Chapter 10
Well, that’s just great, thought Chris. These things came here to change all of us and make us perfect. They’re playing God. After all this, what in the world is next? I’m scared, and walked away to go to the kitchen.
Nash was sitting in his bed, waiting for Rosalie’s laptop. Monti never showed Chris the brand-new laptop he had for his father. He was hiding it in a bag, and Chris didn’t look into it because he thought that the only thing that Monti was carrying in that bag was his world-famous syringe. He pulled the fifteen-inch laptop out of the bag and walked toward Nash and said, “I believe you are waiting for this,” and handed it to him.
“Who are you?”
“Everybody knows me. I’m Monti Bernaola. They call me the mad geneticist or the Mad Scientist because I’m always playing with and altering people’s genes. The police talk about me. The press talks about me. They want to put me in jail because I am doing something ‘illegal’ something ‘as illegal as cloning a human being’. How can you not know me? Where the hell have you been, in a cave?”
“You’re Bernaola, the Mad Scientist.”
“Yes.”
“I had seen your face on TV but I had trouble remembering your name and your celebrity name for a moment.”
“What condition are you suffering from, a very-early onset of Alzheimer’s?”
“No, I have cerebral palsy and a plethora of abnormalities and obvious defects in the brain, which include but are not limited to memory problems. I know I’m a sorry jackass.” Monti took this moment of distraction of Nash’s to inject him with his special crimson fluid. Nash didn’t feel the needle, but he surely felt the effects of what was injected in him. Monti hid the empty syringe in the tote bag and Nash didn’t even know he had been injected. “Oh,” he said, “I’m feeling sleepy all of a sudden, and I was just getting ready for some entertainment in my new,” he yawned, “laptop.”
Monti closed the laptop, put it in Nash’s nightstand and said, “You’ll have time for entertainment later,” as Nash’s brain collected the information Monti was giving him about what was happening to him before falling into a deep sleep, “and it will be more enjoyable because you will be able to type like a normal person. Hell, from now on, you’ll literally be able to type 100 words per minute, or who knows? Maybe more! You will be able to walk again, do anything you want with your hands, go back into your wife’s arms, and take care of your disabled children…” He paused for a minute and said, “Although they won’t be disabled for long,” and laughed like a hyena, “and he will just live a normal life. Have a good one, and enjoy the new laptop that Heath Manning sent you by getting connected to your son telepathically and reading his mind. Oh, and before I forget,” he said as he opened the bedroom door to walk out, “Heath said that you don’t have to pay it back. It’s a gift. Goodbye.” He walked out of the room, opened the living room window after walking several steps to the living room, and literally flew out the window in a matter of seconds and finally closed the window with his mind and left the house. The only ones that knew that Monti was there were Chris and Nash, and they wouldn’t tell anyone because they wouldn’t give Monti away to those who wanted to kill him for doing what he was doing.
Nonetheless, it was inevitable. All the people that Monti had cured fixed and restored, they didn’t know that they had to keep it secret to keep Monti alive, so they went to the police and they told them everything that Monti had done. They went to the police because they didn’t know where else to go. In a matter of days, the tables had been turned, what Monti was doing was not only legal but also appreciated, and now, the ones that were in trouble were the evil humans who wanted to kill this angel, the people who were now considered insane extremists. Everyone knew that a human being would have to be insane not to appreciate what Monti was doing. Monti’s oppressors had to hide. They had to go to a secret place where they would devise a plan to kill this angel. What they didn’t know was that there was another angel determined to protect his own at all costs, and it didn’t matter who the angel was… he had to protect him. It was only a matter of time before that person would speak and throw all of the plans of these evil people down the drain.
Monti suddenly had an idea when he found out about all of the liberties he now had: to create a genetics lab where humans with incurable diseases like late-stage cancers, AIDS, mental illnesses, physical deformities, down syndrome, and other genetic defects could go, have their DNA enhanced, and be cured. His attorney already had the necessary paperwork to open that chain of clinics. What was needed was money for locale and supplies, and even if Monti had the money he needed to pay his bills and his mortgage, he didn’t have the money to do something so big. He could only turn to one group of people who could help him: the Manning family, but he didn’t want them to think that he wanted to take advantage of them. He talked to Rachel about this because he would always turn to his wife when he needed to make major-life and financial decisions.
“You got everything ready for our chain of clinics, Monti Gerard? You know I’ve always been for genetic enhancement.”
“Yes, but I need the money to build the clinics and the supplies needed, the blood we need because you know that all-alien blood is healthy and good for humans. It’s the only blood that won’t contaminate and the only blood that’s literally universal, compatible with anyone.”
“Why don’t you ask the Manning twins for help?” she suggested.
“I don’t want them to think that I’m trying to take advantage of them. You know that Mark and I had problems in the past.”
“You never forgive yourself, do you, Monti?”
“Ah…”
“It’s easy for you to forgive others, but difficult or impossible for you to forgive yourself, right?”
“You can say that.”
“I think your own DNA needs to be enhanced, too, man. Wake up!” she yelled and snapped her fingers in front of him. “The only place where everything’s perfect is heaven, and the only being who is perfect, flawless and all-powerful is God. As good as we are, we’re not perfect,” she said referring to the alien race. “We all make mistakes. Did you hear that? All.”
“You’re right,” he said, waking up and smelling the roses. “The past is the past.” He got up from the sofa and walked to the living room phone extension. He picked up the handset. “I’m going to try. If they say no…”
“You don’t know anything about the Manning twins do you? You have to know that all the money that they’re making is to help us, to give us the money that we need to get ahead and help this economy prosper.”
“So, that’s what they’re making billions and billions of dollars in a monthly basis for, huh?” he said, smiling.
“They’re not making the money for themselves. To tell you the truth, they use very little of the money for them to live the good life. Let’s say that each twin makes one billion dollars every month, which, they literally do. Forbes said so, that they’re the most powerful men in the planet, and that the only being that has more money than they do is God.”
Monti laughed.
“No, really, Monti, this is true. Watch the news. They’re giving the American government the money they need to get the nation going. Why do you think that they adore us and respect us so much? Mark and Matt give us everything we need, literally. If they make one billion smackers a month, they only use like two hundred million dollars to live the good life; they only spend that money on them and their families.”
“Two-hundred million out of one billion. Are you serious?”
“You need to watch the news more, you really do. You’re going to call either Mark or Matt for help right now, and then, as soon as you finish talking to either one of them, you’re going to sit down and watch the news while I make dinner. The three hours you have for yourself everyday, you’re going to use to watch TV, comply with your duties as a husband, and have a little fun. You only have three hours of twenty-four hours everyday to do what you want, now that you changed jobs in order to be here everyday. Use them wisely.”
Laughing, Monti said, “Yes, ma’am.”
She got up and as she walked the house to the kitchen she said, “It’s a woman’s world now, and you men have to get that through your void heads.”
Minutes later, Mark got on the phone with Monti. When Brooke told him that Monti was calling, Mark literally dropped everything he was doing to talk to him. “Hi, Monti,” he said, “how are you doing?”
“Good, I guess. I was a truck driver and now I’m the manager of a fast-food restaurant, which unfortunately is not one of your restaurants. What can I say? You know about my chain of clinics, don’t you?”
“Yes, and what you’re doing is great,” said Mark. “You got loose as soon as the cage was opened, huh, buddy?”
Smiling, Monti said, “Hey, you know it! You let the dog out, and the dog does anything he wants.”
Rachel laughed when she heard that from the kitchen.
“So open your chain of clinics and get it going, man? Is anything stopping you? Can Matt and I help?”
“Actually, yes, there is something you can do to help. You can give me the money to build the clinics, the supplies, and the alien blood.”
“Give me the phone number of your attorney,” said Mark, notepad and pen in hand, “so I can talk to him and know exactly how much money you need.”
“I am hoping you will give me like three or four years to pay you back.”
“That is nonsense!"
“But I can’t…”
“You don’t’ have to pay me back. All of the money that my brother and I give to our people is a gift, not a loan. Even though we literally have tons and tons of money, we are not a bank. We are providers to our people.”
Smiling, Monti said, “Ok. You give us the money because you know we’re going to literally become multimillionaires and the money you give won’t be wasted and you won’t end up losing it, is that right?”
“That’s right,” affirmed Mark.
“Ok. I will give you the email address of my attorney so that he can respond to your query as soon as he can. You know that email is a twenty-four-hour thing. Phones are not.”
“You’re right.”
Monti dictated his attorney’s email address to Mark.
“Thank you.”
“No, thank you!”
“That’s what we’re here for,” said Mark. “I’m going to email your attorney right now.” He hung up.
Minutes later, Monti arrived to the kitchen and gave his wife a big hug. “I got great news. Mark is going to call Attorney Kessler to give him an estimate of the money we need for our chain of genetic clinics.”
“How many clinics are you going to open?” she asked, smiling, and gave him a kiss on the lips.
“I don’t want to abuse Mark, so we’re going to start, we,” he said and returned the kiss to her, “by opening fifty clinics, one clinic for each state. As we make the money for it, and you know we are going to be billionaires like the Manning twins,” they couldn’t stop kissing each other, “we are going to open new clinics, until there is one clinic in every city in the United States. In a matter of months, we’re going to have a clinic in every city and within the next two or three years, we’re going to have a clinic in every country, in every city, all over the world. How does that sound?”
“That sounds like taking the sun in our hands.” They hugged.
Meanwhile, Mark was composing an email to Attorney Kessler.
DEAR ATTORNEY KESSLER,
THIS IS MARK D. MANNING, PRESIDENT OF MANNING FOODS. I AM WRITING YOU TO ASK FOR AN ESTIMATE OF THE MONEY THAT MR. MONTI G. BERNAOLA NEEDS TO OPEN GENETICS CLINICS. YOU KNOW THE PURPOSE OF THOSE CLINICS. I AM GOING TO GIVE MR. BERNAOLA THE MONEY THAT HE NEEDS. SEND ME AN EMAIL WITH THE ESTIMATE AS AN ATTACHMENT, AND FAX ME ANY PAPERS THAT I WOULD NEED TO SIGN TO OPEN THOSE CLINICS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. MY FAX NUMBER IS (241) 555-0886. MY OFFICE NUMBER IS (241) 555-9098 AND MY HOME NUMBER IS (241) 555-5690. YOU CAN REACH ME ANYTIME YOU NEED ME, FOR ANYTHING.
SINCERELY,
MARK D. MANNING
PRESIDENT OF MANNING FOODS
Mark changed the font size, justification, and color of the email message and clicked the ‘send’ button. Then, he called Monti back, just to let him know that he’d sent the email.
The phone rang in Monti’s house while Monti watched the local news, which was talking about the Manning twins at the moment because they would have a story about them and what they were doing everyday. They were just as important as the President of the United States and other rulers of the world, and even more important than artists. Monti stretched his arm and picked up the phone. “Hello.”
“Monti, this is Mark.”
“Hello, Mark.”
“I emailed your attorney.”
“Thank you. You can be sure that when he sees that email and reads the body he will respond immediately. No one hesitates to respond to Mark Manning.”
Mark laughed. “You’re making me feel like a god, and I want to be loved, not idolized.”
“It’s ok.”
Laughing Mark said, “I suppose it is.”
“If humans idolize celebrities that are drug addicts, abortionists, promiscuous and just mean-spirited, what would be wrong with idolizing Mark and Matt Manning?”
To turn the tables on him and make him blush, Mark replied, “What would be wrong with idolizing the Great Monti Bernaola?”
Monti laughed hysterically. “Cut it out.”
“I just wanted to make you feel the way you make me feel when you do that. There is nothing wrong with that. Well, I have to let you go.”
“I will talk to you, man, hopefully tomorrow.”
“We will, hopefully. Bye, Monti,” said Mark and hung up. Then, he dialed Matt’s extension.
Matt was checking some reports that his secretary had just handed to him. The phone rang and he picked it up. “What’s up?”
“I don’t know how many clinics Monti Bernaola is going to open, but I am going to give him the money.”
“Why don’t you give him half of the money he needs, and then I’ll give him the other half?” Matt suggested.
“That will really help. We have to wait a little bit, though, because I emailed his attorney asking him for an estimate of the money that Monti needed to build all the clinics. We don’t know exactly how many subsidiaries Monti’s going to open, so we have to wait for word on that, too.”
“I hope that Monti knows the money’s here, and there are no limits.”
“He does.”
Monti also decided to email attorney Kessler. He was composing the message for him.
ATTORNEY KESSLER,
HI. I JUST WANTED TO GIVE YOU SOME INFORMATION TO HELP MARK MANNING KNOW HOW MUCH MONEY HE’S GOING TO HAVE TO GIVE ME FOR ME TO OPEN THE SUBSIDIARIES OF MY GENETICS CLINIC. AS YOU KNOW, WE HAVE TO CRAWL BEFORE WE CAN WALK AND WE HAVE TO WALK BEFORE WE CAN RUN. EVERYTHING HAS TO BE DONE LITTLE BY LITTLE. I AM PLANNING TO OPEN FIFTY CLINICS, ONE CLINIC PER STATE. THEN, AS I MAKE MY OWN MONEY, WE CAN OPEN ONE CLINIC PER CITY, BUT I PLAN TO GO ALL OVER THE WORLD, SO AS THE MONEY KEEPS COMING IN, I AM GOING TO GO AROUND THE WORLD AND WITHIN THE NEXT FEW YEARS, THERE’S GOING TO BE ONE CLINIC IN EVERY CITY OF THE WORLD. THOSE ARE MY PLANS. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, SO PLEASE REMEMBER TO GIVE MARK THIS INFORMATION WHEN YOU REPLY TO THIS EMAIL.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH
MONTI G. BERNAOLA.
That night, around midnight, while Rachel slept, Monti walked to the pharmacy which was one mile away, to buy Rachel new make-up: new foundation, new brushes, new eye shadow, new eye liner, and new lipsticks… the works. Suddenly, he found some thugs beating a look alike of his to a pulp, a human version of him which suffered from multiple-personality disorder, and whose evil alter ego had raped and killed the little sister of one of the thugs. Every angel had a human version of him because for each one of us, there was one in the moon. However, the human versions of the angels had nothing to do with the angels and were not linked to them in any way. We were our own. This poor twenty-three-year-old man was regularly beaten as a child by his own older brother, and the situation got so bad that the man escaped from his own body and his evil alter ego was born. It was like the man was Dr. Jekyll and the alter ego was Mr. Hyde. The poor man knew nothing that his evil alternate personality had done or was doing at the moment.
Monti walked closer to the thugs and said, “Stop!”
Monti’s irises were literally two little stars that shone brightly in the dark, so the thugs stopped kicking his poor look-alike immediately and stared at him, stunned. “Look, man,” one thug said to one of the others, “This man has a look-alike. Perhaps it’s true that he wasn’t the one that raped Tess. Maybe it was this… thing.”
“Yes,” said Monti, “I am a living thing, but I am not a rapist,” as he walked closer to the man and looked him in the eyes, blinding him and making him blink very quickly. Now, the man could hardly see anything. “Unlike you,” he said referring to all human beings, “I can control my impulses and I know which desires I can fulfill and which desires I have to repress. The rapist in me is dormant. The killer in me is dead. Actually, I daresay that the rapist in me is also dead because I have never felt the desire to take anyone by force.”
“Oh… ok,” said the third thug.
“And he’s not the rapist either,” said Monti, shocking all the thugs.
“So are you saying there’s a third look-alike of both of you who really did it and then framed him? Don’t be ridiculous. I know that every one of us, that every human on this earth has one person that looks exactly the way we do, but we don’t have two or three. Come on.”
“That is not what I’m saying, dumbass. I wish you would just shut up and listen to me for a second.”
To avoid making Monti angry, the thug stopped trying to be funny, calmed down, and said, “Ok, I am listening.”
“What I am saying is that this man has MPD.”
“Oh, you mean that his alter ego raped my sister,” said the second thug.
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“We can’t put him in jail because we have no proof against him, so my buddies and I decided to do some irreversible damage to him, you know, so that he would have to pay for what he did to my Tess for the rest of his life.” He didn’t know why exactly he was opening up to Monti like this, and he didn’t like it, but he had no choice.
“Please, don’t beat me anymore. I’m dying,” begged the poor battered man. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I swear to God. I haven’t raped anybody. I would never do that. Please…”
One of the thugs kicked him one more time. “You shameless…”
The man started crying.
Monti grabbed that thug by his shirt and said, “I said stop!” He morphed into alien form and all the men screamed and ran away. When Monti threw that thug on the floor, he ran away also, even though his back was broken.
The poor man couldn’t stop crying. Monti got on his knees and pulled his full syringe out of his pocket.
“Oh, no, not a needle contaminated with the AIDS virus or HIV!” screamed the man at the top of his lungs. “I would rather have them come back and literally beat me to death!”
“This is not AIDS or HIV,” said Monti. “I’m not evil like Emerson. I would never do that to anyone.”
“How do you know the name of that son of a bitch?”
“I got to know you just by looking at you in a matter of minutes, by listening to you, by hearing your cries of mercy. If you accept this,” he said and placed the syringe on his neck, not injecting him yet, “all your problems will be over. Would you like Emerson to go away and never come back? Would you like him to die? Would you like not to have to go to the tedious, difficult and painful process of integration that doesn’t guarantee that you will be you for the rest of your life and that, that son of a bitch will never come back?”
“I want that more than anything.”
“This will make it possible for you.” He said, disabled the man’s sense of touch, and injected him. “I will take you home and you are going to sleep in my guestroom. Then, you can go home and life your life again, and you will be you, Elwood, forever.” Monti carried the man home. When he went into the house, Rachel was waiting for him in the dining room and drinking a glass of milk because it was late. She became alarmed when she saw the man, got up and walked toward him and Monti.
“Oh, my God, who is he and what, happened to him?” said Rachel, caressing the stranger’s head.
“I don’t know his last name, but his first name is Elwood, and as you can see, he’s my identical look-alike.”
“I take it you ‘put him to sleep’.”
“Yes, I did,” said Monti as he and Rachel walked out of the living room and walked the hallway until they got to the stairwell, and then they went upstairs to the second story of the house. “I’m going to take him to the guestroom.”
They walked the hallway until they got to one of the guestrooms. Monti had sold his house and bought a bigger mansion just a few blocks down the street with the money that Kate had given him when he was released from TOTM and with some money that he’d saved up… $1,000,000 altogether to be exact, but luckily for Monti, the house was only $800,000 and he was able to use the remaining money for two $50,000 cars and to furnish the brand-new house that he had for him and Rachel, custom-built because Rachel’s parents were having problems paying for their mortgage and they had already moved into Monti’s house. They were occupying the most luxurious bedroom in the first story of the house, one that had a killer bathroom inside of it. Rachel opened the door and just like that, Monti accommodated Elwood on the bed.
“There you go, buddy,” said Monti and he and Rachel got out of the room.
“Are you going to let him borrow your clothes or buy him his own clothes?” asked Rachel.
“I’m going to let him borrow my clothes.”
“What if he doesn’t have a place to live?” asked Rachel as they walked the hallway back to the first story. “Are you going to let him stay here? What if he’s married? What if he has children?”
“It’s not common for a twenty-three-year-old human to be married and have children, but if he does have children and a wife, I’m going to buy him a house. We’re going to be multimillionaires, remember?”
“Yes, I remember that. How can I forget? That’s the reason why I haven’t been able to sleep. So, where did you meet this lad?”
“I met him on my way to the pharmacy. Some ne’er-do-wells were beating him up.”
“Was he involved with a gang or something? Monti, you have to be careful who you let into our house.”
“It was a revenge beating. He’s not in a gang. These dudes were beating him to a pulp because he raped some girl.”
“You brought a rapist into our house? Oh, that’s right, you gave him the magic injection, and you’re hoping he won’t be a rapist anymore.”
They went back to the dining room. “When I give someone a magic injection, everything bad disappears in that person.”
“…Even their evilness.”
“That’s right. I not only give these people back their perfect health, but I also make them good as an apple pie.”
“I didn’t know that. I thought this thing you had going on was just a health-restoring thing.”
“It isn’t.”
“We’re doing a great thing, then. We’re not only curing people, but we’re also turning evil people into good people.”
“As incredible as that may sound, that’s right.”
Suddenly, the doorbell rang. Rachel walked out of the dining room and into the hallway that took her to the entrance and exit door. She walked to the door and opened the door, thinking, God, what else strange is going to happen tonight? First, my husband brings a rapist into my house thinking that he changed him to the better by enhancing his DNA, and now someone rings my bell at two o’clock in the morning. She opened the door and gasped when she saw the handsome but shy twenty-year-old stranger. He was crying. “What’s wrong?” she asked him like she knew him.
“Help me. I don’t know who I am. Have a genetic test and find out whom I am and if I have family!”
Oh, God, just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse. “Ok, let me get this straight. You don’t know who you are.”
“No.”
“Where did you come from? Who do you live with?”
“I just had a car accident and some… living thing with literally-starry eyes injected something in me and the next thing I knew…”
“You were genetically enhanced.”
“Yes. I had a car accident and I