by M C Rooney
“Oh, I know she is a danger, and I know who she is,” Lord McCredie replied. “How a head of state could be so insane is beyond me. But I have arranged a little ‘accident’ for her when she flies out to her secret hideaway tomorrow.”
“Head of state!” McLaren said in confusion, but the two other members of the inner circle were now nodding their heads in immediate understanding.
Damn, McLaren thought angrily, being stuck at the arse end of the world always meant you missed out on all the important matters, such as the who is who of world politics.
“And I have finally tracked all the others,” Lord McGrath said. “Their influence is too great to let them spoil our plans. With your permission, only McNamara and the four of us will be alive come tomorrow.”
“If we know who they are,” Lord McGill said thoughtfully, “then it is feasible to assume they know who we are. I agree, they must die.”
“Agreed,” said Lord McCredie.
“Agreed,” added McLaren.
“It will be done,” Lord McGrath replied with a nod of his clown-covered face.
“Good news, good news,” replied Lord McCredie in a satisfied tone.
McLaren had begged the other councillors to let McNamara live. His knowledge was too great to lose, and besides, he really was a harmless idiot when all was said and done.
“So to the next agenda, do we have all of our people ready?” asked Lord McCredie. “I have mine already in the underground bunkers throughout Europe,” she confirmed. “The weapons they have are the very latest, the doctrine to live by even better.”
“I have forty thousand people under the water in both the Pacific and Indian Oceans,” Lord McGill replied. “They stand ready for the rebirth.”
“I also have forty thousand people in underground bunkers throughout the Middle East,” confirmed Lord McGrath. “We have enough food and water to survive the year.”
All three councillors turned to McLaren, and he felt the danger of their stares.
“I have twenty thousand people in a state of cryopreservation,” McLaren replied. “They are placed in safe houses all throughout my country. One year from today, the stasis boxes have been timed to open, and the weapons they have will be unstoppable.” Cryonics, this is what his area of expertise lay in, his passion, and his genius.
“Are you sure it will work?” asked Lord McCredie. “Your country may be empty or worse should your experiment fail.”
Somehow that woman’s stare made him even more uncomfortable than McShane did. “Yes, I am sure. I have worked very hard on this project,” McLaren replied, summoning up all his strength, courage, and arrogance. “The mechanics are perfect.”
“And have you kept them safe?” asked Lord McGill.
“Yes, they have been placed in a well-secured environment, close enough to the soon-to-be empty cities,” McLaren replied. “One of the cells is placed to the north of me in my own state. They will be safe,” he assured them. “The people here are so placid, they would not notice if you placed a nuclear bomb in a farmer’s field.”
The three members shared a look over the screens. One of the rejected plans was to nuke most of the planet to reduce the population. Fortunately, McLaren had come up with the idea of the Towers, with the assistance of McNamara, of course, he thought begrudgingly.
“And do all groups have the new money currency?” asked Lord McCredie.
“Yes,” the three other members replied.
“And the mercenaries have been paid extra?”
“I saw to that myself,” said Lord McGrath. “They will live like kings in the new world.”
He had indeed seen to this. The prince had over fifty children, some of whom he would take with him, but others who had been planted all over the world. He had paid extra money to very highly trained mercenaries to protect his children, with the promise of more hidden gold if they kept them alive. The children themselves had also been trained in all areas that they needed in order to survive, including additional access to the very precious orange disk all members of McKay had. The inner council had their goals, but McGrath had a bigger goal of helping his descendants become rulers in the new world.
“Then we are all ready,” Lord McCredie announced. “This group, which I jokingly named McKay forty years ago, has had many setbacks, many failures in delivering a strong enough disease to reduce the population to a level that the planet so desperately needs. But thanks to McLaren, McNamara, and that insane bitch McShane, the successful plan has only taken us five years to complete. Finally, the day has come.”
“We may not live long enough to see the rebirth,” said Lord McGrath, “but I feel we have done the right thing. Even though this Cykam religion is completely bogus.”
“There will always be religion,” Lord McGill replied. “All are based on faith, not fact. But by only having one religion, we will reduce the future wars of mankind by a great margin.”
“The prophet of this religion brings only a message of peace and brotherhood,” McLaren said, knowing that what the prophets wanted and what actually happened afterward were two completely different things.
Jesus would have been considered a hippy in today’s world, but some of the fundamentalist Christians were completely opposite to what he taught.
“It will take decades to conquer the continents,” Lord McCredie added, “but I have seen the religious zeal of this cult, and it will only hasten the conquest.”
But it will not take decades on my small island, McLaren thought with an inward grin. I will be ruling this state this time next year. The cult cell leader was, of course, my own son.
“Besides, the religious should keep the mercenaries in check,” Lord McGill added, “and the scientists will keep the religious in check. It is a delicate balance, but I think it should work.”
“I just worry that religious dogma may send us back to the dark ages,” Lord McGrath said in a concerned voice.
“I do too,” Lord McCredie agreed, “and I know what idiotic lies this Cykam religion is based upon, but we needed a small population to blindly follow us, and this cult was perfect.”
Lord McGrath seemed to look over at Lord McCredie for a moment and then gave a nod of understanding.
“Whatever the outcome,” McLaren said, “the Earth will heal itself with the small human population.” And it will stop bloody raining, he added in his mind.
“To a new beginning!” Lord McGill cried out.
“One religion, one currency, one army, one law!” shouted Lord McCredie.
“An era of peace,” said Lord McGrath.
“And let’s give thanks to McKay and his son’s imagination,” McLaren said with a loud laugh. “McKay, the greatest entrepreneur of his time and ours.”
West Coast, Tasmania
The town Maurice Roberts called home had a population of maybe eight hundred and was positioned right up against the ocean. The weather could be rough, and fishing was hazardous, but all in all, it was a nice place to live. Maurice lived with his father, Richard, and little sister, Hannah, whom he absolutely adored. His mother, Rebecca, had left his father a year ago for a horrible man by the name of Barry Smith, who lived only a few blocks away. Maurice felt ashamed that his mother would flaunt her new lover the way she did, but his father managed to move on with life, despite the neighbourhood gossip. Maurice was eighteen and coming near the end of his year twelve schooling and couldn’t wait to leave and get a job in the real world. It wasn’t because he wanted to work as much as the fact he was tired of being bullied by his cousin Scott, who had been in the same class as Maurice since kindergarten.
The school consisted of over one hundred kids from ages five to eighteen. Most would leave for the bigger towns and cities in search for work, but Maurice loved it here and wanted to stay, so much so that he was going to risk his future, as his father would often say. Maurice watched as his little sister waved to him and ran down the street with her friends on their way home. Maurice would have liked to run aft
er her, but he was afraid that he might cause an earthquake, which was what Scott would call out to him at the school sports carnivals.
Maurice was fat. In fact, the doctor said he was so obese that if he kept going the way he was, he would probably have a heart attack by the time he was thirty. At nearly two hundred centimetres tall and weighing about one hundred sixty kilos, the doctor also said that when he fell to his knees from the inevitable heart attack, his kneecaps would probably explode as he was such a fat lard. Doctor Baker could be a bit blunt sometimes, too blunt by Maurice’s reckoning.
“Have you seen that arsehole today?” someone yelled out to him from a nearby takeaway shop.
He knew who it was but kept walking in the hope she would leave him alone.
“Hey, Fatboy, I know you can hear me.”
Pretending he didn’t hear her sweet dulcet tones didn’t work, so Maurice had no choice but to turn and look at that ugly pinched-up bitch-faced mole.
“Oh, hi, Freda; how are you?” he said pleasantly.
“Shut up, you big pile of shit. I was asking whether you seen John today?”
What did John see in her?
“No, sorry, Freda.” Maurice trembled. “Last time I saw him was at lunchtime.”
Freda scowled at this indignation that Maurice didn’t know where his lifelong friend was at any given moment of the day, then told him to ‘fuck off, then’, which Maurice was quite happy to do.
“Maurice!” another person yelled out, and this time, he was pleased to see his friend Craig Cheng run across the road towards him. Craig was a friend from his childhood, and just like John and Scott, he had gone through all the grades of school with him. Maurice also liked Craig because he never called him fat.
“I saw you earlier,” he said, “but I just waited until you passed Freda before saying G’day.”
“You could have warned me,” Maurice grumbled. “I would have been quite happy to cross the street to you.”
“Nah, mate,” Cheng said. “I love to see you squirm, not me.”
“Why does he go out with her?” Maurice asked.
“Goes off like a rocket.” Cheng smiled knowingly.
“What?” Maurice replied, confused.
“Never mind,” Cheng replied with a laugh. “No doubt all you think about is Veronica.”
Maurice blushed. “I do not,” he lied as he brushed his thick black hair out of his eyes. Veronica was the smartest girl at school, and also the loveliest. Whilst other girls ignored him with disgust, Veronica actually took the time to talk to him. She was quite simply the kindest person he had ever met.
Now he had passed the first hurdle of the lovely Freda, he had to walk past the local mechanic’s, which was owned by his Uncle Ken and his horrible cousin Scott, and Scott’s older brother, Warren.
“Are you sure you want to walk with me?” Maurice asked Cheng quietly.
“Of course; pricks like that won’t stop me from walking home the quickest way,” he replied.
Maurice heaved a big sigh. He admired Cheng’s bravery, but sometimes he just wished Cheng would avoid this side of his family as much as possible.
As they were walking past the garage, Maurice had hopes that they would not be seen, but unfortunately, both his bogan cousins soon spotted them.
“Well, well, well,” said his cousin Warren, who was tall and lanky and nasty. “You walking along with your Chink mate, fat arse?”
Craig was of Chinese descent. He had straight dark hair, but that was where the similarities to his ancestors ended. But the Martins only saw his last name, and that was all the dumb racist pricks cared about.
“Surprised he didn’t pass out from the exertion of walking two blocks,” added Scott, his brown hair falling across his rat-like features.
I’m surprised you knew what exertion meant, Maurice thought, but he kept those thoughts to himself, as per usual.
“I was born here, numb nuts,” Cheng replied. “My family has been here for five generations.”
“Just keep walking,” Maurice said frantically, but Cheng stubbornly stood his ground.
Warren, who obviously didn’t like being talked back to in any way, turned to his father out the back of the garage.
“Dad,” he called out, “the chink is here.”
“Craig,” Maurice pleaded, “please, let’s go now.” But it was too late, as Warren’s equally nasty father strode out to the front of the street.
“Well, look who is here,” Uncle Ken said in a tight voice. “It’s the chink come to steal our jobs.”
Uncle Ken was a strong man in his forties and had the same thick black hair as Maurice, but whilst he was handsome, the nastiness of his nature shone through on his face.
“What do you mean, steal your jobs?” Cheng replied.
“It’s what you Chinese do, isn’t it?” Ken spat at him.
“What a bunch of crap,” Cheng spat back with equal emotion. “It’s economics; the big countries always swallow the small ones. The Americans did it before, and the Japanese before that,” he replied. “It’s just the way it is.”
“Well, I won’t sit here and watch as your country takes all of our jobs,” Ken said, glaring back at him.
“Oh, yes, I’m sure the government of China wants your garage.”
“Fucking immigrant.”
“My family has been here for over a hundred and twenty years, dickhead,” Cheng said angrily.
“What did you call me?” Ken shouted.
Before Cheng could reply with another well-placed insult, Maurice dragged him away. He far outweighed his friend and provided good cover for him, as he was sure his uncle was reaching for a pipe wrench.
“Well, that was interesting,” Maurice said quietly as he herded his friend towards his house.
“No offence, Maurice,” Cheng said with a red face “but your mother’s family are complete bastards.” Then he stormed off down his street towards his home, where his family had lived for generations.
“No arguments here,” Maurice mumbled, and he gave another sigh as he looked to his left. What do they say? Bad things come in threes.
“Maurice,” the slimy middle-aged man with greasy hair plastered against his ugly head called out, “I was just taking a stroll with your mother.”
Maurice looked at Barry Smith’s hand around his mother’s waist and wanted to punch the sleazebag’s face in. And what made it worse was his mother, who was a very attractive lady with her thick black hair and an hourglass figure, was holding the ugly man with equal passion. Much as he loathed to even think it, with love.
“Maurice,” she said disdainfully and kept walking with her new lover.
That was it. That was the extent of their conversation for the last year. His sister got some attention occasionally, but fat Maurice, the embarrassing blob of a son, was completely forgotten.
Maurice clenched his big hands in anger. He had to get home. He had to vent his anger in the only place he could, the place where everybody could have a big whine.
The Internet.
“What are you doing?” asked ten-year-old Hannah as she walked into his bedroom. Whilst Maurice took after his mother, Hannah and Richard Roberts both had light brown hair and a frailty to them that made Maurice want to protect them both.
“I’m on the Internet, complaining,” Maurice replied with a smile. “Care to join me?”
“Nah, sounds boring,” she replied with a cheeky grin she wore so well. “I much prefer to watch my favourite band play on the music channel.”
Her favourite band was a new ‘boy band’ by the name of Culture Rapture Auto Playground, whose singers were named Shane, Harry, Ian, and Tommy. They were the latest ‘it’ band with all tweens nowadays.
“Well, don’t play it too loud,” Maurice replied as he kissed his little sister goodnight. “You need your sleep for school tomorrow.” Plus, I don’t want to have to hear it, he thought as she went off to her bedroom.
“Speaking of school,” his father c
alled out, “don’t be too late talking to your Internet mates, okay?”
“Yes, Dad,” Maurice called back. But he knew he would stay up late, and hopefully, Veronica would be online so he could hear her lovely voice again.
His computer screen chimed for an incoming call, and Maurice lifted his big gut and arse from the chair and closed his bedroom door. Quickly, he went back to his computer and noticed the caller had no ID.
“It’s him,” he murmured to himself.
Taking a deep breath, he accepted the incoming call, and as per usual, a clown face appeared on the screen.
“Good evening, McKay,” Maurice said with a smile.
“Good evening, Maurice,” the clown replied. “I hope you have had a good day.”
“Ah, just the usual stuff,” Maurice replied.
“I see you have been arguing with the Internet conspiracy theorists again.”
How did he know? McKay always knew what he did on the Internet. Thank God he never spent time on the Holoporn websites. That would be very embarrassing indeed.
“I guess conspiracies are a hobby of mine,” Maurice said with a shrug. “My friend Carter said it was because I don’t have a girlfriend.”
The mask of McKay seemed to smile.
“People who say that are usually the ones who don’t think outside the square,” he replied. “They like the comfortable world they live in and don’t like people rocking the boat.”
“Are they afraid?” asked Maurice.
“A little,” McKay replied, “but mostly, they can’t be bothered or don’t care until it affects them directly.”
Maurice looked at his feet—or his big gut, which he couldn’t see past—in dejection. Perhaps he shouldn’t care and just go along with the others.
“Be careful what you believe, though,” McKay said suddenly.
“Why?” asked Maurice.
“Agendas,” McKay replied. “Everybody has an agenda. The conspiracy theorist wants you to buy their books or listen to the radio show. It has become a career for them, and that means the truth becomes scarcer as the time for the show or the material for the book is filled up with a lot of nonsense.”