Superpowers: Sacrifice (Part VII)

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The year was 1961. Stockton had not spent the last few years while in exile playing solitaire and shoveling snow in Antarctica. He had continued working. His loyalists had been dispatched across Usonia to gather intelligence, much in the same way they had with the nations from earlier stages. Some spies were already in place, but much had changed since then, so he needed updated information. But this was not all he did. He had also succeeded in funding the campaign for the new leader of the free world.

Usonia was famous for pioneering a new form of governmental elections; one that was copied by other countries not long after it proved to be successful. For the first two months of an election year, every participating city large enough to qualify would hold their own presidential election. Anyone within reach who wanted to run for president would be able to, and for those first two months, they only had to convince their city that they were the right person for the job. No other city would even pay attention to them, and it was common to be running unopposed. For the next two months, each candidate who had won their city election would run a second campaign; this time competing with all the other city winners in their county. They would do this with a heavier purse, and greater notoriety. All county winners competed with each other for the next two months to win their state. Winners from a region of six states would compete across another two months until there were a total of seven candidates that would run against each other in the nationwide election for the last five weeks of the year. The incumbent would sometimes run as the eighth candidate, but they were not actually allowed to campaign since this was a distraction from running the country.

One benefit of this election structure was that it prevented only the richest from having a chance to serve their people. It did not take much money to campaign across a single city, and if you won that one, people would start to notice you, and provide you with funds so that you could go further. This also removed the need for political parties. Before this structure was implemented, people would regularly vote for whichever candidate belonged to their party, and all but completely ignore their actual position on the issues. This also meant that the candidates could be gradually whittled down until only the best remained, and once the electorate only have seven people to vote for, they knew that the six they were not yet familiar with had already been vetted by their area’s voters. But it was not without its flaws. When only rich and/or famous people could run for office, you pretty much knew what you were getting into. But when a random person from a random city who had no experience, could potentially run the country, it was possible to generate a somewhat fabricated narrative for them without anyone noticing. And this was especially true of any election before the data network was invented, and any six-year-old with a computer could run a background check.

Former governor of Federama, Frederick Stockton used this flaw to his advantage. Near the end of 1959, he personally traveled to Usonia in secret and recruited a woman named Larisa Peters. She had no prior aspirations for leadership, but she had a passion for politics, and a strong community in her Telamonic temple. Many believed in her, and her ideas of peace from sacrifice integrated well with Stockton’s plans for finally disarming the world. She would end up making one of the greatest sacrifices to carry out what she believed to be a righteous mission. She ran for president in the large city nearest to her town on a mild and generic platform; one that she won easily due to Stockton’s secret financial contributions. She continued through the elections, and found herself president eight months later.

After taking her position in the capital, Peters took a radical stance against Federama. She started out slowly making waves; an offhanded comment here, a meeting with the right person there. Within only a few months time, she had managed to create dozens of resistance groups all over; people who were angry with her, and were attempting to get her to step down. Protests began to crop up across the land, and she was facing a ton of backlash from congress. Almost no one was happy with her term, and the few who were happy could not be loud enough to be heard. Nobody so much as suspected that Peters had been working with Stockton. Again, this was before the personal computer was invented, and so tracing the campaign funds, and connecting the dots, would have been difficult at best.

The resistance grew and merged, until someone had the bright idea of making the connection between Peters’ ideas and everything that a certain former island leader had feared years ago. Suddenly, Stockton was no longer a pariah, but a hero to the people; one with a following ten times larger than his home’s population. Everybody wanted to be part of history, even if they weren’t educated enough to understand what the issues really were. More recruiters from the Antarctic base were dispatched to Usonia, and contacted the protesters. Together, they formulated a plan to get Stockton back on the radar for good, and in the best light possible. Eventually, he was able to officially step out of exilement, and begin to speak across Usonia. His following continued to increase until even people who weren’t really part of it agreed that he had been right all along.

Stockton held a highly publicized event where he would go to the capital of Usonia and request a meeting with President Peters. They stepped into a room together and began discussing the final stage of the final stage. It didn’t take very long, but they wanted to make it seem like Stockton was working tirelessly to convince her to change her mind, and so they just played cards for several hours. Once enough time had passed, an agreement had been supposedly reached. Peters took to the podium and announced plans to relieve her country of every single one of its nuclear weapons, and to place a moratorium on nuclear research that pertained to its applications for violence. People would go on to say that she only agreed to this so that she would not lose her chance at a second term, but most didn’t care. As long as the job was done, it didn’t matter how it had happened.

Months later, it was once again the eighth day of the eighth month, on the anniversary of the Utah bombing that had ultimately killed Stockton’s parents. He had invited his now gracer, President Peters to visit the secret Antarctic base. She was actually still at risk of being impeached by her electorate, but she wasn’t worried about that. Someone else could have the chair. She had no intention of putting her name on the ballot in 1965 anyway. She had some news of her own to give to Frederick, but wanted to let him tell his news first. He escorted her to a viewing room they overlooked the floor, and then went downstairs alone. Every single one of the hundreds of bombs and missiles that had not already begun the process of dismantlement were in one place. She positioned her lips over the microphone. “Is this safe?”

“You are perfectly safe in there,” Stockton assured her from the floor.

“Are you safe? Should you not be wearing protection, or something?”

“I was born immune to nuclear radiation.”

“You were? Because of Utah?”

“Because of Utah.”

“What are you doing, Frederick?”

“I want you to know that I had not intended on bringing you into this. I didn’t even know you existed when I started my plans. But those plans had to change, and when I first recruited you, I never knew that I would fall in love.”

“You’re scaring me. What are you going to do with these weapons? Why have they not yet been destroyed?”

“The world is sick, Larisa. It needs to be cleansed. I started forming this plan when I was still only a child. I never thought I would actually be able to get away with it, but humans have proved to be just as predictable as I suspected. Even with my setbacks and alterations, things went about the same as I thought they would. The only surprise was you and me. And I’m sorry for what I have to do now.”

“Oh my God. You’re going to send the bombs, aren’t you. This was your plan? To become what you claimed to fear the entire time?”

Frederick smiled. “That’s funny. You’ll understand. It might take years, but once I’m done here, and the world can begin anew, you’ll know that my mission was the best thing to happen to this planet since its coalescence.”

“Frederick. Don’t do this. You hear me? Do. Not. Do this!”

“Push the button, Tanner,” Frederick ordered.

“No!” Peters yelled, but Roma Tanner was in a separate room, so she couldn’t get to him. She banged on the door and watched in horror as Roma pushed the latte-colored button.

“Godspeed,” Roma said into the microphone. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you. Your country, and your planet, appreciates your sacrifice, even if they never know what happened here today.”

Frederick Stockton stepped into the machine and placed his hands on the metal bars to each side of him. The radiation from the weapons began to leak out of them and seep into his body. The power increased exponentially until he had absorbed all of the radiation. “If I could have,” he said through coughs and tremors, “I would have sent the weapons themselves, but we simply do not have the technology for it. The more I waited to implement the plan, the more weapons I would have needed to transport, and the more rockets I would have needed to build. I would never be able to keep up, and so this is my sacrifice. There is no truly safe way to dismantle a nuclear bomb, Larisa. They’re always dangerous, and the ones I let go could come back and bite you in the ass one day. There is also no safe way to set one off. You could do it over the ocean, but do you really want to do that for every bomb in the world? The environmental repercussions are beyond human understanding. I couldn’t risk that either. The only safe method is to get them off-world, and only I can do that. Close me up, Tanner.”

“Yes sir,” Roma replied.

Frederick continued speaking into his microphone. “I’m sorry it has to end like this, but also...I’m not sorry.” The door of the machine closed in front of him and lurched. It was preparing for takeoff. “I love you.”

“Oh my God, it’s a spaceship.” Larisa placed her hand over her mouth and gasped.

Roma began to count down, “Eleven...ten...nine...”

“Wait!” Larisa screamed. “Wait! I’m pregnant!”

Frederick smiled again. “I wish I could meet my child. How about we name the baby Gardenia? After my mother. Could you make that sacrifice for me?”

Tears dripped from Larisa’s cheeks. “That’s a beautiful name. It isn’t a sacrifice.”

“...one.”

“Goodbye.” The rocket shot out of the base and through the sky. It soared out of the atmosphere and into space. It was designed with no navigation. It was just supposed to go upwards as far as it could, for as long as it could. It was not until the rest of the world had mastered space travel did people know how far Stockton had made it away from the planet before his ship blew up. He died without ever being sure that his mission had succeeded. Since that day, save a few outliers that were stopped, the only nuclear research conducted had been for benevolent reasons like renewable energy. Frederick Stockton landed in the history books as the leader who had made the greatest sacrifice for the happiness of mankind.

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Microstory 195: Vilhelm Kardos

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After accidentally being responsible for a balcony collapse, Vilhelm Kardos took a vow of silence. He was born with the ability to manipulate his own density, which means that he could be as light as a feather, or as heavy as an anvil. This allowed him to walk on water, and somewhat in the air as a mild level of flight. In its natural state, his body was extremely durable and strong, but he could also adjust the atoms he was composed of so as to pass unharmed through solid matter. His ability promised a number of impressive military applications, and so he was recruited by a paramilitary organization. He never agreed to join them, but part of his vow of silence was to abstain from argument in any form. He allowed them to take him away without pushing back, even though he could get past them easily. They spent weeks trying to break him down and convince him to help them, but he never said a word. He remained in his cell the entire time, moving only to eat, drink, and relieve himself. After finally resigning themselves to the fact that Vilhelm was never going to budge on his position, they switched tactics and pulled him into a new program. They used technology to steal his ability and transfer it to Phaedra Wirth. An unfortunate side effect of this was his death. Phaedra later turned on her superiors and went on to use his ability for good, but his influence on Bellevue and the world was not limited to this. Out of his years of silence came a plan, and a series of events first set by him that would shift humanity into a new age.

Microstory 194: Otto Vann

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Otto Vann was a wicked man. He was the most twisted of his siblings, having fully embraced their violent cult that encouraged torture. But be took things one step further, choosing to brutally murder people just for fun. The purpose of their sect’s form of torture was to recruit a following, but Otto had an insatiable thirst for death. He became a notorious serial killer across all of Europe. Yet his existence was really only rumored. He never killed the same way twice, and he did not have a hunting ground. He would cross into a different country for each kill, and only circle back around once he was finished with all of the others. Of course, his kill count was never really known, but it was estimated to have been in hundreds, possibly over a thousand. Like his sister and twin brother, his ability was fairly weak, but it was enough to come in handy. He was capable of manipulating the oxygen in the immediate area, and would regularly use it to make his victims unable to breath, without having to leave any marks. He would also use a special technique to make his torture victims high on the oxygen, so that they could be more easily influenced into falling in line. Otto's family was not entirely aware of his proclivities, but they knew that he was going beyond his calling. His brother tried to get him to be more careful, his sister did her best to stay out of it, and his parents couldn't care less, as long as it wasn't interfering with his responsibility to increase the numbers of their cult. He was finally discovered after trying to join up with Bellevue, and later died a prisoner. But his life was not a complete waste. His ability was replicated with technology, and used to create a new form of firefighting. Instead of trying to drown or snuff out the flames, their fuel source could simply be sucked away in an instant.

Microstory 193: Luka Drake

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To refer to Luka Drake as a “speedster” would do him a disservice. To an outside perspective, he might appear to be running quickly—that is, he would be moving too quickly for anyone to register him—but this was not actually what was happening. In reality, he was capable of perceiving the world at an extremely low speed, and then move through it at a normal rate. When in this special state, people and other moving objects around him do not appear to be completely still, but they do move incredibly slowly...painfully slowly. The ancient rogue scientists responsible for anomaly abilities stumbled onto even older research into the physiology of small insects at some point. They found that small creatures, notably flies, naturally perceived time differently. In fact, there was a correlation between the size of the perceiver, and the speed of time. This research explained why flies would be able to escape from the wrath of a swatter with fractions of seconds to spare, even though the human wielding the weapon was physically superior. Just watch any disaster film with huge explosions and the collapse of gigantic objects. Mountains, skyscrapers, or gargantuan statues crumble and fall to the surface relatively slowly, despite being massive. These things are not falling slower, but they appear to be from a human’s perspective, because of the dramatic size difference. The scientists applied this property to Luka’s bloodline, and added a little extra oomph. Upon some concentration, he could rewire his brain’s perception of reality, and essentially throw himself into a different flow of time. Unfortunately, his ability wasn’t perfectly, and he found himself stuck in this state for a long time. He spent years unable to interact with those around him, because they were moving too slowly, and didn’t even know that he was there. He walked around the world at his lonely luxury, eating bits of food off of people’s plates. He carried with him oxygen tanks, because the oxygen molecules in the surrounding environment were not moving fast enough to keep his body satisfied for extended periods of...time. Upon running into Bellevue, he discovered a dangerous drug that could temporarily suppress abilities, which he promptly injected himself with one time. He then found documents regarding the mystery of Connor Higgins. At the time, Bellevue did not know what his ability was, but Luka pieced it together and realized that he could negate abilities, and so he went off to find him on his own. He then moved on with his life, but kept a supply of Connor’s blood with him, occasionally transfusing himself to keep him tied down to the timeflow. But he was not done with Bellevue quite yet.

Microstory 192: Paulo Rocha

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An important early member of Bellevue jumped ahead of that infamous short list of anomalies, and discovered Paulo Rocha living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He was born in a small town nearby, but moved to the city to be closer to the targets of his ability. He could sense and manipulate waves on the microwave section of the Electromagnetic spectrum, including ultra-high frequency, super high frequency, and extremely high frequency waves. This allowed him to interface with television broadcasts, walkie-talkies, cell phones, GPS, and later line-of-sight communication such as wireless internet and near field communication. He could push the boundaries and adjust or redirect these signals beyond their normal range. He was always a curious boy, and liked to listen in on private conversations. He never worked in espionage, or sold information to the highest bidder. He just liked to know that he knew things that others wouldn’t want him to know, and would do him harm if they knew that he knew. But this early Bellevue member was desperate. A friend of theirs had unknowingly become father to an extremely powerful Generation Two, and the infant needed to be protected from the world. Much of Brazil was about as remote as one could get in the world, and Paulo was about as random an anomaly as one could find. He agreed to raise the child in secret. He remembered learning of a small tribal village that had experienced minimal outside contact from his life in the small town, and so he took her there. He kept that baby safe, teaching her to control her abilities, and to make her own choices for what she wanted to do with them. Many years later, after hearing of her birth father’s death, this girl took to the skies and became a superhero to honor his legacy. She traveled to Bellevue and secretly absorbed the abilities of all anomalies she could find. She then went around the world, mostly in South America, saving everyone she could, and capturing criminals. Bellevue officially contacted the two of them not long after, and discussed their options. Paulo ended up holding on to his connection with his adopted daughter, and ran communications for operatives in South America, much like Radimir in Europe. His ability was perfect for it.

Microstory 191: Mosi Jengo

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Tanzanian Mosi Jengo was born to a wheat family of modest living. His was a community of farmers, and when he was a child, the only one not dealing with a drought. The surrounding area farmers were suffering greatly. Recreational drugs were illegal throughout most of the world, but parts of Tanzania relied on the industry to keep them aloft. Confederacy authorities allowed this to continue, partly because they lacked the resources to shut them down, but also because they were willing to concede a small fraction of drug users if it meant poor farmers had enough money to survive. But a certain farm off a nearby town had learned of Mosi’s community’s fortunes, and went in with weapons to find out what was happening. Upon hearing that they were somehow responsible for the miracle, they attacked and terrorized Mosi’s family. His parents pleaded with them, and tried to explain that they had no idea why the rain had chosen fall only on them. Out of anger and fear, Mosi used his abilities to pull a lightning bolt from the sky and strike down the man who was manhandling his mother. What he did not understand at the time, was that his mother would be harmed by the lightning as well. She was electrocuted and killed instantly. The leader of the rival farm allowed Mosi to mourn his loss before removing him from his home, and paying the father what he considered to be a fair exchange. The leader became Mosi’s mentor. He provided him with an education, a bed, and more food than he was used to. Together, they rid their country of the drug business. They spent years converting farmers to legitimate businesses by selling them good weather. Every year, they would return to Mosi’s home to pay respects to his mother’s legacy. By the time Bellevue found him, Mosi and his mentor had transformed Tanzania into a flourishing paradise. As the land turned, not only did the farmers become richer, but tourism began to boom, further enhancing the country’s economy. Through irrigation and other modern farming techniques, Tanzania began to be self-sufficient, and no longer needed Mosi’s assistance. He and his mentor joined Bellevue, but spent very little time in Kansas. They traveled with Blake Williams as a sort of specialized weather team. While Blake absorbed and quelled quakes, Mosi protected target areas from other natural events. Slowly, he shaped the world to make it safer and more convenient, and was later able to gain enough power to control the weather across the globe from any point, to nearly any degree.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 25, 2049

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Two of Gilbert’s men instinctively grabbed Mateo and Leona to pull them ahead of the group and down the corridor towards safety. The tallest of them had not had much opportunity to stand up straight while they were walking before, but this second had a higher ceiling, and allowed them all to move much faster. The floor was already wet, so there was a lot of slipping and running into walls, but they were able to stay on the move. The water flooding in from behind them was moving much faster, and would soon overcome them. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Literally. The walls cleaved from each other with each passing step as the ceiling flew up from the floor.

Finally, they were out of the corridor and into the largest chamber they had ever seen. It was a deep cavernous ellipsoid, at least a half kilometer wide, and they were standing in the middle of it, on a sort of mezzanine balcony. There were stairs and seats carved into the rock across the way. The occasional narrow waterfall poured from the walls. Stalagmites littered the floor. Some kind of stage waited patiently in the center of the very bottom. They were standing in an auditorium. But the most fascinating sight was the ceiling, or rather that there was no ceiling. Despite being deep underground, and knowing that this was absolutely not a known landmark of Easter Island, the sky could be seen above them. Rather, there were many skies above them. Stars periodically blinked in and out of existence. The sun appeared from one side and then disappeared, and then it would later appear from a different side. Sometimes, it was like they were seeing multiple versions of the sky at once in a spectacular vortex collage. They watched for several minutes before one of the men pointed out that they were no longer in danger from the rushing water.

“What’s happening here? Is this a hologram?” Gilbert asked.

“It’s a time window,” Leona explained, to the best of her ability.

“What does that mean?”

“You’re seeing the sky at different moments in time, from different angles, and likely from different locations.”

“How is that possible?” he asked.

“Same way my boyfriend and I travel through time; we do not know.”

“I thought I was crazy for thinking that to be the explanation for you two,” Gilbert said. “But I was right? That’s amazing.”

“Why is the sky seemingly perpetually zipping through time?” one of the men  now asked.

“That’s another question we could not answer,” Leona said. “What are you trying to find here, Boyce?”

“Immortality.”

Leona and Mateo took their gaze from the skies and looked at Gilbert.

He looked back at them. “Does that mean anything to you?”

They now looked to each other. “It does. It’s possible.”

“Who told you that would be here?”

Gilbert shifted his chin to various angles. “I don’t know.”

“That’s usually not a good sign,” Mateo said. “You shouldn’t do anything without knowing why.”

Leona went back to admiring the beauty in the skies. “Rule number eight.”

Mateo reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. It always traveled through time with them, and was always able to determine when and where they were, and he regularly checked it to make sure his pattern held. “This isn’t right.”

“What is it?” Leona asked.

“My phone says that it’s April 25, 2049.”

“That shouldn’t be,” Leona agreed. “We never made the jump. It should still be 2048, unless...”

“Unless what?” Gilbert looked concerned.  “How are we in the future?”

“The cave didn’t protect us from the timejump,” Leona realized. “It just included everyone here.”

One of the men did his best to sound upset, but actually seemed more excited. “Is this permanent?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Leona noted. “Last time that happened was with me. That was twenty years ago.”

Gilbert sighed out of fatigue and resolve. “We have no choice but to push on, do we? We’ve come this far. Let’s find the fountain of youth.”

“We are still not certain that is a good idea. Someone wants you here, and if they erased your memory, then they probably do not have your best interests in mind. We should go back,” Mateo urged.

“We have been having this conversation for a year. I’m over it, and I’m not going to repeat myself.” Gilbert turned and began walking down the steps. His men followed, and so did the other two.

As soon as they had all reached the bottom, the sky stopped changing. It had settled on a brilliant shade of red. Shimmering and dusty cloud loomed overhead. “Why does it look like that?”

“It could be a setting sun, or that’s from a couple billion years ago when the sky was orange, and the atmosphere full of methane.”

“How are we still alive?”

“It’s a time window. We are still standing in 2049.”

“I’m not liking this day much more than the last,” Mateo informed her. “Just want to put that on the record.”

“Noted,” she responded.

They continued to walk across the floor and head for the stage, the only logical place to go. The air shifted from hot to cold and back again, warning them away, but they never stopped. Gilbert was the first to step up to the stage, and noticed a sense of relief and mild euphoria. Leona and Mateo came next, and felt the same thing. They were still aware of all of their problems, but they were not worried about them. Suddenly, Reaver and the man who tried to kill them, as well as mystery that was Frida, didn’t seem so important. There was only now.

The other men followed them up, but felt quite differently. One started to smack his lips. “I’m really thirsty. Anyone have any water?”

One grabbed his head in pain. “Son of a bitch!”

“My hands are tingling,” another said.

“Guys, I can’t hear anything,” said a fourth.

The one who had helped Mateo down the corridor while the water was rushing behind them started nodding off. “I can’t keep my eyelids open.”

“What is happening to them?” Gilbert asked, with worry but no sense of urgency. “Why is it not happening to me?”

“It’s a security system,” Leona told him. “These are time travel symptoms. I don’t know why they’re lasting so long, though.”

The last man sniffed the air. “Do you smell burnt toast?”

And with that, all six of the men disappeared. Something from the pack of the guy with the headache exploded, bits of it landing on the floor. He must have been carrying citrus. They had served their purpose, according to whoever wanted the three of them, and the three of them alone, to be down here.

They turned from the spot the men once held, knowing that there was nothing they could do to help. A large transparent cube had appeared in the middle of the stage. Inside of it was everything one would find in an apartment; a bed, a wardrobe, a dining room table, miscellaneous other things, and even the kitchen sink. But no one was inside of it. The security guard from Reaver’s facility who had tried to stop him from escaping with Guard Number One and Guard Number Two appeared from behind a stalagmite. He was dressed in what appeared to be a rather fancy version of a security guard’s uniform. He was cool and collected; the opposite of his demeanor when they had first met. “Welcome to The Agora.”

“What happened to my men?” Gilbert asked.

“They’re safe,” he answered. “Back home. They helped get you here, but they did not need to be here.”

“Who are you?” Gilbert continued.

“I am The Head Guard. But right now, I’m on holiday. I have nothing to do while the prison is empty.” He looked back and presented the cube. “I need you three to fill it for us.”

“Who’s the prisoner?”

“Fugitive,” Head Guard corrected. “I think you know who.”

Reaver.

“Find him,” he went on. “Bring him to justice. We would much appreciate it.”

“Why can’t you find him yourself?” Mateo put his hands on his hips.

He shook his head. “That is not my job. I guard, I don’t catch.”

“That is not our job either,” Leona said.

“Yes it is. You’re The Rovers.” Head Guard seemed confused.

“We’re the what?”

“The Rovers. You go where you’re needed. Did The Delegator not explain this to you?” Really confused.

“Not exactly,” Mateo said. “He basically told us we could do whatever we wanted.

“Hmm...” he replied. “Something must be wrong with his neurolinguistic programming. We’ll have someone correct that. You’re not to do whatever you want, you are to do whatever is necessary. You do have jobs, you just don’t have one single job. Right now, we need you to catch Reaver.”

“Rovers catching Reaver,” Mateo said with a laugh. “Why would we do that when you could just send a Reaver to catch a Reaver?”

“I am afraid I do not follow.”

“Reaver’s daughter,” Leona said. “She’s a choosing one. Masters of time and space, and they still pretend to need go-betweens. I don’t understand why they send any of us to do anything when they could just jump through time and do it themselves.”

“I do not know either,” Head Guard said. “I’m not one of them. I just do what I’m told; like you.”

“We do not do that,” Mateo corrected.

“No, I suppose you don’t. But you need to start, or there will be consequences.”

“Like what?”

“Bad ones,” was all he said of it.

“And what am I to do?” Gilbert asked.

“You are being temporarily placed in their pattern so that you may assist. After that, you will be so far from your own time that the warrant out for your arrest will no longer be relevant, and you will be free to start a new life.”

“What do we get in return?” Mateo asked.

“If you do what you’re asked, then there will be a reward.”

Gilbert perked up. “Like immortality?”

“Like immortality.”

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Superpowers: Exile (Part VI)

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Enemy of the state, Ellaraitch strode into Governor Stockton’s office with that same smug look on his face he always had. What else could be expected from someone who refused to divulge either his first or last name to the public; insisting that people refer to him by the one name alone? One thing to note about the Amadesis religion was that there were many extremely disparate sects. The main characteristics that held them all together were that they were all evil, they all believed in a single path to enlightenment, and they all considered harming others to be best practice. The largest sect engaged in a sick form of polygamy that not only allowed, but encouraged, child rape, along with good ol’ fashioned incest. Another tortured victims so badly that they were corrupted enough to join up themselves. There was even one that believed in some sort of presumably unknowable hierarchy where only a select few members would get into heaven, so that even being part of it didn’t guarantee you happiness.

Ellaraitch was the head of a sect of Amadesis that was the lesser of many evils; at the time, at least. He originally became famous as a prolific science fiction writer, churning out crap stories like cancer cells. He was known for charging new members with increasingly more money each time for therapeutic treatments, and for creating a level of privileged secrecy surpassed by none other. He would go on to be far more dangerous to the world, but for the moment, Stockton thought of him as the only way to reach his goals. Ellaraitch had always been against the violence of other Amadesins; particularly the ones that sent the bomb to Utah, but not because he wasn’t himself violent, but because he considered their methods to be tactless and unsophisticated. He fancied himself more strategic than that, and he would prove this to be true once his sect began to spiral out of control, and become dominant.

“I can help you remove the nuclear weapons of the U.K., but you’re not going to like how I plan to do it.” Ellaraitch sat in what was supposed to be Stockton’s chair, and drank his glass of alcohol. It wasn’t technically illegal on the island, but only because it never seemed necessary to pass a law.

“I’m not going to hurt anyone. I regret every casualty of the Korean invasion. I need the next step to be seamless and painless. If it can’t be, then I would rather just give up.”

“I do not intend to hurt anyone. It will hurt, yes, but not physically. It’ll only hurt you, because it’s going to take much longer than you wanted, and it’s not going to make you look good.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Have you heard of Tygreve Melsbach?”

Stockton thought back to his primary school days. “A leader of Belgium; the one who was exiled? That was centuries ago.”

“The important part of the lesson is not that he was exiled, but that he later returned to power. Like you, he took on an impossible mission, and suffered many setbacks before just losing completely.”

“Yeah...” Stockton was waiting for a point.

“And so he was sent to an island, much smaller than this one. He lived there for the better part of two decades, until secretly escaping, gathering support, and taking back his throne.”

“Go on.”

“If he had tried to steal back power immediately after exilement, he would have failed. It was that time he spent away that made it work. In that time, the world changed. Trade deals were made, canals were dug, leaders came and went. By the time he left the island, he had been all but forgotten. He used this infamy to his advantage, knowing that the day’s leadership would severely underestimate his strength.”

“Are you asking me to go into exile?”

“Not exile. That wouldn’t work for you; not in modern times. But you have to fully accept your role as the world’s pariah. You have to suffer a scandal, get yourself sanctioned by the Confederacy, and then Federama has to wait at least five years before doing anything else that gets it noticed. You have to throw your little nation into obscurity so people let their guard down and stop worrying about what you do next.”

“This sounds like a trick to get me out of the way, so that you can take control of the Amadesins. You need the spotlight, and my mission is in your way right now.”

“This is true,” Ellaraitch conceded. “I see a benefit to my movement, but that doesn’t mean you cannot benefit as well.”

“Five years. Of just...doing nothing?”

“After the scandal, yes,” Ellaraitch reminded him.

“Of course, and what do you suggest this scandal be?”

“The United Kingdom.”

“Oh, that explains it. Thanks.”

“An attack from the United Kingdom, is what I mean; well...an apparent attack from them. They won’t actually have anything to do with it.”

“Dawuthuh?”

“I have people in high offices of the U.K. They can make it look like they’re attacking you, but it’ll actually be your people. They can come in with a bunch of those—what are they called—helicopters. Soldiers will descend on the island, start shooting up the place, and steal all the weapons back.” He put up air quotes for the last few words.

Stockton just stared at the man for a minute or so. “You sound like an idiot. Well, even more of an idiot than usual. That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.”

“They don’t have to be helicopters. They could be narrow-body jet airliners. We’ll claim the British threw the bombs into a volcano, along with a bunch of poor unfortunate souls. If you think what you did was bad, just wait until the public hears about the U.K. throwing people into a volcano.”

“This isn’t one of your bad books, Ellaraitch,” Stockton raised his voice. “This is real life. You can’t just come up with plot twists and narratively presentable fabrications to fit the story corner you’ve painted yourself into. This is why your religion is complete nonsense. No one would believe something like that. Airliners? In a volcano? Come on!”

He shrugged. “We can make it work.”

“No, we can’t. You’re asking thousands of people to keep quiet a huge and ridiculous lie.”

“Haven’t you already done that? No one knows what you’re really planning to do with these nuclear weapons. And your mission was a perfect secret until you actually began to execute it.”

“That was based on a system of compartmentalization. Not everyone is on board with this, and people have loose lips. The secret of the fact that the British never invaded my shores would be revealed eventually.”

“Sure, maybe in 1995, or something. But you won’t have to worry about that. We’re not going to just write a news story about the invasion, we’re going to actually stage one. Your citizens will be convinced that it happened because they’ll see it with their own eyes.”

It took a few more hours of discussion, but Governor Stockton was eventually persuaded to agree to the plan. It was the most frustrating thing that had ever happened to him, even up against the past year’s of problems. He knew in his soul that what Ellaraitch had come up with was ludicrous, but the more the man spoke, the more reasonable he sounded. It was evidently his superpower to make people believe preposterous lies wholeheartedly, and Stockton found he had no choice but to exploit that for his own gain. A few months following the conversation, “the United Kingdom” came in with helicopters—not airliners—with precision strike forces, conveniently similar to the ones that Stockton had deployed for his earlier missions. They recorded a series of carefully placed explosions with grainy and fuzzy security cameras.

A few Federama citizens were claimed to have been killed, while others were just kidnapped, along with the bombs and missiles. In reality, they were all removed from the island and taken to what Stockton had always referred to as the second location. He hadn’t needed much time to prepare for this, because this small island in Antarctica was already being used to house the actual weapons stolen from other countries. It was just another method of compartmentalization. If anything went wrong, he wanted the least number of people to be at risk of being within the blast radius. Even the strike teams didn’t originally know where the second location was. After each stage, they would place the weapons on a ship so that a different team could take them away.

The handful of people said to have been kidnapped had agreed to sacrifice their lives. They were either single people with no families, or entire families that were willing to relocate to a secret base in the middle of nowhere. They told the world that the United Kingdom military was responsible for this travesty. The Confederacy began an investigation, and they were unable to come up with any other legitimate explanation. As a kind of punishment, the U.K. was ordered to relinquish their own nuclear weapons, despite the fact that the ones supposedly stolen from Federama were never recovered. These British weapons were transported to an unknown location in Usonia, which was both disgusting and helpful to Stockton’s plans. Now, according to the world consciousness, Usonia was the only nation in the world with nuclear arms. That didn’t seem safe, but it did mean that there was only one more step in disarming the world entirely.

Governor Stockton continued to lead Federama, but with little global intrigue, for less than a year. He was then asked to step down from his position, and was replaced by his frenemy, Roma Tanner. Stockton left the island and joined the sacrificed in Antarctica. He waited there for three years, working on his plans for disarming the most powerful country in the world. The United States of Northern Integrated America. Usonia.

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