Chương 22: 21-Hail to the Chief

"Who shall I announce, sir?" Edward asked the newcomer. It was the second time he had asked, no, he had demanded, an audience with Dignity. He was a man in his sixties with an unremarkable face and a perennial scowl. Edward had worked as an overseer in a factory before the activation and had seen that scowl before, usually on inspectors' faces during an audit. It was a scowl that said I am sick to the death of your incompetence and the shoddy, inefficient way you do things here, but I am far too polite to say it.

It was a very expressive scowl. The fact that Dignity had granted him a second audience in the same week said a great deal about how he expected the meeting to go. She was a hard-working, dedicated woman, but she had her little vices, too. In her case, she loved making arrogant bullies look like fools. Edward almost felt a twinge of pity for the man. And then he heard his answer.

"You may announce the President of the United States," the stranger told Edward smugly.

"Please, do come in, Mr. President," Edward opened the door for him, trying not to smile. He escorted the man inside. He would not miss this for the world. Dignity was sitting at her desk, sorting out some papers. John Podachek was at her right; he was busy manipulating some sort of contraption so weird that it made Edward's eyes water.

"Ah, Mr. President, please do sit down," Dignity said, smiling at the man.

"I was incredibly impressed by your arguments two days ago. As I recall, you presented yourself as the designated successor after we lost the elected president in that sad zombie affair a couple of months ago."

"I asked our premier constitutional scholar, Mr. John Podachek here, to be present for the proceedings. Perhaps you would care to repeat your reasoning before him."

"Of course," the man said, an oily smile spreading on his face. Edward almost laughed out loud. This moron thought he had already won.

"As you recall, eh, uh, er… I want to be recognized as the President so we all… er… I mean, I advance and progress, and…uh, live better and... have people do what I say?"

"Such eloquence can only come from a true statesman, John," Dignity said gravely to Podachek.

"John here has a weird class called Inexorable. This class has a lot of little quirks, the main one being that no one can lie in his presence. I think this has a lot to do with your sudden loss of spontaneity."

"However, leadership has taught me an important lesson: you should never renounce life's little comical moments. As I recall, you worked as a regional administrator at a federal agency. You made a case as being the proper designated successor, as all the administration ranks above you had been wiped out during the Apocalypse," she said sweetly, smiling at him. Edward braced himself—now came the good part.

"So I passed along your manifesto to Mel, our teacher, and asked her students to analyze it. I do want them to become involved in Babylon's administration someday, and I thought it would be a good experience for them," she said while she glanced at the stack of papers she held.

"They are very bright kids; I must warn you."

"This one comes from Maria. She designed that thing John is trying to solve," she pointed at Podachek.

"It is a Rubik's Cube with nineteen dimensions. John was incredibly good at solving them before becoming enhanced, but after gaining enhanced intellect, he lost his taste for them; they were no longer a challenge. Maria designed this new one for him, and he has not solved it yet. She is a dearie," she added, beaming.

"The manifesto reveals a worrying lack of knowledge of the fundamental precepts of law— designated successor rules stop at the Secretary of Homeland Security," Dignity read aloud; the stranger tried to protest, but Podachek's presence sealed his lips magically.

"You were going to address your argumentation about how this does not apply to the present situation? Do not worry, I was coming to that," Dignity said, before going on.

"All the arguments presented to justify ignoring those rules are a mix of woeful ignorance of basic constitutional fundamentals, malicious misinterpretation of legal precedent, and plain wishful thinking. That girl has a way with words," Dignity said approvingly.

"I picked Maria's essay, but I could have used any of the other thirteen. They all agree with her," Dignity explained.

"However, I am also going to read Koji's. That kid is incredibly good at side thinking. He used your own arguments and calculated your position in the succession ladder. You are number 3245—Mr. Podachek here was a marshal and is currently holding a minor position on a coordination detail with the FBI. That puts him 652 ranks above you."

"So, please, meet the President," she said, pointing at John.

"Do you want to say anything to your employee, Mr. President?" she asked Podachek. Podachek glanced briefly up and looked at the man in the eyes.

"Goodbye," he said. The man fled the room. Edward burst out laughing.

"Just for the record, John," Dignity said to Podachek, "I would have voted for you." There was a soft knock at the door. Billy was peering from it. Dignity sighed. Laughter was over. Thirty minutes later, Dignity was still trying to get her head around what Jenna had explained to them.

"She still has the Icosahedron?" she repeated.

"And she is now some sort of ally? Why won't she give it back, then?"

"Well, to be fair, the Icosahedron is hers. She was its first owner," Jenna began, somewhat defensively.

"But that is not the reason," she quickly added as Dignity frowned. She was the only person capable of putting the fear of god in the Primordial.

"She says she wants to force our enemies to show their hand. She is a master strategist. She is a master at practically everything. She will come when the time is due."

"Bob, you are the reasonable one here," she said, turning to him.

"This woman gives us a beating, steals from us, and suddenly you are all on Team Dawn? You must understand my skepticism."

"You don't seem spellbound," she went on, "and I know you are not lying to me. Podachek is here. I will not insult your intelligence by pretending that you are not part of the reason I called him this morning." This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"The question remains: what could she have said to make you change your mind so much?"

"The idea is simple, Dignity," Bob answered her.

"We have picked a fight that we can't win. We can hold the Coven off for five, ten, or twenty years…they will eventually get the artifact back. And twenty years is nothing at the scale we are using. Nothing. We might as well hand it to them ourselves."

"And does this new friend of yours, who is so good at practically everything, have an alternative?" asked Dignity.

"She does, Mrs. Richardson," Billy told her. He was the only one who still called her that.

"She believes she can destroy the Icosahedron using the same mystical power she employs to restart her powers."

"You told me she already tried that once and failed," Dignity countered. Dawn had told the Losers part of her story.

"The process lacked a vital component," Jenna answered.

"That being?" asked Dignity.

"Us," Jenna said.

"She thinks she can destroy the Icosahedron, but only if we help her. That is why she is in such a hurry to try it. She knows the Coven will get us sooner or later."

"She wants to destroy it while we are still alive."

"What makes you think destroying it is such a good idea?" Dignity went on.

"What if Necessity is right?"

"Necessity was right, Dignity," Bob answered.

"Until two months ago. The future was set in stone. If the Icosahedron were destroyed, Limbo would eat all creation. Now the timeline is fuzzy. That part is not inevitable anymore."

"What caused the change?" Dignity asked.

"Dawn thinks the future became unreadable at the time we gained our powers," Jenna answered.

"We are not contained by the Compendium. We are the only factor that it can't take into account when making predictions. That is also the reason we could be used to pierce its invulnerability."

"She thinks there is a chance we can help stop this whole thing without destroying the universe. We are not even sure it is a better option, mind you. The future just can't be read at a certain point. That is all. If we do this, we are going in blind." The leader of Babylon thought long and hard, trying to decide what the right thing to do was. She finally spoke.

"To hell with this. My name is not Reasonable Risk. My name is Dignity."

"We are in." Colonel Hawking and Necessity watched each other through the rift. It had appeared in the middle of Hawking's command hall at the appointed hour. He had asked for this meeting through one of the men he suspected of being a Champion working for the Coven. Tell your boss we want to discuss an agreement tomorrow at 11 A. M. Necessity must have been impressed enough by the Federation finding the spy to hear what Hawking had to say. He had the spy killed, of course.

Hawking had been talking for the better part of an hour, while the shrouded leader of the Coven stood and listened. Necessity finally spoke, in Hawking's own voice.

"I have been doing this for all eternity. In my view, you were born just a moment ago. Why should I defer to you?"

"Because the Losers have already beaten you twice," Hawking spoke bluntly.

"They do not play by the same rules you do. Dragons, swords in stones, chosen ones... You are bound by the Compendium and its way of doing things. They are all over that. Tropes will not work with them."

"You need pragmatism. Factory line thinking, just as the Everlasting does when he corpse-camps. Rules lawyering. Theory crafting," he paused for dramatic effect.

"You are cognitively incapable of that. The Compendium has shaped you all as much as you shape the worlds you invade."

"I have been working all my life for the industrial-military complex. I know all about pragmatism. And we have recruited help," he revealed his strongest card.

"We have a group of theory-crafters now. I was skeptical at first, but I saw some of their proposals for class design. They took some of the ideas you used when you created the Fortunist, the Inexorable, and the Merciless Master to the next level."

"Yes, I know all about your little group. The Class Design Bureau, as you call them, or the Min-Maxers, as they call themselves," Necessity stated calmly in the Colonel's own voice.

"Very precocious lads, rather youngish." Damn, he found out about that, Hawking thought.

"How did you..." Hawking spluttered.

"None of them has a class. I made sure of that. I did not want them to have a log that could be read."

"Not so full of yourself now, are you?" asked Necessity.

"When the system activates, everyone gets a log, even those with no classes. The Coven likes to be well-informed. The only exceptions are Essentials and Abominations." And he just gave me that piece of information for free, Hawking thought. He was not an idiot. Necessity was not volunteering anything—he just wanted Hawking to realize how little he cared what he could do with it. He suddenly realized how dangerous the being he was playing with was.

An uncomfortable silence followed, finally broken by the Coven leader.

"I agree some of their ideas are good, though," Necessity conceded.

"What do you want?" he asked Hawking.

"Total freedom to choose my own champions and how to train them, including their classes. Give me that, and the Losers will be dead, and you will have your artifact back in less than one month. Then you can leave my fucking planet alone," Hawking answered.

"And we will keep one symbiotic dungeon for each city in the Federation. That is the only good thing those three idiots have ever done." Necessity thought for three seconds. Three seconds that seemed to take forever.

"Your terms are acceptable. Write the names of the Avatars you wish to empower and the quests you want to grant them. I can guarantee a maximum of 43 elite quests at the same time. I will read your log every morning and guarantee your instructions are followed. Do not call me again. Your results will speak for themselves." The rift vanished. Hawking breathed a sigh of relief. Then he summoned his staff and organized the rest of the day. He had a lot of work to do.

Michael fidgeted nervously while he waited for the representatives of the Answer to arrive at his farm. His four male sons stood guard behind him. The Answer usually gave a warning before inflicting punishment. It almost never had to punish anyone. Their warnings were usually horrific enough. What exactly did I do wrong? he wondered for the eleventh time. He had no contact with spawnfriends or, God forbid, dungeonspawn.

He had abstained from selling to or buying from the Federation or the Circle since Sister Mary Beth had branded both organizations as heretics. He was a loyal follower of the precepts of the Answer. He had not even protested when they had taken her eldest daughter to the monastery to train her to fight in the holy war against the Coven and its dungeons.

"Do not worry, father," Tom, his eldest son, told him. He had much better eyesight than Michael and had already detected the Answer's representative.

"They have sent a single person, a woman. This is to be only a cautionary warning." Tom was right. A petite girl, her face covered by the customary veil and wearing the Answer's robes, approached his farm. When she was only 100 feet apart, she took off her veil. It was Blanca, his eldest daughter. It was the first time she had visited since she took the holy vows four months ago. Michael's face broke into a smile, and he tried to approach her, but Tom's hand on his shoulder restrained him.

"Father, wait. I do not think she comes as your daughter." Blanca's next words confirmed Tom's impressions.

"Michael Billings, you have been found guilty of colluding with dungeonspawn, and are to be issued a warning," Blanca sternly told him.

"Two days ago, you gave water to the horse of a man riding East. This man later headed to Madison, a heretic town that consorts with a dungeon. You are guilty of treason to humanity."

"Blanca, please, don't do this, we love you!" Michael shouted, trying to elicit a response from her daughter.

"Love? You don't know what love is," she answered coldly.

"Love is what Sister Mary Beth feels for me. Love is what I feel for her. This is love." She took out a small knife from her robe and plunged it into her left eye.

"Consider yourself warned, father," she told him as she turned around and went back the way she had come, leaving Michael weeping on the ground, as his sons tried to console him.

"And remember, daddy," she added, not even turning back.

"I have another eye left."