Best Left Unfinished

by Sara Jamieson

  ~~~~~

  Human beings were fascinating creatures. They were such a strange mix of complications and simplicity -- of creativity and conformity -- that one could spend the entirety of one’s life making a study of their impulses and proclivities (of their motivations and what held them in check) and still stumble across new information and reactions and subtle differences that required a reevaluation of your own expectations and methods. That was his favorite thing about them; he had decided long ago that each new person in each new situation was another challenge and another opportunity for study and honing strategies. Human beings were fascinating because they never bored him.

  There were so many other things that did. There were a variety of areas of study available in the world (and he should know as he had dabbled in so many of them by turn before eventually finding his way back to the human actions and reactions and thought patterns that never failed to intrigue him) with which one could acquaint oneself. One could become an expert -- one could learn the what and the why as well as the how. One could even learn the practical (and theoretical) applications of such knowledge. The same question, however, always loomed at the end of such studies -- what next?

  After one had attained such mastery, what was one supposed to do? Should one employ it forever? Should one use the proscribed forms to apply over and over again in endless repetition because that was one’s accomplished field of study and one must remain locked into it forever? Some human beings might be satisfied with such endeavors. They might find it rewarding or whichever word of the moment they used to pretend that it was somehow acceptable to limit their potential to a preset track. Such a state was not for him. Repetition bored him. Fields of knowledge were a means to an end -- not an end unto themselves.

  Only one thing in his life had ever succeeded in holding his attention beyond the initial attempt -- that was the study of other human beings. There was so much to be figured out in the variety of their underlying sameness. They were so ego centric. They were so focused on self so much of the time, and yet they also held some sort of common bond of a desire to seek something external to fill some sense of something missing within them.

  How could anyone not be fascinated by such a seemingly endless list of contradictions that somehow still managed to create a coherent, functional whole? Was it any wonder that he never really gave up his pursuit of an understanding of all things human (even when he detached the majority of his focus for a time to engage in other pursuits)? He hated being bored with a passion that little else in his life was capable of conjuring. It was only sensible that he be inordinately fond of that which kept the boredom at bay.

  Randall Sutton liked human beings in the manner that a somewhat spoiled child enjoys a particularly engaging toy -- it is far less about any intrinsic value of the toy itself and far more about what that toy provides to the child in question. People were his toy of choice and (more often than not) they were a tool by which he could reach some end that he had decided it was worth his time and effort to endeavor to obtain. He could not remember a time that he had not looked at the people around him thus, and he saw no point in the future wherein he might reconsider his opinions. People made the best toys -- they could be pushed and prodded in innumerable directions (and there was nothing quite as fascinating as the deciphering of which method of dangling carrot or metaphorical anvil over the head would produce the desired results most efficiently). They retained enough autonomy that a challenge was virtually guaranteed in the determination of where the line between pushed as far as could be and pushed just too far might be. There were always surprises waiting for him (although the older he became, the less frequently he found himself stumbling across them) because people retained a certain level of randomness that would crop up in their behavior at the strangest of times.

  They made wonderful tools because there was nothing in the world that was on par with human ingenuity. They could be trained until finely tuned and even given tasks and left to their own devices when necessary. They were like all tools in that they could be discarded when they were beyond the point of usefulness any longer. The Society was the favorite tool in his arsenal -- it had been even before he had successfully placed himself in the position of authority over the other members that he now maintained. Finding them had been like finding a particularly unexpected gift sitting underneath the tree on Christmas morning -- he hadn’t realized just how much he wanted it until it had been sitting there in front of him (and then he couldn’t quite contemplate how it was that it had never occurred to him to ask for such a thing before).

  Individual people could present a challenge of the highest order; an associated group of people (particularly one dedicated to the premises that the Society held as its core principles) rarely served to function as a challenge at all. All you had to do was find the proper button to push (or the appropriate string to pull); a group of people would be falling all over themselves to let you lead them toward or away from (whichever the particular circumstances might require) whatever goal or landmine it was that the collective managed to work itself up into a lather over. People in groups were always far more easily led than an individual on his or her own.

  Randall knew that because he had been doing both since well before he was old enough to be legally recognized as a competent adult. He also had trouble remembering when it was, exactly, that the world had separated itself within the organizational structure of his head into himself and the rest of humanity. Intellectually (and philosophically as well for that matter) he knew that he was, in fact, a member of that class of human beings that he was so fond of observing, coordinating, and manipulating. He had, in contrast to that, never really thought of himself in terms of being one of them. It seemed a foreign thought somehow to class himself in such a manner.

  He could recognize the accuracy of the claim -- he could even acknowledge that he possessed similar attributes to those he catalogued in the others. For some reason, that never changed his internal sense of somehow remaining apart. He was the studier; they were the studied. He was the observer; they were the observed. He was the user; they were the used.

  That was the place wherein his sense of the right and proper order of things remained, and he did not seek to change his view. He was even aware of the irony of how he internally scoffed when he noticed similar states of egocentric focus in others. His awareness changed nothing.

  Even the Society (with their strict views of that which was to be propagated and that which was to be brought to an end via their own determinations and machinations) entrenched in its own sense of self-importance and necessity, garnered its share of mental lambasting from him for its overinflated ideas of purpose despite how useful he found it all.

  He could appreciate that someone else (someone with a lesser understanding of the fitness of things) might find his lack of indulgence for what could be construed as no different thoughts than his own something in the way of being hypocritical. He saw a bigger picture -- a picture that made clear that there was every reason to believe that his opinions on the matter were all located in their proper places. It was quite simple, really, he used the Society; they did not use him.

  Thus, his sense of egocentric focus was validated by the circumstances, and theirs was repudiated by their inability to recognize their place. Was it a convoluted application of logic? It would have been for someone who wasn’t Randall Sutton. There would, however, be no reason for someone who was not Randall Sutton to ever ponder such thoughts. They remained locked tightly within his own internal block of knowledge. He did not voice them. There was no one in which he would confide such things (or anything at all for that matter). It was as his internal division had made clear to him long ago -- there was the rest of humanity; there was Randall Sutton (there was no need for him to share any of the essence of what made up the internal him with something that would always remain other than himself).

  It had been so easy to oust Elliot
Hall in the early days of his bid for power (even limited as he was by the never quite erased snobbery of those who would ever perceive him as an outsider made acceptable to their purposes by a mere fluke of nature). Hall had been taking the Society down a path which made many of the old hardline voices uncomfortable -- it had felt like backtracking to them to be placing the oh so very planned for and engineered children out into the world at such young ages. They had been striving for decades to create something apart and to have it placed back into the care of that which they desired to be apart from in some concession to a necessity of being able to blend had not found favor with their ideals.

  How Randall loved ideals. An ideal that was chosen because one decided that it made an appropriate ideal -- with no exterior source and no outside determination for the worthiness of the ideal -- was so easy (if time consuming) to twist and nudge into just the incarnation that he wanted it to have. The Society (for all its pretensions of being a higher form of humanity) was no different in that than any of the other ideals conceived within self that he had encountered during the course of his life.

  The right comment made here or the appropriately concerned look given there was all that it took. It was almost laughably easy (and amusingly quick) to see them fall all over themselves to counteract Elliot’s “ill-advised decisions” and hand the reigns over to the oh so helpful and ready to serve (and clean up the messes of the others) Randall.

  He did not flatter himself with the notion that he could have ordered nearly anything in those early days without a flicker of questioning to trouble him; it was merely fact. It would have been no great effort to secure Elliot’s elimination, but he hadn’t found it necessary. Hall had retreated; Randall had seized the open field (and remained half-hopeful to this day that the other man might reappear from wherever it was that he had decided to disappear to provide a further challenge for Randall’s consumption and enjoyment).

  The children had proven far more difficult to control than the adults that had surrounded them. The ones that took some time to reacquire from Hall’s machinations proved even more so. The other man had covered his tracks well -- Randall appreciated that in someone who attempted to make themselves into an opponent. They hadn’t been able to find all of them quickly (and a few they hadn’t been able to find at all). Others might have fretted over such a state of affairs -- mistakenly perceiving it as some sort of a setback or failure of a kind. Randall knew better. There came a point wherein it was no longer expedient (or even necessary) to use further resources in an attempt to trace the locations of the missing ones. Randall knew people -- there was no need to go looking for someone who would be coming to you.

  They would grow up, and they would want answers. The trails that they would follow in their attempts to find those answers would lead them to the Society, and they would be theirs for the conversion and taking.

  There had been doubters, but Randall always knew how to keep them in their place (and often such effort wasn’t even required as those most inclined toward doubt were also those most inclined to hold their tongue and go about their own business without engaging themselves with the internal politics around them). Time had proven him right (as time always did).

  Years had gone by, and the prodigal children had come looking for their answers (and if some of them were less inclined toward conversion than others, then that was even better -- they provided one more way to stave off the boredom).

  They were all his pieces; they all had their place. He was the master with the complete view of the chessboard, and he knew where each of them would stand at the end. If the paths they took to get there were a bit convoluted and required different interventions on his part to lead them there, then that made the game more interesting, more of a challenge, and more worth playing.

  Knowing that he was going to win was never in question, but what could be more boring than knowing how and when he was going to win? There was nothing that he could think of off the top of his head (and if it wasn’t already at the top of his head, then it was nothing worth the time to think over).

  He had always been declared brilliant; he had always suspected that his constant battle to push back against the ever pushing forward state of boredom that stalked him was the price which he paid for that state. He did not begrudge it -- knowing from his study of all things human that prices were exacted for all things in life. He embraced it; he cherished it even. It gave him direction and purpose in a world in which he observed so many who seemed to drift without either.

  He acted in accordance.

  He gave out his cell assignments (complete with mixes that were far more inclined to personal conflict than maximum efficiency), and he gave methodical check lists of orders that must be followed without the possibility for creative means of short cuts to their goals. After all, it wouldn’t do to finish things too quickly. He had such a nice setup here; he would prefer to milk it until the entertainment value had all been dissolved. Who knew if the next set he moved on to would provide nearly as much fodder for his amusement?

  He was not inclined to take chances when chances were not needed. His sources of entertainment needed to be protected, and he protected them zealously from anything that might interfere. Anything that might ramp up the potential for conflict as he observed was, however, encouraged (perhaps not equally zealously, but encouraged none the less).

  Others might fret or worry over time constraints and forward progress (and he knew exactly from whence that whining would come and could predict both its inception and duration with a level of accuracy that meant that those particular persons had outlived their usefulness in the realms of challenge and entertainment). Others might be too engaged in thinking that their individual attainments and projects were of greater importance than observing the display of human nature available for perusal. Randall was not a part of the others. Randall was separate from the others. Randall was beyond the others.

  They could ponder and become caught up in their own sense of the importance of their affairs. Randall had other items to occupy his time. He had his own affairs (and he knew their importance); he had his own designs (and he saw that they were carefully carried out to completion), but he had no intention of losing sight of the equally important pursuit of his own entertainment in the process.

  Randall was going to sit back, take it all in, and enjoy the show for as long as he could make it last.