tell me more about mr. mundi?

For the nineteenth time in as many minutes, the earth came to an end. It rustled, erupted into a billion pires of seething flame, collapsed in upon itself, and was no more. Through the plexiglass window of the Time Capsule Doctor Frank Mundi watched with fascination. His cat, Chester, seemed less amused and licked itself quietly. "Funny," Frank couldn't help but think to himself, "here it is, I've found it, checked and rechecked, the end of all life as we know it, and that damned cat doesn't even look up. Must be a species thing." He flipped a few cranks back with his opposable thumb and returned to the relative safety of his tiny, insect-riddled apartment. "I wonder how mankind would react," he thought, "if someone told them exactly how much time they've got left." He stroked his moustache (a three-day growth from not shaving) detachedly and stepped out. His ears made a pleasant "popping" noise as the air pressure changed. The cat stayed inside and busied itself scratching at the rounded sides of the greatest invention the world had ever ignored.

Frank was one of those millions of societal outcasts created every day in great factories called colleges. He felt, as he was biologically programmed to, a great and lasting sense of pride as he looked out on the degrees and diplomas on his wall. Truth be told, a good education is not a bad thing. In fact, it is an extremely good thing. But it had been implemented improperly in Frank Mundi -- he had, as a child, been somehow mentally wired to fear people. And being a person himself, this was not a good thing. In his eight years of higher education he had tried to suppress this vague tingling feeling within him that told him at every turn that perhaps, rather than learn along with the homo sapiens sapiens lot, he might do better to crush them all with boulders. Upon graduating he returned to a small, squalid apartment and a well-educated, completely unproductive life. It was not his own fault. He was an impeccably intelligent and well-read person in every way. He was just -- born wrong. He wasn't sure why, but just the very sight of his many diplomas on that cracked, ant-ridden wall stirred up thoughts in him. He felt smart, he felt powerful. He felt -- like he had to go back in that capsule and flip back a few hundred million years. In short, to an outsider, unaccustomed to earth concepts like species dominance, the cat would have at that moment seemed, clearly, the more intelligent of the two. For one thing it hadn't gone and wandered out into one of the most inhospitable climates the world had ever produced, as Mr. Mundi just had. No, Chester stayed comfortably inside the timeless bubble of the capsule and watched the earth begin, as it had watched the earth end, thanks to the human's compulsive behavior, over and over again. An outsider, watching this strange, repetitive drama unfold, would have no recourse but to scream and snatch the poor cat into a safer environment (like, say, any environment at all), and perhaps crush its tormentor with a large boulder.

As there were no outsiders about, however, Frank Mundi remained in charge. Chester, a furry enigma, did not seem to pay the slightest notice to any of it, even as Mundi, now dressed in a rather silly-looking protective suit, hovered excitedly, in the manner of an enormous shining hummingbird, over a burning sea of primordial slop. Mundi hooted and shouted something about creation. The fattened orange cat said nothing at all, save some unenlightening purring.

Stella Lawford picked a stray bit of lint off her shoulder and made sure she looked just perfect. Tonight was a special occasion, after all. She checked the gun one last time to make sure it was loaded, and counted all the fake money, stuffing it lightly in her purse underneath the cosmetics, small change and luncheon receipts. Fine. She let out a deep breath. She was ready for anything now. If Frank Mundi wasn't prepared to pay tonight, that was his own problem. She grabbed her keys and walked casually out the door.

Frank Mundi and his cat were now the only two living things on the face of this early earth, and again the cat demonstrated higher logic. It fell asleep, thus ensuring that its now all-important status as second-in-command of an otherwise uninhabited planet would not be lost. In an unfortunate but typical fashion, its traveling companian showed no signs of doing the same. In fact the cat came very close to being the only living creature on the planet earth when a geyser of molten sulphur erupted right beside Mr. Mundi. Instead of pulling back from this pillar of brimstone, which would have been the response of any sensible lifeform, Frank simply regarded it with mild curiosity before plunging his hand into the superheated rock. If they cat had been watching it would no doubt have flinched at this further sign of human insanity but as it had been busy probing the depths of forty winks it felt no inclination to respond. So they only other remaining living creature failed to Frank plunge his hand into the aforementioned fire. Then again, it also failed to see Frank remove his hand entirely unscathed from same.

In Frank Mundi's defense we note that he was intelligent enough to create not only an ingeniously elaborate time capsule but also a protective suit based on the same principles. When safely contained in either, a being would be relatively impervious to the various apocalyptic doings of a planet, as for all intents and purposes their body would still be somewhere in the time period from whence they came.

However, in doing this Frank still managed to look extremely silly. The cat blinked, yawned, and opened its eyes a crack. Nothing worth taking note of. It stirred a moment before a lengthy meditation on the hair on its paws.

The little cat was now sure that his plan had worked. He was almost ready to reveal himself to Frank, to become the master's master. But he could not interrupt the Mundi in the latter's hour of glory. He must let Frank reach as high a height as possible. It would make bringing him down to the level of a slave all the more enjoyable. At the moment it was simply time for Chester's dinner, and cockroaches were the main course.

Frank's ego was feasting upon memories of Napoleon, and killing him slowly. Considering the degree to which he'd just breached the tides of time, it's a wonder Napoleon wasn't feasting on him. Somewhere, a good idea committed suicide, and a bad one packed itself tight into a large cardboard box addressed to the Pentagon. A dog barked, and a phone rang, simultaneously, cancelling each other out. A message was being delivered to all mankind, over and over and over again, but no one was listening. All was gone, all was futile. "The world is round," someone from above softly lied, over and over and over again until the falsehood became true. But Frank Mundi didn't hear it, for he was lying on the floor of the time capsule, blood dripping from his crushed forehead, dead in twenty different conceptions of human time.

Outside his door, Stella Lawford wondered whether she could ever love another man ...