Adventures in Crowd Control (Part 4)

Howard walked in through the front door and straight past the couch in the living room.  He was sick of the setbacks and the delays.  He wanted to come up with a plan and start implementing it immediately.  Nap time was over.

He decided right away that he wasn't going to bother building a miniature prototype this time.  The dead potato bug provided plenty proof of concept and besides, the mother of the baby mice had long since snatched them up and moved them to an undisclosed location.

He walked into the bathroom and flushed his pain medication.  He didn't need it now and the allergic reaction could prove problematic.  First off, the task of building his invention and then piloting it would be difficult while afflicted with uncontrollable spasms.  Even if those weren't all debilitating, there was still the issue of how he would be perceived by others.  After reducing a bunch of traffic-impeding, civilly disobedient people to a red smear, TV crews might want to interview him and twitching facial features might give the impression that he was a crazy man.

Howard decided the first thing he needed to do was to figure out what he needed to buy at the onset rather than get blindsided by unexpected costs down the road.  He went onto the internet to check prices on the necessary components and jotted them down in his spiral notepad.

It wasn't a long list but it wasn't cheap either.  Howard had nowhere near enough money in his bank account to buy it all by maxing out his credit cards, he was able to order it online in one go.  Now all he had to do was wait for the delivery of a forklift, two 10-foot prong extenders, a used airplane propeller engine, 20 feet of two-inch diameter steel cable, a blowtorch, and a copy of Welding for Dummies.

In the weeks between purchasing these items and their delivery, Howard busied himself with going through painkiller withdrawal.  In the preceding months, he had managed to build up a considerable physical dependency on them and now it was time to pay the price.  The mild spasms due to his allergy to the drugs had been replaced by violent shaking, irritability, and insomnia.

During his extended periods of sleepiness, Howard kept himself mentally on-message by writing poems that celebrated the importance of his work.  Of all his verse, he found these two lines to be the most inspiring:


Eventually, all of the components arrived and he went to work.  With the combination of the heat of the welding torch and the weight he had put on, Howard dripped pungent sweat as toiled away and the air in the garage where he worked grew heavy and humid with human funk.  Slowly his creation took form and when it was complete, he dubbed it the Megawhack.

Howard's next step was to put his invention through its paces.  The test had to be done during the day.  He tried switching on the propeller engine once at night, which resulted in a noise complaint and a quick-thinking promise to the police to refrain from working on his hovercraft while people were trying to sleep.

So he scheduled his test run one early afternoon.  All of his neighbors would be at work except for Mr. Lulkaas, who was unlikely to complain about what he couldn't hear.

The night before, he had gone shopping for an inflatable love doll to serve as his test subject.  They all looked pretty much the same except for hair color but he ultimately chose the one packaged as "Vicki" because the name reminded him of Vic Morrow, the actor decapitated by a helicopter blade on the set of the "Twilight Zone" movie.  When Howard got home, he sliced Vicki open, filled her body with hamburger meat and chicken giblets, and sewed her back up.

The Megawhack's final exam was now ready to begin.  Howard sat in the driver's seat of the converted forklift.  He clicked a button on a remote control and the garage door opened.  He pushed a button that started the forklift.  The engine roared to life and the vehicle emerged from the garage.  At the front of its attached spear-like prong extenders sat the propeller engine welded into place and two lengths of steel cable dragging behind.

Howard then hit the button to start the propeller engine.  It started turning slowly, pulling the cables in a snaking motion behind it before picking up enough speed for them to spin taut and off the ground from centrifugal force.

Vicki was propped upright at the end of the driveway, tied to an old wooden coat rack that Howard never had much use for before now.  She was one of the cheaper models of love doll and was hardly passable as a flesh-and-blood woman, though her wide-open eyes and mouth gave her a terrified look that lent credibility.  Howard could not decide what to put on her protest sign so in lieu giving her one, he had fitted a latex glove flashing a peace sign over her upraised fingerless hand.

The Megawhack advanced until a spinning cable came in contact with Vicki, effortlessly slicing both her and the coat rack in two.  For Howard, this moment of success vindicated all of his efforts up to now.

The only part of the exercise Howard had not counted on was the mess.  Bits of meat went flying everywhere, including straight back at him.  He multiplied the gore level by a crowd full of people and made a mental note to don rain gear before unleashing his invention on the public. 

It was a fortunate for Howard that Mr. Lulkaas was not outside.  Although the sound would not bother him, the visuals that were about to unfold were another matter entirely.

The question now remaining was when the Megawhack was to make its debut.  Civil disobedience wasn't what it used to be.  The sandals-and-beads crowd liked the new president a lot more than the last one and were therefore far less likely to take to the streets on any given day.  Ultimately, Howard settled on a fundraiser rather than an actual protest.

It was a half marathon for breast-cancer research.  True, it was not going to be a gathering of angry rabble but it would cause significant traffic problems.  Rhea Dyer, the vegan-thin organizer of the event and also one of the top contending runners, seemed genuinely proud of this and interviewed on TV."

"You may want to cycle, walk, or take public transit on half marathon day," she said.  "Of course, this is a good thing to all of the time.  We'll be fighting a disease that destroyed the lives of millions of women and also persuading people not to drive their gas-guzzling SUV's.  It's a win-win situation.  Don't you agree?"

As Howard watched her nod and smile knowingly, he buried his finger deep inside his nostril.  Pulling out a glistening ropey snot, he flicked it at the television screen nailing her image right between the eyes.

"Lady, " he said.  "I have just marked you for death."

And so it was decided.

On the morning of the half marathon, Howard took a moment to admire himself in a full-length mirror before heading out to the garage.  There was not a cloud in the sky but in anticipation of spatter from the Megawhack, he had decked himself out like a Maine fisherman in rain pants, oilskin coat, and a sou'wester hat.

"I am the perfect storm," he said.

The starting line was about mile away from Howard's home.  He timed his departure so he would surprise the runners just as they rounded the first corner of the race route.   Howard knew that you're supposed to give people a chance to disperse before they are met with force. 

Fair enough, but he doesn't want to give them too much of a chance either.  Otherwise, he would never get to experience the full killing potential of his invention.  As in all aspects of law enforcement, a balance has to be struck so Howard decided to let the vehicle's 12 mph maximum speed mitigate the carnage.

As he started the machine and pulled out of the garage, there was one nagging thought on his mind.  Who would be the first to die?  He had assumed that would be Rhea Dire but there was really no way to be sure of that.  He was OK that there is some level of chance that dictates who lives and dies but but thought it was his right to pick the first casualty.  To deny him this was a to concede an element of control to the crowd that needed controlling.  For Howard, this was unacceptable.

A solution to this issue presented itself Mr. Lulkaas, who was out for a stroll moving down the sidewalk away from Howard at an octogenarian's pace.  So instead of driving the Megawhack out to the street, he made a left on the sidewalk to chase the old man down.

The steel cables whipped around without mercy.  As they swept over Mr. Lulkaas' lawn they succeeded where King Herod had failed by obliterating the baby Jesus and everyone else in the plastic nativity scene.  From there, the Megawhack brought destruction to neighboring front yards, blasting picket fences to kindling, violently trimming hedges, and sending dogs and cats scurrying under to quiver and wet themselves.  All the while, Howard kept his invention on course, its target unable to hear and therefore oblivious to the instrument of death closing in on him.

Then one of the cables hit a tree.  I did not cut through the trunk as it might through smaller plants.  Nor did it deflect off the surface as it would with a more solid surface like iron or granite.  It stuck fast in the wood and wasn't going anywhere.  Unfortunately for Howard, the same could not be said for his invention.  Or him.

The slingshot effect shot Howard out of his seat skyward at high velocity.  As he flew over Mr. Lulkaas' head, the elderly man waved at his portly neighbor who was dressed most oddly for such a sunny day.

Howard's trajectory carried him over the high cinder-block wall and onto the freeway on the other side.  Whether he could have survived the impact was quickly rendered irrelevant by oncoming automobiles.  The first tires rolled over him followed by those skidding across his body as panicked drivers stomped their brake pedals.  Cars rear-ended each other.  Traffic snarled.  The CHP was going to have its hands full with this mess.

A quarter mile back, a little boy on his way to Disneyland pounded on his mother's car seat with his fists and complained that they were going to get there late.  She told him to calm down, that the half marathon had caused more traffic problems than anticipated, and that there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it.  Maybe not today, he told himself.  Or tomorrow.  But someday, he'd do plenty about it.  You could count on that.