The Curious Invention of Professor John Frink

The Professor Frink's laboratory, situated on a hill on the outskirts of the city, was built by the prodigious Professor after he won the Nobel Prize for his stunningly simple invention, the hammer/screwdriver. Part observatory, part chemistry lab, part zoological garden, part greenhouse, and part house-house. The Professor was a true Renaissance man, with multiple degrees, PhD's and doctorates. He dabbled in physics, chemistry, biology, genetics, proteinology, quantum physics, molecular biology, radiology, ecology, geology, astronomy, astrology, electronics, and mechanics. While his experiments were most often ruined by human error, mathematical mistakes or meddling simians, or resulted in terrible explosions, those that were successful yielded great results. The good Professor's high-tech weapons and relative wealth had greatly aided the team of Hunters so far, and, judging from his hinting, he had developed something that would greatly aid their cause.

They arrived by mid-morning, and the air was still fresh and chill. Sideshows Bob and Mel were present, and Bob looked sad and slightly fat without his dark glasses and shiny black duster. Frs. O'Flaherty and Molloy arrived shortly after the main group, the prior having been waylaid by his obligation to say Mass, and the latter by a call to give a dying parishioner the last rights.

"Hey padre," Bart said to Fr. O'Flaherty casually. Bart grudgingly respected the old priest; he was, in fact, as close a thing to a spiritual mentor he had.

"Top 'o the mornin', lad. Sorry, but I had t'say th' mornin' Mass, and old Mrs. Euwens invited me t' breakfast at Jittery Joe's, but I had to decline. God bless 'er."

Fr. Molloy was visibly disturbed.

"Are you alright, Father?" Brian asked in soto voce.

"Yeah…" he lied, and he started up after the others up the steps to the front door.

"You're troubled…numb, burnt out. You had to see a man die."

"I heard his confession. It was heartbreaking. I could almost see it: the slow descent into sin, the minor concession here and there, the mortal sins, the quickening spiral into despair, the hardness of heart from a life of spiritual death…"

"And yet…he made a good confession…He was sincere, and I am sure that God in His Love and Mercy will not deny him Heaven, nor will He look past your suffering and loyal service, good Father."

There was a pensive silence. Brian looked up and ahead and saw Lisa looking at him over her shoulder. He blushed, and it was especially visible in the cold air. Father Molloy didn't see it. He said, without looking at Brian,

"Father O'Flaherty says that you're..." he said, finishing in a barely audible whisper.

Brian suppressed an amused chuckle.

"Are you?"

Brian looked at him, unfocusedly, and raised his eyebrows.

"Can you?"

They were nearing the door. Robert was at the top of the stairs.

"If I try, if I focus, I can sometimes hear snippets. Mostly though, I just go by facial expressions, hand movements, posture, eye movements-little minutiae that betray enough so that I don't need to read minds: they're being told to me."

"But you can hear them, you can see?"

"Images. Mostly images. And, I told you, only when I'm trying, and only sometimes."

"Could you…discover what someone…has confessed to me?" There was genuine fear, and anger, in the young priest's voice; Brian could hear it in the tone, the fraction-of-an-octave jumps.

"Some things-people, places, events, objects-are inaccessible to me. My perception is in no way a function of radiation or brainpower, but a supernatural gift given to me by God. As with any power, it has both limits and inherent responsibilities. One such limit is my inability to read anything a priest has heard within the Sacrament, or any sins one has confessed to a priest."

Brian saw a degree of doubt in the father's eyes, but sensed that he had accepted his answer. Despite his perceptiveness, he did not notice that Lisa was listening intently to their conversation.

They were at the top of the concrete stairs, at the Professor's back door. Robert cleared his throat and rapped on the steel door with his knuckles. The door was opened promptly by Professor Frink's wife, Professor Einid Frink.

"Oh!" she said in her peculiar, nasal voice, "John's been expecting you. Right this way."

The followed her in through the bare, concrete hallway, up a flight of noisy metal stairs, and up to another door. She took out a crowded key ring, and, after some looking, found the correct key. She unlocked the door and led them into the laboratory.

Prof. Frink poked his head up from behind a table.

"Oh, right on time. Einid, thank you, darling."

"Have fun with your secret experiment –thingy," and she headed off into the monkey cages.

"Ladies and gentlepoysons," the professor said as he stood up, then brushed some dust from his labcoat, "If you will please follow me, I will show you my new invention."

He turned and began walking toward another section of the lab, and the group followed him. Lisa caught up to him, and asked,

"What exactly is this-!"

"Ah! No talk! What with the mood, and the drama, and the rush of blood to my head-oy!-the excitement, its giddying, burhey!"

He led them through a series of locked doors, each with more locks, and each with utilizing more advanced technology. At what Frink assured the increasingly impatient bunch was the last door, there was a corneal scan lock, a voice scan, a finger print lock, a DNA scan, three different codes he had to punch into a keypad, three combination locks, and nine mechanical locks (The keys to six of the locks were hidden under floor paneling, and, once the hidden panel was found and pulled up, the professor had to type in a seven letter code and then spin a combination lock to get the key).

Finally, they entered a dark room that was filled with the humming of thousands of computers. In the centre of the room were what seemed to be several chairs covered with white sheets.

"My friends!" he called out as he walked over to one of the 'chairs', "I have here part of my new plan for UnDead combat! I present to you-" and, with a flourish, he pulled the white cover of one of the objects, revealing what appeared to be a strange, electronic chair, "The Information Jack Chair-patent pending."

There was a befuddled silence.

"Oh, for glavin' out loud! These devices plug into the back of the skull and, through a process much too complex for you to understand, takes files stored within a computer and plants them completely and indelibly in the human memory banks. You see, it would takes far too long to teach all of you the complex intricacies of the various forms of hand-to-hand combat, and weapons handling, and first aid, and language, and so forth, and human education often requires repetition and various studying methods for forcing information to stick in the memory. But, within the time it takes to load about six or so CDs onto a computer, I can teach a person an entire language, or, about a third of Okinawan karate. What with the 'ha!', and the 'hiyah!', and all the mad, mad skills!"

"Wait," said Bart, coming to a sudden realization after the Professor's long plot exposition, "You stole this idea from The Matr-oof!" but he was silenced by Prof. Frink's hand slapped across his mouth.

"Uh, yes, well, the Wachowski brothers did, uh, come up with…that idea, but I made it real. Like with my lightsabers, I mean, sure, Lucas came up with the concept, but you don't see him trying manufacture any and sell them to Nation of Islam!"

"You made lightsabers?" Lisa asked.

"But I digress. I heard how Prof. Callahan here had his tuckas handed to him not once, but twice, by flurving. And Officer Muntz, as I understand, was nearly strangulated by a vampire. So I came to the conclusion that we human be-ins aren't meant for mano-a-mano combat with the creatures of the night. That is, normal humans. With these machines I can teach you all the best of the various martial arts across the globe, and synthesize them into the ultimate fighting regime, in a matter of hours."

"Aw, hours!" objected Homer.

"I can also teach you various languages, as well as the different dialects within them, as well as psychology, first aid, philosophy, weapon combat techniques, gun maintenance, computer skills, ballet-"

"Heck with that! Plug me in an' load the Kung Fu'!" laughed Bart as he rushed to sit in one of the chairs.

"Oh, not so fast, my young wannabe-Reeves. If you remember from…that film…you need to have the appropriate plug implanted in the back of your head in order for your brain to be able to be 'jacked in', to borrow a "You Know Which Film" term. But, since you're so enthusiastic, you can be first!"

"Gleep."

The process was, to say the least, unpleasant. Prof. Frink would sedate them, and then a medical robot he made would cut a small, circular hole in the back of the skull, and implant the nanobots. In a matter of minutes the industrious robo-creatures would penetrate the brain's protective outer membrane and lay down microscopic wires attached directly to the brain's neurons. The wires lead to the back of the skull, where they joined in to fewer and fewer large numbers until they were six. The nanobots were evacuated, and the medbot installed the components, then sealed then with a quarter-sized plug. The process took less than ten minutes, and Frink had three medbots.

Once they were 'plugged' and the sedatives wore off, the Hunters were lead back to the programming room.

"Well, thankfully, the mobsters aren't here, which is good, because I have just enough chairs as it is, plus, they might be stealing, and snooping, and whatnot. But I babble…"

"Tell me about it," Jessica whispered to Bart.

"Uh-what was that?"

"Nothing!"

"Okay then," he said, pressing a lever that caused all the chairs to recline, "This might tickle!"

The cold metal jacks plugged into the back of their skulls. There was much twitching and groaning.

"Alright, is everyone plugged in?"

"Yes...!" they all answered painedly.

"Splendid! Einid, run the basic programs."

"Righty-o," she said, and she loaded into the main computer several program discs. "Loading…loading…done. Okay, transfer. Hoy, this is exciting."

Lisa felt a surge come up from the cord, and she felt her whole body shake and shudder. Her head flipped back and forth and her eyelids fluttered, while images floated through her mind, so vivid and bright. The images settled, her mind cleared. But she found, with the slightest effort, that they floated back up, completely unchanged by remembering. She remembered an old Chinese saying that each time a memory is recalled, it is slightly changed, so that, eventually, it is no longer the same memory. But these aren't human memories. This is stored data, like in a computer or CD or cassette.

"Umm…Frinkie, you might want to see this," his wife called.

Frink rushed over to the main controls.

"There," she said, pointing at the screen that showed Homer Simpson's brain functions.

"Full? Why that's impossible! I mean…oh, right, eh-herm. Well, delete all that, and we'll just put in the basic combat program."

After basic first aid procedures came the language programs, which Homer was not included in, of course. French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Flemish, Friesian, Dutch, German, Swedish, Czech, Romanian, Modern Greek, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew, three different types of Arabic, Swahili, Afrikaans, Pashtun, Bengali, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, Okinawan, and Malay. For those interested (that is, Mel, Bob, Fr. O'Flaherty, Lisa, and Brian) the professor added Ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, Ancient Greek, Ecclesiastical and Classical Latin, Old French, Old and Middle English, Saxon, Norman, Rhaeto-Romance, Basque, Breton, Manx, Welsh, Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Lusitan, Yiddish, Saxon, Albanian, Punjabi, Bengali, Kurdish, Ebo, Bantu, Mongolian, Maori, five major Aboriginal languages, Fijian, Tongan, Inuit, Cree, Cherokee, Shawnee, Iroquois, Adobe, Crow, Arapaho, Algonquin, and Esperanto.

After languages came basic 'covert' techniques: vehicle-jacking, hotwiring, lock-picking, guard-bribing, dog-tricking, fence-climbing, quiet walking, and computer hacking. Then came advanced automobile skills, such as jumps and bootleg turns, as well as motorcycle riding, aircraft piloting, and how to prepare and sail various types of watercraft.

"And now, what you've all been waiting for: the martial arts!"

"Woohoo!"

"Boo-yah!" cheered Millhouse. Nelson leaned over and punched him in the gut.

"That interjection went out of style in '99!"

"So, let's start with gun safety and cleaning…" Frink said, loading in a disk, "Shooting, sniping, rapid-fire weapons, gun repair…and bayonet and close-quarters combat. And…load."

This time, Homer was receiving the data. He twitched and jerked and babbled.

"Whoa…more!" he growled.

"Okay…disarming, knife safety and maintenance, knife fighting 1 and 2, knife throwing, and fighting against multiple opponents."

The data was copied into the computer's files, then transferred straight to their brains.

"More!"

"Rapier fencing1 and 2, saber fencing1 and 2, epee, parts 1 and two!"

"More!"

"One handed short sword one and two, one handed short sword plus shield, one handed broadsword one and two, plus shield expansion pack."

"More!"

"Two-handed longsword!"

"More!"

"Claymore and gladius!"

"Katana, parts one to three, one wazikashi, double wazikashi, wazikashi plus shield!"

"More!"

"Halberd, battle axe, partisan, trident and spear!"

"MORE-OWW! I have a headache! My mind's buzzing…" Homer whined.

"Hmm…Mr. Simpson, it appears that your brain is full. Any further information could possibly result in the loss of vital information."

Homer stared at him blankly.

"Breathe, Homie."

"Oh, right," he replied, snapping out of his torpor.

"How about you go play with the monkeys? They need some exercise."

"Woo! Monkeys!" he screamed giddily, and he ran off with the plug still in the back of his skull. Eventually it snapped, and he fell over, apparently having some sort of fit. He came to, pulled out the jack, then ran off, giggling and sporadically saying "Monkeys!"

"Well, then, lets start with the Kung-Fu."

And they did. Every useful martial art was loaded in, one at a time. Every move, every combination, every strike, every counter, and each and every doctrine and regime was ingrained in their grey matter. They were taught, or, rather, programmed with Kung-Fu San Soo, Shaolin Kung-Fu, Wudan Kung-Fu, and the dreaded Kung-Fu Soccer. Then came Okinawan Karate, Mainland Karate, Judo, Jiu-Jitsus, Tai Chi, Siamese kickboxing, sumo, Israeli martial arts, boxing, drunken brawling, capoeria, and aggressive funk-dancing.

By noon, they were all very tired, and a bit peckish. Mrs. Professor Frink told the robo-cooks to start making lunch for sixteen, while her husband showed them around their labs.

"You see, this whole deal with the vampires-ez is most perplexing to a men of science, which both my wife and I are."

Bart, Lisa, Brian, and Jessica exchanged puzzled looks.

"They are a bundle of contradictions. While they are physical, they are also, as far as I can tell, animated by a supernatural force. Their cells are dead, yet do not decay and are not eaten by maggots, bacteria, mold, or the larger carrion-eating scavenging animals. They ingest blood, but it the blood is not digested, but is absorbed into their bloodstream, which, though cold and necrotic, neither congeals nor decays. It's a puzzlement, da-hoo."

He showed them an operation table were a disabled, comatose vampire lay dissected.

"With it's heart removed, and the arteries and connections are charred by contact with a consecrated substance to prevent regeneration, and, the connection of the heart treated, the creature remains completely inactive. If blood contacts the blood vessels of either, however, regeneration may occur. By cutting off the head, however, and singing the wounds, regeneration can not occur anywhere, and, if it remains in such a state for more than a few days, regeneration becomes impossible, and the body assumes a natural state of decomposition."

"What of holy water, professor? Have you investigated its exact effects?"

"Why yes, in fact, I have." He turned to a nearby jar, a jar that appeared to be filled with a sickly green solution, in which floated a chunk of human, vampire flesh. He donned a pair of latex gloves and, with a pair of tongs, picked up the blob of tissue and carried it over to a nearby meat shaver. He shaved off one thin slice of the flesh, then placed the main chunk back in the jar. He took the shaved slice and placed it on a Petri dish. He then took a large jar of holy water, and poured it over the meat slicer. There was a slight hiss and a puff of steam. He then filled a cup with the holy water, then placed the tongs in it. The cup filled to the brim with froth, and a thick cloud of steam rose up.

The professor took a scalpel and uses it to cut a thin slice of the flesh, which he then placed on a microscope slide. He measured out just the slightest amount of holy water into a cylinder. He turned around to face the others, who had been watching him with a deal of curiosity and confusion as he worked. He raised a single finger on his free hand, then, stepping to the side so the rest could see what he was about to do. He poured the holy water onto the larger slice. There was much crackling and hissing, and steam rose in thick, gray clouds. Bright blue flames appeared, causing the glass dish to deform and melt. Then, it all stopped. Only the blackened, distorted dish remained.

"I used the minimum amount of holy water to dissolve the piece of flesh. As you saw, it took very little to do so completely. In mathematical terms, the amount of Vampyr flesh that an amount of holy water will destroy, is two times the volume squared. A single drop will dissolve a piece of flesh down to the bone. Ah! And the bone! It is a direct volume-volume ratio for bone. All other tissues follow the 2V² equation."

Marge looked to Lisa.

"Did you get that? You understood what he's saying-it makes sense, right?"

"Yes, mom."

"Now, I will place this slide on the microscope…dim the lights…projection, on!"

The lights dimmed, and the microscope's projector showed the dead, motionless cells of the vampire. The delicate, internal components, the mitochondria, the ribosomes, the nucleus, and the Golgi complex sat still, like abandoned machines in a factory.

Professor Frink took a syringe, filled it with holy water, and placed a single drop on the slide. The cells on the projector exploded, as did their real counterparts. Frink went over to inspect the damage to his expensive device.

"Ah, darn it! Cracked the lens. Oh well, all for science. Five hundred dollars…plus repair…all for…science…Oh hell, anyhoo, I'll replay what happened, slow, this time."

"You see, once in contact with the holy water, the cells' connective molecules are dissolved, causing the cell to float away from the others. As this occurs, the cell swells with the holy water. The inner structures dissolve down to the atomic level, and form mostly water and carbon dioxide. This rapid destructurization, when occurring en masse, causes those mysterious blue flames, what with the energy of the molecular bonds being released. The cell membrane brakes due to the internal pressure, and its molecules are then broken down and turned into water and carbon dioxide, leaving the trace minerals still dissolved in the water. The only reason the process burns up any water, hence the ratio, is because the heat the reaction generates causes evaporation. The cellular water and the water reclaimed from the chemical decomposition slow the process down."

"Hmmm…" they all murmured, setting their hands on their chins in contemplation.

"Oh, and the effect that holy water has on blood is also quite ponderous. You see, I thought that the ration would hold for blood, but I found that if you were to pour a gallon of vampiric blood into a gallon of holy water, after the reaction finishes, you are left with a gallon of water. If you then pour a gallon of vampiric blood into the leftover water, you end up with one gallon. And, as far as I can tell, it goes on indefinitely."

"So, what does it mean?"

"Blood, for once, isn't thicker than water."

"Oooh…"

A bell was chimed.

"Oh goody, the sandwhiches! Burhey!"

After a simple lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches washed down with milk, their host showed them another invention.

"These ultra-thin needles are inserted into the muscles, like so, and the little electric jolts cause muscular contractions and relaxation. When supplemented with daily exercise, a diet high in protein, my muscle fiber repairing nanobots, and the occasional use of low doses of steroids, the result is a buff bod in a matter of days."

"Hmmmm…I don't want anyone using steroids. Its illegal, not to mention it's unsafe. My body is still messed up from my strangely-out-of-character steroid abuse."

"Your abuse of anabolic steroids wasn't out of character. You're an insecure neurotic with who grew up in an unhappy home and have a history of poorly handling it when your perceptions are defied. When you were attacked and robbed, your only natural behavior was to go into seclusion. Once you were strong enough to beat up your attacker, which you did, your strength became your only protection."

"Furthermore, you have a long history of addiction and illicit behavior. You've been an alcoholic, a compulsive gambler, and somewhat of a risk-taker."

After Lisa finished, Marge glowered at her and said, "I don't like you analyzing me in front of other people."