[Demonworld #6] The Love of Tyrants

by Kyle B. Stiff

  Immediately the men adopted various positions of shame and supplication. “We apologize, Mister Sanjara,” mumbled one man. “See... thing is, we don’t have the brain power that you do.”

  “Spare me,” said Setsassanar. “You’re not children.”

  “People listen to you, though,” said another military man, smiling apologetically. “The women, they love you! And husbands, they tend to do whatever their wives tell them, spend their money however the women like, you know how it is...”

  “If we can just get this ol’ economy jump-started again,” said a businessman with his hair pomaded in a fashionable whirlpool style. “We’ve had so many… well, temporary setbacks! Mister Sanjara, friend, I’ll let you in on a little secret. The robotic farming program isn’t working out. Those blighted lands are just too much for ’em, we end up needing more mechanics out there than we would need actual farmers if, you know, if we just did things the old-fashioned way... uh, with humans pushing plows, I mean.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got some problems,” said Setsa, turning away so that he could break up a large block of pink cocaine. “Listen. All I need from any of you, right now, is to send a girl in here 'cause I’m gonna honk this blow straight off her tits. I don’t want to see a single one of you until I’m goddamned good and ready. In a week I’ll advertise your garbage - if I feel like it.”

  The men left and the young playboy stood before a wide window. He looked down on the streets lined with garbage, then his gaze rose to where, in the distance, he saw tents and corrugated metal houses lining the banks of a brown river.

  The vision disintegrated and Setsassanar said, “I was surrounded by plenty, but lost the sense of ease I once felt. In the pretension of my youth, I imagined that I was having a spiritual awakening. Only later did I realize the truth that human minds are not built for happiness. We are made to survive, to solve problems. Rolling around in the filth of ecstasy weakens the soul and sets one up for destruction. So we are always hungry, always searching. Always dissatisfied.”

  ***

  “You never showed any interest in me before,” said Cecil. “Why now?”

  Setsa stood before the short, round-faced, youthful man with blond hair. They were in a dilapidated building that once sat in the middle of a busy manufacturing district. Now the building housed a long row of tables where graduate students analyzed the genetic material of wealthy clients, making sure to round out their ancestral record with whichever races tended to be currently in vogue. Cecil and Setsa stood in an office that overlooked the rows of bored scientists.

  “I didn’t know about you,” said Setsa. “They told me a group of scientists were responsible for… me. I met a few of them and they were… well, it’s not worth going on about.”

  Cecil nodded in understanding.

  “But when I heard about you,” he continued, “I just… I had to meet you.”

  A swirl of emotions; confidence wavering, a dreadful sense of having made a mistake, the terrible need to continue forward. The sense of vulnerability was unnerving.

  “But I was also wondering why you didn’t seek me out,” Setsa finished, forcing out the words in a stream.

  Cecil sat on the corner of his desk but kept his eyes on Setsa, a strangely adult gesture from one who looked so young. Setsa had to remind himself that the man had been in his early twenties when he’d spearheaded the team that created his genetic makeup, and was now in his early forties despite his appearance. Most men his age looked completely run down, their flesh sucked dry by the world.

  “I was forced off the project for making people uncomfortable,” he said. “It may have been a joint venture between government and corporate families, but military – private and public – were there, too. It was all tangled up and everyone thought somebody else was running the whole operation. The only thing they agreed on was that I needed to go. Soldiers walked me out. They made it clear that I was to stay away from you.”

  “Oh. I… I guess I… I didn’t really think of that.”

  “Have they given you a good life?”

  Setsa was deeply shaken by the simple question. Instead of answering, he said, “Will you please tell me how you got the idea to make me?”

  “God gave me the idea,” Cecil said without hesitation.

  A heavy stone of disappointment dropped in his guts. So he was a religious nut; that was why he had been kicked off the team. “You believe in God?” said Setsa, crinkling his eyebrows.

  “Non-creative types have difficulty with the notion,” said Cecil. “They believe all ideas come from their own skulls, and they feel proud of themselves. But I think that conscious awareness is a shadow cast by something else. Perhaps hyperdimensional beings who step over time and bound from one end of our three-dimensional universe as if it were a flimsy, folding thing, easily manipulated, easily influenced. I have ideas that don’t follow any normal train of thought. They are flashes of knowing that come from…” Cecil shrugged. “Somewhere. From God? From a god? From a simple, stupid being like myself, who only happens to be shaped like an unfolding biological tesseract and who thinks in terms of expanding and contracting universes rather than notions or half-baked ideas? Who knows. But your genetic makeup… Setsa, no committee of idiotic researchers angling for position and prestige could have created you. I had the idea. We worked together, and when they asked me where I got the idea, I laughed and jokingly said, ‘God told me.’ After a while, the joke became more and more real. But is it really so crazy, Setsa? Where do you think great ideas come from?”

  “I… I don’t know,” said Setsa. “I don’t have great ideas.”

  “Bullshit. Don’t lie. It makes you sound like you’re less than you really are.”

  Setsa was alarmed. He was harangued and harassed by powerful men all the time, but he’d never felt embarrassed. Now he did. He felt as if he had fallen short of a standard that truly mattered.

  “I’m sorry,” said Setsa, surprised to hear the words coming out of him.

  “It’s okay. Messing up is how we learn. It’s how we get better.”

  Setsa laughed, first at the simplicity of the statement, then at the feeling of relief. Perhaps all human interaction was supposed to be simple and straightforward?

  ***

  Wodan saw the two meeting in Setsassanar's penthouse, their wardrobes changing as time passed. Often their words were not translated, but he could tell from Setsassanar's animated gestures and Cecil's slight smile that they enjoyed one another's presence. He even saw government officials visit, only to become uncomfortable that Setsassanar was hanging out with a pariah who was no longer useful.

  ***

  “So you're saying we could actually make a dragon? A dragon?” said Setsa. He paced back and forth, eyes wide, hands flexing uncontrollably.

  “In theory we could make anything. It's all building blocks. There would be some weight constraints, but yes – even a dragon.”

  “A dragon...” Setsa stopped suddenly. “But if it's truly possible, why haven't any others already done so? There's plenty of money going into the field. And if there really are no limits, then-”

  “Laziness, lack of creativity,” said Cecil, shrugging. “Setsa, if there's no payoff for military or commercial interests, then the money will go elsewhere. A dragon might make an interesting military bio-weapon, but only on a wide-open battlefield. It would be worthless in any sort of confining urban terrain. Commercial interests are infeasible as well. Cheap special effects already cover anything science might be able to provide, and selling tickets for people to gawk at the poor thing would never cover the cost.” Cecil fell silent, then shrugged. “I think you were the last great biological experiment, Setsa. The powers that be have their primitive super-soldiers. What more could they want? Chimeras and new bio-constructs have been tried, but now they're all sitting in labs somewhere, waiting to die.”

  “But why?”

  “Because they don't make money, Setsa. So what good are they? That's
just how things are now. There isn't enough money to go around. Listen, just enjoy being unique. You're one of a kind. Maybe that's what… what God wanted.”

  Setsa froze. “Oh no,” he said. “Oh, no. You didn't give up because life became too difficult and then you consoled yourself with the belief that God wanted it that way, did you?”

  Cecil's brow crinkled and his easy smile disappeared. “I did not give up,” he said.

  “Good!” Setsa clapped his hands together and slid into a chair. “Then who could we get to help us? This is a big project.”

  Cecil laughed slightly, shaking his head. “No one would help us. This is crazy. People are worried about paying bills, not creating fantasy creatures.”

  “Those guys that work for you at the… whatever that place was, they wouldn't help?”

  “No. They're either too young, too unintelligent, or too distracted.”

  “Hm. But you worked with some impressive people when you made me, right? Let's talk to some of those people. There were some females on your team, right? I can use my good looks to-”

  “No, Setsa, none of those people. Absolutely not.”

  “Why not?”

  Cecil exhaled slowly. It seemed to Setsa that he did not seem angry, nor even annoyed with him, but was struggling with something inside himself. Finally he spoke. “Setsa, you can't imagine the level of moral bankruptcy and intellectual dishonesty I encountered among those people. They imagined they were doing wonderful work and glowed when they received public admiration for “creating the future,” but in private they were completely bottom-line oriented. Most of them had no ideas of their own about where they should turn their mastery of genetic manipulation, so when the military ran ideas by them, they leaped at anything, as giddy as schoolchildren. And these ideas… oh, Setsa, if only you could have seen the sort of black budget horrors those psychopaths dreamed up, and how the scientists considered the ideas in terms of practical payoff or how much esteem it would buy them. To them, battlefields were a place to show off new products, not killing grounds where innocents were caught in the crossfire between authoritarians and rebels. I still consider it a miracle that you weren't abandoned so that more energy could be devoted to the supersoldier program. It-”

  “Fine, fine, I get it. So… looks like it's just us, then.”

  “Us? You're not even a scientist, Setsa.”

  “I'll do some reading, I'll catch up. Can you send me the books I'd need?”

  “Well...”

  “Electronic files would be best, but I can have some servants pick up any hardcopies you think I'd need.”

  Cecil laughed. “I suppose you'd have the mental capacity. But can you speed-read?”

  Setsa smiled. “What do you think?”

  “Can you read for comprehension?”

  “I'm insulted you'd ask!”

  Cecil shook his head and turned toward the window. “We'd need money and a facility to...”

  “Oh yeah, money,” said Setsa, holding his hands wide to encompass the richly decorated penthouse. “Don't know where we'd get that.”

  “You don't have money, Setsa, you have an allowance that your handlers dole out to you.”

  “You think I haven't made investments on my own?” Setsa tapped his head. “I get bored on the way to parties and film shoots. Knowing what I’m about to advertise is the best insider information imaginable. Come now… dad. Let's not get hung up on our troubles and imagine they're anything more than minor annoyances. Instead… I say let's make a dragon. Let's make the world a fantastic place. What do you say?”

  Again Cecil turned to the window. Setsa knew he could see the fires in the tent city and the abandoned shells of houses far below. Setsa knew that his “father” was considering what a being of advanced intelligence could do to shake things up. The fact that his own creation was inspiring him to remember what it was like to dream, to consider the world a place where fantastic deeds could be done rather than a place of horrors to endure until death, was overpowering. Cecil turned to Setsa with a slight smile.

  ***

  Memories and a slew of emotions raced through Wodan. He felt the thrill of novel ideas as Setsa and Cecil bought property, discussed their plans long into the night, built a facility far too big for the two of them, and did the work of gods which, miraculously, made them feel human.

  At the same time, he saw dull-eyed, heavy-browed super-soldiers in military gear firing at ill-equipped rebels, people with the misfortune of being born near resources coveted by powerful nations. He saw super-soldiers leaping from jeeps clipping along at full speed, or racing through battlefields with full backpacks, even fighting after limbs had been blown off. The faces of scared rebels were photographed and edited, then shown on the news while demagogues warned of terrorists who stood in the way of a brighter tomorrow.

  He saw shanty towns burning, protests put down mercilessly, people desperate to survive working inhuman hours for mega-corporations that didn't pay taxes but did pay bribes to government officials.

  The world seemed to be falling apart as Cecil and Setsa pulled a large reptile that looked like a giant pickle from a pool of mucus and congratulated one another while the thing squawked in its warm, dark nursery.

  ***

  A conspiracy among government agents and corporate mercenaries to reveal Setsa and Cecil's controversial endeavor was foiled when Setsa decided to allow dozens of news outlets into the dragon's lair. The world was shocked to see that the seemingly carefree playboy had worked with an unknown recluse to create – as far as they could tell from the dim lighting – a young lifeform as large as an elephant, covered in black scales and with merciless golden eyes that seemed to accuse anyone who looked into them.

  “Mister Sanjara,” said one reporter. “What did you name your dragon?”

  Setsa glanced at Cecil. “I wanted to go with Doctor Drakkenstein at first, but we talked it over, and I think we're going with Ouroboros instead.”

  “Why's that?”

  “It comes from a mythological dragon with its tail in its mouth, a perfect, unbroken lifeform. And this guy saved us from chasing after our own tails, you know.”

  “What will you do next?” asked another.

  Cecil cut in. “We haven't exactly...”

  “Talking lion,” said Setsa, smiling at the camera. “Definitely a talking lion.”

  A flurry of questions. Then Setsa added, “We're doing it because it's something unexpected. Life shouldn’t be boring! If the world isn't amazing and novel, then it's not worth our time being here!”

  Demographic analysis revealed that the old were uniformly horrified that the currents of nature had been dammed, manipulated, and redirected into what must surely be the child of the devil. But young people the world over listened intently while Setsa spoke about how the world was ready for a generation that could do anything, that could literally give life to their most fantastic dreams. They listened. Lives of consumption and enslavement no longer seemed to be the limits of existence.

  ***

  Years passed and the world watched Setsa's live video feeds of the dragon growing, both horrified and in awe as it required more and more space. Dim lighting reminiscent of medieval torchlight reflected from the great serpent's lustrous black plates edged with shining purple. Debate raged as the thing sat before a specially constructed computer built to accommodate its size, one giant claw tapping a row of symbols, sitting and gazing upon the sum of human wisdom and folly.

  The dragon did not respond to anything while being recorded, nor while it was tended by its small army of caretakers. The dragon did not speak to the public. It did not need to – Setsa spoke enough for the both of them. Setsa seemed to experience a schizophrenic split, acting as the happy, handsome, living advertisement for one audience and simultaneously telling his live feed audience that if they found the current society inimical to happiness then they should make a new one.

  Small breakaway societies were created by young people, but
breaking away was easier said than done. All strains of plants used for crops were copyrighted and thus owned by powerful corporations, and their mercenary forces had no qualms about attacking separatists. Fake breakaway societies run by government agencies often staged disasters for media outlets so that the dissatisfied labor class were surrounded by the message, “This is what happens when you try to walk away! Stay with us… where it's safe.” The leaders of society looked at the brutal citizen uprising in the East and feared that their creation, Setsa, would invoke the same urges in his fanbase.

  ***

  Cecil entered and waved, then Setsa carried the large, heavy cub through the doorway. The golden-haired cub sniffed the air, then tucked its face into Setsa's jacket.

  “Oro!” Setsa shouted, beaming. “Come and see!”

  The dark aviary shook as mighty Ouroboros stalked into view. Setsa entered the dragon's lair without fear and held the lion cub for the dragon's scrutiny.

  “You see?” said Setsa. “We've done it. Meet Adamant.”

  The dragon ran harsh yellow eyes over the cub, then tapped his food bowl.

  “Very funny,” said Setsa. “Now I see why your caretakers never come in here unless you're sleeping.”

  The dragon cleared its throat, then spoke in a deep, rumbling voice. “You gave it immortality, then?” The question tapered off in a subtle wash of high-pitched notes that lingered on the edge of awareness, as if hundreds of small beasts repeated every word uttered by the great dragon.

  “We did,” said Cecil, stepping near the dragon. “Enhanced intelligence, too, but it will only manifest over time. Super-strength as well. He was meant to be similar to Setsa.”

  “So much you held back from me,” said Ouroboros, sitting on his belly but still towering over them. “Pound for pound, my body is frail. And I have, what, one thousand years? Then an inheritance of death?”