Playground

“Wonderful, the design worked just as you predicted,” Geraldine said, beaming.

“Zhe blueprints were drawn with only success in mind,” Fuchs replied.

“I knew you wouldn’t fail me again, not after all I’ve invested.” Her vocal inflection grew more serious, and the euphoria waned.

A flurry of memories trickled into her head. She thought of the winding path that had brought their twisted minds together. It was in 1977, when she was forty-eight-years-old. An aging woman with little time left to figure out how to craft her legacy.

The idea had manifested shortly after her mother’s demise. She was to find a man—any man—to plant a seed inside her. Once she secured the seed, she no longer required the donor. She craved a child in her likeness, just like she’d seen frolicking in the playground that beautiful day from the bench. The child would allow her purpose again. The flesh of her creation would mirror her image and not only continue to control the Borden fortune and legacy, but more importantly, serve as an endless outlet of elation for her perverse narcissism.

While Geraldine’s unhealthy infatuation controlled her, the limitations had left her sexual demons salivating for more. Having another glowing replica to stare back at her, mimicking each expression, would surely eliminate the stagnancy that clung to her.

For the longest time, masturbation had been the only answer she could find, but her mindless self-indulgence could only take her so far. Her initial plan wasn’t ideal, but it was viable and simple. The chore of being with men she had zero attraction wasn’t enjoyable but was a necessary discomfort.

She targeted young men with strong intellects whom she suspected to possess vivacious sperm. Even the most brilliant minds in her social circumference bowed to her when enough money and prestige were at play. But as the weeks of perversion turned into months, and the count piled up, Geraldine grew concerned. Maybe a handful of the men she’d run through could’ve been duds, but all of them?

She had no choice but to consider the problem might lie within. A visit to her clinician would eventually confirm her suspicions. The harsh truth gave birth to Geraldine’s new nightmare; she was infertile.

Unable to create a potential partner to exile her sexual burden, the weight of her lust became unignorable.

“Zhere seems to be some issues with zhe camera in Room 1.”

Fuchs’ update shattered her remembrances.

“Just get it working,” Geraldine demanded.

“Of course, my lady,” Fuchs replied.

He tapped at the various keys on the control panel and computer keyboard in front of him.

When Geraldine’s glare fell back upon the disturbed engineer’s haggard face, she recalled the connection.

After escaping Hamburg, Germany in April of 1945, just a week before Allied forces bombed the state into oblivion, Adolpho Fuchs found himself on the run. His struggle to evade and survive was no novice pilgrimage.

As a Nazi scientist, they had molded him into an asset for an evil that knew no bounds. Dabbling in taboo and inhumane experiments was his forte. Fuchs was a man of macabre brilliance, but for all his varying attributes, it was his range that might’ve been the most impressive.

His trials involved a wide variety of fields, ranging from mechanical engineering, to programming, and the initial reason that Geraldine had gravitated toward him—medicine. His expertise in his homeland’s sinister affairs had made him something of a known commodity. A man with knowledge that, in the eyes of the Americans, was priceless. His war crimes, while not known by name to the larger public, were the stuff of legend within the espionage and government intelligence circles.

Fuchs’ unique understanding of biology led to the farm-raising of soulless tissues within the walls of his lab of horrors. The fetuses were of a Frankenstein nature, but the results were perfect for what he’d envisioned: a race of pureblood, obedient super soldiers.

He artificially magnified their muscles, numbed their pain, and bonded their flesh with robotics. He fathered a glorious and frightening new hybrid species. The prototypes hadn’t turned out perfect, but they were promising. In his blackened heart he still believed that if his funding had been increased, the additional finances would’ve seen his spawns find the battlefield in mass and thus propelled the Nazis toward a more favorable, alternate outcome in history.

Fuchs also contributed to the construction and renovation of several concentration camps in the early 40s. Using his mechanical and engineering background, his heinous blueprints came to light, and countless souls perished due to his atrocious ingenuity.

Along with the several camp proposals Fuchs had seen accepted, were many others that didn’t see the light of day. The feedback from officials highlighted that his designs weren’t focused enough on making the exterminations quick or easy to apply to a mass population.

Some were considered too involved.

Some were considered too messy.

Others were considered too extreme, even for the Nazi regime.

The insidious inventor remained at large for years before the Americans eventually caught up with him. Once the war concluded, Fuchs, along with approximately sixteen hundred other German scientists, was finally captured. His murderous track record should’ve punched his ticket to the beyond, but United States leadership thought otherwise. They decided, despite the nefarious nature of the knowledge Fuchs and his counterparts collected, it was too valuable to be lost. Such a gleaming advantage couldn’t be squandered. After the indecent proposal, a hushed private pardon was granted to hundreds of war criminals.

As a result, Fuchs became part of a black project that remained in the dark for decades. Instead of being put to death, or left to rot in a cell, Operation Paperclip was born. The program harvested criminal intellect and positioned the scientists to use their past data to advance American technology and many other fields.

As Geraldine continued to study the marvel of malice that pecked at the keyboard beside her, she felt fortunate. Only in the exclusive community of personalities that had procured such bottomless wealth could she have learned of Fuchs. She’d grown exhausted and defeated during her search for a solution, but it seemed society had destined to connect their paths.

The dinner party where Geraldine first encountered Fuchs was like any in her circle, full of aristocrat chatter and braggadocios grandstanding. It was a chance meeting. If not but for the grace of alcohol, humanity’s purest social lubrication, the pieces might not have fallen into place.

Martin Pearl was a wealthy, talkative, and overly jittery acquaintance of Geraldine’s. But it wasn’t until Mr. Pearl pulled her to the side for an exchange of gossip that she realized the potential that stood inside the room with her.

A brash blow-hard, Martin was an attention whore, and always on the lookout for his next fix. A politically inclined man of many words for many reasons. Reasons that were always self-serving to his overstated ego.

Geraldine liked to listen to the man not because of his unpolished personality, but talking with Mr. Pearl was like watching a train wreck. Seeing as he’d already dumped a few cocktails into his tank, she was excited for the fireworks.

He often enjoyed sharing things he shouldn’t and defending controversial positions. Mr. Pearl offered Geraldine a few nuggets about the old German that, among ears with a more patriotic perking, would’ve surely ruffled some feathers. He not only expounded upon the long list of horrors Fuchs had been associated with, but also justified them. He rattled on about Fuchs’ success with the space program on American soil, and how it was really the Nazis that landed on the moon.

Geraldine looked at Fuchs’ wrinkly face. The German had certainly accumulated a few more lines of definition since the evening they met. It had been some time, but still, as Geraldine recalled the gathering, it all felt like just yesterday.

Mr. Pearl continued with their conversation, drink in hand, flaunting his vast knowledge of the inner workings of war and politics. But after his revelations about Fuchs, nothing else he said seemed to hold the same punch. Even as Mr. Pearl shared dangerous claims that could’ve seen him suicided in a shitty motel room, Geraldine couldn’t peel her eyes away from the Nazi.

Despite the sensitive and salacious nature of the claims Mr. Pearl spewed without filter, the squeaky wheels in Geraldine’s brain turned in a different direction. On any other night, she would’ve been over the moon with the direction of their conversation, but this wasn’t any other night any longer. Geraldine had reached a tipping point; her mind had been blown wide open. She wouldn’t be able to think again until she addressed her prospect.

While Geraldine couldn’t have cared less about the man’s opinions, acquiring the knowledge of Fuchs’ vast array of capabilities did more than intrigue her. The stories of his groundbreaking work with flesh in his experiments served to push a breath of life back into a potential endgame that Geraldine believed to be dead.

By the time their gathering ended, she knew that an assembly of a more private nature, just her and Fuchs, was immediately in order.

The meeting was short and simple; she bought him out.

When Fuchs took the deal, he disappeared from the government’s radar entirely. It would’ve been a dangerous move had Geraldine not been so privatized and wealthy. She gifted Fuchs anything he desired within the walls of her castle. The option of living like a king in solace was too tempting for the Nazi to turn down.

She’d given him a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. One that allowed him to disappear and lead a simple, anonymous life in private housing, with luxurious accommodations. One that offered a delicious diet, infinite resources, and freedom as far as the eye could see.

The only problem was, Fuchs couldn’t deliver on the miracle Geraldine bargained on. Even with the countless years of unethical research, coupled with Fuchs’ foreign experimental techniques, Geraldine’s weathered, brittle body remained barren.

Geraldine continued to stare a hole through the sweaty SS descendent working feverishly to correct the camera issue. The memories were still infuriating.

While her biology remained a puzzle that Fuchs had never been able to put together, Geraldine didn’t allow the resulting rage to control her. The draining disappointment fostered gloom, but as years of failure flashed forward, the bitter taste in Geraldine’s mouth transitioned.

Fuchs continued to experiment with her fertility, but she wasn’t betting on a breakthrough. Instead, she was thinking about the other attributes that Fuchs had to offer. Geraldine would need to reap something from her investment, even if it wasn’t what she’d initially planned.

It wasn’t until Geraldine found herself back at her childhood playground watching the children frolic with their parents that it finally dawned on her—the peasants that arrived and left with their futures in control and in hand, didn’t even deserve the standard option of genetic replication that Geraldine had been stripped of. There was a gross misbalance in society, and it needed to be corrected. The time had arrived for her to put Fuchs’ other talents to use. To create equality that was long overdue. The children shouldn’t find joy in the playground; they should find their destruction.

In shifting the old man’s focus, the obscene relationship they had didn’t seem like such a waste anymore. Geraldine’s investment would no longer be without fruits.

Even once Rock was added to their evil equation, and Geraldine was greeted with an even deeper, permanent disappointment, she could take comfort in knowing that Fuchs was driving her toward an epic release of wrath.

Geraldine recalled the evil epiphany with a grin.

She felt the same calm wash over her as it had initially. The tantalizing thought of the parents confined to the spy room. The idea they’d soon be forced to watch their precious spawns find the violent finality that they deserved internally tickled her.

“Ah! Zhere we go! Got it!” Fuchs bellowed out.

The camera feed on the screen activated.

“Marvelous! And that means that the video is visible to the parents as well, correct?”

Fuchs smiled and removed his hand from the knob in front of him. He used his overgrown fingernail to tap against the glass on the other monitor beside the one he’d debugged. On the screen, they could see the faces of the seated parents contort with horror and agony.

He looked away from the ghastly expressions of the guardians on the monitor, then back to Geraldine.

Her smile stretched just as far as his.