Emperor Mollusk Versus The Sinister Brain

by A. Lee Martinez

  “I’ve done my best to accumulate the right kind of enemies. The kind that don’t like each other nearly as much as they don’t like me.”

  “A sensible design.”

  “If it’s money you want, Serket,” I said, “I could always write you a check.”

  “Don’t be crude,” she said. “I couldn’t take your money. I have too much respect for you. It’s tragic enough that I’m reduced to such low means. I couldn’t ask that of you.”

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  “Without decorum, where would we be?”

  The fruit was inspected, approved, and returned to the kitchen. Serket cut the banquet short. “Such unpleasant talk seems to have ruined my appetite. If you’ll excuse me…”

  She addressed an underling. “See that the Warlord is comfortable while I arrange the details of his transfer. Keep the Venusian well fed and unharmed. Just in case Venus finds her valuable enough to purchase. And if they don’t, I can always feed her to my beasts in the arena, which should be worth some amusement.”

  Serket climbed on her throne, and the scorpion walked from the room.

  “And see that the statue is changed. If I have to see it once more, I’ll go mad. Good day, Emperor.”

  “Good day, Serket.”

  She exited. The heavy doors sealed shut behind her.

  “I don’t suppose I could write you a check?” I asked of the servants.

  They laughed. Serket, for all her shallowness, was truly their goddess queen. It wasn’t unfeasible that one or two contemplated the offer, but for the most part, their loyalty to Serket was unswerving. It helped that she was smart enough to take care of them.

  A trio of burly, tanned warriors escorted me down a long hallway, pushing the tank before them.

  “He doesn’t seem very intimidating,” said one. “How did he conquer the world?”

  “It’s not hard,” I replied. “All you have to do is think ahead, be prepared. And a certain amount of flexibility is helpful too.”

  “Did you use an army?”

  “No army,” I said. “I like to get my tentacles in the mix.”

  They sneered. Doubtlessly, they found the idea of a leader getting involved in daily affairs to be as repugnant as their queen did.

  We turned down another hall, went through a series of chambers until I was wheeled through a garden, a vast sea of lush green and exotic flowers. A crystal window transformed the harsh desert sunlight to gentle warmth.

  “This is my last offer,” I said. “I won’t make it again. Name your price.”

  “Or you’ll do what?” asked the tallest one. “Make your escape by dragging your boneless body across the ground?”

  They chuckled.

  Something rustled the leaves of a nearby bush.

  My escorts drew their swords. Two of the guards pushed the third forward, toward the rustling plants. He stabbed the garden with his weapon then stepped a foot into the waist-high growth and poked about some more.

  “There’s nothing here,” he said. “Must have been a—”

  Something yanked him beneath the greenery. He barely had time to yelp before silenced.

  “This is not what I wanted,” I said. “I accept that it’s necessary to harm others sometimes, but it’s annoying. Never mind the existential dilemma of whether or not I have the right because I’m comfortable with that when required.”

  “Inform security,” said a guard. “We have a breach.”

  His companion dashed off. He turned the corner, disappearing behind a topiary sphinx. The sound of his sword clattering to the ground echoed through the garden.

  “You’re just doing your job,” I said to the last guard, “and I can respect that. But there are larger concerns at stake. It might help if you drop your weapon and step away from the tank. She might not view you as a threat then.”

  Growling, he turned on me and stabbed into the tank. I darted to the side. He swept the blade around in the water, but even in the small tank, I was a slippery target. He tipped the tank over. It shattered, and I lay exposed on the wet stones.

  “For my queen!” he shouted.

  “Your queen wants me alive,” I said.

  He stopped the fall of his sword.

  Snarg rose up behind him, but I gave her the hold command via the sonic transmitter hidden in my right gill. Nobody ever checks the gills. They just see a fifteen-pound cephalopod outside of my exoskeleton and think I’m harmless.

  The guard peered into Snarg’s milky white-and-yellow eyes.

  “One command from me, and she’ll rip you apart,” I said. “It’s not as if I want her to, but I’ve never been able to train her to capture or incapacitate. She goes for the kill. It’s in her nature. Observe the way the spikes along her back are trembling? That signals unusually high levels of aggression. So at least your death should be quick.”

  The guard dropped his sword and ran. Snarg instinctively wanted to pursue, but she was well trained. She slinked low to the ground. I petted her with a pair of tentacles, and she cooed.

  “Good girl.”

  A seat opened on her back. She gently wrapped her maxillae around me and dropped me into place. The cockpit dome snapped closed. I fed Snarg a directive, and she obediently skittered on her way.

  I used the time to read a scan of the palace. A recon satellite gave me a layout and the location of all life-forms over one hundred pounds. One life-form was marked as a blue dot. That was my first stop.

  Snarg was fast and capable of surprising stealth when demanded of her. My bionic chilopoda scuttled through the halls with nary a sound. The guards were easily avoided. The sentry golems, impressive as they might have been five thousand years ago, were ponderous and oblivious to anything short of a crashing ruckus. Only the scorpions proved any real threat of discovery, and Snarg’s superior enhanced senses gave her ample warning to stay ahead of them. We reached our destination without incident.

  The dungeons were a vast catacomb of empty cells shrouded in torchlight. They were a relic of a time when Serket had been powerful enough to imprison any who offended her. But that was a long time ago, judging by the dust on the cell bars. We found an iron door with a pair of stationed guards. They made a brave show, but Snarg hissed and they bolted down a darkened hallway.

  With two snips of her mandibles, she sheared the hinges and the door fell aside. Zala stepped out of the settling dust.

  “What kept you?”

  “Warlord business,” I said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  We crept on our way. Zala proved nearly as sneaky as Snarg when she put her mind to it, though I could tell it displeased her. But she could be practical when required. We made our way to the fountain room. It lay deep within Serket’s palace. There weren’t any guards. Though when we entered the room, steel portcullises slammed shut over every possible exit. Serket was less concerned with someone finding the water than with them leaving with it.

  The water dribbled down from the top of the golden fountain, along an elaborate path of grooves, to drip into the basin at the bottom. A few ounces of the pristine water were collected in the basin.

  “That’s it?” asked Zala. “That’s what’s so important?”

  “There used to be more.” The portcullises cranked open. Serket and her scorpion throne trundled from a shadowed hallway. “Thousands of years ago, the waters flowed like a river. Now, a few cups of water a day is really all we can expect.”

  Reinforcements charged in behind the queen. Guards, golems, and scorpions ringed the chamber within moments.

  “Without the fountain, there is no Dynasty,” said Serket. “So you’ll understand how very precious it is to us. I would ask you to step aside.” Her eyes flashed. “And I won’t ask again.”

  Zala readied her spear.

  Snarg retched, spitting up a small black box. The device pinged.

  “Oh, Emperor,” said Serket. “Have you really descended to this?”

  “I will blow up your fountai
n,” I replied.

  “And kill yourself in the process? What could be gained by that?”

  “I’m well protected in here.” I tapped the dome.

  “But what of your companion?”

  “Oh, she would die,” I admitted, “but, honestly, I’ll have to kill her one day anyway, so might as well get it out of the way.”

  “Foolish mortal,” said Serket. “I can’t die. What makes you think I fear death? And you can’t destroy the fountain. You could, at worst, force us to dig it out again.”

  The look on her guards’ faces said they were less cavalier about the prospect, but they wouldn’t back down in front of their queen.

  “First of all, this isn’t a spear in the chest or a lost limb. There’s a difference between being immortal and being immortal in bits and pieces. Secondly, you could dig out the fountain, but why put yourself through that? It might not be the end of the world, but it would be inconvenient.”

  Serket yawned. She drummed her fingers and had a servant pick a piece of lint off her cape.

  “I do so despise inconvenience, Emperor.”

  The End

  Three months after my victory against the Saturnite peril, I sat in my Swiss chalet, working on a new device for the future of Terra, when Grant, my Terran butler, interrupted.

  “Lord Mollusk,” he said. “I hate to be rude, but if you don’t leave soon, you’ll miss the parade.”

  I didn’t look up from my work.

  “Is there another one?”

  Grant nodded. “Yes, Lord.”

  “Tell them to start without me.”

  “As you wish, sir.” He turned to leave.

  “Grant, can I ask you something?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  I checked the device. Satisfied it passed inspection, I tossed it into a heap of them I’d collected in the corner.

  “Don’t you think these parades are getting a tad…tiresome?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Lord Mollusk.”

  “How many parades do I really need?” I asked. “This is the third this week and it’s only Tuesday.”

  Grant smiled. “But, sir, you saved Terra from horrible enslavement. You can hardly be surprised that her people want to express their gratitude.”

  “Yes. Gratitude.” I started assembling another device from the various pieces piled on the table. “Would it be ungrateful on my part to just skip this one?”

  “Shall I send your regrets then?”

  “Do that. Tell everyone I’m busy. A lot of pressing science and stuff.”

  “Shall I tell them to postpone it to a more convenient time?”

  “No, just go ahead and do it without me.” I fitted two parts together with a screwdriver. “Lots of science to get to.”

  Grant nodded. “As you wish, sir.”

  He left, and I continued assembling.

  After an hour, I took a break to check the parade coverage. All across the planet, in this world’s greatest cities, throngs of Terra Sapiens celebrated Warlord Mollusk Day. Or maybe it was Emperor Mollusk Is Great Month. I’d lost track of the number of holidays, both official and unofficial, dedicated to my amazing achievements. And while they were amazing, there was a point where it stopped being interesting.

  Today was New York City’s chance to throw the official official parade. There were always plenty of unofficial parades and a slew of unofficial official parades. But the official official parade was the biggest one. It traveled across the planet, moving from city to city, growing larger and more elaborate each day. What had started as a simple motorcade with me on the back of a convertible had become an industry unto itself.

  The floats had become so complex that many colleges now offered degrees in float engineering. There were factories that worked all day, every day to meet the demands for confetti and balloons. And celebration fatigue was a growing international problem.

  Yet still the Terrans kept at it with no signs of slowing down, throwing all their resources toward monuments in my honor and praising me in every way their culture could conceive.

  There were 106 movies about my life, each more grandiose than the last. And while I was indeed the one who repelled the Saturnite invasion, I hadn’t ended WW II by punching out Gorilla Hitler. Nor had I birthed the Industrial Revolution, split Pangea, synthesized the amino acids that led to the development of life in the system, or played with Hendrix at Woodstock ’69.

  I forced myself to watch the parade broadcast for a few minutes. Not that I needed to worry about missing it. The announcers reminded me that there would be an immediate rebroadcast after the post-parade coverage.

  The dark-haired female of the duo smiled brightly while speaking in her perfect-diction announcer voice. “It’s a shame that Lord Mollusk couldn’t be with us today, but we know he’s watching over us.”

  “Yes, he is, Melanie,” said her equally peppy male equivalent. “As long as Terra has Emperor Mollusk, we can always be certain we’re safe.”

  They both laughed.

  “Coming up next, Bill,” said Melanie, “is the Beautiful Emperor Mollusk Choir.”

  “Oh, I love these kids,” said Bill. “What’s the name of that song they’re famous for?”

  Melanie glanced at the index card in her hand. “According to this, Bill, it’s ‘Beautiful Emperor Mollusk.’”

  “Dopey me,” he said. “I should’ve remembered that.”

  “Especially considering it’s the only song they sing, silly Billy.”

  They chuckled in perfect harmony.

  “We’ll be right back after a word from our sponsor,” said Bill. “Emperor Mollusk Creates the Universe. Opening in a theater near you.”

  “Oh, and it’s a good one,” she replied. “I was privileged enough to see an advance screening. In the film, Lord Mollusk goes back in time and—”

  He put a finger to his lips. “Now, now, Mel. You don’t want to ruin it for everyone, do you?”

  I turned off the TV.

  Mind control was a delicate science. Obviously, I’d miscalculated somewhere.

  So it was that a week later, I sat by my fireplace in my Venezuelan palace and addressed the Terrans one last time.

  “Hello. Emperor Mollusk here.”

  I smiled at the camera.

  “First of all, let me just say that I’ve really enjoyed our time together. You’re a terrific species. You really are. And it’s been great fun ruling over you, but…”

  I paused. This was proving harder than I thought it would be.

  “It’s not you. It’s me. Turns out that now that I’ve solved most of your problems, I’m not finding merely ruling you to be particularly satisfying. It’s been a problem of mine for some time. Even before I came to your world. But that’s not important. I’m just here to say that, effective as of this moment, I am no longer Supreme Warlord of Terra. You’re free to rule yourselves again.”

  It was probably only my imagination, but I thought I sensed the collective gasp of a billion souls echoing through the atmosphere.

  I held up a spherical device.

  “I’ve distributed these across the planet. They contain a counteragent to the microbes I’ve seeded in your global water supply. And I’ve already had the mind twisters deactivated and disassembled.

  “Unfortunately, the effects of this conditioning will take several decades to fully disappear. Thirty years, give or take. For the foreseeable future, you’ll still experience a reflexive and irresistible urge to adore me. Please refrain from doing so.”

  I paced to one side of the fireplace and back again.

  “I’ve done things. Things, upon reflection, that I’m not sure I’m happy I’ve done. I can’t undo most of them. But I can give you back your world. You aren’t ready for it, of course. But you weren’t really ready for it before, and to your credit, you managed not to blow it up just fine without me. Oh, sure, I fixed a few problems here and there. You can keep the improvements. You’re welcome.

 
“Since you’ll need a few decades to get back to your old selves, I’ll stick around in the meantime. Just to handle any emergencies that might pop up, but treat me as you would any other resident of Terra. If you happen to see me on the street, feel free to say hello. But no more bowing. No more autographs. No more parades and holidays. And enough with the statues already. They’re all very nice, but after a point, it just becomes silly.”

  I sat in my fine leather armchair and interlaced my fingers.

  “Right. Not much left to say at this point other than it’s been a pleasure being your conqueror. Take care of yourselves.”

  I made a slashing motion and the camera operator cut the feed.

  “How was that?” I asked.

  “Excellent, sir,” he said.

  “I probably should’ve prerecorded it.” I slouched. “Well, no point in worrying about it now. It’s done.”

  I walked to the balcony and looked at Puerto Ayacucho bathed in the glow of sunset. The streets were empty. Everyone was at home, watching my broadcast. I gave them a few minutes to process my message. An order to be themselves was still an order, and they were programmed to follow all my orders without question. Slowly, the Terrans filtered out of their homes. They walked past my home. Most ignored me. One or two waved to me, though they tried to act casual about it.