A GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE
I found myself, face down, in the middle of some truly epic carpet. I mean, I’ve fought kaiju and something legally distinct but pretty damn similar to Cthulhu but this was some truly magnificent carpet. It was thick, furry, and felt like I was face down on top of a panda. Which, as any poacher will tell you, is the cuddliest of all animals. I don’t deal with poachers by the way and have killed more than a few over the years, FYI, I’d just like to make that clear. All panda fur products in my home are completely artificial or cloned.
Ahem.
Lifting my head up from the panda fur carpet, I found myself in an enormous palace’s throne room. It was a kind of neo-classical Rome crossed with corporate executive. The floors reflective black marble, the columns holding up the ceiling were white stone, and the walls were covered in red tapestries marked with the Merciless Symbol. The Merciless symbol was a double-A anarchy symbol combined to make an M. Light was provided by modern lights above but also hellfire braziers.
The carpet I was lying on was a single long straight rectangle stretching back to the throne room’s entrance about a football field behind me up the steps in front of me to an elevated dais. There, with the throne’s back to me, was an enormous electronic throne chair that was facing a wall-window that showed a futuristic Falconcrest City. The skyline had all been replaced with metal buildings reaching miles into the sky and flying cars zipped around the airways.
It was also raining with a steady downpour of greenish-brown water that clung to the transparent steel finish. It was like someone had combined Blade Runner and Coruscant. Oddly, despite the fact it was an archvillain’s lair, the place smelled like Red Dust combined with marijuana and I could hear the sounds of an Xbox being played.
“Goddamn zombie Nazis!” my voice, except much older said, followed by the sound of electronic gunfire. “Screw you ten year olds in Korea! Do you know who I am!? I swear, I am outlawing multiplayer tomorrow!”
“Uh, hello?” I asked.
The sounds of yet another installment of Call of Duty stopped being heard before I saw a smoke ring blow in the air. The throne slowly turned around with a grinding noise before I found myself facing yet another Gary doppelganger. This one was wearing a black cloak identical to my own and looked to be in his mid-sixties. He had a black military uniform underneath the Cloak with a rank badge covered in blue and red squares. On his hands were eight golden rings that had glowing gemstones. A hookah was to one side of his arm as he didn’t quite fit the throne and an Xbox controller was inside his lap.
“Oh, it’s you,” Old Gary said.
“What?” I said.
“I’ve been waiting for you since, well, I was you,” Old Gary said.
“Who are you? Where am I?” I asked, a lot more bewildered than I usually was in this sort of situation.
“I am you. I am also Emperor Gary Karkofsky the First and Only. I am the ruler of the Grand Terran Empire and its dozens of colonies. Most of which, admittedly, are hollowed out spinning asteroids because that turns out to be a lot easier than terraforming planets.”
I blinked. “Are you Merciful? Somehow resurrected? I mean, I was hoping you were kind—”
“No, Gary,” Old Gary said, feeling his face. “I am you. Future you. This is the scene in Back to the Future part II where Jennifer met her older self then fainted before no longer being included in the film. Which, honestly, was a huge waste of Claudia Wells.”
I blinked. “Okay, let’s just say I believe you.”
“Wow, this conversation is getting boring. I wonder how older me tolerated it the first time around,” Old Gary said.
“What year is it?” I asked, looking behind me and expecting a bunch of stormtroopers to come and arrest me.
“It’s 2250,” Old Gary said, offering his hookah pipe. “Want a hit?”
“I’m high on life, nerd culture, and sex with beautiful superhumans,” I said.
“Fair enough,” Old Gary said, taking a deep puff. “I’m high on those and drugs!”
“Just say no, man!” I said, shaking my hands. “Remember what the Director of the FBI said in all the arcade games! Winners don’t use drugs!”
Old Gary blew some of the smoke in my face. “Clearly, he was wrong.”
I took a moment to process this all. “So, by touching the Primal Orbs—”
“Hehe, you said orbs,” Old Gary said, giggling.
“Oh grow up,” I said, fully aware of the irony.
“I’ve been transplanted to a possible future where I’ve successfully taken over the world,” I said.
“Two Earths, the moon, a Mars base, and lots of asteroid colonies,” Old Gary said. “We’re members of the Galactic Congregation that is a lot less religious than it sounds but not wholly secular either.”
“Great,” I said, muttering. “Well, if you’ll excuse me I have to get back—”
“Of course, it might not be a possible future but the future,” Old Gary said.
“Excuse me?”
“Because I remember the Eternity Tournament and how it successfully screwed up the entire universe,” Old Gary said. “I also remember this meeting as I’ve alluded to several times in this conversation, which means this may end up as a self-fulfilling prophecy instead of a new timeline. More Terminator instead of Back to the Future.”
“Wait, original Terminator or Terminator II? The others don’t count, even the series that was awesome toward the end,” I asked. “Because in Terminator, John Connor was only born because of sending Kyle Reese back but—”
“Let’s stop and never mention the specifics of time travel again,” Old Gary interrupted.
“Probably a good idea,” I admitted. “Listen, I know this is a big accomplishment and all but I’m not actually interested in taking over the world. I mean, seriously, who wants that kind of responsibility? I really just talk a good game. I’m going to become a hero instead of remaining a supervillain. So, this future? This future is not going to happen.”
Old Gary snorted in disdain. “I remember this part too.”
“You’re really starting to tick me off, Old Man.” I narrowed my eyes. “I am not going to take over the world.”
“You do,” Old Gary said, putting down his hookah. “Not because you want to or because someone convinced you to but because you had to.”
“No one has to become a conquering despot,” I said, disdainfully.
Old Gary leaned back into his chair. “This is the part of the story where I relay to you the fact it is possible to force someone to become the very thing they disdain. If you live long enough as the villain, you start to want to be a hero.”
“That’s stupid and even if you reversed the statement, it still wouldn’t make any sense.”
“Shut up and listen, jackass.”
“Only if I get a chair and some popcorn,” I said. “I feel like that’s going to be a common feature of this tournament.”
“Always happy to use an old favorite among my spells.” Old Gary snapped his fingers and a lawn chair appeared with a big movie tub of popcorn.
I plopped myself in the former and picked up the second to start eating it. It was exactly the way I preferred it. “Okay, you’ve bought yourself five minutes.”
“I won’t need that long,” Old Gary said, leaning back in his chair like the Emperor. “In one of the few realities where you successfully win and the multiverse is saved—”
“Okay, that already doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s like the Wheel of Time, as long as one reality resists the Dark One, they’re all saved.”
“Okay, one, spoilers, two what is with Robert Jordan appearing everywhere lately?”
“The thing is, all of those heroes and villains teaming up together up against Entropicus and the chaos that followed didn’t have the effect people wanted.”
“People?” I asked, eating a handful of popcorn.
“Well, me,” Old Gary said, frowning.
“I was hoping it would cause everyone to take a look at what was beneath all the costumes and secret identities. I was hoping we could realize that hero and villain were just two sides of the same coin. The heroes could work with the less insane of the villain world. Pay out pardons and money so we could all become rich as well as famous do-gooders.”
“That’s a stupid idea,” I said.
Old Gary shrugged. “What happened, instead, was the War.”
“The War?” I repeated.
“Yes, accent on the,” Old Gary said. “The final conflict between the heroes and villains.”
“Did our side win?” I asked.
“No,” Old Gary said, reaching over and stealing some of my popcorn. “Our side most certainly did not. We sat out the war like Achilles, content on believing the two sides would come to their senses before things escalated too far.”
“Were we stupid?” I asked, my mouth dry. “Need a soda.”
An enormous paper cup, like the kind sold as the largest size in movie theaters, appeared in my lap. I took a sip from its milkshake-sized straw. It was like Coca Cola except even more syrupy and sugary, which I mentally named Merciless Cola.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Welcome,” Old Gary said, looking down at his feet. “Yeah, you could say we were stupid but we were really just trying to protect our friends. Being the devoted champions of Chaos and Neutrality we were, we didn’t want to end up killing Gabrielle or Mandy or anyone else who was leading the charge against the other side.”
“Wait, Mandy and Gabrielle were on opposite sides?” I asked.
“Instead, we just did what rational folk did and hid our families away. Our kids.”
“I have another child than Leia?” I asked, intrigued.
“Spoilers,” Old Gary said, putting his pointer finger in front of his lips.
“And this isn’t?” I asked, annoyed.
Old Gary gave a dismissive wave. “Cities were destroyed, continents were ravaged, and maps were redrawn. The public, showing its usual compassion as well as decency, revived President Omega’s genocide plans. They targeted every single superhuman in the world, innocent or guilty, along with their families.”
My blood ran cold. “Which would include Leia.”
“Yes,” Old Gary said, narrowing his eyes. “They went after my family.”
“I hope you killed every one of them,” I said, putting down my refreshments then balling my fists.
Old Gary’s eyes were haunted and empty. “Yes, I killed them all.”
I immediately lost some of my enthusiasm. “How many?”
“The number sort of loses its significance after a certain number of zeroes but that wasn’t enough for me,” Old Gary said, sighing. “It wasn’t enough that I kill them. I wasn’t going to let the baby-killing pieces of crap be martyred and academics talk about how they went so bad years later. I wasn’t going to let the David Irvings or Alt-Rights of the future talk about how the Pure Human Movement was misunderstood or engage in ironic genetic supremacy. So I took the Prime Orbs and I used them to make sure everybody knew exactly what it was like. I made them feel the pain, the fear, and the horror of their victims by inaction.”
I let that sink in. “How’d that work out?”
Old Gary looked out the window. “It broke humanity. I didn’t leave myself out of the equation but I always knew what I was. What was left turned to me for leadership and generation after generation left me in charge. There hasn’t been a war since and violence is pretty tame. The shadow of what we were hangs over us still.”
“Sounds almost too good to be true,” I said, sensing just how much agony my future self was in.
“Is it?” Old Gary asked, sighing. “The fire has gone out of humanity because we lost our ability to self-delude ourselves about heroes and villains. We’re a grey race now, neither good nor evil, and simply existing. I always had an ironic name because I never wanted to be merciless but in the end, I was the most merciless one of all.”
I made a really tiny violin noise.
“Really, Gary?” Old Gary asked. “That’s what you take from all this?”
“World peace and all the murderous bigots in the world are dead,” I said, frowning. “Oh you poor bastard, however will you survive being the absolute ruler of everything you survey?”
“God, I was an immature dipshit,” Old Gary muttered.
“Very true,” I said, picking up my Merciless Cola with both hands and drinking from it. “Besides, I don’t believe in fate. You may be a sad sack of spent misplaced idealism and guilt for being a mass murderer but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be. Besides, if you really didn’t think this universe was the best possible one then you could just use your powers to go back in time to fix it.”
“Maybe I didn’t believe I could make things better,” Old Gary said. “Maybe I thought I could take responsibility for my actions.”
“Ha!” I said, throwing my half-drunk cola to one side then pointing at him. “My theory is proven true: you’re not actually my future self! You’re a projection of the Primal Orbs trying to do some mind-whammy on me! I never take responsibility for my actions!”
“Mind-whammy, really?” Old Gary asked, raising an eyebrow. “Where the hell did you get such a ridiculous notion?”
“I dunno, television maybe? There’s a lot of stories about magical artifacts trying to influence their users with visions,” I said, not quite buying my theory anymore.
Old Gary put his arms on my shoulders. “Gary, I’m going take your advice, as ill-formed and badly conceived as it is. You need to do things differently in the past. You need to change what occurred before and do things differently. You need to let Entropicus win.”
“What?” I asked, staring at him then brushing off his hands. “That’s moronic!”
“There’s a reason!” Old Gary said, conjuring a pair of fireballs around his hands. Apparently, my future self was immune to flame.
“No!” I said, falling back on the carpet behind me.
Everything went white again.
I blinked several times as I found myself surrounded by a bunch of zombie Nazis who’d been shot up, stabbed, and torn apart. I did a double take at my surroundings before noticing Mandy, Gabrielle, and Cassius were beside me. So was Jane Doe who was covered in Nazi blood and carrying a glowing staff.
“Okay, what the hell did I miss?” I asked, my head pounding.
“Shooting, stabbing, and strangling Nazis!” Jane said in her best rural Midwesterner voice.
“Dammit, that’s my favorite thing!” I said, pausing. “After sex and snark. Well, depends on the day really.”
“Jane and Agent G won their second rounds,” Mandy said, pausing. “Unfortunately, their last battle was with Nazi Necromancer and General Furher so the battle spilled over here. I think it was an attempt to eliminate you.”
I took a deep breath and looked around. “Yeah, maybe, or maybe he was trying to clean up loose ends. Is everyone alright? I don’t see G here.”
“I got stabbed and he freaked out so he went to the bar,” Jane said. “Thankfully, I heal.”
“Which way to the bar?” I asked, looking around.
“That way,” Jane said, pointing down the hall.
“Thanks,” I said, looking over at Mandy. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go get rip roaring drunk. Can you coordinate the salvation of the world in the meantime?”
“Sure,” Mandy said, picking up a broken fang up off the ground. “It’s not like I’m going to be winning the tournament directly.”
“Gary—” Gabrielle said.
“We played into Entropicus’ hands,” I said, shaking my head. “I need a drink to think of a way I can get stupid enough to be unpredictable.”