rayaso

Topic: Open

THE TRANSMOGRIFIER

“I’m ready,” said Professor Steve Johnston, breathing rapidly. He was nervous – who wouldn’t be? His project had reached the human trial stage, and he was the designated human. He couldn’t ask others to risk their lives on something he wouldn’t try himself. There were volunteers, but this was something he had to do.

His assistants – what were their names? – strapped him firmly to the specimen table and closed the test chamber door. He stared up at the huge lens of the projector module. From this angle, it was almost beautiful, with its wires and circuits. It was huge, weighing nearly a ton, not small and convenient like the original design -- the power requirements alone were simply too much. Miniaturization could come later, but first he had to prove to all the doubters that his machine actually worked.

The Transmogrifier was the culmination of his life’s work. Sure, he’d faced the scorn of his colleagues and the laughter of an ignorant public, but Steve was used to this. “I know it will work,” he thought, waiting for it to begin.

The idea had started in his childhood. As a lonely and unpopular child, little Stevie had turned inward and read everything he could, but especially comics. Superman, Batman, Spiderman in all their crime-fighting glory made up his universe, pushing the taunts of the other kids away. But the one closest to his heart had been Calvin and Hobbes, the amazing imaginary adventures of another weird kid and his stuffed tiger.

The Transmogrifier had been the strangest of Calvin’s odd inventions. Unbounded by reality, Calvin had been free to use a large cardboard box to transmute objects, turning himself into a miniature duplicate Hobbes, his friendly tiger. Once Calvin had built a transmogrifier pistol, he and Hobbes had started a free-for-all, turning each other into a pterodactyl, a duck, and other animals.

Using squirt guns, Legos, and tape, Stevie had built his own transmogrifier guns, each more elaborate than the last and each just as useless, except for shooting his little sister with transmogrification fluid, which had annoyed her and angered his mother, who had to get the stains out of her clothes.

Steve had never forgotten the Transmogrifier. It had even inspired his college senior thesis on the disassembly of matter. The core process had involved a lot of dynamite. His graduation had been delayed so he could erase the “F” by submitting something less violent and pay for the damage to a science lab.

Steve had eventually become a brilliant engineer and physicist who had designed and built equipment essential for particle physics research. His Transmogrification Project had been tolerated by the University as long as he had independent funding and no one had found out about it.

“Transmogrification is really two processes,” he had once explained to the Review Board. “Matter is first disassembled and then reassembled.”

The first part was easy: apply enough energy, and anything could be reduced to subatomic particles. Unfortunately, this process also resulted in its own violent release of energy.

“’Nuclear bomb’ is such an ugly term,” he had explained to yet another disciplinary committee. “There are always going to be a few bumps in scientific progress.” A large research grant from the Department of Defense had helped him smooth that one over as well.

The key to disassembly was to do it on such a small scale that the energy release was harmless. This had finally been solved when he invented the transmogrification lens.

The problem of reassembly still remained until the creation of the 3D printer allowed particles to be assembled into any form. If plastic glop could be turned into a gun, why couldn’t elemental particles be formed into something more useful?

By combining the world’s most sophisticated (and largest) 3D printer with the transmogrification lens, Steve had been able to change an orange into an apple, one which unfortunately glowed in the dark, making it suspect as food but useable as a nightlight. “Just a little detail,” Steve had said, “but it mostly works!”

Following a few interesting adjustments, several years later the Transmogrifier was at last ready for Steve, who had updated his will to provide for the care of his cat, Hobbes 2.0, in the event Assistant #1 was right about the photon circuit.

For Steve ’s pioneering transformation, he programmed the machine to make him into a replica of his cat. The machine hummed, the lens glowed, and then BAM! – when the assistants opened the chamber door, they found an orange tabby cat. “He’s cute!” said Assistant #1.

Steve was aware of the change, because human consciousness was unaffected by transmogrification. However, he was in all other respects a cat. “I want some tuna and a nap,” he thought. He got neither, not even a litter box.

As a safety protocol, a timer caused him to be re-transmogrified after only five minutes. The only ill effects were a massive headache and fleas.

Assistant #2, the intelligent one with glasses, wanted to be next. After she was strapped down and the chamber door secured, the Transmogrifier started to hum and glow, with only a little shaking. When the door was opened, there was R2D2! “Beep boop beep,” said R2, before changing back to its original, less functional humanoid configuration.

Assistant #1 briefly became Albert Einstein, but without his genius. Assistant #1 wasn’t that smart.

After they had each had a turn, the celebration began, complete with boxed wine and a few stale cupcakes from the vending machine. Steve let his imagination go wild, and wondered what it would be like to go to his high school reunion with a Nobel Prize medal around his neck.

As pleasant as that sounded, he was still dedicated to his ultimate goal, the one he had really pursued all these years, but had kept to himself. “I’m not going to let them make fun of my dream,” he had thought. “Besides, no one would ever fund it.”

After the assistants went home, he stayed behind for one last experiment. This time he programmed the Transmogrifier himself and disengaged the automatic return function.

Steve also created an automatic overload. There would be no going back, and no one could follow him. Now that he had proved the success of his invention, he had also realized that a functional transmogrifier was simply too dangerous to exist. There was nothing to stop someone from changing a pineapple into a nuclear bomb, creating a super army out of ants, or turning straw into gold. The world was simply not ready (or responsible enough) for that.

Steve secured the chamber door, stretched out on the specimen table, and pushed the “start” button. He waited expectantly until BAM! If anyone had looked, the test chamber would have been empty.

Steve had become part of his perfect world.

Two-dimensional existence was a little odd at first, as were the thought bubbles that formed over his head, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to know where his tiger was. “Hobbes! Where are you?” the bubble read. “Over here! And I found the buried treasure.” The words formed over Hobbes, who was in the next panel, wearing a paper pirate hat and brandishing a wooden sword. Susie Derkins was up in the treehouse, frowning. Dad was burning a steak and Mom was calling him for dinner.

Becoming Calvin had always been Steve’s real dream. He had wanted to live in a world where he could become Spaceman Spiff, torment Miss Wormwood, or create armies of cannibal snowmen to take over imaginary towns. He wanted the weird to be commonplace, and most of all, he wanted a reality where his imagination would rule.

Trading in the real world for this four-panel paradise (with color on Sundays!) had been easy. He knew he would not be missed and the University Administration would be relieved. He'd also made sure Assistant #1 would give his cat a good home.

Dreaming a Calvin-life had been simple, as all dreams are, but creating the technology had been hard. It had taken Steve fifty years and two Ph.D.’s to pull it off, but he had finally done it.

Working and waiting all those years (and earning those degrees) had been tough, but for Steve, it was completely worth it.

He was Calvin now, a little boy with boundless energy and hours of playtime every day. He would have lifetimes to create bizarre ideas and adventures, and share them all with Hobbes.

It would be a wonderful future, made just for the two of them—a fantastically weird kid and the best stuffed tiger a boy ever had.

* * * * * * * * * *

My gratitude again goes to

halfshellvenus, for beta-reading this story.

I thought that making a defunct comic strip central to a story might be risky, because if you are not familiar with Calvin and Hobbes this story may not make as much sense. I hope that it stands on its own.

calvin and hobbes.jpg