Genius and Dummy, Part IV

Professor Hawking’s beryl eyes, rolling wildly in their sockets, had taken on an uncommonly fierce appearance. If pure fury could have cast off the shackles of his paralysis, he’d surly be a candidate for the Benny Hinn show. Fortunately for Alvin, the miraculous, healing powers of rage are still unproven, for it was Alvin who had provoked his beloved Steve to that state of lividity.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” asked Alvin rhetorically as he continued detaching the wires that governed Steve’s voice synthesizer. “The brightest mind of your generation, undone by a rather common mind from mine. This is just a precaution, so you don’t try anything funny while I disable the transmitter in your glasses.” As he removed the glasses from Steve’s face, Alvin continued, “Isn’t it ironic? Don’t cha think? A little too ironic.” And with these words, that same sinister smile spread across Alvin’s countenance. “You were probably on the verge of a Nobel Prize for the work you’ve been doing with String Theory…oh well, easy come, easy go, right?”

Actually, of course, Steve’s work in theoretical astrophysics and cosmology had been a long time in the making. Besides the usual difficulties associated with being a leading thinker in a revolutionary new scientific field with no real mentors to guide him, Hawking struggled with the difficulties of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Having suffered from the condition for 43 years, he was, in fact, that longest known survivor of the mysterious disease.

“On second thought,” Alvin reconsidered, “maybe it will be useful for me to have some limited communication from you.” Alvin pulled his cell phone out from its holder attached to his belt, and dialed a friend. “Hey, David? It’s me, Alvin. I was thinking: what if instead of completely dismantling the voice, we transmitted into a small speaker that only I could hear? Maybe something like a really small hearing aid? Could you design something like that? Great! I’ll be waiting.”

* * * * * * * * *

If Steve hadn’t truly known ire when Alvin was disassembling his voice synthesizer, surely he learned the meaning of that word upon discovering the involvement of his wife’s ex in the conspiracy against him.

“You’re in luck,” began David. “Normally this type of thing could take weeks—even months without the right parts—to piece together, but I happen to have a miniature radio-receiver already built for another project I’ve been working on.” Then turning to the crippled genius, “Oh, hello, Stephen. It’s so very nice to see you again; it’s been so long, hasn’t it?”

“So, how long do you think it will take to get everything operational? He has a small press conference tomorrow afternoon, so I’d like to have it ready by then.”

“Yes, if I start now. The radio receiver we’ll put in your ear can’t translate his eye and cheek movements into words—that requires a lot of computer processing, which can’t be done with such a small, simple device. We’ll have to allow the old synthesizer to decode his blinking, then transmit the decoded words as short distance radio waves to your receiver. By the way Pinky, next time you try to take over the world, could you have things a planned out a little more thoroughly?”

“Sorry,” Alvin replied sarcastically. “As I was just explaining to the professor, I’m of a very average mind. I had the rudiments of the plan established since I read that article on CNN.com, but beyond that, I’m making things up on the fly. You might say I’m writing the book as I go along. By the way, it was the Brain who designed the plans to take over the world, not Pinky. Ok, I’ve got a lot of prep to do before tomorrow’s press conference. I’m sure you have so much to talk about, so I’ll let you two catch up.” And with that, Alvin sauntered out of Hawking’s office to ready himself for the big day.

“Think you can just go around marrying other people’s wives, you pathetic cripple? She was my wife! You sorry, sorry little man.”

“Your ex…wife. And who’s…sorry…now?” retorted Steve from the comfort of his wheelchair. “Alvin says…easy come…easy go. And as far…as wives go…yours was…pretty easy.” There was a distinct twinkle in Steve’s eye as his little pun echoed from the voice synthesizer, the wires of which David had just reconnected. Aside from the unwelcomed gaps between phrases (an unavoidable result of the time lapse between words as Steve blinked out his sentences in a sort of Morris code), he was justifiably proud of the delivery of his little joke. If only, Steve thought to himself, there was a way for the synthesizer to have inflection or emphasis! Then I could have stressed “And as far as wives go, yours was pretty easy." That would have drawn attention to the cleverness of the pun.

“Why you smug little frozen bastard!” David said with bated breath as a vindicating backhanded slap landed squarely on the Professor’s right cheek. “Yeah, not so smug now, are you, you handicapped freak? Can’t even feed yourself, can’t even brush your own teeth, or take a piss without someone else’s help. We’ll see who gets the last laugh now. Just wait until you see what Alvin has in mind for you.”

And just before a solitary tear rolled over the pink mark David’s hand had left on his cheek, a look of genuine dread shone from his beryl orbs.