Forcing myself to stay calm, I turned once again to the little man. He
obviously made the Glove, and could tell me what it was for. What to call
him, though? I considered Frankenstein, but decided nah, too obvious.
"Hey Mengele," I yelled at him, jerking my head upward at my left arm.
"What's this Glove for?"
Once again, his demeanor switched entirely, this time from pseudo-mad
scientist-type to a gleeful Barney-loving childlike person. He chuckled to
himself, then began:
"Hee hee, it's not a Glove, silly! It's a Glov!"
Hm. I didn't see the point. What was the difference?
"Well, it's just The very thing, that made all this, all of You possible!
It's what will make you strong enough to take on the entire force of Barney-
haters and crush them all! Hee hee! As you can see, it's a computer wired
directly into you, holding..."
"What?!" I interrupted him suddenly. "You mean this thing is *attached* to
me? As in *implanted* in my arm?"
He pouted slightly at having been interrupted yet again, then smiled. "Of
course it is! How else do you think I'd be able to completely change your
cellular makeup and hold it as you are now if I didn't wire the computer that
holds all the data to make the change possible directly into you? You'd break
up entirely if it wasn't there!"
I winced noticeably, feeling my left arm go limp within the restraint.
Ewww...I didn't even like getting Shots, but this thing was going to be like
30 needles, all penetrating at once. I wondered, for good? Was I able to take
the Glove off?
"OK, I think I understand...but do I have to wear it all the time?"
"Ho ho, no! Only when you're as you are now, a fox. You can take it off
whenever you want! Can't have you running around unable to look like a normal
human being all the time, can we? Hee hee..."
A _fox_, that's what I was. That little detail had been my next question. As
I pondered that thought, the little man came waltzing over to the table and
lowered the head, so that I lay parallel to the floor, and pressed a button
on the Glove.
The yell for him to stop got stuck in my throat as I witnessed a blue spark
shoot from the Glove and rapidly move up my arm, spreading into a huge
electric field around my whole body. I jerked my head back down as my vision
started to blur again and my head went hazy again. Staring wide-eyed but
unable to see clearly, I saw the table underneath me between my legs, which
seemed...even more blurry than the table...then break entirely apart into
tiny pieces like a swarm of flies once clustered around a bush suddenly
taking flight...then blackness...
and light. Apparently the experience hadn't lasted long. My eyes came into
focus once again, still staring at my legs, only this time they weren't
furred like before, they were as I remembered them, from 17 years of being
human. Naked ape ergo sum, still clothed exactly the same as I had been, and
realizing that I had just witnessed my cellular disintegration, then having
been reintegrated as I had been before this bizarre day.
I looked to my left side and saw the little scientist, wearing heavy rubber
gloves and holding my Glove in his hands, grinning. It was unattached from my
arm, and I could see where the clamps on the armpiece and around the palm
came open and off.
"See? See?" he started up again. "You can stay human on your own. Any other
way, you need to wear this!"
Oh, that made perfect sense. I was so lucky to have this joker for tech
support.
"So what's it made of? That metal..."
"Oh, yes! The metal! I added that part myself, my very own idea, hoo hoo!
It's indestructible, lightweight, and will let you blend right in with those
nasty ol' Jihaddi, because I stole the supply straight from what they use to
make their weapons! They call it Owsenite."
"Owsenite? Never heard of it."
"Hee hee, no reason why you should! It's not even from this world, they say.
It's funny, I can't hold it in my hands without it burning me. I have to wear
these gloves to hold anything made of it."
What logic, I thought. Perfect material to make something for me, the
unwilling subject, who not only has to hold but Wear, out of. Nice that he
thought of everything. Funny, I didn't seem to have any problems while I had
it on, it was just weird.
He then busied himself with reattaching the Glove. I thought it would hurt,
but as he fastened the clamps around my hand and forearm, I don't remember
feeling any pain. He then pressed a button and I reexperienced the electric
light show and vertigo, only this time I reawoke as in the beginning, staring
down at my nose.
Questions answered, I began to reflect on this whole episode. Sure, it was
probably the most ridiculous conception anyone could ever have imagined, but
it *happened*. I was no longer just a human being, I was a cybernetically
wired-up vulpine human. Nifty. The doc said he could reconfigure the Glove to
correct the blond problem. So, maybe I could figure out how to make it
facilitate other changes, make me something *else*. More nifty.
Hold a sec, what was I thinking? When I came in this room, I was completely
in shock and freaked out by it all, now I was talking to myself like I
actually *enjoyed* this. Simply looking around and breathing the air was an
experience no normal human being had ever experienced as I could now,
enhanced to include the attributes normally reserved for the animals, most of
which probably weren't smart enough to realize what a natural advantage they
had been given by birth. Humans before me had written down all the supposed
experiences through hypothetical animal minds, but they didn't, they
*couldn't*, know exactly for themselves if what they wrote was valid at all.
I knew. I had it All now. This little guy, with his disgusting cookie-cutter
personality and mindless servitude to a plush toy, had not only given me all
this power for my own use, he had apparently awakened something that was
dormant in my own psyche, something other than the normal human thoughts and
impulses of everyday life. I realized they had been with me all along, just
pushed under by petty worries and fixations.
Other than human.
Feral.
And as these thoughts flashed through in half the time it takes to read about
their nature, I grinned a wide grin, my lips turning upward into a sneer. So
this little man thought he could use me as a willing tool and I'd follow him
thick and thin, huh? We'll just see about this...
"Um, thanks for all this, you've been nice and all, but um, could you let me
out of these restraints? I'm getting kind of stiff over here."
The little man giggled nervously and trotted to the table side. "Oh, now,
can't have that, can we?" He then unhooked my wrists, and I sat up as he
unhooked my ankles.
"Now," he said, "we're going to be friends, you and I! You're going to help
me and my bestest friend Barney soooo much, you are!"
I swung my legs over so I was sitting on the table's edge, face to face with
the little man. "I was wondering about one more thing: Why me?"
"Oh, ho ho, wasn't about who you were, not to make you mad. It was where you
were! I came here to Kansas to find someone to be the special fighter for
Barney!"
I raised an eyebrow. "To Kansas? Why?"
He grinned and pointed his finger at me. "You know why! It's just only the
bestest reason in the world! Everyone knows that you Kansans are just the
stuuuupendously in love with Barney! Barney himself told me to come to Topeka
to find someone like you, and here you are!"
I jumped down off the table and looked down at the little man. Oh, he's
making this easy, he is. All down to insulting the intelligence of everyone
who lives in the same State I live in.
"I see. You were sure I'd be willing to help out, because I love Barney so
much, me being from Kansas and all. Hmmm..."
As he nodded in his candy-apple euphoria, I leaned down until I was nose to
nose with him, and looked him straight in the eye, past those lenses, boring
a hole right up through his shriveled optic nerve to the vision center of his
brain, making me appear crystal clear in his mind before I spoke.
"I don't think so."
In one swift motion, I grabbed him with my Glov'd hand and raised him up off
the floor, then slammed him against the wall. I only thought of this Asinine,
Audacious, Barney-loving Twit who had kidnapped Me, the bystander up until
now and made me part of some devious plot to kill those who were smart enough
to realize what I had missed, that Barney was not out to 'love' anyone or
anything, nor was he to be loved himself. In fact, given what I now knew,
Barney represented a threat to life as I knew it, and needed to be DESTROYED.
Destroyed...as the word entered my thoughts, something happened. Again,
totally unexpected, and as if in answer to the word.
Destroyed...as I held the man against the wall, a blue spark erupted from the
Glov and danced around it. The man's head jerked once, his cry muffled by my
palm as he writhed.
Destroyed...instead of enveloping me as it did before, the field grew around
the little man. I witnessed him stop writhing and go limp. His form started
to break apart and whirl about as mine had within the field.
Destroyed...as I watched, the man ceased to be anything coherent physically.
The field winked out of existence, and a heap of dust fell through my
fingers, along with the man's clothes and lab coat. It was all that was left.
"I killed him."
I heard myself talking to myself out loud. Turning and looking at the room, I
had the nagging urge to get the hell out of Dodge. I had no desire to stay in
the room where I had been brought against my will, altered to serve an
ignorant magenta lump, and now, had just killed another human being. A stupid
and useless one, true, but he once was alive.
I found the door and rushed out. It opened up into a staircase, then a tiny
house crammed full of Barney toys and paraphernalia. Stopping only long
enough to slash a few on my way out, I located the front door, and slammed it
on the way out.
Once outside, I looked to see if I could recognize anything. It was in a
shadowed area outside the house, with no one else around. Off to my right, in
the distance, I could see the Kansas River and a bridge over it.
I grinned to myself. I hadn't even left town, only a short walk back to my
car, which I hoped was still in the parking lot at school. Glancing downward
I realized something else: I hadn't taken the Glov off, and I was still
walking around as a fox!
This wasn't good. I slipped behind the house, hoping no one had seen me, but
on the dark street, I didn't think anyone had. I puzzled at the Glov. How
did it really work? All that techie crap made sense only in theory; now I had
to work the fool thing.
I located the button the little man had pressed. I took a deep breath and
pushed it. In vertigo, I nearly passed out and landed on my nose, but the
switch passed smoothly, and the Glov unhooked itself when it was done.
I slipped it off, mumbling to myself. Where to go from here? What now? What
is this Jihad the man was talking about? Will I ever get to use the Glov
again, or do I even want to, given what it was intended for, what I was
intended for?
I shook my head and trudged back to my car. Couldn't worry about that stuff
now. Right then I needed only to get back to my car and get home.
I carried the Glov gingerly, keeping it away from the eyes of nosy passersby.
"Time will tell the rest."