HI! Sorry I haven't been on much. My Chipmunks Parody Show videos have been taking a while too. I am in college now and my classes are early in the morning and really late in the evening, so I'm at school pretty much all day, unless I want to walk all the way home in the middle of the day, and the computer's too heavy to drag all that way, so no hope of working on them except on the weekends (which for me are Friday through Sunday! :D)…
I promise I will eventually go back into a period during which I will finish all my current stories and then some; for now, I can only write sporadically, when inspiration strikes!
This story takes place some months after "The TellTale Googly Specs". Also, my sister will probably kill me for this, but I decided to change Karma's name to Caramel (if that's OK with The Caramel Koopa :)
"LUDWIG!"
The roar of my father's voice awakened me from whatever trance I had fallen under.
I look around. Finished and unfinished projects everywhere. Paper with undecipherable scribbles. Just my lab, without so much as a pencil or a tool in my hand to remind me of what I had been doing all night.
I was working on… something. Or maybe I had fallen asleep?
Oh well. It happens every so often. Sometimes with extraordinary results.
But not today, apparently…
"LUDWIG!"
My thick matted hair stands on end again. I move the fluid-filled graduated cylinder from in front of my nearest electronic clock.
Six-fifty-nine.
My disordered synapses suddenly snap back into place. Twenty one minutes before the bus comes.
No rush.
I start the day right – with a blended coffee, flavored by sea salt, caramel, and espresso ground out of coffee beans that my mother had sent me as a gift from Austria, out of my homemade Koopaccino maker. Just like the one I had last night.
My hair stands on end again – this time from the lab on the other side of the basement.
Iggy. How juvenile. I had long since gotten over the age at which I found it fun to simply make stuff explode.
I bring my drink to the breakfast table to savor it while my siblings eat their factory-farmed eggs, overly processed cereal and sausages that, I'm sure, were NOT crafted in Europe. The pulse of caffeine instantly lifts my mood.
Just what I need to endure yet ANOTHER boring day at the Mushroom Kingdom Academy.
The day drags on and on… I only perk up at the sight of the poster reminding me of the science fair whose registration deadline is next week.
The science fair. The only time during the otherwise vapid school year during which I get to shine.
Well, perhaps not the only time. I also dominated the quiz bowl, the robotics league, the chess championship, and band tournaments (I wish I could say the talent show, but there is little schoolwide appreciation for my virtuosity at various instruments, or my advanced skills at composition).
But the science fair is perhaps my favorite. Even though there is no challenge to my winning every year, I revel in the attention I receive from the professionals, and it is also quite humorous to see what my "peers" come up with.
Although it isn't quite fair for me to be allowed to enter, considering I already hold a bachelor's degree…
Oh well. Shame on Father for enrolling me here in the first place.
The anticipation of such an event never fails to make my heart flutter. I begin pondering what to enter…
Any one of my inventions that I have thrown about my lab like so much junk would win the fair hands down. However, I like to make the fair a challenge for myself and come up with something new within the week before.
My harmonic thoughts are subdued by destructive interference from my chemistry teacher's babble.
I groan. High school chemistry, even at the "advanced placement" level, is about as stimulating as a formalized study of the do's and don'ts of teen fashion, a subject that I have become well versed in over the years just from listening to my sister Wendy gossiping on the phone.
Oxidation and reduction… what simple formulae. Maybe I can…
"Now if chlorine donates one of its electrons to sodium, which is the oxidizing agent and which is the reducing agent?"
I take that back. Teen fashion is more stimulating than this.
I would raise my hand to answer that chlorine is the reducing agent and sodium is the oxidizing agent, and then proceed to deliver a more thorough explanation for the reaction in terms of quantum mechanics, but the teachers had already tired of my habit of doing this and would thus ignore me until, several seconds later, the second most intelligent student (by a LONG shot) of the class would raise his or her hand.
My class finally ends, and my thoughts are free to wander.
I wonder who the judges will be this year. Perhaps…
Nah, well, maybe…
My thoughts return to my Transmutational Brainwave Analyzer. I had scarcely touched it in the many years since I invented it, except a few months ago when I…
Well, if I further modified it so that instead of printing the thoughts out on a piece of paper, that it would display the mind's eye on a TV screen…
I giggle in delight. Ooh, what a challenge! I don't believe anybody's ever captured the brain's visuospatial imaging and recreated it in video format before!
The question is whether I can figure it out within the week before the registration deadline.
I snicker at my own question. A week is PLENTY of time.
I return home, suck down another coffee (this time a warm one with Milka syrup in it) and begin preparing one of my preserved brains for revitalization and experimentation.
I hear crazed laughing coming out of Iggy's lab. No explosion this time.
Perhaps I would actually have worthy competition this year.
But then, this was my last year in the science fair, and Iggy's first. Having only been a genius for a mere few months (assuming he wasn't affecting mental retardation the entire time before), he still had a long way to go to catch up with me…
