The Perfect Human

Chapter I: Feeling Good

Abelard could only smile. It had been altogether too long now since he had had the opportunity to physically really hurt someone. There were some incidents since waking up, but too few compared with the fondly remembered regularity of violent transactions prior to the incident. As much as he liked to think he had adapted well to modern civil society, which encouraged bloodless conflict resolution, he did have intense urges to settle disputes in a more traditional fashion.

His cheerful ruminations on his great good fortune had been abruptly interrupted by a burly man who bumped him rather harder than he would have expected from an accidental brush with a passing stranger. On first impressions, Abelard may have attributed the heavy coat to an obsessively careful personality, worried about last minute, end of winter diseases. But his suspicions were aroused by the woolen balaclava, revealing only the eyes and thick moist lips through three crudely cut holes; utterly out of place, even for those who most terribly felt the cold.

Conveniently, or so it seemed to Mr. Balaclava, they were where a dark alley gave onto the street. Abelard was quickly shoved into the dim lane way and pressed against a wall. The assailant's face was close to Abelard's, exhaling the putrefying remains of his last meal. "I've a butcher knife under my coat," he sneered, probably more to frighten Abelard that he might be filleted alive than to explain that there was a good reason other than insanity or cold for him to be so overdressed "and my buddies are also about, so don't yell or try anything stupid."

Abelard's brain went, in a blinding moment, from sober contemplation to basic instinct. In Abelard's more familiar world there could not be any ending to a confrontation other than death. In these contests hesitation was almost always fatal. And that is how the moment's events had coalesced in his hidden mind.

The unwavering stare from Abelard's transparent grey eyes motivated the mugger to reach inside his coat but, all his determination and frequent participation in such ventures notwithstanding, he was hopelessly outmatched against Abelard's recalled experience in these matters. His hand was still fumbling inside his coat as Abelard was bashing his head against the brick wall, stopping regularly to smash a large fist into the hidden face. As the unlucky thug slipped slowly to the ground, leaving a bloody smear on the grimy brick, behind his descending head, Abelard picked up a handily discarded lead pipe and began to systematically break his bones, starting with the easily accessible knees. In such circumstances, he remembered, it was necessary as a dissuasive measure to inflict the severest pain before finally putting such criminals to their ultimately deserved deaths – a thought that Abelard knew to be laden with hypocrisy.

Ordinarily an undesirable presence for him, to the dying assailant's good fortune a prowl car was just turning into the alley and caught Abelard's exertions in its headlights. Another moment and he would have lost his life. Like a feral creature caught in the harsh electric glare, still on the upswing, ready for the final sweep to crush the miscreant's skull, Abelard froze.

Had it not been for the insistent contralto voice, piercing the darkness, pleading for attention, Abelard may have come to blows with the two constables who, in the momentary confusion, quite reasonably mistook Abelard for the assailant. They already had their weapons in hand and were approaching what appeared to be a particularly gruesome case of assault and battery. Abelard's mind was still roaming in a place where neither quarter nor mercy were rarely given and it would never have occurred to him to relinquish the lead pipe, the only weapon he held.

Had the German accented contralto not calmed sufficiently to identify mugger and mugged, things may have finished very badly for Abelard. She must nevertheless have had a momentary doubt as to whether she had gotten it right as she looked more closely at the prone figure, bloody and misshapen. His head was bleeding, the balaclava had not withstood Abelard's punishing blows and was no more than shredded wool, revealing a red pulpy hash, making it difficult to recognize as a human face. The right knee showed as splintered bone and the left arm was bent in an unnatural position at the elbow.