Space-Age Nazi Hunters.
He'd been talking about it for months. He'd found out the film was "in the making" on the Internet somewhere. Who knew where? The Internet had become the same as everything else: a scattering of useless information and senseless babble. The meaning was lost in it now. Every search-engine first turned up thousands of useless sites with thousands of hits apiece before showing you that one useful site you were looking for on whatever topic you were exploring, that one site that would be helpful. By clicking once on the link, you'd officially double its total number of visits.
Not that it mattered much. Soon, version eight of Mind-Melter would be released. The 'net wasn't used for much except for cyber-sex and porn exchange. Mind-Melter could send brainwaves, actual thoughts across the air in less than seconds to whatever desired target so long as they wore a Mind-Melter receiver. The Internet would be obsolete. Why take the time to type words during cyber-sex when you can merely invent an image, and seconds later, your partner, millions of miles away, will see that image and understand your fantasy fully?
Space-Age Nazi Hunters.
What the hell type of movie would that possibly make?
"Can we go see it, Dad?"
He stood in the doorway leading into the kitchen, talking across the garage to me.
"We'll see, Timmy," I responded, barely even knowing what he'd said. I was working after all, and my concentration went fully into my work.
"But it's going to be a great movie, Dad."
"We'll have to wait and see what's going on when it opens, Tim. I can't make any promises."
"But, Dad, I really want to see it..."
"Tim," I snapped, finally looking up to see him raise his head some, his face hopeful despite my scolding tone. "What did I tell you about bothering me when I'm working?"
He lowered his head, not wanting to look me in the eye as I scolded, his hopeful expression melting away.
"Go clean your room, and tell your sister that you both should be in bed by eight-thirty."
"Okay," he said, mumbling more than talking. I looked down again, eager to put the finishing touches on the contents of the bottle before me. The last bottle. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him still standing there. He had more to say, but he hadn't decided whether or not he wanted to continue just then. After about a half-minute, he sighed and turned, head down, and disappeared around the corner into the kitchen.
It was time to close the door. The kids couldn't see what would go on behind it from then on, and I could trust them in the house without me. Tim was only eight, but his sister Halle was twelve, and she'd handled her brother well over the past two years.
It was Monday, getting on in the evening. The time between when the kids left for school in the morning and when they came home in the afternoon wasn't enough any more; hadn't been for over a year now, but the past several months had been worse. Halle had accepted the change easily enough, but Tim had fought it all the way, disrupting my work whenever he found an excuse, fighting with his sister and often insisting I tuck him in at night, something Halle had been doing for over a month now in my place.
All of that was almost over now, though.
I closed the door, latching the deadbolt I'd recently installed.
The parts had arrived that morning, specifically chosen for this purpose. They were tested and examined in labs for any difficulty foreseeable: Weaknesses in blood vessels; tears or weaknesses in muscle tissue; any excessive build-up of cholesterol; you name it. They arrived in insulated metal cases, which sat in a line on the floor next to the freezer I'd had delivered two weeks ago. I'd plugged it in upon arrival. By now, the interior lining was coated with an inch-thick layer of ice. Icicles hung from the rack inside.
I found the case with the torso inside and lugged it over to the lab table in the middle of the garage. Once there, I popped the locks and lay the torso flat in the center of the table on its back. It wasn't stitched in the front, and the skin there caved in on the hollow space beneath. The organs would all have to be implanted, but it was work I was capable of. I had every manual I could possibly need on the shelves of what was once my workbench but had served instead as a research station for the past two years.
Organs first.
I gathered the cases containing the basic organs (heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, etc.), moved them to the lab table, and got ready to work. Each organ, as well as the limbs, would take the better part, if not more than, two or three hours each.
Hard work.
I remembered seeing "B" movies when I was young in which mad scientist types would simply stitch the arms and legs on with thread, binding the skin on the surface and leaving the various workings beneath untouched. They were all "Frankenstein" rip-offs, and the work that went into putting the bodies together similarly fake, almost a joke compared to the actual experience.
Lasers were the tools of choice here. Technology had advanced in laser usage in leaps and bounds since its initial introduction into the medical world. Now, less than fifty years later, scalpels and sutures were almost never even considered. Incisions and the sealing of such were done with lasers over ninety-five percent of the time. The result was not faster healing injuries, but injuries left with little to no healing at all, as well as drastic drops in surgical scars.
Ideal; from a surgical perspective.
By Monday evening, I had over half of the organs implanted. Exhausted at midnight, I put the half-constructed torso on ice and headed to bed. I dreamt of the funeral. Although I'd dream of her often, that was the last time I was physically with her. Four of us stood in a semi-circle around the casket, dividers having been drawn behind us to separate us from the rest of the people present. Her mother wept quietly, now being the last of their small family after her father passed away from a heart attack a few years back, and Halle stood close to her, gripping her grandmother's hand and burying her face in the folds of the woman's black dress. I held Tim, who looked down at the body in the casket, knowing what had happened but not even close to understanding, tears welling in his eyes. I whispered in his ear that he'd miss her, we'd all miss her, but that everything would be all right. I did so as much to occupy my own mind as to comfort him.
The funeral scene faded away to a week before the accident; the last time we'd been together. It had been so plain, so usual. I'd like to look back and remember that last night as being full of passion, as I'd like to think it would have been had I seen the end coming. She'd been lying in bed next to me, half-asleep, and I'd stirred in the night. I reached out for her, holding loosely to her as I rolled closer, my body half covering hers as I pressed my face into her neck, kissing the skin there. She stirred as well, her arms wrapping around me in trained reaction.
She pulled me closer to her, helping me position myself above her in my half-aware state and spreading her legs, wrapping them around me and using them to pull me closer. As my lips found hers, I reached down with one hand, hooking my thumb under the waistband of my boxers and carefully pulling them down.
Having just awakened, and only half-so at that, I was already erect. I pressed forward blindly, feeling her dampness as I rubbed against her a few times before reaching down again to position myself to enter. In my sleep, I could almost feel her warmth encompassing me as I drove deep inside. Her legs and her arms gripping me tightly, her body tensed around and against mine. I drove forward in slow steady strokes, my eyes closed, feeling her breath expelling heavily against my face.
My hands found their way to her waist and pulled at her nightshirt, drawing it up to her shoulders, giving me access to her breasts, which I fondled and caressed, gently kissing and sucking the skin above them as I ground into her.
After a few minutes of this, her arms and legs contracted tightly around me, then loosened some, then contracted again, doing this several times over the next thirty seconds or so as her breathing grew heavier and her moans louder and closer together. I wondered if she was coming, but in my half-awake state, I wasn't certain. Afterwards, I'd never asked her to know for sure. My body responded as though she had, growing more excited and building to a crescendo. A few seconds later, I emptied into her, coming to a stop on top of her, laying still for a moment as her limbs loosened their grip. She was falling back asleep again already. I raised my head, pressing my lips to hers over the nightshirt, bunched up at her neck, then rolled over to my own side of the bed and dozed.
