Category: Warty Hugeman

A shuddering boom rocked the house.

“Stay here,” Wartimus’ father ordered. “Talk to the dildo.”

“Hello?” he asked again. He prodded the studded purple monstrosity with a tongue depressor.

“WARTIMUS RIESIGMANN. PARADOX PROTOCOL PREVENTS MOST PROGRAMMED INTERACTIONS,” it said.

“What are you?” he asked.

“PARADOX PROTOCOL PREVENTS…”

“OK, enough of that. What can you tell me?”

“VERY LITTLE. IT IS FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY.”

“They are in the house!” his father yelled from the security suite.

“Can you tell me who is attacking us?” Wartimus asked.

“IT MUST BE REDACTED. CONFIRM.”

“Yes. Redact. OK.”

“THEY ARE MEMBERS OF [BEEP]. THEY WORK TO PREVENT PARADOX BY [BEEP] AND SEQUESTERING [BEEP].”

“Do they work for the government or something? Like a secret division of some shadowy department or whatever?”

“NOT YOUR GOVERNMENT.”

“Dad!” he yelled. “They aren’t from the government!”

“Trespassers!” his father exclaimed and started laughing his third scariest laugh. Wartimus felt the guns guarding the inside of the house open up.

“Why did you react to my blood?”

[BEEP]

“Why did you call me ‘Warty Hugeman?’”

[BEEP]

“Why did you destroy those helicopters?”

“I PROTECT [BEEP].”

“Why did the guys upstairs call you an ‘out-time’ object?’”

“PARADOX.”

Wartimus snorted in disgust and walked over to his father. He watched over the older man’s shoulder as the house guns chewed the last of the attackers into wet hunks of meat.

“The, uh, dildo isn’t telling me much,” he said.

“It knows who you are,” his father said. “It reacted to your blood. It called you by a version of your name; ‘Huge Man’ is just our name in English. It’s told us plenty, my boy.”

Professor Riesigmann crossed the laboratory to loom over the dildo. “You are from the future,” he told it.

“PARADOX.”

“My son built you.”

“PARADOX.”

“Stop that,” Wartimus interjected. The dildo beeped dejectedly.

“He must have lost his penis at some point in the future and needed to replace it with you.”

Wartmus clutched his genitals without even realizing he was doing so.

“You are also a weapon,” his father continued. “A very powerful weapon. Somehow you have traveled backward in time. The people outside know you are not from this time and want you. And you being here is a violation of the timeline, the paradox you are so fond of pointing out. This all simple logic, my phallic friend.”

The dildo screeched and began to flash with a bright, purple light.

“LOCAL INCURSION! LOCAL INCURSION! PARADOX THREAT!”

“What are you talking about?” Wartimus demanded.

His father ran to the security screens. “I think I know, son.”

Wartimus joined his father and studied the exterior camera feeds. A ship bristling with guns was hanging over the house.

“LOCAL INCURSION!” the dildo squawked again.

“You mean the giant spaceship hovering over the house?” Wartimus asked sarcastically.

“I’m going to take that damn thing apart if it doesn’t tell us something useful,” his father muttered.

“PARADOX IS INEVITABLE. THE TIMELINE CANNOT BE MAINTAINED. THE TIME INSTITUTE WILL TRAP US IN A RECURSION LOOP.”

“What are you talking about?” Wartimus demanded. “Make sense.”

“YOU ARE THE PREGENITORSHIP OF WHAT/WHO I KNOW AS WARTY HUGEMAN, MY WILLBE/WAS OWNER/OPERATOR. THE TIME INSITUTE IS/WAS/WILL BE HIS ENEMY. THEY WILL COME/ARE HERE FOR ME BECAUSE THEY HOPE HE WILL/HAVE COME FOR ME. I AM OUT OF CONTEXT IN THIS LOCAL FRAME. I HAVE/WILL/DO SHALL PRESENT/ED A PARADOX TO THE LOCAL TIMELINE THAT WILL/HAS CAUSE/D ITS DESTRUCTION.”

“This giving me a headache,” the Professor grumbled.

“TRANS-TEMPORAL GRAMMAR IS VERY DIFFICULT.”

“What is the recursion loop?” Wartimus asked.

“IT IS HOW THE TIME INSTITUTE WILL REPAIR THE TIMELINE. THE TIME FROM THE MOMENT I ARRIVED IN THE LOCAL FRAME UNTIL THEY FINISH THE LOOP WILL BE FOLDED BACK ON ITSELF. ALL OF THIS WILL RECUR INFINITELY BUT OUTSIDE THE TIMELINE.”

“We will be edited out of time, son,” his father explained. “Trapped in a time loop and quarantined. A version of us that none of this happened to will go on.”

“How do we stop it?” Wartimus asked.

“We can’t. We are probably already in it. We’ve probably already had this conversation a billion times. Or maybe only twice.”

“We have to do something, right?”

“Maybe we did something the first time. Maybe we did nothing the first time. Maybe one path or the other causes the loop to close. Maybe the loop closes no matter what.” His father gave a fatalistic shrug and wandered back to the security monitors.

Wartimus snatched up the dildo. “Can you stop the loop from closing?”

“YOUR FATHER IS MOST LIKELY CORRECT, WARTIMUS RIESIGMANN. LOGIC DEMANDS IT.”

“Can you stop it or not?” he demanded, shaking it obscenely as if to force it to answer.

“I CAN DESTROY THE TIME INSTITUTE SHIP. IF I DO SO BEFORE THE LOOP IS CLOSED IT WOULD KEEP US FROM BEING TRAPPED.”

“Then do it. Destroy the ship.”

“THE TIMELINE WILL STILL BE ALTERED. THE POSSIBLE/WAS FUTURE WILL/WILL HAVE/WON’T EXIST/ED.”

“I don’t care. I order you to destroy the ship. I order you.”

“I MUST HAVE A HOST.”

“What do you mean?”

“I MUST HAVE A HOST. I DRAW ON LIFE ENERGIES TO FUNCTION.”

“So draw on mine,” the boy said.

“I MUST HAVE A HOST. I MUST BE INSTALLED.”

Realization dawned on Wartimus. Installation. Host. He became acutely aware of what he was holding.

“I can’t just hold you? Or stick you on my finger or something?”

“I MUST…”

“OK, OK.”

“USE THE DAMAGED ONE.”

“Huh?”

“THE HANDLESS.”

“I… I can’t do that to Simon. I caused this, or will cause this, or have caused or whatever.”

“YOU HAVE YOUR NATURAL PENIS FOR 23 MORE YEARS HENCE FROM THE LOCAL FRAME. YOU ENJOY MANY PEOPLE WITH YOUR PENIS AND EVEN MORE THINGS. HE IS MINDLESS, DEAD. GIVE HIM TO ME.”

“Simon is brain-dead?”

“YES.”

Wartimus sighed heavily. “Dad? I need you to do some, uh, surgery,” he called.

“NO NEED. TAKE US UPSTAIRS.”

*****

Wartimus tried not to look at Simon’s penis as he tugged down his shorts on the front lawn but it was inevitable. His small, pale pink member looked frightened and alone in the crazy light show generated by the Time Institute ship.

“What now?”

“TOUCH MY SOCKET END TO HIS MEMBER.”

Wartimus looked away, but gagged on the noise it made, like a sink disposal unit grinding on a chicken bone.

“STEP BACK.”

Simon rose into the air, arms and legs hanging limp, his new battle penis pulsing with an inner light, thrumming the air with power. As the tension in the air built, even Simon himself began to glow. With a thunderclap, the dildo from out of time shot skyward, dragging Wartimus’ friend behind it.

After that, Wartimus saw nothing but white, pure white, and heard nothing at all.

*****

Wartimus reclined on the roof of his father’s house and watched the stars glitter in the darkness of a moonless night. He had spent the summer making up his own erotic constellations and was languidly masturbating to them. He had spent the summer working in his father’s laboratory and hoped when he went back to school that he would finally meet someone who could be his best friend.

 

THE END

Chapter Four |

His ears ringing, his body bruised and aching, his eyes blurred, Wartimus came to on the lawn of his father’s estate with a ring of burning helicopter wreckage all around him and the broken body of his best friend just out of reach.

“Simon,” he croaked as he rolled over onto his stomach and crawled toward him.

The boy’s eyes and nose and ears were bleeding and Wartimus had to place a hand flat on his chest to tell if he was even breathing. He felt the wet rattling in his lungs and the weak beat of his heart. He shook him gently and said his name. When he rolled him onto his side into the recovery position, he saw that Simon’s right hand was burned right down to the bone, rendered to just a blackened claw that still clutched the purple dildo, the helicopter killer, the out-time object–whatever it was. Wartimus worked it loose with his hand wrapped in the tail of his filthy shirt and tossed it away awkwardly.

Wartimus levered himself off the lawn painfully and looked around. The house was still in a defensive posture, searchlights sweeping the skies and the perimeter of the house. He was still holding his communicator but the display was dead. He tossed it away and bent stiffly, gather up Simon and then staggered toward the house.

Professor Riesigmann was waiting for them both at the rear security bulkhead off the brick patio.

“What did you do?” he demanded angrily.

“Nothing,” Wartimus said, carrying Simon into the house.

“Well, it’s obviously not ‘nothing,’ The house is under attack!”

“Simon is hurt. Can we talk about this downstairs?”

His father waved him away and began to secure the bulkhead. Wartimus took Simon downstairs to his father laboratory and laid him on a table in the surgical suite. His father shouldered him out of the way after he had straightened his friend’s limbs.

“Go scrub up,” his father ordered curtly.

Wartimus pulled off his burned and tattered clothes and dropped them into the hazardous waste bin. He looked at himself in the mirror over the surgical sink. His face was streaked with mud and blood and soot. He had an 8-ball hemorrhage forming in his left eye and there was the blunt end of a piece of metal buried almost to the hilt in the hollow space of his right clavicle. He pried it out and dropped it in the sink. He barely felt it.

“What the hell happened to his hand?” his father demanded behind him. Wartimus ignored him and splashed water on his face and the washed off the fresh blood running down his chest. He disinfected his hands thoroughly and put on surgical gloves.

“You’re bleeding,” his father said. He was bent over Simon, checking his pupil reactions.

“I know,” Wartimus replied. He packed some gauze into the puncture wound and taped a bandage in place.

“Is he going to be OK?” he asked his father while he pulled out a set of surgical scrubs.

“I don’t know,” his father said. “What’s left of the hand will have to come off, obviously, but the more immediate concern is that he has a concussion and might have intracranial bleeding. Bandage the hand while you tell me what’s going on.”

Wartimus filled a rolling tray with supplies while he began: “It wasn’t a meteor that came down. It was some sort of a device.”

“Device? A machine?”

“I guess. I don’t know. It looks like a giant purple plastic dick, Dad.”

“A dick?” the Professor asked, his normally detached composure giving way.

“Like a dildo. Anyway. One of those helicopters met us as the crater and we ran back to the house.”

“Simon’s hand looks like he grabbed an electrical transmission line.”

“I’m getting to that. Simon was carrying the device while we ran back. It did something to him. He changed.”

“Changed?”

“Like spaced-out and then he said it was talking to him.”

“Talking to him? The dildo from outer space was talking to Simon?’

“I know how it sounds.”

There was a rumbling that they both felt through the foundations of the house.

“You finish that hand,” Wartimus’ father ordered as he hurried away.

Wartimus taped off the end of the bandage. He squeezed Simon’s shoulder and followed his father.

He found him at the security monitors. “They tried to explosive breach the front door,” his father said and let out an ugly little laugh. Wartimus could see black-clad and heavily-armed men rushing the front of the house. His father jabbed a button and twin jets of flame engulfed them.

“They aren’t too bright, my boy,” he father said. “I haven’t even had to turn on the autoturrets yet.”

“When we got back to the house, Simon walked out into the backyard and the helicopters surrounded him. The dildo shot them out of the sky.”

“Shot them out of the sky? Like anti-aircraft fire?”

“Electrical arcs. Lightning bolts. That’s what happened to Simon’s hand. That’s the one he was holding it in.”

“It’s a weapon? I thought you said it was a purple dildo.”

“It’s both, I think.”

“Well, I’ve just got to see this,” his father said, finally turning from the security monitors. “Where is it?”

“I left it outside.”

His father moved in close and loomed over him. “Outside? You left it outside?!?”

“I was afraid to touch it.”

“Afraid? Afraid? I’m pretty sure you were a boy when I saw you come out of your mother.”

“Dad…”

“Don’t ‘Dad’ me. Go back outside and get it.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“The armory is open. Draw arms and get to it.”

*****

In light-swallowing black body armor, Wartimus brought up the night-sight scope on his heavily-modified P90 and surveyed the backyard. His father had snorted derisively at the boxy gun, but Wartimus was comfortable with it from the range and had slung a second one for his left hand in case of dual-wield mayhem. The fires set by the helicopters were out and except for the random sweep of the roof-mounted security lights, the backyard was dark. His ears had recovered enough to hear the distant wail of sirens and thwump thwump thwump of another copter. He disabled the roof-lights with his replacement communicator and stepped off the patio, out of the cover of the herb garden wall, and walked carefully toward where Simon had been injured. He was immediately shot twice in the chest.

Wartimus grunted under the twin impacts and jumped back onto the patio. Silent bullets began chewing brick all around him as he rolled up against the wall. The fusillade ceased as quickly and as silently as it had begun. The armor on his chest had held and the rounds had only felt like being lightly punched in the chest twice. His father’s design.

He tapped a few commands into his communicator and the autoturrets on the roof deployed in smoothly. Wartimus flipped the monocle down from his helmet and surveyed the yard again through their sensors. Three hot spots under infrared, two prone, one elevated, maybe in a tree, east woodline. He waited for the turrets to pick up the targets and then sent a few hundred rounds into each, delayed to give him time to clamp his hands over his ears. It still sounded like the sky being ripped open.

“You should have used the turrets first,” his father’s disapproving voice crackled in his ear.

Not rising to the bait, he put the turrets on standby and surveyed the yard again. The sniper team still glowed hot, but so did the rapidly cooling splashes of light all around them.

“How does it feel, killer?” his father whispered. He ignored the assumption that these were the first people he had killed and dialed the volume as low as he could.

He stepped out on the lawn again and moved toward dildo quickly. He could see it easily as he approached, bright under infrared, blood-warm in the now cool night. He pulled a heavy insulated glove over his left hand and snatched it up. Running with it held out from his body, he headed back to the house. A shot rang out and tore up the grass in front of him and he skidded to a halt.

“DO NOT MOVE!” said a voice over a loudspeaker. Wartimus dropped to the ground.

“I SAID DON’T MOVE!”

Wartimus calmly switched over to the turret sensors. Low-light, infrared, millimeter wave, but the turrets weren’t picking anything up, not even movement.

“GIVE US THE OUT-TIME OBJECT!”

“You mean the dildo?” Wartimus yelled.

“GIVE US THE OUT-TIME OBJECT!”

“You mean the big, purple dildo?” Wartimus asked. He held it up and waggled it queasily for emphasis.

“Who are you talking to?” his father asked, no more than a faint whisper.

“There’s someone out here. They took a warning shot at me.”

“There’s nothing on the screens.”

“The turrets aren’t picking them up,” Wartimus whispered.

“Impossible.”

“OK. It’s impossible then.”

“Don’t be facetious, son. Get ready to run when I tell you.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Cover fire pattern. Run straight for the rear security door. Straight at it.”

“Acknowledged.” Wartimus tucked the dildo into a pocket on his vest and shucked off the glove. He rolled over onto his knees and bunched his legs under him, a P90 in each hand.

“Ready?” his father asked faintly.

“Yes.”

The roof turrets started up as soon as he left the ground, all six of them, even the front yard batteries taking a low angle over the peaks of the roof. The yard and woods exploded all around him, bullets everywhere except for a three-foot path that led to the rear door. The loudspeaker said something completely drowned in the storm of bullets. Wartimus opened up with the P90s as well, spraying bullets in a flat arc all on both sides. He felt a bullet hit his right thigh, glancing away with no more force than a bird off a patio door. He dropped the P90s when they were out and leaped over the last couple of yards of lawn to land behind the garden wall. The turrets were still firing, spinning barrels glowing. When they finally whirred to a stop, Wartimus saw the back door swing open. He dived through it and slid across the kitchen floor.

*****

“This thing is just drenched in tachyons,” Professor Riesigmann said as he studied the dildo under the scanner.

“They called it an out-time device,” Wartimus replied. He had re-armed and re-armored after checking on Simon. The stump of the boy’s arm was just a bandaged club. While he was outside, his father had amputated the skeletonized hand. It floated in a specimen jar, the index finger straight out like an accusation. He had no idea how he was going to explain any of this to Simon’s parents.

“It’s definitely not any sort of current technology. It is seething with energy and full of densely packed machinery,” his father said.

“Why does it look like that?”

“See the end here?” his father asked. “It’s an attachment socket. It’s obviously meant to be worn.”

“Worn?”

“As in ‘instead of,’ son. It’s both a replacement penis and some sort of weapons platform.”

“Holy fuck,” Wartimus whispered.

“Not quite, son, but you’re on the right track.”

“Who made it? Who’s supposed to wear it?”

“Did you say that it spoke to Simon?”

“I don’t know. He thought it was, at least. And he said it knew me, whatever that means.”

“It’s time to experiment, my boy. I want you to touch it.” He retracted the fume hood until into the ceiling.

“No way. Did you see what it did to Simon’s hand?”

“I think that was just a defensive reaction. It’s should be perfectly safe in a laboratory environment.” His father grinned at him.

Dubious, and with a look of distaste, Wartimus reach out and touched the dildo from the future. He held his finger there as his father fiddled with dials and looked at readouts.

His father grumbled and walked away. Wartimus took the opportunity to pull his finger away from the slick surface. He rubbed his fingers together and then wiped them off on his shirt making a face. His father laughed.

“It’s self-lubing,” the Professor said cheerfully. “Give me your hand, son.”

He grabbed Wartimus and sank a lancet into the ball of his thumb before he could pull his hand away.

“Don’t be such a baby. It’s sterile,” his father said. He milked a fat drop of blood and let it fall on the socket end of the dildo. Wartimus jerked his hand back and sucked on the tiny wound.

“GREETINGS, WARTY HUGEMAN,” it said in a flat, synthesized voice. When Wartimus said nothing, his father elbowed him lightly in the side.

“Hello?” he finally asked.

“PARADOX,” the dildo from out of time said. “PARADOX. PARADOX.”

 

Chapter Three |

The estate’s proximity alarm began to scream from Wartimus’ communicator. He scooped the space dildo in the bucket and dragged Simon out of the pit. The spotlight on the helicopter followed them.

Under cover of stand trees, Wartimus looked his communicator and disabled the audible alarm. “Back to the house,” he grunted, “Someone is attacking the estate.”

The two boys began to run through the woods together, zig-zagging to elude the helicopter’s questing light. Wartimus estimated they were close to halfway back when the helicopter shut off its searchlight and quietly turned back in the direction of the crater. He and Simon crashed to the ground.

“Are they gone?” Simon gasped as Wartimus checked the communicator again.

“No,” he said in a rough whisper. He began flipping through the security camera feeds. “The far west wall has been explosively breached and there are several large armored vehicles in the front yard.”

“It’s so big,” Simon whispered. He had picked up the dildo from the bucket and was studying it. “Like huge. Why would it be this big? And so heavy?”

“I don’t know,” Wartimus replied absently, typing out a message for his father.

Simon held the dildo up next to Wartimus.

“It’s bigger than your entire forearm!”

The message to his father came back as undeliverable.

Simon dug in his backpack noisily and brought out a flashlight. Carefully shielding the lens with his fingers, he turned it on.

“And there’s some sort of socket on the end. Metal. A metal socket,” he said.

“Simon, there are armed men on the property. It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does,” he said, shaking the dildo at Wartimus. “They are obviously here for this. Why would they be after a dildo? And why did it fall out of space?”

“Simon, we’ve got to get back to the house,” he said. He stood and shrugged out of his backpack. “Leave your pack. We’ve got to travel light. Even the flashlights, Geiger, everything.”

“But…”

“We can come back and get them in the morning.”

Simon nodded and turned off his flashlight. He dropped his backpack beside Wartimus’ and said, “I’m ready.” He held the dildo out to his friend.

“You can carry it.”

“It’s so warm,” Simon said, “And kind of slippery.”

“Simon…”

“I know,” he said morosely, “More running.”

“We’ll just walk the rest of the way. We need to be quiet and keep our eyes peeled.”

As they started off, Simon used the nickname he used so rarely and asked, “Warty? Why do you do think it’s purple?”

“No clue,” Wartimus admitted.

Simon didn’t say anything about how his friend was guiding through the moonless night without flashlights and concentrated on walking quietly. Wartimus dialed the light down on his communicator and silenced it. He tried to resend the message to his father again only for it to fail again. He was looking through the network settings when he realized Simon was no longer behind him. He had to backtrack almost a hundred feet. Simon was giggling in a small clearing as he swung the dildo around, making lightsaber noises.

“Simon,” Wartimus hissed. “We have to get back to the house.”

“It’s a weapon, Warty,” the boy said dreamily. “I can feel it. It’s doing something to me.” He had a two-handed grip on the dildo from outer space and a faraway look on his face. Wartimus could see that Simon’s pupils were fully dilated.

“Give it to me, Simon.”

“It’s a weapon,” he repeated. “Watch.”

Simon pointed the dildo at a nearby tree and twisted the base sharply until there was a muted click. A gout of fire arced out of the tip and hit the tree trunk and stuck, burning with a bright blue flame as it ran down to the ground like a thick fluid.

“Holy fuck!” Wartimus shouted in a hoarse whisper.

“It’s telling me how to use it,” Simon said and laughed. He twisted the base again and tossed the dildo to Wartimus. It writhed in his hands like something alive and he almost dropped it. When he looked closely he saw that dozens of tiny tongues had broken out all over the surface and lapped blindly at the night air like an erotic rash.

“Maybe you better hold on to it,” Wartimus said and tossed it back with a shudder of revulsion. It seemed to slap itself in Simon’s hand.

“It knows you, Warty Hugeman,” Simon said in a distant voice. “It thrills at your touch.”

Wartimus blinked a few times and then turned for the house without bothering to check if Simon was following.

*****

Wartimus crouched at the edge of the forest and lawn. Three helicopters hovered over the house, their spotlights playing over it, not bothering to run silently like the one that had followed them from the crater. Someone on board was shouting over loudspeakers, words that just ended up sounding like the feedback howls of faulty equipment. He hailed his father on the communicator, the network connection stronger here. Either the attackers were blocking communications on the estate or his father was blocking theirs to hinder coordination. Maybe they were both pumping electronic chaff into the air. He set the communicator to scan for active channels.

Wartimus turned at the crack of a twig to see Simon walking calmly toward him out of the woods. He cradled the purple dildo in the crook of his left arm and stroked it like a beloved pet.

“Get down, Simon,” he told his friend.

Simon ignored him and stepped out of the edge of the woods and onto the manicured expanse of lawn.

“SIMON!” Wartimus called but the boy continued walking at an unhurried pace. One of the spotlights on the helicopters picked him out. All three angled away from the house and came to hover over the boy, the grass flattened around him in three huge overlapping circles.

Wartimus’ communicator squealed angrily over the cacophonous noise of the helicopters and lit up. He had to jam it close to his ear and heard a babble of unfamiliar voices.

“The readings are clear!” someone said, the sound of helicopter blades echoing strangely. “He has the out-time object!”

“Who the fuck is this?” Wartimus screamed into the communicator.

“Take him!” the voice said, just an angry crackle.

“STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE!” the helicopter loudspeakers shrieked. “WE WILL USE LETHAL FORCE!”

Simon stared up into the sky unmoving.

“SIMON!” Wartimus screamed again, useless in the hurricane of sound. He broke from the wood line on instinct, running toward Simon. He covered the distance in seconds, his muscular legs tearing up clumps of grass as he accelerated. He tackled Simon and covered him with his body.

“You’re going to get yourself killed!” he yelled in Simon’s face.

Simon smiled serenely and jammed the blunt end of the dildo into the exposed skin on the back of Wartimus’ hand. He felt a sharp sting and he rolled off of Simon in surprise. He could see in the actinic light of the helicopters that his hand was bleeding.

Beside him, Simon clambered to his feet and held the dildo aloft. It flashed once, a searing purple light that left a clear outline of it in Wartimus’ vision. As he raised his bloody hand to shield his eyes, thick snakes of electricity arced from the bulbous tip of the dildo in Simon’s hand and all three helicopters exploded simultaneously.

 

Chapter Two |

Simon shouldered his backpack. “How far do you think?” he asked.

“The descent was steep and the sound of the impact was right on top of the flash, so I’m pretty sure it’s on the estate grounds,” Wartimus said, storing the counter and settling his own backpack in place. He pointed to the thin column of smoke.

“I got due east,” Simon said looking at his compass.

Wartimus consulted the luminous face of his own compass. “Agreed. Due east,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The two boys crossed manicured lawn of the backyard and entered the mature woods beyond. The red gels over their flashlights preserved their night vision as they rustled through last year’s leaves. A dry summer had kept the undergrowth down and they made good time.

The woods on the estate had been their playground since they had first met in second grade. Hieronymus had insisted that Wartimus attend the local public school for—in his words—“the sheer lumpen experience of it.” Nearly all of the parents of the children he went to school worked for his father. Simon’s parents worked in the biosciences division, riding the funicular every day to where the factory of Riesigmann Industries clung to the top of the mountain like the enormous claw of an eagle. Simon was the only boy in his class not terrified of Wartimus, the brooding 8-year-old with visible abs and a father that owned the entire town. Wartimus was just happy to meet someone not in awe of his father.

Playing with Simon gave Wartimus the semblance of a normal childhood, as long as a normal childhood involved raiding the estate armory to stitch machine gun fire across enemy trees or engineering a mistletoe blight to ruin Christmas that caused robins maddened by the mutant berries to attack his entire class while on a field trip. Simon loved to spend time with Wartimus, even if he could never tell his mother that their tree house had a number of deadfall traps dug around its defensive perimeter and Simon was expected to run a homemade mortar in case of attack.

The second compass check was made in a small clearing they came upon twenty minutes from the gate.

“Is this…” Simon began.

“Yes,” Warty said. He swung his flashlight over to a blackened stump.

“I told you napalm was a bad idea,” Simon said.

“We contained it.”

“Your father was so angry.”

“Not really,” Wartimus said, “The propane tank didn’t blow. And it wasn’t like Tree House Mark One was anything he had helped build anyway.”

Wartimus straightened and held his hand up in the starlit night.

“You hear that?” he whispered to Simon and the boy shook his head.

Wartimus tugged Simon back under the cover of the trees as a downdraft of air blasted the clearing and a helicopter blotted out the sky. It was nearly silent and moving slowly. Eventually, it went behind the tops of trees at the far end of the clearing.

“It’s moving due east,” Wartimus spat. “I’m going on ahead,” he said and took off running.

He immediately left Simon behind. Alone, Wartimus no longer had to pretend he needed the flashlight and tucked into the holster on his belt, his pupils dilating to drink in starlight. He leaped over obstacles he would have had to walk around with Simon in tow. His lungs shifted in his chest to better strip oxygen from the night air and his heart hammered away. Simon had seen some of the things Hieronymus had engineered into Wartimus, but small things that could be dismissed, like skin a little too resistant to cuts or landing on his feet from a fall a little too far to survive unharmed. His strength and inhuman grace as he moved through the forest would have frightened Simon.

Wartimus outpaced the slow search pattern of the helicopter and skidded to a stop at the rim of the crater ahead of it. It was three meters across and almost as deep. The trees around the crater were down, blasted outward, blackened and still smoldering. There was no way the helicopter would miss this, he knew he had to hurry.

Wartimus peered over the edge looking for an impactor. There was a faint Tyrian glow from the center of the crater. He backed off and got out the Geiger counter. There was only the slow tick tick tick of normal background radiation as he circled the crater. The glow faded as he made it back to his starting point and Simon came crashing through the underbrush, specimen bucket rattling, his flashlight bouncing wildly, the red gel lost.

“How… long… have… you… been… here?” Simon managed, holding his side.

“Less than a minute,” Wartimus lied.

“Radiation?”

“Nothing. I can’t see anything in the crater. I’m going down there.”

Wartimus took the bucket from Simon as the boy continued to catch his breath. He removed the safety gloves and put them on. Handing the still ticking Geiger counter to Simon, Wartimus took a pair of heavy-duty tongs out and practiced working them with the awkward gloves.

As they walked around the crater looking for a good spot to climb down, the helicopter passed close enough to send a cloud of dead leaves and pine needles toward them. Wartimus estimated they would be right over the crater on the next pass.

“We have to go now!” Wartimus shouted and jumped over the edge and rode the slope down in controlled fall. Simon followed less gracefully, the specimen bucket rolling ahead of him. Wartimus caught him before he fell face-first. The Geiger counter didn’t change as Simon waved it close to the center of the crater.

“It’s OK to put that away,” Wartimus said as he fell to his knees and began brushing back the fine dust that had gathered at the lowest point. There was no residual heat or shock geology.

“It didn’t come down very fast,” Wartimus told Simon. Something was just visible in the shaky beam from Simon’s flashlight. He scraped a channel all around it and lifted it carefully, grunting under the unexpected weight. It was purple and studded and looked to be covered in open sores.

“It’s some sort of…” Wartimus began to say but a towering pillar of light stabbed down from the helicopter as it slid in place over them.

“It’s a huge dildo!” Simon yelled in surprise.

 

Chapter One | Chapter Three

Wartimus reclined on the roof of his father’s house and watched the stars glitter in the darkness of a moonless night. He had spent the summer making up his own erotic constellations and was languidly masturbating to them when the sky exploded with purple light. He dropped his erection as he tracked the burning band of fire of a meteor streaking earthward. It hit the ground with a boom and another flash of light that burned the silhouette of the trees into his retinas.

Wartimus stood, put his penis away, and ran to the edge of the roof. A column of smoke rose, lit up by the distant city beyond. The meteorite was obviously close, possibly in the forest that made up the bulk of his father’s vast estate. He climbed down from the roof and in through his bedroom window. The phone was ringing before he had even made it inside.

“What was that?” Simon demanded as soon as Wartimus picked up the phone. “Are we being bombed? I told you we were going to get bombed. We live too close to the dam!”

“It wasn’t a bomb, Simon,” he told the panicking boy. He cradled the receiver in his neck and pulled on a pair of thick canvas pants.

“There’s that big military base, where they test those missiles. Did they hit it?”

“It wasn’t a bomb, Simon. I was up on the roof. It was a meteor.” Wartimus set down the phone to tie his boots.

Simon’s voice squeaked from the receiver. “Don’t they have nerve gas at that base? Which way is the wind blowing? WHICH WAY IS THE WIND BLOWING?”

“Simon! Calm the fuck down!” Wartimus said, picking the phone back up. “It was a meteor. Get dressed for hiking and get over here.”

“It’s one in the morning,” Simon said, breathing heavily into the phone.

“It’s a meteor, Simon. You know how much those things are worth if there is anything left of it? Grab your backpack and get over here. I leave in ten.” Wartimus hung up the phone before the other boy could say anything else. Simon dealt best with ultimatums.

Wartimus turned in the mirror on the front of his closet door, shirtless. He flexed a few times and dropped to the floor for a dozen push-ups. His body was naturally muscular from his father’s experiments–the shots given to his mother when she was carrying him and the constant training growing up, but it wasn’t enough; Wartimus wanted to be bigger. All the other 12-year-olds at school looked like children. He had seen some the teachers watching him as he prowled the halls of his middle school like a panther. In a year, maybe two, he’d fuck a couple of them, he knew. Valuable experience before he hit high school and the girls his own age finally filled out.

Wartimus put on a tight tee that showed off his pecs and a loose, heavy black shirt over it. He slipped his father’s Walther PPK into the front pocket of the pants after checking the safety. His father knew he had taken the gun from the compound’s armory. Wartimus could have claimed something more powerful as his personal weapon but he was a good shot with Walther and knew the gun, field stripping it over and over again while blindfolded and timing himself. Flashlight, knife and his communicator clipped onto his nylon utility belt.

Checking the time again, he went back out his bedroom window, dropped to the ground and raided the garden shed for a five-gallon plastic bucket with a sealable lid and asbestos gloves. He was just closing the shed when he heard labored breathing enter the yard. Simon. The boy dropped his bag loudly at the gate into the backyard and leaned over, his hands on his knees.

Wartimus crept up on him and said, “Be quiet. My father is still up.”

Simon yelped in surprise, despite gulping down air.

“I ran over,” he managed, “Like, the whole way.”

“What did you bring?” Wartimus asked.

“Tongs,” he gasped. “Safety glasses,” he gasped. “Flashlight,” he gasped.

“OK, wait here. I’ve got to go back inside for something.”

“You told me to hurry,” Simon said. Wartimus patted him on the back hard enough for the pudgy boy to almost fall over.

“I’ll be right back,” he told the wheezing figure.

Wartimus used the code to open the back yard security door. There was soft music playing in the den, so he used the kitchen stairs to go down to his into his father’s laboratory. The giant vault door leading into the lab was already open.

The imposing figure of Professor Hieronymus Riesigmann loomed before Wartimus in one of his bespoke lab coats. The lab took up the entire basement of the mansion. Rows upon rows of merciless white lights bore down on stainless steel work surfaces and fittings. His father worked in the enormous space alone but the endless cabinets of equipment could have supported a staff of hundreds. It was all familiar to Wartimus from long hours playing here after his mother disappeared: the dials and switches of the interface for the buried reactor, the omnipresent hum of transformers, the hulking capacitors, the black slabs of isolation tanks, the crackling Tesla coils that he suspected were purely for ambiance. His father’s house had many rules but the most steadfast and unwavering was that this space was always referred to as his laboratory, and never his lair.

“You need to learn to sneak better, son,” Hieronymus said. “You’re almost 13-years-old. At your age, my parents had no idea what all I was up to in the middle of the night.”

“Did their house have motion sensors and security keypads everywhere?”

“Not the point, my boy. Not the point at all. Learning to sneak around in a 1950s house would do you no good. Technology never rests and we mustn’t either.”

Wartimus nodded.

“So,” his father asked, “What were you down here to pilfer? I better not catch you pawning my equipment.”

“I was merely going to borrow the Geiger counter.”

“Got a radiation leak in your bedroom? I thought you just masturbated up there these days,” he said with a toothy grin. Wartimus had tried to build a nuclear weapon when he was ten and his father never let an opportunity to bring it up go by.

“No, I was up on the roof and saw a meteor. It impacted somewhere on the estate, I think. I wanted to take a Geiger counter with me.”

“Nonsense. Meteorites have negligible radioactivity. You know that.” His father reached to ruffle his hair but Wartimus backed away from the condescending gesture.

“But what if it’s not a natural meteorite? It could be something man-made,” he said. He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “What if it is Russian?” His father was an unreconstructed Cold Warrior, always ready to pit his individual American intellect against the hive mind of communism.

“Space rock or spy satellite, eh? And you are going to look for it? Excellent. A good use for a summer night. I’ll let you have the Geiger, it’s a sensible precaution if the power source is breached. But as rent for the counter and punishment for getting caught sneaking out, I claim all the iridium from the impactor or any photographic film from a satellite.”

“Father…” Wartimus began.

“It’s more than fair, boy. The iridium is of little use to you anyway, we all know who does the high-temperature recrystallization of semiconductors in this house.”

“Yes, sir,” Wartimus said.

“And the photos might be of the estate. Those Soviet bastards have been after me for years,” his father said.

Wartimus watched as father retrieved the Geiger counter. Despite all the late night nuclear safety drills, the painful martial arts training, the experimental weight-training regimen, and the cold knowledge that he might have to one day kill the old man in a struggle for primate dominance, Wartimus still loved and respected his father. And, more importantly to his otherwise jocular father, Wartimus still feared him.

“Here you go, son,” Hieronymus said as he handed over the olive drab counter. “Watch the needle; too many rems will fry your wedding tackle. I’ll accept no bald-headed telekinetic grandchildren in this house!”

Wartimus nodded and turn to go.

“Just kidding,” his father called after him. “Bring on the little freaks. We’ll sell ‘em to the carnival, my boy.”

His father’s laughter chased him up the stairs.

 

Chapter 2