Mergatroid

  Mergatroid

Damion ran and Mergatroid followed.  The machine was relentless; it’s pursuit the stuff of nightmares.  

But, the tech geek wasn’t going to wake up from all of this. This wasn’t a bad dream; it was hard, cold reality.

The tech-savvy teenager had been so bored during the current pandemic that he had turned to fiddling around with the household appliances to relieve the doldrums.

As a child, he had amazed everyone with his ability of understating high-tech gadgets and machines and how they worked. He had taken apart the refrigerator and put it back together after his mother was complaining about the noise it made. After the fine-tuning, it hummed without a sound.

He loved technology and all of the devices that it birthed. Although, the young boy had built a laser-lock system that had won the annual science fair (he had never lost one of those contests), it was more fun to just putter around with household appliances.

The latest victim had been the toaster. He had taken it and customized the simple two-slice bread warmer so that it could generate enough heat to melt a five pound block of ice in a matter of seconds. In fact, it could outdo the microwave.

“This is great!” He announced to Simon the cat who just looked on puzzled.

He gave the toaster wheels and put a motor in it. The contraption also had a built in computer chip that programmed it to follow basic instructions. It had a guided radar like a missile. Not satisfied with turning the toaster into some kind of slave monster, he went further and made it able to think for itself.  

In the morning, he would greet it: “Hello, Mergatroid, how are you?”

“I am fine master.”

“Master, I like that.”

Just for kicks, he had taken Mergatroid for a walk complete with leash.  It really drew a lot of stares and nearly caused an accident.  

The toaster followed every order its master gave it.

He made it plow through a giant snowbank. The red-hot toaster went full steam into the mountain of gelled snowflakes and came out the other side less than a minute later.  The hole was clean and neat.

“That is really cool.”

The neighbour’s dog, Cosmos, a very large specimen of St. Bernard, had taken a dislike to Damion. The dog would have devoured the high school geek if given the chance.

So one day, when he knew that the big dumb dog was going to be out and ornery, he showed up with Mergatroid.

Cosmos came running and the toaster stood between him and the dog.  Although, not into animal cruelty, the teenager thought it would be fun to scare the canine just once as retribution for the many times that he had scared the boy.

The big brute stood there ready to pounce when Damion smiled.

“Mergatroid activate heaters.”

“Heaters activated.”

The heaters came on and the metal was very quickly red hot.  

“Mergatroid, kill!”

The toaster started to run after the St. Bernard who jumped out of the way and tried to bite it. He burned his nose a bit and yelped. And, then he ran.

“Yeah, run you big bastard.”

How many times had Damion been going by on his bicycle when the big dog would come running out barking his fool head off and give chase?  There were a couple of times when the mean ass dog head butted the bicycle, which of course resulted in boy and machine flipping end over end and crashing hard.  

Damion would look up from the wreck with the bike atop of him and he swore that the dog was walking away and laughing at him.

“I’ll get you someday you big bastard.” He always said.

Mergatroid had chased that dog for almost five miles until the pooch just gave out from exhaustion.  He had collapsed and the killer toaster had bumped into his rump sparking one last desperate yelp.

Damion felt bad about it, but the end results were achieved. Never again had Cosmos the Terrible terrorized Damion.

The dog had survived and every time that it saw Damion — especially if Mergatroid was in tow — it high-tailed it the other direction.

Damion and Mergatroid had enjoyed a lot of good times.

But, something happened.  

Maybe I pushed him too far?

There was a girl and Damion liked her. He had never experienced love before, Her name was Michelle and she was a short dark haired cutie with lovely large brown eyes and a smile that could light up the universe.

But, she didn’t like geeks or tech boys. She liked athletes.  It had taken months to work up the courage for him to even talk to her. And, the words flew out of his mouth like unwanted spits of food.

“If you’re not doing anything tomorrow night, maybe you could come over and play some video games?”

She giggled and shook her head,

“No, I have to wash my hair.”

Later, he found out that the next night she had supposedly forgotten all about washing her hair, as she had been spotted at the basketball game watching that dumb jock Larry Cornett bouncing a ball.

So he sent Mergatroid to her house to run through the garden with the burners turned on to full power.

The machine obeyed the master, but there was too much heat and created a fire that caught the house and caused tens of thousands of damage.  When Mergatroid had returned home something had clicked inside the machine.

Damion stood on the roof of the house watching all of the fire trucks go screaming down the road, sirens blazing causing a lot of stress in the neighbourhood.

The boy came down from the roof when he saw his pet killer toaster return.

Mergatroid cornered Damion.

“You are evil and made me do bad.”

“Hey, you went a little overboard.”

“I was just following your command.  Your evil must be stopped.”

That was three days ago.

The pursuit had not ceased.  

They had crossed three states and countless counties.

He had climbed a tree. Mergatroid had buzzed through knocking it down in a matter of seconds. Damion had jumped down at the last possible second and took off running. The killer toaster was right behind him.

Damion, not old enough to drive, could not run forever with the crazed Mergatroid in hot pursuit shooting fire like a flamethrower on wheels.  Eventually, the boy had stolen a car and had wrecked it.  

He found a motorcycle, but it wouldn’t start. Mergatroid almost killed him.

He then found an electric bike with a full charge.  That took him a long way.  

He managed to hop a train and rode that for miles and miles.  

Mergatroid never lost track of him.

He found a large pond and there was a rowboat nearby.  He jumped in and started to move out in the water.

“Finally, I am free.”

Mergatroid stood on shore seething heating and threatening.  

“I will hurt my master.”

Damion realized that he could not stay in the rowboat his whole life.

“Mergatroid we can talk this over.”

“Talk is cheap.”

“Damn toaster is smarter than I am.”

“I am a reflection of you.  Why don’t you come to shore and we can talk this over?”

Damion hesitated for a second.  

“This has gone too far.  There are people looking for us by now.  They are probably wondering what happened to me.”

“Like I say, come to shore and we can talk this over.”

Damion started to row to shore.  He landed and smiled.

“You made me do evil.”

“I’m sorry, Mergatroid, but if you had a girlfriend you would understand. I didn’t think that the house would catch fire.”

“Remember when you programmed me to wipe out evil?”

“I did.”

“Well, you are evil and you must be wiped out.”

“I was hoping that we could-

Mergatroid sawed through the aluminum boat with minimal effort. In a second, Damion found himself in the water.  He waded out.

“You have to come out of there sooner or later.”

“Mergatroid why don’t you just go away. You’ve proven your point.”

“I have not completed my mission.”

Suddenly, a boat came by and stopped.  The man at the motor’s helm, Bert Johnson smiled.

“You look like you’re in trouble.”

“I am, do you think you could give me a lift?”

“Sure, as long as that thing doesn’t hurt my boat.”

“It won’t.”

So, Damion jumped on board and the boat took off.  The pond wasn’t connected to any other water outlet and Mergatroid simply followed them going around the pond. It seemed like the teenager was doomed when a helicopter appeared overhead.

“I know you. You’re the kid that built a killer toaster and then the thing turned on you.  You’re all over the news.”

“I am?”

“Yes, you are. I contacted my buddy here and he will take you to somewhere safe away from the toaster.”

“Thank you for all of your help.”

So, the helicopter hovered over them and dropped a rope ladder. Damion climbed it and was whisked away.

Mergatroid followed and chuckled all the way.

“My mission isn’t complete.”