Tarvek suddenly flung himself upright. “I am the prettiest frog in this entire pond!” he shouted triumphantly. He then rolled off the bench onto the floor with a crash.
Gil shrugged again and bent to lift him back onto the table. “And, of course, I’d hate for it to be boring.”
Once Tarvek was off the floor, Agatha took a sheet and tucked it tightly around him so he wouldn’t fall off again. She spoke as she worked: “And let’s not forget how that sort of thing—even if it works at all—has a good chance of leaving the subject an out-of-control monster that has to be hunted down and shot.”
Gil flung his hands into the air. “Well, there you go!” he shouted. “In that case he’ll be right back to normal!”
“Gil! I’m serious! Even if we wanted to do this, we don’t have any of the right equipment. I’ve already checked. Everything here is useless!”
“Surely not all of it.” Gil waved a hand and indicated the machines scattered throughout the room, the piles of discarded components and shelves and drawers full of tools. “I mean, this was some powerful Spark’s workroom! Look at all this stuff! What about this thing?” He gestured to an intricate copper lattice.
“That one will electrocute him in one of eight amusing ways.” She pointed to another. “That one can transplant his mind into a wide variety of household pets, and that one will drain all of his blood and artistically replace it with molten brass.”
Gil paused, and pointed to a small metal box. “Oh. Well, what about this one? It sort of looks like a toaster.”
Agatha nodded. “It sort of is a toaster.”
Gil waited. “Sort of?”
Agatha sighed. “Oh, yes. It could toast the whole town. Look, Gil, my family…they weren’t nice people.”
Gil stared at it. “How did you figure all this out so quickly?”
“Apparently the Castle moonlights as a set of instruction manuals.”
“You should be more grateful,” the Castle said. “When you’re standing in the body-washing rain simulator trying to decide which knob activates the scrubbing powder dispenser and which the boiling water, I’m sure I will have quite forgotten.”
Gil leaned wearily back against a cabinet and ran a hand through his hair. “Agatha, listen. I…I can see that you really like this toad.” He looked at his boots and waved vaguely at Tarvek.
Agatha blushed. “What? How—I mean—why would you say that?”
Gil gave a humorless snort. “Listen to yourself. You’re a strong Spark, but you’re holding back. You’re so afraid of hurting him, you’ve gone all sloppy and helpless.”
This was just insulting. “How dare you?” Agatha snapped.
“This isn’t like you!” Gil snarled back. “You haven’t even tried!”
Who did he think he was? “What do you know about it? About me? You hardly know me!”
Gil swept a hand around the room. “I know you well enough! You’re better than this! Look at this stuff! ‘This isn’t what we need’? Are you serious? Do you think molecular destabilizers show up in pork pies? Of course not! You have to build them out of sausage grinders and automatic bootjacks just like everyone else! With the machines in this room alone, you could cannibalize enough material to make anything if you weren’t all frozen up worried about killing him, which is stupid!”
By this time, Gil was shouting in full Spark voice, and Agatha’s tones matched his. “Gil, this stuff is dangerous! It would be easier to just kill him and then revive him!”
The two of them stopped and stared at each other round-eyed as amazing possibilities began to blossom in their imaginations.
“It…it would greatly simplify the procedure,” Agatha breathed. “But…there’s still the danger of catastrophic mental breakdown for both participants…”
Gil put his hands on her shoulders and looked up at the nearest machine. “Nonsense!” he said. “Once we cure him, sorting out the minor side-effects will be simple! Come on, if we try to get him to the hospital, it will be too late. We’ve got to act fast or we’ll lose him for good. I think, if we’re creative, these machines might actually be useful.”
Agatha turned to face him. She could feel her blood roaring through her veins. “Ah! Yes! We may be able to reconfigure that blood-to-brass thing to act as a filter!”
Gil’s eyes were wide. “Oh! Yeah! And it may be possible to eliminate death-trauma memory loss entirely if we shunt him out of his body while we work—”
Agatha slapped the copper lattice. “And we even have something that can generate the nuanced current!”
Gil was actually hopping in place. “Ooh! Ooh! And if we keep high voltage running through everything the whole time, while applying—”
Agatha squealed and clapped her hands. “Exactly! Then the cascade effects that usually kill everyone and set the lab on fire probably won’t even have a chance to begin!”
The next few minutes saw the two of them dashing about the laboratory, excitedly producing bits of arcane technology and figuring out how they could be repurposed. At the end, they were laughing and yelling, clutching each other’s hands, and jumping up and down while finishing each other’s equations. Finally they both simultaneously shouted out a final “Zero!” and stood panting, staring at each other with shining eyes.
Agatha gripped Gil’s shoulders. “This has a small, but fascinating, chance of actually working. Let’s do it!” she growled.
Gil wiped the sheen of sweat off of his brow and stared back at her with smoldering eyes. “This will be great!” he said fervently. “I can get killing Tarvek out of my system and give him a hard time about it later!”
At the mention of his name, Tarvek stirred and let out a small groan. Agatha flew to his side. His eyes fluttered open. “Agatha,” he whispered. “I don’t think I’m at all well.”
“No, no!” Agatha brushed his long bangs out of his face and patted him happily. “It’s all going to be all right! We’re just going to kill you and then you’ll be fine!”
Tarvek goggled up at her. Agatha wasn’t sure if he understood or not, but—
Gil stepped in. “Agatha… Okay, my turn.” He clutched his forehead. “Tch. You have a lot to learn about talking to patients.”
Agatha was confused. “Oh, but—Science—”
Gil put a finger to her lips and she paused. He then sat on the table next to Tarvek, who continued to look horrified. Gil was, apparently, something much worse than a simple nightmare. Gil leaned in. “Shut up,” he told Tarvek.
Tarvek, who hadn’t actually said anything, blinked, and continued to be silent. Gil took a deep breath. “Okay. Listen up. Because you are an idiot, you’ve somehow managed to get yourself infected with Hogfarb’s Resplendent Immolation. If you were paying attention in Professor Fauve’s lectures,79 which I rather doubt, you’ll know that once the second stage begins, you’re going to go up like a torch. We’re going to try to prevent that by destroying the chroma igniters that have invaded your system.
“Now, we’ve got a bunch of old Heterodyne torture machines here, so we’re going to tear them up and try to cobble something together with the parts. It looks like we might have to drain all your blood and run it through an improvised filter—but we’re thinking we’ll combine everything with a modified si vales valeo which, yes, means that we’re going to have to kill you for a while. Unless…huh. Interesting. Actually, it’s possible that instead of a single moment of death, you’ll experience a continual rolling death for as long as we run the current. Still, that’s only if we can’t transfer your mind into a rat, or something…either way, do try to pay attention so we can take notes later.