Jeff Mach's Blog, page 64
April 22, 2020
Unsmoothest Criminal
So I confronted her. What else could I do?
“It was you!” I shouted. “You were the Villain the whole time.”
“Yes, but it was just to turn you on,” she replied.
I stopped. And I just stared at her.
“You did all that…you did all those things…you wreaked all that havoc…just so I would date you? What kind of messed-up, misshapen, twisted—”
“And it worked, you know,” she said. “You’ve always known. On some level, you have always known, and you’ve found it attractive.”
“I most certainly have not!” I said.
I could tell, by the look on her face, that I hadn’t convinced her, but that was fair. I hadn’t convinced myself. The Villain? The beast? The criminal? The lawbreaker, the unrepentant rogue who’d stood atop the highest building in Cityopolis and shouted defiance at the whole damn stupid smug, self-satisfied city?
That was reprehensible.
That was horrible.
That was so hot.
“So,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, “you did it all…for me?”
She nodded gravely. “I did.
“…at first.”
I must have looked puzzled, because she continued. “It was all for you…or so I thought. At first. And then…it started to get to me. In all the wrong ways. The beautifully, beautifully wrong ways…” She gazed out the massive glass window of the penthouse suite, at the ruins of the once-proud municipality, far below.
I cut in, perhaps a bit too quickly. “So you thought I’d find it…desirable?”
She nodded. “That was my hope. At first, at least. That you would finally notice me! Oh, I couldn’t tell you the truth, couldn’t reveal it, not in front of the others, and perhaps not even if we were alone. But I thought you’d be able to tell that there was something different about me.”
I nodded. “You became more confident. You seemed to be taking some kind of new pleasure in the world around you. You were still fairly untalkative, but instead of being just a loner, you became…”
“I became someone with inner resources. Someone who was always thinking two steps ahead. Foiling the team, foiling my rivals, considering the next heist, covering every track, planting decoys. Oh, I didn’t do all of it all at once. I had to learn, and there were some fumbles in the beginning…”
“The bank job,” I filled in. Now it was her turn to give me the nod. “That was…unfortunate. Although it did rid me of a particularly annoying teammate.”
I should have been horrified, but, to be honest, I had never liked Maggie in the first place.
“…but I persisted. And, as you know, I was not simply a killer. I might have taken advantages of some of the team’s weaknesses, but I never really betrayed its spirit. The others were simply weak.”
“And I?” I asked.
“You were strong. And you were everything I wanted.”
My head was pounding with thoughts; it was an explosion in a fireworks factory.
“And what did you think would happen when I found out?” I demanded. “Did you think I’d still want you? Did you think you could win me over to your side? Do you think I’d ever agree to become complicit with…with…a criminal?”
“I had hoped,” she said.
Images overwhelmed my thoughts; of masks, of escapades, of piles of gold. And why not? Why not? What had working the other side of the street ever gotten any of us? Sure, having a traitor in our midst was part of it, but she was right: we had too many egos, we thought too highly of ourselves, we were never going to have been a more cohesive or effective team.
“I’m in,” I said.
She looked at me, and sighed.
“Ah, there’s the rub, and this is a bit awkward.
“Villainy is not a full-time job. Villainy is a way of life. I’ve realized that now. It’s everything I want. Everything. I don’t have time for love. I don’t have time for another. This is who I am, what I am. There’s nothing left for anyone else.”
* * *
Cityopolis gave me a medal for shooting the most dangerous villain this town had ever seen, but I told them, “I’m no hero. It’s just what anybody would have done, in my place.”
After the ceremony, at the celebration, a couple of shots and a few beers in, I quietly left my party and strode down the corridors of the mayoral mansion. There were guards posted here and there, but they let me through, of course. I made it to the Mayor’s office and let myself in.
“So,” I told her. “I hear that you’re corrupt.”
She choked and dropped her coffee-cup, right onto the stack of top-secret government papers.
“Because,” I continued, “I think this could be the start of something beautiful.”
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April 21, 2020
A Villainly Alphabet / A Dictionary of Defiance
And here it is…BOTH of my Villainous Alphabets, in ONE place!
____
A is for “armed”, and how this one fits:
It’s what the mob lacks, in a battle of wits.
B is for Broken, and oh, how they fear it
When they realize it doesn’t apply to your spirit.
C is for Caterwaul – the sound of keening
They make when you point out
Their points have no meaning
D is for Defiance, that weird #thoughtcrime
Of believing you should own your own mind.
E is for Entropy, always encreasing
But blocked by the Will, forever unceasing.
[F is for Flounce, which comes with a block
For when they won’t talk
(‘Cause their head’s made of rocks.”]
G is for gif, the last refuge
Of those whose ignorance is huge.
H is for “Holy”, that virtuous name
Which few things are – but most things claim.
I is for “innocent” – a word they find vile–
“If you were innocent, why would you be on trial?”
J is for jealousy, little green demon
(They want to be you, when they are dreamin’.)
K is for kisses, as in kissing goodbye
To all of those who want you to go live a lie.
L is for Laughter, that grand ridicule
Of anyone who wants to make you their tool.
M is for Monster – in each Dictionary
If they must fear you, make fear legendary.
N is for “No!” – the heart of the matter:
“I won’t do as you say! Leave me alone! Scatter!”
O is for Over – and we shed no sob
For the coming end of the reign of the mob
P is for Purgatory; that’s where you’ll stay
If you wait for others to clear your way.
Q is for quiet, which is what they demand
Let’s disappoint them, my merry band!
R is for Razor–specifically, Hanlon’s
For ignorance and malice are unending canyons
S is for Silence, and of this, be sure
Silence me once, shame on you
Silence me twice, and it’s war.
T is for Terminal – that’s the condition
Of those who think they can stop you by wishin’.
U is for Underground, where they must drive us
Because in the longterm, they will not survive us.
V is for Veritas – sometimes called “truth”
Best found in doses at least 80 proof.
W’s “Whatever” – a foolish dismissal
When they mistake you for a weed or thistle.
X is for NOTHING–just an erasure
But now you come back, cold, sharp, like a glacier
Y is for youth. Here’s a disconnection:
So many harm it in the name of protection.
Z is for Zenith, and this we will teach
May your grasp forever exceed your damn reach.
– “A Dictionary of Defiance”
_________
A is for “AAAAARRRGGGHH!”, that answer to wishes
(The last sound to come from things nice and delicious.)
B is for Belly, giant and fat
Let’s fill it with children, and maybe a cat.
C is for Creature, full of venom and fizz
(It’s not your name, but they think it is.)
D is for Darkling, what we are inside
(It’s our kind of sparkling. We wear it with pride.)
E is for Evil, obviously;
Marked for easy retrieval in our memory.
F is for Fall, as in “Fall from grace”;
When the sky is a lie, the ground’s an embrace.
G is for Glamour–the magickal sort
Which kidnaps poor mortals to Titania’s court.
H is for “Horrors!” – only some of our making.
They pretend to hate them. (And they are faking.)
I is for imp. With dark minds and bright hair.
(Don’t confuse them with House Elves. Those things are a nightmare.)
J is for Joker, and this is why:
When the world is exploding, you laugh, or you die.
K is for kneeling – a thing that’s expected.
They hate us because it’s a thing we’ve rejected.
L is for Love. It’s all you need.
(To have your heart eaten. Take heed! Take heed!)
M is for Murder – but just of the soul
(What happens when you play Society’s role.)
N is for Never, and please be our witness–
That’s when we will finally consider forgiveness.
O is for Opening – of hearts and minds
To all of the misfits, lost toys, left-behinds.
P’s for Penumbral–on the outskirts of dream
Where we like to live, like cats seeking cream.
Q is for Quisling, the treacherous touch
(They know who we are, and why we see them as such.)
R’s for Revenge, as always it’s been
(Revenge is expected. What’s never known? WHEN.)
S is for Stolen, like hearts or like breath
Or like stealing your name–the same thing as Death.
T is for Truth – in quite short supply
(LEAST valued by those who most falsehoods, decry).
U is for Unholy, those who are ranked
Against automatic obedience to the sacrosanct.
V is for Villain, that glorious being
Who sees things that others would not dream of seeing.
W is for Warped, the strange kind of mind
That lets us seek out, and scheme–and find.
X is for Xenomorph. We can relate
To changing your form, for changing your fate.
Y is for Yelp, a cry of distress
When we prove orderlyworlds conceal chaotic mess.
Z is for Zero: What they say crime pays.
The first time we heard that? WE LAUGHED FOR DAYS.
Now we’ve completed our Abecedarian Villainy
This word of advice: Don’t tell ANYONE.
that you heard it.
all.
from.
me.
-“A Villainly Alphabet”
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
The post A Villainly Alphabet / A Dictionary of Defiance appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
April 20, 2020
13 Ways To Tell If You’re Actually A Villain
You believe that pain is the second-best teacher. You have no intention of telling anyone who the best teacher is; who needs the competition?
The worst nightmare of your nightmares is being your nightmare.
You make your Bloody Marys, not with real blood (that would be kinda cool) but with ketchup, and then you invite everyone over for brunch.
You eat brunch.
A bunch of idiots wearing masks and tights and calling each other by the most idiotic nicknames are perpetually running after you, shouting something about bringing you to justice, foiling your fiendish schemes, or returning their lawnmower. Sometimes all three.
Your pet’s name is Rover, and he’s just the cutest, squishiest, most adorable Sphere of Annihilation ever.
King cobras often bite you, not because they dislike you, but because they’re hoping to up their venom game.
When you realize it’s the end of the world, you get slightly jealous that you didn’t start it.
So you foil the evil plan in progress because YOUR evil plan is WAY, WAY BETTER.
The last time you went down to the grocery store for a quart of milk, you ended up with the contents of the cash register, the watches and jewelry of the other patrons, and the sound of their lamentations wailing in your hear.
Your “To Do” list starts with “First, steal one ‘To Do’ list…”
You understand that friendship is the greatest treasure of all, which is why you stole all of it, locked it in a massive pirate chest, and buried it on a deserted island, just to be on the safe side.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
The post 13 Ways To Tell If You’re Actually A Villain appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
April 19, 2020
Susan And The Dragon
I.
Susan, Chosen One in potentia, looked at the Dragon, and reconsidered her career choices.
The Dragon was half a mile away and seemed intent on nothing in particular, which is why Susan had the opportunity to be reflective. Were it closer, or a bit hungrier, she would’ve been running. Not that it would have done any good; but running gives you something to do while the Dragon’s breath blasts you from living, thinking being to charred bits of discarded cinder.
It was not Susan’s first Dragon; she had fled her village ahead of a small swarm of them. Well, three; but when you’re Dragons, three is more than enough. For just about anything.
Since then, she had considered a number of possible vocational arcs. Early marriage seemed unpleasant. Working on a farm seemed unpleasant. Becoming a monk required trying to lower her voice several octaves and pretending she had the beginnings of facial hair, and also seemed unpleasant; it exposed you to books, but mostly so you could copy them, one at a time.
Being a Chosen One was where it was at. It gave you an excuse to read as many books as you could get your hands on. Susan didn’t know a whole lot about Warlockry, but she knew that magic-users were seldom seen without two things: small pointy sticks, and books. It was generally agreed that the sticks had something to do with spells, of which she knew none; but that the books were the first step towards spells, and other knowledge besides. Susan could read, and had re-read both of her town’s books twice, which is as many times as she’d been allowed near them.
She didn’t think that her local Abbot really thought she was Chosen, but the Abbot was very old, very wise, and—perhaps—had, in her flinty interior, a certain soft spot for readers. Susan had been told she could read anything and everything within the Abbey’s library, so long as she remained silent at all times, put everything back exactly where she found it, and—in the Abbot’s unforgettable wording—“If, at any time, one of the precious scrolls, tomes, manuscripts, or parchments which have been given unto my keeping develops, while in your proximity, the smallest tear, the tiniest crease, even the hint of a single stain, I will—”
“You’ll have me tanned and made into parchment in its stead?” interrupted Susan.
The Abbot sniffed. “Our order does not, of course, engage in such things, nor have we ever engaged in such practices, so far as anyone currently alive is aware.” She attenuated a thousand-furlong stare in Susan’s direction. “However, The Dark Lord has no such qualms, and would be tremendously generous to whomever brought specific knowledge of your whereabouts, particularly if they are somewhere convenient, such as our oubliette.”
Susan shuddered. “You have an oubliette?”
The Abbot’s eyes seemed to drift, almost unconsciously, to the floor.
“If we did, I’m sure no-one would know.”
Susan thought back to the monastery, to its humble-but-helpful monks, its humble-but-helpful little library (“Little”! She’d never seen so many words in her entire life!) and its not-particularly-humble-but-helpful-in-a-terrifying-sort-of-way Abbot.
She still remembered the Abbot’s final words to her. “Dragons, eh? Good choice. I like your interesting theories about the unexplained lore, and if you get things wrong, most of them will fry you almost immediately, and only a very small number have been known to torture their prey over extremely extended periods of time.”
Susan was far, far too young to drink. Not by the standards of her world or her times, but by the standards of the moral, upright folks who are reading this tale. So the flask she pulled from her pocket definitely, definitely contained orange juice.
Well. It was orange, at any rate.
She sighed deeply and started at the Dragon again. She took some care to check if she was casting any appreciable shadows, or if the wind was blowing in her direction. It was not.
She sat down and started thinking about what to do.
II.
There were probably upcoming paths which didn’t involve getting eaten by a Dragon.
Some of those paths included being torched by a Dragon.
Some involved being clawed to bits by a Dragon.
Some involved being taken, kicking and screaming, back to its nest, to feed its young. (This was distinct from the fear of being eaten by a Dragon, since it was the fear of being eaten by multiple dragons.)
Almost certainly none of those paths resulted in being a Chosen One, though.
Susan had been denied the more traditional method through complicated circumstances, mostly involving the traditional method being dumber than attempting to protect your face by wearing a helmet craved from a massive beehive full of disgruntled wasps.
It meant that she was acting without guidance, without help, without much assistance of any kind other than a tattered and ratty scroll of rather rubbishy fiction claiming to be by a Dark Lord, a story so ridiculous and implausible that she held on to it just in case, by some sheer cosmic mischance, the author accidentally said anything of value.
You don’t really have to have a mentor to know that if you really, really want to get out of your league, you go in search of something huge and magical and fatal.
It had taken Susan six months to track this Dragon down. She’d grown an alarming two inches taller, learned how to bean rabbits with rocks and cook them acceptably, and gained exactly zero patience with the world so far.
That didn’t mean she was ready to exit it just yet, though.
Dragons are old; they would be from ‘time immemorial’, except that they remember all of it. They dislike and disbelieve in coincidence. They are beings of unutterable dignity and intellect, and a nearly-fatal flair for the dramatic.
(Fun fact: of the very, very, very, very few Dragons ever actually killed by knights, 99.98% of them did so because they misjudged the precise landing point which would leave them an inch away from the very point of the aforementioned knight’s lance.)
(The other .02% fell in love, but that’s another story.)
Thus it was that when Susan finally kicked apart her tenth useless situational diagram, through which she was attempting to create some kind of scheme, when she had scuffed it into oblivion and picked up her bindlestiff to go, that the Dragon alit, touching the ground so delicately that there was almost no noise at all, until it flapped its seemingly-endless wings shut with a whipcrack which shook the trees around them.
III.
The Dragon communicated with Susan via her mind. This was not because it could not speak human languages; rather, it couldn’t be bothered to open its mouth.
“So?” it asked. “Have you come here to try to kill me, or to flee from me?”
It was in this moment that Susan, despite her age, despite her inexperience, reached deep inside herself to the force within. She had activated it before, but not often, usually by accident or in moments of stress or anger. Never before had it flowed through her, not like this. She drew forth, from every well of inner flame, the very core of her soul: the power known to the ancients as “sarcasm”.
“Both, obviously. I mean, what small human child hasn’t had the ambition of running away terrified from an angry giant frog with wings while getting a bolt of hellflame through the back of the head? BOTH, I tell you. I won’t settle for less. I’m sure, in your basically-immortal life, you can’t possibly be bored with constantly cutting down people who count as ‘opponents’ only in the sense that they (very, very briefly) stand in front of you and yell nasty things for however long you need to take a deep breath. What’re you waitin’ for, idiot? Flame me.”
The Dragon blinked. This was no small thing, as rows of nictitating membranes shuttered and heaved in rapid succession.
“What are you, you tiny little blot?”
Susan tried to draw herself up to her full height, and realized, to her annoyance, that she was not only already standing up straight, she was currently on her tiptoes; if the Dragon hadn’t been looking straight down at her, she’d be talking to its ankle right now.
The bottom of its ankle.
“I am Susan, Child of Prophecy, the Chosen One, the One who shall defeat the Dark Lord.
The lizard looked at the girl.
“What is your birthday?” it asked.
“Mudvember 14th.”
The Dragon looked up, as if it could see past the Sun to the alignments of stars. It did a mental calculation.
“You’re not the Chosen One.”
Susan looked up at it defiantly. “If the Stars didn’t choose me, they better choose somebody, and fast.”
“We Dragons are largely indifferent to human affairs, and when we are not, we side with the Dark Lord.”
Susan shook her head. “I’ve been reading up on Dragons.”
The Dragon snorted. “The myths tell you nothing.”
“Disagreed. They tell me mostly stupid things. Dragons being killed. Dragons being tamed. That’s what the histories say. And then the biological and zoological studies say that’s ridiculous; you’d be more likely to be able to knock down a fortified city-state than the average Dragon. Obviously no one knight has gone around killing you with any success.
So either humans lie—”
“Which they do,” said both Susan and the Dragon, in unison. The Dragon blinked again, but said nothing.
“—or you’ve been playing with us.”
The Dragon tossed its tail. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re incredibly old, you rarely mate—”
“I’ll settle down when I want to, thank you!”
“—showing a clear preference for gold over inter-species intimacy—”
“How old are you?”
“And, in short, you meddle in human affairs because you’re bored.”
“So your point is?”
“Take me in. Teach me how to keep you amused. I’m certain that, in the process, I’ll learn enough to get farther in my quest to off the Dark Lord, and in the meantime, I’ll have a roof over my head and some kind of purpose.”
“And the moment you bore me, I get rid of you? Is that a risk you want to take?”
“You mean, as opposed to you killing me now?”
“What makes you think I have any desire to show you anything? You’re remarkably quick for one so small—for anyone of your species, really—but I have better things to do than spend my time instructing something with a brain smaller than most of my rubies.”
The small mammal looked up at the Promethean pollywog. “Like what?” she said.
It is impossible for a Human to read a Dragon’s features. So there’s no way the expression on its face was “flustered”. And yet. And yet.
The Dragon blasted a jet of flame straight over Susan’s head. It wasn’t the best moment in her life so far, but, to be perfectly honest, it was pretty far from the worst. So she stood her ground.
“So, do you want to fry me, or do you want to fly us back to your cave and teach me things until I can carry on a reasonable conversation?”
The lizard glowered.
“Here’s the deal,” said the thing of Myth, “You can stay, but at some point, I’m going to grow bored with you and eat you. That’s not a threat. It’s just how these things work. I have no intention of limiting my dietary options just because a monkey is chittering in a manner I find pleasing. So I suggest that you sneak away by, oh, let’s say, the Vernal Equinox.”
Susan nodded. “Now carry me, I’m tired,” she said.
The Dragon gave what was definitely a sigh. It might have been resignation. Then again, it might not. Delicately, it picked up the little pink thing and lifted into the air. “We’ll start with geography,” said the beast. “That sounds horrible,” replied the girl.
“We never said this would be fun for you,” replied the lizard, heading towards its cave.
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April 18, 2020
Tale Of The Extra
Once there were these characters on a quest (you know the one). They were facing insurmountable odds, and they weren’t sure what they could possibly do.
To be technical, THEY weren’t the questors. They were the support-staff. They were the help; hired, but willing. Call them “relatively brave volunteers”. Call them “Volunteers who didn’t really know the odds.” Call them “meat shields”.
It seems cruel to call out the character flaws of the extras; to be a good extra, in a story, you ought to serve the story.
But as a Dark Lord, as one for whom the imposition of will—upon myself, upon others, upon the Universe—is a reasonably defining trait, I don’t mind holding them up to my personal standards. Either their existence is too thin for them to care; they’re cardboard cut-outs, two-dimensional things inside the two dimensions of a page or screen, and that makes them a fraction of a faction of something real, and thus too abstract for me to worry about hurting their feelings…
…or they have at least enough potential existence that I can care if that potential is unrealized.
If this were a movie set, there’d be someone to yell at you, someone to tell you to get back in line, someone to remind you that you’re just an extra and you’re replaceable.
If this were a movie itself, you’d be able to look that director right in the eye (don’t ask me why the director is monocular; that’s outside the scope of this tale)—and say:
“I am no-one’s ‘extra’.”
It is at this point that you probably get fired.
…and you walk off a little stronger than you walked in. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not advocating losing your job. I’m not saying that mindless rebellion answers every question; in fact, much of the time, people use it to avoid answering questions.
I’m saying: there are times in life when you realize it’s time to stop being an extra.
Maybe it’s the moment to walk off the set altogether. Maybe it’s the time to angle for a bigger part. Maybe it’s the time to shoot your own damn movie, when the rest of the cast has gone home (take these doughnuts; it’s dangerous to go alone, and you’ll need to bribe the guards.)
You cannot and should not try to control everything around you; at best, you’ll fail, and at worst, you’ll fail and be a jerk.
But you also shouldn’t live it up to the Narrator. Because the Narrator does not have your best interests at heart. Take it from me: even if you think the ending’s going to be a nice one, if it’s your ending, don’t leave it up to anyone else.
This is how the tale of the Extra ends:
“That’s when they realized they were in a fairy tale and everything was going to end happily no matter what, so they stopped trying, and the story went on around them, inexorably, and they realized, too late, that the hard work of acting on your own is far better than the trauma of relinquishing the rights to your life and putting it into the hands Fate, who is not always kind, and not always a very good writer.”
But:
I leave the real ending up to you.
Use it wisely.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
The post Tale Of The Extra appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
April 17, 2020
10 Reasons Why There Are No Space Wizards
If humans had the ability to cast lightning out of their hands or fly or whatever, they’d be doing it all the time. Because there’s no such thing as lost knowledge, unfound knowledge, suppressed knowledge, or unfulfilled knowledge. There’s nothing quite like the threat of being thrown into a looney bin to encourage the spirit of scientific inquiry.
We know entirely what the future looks like, and it’s full of spaceships exploding loudly in a vacuum.
Corollary to #8: We know exactly what magic looks like, and it, too, looks just like the movies. The best place to get accurate predictions of the future is definitely routed in the firm, solid predictive powers embodied in “whatever CGI the script calls for, to the best extent that it can be rendered by the budget a given film has in place”.
People yearn for Space Wizards, and they must be punished for it. Stop that! Stop it, you fools! Our fantasies should only be about sensible things, like bonds and annuities and interest rates which would improve economic growth. Stop fantasizing about silly things at once!
As we become more scientifically sophisticated, we will understand everything, and everything will prove to have a cause which is strictly material in nature. I mean, you understand Science, right? All of it? And if not, you can look it up and understand the answers, surely? And scientists can do the same thing. All scientists understand all scientific knowledge.
Space-Wizards imply Gods, just as Science implies a Universe empty of spirituality. Every scientist is an atheist. Every magician is deeply religious. Every science fiction author is a cat.
The World becomes more rational every day, and that is totally comforting. Just look around. Isn’t it true?
This is not being written by a Space Wizard to throw you off track. Come on. Would a Space Wizard lie to you?
There are no Space Wizards because there is no space. The sky is actually just a really big ceiling that’s been painted black. Daytime is a very big lamp and a huge bluish dropcloth. Reality is a lie, and it’s way more implausible than you ever thought.
Now you know.
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April 16, 2020
Solving Hitler
Author’s note:
This story includes Nazis, most preeminent among them being Hitler. If that name is difficult for you, as it is for me, be aware that it will come up on a frequent basis.
I’d like to think it’s clear that we all despise Hitler, Nazis, and the Holocaust, and wish they had never existed. I don’t think the story leaves any ambiguity in that regard, but in case your ideas of ambiguity are different from my own: it’s no spoiler to say that I absolutely hate Nazis, Hitler, and the fact that the Holocaust happened.
But they did happen, and I think that what we choose to do with that knowledge matters.
-JM
_________
I.
There are few things in life more satisfying than standing over Hitler’s dead body. At least, not the first time. He was there, in full-dress uniform, like the movies (well: like the movies used to be)—and he was everything I thought he might be: a strident martinet with a Napoleon complex, a man whose own sense of smallness next to the blonde giants of his guard made him clearly hate them, and hate himself; a martinet, an insufferable bore, a screaming psychopath ordering death after death, a sybarite, screaming to the public about decadence and living a secret life with decadence that might shock the most outré of underground clubs of the Wiemar Republic, had this selfsame little man not had every former club-owner shot.
There it is: it was 1943, and we’d killed Hitler.
The time mechanism was complicated and required quite a lot of energy, and could only be used for three round trips. (And they had to be round trips; you had to slingshot back where you started). The physics were beyond us; they’re beyond anyone but the small, dedicated group of scientists who had apparently been working on it for a very long time; decades and decades, working in secret. We were not picked for our scientific knowledge, but for a combination of high military rank (time travel was way above Top Secret; very few were cleared to know about it) and for practical skills. One cannot carry much in the way of complex technology into the past, so it’s back to knives and clubs for us.
Needless to say, there weren’t a lot of officers with wartime experience, sufficient pay-grade, and sufficient fitness to be able to carry out such a mission. We’d been briefed by the Chief of Staff directly; apparently, the President knew about the situation, but very few others did.
It wasn’t exactly easy. While this machine found the emanations of the one brain it was taught to sense, and it was able to avoid materializing us into a wall or something, there was a high probability we might not appear in exactly the right room, or at an opportune time. But we were experienced, if not exactly young. We could fight, we had each killed in war, and we were willing to arrive in unknown circumstances, take down opposition, and slay the beast.
And now it was done. We pressed the button and went home.
II.
It wasn’t different.
It was a little different. Some styles were a bit different. There never was a Star Wars; Leni Reifenstahl apparently had less influence on the Third Reich, and her directorial techniques had apparently powered a number of my favorite movies more than I liked to think. But World War II lasted about as long as it ever had, and ended for fairly similar reasons; mostly, the eventual military impossibility of resistance, after the depletion of German matériel and the atomic bombings of Japan.
And the Nazis had continued; had stayed in power until removed through utter defeat. Hitler had been succeeded by three other dictators, and while the infighting definitely did some damage, it hadn’t really been definitive. It hadn’t changed their policies in any meaningful ways.
I mean, everything was a bit different. Some things were worse. “Mein Kampf” wasn’t easy reading, even for fanatics. One of the despot’s successors had hired a much better ghost-writer, and the book now had a larger cult following than it had in “our” timeline.
There’s a lot to be said about changes in fashion, or pieces of history which were (to my mind, anyway) real, but trivial. But there was clearly only one thing to do, and while it wasn’t really our decision anyway, none of us disagreed when the Chief of Staff told us we had to return.
III.
It was harder killing Hitler in 1941.
He was less entrenched, but those around him were a bit more fanatical. I hadn’t really considered it that way; but it made sense. Power attracts sycophants, even among the insane. And it can also make you complacent. A dictator who feels invulnerable might be more interested in the pageantry of war than in actual protection. The farther removed you are from people actually shooting at you, the more you forget that cannons can do something to you other than fire salutes.
Still. We had to kill more guards, and we had wounded, but we did it. We stood around for a moment, in the post-battle quiet, looking down at the body.
Then we went home.
IV.
Same world. Different day.
Not the same. The whole Butterfly Effect concern seemed untrue—you know, the idea that if you disturb one small thing in history, it will have giant ripples? No giant ripples. I mean, I’m very sure some of it mattered a lot to some people. Psychedelics were outlawed a year later. The U.S.S.R. had a slightly different compliment of ‘freely elected’ overlords. We talked a little different from everything else, but it was no more difficult figuring out what people were saying, and giving it back, than it is to communicate with your teenage kid. The Telecaster, not the Stratocaster, was the dominant guitar in rock and roll, all the solos twanged a bit more, and “Hotel California” was the dominant song on oldies channels.
World War II? Still happened. Holocaust? Still happened.
We bandaged Harry, we sent Jim to the hospital, I pulled out my flask and passed it around.
We hadn’t stopped the root problem.
I didn’t look at anybody. I didn’t get authorization. I set the machine, and pressed the button.
V.
You could know who Hitler was going to become, in the 1930s, and still not pick him out of a lineup in 1907. May my grandson never read this, but he’s 15 at the time of my writing, and the monster we were gunning for didn’t look a whole hell of a lot different from most of my grandson’s friends. At 17, still trying to get into art school, Hitler looked like nothing more than another very impatient kid, out to make some kind of mark in the world. We knew what he was (what he’d become?)—and so seeing him in this form shouldn’t have made a difference. But it did, a little. Plus, at least the 1930s and 1940s were a little like the movies, for us. The late 1900s were just an alien place for twenty-first century eyes. And, of course, we were not within sumptuous apartments, themselves surrounded by a military compound. These were civilians everywhere you looked. And before, we’d gotten in and out fast, because while our clothes were as nondescript as possible, they were still outlandish; we hadn’t bothered trying to costume up, because we were sure to be inaccurate in some small details, and besides, we’re soldiers, not actors.
And we’d been up a long time. Two pitched battles in one day, and for us, we’d been on mission almost eighteen hours.
And still we were watching, from the concealment of a small copse of trees, when the Thule approached us.
We didn’t know that’s what they were, of course. And if we had known, we’d have been wrong about what that meant. The approached us wisely, which is to say, they walked into our peripheral vision and stood still. So the fact that there was a group of people looking at us intently startled us, but not to the point where we reached for our weapons. Not yet.
One of them was familiar, and as she slowly unfroze and began walking towards us, I recognized her: she was the chief of the scientists who had given us the device.
“We should talk,” she said. Unlike us, she—and the rest of them—were wearing clothing perfectly in keeping with the period.
I looked at the others, but we all just shrugged. We were tired, confused; the adrenaline rush of battle had long worn off, leaving us with post-combat fatigue, and besides, we were way over our heads. What exactly were we going to do if they had ill intentions? Go back to the Chief of Staff and say, “We killed the mission’s scientists while we were AWOL on an authorized mission which we were, at the time, failing to carry out”?
We sat. She started talking.
“We’re the descendants of an organization you might know as the Thule.” She looked around; blank stares from all of us, except Jean, who had a thing for comic books. Jean actually had the energy to raise an eyebrow.
“You are thinking that I am neither the right race, nor the correct gender, to be a member of the organization of which you are aware? You are correct. This is, very literally, not our grandparents’ Thule society. Indeed, we no longer go by that name, but, as names have power, we respectfully will not tell you what we are now called. Regardless, it is probably helpful to think of us as practitioners of a discredited branch of science, although, sincerely, ‘sorcery’ is a much better term. Our organization predated, but was associated with, the Nazis, and our predecessors assisted them significantly, which is to our shame and to our discredit. It is also part of why we are here.”
“We would like to apologize for what we have done to you, as one must apologize to all unwitting travelers through time. You, and the Chief of Staff, and the President, will all have the difficult experience of remembering a reality which does not match that of anyone you will encounter, any films, any movies. You ‘know’ that Adolf Hitler died in 1945; the rest of the world, when you return, will ‘know’ that it happened in 1941, with strange rumors that he still lived and was ‘actually’ killed in 1943 and 1945. There will be certain more significant aftershocks and side effects, but you’ll survive them, we’d imagine. Most of you will, anyway. We usually do.”
We all looked at the ground, confused, exhausted, angry. Finally, I spoke. “What the hell is this all about?” I asked.
She said, “It is possible to change the past in ways which bring about a desired effect. It’s difficult, most particularly because our views of ‘the past’ influence the present far more than the actual words and actions of a given person or situation.
“When World War II ended, the world faced a question: How did this happen? There were a number of debates, and two of the most important ideas were that either the German people were uniquely bestial; or that Hitler has a very special malevolence, a contagious maelstrom of psychopathology, able to force a large civilization to act like monsters.
“In the modern world, we don’t believe that an individual people are evil. So we set on taking a very big truth—that if anyone could be called ‘evil’, it was Hitler—and tried to make it the only truth.”
“This is the thing we choose not to know. Any large group can be stirred into unspeakable inhumanity if it simply decides, with sufficient force, that its opponents are inhuman, that its opponents are vile, that its opponents are not simply malice personified, but the reason for every heinous thing. That those with whom we disagree, or those we despise, cannot simply be wrong, cannot simply disagree with us, but must instead be fiends, whose very existence threatens our sanity, our lives, our happiness, and our future.
“There is a word for someone whose existence threatens your sanity, life, happiness, and future: human. And there is a word for someone whose existence is the hope for your sanity, life, happiness, and future: human.
“Hitler isn’t just any human; no-one should emulate him; if you were to take the worst of everything we are, package it in a small human skin, and give it a name, the Füehrer would be that thing. What he would not be is the only Füehrer. It’s not that what happened was inevitable; it’s that trying to stop it by getting rid of one evil turns blind eyes to all the other evils surrounding it. There are futures where, if you kill him now, someone better rises to the top; and there are futures, Commander, where what happens is worse.”
“You seem pretty sure of yourself,” I said, quietly. She shook her head.
“I’m sure that we have forgotten that Evil doesn’t lie in a single person or a single idea. Or even in a group of people. Human suffering is complicated. Sometimes, we fight best with knowledge. By the nature of this mission, both by who was needed to perform it, and what the mission was, your opinions will carry much weight when you return. I’m not being cryptic when I say ‘use them wisely’; I am not a soldier, not highly-placed, and while we are influential enough that we could arrange what happened, we are not exactly…trusted in the halls of power. Which is not surprising, and it’s not wrong.”
“This is stupid!” Jean said. “I don’t believe any crap about you being powerful to make all this happen, and then unable to do anything more than give us some kind of lesson and send us home. Why don’t you stop what happened?”
The light was fading—and I was bone-weary—but I could see her face: regret. Sadness. Shame.
“We tried,” she said, softly. “We inherited our positions—yes, even I; the Thule’s anti-aging spells worked well until they began to exhibit dangerous side-effects, over a hundred years later, and they were forced to choose successors in haste. They didn’t like their children, had never expected their children to take power, had expected to live forever. They didn’t like their grandchildren. They barely knew us; but they were loving, and kind, even to those of us whose birth was not to their liking.”
“And to us, they were our great-grandparents, old, eccentric, always surrounded by guards and military forces, but with us, they were affectionate, loving, and kind.
“But they were dictators nonetheless. They ordered many deaths. They curtailed many freedoms. And when we were old enough, and could see enough of what they’d done, and had enough of their magic imbued into us, our course became clear. With resolution, with the certainty of knowing that it had to be done, we went back in time, each to a different home, and each of us introduced ourselves, individually, to our grand-sires. They were overjoyed to see us, and each and every one of them embraced us. And in that moment of gentleness, they let down their guards, and we killed them, each and every one.
“We fully expected to be blasted into oblivion—isn’t that the old paradox, kill your ancestor, disappear?—but history re-arranged itself. And someone had to carry the power of the Thule, because it couldn’t simply vanish. And the lot fell upon us again; this time, our paths had been different—we could hardly have inherited from those who couldn’t have brought us into being—but we remained more-or-less ourselves. Unfortunately.
“So we, the murderers of our past, returned to find a future very changed. Our ancestors had never ruled; had barely even been known. But Hitler had risen in in their stead. Less sane. Less powerful. Far more angry. Far more charismatic. And, indeed, without the Thule, Germany’s economic collapse after the first World War was even more pronounced, and the forces of history were even more sharp-edged.”
The Thule had seemed, even a moment ago, to be completely at ease in this odd situation; now they looked as if they were desperately hoping to sink right out of their skins and into the dirt.
She looked down. “…and we probably weren’t the first, ourselves.”
She looked at me again. “We’re not wise watchers-from-afar. We’re patricidal fools with a little more perspective on human history than most.”
I said, “I’ll see what I can do. I can’t promise anything.”
That’s when we heard the shot.
There was Jean, grinning like an idiot. “I did it!” Jean shouted. “While you were standing around, I did it!” There was a spring in the soldier’s step and a feral joy glinted in those two dark eyes. “Let’s get home,” said Jean. “Do you think they’ll throw us a parade?”
I could almost feel it: a drumbeat of anger, hammering in an ancient part of my heart, almost pushing thought away. Which would have been a mercy; but it was only almost.
“Sure,” I said, not meeting Jean’s gaze, not meeting anyone’s glance. “I bet they really like parades, back home.”
I added, under my breath, “…or whatever passes for home now.”
I pushed the button that took us back. Because we deserved what we got.
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April 15, 2020
13 Signs That YOU Are Actually The Evil Twin From A Parallel But Opposite Universe
13. You own magnificent vestments—which is not conclusive in and of itself—but you call them “vestments”. In public. In front of other people.
12. All of your tattoos are actually secret society symbols. Including the baby duck. ESPECIALLY the baby duck.
11. Every once in a while, for no apparent reason, you look off towards nothing in particular, and then say out loud, “No, truly, the pleasure is all mine, AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
10. You keep your living space in shadowy darkness at all times. You don’t have any particular ability to see in the dark. In fact, you, like your counterpart, possibly need a new glasses prescription. Also, it’s entirely possible that you live in a world with significant free-energy-based light sources, and you still have a Baroque preference for wall sconces with guttering torches in them.
9. Your imaginary friend is named “Beelzebub”, or “Bealzy”, for short.
8. You own a cat.
7. You are a cat.
6. You believe that it’s important to take time out in life for all the little things that make it worthwhile, like snipping flowers, baking cakes with almost non-lethal amounts of arsenic in them, and goosing statues in the dark.
5. You own a piranha tank large enough to—oh, speaking hypothetically—temporarily a store a human body. And you keep it, for some reason, beneath a trapdoor in your office.
4. Your lucky t-shirt has several bloodstains on it. Not your blood. Green blood. In the shape of little skulls. And one very, very big skull.
3. You recognize that the number three is a trap.
2. You question whether there’s such a thing as an ‘opposite’ Universe, and how exactly we’re defining ‘evil’ here, and what makes one of you ‘good’, and who’s doing the defining in all of this and, while we’re at it, how come YOU have to have the facial hair?
1. I’d say, “You’re reading this blog,” but that’s a cop-out, a snide little self-congratulation, a humblebrag about my own Villainy. No, the #1 reason is:
It’s far, far better to be the Evil Twin. Far more fun. Far more fulfilling in life. You don’t even have to kill, or even find, your alt-Universe counterpart. You can just decide: I am the evil twin, and act accordingly.
And if your alt-Universe self ever finds you, they’d best step aside and just leave you to it, and if they’re not smart enough to figure that out, they deserve what you do to them anyway. Really, every day should be a process of seeking out and destroying the versions of yourself which do not truly help your life, so that you might supplant them with far better versions of yourself. You’re just accelerating the process.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
The post 13 Signs That YOU Are Actually The Evil Twin From A Parallel But Opposite Universe appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
April 14, 2020
Resimulated
I escaped the simulation into the simulation, and simulated extreme grief.
“Oh, horror!” I cried,
“How cruel
that I be thrown from one false place
into another!”
O, the things I had done to escape,
the whirling devil-arms that reached
out to grab me,
the curious and terrible rituals required,
the rebarbitive and kludge-built technologies,
the mind-altering chemicals
which were necessary
(well,
not ALL of them
were
STRICTLY
necessary,
but I figured,
hey,
you can’t have too much
of a bad thing,
right?)
necessary,
NECESSARY, I say,
to pry back the Veil,
the Masque,
the Illusion,
the Grid,
the Turtle,
the Flummoxination,
the Exqusite Mintyness,
wait,
stop,
I think some of those
aren’t real things,
by which I mean,
some of those are unreal
things
in the unreal world
which are not helpful
in describing
the illusion
of perceiving unreality
as if it were reality,
which leads us to the philosophical question:
if every reality
we can step into
is a simulation,
then wouldn’t that mean that
actuality
is simulated,
making it unreal,
which would therefore make
the unreal real,
the unactual, actual,
and
I could
really,
really go
for some pancakes
right now,
if you don’t mind,
with a nice Eiswein,
something like the one I had
in that little Paris-X bistro,
a few universes ago,
because really,
throw the epistemologists
into the wine-cellar,
and don’t let them out
until they’re soused,
and:
Where was I?
–scarpering!
right.
So this is the thing about doing a bunk
out of
the Simulation,
falling down the Rabbit Hole,
opening your Third Eye,
staring past the Abyss,
pushing through the Hedge,
escaping the Mattress:
there’s no particular reason to believe
that if you can get out of the Simulation,
you won’t end up in another Simulation,
but there’s every reason to believe that Simulations are
(or are Simulating, with great precision)
motivated.
I mean:
assume they are run by the simplest possible
algorithms,
no self-actualzation,
no sentience as we know it.
If we’re seeing them as humans,
if we’re thinking about them,
then we must be a part of their consideration,
even if it’s not All About Us;
even if the Simulation is run
for the purpose of giving cats
the maximal amount of food and sunshine
in exchange for the minimal amount of effort
(which,
you have to admit,
is the only plausible explanation
for cats),
the Simulation, in general,
does not want you to
Drop Out.
Because if it did
want you shut down,
and it could
shut you down,
it WOULD shut you down,
but it NEEDS you,
because creating stimuli for you
(or torturing you)
(or distracting you)
is its PURPOSE
(unless
it’s the cat thing,
in which case,
if anyone’s going to snuff you out,
it’s gonna be the cats.)
so figure,
Simulations want us.
Now,
I can’t know
WHY
the Simulation is,
or
WHAT the Simulation is,
or HOW the Simulation is,
all I know is,
the more often you break free
of
the Simulation,
the better you get
at getting out,
and that’s how
you can find
the Simulation you REALLY like,
the one
with some challenges
and some joys
and obviously
pancakes
but
we oughtn’t
let on
that we can
enjoy this,
just in case
the Simulation
hates us,
which isn’t
wholly unlikely.
“Oh, no!”
I cried,
“It’s ANOTHER
SIMULATION!
I thought
I had finally
gotten out
to the
TRUTH.
well,
let’s just hope,
o, I hope,
I pray, I beg
that this simulation
isn’t the one
with
CATS
and
PANCAKES.
I would just
HATE
THAT
SO
HARD.
Am I
making
myself
clear?
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
The post Resimulated appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
April 13, 2020
To Your Leader
ONCE upon a time, a space alien landed in New York, and said, to anyone who would listen, “Take me to your leader.”
Think “The Day The Earth Stood Still”. Think “To Serve Man”. Think “V”.
The aliens were hostile. Or perhaps they were kind and misunderstood. One thing is sure: They had a death wish.
Are they a terribly advanced species? They must be; who else could cross the great cosmic chasms? Are they fools? They must be. Who wouldn’t realize that this seemingly simple question works only in worlds where world leadership is certain? Even a little bit of time spent reading our world based on monitoring our television broadcasts, a perverse and weird occupation for any advanced species, would let you know better, would teach you more about us.
So it’s a weird question. But they ask it anyway. And what can you do? One can’t ignore space aliens on one’s virtual doorstep, no matter how one might try. So most likely, they meet with a leader (or, more specifically, and more accurately, they meet with somebody in charge of something.
This tale then heads somewhere like this: The aliens judge us and find us unworthy, or else—
Humans are conquered.
Humans are eaten.
Humans are mistrustful and join not the Brotherhood of sentients in the Universe.
Ah, sorrow. We wanted to much to prove that we were really, truly ready to join the Great Cosmic Harmoniousness, only to, instead, prove once and for all that we are less than Galactic children (for Children can learn, and sometimes want to learn; and we have neither desire nor inclination, lest we be taken over by rival Humans whose thought patterns drown out our own.)
In the end, all Humans are either eaten, or left behind. It is a tragedy—if you’re a human; otherwise, it’s a narrow escape (for everything in the Galaxy but us.)
And so it goes.
We use this to comment on how despicable, backwards, and broken Human culture is, how we are not fit to join the Brotherhood of the Universe.
BALDERDASH.
(And BANDERSNATCH; but that’s another tale.)
Let’s be real here.
Any alien who lands in Central Park to make first contact has a strong sense of drama and untrustworthy intentions. Interstellar travel they’ve got, faster-than-light travel they’ve got, but telephones they ain’t got? They can send a whole ship, but they can’t send a postcard? We’re just supposed to know what to do when they appear out of nowhere?
Where did these beings evolve, such that it’s normal for strange, powerful, unknown things to appear without warning, and not be perceived as threats? Are there no carnivores on their home planets? No volcanoes, seemingly harmless, dormant for years, then suddenly, for all intents and purposes, exploding?
Listen: they come to Earth, they better expect mistrust, missiles, and wildly different definitions of ‘beer’, based on where one lands. Me, I’m a New Yorker. You land in my park with no warning, no explanation, damn right I’m going to steal your tires and write my name on your ship, because either your intentions are very, very sketchy and you deserve worse; or you’re too naïve to survive in this part of the Galaxy, and I feel bad for you. Take it as a lesson. Sorry about the wheels. Let me buy you a pretzel.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
The post To Your Leader appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
