The Consequences Of Genius

        It had been years. When he first became obsessed with the idea in college, he was heralded as a genius of his generation. Capable of making the next incredible breakthrough. But now? After so much time had passed? He stayed in a dark, dim room, leaned against a desk covered in papers on a floor flooded with more papers, with only the faint desk-lamp to provide him light in the darkness. He had to be on to something. He must be!

After all this time, with all this equipment and all the money he’d spent, there had to be something to this madness. His eyes scrolled the pages of research and notes, at least the relevant ones on his desk, and he made further notations about this latest experiment. He stood, the motion causing many papers to billow away from him, and he marched towards his machine. His grand invention. The great signal flare with which he will usher in a new era of humanity.

He adjusted the amperage, re-arranged the antennas on the second pod, and triple-checked that they were powered. He stepped over the frayed and mangled corpse of the failed experiment as he wandered his way to the fuse box. It was important, of course, now that he wasn’t making his coffee, to re-divert the power back to his machine.

An unfortunate groan came from the floor. He glanced, with an expression of disinterest, at the almost-human on the floor. One arm failed to defuse from its torso, the other reaching out for a supportive hand, the entire creature red with blood.

He ignored it. It would mean nothing in his new realm, in his perfect future. It cost him nothing to repeat the experiment, save perhaps an electricity bill at the end of the month. But it was fine, he was so close now. When that time came he would be able to pay it in spades, and they would probably pay him for having made such a profound discovery in their building. Yes, yes, he would be beloved.

        In school, his research had been heralded as brilliant and incredible. But his critics, they were vicious and unrelenting. They called him mad, they said he’d lost his mind, they could not fathom the possibilities that would be ushered forth by his great invention!

The whirling of the machine was like music to his ears with each booting sequence. Watching the DOS prompts on the little jerry-rigged laptop was like watching Picasso paint, and he was sure the world would agree! But, it had begun to grate. After fifteen failed runs, fifteen unpleasant corpses to clean up, fifteen groans and nightmarish forms, he was not without a few doubts and frustrations. He still had neglected to clean up the sixteenth experiment, and so it lay malformed on his floor.

It was a source of much frustration. On his next go around the desk, he stomped his foot down on its skull, the unfortunate squelch and squeals of pain and compounded flesh filled the room. As its final scream hollered out in an unpleasantly familiar deep voice, he pushed harder until there was no life left in the failed experiment. The hideous thing simply lay dead and slightly oozish upon the ground, whereupon he grabbed its unpleasantly fleshy and grotesque form where one might have a shoulder, and dragged it, slowly, uncomfortably, across the room leaving a trail of blood as the aged wooden floor left splinters in its hide. He pulled another trash bag from the roll he kept in the corner, and wrapped the foul and lost beast in it. He then heaved the squishy and liquidy bag of garbage out of his apartment into the elevator.

Out in the snow at the bottom of his building, he walked out into the uncovered parking lot, trailing the uncomfortable fleshy bag behind him, bringing it out to the now slightly full dumpster which smelled uncomfortably of rotting flesh and looked misshapen in all the worst ways. He threw the bag over his shoulder, comforted slightly by the idea that if it were not already dead, it soon would be. He then marched his way back in the door, into the elevator, and back to his damp, cramped, and paper-covered room. He re-examined his notes once more and re-drew the drapes to be sure that none would witness his genius before himself.

He knew that everything was ready, and so, more confidant than ever in his project, he readied for the seventeenth test. He adjusted both capsules, huge silver chambers which stood on opposite sides of the room, connected both by cables and the invisible power of radio waves. He brought the second one to life by connecting the circuit with the breaker on the far side. He considered, slightly, the idea that his project would be rejected. No, NO, that is impossible. He has worked so hard, and made such progress. There is nothing but success which awaits him. If not now, then soon enough. He brought the first chamber to life with another flip of the respective breaker. He waited for the coils and gears to find their place before the grand bronze doors opened. Immense quantities of steam poured out from the machine and flooded the floor of the little room, making what discarded papers that had come close into piles of literary mulch, and warmed the little room.

Out of habit, he checked his notes one more time. The calculations were excellent. The machinations worked beautifully. As a way to provide a new variable to this test, he connected a little samplette of gelatin to the machine. If all went well, he’d have a very lovely snack on the other side. If not- Well, nothing wrong with a seventeenth mess to clean up. He nodded his head, almost involuntarily. He was exhausted. It had been a long day, with hours of work behind him.

He stepped into the machine, flicking the switch as he went. The bronze doors closed and he heard the gears whir and the coils spark the air with loose bolts of plasma. The electricity in the air sparked and crackled, until eventually the chamber was filled with steam, and there was a bright light.

At first, there was nothing. Slowly, his senses came to him. The bronze doors before him opened. He was on the other side of the room. His heart quickened in an unnatural beat. He tried to raise his arms but failed. They were held in place. He tried to step forward, he fell. The contact with the metal of the chamber and wood of the floor against his incomplete visage caused searing pain along his body. He tried to call out, but his voice was nothing but a gurgle. It was strained, limited, he was naught but an unpleasant and lost slug of a person on the ground, one viable arm and one viable leg, both which stung immensely to move about his form. His vision was blurry but functional, which he counted among his successes. He thought to himself, it will be better for the-

“It will be better for the eighteenth test, I suppose.”

The voice came from above him. He looked up, and saw himself. Dirty from the days work, with an unbuttoned collared shirt and plaid pants, wholly unharmed, staring down at him with nothing but contempt and disappointment.

“I suppose you will have to go with the others.”

A boot was raised well above his head.

There was pain. There was screaming.

And then there was nothing.

(P.S.: This story was written on-stream, at twitch.tv/mys_mistree, using the prompt "A person going crazy with their research", submitted by Crazycrazyfox)