Just Being Frank

“Aren’t you gonna wait for a stormy night, put him on a lift an push ‘im up through the ceiling?”

“What… are you nuts or somethin? You watch too much t.v.,” continued the Doctor, very candidly. “You know, you don’t have to stay. I can handle it fine by myself from here.”

“What are you gonna do when he wakes up an goes crazy like he does in the movie? Aren’t you taking chances?”

“Don’t worry about it. As usual, you’re missing the point entirely. The whole reason I went through this was to create the perfect employee. Someone who would do what I tell them to do without asking for overtime, or whining about their headache, or bad back, or whatever. I’m sick and tired of listening to people complain day in and day out. There aren’t any good employees out there. I was forced into doing this and you know it… they left me no choice.”

“But this… this creature you’ve stitched together from who knows how many well-meaning, good people. It’s not right, it’s not moral, there’s just no justifying it.”

“Look who’s preaching morality now,” replied the doctor most pointedly. “You’re just like all the rest… even worse in fact. You’re a graverobber Laurence. You’re involved in this just as much as I am. You squeal on me now an the law will come down on you like a hammer on a watermelon. Just shut up an make yourself useful as long as you insist on hanging around.”

“No, I won’t help you deliver this madness to the world. I’m calling it quits right now. This whole thing got way out of hand. I never…”

“The batteries,” interrupted the doctor, who although trained in the art of healing was hard at work employing the use of his skills to resurrect a hideous quilt-work of human flesh… a seven foot giant who – once re-animated – would follow any command at any time of day or night, no matter the difficulty or level of expertise required… all of this had been planned to the nth degree and to the most minute of detail, but all of this was dependent on one last effort that the doctor - in his haste to finish - had not foreseen and needed to enlist the aid of his assistant just one more time…“the batteries,” he repeated. “I can’t install the batteries and hold this clamp down at the same time… he’ll hemorrhage. They’re right behind you.”

“You mean,” I began to say, knowing full well that the table had turned in my favor and that the doctor’s evil plan to create the perfect American employee with no will of his own and no power over his own destiny now lay helpless in the palm of my hand, and in the form of two rechargeable, double ‘A’ batteries. “These two little batteries right here? That huge, monstrous creation of yours is going to run on two small batteries?”

“Yes, if you ever give them to me. He’ll run for a hundred years on one charge if you really want to know, but his first task will be choking you if you don’t hand them over.”

“Forget it. I won’t contribute to this mess any more then I have. The buck stops here Doc. You’re finished. All this is gonna do is make matters worse, don’t you see? If you go through with this, you’ll make everyone look really bad. No one will be able to get a job anymore, and thousands of your crazy, half-human creations will be running amok. I can’t let you go on with this.”

“They can’t get jobs now, what’s the difference?”

“The difference is, we still stand a chance if we all pull together. It’s always been that way. Americans are tough, durable and long lasting.”

“So are the batteries in your hand. Give them to me.”

“Never, you’ll have to torture me to get them.” But just as I’d finished speaking, intending to stay my ground by all the powers of resistance I could summon from within, the huge steel door of the laboratory - some twenty feet or so behind me - began to creek on its aging, metal hinges and opened ever so slowly… adding fear and desperation to what had been a hopeless and wretched situation from the start. “There’s nothing you can do to take these from my hand,” I added with perfect steadfast determination. “I’d rather eat them both then watch that abomination to man and God come alive.” And what evil lurked behind the looming, heavy door I did not have much time to wonder, for out from behind it came a voice to match the newly formed creature who urged it open in which my ears and memory could find no equal here on earth…

“Good evening Doctor Bertram,” said this girl who’d entered the lab, so sweetly and demurely, it was surely music to any man’s ears. “Can I get you anything?”

“But even as she spoke, the firmly clenched grip that once very stubbornly held fast to the two small batteries had now loosened to the point that could contain them no more, and out from my grasp they fell to the concrete floor, like two incidental items that mattered no more then the free toys from inside a box of cereal – promised to a child in all their uncompromising innocence.

“You still gonna eat ‘em?” asked the doctor adeptly and with the timing of a well practiced actor. “You want Maria to get you ketchup with that order? Maria,” he continued coolly and as if I was now quite invisible and took up no space at all in the laboratory, or in the world for that matter. “Pick up the batteries and bring them here would you? Mr. Laurence appears to be preoccupied and can’t find it within himself to be of much help to me… isn’t that right Reid?”

“Where did she come from?” was all I could reply, as the radiant energy that Maria gave off seemed to light a space in the room all around her. So beautiful was she.

“Whaddaya mean, ‘where’d she come from?’ I created her… whatdidya think? Try an find someone who looks that good. That’s what I’m try’in to tell you, but you’re not listening to me. She also does anything I tell her to do. Now whaddaya think we should do about finding employees? Got any ideas?”

“Wal-Mart is still running a sale on rechargeable batteries. I’ll get the truck.”