Mr Morpheus II – Electric Dreams

Richard Halbert stood on the glowing blue virtual plane and looked up at the virtual clouds that were rolling, or rather scrolling, overhead and crackling with a strange dark red electricity. It felt good to be outside of his bubble even if ‘outside’ was only a virtual simulation of the real world. “Very good, Dr Cracklyn”, he said to the designer of the world who was now appearing in his virtual peripheral vision, sitting cross legged upon a floating, virtual magic carpet, “But I’m not paying you to design computer games. You told me that you could build something that would kill Mr Morpheus. That’s what I’m interested in”. Halbert disappeared from the virtual plane as he took off his VR helmet and re-entered the office of his palatial Beverly hills mansion and the air-tight bubble he lived in to protect him from the thousands of deadly bacteria he saw in the air. Dr Cracklyn removed his helmet too. “And that is exactly what I have done”, said the computer expert, smoothing back his steel grey hair, “Created a solid-light hologram that can do anything with her virtual reality powers that Mr Morpheus, with his dream powers, can do”. Halbert balked at the grey haired, computer nerds marketing pitch. “Seeing is believing, Doctor”, said the paranoid Crime lord/legitimate Business tycoon impatiently, banging a fist the size of a gorillas and covered in gold signet rings, “Mr Morpheus has decimated the Empire that I have taken years to build and I won’t be happy until I see his grinning head on a spike”. Dr Cracklyn smiled knowingly and then, pinching the upper right corner of his face, in one quick motion, tore it off, revealing the face of a young and attractive woman underneath. Then the rest of his head and body started to Morph just like a computer generated image, his slicked back silver hair growing until it spilled onto his shoulders. “You’ve already seen how realistic my hologram can be”, said the woman in front of him, still speaking with the voice of Dr Cracklyn, “Realistic enough to fool a sharp-eyed and highly intelligent man such as yourself. Now watch while I put an end to your Mr Morpheus troubles once and for all”. The holographic projection began to melt and change again, just like something made of a living, molten crystal, becoming a flat television screen and then, across the screen Halbert saw the woman, now more like something out of a video game, flying across the screen at phenomenal speed and, at the same time, he saw what he assumed to be the real Dr Cracklyn enter the room. “I’ve called her Simulacra, or Sim for short but you can call her whatever you want”, said the programmer, “And as you can see, she fly’s just like Morpheus and travels, just like him, in the blink of an eye”. But then Halbert saw another face on the screen, the constantly smiling, domino masked face of the loathed Mr Morpheus who seemed to be in the middle of saving an airliner full of people from crashing into a murky looking atlantic ocean, using his usual reality bending tricks to turn the aeroplane full of screaming people into a giant, inflatable, day glow banana with yellow canary wings that, flapping its wings and extending giant canary like legs, gently landed upon the waters, much to the relief of all the passengers who Halbert saw peering, confused, out through portals in the dream crafts weird banana skin hull. The strange Virtual woman hurtling across the sky towards him like an angry exocet saw the bizarre craft bobbing far below her as well but unlike the masked Hero, she did not see the value of the lives of the people within; she had not been programmed to. To her they were just handy pawns in a life sized game of computer chess and Mr Morpheus was about to be checkmated. Then, as Mr Morpheus transformed the banana like aircraft into lots of life rafts like giant Alice in Wonderland tea cups in which the passengers were floating, he saw the periscope of a submarine rise from below the waters of the atlantic and then, twisting this way and that to locate its target, it was followed by the surfacing body of the submarine; an iron shark with a large grinning mouth full of metal teeth. “Hmm?”, Halbert heard the masked Dreammaster say, as he looked at the enormous iron ocean predator that was now speeding towards one of the floating teacups as fast as a torpedo, “Interesting”. But then, much to the dismay of his computer generated opponent, in the wink of one of his twinkling eyes, Mr Morpheus turned the giant iron fish into a giant can of tuna which sank helplessly to the ocean floor. “Don’t worry”, said Dr Cracklyn, looking nervously over at his paymaster who seemed, so far, rather unimpressed, “That was just a warning shot. She’s just warming up that’s all”. Then, as if to prove what her programmer had just said, the computer simulated supervillainess stretched her mouth as wide as her face and let out an ear splitting, spectacles shattering scream. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrgghhhhh!”, she screamed and then, seizing hold of the large exclamation mark from the end of “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrgghhhhh!” and wielding it just like a baseball bat, she smashed it across a stunned Mr Morpheus’s blue cowelled face, sending his head flying like a baseball across the stormy mid-atlantic sky. Then, before Mr Morpheus had time to stretch out his arms like elastic bands and retrieve his errant head, she followed up that killer blow by materializing a giant spaghetti fork and twisting up Mr Morpheus’s blue lycra costumed body like spaghetti. “This is really getting out of hand”, said Mr Morpheus’s head as, stretching its ears out like wings, it flapped its way back towards its spaghettified limbs and torso. “You see”, said the gloating Simulacra, leaning on a floating cloud as Morpheus untangled himself, “Anything you can do, I can do better, dream-maker. Your old fashioned dreams are no match for my electric nightmares”. Mr Morpheus reconnected his head like a lump of plastiscene to the neck of his untangled body. “So, your some kind of machine are you?”, asked Morpheus, rubbing his chin in thought and then, his eyes lighting up like 100watt bulbs with a brilliant plan, he enquired, “Do you even know what a dream is? Do holograms have dreams?”. The CGI superwoman seemed floored by this question, at least for a minute or so, before replying, with a little hint of sadness, “No. I’m not programmed to dream”. Morpheus shook his head, tutting; a small tear running from the left eye hole of his blue domino mask, “Oh that’s tragic. Dreams are wonderful. They’re part of what it means to be really alive”. A tiny blue, electric tear now crackled down the holograms left cheek and, watching from behind the dome of his transparent, bullet proof bubble, Halbert let out a loud, rumbling growl of annoyance like the sound of a displeased panther. “I-I-I”, stuttered Dr Cracklyn, his whole body now starting to tremble with fear, “I don’t know what could have happened”. “What’s happened is that your hologram has been defeated!”, yelled Halbert, his left hand reaching out and hovering over a red button marked ‘Security’. But just then, the paranoid criminal kingpin noticed something on the inside of his transparent bubble; a few specks of something blue and gooey that were rapidly multiplying and spreading outwards and, when he looked closer, he saw that each of the tiny blue specks had a grinning face, the face of Mr Morpheus and one of them was even waving to him. “AAAAAAAAAAAAGHHH!”, he screamed. Dr Cracklyn, looking over, stunned, at the man in the bubble now saw him cowering behind his swivel chair. “What is it?”, asked Cracklyn, panicking, “What happened?!”. “Bacteria!”, yelled Halbert, a terrified look upon his face, “Bacteria is everywhere”. Seeing this as a good time to make a swift exit, Dr Cracklyn turned around and started to run towards the door of Halberts office but, instead of reaching the exit, the bewildered computer Programmer ran head first into the blue, spandex clad chest of Mr Morpheus. “I’ve been having a few computer problems”, said the grinning Superhero, gripping Dr Cracklyn by the collar and hoisting him over his head, “Since you’re the expert. I thought you might be able to help”. Dr Cracklyn struggled, waving his arms about and kicking his legs but it was no use against Morpheus’s grip and then he spluttered, “W-what did you do with my Hologram? What did you do with Sim?”. But he needn’t have worried; for at that moment, Dr Cracklyns creation was flying about in a pink sky amidst fluffy purple clouds and laughing happily; deep in the middle of a wonderful dream.