3 more stories from The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination

The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius (2013)

Edited by John Joseph Adam 

My initial post covering four of the stories is here.

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"Professor Incognito Apologizes: An Itemized List" by Austin Grossman is a genuinely funny story. In it, Incognito tells his significant other:

     You remember the day I asked you to take me back? You can thank Detective Kropotkin for that humbling moment. The night before, I had snapped the lock of his office door and was busy dusting his things with my nanotech powder. It happened that Kropotkin was waiting for me. He'd come in to work late, unable to sleep. He stood in the doorway looking especially seedy, a checked wool coat pulled on over his pajamas, but the revolver steady in his grip. It's so obvious Kropotkin is an asshole, even his allies feel sorry for him. He honestly thinks living alone and playing drunk chess on the Internet makes him a tragic hero.

     Seeing him there, with his sad little grin, I realized something worse: He thinks he understands me. He actually thinks we're melancholy companions and rivals in a long dance of good and evil, law and chaos. And seeing him, I felt that I was, indeed, looking into a kind of mirror, but only in that I was turning into a pathetic cliché. I realized that the person I am with you, is also part of the person I am.

    

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"Father of the Groom" by Harry Turtledove

     You might imagine that, with such splendors on his curriculum vitae, Tesla Kidder lives alone, cooking in Erlenmeyer flasks over a Bunsen burner. You might, but you would be mistaken. He is happily married to Kathy, a smashing blonde, and has been for lo these many years.

      How? you ask. How? You, in fact, cry. Well, to put it as simply as possible, Kathy is a bit mad, too, or more than a bit. Proof? You want proof? She breeds Weimaraners for a living. What more proof do I need?

Turtledove employs a light touch here with gusto: no need for the reader to fret over facing another time-consuming, life-gnawing alternative history opus. (Reading the first volume of Worldwar circa 1997 permanently satisfied my interest).

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"Laughter at the Academy: A Field Study in the Genesis of Schizotypal Creative Genius Personality Disorder (SCGPD)" by Seanan McGuire is formally an inspired collage. 

Evil genius has been diagnosed and prohibited. A special police flying squad has been created to stamp it out. 

So who is helping everyday researchers get in touch with their inner pathologies?

    "Captain, I'm telling you, the pattern is clear. You need to look at the data."

    "Do you realize what you sound like, John? A mysterious lab assistant whose name changes every time she appears, somehow driving some of the nation's most brilliant minds into the grips of psychological disorder? Escaping disaster after disaster— to what end? What motive could this woman possibly have?"

    "I don't know, sir." Sergeant Secor stared resolutely ahead, trying to ignore the look of disbelief on his superior's face. "The pattern is too consistent to be accidental. I combed through seven years of incidents. This anomaly is present in eighty percent of the reports. Five or ten percent, I might be able to dismiss, but eighty? Every time, she's been hired within the past four months. Every time, her surname matches that of a recently deceased scientist who fits the special handling profile. And every time, the lab is destroyed, with no survivors, but her body is never found. It can't be a coincidence, sir. It simply can't."

    Captain Jovan Watkins sighed. "If you're sure about this, John . . ."

    "I am, sir."

    "Bring me proof. You'll need to find this mystery woman. We need a name, and a reason for anyone to be willing to do the things you claim she's doing."

    "Yes, sir. I won't let you down."

    "I certainly hope not, John. Dismissed."

McGuire masses her story with quotes from learned journals:

—from "Development of the Creative Genius: Nature v. Nurture," by Doctor Powell (diagnosed SCGPD, trial pending). Published in Psychology Journal, volume 32, issue 8. 

snippets of graffiti:

found in the ruins of MIT. Author unknown.

and a more straight-forward police procedural. McGuire eschews jokey cleverness; this is clever narrative conveyed via unstuck-in-time puzzle. Its pieces, when assembled, suggest the SCGPDs have already had the last laugh.

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Jay

9 December 2021