by Mike McCarty
“Hey!” Amber cried. “Who are you calling common?”
Baby Caligula jumped off the desk and quickly scaled the nearest file cabinet. “It is time to seize control!” he shouted. He made an elaborate series of gestures with his wee, pudgy hands. “I learned a few tricks when I was struck in that fat slut’s gynecological time machine.”
With that, a swirling vortex of sea-green mist opened up in the floor at the base of the file cabinet. Out of the mist marched two-dozen infants, each carrying a shiny miniature spear or sword.
“What the Hell...?” the doctor whispered.
“Say hello to my infant infantry!” the baby babbled. “Since I can’t rule Rome–I’ll rule your office! It shall be my new base of operations. I’ve had a few opportunities to visit the Internet in recent weeks–father always has his computer on, to see how many perverts are visiting his many porn websites. I first read up on the Roman Empire–they should never have installed those lead pipes to carry their drinking water. A tragic mistake. Then I looked up some military websites, and I now realize, today’s armies would be powerless against a battalion of babies. No soldier would ever dream of shooting a poor, innocent infant–even one with a spear!”
“When your soul made the leap through time, it would appear that your megalomania hopped on for the ride, too,” stated the doctor, writing down more notes.
“You call me mad?” The tiny tyrant stomped his adorable left foot. “Perhaps I am mad! Yes, you have to be crazy to be a baby. All you do is eat and crap, day after weary day. What kind of an existence is that? I used to have fun sucking mother’s boobies, but she switched me over to a hideous, rubber-nippled bottle after only three weeks.”
“I’m sorry,” Amber said, “but you kept nipping me with that little tooth in the front.” She turned to Dr. Matapathamos. “He was born with teeth! He’s a monster!”
“No, she’s the monster! An unfit mother!” Baby Caligula stared at Amber, his wide blue eyes gleaming with rage. “She doesn’t even sing ‘Three Blind Mice’ to me any more. I love that song! It’s so deliciously violent–especially the part where the evil woman with the kitchen knife mutilates those terrified, sightless little animals. She chops off their tails! Are you familiar with the song, doc?”
The physician nodded. “Certainly, yes. If you want to hear it again, why don’t you just sing it yourself?”
“Good idea! I shall have to do that,” said the diminutive despot. “But now, my first order of business is to appoint my rocking horse as leader of the New Roman Council! Guards, fetch my horsey!”
Several of the babies marched back into the vortex, and came out a moment later dragging a baby-blue rocking horse with yellow ribbons in its purple mane.
Baby Caligula climbed down the file cabinet. He then knocked over a side-table which held a box of cigars and a lighter. He picked out an especially fat cigar, bit off the end, and lit the stogie–apparently the designers of the childproof lighter hadn’t considered the cleverness of a time-travel baby. He climbed onto the wooden horse, put his leafy crown of laurels on its head, and started rocking back and forth.
“Blecch!” The infant took another puff of the cigar and said, “Doc, what are you supposed to do with these? Smoke ‘em or flush ‘em? They taste like poopy diapers.” He tossed the burning cigar into a metal wastebasket by the side of the desk.
“What–? There are papers in there! You’re going to burn the place down!” Dr. Matapathamos came out from behind his desk and grabbed the wastebasket, which was now filled with fire. He dropped the hot metal container and flaming papers scattered across the room. Soon the curtains, sections of the rug, and a table covered with books and research papers were all ablaze.
The doctor, Amber, and Desmond all hurried out of the smoke-filled office. The troop of terrified tots all rushed back into the misty time-vortex. Baby Caligula rushed in, too–but a moment later, he came back out, clutching a pink plastic ukulele. He made a sweeping gesture to close the vortex behind him, and then cried out, “Alas, soon my empire shall be no more! And so I must follow the glorious example of Nero, who played the lyre while Rome burned...”
Minutes later, a fireman named Clarence Tate tried to enter the office, but he couldn’t get through the door. It was later revealed that a chair had been pushed against it on the other side. A tiny, charred corpse was found in the center of the room, next to a puddle of molten plastic.
Mr. Tate swore he heard a tiny, nasal voice singing “Three Blind Mice” as he chopped at the door of the burning office with his fire-axe.
Military Mite
Once upon a time, the industrial military sector had complete economic and political control of the United States. But after World War II, the Korean War, Viet Nam, and every other conflict, battle and scuffle in our planet’s various nooks and crannies, there came a day when folks just wanted to come home from work and log on to the internet.
People were bored with war. Besides, personal computers could play countless entertaining and harmless wargames–if a person felt like engaging in a bit of aggression, all they had to do was sit down in front of a monitor’s comforting glow and begin to play.
The military had a hard time justifying bloated budgets to Congress. Congress still felt the need to protect America, but Army-wise, it was a time of penny-pinching policies.
The cuts soon followed. Bases and installations were shut down. Projects were terminated. Staffing was reduced. And Dr. Stanley Prince’s name was at the top of several lists as a likely candidate to axe.
Prince, a thin, nervous man, was from the old school–more bureaucrat than mad scientist, involved in a number of pork belly science projects. He’d enjoyed some initial success in his career, but now, his colleagues simply couldn’t remember the last time he’d presented an idea of royal proportions.
Prince sat in the crammed waiting room, flipping through a current issue of Scientific American, not really reading, just trying to look nonchalant. Actually, his heart was pounding like a conga drum.
“Mr. Prince,” said the blonde receptionist. Her smile was just as artificial as her enormous bosom. “Major McQueen will see you now.”
“Doctor,” he said as he passed her desk. “That’s Dr. Prince.”
She smiled and shrugged.
W.W. McQueen was reading some papers when the doctor walked in. The major didn’t make eye contact. He just pointed to the seat in front of his massive oak desk.
Prince sat in a small, velvet-cushioned chair. He stared out the window–the Major had a spectacular view of Washington D.C.
“Mr. Prince,” the heavyset military man said. “I have to cut over one thousand jobs this week alone.”
“That’s Dr. Prince,” Stanley said.
The Major looked out the window. “Really? Where? I thought you were Prince.”
Stanley smiled. “I was just pointing out that I like to be called Dr. Prince.”
The Major cocked his head to one side. “Are you funning with me? I’m too busy for your fancy academic games. Like I always say, the only different between aca-day-mia and maca-damia is the letter ‘m’. Other than that, they’re both nuts.”
“Not really, Major. You are mispronouncing academia to make the two words rhyme. And, macadamia doesn’t have an ‘e’ in it.”
The Major cocked his head to the other side. “Boy, the fun and games never stop with you, do they?” His furry white eyebrows lowered. “What I’m looking for is a reason why I should go to Congress and tell them the Pentagon isn’t spending taxpayer money foolishly. I have been examining your records and frankly, I’m surprised that you haven’t been in this Division Five office before now.”
Stanley just nodded sadly.
“They call you ‘a scientist’s scientist.’ Sounds like fancy double-talk to me. I have a note here that says you are, and I quote,
‘A major think-tanker–someone with profound theories.’ Pretty words, but we need results, not just speculation.”
Stanley nodded again.
Major McQueen stabbed at plump finger at a printout. “In the heat of Viet Nam, you came up with this cockamamie proposal: performing voodoo rituals to bring dead soldiers back to life, cutting down on the number of new recruits.”
“Nixon didn’t have a problem with it,” Stanley said. “But my superiors buried the project in mountains of paperwork and procedure. Even the undead cannot withstand red tape.” He leaned closer to the desk. “An effective voodoo ritual can focus vast amounts of theta energy, so naturally –”
“What the hell is theta energy?” The major shouted, but he did not give Stanley time to answer. “Prince, that proposal wasn’t science–it was bad science fiction. Like I said, I’m looking for results. I’m afraid I must recommend that you go into early retirement. You’ll get all your pension benefits. Now sign these papers.”
The scientist cleared his throat. “Major, this whole turn of events may be a little premature. I’m near a major breakthrough right now. My new project is going to produce this country’s most destructive weapon since the A-bomb.”
Major McQueen’s eyebrows shut up. “Go on. You’ve got my attention.”
“I have been working on Project DTD–that stands for Dust To Dust. I have been breeding special dust mites with enhanced abilities.”
“Dust mites?” The Major stroked his chin. “They’re really small, right? Can they carry around tiny microphones? How about laser beams?”
“Umm, no.” The scientist said. He took off his glasses and rubbed the sides of his pointy nose. “Dust mites eat dead flesh. But I’m creating a new breed that consumes both dead and living flesh.”
The Major nodded, a smile slowly stretching across his face.
Stanley put his glasses back on. “The possibilities are endless. Our planes could drop the microscopic parasites over an enemy’s camp. Or, we could have another country sell them provisions loaded with our tiny friends. This new breed can survive in an aquatic environment, so we could even put them in an enemy water supply.”
“Intriguing,” the Major said. “Killer insects, but tiny. Much better than those killer cockroaches we were working on. Those things were as big as puppies–couldn’t sneak ‘em over enemy lines. So what’s the hold-up?”
“The biggest problem I have is this: after the dust mites eat a substantial amount of flesh, they won’t eat again for another forty-eight hours. They instantly become lethargic, sleepy–then, when they perk up again, they lay their egg clusters. First, I have to alter their reproductive cycle, since those prolonged rest periods will lessen their military effectiveness. Then I have to speed up their metabolism, to create a lean, mean, constantly eating war machine.”
“Remember, Prince, I need hard proof. I can’t show the budget boys a bunch of flim-flam.”
Stanley nodded. “I understand. Give me another month and come to my lab in Nevada. If you don’t like what you see, I’ll sign your papers.”
The officer thought about it for a moment. “One month, and one month only. And fix that bug problem! Find out how to wake up those little sleeping beauties of yours!”
In the next month, rebels in the tiny republic of Vreplakia tried to take over the internet. Their new flag featured a burning computer, surrounded by a phrase which translated in English to “What Will The Fat Americans Do Now?”
The efforts of Vreplakian hackers ruined e-commerce for countless U.S. businesses. This enraged Major McQueen, who said to his secretary in bed one night, “My God, that son of a bitch Prince better deliver the real deal. I’m itchin’ to drop a planeload of those flesh-eating dust mites on those Vreplakian bastards. That’ll teach ‘em to mess with the red, white and blue.”
The secretary smiled. “Their flag is red, white and blue, too. The flames are red, the computer is white–well, actually, more of an off-white–and the words are blue.”
The Major gritted his teeth, but said nothing.
“Say,” his bed partner continued, “if you’re so worried about how that scientist is doing, why don’t you just go have a look-see? You’ve got security clearance. You could do it at night, when he’s asleep, so he doesn’t think you’re looking over his shoulder.”
“You’re not as stupid as you lead people to believe, are you?” the Major asked, impressed.
She shrugged. “Oh, what does a silly little Harvard valedictorian like me know?”
A week before his official scheduled visit, Major McQueen made a midnight stop at a Nevada lab. It was time to kick Vreplakian ass, whether Prince liked it or not. The Major also wanted to make sure this wasn’t another of the scientist’s crackpot schemes–if there was even one zombie involved, there’d be Hell to pay.
The lab was fairly spacious. In the center was a smaller room with Plexiglas walls, containing five rows of tables. There were three aquariums on top of each table. The aquariums seemed to be in need of a good cleaning. They all seemed to have little clouds of lint floating around inside of them. Outside of the Plexiglas room was a control module on a metal stand. The stand also held some weird-looking science instruments and a notebook.
The Major opened the notebook and flipped through the pages. He saw dozens of crude drawings, along with some scribbled notes. He studied the pictures...A piranha.
Foreign letters–probably Greek, since he recognized pi.
A preying mantis.
A black widow spider.
Roman numerals.
A razorback hog.
Some Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Laddery-looking spirals. Maybe it was that DNA stuff scientists liked to babble about.
He also found some sketches of naked ladies, along with some scribbled 900-number sex lines.
The Major had taken only a few science courses in college, but he could tell this was no scientific discipline he’d ever studied. This looked to him like...Like someone spending tax money as wildly as a drunken Hollywood hooker with a stolen credit card. Even worse, it looked like god-damned, son-of-a-bitchin’ science fiction.
“Failure,” the Major hissed.
He tossed the notebook in the air and stormed out of the lab.
The notebook hit a button on the control module and a panel in one of the Plexiglas walls slowly slid open.
In the morning, Dr. Prince was at work bright and early. Last night had been his first night out of the lab for nearly a month. He had a small cot and a dorm-style refrigerator in the back, since he was constantly working.
He opened the door, walked into the lab and saw his notebook sprawled on the control module.
“So much for security,” he muttered. He’d had troubles with nosy guards in the past. That was why he wrote the most secretive aspects of his work in a special fluorescent dye–completely invisible unless it was held under black light. He smiled at a page of his crudely drawn naked ladies. The real secrets of Project DTD–including the formula for dust mite repellent–were written in his special invisible ink all over their bodies.
The doctor then noticed that the Plexiglas panel was open. His smile turned into a grimace. He looked around, then realized that his special protective lab suit was in the back room, in a locker next to his cot. The dust mite repellent was in a sprayer–next to the suit. He turned to run, but it was too late.
The dust mites had found him.
His skin turned pink, then red, then bubbling maroon. His muscles actually foamed from the frantic activity, the microscopic savagery of the tiny creatures. His eyelids vanished, then his eyeballs burst and dribbled down his cheeks. His abdominal muscles foamed away and his intestines hit the floor with a wet, resounding smack. Even his bones dissolved into a gritty paste. Soon he was nothing more than a colorful pile of stinki
ng garbage on the floor. But the wee monsters weren’t done. Soon the reeking pile that had once been Dr. Prince was nothing more than a cloud of micro-shredded debris.
The entire process took the mites about three minutes.
Major McQueen, his immediate superior Lieutenant Colonel Troll and his ranking officer Colonel Wolf–all three were scheduled to meet with Dr. Prince at two o’clock sharp. They looked around the lab, waiting for the scientist. The place was a mess, with a big pile of dust next to the control module.
Impatient, the Major showed the other officers the notebook.
“I think Dr. Prince knew he had a failure here and left town,” the Major said.
“I have to agree. Sad, really. And disgusting,” Colonel Wolf said, staring at the pictures of naked ladies. He tore them out and crumpled them up. He tossed the paper onto the dust pile. “Get someone to clean up this mess,” he said.
The major picked up the phone and called the maintenance department. A moment later, he walked out with the others. He tried to brush a streak of dust off his sleeve, but he only managed to rub it into the fabric. He looked at Troll and Wolf. They were also streaked with dust.
Julia Blanca worked in the Nevada Military Science Division for the last five weeks. The money was not too bad for mostly dumping trash. She had to take classes about bio-hazardous waste, but she kept falling asleep during the lectures. At any rate, it wasn’t too bad a way to make a living. Working second shift, she didn’t see her children until after the babysitter had tucked them in bed.
She swept up a mound of dust in preparation for loading it into a red plastic bag. But her wheeled work cart was out of trash bags. She tried to remember where the storage closet was, on this floor...Then her pager buzzed. She looked at the displayed number. It was home. The kids again.
She sighed, then remembered the window in the hallway.
A minute later, she dumped the dust outside.
In the fresh air, the dust mites swirled along with the warm wind. They felt happy, sleepy and a little dopey, too, gorged on their recent meal–but soon enough, the egg-laying would begin. The wind carried them on and on, toward a magical kingdom called Las Vegas.