Jeremy and Kylie had been married shortly after Kylie's retrovirus, in a small formal wedding attended by Illuminati young and old, including both their mentors and a number of other engineereds. Joey served as best man, Sally was one of a handful of bridesmaids (leaping six feet into the air to catch the thrown bouquet), and the minister was a LaVeyan Satanist. Jeremy didn't bother inviting the Duumvirate because he knew they wouldn't accept it (and was somewhat disappointed when they didn't show up on their own initiative), Sarah didn't respond to his invitation, and he didn't invite Paul because he was still pissed at him for his Jerry Springer-style mockery and annoyed that someone like that would live with the Duumvirate. Jeremy even favored attacking Paul whenever possible in the laser tag competition on the twins' birthday, and Paul had used his aggressiveness against him more than once. The two had patched things up since then, mostly due to Joey's influence and a few gentle prods by Kylie. Inviting Paul over for tea was his way of telling him that all was forgiven and they could be friends again.

Kylie opened the door for the visitors, and only the thinnest of self-discipline prevented their jaws from dropping. While Kylie was strikingly beautiful as a normal, her face wasn't absolutely perfect and her hips didn't have quite that shape. She looked like she'd stepped off a magazine cover, altered genetics taking the place of of image editing. Of course if she was still a normal her back would be hurting from the weights on her chest and she'd have a hard time walking in those boots. While both Paul and his servant did their best to pretend not to notice, a casual glance at the front of their pants could determine their opinions of Kylie's modifications. Sure, Paul knew, he could have as many women as he wanted and they could all look like that, and he wouldn't even need hard control as he could find ones receptive to the idea quite easily. But a genuine Illuminated girl, capable of controlling nations and manipulating events to suit her will, who intentionally made herself even more of a sex goddess? Jeremy had hit the absolute jackpot, and Paul's attempt at hiding his instinctive envy was no more successful than hiding his carnal reaction, particularly when she walked out of the room. He hated to see her leave but he loved to watch her go.

Paul's envy was also a reason Jeremy had invited him over. The smug smile said it all: Hope that crow tastes good. But it was all in good fun and Paul was prepared to eat a lot more crow than Jeremy was willing to serve up.

Sally, surprisingly enough, had her looks altered only to a minor extent. Kylie had given her only one real command when she went into the psychologist's room: Don't try to outshine me. But the psychologist had convinced her to take a different route, informing her that her freckles would be erased automatically (engineereds can't freckle), helping with slight alterations to her base facial structure, but letting her know that there was nothing wrong with being short and wide. So Sally was no longer chubby but stout, C-cup breasts and a small layer of fat over layers of muscle. She was surely stronger than any of them, and Paul found it likely that she could lift even more than a Dominator could without breaking her spine.

There was also a somewhat familiar scent in the room, very faint, somehow industrial in nature. Paul didn't comment, choosing instead to sit with Jeremy at a table and start talking business. Oh boy, Joey thought. Politics. Jeremy wasn't making him stand here and listen to things he knew he'd never fully understand, even retroviral. He silently slipped away from the conversation, gesturing to Luke to follow. Luke did, less out of curiosity than wanting to get out of that room. Having unobtainable tail (or so he assumed) wagged in his face once was quite enough.

Normal men would construct a shed or a garage to play and experiment in. Illuminati, with secrecy concerns and better excavation equipment, dig sub-basements. Once again Jeremy had aped his Dominator in style, although the elevator didn't go quite as far down and there was only one room as of yet: a room with several dozen firearms, all bearing the same odd shape with a thick, wide barrel and compact design, and a coated wall some fifty feet behind a series of lines drawn on the floor. Luke realized what he'd scented on Joey: burned explosives. Joey saw Luke sniffing and nodded. "Yeah, the new compound's not perfect yet and the air filter'll be in a couple of days. So, how many times have you been shot at?" he asked with a bit of a grin. Luke rolled his eyes a bit: What, are we comparing non-scars now? Joey hadn't been shot at, almost certainly- he was simply too nice. ('No, wait... this kid could probably be shot at all day and still be just as happy-go-lucky afterwards.')

"A few," he said hesitantly. If the target was able to shoot back, you were doing something wrong. He'd done a number of wrong things fighting Garavito's normals, but that was what hands-on experience was all about.

"Ever had to actually dodge?" he asked, standing just behind a firing line on the floor.

Luke had to think about it. Did he? He didn't feel like he dodged, he just moved where the bullets weren't going. But that was the definition of dodging. "Yeah. A couple times."

Joey fired. The pellets embedded themselves into the wall in front of him instantly, cracking and tearing the ballistic plastic; the air shockwave was heard as an amazingly loud PAK! It took Luke a moment to grasp what he just saw. "Think you could dodge that?" Joey asked as the destroyed plastic was swept backwards like bowling pins and a fresh wall- must be more than ten feet thick- was lowered in its place. How much of that stuff could Jeremy have.. oh, they're melting and re-molding it.

"Um. No?" That was like something out of Ratchet & Clank, some kid's idea of a super sawed-off made real. It must have a hell of a kick.

"I couldn't either. It's okay, I can let you try it," Joey said, offering him the gun.

"Sure, I'll try." The weapon was relatively light. "Hold up.. are you implanted?" It came out almost as an accusation.

"Yeah. When Jeremy got me, he did it." Luke looked askance at Joey's casualness, and Joey misinterpreted it. "Jeremy's been my friend long before this." The hell?

"It might be a little late for this, but find better friends," Luke replied, firing into the wall to accentuate his point (it did have a solid kick, but not quite what he was expecting), and Joey sent the audio, sans gunshot, to his master upstairs. Easier than sending word-symbols, and carrying all of the spite.

Paul and Jeremy, two floors above, were leaning back, watching a normal movie on low audio with their feet sharing a cushion. Their conversation had quickly shifted to a larger political view. Understanding the massive pileup of Illuminati plots was fundamentally impossible without zooming out to larger forces.

"It's a matter of cultural trends. When the Duumvirate.," Paul was saying, when Jeremy suddenly raised a hand.

"I think it might be a little late for this, but find better friends," Jeremy said in a fairly good interpretation of Luke's darker voice.

Paul started chuckling. "I knew he'd say something like that!" Jeremy held up a hand again, as it was continuing.

"There is no possible way that I could find a better friend," Joey said with solemnity.

Luke was taken aback. "Do you know what you could have been, what you could have done? He's taken every piece of freedom you ever could have possibly had. And you're praising him for that. It's actually what you want." Disgust crept across his face like a cockroach, starting at the edge of his left cheek and moving inwards. Paul and Jeremy laughed at him.

Joey started chuckling. "Freedom. Luke- there are two ways it could have happened. Either Jeremy picks me up, or he doesn't. He does. I'm here. I'm retroviral. I do minor errands and test weapons, when we're not slacking off- and we do a lot of slacking off, actually. I help him rule. Now, compare. What would I be doing right now, if he didn't pick me up? I'm seventeen." ('Three years older than me, damn he doesn't act like it.') "I'd be in high school still. Worried about.. homework, grades, maybe a date to.. to some prom or something." He spoke of normal life like men speak of bad jobs, and the comparison between some random normal and his lovely, powerful assigned-girlfriend was obvious. "Looking for.. a college. Still living with my dad." The next words were straight from Jeremy: "I think you can appreciate not wanting that, can't you?"

The bile did not stop and the sarcasm rose. "And so you have retreated to this magical land of milk and honey, where all you must do is be your- heh- friend's bitch for all eternity, to enjoy the comforts of a perfect life. Truly, you have beaten the system."

"Luke, you idiot, I am the system now. So are you." Joey had a microscopic bad side, and yet somehow this.. fiend in front of him was inerrantly aiming for it.

Luke felt a hidden feeling, almost a calling, spring into action. This was no longer about conversation. This was about conversion. Sarcasm was unleashing Joey? Okay, add more sarcasm. Pile on a little Illuminati power, he knew enough had rubbed off on him by now, use the correct cadence of voice tone, lean forward just a bit and narrow his eyes. "Congratulations, cog, on your promotion to Head Cog! Now you can be turned less frequently and enjoy more polish. The only price, of course, and it's a real cheap one, is that no matter how much social upheaval or unrest happens out there, you will never be able to make your own real decisions in here. Ever." Luke would have been surprised to know very similar thoughts were in William's head roughly five years ago. Jeremy repeated the words with a bit of approval- Paul had gotten himself one hell of an acquisition- but Paul didn't like hearing them. He had been a servant just a few years ago, too. Being reminded of the percolating indignity was not a pleasant experience.

Luke's bile choked in his throat when he saw the peaceful, happy smile on Joey's face. Was he actually speaking to someone for whom that was a comfort?

"Technically, you can. Right now you're holding one of the few weapons that can kill one of us. And for all your hatred, you're not going to use it." Jeremy was surprised at the conversational gambit, but figured it was all right. Luke wouldn't actually... would he?

"No. What would be the point?" Of all Paul's various warnings, 'Don't do anything retarded' stuck out as the most sensible. Killing some fucked-up happy boy like Joey when Gritzl (or Rhines.. 'please let Rhines have a clone, so I can kill him') was still out there somewhere? Waging one-man war against everyone and everything was a very, very tempting proposition, but.. then what? And why the hell would he start here? If he was going to do that he'd start with the Duumvirate and work his way down. "The only one of us with a reason to do that is you, Joey. We might have different definitions of friendship, but my friends don't put shackles on my mind."

What he didn't know was that saying that amused Paul with extra schadenfreude, and tempted him to do it, a humor he borrowed straight from the twins. 'You know how I said I wouldn't implant you? Yeah... about that...' It wouldn't be anything personal, really.. no. It was 'Holy crap I can actually do that now, even to him, oh God he'd never expect it, that's awesome' to think about, not so awesome to actually do. Paul could bobble his sense of justice, but wouldn't actually drop it. If he did that, he'd start remembering Damien again, in increasingly vivid detail.

Joey looked at Luke with real pity. "You almost understand. It's painful to watch. Oh, and Luke? Just so you know, we're telepathic to each other," he revealed, tapping himself on the forehead. Luke's surprise was negligible. "He says they're both getting a kick out of this."

Which was also unsurprising. It would be like Paul to think it was funny, wouldn't it? Even something like this. Luke almost said something particularly hateful, but didn't want to make them laugh even harder... instead, he tried to imitate someone higher than they were, and took the long view. "Let's have this conversation again in fifty years." Fifty, a hundred, two hundred, on and on and on, forced to do everything your friend (oh Satan, was he ever starting to hate that word) told you to do, all the time, with no letup, no respite, not even in your own head? Luke had skimmed through both the Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost, what was that.. something about the mind making Heaven out of Hell? Was it even really Joey's mind now? Would it be in fifty years?

Joey just smiled at him. "Maybe I'll rethink it. Maybe he'll rethink it." He was interrupted by the elevator opening- holy shit, perfect timing- "But right now, I'm going to go do things with a girl who doesn't want to burn me to death," he said, still smiling. Fuck, did everyone know about Luke and Ruby?

Luke saw the conflict in Sally's eyes, the hesitation in her movements, the semi-forced smile of someone gradually deciding it wasn't that bad and she should just get used to it. 'Does he not see that? Is he blind?' But of course Joey saw it, it was just a problem to be worked out, and then they could all live happily ever after...

Luke's finger tightened in place- almost putting pressure on the trigger- if he squeezed, he really would begin one-man war, right now- he forced himself, with conscious effort, to wait until they had left before firing at the wall. He had made his Faustian bargain, after all, and there was no good reason to renege on it. "Fuck this place!"

All right. Forget the S&M bullshit- it wasn't the same as the insane crap he'd been through, not even close. He was in a room full of weapons deadly to engineereds. Sighing, he basked in the temptation for five seconds before looking at the varieties. Just the same design reiterated over and over again, the variety being in the subtleties and refinements. A couple had longer barrels, but the real nasty ones had short ones for wider spread- in fact the one he had just fired had practically no barrel at all, just a large hole. He looked at the computer and tried to process what he was reading.

The explosive was a gelatinous, plasticine substance, spread in careful patterns behind each tiny pellet. The expanding gas of a firearm barrel actually did very little to propel them past the initial blast, for reasons he didn't quite grasp. Things were mentioned about pistol shrimp and cavitation bubbles, with some quirk of physics that let them scale it up... "What the hell?" he muttered aloud. He'd researched firearms a bit in his spare time, these things violated pretty much everything... he read more, focusing on application rather than physics. Since one pellet and one piece of gelatin were one 'shot', there were even a couple of designs with variable-load ammunition, but you had to pull this lever or press that button or squeeze this other thing just-so to control the size of your next blast, and who wanted to do that in a firefight?

Well, hell! Some people didn't need to move their hands to send variable signals. Smiling, he entered a note- they'd be surprised as hell to have him actually giving useful advice, in the standard didactic style he'd gleaned from reading similar reports.

Make a variant that allows electricity to be sent through the handgrips, determining load size on a linear scale. Doing so facilitates ammunition conservation amid periods of maximum use. Additionally, this makes it impossible for enemies without electrical supplies to use the weapon.

Shouldn't he say more? Whatever, they'd get the idea. And he couldn't resist:

P. S.

He sat at that screen for a while, wanting to say something suitably insulting. P. S., fuck you. P. S., eat shit and die. No, they'd just laugh. P. S., cut the shit and just start torturing him. No, they'd just laugh more, and continue on their way. P. S., the more you torture him, the more you prove my point. Maybe.. but he wasn't, that was totally the wrong word, it didn't work like that here. But... wait, what was that girl's name?

P. S. Sally's horror only proves my point.

There we go. Practically guaranteed to cause some discord in the Jorgensen household. Satisfied, he saved the message, and went up the elevator. Where to go now? Paul and Jeremy were fine without him, Joey and Sally were... elsewhere, and he didn't want to meet Sally's mistress as it might end badly.

"Luke, come here," Paul commanded as he stepped out. Ah, right. No decisions for himself. Just like Joey.

"Jeremy isn't convinced you can move metal without touching it by your own power." A series of iron-containing objects were laid out on the table- a few used bullets, a couple of other shapes, some tiny bits of scrap. "Dispel his ignorance."

Luke drew his baseball bats, then in a fast, practiced move, put them handle-to-handle and slipped a long fabric-and-wire condom over them, forming a staff. Gripping the metal contacts, he kept up a steady full-strength discharge.

Nothing, at first- then a slight pull as he poured power into it- then he pointed the north side with his right hand and everything on the table, from five feet away, accelerated towards him and slammed into the end of his staff. The viewscreen's corner went rainbow. Jeremy felt his guns pressing into his back. There was a brief burst of mental confusion as-- holy shit, he can't be powerful enough to affect those?!

"Shit!!" Jeremy shouted, covering his head with his hand, a gesture Paul didn't quite understand but Luke did. "How's that even possible?!"

Luke flipped the staff around and depleted the field some- everything was still stuck to it, but the screen restored and Jeremy got his telepathy back. "Two main things for electromagnets: The number of turns in the coil so I can pour watts into it faster, and how much of a field the material can handle. There are a whole lot of turns in this thing, and it can hold a huge field." In his considered opinion, molecular materials development fucking ruled. Regular neodymium alloy was a joke next to this stuff. He could keep discharging into this until he started messing himself up.

"Fuck.," Jeremy said. "I think you can divert bullets." The obvious problem he didn't realize until it was out of his mouth, because he was mentally explaining to Joey just what the neural equivalent of slamming one's hands on the keyboard had actually been.

Paul started guffawing. "Yes," Luke said. "In my direction." Ah, how he wished he could actually wield a diamagnetic tool and tear things apart from afar. Physics, damn them, did not work that way. I am Volto! My right hand.. attracts! My left hand.. also attracts! Well, at relatively short ranges with suitably magnetic materials. He finished depleting the field and let the stuff fall back down to the table, disassembling his weapon back into its components.

Jeremy looked at him. "That.." Pause. "I'd like to say it's useful, but I can't think of a lot of actual uses for it." Maybe if you needed to fish keys out of a sewer or something? Everything else he could think of could be accomplished by simpler methods.

I can. "There's plenty. Sometimes just being able to pull some things and not others is worth it," Luke replied.

"Heh. We know about that," Jeremy said. Paul waved him off, and Luke knew where he wanted to go- the roof.

He passed Charles on the way there. The two were of a height, and in one glance the brutal, animose teenage killer and peaceful, servile old accountant discovered they saw eye-to-eye. On a great many things.

The roof was sloped by only twenty degrees, and he could dig in his heels and feel the May sun on his face. He laid on the tiles, dead to almost everything, leaving the window ajar so he could eventually hear his name while Jeremy showed Paul the weapons of doom.


Paul was glad Jeremy was the one responsible for testing them, even if he didn't like the new order of things that they represented. It was certain that the enemies had these weapons by now, and whether Barnum would be able to trace them after-the-fact meant little if the Duumvirate was a few white and red smears on a wall somewhere. Jeremy's servant doing the testing meant that the new ones were designed to engineered sensibilities, and normals might not find them as readily accessible; that could mean fractions of a second, which was an eon in combat.

They went back upstairs, and Kylie was waiting for them at the table, doing some business on her phone, and Paul felt he just had to say it: "Kylie, why exactly did you dress up to tease me?" For what it was worth, she was a married woman, even if it felt strange to think of her as that.

"No," she answered casually, "I always dress like this." Paul wasn't sure whether or not it was plausible. Did she really wake up every morning and put on a low-cut ass-hugging minidress, elbow-length gloves with slits for her nails, and calf-length boots with nine-inch ballet heels and another two inches of platform? Come to think of it, she probably did.

"Even so, it's not going to affect how I make decisions," Paul said, his tone somewhat apologetic. Jeremy smiled at him. "No, really. I don't think we're going to make any deals between us, at least for the foreseeable future, but whatever techniques you use on everyone else are just not going to work. Not on me. I have too much shit to worry about."

Kylie could say that she wasn't trying to affect his decision-making with her sexuality, but that would be transparent bullshit. She always dressed like that because it gave her a permanent negotiation advantage, and she and Jeremy even had sex in the middle of certain deals to throw people off-balance. She also didn't ask whether Paul was trying to convince them or himself. She smiled with one side of her mouth, mentally commanding her servant to fetch tea. "How about a different kind of deal. A story for a story?" she suggested.

"I have plenty of those," Paul said, chuckling. "Which one do you want?" He was curious what she wanted to know about the twins.

"Tell me how you got that servant of yours. The real story, especially what's been left out of the files." The public files didn't say much on the subject beyond 'This servant was acquired when this Illuminatus was terminated.' Paul hesitated, not for his own interests but for Luke's. Even telling anyone what he had seen and killed in there felt wrong. "Before that, tell me why you even got someone like that, what purpose could he have to you that someone else couldn't fulfill?"

That was an easy one. "Because he adds elements to my repertoire that I didn't have before. Why did you get a servant so unlike yourself?" Sally came in with the tea then, and Paul took a sip. He'd never tasted anything like it and wasn't about to ask for the brand, as it likely didn't have one.

"She needed a place. The school we went to was bad for her, she was tormented and pinched almost constantly, her parents were.. monsters, and she was practically begging for someone to take charge of her life and offering perfectly good service in return. She would have done anything for a friend. I took that deal." She looked at the smiling Paul. "Same thing?"

"Similar. I'll tell you the story, but it never got put into the database for a reason. It doesn't leave this household. Capiche?" They nodded, and Paul told them the story, leaving nothing out (including the initial reason for it), going deep into lurid detail, and focusing on how subliminally wrong it all was. Like anyone telling good horror stories, Paul was pleased when Jeremy and Kylie's skin crawled. The masters couldn't help but transmit some of it- Sally and Joey's skin was crawling even worse, Sally feeling an impending nightmare and Joey feeling like he'd been blindsided- 'Someone did that to him?' And while they were enjoying such a peaceful afternoon, too.

"O-kay," Kylie said awkwardly. "I guess I shouldn't have asked. And, a story from me..?"

"Why you aren't a servant. 'The real story, especially what's been left out of the files.'", he imitated, smiling.

"That's the first real question he asked me," she said, gesturing to Jeremy. "All right. The known stuff first."

She took a long sip of tea, considering where to start. "Charles was my grandfather's estate manager. When Grandpa died, Grandma died almost right after, and my dad had no idea what to do. He had Charles, of course, but while Charles is good with facts and figures and some other things, he's no good with leadership. My grandpa sat on the board of a million different companies, and my dad had no idea where to even start, he was about thirty at the time and had never worked a day in his life. He was confused, everyone knew it, and eventually a man came up to him, offering direction and guidance, competent help, all for the price of following a few commands and keeping a secret." Paul nodded. Faustian bargains were an efficient, well-known way of getting servants. (He wondered if that made him more satanic than Luke, which was a sobering thought.)

She arched back her shoulders for a moment, stretching her top. "So. Few years later, Rick takes my dad to this big party somewhere, whole lot of guys and their servants, and Dad meets this other servant, basically a whore, and takes her for about five minutes in a closet. She.. became pregnant. Her master.. for some.. reason, let her carry the baby but not keep it, my dad was the one who had to raise her." Kylie was an only child. "Almost sixteen years after that, my dad is killed by Roger Beck's assassin, Rick gets some help and takes revenge, I get the stuff, yadda yadda yadda."

She took a deep breath, making an O with her lips as she exhaled. "Now, this part.. doesn't enter your household. Or anyone else's. You'll see why."

"Lips are sealed," Paul said. He had no intention of giving away her secrets.

"Charles never was Rick's servant, not really. Roger managed to get him to hedge his bets in case something happened to Rick or my dad. And this was very early on, before I was born. Charles never quite told him everything, but Roger had inside information on Rick for almost twenty years." She paused for a moment, considering whether to tell the story in chronological order or otherwise. "Roger heard from Charles that Rick was going to do some sort of coup, or manage to take his resources, but Charles suggested that he could turn it to his advantage instead if he did this, that, and the other thing. It's technical if you want it.."

"I have enough of my own technical problems. Just keep going."

"Anyway, he didn't. He killed Dad instead, starting to do a takeover. And.. Rick and Charles started working together, seeing who could help. Charles calls up this engineered girl, Vicky.. Roberts, I think? I'm.. I was Robins, she's Roberts. Some geneticist at Northberg. Anyway, he calls her up, and tells her that Roger's going to end up taking me as part of some kind of deal. Roger was actually hitting on her or something, I don't know who said what but he was a dirty old man and it ticked her right off. So when Charles tells her Roger's going to start stealing a guy's stuff and raping his servant, she..."

"She flies off the handle. Splatters him," Paul finished for her. Jeremy chuckled and took a swig of tea.

"It was.. you wouldn't even... Something about spores. Something else about a dragon." Paul nodded, although he wasn't sure how he wanted to know those two things could be combined. Spores could be deadly and Northberg's dragon was not something even an engineered wanted to fuck with, even if it was still the size of a small child. "I'm not even sure if she believed Charles. Maybe she was just looking for an excuse. Anyway, he dies, end of Roger. This is where the shit hits the fan. Charles calls up Rick- right there on the screen- and tells him that if he doesn't make me an Illuminatus and give me Roger's stuff, he's going to take everything he knows about Rick and Roger, and make it public before killing himself." Paul's eyes widened. "Not public public, we're not talking about a secrecy breach, but all Illuminati. And remember, Charles was Dad's man for years. He knows everything." Paul finished his teacup and poured himself another. Jeremy and Kylie had good taste in the stuff. "I think Rick was kicking himself for not using implants, because he didn't have a choice. I got Roger's stuff, I'm still in some.. I guess you can call it long-term debt, especially to Vicky, but it's mine, and for secrecy he said I could just have the estate. Charles managed to keep all the stock and position stuff my dad had for me, too, some more secrecy there." Normal resources, but still valuable. "So, a lot of those companies that Rick and Roger were fighting over? Yup. I own them." She smiled wide. "But now the rest of it. That coup that Rick was going to do? He wasn't. Couldn't. And that stuff Charles suggested that Roger do? Unworkable. Roger's solution was obvious, my dad had to go."

"And Charles had known him for twenty years. He knew he'd come to that conclusion," Paul said, the light beginning to dawn.

Charles stepped around a corner then, having been listening around it for some time, holding his hands behind his back and smiling. Paul looked at the servant, pointed at himself, and drew a quick finger across his lips. They are zipped. Paul turned back to Kylie in wordless questioning.

"See, Rick and my dad had been talking about where I was going to end up. My dad.. if he wanted to keep me with him, he could have just said so. Rick would have listened." Paul nodded, as he had normal-world servants with their own children. "But he didn't. I think he just wanted me out of the house. Of course, before this I had no idea about any of this stuff. So, I was going to get sent away to some.. well, hopefully nowhere like you were talking about. But Charles wasn't my dad's, or Rick's, or Roger's. He was my servant, all along."

"From the day you were brought home, my lady," Charles said. Paul understood at once. He'd intended to ask the $64,000 question of 'What have you been doing with Charles to make him do these things for you', but understood the answer: Nothing. Charles simply liked being owned and controlled by his princess.

Kylie giggled at him, and waved him off. "He's so adorable. He was actually the one who suggested that I should find a boyfriend around my own age, someone established. He was to be young, capable, engineered, and preferably a personal friend of the Dominator. Jeremy was my second choice, but I figured you would already have all the girls you'd want," she said, with a faint, precise sigh, subtly chiding Paul for being such a hopeless virgin.

Paul knew that he could ask to have a threesome right then and there, and in all likelihood get it, Jeremy pumping Kylie from behind while she took his cock in her mouth, and knowing her she'd probably drink every last drop. It was beyond tempting. If he were telepathic with Luke he probably would have done it. "Then you made the right choice," he said instead. "I won't be led around by the dick."

Jeremy's smug look said it all: Your loss.

Paul looked back: Then I'll take the loss.

They returned to talking about more conventional politics.


Luke woke up from his half-trance, his black clothing warm to the touch, the shadows just a bit longer than before. Paul led him out the door, fresh from an adrenalin rush from some fast game or other, a smile wide on his face, gleefully waving goodbye to his fellow Illuminati. 'He's as much of a happy boy as Joey...' No, Paul wasn't the same as that. Paul had guts of his own.

"Paul... what the hell is wrong with them?" Luke asked as he entered the aircraft first, sitting in the pilot's seat and starting the engines.

"There's nothing wrong with them."

Paul and Jeremy had discovered something of a fractal nature with regard to Illuminated plots; the small mirrored the large in fundamental ways, but not others; you could group 'qualities' as taking hold more in small than large, and extrapolate out what was more likely to cause what in which size group, only having to know a handful of facts about the nature of the group. Some things were diluted (personal quirks, anything you don't want to show anyone else you nominally trust), other things (ideological purity, unifying belief systems, and things that were related to that but didn't look like it) purified and magnified, if occasionally simplified. A different understanding of the world, if not altogether fleshed-out yet, and unlikely to work on Illuminati who intentionally twisted their own organizations.

Ergo, Paul really didn't need his new epiphany marred by this quasi-normal shit. Although Luke was more of a challenge than an obstacle for him.

"You know what I mean." Paul was the Illuminatus, right? He shouldn't need to have it spelled out.

"The way they act towards each other is because they love each other," Paul replied. "Shouldn't that be obvious?"

Pilot's chairs don't swivel, but Luke instinctively tried anyway before turning his head and body to shoot a glare of malice. Pet the porcupine backwards some more, why don't you, oh enlightened one? "Do you know.. what hearing that makes me want to do?" he asked, gritting his teeth.

"Crash the jet?" Paul suggested. Which was exactly right. Smash it full-speed straight down.

"How the hell.. then why did you even... who the hell are you, Paul? Who the hell are you?"

"Your best friend?" Paul offered.

Luke sent a jolt through the armrests. There was a brief -sshk- as some subsystems reset themselves as designed. Good thing there was no ejection seat. "Oh what the fuck.. Y'know, I thought I was the biggest asshole. Yeah. Sure. I'm nasty. I'm mean. I killed my own parents. What the fuck ever. Yeah, I know, you waste sick fucks. Good for you. You, all of you, pass around slavery, real, permanent slavery, like it's some sort of.. game, you just expect things to go your way, you just ask for things and get them, but it's more than just that.."

"Are you talking about all Illuminati, or just the ones you know?"

"Just you. The ones I know, I guess. Not the assholes, probably not even most of them. But you, Howard and William, and Sarah, and Jeremy and Kylie, and a whole bunch more, not just engineered, you do this. All the time, it's all over that special Internet. And I want to know what the hell you're thinking."

"Luke, how long is it going to take you to understand that we've transcended authority? It's like food. Yeah, we need food, but we don't have to farm it ourselves anymore, or fight for it, or not be able to control the diseases in it. The whole concept of it is now our bitch. And I think that if Jeremy got Joey today, he wouldn't ask for control implants, but, eh. Oh well." Luke was facing forward again but knew Paul was shrugging. No big deal, right? Right. "C'mon, Luke- think of the worst thing you can possibly imagine someone doing to someone else with control techniques."

"The worst thing I can imagine? You don't want me to say this out loud, I think I'd melt your fucking brain." Even he didn't want to say it out loud, which spoke volumes.

Paul chortled, and watched the clouds roll by, enjoying the view, and the faint interplay of the sun on the windows. Shame he couldn't open one. That's what he needed: A jet-helicopter with a sunroof. "Okay. Now imagine Jeremy doing it to Joey." Luke was expecting 'now imagine me doing it to you' and his brain took a sharp turn. Joey's innocent, happy-go-lucky trust, gone in seconds, asking why through a flood of tears. "You know why he won't? Because he doesn't have the equivalent of an eating disorder. Howard's still got a big book of control techniques, and I think it's replaced so it doesn't go out of date- you might want to read it. There's all kinds of shit in there, everything from the basic stuff like shackles and rope, to whips, drugs, Skinner boxes, all sorts of cult techniques, control collars, and finally mind control implants. But it turns out that, at this point, we don't even need them anymore. And I don't think we- the 'we' when you said 'just you'- ever really did. You might not believe we're above authority, but you should probably hope so. Because, really? If we're not? You're pretty much fucked."

I'm not, Paul. You might think I am. But I learned something today. So long as I have magnetic weapons, implants won't work on me. And I can turn off anyone else's implants, too- any time I want. What would it do to withdrawal? Only one way to find out...

But, friend or not, he couldn't have any idea of that. "No. I don't believe that. I believe we're all fucking crazy."

"Good enough for me," Paul replied, and watched the clouds flow around the wings. "So what were you thinking about up there all day? Impending fatherhood?"

"I don't.. think about anything when I'm doing that. And I told you, I'm not going to be a 'father'. Northberg obviously knows how not to fuck kids up. I know. He'll be a servant for one of the 'just you'." He looked to the side. His face twisted up. Might as well admit it. "Beats being 'normal'. Joey was right about that much."

Opportunity is now! "Then quit being it," Paul said in his best commanding voice.

"I... Yes, Paul," Luke said. And began to laugh.


Jeremy had intentionally diverted Paul from the unexpected message; if Luke felt he needed to send something in private, then private it would be. He smiled at the idea- hey, send it on to Barnum, that wasn't a bad move- and winced at the P. S. Sally saw the message, pondered the kind of person who wrote it, and she and her mistress had a five-minute period of psychic recalibration and reconciliation.

He also wondered what the magnetic field actually did. After a long conversation with both the Night Operator and Stark, a review of the technologies and circuitry was deemed necessary, and this flaw and possibly some related ones would be fixed in all newly-produced implants.