Mad Scientist Journal: Winter 2014

By Dawn Vogel

The secret history of the universe, virtual civilizations, murderous plants, and tailored diseases. These are but some of the strange tales to be found in this book.

Mad Scientist Journal: Winter 2014 collects three months worth of essays from the fictional worlds of mad science. Included are three new pieces of fiction written for the discerning mad scientist readers by Charity Tahmaseb, Gary Cuba, and Sean Patrick Hazlett. Readers will also find other resources for the budding mad scientist, including an advice column and other brief messages from mad scientists.

Authors featured in this volume also include Mathew Allan Garcia, Regina Clarke, S. R. Algernon, Jason Bougger, K. C. Shaw, T. J. Tranchell, E. B. Fischadler, Steve Toase, James M. Hines, Kelda Crich, Damien Krsteski, David Neilsen, K. A. Blaha, Sean Frost, Lorraine Schein, Andy Brown, and Parker McKenzie. Illustrations are provided by Amanda Jones, Dawn Vogel, Scarlett O'Hairdye, Katie Nyborg, Luke Spooner, Shannon Legler, and Justine McGreevy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DefCon One Publishing
• Release date: Mar 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311632852

Dawn Vogel

Dawn Vogel has been published as a short fiction author and an editor of both fiction and non-fiction. Her academic background is in history, so it’s not surprising that much of her fiction is set in earlier times. By day, she edits reports for historians and archaeologists. In her alleged spare time, she runs a craft business, helps edit Mad Scientist Journal, and tries to find time for writing. She lives in Seattle with her awesome husband (and fellow author), Jeremy Zimmerman, and their herd of cats.

Book preview

Mad Scientist Journal: Winter 2014

Edited by Jeremy Zimmerman and Dawn Vogel

Cover Illustration and Layout by Amanda Jones

Copyright 2014 Jeremy Zimmerman, except where noted

Smashwords Edition

Little Gods is Copyright 2013 Mathew Allan Garcia

Narrative of Samantha Fremont is Copyright 2014 Regina Clarke

A Dispatch from an Otherwise Unremarkable Planet is Copyright 2014 S. R. Algernon

A Bad Case of Rabies is Copyright 2014 Jason Bougger

The Young Naturalist's Corner: Strange Lizards of Amprad is Copyright 2014 K. C. Shaw

Hemingway at Work is Copyright 2014 T. J. Tranchell

A Novel General Anesthetic is Copyright 2014 E. B. Fischadler

The Fibril Prosthetic is Copyright 2014 Steve Toase

The Cure is Copyright 2014 James M. Hines

Sims is Copyright 2014 Kelda Crich

Automagical is Copyright 2014 Damien Krsteski

Response to the Board's Decision to Terminate Project Cornucopia is Copyright 2014 David Neilsen

Carnivorous Fog: Avoidance, Survival, and Eradication Strategies is Copyright 2014 K. A. Blaha

The Short Sweet Life of My Invisible Prom Date is Copyright 2014 Charity Tahmaseb

Nonsense 101 is Copyright 2014 Gary Cuba

The Witchwood Whispers is Copyright 2014 Sean Patrick Hazlett

You Oort to Know is Copyright 2014 Sean Frost

Spacious basement laboratory, Bundle of used white lab coats, Used time machine, Tesla death ray device for sale, Test subjects wanted, Displaced, slightly singed reanimated woman, Feeling misunderstood and ugly, Post-traumatic therapy group, Want to meet other emotionally unavailable, and 12-Step Program are Copyright 2014 Lorraine Schein

The Fragrant Leaf Teas of Distinction, Eddie Fiss and Son Specialist Builders, and Barrington, Turmeger and Grutch Investment Opportunities are Copyright 2014 Andy Brown

For Sale (flying saucer), Looking for Volunteers, Lost (imagination), Missing (soul), Missing (squirrel), Reward, and Looking to Buy (stuff) are Copyright 2014 Parker McKenzie

Art accompanying Little Gods and The Cure are Copyright 2014 Scarlett O'Hairdye

Art accompanying Narrative of Samantha Fremont, and Hemingway at Work are Copyright 2014 Katie Nyborg

Art accompanying A Dispatch from an Otherwise Unremarkable Planet, Automagical, and Carnivorous Fog: Avoidance, Survival, and Eradication Strategies are Copyright 2014 Dawn Vogel

Art accompanying A Bad Case of Rabies and The Fibril Prosthetic are Copyright 2014 Luke Spooner

Art accompanying The Young Naturalist's Corner: Strange Lizards of Amprad, Sims, and Response to the Board's Decision to Terminate Project Cornucopia are Copyright 2014 Shannon Legler

Art accompanying A Novel General Anesthetic is Copyright 2014 Justine McGreevy

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Letter from the Editor

Essays

"Little Gods" provided by Mathew Allan Garcia

"Narrative of Samantha Fremont" provided by Regina Clarke

"A Dispatch from an Otherwise Unremarkable Planet" provided by S. R. Algernon

"A Bad Case of Rabies" provided by Jason Bougger

"The Young Naturalist's Corner: Strange Lizards of Amprad" provided by K. C. Shaw

"Hemingway at Work" provided by T. J. Tranchell

"A Novel General Anesthetic" provided by E. B. Fischadler

"The Fibril Prosthetic" provided by Steve Toase

"The Cure" provided by James M. Hines

"Sims" provided by Kelda Crich

"Automagical" provided by Damien Krsteski

"Response to the Board's Decision to Terminate Project Cornucopia" provided by David Neilsen

"Carnivorous Fog: Avoidance, Survival, and Eradication Strategies" provided by K. A. Blaha

Fiction

"The Short Sweet Life of My Invisible Prom Date" by Charity Tahmaseb

"Nonsense 101" by Gary Cuba

"The Witchwood Whispers" by Sean Patrick Hazlett

Resources

"You Oort to Know" provided by Sean Frost

Classifieds

About

Bios for Classifieds Authors

About the Editors

About the Artists

________________________________________

Letter from the Editor

Dear Readers,

Words are absurd. When you peel back their skin and look at the viscera underneath, all you will find are icons of sound that remind you of a time when you heard the icon before.

Just think: Your brain attempts to send an idea out into the world by causing your throat to spasm and noises to rattle out of your skull. Air molecules collide into one another in a shockwave radiating from your head. This blast ring rattles fragile bones in other people's skulls, triggering a memory of their own interpretation of the concept you are trying to ululate into the world.

You can never truly share an idea, only attempt to trigger chemical reactions that remind others of what you're thinking about. And even the idea is only some stew of hormones, electrons, and meat sloshing around in your skull.

But bacon. Bacon transcends all this. It's the breakfast meat of the proletariat. Do not mess with bacon.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy this quarter's collection of words.

Best regards,

Doctor Isabella Stein

Guest Editor

Dr. Stein received her education through an online university based out of Chechnya. Her chief contribution to science has been the bacteria that lives in your stomach and reports everything back to her. She likes cats.

Essays

Little Gods

An essay by Nathan Orbos, as provided by Mathew Allan Garcia

Art by Scarlett O'Hairdye

ONE

Let's talk, shall we? You and I. I want to clear the air. There are things that've been on my mind for a few millennia. You're old enough to know the truth. You're ready to accept it.

Who am I? I am the object of your fear. I am the thing you've been trained to hate since you were able to be trained to do anything. Why? Well, let's just say that my eyes were too large, my smile too wide for my face, my ideas too convincing. I can't help it. I'm just a happy guy. I like to smile, and I get overly excited sometimes, I admit.

I'm going off topic now. This isn't about me. It's about you. Let me just go right on ahead and say it: Things are bad. And worse things are about to happen. They've been there all along. Long ago when my brother and I disagreed about how things were going here. On Earth.

So let's talk. Let's talk about how this happened. How you're going to fix this.

First, the elephant in the room: I'm Lucifer. Yes, Beelzebub, The King of Darkness, Legion, all that jazz. Now I know your opinion of me is low. I get it. But put that aside for a second. Just for a second. Hear me out this once.

I promise you will not be possessed simply for reading this. You will not get a bad case of diarrhea and vomit split pea soup. God will not send you straight to hell for entertaining my ideas. Relax.

We're all friends here.

TWO

We created the universe one day, when we were bored, that's really what how it came about. There was no divine discussion on the significance of life. We didn't debate on the philosophical implications of what life would cause. Global warming, pollution, war, anything like that.[1] In fact, let me come right out and admit that it was with Jehovah, my brother, that these first small steps toward creation began.

But he rarely thought of the things he created. Sure, he'd make a tiger that shot bees out of its mouth, could fly, or had gills. A couple acres of land for his creature to hunt and live its life. Very few gods had the spark to create life. He was, to my knowledge, the last god left with the gift.

Jehovah'd get bored and let the animals starve, or create bigger creatures to hunt and kill it. It was a game to him. He watched the creatures grow, evolve. How they learned to cope in the environment he created. How they struggled with the challenges he put in front of them. He'd create a panther-beast, allow it to spawn and wipe out its prey. Watch it starve until it had no choice but to eat its young.

His ideas became grander, too, with time. He'd create two sets of animals, each with their distinct strengths and weaknesses, and place them in an environment. He created an avian creature that could dive under water for short periods of times. It had teeth like a serrated edged blade and claws that would gut a pig with one stroke. Like the Cormorant, though more deadly. Then he created a marine animal that could change colors, with a suction mouth that could pluck your eyes and tongue out in a millisecond.

He'd watch as each slowly thinned out the population of the other, spending years hovering over his creation, the soft glow of the world's light source gleaming on his face.

I think it was these things that made him think of creating the universe. By then he had countless environments, some hollowed out and empty. Husks of worlds he had impregnated with life, then let die. But he sought to connect it all together, create a world of worlds, with many environments. Thousands of species. All with one goal in mind: To populate. To strive and grow.

He imagined the battles he'd witness, a whole world where only the fittest beings survived, the weak cast down to extinction. But he was tired of pitting his own creations against one another. He wanted an opponent. He wanted sport. Someone to think of creatures independent of his own ideas. After all, what fun is sport when you are only competing against yourself? He wished to test himself.

He wanted someone to gloat at.

We began playing these Godly Battles, as he called them. Said he'd give me the spark to create a few things, if I'd play his game. The draw of being able to create a living being was too appealing.

Our differences were apparent from the start. I favored brains to the brawn of his creatures. He laughed at the years[2] I spent toiling over my mouse sized creature. But his amusement would grow into frustration when his giant cat took years to capture my animal, if at all. Sometimes his animal died of starvation before capturing mine. My creatures were always omnivores.

With time, my skill improved, my creations evolved. I made great apes with opposable thumbs that could grip branches to bludgeon my brother's monsters, which is what they eventually became. Dragons with three heads, sea beasts with meaty tentacles that gripped anything that touched the water's surface, a reptile that grew back any limb my creature severed. But his grew bigger, and it was inevitable that they defeated mine every time. Satisfied with his superiority, he grew tired of the game.

He wanted to populate the world we had created. Earth, we had begun to call it. Let it run on its own. Let it grow. He needed me, though he never brought himself to say it. His creatures were behemoths, monsters. Things only the most deranged human beings could think about. His creatures, if brought to fruition, would destroy any other living thing. He needed me to create creatures that were balanced. Eat each other, yes, but only as often needed so the populations were never diminished, unless we had created something too weak.

I was the detail man. Details thrilled me. I liked to watch the gears turning in my creatures, and be assured that what I created was faultless. Divine. I'd spend centuries creating new creatures. Giant cats with camouflaged fur. Birds of all different sizes and colors. Some predatory, feeding on smaller birds. Smaller species, like Oriental finches or canaries, ate primarily seeds and worms. There was a delicate balance that I had to keep in mind, but Jehovah, always the impatient one, wanted to bring things to completion. He was eager to watch things unfold, to watch his creations move and interact like clockwork on Earth.

Humans were last. They were different from the other beings. We both realized it. The other beings moved in complete oblivion of us gods, moving through their lives as if on tracks we had created for them. It was in their blood, imbedded in their DNA.

Humans, however, moved on their own accord, completely abandoning instinct for something that overtook them. They sought answers, idolizing gods of their own making,[3] as they felt that the complexity of life could never have just happened. To them, a world without gods with plans for each of their lives was simply not worth living.

Such clever creatures, humans.

They acknowledged us, though they could not