FINAL WISHES
By Gary Curtis
Powerpuff Girls created by Craig McCracken and all related characters owned by Cartoon Network
SIX
Blossom went pale. "Princess?"
Buttercup went red in the face. "Princess Morbucks?!"
Bubbles squealed, her voice rising on every word. "She's our sister??!!"
They were too stunned to do anything else but read.
'It all started around fifteen years ago. I had been doing research into the lost art of alchemy; turning materials into something other than their natural state. Had I been only about money, I probably could have found a way to turn lead into gold. But, even then, science and life mattered equally. I sought to find out if it were really possible to create life in a laboratory. I published papers on the subject. Still, money was important, though I saw it more as a means to further my studies than to create a comfortable life for myself. Being out in the world, enjoying life's finer things, never appealed to me as much as being in my lab, letting my mind roam free. Had an opportunity arisen, though, to earn vast amounts of wealth from my work, I would not say no. I am not that altruistic.
Such an opportunity arose in the spring of 1990. I received a letter from a colleague I hadn't seen in years. He had read my papers on artificially created life and knew someone who might be interested in seeing that research taken beyond the realm of theory. I met with the interested party and came away with the belief that he had only the best intentions in mind. He was wealthy beyond imagine and simply wanted a daughter with no strings attached. He had never married and suspected that any prospective marriage partner would be interested only in his fortune, and thusly he would lose not only a large portion of that fortune but his child as well if the marriage ended. The man did seem a bit paranoid, but I can't say I found fault with his logic. A plus was that he lived thousands of miles away from Townsville. He had never heard of the place until he flew to meet with me. I was thinking that having the child live somewhere distant was a good thing, though at the time I didn't understand why I felt that way. Even then, a tiny part of me was sensing that I would be doing the wrong thing.
So, for an advance fee of one million dollars, I began my research. By 1992 I was sure I was onto something solid and by the next year, my 'client' had greenlighted the 'project'. By early 1995 I had a full computer model to show him, and I got the go-ahead to produce a female child. I was paid another two million for the work, whether it succeeded or not, with an additional seven million to be paid on 'delivery'. Ten million dollars I took, and it gained me nothing.
Nothing good, I should say. What happened, I realized in hindsight, was an omen of what was to come. I had carefully stirred all of my ingredients with a large spoon. I went to my desk to briefly double-check the list to see if I had it right, when the reaction took place. I was not expecting it to happen that quickly and I feared the worst. But, she was perfect in every way. She didn't cry. She looked up at me with a smile in those blue eyes, with those tiny red curls, and her perfect little mouth sucked away like it was a pacifier at the spoon I had left in there when I walked away. The spoon, as I'm sure you've guessed by now, was made of silver. I smiled back and said, 'Why, you're just a little princess, aren't you?''
Bubbles was the first one able to speak. "She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth."
Blossom sagged visibly. "Oh, Bubbles, that might be funny if this weren't so sad."
Buttercup's feelings were all over her face but for now she said nothing. They kept reading.
'She was such a beautiful baby. Had Morbucks not been there in the house, I do believe I would have cleaned out my bank accounts, taken my infant daughter and quietly disappeared for good. But he was there. And I was too weak. I heard a noise behind me and knew he'd heard me talking to her. There was no chance of hiding her and explaining away the failure until he left. He came down the stairs, saw me holding her and immediately reached for her. She cried, then, and would not let go of me. I should have stood up to him, told him to keep his money, he wasn't getting my child. She was mine! But something in the way I hesitated giving her to him angered him and he told me calmly that he didn't take kindly to being double-crossed. It was a menacing calmness, and while today I fear him not and will fight him to the end, at that moment I did. I began to suspect that I'd seriously misjudged the type of man he was, but, even as my innocent little baby shrieked, I handed her over and took my thirty pieces of silver from him.
For a second, I was ready to snatch her back but he gave me a sneering, "Oh, if you want a kid so bad, just make another one. You can afford it. This one belongs to me." He looked at her and said. "Princess. Yeah, I like that."
Looking back now, it was just like those words in that song from my adolescence:
'Well, another man might have been angry.
And another man might have been hurt.
But another man never would have let her go.' (1)
I stashed the check in my shirt.'
(1) Song lyrics from 'Taxi' by Harry Chapin, 1972.