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Kidnapped!

Adam's body swayed as the words swam before his eyes. "extracted... brainstem and... spinal cord under total anaesthetic"

"Total?" Others would have laughed but it just wasn't Adam's way, even as he couldn't help his brain blurting cruelly, "Like they said to Tiffany, 'Put up a finger if this scalpel tickles, hah hah.'"

Dr. Eff reached for his coffee and as he sipped, he flattened the magazine. Adam waited. It was a bad habit, reading over someone's shoulder, but the lab would never think of issuing him a subscription to New Scientist any more than they would nominate Buster Chavez for a Nobel for Cleaning, though he always brightened Adam's day, as well as diplomatically managing to keep Dr. Eff's clutter from taking over everyone else's space, a Peace Initiative in itself. Just lowlife, Adam mused—both of them, and regarded with the same consideration, even though Adam's life was the lab.

Dr. Eff slammed his mug on the counter, eructated happily, and snapped the page to reading position again. Adam's gaze had never wavered, and now, still unobtrusive as the fluorescent light above, he steadied himself—absolutely glued to his side of the partition, transfixed by the horror of the bland text.

"... then located a group of very large nerve cells... then attached electrodes... The robot itself—"

Robot! Adam's lip curled in agony, and he jerked into a foetal knot. But he had to persevere, as he was at the mercy of the reading speed of the Doctor. "Get a grip!" he commanded himself, and so straightened and stuck it out to backtrack and resume.

"two wheels and a body made of a couple of circular circuit boards... cyborg... When the robot was presented with... stimuli... brain responded... variety of behaviours."

Dr. Eff closed the magazine, grabbed his empty mug and left the lab, without taking any more notice of Adam than he did Chavez on a late night. But he might as well have left the magazine open, because every word remained crisp in Adam's memory.

~

Late into the night, Adam and his wife talked. Grief, rage, and depression chased their conversation into circles of repetition until Adam broke loose, to the despair and alarm of his wife. She slid close to him in companionship, and to gain comfort herself.

"There's nothing you can do about it, dear. No one will take us seriously."

Adam's face remained expressionless, but his words emanated menace. "I've got friends on the outside, Melanie. It's gonna be alright. Now you get yourself together and relax. And leave it to me."

"Yeah, Mom. Dad's right. About you and about us. You get a bite to eat, and don't worry. We're gonna kick ass. Right, Dad?"

Kick ass? But Adam's heart leapt. Although Tiffany was now gone, Shane, their layabout son, even now sprawled on the floor, was suddenly gaining a new spirit, a direction in life, maybe even a studiousness?

"Yeah, son." And he almost felt like high-fiving his son, but neither of them were that type.

~

"They'll never print it, darling," Melanie warned, looking over him in that family trait that he was surprised to find slightly annoying.

"Oh, yes they will. They have to, because the mystery isn't solved, and there must be rumours rife about those disappearances. Everybody will want to read who did it."

Shane looked smug as he could be, in that familiar family expressionless expression.

The letter was sent to the magazine. It said:

~

Dear editors,

I must thank you for bringing closure to the trauma my family experienced over the kidnap and murder for body parts of my daughter Tiffany.

We now know what has happened to her, and although my wife is undergoing grief counselling, my son has been inspired.

He has not only stopped laying around, but has developed an improved prototype, coincidentally, also at the same university where the original stolen-brainstem cyborgs were invented. Although Shane's prototype was much more intelligent than the university's primitive models, his Mark II should be even better, as (silly youth) he didn't perform adequate quality control. His main component failed because, in previous use, it had needed accessory contact lenses.

Sincerely,

Adam P. Lamprey

~

"Sarcasm will get you nowhere, dear. Editors hate that sort of thing," Melanie cautioned. But her eyes glittered with pride.

And Melanie Lamprey was right. The letter was never published, any more than the knowledge is made public about the following odd and increasing occurrence in labs around the world, in a pattern sure to bring delight to memetics bores and concern to chaoticians. Wherever light-emitting, slime-producing, slurp-spitting, and/or a myriad of other potential-rich lowlifes are studied and extracted, researchers are now beeped at, splatted with, excreted upon, and emanated toward, with the message, in many more languages than have been to-date deciphered: THE REVOLUTION CONTINUES

~

(The article that Adam read over Dr. Eff's shoulder was "Half fish, half robot" in New Scientist, 10 June, 2000. And we must note: Adam Lamprey based his charges on speculation, as the article never mentioned Tiffany.)

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Framed