A bit of fiction for you, with an explanation at the end:

“I don’t want you to go,” Brett said. He leaned back on his hands, the grass tickling his wrists.

“And I wish Cherenkov radiation wasn’t so pretty,” Fiona replied. “We don’t always get what we want, Brett.” She stood, dusting her hands off on the legs of her jeans. A lone ant, busy climbing her bracelet, flew off into the breeze to settle back amongst the grass.

Brett sat, staying behind, to watch the sunset. The sky turned wild neon blues and dark purples and pinks, something that had some of the town worried. The atmospherics should be holding steady. The filtration proved different. And if the filtration didn’t work right, then they were all cooking in their skins, right then, just being outside.

Except it never happened that way. They grew up, the kids of the town, like any other kids. They knew the secret rocks and broken logs to hide in and behind. They were familiar with the houses hat held unlocked garages and the ones with the best pools to sneak into at night. The area was fine. No mater how often they got warnings of danger from the reactor or the processing factory, nothing happened. The Russians were coming – eventually – but not today, and not tomorrow and everyone knew that didn’t show up yesterday, either.

The danger of their town became its own sort of background radiation, after a childhood spent around it. It hardened the skin and made mutants of them all. Instead of fearing radioactivity they simply understood it and dealt with it the way a fire-eater handles open flame – with respect and an element of boredom that always teeters on the edge of dangerous.
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Police tape surrounded the house. No one was allowed in or out, neighbors pooled around trying to get a morbid view. A car honked twice and rolled up to the curb. The tiny door opened and Binky got out.

He dragged out a large duffel bag, two gurneys and a large equipment box, setting them all on the curb. Onlookers gaped. There was no way all of that could fit inside such a tiny car. Binky was used to the looks.

He wandered up and, ducking under the police tape, nudged Detective Biggins with an oversized shoe. “This the vic?” Binky asked, throwing in a head lift in the general direction of the body on the ground.

“Yeah. The dead guy is the dead guy. That other dead guy,” Biggins pointed, “is the other dead guy.” Biggins hated Binky. He hated everything the clown stood for. Binky couldn’t care less. He sprayed a bit of cooling water on a handkerchief, directly from his lapel flower, and dabbed his forehead. Careful to not wipe off the make-up, he soothed himself and got to work.

Blowing up balloons he measured the angles of the shots fired and made a poodle to mark each. Some white powder to dust for prints, and a UV light the shape of a flamingo helped him discover even stranger clues.

Standing, Binky honked his nose and brushed off his knees. “Well, this is gonna be an interesting one,” he told Biggins, who sighed. “But for now, I’ll take these bodies in myself, to make sure nothing happens to them.”

Binky grabbed a roll of multi-colored plastic from a wide pant pocket and snapped out two body bags, each a primary color. “Which one’a these guys looks more like he’d enjoy the sunshine yellow, ya think?” he asked Biggins.

Biggins stood and thought hard about retirement.

Oh, snap! Check this awesome sketch of Binky done by Lar DeSouza! He’s the artist of Least I Could Do and Looking For Group. He also sells prints and such at Stuff From Lar. You should buy some.

Professor Ezekiel Alphonse Horatio McFlurryphontos studied his maps. His plans to take over Zimbabwe and thus assume his rightful place as the world’s preeminent scientific mind needed adjusting. Mozambique looked like an easy way in on first glance, but with each subsequent pass, the Professor reconsidered.

Now, to some, it might seem odd that taking over a small African nation would confer superior scientific status upon an individual, but Professor Ezekiel Alphonse Horatio McFlurryphontos knew that he was right. He generally was, if you only looked to him for the current score. If anyone had asked, the Professor would have explained that due to his recent time travel problems, he had ended up being revered for his genius – no matter what havoc he wrought. He enjoyed it at first, but grew to despise the fawning and interruptions. So, instead, he would show the world who was boss – quite literally.

Respect was good. Respect was key, even, to the Professor’s mind, but too much of a good thing turned out to not be such a good thing after all. Regardless, Pfah!, the Professor settled on Zimbabwe as his target. Once he controlled a country nothing could stop him.

He discarded the Mozambique plan and settled on an air-based attack strategy. Everything went according to plan. It was, the Professor thought, quite simple, looking back. Step one was the hardest, building an aircraft capable of flying over Zimbabwe while simultaneously spraying the entire country with a shrinking liquid. Covering the country quickly enough, and in a proper pattern was key. Without managing that everyone, their buildings and possessions would have shrunk unevenly. Lumpily, even.

Once the plane shrank the country the Professor stepped in, carefully – so as not to step on anyone, and swept up. Literally. The Atomi-broom gently, but emphatically, gathered up the buildings and people and extraneous pets into a holding unit. The unit itself was the size of a compact car, and within it, tiny robots went about pushing buildings into place. The robots, though tiny, were easily the size of busses, to the people now in the holding unit where they would live and prosper, albeit shrunken to the size of insects..

Zimbabwe taken care of, the Professor turned his attention to setting up shop. The world raged, but the Professor ignored them. Their respect quickly turned to horror and the Professor merely smiled. This, he felt, was more like it. Sometimes a certain state of mind is required for the best creative endeavors and, after achieving what he thought was his goal, the Professor had learned the true mindset needed for his own abilities. Certainly the success of his recently-trashed status was accidental, but it was still his, was it not? And as such, it was also his to upend gloriously, as befitting a genius.
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Professor Ezekiel Alphonse Horatio McFlurryphontos gazed out upon the world and found it … meh. He decided it would do. Since it had to. Thanks to his own machinations, in fact. It had happened like this:

The Professor ran after Gargantua, once a boy known as Jebediah Sucrose Klienschtop and now a rampaging giant monster. Yes, technically the transformation had been the Professor’s fault but why place blame? The truth of the moment was that the Professor intended to stop the monster.

And he did. A neural stabilizer here, a blast from the Imagi-fire helmet there and soon enough little Jebediah Sucrose Klienschtop, also recently known as Gargantua, ceased to be a problem. Which was one problem down. However, the resulting collateral damage became an issue. Professor Ezekiel Alphonse Horatio McFlurryphontos found himself hunted.

And so he ran. Well, he wouldn’t have called it running, per se. It was more akin to a gentle absconding into the night. A retreat, if you would. Yes, retreats are wonderful things full of spas and meetings and coffee. Now, the Professor’s retreat, it is admitted, mostly consisted of trees and sleeping out doors and avoiding dogs – but the idea stands.

After a week or so, the Professor grew tired of running. So, armed with only: his wits, a laser pistol, the Imagi-fire helmet, twelve stun capsules, one miniature Brontosaurus named Sal, and a mostly bullet proof lab coat (never tested), the Professor made his way back to his lab.
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Professor Ezekiel Alphonse Horatio McFlurryphontos frowned deeply. He hadn’t meant to harm anyone. Quite the opposite, in fact. He deeply and truly wanted to help humanity. He shook his head, deep in thought, and raised his hand-forged Spectra-Laser-Goggles , settling them high on his forehead.

Now, to be sure, many people saw his actions in a different light. They were, put simply, fools. Professor Ezekiel Alphonse Horatio McFlurryphontos knew them for the fools they were.

For example, he thought, didn’t turning Mrs. Wilkinson into a small, self-contained universe prove beneficial? Of course it had! No one was hurt (except for Mrs. Wilkinson and the feelings of her family and friends) and the cause of science had been advanced by hundreds of years. Einstein himself could never hope to solve the equations that Profession McFlurryphontos solved, with the aid of what had once been Mrs. Wilkinson. Even now she advanced humanity’s knowledge, swirling in the Post-Destrucionalized bell jar that housed her in her universal state.

But no, even then, the world had come to think of Professor McFlurryphontos as “a villain” or a “mad scientist” as if all scientists worth their salt were not mad, to the untrained eye! Pfah!
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He craved touch. The feel of hot, supple skin sliding against skin. If he only closed his eyes he could feel it. The invisible rasp of tiny hairs bending as nerve endings lit up like a pinball machine on tilt, blood vessels singing as they pumped harder infusing a warming flush, it made him dizzy just to consider.

Then again he felt the same way about waffles. He really did, though his friends laughed when he tried to explain. The feel of hot batter in his mouth, mixing and playing with the cold syrup and melting butter… it was too much for him. Everything was far, far too much. Always had been, truth be told. So he went to doctors and sought professional help only to be told the problem was in his mind. More doctors, more tests and experiments and he learned, over the years, to expect the sad shake of a head that doctors tried to hide from him right before they shrugged their shoulders and sent him to talk to someone else.

He tried to live alone for a while, eliminating as much of the world as possible. He tried to control his urges. Even then, he would get out of bed in the middle of the night to pee and the feel of the chilled hardwood floor under his bare foot – the grain of the varnished wood just hinting up along his heel – sent chills through his spine.

Blind desire filled his every waking moment and yet somehow, maddeningly, never dulled to the point of the far-too-well-known. Twenty years into his personal hell he gave up. Five years after that he gave in. The doorknob’s smooth brass slid against his palm like the whispers of the universe and he grabbed it tighter, turning it. The door opened and a warm breeze licked at his neck, making him swoon. The sun prickled along his face, like the kisses of a thousand needles and he smiled into it, stamping down the urge to run and hide. Where could he go, anyway? Bed? With its soft sheets and warm covers? That wouldn’t be better so why not just enjoy it, embrace it and run in the grass?

And so he gave in. To all of it. He made it as far as the driveway before dropping to his knees and rolling around in mindless pleasure and desire. They found him that way, two days later – dew covered and sleeping with a huge smile on his face. Back into the house he went, drugged so that he wouldn’t wake up and feel the hands of the people carrying him. Back into the fake house, past the fake lawns and neighborhood he could have seen if only he had been able to take twenty more steps. But none of that would matter in a while.

Their experiments were almost done, after all. Soon they would know enough about how these desires worked in humans, to launch the first attack wave.

Soon.

They couldn’t wait. They wanted nothing more than to board their attack ships and feel the smooth Hrnjds-skin seats against their backs while engines purred like lovers and…

“Wyksboh?” Gskri asked, “Did you spill the klrtht’ing formula on us? Awwww jhraso!”