12. the fury of the Red Dragon


The fat man wiggled in his seat, those damn first-class airplane seats for people with 72-inch legs but only a 50-inch waist max.  “How the hell are people supposed to get comfortable in these little things” he grumbled.  He almost wished he had his wheelchair back.  He looked out the window to see the snow-covered shoreline, and the glacier covered mountains in the background.

“We will be arriving at Ilulissat Airport in 20 minutes.  Please fasten your seatbelts” the pilot announced over the cabin speakers.

“Yea, like I could” the fat man complained some more.  He looked out the window of the Honda-build private mini-jet, sipped his coffee, and took another bite of his jelly-filled doughnut.

The plane landed, and the fat man wrapped himself in his arctic jacket, pulled the fuzzy-lined blizzard-ready tunnel-hood over his bald head, and walked out of the plane onto the pull-up platform and into the cold.  He quickly scurried across to the main walkway, and into the building.  “No one to greet me?” he grumbled further, as he looked around, trying to find the door to the helipads.  A kind young lady dressed in a typical commercial airline uniform noticed he looked lost and offered him directions.  He found the helipad, found his chopper (the only one of two, total, that was fired up and ready to fly), and climbed in.

“Damn, you got heat in here?”

“Yea, give it a few minutes, but the flight should only take 10-15 minutes max.”

"I’ll be God-damn frozen solid by then" the fat man thought to himself.

They flew out over the bay, over part of the large island covered in an ice-sheet, over a mountain, and down into a small, long but narrow valley tucked away in the wild, forbidding terrain.  At the end of the valley, just a bit up the mountainside, was a magnificent palace built of volcanic rock, steel, and concrete; there the helicopter landed on the helipad in the ice-covered front yard.  He stepped out, back into the cold, and the chopper pilot closed the door behind him.  He turned around, and the chopper pilot took off back into the sky.  “I’m only going to be here 15 or 30 minutes.  Mother f-ker couldn’t wait?”

He looked around.  “And still no one to greet me?”  He made his way to what seemed to be the front door, the grand entrance to the grand palace, and knocked.  He didn’t remember his gloves, and his knuckles hurt in the frigid air, knocking on frozen steel.  Nothing.  He knocked again, harder.  Nothing.  And again, he started pounding, the fire of anger building in his temper, but chill, goosebumps, and shivers creeping up his thighs and under his coat.  Just as he was beating his last knock, the door opened, and he almost lost his balance falling forward.  He still wasn’t fully used to these new bionic legs.  He stumbled forward a bit, a half-step into the building, but no one was there; just an empty, dark hall.  He noticed the light switch on the wall next to the door, flipped on the lights, and stepped in, closing the door behind himself, shutting out the cold wind.  With his hand still on the door handle, he felt and heard a click that seemed like a deadbolt locking.  He didn’t even try to open the door, back into the icy wind.  He walked 100 feet down the empty, white-walled, undecorated, cement floor, cement wall, cement ceiling hall, to the only other door at the other end.  He opened it, to find another hall running perpendicular.  His door was in the center of one long wall.  The other long wall had several doors, all of which were closed.  He stepped into this next hall, and the door closed by itself behind him, and again he heard the deadbolt lock.

He stood there a second, perplexed, but then a door opened, and an old, short, hunchbacked, balding man wearing a black tuxedo, with a round, shiny-topped head and thin gray stringy hair circling around the back from ear to ear hanging down to his shoulders, peered into the hall.  “This way” the man in the tux said.  His lack of emotion almost borderlined on the hint of disdain; or was he just a grumpy old man who hated his job?

The fat bald man followed the short hunchbacked round-headed bald man though the door, and though a series of hallways with a plethora of doors.  Nothing was said.  Finally, the escort in the tux opened a door and stepped aside, and the fat bald man looked in to see a small waiting room with some (still too God damn narrow) arm-chairs and a coffee table covered in old magazines for old retired women.

The lead-manager of division-one of the science arm of the project was sitting in a chair, legs and arms crossed, with a look of patient impatience on his face, a hint of disdain for the situation in his body language.  “There you are” the science manager said to the fat man.

“Here I am.” the fat man said, bouncing the disdain in his voice right back.  He looked at his watch.  “Right on time.”  He switched up his attitude, back to friendly “you’ve been here a while?”

“You were supposed to be here 2 hours ago.”

“Hmm.  That’s not the message I received.  I’m here now, and I need to talk to you briefly about some … issues … we have with the further development of the program.”

“I heard some rumors … that’s another reason I’m a bit miffed right now, besides your insistence I get dragged out here to the middle of nowhere, left in what feels like a max-security prison cell for several hours, when I told you I’m a scientist, not a politician.  I don’t want to get caught up in your bids…  You told me we were helping all the vets, first…  I see you helped yourself to the tech, but I guess I expected that when I met you…”

“I’m sorry, but when you hear … kids are involved …”

“Kids?  Kids are still growing; their nervous system still fine-tuning itself.  I explained all that from the beginning!”

“I know, but we thought we could work around the challenges” the fat man replied.  He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a couple of Twinkies.  He offered one to the scientist “Twinkie?”

The scientist looked at him sideways, with deep skepticism in his squinting eyes.  “No.”

The fat man glanced around the room again, futilely looking for a place he could sit.  His back hurt; it wasn’t used to bearing his weight while standing.  He opened the cellophane wrapper and took a bite, and some cream ejected out onto his jacket belly.  He wiped it off with his finger and licked his finger clean.

The atmosphere in the small waiting room become awkward, as the two endured the passing time — the slowly passing time.  Only five long, quiet minutes passed, before the scientist spoke up again “so what are you doing now for kids?  And what is the problem?”

“Well, we can’t talk about that right now; it’s all proprietary and top-secret … on a "need to know" basis.  If we can persuade you into assisting us with the technical details, we can show you first hand, and maybe you can help us overcome the hurdles we’ve encountered?”

“Hurdles?  How big are these "hurdles"?  What aren’t you telling me?  Are these kids in danger?  Are you gambling with their lives?”  The disdain in his voice was growing quite more obvious.

“Calm down my friend; I can’t reveal any more details; we just need your help…”

“If you can’t … won’t tell me the kids are out of danger, I must assume you put them in danger” the scientist said with a growing look of disgust on his face.  "Why do funding streams always come from the evil sides of humanity?" he asked himself.  Capitalism and Medicine go together like hockey players and ballerina dancers, he though; "For-profit medicine is a sickness" was the motto posted on his sister’s desk.  He thought of the words to a song … "Money is the root of all evil today … but if you ask for a rise it’s no surprise they’re givin’ none away"

“The kids are fine.  We just want to make sure they remain healthy, and we need your expertise.”

The door opened.  The old hunchbacked man in the tux stood there and said “Ms. Draghôné will see you now.  Come with me.”  The fat bald man and the scientist followed him back into the labyrinth of hallways and doors and more hallways and doors.  The scientist wondered to himself what might lie behind the other doors?  Boobey traps?  This surely seemed like a maze built for protection.  All the walls were solid; the doors steel.  He thought of the passages in the Great Pyramid; and then thought about those old "Indiana Jones" movies, and their dramatic secret passages with deadly nightmares springing out of the dark shadows around every blind turn.  He realized he had lost track of the path through the maze — his wandering thoughts frustrated by the long wait and the worry for children distracted him just enough…

They came to a hall with only one other door at the very end, walked 100 feet down to it, and the man in the tux opened it and walked in, signaling the others to follow.  They entered a giant dome room with a giant pool of slightly-steamy water in the middle.  The fat bald man noticed the air was far warmer and more humid than anywhere else he had been since his plane landed earlier that day.  Everything was white.  Plain white, just like all the halls in the labyrinth they had walked through.  A dainty younger but mature Chinese looking woman, thin and 5′2″ tall, sat in a large chair wearing a one-piece red swimsuit, high on a platform at the end of the pool, on the far-side of the dome.  "Finally a real chair made for full-sized people, and that undersized Lilliputian is sitting in it" the fat man thought to himself with greedy jealousy.

“That will be all, Alvin.  Leave us” the woman on the high platform said.  The man in the tux left and closed the door.  Both the fat man and the scientist heard the dead-bolt lock, as the woman continued “well, well, well, Barry, you’ve resurfaced.  And with legs!  Benefiting off my project, I see.”

The fat man walked across the tile-covered concrete pool desk towards the water 100 feet away, with the scientist following a step behind him.  The fat man, Barry, replied “of course I have legs now; why do you think I put my life into this project?  But you need to remember this is our project; you are a funder, and yes we are grateful, but…”

“This is MY project!  **I** came up with the plans and identified and coordinated the key players!  You are nothing but a pawn.  And I heard you LOST a GVT7800.”

Barry the fat man stood there a split-moment in silence, then replied “that was for another funder.  You are not the only one.  This project is mine, I control it, and …”

“The Crown Prince is my pawn, too.  This is MY project.  YOU have failed in your duty to manage it properly” she said, sitting up from her reclined position in her chair.

“We had everything prepared to ship the unit to the Crown Prince, the inspectors were all verified to be out of state.  Someone with money and influence unexpectedly brought some African car into the port, and that drew in an emergency surprise inspection.  We had no control…”

“That’s the fucking point!  You lost control!  Just like you lost control by moving the project to the Moon!”

“What else were we supposed to do?  Where were we supposed to go?  Between the N.S.A., the Chinese, the Brits, the French, and the Aussies, every square inch of the Earth is being watched these days.  Not to mention the Russians, India, and Iran.  If word gets out before we finish, that’s it.  Now, of course, we have the new spot deep under the mountains of Argentina…”

“And the project integrity?  Why are there problems with the bionic tech?  Why haven’t you addressed that yet?  Why are there delays?  Because they are on the Moon!?!?”

“As you see here, we have our lead man ready to address those issues, and full operation is just around the corner with more children lined up, and…”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses.  **I** got you your "lead man".  YOU were responsible, YOU let the project quality slip, and YOUR vehicle was spotted and broke security on its way there.”

“The new A.I. control system unexpectedly crossed through the line-of-sight to the Moon’s face as it navigated to the far side.  It shouldn’t have done that, and we gave it further training, almost fully retrained it…”

“You should have done that from the start!” she screamed, leaning forward in her chair.

Barry stood there, silent.  Five long, eternal, enduring seconds passed as he and Ms. Draghôné stared at each other, with the scientist standing quietly behind Barry, oh so glad he wasn’t involved in this dispute, wishing he was back in Seattle.

“And I heard you had a security breach during your last high-level briefing” the woman said calmly, regaining some composure.

Barry the fat man again stood in silence for a moment, as he mentally processed this last statement from Ms. Draghôné.  How did she know?  Only his five-member inner circle knew details about that incident.  A mole in his circle?  “She was just a 2-cent whore from the ghetto.  Nothing to worry about.  She ran, and never contacted the cops.  She killed a couple of our guys, so she’s not about to rat on herself.  She disappeared off the radar, so we …”

“THAT WOMAN IS MY WORST ENEMY AND MY NEMESIS!” Ms. Draghôné retorted as she jumped up and walked to the end of the diving board overlooking the deep end of the pool, screaming her words at the top of her lungs through clenched teeth as she proceeded down the board.

Barry the fat man was speechless.  He just stood there, mouth wide open.

The woman slowly sat back in her chair and reclined.  Another 10 hellish seconds passed, as she glared directly into the fat man’s eyes from across the room.

“You have failed me for the last time” Ms. Draghôné said to Barry.  She pressed a button on her chair’s arm and spoke “Elvin, release Jennifer.”

Not ten feet from where Barry the fat man and the scientist stood, a 15-foot circular hole in the floor appeared, as the tile-covered surface dropped down.  A few seconds later, another matching-sized section of floor with black tiles rose up from the hidden depths below to refill the hole.  In the middle of the black circle was a 20-foot green anaconda.

The snake’s head rose from the ground and looked at Barry the fat man.  It only took 3 seconds for the snake to strike from the spot where it sat, and it wrapped itself around Barry three times, from his feet to his neck.  The snake was hungry; they had not fed it in two months.

Barry screamed.  He struggled to free an arm, to no avail.  He fell to the ground.  He remembered the power in his new bionic legs.  He tried to use them to overcome the snake’s tail wrapped around his ankles, but anytime he got one leg loose, the other would get wrapped.  He wished, irrelevantly, that he had opted for the military features; too late.

The scientist ran back toward the door, horrified, but it was locked.  He stood there watching, as Barry the fat man screamed some more and struggled.

Barry felt the rest of the Twinkies in his inner coat pocket squish, and he could feel the cream ooze onto his shirt underneath and the growing pressure pushed it up to his neckline, as the snake slowly tightened its grip around him.  He managed to get an arm free, and tried to pull the snake’s head off his neck, but the snake bit his hand.  They rolled on the tile for a few more seconds, then rolled into the pool.

The scientist heard the hissing/whining/screaming sound of the snake as it entered the water; Barry continued screaming, but with even more terror in his ventilation.  His eyes began to bulge, and he lost his voice, as his lungs began to collapse, devoid of any further air, as the snake squeezed him tighter.  His head, and the head of the snake dropped below the water line.

The snake released its hold on Barry, as the 198°F geothermal hot-spring water in the pool killed it, and Barry reflexively took his final breath into his lungs — of hot-spring water.  The uncoupled pair sank to the bottom of the pool, twitching a bit for a few moments until they became still, as Ms. Draghôné watched from her chair, smiling.

The scientist didn’t move.  Didn’t say a word.  He stared at the pool, aghast, shocked, terrorized.  Ms. Draghôné turned her head to address him.

“Well, it looks like you’re in charge of cleaning up the problems on the Moon.  You head out next week.  You’re staying here until then.”  Ms. Draghôné pressed the button on her chair’s arm and spoke “Alvin, come escort our guest Mr. Boch to his chambers.  Feed him well.”

She looked back at the scientist.  “We’re having snake kabobs tonight, Otto” she said, smiling, as he wondered to himself how much human flesh might be on those wooden stakes…