Wing and a Plan Read online

  A WING AND A PLAN

  Matt Adams

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2011 Matt Adams

  Cover image composited from elements by Krishna and David Wilbanks via Flickr

  Used with Creative Commons License

  Learn more about the author at http://mattadamsauthor.blogspot.com

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  Stupid, insufferable humans. They’d been caught up in another self-righteous war, bringing about environmental disaster without even realizing it. At least they’d paid attention when the Exxon Valdez sank. At least they’d paid attention when their oil-greedy ways created a catastrophe in the Americans’ precious Gulf Coast.

  The latest calamity washed oil up along the eastern edge of Antarctica.

  Morris had had enough.

  He had no particular compassion for the other creatures of this tainted and broken world, but those creatures still had a life force endowed upon them by a greater power.

  That greater power was most certainly detached from humanity.

  No one thought about the penguins. The latest oil spill had hit his kind hardest as oil drifts washed up on the southern tip of Africa and parts of New Zealand and Australia. Hundreds died, thousands more were injured, many wouldn’t survive.

  He regarded them as curiosities, single-minded husks focused only on eating and reproducing. Still, Morris couldn’t help but care about them. They were his country-penguins after all. They lacked the foresight and will to rise up against the humans and remake the world in their own image. Though his brothers and sisters often disappointed him, Morris could not shake the grating sense of cultural self-preservation.

  He rubbed his beak with a stiff flipper as he sat atop his ice throne on the western edge of Antarctica. Tossing aside another bottle of Beck’s, Morris stared straight ahead at the large computer screen as his flippers glided across the large keys of his custom-designed keyboard.

  He took pride in the intricate architecture he’d designed within the ice structure. The interior resembled a fine, old-style British manor with large halls and his very own ice-shelf library. His favorite room, the den, allowed him to monitor various news feeds around the world.

  To the outside world, Morris’s lair looked like an ordinary glacier and he took pains to hide his power signatures from scanners that could detect them. As a penguin, he could not identify a single design influence; it simply was not part of his culture. And so he’d turned to the humans, gaining design insight from sources as diverse as Superman to old episodes of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

  One day, the humans would regard penguins with a capital “P.”

  Morris would lead the way, if only his contact would come through.

  #

  What the humans had done to their world mildly upset him. What they had done to the penguin culture infuriated him.

  Humanity possessed a tremendous, unique capacity for creativity and the will to use it. At times, the humans suppressed the self-destructive tendencies that spelled doom for their reality.

  They could not quench their never-ending thirst for war, money, and power. As conflicts escalated and resources became even more important, the countries of earth took sides in a global conflict that would soon escalate to nuclear war. When it came, Morris imagined the self-satisfied smirk that would spread across his beak. Yet, it would come with some sadness. Though the humans could act mercilessly, their capacity for good was impossible to overlook. He regarded them as a pitiable people without pity, tragic figures incapable of getting out of their own way. Some rose to teach them—Lincoln, Kennedy, Rabin, Reagan, Ghandi, Sadat—but few would listen, and many of those great men would meet unfortunate ends.

  Morris wanted to understand; he wanted to learn. And so, as the preeminent attraction at a German zoo, he’d discovered capacities his contemporaries lacked. He secretly learned the language, and a trainer there took particular interest in Morris. They formed a fast friendship, though the young Emperor penguin hadn’t realized the man’s true intentions. He’d been far too trusting. Before Morris understood the full scope of his trainer’s plan, he was ushered off to a secret military base in former East Germany, a facility both German and Russian in nature.

  They performed obsessive experiments on “the talking penguin,” often ignoring his pained squawks. Their final gift was complete clarity of purpose and mind, a new understanding of the complex world Morris and his penguin contemporaries struggled against. He understood: penguins were inferior only because the humans wanted them to be inferior.

  Morris had far greater ambitions for his people.

  With help from one of the scientists, Morris fled to the so-called Land of Liberty. The United States, he’d heard, was the last bastion of freedom and forward-thinking in the world. He held fast to the unwavering hope for a normal life.

  He arrived in a city called Pittsburgh, a place he’d thought worthy of a penguin. Many people wore the symbol of his kind, but when he watched his first Pittsburgh Penguins game on TV, he left enraged when none of his brothers and sisters took to the ice.

  Although he begrudgingly admired their ingenuity, humans were not fit to sail the ice; they weren’t made for it. They had no insulating feathers, no mechanisms to control their blood flow. They were an indifferent people whose cultural depravity knew no bounds.

  Chilly Willy.

  March of the Penguins.

  That insipid movie with the dancing penguin voiced by Elijah Wood.

  They made his kind mascots for ice cream bars and the manmade prisons they called zoos.

  They even ripped off their highest example of male fashion from penguin-kind.

  Where would it end?

  #

  Deep within his glacial estate in Antarctica, Morris leaned forward in his icy chair and pulled his keyboard closer. Since the inevitable buildup toward war, news reports were difficult to come by. Still, he found human technology to have remarkable resilience. Humans flocked to their message boards and Facebook accounts to share news and information.

  No one knew Morris had engineered a sophisticated algorithm to sift through and find the most useful data. He’d disguised it as a cute Facebook “app” featuring the picture of a cartoon penguin. Few Facebook users could explain what the app actually did, but they downloaded it in droves nonetheless. He didn’t care about Farmville updates or teenagers and their stilted non-words concerning potential enlistment and delayed sporting events. He looked for certain trends in the code, anything that would indicate weakness in the human spirit.

  He found common expressions of uncertainty and leeriness toward the delicate balance of the world. The strings could snap at any time, destroying everything the humans knew. Morris was more than happy to let their fears distract them from his greater purpose.

  A large blip appeared and a hollow, tinny sound pinged from his monitor speakers. Morris tapped a few keys on his customized keyboard—he’d become quite adept with the hunting-and-pecking method—and saw a message that excited him enough to elicit a jubilant squawk.

  Ludwig had made contact.

  He knew where Morris could find the serum.

  The Penguin slid from his chair and waddled around in a circle, ignoring the curious looks of his brain-dead brothers and sisters who milled about the estate.

/>   He waddled toward his laboratory and dragged out his power-glider, securing a metal briefcase in the custom luggage slot.

  His kind lacked the capacity for flight, but Morris had found a way around it. He took inspiration from the humans, crafting a powerful device allowing him to soar high above the earth. He pulled the straps tight and a low buzzing sound swept across the ice. A loud boom shook the icy ground as the wings popped open.

  A crowd of penguins gathered outside the estate and Morris raised his flippers in a grand gesture, “My brothers and sisters, the Penguin Empire shall rise!”

  Most of the penguins looked away.

  One lost its footing and tipped over.

  Morris sighed and blasted off for Berlin.

  #

  “You are hard to find,” Ludwig said, his English broken and stilted.

  “You can talk in German, Ludwig,” Morris said to the scientist.

  “No. I like talking English, even if it not so good,” the man replied. “Always amused by your accent, old friend.”

  Morris shook his head, “My first contact was with Germans. You’d think I’d talk like them.”

  “But no, not little Morris. He sound like Clint Eastwood!” Ludwig said, erupting into hearty laughter.

  Morris waved his flippers and squawked in anger, “That’s enough, Ludwig. The maker provides us with only a single voice.”

  “Yes, yes. This true, freund. This true.”

  Ludwig wiped his bearded chin with the back of his gloved hand, “Quite cold. Quite cold.”

  “Cold? Ludwig, you’re getting soft. I’m burning up,” Morris said as he looked over the city.

  “The base you seek is a few kilometers south of here,” Ludwig explained. “A hydro-electric project left the facility under water. Very difficult for a man to get to. Ah, but you are no man!”

  “Good thing for your sake, Ludwig, that you realize that.”

  Ludwig clapped Morris on the back hard enough that the penguin had to put a flipper on the ground to steady himself.

  “It is good to see you, mein freund. But I make one thing clear,” Ludwig said with a sweeping gesture, “This exchange balance things. Make us even.”

  Morris handed over the metal briefcase, “This is it? Nothing more from my friend Ludwig? And all this time I thought you liked me.”

  Ludwig’s face lit up as he accepted his payment, “Do like you. But my debt is repaid. The things we put you through were unbecoming of scientists. We should not do such things to little creature. This is it. My final gift.”

  “I never understood why you helped.”

  “Gleich und gleich gesellt sich gern,” Ludwig said.

  Morris approximated an arched eyebrow, “Kind of like birds of a feather, huh? I suppose we do flock together.”

  Ludwig held a hand out and Morris accepted it with a flipper, “Auf wiedersehen, Ludwig.”

  “And goodbye to you,” the man said, clutching the briefcase even tighter.

  #

  Morris approached the old military base, a relic of the Soviet occupation; one of those underground research facilities the Soviets seemed to love.

  While Morris didn’t have much use for most of humanity, he held a begrudging admiration for Russians. They went after what they wanted. The Germans did that to an extent…until the global community neutered them. Both remained strong and proud peoples, and each contributed something important to the global market. The Russians offered vodka; the Germans offered pilsner and hefeweizen. Morris was particularly fond of all of them.

  He sighed and performed a full-body shake as he prepared to dive into the overflowing waters. The hydro-electric project was likely designed to cover the old base and Morris figured the facility was flooded. At least Ludwig had provided an approximate location. Morris’ penguin senses would do the rest.

  #

  The sweet caress of cool water washed over his oblong body and Morris relished it. Here in the water, he felt at home. For a few seconds, he saw the new world he hoped to craft. Tall ice structures dominated city skylines and canals provided the most efficient form of transportation for his kind. He tasted the oily warmth of a perfectly-cooked mackerel served at an exclusive restaurant.

  He snapped back into reality as he approached a door bearing the faded black, red, and gold flag of Germany. The coat of arms at the center confirmed the structure’s East German heritage.

  NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY, the door screamed in capital letters.

  Morris used both flippers to push down the lever that opened the door. Air bubbles cascaded toward him, and the penguin wrapped his flippers around the lever until the onrushing water stopped, staring straight ahead to take full advantage of his advanced underwater vision.

  He glanced to his left where the research rooms sat, their glory days well past them. His eyes caught glimpses of a long, flat metal table like the one the scientists had strapped him into all those years ago. Even in the muffled underwater world he swam in, he could hear the screams and squawks of the creatures and men the scientists carved up, interrogated, and dissected.

  He saw a reflection in the water; the younger face of Ludwig, his visage lacking the lines, gray beard, and glasses of the present day. Youthful energy crackled behind those eyes. They’d been the only kind eyes within the facility. Ludwig had followed his orders and continued to study the “talking penguin.”

  But as Morris gained more proficiency with the language, Ludwig took pity upon him. Though he couldn’t stop the other scientists from injecting Morris with a serum, Ludwig made amends by forgetting one day to set the electronic lock on Morris’s cell door. The mistake likely cost the scientist his job and his salary.

  Morris used the opportunity to escape, seeking refuge in the United States.

  The experiences there opened his eyes to the greater evils of humanity as flocks of penguins huddled in zoos, growing fat with plentiful food sources and content with playing to the crowd. He discovered humanity’s dark fascination with the debasement of penguin-kind in movies and pop culture, realizing their idea of a proper “Penguin” revolved around a man who fought with umbrellas against a giant bat.

  Morris forced his mind to stop wandering and swam past the “research rooms” toward the facility’s archives.

  #

  The scientists disappointed him with their poor upkeep of the archives room; then again, the facility held many unhappy memories. Papers, pictures, and film canisters floated in ghostly synchronization, their inks and images fading. A few cabinets remained sealed, perhaps containing some useful information.

  Morris spun in the water, his eyes searching for an area reserved for biomedical research. He spotted another sealed door warning against unauthorized entry. The entryway employed a submarine-style door, a design that showed incredible if unintended foresight from the facility’s designers.

  Morris grabbed the wheel and spun it, hearing the warble of escaping water and air. He pulled the door open, floated aside for a brief second, and then proceeded.

  Like the main archive room, the biomedical research wing showed signs of lackluster care. A distant pang of regret rippled through him; the scientists had developed many useful programs and projects despite their misguided nature.

  A glass case floated several feet away and Morris knew he’d found his target. Large letters marked the container as “Hazardous Materials,” and the penguin approached it while trying to calm his barely-contained excitement. With a sharp blow from his left flipper, the glass case broke and several vials floated out.

  He examined each one, careful to avoid the floating shards of glass he’d unleashed.

  Project 11-A.

  The serum floated tantalizingly in front of him; Morris grasped it and placed it in his specially-designed belt, leaving the rest of the ghostly relics floating in perpetual liquid limbo.

  #

  After a relatively uneventful flight back to his glacial estate, Morris arrived to find his inferior penguin contemporaries o
verrunning his lab. They waddled almost drunkenly around the facility, bumping into the ice tables and bookshelves and sliding down his manorial staircases.

  He rolled his eyes and unstrapped his flying machine, setting aside the vial marked “Project 11-A.” Reaching into one of his equipment drawers, he drew out his trusty fish cannon, and sprayed an area beyond his lab with treats.

  The act left him ashamed—it made him no better than the zookeepers who fed their penguin captives by hand to get them to perform tricks—but Morris needed isolation to concentrate on his ultimate goal.

  #

  Sealed inside his laboratory, he began catalyzing the serum

  The idea behind the liquid was simple: a recipe for a “super-soldier” the scientists cooked up in their underground lab in Berlin. The project never came to fruition—the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War fizzled out before the initiative could be activated—but Morris had faith in its boundless potential.

  The scientists designed it to make an individual smarter and stronger, and Morris planned to use it to bolster the mental power of his weak-minded penguin flock. If it worked, and he was confident it would, he planned to synthesize enough to treat all the penguins of the world.

  The Emperor Penguins would rise alongside their cousins: the Adelie, Humboldt, African, King, and Rockhopper.

  Again, visions of his new world flashed through his mind. He would become Morris, the Champion of Penguin Prime, the wise and mighty ruler who outwitted the Puffin Lords of Zanzibar and showed the humans their true place in the world order.

  If anyone could do this, it was him.

  Morris checked his calculations one more time and began running simulations for synthesis.

  #

  Morris and his penguin contemporaries possessed slow metabolisms perfectly adapted for cold weather habitats. The original serum boosted metabolism and increase cognitive power. Though a bit blubbery, his dim-witted ilk did not need a dramatic boost in metabolism.

  Morris double-checked his findings once more; the last thing he needed was a formula that increased the metabolism of his brothers and sisters too greatly, resulting in the thinning of their ranks. Cold-weather creatures did not need the lean body mass favored by human ideals of physical perfection.