A la Node

4 – A Treatise on the Making of Love

I suppose it started when we stole the MRI machine from the Westport hospital complex. Well, no, it started long before that, but as far as I knew it started on that warm summer night, on an overloaded dirigible winding its through the dark with a sizable chunk of hospital hanging, and only occasionally dragging, below it. It started that night, when I turned to look at Lisandra, standing attentively at my side on the bridge, looking down at the excised piece of architecture swinging gently below.

I can’t pretend I had never noticed her before, but it had always been the uniform I had noticed, or more precisely the way she filled the lightning blue and black leather outfit taught with hips and breasts, muscular calves and arms. That night, filled with the adrenalin of a good heist and the beautiful crystalline Plan laid out in front of me, I had found more in her than expected. The foam had been her idea, for one. She was smart, thought ahead. Under pressure, she had been calm and decisive, and she had taken out the hospital anti-aircraft guns with slow precise sweeps with the forward lasers. The sight of her on the guns would have been enough to capture my attention.

Of course you have to have an attractive female assistant in my line of work, for the publicity shots if nothing else, but I saw something else in her that night that swirled dangerously in my blood.

It’s not easy to steal an MRI machine, by the way. They tend to weigh several tons and are generally bolted down pretty well. The plan, therefore, was to just grab the whole room. Well, several rooms really, to get all the little bits and pieces of the power and computer systems out. We lased the MRI suite out with surgical precision from the air and poured quick-set expanding foam into it while we were attaching cables and taking up the slack. We hauled it up out of the hospital complex as the defensive batteries shot ineffectually at our armored airship from roof of the medical school building. We headed for the hills, but then doubled back and tried to lose ourselves in the clouds when we saw the clear trail of debris and foam that stretched out behind us. Not bad, all in all. Lisandra practically glowed with competence in her new position of authority.

We didn’t know that the MRI operator, a religious man by the name of Stevens, had stayed late to spend some quality time praying. If we had known he was in there, hunched over the desk talking to his God, we would have waited for him to finish and leave – but the place was supposed to be empty and we were too pressed for time to check. When, after twelve hours of winding, bobbing flight we landed at Beta Lair and de-foamed the MRI room, we found him curled under the desk panting with righteous exhaustion and outrage.

A couple of henchmen flanked him as he got unsteadily to his feet.

“You!” he screamed, with no apparent context.

“You are very lucky to be alive Mr….” I waited for him to supply a name, but he just stared blankly at me.

“Stevenson,” said a henchman, leafing through the man’s wallet.

“Anyway, I do apologize, we assumed the facility was empty, we did not intend to bring you along with us.” I was very gentle, I thought, and put on my best friendly smile. He cringed and edged back towards the little metal desk that had miraculously held onto a large air bubble in the middle of a room full of airtight foam.

“God saved me!” he exclaimed, “I was praying, and he saved me! He has a purpose for me, and you better be afraid, mister, he saved me so that I could defeat you!”

This was a new one for me. Usually there is a certain amount of moralistic outrage, some speeches about abominations against nature and meddling with powers man was not meant to meddle with, but I don’t think anyone had ever invoked God on me before.

“Err… yes, it was remarkable that you survived the foam, and as I said I am sorry about catching you up in our project. I’m afraid we’ll have to kill you at some point, but honestly, I’m sorry, it was not our intention.” Was a smile appropriate here? I wasn’t sure, but I tried another one on just in case. He stepped back again and came up against one of the henchmen. “OK, put him in one of the cells, and we’ll deal with him later. He’ll be good for spare parts, if nothing else.”

Beta lair was not where we wanted the MRI, but we had drawn too much attention to continue on to Alpha. That was fine, as far as the Plan was concerned, we could raze Beta off the map in with ten seconds notice, so we had an extra margin if anyone had traced us. We could at the very least get the MRI refitted and tested before hauling it to Alpha when the dust settled.

Lisandra walked up to me later in the Control Room, and I watched the muscles of her midriff move under the tight leather. I’d had the uniforms designed by a little firm in San Fransisco, a good investment for the cleavage alone. She managed to look lethal, professional, feline and sultry all at the same time.

“The MRI will be cleaned and operational by tomorrow morning, Sir.”

There was a coldness in her voice I hadn’t noticed before. Or perhaps I had, and only now that my awareness of her had become more personal did that chill seem directed personally at me.

“Lisandra, how long have you been with me?”

“Sir?”

“You know I have some gaps in my memory since the raid on Dr. Mincing’s compound. I read all the briefings, but I don’t recall seeing your papers.”

“Sir, I… came on board just prior to that operation.”

“Ah, yes, of course. You’ve proven very useful in your short time here, Lisandra, I wanted to express my appreciation.”

“Sir?”

Somehow she managed to compress an ounce more frigidity into that one syllable. “Yes, indeed. When the Plan is complete, I will rule a sizable portion of the planet, I’d like to give you a gift. Would you like a tropical island? A large city to rule, anything?” I don’t know where this came from. It was not my policy to give gifts to employees, but the words had formed somewhere between my brain and mouth, and I was helpless to stop them once started.

“I serve the Great Plan, Doctor Mansard, I serve to crush the inferior and build the new Empire of Science. I don’t work for bonuses.” She had gone fully cryogenic now. What had I done wrong? I am a master of the intricacies of the human mind, but often it’s day-to-day operation unveils surprising emergent modalities. I don’t know precisely why, but I had very much wanted her to accept a gift.

“Indeed, the Great Plan is paramount. And we have far to go yet, but still, I consider you a … valuable asset. If you would like anything, please let me know.”

“Yes, sir. Sir, I need to see to the prisoner.”

“Of course, Lisandra.” I watched her walk up the stairs out of the command pit, admiring again the work of whatever unsung hero had designed those pants. When she finally went through the hatch and out of sight, I turned back to the holo map with the distressing feeling that I had done something wrong.

The Great Plan was well under way. Like all the best plans, it was straightforward and relatively simple. We had planted thousands of resonant flux devices all across the pacific northwest of the north American continent. Each one had been slowly and quietly drilling down into the bedrock. Alone, any one of the devices was nothing, but when they had reached the right depth and connected to each other, they would become a network of resonant nodes that could literally shake the earth apart. With the network in place, I could trigger any of a thousand dormant volcanoes into violent life, or release the tension in any of a hundred major faults. With power over the very earth itself, everyone west of the continental divide would have to bow down to me, and the entire Pacific rim would learn to fear my wrath. It was a good plan, but I realized early on that the administrative side was going to be my undoing. I simply didn’t have the manpower to run an empire that size.

As usual, mastery over the depths of the malleable human brain would be my salvation. Before announcing my control over the fundamental fires of the deep planetary crust, I would have a more subtle network in place. Men and women whose minds I controlled, whose motivations I designed, and whose will would be subservient to my own. Mayors, governors, senators and business leaders would, one by one, become my tools. Hence the need for the MRI. With a few enhancements, that machine would become my scalpel.

It was ironic that Dr. Frankenstein, so long ago, had proposed the forces of electromagnetism as life-giving power. How crude his experiments had been, but how close to the truth he had gotten! He had used enormous currents like a sledgehammer against the delicate fretwork of human tissues, but the principle had been correct. His failure, and the riot which had unmasked his monster, revealing only a crazed and bewildered lab assistant named Otto, had discredited the whole field of electrochemical reanimation for a hundred years. Now, though, now the powerful magnetic fields, enhanced and refined by my own genius, would rebuild human minds and breath life into them with the faintest eddies of electrical fire. Where we could not remake a key political figure, we would build one from scratch, using lasers and bacterial tissue assembly where Frankenstein had blundered around with needle and thread. No scars or stitches would mar the flesh of our creations.

I couldn’t help laughing when I thought about it. This time, even Dr. Mincing couldn’t stand in our way.

Two days later, the MRI was ready. Its resolution enhanced by two orders of magnitude and a new perpendicular magnet added, it now had the power to push tiny specks of iron around in the brains of my victims, performing surgeries of infinite delicacy. I had created the perfect surgical tool. It was time to move to Alpha Lair.

Lisandra and I watched the henchmen crate up the equipment. Sykes, my Technical Henchman First Class, oversaw the disposition of the delicate instruments and insulated bottles of liquid helium necessary to keep the superconducting magnets at temperature. Andrea Sykes, I felt, was protege material. She had a firm grasp of Science and a monomania that made even me nervous at times. With a second on the order of Lisandra, the girl could go far. She just needed to develop some people skills and get a bit of experience crushing her enemies with an iron hand, and the world would tremble before her. I watched her petite form appreciatively as she supervised the henchmen and carried the more delicate parts into the hold herself.

Finally, the dirigible was packed and ready. We hauled the christian MRI man on board last, encased in a transparent cube of stasis gel. We hadn’t tested the gel before, and it was hard to tell if the figure suspended inside the pale blue stuff would survive the test, but he certainly did look dramatic hanging there in a pose of indignant violence, mouth open and eyes glaring out in defiance. I made a note to myself to have one or two of these in the background when I broadcast my message of conquest to the populace and its leaders. Not many people appreciate how much of this job is about the image you project.

I was keenly aware of Lisandra’s presence as I watched Sykes supervise this last piece of cargo into the hold. I don’t know if she was closer to me, more often close to me, or if my sudden fascination with her simply made me more aware of her. I caught her several times looking at me with a strange and unreadable look in her eyes. She stood rigidly next to me, and glared at Sykes until all was ready for departure. The scent of her floated around me, distracting and lovely. It reminded me of blood and electricity and lilacs.

“Right,” she snapped as soon as Sykes had disappeared inside. “Lets go. Sir.” and she stalked off across the hangar floor, not even glancing up to her lord and master. Strong woman, I thought, if I hadn’t known better I would have thought she was angry.

The weather was suitable for our departure. The night was deep black and the air was heavy with moisture. Gusts of wind buffeted our dirigible, and thunder rumbled in the distance. Somewhere lightening was paying tribute to old Dr Frankenstein and his philosophical heir as into the darkness we rose. Our path would skirt the edges of the storm.

When we were well airborne, I took Lisandra up the spiral staircase that led from the gondola up through the center of the dirigible and onto the observation deck up top. There, we stood watching the lightning dance at eye-level through clouds a mile or two away.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I asked her, and watched her face, barely visible, as she didn’t answer. In the brief dim flashes, I could see a far-away look in her eyes.

After a while, she said, “We’re getting closer, I think. The pilot should be taking us well around, no?”

True enough, the flashes were brighter, closer, and the thunder more immediate now. The wind was picking up and atmosphere felt oily and electric. I used my communicator to call to the gondola.

“Pilot, why are we approaching the storm?”

“Master, storm course has changed, bearing now 32 degrees.”

“Take us further, we don’t want to be in the middle of that.”

“Yes Master.”

I watched Lisandra watch the lightning. The violet flashes gave her face an otherworldly look, matched by her expression. I considered my options. As her superior and the future ruler of the Pacific Rim, she was, by any standard, mine to take. But what I found captivating about her was her strength, forcing her would negate that which I found most attractive. Surely she would respond to me, if she were not in an inferior position. Perhaps she felt it would be inappropriate to show affection, as subordinate to Master. A delicate situation, it seemed.

The platform gently tipped sideways as the airship banked away from the storm. Lighting arced through the clouds startlingly close to us, thunder following almost immediately.

“Pilot, pick up the pace.”

“Yes, Master.”

I contented myself with watching Lisandra hold herself taught against the acceleration. I could tell she was drawn to the storm by the way she stared into it, almost hungry for it. Her face was close to rapturous watching the lightning, it made me want to kiss her, hold her, drive into the storm with her and make love among the clouds and thunderbolts.

Another flash, close enough that the thunder threatened to deafen us.

“Pilot, we’re far too close, take us up and increase speed.”

“Yes Master.”

“Altitude will put us closer to the cloud-to-cloud arcs, but there’ll be less chance of being caught in the middle of a cloud-to-ground strike,” Lisandra confirmed my own thoughts.

“Lisandra, there is something I should tell you -”

“Master! This is the bridge, radar has picked up a large craft, closing fast. Dirigible. Unidentified.”

“Blast! Lisandra, take the forward lasers, I’ll direct from up here, visibility is about as good as it gets up here anyway.” She saluted and went below. I had my field glasses with me, I peered into the darkness. “Pilot, paint that thing with the nav laser.”

A green line pierced the air, wandered for a second, and then fanned out and swept through a tight arc. In the distance, an airship appeared, a green wireframe against the black sky. A flash of lightning filled in the blanks for a split second, there were big guns, turbojets, and in brilliant yellow, painted a hundred feet high across the bow, a symbol I had learned to loath. The stylized figure of Mercury pointing forward, the standard and livery of Dr. Mincing.

“Lisandra, cut that bastard to ribbons.”

A lot of things happened at once. Mincing’s ship disappeared in a massive cloud of reflective chaff, which the nav laser turned into a fractured grid of glittering green lines. Our nav laser winked off, and I heard the deep -bang-chuff- sound of our own chaff going out as I reached the hatch and slid in dizzying spiral down the staircase rail. Loud concussions and a sickening lurch coincided with my reaching the landing above the gondola. I looked through the hatch and saw chaos.

“Pilot, report!” Nothing. “Lisandra!”

“Gondola hit sir, con is dead, I repeat con is dead.”

I thrust my head down through the hatch. The starboard wall of gondola was sliced open, the edges of the cut still smoldering. The pilot and three crew had been opened up in the same way, and no one else was visible.

The gondola held the main controls, but there was another bridge inside the envelope, as well as the cargo bay and weapons pods fore and aft. Most of the crew, in fact, was actually inside the envelope – the gondola was used as primary bridge mostly for visibility reasons. Visibility and the fact that the gondola could detach and glide in case of emergency. I smashed the red plastic shell over the release and pulled the switch down hard. An ear-splitting series of pops signified that the explosive bolts had released. The airship lurched again, and I was already running for the interior bridge.

“Lisandra, let your beams wander, I’m taking the interior bridge.”

“Already on it sir. We’re a lost balloon, they’ll think they’ve decapitated us.”

After the burst of activity, the following five minutes was painfully tense and empty. We drifted as if completely uncontrolled, waited for Mincing to come within grappling distance. The storm, far too close even before the attack, overtook us. We twisted in the gusts and thunder rumbled and exploded around us. The conductive skin of the envelope kept us relatively safe, but the huge delicate structure was not designed for strong winds. I watched the attitude data on the nav display with sickening impatience.

I considered the options, interrupted periodically by lightning. Mincing might just get close enough for a sure shot and then slice us up like a loaf of bread. Or, he might intend to board and take the cargo. In any case, we had once chance at surprise, and not as much surprise as I would have liked – Mincing and I had tangled before, he would suspect a trap.

In any case, it was going to be a long hard hard job for him to maneuver to us – we were being tossed around in the storm and gaining altitude without the gondola’s weight, it was as good an evasive flight path as I could have managed if I were driving myself. I cursed the storm, if we had not been distracted by it…

With the next lightning strike, realization struck as well. The storm had changed course, and had hit us at the worst possible time, while Mincing snuck up behind. I ran for the closest exterior hatch and flung it open, was immediately soaked by the blast of freezing rain, slammed it shut again and ran for the analysis console. I dumped a handful of the storm water onto the console and pulled out my pocket microscope. Squinting, I cranked up the light levels until I saw them. Thousands of micromachines, swimming in the droplets beaded on the console surface, glowing dully as they went about the work of directing the storm. Mincing had weather control.

I laughed. After all the tension and the loss of crew, the frustration of being caught by surprise by an arch enemy, the release was wonderful. Mincing had weather control, and these tiny weather bugs would be his downfall.

“Lisandra! To the forward laboratory!” Lightning punctuated my words gloriously.

Her bearing was calm as always, but the rage that showed in her eyes made her face lovely. We hauled equipment out of cabinets until I found what I needed.

“You’ll come with me, this is delicate and I don’t trust the henchmen with it.”

The equipment was heavy, but there was only one place from which it could do it’s job – the top deck. We wrestled it up the narrow spiral stairway and shoved it ahead of us into the howling wind just outside the hatch. It was hard to stand, but the wind whipped my uniform labcoat out behind me spectacularly, and Lisanrda’s tense balanced pose was the image of incipient glorious violence. Somehow Simpson, Henchman Photographer First Class, was never around when things reached this stage, it really was a pity.

Lisandra and I connected the resonators to the mini reactor, and I dialed in the frequency with short pulses, watching for the glow of overstimulated weather bots in the surrounding air. When I had it, thunder roared over us. Again, I wanted to kiss Lisandra.

“This will take out our systems too!” she screamed over the wind, “We’ll have no control!”

“Are you afraid?” I yelled back at her, feeling the harmonics of my voice resonate with the wind. From out of darkness, lightning illuminated the vast bulk of an airship envelope looming above and to port, yellow Mercury pointing at us accusingly. Her face composed but her eyes blazing, Lisandra hit the timer button and we dove for the hatch.

Five seconds. The pulse was like lightning spread out over a volume of space, electricity lept from every metal surface inside the dirigible, and outside millions of micro scale weather control devices were taking up the pulse, resonating with it, passing it on. Mincing would find every scrap of electronics in his ship fried, and the pulse would carry on through the storm, as far as it found bots to propagate with, killing them as it went. With luck, it would wipe out his entire weather infrastructure.

“We’re still helpless,” Lisandra pointed out.

“I am never helpless, my dear Lisandra.”

It’s always a good idea to carry some low-tech weaponry around with you, and recently I had fallen in love with dye-based lasers. The gun I pulled out of my inner uniform holster looked a lot like an overly large handgun of the gunpowder and bullets variety, but the bullets in this case were actually laser tubes, filled with dye and catalyst. Pulling the trigger would pop the tiny catalyst packet and initiate a fierce chemical reaction and about half a second of intense lasing. No electronics, no battery. I handed it to Lisandra. Electricity crackled between us as she touched the metal. Emotions played across her face too fast for me to follow.

“I’ve got my own,” I said and pulled the other one out.

We emerged into a scene of electric chaos. The shock wave of electromagnetic pulse could still be seen bouncing irregularly through the clouds, but the wind and rain lashing across our faces made it hard to tell what was lightning, what was pulse, and what was electrical fire crawling across the skin of my and Mincing’s dirigibles. I caught Lisanrda’s attention and demonstrated the laser handgun. Pointing at Mercury, I squeezed the trigger and watched the dim violet beam lash out across the space. A twitch of the wrist opened a long cut through the skin and into the gas bags beneath. Mincing’s airship would die the death of a thousand cuts. When the cartridge was spent, its heat released the catch and ejected it from the side of the gun to twirl away into the wind, residual laser light still twinkling from one end. We held onto the railing against the wind and lurch of the airship and commenced shooting.

A dirigible is a big thing, and it takes a lot of holes to sink it. We were eight clips in when the other airship noticeably sank beneath the level of out platform. I was not surprised to see a figure in brilliant yellow cloak climb onto the top of the other ship. It was impossible to make out features from this distance, and only the yellow cloak made him visible at all, but it was undoubtedly Mincing himself. I heard something ping off of the railing a few feet away.

“I think the madman is shooting at us!” I yelled, but two more pings made it clear. We were now shooting down towards the ship and the yellow cloak, but the the distance was growing, and it was hard to tell if any shots connected. The poor fool had only bullets, useless against the skin of my airship. Only a lucky shot would help him now, and it appeared he was out of luck. His ship was listing badly, and my last sight of him was a tiny yellow speck tumbling off into the darkness below.

I turned to beckon Lisandra back into the ship, but my elation died in my throat. There was blood, and she was leaning, leaning, and then tumbling to the deck.

I don’t remember getting her into the ship, down the spiral stairs, back toward the cargo and crew areas and into the lab. I remember commanding Sykes to take henchmen and get the ship under control, told her to climb outside and turn the airfoils with her bare hands if she had to. I remember Lisandra lying there on the operating table, beautiful uniform cut away from her bloody and mangled torso. I will always remember her raising her head, shaking it in confusion and opening her eyes.

The relief of that moment broke the spell I had been under, and suddenly I was surrounded by sounds. The storm still raged outside, and henchmen ran and yelled directions in the corridor outside the lab. The lab equipment, now eerily silent and dead, felt nearly as loud. I injected her with morphine and felt like singing.

“The bullet went through a couple of ribs and diverted back out through your right breast! You’re going to be just fine!” I think I yelled it, too happy to control my voice. She closed her eyes again and passed out.

We did, eventually, make our way back to Alpha. We had a major gas leak due to electrical fire, but we had enough ballast to dump along the way to keep us aloft. We came in over the rocky little hill that concealed the underground lair only a few feet off the ground, but we slid in through the hanger doors without incident.

Lisandra of course, went directly to the operating theater. She insisted on remaining awake while I worked, with only local anesthesia. I did my best work on her, reconstructing her devastated flesh with loving attention.

“Take that, Frankenstein!”

She rolled her eyes and mumbled, “God, you and your Frankenstein…”

“I could put some armor in there if you want,” I offered. “Laser under the nipple? No one would suspect.” She only rolled her eyes more.

“You’ll strain your optic nerve if you roll them back too far. You know, I think you’ve been sewn up before. Lot of little tells in here, muscle attachments, microscars. Damn fine job, whoever it was, not a single sign externally. Don’t worry, I won’t leave any either.” She stayed quiet as I worked, rebuilding a breast so perfect I could have designed it myself.

The business of the Plan hummed away while she recovered. Everything was running smoothly, except that Beta was raided by an unknown force and went into nuclear self-destruct three nights after we made it home to Alpha. There was no evidence left in the fused soil and radioactive gas to guess who it had been, but it seemed unlikely Mincing could have recovered enough to pull it off, even if he did have a parachute when last we saw him. I put it in the back of my mind and considered my next move. It was a crucial juncture, it had to be right. There was no room for error.

“Lisandra,” I said, standing in front of her bed, in which she sat up, looking at me with carefully controlled features. I walked to her, looked into her face. “Lisandra, you are a competent and talented officer, and further I find you exceptionally sexually attractive. Come to my chamber tonight, I will be gentle with your healing body.” Yes, that was it, gentle and complimentary, expressing my admiration as well as my desire for her.

I wasn’t even finished congratulating myself when her hand made contact. Even after a week in recovery after major surgery, she had the strength to nearly dislocate my jaw.

“Never!” It was a hiss from between her clenched teeth.

I couldn’t speak. I stepped back from her. Three nurses and a henchman went busily about their work around us. I turned to Sykes, who stood holding Lisandra’s chart, then back to Lisandra. Still, no words came to my rescue, but as in all moments of crisis, the scientific mind is transcendent. The solution was clear.

“I see, I do apologize. Sykes, I would appreciate your input on what I did wrong here, but not now. I will need your help with the MRI system though. If I cannot have a love partner in Lisandra, I certainly have the means to create a partner to meet these… distracting needs. Have no fear, Lisandra, your position here is secure, you are too talented to lose over a lovers spat. Sykes, follow me.”

Sykes dropped the chart with a loud clatter, and Lisandra’s always unreadable face stared blankly at me. I turned sharply and left the room, but it was a little while before Sykes came out and followed a few steps behind me to the MRI theater. Just as well, as my needed a few moments to adjust my jaw and allow the burning to reduce in both cheeks.

“I’ll need to find donors, do we have any female prisoners? No? Ah, well, I’ll have Smith take the henchman out and find a willing body or two. Meanwhile, I’ll need you to tune the MRI and set a new profile, I don’t want to make a weak-minded malleable lover, now do I? Sykes?”

She stood looking at me with unreadable tight eyes and clenched jaw. Women could be such complicated creatures, even when you could take their brains apart and re-assemble them. Finally, she choked out “Yes Master.”

That night, our purloined MRI operator escaped. Smith, my Chief Security Henchman groveled at my feet in the Master Control Room.

“On your feet, Smith, and don’t do that again. I sent a memo out, didn’t I? No groveling, it’s inefficient.”

“Sorry sir, habit sir, and Lieutenant Fist was keen on it, sir.”

“Should never have left that man in charge while I was away, but he’s not here and I am. Give me the report, we’ve already wasted too much time on this.”

“Master, Sir, we found the cell empty, no signs of force.”

“Very well. Search the whole lair, but keep it quiet. He’s a loony, probably harmless. Oh, and check to see if any of our henchmen have Christian sympathies.”

“Yes, Master.”

The prisoner was very minor concern, the attack on Beta only a little more worrying. There were always enemies, always attacks, and at any given time an escaped prisoner was probably a fifty-fifty chance. No, what prayed on my mind that night, and through the next three days of careful maneuvering and planning, was the Plan. We had come to the crunch time. We had a dozen targets for brain remapping, but we needed dozens more, and we needed them processed before fall to be in place before elections in November.

And before we could start processing, there was my own personal project. I would build the perfect woman. She would have everything I desired, the brilliance of a Sykes, the competence and fire of Lisandra, the deadliness of a viper, and her love for me would be built-in at the factory. She would be my greatest creation, and by her would I prove my power over all lesser minds. Yes, it was perfect.

Another day passed before Smith finally brought me good news.

“On your feet Smith!”

“Yes, Master, sorry Master. We have three bodies, a car wreck apparently, three young females, all in good shape except for minor fatal wounds. Also, another two good brains in from Santa Monica, both donors, one a PhD.”

“Very good smith, but brush the dirt off your knees, please. That uniform was expensive, and you’re wearing the knees right out of it.”

“Sorry master.”

Finally, I could begin work. I wished that Lisandra could be by my side to share in the glory, and as if reading my mind, Mangle, Henchman Second Class, Medical, released her from recovery later that day.

I admit there was a certain awkward tension when she joined me in the control room, but professionalism overcame, and then enthusiasm as I described our progress to her. The Plan was unfolding in beautiful precision, half the EarthFire network was already online and we could test with a few small volcanoes as soon as we wished. It felt good to have her back, it was like missing an arm when she was not there.

I finally left her in charge and went to the surgery to begin work. The bodies were perfect. Between the three unfortunate young ladies and my laser, a body took shape that was compelling enough that I actually became distracted by it several times during surgery. I took a long break and prepared myself for the brain implantation, an incredibly delicate and sensitive operation.

When I went to inspect my raw materials, however, there were no brains waiting for me. Three empty cubes of stasis gel sat on the table, but the two donated brains and one recovered from the car wreck were nowhere to be seen.

Back at Master Control, Smith couldn’t keep himself from bowing as he reported.

“Camera network all on the fritz, Master, no idea, could be the electrical storms up top…”

“Electrical storms?” It was easy to forget several thousand feet underground, that weather was going on somewhere above. “And look up at me when you talk, Smith.”

“Yes Master. We’ve had three days of heavy thunderstorms over the lair, Sir. We have telecom lines that go up to the hangar, the surges could be coming from up there.”

“Surges?”

“Wiped out the cameras, Master, big surge, we keep getting them. So, we didn’t see what happened to the brains, and we can’t scan for that escapee.”

My skin began to crawl, but it took my mind a few seconds to pick out the reason. “Can we get a sample of rainwater down here please?”

I wasn’t sure how he had survived, or how he found us, but I knew that Mincing had found a way. He was insane, but brilliant. He had clearly fixated on me, and was probably using up every resource he had to root me out. If he had found Alpha Lair, he might even have a chance.

“Lisandra, we need to get that christian loon smoked out. He’s obviously stolen the brains and will be looking for other ways to cause trouble.”

“He did? Oh yes, I see sir, obviously. We’ll find him, sir.”

“Smith, I want brains, and I want them now. Sykes, find the source of those surges and isolate us. Oh, and start planning for a possible emergency evacuation to Delta lair.”

“Evacuation, Sir, are you serious?” I realized that no one else had made the leap I had, they didn’t know that Mincing was breathing down our neck.

“Backup plan only, Sykes, just in case. Everyone get to work!”

We were still without video surveillance the following day, but Smith appeared with a brain.

“Poet, apparently, Master.” He handed the cube of stasis gel over and appeared to be straining himself to keep from going to his knees.

“Excellent work Smith, you’ll get a bonus for this.” The man glowed, and couldn’t resist a bow. Then, realizing it might upset me, he hastily tried to turn and leave, but still in mid-bow, his head swung into the command console behind him with a loud clang. He staggered off, veering to avoid Lisandra, who had walked swiftly into the control room, but stopped short when she saw the brain.

“Beautiful, isn’t it? Take over here, will you? I’ve got a mind to sculpt.”

I thought I saw a tiny twitch near her eye. She definitely looked stressed, I made note to give her some enforced downtime soon, before any heavy action started. I didn’t want to use her up.

I entered the MRI theater in high spirits. I placed the brain into the throat of the machine for an initial scan and turned to the control board.

It was smashed, hammered into junk.

“SMITH!”

I poured through the machinery, but someone had been thorough, someone who know what to break. Every important control circuit was destroyed, and further, the magnets had been quenched at full current, the helium allowed to boil away. The MRI was useless.

Smith pounded into the room with Lisandra and Sykes right behind. As a group they pulled up short and looked at the damage with shock.

“Smith I want that christian bastard FOUND!” I yelled, but needn’t have – in the doorway, walking with a frantic unbalanced gait, came the rogue MRI operator, holding a crucifix in front of him as if it were really some kind of protection.

“Ha! I told you God would defeat you! I am his instrument on earth, I am the bringer of his Storm and his Army!” The man was practically drooling. I reached for my sidearm, but wasn’t wearing it, I had stripped off all metal before entering the MRI room.

Smith lunged, but the zealot held up his crucifix, and from the tiny ruby at its center came an intense red light. The laser sliced through Smith’s midsection, separating the two halves with an explosion of steam and blood. The bastard was armed, and we never though to check.

As Smith was falling apart, I was running for Lisandra, and took her down in a rough tackle just as the zealot finished recoiling from the enormous mess he had created. He turned to us, but I pushed Lisandra ahead of me, waving her urgently behind the bulk of the MRI machine. I felt the blast of hot air as the red laser swiped past my ear. The man was armed, but not used to violence – after the first bloody death, he was using the crucifix tentatively, carefully. I couldn’t see where Sykes had gone, but I knew she had the sense to take cover. The little metal cross couldn’t contain much power, so he didn’t have many shots – he would be defenseless in a few minutes if we could avoid his wild potshots.

I went behind the control console just as the alarm siren went off. I assumed this firefight was the reason, but the crazed MRI man cackled with glee when he heard it.

“Hahaha! They come, the army of God comes! We will wipe your abominations of science from the face of the earth!” He waved the cross through the air but didn’t fire. Was it dead, or was he just gesturing?

Lisandra stood up from behind the MRI bed. “Put the laser away, we won’t hurt you,” she said, in a calm, cool voice.

“Ha! You won’t hurt me, you’ll all die! Though to be sure I am grateful to you, miss, for all your help. Thank you for freeing me, and I would never have found the scanner on my own! Haha!”

My blood ran cold. “Lisandra! What does he mean?” She didn’t answer. I looked again at the man, who was leveling his cross at her where she stood frozen like a deer in headlights. I heard her cry out “I’m sorry…” as I slammed into his guts with all the force I could muster. I felt the heat from the little laser but its beam sputtered out about the same time I drove him into the door frame and heard a sickening snap deep within him.

A quick chop to his neck made sure. Over top of the sirens, a voice was announcing “Incursion alert, Battle Stations, Battle Stations…” I turned to where Lisandra had been standing and saw Sykes lowering her gently onto the floor. A tiny black hole marred Lisandra’s perfect untroubled forehead. I screamed.

Sykes was trying to tell me something, but I was in a red haze. I felt it boil up in my veins and every fiber of my being cried out for destruction. So, there was an incursion, was there. I would show them the cost of invading My lair. Sykes screamed at me to listen, and I did with half an ear even as I called for henchmen.

“We can save her, the damage is small, we can -”

“Look around you fool! The machine is dead, I cannot fix a brain without tools! You, bring me my sonic lance, and fusion grenades!”

The lance was in my hand almost instantly. I’d show them an incursion. I pointed to the doorway, which was open already, but which became very much more open. The concussion tore out virtually the entire wall and a large chunk of the wall across the corridor outside. I strode through the rubble and bodies of slow henchmen. Sykes hauled Lisanrda’s body onto a gurney and pushed it after me, but I ignored her.

I strode down the hallway in the direction of the access tunnels – an invasion would have to come through those narrow passageways to the surface. When the first group of them came around a corner in front of me, they died before registering my presence as the lance scoured the hallway with a shockwave of superheated air. I glanced at the bodies in passing, they wore black robes. Odd that, no sign of Mercury at all.

Sykes was screaming at me again. I half-listened. “Right! Turn right! Trust me!” I took the next right, and faced a corridor full of black robes. The lance took out the first couple of rows, but the shockwave was diverted upwards then, taking the tops of heads off in little bursts of blood, before ricocheting off the ceiling and slamming back into the robes a few rows back. Henchmen poured past me, laser sidearms slicing away. We were close to one of my special arms lockers, so I diverted down a side hallway and pressed my hand against an anonymous ident plate. Sykes was still behind me, muttering under her breath, barely audible against the sounds of battle behind us

The locker was a good one. I surveyed the shelves of weaponry, then tossed the sonic lance aside and grabbed a fusion pack and a plasma pulser. Then I spotted the soliton generator. It wasn’t really a hand-held weapon, and had been intended to be mounted on the dirigible, but had an unfortunate tendency to puncture them with backflash. I slung it over one shoulder and picked up a laser rifle for good measure.

A hot red beam grazed my back and I realized Sykes was yelling again. She picked up the lance and aimed over my shoulder, removing a large chunk of wall and the men that had been hiding behind it. A tiny piece of me that was beginning to have fun collided violently with a Lisandra shaped wall of guilt and recoiled with head-pounding rage. I didn’t even step out of the locker, but pointed the soliton gun in the general direction of the hallway and funneled my rage into the concentrated wave of plasma that removed everything in front of it for a hundred yards through walls and bedrock.

Sykes looked grim, but pushed her gurney along behind me as I continued. The voice overlay on the siren was now calling out individual sectors that had been breached. More black coats came around the corner, stopped in shock when they saw the smooth-walled tunnel through the rock, and then evaporated in a ball of plasma. It was time for some more general action.

“Master Control, initiate defense 22-A.” I stepped into the very center of the hallway, and Sykes pushed Lisandra away from the walls. The voice overlay counted down from ten – if the henchmen had been paying attention to the training videos, they’d be fine – if not, they would be spared watching any more of them. The walls pulsed with energy. Anyone too close to one would be dead, and anyone too close to -them- would be dead. If they were filling up corridors like the column we had seen earlier, platoons of black robes would be electrocuted en mass. They came hunting the Devil, I thought, lets give them a taste of hell. Screams echoed from every direction.

“Left!” Sykes yelled, and I thought perhaps she had called up tactical on her com and was directing me toward the enemy. The corridor to the left was empty, and we moved in silence a few hundred yards.

“Where are you taking me, Sykes, this is all storage. I want to see black robes, damn it!”

She ran ahead of me to a door, no different that dozen we had passed, she opened it and looked at me with a pleading frustration. “Please, Master.”

I thought of Lisandra’s betrayal, and that thought and the guilt of her death refused to co-exist in my mind. Sykes was either loyal or she would die very shortly.

I looked into the room. Taking up it’s center was the large cylindrical maw of an MRI machine.

The room was laid out identically to the one I had seen destroyed and painted in blood only five minutes ago. This one had a fine layer of dust.

“Talk while you work.”

Sykes grunted but said nothing until she looked up at me and saw the laser rifle pointed at her chest.

“I’ll talk, but if you want her alive, you’ll help me out here.” Sykes had managed to dowse the body with stasis gel at some point, she was struggling to manhandle it onto the MRI bed. I lowered the gun and helped.

“She was trying to stop you from making another woman.”

“Another?”

“She knew this lab was here, she knew it would not really end the plan, but she was trying to buy time. She had no idea the zealot would be that dangerous.”

“What do you mean another? And where the hell did this equipment come from?”

“From before the raid on Mincing. That memory loss you suffered when you took that shrapnel in the head? This was in there.”

We had Lisandra arranged on the table, the gel would keep her body from dying quite so quickly, but there wasn’t much time to lose. I realized suddenly the choice that was before me.

The corridor echoed with explosions and screams.

“Master Control, initiate defense 39-c.” I called out absent-mindedly. The rage had slipped away, but I could feel it there, ready and waiting. The screams went up in pitch and then suddenly the bulk of them stopped.

“What did you mean, make another woman?”

She looked me square in the face. “Where do you think she came from?”

I stared down at Lisandra. I looked at her perfect face, suspended in an expression of perfect composure. She had matched my needs so perfectly, been so competent, so intelligent. I remembered what I had seen while repairing her ribs, the subtle signs of an extremely talented surgeon. I remember asking her how long she’d been with the organization, remembered not seeing her papers.

“When we were fixing you up, we thought it best if you forgot. She hoped that would be the end of it.”

I tried to let it settle in, but it just wouldn’t.

“Do an initial scan, lets see what needs fixing.”

We watched in silence while the machine worked, both of us carefully looking at the body instead of each other.

“It’s not easy to wipe out specific memories, and you don’t know what else might be using those connections.”

“Tell me about it. There was some ancillary loss…”

“Such as?” I probed at my own thoughts, as if I would be able to feel the ragged holes of an excised memory.

“Well, you used to love cats, Sir.”

“I see.”

Then the scans were through and it was time for work. I lost myself in the intricacies of the neural network that was the woman I had created to love me. Sykes was by my side, wiping the sweat from my brow and running into the corridor to field queries and relay orders. Gradually I became aware of a calm in the background noise. The sirens stopped and since I was still alive I assumed this meant we were winning. I pushed it all away and concentrated on the neurons.

Three hours later, I had done all I could do. We denatured the stasis gel and watched it flow away like syrup. She started breathing, but did not wake up.

“She didn’t love me, Sykes. I failed.”

“Of course she loved you, idiot. I mean Sir. Every part of her personality resonated with yours, you made sure of that.”

“But…”

“You made a woman, Sir. Did you want robot, programmed to do as you say?”

“Of course not, that would just be a sex toy, not a partner. Though I did experiment, back in grad school…”

“I’d rather not know, Sir. But you made her strong, smart and stubborn. How did you think she would take it?”

“If she felt it… if she loved me and I forgot why, why couldn’t she just let it take it’s own course? I don’t understand.”

“No, Sir, you never have.”

A henchman came in, I recognized him as Smith’s lieutenant. “Surface patrol has a prisoner, master. I think you’ll want to see him.”

Bright yellow is not a color that looks good dirty. Electric blue takes on a sort of worn-in patina with dirt, it can look well-used but still sleek and competent. Yellow, on the other hand, looks garish and cheap with wear. Mincing managed a certain dignity even in his shredded and dirt encrusted finery. The rage that had been put into a corner of my mind earlier stepped out again and enticed me with creative ways of destroying him.

“Your army failed, Mincing.”

“Not my army. The Army of God. And they didn’t fail, not yet.”

“Explain while you still have a tongue.”

“Cheap threats, Mansard, cheap threats. But that army is a real threat. They have agents everywhere and they’ve begun mobilizing against all of us, all of Science in fact. They have weather control. They took my Lair Three, I was retreating with their storm on my tail, when I ran into you.”

I measured his face and words. Yes, there was truth there.

“Mansard, you beat me, I’ll never recover the foothold I once had, I accept that. You are the better man. But these fools want to destroy us all, and everything we believe in. They are insane, Mansard, they use science but hate it. I’ll do whatever you need, I’m at your disposal. I know you won’t trust me, but you also know I’m a good man with a virus or a nuclear pile.”

Sykes drew up next to me, held out a little silver crucifix with a tiny red ruby at its crux. The back had been removed, and I glanced down into the circuitry. I recognized it. A billion tiny electric bugs had died a few nights ago, and every one of them had guts like that.

“Mincing, welcome aboard. Henchman! Give this man a bath and a uniform. Sykes, follow me.”

“Sir?” asked a henchman, and I had to remind myself that while Lisandra, Sykes and Smith were the cream of the crop, most of the crop was pathetically slow.

“Clean him up and put him in uniform! He’s ours now, and by the way he outranks you. Mincing, find medical and start fixing my men.” A chorus of “Yes Master!” warmed my heart.

We walked from the little holding cell back towards the MRI room.

“Sir, I studied what you did on the airship. I can modify your pulse generator, tune it to these. If all of them wear one…”

Lisandra’s eyes opened as we walked in. I stood before her, ashamed, relieved, confused. “Lisandra, I am sorry. I understand how the neurons connect, but I admit, I don’t know how to make this right. I wanted your love, and when I want something, I usually just make one.”

A tiny smile broke her face. I held my hand out to her, and after a few moments, she took it. There was a very long moment of silence.

Sykes, from behind me said, “Sir, there are ways of helping you understand…” She looked meaningfully at the MRI.

I turned to her. “Ah, Sykes, you are a genius. I don’t know how to thank you. You have been brilliant, Lisandra would not be here without your quick thinking and control under pressure, and our little crucifix problem may be solved thanks to you. You are due a promotion.”

“Yes, Sir. You did design me well.”