Warning Signs

Doktor Monstrous, PhDemon, nearly conquered the world with her army of giant robots equipped with night vision and laser eyes and tentacle arms with clawed hands on the ends. Europe fell quickly and her mechanical armies marched across Eastern Europe into Asia, crushing all resistance in their path like Genghis Khan but in the opposite direction. Japan only barely expelled the invaders thanks to giant robots and oversized monsters having long since ingrained itself into the culture’s psyche.

From there, her metallic minions spread south, capturing the islands of the Pacific before claiming the California coast for her own. At night, all across the globe, people would lock themselves in their homes and huddle in closets as the horrific groan of vast metal legs thundered against the ground, making the earth shake with every heaving step. There they would sit and pray that whatever came next, morning or death, would come quickly.

The world watched in shock as nation after nation fell to her armies, but only to be saved by a massive EMP that knocked out all power in the world, stopping the robots but knocking humanity back a hundred and fifty years in the process.

Historians would, in years to come, wonder how it had come to that point without someone stepping in earlier to stop the villain. What was the first sign? When she started stockpiling enriched plutonium? Her blog, entitled, “The World and How to Rule It,” which outlined step-by-step her robot takeover plan? Perhaps the first warning sign was when she legally changed her name to Doktor Monstrous, PhDemon. Or should they have suspected her evil nature from the very start, when she would build robot armies out of blocks and command them to “destwoy!”

- Originally mailed to B.P. in Mississippi