Made Men

Made Men

By
Bradley Ernst

Copyright ©
2016 by Bradley J Ernst

All rights
reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any
manner whatsoever without the express, written permission of the publisher except
for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

To my father.

For doing the right thing

in
a
grocery store

in
1976.

Table of Contents

~Broad Strokes

~Captive

~Vessel

~Persephone and Need

~Medusa

~Still Life

~Hubris

~Not-god

~King James Version

~West Berlin

~Good Look

~Essentials

~East

~Anonymous

~Two-out-of-Four

~Confession

~The Spear of God

~The Feet of the Beggar

~No Rest for the Wicked

~Liar

~The Last Supper

~Understanding

~The Wait

~Rotkäppchen

~Both

~The Monster

~Trident

~Apropos

~America

~Beautiful, Terrible

~So Bunny can
Have it Better

~Unannounced Visitor

~Had to go Plymouth.

~Dead on Paper

~Foreshadowing

~Egress

~Cast and Crew

~Tea for Three

~Range

~Odd Bundles

~Lung

~Survival of the Fittest

~Act of god

~Slow Ride

~Warpath

~Bullet Train

~Like Father, Like Son.

~Light in the Window

~Bone Broth

~Exhibition

~Epilogue

~Acknowledgments

“Through the exaggerated neck I wanted
to represent strength. I realize that the execution exceeded the idea.”

“The result of a lifetime, the
pivot of my aesthetic.” (Rodin on
Monument
to Balzac
)

                                                                  
~Auguste
Rodin

A
large
airplane had dropped something. The something barreling to the earth weighed as
much as two Indian and one African elephants combined—however only
fourteen pounds of it mattered: plutonium. In forty-three seconds World War II
would be over, although it would take hours and days and weeks for the leaders
of the current apex species to fully absorb what had happened and to agree that
the war was over. As the object neared the earth, dread and black, it pierced
the clouds obscuring its ideal target. The co-pilot of a Boeing B-29
Superfortress readied his camera.

F
orty-seven years ago
Auguste Rodin finished what some consider his worst and some consider his most
masterful sculpture.
The financers of
the Balzac plaster mold viewed it with fecund disdain. They—
the Société des gens
de lettres de France, who commissioned the work seven years prior—hated
it. Rodin withdrew from society with his creation. The sculptor nursed his
melancholy in Meudon, France. The artistic world sided with Rodin; the
celebrated sculptor had not tried to capture the exact physical visage of the
writer—of the man—but instead the spirit of Balzac. As such, he
succeeded. The figure, corpulent and goitrous was the firefly in a jar … just
not nearly as pleasant to look at.

The
Société des gens de lettres de France didn’t ask for spirit. They wanted Balzac
looking pensive, crouched over paper at a desk. Auguste and the spirit he had
carved from lime, sand, and water glowered at each other in the sculptor’s
home.

Eight
years had passed since the white marble lions of the Marco Polo Bridge
witnessed strife between the Japanese interlopers and the men whose
grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers and distant granduncles carved the
beasts in various sizes and styles. Eight years since the gears of war had
lurched forward again. The world had not healed yet from the last global
conflict. Battles raged yet again, too soon, on the world’s brittle bones.

Six
years and five weeks had passed since Auguste Rodin’s bronze of Balzac, cast
years after the sculptor’s death, was installed on the Boulevard du Montparnasse
in Paris. The young German physician obsessed with genetics looked away from
the festivities—the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen just accidentally
brushed against him in the crowd. Her exquisite face bore the hues of
anger-laced fear. The fear looked lovely on her cheeks—the flash of color
intimate. It reminded the narcissist of the smells of a lover in the
morning—mouth and awakening body turning to him, demanding more.

A
man with an odd musical instrument made chase—a halfhearted effort to
retrieve the woman, his lover—however, he’d enjoyed too much drink. The
gypsies were in town; she might be Spanish. The Romanian’s pursuit of the
Spaniard was not sure-footed in the thick crowd. The gypsy struggled with a
choice: lose the instrument and catch his mate, or lose sight of her
altogether.

He
chose poorly.

The
geneticist noted the smooth flash of her bare shoulders with each sidestep and
flick of her slender wrists, heeded by her flowing skirt as she darted through
the ordinary gray people clogging the thoroughfare. The German doctor followed.
The gray people made ample room for him, parting to make way for his long,
confident strides, though none were aware of it. They were each accustomed to
the avoidance of evil—just not consciously. The Nazi needed her—and
would have her. The drag of her skirt against men slowed her escape. He gained.

N
ine-eight-seven-six
seconds until the bomb detonated. People looked
up. Heaven parted. Those on bleachers just inside stood to make room for those
on the way. Rodin watched from above with interest—how would this stroke
of clay look on the human form? He was forced, by his death twenty-eight years
ago, from his last earthly work: The Gates of Hell. The sculptor picked up the
count.

Five-four-three-two
…

The
earth shivered. Radios worldwide crackled to life. It was a new age. Many who
had given up hope would be freed. Stories of resolve would shape the human race
yet more, over time.
Now
, thought
Rodin,
I’ll work the eye of my sculpture
,
where
the soul is known
to rest
.
He’d leave the brow furrowed. Rodin knew Josef Mengele
would flee to South America; Carl Clauberg would seek refuge in Russia. Justice
was distant. His clay never hardened in the afterlife and with no critics to
stifle him, he’d continue to perfect his work.

S
eventeen months
passed. The green-paint covering the concrete walls in a hidden cell in Berlin
smelled of ammonia. The young German physician read to the love of his life.
Time was of no consequence. She did not care that the war was over. She was
unaware that wars had ever existed. She would never see the sun, or hear music.
Her womb, already, was tired of chemicals.

“Leave
her alone,” said a weak voice lacking hope that he would.

The monster had her daughter
.

His offspring—but her daughter.
The Spaniard
shuddered, horrified.

Her baby should be breathing
campfire-air and learning the songs. She should be sleeping under the
stars—learning the ways their people had always lived. She should be
growing thick nails to pull briars from her feet in the
moonlight—learning the stories, feeling the happiness that was belonging
because you fit nowhere else. Belonging to yourself, with only the need for wit
and music and memories to carry you along on the winds. What was he reading to
her?

“Parthenogenesis,
Anjou, has been found to occur in fish.” Dr. Wolfgang Bähr held the child on
his lap. “And amphibians, birds, and also certain reptiles—Anjou, do you
suppose we can make it happen in a mammal? It would be such
an
…”
the horrible man held his flat face aloft, eyes closed “…an
important
discovery. It would push what
we know to be possible past all things that are reasonable to expect might
actually
be possible.” Anjou did not answer.
An infant, Anjou blinked at the green wall and made nursing motions in the
thick, ammonia air.

J
ournal
of Wolfgang Bähr:

September 18, 1952:

Anjou
has given birth.

The
hours of teasing strands apart, of visiting deeper and deeper areas of cells,
of twisting the knob to magnify yet further take their toll.
Days
of anguish.
My hands become less steady; clamps, contrivances, rubber
rests are needed. The constant roar of my brain has eroded my nerves.
Especially when, once again and increasingly often, I realize I do not have
what I need here. Oh, for a month with the microscopes that graced my rooms
during the war. Those early samples were critical.
The volume
of help?
Astounding when I look over my shoulder at that finer time.
Electric: all eyes on the future. And now I am alone. I cannot make a scalpel
sharper than obsidian. I cannot see deeper than the paltry stack of imprecise
lenses I was left allow me to see. My early work was all my best, our momentum
in the wake of the running giant carving his way through forests and stone
alike without any sign of wear.
Those golden days of hope, of
promise for our race.
The years of immediate access to minds like my
own. Fear lives closer to me now than memory. I awake with the beast. I take
breakfast across the table from my mortal self and see my corporeal limit
clearly slipping into the usual decay that years bring, leaking from the early
springtime basket of potential.
Grandness never to be
realized.
That I may die without seeing the fruit of this project is
probable.

I
resent the isolation.
And the aching squint of focus.
I loathe the humiliating expenditure of my own seed and blood.
My years in dank, mildewed tunnels.

And
yet she has birthed.

Two.
Quiet beings—soulless vessels.
Bowls I intend to
keep intellectually empty. The first two rungs of the ladder, the base of which
is wide and steady and stable.

They
are duplicates. As such, I shall identify the more fit of them to fertilize. I
will continue the hormones and broth in which they must grow. The survivor will
shine. I will continue.

October 18, 1952.

Anjou
is despondent; I have cracked the shell of the inferior over-ripe egg.

In
my study of it, I see her horror. Trenchant consternation. The emotions of a mother,
the only interesting benefit the exercise has shown. Measurements of subject as
follows:

Occiput:
ratio unremarkable.

Femur:
ratio unremarkable.

Kidneys:
three. All appear functional.
An odd, durable trend.
Refer to prior notes.

I
intend to suffuse my residual, yet waning optimism into this endeavor. By
writing it will it be so? This specimen is the last that will not be superior.
As we share genes and blood, I have not the heart to chastise Anjou
deeply—nor do I feel beholden to set myself upon a moral wall, to open
myself to castigation, to explain. She (Anjou) is half of my creation, but the
remaining, thriving vessel is so much more. She (I utter at the risk of
humanizing another pet I cannot feed long term) casts a glow on the walls: adds
a verdancy
to the government paint.
A
novel vibrancy.

I
concede that I was remiss in speaking with and in teaching Anjou. It did not
lead to pure results. My sentimental ruminations are a curse—in that I
would remove all feelings for life (if I could.)
All senses
regarding the need to rut, to have company.
They are not my peers. I
repeat: these are not my countrymen. Vitamins, oxygen, minerals … nutrients and
molecules …
By
revisiting these ingredients I am
brought back to Earth.

The true challenge of creation?
The mind. Not
creating the mind itself, but in keeping the bottom rungs of the ladder steady
in the frame. I resent the rhymes. The books.
Those gifts
with which I’ve ruined Anjou.
Her skin is sallow from want for more.
From anticipation of loss, though she has only her ideas to lose. She will
poison the healthy vessel if I do not intervene. Anjou croons to it. She
strokes its cheek with a fondness that science cannot allow.

Dr.
von Eichel has identified additional candidates for contribution to rung three.
Increasingly, I find myself impatient for efficiency. Shall I see this program
become useful? The ladder must elevate us all after a point. My daily hope: the
base of the ladder will become as obscure as
man’s
own
humble beginnings are to science today.
A scuttling from the
sea to exploit opportunity.
In its shiny light of infancy, the glint of
the vessel, the rung’s eye must contain the concentrate: The wisdom of all
Earth’s grandfathers. The bravery and strength of mind—the superiority I
need. I must not inch back, or even look down. I must
create,
push aloft what beings will pull us up after them. This program has no
comprehensible limit!
Its height, only obscured by my own
rudimentary imagination.
How can the gibbon make the man? A question the
gibbon is rash to ask, as he cannot know. Here I hang, weary and alone, halfway
up the ladder—unwilling to fall back into the soup of fins and vestigials
below, aspiring to be pulled up by what we are to become. All things we know
must be poured into one cup, if the flash of our sun can support a being that
will allow us to exceed its orbit.

October 19, 1952.

The
first rung of the ladder already knew its purpose. My choices are human. In
that, I have failed. Anjou has tried to put her offspring to death. All remains
tenuous and I have lobotomized the girl. My failure to earlier recognize the
shortcomings of allowing my own humanity to taint the vessels hurts me deeply.
The second rung nurses greedily. I am, now, a nursemaid to Anjou. She will
provide what I cannot. The vessel pulls it from her. I will do what I can:
there is other milk to be had—for a price.

The
lock on the door is old. Some days my key will not turn the cylinder. I have
seen more of our kind, more deeply, than perhaps anyone alive. Mengele, now a
shadow, was merely a hobbyist: a stunted sow. He continues to answer my
correspondence, yet is as useful to me as the key … and on the move again. The
pallid commonness of Josef’s fear is useless to me when what the State, the
Party, the world, our kind, needs is collaboration. It is untenable. As I
elevate us, continuing what my sponsors have deemed worthy—and this on a
paltry budget—I give my marrow and send out tendrils to bring the seed of
only the loftiest, brightest minds, only the top natural genes. I weep for
Josef—early resolve is nothing if eroded by fear.

I
shall never succumb.

July 5, 1954.

The
library has changed hands. I’ve become a specter. Private ownership!
And no resources for me, the most faithful of patrons, to bid on
the building.
To think how much we have lost, how far we have come and
how fast we have slid back. Now this.

Still,
no blueprints exist of this cell. The passages remain. I am now janitor and
superintendent of the horrid tunnel. A scrubber of rust and paint, a troglodyte
plumber with waning vision. The things I’ve done that require precise vision
are, thankfully, past. I hope they were enough. I am glad in a way; I am ready
to be rewarded. I enter, now, on the library’s schedule, and unless I intend to
sleep in this small room, in which I keep my notes and the specimens, I am at
the mercy of others.

I
do miss Anjou. On the second shelf of my cabinet sit remnants of what she and I
created together. My youth—oh the wonder of it. It was with certainty and
optimism that we tried the things we did, Anjou. I know you thought me a devil
in the end, but I am our own sculptor—I am our own creator—of what?
We need to climb the ladder to see. From on high, we may glimpse the future: a
time of which I am no longer certain.

A
woman has agreed to carry the zygotes to completion for a fee. Accordingly,
this afternoon I will euthanize the second rung and jar her for posterity and
journalize the collection of her eggs. The gestational surrogate, the next best
thing to a time machine, believes me a religious man—a widower left
wanting a family. I am thankful for the thump of her womb beneath her common,
empty head. In nine months’ time I may be able to secure a more suitable
habitat—or, alternatively, I must find ways to make this dungeon bearable.
Until my effort outgrows my reach, it is a dungeon. For as I packed the second
rung out, turned the sandy lock, took the left turn and walked those steps I
know like no others, then the right, climbed, listened and waited, and finally
moved the panel—when I journeyed with the weight of the second rung
against my leg, even in its incomplete state—I thought of her weakness.
Hers. She—Anjou’s hatchling—was just like me.

I
must exceed us! This is the last of it. The plumbing will not last a year. I, myself,
may not realize another ten. The rungs are so far apart that my human legs
cannot climb them. This project must grow itself after me.

It
is the only way.

And
what of evolution? Once it tastes the sweetness of an accelerant?

Mengele
now swims in a clear, warm ocean. Laughing, larking about and doing whatever he
sees fit. A vagabond. Mengele: unlikely to be remembered.

I,
however, will not succumb.

May 5, 1955.

Of three, one vessel.
I have assured our
gestational surrogate that a wet nurse
awaits
. Morphology
of males: exquisite.
Aryan in every way.
What a shame
to jar them.

June 8, 1956.

Vessel waning, unlike Anjou, who was so human.
I miss her company
;
her childlike ways. Her body. In failing her, I myself
have deteriorated. Perhaps the nurturing of her was not a mistake, although I
am guilty of many.

June 9, 1956.

My
hands shake. Egg harvest from the vessel: a mechanical success, although my
overall outlook is grim. Semen of subject (IQ 220) procured via von Eichel.
Preparing for yet another IVF—no surrogate available at present. Funds
greatly diminished. Will make do.

March 17, 1957.

Three.
No vessels. I will nurture them as I did Anjou. I am their creator.

Two
are notable. They are the
creatures
generals who
hesitate in the company of inclemency dream to unleash, yet decades too late
for the cause. I will study them until they are problematic, then dispose of
them and collect tissue for future cloning efforts. Even now they reach for
each other—a collaborative effort instinctually perfect and coordinated.
I attribute this trait to
C. rhombifer
and am ever so thankful to have obtained those early samples when the world was
at our feet. When the instruments, including my vision, allowed this phenomenon
to take root.

The
last is exquisite. To say he is Aryan is an insult. How can the gibbon make the
man? He cannot. If God exists, however—and a man yearns for him his whole
life—can he flesh out God? Suffice it to say, two are notable … but one?

One
is exquisite—the top rung of the ladder. He is the future.