Dr. Xorba would be awarded a Nobel Prize for his discovery. The only question was whether it would be in biology or in physics. Unable to decide, the panel solved their dilema by awarding the famed scientist one in each field, the only person in the history to receive simultaneously two Nobel Prizes, Dr. Xorba knew when he was beaten. It was hard for a person of Dr. Xorba’s relatively tender age to admit that his life had been a total failure, but he was man enough to face the truth.

  Xorba was indeed a broken man. He retired to a tropical island in the Caribbean where he still resides. He has changed his name back to Chesterfield Cooper and is addressed fondly as “Chet” by the many beautiful women who come as visitors to the luxury resort at which he lives and endeavor to enjoy the excitement of going to bed with the world’s most famous scientist. He sits on the beach all day, enjoying the sun and the ocean. Since he is fabulously wealthy, he has no financial concerns. Three new planned developments in the US have been named after him, and his face appears on the postage of one African nation. There is no doubt that he will be similarly honored on an American postage stamp when he dies, the delay arising only because of the US tradition of not honoring a living person on a postage stamp.

  The case of poor Dr. Xorba, or as he is now Dr. Cooper, illustrates the futility of trying to become a mad scientist. What good are wealth, fame and beautiful women if you are a failure in your lifelong ambition? Thus, it is with human nature.

  AVOID THE FIRE

  When Harvey Brownstown was a child, the movies he saw depicting the courage and glamour of the Marines made an indelible impression on him. Therefore, when shortly after graduating from high school he happened to pass the local recruiting office, he was unable to resist the call to arms made to him by the poster in the shop window. It showed a handsome Marine dressed in dress blues, with a beautiful girl embracing him warmly. The legend at the poster’s top screamed “BE A MAN! ENLIST TODAY!” The legend at the bottom read “JOIN THE MARINES! MAKE YOURSELF, YOUR GIRL AND YOUR COUNTRY PROUD!”

  Without another thought, Harvey entered the office and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. In a f
ew days he was sent off with some other enlistees to the Marine training camp at Parris Island, South Carolina. There he was placed in a training platoon with some thirty other new recruits and subjected to thirteen weeks of harsh treatment inflicted on the fledgling Marines. Revilie before damn, twenty-mile marches with full packs, and late night exercises were all part of the norm. The stated goal of this purposeful brutality was to break them down in order to refashion them into Marines.

  Four members of Harvey’s platoon were “washed out” of the platoon for various reasons and returned to civilian life. Harvey privately hoped that he would be added to this list. However, as much as he had come to despise boot camp, he was even more afraid of almost succeeding and being obliged to repeat the entire thirteen week course again. Accordingly, he managed to just make the grade and, graduating with the others posted to a Marine rifle company.

  In his new assignment, Harvey was scarcely more satisfied than he had been in boot camp. The discipline was still harsh, the “gung ho” Marine Corps spirit foolish to a young man who had always prided himself on thinking for himself.

  Lying exhausted on his hard cot in the barracks, he morosely cursed the fate that had brought him into the Marine Corps. If only, he thought, he might somehow be returned to civilian life, he would never seek after military life again.

  Three months after joining the rifle company, it was assigned to the military force the United States was assembling to invade one of the Caribbean islands whose authoritarian government had been highlighted in the American media as being uncaring about the needs of its population. Thrown into the assault on the island capital, Harvey’s platoon lost more than a quarter of the men killed or injured. Harvey prudently lagged behind in the attack, thereby avoiding the enemy fire until the engagement had been won.