last time we left our makeover of the movie Batman and Robin with the introduction of Dr. Pamela Isley and her supervisor(?) Dr. Woodrue, who is a mad scientist creep. Both scientists are working deep in the jungle to do…something…
Dr. Isley had just asked Woodrue about the screams coming from his lab. Meaning, I guess, that screams coming from a lab are something most academics consider unusual, but not so concerning as to require calling, I don’t know, a campus review board or whatever?
“What are those screams?” Isley asked.
Woodrue was illuminated by a fierce flash of lightning. This was the RAIN forest, after all, there’s bound to be some lightning, right? It’s not like this is just a convenient, dramatic lighting effect that happened to come at the exact right time.
“How I’d love to share my secrets with you,” he said. “But I ask you, sweet sapling—can you be trusted? You refuse my invitations to dine. You hide yourself behind these sallow robes.”
Pamela backed away from him. She was very happy in her “sallow robes,” thank you. And if turning down romantic advances makes a person untrustworthy, then I am the most trusted person on the planet right now, because turning down romantic overtures is something I not only don’t do, I’m never even afforded the opportunity. So I must be the most honest person ever to live.
A deafening clap of thunder seemed to shake the very earth. “Ah, but there’s romance in the air tonight,” Woodrue cackled. “Perhaps a moonlit stroll in the jungle, my dear?”
Pamela winced. There was nothing she’d like less. Putting aside the romantic parts, walking around a bunch of tall trees in a lightning storm, in the rain forest, in the dark, just seemed like a very non-doctor-y decision to make. She could picture her colleagues laughing as her corpse was delivered back home, her life having been snuffed out because she laid down on a poisonous frog in order to bang her very creepy supervisor, who took her death convulsions as shudders of pure pleasure. This is the sort of thing that would ruin sex forever for most, but Woodrue would probably shrug and walk away. I get the feeling this wouldn’t be his first time in that particular cirCUMstance.
“Woodrue, you have to tell me what you’re doing with my Venom,” she said doggedly.
Woodrue’s reply was sour. “You must show my your secrets, blossom, before I show you mine.”
Pamela watched in silence as he turned to leave with a flourish, probably, Woodrue having special lab coats constructed that behaved more like capes so he could always make dramatic exits after a turndown, something he experienced quite often.
As the door to Gilgamesh Wing began to swing closed behind him, Pamela kicked her fallen recorder. The metal cylinder rolled across the floor and wedged itself between the door and the jamb, preventing the entrance from sealing in a way that enticed the character to step inside while also absolving her of any guilt through intent, removing any and all blame from this action while also allowing it to happen. This is how story works.
She gave Woodrue a few seconds’ start before she slipped through the doorway after him. She found herself in the main hallway of the long-abandoned prison and made her way along it, following the sounds of the screams as they grew ever louder. It occurred to her for the first time how impractical a prison isolated in the rainforest would be. How did they get all the building materials out here? How did they get food? Wouldn’t a prison surrounded by rainforest provide ample escape opportunity, like, wouldn’t some dude be about 100 feet away before he was completely invisible, lost in the growth?
Dim light shone from a large chamber which Woodrue had converted into his Gilgamesh laboratory. Inside stood banks of flashing Cray supercomputers, connected up to a vast array of sparking, humming, high-tech equipment, sparking being totally unnecessary to the operation of the equipment but something Woodrue insisted on because the sparking contributed to the ambiance, therefore enhancing the abilities of the greatest equipment of all: his dick. Close second was his brain, but even though Woodrue’s intellect was vast, his schwanz was vaster.
Woodrue stood in the shadows, a mobile phone in his hand.
“Ladies and genflemen of the un-United Nations,” he began, then said into the phone: “And our mystery bidder.”
Careful not to make a sound, Pamela crouched behind the door. She could see that a small bridge arced across the room, with four distinct shapes standing on it. An American general, a Russian commissar, and an Arab sheik stood there, next to a man she recognized from news bulletins: he was the brutal dictator of a South American country. She couldn’t remember which one, it seems like these South American countries have a rotating cast of weirdos who take control for a while, kill WAY too many people, and then, shockingly, something bad happens to them, and a new guy takes over because people are intrigued about his innovative, more efficient way of killing a lot of people.
“I give you the future of military conquest,” Woodrue announced grandly.