Tales of the Parodyverse

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Fin Fang Foom
Mon Aug 15, 2005 at 11:46:51 pm EDT
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Continued, again...
Originally
SE #3, continued in here...
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Fin Fang Foom
Mon Aug 15, 2005 at 11:44:55 pm EDT
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It went without saying that two of the driving forces of humanity were events and experiences. Before the attacks, both of these sources of power had become thoroughly commercialized: instead of being marketed as what they actually were, songs and sales and comics and worship services and movies and championships and TV shows and many other things were touted as Events, complete with media heralds that spent huge amounts of money proclaiming their grandeur and importance. History was structured in terms of major events, as were personal lives. The flashpoints of life were considered to be the graduations, weddings, births, etc. Events were very valuable from a political perspective, as well--controversial incidents could provide motivation to even the most apathetic of voters. Unless they were already pillars of culture, these monoliths took quite a bit of effort to build up, to the point where they were straining underneath the weight of their own hype and expectations. All of these spectacles were competing with each other, with the powers-that-be launching their titanic creations and then watching the effects. They’d try to learn from their failure or success and start the long, arduous process of preparing the next salvo.

Likewise, places such as stores and churches and restaurants worked to create a positive experience from the time someone walked in the door to the time they left, controlling the environment in an almost paranoid fashion. If there isn’t a large, easily-understood, at least bilingual map in the lobby, which includes directions to the restrooms, then they may not have a good experience. If the greeter is too forward or too reserved, then they may not have a good experience. It was a strange thing, to have a waitress hovering near you because your glass was about to go from being a little over half full to a little under half empty; to watch a store employee mentally kick themselves because of an utterly normal glitch that had a tiny chance of giving a customer a negative impression. They understood that, even moreso than the actual goods or services being offered, a great experience would determine whether or not people came back for more. People scientifically set up dates and parties and vacations for maximum enjoyment (mainly for the enjoyment of others, in the hopes that they’d look good in the process), and church boards spent countless hours in meetings trying to fine-tune their worship service for the best possible effect. How much time, money, and effort had gone into artificially creating feelings, in order to control people?

Dr. Christopher Price understood the dynamics behind all this, and he also understood how the two phenomena were connected to each other. Unfortunately, he’d found a new application for it, perfecting it into an artform that should have never been discovered…

It was a starless, moonless night in the wilderness of New America, thanks to an open wound that was left over from the attacks--six years later, eclipse-inducing dust still swirled high in the stratosphere, in a state of panic from being blasted off the face of the earth. There were no wild animals or lights shining in the darkness, just barely-visible snow and ice. The wind sounded and felt more like a tidal wave. Very, very rarely, there’d be a distant light in the clouds…a skycarrier, or, less likely, some Falconers. Curiously, there was no smell at all, due in large part to the lack of any healthy flora. This area had particularly harsh weather; even someone in the most expensive winter gear would have only lasted a few minutes. However, a new kind of being was racing through the unseen desolation, on a mission that only he knew of. The Pale Horseman’s hovercycle jumped over hills and swerved around long-dead trees, while the man inside the armor--Dr. Christopher Price himself--resigned himself to another night of work that many would notice, but none would truly understand. Which was how it had to be.

For as long as he could remember, Price had had a secret. At first, he’d wanted to tell people about it; to get help, but boys in the 1950s weren’t exactly encouraged to share their emotions, let alone discuss a deep-seated mental problem that no-one else seemed to have. Though he tried to will repress these thoughts, it was impossible--and the thoughts made him feel guilty and sullen and paranoid about being found out. In his school pictures, he was always the one who looked like his puppy had just been killed by a crashed Soviet satellite. He read grownup books about psychology, hoping to use the “physician, heal thyself” approach. But no matter how big the textbook was, no matter how long the results of the study were, his issue was never even hinted at, let alone diagnosed and explained. Though it wasn’t even remotely sexual in nature, it did (negatively) affect his development and maturation. There was a very creepy, unstable vibe emanating from him, which scared off would-be friends and lovers alike.

He continued studying the human mind as he entered college--with no life and a ton of excess mental energy that he wanted to redirect, he was the perfect student--but even the more advanced psychological courses didn’t address his problem. Desperation being a far more powerful motivator than the desire for success, he mastered his field in a surprisingly short amount of time. However, he was bitter, because of how it had failed to help him. But it did have its uses…though he couldn’t seem to influence himself, he could more than easily influence others. What would later be his career began as a simple experiment: seeing if he could manipulate an obviously-out-of-his-league woman into sleeping with him. Research was necessary, as were carefully-chosen words and behaviors. But it worked. It worked with the next woman, too. And the next. He used the same trick to impress his professors (even more than he already had, anyway), and to get away with pretty much whatever he wanted. The bombastic outrageousness was what appealed to him the most; how he could stand there and argue obviously untrue, illogical, hypocritical things, and actually win by doing so. It was also a great way to avoid the corner of his mind that contained far more dangerous thoughts.

Though his original plan had involved going into advertising after he graduated, he was approached by a political organization. It just happened to be allied with Wertham’s father. Their view was that democracy was little more than psychological warfare, and they wanted an expert in their corner. Before he even set foot in the proverbial ring, Price spent a year doing focus-groups and intensive studying of the American political mindset--he wanted to be as prepared as possible. After he’d learned the necessary facts, he set about creating tools (or perhaps weapons) to accomplish what his masters needed accomplished. He practically invented the modern version of the smear campaign, and he trained politicians in how to use language and frame arguments effectively, in addition to showing them what to do and what not to do with the media. Price knew which issues to embrace and which issues to downplay, depending on the demographic. He helped them with their still-under-contruction “noise machine”, a combination of three things…media outlets that they either owned or were ideologically similar to, “independent” political spokesgroups, and certain churches that could be bought off, all of which parroted their talking-points. (The strategy was simple: a supposedly-unaffiliated individual or group would make extreme accusations or slander, and the politician would “stay above the mudslinging”, while reaping its benefits.)

Several election cycles later, he’d propelled them to power, and he rose through the party ranks. It was far from easy work, however…the American psyche was strong, and difficult to control. While they made ground in terms of holding office, they lost it in terms of culture. Internal snafus didn’t help this. The public found out about the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, but Price managed to hide the even larger scandals that would have destroyed the party forever. During this time, he met the Wertham that would later become President. He was just a one-note, recurring character in Price’s life, nothing but comic relief and a source of low-level crises that needed to be covered up. Meanwhile, their ideal version of America was becoming more and more different from what the actual mainstream wanted. The extreme wing of their party was demanding things that were now politically untenable, and keeping them satisfied--while doing nothing meaningful or overly-noticeable to address their concerns--took a considerable amount of finesse, on Price’s part. Moderation was the new buzzword.

Around the time that Wertham started his ill-advised corporate career, Price had finally combined a number of disparate groups into a powerful political party. His blueprint was both simple and perfect: to succeed in American politics, you needed large amounts of money and large amounts of people. So, you centered things around two groups, one that had financial power and influence (say, Big Business), and one that a large percentage of Americans identified with, to provide the huge amount of votes that you’d need to win elections on a regular basis (having studied the demographics, Price knew it had to be middle-class Christians). You then decided which of those two groups would be your true master (Price was now an elite, himself, and there was no point in getting on their bad side, so it was an easy choice), and which you’d trick into being your more photogenic, pseudo-populist public face. After that, you supplemented your ranks with a smattering of smaller, less-powerful groups that didn’t really have any other realistic political options, so they were more easily pushed around. Isolationists, small-government people and “fiscally conservative” people, certain older voters who would support the party even though it ran women and non-whites, etc.

So, you had a corporate wing and a cultural wing, and in order to keep the latter one in line, you needed to string them along with hot-button social issues--but if those issues ever became moot, you’d lose your control over them. So you could only choose things that would likely never be resolved through politics. You should vote for Candidate A because he’s anti-Issue Z, even though he won’t actually have the power or a realistic opportunity to ever do anything about it; it’s just the principle of the thing. At the same time, they had to be extremely controversial issues, to distract them from how their spirituality was the exact opposite of the corporate wing’s values, and how the party’s policies helped the other wing and hurt them, occasionally tossing them scraps of tax-cuts. As such, the corporate wing thrived, causing the middle-class to shrink, which you blamed on the opposition party, foreigners, whoever. The whole thing worked like a charm. Despite his success, Price came to resent the public, however…if only they were a little more malleable, he could do more with the country than anyone had ever done before. (Like Wertham, however, he didn’t care about politics or a particular belief-system, he just liked the game. He’d hijacked the party because he could.) And his problem was still present, waiting for its moment.

To some, it would have seemed like babysitting, but when they approached Price to take care of the heir apparent--Wertham, the younger--he jumped at the chance. It had taken years of grooming and training to change his image from that of a lazy rich boy to the kind of guy the average joe would want to have a beer with. Enabling an incompetent candidate to win was amazing enough, but keeping a hapless, failure-prone governor in office, election after election, took any number of miracles. It was like winning several straight Super Bowls with a team of high-schoolers. (Admittedly, the opponents weren’t exactly fielding first-stringers, which helped.) Price might as well have been the one in office, as Wertham was little more than an actor. Around this time, new media technology made the noise-machine more powerful than ever, which greatly helped their cause. He’d had planned to have him run for President in ‘00…and while the first year was bound to be rough, Price was sure that 2001 would be the greatest year in American history. Then, the Swarm attacked, and Price recognized them immediately--he’d been involved in the ‘70s cover-up. He whisked Wertham and his family away to a bunker that the aliens didn’t know about, while coincidentally failing to remind everyone else that the North Dakota fallback site had been discovered by the Swarm, back then.

The next day, Price did his best to act surprised when he was informed that, since so many government officials had died, the Presidency had somehow passed down to Wertham. Price was heavily involved in selling the neocon American Empire idea to the President. (It wasn’t hard, they’d become very close friends.) He also converted Jarvis to their side. Wertham’s then-wife, Sabrina, hadn’t been a fan of their plan, but he knew he could handle her. After the divorce, Price and the new National Security Advisor, Mary Vasquez, convinced Wertham to have her put in an asylum, where she’d be left alone and unable to tell anyone what was going on. But Mary had her killed in some strange way; Wertham wasn’t told, and Price didn’t find out until later. The entire world looked to America--or New America, rather--for leadership, in this time of global crisis. Wertham’s approval rate was estimated to be in the high nineties. It all seemed like a dream come true, but it was about to get even better…

Price had been wrestling with the American psyche for several decades, now, and it had proven to be a formidable opponent. It had been unimagineable to him that a genius such as himself was being stymied by hordes of nobodies: soccer moms, labor union widows, and college girls that listened to Sarah McLachlan. He’d spent countless millions trying to get their votes, with little success. But the attacks had changed everything. The once-strong willpower of the nation had been fractured, and suddenly, everyone was vulnerable. They wanted reassurance. They wanted strength. So long as you gave them flimsy versions of those two things, you could get away with whatever you wanted. Price used his PR skills to sell the Labor Initiative idea without triggering an effective revolution, and he also did the initial batch of propaganda for Safe America recruitment and New America News Network, providing them with powerful designs and strategies that could be used and re-used. They occupied country after country, stretching an already-damaged military beyond its breaking-point. In any other era, such ideas would have been ridiculed and outright rejected…but in the months after the attacks, the public was more impressionable and easily-led than ever.

As Price studied the psychological effects that the attacks--though it might as well have been the end of the world--had had on the populace, his long-repressed problem bubbled to the surface once again. Only now, he realized that it had never been a problem in the first place. As a child, Price had been deeply insecure, and he’d been subconsciously searching for a powerful force to hitch his identity to, for protection and success. He wanted to bet on the winning horse; to be on the winning side. One day, in school, a siren had gone off, and they’d all crawled under their desks…a nuclear drill. The image of his classmates (who scared him and seemed superior to him), whimpering and cowering and getting dirty on the floor, made him smile for reasons he couldn’t quite conceive. He denied that part of himself for the vast majority of his life. However, he couldn’t stop thinking about doomsdays, in all different shapes and forms--at one point in his pre-1999 career, the US military asked him to create lethal contingency plans that would be psychologically devastating, and he jumped at the chance. But now, he understood that he wasn’t a freak or sick at all, it had been preparation for his destiny.

Price had been friends--as much as he could be friends with someone--with many party-friendly people in marketing. They talked shop quite a bit. He knew all about the dual-yet-singular power of events and experiences…but it wasn’t until after the attacks, when he realized what the force of apocalypse had done to both his mind and the world as a whole, that he put two and two together. Initially, he didn’t tell anyone about his theory, as it did sound crazy. Obviously, the attacks had become the defining moment in human history. This event had been the most powerful thing that anyone had ever experienced, and using it as a political centerpiece was enough to keep the mental wound from healing; to keep them in a state of terror. A culture built around a day of independence was bound to flourish, while a culture built around a day of doom had a much less promising future…but it was easier to control. That was the version of the theory he gave to Wertham and the others.

But, as usual, the truth was far more spectacular. While what he told Wertham was accurate, the theory had a deeper level that, he suspected, only he could understand.. Normal life had always bored Price, it seemed dull and monotonous--times of war were a bit more highly-charged, but still, he felt that there had to be a more vital level of existence. The attacks had been like a splash of cold water, awakening him more than ever before. Though he felt it clear as day, he couldn’t articulate it to himself until he thought of history as a very long story: if we’re in the beginning or middle of it, what we do ultimately doesn’t matter all that much. There’s a lot of time until the story ends; anything could change. But if we’re at the very end, every tiny decision has an incredible amount of significance. He suddenly understood why humanity always wanted to believe that the end of the world was near…it gave life meaning and gravitas and an epic level of importance. They could be part of something major, because every generation and war and election could be the last, changing the fate of the world.

As far as he was concerned, Price wasn’t hurting the populace at all--he was helping them, as, because of him, they felt like they had a part to play in some larger-than-life series of events. Sure, he could convince Wertham to rebuild America the way it had been, or he could make everyone feel like they were on the edge of death, and thus more alive than ever. He used the media to subtly paint nightmares in the minds of the American public (not that there was much of a media left, just the government-controlled papers and NANN), while carefully using words and policy decisions to reinforce the frightening tinge. It had been his decision to give extra focus to the war in Sumeria--Iraq--as the Middle East was involved in all sorts of end-of-the-world prophecies. Safe America soldiers that had been hesitant to fight in other theaters were overtaken with a religious awe when told that it was up to them to see that we won in the Holy Land. The citizens of New America may not have had decent food or shelter, or health care, or freedom, or whatever, but they felt like they were in a battle for the future of civilization, and that sort of importance was far more valuable.

Unfortunately, the Sumerian occupation went worse than the others, and that was saying something. Because of how high-profile they’d made it, there was a huge public backlash that even took Price by surprise. Granted, since the public was either working somewhere against their will or fighting in wars that were vaguely-motivated and not going well, it wasn’t like they needed much motivation to be upset. If the New American government was wrong about how to handle Sumeria, what else might they be wrong about? Price regarded it as a minor statistical blip--something he could easily fix, given time. And he might very well have been right. But he never found out, as Mary pressured Wertham into giving him a “lateral promotion” to the middle of nowhere. Looking back, he knew he should have seen that coming…it had been her idea to get Sabrina out of the picture, of course she’d try to get rid of him, next. Fewer people in the inner-circle meant more control for her.

Price was furious, of course. He’d been responsible for Wertham’s political career, for turning the party into a juggernaut, for using the attacks to create an empire. If not for his smooth selling of utterly unAmerican ideas like the Labor Initiative, the public would have dragged them into the streets and executed them. Wertham’s life had been nothing but mistakes, surely Price was entitled to at least one. For that matter, he was entitled to be treated like royalty, after all he’d done for his country. And now, they’d put him in charge of an unimportant torture ward that was badly-staffed and barely funded. While researching other “hospitals”, he found out about Sabrina’s strange fate, and became extremely paranoid, as he was pretty sure that Mary would try to kill him, too. During this exile, he did manage to stay productive, however…he also had a degree in neuroscience, and this gave him the perfect opportunity to explore various mind-altering chemicals. He had a whole hospital full of guinea pigs for his experiments.

It was there that he made two breakthroughs: first, he performed “procedures” that gave him even more insight into the human brain, and helped him verify his theory about the psychological effects of doomsdays. And second, he invented an intelligence-enhancing drug that, after one dose, made him a genius in every scientific field, instead of just one. His weaponry and other technology was initially created out of self-defense (even though she hadn’t yet tried to kill him, he figured that Mary would get nervous about him eventually), but he soon realized that it had another application. There were more ways to give humanity that apocalyptic sensation than just through the media and policy…he was about to start his new plan when the insurgents had brought down the hospital. (He’d called for help, but Mary had answered the phone at the Presidential compound.) Now, one month later, it was in full-force. That was what he was doing, tonight--creeping in at the edges of the collective-unconscious. Doing something that would help keep the populace off-balance, in addition to assuring that the world would be mired in interesting times.

All catastrophes had their own motif, and he was using both the specific one from the attacks and the motif of armageddon in general. Obviously, the Pale Horseman was from the Bible, but he’d made the armor look somewhat alien and insectoid, just like the Swarm. And since their ships had had glowing red circles on their undersides--part of the propulsion-system--he’d created flare-like limited-AI decoys that gave the same effect, and let them loose on the world. (They were highly-disposable, made of a material that was produced easily, and could disintegrate if aircraft got too close.) Using his genetics skills, he’d created a new species of cockroach-like bugs, which just happened to reinforce the Swarm’s imagery. Maybe they were the unevolved version of the aliens, waiting for their moment in the future. Nanotech created holograms of frightening creatures which issued inhuman-sounding messages of coming destruction. With the same technology, foreign cultures saw their own gods or representatives of death. Price sometimes disguised himself and walked amongst the insurgents, or the domestic Safe America troops, and sowed rumors and urban legends, as well.

But he hadn’t had that much time to work on those more important aspects of his plan, as he was racing all over Central, killing his former test-subjects. That annoying loose end had to be wrapped up ASAP. They had something in their heads that could mess up national security--the secret of the doomsday seeds--and he couldn’t have that either actually happening or becoming known to the administration; not if he wanted his chances at getting back into the inner-circle to be good. He knew they’d be indebted to him forever once they found out about the rest of his theory (which was more like a fact by now, in his mind): not only did humanity feel more important because of this end-of-the-world atmosphere, they also subconsciously revered those on their side who made them feel that way. The same tool that gave the public’s petty little lives majestic context would simultaneously keep them under control. It was the future of America…

--------------------------------

Misleading marketing notwithstanding, there were several different motivations for people to join Safe America. There were those who were genuinely selfless, who wanted to support their country, even if it was currently making a mistake. They hoped that something good could come out of this multiple-occupation mess. Others were simply scared of becoming not-so-glorified slaves in the Labor Initiative. Some saw it as an opportunity to have a level of power that they’d never known in their pre-attacks lives-- they were the bitterly divorced men who suddenly had the chance to take out their frustrations on entire insurgencies and meet foreign women (as opposed to American women, who, they’d always thought, weren’t submissive enough; they were one step away from getting a bride catalog), or the fortysomething men that had worked under teenagers at Wal-Mart, looking like they were ready to become serial killers at any moment. And both illegals and soon-to-be Labor Initiative workers looked at their current lives and mistakenly thought, “Could it really be any worse?”

After the attacks, enlistment had undergone a boom not seen since the time of WWII. In those first few days, the line from the administration had been simple…we’d rebuild, pour everything we had into the space program and military, and go after the aliens (who’d been fought off by the superheroes that the government now never mentioned, or spoke of as enemies). It’d take a few decades. But within a year, it was announced that, before we engaged our enemies, we had to make a few detours. The world had to be gotten in order, with everyone on the same page. We needed to free some other nations from those who’d allegedly taken advantage of the vacuum of power. We needed to put their resources to work, in terms of this new space program, about which details were never given. Now, six years later, it had become clear to most that Wertham wasn’t serious about going after those who’d attacked us, just as it was clear that we could be stuck in these wars for decades to come.

The lives of Safe America troops had fallen into a sad state of affairs: first, they went to boot camp, at which they got an unfortunately low level of training. There wasn’t much manpower or money to spread around. Morale was low, if it was there at all. They were then shunted off to one of many disastrous situations, and asked to do unreasonable, if not impossible, things. A relatively tiny number of underequipped soldiers was charged with guarding the Canadian and Mexican borders, in order to stop the black-marketers from funneling supplies to the insurgents. A mere five thousand soldiers had been asked to secure the metropolis known as Baghdad, with no air-support. They had to contend with conflicting orders from on-high--one day, they’d be told to protect a town from the nearby bands of nomads; the next, they’d be told to force the populace out of the town and use the nomads to kill those who wouldn’t leave, as there was untapped oil underneath it, or it was needed for a strategic purpose. Some superhumans refused to go to the front lines, while others were far too confident, taking on massive forces with tiny Safe America contingents, knowing that they’d be fine, while their troops didn’t have a chance. Worst of all, military leaders now found their advice routinely ignored by the administration.

As such, there was a small, core group of survivors, who didn’t care about ideology, or national security, or strategy, or even winning--they just stuck together and tried not to die. While others were out to capture the glory of war, they’d forsaken their previously-loud masculinity, and were now willing to simply retreat when things went beyond their control. Their uniforms were covered with markings that proved they’d survived some of the worst battles and theaters that the world had to offer: the Arctic Circle, Operation: Thunderhead in Gothametropolis York, the Sunni Triangle, the horribly-planned Liberty Offensive in Venezuela, and the fifth Battle of Oklahoma City, in which the empty, temporarily re-occupied city had once again been stormed by insurgents, only this time, a supernatural blizzard came with them, forcing skycarriers out of area, and trapping the Safe America troops in the middle of a ring of enemies. They’d even made it through extended rotations in Central. And now, half a dozen of these legendary survivors were in what was known as Project: Horus, as pilots flew it to an aerospace factory in the remains of Texas. They were returning as the last thing they’d ever expected to be…heroes.

What had once been called the Lone Star State was dark and rainy, with the occasional town-sized patch of lights: Safe America had moderate control of this area, so reconstruction was under way, fueled by Labor Initiative camps. From the outside, Project: Horus couldn’t be seen at all…its stealth mode was activated. In one of its many passenger holds (which looked like high-tech waiting rooms), a group of six comrades sat and relaxed, unable to believe that they were finally going home. Though they were all under thirty, they’d lived what felt like a dozen lifetimes. For the first time in months, they were clean and shaven--Project: Horus had showers--and wearing something other than their battered uniforms. (“Safe America” t-shirts and flimsy athletic pants made of a squeaky material that none of them could remember the name of.) After what could only be described as an utter stroke of luck, their entire lives had changed, thanks to their discovery.

“I’m just saying, do you guys wanna hear my idea or not?”

“Not really, no.”

“Jack, c’mon…”

“Some of us are trying to sleep.”

“What, there aren’t fold-down cot thingies in the other rooms?”

“I like the cots in here.”

“What’s different about ‘em?”

“I don’t know.”

“That isn’t an ans--”

“Go ahead and tell us, Ben.”

“Well, I’m--”

“What, he finally says you can tell us, and you change your mind?”

“Okay! God. Okay. It’s about the nanotech.”

“I’ve heard this…”

“Shut up. Anyways, my theory is, they could undo the nanotech and change the environment back to normal, but they don’t want to. I know, you’re thinking that doesn’t make sense, ‘cause they have to pay to ship food in from other countries--but since they’re the only ones in the country with food, everybody has to come to them. That’s how they got us into Safe America, right? If anybody could grow or hunt their own food, it wouldn’t be so easy for ‘em to get bodies to do their crap. That’s the only reason the illegals come forward.”

“Actually, they don’t pay. I think they just threaten to invade people until they agree to trade food and water for, uh, not getting killed.”

“But my idea makes sense, right?”

“Well, yeah, of course.”

“See?!”

“Why’re you looking at me? I didn’t say I didn’t believe you, I just said I didn’t care. And now that you’ve told us, you can shut up and go back to fantasizing about your redheaded sex-slave.”

“I have feelings for her, you midieval little f--”

“And I had feelings for that actual steak I ate, last month. I understand completely.”

It looked like their last foreign post would be the South American theater…and the missions that opened and closed their time there had both been quite interesting. In their very first week, they’d had to tag along with a group of Falconers who’d been ordered to secure a ziggurat; a square, stairstep-looking pyramid. One of the militaries they were up against (in the wake of the invasion, many smaller countries had banded together) apparently had some sort of super-weapons, and were hold up in the pyramid with them. Conventional forces couldn’t get past the spotlight-like solar blasts. Predictably enough, the Falconers--reluctantly leading the charge--took out the first wave of them, and then flew right into the building, hoping to find those in command, while leaving a ton of enemy soldiers for the Safe America troops to fight. (The Falconers could have taken most of them out in a matter of seconds, with a few well-placed mini-missiles, but they were lazy.) After the bloody battle was over, the Falconers found a weird-looking crypt…they opened it up, and a wide range of monsters came pouring out. Though the Safe America troops eventually fought them off and got it closed, they were attacked by the monsters for weeks afterwards.

Their final mission had been what Safe America personnel referred to as media suicide--an operation that had little tactical value, but would provide a great photo-op or headline. These missions were often hastily-planned, in response to PR troubles for the President. As such, they went wrong more than most of their ops did, which was saying something. There was a massive statue of Jesus Christ that had overlooked a famous South American city; after the attacks, it was actually taken down and transported to a place where the ground was more secure. (The city had been utterly destroyed, of course.) Part of the army of a South American nation had formed their camp around it. Wertham thought it’d be a great visual--not just defeating enemy soldiers (who, admittedly, were serving a democratically-elected leader who had an excellent human rights record), but getting a picture with Giant Jesus and maybe putting it on display in New America. Unfortunately, the skycarrier got the wrong coordinates, and started the attack by accidentally blowing the statue to pieces. Later, hoping to put it back together, Wertham sent a small Safe America squad to the now-abandoned site…though the statue was beyond repair, they found something even better, hidden in an underground hangar that had been revealed by the bombing.

It had taken two months to figure out how to get past the ship’s security tech, and another week for pilots to get the controls down. The good news: as a reward for finding it, they could accompany it to the aerospace plant where it would be reverse-engineered and mass-produced. They all received promotions and would serve in a security capacity. The bad news: the plant was run by the same Falconers that had shafted them on their first mission in South America. Proving the Peter Principle, they too had been promoted, only it was because of their role in the crypt incident. (The Falconers’s report read differently than the truth, but pointing that out meant getting lured into a battlefield situation and then being executed on the spot for “insubordination”.)

From the outside, the factory was a series of unfinished, seemingly unconnected domes, with the usual hatches, ladders, long-range security cameras, and cannons that were on a network of rails, so they could be slid around, instead of being limited to a single arc of fire. Shantytowns made of tents and lean-tos surrounded the domes; they were where the Labor Initiative workers were kept. The whole affair was in a valley full of murdered trees and burial mounds. (Backhoes and dump trucks were situated precariously close to those mounds, a sign that the dead might be making way for more New American reconstruction.) There was no electricity outside of the domes, but there were a few dwindling campfires, along with doorless, slit-windowed concrete guardposts at fifty meter intervals. The constant rain had created tiny creeks that were half-water, half-debris. Project: Horus approached from the south, the pilots activating hailing frequencies and landing gear, still trying to learn the ins and outs of this strange craft.

“God, I love these seats. I think--yeah, I heard one of the tech guys say that if you eject in ‘em, they can fly all by themselves. They probably cost more than I’ll make in my entire life…”

“Like that’s hard, with the nothing we get paid. Okay, let’s drop below the storm, I think this thing can take--wait, what’s--huh, that’s weird. Check it out, the scanners aren’t picking up anybody in the camps.”

“They actually work, for once? Be still my beating heart. Must be in some of that ‘normal weather’ I keep hearing about.”

“Workers’re probably doing stuff inside. It’s been so long since I’ve been home, I forgot, nine-to-five ended with minimum wage and all the welfare programs, right? Hey, remind me to tell the Falconers that the factory’s scanproof shield thing is working fine, even this freaky tech can’t see through.”

“Ohhhh, sh--I just remembered, I need to pull up those surveillance logs we took when we flew over Mexico and burn ‘em to a disc.”

“Don’t be a baby. That one Falconer has a girlfriend that’s like fourteen, they aren’t gonna care that you were using top-secret technology to spy on some chicks in Cancun.”

“I’m telling you, we should’ve landed and picked ‘em up. It was sixty degrees there, man…I can’t remember sixty degrees. And there wasn’t anybody around to see our not-so-little secret. We promise them a better life or some bull like that, and bam! Instant mini-harem.”

“Will you put your headset back on? We just got a response, we’re cleared to land.”

“In the field, that crap matters, but back here? Screw it.”

“Well, you’ll fit right in with these guys--looks like amateurs are running the place. No protocol at all in the response, sounded like some bored kid.”

“What do you expect? It’s four in the morning, everybody that’s important is either asleep or getting some. Night crews always suck. Back when I flew the last F-18 in existence for the Navy--and for the record, I was the only one cleared for it--I had to make a night landing when this carrier was under attack from what was probably an EC sub, and--”

Project: Horus approached the only fully-finished dome, as massive, rectangle-shaped blast doors parted vertically and retracted. It just barely fit through. There was a sloping, square tunnel of a landing strip, and they hit the brakes, powering down without much friction. They glided to a stop in an empty, new-looking hangar that could have held a dozen skycarriers. For a few minutes, they simply waited, assuming that a flight crew would be coming to take things from here. But no-one showed up. After some more communication with the bored kid, a ramp lowered in the back of Project: Horus (which was something of a misleading name; “Project” implied that they’d built it, instead of simply enjoying the dumb luck of finding it), and both the Safe America troops (who’d put on their never-before-used dress uniforms) and the two pilots exited the ship. They were disappointed, as they’d hoped for a congratulations party, or at least some chicks. After all, they’d found something that could turn the entire New America situation around.

A grizzled, tan, fiftysomething man in Air Force blue came driving towards them in a jeep that had been painted black. Due to the size of the hangar, it took him a few minutes to arrive, and they were left just standing around awkwardly, as they were sick of conversation and experiencing the strange sensation of returning home for the first time, after having been in war.

The man screeched to a halt and hopped out rather athletically. His hair and beard were little more than bushy, dark grey stubble, and he wore an ill-fitting general’s uniform. After exchanging salutes and ordering them at ease, “Welcome to Texas, boys. That’s a real beaut you brought me. I’m General Droughns--our Falconers wanted to be here to meet ya, but they’re off on an op. I understand you flyboys have in-country leave for a few months, and you treasure-finders are my new security honchos, is that right?”

“Yes, sir. And we have the notes we came up with when we were figuring things out, sir. Everything you need to know to fly her.” He handed Droughns a binder.

“Well, alrighty then. Is it just the eight of ya? You know how it is…we’re undermanned, and I didn’t have time to get your bunks set up just yet.”

This was how they treated heroes? “Yes, sir, just the eight of us.”

“Okay, I’ll take care of that right quick.” Droughns had a wired, police-style radio clipped to his belt, which he pulled out and spoke into. “Sergeant, I need eight bunks prepared in the southwest residential wing. Sergeant?” He cursed. “Reception ain’t always the best, down here.” He began walking to find a better signal. “Would ya close the back door on that thing? The brainiacs don’t show up ‘til tomorrow, so nobody’ll be looking at it for tonight.”

After they did, and after he’d put some distance between himself and them, an orange, comet-esque streak, with a black dash in its tip, blasted towards the ship. It stopped short, swerving into the area that the pilots and soldiers were standing in. Though it was a relatively weak blast, they were vaporized instantly, and the ship took the explosion easily. Because of the empty space and metal walls, it echoed for a ridiculously long time.

“General Droughns” dropped his Texan accent and his good-old-boy demeanor, speaking into the radio. “It’s over--and I’ve got the notes. Put all the weapons and supplies we scavenged in the trucks, and drive ‘em down here…this thing is big enough to hold it all. Yeah, you aren’t gonna believe what it is. I don’t want to stay here a minute longer than we have to, so double-time it, in case somebody shows up. And tell my daughter that that was a great shot.”

His real name was Robert Zelner--he was the leader of the group of insurgents that had taken down the asylum tower in Central, last month. Most had written them off as bandits. In truth, that attack had been the first stage of their plan--the next stage involved Project: Horus, which one of their spies had found out about. They hadn’t known any of the details, just that something important would be coming to an aerospace factory in Texas…and imagine their surprise when, while watching that factory from a safe distance, they saw the Falconers get drunk, slaughter most of their workforce, and then take off with their Safe America contingent, leaving an inexperienced, easily-tricked skeleton crew behind. Zelner and co. had freed what few workers there were. Though Zelner was an insurgent, he wasn’t loyal to the overall community of them…forget following their lead, he had a plan that harkened back to the very beginning of America, and this amazing ship would help him carry it out. If the other insurgents tried to stop him, well, they’d have Project: Horus to contend with.

---------------------------

Euthanasia was usually only thought of in medical terms, but the actual phenomenon was much more far-reaching than that. For instance, at what point did you decide to let a relationship die? Or an idea? Or a country? Plugs were being pulled on all sorts of things, all the time, all over the world. The underlying conflict was always a vague blend of destiny and fatalism versus human intervention. Was something supposed to live or die, and we were messing it up by interfering? For the longest time, humanity had looked at outcomes it couldn’t control and written them off as fate…but now, as they became more powerful, this helpless worldview found itself obsolete, as we certainly could control many things that had once been in the hands of gods. All of this led to an epidemic of convoluted second-guessing. Was this supposed to have succeeded, even though it was failing, or was its failure a sign that it was flawed? In the case of the American Empire, Wertham’s secret dream for his son would have fallen apart by now if not for the actions of Jarvis, who, like Atlas, was carrying America’s entire world on his shoulders. Were superhumans just the next step in mankind’s path towards becoming their own gods, or were they keeping defective societies on life-support, propping up zombified continents?

Upon seeing him, entire armies had turned and fled. Mountains and islands were left shattered in his wake. He’d shouted orders while literally ignoring hits from missiles, tanks, and suicide-bombers. When a battleship had been unable to get to a key conflict in time, he’d picked it up and carried it, traumatizing countless fish (and thus ruining their taste for future predators) as he dropped it back into the ocean. He’d singlehandedly defeated the last decent aerial force in the world, China’s Dragonwing Mech Squadron (they’d ventured into American Empire airspace). Ten thousand leftover Nazis had swarmed over him under a purple sky in Antarctica, and though it had taken twenty hours, he’d slaughtered them completely, ending up standing on a hill of smoldering skeletons. They’d attacked him with weapons that used the sun, the atom, and the molten soul of the earth. He’d led more charges than he could remember. His life consisted of going from one botched Safe America op to the next, always expected to save the day and make up for the lack of morale, money, manpower, planning, and preparation. Without ego at all, he could say that they’d have lost well over half of their major battles, if not for his presence.

Jarvis’s life was built around one unshakable belief: the attacks had changed everything. Even before then, he’d felt that the newly-renamed Lair Legion was holding back, somewhat…and afterwards, he knew that the only way humanity would survive was if superheroes took the gloves off. Someone had to make the hard decisions. Those were the sorts of ‘80s movie tough guy cliches that Price had filled his head with, which, on the surface, seemed like a natural extrapolation of the superhero concept. Yes, they’d always valued humanity’s well-being more than the law. Yes, the fate of civilization was much more important than bureaucracy and red tape. But superheroes usually balanced that out by doing everything in their power to be both right and competent, while Wertham seemed incapable of either. Jarvis, of course, thought that the President had his heart in the right place, and that he just needed a little help. His view was that global security and stability came first, and until they’d restored that, everything else could wait. Yes, they’d made things considerably more unstable by invading so many countries at once, but, someone had to take charge.

There was a special wing in the Presidential compound underneath Washington, DC. It was a suite of rooms that were just as eerily quiet as the ghost cities that now comprised much of New America--a foyer, a study, a dining room, a kitchen, a living room, several bathrooms, “guest bedrooms”, and a master bedroom. Lights were kept on 24/7. Food was restocked on a continual basis. Linens were traded every few days. A rotating set of naked women--who had to meet an extremely high set of physical qualifications--were kept in the guest bedrooms, forced to lie there all day, in case he wanted them. Unsurprisingly, Jarvis was virtually never there. His untitled duty kept him far too busy to stay there for more than a few hours at a time. The help had to be threatened, bribed, or drugged into cleaning it (though they stayed out of the master bedroom and tried not to look at the naked women in the other bedrooms), as they were terrified of going into an area that felt like it was profanely sacred; regardless of what they were told, they were sure it was off-limits under penalty of death. Its air was electric. High ceilings, tons of floorspace, personal trophies of war that were kept under glass.

Teenagers in maid uniforms were tiptoeing around the suite, trying to dust and change towels as quietly and quickly as they could. They were afraid to touch anything, but the drugs they’d been given helped loosen them up, though not by much. As a general rule, they lived in near-darkness, down in a powerless cell of a room, and going from that into this blinding, magnificent universe was too surreal for words. Their fears were justified, of course…they’d seen Jarvis and other higher-ups kill people for what was essentially nothing, they’d seen Jarvis mistake maids for his harem-girls. Lacey had never been seen again after taking just one candy from the crystal dish in the foyer, and they always ended up throwing out that candy, anyway, as he never ate it. There was a picture of Lisa that had been crooked for weeks; one of the maids, who had mild obsessive-compulsive tendencies, was fighting the urge to straighten it. Then, suddenly, the room’s air shifted--a massive door swung open, somewhere that they couldn’t see. The maids wisely ran for the service entrance.

Jarvis stormed into the foyer, his insanely-expensive suit shredded, revealing a black, molecularly-dense bodysuit underneath, which had zippered pockets and was zipped up to his neck. No gloves. Wind-resistance from the supersonic flight back to New America had wiped the suit from his face, in addition to messing up his hair. The South American offensive had gone horribly--they’d won, but the buildings they were supposed to capture had been destroyed in the process, and they’d lost about a quarter of their troops to serious injury or death--while the North Pole recon had resulted in both an ambush and an avalanche. Safe America had finally gotten a baseship through the ice, which would serve the troops much better than their outdoors camp, only someone had set off explosives high on a glacial hill, aiming an avalanche at the makeshift river that the ship was anchored in. Jarvis had used countless blasts of cosmic energy to vaporize the wave of snow, and afterwards, they hadn’t even given him a meaningful “thank you”. Oh, they’d said the words, but the weary, annoyed look in their eyes was far louder. They were taking him for granted…they were all taking him for granted.

Just in terms of basic fairness, he knew that he should be President, by now. He had far more sweat equity invested in New America than Wertham did. Wertham sat in an office all day long while his advisors did all the work, and when they presented him with pre-packaged solutions to problems that he’d often caused or made worse, he understood maybe half of them and tuned out the rest, as he didn’t want to hear anything negative. Whereas Jarvis was keeping the American Empire from going down the toilet almost all by his lonesome (they did have a few other superhuman operatives), and it seemed like he was the only one left in Wertham’s inner-circle who cared about going after the aliens. He’d pestered Wertham and Price and Vasquez to hurry up and get this new space program going, as we’d hopefully be done fighting these wars someday, and we should be prepared to get moving on the things that really matter. But the country was already having a new Civil War; overthrowing Wertham would just add to the chaos. Jarvis honestly did want what was best for New America, which was why he hadn’t just wiped out what little remaining government there was and made it Jarvisland or something. He was sure he could change the system from the inside.

At the moment, however, he just wanted to get away from everyone. Jarvis went to his master bedroom, which was the only place on earth that the New American government was afraid to intrude on. It was larger than most people’s (pre-attacks) houses, with its own kitchen, bathroom, swimming pool, sauna, hot tub, bank of viewscreens, home office, and stairs that led to a bed that was on a tall, altar-like structure. Except for the bathroom and sauna, it was all one open area. Jarvis removed the remains of his conventional clothing (which smelled like a combination of gunpowder, saltwater, gasoline, and the so-called Kyrean spectrum of cosmic energy), leaving it on the floor and sitting on the maroon footstool of a chair that he’d thrown at a maid, last week. (She’d actually managed to dodge it, and he’d had her signed up for Safe America immediately.) He had time for maybe three hours of sleep, before they needed him to help an African leader out with a superhuman problem, in the hopes of making him forget that Wertham’s dog had peed on him, when he’d last visited Washington.

Jarvis used the room’s voice-controlled lighting to darken things to a sunset. Then, rubbing his eyes, Jarvis said, “Do you have any idea how many people have tried to kill me?”

Someone stepped out from behind his pillar-mounted bed: it was Mary Vasquez, in the long, silk, dark green robe she always wore. Since everyone who worked in the Presidential compound also lived there, they were used to seeing each other in their pajamas and so on, it was practically like a frathouse. (Some of them even had to share rooms and bathrooms, which was a sitcom waiting to happen.)

“You’re lucky I decided to find out who you were instead of just blowing you away--sometimes, I get lazy.” He stood up, stretching. “If this is about an op, you can forget it. I’m done for the day.”

“It isn’t. I think we can help each other out.”

“Which is a non-political way of saying ‘Let’s make a deal’, right? It is way too late at night for this mutual back-scratching crap.”

“Just hear me out, okay? There’s something I think you need to know.”

Apparently ignoring that: “Does the President know you’re here?”

“No.”

Jarvis gave her a vaguely scandalized, “Well, isn’t that interesting?” expression that would have been better-suited on an elderly woman’s face.

“Look…the President, well, he didn’t exactly tell you everything about that Swarm tech.”

Jarvis’s amused look quickly crashed into a more outraged visage. After the initial wave of shock passed, he let loose with both a stream of profanity and thrown pieces of furniture. Mary ducked back behind the pillar-bed. Glass shattered, wood splintered, bottles of wines were shot in midair with cosmic energy, and tiny chunks of debris bounced around the room.

When she saw that he was about to head for the door, she shouted, “He didn’t tell you because he didn’t know!!”

That stopped him. He turned and then, in a combination of a jump and short flight, ended up just a few feet in front of her, jabbing a finger in her direction. “But you did, right?!”

For someone who had invoked the anger of a man that could touch certain stars without flinching, she stayed remarkably calm. “Listen, just--just listen. I didn’t want to talk about it in front of him. He doesn’t know the whole story.”

“Yeah, right. Why not??”

“You know how he is, for god’s sake! I love him, but, whenever we find something that’ll actually be useful, he completely screws it up. I mean, the entire world was on the same page, after the attacks…how long did it take him to run that into the ground? He didn’t want to spend time or money to weaponize the entire skycarrier fleet, he put that idiot friend of his father’s in charge of the supersoldier program…”

His anger was suddenly drowned out by the implications of what she’d said. “Wait a--are you saying we actually have Swarm technology??” Though he wanted to wring her neck, that stuff had to be gotten to the labs or the front lines, post-haste. It could mean all the difference in their wars.

What she’d said about Wertham had been true, but now she had to mix facts and lies--though Jarvis knew about Project: Horus, he couldn’t find out about Project: Helios--so she said, “It really did melt down after we got it, but one piece survived. Unfortunately, we don’t know what it actually is, because of how they shredded all the documents related to the Swarm tech--all we know is that it wasn’t classified as a weapon, at the time it was put into storage. I found out about it after the attacks, when my clearance was raised. It’s in Virginia. As soon as I knew, I sent a team to recover it and bring it back here, but they said their hazmat gear wasn’t powerful enough to get near it. It’s in a windowless containment room that’s marked C-11, that’s the highest level for dangerous substances. The only hazmat suits we had that were capable of withstanding that level, well…”

“…they were in the North Dakota bunker that the original Washington higher-ups went to, right?”

She was glad to be getting back to telling the truth. “Yeah. The suits didn’t survive the attacks, either.”

Jarvis ran a hand through his hair, trying to process it all. “Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?!”

“I wasn’t authorized to--I’m still not! I could get fired or imprisoned if they found out I told you, if not outright executed, considering that I’m leaking classified intel.”

“I have the highest clearance, just like you.”

“They still didn’t want you to know. They were afraid you’d look into it yourself, and that it might hurt you or kill you. Yeah, you’re invulnerable, but we have no idea what this thing is supposed to do. You’re all that’s holding New America together…you know that. They didn’t want to take the risk, especially on something that isn’t even a weapon.”

Finally having received the ego-gratification he’d been longing for, Jarvis decided that he no longer wanted it. “What is this, some kind of trap? You send me and hope it kills me?”

“Of course not!! Don’t be ridiculous.” Her heart was pounding; though this wasn’t the backstab, Wertham’s attempt to create a superhuman body for his son (otherwise known as Project: Helios) was indeed the coming backstab. If he figured out the right truth about the wrong situation, it’d still be just as destructive.

Jarvis reconsidered. She hadn’t had to tell him about how dangerous it was--if she were trying to kill him, it’d be easier if he went in blind. Besides, of all the neocons, he trusted her the most, and he knew that she did value him, though this was the first time she’d ever said it out loud. “Okay, okay. Sorry.”

“I kept trying to get them to send some robots to take a look at it--you never know, they might not melt or something--but we were so busy with everything else, we never got around to it. They thought it’d be throwing money away.”

“So…what now? You want me to take a look at it, right?”

“Yeah, to see if it’s anything we can use But, for god’s sake, be careful.”

“Aren’t there security cams watching it, something like that? Why didn’t your team just use those to see what it was?”

“The building’s power got knocked out in the attacks--the damage is too bad to repair. Backup power is a nuclear fission battery that’ll last either a few eons or until Elvis comes back to take us all home, but it only covers emergency lighting, electronic locks, and controlled environments. And the skeleton crew that worked there all starved to death.”

“Look…if this turns out to be important, I’m not gonna let ‘em kill you, so don’t worry about that. They’re the ones that should be executed for treason. Knowing about this all this time and not doing anything about it, god. Plus, if this ever got out--! They can’t give the insurgents that kind of propaganda ammo.”

Satisfied that she’d sold him on the first half--she really did need him to check out that piece of Swarm tech, which Wertham really didn’t know about, but she’d obviously had to avoid any mention of the fact that two pieces had actually survived, the second of which they were using for Project: Helios, which Jarvis really couldn’t find out about--it was time to move on to the second. She gave him about thirty seconds to digest it, and then said, “Originally, I was just planning on telling you this and not asking for anything in return, but, I do need your help with something else.”

“What is it?”

“I’d really, really appreciate it if you’d drop the Price issue. I know, he was effective, but he was starting to lose it, trust me. And there are things that neither you or the President know about.”

“Sounds like there are quite a few things like that,” Jarvis muttered.

She kicked herself for putting it that way. “No, I mean--you know how controlling Price was. Well, remember when we sent Sabrina off, after the divorce?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“He actually had her killed,” she lied. “The President doesn’t know. That’s part of why I talked him into sending Price to the boonies. I thought about telling him, but, considering how much pressure he’s under, I’m afraid he couldn’t take it.”

“My god…”

She resisted the urge to smile. In one fell swoop, she’d made Jarvis feel sympathetic towards Wertham and provided a good cover-story for why her main rival and his skill shouldn’t be a topic for discussion, which had been tempting Wertham to bring him back into the fold. In truth, she hated manipulating people, but since she thought of herself as the last sane person in power in New America, she had no other choice. Her fellow neocons were enamored with an unwieldy empire, subscribing to a version of reality that had turned out to be completely untrue--they kept acting as if they’d never been proven wrong, even though their faulty “plan” was making things worse. (As if things needed any more help, thanks to the Swarm.) Also, though he seemed normal on the surface, Price had to be completely insane, and he’d been making Wertham more and more extreme. Price was her superior when it came to mindgames, so she’d had to turn what had been an honest, loving relationship into a means of sexual control, just to keep Wertham from going off the deep end, mentally or ideologically.

The only way any America would survive was if she had total command of him. So, she pretended to love the American Empire idea (that train had left the station; and she initially had approved of it, albeit as a temporary, carefully-controlled plan to keep the geopolitical structure together), while doing her best to keep Wertham anchored in the facts, but without overwhelming him with their seemingly-hopeless situation. She thought she was doing pretty well. “Killing” Sabrina had been a mistake, however, as she could have been a useful ally. Mary’s possessiveness had gotten the better of her. Until the future of her country was on the line, Mary had never used sex to get places in life. In truth, she’d only been with four men, all long-term relationships. (Though three had been affairs.) But now, she had no choice. She knew that Price had survived her passive attempt at murdering him (by not sending help), and in a game of people-influencing chess between the two, he could easily win. God help her, her gender was her only advantage. With the President theoretically sexually-relaxed, she now had to turn to Jarvis: to gain his trust, to get him to do things that needed to be done, and to protect her lover from him until he was no longer a threat.

She stepped closer to him, breathing heavily due to their confrontation, and allowing her robe to fall open just a bit, thus showing a generous slice of sweat-soaked cleavage. “The President and I desperately need your help, okay? This isn’t about politics or even national security, anymore, we have to do whatever it takes to win these wars and make this empire thing work, or else it’s all over.” Whether she meant it’d be all over for the people of America or the current government of America, she didn’t say. “I don’t care if we have to turn into monsters, for a while: if we have to kill every last illegal and insurgent in the country, so be it. Once things are back on track, we can go back to--well, not normal, but as close as we’re ever gonna get. Yeah, I know, you don’t agree with the other neocons. Hey, neither do I. We need a version of the empire plan that actually works. But if anybody’s gonna sway the President away from them, it has to be the two of us…we’re the only ones in a position to do it.”

“Of course I’ll help America. That’s what I’ve been doing doing 24/7 for the last six years, you don’t even have to ask. I never thought of it that way, though…you’re right, it isn’t fair to ask the American people to take another hit, another loss, especially not after Vietnam and the attacks. It isn’t just a strategic thing, it’s a power thing, we have to win. For the good of the country.”

“Exactly. Look, I--I want to make it up to you. I mean, about not telling you about the Swarm tech sooner. And, well, I know they give you girls, but, I don’t think they appreciate you in the same way I do. I’m not trying to compare what I’ve done to what you’ve done, but, we’re kind’ve equals, in some ways. I see what you do for our country every single day.”

“Oh, of course we are. We help in different ways, but still, it’s the same idea behind it.”

Mary loosened her belt and rolled her shoulders, letting her robe drop to the floor. She then wiped some of the sweat off, her fingertips and palms dragging from her shoulders to the swell of her breasts, to her flat stomach and the inwards curves of her sides and the outwards curves of her hips, to just below her belly-button. Then, she looked at him hungrily, allowing her mouth to fall open slightly.

Jarvis anti-instinctively backed away. “Wow. I mean, um, I want to, and, well, I know I’ve earned it--but it’d kill him, if he found out. You said it yourself, he’s under a ton of stress. It’s safer not to.”

She tried not to roll her eyes at the “earned it” comment. “C’mon, you’ve seen him with those teenage girls…it’s an open relationship. I never took advantage of that, before tonight, but if I ever did, I know he’d want it to be with you. To thank you.”

“Well…”

She kissed him, pressing her body against his. He couldn’t help but wrap his arms around her, his hands soon going south of the border, squeezing. Afterwards, she playfully pushed herself off of his chest.

He was fingering the zipper at the top of his suit, right underneath his neck. “Turn around, slowly, and stretch.”

She did as she was told, flashing him a smile over her shoulder. “Like what you see? It’s true, what they say about Hispanic girls…best rears in the world.”

Jarvis firmly held each breast, rubbing her nipples with his thumbs. “Just this once, okay?”

Mary showed him innocent, doe-like eyes. “I’ve, uh, I’ve never been with a super, before, so be gentle…but not too gentle.”

“I won’t hurt you, baby.”

“How do you want me to start?”

“On your knees.”

She smiled. As she got down, she said, “Just you and me, baby, ruling the American Empire and saving the world…”



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