Columnist
My
name is the Mad Scientist. To be more precise, my name is Sir Victor Wilson, but
you can call me Mad Scientist, The Mad
Scientist or Mr. Scientist. Or you can just call me plain Mad.
Yes,
I know there are many mad scientists around, especially in Transyl-vein-ia’s
Mad Science District. But there are also many pills around and there’s still
only one called “The Pill.” Well, I’m the only mad scientist called “The Mad
Scientist.”
Over
the course of the next few weeks, I plan on digging into the Mad Science
District archives to bring you exciting stories about some of the other mad scientists
in this world, even if none of them are more brilliant than I.
These
scientists, like me, never ever think of going small. World domination is always
the goal.
So
grab yourself a cup of tea, sit back and enjoy this story about Dr. Augustine
Mitchell, a colleague of mine from my earlier days as a junior mad scientist.
Dr.
Augustine Mitchell made a great study of artificial intelligence. He created
several household robots that did things for him around his lab, but he always
wanted the robots to have feelings. And he wanted them to do things for
themselves. He was growing tired of the same old menial tasks his robots were
doing, like taking out the garbage, washing dishes and walking his pet saber
tooth.
One
day, Dr. Augustine took a sip of his tea and, from the seat at his lab table in
his home lab, he envisioned an army of robotic minions. These minions would go
out and rid the world of evil so that Dr. Augustine wouldn’t have competition
anymore. He wanted to be the only evil in the land. After having this vision,
Dr. Augustine stood up from the seat at his lab table in his home lab, raised
both fists in the air and yelled, “I want a robotic minion army with the power
it needs to purge this universe of all other evil!”
Yes,
Dr. Augustine was yelling in his home lab, even though no one else was there at
the time. Then he sat back down and he took another sip of his tea.
The
next day, he and I met at a lab bar down on Doom Drive for some cookies and tea,
and he handed me a book of blueprints that had various drawings of robot
minions and their dimensions. He included every detail down to each and every screw.
These
robots ranged from modular self-reconfiguring models to self-destructors. They could
fly, crawl, disappear and create collectives amongst themselves. Some were microscopic
and some were larger than 50-story buildings.
One
drawing Dr. Augustine had was of a swarm of mechanical bees that could hover
over its prey and sting, disorient and consume that prey and anything in its
vicinity.
I
asked Dr. Augustine why he wanted to create this army. After a sip of tea and a
bite from one of his cookies, he stood up from his seat at the table in the lab
bar down on Doom Drive, raised both fists in the air and yelled, “I want to
take over the world, of course! I’ve been working in my underground lair for
some time now, trying to rid this planet of the evil that competes directly
with me! My minions will be programmed to look for these evildoers! They have several
sub-routines programmed into them that sense evil thoughts and evil plans! And
once my minion army detects these evildoers, they’ll attack and take them out!
I have a test minion here with us now, if you would like to see it!”
Yes,
Dr. Augustine was yelling in the lab bar down on Doom Drive. But everyone in
that bar yells their own plans from their tables of cookies and tea, so no one
else heard his plan.
Dr.
Augustine didn’t return to his seat. With great excitement, he began his
demonstration, even though I never said I wanted to see it. With a tiny remote,
he called over one of his household robot minions. It rolled up to the table
from some dark corner I didn’t see, pulling behind it something under a tarp
that was about 8 feet tall. Dr. Augustine yanked the tarp and revealed one of
his sample evil-destructor robot minions.
He
turned to me, raised both fists in the air, and instead of yelling some more,
he gave one of the loudest, evil “Muwahahahaha” laughs I’ve ever heard. Then he
yelled after all.
“Watch
while my creation comes to life and takes evil from this world!” he shouted at
eardrum-shattering decibels.
He
turned his minion around, which was equipped with laser rocket guns on each
arm, a jetpack and lethal blade-like armor all over, and he flipped the on switch to the on position.
Once
the system booted up, scanned for viruses, and the doctor installed a couple
minor updates that came up in the start-up process, the minion looked directly
at his creator and killed him. Then the minion self-destructed into millions of
pieces.
Luckily,
I had gone to the lab bar in my newly designed invisible protection bubble. And
it worked. I was safe. The bar, however, was not so good. But that’s nothing
new. Mad scientists are blowing that place up almost every week. The ownership
is used to it by now.
Once
the dust settled, I looked over to see if Dr. Augustine was all right. He was
not. He was dead. That’s when I noticed the doctor’s robot minion checklist. There
was one thing he didn’t check off, and that was to program his minion to destroy
all evil except the evil Dr. Augustine, no matter what it thought.
Dr.
Augustine will be missed, but we will not miss the valuable lesson he taught
us: Always make sure you’ve checked off everything on your checklist before you
run a test. (I sometimes forget to check off the item reminding me to wipe the
grease off my creations from my dirty hands -- not the most crucial of items to
miss, clearly, though shine is still always important to me.)
Dr.
Augustine’s research can be found in the Mad Science District Museum. And for
more science talk and more letters from the lab, check back with me next week
for Mad Science Mondays in October.
The Mad Scientist is a mad
man with evil on his mind always and plans to take over the world at any given
time. He lives in a castle on Lab Lane in the Mad Science District of
Transyl-vein-ia.
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