As Albright contemplated his new predicament, Traynor contemplated clouds.  He had never been outside for any definite period of time.  Albright had a skin condition which made his skin take the color and texture of an overripe lobster, so he had never considered taking Traynor outside.  And, as Traynor’s sole human contact was his father, he had no way of knowing what was normal and what was not.  This will become painfully obvious soon.

Albright picked up his pace as his mind raced.  He and Traynor were now on foot in the downtown of Athens, Greece.  They had raced away from Remcon in Albright’s vehicle, but Albright had decided to stop in the city to eat and contemplate Traynor’s fate.  This clipped pace, then, was Traynor’s first exposure to the city and other people.

“What?”  Traynor said, pointing at an Asian couple walking nearby.

“It’s rude to point at Asians, Traynor, they take that as a sign of hostility.  See?  You’ve angered them already” Albright replied, blissfully unaware that the shocked look on the couple’s face was a reaction to his comment, not Traynor’s.

Albright’s poor social skills were not just a product of his upbringing or his time in the war in America, he also seemed to be genuinely unaware that his words and actions were inappropriate.  He did not consider himself to be racist, but he just couldn’t bring himself to trust Rwandans, Lithuanians or Orcs.  But had more to do with a violent history than any innate dislike.  Interestingly, he thought Germans were charming good chaps.

Traynor and Albright crossed the avenue, and walked down the blackened street that held the commercial district of Athens.  Most shops were closed as if a train had crashed into the area, but one Indian restaurant in particular looked as if it had just opened.

Albright led Traynor into the restaurant, past a man in a trench coat who was busy dry heaving.  Traynor paused momentarily, a look of concern on his face.  He stared at the man, focusing on the trench coat for a moment, before walking into the building behind his father.  Albright, meanwhile, did not notice anything as he was busy studying the menu posted on the door, looking for a meal he could stomach.

Not sure, he walked inside and sat down in a booth.  Traynor went in behind him and attempted to pull himself up to the seat beside his father.

“Do you want a booster seat, sir?”  An Asian lady in an apron said, coming into view behind them.

Albright turned to her, contemplating the question too long.  “No, I’m tall enough.”

“For the child, I mean.”

“Oh, him?  No, he’s nearly 6, he’s fine.” Albright said.

“Two!”  Traynor corrected, holding up three fingers on each hand.  The waitress stared at him, confused.  He looked two, he said he was two, but he held up six fingers and his father said he was six.  She figured it wasn’t her problem and proceeded to take their order.

“Some milk and ¬cookies, please, and maybe a sandwich for the boy.”  Albright commanded.  The waitress paused for a beat, then decided she didn’t want to spend any more time at the table than necessary and went back to the kitchen.

Traynor, meanwhile, had made it onto the booth and was looking at the restaurant with abject admiration.  Albright attributed it to the novelty of the scenario, but Traynor kept the incredulous look well into his twenties.

Albright stared at him, then spoke as if explaining a well-thought out plan.  “Traynor, we need to find a geneticist.  Geneticists are scientists th—”

“You!”

“That’s right, they’re scientists like me, but they’re far less boring.  And they probably read the human genome before they started messing with creating human life.  But we all make mistakes, right?  I may have sentenced you to a cruel, short and painful life, but you did terrible in your math class earlier today.  The important thing is to forgive and forget.”

Traynor smiled.

“But I haven’t forgotten that I assigned you make up work for your mistakes,” Albright castigated.

Traynor frowned, sure he had not been assigned such a thing.  Indeed, he didn’t think he had ever been able to successfully complete a homework assignment.  It just all seemed so complicated.

Then Albright suddenly seemed far more serious.  “Traynor, I need you to understand this.  You will die before you turn 30 unless we find a way to fix your cellular reproduction.”

He stared at Traynor.  Traynor looked back, perplexed.

“Die?”  He asked.

“Die.  But don’t worry, we’re going to go see some of the best geneticists in the world and I will fix this problem if I have to master another discipline to do it…  I guess what I’m saying is we’re moving.  To Guatemala.  Tonight.”

“’Night?”  Traynor puzzled.

“Yes, I fly by the seat of my pants.  It’s much easier than waiting for a good night’s sleep in order to make a decision.  You remember that, that’s good advice: always do whatever you decide before you decide not to do it, or else you’ll never do it, got it?”

“Gottit,”  Traynor decided to do it.

“Okay, now, a person that hadn’t decided to do something would get up and walk out of the restaurant right now, but we still haven’t gotten our food, so that would be silly.  Just this once it’s okay to decide to do something and then barely do it.  It’s a corollary you’ll understand later.  Corollary.  Say it.”

“Oronary.”

“Sir, here’s the shabib you ordered and some dal for the child,” the waitress chimed in from behind them.

“We didn’t—“  Just then a shout went out through the restaurant, barely eliciting a response.  A young voice shrieked “Praise be to Allah!”  Albright, the waitress and some of the customers turned to look as the young man that had been vomiting outside, inside with his trench coat wide open and several sticks of dynamite clearly displayed on his chest.

Albright stared, the waitress went on to the next table, handing an elderly gentleman his drink.  Traynor stared through clenched eyelids.

“Shoo! Shoo!”

The longest conversation anyone ever had with Albright was poor Clemens Berkowitz, who guarded the parking lot to the Remcon facility.¹

“Dr. Dr. Master Albright, has anyone ever told you how much you look like the man from Message?” Berkowitz asked him one morning. Albright turned 180 degrees and walked away as fast as he could. Berkowitz later claimed that this had been an in depth conversation and became the resident expert in all things Albright.²

‘Message’ was the short 2-D video that had circulated the world media some six years prior to Traynor’s birth. It had been poorly received until the Russian and Chinese governments had announced that it was a hoax. This had led to worldwide panic as most governments of the world had less credibility than random chance. By denying the message, they gave it the golden stamp of truth. Shortly afterward, an international commission investigated the recording as well as the science behind observing the future and concluded that it was unlikely, supremely resource intensive, and would require a machine existing in each observed point in time. The analysis of the recording yielded near certain proof of a staged event. They concluded that the whole event was likely staged by a member of the original committee that conducted the experiment either in the past or in the far future. The world reaction to this denunciation was panic. Journalists discovered deep connections between each member of the commission and a major corporate interest and philosophers of science decried the claims as baseless and questioned the sources. A few years later, each member of the international commission was tried for crimes against humanity, tortured, and executed upon receipt of their confession. I wouldn’t have mentioned it here, but I think it’s really, really interesting.

Anyway, Remcon came under new management. The previous management had decided to sell because of ongoing violence in the area and the high cost of relocation, the new management had decided to buy because of divine providence. The buyers were from a particularly prolific strain of Mormonism that felt compelled to take over new areas and convert them by example, economic pressure and constant proselytizing. ³

The new management made it explicitly clear that unskilled employees would be fired in favor of employees that could do their job and others’ as well. The new management thought that if secretaries were knitting booties or working on the company newsletter and taking calls, they would be more productive than if they were simply taking calls.⁴ The only people who this crazy new policy could affect were the secretaries Aristus and Evaristus Bender (who were the first cousins to the new Vice President) and Berkowitz, who had no skills and was unloved. Justifiably, Berkowitz feared for his job.⁵

Berkowitz looked at the area around his post and saw the very memo that had kept him scared all day. “GOT A TALENT? THEN YOU’VE GOT A JOB: Remcon’s new policy requires workers to multi-task, which means old, ugly, unliked workers are out of luck. But their loss is your gain! Apply at Remcon now! We’re hiring for the following positions: Parking Lot Security Guard. Think you can handle it? Give us a buzz!”

The strange part for Berkowitz was that nobody else in the building seemed to have gotten one of these memos. It was as if they wanted only him to panic. And he did. But now he was fresh out of ideas and, nearing retirement, Berkowitz was unsure of what he could offer in useable talent. The only thing he had ever received attention for was his ‘extended’ conversation with the mysterious Albright.

Then he realized what he had to do. Berkowitz decided that the survival of his career depended on his (false) relationship with Albright. He would appeal to everyone’s curiosity over Albright by really becoming his friend and finding out just what he was doing. It seemed nobody— not even top management— knew how he was hired, what he did, or how much he was paid. Albright had always lived at Remcon headquarters and, as far as Berkowitz could tell, Albright had a secret arrangement with the ex-CEO of the company that made him untouchable. What it was nobody knew, but Berkowitz was going to find out.⁶

The day Remcon exploded, Berkowitz made his way to the far warehouse where Albright worked. The door was chained shut, so Berkowitz knocked loudly. He waited outside with baited breath, half of him hoping he had not been heard and the other half wishing he didn’t have such an extrovertic bladder.

~~~

Inside the warehouse, Traynor was taking his first steps as Albright observed. Of all his attempts to engineer a weaponized clone with great hair, Traynor was the most successful attempt. This was most likely because Traynor was also Albright’s least ambitious attempt. Previously he had attempted to create a child that could breathe under water,⁷ withstand fire,⁸ and spit out acid. ⁹

Somehow Traynor had survived two years with little to no attention on Albright’s part. In fact, he found himself growing more and more attached to the boy, to the point where he started calling him boy and stopped calling him ‘meatbag.’

Albright was even giving his toddler-clone an in-depth education. His lessons were progressing nicely: he was nearing Algebra now.

“I’m going to skip over dividing by percentages and go right on into factorials. Can you say factorials?” Albright asked.

“’Torios!” Traynor exclaimed, laughing as his hair did a little wave, which tickled and made him laugh more.

“No, actually, it’s ‘factorials.’ There’s an ‘F.’ Which, coincidentally, is what you get on today’s pop-quiz. No matter, we’ll just keep hurrying along until you finally start getting it. Okay, factorials are a mathematical game that coincidentally let us find out how many possible permutations there are of a—” but then Albright noticed that Traynor wasn’t paying attention. Instead, he was staring at the door. There seemed to be a pounding noise coming from it and Traynor wanted to investigate.

Albright sat in contemplation for a full moment before he realized that someone was knocking– and had been for a while. He hadn’t had any visitors in years and his last vistor, he distinctly remembered, was his ex-wife’s divorce lawyer… looking to sell some girl scout cookies. The experience was so traumatic, he was glad it had not repeated itself.

He stared at the door for a few moments before he decided he should answer it. He sat Traynor down and looked around the building. It was fairly obvious that there was genetic engineering going on: there was even a groaning, half-formed corpse on the floor that Albright had never gotten around to disposing of. He would just have to make sure that whomever it was wouldn’t go inside.

“Hello,” Albright rasped, shocked to see a complete stranger at the door.

~~~

Sweet holy moly! Berkowitz thought. He hadn’t actually expected to be at this point. Up until now, the thought of associating himself with Dr. Dr. Master Albright was purely an academic exercise. He thought quickly and carefully of what to say, then eloquently stated it:

“Uhh… yeah.”

“Very well. Good for you. Have a euro,” Albright said, not handing him anything.

“Doctor Doctor Master Albright, my name is—”

“Please, please, my friends call me Doctor Master Albright.” Albright interrupted.

“Doctor Master—”

“It’s actually Doctor Doctor Master.”

“But you just said—”

“I was making conversation. I was trying to be friendly, but, just so you’re sure, you’re not my friend.” Albright patiently explained, as if talking to a slow person.

“Well, my name is Clem. And I– I– I want to be your friend?” Berkowitz stammered, looking past Albright into the warehouse.

“Oh, that’s nice. I don’t want one, though, thanks.”

“Oh.” And Albright closed the door. Berkowitz stared momentarily, then walked away, sadly. He knew he would lose his job soon.

Berkowitz walked dejectedly back to his post, ready to search for a new job. He stared blankly in front of him, not watching the vehicles enter or exit the facility. He found it difficult to care, really. Albright, with his stupid patchy head had as good as cost Berkowitz his job.

Calling Albright a name, even if it was only in his own mind, made Berkowitz cheer up. He decided to amuse himself by mentally berating Albright further. Albright was a dunderhead. And he smelled like rotten, decaying flesh as of a warehouse in which illegal biological experiments were taking place under everyone’s noses. Also, his mother dressed him funny.

Then, a sudden burst of inspiration hit Berkowitz and he stood up. He realized that he had never actually seen the inside of the warehouse. He doubted if anyone had with how Albright had become so iconic in the minds of all the workers.

Even if Berkowitz didn’t have a relationship with Albright, all he needed to keep his job was to make himself indispensable by obtaining information that nobody had been able to obtain until now. He left his post for the second time that day and stormed over to Albright’s warehouse yet again, both hoping and dreading that he had not imagined the smell of decaying flesh.

~~~

Albright tried running a sample of Traynor’s blood through the simulator again. This simulator had been coded with both tRNA and the base Venter genome.¹⁰ He attempted to observe the particular sections of Traynor’s DNA that he had modified as he ran the simulation beyond age 5 and into the teenage years. He was shocked to see how high the rate of mutation was once Traynor passed puberty. Most of the mutations seemed to be mild transcriptions in outrons,¹¹ but increasingly, several insertions seemed to occur on the introns. This was terrible news. This meant was that as Traynor became an adult, his chances of developing cancer or dying doubled… every year! The probability of Traynor reaching age 40 became less than one in ten million. He looked at Traynor, now playing with a loaded rattrap and tried to assimilate this new information. His clone— his son— had less than a 0.000001% chance of outliving his father. He was more likely to be struck by lightning and win the lottery than retire.¹² Albright had created a child condemned to die horribly… and far too soon.

“Appa?” Traynor said, holding up his Algebra homework in which he had drawn a tall figure with glasses and patchy hair. The rattrap lay dismantled nearby.

For the first time, Albright looked at Traynor as something both distinct from himself and distinct from a mathematical problem. He looked at him as a human being. Traynor was a human being cursed to live a short life because of the errors of his predecessors— Albright’s errors no less.

Then, for the first time in ten years, Albright decided his project was over. His hope of recreating his past seemed so foolish now that he thought of Traynor as someone else, distinct from him. He had thought of it all as an academic exercise, but now an all too real complication had brought the previous six years into sharp relief.

Albright leaned back into his chair and stared at the ceiling, attempting to figure out what he could do about Traynor’s condition. There were over 1012 cells in the human body, if they could not replicate normally as in Traynor’s case, then the body would be as good as dead. Albright needed to consult with someone: someone who knew how to create super RNA or cure aging. And, if he wanted to save Traynor’s life, he might have to go to the ends of the earth itself.

There was another knock on the door. This time Albright heard it, but decided not to answer it. He did, after all, have to prepare for his journey. Unfortunately, because Albright didn’t answer the door, Berkowitz assumed the worst and called the police. This indirectly caused the death of everyone working at Remcon. ¹³

As Albright packed clothes and equipment, Traynor stumbled around behind him. Albright painstakingly carried everything from his warehouse to the next via the underground tunnels that connected every building in the facility. Albright’s long tenure had made him an expert in some random facts that had escaped the notice of most employees at the plant. ¹⁴

As Albright loaded everything into his vehicle in the next warehouse, Berkowitz told the police officers where the warehouse was and explained that he was certain Albright was up to no good with company resources.

Just as Albright knelt down to explain the situation to Traynor, the policeman knocked at the warehouse door. Albright, who was no longer in the warehouse, heard nothing and so did not answer the door. Berkowitz and the police officer looked at each other.

“Who’s warehouse is this?” The police officer asked.

“Mine. My name is Clem Remcon and I give you authority to break into the warehouse.” This was all the police officer needed. He turned around and charged at the door, kicking it with all his strength. It shuddered, but nothing more.
Albright and Traynor boarded the vehicle and opened the second warehouse’s doors. Albright engaged the motor, set the coordinates and steered as the vehicle exited the bay doors.

Had Berkowitz not been so dogmatic, he would have heard Albright leave and not been helping an innocent polic officer charge into a deserted warehouse. Had he not been so afraid for his job, he would have been guarding the parking lot actually doing his job. Had he actually been doing his job, he would have noticed Albright exit the premises, not bothering to lock the gate behind him. Had the gate been locked, or the alarm system engaged, the semi filled with nuclear material would not have been allowed nearby, much less within the compound. Had it not been allowed inside, the senseless deaths of hundreds of Remcon employees and a police officer would have been avoided.¹⁵

Unfortunately, Berkowitz was a foolishly consistent, hobgoblin of a man and the suicide nuclear bomber was able to destroy yet another company owned by a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The ongoing world war of religions had just suffered another nuclear attack.

Albright, of course, noticed nothing until Traynor called his attention to the giant mushroom cloud in their background and the bright Turquoise night sky.

“That’s just the Northern lights, Traynor, don’t worry about it. Go to sleep. We have a big task ahead of us and we might not relax for quite some time to come.”

And so they drove away as the only unwitting survivors of the Remcon disaster. Sadly, this would not be the last time they fled an atom bomb… not by a long shot……————

1. I would not get too attached to Berkowitz, he dies horribly in just a few short paragraphs
2. Just remember how readily he lied to everyone when you learn of his horrible, horrible demise. It’ll make it easier to accept.
3. Coincidentally, this was the cause of the increased violence as a prolific strain of Islam had had the same idea for the area.
4. Remcon went out of business shortly after the end of this chapter. Some people blame the fraudulent accounting, some blame the incompetent management, others blame the giant nuclear explosion that killed every member of the company and most nearby towns, but I blame the economy.
5. But not his life, sadly.
6. No he wasn’t.
7. He drowned
8. He burned
9. He was actually ran over by a bread truck.
10. “Now works with XX Chromosomes!”
11. and thus irrelevant
12. Of course, this was assuming the world wasn’t going to end soon, which it was, but Albright hardly believed this to really be the case.
13. With the exception of Aristus Bender who had called in sick that morning. Unfortunately, she passed out in the bathtub and drowned. It would be ironic if not for the fact that it was a premeditated suicide.
14. Remcon averaged a transfer of ownership once every four years. The fact that most employees stayed less than a decade made knowledge of the architecture a veritable waste of time.
15. Well, most of the deaths, the semi was going to blow sometime, after all.

 Ioannes Muhammad threw up. He was outside of a diner in Athens, Greece and he couldn’t stop vomiting even when there was nothing left. A few people stopped to give him change, but nobody bothered to ask if he was okay or wanted to go to the hospital. It was okay, though: he didn’t. He just wanted to make it inside the diner and die a martyr.

The trespasses against Islam had been so great that the seventeen year old¹ had to act. He was short for his age, had nervous, deep-set eyes and was afraid that if he didn’t become a martyr, he would send himself to hell from furious masturbation.² But his heart was filled with faith and love for his people… which was why he was so afraid and hateful all the time.

Ioannes finally stopped heaving and stood up, resting against the building. Just then, an old, baldish man and his grandson walked into the building. The boy was trying to catch up with the man, but having a hard time of it. The old man seemed distracted. Ioannes was regaining his breath. At that moment, he tightened his trench coat, made sure the ball-bearings and nails in his pockets were sufficiently jangly and looked down at the change people had been giving him when they thought he was a homeless man in desperate need of medical attention. He almost took the change (it totaled to nearly 30 euros!), but decided against it. He was, after all, going to be walking in paradise in just a few short moments. What good would currency do him?³ Ioannes lifted his far-too-heavy coat and walked inside the building, glad to only have to walk one-way to the establishment.

He entered and saw it was a mostly muslim establishment. Apparently he had picked a Middle-Eastern themed fast-food place to destroy. He was beginning to have second doubts when a European couple came into the store.

Well, he thought to himself. At least that evens the odds a bit. And besides, all my brethren will die martyrs with me.  He opened his trenchcoat with a flourish and shouted “Praise be to Allah!” as he pressed the trigger that would detonate his bomb.

But nothing happened! His bomb had not gone off!

… everyone turned to stare at him for a moment. They stared him up and down to see if he posed an imminent threat. Then all of the customers in the establishment went back to eating. Presently, a short, fat and bald manager came up to him to shoo him out.

“Shoo! Out! We don’t allow suicide bombers in here! Out!”

And the manager pushed Ioannes out of the store. Once outside, he looked him in the eyes with the deepest of sympathy, as if he were seeing a pregnant kitten surviving a llama attack only to be told it had incurable genital warts.

“Listen,” he began in a wooden, rehearsed-sounding tone, “I sympathize with you, I do. My maternal grandmother was 1/16th Arab and she tried to jihad a dozen times before she finally just settled down and married my paternal grandfather. But this is the wrong place to do it. First of all, this is an Islamic establishment in an Islamic neighborhood in an Islamic district of a Jainist city in an Irish-Catholic country. Second, we have a specific policy against suicide bombing. You understand.”

He pointed at a sign on the side of the store that said “For insurance purposes, we don’t allow anyone hoping to turn themselves into a living weapon inside the premises.” Underneath this, in permanent marker, it said “Herbert Mullin, this means you!”

“You’re just going to have to go, understand? You understand, right? Yeah, you understand.” And the little egg of a man walked back into the restaurant to assure the clientele that they were in normal levels of mortal danger.

Ioannes bowed his head in embarrassment. He hadn’t checked the detonating device (for obvious reasons, he thought), and now he was an embarrassment to his faith. He started to walk home, realizing his journey home would be as difficult as his journey to the establishment. For one, he was beat morally and spiritually. He doubted if he had ever felt so useless and self-loathing. Secondly, Ioannes had not brought enough money for a ride home in public transportation, and the money he picked up on the street was barely insufficient to cover the 31 euro fee back to his home, so he had to walk the 20 kilometers to his house… and he wasn’t sure which direction to go… and the heavy, large, black trench coat wasn’t exactly appropriate for what proved to be the hottest day of the year.⁴. But what really preoccupied his mind that day was that he had spent the previous two weeks handwriting letters to his family and all of his old girlfriends, telling them what he had planned to do that day. He doubted whether he could face the embarrassment.

No. He had had the best of intentions, seeking what he felt was the only solution to his plight of constant self-flagellation,⁵ but now he had failed at that too.

After nearly four hours of walking, he dropped the trench coat in the middle of the side walk. He had only walked a few hundred paces when he heard it explode, killing, ironically, another suicide bomber.

(Note to the Audience: for fear of forgetting crucial details of the other character’s storylines, I created this guy.  I’d write a disclaimer of some sort here, but I just don’t feel like it.  Hopefully, in a few days I’ll get my computer back and I’ll be able to tie everything together quite nicely.)————

1. I’m referring to Ioannes here, it’s descriptive so that you can learn more about him without my having to waste dreary words describing him like “he was short for his age,” “he had nervous, deep-set eyes,” and “he was afraid if he didn’t become a martyr, he would send himself to hell from chronic masturbation.
2. … I don’t even know why I do footnotes anymore…
3. Actually, I understand Allah doesn’t accept wampum. The cover charge to heaven is supposed to be pretty steep, too. Oh, well, so it is with infidels.
4. it was -213 degrees Kelvin, in case you’re imagining
5. His real plight: he often thought about men

This is a true story. If there were wikipedias left in the world, it would be written by one of the esteemed authors. There isn’t, so it won’t. There also isn’t a world. As I’m the last person alive with the ability or desire to take on this project, it has fallen unto me to chronicle the end of existence for posterity.¹ Take it from me, though, that history is better off with me telling the story than with any of the other monkeys I’m sharing air and rations with. I at least have a decent memory and sane hair.
This is a true story chronicling the end of the universe and the first part of what comes next. Due to the conditions imposed on me by our circumstances, I have had to imagine the connecting details between what information we do have available. Hopefully it will never be anything major.² Here we go.————

1. If you are writing about this for your 10th grade English class, you’re probably wondering what point of view this is. It’s not fully first person, since I’m barely in the story and plan to be as objective as possible, but it’s also not omniscient since I claim nothing of the sort. Instead, let’s call this third person unlimited.
2. Although, I did make all of the females have larger breasts for those of you who choose your literature based on the attractiveness of the lead characters.

    This section consists entirely of the introduction of various characters.  The time is almost one decade after the discovery of the fixed date for the end of existence and nearly six years after the leaking of this information to the world media by a personality known only as Debbie D. Dallas.  At the time of this section, the final countdown has begun and people have begun to react in different ways.   

    Dr. Dr. Master Alberic Albright thought he was a modest man: he only insisted on people calling him Single Dr. Master Alberic Albright and nothing more (or less).  This interfered with his dating life on more than one occasion.  His first marriage failed as a direct result of insisting his wife’s pillow talk refer to him by this title.  She refused because at the time he was only a Mister.

“I went through eighteen months of schooling to change the I in mister to an A,” he often told Traynor.

This story is more about Traynor Albright than anybody else, but in order to understand Traynor, you’ve got to understand Dr. Dr. Master Albright.  Because Traynor wasn’t just Albright’s son, he was his clone.  ‘My little $4 million mistake,’ his father would call him.  Often.

Even this is an unfair characterization, because Traynor wasn’t an exact clone: he was genetically engineered.  His father had hoped to engineer a living, biological weapon with great hair.  In that respect, he failed: Traynor’s hair was not the patchy baldness his father’s hair was, nor was it a full head of wavy hair like his father had envisioned, instead the DNA was specifically tied into his hypothalamus and amygdala.  This meant that Traynor’s hair was directly responsive to his emotions.  His father called this a super power, Traynor called it an extreme annoyance.  However, this was the least of his problems as Albright had manipulated far more than his hair…¹

Dr. Dr. Master Alberic Albright was a child prodigy.  His genius knew no bounds and he became equally adept at HRTM², genetics and engineering.  The last two degrees were why he felt qualified to manipulate his genetics to produce what he would later affectionately call ‘hilarious proof for why man shouldn’t play God.’

Albright was also a veteran of several foreign wars.  He had been involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom of America in which the government of Iraq and its many allies fought valiantly to end the dictatorship of the then American president.  This was back in Albright’s more politically charged youth.  His experience in America changed him.

“It changed me.”  He would often say, unprovoked in unintelligible situations.  Then he would stay in a silent catatonic state for fifteen minutes before he moved again.  This move was usually a bowel movement or some other equally uncomfortable biological function.  This was one of the many reasons why Dr. Dr. Master Albright was never invited to parties and could never make or keep friendships.

He was, however, quite good at his job.  His complete lack of personal skills, tempered over years of having no peers and no consistent socialization ensured that he always had his own projects.  His complete, unabashed genius ensured that he always had as much freedom in his projects as possible.  This meant that he was often in charge of projects that none of his supervisors were aware of.  This also meant that nobody realized the true purpose of his genetic engineering until it was far too late.

Albright had an idea for how his life should have gone from which he could never be disavowed.  He was certain that if he had grown up with a perfect head of hair, his life would have been perfect.  If he had had perfect hair, he would never have been rejected by each and every cheerleader in high school³ and perhaps he wouldn’t have elected to join the Merchant Marines.⁴  If he had had beautiful hair (and social skills, presumably), perhaps he would never have been sent on the special mission to America during the war and perhaps he wouldn’t have witnessed his best and only friend die in his arms.⁵  Something changes a man when his dog dies of old age right on his lap.

“One minute he was licking himself, the next thing I knew, I was watching  Harold and Kumar meet Abbot and Costello by myself.”  He would often mutter to himself or while in the shower.⁶

So, being as logical as he was, Albright traced bock all of the errors in his life to his youth.  Being as irrational as not having regular human interaction provided, he became fixated on this point until he decided to clone himself, genetically engineer the creature to avoid his biological foibles,⁷ and raise his clone to avoid the pitfalls of life.  Albright thought that if he could manage to create the perfect human from his own genes, genetically revamping the species was the next logical step.  He often fanaticized about earning the Ignobel Prize and getting his pick of cheerleaders.

As we said, he was a very, very peculiar man.  His own government had deemed him worthy of sterilization.⁸  Of all the people to clone, or engineer a human or raise a child, he was probably the worst choice.  Of course, the company he worked for, RemCon, had no idea what he was doing and no desire to ask for fear of appearing to not know what was going on.  They were also afraid of being forced to talk to him.  This was particularly inexcusable as RemCon was a company that made novelty doorbells and whistles.  Had one person been to Albright’s warehouse during the six years it took to create Traynor, they surely would have noticed the tons of vials, test tubes, drawings of large penises and half formed human-dragon hybrids littering the floor.  Had they checked his invoices, they would have seen him being single-handedly responsible for two-thirds of the operating costs.  As it was, Albright served the purpose of boosting the company letterhead so that it appeared they had at least one internationally renowned scientist.⁹

And so he was left alone for six years.  This unlikely situation paved the way for Traynor’s birth and the misadventures that would soon follow.————

1. As a sampling of Traynor’s own unique genetic code, he could change himself into a sandwich, although, at present, he has only been known to use this ability once.
2. Hotel Restaurant Tourism Management
3. He asked every cheerleader out on a date once.  And by date we mean dare.  And by dare, we mean an extortion by which if he did not ask all the most beautiful girls out on a date in one afternoon, his parents would die a cruel death.  And by that we mean nothing at all.  His stories were always exaggerated.
4. You’d be surprised how much combat they see
5. Whoa, that was a serious turn there.  I wonder how it’s going to come back to the general mood of the rest of this paragraph?
6. This is an exclusive ‘or,’ he didn’t like to be alone while showering.  This is half the reason he cloned himself.  This is much creepier than it sounds.
7. Which meant that he wanted to include fangs and wings until he realized how hard it would be to make a genetically viable human that could spit fire.  Surprisingly, this trait was in all but his final plans.
8. Then again, he was German.
9. The irony is that they confused his name with that of a famous serial killer.  The cognitive dissonance never set in.  Obviously RemCon was not a very successful company.  The sad part is that none of the board of directors knew why.  Oh well.  At least they’re all going to die soon.

“I’m a genius,” Dr. Dr. Shimon Kipha Angelo whispered to himself at the urinal. He stared at a fly he was giving an undignified drowning and he thought over every detail. Dr. Dr. Angelo was so used to constantly being wrong that he checked the math four times before he zipped up. Then he ran over the implications of his new formulation as he cleaned his hands in the sterilizer.

“I’m a genius,” Dr. Dr. Angelo repeated, more sure now than before. He made his way to his desk and mapped out which components he would need to replace. The good news was that the prototype was almost perfectly conceived the first time, the bad news was that it would need to be rebuilt from scratch using new, more expensive materials. This was a bad sign since the last prototype had been built using 24-karat gold, platinum and diamond-encrusted rubies along the side.

“I’m a genius.” Dr. Dr. Angelo said, more sure now than ever. This machine, if used and powered properly, would work. Finally.

He called out to an underling to get his funding sources online. He dreaded asking for more money, especially since they had thought the previous machine was far more expensive than it should have been. However, he was sure the committee would approve the request as he had finally figured out the reason the machine had never worked before. It wasn’t that it did not have enough power — okay, it was, but that wasn’t the main reason it failed. It wasn’t that it was not made of sufficiently strong materials — okay, that too, but that would be fixed shortly. No, it was because they had been using the machine incorrectly. No Machine could look into the past. Such an idea was B-rate, hack science fiction at best. No, the machine had to be aimed forward! The past had already occurred; the only thing one could see was the future.

This was the secret that had eluded him for the past ten years. It was this way that he could make his mark on the world and win a Nobel Prize in one blow.

“I bet that would get me a lot of tail,” Dr. Dr. Angelo muttered as the underling walked by.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing, Martha Jule, I’m just thinking out loud.”

“Are you– are you making rude hand gestures at me??” Martha Jule stared, dumbfounded.

“I told you I was thinking out loud. That was sign language, my dear, sign language.”

“That wasn’t sign language, that was the shocker… Are you drawing a diagram of a vagina now??”

“No, it’s a Georgia O’Keeffe.”

“Ugh, your meeting is ready now,” and Martha Jule left, unsure of what to make of the situation.

Dr. Dr. Angelo walked into his meeting room and sat at the head of the table as the holograms of the various members of the committee appeared, one by one.

“Why am I only seeing the back of someone’s head? Dr. Angelo, are you sitting at the head of the table again??” said the loud, gruff voice of Dr. Linus Q. Ball, the head of the committee.

The committee members looked bored. All except for one particularly dignified looking man who was staring intently at another hologram’s breasts as if trying to find his magic eye.

There was a reason the committee looked bored. His contracts were already stretched to their peak as Dr. Dr. Angelo hadn’t had a breakthrough in years. His associates were growing restless and his underlings’ adulation was beginning to fade, yet everyone had held their tongue as they knew they could not rush genius.

“I’m a genius,” Dr. Dr. Angelo stated firmly.

“Well, rush on with it, we haven’t got all day,” Dr. Linus Q. Ball said.

“Single Dr. Ball,” Dr. Dr. Angelo began, “I have solved the logical problem that made the last attempt a failure. I am sure of it this time. I believe that as soon as a new machine is built, we will be able to use the chronoscope to view… the future.”

“The future? How can you be so sure?”

“I had another breakthrough while urinating.” The committee murmured sentiments of approval. “I am so sure, I’d be willing to bet the rest of the budget on the Google 49ers!” The committee murmured sentiments of being impressed.

“Dr. Angelo, you said you were sure last time. You said you were so sure, we could spend the rest of the money gold-plating the blasted machine and gambling it away!” Dr. Ball exclaimed.

“I didn’t expect you to actually do it! It was a metaphor!” Dr. Dr. Angelo responded, peeved.
“Actually sir, I was the one that gold plated the machine. But I thought it was a hyperbole, if I had known it was a metaphor, I never would have authorized such an expense,” said the dignified man, without looking away from his colleague’s breasts. His gaze seemed to make everyone uncomfortable but himself. He was well groomed and spoke in a distracted manner, as if he were doing something far more important and couldn’t be bothered to give a damn.

Dr. Dr. Angelo stared, dumbfounded. He was not alone, Dr. Ball nearly shrieked, turning to his colleague: “Anacletus, is this true? Did you really waste 9 billion dollars of the defense budget gold plating a chronoscope??”

“No sir, I believe the challenge was gold plating AND gambling,” the man replied.
Dr. Ball looked furious, Dr. Dr. Angelo stared, then took advantage of the tense moment: “So, can I get the funding, then?”

Briefly startled, Dr. Ball glanced at him and said, “Yes. Sure. We’ll check back in three months” and the connection terminated abruptly.

—————

Eight months later

The committee, various heads of government, and Dr. Dr. Angelo gathered around a giant monitor as the system slowly powered up. This platinum-turbonium chronoscope was laced with adamantium and was slowly gathering two Godzillas worth of power.

Suddenly the room dimmed and the monitor shimmered.

“Remember gentlemen,” Dr. Dr. Angelo stated in a plot-furthering sort of way, “this is a representation of the time that is being observed by the wormhole we have created. The actual portal is represented in the secure room of another facility. Obviously, since we do not know what effect this amount of energy might have on normal humans, all non-Mexicans have been evacuated from that facility.”

“Then it works?” asked one particularly jovial young man.

“Yes, Señor Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, it works. I have checked my figures numerous times.”

“Well, then, what should we see first gentlemen?” asked Dr. Ball, as proud as he’d ever been. “This is going to be an historical event, we should choose to observe something we think is important or beautiful, yet predictable so that we can observe it fully and wholly.”

“We can look to the next inauguration of the republic of Mexico! That way, we can determine if democracy has thrived again and the PAN’s candidate has been elected for the 12th straight time!” Señor Constanzo said, eager.

“That is ridiculous, Guatemala has six times the economy Mexico has, we should observe that!” a man with a ridiculous moustache shouted out.

“How about the next World Series? The curse of the Yankees could finally end this season!”

“Or the Olympics?” shouted another.

“The last ice cap?” soon, the entire room was deep in dispute.

“What is that??” One man suddenly yelled. “Is that a man checking his own prostate?”

“Phew!” Dr. Dr. Angelo said. “I’ve been looking at the near future with this thing for twenty minutes. I ran out of things to see, so I fast-forwarded a month to my regular prostate exam, just to see if I have anything to worry about. Any of you would have done the same.”

The crowd murmured sentiments of approval.

Dr. Ball looked peeved.  “Gentlemen, I gather our organization could have been improved.  Dr. Angelo’s point is well taken.  Very well, we have ten more minutes of power left to run machine and we have paid a hefty sum to even be here.”  Dr. Ball chuckled to himself.  “Señor Constanzo, I believe you stated your preference first.  What scene would you like to witness? Remember, we only have enough power stored to work the machine for ten more minutes.”

    “Yes, then.  Thank you very much.  I would like to see the Mexican presidential inauguration next year in Tijuana.”

Dr. Dr. Angelo looked up the coordinates and exact time in his device.  Then he did some quick mental calculations and manipulated the controls.  The monitor shimmered momentarily.  Then, the image changed to a torch-lit scene of brutal riots.  Tijuana residents were throwing Molotov cocktails through store windows.  There was looting, severe language, beatings, a gang rape of a local TV anchor and— at the center of the scene — an old man kicking a puppy down the street.

    “Ah, I take it we were reelected.  And look: the crowd is excited!  Good, good.  Thank you.  I take it the honorable chancellor will choose next?”  Constanzo said.

“Yes, but this will have to be the final selection, this machine is as revolutionary as it is costly,” Dr. Ball said.

    “Very well then,” the elderly Asian man said.  “I confess, I am curious where civilization will go in the next 50 years.  I will not live to see this; I would be satisfied to witness any part of the world.”

Again, Dr. Dr. Angelo consulted his device to pinpoint where the Earth and solar system would be in 50 years.  Then he maneuvered the controls.  The scene flickered for a moment before the whole monitor went white.  Dr. Dr. Angelo paused, then consulted his device yet again.

    “What happened?”  The elderly man said.

    “Is the machine out of energy?” said another.

Dr. Dr. Angelo moved the controls then calculated a point 25 years into the future and set the controls.  The screen flickered back to a dark scene of a moonlit island in the ocean.

    “In the machine working Dr. Angelo?”  Dr. Ball rushed.

“Everything appears to be working…” Dr. Dr. Angelo bit his lip.  “This next scene is exactly 37.5 years from now.”  The screen shimmered again, but this time a man in his twenties appeared on the screen.

There was a murmur of confusion among the spectators.

For a while nobody said anything, then the man on the screen spoke: “This message is for Dr. Dr. Shimon Kipha Angelo.”  He cleared his throat and spoke forcefully.  “The universe is going to end exactly 38 years, six months and 12 days from your present time.  You must act quickly if you’ll ever have a chance of saving all of existence, because — after the ending of slavery, the freeing of Tibet and the beginning of the Ice Cold War, the future is all but doomed.  You can check how dire it is by realizing that the reason you cannot observe anything past next year… is because there is nothing left.  Oh, and I should add that the cause of the end of the world is simple.  I should say it before you run out of energy and can no longer hear me.  That way, instead of the future that currently exists, perhaps we will be able to cut out much of the hardship we have had to endure because the future version of myself that you all saw didn’t get to the point soon enough so that the machine you’re using became overloaded and never worked again.  Nevertheless, and without further adieu, this is the cause of the end of the world that I am now currently going to tell you.  I emphasize how dire this is and how you and I are the only ones that can do anything to prevent this terrible catastrophe to come about.  Very well.  Let me get on with it and tell you what causes the end of the world…  Existence ends in 38 years because——” and the transmission ended.

There was a murmur of general disarray among the spectators.  Dr. Ball looked blanched, and Señor Constanzo looked like he smelled poo.

Dr. Dr. Angelo turned to his device and pressed a button to connect him with his underlings in the other building.

    “Yes sir?”  They answered.

“Tell me we just taped this.”