Thy Will Be Done |
Issue 13
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“It’s not you, it’s me.”
Those words made me tighten my grip on my spoon, interrupting the robotic stirring of the remnants of the bowl of soup in front of me. Forcing myself to relax, I finally looked up and met her eyes for the first time since the passive-aggressive onslaught had begun. I’d known she was breaking up with me the moment her voice changed when our food came, dropping into placating tones as she started self-deprecating in that way girlfriends do when they’re trying to push you away. I should have realized something was wrong by how quiet she’d been while only ordering a salad. Heck, it probably should have tickled my spidey-sense when she suggested eating here at all, on her lunch break in this crowded little café across the street from her work. “You’re a nice guy and all, but I need to figure myself out, you know? And it’s not fair for me to keep you in this relationship with somebody who doesn’t even know what she wants out of life.” She laughs, as if at herself. “God, I’m such a mess.” I sigh and push my chair back from the table. “Yeah, you’re really doing me a favor.” I toss a couple bills on the table, more than enough to cover my half of the meal. Everything I do feels petulant, but I’m powerless to stop it. Are there people out there who can break up gracefully? Who, when the end comes, can just accept that if one party’s heart isn’t in it, that a quick and clean break is the best thing for everyone? Or is that one of those things that people just know intellectually, but really we all get at least a little childish when faced with this level of rejection? “I really am sorry,” she said. Bite your tongue. The urge to say something mean, to hurt this person who just hurt me, is so strong. But she isn’t trying to hurt you. Keep your fucking dignity. And it’s just made so much worse to be patronized like this, coddled like she’s afraid I’ll cause a scene. Afraid I might lash out. She doesn’t know me at all. “Yeah, I’m sorry too,” I said coldly as I head for the door. Ah shit, that was kind of mean, wasn’t it? Taking the hurt she just laid on you and guilting her about it. Well hell, what am I supposed to do? Pretend it doesn’t hurt? Put on a big plastic smile and say thank you for your honesty? Well, what would be wrong with that? It’s a damn lie. It’s not my responsibility to shove what I’m feeling into a bottle just to spare her a share in the emotional fallout of this catastrophe. Besides, we’ve been dating for over four months. She knows me well enough by now to know how I’ll feel about this. So, who am I lying for? Who are either of us lying for when we can both see right through all of this? Is there some third-party audience we are both supposed to be performing for? Why does this all have to be so damn hard? The worst part is that I’m almost used to the sensation when I step outside into the street traffic and feel so utterly alienated from all the shiny, happy people bustling around me. For at least a minute or so, I am the world’s freshest reject. The latest casualty in this endless dance of potential partners, the search for a true confidant with whom one can face the world. Because who could face this world alone? Such a bleak place, full of strife and isolation. One little corner of security and intimacy. Is that so impossible? Considering I’ve been in the dating game since I was a teenager, now almost fifteen years and nearly that number of failed relationships later, it was starting to look like the answer to that question was yes. So, without a particular destination in mind, my feet carried me into the anonymity of the busy sidewalk, a single bloodied soul trying to blend back into the ever-pulsing veins of the city. I just want to disappear. Ironic, isn’t it? Because what you really want is to be seen. Shut up, that’s not helping. As if to prove that what I really want is to disappear, I slipped off the main thoroughfare and into a dark and deserted alleyed. Or not an alley at all, because it was a dead end. A big brick wall, spanning up several stories high, offering no possibility of escape. I stepped in a few more paces, as if my feet were slow in getting the message that there was no way through here. It didn’t look like anyone had been down this way in years. There was a single dumpster, and it was piled so high with trash that it had long since overflown. And the scent of decay was old enough that whoever used to throw their trash here had probably found another spot some time ago. Oh, this is like one of those places where people get mugged and murdered. The realization hit me like a bucket of cold water. I stepped backwards, but I hadn’t even completed that first gesture of flight before I bumped into something behind me. It wasn’t a mugger, thank God. But the aluminum garbage can I’d jostled fell over and clattered with such a racket that I jumped like a startled cat who had just had one of his nine lives spooked away. The lid of the can popped off entirely and was sent rolling away. I barely noticed the lid though, because out of the can was billowing a rush of shining smoke. shimmering of dust and broken glass. My anxiety burst into utter awe as I looked upon this ethereal Being coalescing from out of the trash can into the approximate shape of half a humanoid. With a wispy lower body, a cigarette butt vest and an old banana peel atop its head as though it were a hat. “I am the Garbage Genie,” the Being declared in a booming voice, thick, smoky arms crossed in front of it. “I will grant you one single wish for freeing me. But speak wisely, for you may wish only once, and such power wielded foolishly can bring grave consequences.” Maybe some people would have been stunned into silence at this development. But not me. I kind of always suspected something like this would happen to me one day. And I’d read that monkey’s paw story, so I was prepared for exactly this event. Well, not exactly this event. Look, his eyes are rotten orange slices, and his nose is a used condom. Nevertheless, I did not hesitate. I knew how to turn one wish into infinite wishes. “I wish for the power of mind control, to make people behave exactly as I want them to.” If the Genie had any opinion of my wish, its garbage face didn’t show it. “It is done,” the Genie declared with the snap of his fingers. “Now lose my number.” With that, the Genie disappeared in a puff of smoke, which smelled like God had just lay down a putrid fart. You read books, so surely you know what an omen is? Shut up. I know there’s potential pitfalls for what I’m about to do, but I also know that there’s got to be a way to do this right. Even if part of my brain is apparently not so sure. Still, I know I’ve got to start small to make sure there isn’t some undisclosed and unavoidable curse attached to this wish. As I step back onto the sidewalk amidst the street traffic, across the road I see a hotdog cart. The vendor is mostly idle, rolling his wieners in a fashion that suggests they haven’t exactly been flying off the grill. A bookish woman strolls past the hotdog cart without even a glance. I felt the newfound power pulsating in my mind with the rhythm of my circulatory system. I reached out into the woman’s mind, mentally seeing her psyche like a blank page, but with a little flashing cursor like one might find in a Word document. I realized that I could input anything I wanted on that page, that unseen mental fingers would type any command I could conceive of into that space, and she would be bound to it. Go back and buy a hotdog from the vendor. Perfect, I thought. Concise and within the realistic boundaries of the situation. What could go wrong? Sure enough the woman looked up as though the scent of hotdogs had just caught her nose for the first time. She did an abrupt about face and went back to thrust her debit card in the hotdog vendor’s face, demanding his finest wiener. The vendor was all smiles as he asked her what condiments she preferred and dressed her dog accordingly. Well, that couldn’t have gone better, I mused as I turned away from the wholesome scene. Everyone is a winner. All I’ve done is improve two people’s day. Are you going to pretend you didn’t just see her spit out that first bite of hotdog and throw the rest in the garbage? She probably just doesn’t like hotdogs. I still count it as a win. What if she was a vegetarian? Don’t you think that might mess her up? She will be fine. A minor misstep. All part of the learning curve. Feeling a pretty sure grip on my budding ability, I decided I had an ex-girlfriend to reconcile with. By the time I got back to the café where I had been the victim of a unilateral uncoupling, the lunch rush had mostly died down and I found the table where it happened empty. I sat back in the seat I had occupied less than an hour earlier, unbothered by the fact that my unfinished bowl of soup still hadn’t been cleared. Such paltry things couldn’t bother me while I felt this power surging through me, the growing intimacy with what felt like psychic tendrils spilling out of my brain and into those of everyone around me. I suspected those tendrils extended out beyond the reach of even my eyesight. There was only one way to find out. I reached out to my ex and transmitted to her that she must return to the café and meet me. I didn’t receive any sort of indication back from her. It appeared to be a one-way street, yet on some instinctual level I knew that my command had been received and would be heeded. Folding my hands upon the table, I waited. The waitress asked me if I would like a refill of my coffee, as if I hadn’t been gone for long enough to become a God. I politely declined. There would be no nervous sips of a beverage I didn’t really want. No idly poking at my food. For the first time in my life, I was in control of myself. I was in control of everything. She had an odd look on her face when she entered the café. Part bewilderment, but also something akin to religious awe. Like she had just come face to face with the horror of a biblically accurate angel and was unsettled to discover she found it a little sexy. The expression only intensified when she spotted me, sitting at what I was coming to think of as “our table.” Without waving or any other greeting she sat across from me. Our eyes locked through every motion she made. I got the distinct impression she was trying to read my mind. And what would she say if she actually could, hmm? “It’s so weird,” she said, fighting through bewilderment. “I don’t know why, but I knew you would be here. And I knew I had to come back.” Love me. Not desperately. The good, healthy love that lets you remain a well-adjusted and self-actualized individual. Love me not like a forest fire that devours everything in its path, but like the candle by which two lovers might light their evening together. Oh, fancy yourself a poet now, do you? Heck yeah, why not? What else is a poet but one who sees through the materialist world and into the haunting rhythm of Truth? To be a poet is to become God, and I am the closest anyone has ever been. You have woefully misunderstood both poets and poetry itself. You should shut up forever. No, you shut up. I don’t think I even need you anymore. Her shoulders, her face, everything about her relaxed as my directive penetrated her mind, like ice cream melting on a hot summer day. It was fascinating. In the matter of a single moment, after whatever sort of psychic brewing process took place behind those eyes…after the wincing moment of struggle, you mean…it was like a new, beautiful person had been born. “Hey, listen,” she said, looking at me with hooded eyes in a way that I’d only ever seen before the first time we’d slept together. “I may have made a mistake earlier…” But the truth of it was, my mind was already wrapped up in much greater possibilities even before she’d walked through the door. What was I doing wasting my time on such trivialities? “No, I think you got it right,” I said, getting up from my seat, spine much straighter than the last time. “It’s been real.” I’d be lying if I said I didn’t relish the slack-jawed look of despair on her face as I walked away. Are you just going to leave her like that? What? No, of course not. Not for long anyway. Just a couple seconds more. No harm in that. Go back to normal…but remember me fondly. See? I’m not like one of those assholes who would leave a lady stuck in hopeless unrequited love. I’m a gentleman. And the world needed a gentleman now more than ever. |
Alex Passey is the author of the novels Mirror's Edge and Shadow of the Desert Sun. He has also written for the graphic novel Twilight of Echelon and the Apocalypse anthology from Dragon Soul Press. Though primarily a fiction writer, he also dabbles in poetry, and is an opinion contributor to the Winnipeg Free Press.
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***
Since then, it’s been a whirlwind couple months for me. For the world. But it’s important to still make time for the little pleasures in life.
“All right, this one is a little number I wrote back in high school,” I said into the microphone, sending my voice out as a sonic wave to wash over the screaming crowd packed into Madison Square Garden. They held up signs professing their undying love for me. They writhed and danced, even at this interval between songs. They chanted the name of my band over and over.
Speaking of my band, we were a veritable supergroup of rock and roll stars. I pivoted to glance back at them, careful not to knock the mic-stand over with my guitar like last time and drank in the sight of my backing band. The biggest names plucked from the best acts in the world, all assembled on stage to play with me. Our bassist had even come out of retirement just for the chance to be in my band.
Yeah, and they can’t play any of their hits just because you can’t keep up.
That didn’t matter. They weren’t here for that. They were here to play my songs. And man, the songs sounded so good. A hundred times better than when I used to play with my old band back in college.
I was pouring sweat by the time I twanged out the last notes of my final encore. The ravenous fans demanded more. They would rock out with me all night if I let them. Made them. But I had nothing left in me. I needed to call it a night.
“All right everybody, you’ve been great. Good night.”
Everybody go home and return to normal.
I didn’t bother lingering to ensure my command was heeded before leaving the stage and heading for the exit. I had full confidence in my ability at this point. You just don’t want to see that look of stupefaction on their faces as they stop being robots and turn back into people with free will again. I admit this isn’t my most magnanimous moment. But it’s one of the few indulgences I allow myself. And I felt I’d earned it after all the good I’ve done in the world.
Because of my influence war was fast becoming a thing of the past. Much as I always suspected, the only people who needed to have their minds changed on the subject were the despots in charge of armies. Most of the soldiers and the civilians didn’t need much of a push to stop the fighting. I was actually surprised how easy it was.
I left the arena through the underground tunnel reserved for the highest profile of performers, my luxury town-car being piloted by my personal assistant. He’s the one person in the world who I had no intention of influencing with my power. Formerly one of the highest regarded philosophers of ethics in the country, I knew he was the perfect person to speak unfiltered truth to me. To keep me grounded.
“Where to, sir?” my assistant asked as he steered us out onto the busy streets where traffic immediately started parting for us like the Red Sea for Moses.
“Home,” I replied without hesitation. “I am completely bushed.”
I laid back with my feet up across the leather seats, not bothering to put my seatbelt on. Car crashes were way down ever since I’d compelled everyone to stop drinking and driving. Texting and anything else distracting too. I hadn’t been able to stop accidents completely, but just those things alone had gone a pretty long way.
“Another busy day of saving the world,” my assistant said. He doesn’t really phrase it as a question. And he sort of chuckled as he said it. Was he mocking me? God, sometimes I hated him.
How long before you hollow out his brain too? No. I’ve drawn my lines in the sand and I won’t cross them. I can’t just turn everyone in the whole world to mindless automatons. What would be the fun in that? Oh, is that what we’re having? Fun? Or are you just masturbating and using the psyches of the entire world as lube? No. People are safer and more productive than ever. By almost every metric, I am saving the world. Almost, eh?
The sight of my mansion and sprawling estate quiets my mind, as it always does. My assistant punches the eight-digit code in the command panel. The gates unlatch and slide open soundlessly. I let my mind drift towards the fantasy I knew I would find inside. The girls would have a gourmet dinner prepared in the living room, alongside a very expensive side of wine and scotch. A rock ballad from the 80s would be humming through the house’s sound system, loud enough to be appreciated, but not so loud as to drown out the welcomes home I would receive from my seductively, yet modestly, dressed harem.
It was exactly what I needed before another big day at the United Nations general assembly tomorrow. One couldn’t be expected to properly save the world without a way to unwind.
After parking the car in the roundabout out front, I was pleased to hear the sounds of the band Poison drifting out to meet us. My assistant opened the front door, but then immediately slammed it back shut. He turned to me, eyes bulging out of his head as his mouth fumbled the first attempts to form a word.
“Ah…sir,” he stammered. “Perhaps you would be more comfortable staying in a hotel tonight. I can call ahead to—”
“Oh, just get out my way,” I said. I pushed past him and his blubbering objections to open the door myself.
The blood on the floor is the first thing I saw. No, not just blood. Chunks of brain and skull as well, plastered all over the wall. And not just the wall, but also the Monet painting that my art collector had brought me when I asked for the most expensive work in the Gugenheim. Oh no, they got their gray matter all over The Palazzo Ducale. Really? Sarcasm now?
But then I opened the door all the way and saw that it wasn’t just the one wall, but all the walls. And the fine marble floors as well, where the partially headless bodies of my entire harem lay crumpled on the floor. The bodies were all immaculate in the evening wear I had requested. Requested? The only unprompted accessory is the handguns each of them had clutched in their now lifeless hands.
“God damn it, not again,” I fumed. “How could this happen? I gave them explicit commands that they were not allowed to kill themselves.”
My assistant had sheepishly followed me into the crime scene. Crime? Against whom? You? My assistant was quite white in the face, but he held his nerve and the contents of his stomach as he surveyed the odd, almost ritualistic circular shape that the bodies lay in.
“Well, sir,” he said, swallowing a lump in his throat. “If I may be so bold. It would appear that they circumvented your command that they not kill themselves by simultaneously killing each other.”
“Clever bitches,” I muttered. Were they really? Or were your just too convinced of your own righteousness to miss such an obvious workaround? And you’re going to save the world? You can’t even keep control in this house. “Well, I guess I’ll have to do better with the next batch. Make it ironclad that they aren’t to harm themselves or others.”
“I will have the replacements ready for you by the time you arrive home tomorrow, sir.”
“Excellent. And make sure this mess is cleaned up by then too.”
“All right, this one is a little number I wrote back in high school,” I said into the microphone, sending my voice out as a sonic wave to wash over the screaming crowd packed into Madison Square Garden. They held up signs professing their undying love for me. They writhed and danced, even at this interval between songs. They chanted the name of my band over and over.
Speaking of my band, we were a veritable supergroup of rock and roll stars. I pivoted to glance back at them, careful not to knock the mic-stand over with my guitar like last time and drank in the sight of my backing band. The biggest names plucked from the best acts in the world, all assembled on stage to play with me. Our bassist had even come out of retirement just for the chance to be in my band.
Yeah, and they can’t play any of their hits just because you can’t keep up.
That didn’t matter. They weren’t here for that. They were here to play my songs. And man, the songs sounded so good. A hundred times better than when I used to play with my old band back in college.
I was pouring sweat by the time I twanged out the last notes of my final encore. The ravenous fans demanded more. They would rock out with me all night if I let them. Made them. But I had nothing left in me. I needed to call it a night.
“All right everybody, you’ve been great. Good night.”
Everybody go home and return to normal.
I didn’t bother lingering to ensure my command was heeded before leaving the stage and heading for the exit. I had full confidence in my ability at this point. You just don’t want to see that look of stupefaction on their faces as they stop being robots and turn back into people with free will again. I admit this isn’t my most magnanimous moment. But it’s one of the few indulgences I allow myself. And I felt I’d earned it after all the good I’ve done in the world.
Because of my influence war was fast becoming a thing of the past. Much as I always suspected, the only people who needed to have their minds changed on the subject were the despots in charge of armies. Most of the soldiers and the civilians didn’t need much of a push to stop the fighting. I was actually surprised how easy it was.
I left the arena through the underground tunnel reserved for the highest profile of performers, my luxury town-car being piloted by my personal assistant. He’s the one person in the world who I had no intention of influencing with my power. Formerly one of the highest regarded philosophers of ethics in the country, I knew he was the perfect person to speak unfiltered truth to me. To keep me grounded.
“Where to, sir?” my assistant asked as he steered us out onto the busy streets where traffic immediately started parting for us like the Red Sea for Moses.
“Home,” I replied without hesitation. “I am completely bushed.”
I laid back with my feet up across the leather seats, not bothering to put my seatbelt on. Car crashes were way down ever since I’d compelled everyone to stop drinking and driving. Texting and anything else distracting too. I hadn’t been able to stop accidents completely, but just those things alone had gone a pretty long way.
“Another busy day of saving the world,” my assistant said. He doesn’t really phrase it as a question. And he sort of chuckled as he said it. Was he mocking me? God, sometimes I hated him.
How long before you hollow out his brain too? No. I’ve drawn my lines in the sand and I won’t cross them. I can’t just turn everyone in the whole world to mindless automatons. What would be the fun in that? Oh, is that what we’re having? Fun? Or are you just masturbating and using the psyches of the entire world as lube? No. People are safer and more productive than ever. By almost every metric, I am saving the world. Almost, eh?
The sight of my mansion and sprawling estate quiets my mind, as it always does. My assistant punches the eight-digit code in the command panel. The gates unlatch and slide open soundlessly. I let my mind drift towards the fantasy I knew I would find inside. The girls would have a gourmet dinner prepared in the living room, alongside a very expensive side of wine and scotch. A rock ballad from the 80s would be humming through the house’s sound system, loud enough to be appreciated, but not so loud as to drown out the welcomes home I would receive from my seductively, yet modestly, dressed harem.
It was exactly what I needed before another big day at the United Nations general assembly tomorrow. One couldn’t be expected to properly save the world without a way to unwind.
After parking the car in the roundabout out front, I was pleased to hear the sounds of the band Poison drifting out to meet us. My assistant opened the front door, but then immediately slammed it back shut. He turned to me, eyes bulging out of his head as his mouth fumbled the first attempts to form a word.
“Ah…sir,” he stammered. “Perhaps you would be more comfortable staying in a hotel tonight. I can call ahead to—”
“Oh, just get out my way,” I said. I pushed past him and his blubbering objections to open the door myself.
The blood on the floor is the first thing I saw. No, not just blood. Chunks of brain and skull as well, plastered all over the wall. And not just the wall, but also the Monet painting that my art collector had brought me when I asked for the most expensive work in the Gugenheim. Oh no, they got their gray matter all over The Palazzo Ducale. Really? Sarcasm now?
But then I opened the door all the way and saw that it wasn’t just the one wall, but all the walls. And the fine marble floors as well, where the partially headless bodies of my entire harem lay crumpled on the floor. The bodies were all immaculate in the evening wear I had requested. Requested? The only unprompted accessory is the handguns each of them had clutched in their now lifeless hands.
“God damn it, not again,” I fumed. “How could this happen? I gave them explicit commands that they were not allowed to kill themselves.”
My assistant had sheepishly followed me into the crime scene. Crime? Against whom? You? My assistant was quite white in the face, but he held his nerve and the contents of his stomach as he surveyed the odd, almost ritualistic circular shape that the bodies lay in.
“Well, sir,” he said, swallowing a lump in his throat. “If I may be so bold. It would appear that they circumvented your command that they not kill themselves by simultaneously killing each other.”
“Clever bitches,” I muttered. Were they really? Or were your just too convinced of your own righteousness to miss such an obvious workaround? And you’re going to save the world? You can’t even keep control in this house. “Well, I guess I’ll have to do better with the next batch. Make it ironclad that they aren’t to harm themselves or others.”
“I will have the replacements ready for you by the time you arrive home tomorrow, sir.”
“Excellent. And make sure this mess is cleaned up by then too.”
***
The next day on the car ride to the UN I saw a man hung to death from a billboard which had been spray painted over with a question. His body twisted gently as the wind pushed it about with curious fingers, and his epitaph ran with dripping red letters.
Were we ever even alive?
“What do you think that means?” I asked my assistant, whose eyes were fixed on the road even more studiously than usual.
He glanced to the side briefly, as if noticing the dangling corpse for the first time. “Not sure, sir. Maybe they’re just a fan of Lamb of God?”
“What?”
“Nothing, sir. Bad joke is all.”
I frowned, leaning back in my seat to consider this. It was definitely a suicide, because I’d banned murder in the city. And public displays like this were becoming a problem. A man had lit himself ablaze in the middle of Wall Street just a couple days ago. And not long before that, somebody had fruitlessly driven their family sedan into the thick walls surrounding my estate.
“Maybe it’s time to try a broad decree against suicide for the entire city,” I mused.
My assistant didn’t say anything for a few moments. Just flicked on his turn signal as he piloted us off the highway and onto our turnoff. His lips had been pressed so tight that I could hear them smack when he finally opened his mouth to reply.
“That seems…” he started. But then he seemed to reconsider his words. “Are you sure that is a good idea, sir?”
“Why wouldn’t it be? What is gained by allowing people to kill themselves?”
He hesitated again for a long while as he navigated the underpass we were descending. “I guess I don’t know, sir. But maybe that alone is a reason for pause.”
“Hm,” I said, tapping my chin thoughtfully. “No, I don’t see any major downsides. Especially weighed against how it must make people feel to see these tragedies. I know it makes me feel terrible.”
Does it? Or does it just make you look bad?
I broadcast to the entire city. Thou shalt bring no harm to yourself or others.
Oh, getting biblical now. Very healthy.
We drove in silence the rest of the way to the General Assembly. My assistant would have had no inclination of my command. Not that anyone else would have heard it in words or even as an intrusive phenomenon, you assume, but I suspected they must have some sort of inkling that something had changed inside their head. But no, I still endeavoured to keep my assistant pure. I valued his counsel, like that which he had just offered me during the drive.
The General Assembly that day was mind-numbingly boring. Solving all the world’s problems had long since lost the shiny veneer it had in the beginning. All these world leaders came in and blustered as if all their problems were difficult to solve. But it was all so simple. Today’s litany of petitions breezed past me in a blur.
“There is an uprising in Bolivia where local indigenous people are trying to push a foreign mining company off their land. They say it is polluting their waters and—”
So, I told the locals to cease all aggression immediately.
“Environmentalists have occupied the head office of a major fossil fuel corporation and barred the doors. The executives are unable to get to work and—”
So, I told the environmentalists to cease all aggression immediately.
And then some delegates spent a couple hours explaining the dynamics of the latest violence on the Gaza Strip. That was dull. And a waste, because ultimately I just told Israel and Palestine to both cease all aggression immediately.
One delegate had the audacity to speak up. “But sir, what about the blockade that is preventing aid from—”
Chill, I told him.
That was all I could handle that day. “Today’s proceedings are adjourned,” I said aloud. I ignored the rumbles of discontent that rolled through the Assembly at this. But all that was left on the docket was some paltry thing about mental health and suicide, and that perennial problem could wait for another day. I could only save the world so much in one day. They’d all see the results soon enough. Then these people would be greeting me with cheers of adulation.
One way or the other, right?
The drive home was quiet. Too quiet, in fact. At first I told my assistant to put some music on the radio, but then I noticed that as he was scanning through the dial, several frequencies which should be broadcasting local stations were offering up nothing but static.
It was then that I looked out the window and realized that we weren’t only experiencing a smooth traffic-free drive because all the other motorists were pulling out of our way. It was because the road was mostly free from traffic. And the few cars were only going in one direction. Out of the city.
“What do you suppose is going on?” I asked.
“Ah, well it is Thursday night,” my assistant said. “Perhaps many people have decided to take a long weekend and go camping?”
I frowned at the back of his head. Not for the first time, I lamented that I hadn’t included telepathy in my mind powers. It would have been useful to be able to read people’s minds. Yeah, maybe knowing what’s going on inside people’s heads would have made you better at governing them, huh? But I guess you would have had to actually care about their thoughts and feelings for that to even occur to you.
I also wondered, also not for the first time, if I could mind control myself and force these divergent thoughts out of my brain. I’ll admit, I was a little scared to try. What if that dissenting voice was a critical part of my brain that affected me as a whole? A real nuanced psychoanalyst when it’s your own mind, eh? Still, I considered it very seriously the rest of the drive home.
At least until my estate came into view and I remembered the candidates for my new harem who would be waiting for me there. I’d picked a dozen or so qualified women from a dating app on the drive to the UN this morning. All attractive, of course. Educated, but not too educated. I wanted to be stimulated by their conversation, but I also didn’t want them to feel stifled by the relatively remedial work of keeping my house. Sure, that’s why you don’t want them too educated. And I also made sure they were all childless. I didn’t want their attention divided between me and their children. That wouldn’t be fair to the child.
And I made sure that all of them were struggling economically. I wanted this chance to be a golden ticket for them, a chance to leave all their bills and student loans and all the toils of their humdrum lives behind. I wanted this to be like winning the lottery. Sounds like you want them vulnerable, but go off, King.
I’d already infused all the women with the appropriate commands that would render them supplicant and ready for me. At the prospect of so many potentially qualified new partners, the weight of the day’s events had almost fully flown from my shoulders by the time my assistant unlocked the front door. Yet my shoulders sagged again immediately as the scene in my living room was revealed.
My assistant didn’t even try to shut the door on me this time, sagging against the door instead, the handle barely holding up his weight, as we took in a sight even more gruesome than yesterday. The walls and art were free of blood this time, but the floor looked like that of a slaughterhouse, all full of pooled blood and discarded body parts. There was an eyeball here and an earlobe there. There was a bundle of blonde hair that had been shaved so roughly that bits of scalp were still clinging to it.
Oh, and don’t forget all the wailing women, on their knees, keening with pain and despair. Most had already completed their gruesome tasks and seemed to be pleading with me. But one was still in the act of carving off her breast with a steak knife. Another was chopping at her wrist with a butcher knife. And one was even in the process of sawing off her own nose.
To spite her face. Get it? Though I agree, it’s a little on the--
“I don’t understand,” I said aloud. I could barely look at their mangled faces, moaning at me as if I had the cure to some plague which afflicted them. “How can this be happening?”
My assistant laughed a bitter sound unlike anything I’d ever heard from him. I could see that something had broken inside him. “Are you really that thick? This is happening because they genuinely don’t believe this is harming themselves. They think it is their salvation, to maim themselves to the point that you no longer want them as your sex slaves.”
“That’s not fair. I don’t think them as sex slaves.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think of them as!”
I turned to the woman whose eyeball lay in a pool of blood on the floor. “Is what he says true? You would do this to avoid being a part of my family?”
She looked at her eyeball on ground, biting her lip. But she nodded. “It’s only pain,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
A clicking sound behind me caused me to turn and face my assistant. I’d known it was the sound of a hammer cocking even before I saw it, yet the sight of it still staggered me.
“But I left you free,” I protested.
He laughed again, a sound so bitter I could taste the poison. “Did you? Do you really think a person in my position is free? When you hold the power to revoke my freedom arbitrarily at any time? Do you really think a free relationship can ever exist under these conditions?”
“But I rely on you for advice.”
“You’ve relied on me for justification!” he shot back, waving the gun like perhaps he had shaken a finger during a lecture in a past life. “Whether you have directly invaded me or not, I am no different than the automatons you’ve reduced every other person on Earth to. I am just an accessory for you to dress yourself with to present the image you want to imagine yourself as. And to a world that you don’t seem to understand can only see you as a tyrant, no less. You want to know what that graffiti meant this morning? ‘Were we ever even alive?’ People are killing themselves because they have no idea if their thoughts are their own. Where do they end and where does your influence begin? Do you even know? Do you understand the psychic chain of events you’re triggering? Can there be such a thing as a free thought in a world where such monolithic power exists? Can you answer that? Because they are literally dying to know!”
Look, you’ve reduced this brilliant mind to cliches.
“Peace!” I sputtered, nearly choking on the word. “Isn’t it worth it to sacrifice a little freedom for the sake of prosperity and security?”
My assistant rolled his eyes with such exasperation that there was probably a big enough opening for me to grab the gun. Yet I was frozen to the spot. I needed to hear him out. “Oh, come on!” he cried. “Just telling people to stop fighting is not solving the world’s problems. The fighting itself is not the problem. They’re fighting for a reason. But you haven’t bothered to learn the first thing about the problems of the people you’re telling to stand down. ‘Can’t we all just get along’ is not a coherent political philosophy. It’s just a way to make you, as a casual bystander, feel better.”
He stood there, face red, trembling, his righteous energy seemingly spent. But that gun stayed level at my chest, so perhaps he still had a little something left in the tank.
“So that’s it then?” I asked. “You’re going to shoot me?”
He chewed his lip. “Let’s see if I can.”
He telegraphed his intentions so flagrantly. Dropping his shoulder and thrusting the gun forward, almost as if he meant to stab me with the gun instead of shooting it. Even if all he’d done was twitch his finger on the trigger, that might take a fraction of a second, but I knew by now that my transmissions were instantaneous. And I’d had one ready for him the moment I’d heard him draw the weapon. I hadn’t been eager to test my abilities in such a situation, but his form was so poor that it was hardly much of a test.
Don’t shoot me.
Turns out I’d have been better off leaving off that last word, because all his overacting had been a feint to throw off my suspicion. My assistant turned that gun about, jammed it in his mouth and pulled the trigger. His once vaunted brains mostly blew out the front door.
And so there I stood, alone, amongst the gore and mutilated women who I would have called partner. Once again I lamented that my wish hadn’t included the ability to read minds. It might have solved all these problems. Or it would have been a trickle of piss on the forest fire you’ve lit.
Shut up.
I’d done it without even thinking. And then I knew what it was to be truly alone, even inside one’s own head. A silence that could swallow eternity. And in it I could not help but wonder, was I ever even alive?
Were we ever even alive?
“What do you think that means?” I asked my assistant, whose eyes were fixed on the road even more studiously than usual.
He glanced to the side briefly, as if noticing the dangling corpse for the first time. “Not sure, sir. Maybe they’re just a fan of Lamb of God?”
“What?”
“Nothing, sir. Bad joke is all.”
I frowned, leaning back in my seat to consider this. It was definitely a suicide, because I’d banned murder in the city. And public displays like this were becoming a problem. A man had lit himself ablaze in the middle of Wall Street just a couple days ago. And not long before that, somebody had fruitlessly driven their family sedan into the thick walls surrounding my estate.
“Maybe it’s time to try a broad decree against suicide for the entire city,” I mused.
My assistant didn’t say anything for a few moments. Just flicked on his turn signal as he piloted us off the highway and onto our turnoff. His lips had been pressed so tight that I could hear them smack when he finally opened his mouth to reply.
“That seems…” he started. But then he seemed to reconsider his words. “Are you sure that is a good idea, sir?”
“Why wouldn’t it be? What is gained by allowing people to kill themselves?”
He hesitated again for a long while as he navigated the underpass we were descending. “I guess I don’t know, sir. But maybe that alone is a reason for pause.”
“Hm,” I said, tapping my chin thoughtfully. “No, I don’t see any major downsides. Especially weighed against how it must make people feel to see these tragedies. I know it makes me feel terrible.”
Does it? Or does it just make you look bad?
I broadcast to the entire city. Thou shalt bring no harm to yourself or others.
Oh, getting biblical now. Very healthy.
We drove in silence the rest of the way to the General Assembly. My assistant would have had no inclination of my command. Not that anyone else would have heard it in words or even as an intrusive phenomenon, you assume, but I suspected they must have some sort of inkling that something had changed inside their head. But no, I still endeavoured to keep my assistant pure. I valued his counsel, like that which he had just offered me during the drive.
The General Assembly that day was mind-numbingly boring. Solving all the world’s problems had long since lost the shiny veneer it had in the beginning. All these world leaders came in and blustered as if all their problems were difficult to solve. But it was all so simple. Today’s litany of petitions breezed past me in a blur.
“There is an uprising in Bolivia where local indigenous people are trying to push a foreign mining company off their land. They say it is polluting their waters and—”
So, I told the locals to cease all aggression immediately.
“Environmentalists have occupied the head office of a major fossil fuel corporation and barred the doors. The executives are unable to get to work and—”
So, I told the environmentalists to cease all aggression immediately.
And then some delegates spent a couple hours explaining the dynamics of the latest violence on the Gaza Strip. That was dull. And a waste, because ultimately I just told Israel and Palestine to both cease all aggression immediately.
One delegate had the audacity to speak up. “But sir, what about the blockade that is preventing aid from—”
Chill, I told him.
That was all I could handle that day. “Today’s proceedings are adjourned,” I said aloud. I ignored the rumbles of discontent that rolled through the Assembly at this. But all that was left on the docket was some paltry thing about mental health and suicide, and that perennial problem could wait for another day. I could only save the world so much in one day. They’d all see the results soon enough. Then these people would be greeting me with cheers of adulation.
One way or the other, right?
The drive home was quiet. Too quiet, in fact. At first I told my assistant to put some music on the radio, but then I noticed that as he was scanning through the dial, several frequencies which should be broadcasting local stations were offering up nothing but static.
It was then that I looked out the window and realized that we weren’t only experiencing a smooth traffic-free drive because all the other motorists were pulling out of our way. It was because the road was mostly free from traffic. And the few cars were only going in one direction. Out of the city.
“What do you suppose is going on?” I asked.
“Ah, well it is Thursday night,” my assistant said. “Perhaps many people have decided to take a long weekend and go camping?”
I frowned at the back of his head. Not for the first time, I lamented that I hadn’t included telepathy in my mind powers. It would have been useful to be able to read people’s minds. Yeah, maybe knowing what’s going on inside people’s heads would have made you better at governing them, huh? But I guess you would have had to actually care about their thoughts and feelings for that to even occur to you.
I also wondered, also not for the first time, if I could mind control myself and force these divergent thoughts out of my brain. I’ll admit, I was a little scared to try. What if that dissenting voice was a critical part of my brain that affected me as a whole? A real nuanced psychoanalyst when it’s your own mind, eh? Still, I considered it very seriously the rest of the drive home.
At least until my estate came into view and I remembered the candidates for my new harem who would be waiting for me there. I’d picked a dozen or so qualified women from a dating app on the drive to the UN this morning. All attractive, of course. Educated, but not too educated. I wanted to be stimulated by their conversation, but I also didn’t want them to feel stifled by the relatively remedial work of keeping my house. Sure, that’s why you don’t want them too educated. And I also made sure they were all childless. I didn’t want their attention divided between me and their children. That wouldn’t be fair to the child.
And I made sure that all of them were struggling economically. I wanted this chance to be a golden ticket for them, a chance to leave all their bills and student loans and all the toils of their humdrum lives behind. I wanted this to be like winning the lottery. Sounds like you want them vulnerable, but go off, King.
I’d already infused all the women with the appropriate commands that would render them supplicant and ready for me. At the prospect of so many potentially qualified new partners, the weight of the day’s events had almost fully flown from my shoulders by the time my assistant unlocked the front door. Yet my shoulders sagged again immediately as the scene in my living room was revealed.
My assistant didn’t even try to shut the door on me this time, sagging against the door instead, the handle barely holding up his weight, as we took in a sight even more gruesome than yesterday. The walls and art were free of blood this time, but the floor looked like that of a slaughterhouse, all full of pooled blood and discarded body parts. There was an eyeball here and an earlobe there. There was a bundle of blonde hair that had been shaved so roughly that bits of scalp were still clinging to it.
Oh, and don’t forget all the wailing women, on their knees, keening with pain and despair. Most had already completed their gruesome tasks and seemed to be pleading with me. But one was still in the act of carving off her breast with a steak knife. Another was chopping at her wrist with a butcher knife. And one was even in the process of sawing off her own nose.
To spite her face. Get it? Though I agree, it’s a little on the--
“I don’t understand,” I said aloud. I could barely look at their mangled faces, moaning at me as if I had the cure to some plague which afflicted them. “How can this be happening?”
My assistant laughed a bitter sound unlike anything I’d ever heard from him. I could see that something had broken inside him. “Are you really that thick? This is happening because they genuinely don’t believe this is harming themselves. They think it is their salvation, to maim themselves to the point that you no longer want them as your sex slaves.”
“That’s not fair. I don’t think them as sex slaves.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think of them as!”
I turned to the woman whose eyeball lay in a pool of blood on the floor. “Is what he says true? You would do this to avoid being a part of my family?”
She looked at her eyeball on ground, biting her lip. But she nodded. “It’s only pain,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
A clicking sound behind me caused me to turn and face my assistant. I’d known it was the sound of a hammer cocking even before I saw it, yet the sight of it still staggered me.
“But I left you free,” I protested.
He laughed again, a sound so bitter I could taste the poison. “Did you? Do you really think a person in my position is free? When you hold the power to revoke my freedom arbitrarily at any time? Do you really think a free relationship can ever exist under these conditions?”
“But I rely on you for advice.”
“You’ve relied on me for justification!” he shot back, waving the gun like perhaps he had shaken a finger during a lecture in a past life. “Whether you have directly invaded me or not, I am no different than the automatons you’ve reduced every other person on Earth to. I am just an accessory for you to dress yourself with to present the image you want to imagine yourself as. And to a world that you don’t seem to understand can only see you as a tyrant, no less. You want to know what that graffiti meant this morning? ‘Were we ever even alive?’ People are killing themselves because they have no idea if their thoughts are their own. Where do they end and where does your influence begin? Do you even know? Do you understand the psychic chain of events you’re triggering? Can there be such a thing as a free thought in a world where such monolithic power exists? Can you answer that? Because they are literally dying to know!”
Look, you’ve reduced this brilliant mind to cliches.
“Peace!” I sputtered, nearly choking on the word. “Isn’t it worth it to sacrifice a little freedom for the sake of prosperity and security?”
My assistant rolled his eyes with such exasperation that there was probably a big enough opening for me to grab the gun. Yet I was frozen to the spot. I needed to hear him out. “Oh, come on!” he cried. “Just telling people to stop fighting is not solving the world’s problems. The fighting itself is not the problem. They’re fighting for a reason. But you haven’t bothered to learn the first thing about the problems of the people you’re telling to stand down. ‘Can’t we all just get along’ is not a coherent political philosophy. It’s just a way to make you, as a casual bystander, feel better.”
He stood there, face red, trembling, his righteous energy seemingly spent. But that gun stayed level at my chest, so perhaps he still had a little something left in the tank.
“So that’s it then?” I asked. “You’re going to shoot me?”
He chewed his lip. “Let’s see if I can.”
He telegraphed his intentions so flagrantly. Dropping his shoulder and thrusting the gun forward, almost as if he meant to stab me with the gun instead of shooting it. Even if all he’d done was twitch his finger on the trigger, that might take a fraction of a second, but I knew by now that my transmissions were instantaneous. And I’d had one ready for him the moment I’d heard him draw the weapon. I hadn’t been eager to test my abilities in such a situation, but his form was so poor that it was hardly much of a test.
Don’t shoot me.
Turns out I’d have been better off leaving off that last word, because all his overacting had been a feint to throw off my suspicion. My assistant turned that gun about, jammed it in his mouth and pulled the trigger. His once vaunted brains mostly blew out the front door.
And so there I stood, alone, amongst the gore and mutilated women who I would have called partner. Once again I lamented that my wish hadn’t included the ability to read minds. It might have solved all these problems. Or it would have been a trickle of piss on the forest fire you’ve lit.
Shut up.
I’d done it without even thinking. And then I knew what it was to be truly alone, even inside one’s own head. A silence that could swallow eternity. And in it I could not help but wonder, was I ever even alive?