Zap!

You have no idea what I've done.

I'm a scientist. A physicist, actually, although I parlayed my hobby into a career...at any rate, science is my trade, and applying it best I can for the government is what brought money to me every week. This work had kept me very busy with very specific tasks. I think that's why it's so specific, why it seems so minute. If you spread out a single nefarious act over enough pieces and people it seems like a lot of boring ones. So this is going to be quick.

I've had my job for fifteen years. I've raised a family on it, and they're at home right now I'm sure...shocked, unable to understand what I told them, but still horrified. Don't worry, I told them less than I'm about to tell you.

My work has been with particle study and quantum mechanics, assisting some top level stuff involving space travel. Essentially, they're trying to build something to manipulate the fabric of time, but that's not really important. What is, is that I've been trying to find a way to change how particles interact with each other, and that's it. Immediately, all findings have to go to my boss and I'm onto the next billion potential reactions. This is all really interesting, and I honestly loved my work. Please remember that.

One day, my stuff just combusted. Everything was lost, all the data I had input, and I damaged my hand pretty badly. They were naturally very curious, and I told them everything, right down to the particular equation that had made everything catch fire. They gave me more than enough for my hand and all the time off I'd have to be taking, and invited me back to work only when I felt ready.

Well, ready came a little too soon, because I couldn't forget about it. I had a bandage on my charred hand to remind me what had happened. Imagine a tattoo that hurt all the time and you got because you were doing your job. Then imagine they tell you it's someone else's job. Pretty difficult.

When I went back to work I asked my manager to talk with whoever I needed to about moving divisions, to follow my discovery, and lend any help I could. There was a lot of reluctance at first, and understandably so, as I must have appeared pretty wild-eyed with the bad hand, half-doped on pain meds. I maintained that I had some sort of claim to it, as I had discovered it. When I mentioned that I wasn't going to be forgotten in the space travel hall of fame, they seemed relieved, and immediately began talking with me about realistically moving. I think they thought I was intentionally trying to do what I wound up doing. Those guys should be fired.

I thought it was space travel, still, when I went to work the first day, and I entirely expected to be assisting in the construction of some spectacular intergalactic engine. Imagine my surprise when I learned UB-21 is actually a couped up lab like the one I was in, only this one had air thick with oil and sulfur instead of pastries and coffee beverages.

The people were exactly the same. Not literally, but, you know. My boss was Dr. Hamper, and let me set it straight immediately: neither he or anyone else in the lab had a thing to do with what happened today. I stole materials, forged signatures, and did everything in secrecy because I knew they were law-abiding citizens who would report me for their big fat rewards. I might have done it myself, if I weren't responsible for the damn thing.

At this point, I was still pretty interested to be there. It wasn't some awesome engine but it was still science of the most awesome accord, and for a man like myself nothing is more exciting. They were all highly accepting of me, appreciative and even thankful that I had found this equation, jokingly thanking me for their jobs, and inviting me to try and rethink it from every angle to produce any other results I could.

Incidentally, the documents I signed to transfer included a higher confidentiality level, so most of this is going to be revealed illegally. I'd almost prefer they deal with me, instead of the county, or state, whichever corrupt local installation might eventually control my fate.

I realized we were working on a laser gun around Christmas of last year. I had been producing my math with a variety of particles included to try and find a way to use explosion to create more elements that might be used with one another. Sadly, it was a no go, and the laser was hardly any more powerful than the stuff they already had developed.

The problem was that, in order to create a gun that could be used effectively as a weapon by anyone at all, we had to find a source of energy that could constantly replenish what was being expelled. I was the one who suggested sunlight, initially, but it was one of Dr. Hamper's assistants who really made it all come together when she came up with a prototype model built entirely out of materials designed to absorb and store sunlight. What she did, in essence, was create a gun where sunshine was the bullet, and every inch of the firearm was the chamber.

It was more her idea than her mechanical expertise, to be fair. The entire group had to build it, slowly, over half the next year, and it was my job to make the science work. This is the only part of what happened that I really, really regret, because had I wisened up here and listened to my gut it could have ended before it started and a lot of people would still be alive. But I worked, diligently, too excited by the prospect of doing something new with solar rays than any consequence.

There was also pressure. The project was constantly threatened with bankruptcy, so results were important to keep money coming in. I had come to know and befriend these people, Dr. Hamper, everyone else, so I also felt a sense of social responsibility at that point to make good for my team, if you will. Everyone from up top needed something new. I thought maybe they were going to use the technology to pioneer the lunar surface for further colonization, although I had absolutely no reason to believe it. I never shared it, I never talked about it. We just worked, and went out afterwards.

A few months ago, summertime, was when the first one was done, and it became absolutely clear from the way men in black ties watched closely that it wasn't going to go to the space agencies. Men in colored ties, with pins on their lapel, work for exploratory organizations. Men with matching clothes work for places where people want to remain anonymous.

They wanted to know range. They wanted numbers on frequencies and how hot it really was going to be. They gave us notes, and made us sign new documents promising worse things would happen if we talked about it. They spoke long with Dr. Hamper, who later looked genuinely pained that he wasn't telling us about it.

As the second, more efficient gun was designed, it became obvious to us all what it was going to be used for. The sleek shape and smaller design made it perfectly sized for two human hands. The paneling was arranged to accommodate a combat stance mimicked a thousand times by myself, alone, in the dark lab after hours in utter shock and horrible realization. The barrel was small, a single unit that could turn a laser point into a deadly laser bullet.

That's what this thing did. It shot bullets. Lasers shot rays, until now, lasers had to beam and create a solid line, but this particular weapon concentrated heat from the sun in bursts that could be shot off independently. Rapidly. But we had designed a weapon that could squeeze off 4-5 shots a second. Shots of heat, pure heat, that burns a hole right through a body. The thing that fascinated me the most, that made me most afraid, was the targeting scope. This was a specific request from the men who gave us notes: with the movement of your thumb over a panel near the trigger, the barrel got wider and wider. It could go from pinpoint to fist size immediately.

Let me repeat myself because that phrase is pretty important. it could create fist sized holes in practically anything. It frightened me, when we tested it, on pumpkins, large vegetables, then dummies from the police department. The men brought a monkey by one day, quietly, very early one morning, and that was pretty much what convinced me that something had to be done. They shot it with a blast at about fifty percent size and it was dead immediately. They shot it in the gut, and it didn't even have a chance to scream.

They gave us more notes for a final design. We were allowed to keep the prototype, which we cannibalized, and then built from scratch incorporating their new requirements. By ths is time, I was understanding I had to do something to stop this weapon. I racked my brain the entire time. My wife and I, our marriage practically fell apart because she couldn't understand why I couldn't be content just complaining about it to my superiors. "That's all you have to do," she told me. "Then we can move on"

But there was no way, of course, I could complain to those people. They were the questionable ones who put me into the position to begin with. "It's only a monkey," she told me when I told her about the first victim. "Nothing my mascara doesn't do." Then she recommended I contact the EPA, as if they weren't getting their paychecks from the same place I was.

My options were low. I thought about selling it to another nation, but then I realized that would only ruin things on a much wider scale. I considered blowing up the lab, but data was kept in hard drive facilities two hundred yards underground, so that wasn't going to do much good. I could plead, protest, take it to advocates for a less violent tomorrow, but this would have only started some pointless polarization that would fan future flames.

Massacre became my only option. Our history is full of tragedy forever taking something out of the public consciousness, be it names, religious beliefs, public figures, cultural practices, images. Nuclear weapons, of course, something so destructive nobody can have them, except nations in top power. This is because people in power used them first and made horrible examples in the name of somber advancement. Massacre, as I said, was the answer, because if a madman ran loose wiping a city clean, the weapon he used it with would never be credibly used by any legitimate government. Sort of like how America never really used actual concentration camps. The quest for energy-based weaponry would continue, but it would never in a thousand years include the particular power crafted in part by the man who would wield it to murder so casually.

I'm not deluding myself. I know it's horrible. I know that nobody deserved what happened, but it had to happen. I won't pretend I can understand what effect it had, but I can say with utmost confidence that it saved lives, a lot of lives, somewhere down the line. But the tragedy is no less. Even now it's all blurry, but through that are pristine pictures of faces frozen in horror, right before when their bodies stopped and whatever made them active went to flight, floating through the hazy memory of my action.

I am a monster and deserve justice. Consider me legendary, in that regard: a single example of what can be done. A boogeyman to ward off pervasive actions in the same regard. No child raised hearing about razor-toothed gypsies stealing children would do such a thing later in life, right? The same principle applies, with or without racist history.

So, yeah, I didn't sleep last night. I couldn't. I knew today was going to be the day. I tried, briefly, but every time I shut my eyes I could only think about everything I wasn't looking at. I spent a majority of the evening wandering my home, looking at the pictures, the trinkets, rooms half-packed and recently abandoned. My wife, the kids, had gone some weeks before. I had asked them to, made up a story about a mistress, something my wife wanted to believe for some reason. I had to bust myself out, see, because I had to be ok with leaving it all behind.

I went to work this morning three hours early. I left at the crack of dawn, arrived when my bosses did, and waited about fifteen minutes before sneaking in. I spent some time in the break room, scoping things out, making sure the earlier clock-ins kept themselves in their offices and away from the lab. At 7:30, the earliest possible time anyone of our clearance can gain entry to the facilities, I was in and alone with what we had affectionately dubbed "the beast." It was sitting posh in a pillow-laden casket lined with a material that blocked GPS signals, glistening under an imaginary light I was putting over it deep in my brain.

There was no holster. I picked it up straight, turned it on, and stuffed it under my coat. All it needed was a moment of sunlight to power up enough to work, and every subsequent moment doubled the power it had before. After five minutes, it would work for six hours in pitch darkness. After an hour, it wouldn't stop for a week. But until then, since it had been in such an isolated place, it had nothing in there. A few sparks from the artificial sunlight we had fed it for tests, but nothing to do what I needed.

Nobody stopped me on the way out. It wasn't even eight by the time I got to the street, and most people didn't start arriving until 8:15. I didn't want to target my co-workers. If I killed people I knew, it would be workplace-related. It would focus on that, and I'd be forgotten as another psychopath. This isn't psychotic. I didn't want to do what I was about to do, and it was screeching and tearing at my brain then like it is now. As I tightened my grip and walked down the street, a block away, two blocks away, I saw the future, moments afterwards after I had pulled it out and shot the first guy.

Just some bum. I tested it on a bum. Put that in history for the laser gun: first tested on a bum. I pulled it out in an alleyway, crossing between buildings to another street, and turned it on. A soft hum, a gentle buzz that felt strangely comforting under my arm, and the most light-weight barrel I had ever felt. It moved like plastic, but shone under sporadic patches of sunlight like steel. Every time it caught the sun, displays along the butt flashed. Colors signified the strength, run like a rainbow. It was yellow already.

The hole was small, but I shot him for about three seconds, so his chest looked more or less like a pincushion. The pavement and bricks behind him had burned and smoldered, and the muck stuck to those surfaces gave the smell. It overpowered what wafted off of him, which says something, because the smell of burning flesh is atrocious.

I opened the barrel and stepped onto the sidewalk. I opened fire on a stand across from me, a guy selling cigarettes and candy and other stuff that ought not be available at every streetcorner. I aimed for his stand, which did something to his legs, because he fell. I fired again and reduced the structure to splinter. People started to scream and run. I swung the gun and fired, aiming off because I was expecting it to be heavier than it was. One blast struck the side of a building at an angle that sliced a thick slab off, which crushed a corner flat. Some people stood in horror and watched, a few ran, but most backed away slowly watching it happen. When the two crashed dust kicked up, which caused the gawkers to turn tail and run right into concentrated bursts that were the only illumination.

The sight is hard in my head. I could see only as much as they, so I was firing blindly, mostly to keep things lit up. Every time I hit someone they would light up briefly, from the inside out, like the heat seared their blood so much it set their skin on fire for just a minute. That's a fair guess, if their screams were any indication. In that initial crowd, maybe a hundred, I killed. It sounds like a lot, but that is a low estimate. This thing was rapid fire, and I was swinging it around with my finger clenched on the trigger. When it hit someone they dropped and someone dropped on top of them. I didn't see what was there after the dust cleared because I'm pretty sure there's probably still a lot of it hanging around while paramedics wade through those corpses. I'm guessing a hundred and fifty. If I'm wrong, then there is a God.

But there probably isn't, because it didn't stop there. While I was firing blindly I was backing up to put as much distance as possible between myself and the people I was shooting. Some ran right past me, most scattered to either side of me, but nobody tried to stop me. I don't really blame them, if I managed to get far enough past the end of a laser gun that I could attack the guy holding it, I'd keep on running it past it myself.

I stepped back onto the street, turned around, and started running to get away from the dust. Things were immediately clear, and I started firing just as randomly as I had into the cloud. Some of the people I hit were the ones who had run past me moments before. Others were people who were trying to escape from me. Some of these people didn't die, but a lot of them lost limbs if they didn't.

I crossed the street after I had passed the affecting range of all the cement that clung to the air. Cars had long since screeched to a halt and been abandoned. I picked up speed to cut through another alleyway and came out shooting on the other side, vaporizing people from the neck up and ricocheting shots off of buildings, raining glass from windows shattering, burning hydrants. Water shot into the air and cars skidded and crashed. I started firing on the vehicles, which blew one up, which sent a few spiraling out of control into the air, crashing through buildings, on top of other cars parked along the curb. My eyes went wide and things were absolutely still when that explosion occurred. I felt the energy, around me, or at least my ability to feel that energy, dissipate, and suddenly I was alone with the power of the sun in my hands.

I shot towards the direction I wasn't walking and, when flashing lights started barreling down the street, I swung my arm forward and started shooting at them. Their grills melted and engines exploded, burning them all to immediate remains unique because of their teeth alone. I went into another alleyway, continued my journey over another block. I was going to get as far as I could.

People were curious, the next street over, and had wandered close to where the noise had come from. As I came running, frantically, they called to me wondering what was wrong, and asking if I was alright. I shook my head furiously and the crowd parted to let me through, whispering "hurry," and "what happened?" I stopped and turned, to see they had all turned, and I was staring at an entire neighborhood wondering if things were going to be alright.

"Are you ok mister!?" they asked me.

"I'm fine," I told them, "but things are going to get worse soon." They didn't know what to make of that. When I brandished the laser gun, a few of them knew what it was, and one guy lunged at me, but I shot him first, in the chest, and before he was on the ground, I had opened fire on the crowd. It was quick, and a true testament to the power of that damndable weapon. They were so close, heaped up on each other after they got shot, they melted together.

I heard gunshots behind me, which were more police officers, who I also shot. I avoided their cars, as my ears were still ringing from the first explosion I heard, and walked up the street. I considered saying something, bellowing a horrible statement for people to remember and pass down as my only motive for what happened. But the sirens behind me, the screaming all around, the general panic, the electricity in the air, some of it because of fear and some of it because particles were being split and controlled on a microscopic level, it was a pale shadow of the kind of impact this weapon could have.

The panic before me was grandiose. People were running from their houses because they probably still only thought that the only thing wrong was the building collapse I had caused initially. They were talking to each other, hurrying towards places where they were all together and sort of fighting with each other. I wasted no time or breath. This was not the time for drama. I shot them before they saw me coming, and before the people on the other side of the street knew what was happening, I had shot them too.

I began to shoot buildings. I started with the elementary school. I tried to hit every window and the door. Then the fire station, the grocery store and anything else in that strip around it. I blew up a gas station from a distance. I melted track about a half mile after where a train was and it went into some water. Movie theatre. Restaurants, and the record store. Essentially any place that might have a lot of people in it, I tried to destroy. I wanted people to see this, on television, what I had done, so if they saw it fifty years from now as scenes from a war their country is fighting, they understand what is really being done. That's why I kept my mouth shut.

I kept shooting. I didn't ever stop pulling the trigger, by the way, after I broke out of that last alleyway. There was a lot of contemplation, but I was never not pulling that trigger. I hit anything and everything that moved. I was walking, though, and away from the center of population, but towards the airport, so I decided that was probably the best place to head.

I'm not kidding when I say I walked to the airport. It's about five miles, but I walked to the airport, and I shot everything I saw along the way. There was no footage on TV because anytime I saw a camera flying by or driving by or running by or stationed far away I shot it and it blew up. There was little in the way of law enforcement stopping me because I could set their barricades on fair from a hundred yards. Snipers, I'm sure, tried, but I was shooting everything, and that included the tops of buildings. I didn't want any avalanches like before, but windows were fair game if they were hit right.

I literally cut a path through this city, and I did it with a laser gun. All it took was one man, with a laser gun, to walk from the downtown blocks of a major metropolitan area to the airport, and I caused unknown damage. The kind of damage people will tally up for months to come. The bridge, the beams below the bridge, melted like ice, how many people were driving on that bridge? I aimed for an airplane I saw. If I hit that, God knows where it went.

I made it to the airport. I shot security, I shot commuters, I shot police, and I shot at the right places to turn a four story building into a split level. My ears were bleeding after that, more dust had come around me, and sirens were wailing all over. I had the gun ready to shoot at first sight, and squeezed a shot off when I heard someone say "FREEZE!

When it disappeared into the dust, someone said it again. "FREEZE"

I did. A cop came out, arms outstretched with a gun trained on my face, and he said it again. "Freeze. Stay where you are. Put the weapon down. Put the weapon down"

I did. The cop came closer. "Put your arms behind your head and get down." I did as I was told and laid on my belly. The cop put his foot on my back, leaned down, and cuffed me. As weight lifted off my back I heard him speak into his microphone, "five-six, surrender without incident. Yes. Without. Over"

There was some silence. A lot of it. Sirens were getting closer. This guy had come alone? Did he survive something? I asked him these questions. "Did I almost kill you"

"You broke the law," is what he said.

"I'm doing this for you," I told him.

"Is that a fact"

I nodded. "They'd have given you one of those a few years from now without me today"

"Everything you say can and will be used against you"

"Because you told me to freeze. You did what you're supposed to. And if you had one of those, God knows procedure would become a thing of the past"

"Just remember your rights"

He didn't talk any more after that. Neither did I. I think I misrepresented myself to the officer, quite frankly, because I don't think my biggest fear was this weapon behind in the hands of police officers. It was definitely the military. But I knew, or at least I had a fear, that one would lead to the other, and just the sight of these guns would be enough to instill the kind of fear no human ever ought to fear.

I don't know how many people I killed, honestly, but I will own up to whatever the counts wind up being. This is the entire story, at least everything that's relevant, everything you'd need to know as part of a confession. The important thing is that I not be portrayed in any media as a raving lunatic, or a mad massacreist, or a depressed loner who went off on a rampage. This had nothing to do with rage, or my discontentment. This had everything to do with prevention. Let this be a tragedy, please, please, not a lesson. Let me be whatever beast you need me to become so that this day goes down with others that never leave the public mind. Let me be guilty for everything I must so that courts, laws, record, and my fellow countrymen know that I was rational, logical, and sane, and everything I did will remain intact as their effects and not who created them.

Don't try to get me off. Get me guilty for the right reasons. As my attorney, that's all I ask.