by AJ Vega
******
“It was inevitable,” the Chairman said.
The faces around the long table looked even more grim than usual. Some of them, the Chairman thought with a measure of amusement, seemed to border on sheer panic. His closest executive, sitting to his right, was sweating profusely and the smell he gave off was beginning to irritate him. Riaz fought the urge to kill them all without delay; if nothing else, it might make the smell go away.
“You may as well begin your emergency plans, whatever those may be,” Riaz continued. “The authorities will be here any moment, and your future employment at the Elysium mines will not be as lavish as you are accustomed to.”
They all looked at each other, dumbfounded, as if waiting to hear something come out of his mouth that would somehow save them from their hard-earned fate in the prison mining colonies.
The Chairman stretched out his hands. “I’m not sure what you’re waiting for.”
Then he began to laugh in their faces.
One of the executives finally stood up, slamming a pad on the table then rushing out. The others, as if on cue, scurried behind him out the room. The guard who stood at the exit was nearly run down as they all stormed the doorway.
Chairman Riaz finally stopped laughing. Wiping tears from his eyes, he walked to the guard.
“Bring in that container,” he said, trying to regain control of his voice after the fit of laughter.
The guard left the room and came back with a long crate using an anti-gravity motivator. He set the crate down and returned to the door.
“Give me your pistol,” Riaz said.
The guard paused, and then complied. Riaz checked the flicker pistol then pointed at the guard and fired. The guard went flying out of the room, landing flat on the floor. The Chairman walked to the door, kicked the guard’s legs out of the way, and then sealed the entryway. Returning to the crate, Ruiz operated a control on it. He heard a slight hum, and then the top of the crate opened.
The Chairman looked inside to find a human body lying in it: an adult male of average height, with short hair and an expensive suit on him. His eyes were closed and his body motionless. The body looked exactly like him.
Riaz pulled the body out of the crate and propped it on a chair in front of the conference table. He put the pistol in the body’s hand and aimed the pistol at its head while pulling the trigger. A loud snap sounded as the head of the body blew into tiny pieces, blood splattering in every direction and even landing on Riaz’s face. A headless and bloodied corpse now sat in the chair.
The Chairman now walked away from the corpse, not even bothering to wipe the blood and other matter from his face. He pressed his hand against the conference table and closed his eyes. His mind reached out into the corporate waves, branching out its information tentacles into every computer system it connected to. His consciousness was now one with the Ocean.
His form began to disintegrate into a cloudy mass of nanobots. The fog of nanobots surrounding him gave off a colorful display of energy as his body began to transform. A new form began to take its place: no longer the tall, intimidating executive known as Chairman Riaz, but now the short, drab assassin known as Daniel Chin.
Chin unlocked all of the security controls for the building and turned off all monitoring devices. He disconnected himself from the Ocean and ambled over to the crate. He pointed his finger at it and a stream of energy flowed out of it toward the crate. The mass of nanobots, pulsating with electrical charges, enveloped the crate—dissolving it until there was nothing left. The swarm then retreated into Daniel Chin’s form and reintegrated with the rest of him.
He patted down his trench coat and strolled out of the room. All traces of his existence had now been erased. The only thing the authorities would find was a dead guard and the corpse of one of the most powerful executives in the universe: the late Chairman Riaz.