Chapter 3
"Are you sure you want me to do this, Mr. Griffiths?" asked the scientific maverick named John Hutchinson. His lopsided spectacles and frizzy shoulder-length hair making him seem ever more a mad scientist-type than the crisply groomed, years-deceased Professor Mathers. "I've never placed a living being into this chamber before. Most especially not a person."
"Don't worry, Mr. Hutchinson," a half-smiling/half-smirking, both somewhat sinisterly, Gwyllm Griffiths offered in order to reassure this seat-of-his-pants scientist. "I've done this before...but it's been a long time. And you've rearranged the overall layout of the device. You've also added to it. But...it should still work to transform me. And, if it does...you, John Hutchinson, will no longer be looked upon as the leader of the lunatic fringe of your, uh, field."
Though Hutchinson was not now, nor at any time prior to this person's arrival at his apartment door, a seeker of sensational attention, his scientific curiosity was such that this strange experiment would, indeed, be done.
A flip of a switch caused a semi-metallic door to rise and expose the interior of a chamber previously only used to focus frequencies and energies in order to create The Hutchinson Effect.
Now, instead of inanimate objects, ranging from bowling balls to bottles to paper cups, evidently defying gravity for the duration of the energetic Effect...
...a human named Gwyllm Griffiths, well into his sixties, sat on a makeshift stool. Patiently awaiting the activation and manipulation of a machine made all the more massive and strange by the gradual addition, starting six-and-a half years earlier, of working parts to Professor Mathers' mechanism.
"Ready?" Hutchinson asked, somewhat shakily, as he paused just prior to causing said chamber door to drop shut.
With an even more sinister smile/smirk, the elderly-and-alone Gwyllm readily replied, "More than you can ever know. Proceed."
Soon, the sealing of said door was promptly followed by a seemingly random manipulation of the monstrous machine's various switches, knobs, and buttons. Its internal whine swiftly rising as the strange aggregation of unknown energies it produced were completely directed at its target...
Gwyllm Griffiths.
Through the semi-metal chamber door's squarish glass window, the same that had been seen on Prof. Mather's machine so many decades earlier, the physical transmogrification from Man of the Present to Man of the Future could be carefully scrutinized...
"My God..."
John Hutchinson had seen strange reactions from articles he'd placed inside said chamber before. Normally making an anti-gravity eventuality seem much more than hypothetical, though such was still hotly debated by constituent scientists and the public-at-large.
But never the evolutionary leaps now occurring at a rate of tens of thousands of years per minute. Then hundreds of thousands per minute. Until, ultimately...
Millions per minute.
Before the final few millenniums swiftly passed for the Irish-accented aging man, which would allow him to transmutate into the Vortex of Cohesive Consciousness he so wished to physically assume...
Puh-pop! POP! Zzt! ZZZZ-zzzt! REEE-eee-rrrrrr!
Not only the electricity so essential for powering the Frankensteinish machine made and maintained by John Hutchinson, but also such supplying power for two entire city blocks, suddenly ceased...
"Oh, my..."
...not only plunging John's apartment proper into a deepening darkness brought about by the gradual arrival of evening...
"No! It's not enough! Not enough!"
...but halting the super-fast transmogrification of Gwyllm at a probable point of evolutionary advance some sixteen million years into Man's Extreme Future.
"Nnnn-EERRRR!"
CRRRRRRRR-Crang! BLLL-BLAAM! KREEEEEE-eeeeeeeeeee!
As his self-maintained battery-powered generator brought emergency lighting on-line inside the overcrowded-with-a-wide-variety-of-devices dwelling, John Hutchinson was struck into shocked silence by what his eyes beheld...
"Jesus..."
Where there had been a normal Human mere minutes ago, there now stood, on more muscular than normal little legs with a neck as thick as the trunk of a tree!, an unimaginably massive head. More brain than anything else. With not two, not four, but six arms-and-hands whose extremely long, multi-knuckled fingers seemed almost like tentacles instead of dexterous digits.
"Wh-what have I d-done...?"
"What you have done is failed, Mr. Hutchinson!" came the mentally delivered reply directly from the massive multi-million year advanced mind of a Mutated Man to the mad scientist-type suddenly afraid for all humanity. "Failed to fulfill our agreement! I was supposed to ascend to a cohesive consciousness that would afford me the ability to merge with my one and only Love! To intertwine my intellect with that of my recently deceased wife! With Cathy."
In the peaceful pause of such tremendous telepathic output, John thought only of escape...
A thought easily ascertained by this monstrosity-made-real slowly closing the short distance between them in order to grasp this estranged scientist within hands much more than mere redundancies in regards to their rise from two-to-six.
A palpable psionic pulse of power absolute actually inflicting genuine agony that also served to chase such thoughts from the meager mind, compared to this severely transmutated man!, of John Hutchinson.
"P-please," pleaded John as his tightly held-by-six super-hands body was stiffened by the telekinetic/telepathic power, approaching that of a god!, consistently assaulted his entire nervous system. "I...I can r-repair the m-machine...and t-turn you b-back!"
"Back?" laughingly, both in thought and through the nearly-depleted-by-Time mouth, replied this Far-flung Futuristic Man-Monster. "As I had said to Prof. Mathers once I had auto-evolved into a Future Human of one million years...would you wish to return to an ape? The answer is a resounding...no!"
That "no" carried more pure power, agonizingly so!, than anything remotely imaginable. Especially in respect to someone still clutched so tightly by six long-fingered hands, whilst a telepathic/telekinetic intellect of some sixteen million years hence held him so close.
Psionically as well as physically.
"EEE-YIIIIII!"
As blessed unconsciousness claimed the mangled mind of John Hutchinson, the six hands holding him released their seemingly steel-like clutch. As an impossibly powerful telekinetic brain, bigger than a boulder resting atop muscularly altered-for-maximum support body-and-legs!, literally hurled him aside...
Krr-krash! Thud!
...before forcing the entire side of the apartment's sturdy structure to blast outward as if from the explosive eruption of several pounds of C-4. Then telekinetically lowering his immense form to the ground beyond, whilst declaring loudly with both massive mind and almost lost-to-Time mouth...
"The whole of humanity must be brought under my power! But, first...I shall destroy this city! An example must be made!"
END OF CHAPTER 3