The Baby by Michael W. Clark
It’s an ugly baby. But who am I to judge? Men don’t fully understand cute. At least, not the way women do. I never understand what they mean by, “He’s so cute!” In that voice, their talking-to-a-baby voice. I don’t see it, certainly. I try to understand, I do, but I don’t get cute.
I have taken a whole series of pictures of various babies just to attempt to define cute for myself. I want to learn what cute is. What are the attributes to cute? I made a composite, a composite of cute. I overlaid all the baby faces and their bodies. I can only assume that they were all cute, so I used them all. Maybe a bad assumption but one has to start somewhere. I guess I was wrong though? The composite of cute doesn’t look any cuter to me than non-composite babies. It looks odder actually. Odder in an ugly way. What other type of odd is there?
It, the composite of cute, looked deflated, like an airless balloon, there on the flat computer screen. Maybe that was the reason for the lack of cute? I thought, “If it were three dimensional, like blown up like a balloon, things would be different?” I thus had the image printed upon a Mylar inflatable. When filled with helium it did look different and it floated! Still, it just looked odder and creepier. The composite of cute hovered near the floor at knee height.
“A silent hovering ugly baby? It follows me around the room as I walk!”
#
“You saw the baby blimp then?” She said to the reflection of a blonde female in the upscale hotel bathroom mirror. The escort service told them not to make obvious contact while they were “in the field.” As if it was some sort of military operation and not just a paid night out with some bored and boring business type guy. Why the escorts couldn’t meet was never explained, other than it was bad for business. How could two attractive young women chatting be bad for business? So, they chatted surreptitiously.
The blonde reflection nodded. “Creepiest shit of a thing.” The reflection quivered. “Willies time! Ugh! Would rather have had sex then watch that thing haunt his rooms.”
“Composite of cute, he calls it?” The brunette reflection frowned. “Did I think it cute? He asked. Hell, no! I thought, but didn’t say, ’cause.”
“Your opinion is not your job!” They both recited and then giggled. Unfortunately, someone walked into the bathroom and for business sake; they had to get back to work. They waved goodbye to their reflections in the mirror.
#
“Holographic?” He had read about it. “Could give the appearance of three dimensions.”
The lady present in his apartment though said, “Why don’t you just buy a statue of a baby?”
“But those are idealized!” He replied.
She was a brunette and very attractive but wasn’t so much so when she wrinkled up her face at his comment. “Idealized is just an artist’s personal composite of a baby, an archetype.”
“Archetype? Someone else’s archetype?” He said with too much emphasis. The excessive waving of enthusiastic arms caused the composite to flee and then bounce lightly off the wall. “But I am doing this for you.”
The brunette looked even less attractive as panic filled her face. “Me? You don’t know me!”
“No, ah, not you personally, but you as a woman.” He was confused. His comment didn’t ease her panic. She started to gather her things. “Not that either, but for me to understand the way you see things. Such as cute.”
“Why do you care?” She stood up. “Look, I just realized I have to go.” She headed for the door. Her movement caused the composite of cute to follow her to the door. As she reached for her shoes, the baby blimp bumped into her leg. She screamed which then caused him to scream. He dropped the tray of tea pot and teacups he was carrying. It crashing on the floor set off another round of screams and the fleeing of the composite of cute from the room entirely. The brunette disappeared out the door almost as fast. He did understand fright. He had that in common with women, at least.
He carefully and thoroughly pick up all the glass and Porcelain shards and then vacuum the floor before he let the composite of cute back into the room. “Always PP! Prevent a puncture!” He mused to himself. He also needed to put more helium in it too. Otherwise, it would be dragging on the floor. “Filling up Baby!” He hummed. It took him more than an hour to totally recover from the incident. He knew he and women shared a response to trauma.
#
I tried the holographic imaging for the face. I couldn’t decide. The face looked only partly odd instead of completely odd. But was that good or bad? I set the hologram of the face up so at a certain angle, the pudgy face smiled. It still wasn’t right though, maybe it needed three dimensional arms and legs? I actually sewed the Mylar appendages myself. Attaching them was difficult. Still, after all the trial and error in getting them on, they just hung there! Lifeless and numb like defeat.
“Numb is never cute under any circumstance.” I said to the hovering, sometimes, smiling baby wandering around the room bumping into the furnishings and the occasional wall.
#
The video was called, “Pathological Preoccupation.” When he had searched Internet for “Baby” and “Performance” this clip popped up. It was a hot topic! It had over 200,000 views! But it was of his Composite of cute hovering around his living room! He had never taken pictures of it, let alone video. “Who did this?” He kept shouting out to the composite of cute that, as usual, ignored his speech whether it was loud or soft. For a few moments he even felt that the composite of cute had somehow betrayed him.
He finally figured out that the video had been taken from the window of his fire escape! He didn’t realize his privacy was so public! He realized he needed to get curtains. This fact simply annoyed him. Still, his anger built. He was really outraged, at first, by the privacy violation and then by the comments on the site about the video. The title itself was bad enough, “Pathological.” What was that about? They were saying he was ill. Ill? In what way? The comments were less vague.
“Whack jobbi-dilli-do-job!”
“Pseudo-pedophilia?”
“Frankenbaby mach 2?”
“Toddl-zombie!”
“What is wrong with this picture?”
“Is this a ghost?”
“Yeah, a ghost of sanity. Booga booga boo!”
“There’s always room for jello!”
“I hope that’s a rubber room?”
“Abandon all hope!”
“Simply fuckin’ nutz!”
#
He wanted to ignore it. He wanted to put it out of his mind. He wanted the world to either understand him or leave him alone! He realized though that it was the escort girls. They had done this. It had to be them. No one else had seen the composite of cute. He had mentioned it to a few people at various photo and software Shoppe’s, but none of them seemed that interested and no one knew his home address. He had a post office box for all his billing and deliveries.
Those girls had to be it. The brunette most of likely. The composite of cute had scared her innocently. Maybe revenge was her motivator? He couldn’t remember her name, if she had ever given him one? He couldn’t remember if she had. He knew he never ask her for it. The company would know by the date, but when was that?
And one day when he was reading the continuing feed of negative comment and video link occurred. He followed it to another video called “P2 with dog.” Someone had superimposed a dog walking beside the composite of cute. It was a miniature toy poodle. It was a very good job. The dog seemed to actually be there and they were interacting with each other. This video seemed to be done almost out of love, to give the composite of cute a companion. The subsequent videos were not so loving. They were obviously from other people. They got more elaborate. “P2 on a tricycle.” Then “P2 on a horse.” Which was followed by “P2 in armor” and of course “P2 jousting.” From there they started to get violent and bloody!
It all angered him and confused him at the same time. What got he do? He wanted to sue but who? The escort service wouldn’t tell him any information about the brunette or send her over to him again, despite his insistence. Final they refused to talk to him. They threatened to charge him with harassment. He had been wronged and he was being further attacked?
He wanted to lash out but to who, at what? He would talk to the composite of cute about his frustration. He even cried. He was embarrassed at that. Such shows of emotion were not proper. At these events he would sit with his back to that window just in case. He bought new curtains but didn’t trust them. He didn’t know what else to do.
#
He knew writing a reply to all these insults and criticisms would only generate a flood more of them, more a wildfire than a flood though. He seemed helpless to respond even, there was no way to fight back. The composite of cute was the center of an absurd storm. He had hoped the web would lose interest but on the contrary, it was building. More response videos appeared. The creators seemed to be competing to increase the absurdity and shock value of each new clip.
#
No one had ever given me the slightest interest until the composite of cute came into existence. I feel oddly proud and jealous at the same time. My experiment in male sensitivity and understanding had become an experience in mean spiritedness and mob rule. The Electronic Mob was in pursuit of my creation. They didn’t want to destroy it but exploit it. I even found a Nurf version of the composite of cute on E-bay. The bids were high. It wasn’t even a good likeness.
#
Lost and desperate was his mood. He hated these feelings. He always had been in control before, but not now. Against a mob, one man never stood a chance. In the movies, mobs ruled too but sacrifice usually countered the mob. The shock of it brought them back to their proper senses. What type of sacrifice would affect a virtual mob? A live feed could counter a virtual anything. Yes, the live sacrifice of the one thing they cared about the composite of cute. “That would do it! For sure!”
He started to cry. He couldn’t remember the last time he cried. He had given the composite of cute fingers and toes. It hadn’t changed the randomness of its constant exploration of his apartment. He hadn’t decided upon a gender yet and now it didn’t matter. This simple but significant fact had brought the rarest of tears.
#
A live web feed was easy enough to setup but informing the P2 craves audience was his greatest concern. His first attempt at setting a time was met with a flaming response decrying him for attention grabbing. No one believed he was really the composite of cute’s, well, P2’s creator. On the Internet, lying is the norm, faux-reality was its currency. Truth was seldom sought or provided. To them he was just another glory huckster attempting to turn the spotlight on himself for a few precious moments. The final result in a celebrity driven culture, celebrity without talent. The whole world was supposed to love and admire you simply because you exist, just like your mother. It was a sick and self-centered attitude.
#
I don’t care about that. I just wanted to understand a different perspective and I got no appreciation for that only ridicule from all the anonymous, seekers of universal maternal affection on the Web. I don’t want their love though; I want them to leave him alone! But it was clear I had to hurt them in a spectacular fashion, simply to get their attention for one moment.
He knew he only had a moment. In the modern marketing dominated world of distraction, the Post Sesame Street world of short attention spans, only a brief instant did he have to make his point? His solution was clear, hydrogen! A big bang started the universe; maybe a small bang would stop this abuse of the composite of cute.
Ignore the rabble response! Lead them to his event. Be as self centered as they were. Fight fire, literally, with fight! Those were his conclusion and the way he proceeded. He just posted the direction to the event. He left his electronic breadcrumbs and moved on with his plan. “P2 – The end is near!” Was one of his crumbs. It was a statement of fact and yet many saw it as a threat, a manipulation. It was not the former, but it was the latter. No shame in that.
Getting a tank of hydrogen gas was difficult. His building wasn’t licensed for it. He had to buy it illegally from Craig’s List. There was thus no delivery. He had to drive down to the university loading dock in the middle of the night and wrestle the tank into the van on his own. He had already paid the graduate student through PayPal. He had had to rent the van because he didn’t own a car. He did that with a credit card. When he finally had hauled the large tank up the stairs, he realized the tank didn’t have a valve on it! The small helium tank he rented from a service had the valve right on it. He hadn’t thought it would come any other way. But the helium tank was much smaller than the hydrogen tank, the helium tank valve wouldn’t fit on the larger tank. The time was nearing though. He had his vidcam already for the feed. He had to do it on time. He ran down to the hardware store and bought every adapter they had along with a bunch of wrenches. He didn’t know what he needed, but he needed it quick.
#
I fiddled and tested. I finally had a joining between the hydrogen tank and the valving used by the helium tank. All I was missing was the Teflon white tape to put around the valve threads to prevent leaks. I had forgotten to buy some with all the other things I had gotten. I didn’t have time to rush back to the hardware store and get some. My jerry-rigged adapter would do for this single event.
#
The composite of cute had watched him silently but maybe not patiently. All the activity in the apartment had caused the composite of cute to roam around actively. It was almost like it was pacing back and forth. He grabbed COC gently as it passed by. He released the helium slowly and gently. He let COC flatten out completely on the hardwood floor. It looked like it was sleeping so peacefully and calmly. He cried again or maybe cried still, he wasn’t sure. The time was near. He opened the hydrogen tank valve slowly. He could hear the gas hiss. He carefully filled COC. He had trouble holding the tubing in the right place because of his tears. His sobs were getting high pitched. He had his computer on automatic so it would come on time. COC took shape slowly. “Fattening it up for the kill!” He kept thinking. The pitch of his sobs continued to intensify and get higher.
Then before he was really ready, the vidcam came on. He hadn’t actually wanted to show his own face on camera but it was too late. There he was with COC for the web to see. The comments started to fly in. Most of them abusive as expected. So, he closed the gas inlets on COC and began to talk, but he sounded like a duck. He had to go on though. He couldn’t stop now.
“I created composite of cute to understand.” He cleared his voice but he still sounded funny to himself. “To attempt to understand what women thought, ah think, when they see a baby, but you people don’t understand that effort.”
More abuse flowed in.
“CUTE? WHERE IS CUTE?”
“Composite this!”
Many comments were just repeating LOL, LOL, LOL!
Still he quacked on, getting angrier and angrier. “So, since you can’t appreciate my efforts. You ridicule those efforts. It stops now!” He held up a Bic lighter beside the inflated head of composite of cute.
#
“Noooooo! Ha! Ha!”
“LOLLLLLLL!”
“OHHHH! Yessssss!”
“Do it! Do it! Do it!” Flowed in.
“So, it ends.” He was crying. He looked down at composite of cute’s blank stare. She was not just cute he realized, but beautiful. “So, she ends!” He put the lighter by her head and flicked the Bic. The ball of flame erupted so immediately and violently they both died without pain.
“WOW cubed!!!!”
“Inflammatory!!!!!”
“Fucking wonderful!!!”
“There is no emoticon to express how great that was!!!!!!!”
“Infinite exclamation points!!!!!!!!”
“Great art!”
“What happened?”
“Dumb ass! The end just happened.”
“Yeah, brainless wad, pay attention.”
“Now, that’s living!”
—
Michael W. Clark is a former research biologist, a college professor turned writer with forty short stories published. Most recently his stories have appeared in Lost Souls, Surprising Stories, Morpheus Tales Magazine, UC Berkeley’s Imaginirarium, Black Heart Magazine, Tracers, Infernal Ink and 365 Tomorrows. He also has stories in these anthologies: Fat Zombies, Creature Stew, Gumshoe Mysteries, Future Visions Vol. 3, Nightmares, Delusions and Waking Dreams, and Devils We Know. January through March 2019, his sci fi adventure Novella, The Last Dung Beetle appeared in www.serialpulp.com. It was rated 4.5 on Goodreads. He is also the editor and content provider for the web site www.ahickshope.com
