Better Judgment:
The Dr. Wily Story

By Hadrian (Hardman) Howell

Chapter 15

199X

“I hope this works,” I said.

“Would you relax, Albert? I've tested this thing a dozen times,” Isaac said.

The microwave hummed to life and I gave him a glare. “Not what I was referring to, you ridiculous human being.”

He smiled. “What?” he said innocently.

“I have reservations about your experiment, is all.”

“Oh would you get off me about that?” Isaac grouched. “Look, just because I didn't let you double check my math or tighten the bolts doesn't mean it won't work.” The microwave beeped and he removed his previously frozen burrito.

“Isaac, teleportation is a tricky thing. I mean, first of all, it's hugely complicated and probably too big a job for today's processors to actually handle, and secondly... oh yeah, it's IMPOSSIBLE.”

“Is not,” he said through a mouthful of food.

“Come on! This is retarded! Your whole contract is riding on this-”

“Which is why I know it'll work,” he sighed. “Come on, Albert, I'm not a total moron.”

Isaac may not have been a total moron, but this was still pretty stupid, in my opinion. After chatting with Colonel Hathaway, Tom and I had secured a small laboratory for ourselves, as well as a moderate amount of clearance to know what Isaac had been up to all this time.

Isaac's 'bio upgrade' project had been a bit of a red herring. While he was still excited about the idea, he'd actually been teamed up with a small team of physicists to work on the idea of teleportation. The instantaneous transportation of an object from one location to another had some rather staggering implications, both militarily speaking and non, so I wasn't surprised to see such a project in the works, but Isaac's inclusion on the team was more of a mystery to me.

It turns out that Isaac's background in bioengineering had been helpful in advancing the standards and practices for attempting to teleport biological material. While breaking down and reassembling static, nonliving objects was pretty straightforward (comparatively speaking), transporting biological material had to take thousands of additional factors into account, and the average physicist couldn't even begin to think about them.

Of course, I still maintained that such a thing was pretty much impossible on any level. It was a nice idea, but I knew enough about physics and engineering to understand that the amount of energy and precision required for such a thing would be astronomical, and probably not very easily accomplished with contemporary technology. Maybe in ten, twenty years, it would be more likely, but today? I had my doubts, needless to say.

Which is why Isaac was bringing me to the first field test of the technology. Firstly, he wanted to show off, and secondly, he was actually the only person I knew who preferred my company. Tom liked everyone's company, in fairness, but recent events had made him a bit more distant and a bit less focused. He was spending an awful lot of time alone in the garage we had rented instead of our government-supplied lab space here on the Ackridge Air Force Base near downtown Monsteropolis. This suited me fine, because the line between credit and actual work was starting to blur a little too much, and the more solo work I did for the military, the more credit I received, like I actually deserved.

Won't lie. I was feeling a bit bitter.

Isaac got me a seat in the observation booth with a few other people who were much, much more self important than me before leaving to get down and make ready for the test. There was a large window looking down into a room with two raised platforms, with control panels attached to each platform. I held no illusions about the idea that something would be teleporting from one platform to another, or at least that such was the intention. I still had my doubts.

My mind was working on four different things when he sat down next to me, and I almost didn't notice him.

“What are you doing here, Al?” Alfred Gibbs asked me with a smile on his face.

“I could ask you the same question,” I managed past a mild surprise.

He smiled even wider. “I have connections, Al. You know that better than anyone. I'm under orders to keep an eye on the boss's son.”

“Julius didn't strike me as the caring father type.”

“Oh, he's not,” Gibbs admitted with a shrug, lowering his voice as other people began to fill the room. “I see you found a work-around for his domination play.”

“Such as it is.”

“Good for you,” Gibbs grinned. “Just between you and I? He's a little frustrated that he's hit so many roadblocks to screw you over.”

“Maybe it'll give him that fatal heart attack he so desperately needs,” I snarked, getting a laugh from Gibbs.

“I missed you, Al,” he smiled, “I really did.” He looked out the glass and then back at me. “So do you think this'll work?”

I shrugged. “I doubt it, honestly, but even if it works, it'll only be a feeble first step. The military brass isn't going to like it until they can drop a battalion on a warlord's doorstep.”

“Probably,” Gibbs sighed. “But this first step probably won't be that feeble.”

“Oh please, they're going to move a box ten whole feet. I could do that with my legs and a lot less energy.”

“Admittedly true, but I think this show might just surprise you.”

The tone of his voice made me focus back down on the room. My mind raced with a million possibilities, why he might be so interested in this particular event, but I also realized that whatever Gibbs was planning was probably already in motion.

I should have left, right then, and found Isaac. I should have raised an alarm or stopped the test somehow. Even the vague smell of Julius Kintobor being anywhere NEAR the Air Base should have caused a long, boring, uneventful lock down during which I could have gotten a lot of work done. I should have DONE something, and that thought would plague me for decades to come.

I should have done something.

Instead, I stood there and watched as the demonstration began. The physicists manned the platforms as Isaac stepped to the front and produced a microphone from a pocket.

“This thing on?” He asked, wincing at the momentary audio screech of the activated microphone. “I'll take that as a yes...” He was the one giving the speech probably more because he had a personality unlike the mousy, shadows of humanity behind him, than any other real reason. “Well, hello there gentlemen. And ladies, if there are any. It's not easy to tell from down here, heh...” His attempt at humor was met with a stunning silence.

He regrouped and got back on track. “Today, we'll be showing you the remarkable strides we've taken in the transportation industry, namely the instantaneous transportation of an object from one location to another. Teleportation, in the simplest terms.”

There was a general murmur that always happens when someone says something crazy to a crowd of powerful people. Isaac grinned, his mustache twitching with his lips. “Behold!” I said in a hammy manner, gesturing to his microphone, “Now, I'm going to put this on one pad, and I'll pick it up on the other.”

He set the microphone down on the left pad and stepped back, now standing between the two platforms. The physicists on the left hit a sequence of buttons and the physicists on the right seemed to do something as well. There was a burst of light that made me look away, and when my eyes had adjusted to the normal light again, Isaac was picking up his microphone nonchalantly from the right pad. The murmur got louder.

“You'll notice,” he said with a grin, “that there was no noise over the speakers. Instantly, the microphone moved from one point in space and time to another, easy as you please, totally undisturbed. This is, of course, a fine first step.”

Now, Isaac himself stepped up onto the right pad. “The system works like a package system. From one pad, you can select a receiving pad, and the receiving pad can choose to accept or deny the process. If there's a denial, nothing happens, but if the parcel is accepted, it is there mere seconds later.”

Now he swept his arm out theatrically. “This is of course all well and good if you want to put FedEx or UPS out of business, but what about Southwest Airlines?”

“There's no way,” I hissed. “He couldn't have this ready for living people. Not yet...”

Gibbs nudged me, “Watch this.”

I couldn't have known what was about to happen. How could I?

“Take me home, Dr. Cooper.”

One of the physicists tapped the buttons, and there was another burst of light. This one, however, was different, and there was a terrifying scream that may or may not have been human. The room erupted into activity as gawking faces fought to see through the glass. Isaac was nowhere to be seen.

“Where the hell is he?” I shouted over the shock and alarm of the room, rounding on Gibbs. His maddening smile was still firmly on his face.

“If my calculations are correct?” Gibbs said mockingly, “I have no idea, Al. I'm just here to make sure things go smoothly.”

“Why you-” Someone shoved me aside, and I lost my balance and fell, and when I got back to my feet, Gibbs was nowhere to be seen.

I got out of the room and looked around for Gibbs, but he had vanished without a trace. Back in the test room, panic was turning fear into a raging monster that was surely going to destroy teleportation as a project, probably forever. My mind was reeling, trying to figure out what I had just witnessed. Did Julius Kintobor send Alfred Gibbs to sabotage the demonstration and make his son kill himself? Did even that man have the stomach for it?

It was in a haze that I made my way through the base, sneaking into an arms locker and acquiring a Beretta M9. I was aware of gun safety, as there had been some paperwork relating to it after I'd been granted clearance on the base, and I had visited the shooting range once before and knew what I was doing. In my innocence, I only had a single clip of ammunition for it when I left, the weapon stowed in my lab coat,

I wasn't entirely sure what I was about to do.

20XX

I knew exactly what I was doing when I cut the power to Mr. X's bunker. The Mega Man Killers weren't about to be bothered by a lack of light, and the MK 6.1 Combat Pod was more than capable of night vision filters or just illuminating the area if I needed to. When the lights went down, the armed resistance and bodyguards we were facing falter and started to fall to the Mega Man Killers even faster.

The problem was that this place had NO sense to its layout. I mean, don't get me wrong, I know a good labyrinth when I see one, I've made quite a few in my time to slow down certain blue pests, but this place... It was almost like it was designed by a man with no concept of what people need. It was ALL labyrinth, there was no living space for all of these... well they were dead bodyguards now, but still. There hadn't been a kitchen yet, and judging by the Combat Pod's structural scans, there wasn't one. Or a cafeteria or anything you'd expect from a base this size.

It was a little unnerving.

“These guys do NOT give up!” Ballade shouted as another squadron of heavily armed soldiers came at us from a side hallway.

“You'd think they would be loathe to attack us after all of their friends we've killed,” Punk commented as he shifted into his 'wheel of death' mode and crashed into the newcomers, scattering them in several directions.

“People like this don't HAVE friends,” I said offhandedly, maneuvering the Combat Pod back and away. I still hadn't de-cloaked the Pod. Why should I? The Mega Man Killers were handling things quite well. Forte had used his Gospel Booster, merging with his robo-dog sidekick and was in a different part of the base entirely, causing his own brand of havoc. The Genesis Team, mismatched and strange as they were, were holding the hangar we'd entered through to make sure nothing escaped.

I un-muted Forte's transmissions to hear him still laughing hysterically. Obviously things were still going well. I re-muted him and returned to the Combat Pod's virtual map as Dark Man assaulted the few remaining soldiers who were trying to fight back with his barriers. I'd been trying to isolate a few areas that looked like likely places for Mr. X to hide, and the last few I had thought looked good had turned out to be dry holes. With the shock value of my overall global strike now fading after an hour or so after the initial strike, I was starting to receive reports of concentrated resistance from my other teams, which gave me a time crunch I was not at all appreciative of.

Mr. X had seen this coming. He'd been getting ready for this probably five minutes after his first assassin had failed to report in. All that was left at this point was grinding down his defenses and trying to think like him enough to determine where he was hiding.

I zoomed in on a section of the base I had assumed was storage, but now that I looked closer, something about the layout was familiar. It was a large room with eight smaller rooms in close proximity, with no visible means of getting into or out of those other rooms. A quick power reading confirmed my suspicions.

That bastard had stolen my signature trick!

“Forte!” I barked into the channel, “I need you to go down two floors and head east. Mr. X has a Boss Gate set up, and we'll need to clear it out to get to him.”

“Why me? Where are you guys?”

“We'll be there as soon as we can,” I assured him, “but you're much closer. It'll be the Strongest Robot Tournament contenders, I'm sure of it. Go show them who's stronger.”

“Okay, that sounds like a plan,” I heard him say with a smile before the transmission cut out. Forte's purple representation dot on my mini map began streaking toward the designated rooms.

“All right, boys,” I said to the closer Mega Man Killers, “we have a target now. Let's get moving.”

“Will this be like the last four targets?” Ballade commented.

“Shut up,” Punk admonished him, “we're running out of places to look.”

“We'll find him pretty soon, I'd think” Enker said brightly. “Besides, at least there's NO chance we run into any real challenge down here.”

“Yeah, that makes this boring,” Punk said slowly. “You have a skewed idea of what we're built for.”

“Personally, I like living,” Ballade shrugged.

“I have a preference that I stay functional for long periods of time,” Doc Robot put in as the group began to move.

“We all do,” Enker nodded.

“Cut the chatter,” I said, shifting uncomfortably in my pod. “Get this done, boys. I've been waiting more than 40 years for this.” A flashing light drew my attention in the Pod, and I killed all outside audio communication before I hit the button. “Hello, Tom.”

“Wily,” he almost seemed to spit over the line. He had stopped referring to me as Albert a long time ago.

“Is this going to be a long conversation,” I asked offhandedly. “It's just I'm in the middle of something right now and-”

“How long, Wily? How long has this been going on?”

I thought about that for a moment. “You're going to have to be more specific, Tom. How long has what part of this been going on?”

“You've been funded by terrorists? Fundamentalists? Secret cabals of powerful dictators?”

“What, this surprises you? Didn't you ever stop to think who might actually be supplying the cash for a mad scientist bent on world domination? There aren't a lot of investment bankers that go for that sort of thing. Y'know, publicly.”

“This isn't funny, Wily,” Tom snapped at me.

“Actually, it's a little funny. I mean, really. When you stop and think about it.” I grinned.

Tom was in no mood for my levity. “How long?”

I laughed. “God, Tom, it's been a long time. Remember when Isaac died?”

“Since then?”

“Well, since not very long after.”

“When-”

“Yes,” I cut him off coldly. “Ever since I got blackballed out of the University. Ever since you distanced yourself publicly from me. Ever since everything we had worked for suddenly became YOURS, and I was left out in the cold.”

“I never-”

“YES YOU DID,” I found myself shouting, loudly enough that even in my muted pod, Dark Man's head turned. “If you ever man up and do ANYTHING with your life, you should at least own up to your part in this, you FAT BASTARD! I had NOTHING LEFT, and you? You had a family, that you BUILT to be perfect, after your drove the ONE who wasn't perfect out! You had all of the friends, all of the fame, all of the fortune, and I. Had. NOTHING! I built a criminal empire known the world over FROM SCRATCH, and it never ONCE occurred to you that I might have had HELP? You're just as guilty in all of this as they are, Dr. Light,” I sneered into the microphone, “and I have been denied my rightful place in the world for YEARS! When these psychopathic, overzealous inbred sons of whores told me what they were planning, I was furious, and not because we're secretly friends or out of some sentimentality, it was because I haven't BROKEN you yet. I haven't squeezed every ounce of dignity from your spine and drained you of your will to live, just like YOU did to ME. NO ONE will take that away from me! It's my right to take you down, and when I do, everyone will see that you're just as bad as I am now! Just as terrifying as YOU MADE me. Just as awful and unfit for this world as everyone thinks I am! Remember this all the way to your dejected, lonely GRAVE, you son of a bitch: THIS, and everything that came before, and everything to come, is on YOUR head, and YOURS ALONE!”