Megalopherous

Written for the Leslie Writes, unofficial challenge, ‘What am I’

"Professor! We can't contain it! It's destroying the laboratory!"

"It's okay. It'll probably get tired soon. I need to try and get-"

"I don't think you understand. If we don't contain it before the uranium cycle is complete, it's only going to get bigger!"

And that, it did...

Megalopherous became a failed initiative, driven by an idea of making the streets safer to walk at night. I, myself, wouldn't dare step foot outside after dark if I saw something that looked like that walking down the street, and I created the thing.

It took years of hard work and skillful planning to bring the design to life, but for the life of me, I don't know where I went wrong.

I couldn't dwell on the fact. Time was not on our side. Our only choice was to stop it. Or destroy it before it succeeded in altering life as we knew it.

"What are those things on the top of its head doing?"

"Well, they were supposed to be Alert Amplifiers so authorities can track the signal when it catches a criminal in the act. But I can swear they're picking up on radio stations. Can't you hear Free Bird playing? I can."

We were running out of options fast. Megalopherous was already the size of a house, destroying everything in its path as it walked through the parking lot towards a neighborhood.

"Professor, it looks like it's using its magnetic powers for something."

Lucas, my assistant was correct. We began to see small, black rectangular objects floating in from nearly every direction, converging on him. All we could do was wait and hope that my company’s CEO could get in contact with the military. We needed them fast.

"What are those floating things anyway?" Lucas asked as he continued trying to disrupt its frequency with an iPad. "Ouch! Never mind, one just hit me in the head. It looks like a... a TV remote? Why does it need those?"

A puzzling question, indeed. Megalopherous was consuming every remote within a 5-mile radius.

We were about to face the unknown...

Glass blew out of homes in sudden bursts as remotes punched through windows of every house within the megazone, spraying the pavement with glittering shards.

An angry mob of citizens began marching behind it, hurling stones and bottles at the thing as it continued to wreak havoc down the block.

And then it dawned on me.

Of course! It needed the infrared circuitry embedded in the remotes in order to become a weapon.

But what kind of weapon?

As the remotes continued entering his gigantic mouth, he kept growing exponentially. He was now big as a four-story building, allowing the magnetic pull to reach farther and farther until every remote on the planet was in danger of being consumed.

Everyone affected was left with a TV that relentlessly flipped through channels faster than I can type. It was quickly becoming the most-obnoxious epidemic in the history of inconveniences.

And it was all my fault...

I had to do something fast.

That’s when I remembered I installed an automatic shutdown command in its software. I grabbed the iPad out of Lucas’ hand and brought up the schematics.

There it was, the automatic shutdown, pulsing like a beacon. I pounded the red icon over and over, ending the reign of terror Megalopherous had been causing.

Two hours of destructive mayhem had come to a halt.

It powered down and went still at the edge of New York City, where its staggering weight slowly sunk its body half-way into the earth...

Besides all the damage it created, Amazon delivery service and electronics companies made billions from the blunder as remote sales skyrocketed.

Today, Melgalopherous sits as the Metropolitan Museum of Lost Remotes. People come from everywhere to see the weird-looking structure. If you’re lucky enough to find your remote in the millions lodged inside it, you win $100.00 and get to keep the remote as a souvenir.

As for me, professor Stinkleneck, I was demoted to janitor. I couldn’t be mad about it. At least I still had a job and kept access to the company. I did, however, think about threatening to restart the thing if they didn’t give me my job back, but decided to wait it out. Hopefully it won’t ever come to that.

For now, I’ll mop these floors and clean the toilets until I’m ready to unleash a new version.

I think I’ll call it… The Bride of Megalopherous. 👀