Of Peeps: Revisited: 2

   “You’re kidding,” Wolfe went pale.
   “Not that I’m good at recognizing voices, but I heard ‘mechanized revolution’ while he was muttering. Then he started singing.” Radar was still shaking. “He couldn’t have survived could he?”
   “I doubt it. If the blade in his chest didn’t get him, then James cremating him would. I’ve gotta see this.” Wolfe headed downstairs, Radar following. Almost unconsciously, Wolfe formed a dagger of ice in his hand.
   They reached the door to the lab. Sure enough, there was a voice coming from within. Wolfe listened carefully...
   “La donna è mobile, Qual piuma al vento, Muta d'accento — e di pensiero...” Wolfe raised an eyebrow.
   “Why’s he singing Rigoletto?” Wolfe asked. Radar shrugged.
   “What’s a Rigoletto?”
   “An opera. That’s a famous piece he’s singing.” Wolfe pushed the door open a hair.
   A rather portly man was inside, waltzing with someone. As he turned Wolfe saw that the person was actually an old drone guard, its head flopping comically. Clearly it had been deactivated.
   Radar looked through the crack, too. He noticed something on the man’s shaven head and elbowed Wolfe.
   “He’s got a scar on his scalp. Could be from a surgery.” As he spoke, Radar noticed a broken jar on the ground, a pool of yellowish liquid and discarded electrodes accompanying it.
   “Let’s get out of here,” Wolfe said. “Come on.” Radar followed him out.
~~~
6 months earlier
   Gene Farley woke up on the day of the tournament’s final round at about three in the afternoon. He’d have slept longer but he fell off the couch.
   Rubbing his head, he sat up on the greasy linoleum. His project from earlier in the day had been cleared off, leaving his tools scattered all around the work bench. He frowned.
   “They could at least put them back,” he muttered. Farley took his work very seriously. He had to, or else his business partner, van Curen, would inject him with something nefarious while he slept (which he did a lot).
   A lot was riding on Farley’s skills as a mechanic. Van Curen had visited Farley in jail about a year ago with an offer. He would bail Farley out of jail if he agreed to work for him. Farley couldn’t refuse.
   Now he was here, welding combat additions onto wounded fighters. Van Curen had Farley watch all the fights with great concentration. Apart from being a mechanic, Farley was very good at spotting the very best physical attributes of a person. From this he could decide what parts of the body to enhance. If a fighter’s best attribute was speed, Farley would further enhance that. His philosophy was to improve what was already good and leave alone whatever deficiencies were present.
   Farley stood up, scratching his ample stomach, and entered the main laboratory. He expected to find van Curen in there, injecting muscle growth stimulants or something. But the lab was empty. No fighters. No van Curen. Just a jar and a note on the center table. Farley walked slowly over to the table.
   It was eerily quiet. There weren’t even any guards posted outside van Curen’s room. That more than anything frightened Farley. He picked up the note and read the envelope.
   “My friend, If I do not return by next morning, assume I am dead and open this. You will continue our work. Alexander van Curen.” Farley stared at the envelope. Then his eyes roved over to the jar.
   A small chunk of something was suspended in yellow liquid, electrodes attached to its surface. He looked closer for a few seconds then recoiled from disgust. It was part of a brain, pulsing gently with the electrodes.
   “Bleh!” He dropped the note on the table. He turned around to avoid looking at the pulsing mass. Now facing the counter, he saw a folder labeled “Experiments.” Curious, Farley opened it.
   A stack of papers looked up at him. The top eleven were the fighters from the tournament. Below that were a few more. One described the process of making the pathogen for evaporating blood and how it did it. One paper seemed to be more like a diary entry than an experiment.
   Dated one month before he sprung Farley from jail, the paper described an operation to remove all non-essential right-brain tissue from van Curen’s head and have it preserved. “I believe that the procedure will allow me to focus on my work pragmatically without being distracted by artistic tendencies.”
   Farley was beginning to see just how much of a nut van Curen really was. Not that Farley wasn’t a little strange in the head, too. You had to be just the right kind of twisted to weld stuff onto human bodies.
   Having nothing to do but wait, Farley went back to his office.
   Could you call it an office? Maybe an annex, or a niche. No, too big for a niche. Dwelling? Cave? Darkened lair? His train of thought liked to derail at times.
   Regardless, Farley went back to whatever it was and laid down for yet another snooze.
~~~
   Farley woke up unusually early the next morning, almost jumping off his couch. Though this could have been because one of his various tools on his belt had shifted while he slept and poked him rather startlingly in the rump.
   Whatever the case, he got up and entered the lab. His stomach lurched to see the two guards back at their posts.
   “Scared me there, guys,” he said. No reply. “Not morning drones, eh?” Still nothing. Farley walked over to them, intending to enter the door to van Curen’s room. Before he got within six feet, they moved together, blocking the door.
   “Oh come on. I want to see if he’s back,” Farley said. One guard pointed to the note on the examination table. Farley looked at it.
   “If I do not return by next morning, assume I am dead and open this.”
   “So he bought it, huh? Well lets see what this bad boy says.” He opened the envelope with a thumbnail and pulled out the letter.
   His eyes got wider and wider as he read down the paper. He looked at the jar on the table and back at the letter, the coolly written words belying the horror of what van Curen wanted him to do. He spotted a p.s.
   “By the way, the guards in the room should be grabbing you right about...now.” Farley hit the floor as the mechanized guards tackled him. His head hit the ground hard and he blacked out. The next thing he saw was an anesthetic mask being lowered onto his face and he was unconscious again.
~~~
   He awoke with a pounding headache. Or was it splitting? The light wasn’t helping whatever it was. He shielded his eyes and sat up.
   A young man in a smock and mask was looking at him curiously.
   “How do you feel?” he asked.
   Farley cringed. “Like my head’s been cut open.” For some reason this made the man laugh. “What?”
   “Well, uh, you did get your head cut open.” Farley’s eyes went wide.
   “You mean that...you...the letter?” he spluttered.
   “Yes. I took out the non-essential part of your brain and replaced it with Dr. Van Curen’s. Just as he instructed. I’m only a med student but it went smoothly.”
   This did nothing to improve Farley’s mood. “YOU’RE NOT EVEN A REAL DOCTOR!? Agh!” He grabbed his newly shaved head with both hands and lay back down.
   “You’ll want to avoid strong light and sound for some time,” said the young man. He got up and took off the smock. Underneath, Farley saw a guard’s uniform.
   “You’re a guard here?”
      “Yes. All the drone guards have been turned off and I’ve been hired by the company that built this arena to monitor security until they decide something to do with it. I found you with the letter on the table. Given that no one else was around, I decided to do the procedure myself.” With that, he left the room.
   Not two days later, the guard was killed. His body now sat in the security booth, a bottle of beer in his hand and nothing but red powder in his veins. Body dry like a leaf in late October.
   That was how Wolfe and Radar found him six months later.
   “Blech. You think the guy downstairs did this?” Wolfe looked over at Radar. The shorter boy shrugged.
   “Probably. But we don’t want to get involved with this. With any luck we can get back home and we won’t have to bother with this place again.”
   “Yeah. Let’s go.” The pair returned home that night, leaving Farley to his dancing.
   But the procedure hadn’t gone as van Curen had wanted. The guard had misread the letter. Van Curen had only wanted Farley’s creative side removed and replaced with his own. Instead, the guard had removed everything he could without killing Farley in the process. This left Farley with a somewhat diminished IQ and only and artistic side.
   Now drawing eyes and moustaches on all the beakers in the lab, Farley was under the impression that he was Alexander van Curen. And his greatest goal in life was to lead a mechanized revolution. For that he would need the Peeps, which he knew about from security footage.
   To get them he would have to reactivate the drone guards and create even better inventions than before.