Evil Genius (Part 10)

Chapter 2

As his henchmen carried Meg across the lawn back to the White House, newly christened Skull Manor in the last month, Ivan followed slowly behind. He was starting to get depressed again and, frankly, almost everyone in the world would agree with him that there was a lot to be depressed about.

Once he had made it clear to everyone that he really, truly didn’t assign even one ounce of value to their lives, most people decided that it was in their best interest to stay as much out of his way as possible. In practical terms this meant emptying out of the cities, since those were the most likely targets the next time someone evoked his wrath, and heading to the vast expanses of rural land in between. Here small bands of people would gather together and, assuming they didn’t kill each other on sight (which happened fairly frequently), form small farming villages and communes. This meant, of course, that within the span of about 2 weeks, 90% of the world’s workforce simply stopped showing up at work. The domino effect to the global economy was swift and absolute. First, money became useless and the barter system was reinstated. Then, with no one but computerized algorithms and the occasional devoted bureaucrat left to run them, all the public utilities started to fail. Cell service went almost immediately, then natural gas followed. Power went out after about 90 days, and finally running water ran no more.

The radio and television airwaves had stayed somewhat active at first, thanks to media moguls with industrial-sized generators and egos as well as battery-operated receivers. But as each day started to more and more resemble the last, with less and less new news trickling in, most people decided that there wasn’t much worth listening to anymore and that there were better uses that their limited supply of batteries could be put to. Young women in particular seemed extremely concerned with protecting the battery reserves. Eventually, the only ones left broadcasting were the same deep-woods hermits who had been on the air predicting the apocalypse for years, but all most of them were doing was gloating and saying “see, they told me I was crazy but look who’s laughing now”. But even though almost all of them said some version of this (even the ones who weren’t actually on the air and had just been talking into pine cones and using tin foil antennas), none of them actually laughed when they said it. The irony was lost on them.

For a while, too, the highways were full of traffic as some folk streamed into cities from the countryside to do some looting while most streamed out to literally search for greener pastures. But with no new oil and gas being delivered and a finite supply in each area, soon most cars became nothing more than road ornaments littering the interstates, or else they were converted into non-mobile homes in a newly-formed shanty-town.

In short, in the span of 6 months the world was sent back to approximately mid-18th century living. The most technically advanced group in the world was now the Amish. Unlike the renegade broadcasters though, this irony was not lost on them. As a group, though, they were probably the least surprised about the recent events. As far as they were concerned, the world had just gone on a 300-year rumspringa and was now finally getting back to where it was supposed to be.

This wasn’t what the Doctor had planned. He had always aspired to be something like an Ayatollah, but ruling the world instead of just one country. And in even the most backwards third-world country, the dictator managed to live in lavish luxury even as his people starved. But this was not the case with him. Sure he had the most powerful generators to provide him with electricity, and more gas to power them than anyone else on Earth. But even his supplies were not infinite, and before too long he’d be on candles and heating oil like the masses already were. And sure he never had to lift a finger to get anything he wanted; the problem was that there simply wasn’t a whole lot of luxury to have. There was very little fresh anything to be had anymore, and more and more he found his dinner consisting of various canned goods. Between their expiration date and his sanity, he really couldn’t guess which would give first. But of all that he had to endure, it was the collapse of indoor plumbing that bothered him the most. The truth is, no matter how powerful one becomes, one does not feel powerful when one is pooping in a bucket.

He had tried to fix these things of course. But, as it turns out, some orders are easier to follow than others. Ordering someone to do a menial task like throwing another log or musician on the fire was a hell of a lot easier than ordering them to “sort out the whole power and plumbing thing.” It wasn’t a question of will. His men would gladly crawl through broken glass on their hands and knees just for the privilege of being the one to take the bullet for him. But, as it happens, the people most suited to that purpose aren’t particularly adept at highly-skilled technical work, nor are they well-suited to seek out the individuals who are.

And so, with little choice in the matter Doctor Destructo, great ruler of the broken machine known as Earth, persevered. His almost-nightly exercise with the Courtland girl had been the highlight of his day the last few months. It’s true that she was hopelessly outmatched and would never succeed, but the weapons he gave her were real enough. And she had come so close to besting him once, wasn’t it at least technically possible that it could happen again? That’s what he told himself anyway, and that thought alone was enough to give him at least some minor thrill of victory each night that he foiled her. Some small daily affirmation that whatever this world had become, he was still the ruler of it.

And now that bitch wanted to take that away from him. He would kill her, of course, because failing to back-up a threat was the beginning of the end for any figure of authority. But her death would give him no pleasure. Just one more head on the Mall.

And, frankly, one more head was not what that Mall needed. What had seemed like such a poetic and symbolic gesture at the time had backfired immensely. When he had first conceived of this grand vision of the heads of one thousand decapitated adversaries on spikes sprawling as far as the eye could see, he had failed to account for his other senses. Specifically, what the heads of a thousand decapitated adversaries might smell like after 3 months of sitting in the hot summer sun. But the Mall wasn’t even the worst of it. Do you know what happens to a lagoon of blood once it’s been allowed to congeal? Ivan did; and as a result all the lagoon-facing windows had been shut and sealed permanently.

As he neared his private entrance to Skull Manor, he was filled with immense fury at what she was doing to him. But more than that, he felt terrified. Because for probably the first time in his life, he really and truly had no idea what the hell he was supposed to do now.