by Eric M Hill
Anderson bent down and whispered. “You’re going to kill yourself, predator.” Anderson straitened up and walked toward the gazing crowd without looking at them. He was looking into his own mind as he spoke over his shoulder to the machine. “Engage.”
Charlie “The Basher” Johnson recoiled at the screen above.
Chapter 33
The screen was black and absolutely blank, but not to Charlie.
The machine used properties in the predator’s blood to send DNA unique messages, colors, and images that passed through the revolutionary eyeglasses to the retina to the optic nerve to the brain. After this process of manipulation and introduction of DNA and cellular data into his brain was complete, Anderson’s discovery of new cells, which he called morality cells—M-cells for short—and his science defying discovery of nonchemical communication among cells would be used to communicate indirectly to the predator’s M-cells.
His final experiment with the predator who’d actually killed his daughter had proven that such a thing was scientifically possible (direct communication was next). Ironically, however, this new revolutionary breakthrough had also scientifically undermined much of what he thought was certain in science.
Discovering new cells was one thing—that was to be expected as new nanotechnology was developed—but how certain could you remain when the behavior of the newly discovered cells fundamentally contradicted your basic understanding of the cellular behavior of the old cells? What else didn’t he know that he was convinced he did know?
Did he now have to rethink the law of gravitation? The laws of motion and of thermodynamics? What was next? Discovering that Copernicus was only partially correct? That the sun was the center of our universe only when the Earth wasn’t? A million paths awaited his super brilliant mind, and each path had a million fascinating questions with answers that may birth a million more question marks.
But this moment in the Austin city jail presented only one question for which he needed an emphatic answer now. Since the M-cells were “morality” cells, and the cells exhibited behaviors individually and collectively like those of humans, could they be depended upon to always self-eliminate? Or would they behave as inconsistently and irrationally as did humans? He’d proven there was such a thing as M-cells that could stimulate other cells to self-eliminate. But was there a such thing as cells that didn’t believe, so to speak, in the self-elimination penalty? Dovish, do-gooder cells that would protect the predator at all costs? Hell, he’d just described the human immune system.
Dr. Anderson quieted, but didn’t successfully silence, his racing mind. The people gathered in this room were here for a reason. They wanted to see proof of concept that there was a way to radically alleviate the crime problem. Despite his questions, he was confident that proof of concept would be delivered—even if it turned out to be less than tidy.
“Execute program Predator Elimination,” said Anderson.
Predator elimination? Wait a minute. I’m a predator, thought Charlie, before his terror was replaced by confusion. The more he looked at the screen, the stranger and more disoriented he felt. No words could describe what was happening to him. But stupid or not, one thing he knew for sure: something in that screen was messing with him.
“Get these glasses off of me, man!” he screamed, knowing his plea was futile. The predator pushed his head hard against the back of the gurney to get away from the screen. “Man, turn this thing off!”
“What’s happening to him?” Wendy Shuman, the district attorney whispered, but without sympathy.
Dr. Anderson’s eyes stayed riveted to the predator. “Justice,” he said.
Charlie wriggled as much as the restraints would allow. Whatever was in that screen hated him and was trying to— “Oh God! It got me! That thing inside of me, man! Get it out of me!”
“What’s got him?” asked the Dallas police chief.
Dr. Anderson searched his brilliant mind. “I—have—no idea,” he said, but he was lying. Sure, he was standing before an ocean of possibilities with nothing but a teaspoon of understanding in this new world of science. But his conclusion was that the M-cells had begun their attack. The serial murderer and serial rapist was being self-eliminated.
But the scientist was wrong. The attack had not yet begun. In fact, the M-cells were only in the preliminary stages of their investigation. Whether there would be an attack or not depended upon what they found.
***
Charlie would’ve never agreed with this conclusion. He was definitely under attack. Something in that screen was after him, and now it had him. He had felt it enter his eyes and go into his head. Whatever it was was now slowly spreading in his brain.
“What you want with me?” Charlie lamented.
Anderson would figure it out later when he examined the telemetry, but presently he and the others had no way of knowing the predator wasn’t speaking to any of them. The predator actually had no idea who or what he was speaking to.
“I didn’t do nothin’. I didn’t rape and kill those women.”
The M-cells found something.
The screen above the predator was still unchanged to the natural eye. Black, smooth, rounded at the ends and corners and blank—but not to Charlie. Guilt pried his shocked mouth open. He couldn’t believe what he saw on the screen.
Him.
And those women.
Every single one of them. Each rape and murder played before him like a movie in slow motion. He saw the women as he had seen them then. But he didn’t see the entirety of his own body. He could only see as much of himself on the screen as he would have been able to see of himself when he had committed the crimes.
Then Charlie had a non-stupid moment. The reason he only saw part of himself on the screen was because that thing inside of him was using his brain and eyes like a projector. In a flash, Charlie again defied the stupid label. This thing is pissed off at me for rapin’ and killin’ those women. “Turn the machine off! Turn the machine off!” Charlie begged. “This thing is after me!”
Charlie didn’t know a thing about particles and atoms and molecules. And all he knew about cells was some had bars and some didn’t. The scientific and unscientific activity going on inside of him—the chemical and nonchemical communication at the cellular level—had not yet enjoined the actions of nerve cells, or neurons, also known as nociceptors.
These special cells were responsible for receiving and transmitting messages of pain. They would not receive and send any messages until and unless the M-cells were satisfied of their host’s guilt, and if enough other cells cooperated with them. This had not yet happened. So the predator had not yet reached the pain stage of sensory awareness of what was going on in his body.
But the M-cells were making progress with their investigation.
The predator was cellularly captive to the horror movie on the screen in which he had produced, directed, and starred.
He was in her home. Michelle’s back was to him. He struck her in the head with the broad side of the hammer with enough force to drop her, but not kill her. He stood over her, looking down at her in triumph, his rage not yet satisfied, his lust not yet fulfilled.
He roughly disrobed this woman whom he had first seen only an hour ago through her open window. He dragged her to the bedroom and was further enraged at the effort it took him to get her from the front room to the back room.
The diminutive predator got her onto the bed and rolled her onto her back. He looked at her naked body and seethed. “You think you all that,” he said. Women like her despised dudes like him. Well, he was sick of that crap. He’d been sick of it for a long time and had shown these arrogant hoes that he was sick of it.
He took off his clothes. He stopped at a long mirror on the floor that leaned against the wall. His face wasn’t ugly. It’s just that he was so short and skinny. He looked in the mirror at his penis. So little! Why’d he have to be so little? His rage enflamed more.
He could still hear the laug
hter of Tina Mallard, his first and only girlfriend, as she laughed at him and said she had never seen one that small before. But he had shown her. He waited a long time before he did it, but when he did it, he did it right. They never did find out who bashed her head in.
Charlie snatched his gaze from the little man in the mirror. He slapped the unconscious woman until she awakened. Michelle’s weakly fluttering eyelids slowly opened. She immediately felt an all-consuming pain in her head. Her sight landed on a naked man standing over her. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she was on her bed. He must have been standing atop her bed. Her eyes went to the silver and black object in his hand. It was a hammer. He hit me with a hammer, she thought.
Charlie felt ten feet tall and all-powerful looking down at the injured, naked woman. She was terrified. “What you gone do fo’ me?” The predator’s words were angry, like he had finally caught up with someone who owed him something.
Michelle’s reply was desperate and weak. “Anything you want me to do.”
“You better believe it.”
Michelle did all he demanded and gave all she could. It was not enough to save her life.
One after the other, the predator watched his murders of several women the police didn’t know about before he was forced to watch himself murder Abby, Charlotte, Lynn, Tonya, Rachel, and Heather. Then Charlie’s M-cells communicated with nociceptors in his head.
Chapter 34
The nociceptors in the back of the predator’s head accepted the M-cells’ nonchemical request. An avalanche of neurotransmitters raced from the nerve cell endings, or receptors, of this area of his head to the brain. Almost instantaneously, neurotransmitters raced back to this area of his head with a message that was chemically conveyed and chemically understood. Translated, it was, Pain. Intense, agonizing, excruciating pain.
Charlie’s face grimaced. His mouth opened. His eyes closed. Intermittent breaths and moans exited his mouth, limping and weak, like people overcome with smoke and dragging themselves from a burning building.
“He—he—help me. Ohhhh,” he languished, seemingly forever. “It hurts so bad. Man, I’m sorry.”
“What the hell are you doing to him, Dr. Anderson?” asked the mayor. “You said you had a revolutionary way to get rid of predators. A way that couldn’t be shot down by the courts. There’s nothing revolutionary about torturing people. We already know how to torture people.”
Mayor Roussard shook his head in disgust. He took off his glasses and cleansed the lenses as he cursed under his breath. He was a fan of Dr. Anderson, but he wasn’t a fan of being invited to a steak restaurant and being served a peanut butter sandwich.
“The mayor’s right, Dr. Anderson. As bad and as dangerous as these prisoners are, the courts are not going to allow us to torture people like this.” This was the Chairman of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice, Kenny Marshall. He spoke with great respect of the legendary scientist and philanthropist, but also with great disappointment. “We were hoping for something that wouldn’t be such an easy target for our detractors.
“Dr. Anderson, we’ve got a justice system that’s overwhelmed, a death penalty we can barely use because of the courts, and violent criminals multiplying like rabbits on super Viagra. You told us you had found a way that T1 predators could be exterminated in mass.” The chairman’s eyes pled for something more promising. “That it could be done in such a way that the courts couldn’t stop it.”
“And that we wouldn’t look like monsters,” the mayor reminded him.
“Dr. Anderson,” continued the chairman, “please tell us there is more.”
Dr. Anderson looked at each worried face as the predator moaned and spoke nonsensically in the background. “There’s more. Much, much more. I can’t—I won’t give you details of the science. But I can tell you that I am not torturing this predator. I can tell you that despite the distractions of the scene stealing machine and the predator’s behavior, that any pain inflicted upon this criminal, is not coming from the machine. When he is terminated, it will not come from the machine.”
The predator moaned desperately. All eyes but Anderson’s went to the predator. He waited as each of them finally pulled their gaze from the suffering criminal.
“Dr. Anderson, put yourself in our shoes,” said the chairman. “An unrepentant serial murderer-rapist is strapped to a machine. His eyes are pried open as he’s made to stare into a screen created by the greatest scientist and inventor to ever live. The predator goes crazy minutes later. He says something in the machine is trying to get him. It gets inside of him. Next thing we know, he’s moaning and screaming in pain. Now, Dr. Anderson, who’s going to believe that the machine isn’t torturing the criminal?”
“I’ll do it! Just stop the pain!” yelled the predator, his tortured voice climbing in a layered crescendo of agony. “I’ll confess to every one of them. Just stop! Please stop!”
Every eye snapped onto the trembling predator.
“I raped and killed thirteen. Two girls. Eleven grown women. I bashed another one, but she didn’t die. I used to go with her. She was my girlfriend.”
Chief King’s mouth was open. The Basher was probably the most puny T1 predator he’d ever had in his jail. But he was as deranged and defiant as they came. To hear this criminal confess was shocking. That machine had to be torturing the Basher to get a confession, he thought.
“Look at his—” the word was inaudible in Wendy Shuman’s mouth. It was penis.
“What is that?” asked the Dallas chief of police.
It wasn’t just the predator’s penis. It was also his scrotum and inside thighs. Peanut-sized red and white lumps that oozed pus covered his thighs and disfigured his crotch. Charlie “The Basher” Johnson was now bigger downstairs than he’d ever been, even in his dreams.
“Boils?” asked the district attorney.
“Carbuncles,” answered Anderson. Fascinating, he thought. His body is attacking the very thing he used as a weapon against women.
The predator’s body convulsed a few times and stopped. His chest and belly became still. It appeared that the criminal was dead. A check of his body confirmed that the Basher had once and for all bashed his last female. He was dead.
It also appeared that Anderson’s plan for mass self-extermination of T1 and T2 predators was dead—at least for now. His proof of concept had proven to be too messy for the group of people who would have to answer accusations from the media and civil rights’ organizations and spineless politicians that prisoners were being murdered—that would be their word—by an untraceable chemical or biological agent created by Dr. Anderson. An accusation that no reasonable person could ignore.
He left Austin determined to return with a clean and acceptable way to facilitate self-extermination of murderers. Especially murderers who were also rapists.
Chapter 35
President Cuning knew what he was going to do prior to hearing his daily State of the Nation and State of the World briefings. Actually, he could hardly wait for them to conclude so he could get on with his strategy of grabbing absolute political power. He considered what CIA Director David Beams had just told him privately and called in his chief of staff.
“Mr. President,” said Hal Cook.
“Sit down, Hal. We’ve got a lot to discuss. Seems my good friend and America’s guardian of democracy and the Constitution has been busy.”
“Oh, I wonder to whom you could be referring, Mr. President.”
“It seems he’s had some success with his experiments. I think it may not be long before he delivers.”
Hal perked up. “You’re telling me this man may actually develop a crime suppressant drug? Remarkable.”
Cuning grinned slightly and nodded. “Well,” he said, stretching the word, “I suppose driving predators crazy, then killing them, isn’t a drug. But one could say it suppresses crime.”
“It sounds like what you’re telling me is the smartest man to ever split the womb has found an exotic way t
o kill criminals.”
“Hal, anyone ever told you that you have a gift of cutting through the crap?”
“Yes, sir. The president of the United States has told me that a time or two.” The chief of staff thought a couple of seconds. “Since the human race has always had exotic ways of torturing and killing people, there is certainly more to this story. Has he found a way to exotically kill predators by the hundreds, or preferably thousands, in a way that would be palatable to those who still see these animals as people?”
The president’s crossed feet dropped from the top of his desk to the floor. He leaned forward on his elbows and looked over his interlaced hands and bounced a finger. “Not yet, but trust me, Hal. It’s coming. This man has the brains and the hatred. He hates predators for what one of them did to his daughter. He’s going to have his revenge.”
“And you’re going to have your reelection, Mr. President.”
“We’re going to have more than that, Hal. Mr. Bill of Rights is going to help us more than even he can imagine.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Him, cowboy John Wayne slash Chief King, and the man who would be president, Governor Richardson. Austin is going more and more rogue every day. Secret experiments on predators. Gangs of hunters roaming the streets and torturing and killing anyone they think is a predator. Cops feigning helplessness, allowing these vigilantes to turn Austin into the Wild West. You know, they’re not just killing predators. There’s a lot of innocent people being killed in the name of hunting predators. From what I’m told, some of these hunters are as bad as the predators they hunt.”
“I’m hearing the same thing, Mr. President. Lots of places turning rogue.”
“We’re in uncharted waters,” said Cuning. “But the old map may prove as useful as it is anachronistic. Article II, Section 2, Clause 1.”
Hal Cook was politically astute—some said brilliant, a master manipulator, dangerously ambitious—and possessed a utilitarian ruthlessness that had made his union with the young Cuning all but inevitable.