Day Two: Bear
Ice. I was wrapped in a blanket of ice. I shivered and gathered myself closer, wildly hallucinating in my half-conscious state. I was lumbering up a great hill of snow, the wind whipping at me from all directions. I closed my watering eyes to a crack in a vain attempt to shield them, as the icy breath permeated my skin, jarring my bones and dislodging my hair follicles, so that as I mounted the crest, my white fur was falling away in large tufts, which were soon swept away by the destructive wind.
I looked down my black snout from the mountaintop to the land below, hoping and praying for a body of water, a forest, anything that would change the scenery. There was none. I was a solitary polar bear in an arctic land where the snow and ice went on for eternity, with no protection or shelter or hope. Surely I would not last long.
A shuffling sound woke me from my despairing dreams and I stirred, opening my eyes for them to be suddenly filled with piercing light. I winced and squinted as my eyes adjusted. There were whitewashed walls and tile floors with a single drain located off to one side. All was a blindingly pure white, like sun reflecting off snow, painfully reminding me of my dream.
I was strapped to a metal operating table in the center of the room, stark naked and chilled to the bone. Surrounding me were wheeling trays of surgical tools, menacingly orderly and shiny in the light. Despite the lack of heat, I broke out into a sweat.
I heard another shuffle like the one that woke me, followed by an exclamation. "Oh good! You're awake," came a horribly familiar voice from behind me. Like a singular muscle, my whole body tensed, and I growled, despite myself.
Shaw stepped into my line of view, grinning that curling, arrogant, annoying grin. He was dressed in scrubs, wearing the little mouth covering and all. In one plastic-gloved hand he held a syringe filled with clear liquid. "I would have brought you in here conscious… But some of my men argued that it was safer this way. You know, after what happened yesterday," he said amusedly, as if I were a pesky pet that was always getting into naughty trouble.
"Screw you!" was all my twelve-year-old brain could come up with, making Shaw laugh long and hard. I glared at him, silently willing him to burst into flames.
I glanced sidelong at the glistening tools just a few feet to my right. They seemed to be there to taunt me. It was all too perfect. I looked back to Shaw, who was smiling as if he had just read my mind. "That's my boy," he said softly. "You're on your way, aren't you? Marvelous! Simply marvelous!" he exclaimed cheerfully.
"One day you will be doing great things, great things indeed. What you have is a muscle, you know, and soon we will have you nice and lean and strong, fit to move mountains! Just you see. But we've got to start somewhere, haven't we? And what a better place than here."
I most definitely did not like the way this was turning out. Naked and strapped to a table, surrounded by possible weapons for murder and dismemberment, no, I did not like this at all. The table on which I was attached to began to rumble and shake, as did the tables with the utensils on them. Curiously, the tools themselves did not move. They were perfectly still.
Shaw took a deep breath through his nose. "Smell that?" he said. "It's fear. Confusion. Hate." He exhaled satisfyingly, reveling in the moment.
I looked up at him, my face that of utmost hate, staring at the madman with my jaw clenched.
However, this only appeared to encourage Shaw. "You see, right now you are wild. You are filled with extreme emotions, are you not? After all, you just lost your mother –"
"Because you killed her!" I interjected at the top of my lungs, unable to take it.
"– and you're understandably upset about that," he said as if I hadn't spoken at all. "But, the thing is, we don't need all that baggage. Love and grief are such heavy emotions, and right now they're weighing you down. As we established yesterday, anger and pain are your real motivators. So, let's build on that."
I did not like the way this was going. My eyes grew wide as I looked at him, my jaw slack.
"You're like a wild animal. What we need to do is get you house broken, catch my drift? We have to get you fit to saddle. You need to capture that power of yours and learn to use it well, with deadly precision, and we can't do that when you're full of all those hormones."
Reaching out for a scalpel, he set down the syringe and leaned in uncomfortably close to me. "So let's consider this lesson one," he breathed softly.
Panic mode officially on, my adrenaline kicked in and my entire body positively shook with fear and nervousness and anger. The tables rattled dangerously, as did the drain covering, but the scalpel in his hand remained still.
Shaw looked at me smiling, clicking his tongue and waving his finger disapprovingly. "407128, do you know what is best about the Nazis and their Third Reich?" He paused a moment for dramatic effect. I certainly would not answer. "They have state-of-the-art technology. What you're looking at here," he said waving the scalpel, "is a fascinating little invention called 'plastic'. This is a prototype designed just for you; sharp as a knife and without all that metal – I think you'll come to appreciate it. I know I will."
A nasty smile, a bright light, and endless pain became my constant companions in the longest forty-eight hour period of my life. I was manufactured there in that room, hot off the assembly line, model year 1944. I went in as a pile of raw materials taken straight out of the earth, Erik Lensherr, and emerged two days later, a crude but promising handcrafted work of art, a machine, 407128.
