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.

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