Mr Morpheus 3 – Mr Morpheus versus Wishman

In the blink of an eye, the bank was robbed; in the blink of an eye the banks enormous, steel vault was empty and all its contents piled up neatly beside a bizarrely costumed supervillain called Wishman.

 

He looked, to all the gawping, astonished bank customers who saw him, like something from the Arabian Nights; a purple turban wound round his head; baggy purple pantaloons upon his legs; pointy golden shoes upon his feet and, round his neck, a strange, golden, star shaped medallion.

 

In fact he looked so ridiculous in his costume that one might have been tempted to laugh at him if it were not for his obvious power.

 

“Oh I wish Mr Morpheus was here”, they all thought, “He’d defeat that clown”.

 

But then, as if their wish had been granted, the blue costumed master of dreams suddenly appeared.

 

“Odd”, said Mr Morpheus, as he materialized in front of Wishman in his bathtub with a showercap upon his head and a scrubbing brush in his hand, “I don’t remember painting my bathroom this colour”.

 

“This is not your bathroom, Mr Morpheus. I wished you here”, said Wishman, “Because I wish to be the man who destroyed Mr Morpheus”.

 

“I see”, said Mr Morpheus, instantly changing into his blue costume and taking off his shower cap before making his bathtub vanish, “Well why don’t you try wishing for a nice cosy prison cell because that’s what you’re going to get”.

 

But then Wishman merely smiled and, suddenly, Mr Morpheus’s wrists and ankles were securely manacled and chained to the floor.

 

“Dream on, dream master”, said Wishman, “Your powers won’t work against my wishes and I’m going to make you wish you’d never been born”.

 

Mr Morpheus struggled against the manacles and then frowned.

 

“Your right”, he said, shocked, “I can’t get out of these”.

 

Wishman laughed,

 

“Hah! Against my wishes you’re as powerless as any ordinary man”, he said, “Now do you have any last requests before I wish you out of existence once and for all?”.

 

The dream master thought for a second.

 

“Uh. Just one”, he asked, “Tell me how you’re doing all this?”.

 

Wishman pointed to the medallion hung around his neck.

 

“This medallion. Believe it or not, I was just an ordinary, low paid construction worker; a nobody but then I dug up this with my pneumatic drill; it was buried in the foundations of an old building we were working on and I soon realised it would grant my every wish”, he explained, “So then I became Wishman”.

 

“Hmm?”, thought Morpheus, looking intensely at the medallion as if seeing into it, but then, suddenly, his eyes lit up, “Yes, it’s what I thought. That thing is controlling your will”.

 

Wishman laughed,

 

“What? You’re not serious”, he said.

 

“Oh, I’m very serious”, said Mr Morpheus, “You think its granting your wishes but you’re only wishing for what it wants you to wish. If you don’t believe me, try taking it off”.

 

Wishman looked down at the medallion and then, trying to remove it, gasped as he realised it wouldn’t come off.

 

“What?”, he said, disbelieving, “But why?”.

 

“From what I can tell. It’s some kind of artificial consciousness; an artificially intelligent parasite; like a robot brain that, lacking a robot body, needs your body to move around but, in order to take control of you, it needed to trick you into thinking it was granting your wishes. You were doing what it wanted all the time”, explained Mr Morpheus.

 

Wishman sank to his knees imploringly,

 

“Help me, please”, he begged.

 

“I can’t help you as long as I’m in these manacles”, said Mr Morpheus, pulling against his chains, “You’ve got to wish me free from them”.

 

The man struggled to make a wish but the medallion around his neck was clouding his brain.

 

“I can’t”, he said, panic in his voice, “It won’t let me”.

 

“Then, at least let me choose the way I want to die”, said Mr Morpheus.

 

“Alright”, said Wishman, nodding, sadly, “The medallion agrees to that”.

 

“Good”, said the Superhero, “I wish to die by being eaten by a giant, blue Farnarkle”.

 

“A what?”, asked Wishman, a bemused look upon his face.

 

But then, suddenly, the medallion fell from Wishmans neck onto the floor of the bank whilst, at the same time, the manacles vanished from around Mr Morpheus’s wrists and ankles.

 

“What happened?”, asked Wishman, relieved, “I’m free”.

 

“There’s no such thing as a blue Farnarkle”, said Mr Morpheus, “But your medallion, because it was a computer, short circuited trying to grant an impossible wish”.

“Thank you , Mr Morpheus”, said Wishman, now just an ordinary man again but a much nicer and wiser one, “Oh thank you so much. I thought I had power but I was just a slave. I wish I had never seen that thing”.

 

“Hmm?”, thought Mr Morpheus, rubbing his chin,“Well, perhaps I can make that wish come true”.

 

The man opened his eyes; he was lying in his bed at home.

 

“Was it all just a terrible nightmare”, he thought to himself, sitting up in bed and remembering his dream,“I wonder?”.