Beast Machine

by Brad McKinniss

  “How’re you feeling?” said Gora, kneeling next to Tubman’s cot.

  “I’m still sore, but I can’t imagine I’ll be out of commission for too long,” replied Tubman wearily. She playfully adjusted her bandana and tousled her ears to ease Gora’s anxiety. “What about Owlbert? How’s he doing?”

  “He’s still not awake, but his vitals are stable.” Gora placed her hand on Tubman’s arm. “Let me know if you need anything. I’ll let you rest.”

  Tubman smiled and then closed her eyes. Rest was necessary for Tubman too – she had been to hell and back as well. Not just in the past 75 hours, but the past several months of her second existence. She had been thrown into a world of danger, revenge, and bloodlust from a world of danger, revenge, and bloodlust. Would her hell ever end?

  Gora walked over to her workbench and sat at a chair. “I need to invent something,” she thought. “Something that will free Hitbear so we can continue with our plans.” She picked up pieces of metal, nuts and bolts, extra material from Owlbert’s polymer wings, broken vials from her broken vials heap, unbroken vials from a cupboard, string, and Technicolor tubing. She tried to hurriedly combine the odd ingredients to create something useful.

  Each time was a failure, not because Gora wasn’t trying or that the materials were irregular, but because she was rushing and not thinking correctly. “Damn,” she said as a bizarre looking box fell apart.

  “Damn,” she said louder as a magnified light generator broke into pieces.

  And “Damn!” she screamed as a makeshift gyrocopter caught fire and crashed into the floor. “God fucking damn it,” she was in tears. “God fucking damn it, I can’t concentrate.” She fell to her backside and covered her face. “I can’t do it. I can’t save him, I can’t save anyone. I’ve become a pathetic lump. What the fuck happened to me?”

  A furry paw tapped her shoulder. Gora turned her head slightly, still covering her face.

  “We won’t get anywhere with you blaming yourself,” said Tubman. She sat next to Gora. “I would rarely lose a runner when I’d help them escape, but when I did…when I did, I remember feeling this great void in my heart…in my soul. I never thought it would go away – in a sense it didn’t fully go away – but I did what I did best then – I ran. I ran to help more runaways escape from the inhumanity of slavery. I filled the void, mostly, with the happiness of knowing that I helped someone escape a wretched life. I continued my life’s mission; it helped keep my mind off of the bad.”

  Gora wiped her eyes, “So you think we should abandon Hitbear? Just leave him to rot in some cage?”

  “No, not at all,” explained Tubman, “but we aren’t going to get him back by rushing back there with faulty inventions that will put everyone else in danger. We need to stick to your original plans, and come back to Hitbear when the people at that place won’t expect it.”

  “He could be moved. Placed in a dungeon somewhere. We should act now.”

  “I want to act now, just as much as you, but it would not be smart, Gora. Look at Owlbert.” The pair looked back toward the incapacitated owl, resting in the hammock Gora had made for him. Wires and tubes going in and coming out of his body, connected to machines to keep his health correctly in tune. He would be fine, but for now he would be useless to any future missions. “I’ve got a rough limp and you’re not going to be right enough to go back there. Even when the both of us get healthy, Owlbert won’t be right enough to help.”

  “What should we do then?” asked Gora. Her eyes widened and she frowned.

  “We have to make another one of us,” said Tubman. Gora bit her lip. “I know I’ve been saying this for some time, but we need someone else to help us in all of this… this chaos.”

  “I can’t,” said Gora. “I just can’t.” Gora shook her head and tears flowed out slowly.

  “Why not?” said Tubman quietly. “Please, Gora, we need help and we need it now. I can help with the research, if that’s the problem in all of this. I can figure out that internet-machine to help out. All you’ll have to do is press the buttons.”

  “No, it’s not that…” Gora gulped loudly and then hiccupped.

  “What then? Just spit it out – if you want to be able to save Hitbear you are going to have to tell me why we can’t have another one of, um, one of me. Another beast.”

  Gora stood up quietly and looked at Tubman, “Fine, follow me. She’s not going to like it, but follow me.”

  “Um, okay,” said Tubman. She hopped up and followed by Gora’s side. Her limp was getting better but was still noticeable. “What do you mean by she?”

  The pair walked over to the corner where Gora deposited her used vials. It was a mountainous pile that stood roughly five feet high and cascaded down to roughly eight feet wide. Not every vial had a liquid or product in it, but many did and the result was that most of the vials stuck together making the vial pile sturdy and hefty.

  “So this is where the stink comes from?” said Tubman.

  “Oh hush,” said Gora. She walked to the wall and scraped her fingers against it. “Where is it…” she muttered. “Ah, here.” She found a soft spot in the wall and pushed it in, causing there to be a round indentation in the wall. “Stand back.”

  A loud whirring and bustling sound could be heard. Whi-zzz-iii, whi-zzz-iii, urt-urt-urt. The sticky vial pile, the floor piece under it, began to rise up then move sideways. It moved enough to the right that it revealed a staircase.

  “What the hell, Gora?” said Tubman. “You’ve had a cellar this whole time?”

  “Follow me down,” said Gora, already two steps down.

  “My leg, I’m going to need help.”

  Gora grabbed Tubman and held her like one holds a puppy. The stairs were shorter than the ones that tortured them in Spotila’s building, but there was no light. When Gora found she had no more steps to go by way of her feet hitting cement, she yelled out, “Illuminate!”

  And that is what the room did.

  Bright panels of light began to turn on, one after the other. It was quite the change of pace from Gora’s dimly lit, gloomy laboratory. There wasn’t much to the room: a few generators, emergency rations of food, blank concrete walls, and one large red box labeled ‘AMMO’. This seemed nothing more than a safe room. The last bit of lights turned on for the last dark part of the safe room – right in the middle of the room.

  “By God,” said Tubman as Gora set her down. “What the hell is that?”

  A massive tube sat in the back middle of the room. Steel appendages that looked like spider legs reached to the top of the ceiling and down to the concrete floor, with the tube in the center. There was a light inside the tube that turned on and a blue liquid that filled the tube was now noticeable. Tubman and Gora walked toward the tube slowly, precariously.

  “Gora?” said Tubman. “Please… tell me what this is.”

  As they stepped closer, Tubman noticed that there was a body floating inside the tube of blue liquid. No, two bodies. She stepped even closer, and then noticed that the two bodies were in fact two parts of the same body. The torso of the body floated near the top of the tube, while the legs sat near the bottom of the tube just hovering there. An intestine strung between the two, as if to keep them together but let them have their own space. Tubman noticed the split body belonged to a woman. A woman with a half shaven head, full lips, bites marks on her arms, and long fingernails. She tapped on the glass and the woman’s eyes opened.

  Tubman flew backwards. “Gora!” said Tubman in a scared voice. “Who the fuck is this!?”

  “It’s Aster Granzella,” said Gora. “My mother.”

  370

 

 

 
lter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share