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This story is Alternate Universe.
Reflections
I looked up as the sound of the rumble got momentarily louder before dying away again to the dull roar it had been for the last three days. My companion glanced up as well before giving me a curious look. “Was that the secondary shield?”
“Probably.” I checked the computer and pulled up the schematics. “It looks like they’ve finally drilled through to the upper complex itself with their ground penetrating missiles and bombs.” I snorted with bitter amusement. “About time, too. I was beginning to wonder if they’d ever get through it. You know, if I’d known from the beginning that they’d be this technologically inept, I’d have gone ahead and beaten them.”
My companion gave me an amused smile and offered me a glass of wine. It was a nice dry red with a solid body. Of course it was my favorite. “Next time, James?”
I grinned and sipped delicately. “Next time.” My first name is James. It’s not Jimmy or Jim or Jimbo, either. It’s James. My family name varies in the news, depending on where they went for their information. Some believe it to be Scott and others Sukotto. And then there’s that pathetic nickname they tried to give me. Sukebe. I am a lot of things, but I am not a pervert. A connoisseur of the exotic, yes, but never a pervert, which is why I have always categorically rejected the appellation the press tried to give me. My family name is actually Scot and my ancestors came to the United States before the Mayflower, so we have a long and distinguished history.
Sadly, that long history was one of generations of intelligent people who, through a series of misadventures, spent most of their time living in poverty. I, however, had managed to rise above my hardscrabble roots to become, well, me.
I’d graduated third in my high school class and wasn’t voted most likely to be anything, since I wasn’t one of the popular people that I despised. I dabbled in college, but it was boring, so I dropped out and began a voyage of discovery that ended up in Haiti, where I studied witchcraft and voodoo. Not that white witch mumbo-jumbo, either, with their silly threefold rule. I studied true power and how to bend it to my will. In retrospect, I should have paid a little more attention to the white side of magic and its rules, because it turns out that at least for me, they are real. Because of them, I left Haiti rather abruptly, barely ahead of the howling mob that wanted my heart, preferably without the rest of me. Because of them, my universe ended.
I returned to the US with no job, no money, and no home and, I discovered, no prospects. That, of course, meant up was the only way to go. I began studying Western magic and discovered that the rings of stones in England were not the agricultural timekeeping devices as was commonly thought. Instead, they were maps of how to open doors to different places, based on the time of year. Maps that I deciphered and doors that I was determined to open.
Well, my history is fairly well documented in my private journals, so I’ll gloss over the details. Suffice to say that I was successful beyond my dreams and the fruits of those travels made me very, very rich. I wasn’t really after the money. This was never about money. It was about the things that money could get me. It was about power. I had reached that level of power where I owned other people, who danced to the tune I played. Senators, representatives and even a president were mine. They both gloried in my money and resented my control. No matter, however, since they were mine, body and soul, at least as long as public opinion remained on my side.
Then came that fateful day. It started normally enough. I’d had my morning romp with Annette and was lounging around the office when my secretary came in to discuss my schedule for the day. I had a couple of meetings with patent lawyers and one with someone from DARPA who wanted to try to give me money for some of my research. It wasn’t going to happen, of course, since I was too smart to tie myself to a government so they could classify and steal my work or pay me a pittance for it.
Emily was my secretary that day. Her fur gleamed in the light from the skylight, but I noticed that she was going to need a trim in the next couple of days. Poodle genetics being what they were, she needed to be trimmed on a regular basis or her fur would mat. I leaned back and put my slippered feet on the desk. “Is that it?” Being the boss and owner of the company, I had instituted a casual dress code from day one. I always fancied that ties drained my ability to think.
I knew it was the last of my normal business so I was surprised at her reply. “No, sir, there’s one more item. A reporter wants to interview you.” She checked her notebook. “A Ms. Linda McKenzie. It’s supposed to be a color piece about the great inventor that is you.” Her tongue lolled in a laugh.
I suppressed a spurt of irritation. I loathed reporters. “When did I last do one of these damned color pieces?”
Emily didn’t hesitate. She’d have anticipated the question and checked before coming in for the scheduling meeting. She was so efficient. I still miss that. “It’s been about six months, sir. You’re due to do something or your PR flack will be hounding you again.” We shared an amused smile over her choice of words. He was just a human.
“Will this shut him up?”
“For a while, sir. You know he’ll never be completely happy with your public image unless you become more charitable.” I helped humanity out with my inventions and saw no need to give them the money they’d given me for them, too.
“When does this McKenzie want to interview me?”
“She claims it’s at your convenience, sir. Should I test that and schedule for three in the morning?” Her ears quivered with suppressed laughter.
I laughed too. “No, tell her I’ve got ten minutes tomorrow at eleven. Who does she work for?”
“She’s freelance, sir, so she’ll sell the interview to everyone she can. I understand she’s hungry, too.”
Hungry was good. It meant she was looking to make her way up the halls of power in the media. I could appreciate that kind of drive. I was still hungry myself. Was there ever too much power? I have never thought so. “Excellent.”
“Sir, I’m pretty sure she wants a video interview.”
Not so excellent. It meant I had to dress corporate. “Well, nothing is ever perfect, Em. Lay out a nice suit for me for tomorrow before you go to bed tonight.”
“Yes sir.”
When Linda McKenzie arrived the next morning, Emily and the others made themselves scarce. It would never do for the knowledge of their existence to get out right now.
I let her cool her heels for fifteen minutes before allowing her access to my office. She was an attractive brunette with a figure that was made for television. She brought a videographer with her, a man named Larry, I think. All I really remember about him was that he wore a cap to hide the fact that he was going prematurely bald. He should have used my cream.
After Larry set up video system, and we exchanged the usual pleasantries for the video camera, including a brief synopsis of my known past, Linda quickly got to the interview. I could tell right away that it wasn’t going to be a fun one. She was out for blood. “Several environmental groups have issued reports that claim you’re harming the environment. What do you have to say to these allegations?”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to be a little more specific, Linda. I rock a lot of boats these days.”
“These reports are about your HC yeasts.”
Ah. This was an easy one. I suppose it was what made me lower my guard. Or maybe it was her impressive chest. I have always been a tit man. “Those groups, if you followed the money, are owned by the oil cartels. They aren’t happy with me because I’ve become a serious competitor with the hydrocarbon yeasts, which eat plastics, rubber and CO2 to produce oil when they die. The reports you mention state that the yeasts could get into the environment and eat everyone’s cars and bra straps. By design, they don’t reproduce and they have a limited lifespan. They’re perfectly safe unless someone jumps into a vat of them.”
Her eyes lit up. “What happens then?”
“Well, if you’re in there for a week, they’ll eat all the petroleum products in your clothes. If you wear a fake hair wig or plugs or plastic teeth, they eat that too. What they do has never been a secret.”
Disappointed, she tried a new tack. “Speaking of secrets, do you have any you’d like to reveal?” I couldn’t help it, I laughed in her face, which apparently infuriated her. “Jim, the people have a right to know. Tax money pays for all of this!” She waved a hand around to include the antiques in my office.
I ignored the urge to correct her calling me Jim. I was getting irritated and that meant she wasn’t going to be asking questions for much longer. “Linda, you’re wrong. You see, the government gives money to BetterSolutions. I don’t own a single share of stock in that corporation.” I did, however, own the members of the board. I even made one of them. She kept the others in line. “BetterSolutions hires my corporation, DMR, as a contractor. DMR stood for Dreams Made Real, something which very few people knew. “DMR is wholly private and the people have no rights to know anything at all as far as it is concerned.” I should have spouted something more socially correct but like I said, I was distracted. “As long as I don’t break the law, I can do whatever I want.”
“The Justice Department is investigating you. Explain that!”
It was the oil cartels again, plus a few other groups whose feathers I’d ruffled by being a genius. Surprisingly enough, some people didn’t want the world made better unless they made a buck at the same time. They sent their owned people after my owned people on fishing expeditions all the time. I owned some of the people they thought they owned, so they never found anything worthwhile. Once in a while I paid a small fine to make everyone feel like they accomplished something. After that, life went on until the cycle started all over again. It was a dance in which both sides already knew all the steps and followed them slavishly. One of the steps was never reveal the truth about the dance.
“Linda, I suppose I could point out that there have been several investigations and they’ve never found anything to charge me with. You know what, they never will, either. Nobody will.” I suppose it sounded like a challenge. I know now that Linda took it as one.
Her eyes flashed. “We’ll just see about that.”
She started to ask another question and I made a show of looking at my Rolex as I cut her off. “I think we’re done, Linda. Sorry, but I’ve got some other appointments I have to keep.”
“I just have a few more questions.”
“They’ll have to wait. Why don’t you call again and set up another interview.” That would happen about the time the universe ended and, from my tone, she knew it. Larry packed up the camera and they left.
Later, of course, when I was elsewhere, Linda returned and started down a path from which there was no coming back. I suppose it was inevitable. The invasion of my privacy by Linda and her revelations to the world would have happened eventually. I must admit that she did an excellent job of vilifying me. The resulting furor was everything my enemies had ever wanted for me. They destroyed my living creations and paraded them around as a symbol of my inhumanity. I was made pariah overnight. If I didn’t already hate them all, it would have certainly made me as insane as people now claim I am.
You see, that’s something that never got revealed. I hated humans, and especially women, before I ever went to Haiti. That hatred was the reason behind everything I had done since high school. I had a sweetheart since I was eight years old. Her name was Jill. We were inseparable and even swore a blood oath that we would always be together. When we were eleven, I asked her to marry me and she said yes. Childish? Perhaps. But I meant it and I intended to marry her when we graduated from high school. She took my virginity and I hers. We would be together forever.
We were juniors in high school when she met Leslie. Leslie was outgoing, vivacious and openly gay. My world revolved around Jill and I couldn’t have cared less about her. Then she took Jill from me. I fought for her until I had nothing left, but to no avail. It was despair that drove me to Haiti, where I studied the black arts until learned how to make Jill mine again. My teacher at the time, a voodoo witch, discovered my plans and forbade me to leave. I was more powerful than she was and she wanted that power for herself. She kept me there for another six months, until I finally realized what she was doing. We fought and I killed her. It was her female followers that chased me around Haiti for a while before I finally managed to escape.
I returned to my hometown, ready to reclaim my destiny. Eldritch arts would free Jill from Leslie’s influence and rekindle her feelings for me.
I was too late. Leslie had always been a boozer and she’d managed to kill both herself and Jill in an alcohol related car crash two weeks before I had returned. My world ended with Jill’s death. I blamed Leslie for taking Jill from me the first time, my voodoo teacher for keeping for her own selfish ends, her followers for chasing me around Haiti for three weeks, Leslie again for putting Jill forever out of reach, and of course, Jill herself for her unfaithful whorishness. Women were the root of all my problems.
Since my world had ended, I decided that theirs should, too. After all, it was only fair. They’d done horrible things to me and to other men and they had to pay. They had to go.
This brings us back to the present. I was comfortably ensconced in my secret lair located a couple of miles below the labs the humans had been allowed to find. There were no physical connections between the two facilities for them to follow.
Nothing they had could reach me, and if somehow they did, I could always flee through a doorway to another world. I intended to do that soon enough, returning from time to time to see what had transpired in my absence. But first I wanted to observe them as they destroyed my base and created the cesspools of unholy magic that I’d set up for them. It would continue to do my work with unfortunate passersby while I was elsewhere.
My companion held out the bottle. “More wine?” She was the one creation from my original batch that hadn’t been destroyed during the war. The humans even got the one that was on the board of BetterSolutions. But they missed this one. I always thought that her survival was evidence of the universe showing me that it approved of what I’d done to humanity as a whole, and to women in particular. My companion was the only one of my creations who knew my full plans almost from the beginning. I had to keep the others from knowing or they wouldn’t have been able to play their part so well.
This one was made from DNA samples I’d gotten from Jill’s body after I dug her up, blended with some of the outside DNA I’d collected during my travels. I didn’t name her Jill, however, since Jill had betrayed me and destroyed my heart. Still, I found it particularly poignant that my companion had been ordered to betray me just like my Jill had, and without her help, I couldn’t have arranged things as I did.
I held out my glass. “Thank you, Linda, I think I will.”