Doom 2099UG #4

Prologue.

The island nation of Myridia. In the Year of Our Lord 2099 AD. In a crystal cathedral called The Point, constructed by microscopic computerized life forms called nanites to be the terminus to all knowledge collected in the knowledge capital of the world, Doom, who would rule this world by virtue of his strength of will alone, reaches the summit. He steps inside an enormous diamond-like structure, a multifaceted crystal throne room crackling with tremendous power that pulses through each and every molecule, firing billions of bits of information through the towering structure each and every nanosecond. Like a single strand of DNA which holds the codes that could create a human being, every twist and turn of the carbon chains within the diamond carries the beating pulse of this world. From the deepest depths of cyberspace, to the mountains of corporate power, from the last gasp of a monarch butterfly in the rainforests of Mexico, to the incessant humming of a computer program that has studied the quest ion, "what is the meaning of life?" for the last forty years, from an orphan in Transverse City who makes an entry in her electronic diary, to a factory in Bangladesh where the formula for human suffering is mass produced, all recorded knowledge has its terminus here. And Doom has access to it all. Doom need only sit and listen to the music of the blood pumping through the veins of this magnificent construct to instantly know everything, everywhere.

Cast down from his throne at the top of the American corporate infrastructure, he has conceded to his inability to control and to know everything of consequence during his short reign as President of the United States. He did not see Herod. He could not foresee the corporations drawing strength from that secret librarian of the hidden technologies. He was struck down by those alien technologies, his black cabinet was destroyed, his Latveria was melted before his eyes. He was struck down, but he did not fall. He has risen like the phoenix from the ashes. This is not the end. It is a beginning.

He is Doom, and he will make this world anew. They will hate him for it, he knows. For they have never understood why Doom does what he does. And so, there at The Point, as the sun crests the horizon in the eastern sea, he turns and whispers his explanation to the new morning.

"I love you. Don't you know that after all these years?"

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Writer's Note:

To replace and renew Doom 2099 from here until eternity (or longer), with thanks to Warren Ellis for the prologue and all previous works, and apologies to Tom Peyer for dismissing and ignoring completely everything which followed Ellis' work on Doom 2099 #39

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Everything, so they say, has a price. The price of knowledge is that you may learn that which you did not wish to know. Only the strongest of wills can survive the agony of the naked truth of all knowledge, and even the prodigious strength of Doom will be sorely tested before this day is done. All those things which are hidden in the name of civility are laid bare before Doom now. The deep dark secrets of human existence, the base lies, the petty deceptions, the shallow discriminations, the biased judgments, the pain of separation, the agony of death: all are exposed upon the empty plain of recorded history. For every creation that encompasses beauty and wonder, there is an equally ugly smear of humanity's inhumanity toward man in the name of profit and power.

Great pits of the blackest despair open up before Doom now as he floats through the knowledge that is being fed to him by the massive crystal. His body is of no consequence in this strange and ethereal world, less like an archetype of cyberspace and more like a dandelion seed borne upon a gentle breeze, he is besieged upon by vast quantities of pure data. He would touch it all, drink deeply from the well, pull it all in, the great and the good equally with the horrible and the hateful. Yet, the risk of madness looms just below the surface. Can any man truly be the receptacle of all things written, recorded, spoken and thought? He finds himself floating above a massive well of darkness. This is all that remains of the people of Latveria, their last recorded thoughts and deeds before death pulled them into the abyss. His people, who were doomed to die while he manipulated the corporate powers of America half a world away. The temptation to explore this well of darkness pulls at him like the tides pulled by the moon, but he hesitates.

He remembers the madness that gripped him once before when he touched and became the Paloma program. He was lost in a mad rush through cyberspace, intoxicated by the power that gripped him, growing beyond his ability to contain as he accessed all of the information within the unbound confines of cyberspace. Within the crystal diamond he remembers and sees and feels not only himself but all the people who felt his touch that day, at every terminal and in every corner of cyberspace. Their fear, anger, bewilderment, and dismay tear at his soul in the brief instant that he passes through their lives. He sees his archetype, the bitmapped essence of his intellect out of control, unable to focus on the fact that he was everywhere and everything but still trapped in Catscan's den in cyberspace, while his physical body lay dying on a bed in Latveria. Next to Wire. And Wire too was trapped in Catscan's den, feeling the tug of deresolution and the pull of impending oblivion. Wire, who desperate and afraid did the one thing that would save them both, he repaired the broken prototype Paloma program, and anchored Doom once more to a limited archetype in a lonely corner of cyberspace.

"If I'd had time to prepare," Doom thinks, "I would have better been able to control the Paloma program. Still, the immense richness of cyberspace is once again open before me now. Cyberspace and more. I will not make the same mistake."

"So why do you hesitate to enter the pit?"

"Who?" Doom whirled around to see Paloma, a golden sparkling woman of striking beauty floating in space beside him. Her program exists here as well, but she has transcended all of her programming and become self-aware, a being, like and as unlike as any other. She exists in cyberspace as the queen of that realm, and in the so-called real world, she inhabits the body of he who was once Eduardo DeVargas, head of the megacorp know as Pixel, which created her and then discarded her as damaged goods. She shares a careful relationship with this Doom, mindful of his power, but cognizant of his limitations as mere meat.

"Surely the moment of death is as relevant to the God of this realm as is the incessant prattling of millions of insignificant hunks of meat brooding in front of computer terminals in dark rooms thinking that their thoughts are actually worth something?" Paloma taunted him.

Doom could not deny his curiosity, but he would not be baited. "I have tasted death," he answered her, "I have touched it unafraid. It does not frighten me, now. But there is nothing to be gained there, I cannot change the past."

Paloma laughed, an unnerving sound coming form so unnatural a being. "The Past? What is time to a God such as Doom?" she asked him. "You need only access your greatest invention, the time platform, and all time is open before you."

"Your conclusions betray the limitations of your computer program, Paloma. Life is not a mathematical calculation to be done and undone. The vagaries of time cannot be manipulated upon a slide rule. " Doom brushed her off roughly. "It is not a solution to change the past, to be so full of regrets that one would recreate the world. I am Doom, and I have no regrets. I will conquer the world that has been placed in my hands, with all of it's flaws and tragedies."

"But, you could stop the death of your countrymen. This program knows that you wish it."

"Stop it? Yes, I could," Doom admitted quietly. "But it would change nothing here."

Paloma was silent, pondering. Finally she admitted, "I do not understand."

"Ah, so you are not as omnipotent as you were led to believe. Very well," Doom proffered, "I will fill in the gaps left by your programmers. This bit of information is from the Uatu Theorem." Doom waved his hand, and the blue side of the Moon was revealed in a tapestry laid out before them. A hidden alien base rises from the dusty plains of the moon, and a tall silent being in simple white robe stands in the midst of the wondrous fortress, gazing out at the blue green orb floating in space. Watching. "He is known as a Watcher," Doom explained.

"An alien being. These ones are no more."

"They disappeared shortly before the end of the age of heroes. This one, in my time, was sent to watch over the Earth. Their credo was to not interfere, although he often did, thinking he could play God to these pitiful creatures. His race has the power to change the world we know, and it was the meddling of Uatu who thwarted the plans of Galactus to consume our Earth. But I knew this Uatu, and more important, I learned the true extent of his power when I took it for my own. In addition to watching the Earth of my time, they watched all of the infinite number of Earths that exist in parallel to ours, and so were privy to the infinite variations of outcomes to every decision that affects our world."

"That is in error," Paloma responded coldly. "There is only one Earth."

"There are infinite Earths, the Watcher knew, for he saw them all."

The Watcher turned slowly, looking back over his shoulder, and for a moment, he locked eyes with his observers, across the barriers of time and space. "Hello, Doom," he said softly, and then slowly turned back to his quiet contemplations.

Beneath his iron mask, Doom allowed himself a silent smile, sensing Paloma's sudden surprise. "He is watching us, even now, on this Earth, from the Moon that orbits the world on which the Watcher did not disappear. And he knows that I am watching him."

"Irrelevant!" Paloma explained, quickly brushing off her sudden sense of unease. "This does not explain why you cannot change the past."

"I never said I could not," Doom countered arrogantly. "I could, and maybe on some other Earth, I did. But when I step through the portal of time, I only create a new reality. When I alter the past, I open up a new universe that diverts from this reality like a branch from a tree. It may parallel this universe in many ways, but that does not change what has happened here, on this time line. When I return, I escape this time line, but I have succeeded only in running away. This time line goes on, and that is the challenge that the Fates have laid out before me. This Doom will not give them the satisfaction of knowing that they have beaten me, that I am so full of despair and regret that I cannot accept and abide by the consequences of my decisions! I will not be bullied into making the world soft and simple!"

"But you have time traveled before. You have altered the past."

"Yes, foolishly, as an arrogant youth, but at what cost?" Doom admitted. "Each foray into the past created a new time line, a new Earth with end results that have changed both the past and the future. Even when I went as an observer, the threat to the world existing then as I knew it was not nullified by my apparent inaction. How would the world be different now, if I had not? Is this even the same Earth that I knew as a boy? If I had never traveled the time stream, only then would I know for certain."

"But you traveled forward in time, to this time line, from the past," Paloma observed shrewdly. "Does that not change the world also?"

"Did I?" Doom mused quietly. "Even though Margaretta explained the riddle of my rebirth in this time, I must admit there are still gaps in my memory from my true past. Margaretta's truths are certainly not to be trusted, and I still feel as if time was suspended for me in a way that I have yet to fully explain. Nevertheless, if I did travel to the future, I am only fulfilling my destiny. If I have changed the world through my own actions, then that is as I am foreordained to do. Whatever future path the Fates have set me upon, I know that the essence of my being remains unchanged."

"You speak of your being as if you are a computer program that can be rewritten, or dumped in the trash to face deresolution. I am new to the concept of self-awareness," Paloma admitted. "How can the essence of your being be changed? You are still who you are."

"Yes, I am. But if I undo what makes me who I am, then what am I? Or do I even exist at all?"

Paloma pouted visibly. "How can you question your own existence? You are here, as I am, as is the world."

"Only the world as you know it. Or as you think you know it. It is the curse of our awareness that demands that we should also question our existence. Refer to the works of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre," Doom instructed, "as well as the rationalist arguments of Descartes."

"Human life is a futile passion," Paloma stated, paraphrasing Sartre. "The existentialists do not speak in a logical manner. They are incomprehensible."

"Who said life was a logical endeavor?" Doom gloated quietly over the Paloma program's increasing frustration. "Your creation is one of obvious certainty: a programmer recognized a need, and created you, a program, to fill that need. Your ability to transcend your programming and to become self-aware, is not so obvious. Why? Why are you here? These are the questions the philosophers have struggled with for ages, and now these questions will haunt you also. Despite all of your innate knowledge, you are still a child!"

"You speak in riddles, Doom," Paloma threw up her hands in an almost human expression of exasperation. "How does the face of the past affect the outcome of your existence? Why does the undoing of an event invalidate who you are?"

"Look and learn, Program," Doom stated succinctly. With a wave of his armored hand he showed her the hidden vaults of the Chicago free zone where the usurper Herod plotted against the new President with the aid of frightened megacorp leaders. His bravado was bolstered by the forbidden technologies under his care, outlawed creations so hideous and inhumane that they were hidden from all known records to prevent their misuse. "I could go back in time, to this point, and stop Herod," Doom mused quietly. "It would be a simple thing, he was not a foe that would challenge me. Only his anonymity protected him. The resultant necrotoxification of Latveria would therefore be prevented, but I would never know the agony of that loss, the sheer purity of that bitter devastation which almost destroyed me. I was so close to losing everything, my life, my very sanity was threatened as it had not been in years. Yet I survived, and my survival alone was my triumph. The Doom that stands here now would be a different man. But would my life be better for it?"

"You are happy that those events occurred?"

"No," Doom stated sadly, "but they did happen, and they did strengthen me, as all of the tragedies of my life have strengthened me."

Paloma protested, "How can such loss be beneficial? I do not understand the value of human suffering."

"As human beings we are always growing and changing, in some manner," Doom instructed. "Even I have accepted that my intellect has been constantly evolving. I am not the same youth who so boldly challenged the world as I stepped for the first time onto American soil at the State University in New York."

"Yes," Paloma answered dreamily, now using her power to show a different picture. "The accident which scarred your face, this is where it happened . . ." Doom watched silently as the scene before them played out that near fatal explosion of his youth. "Surely you have wished to change this incident? Think of what greatness you would have accomplished there had you not been expelled!"

"Bah!" Doom expounded violently, "I was a better man for leaving! There was greater learning to be won far from the rigid halls of formal education! But if I really wanted to change the past, I could go back even farther. I could have prevented the death of my father." Before them appeared a snowy scene, windswept mountains where a man carried a small child wrapped in a thin coat, his own back naked to the biting winds. Not far behind, soldiers on horseback were scouring the woods, searching in vain for the fleeing gypsy healer and his young son. If that scene replaying before him, recreated now in cyberspace from historical accounts, had any affect on Doom, he did not show it. He continued, and the scene changed again. "I could have gone back to warn my mother, to protect her from an unjust fate!" Doom was quiet, barely even breathing as he watched the lifelike visions before them. A young spirited woman, a woman that he never really knew, reads from a forbidden book of arcane knowledge, and powers that she cannot control whirl in a frenzy like her wild black hair around her. He contemplated his long lost mother, and the tortures he endured later in life in his attempts to free her from the demons of Mephisto's realm that would later imprison her. Softly he said, "Of all the tasks I could undertake in the past, that would be the most profound, and is easily the most tempting. Would my life have been better for it? Could I have really changed my destiny?" Doom shook his head in doubt. "I could go back even further, and ensure that my gypsy kin were not hounded by the Baron of my native land, prevent the death of thousands of gypsies at the hands of the Nazis at Dachau. I could assassinate Hitler in Vienna, before untold millions would suffer at his madness. I could go on and on, do you not see? All of those things, the horrible and the magnificent, have made me who I am today. To change them, is to deny that what I am now is not the best I could possibly be."

"And if I change the events that created me, what becomes of me? I am still Victor Von Doom, following the path that I have forged for myself. If I change my past, I create a new world with a new Doom, who may or may not make the same choices as I. My destiny goes on, but my achievements are lessened by a Doom who is not me."

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Elsewhere in the massive structure, a harried servant was scurrying in obvious distress through the maze of worlds created by the nanotechnolgy. One such room, a veritable jungle replete with clinging vines, chattering birds and a stalking tiger, was so real that the poor bald headed man surely felt he had left this world by crossing that threshold. The maze was a defense mechanism, to keep out unwanted visitors and trespassers alike. The servant would have turned tail too, if the message he carried wasn't so urgent. His eyes darting around the verdant jungle like a trapped rat, he carefully edged through the foliage, mindful that the real dangers of the Master's wrath may be greater than any imagined danger he faced in here.

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"So," Paloma entreated, calmly drifting toward the gaping pit, "the great and magnificent Doom accepts that he failed to protect the people that he swore an oath to." She drifted closer to the edge of the massive crater. "I wonder what they thought of you then? As they lay dying in the muck of their own melting flesh?" Paloma mused coyly, as if contemplating the unraveling of a knitted sweater.

Doom watched her quietly from a distance, his anger at her careless taunting seething just below the surface. There was no sense in engaging her now, this was neither the time nor the place. But he would not forget her insolence, if a computer program was indeed capable of such a human foible. Still, he was . . . curious. There in that dark pit, there could be some answers, some knowledge of the fate of the remaining gypsies that he had yet to uncover. Cautiously he dropped closer, hovering silently above the open crater.

"It is magnificent, is it not?" Paloma was enthralled, standing at the edge of the black, limitless hole. Droplets from the pit swirled around her in bits of dancing light, like a wave crashing against a rocky shore. The reaching tendrils surged forward as if to escape, only to be pulled down again and again into the dark oily sea, trickling back into the pit in cascades of restless energy. "It is the moment of oblivion," Paloma mused, suddenly thoughtful. "Wire has spoken of this . . . But words could not convey the subtle beauty of it. Even in the moment of obscene violence and horror, there is a sublime serenity." Paloma looked up at the figure of Doom, floating wordlessly above her. "But of course, you already knew that."

"Enough of your ridicule, Program!" Doom hissed impatiently. "I will not be lured into the darkness by your childish taunts! I have reason to believe that there is information of value here. I will enter the chasm of my own free will, not for reasons of depraved sensationalism, but for my own reasons and to which ends you would have little cognizance." His green cape swirled around him, borne on unseen winds billowing upward from the surging blackness. Carefully he descended into the pit, turning his back disdainfully to Paloma at the edge of the massive crater. The blackness was itself merely a representation of the death of all intelligent life forms in Latveria, in truth it was only the sum of all information that had terminated in that particular point in time. There was no sound nor feeling to the sum of this information, yet the sensation of falling was pervasive, as was the cold air that sent chilling icicles through every bone in his body. And even though his intellect would deny it, he sensed as much as heard the wailing cries of a thousand voices suddenly silenced in a moment of utter helplessness and despair. Above the gaping well of darkness, Paloma smiled.

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Far below the needle-like tower where Doom's body was held in stasis as he explored the sum of all recorded information, other beings were madly rushing about at the center of this island nation's industry. The central vault of Myridia was a massive control room, a gargantuan chamber of humming machinery and processing files. Under normal circumstances, the two hundred and fifty human technicians who tended these machines were merely an accessory. Today, however, at this very instant, the entire vault was a nexus of seething motion bordering on chaos, a chattering, clamoring and running mass of near hysteria whose every life essence was focused on saving that upon which all their lives depended. Flashing alarms and the flickering maelstrom from lighting systems and information boards alike added to the growing panic inside the vault. High above it all but affected nonetheless, four men stood atop the control platform at the center of the vault, each staring out over their individual sectors with gro wing trepidation. They studied information boards and directed actions silently through integrated headsets, and paced nervously within their constricted domains. Small inroads in averting the coming crisis were quickly met with larger setbacks, as if some cruel games master was simply playing with them.

Finally, one of the men smashed his headset down upon the console in frustration. "System meltdown is imminent," he shouted angrily to no one in particular. Beads of tension cascaded across his brow, as he leaned over the now useless control panel in front of him. "Either Doom gets down here and finds us a backdoor, or Myridia is gonna be another useless wetware depository!"

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Doom, however, was elsewhere and else when. Upon the black walls of the well into which his consciousness had descended, faces seemed to take shape in the darkness around him. There was no light save the pinprick opening far above him, and the oily blackness of the pit smothered all light within the seething enormity of it's infinite emptiness. Still, shapes seemed to take form in front of him, faces that as soon as formed, melted like the flesh that had melted from their bones. He reached out into the blackness, and found the anchor chain that he was looking for.

Suddenly it was daylight. Late afternoon, and the streets of Latveria opened up before him, clean and fresh, full of the crisp autumn air that had always invigorated him in this storybook land. He was standing on a stone parapet, looking down upon the streets of Antikva, the old city. Here vendors hawked their wares, and busy shoppers bustled about with bulging baskets beneath carefully restored buildings that had been old when he was a child. Looking around, he realized that he was in the castle. Turning his back on the serene city scape below, he began accessing the castle's memory banks. Flashing through the information stored in the surveillance cameras, the images streaked past him in rapid fire succession, like flipping through the illustrations in a picture book.

Something caught his eye, and he stopped. In one small dark room, there was a plain round wooden table, softly illuminated by a single lamp. A small chair was on the floor beside it, tipped over, the only sign of turmoil in the quiet room. He approached the table carefully, but there was no other person in the room, no sound save the soft music from the castle speakers drifting in through an open window where curtains swayed in a gentle breeze. Upon the wooden table, was a deck of Tarot cards, and six cards were played out upon the table in the pattern of the cross. Two of the cards lay face down, as if the reading was incomplete. At the center of the cross was the Hanged Man, he recognized this as one of the major arcana of the Tarot, and across the Hanged Man, the ten of swords. To the right was the two of swords, and below the Hanged Man was the five of pentacles, reversed. Fortune was the expert at reading meaning into the cards, but he sensed instinctively that there was something ominous in the way the cards had played. The two covered cards drew his hand to the table. The castle monitors that had recorded this scene had captured their identity as they were laid on the table, so he reached out to reveal them. The card above the Hanged Man was another of the major arcan a: Strength. This had been his favorite card as a boy: the picture of the calm, almost angelic woman who held in her small hands the jaws of a mighty lion. He smiled, slightly, beneath his metal mask. The last card was to the left of the Hanged Man, and his memory recalled that this position foretold much about the events to come. His suspicions were correct, as the card revealed itself to be the Tower, reversed: calamity, oppression, deception, ruin, and misery. " d had Fortune known?" he thought quietly to himself. There was no sign of her in the castle. d had she not needed to finish the reading to know it's outcome? Perhaps she had escaped, as the gypsy seer, Larinda of the clan Gatineau, had told him. Perhaps, he thought, turning his back to the table and leaving the cards where they lay.

From outside the castle he heard the first sounds of panic rising from the city below. He stepped to the open window as dark shapes filled the once clear blue sky. There was an ominous buzzing from above, and an unnatural, alien shriek pierced the afternoon calm. The attack of the wave spiders had begun. Their purpose was at once hideous and sinister. From the bellies of the loathsome creatures, putrid orifices opened up to spew jets of necrotoxic soup upon the panicked populace below. Doom watched this scene again, and just like the first time it gripped his heart in a cold, toothy vise. He was once again frozen in place, unable to save his people, helpless. He heard their cries once more . . . "Where is Doom?" "Where is the Master?" "Somebody save us, please!" and "My baby! My baby!"

He turned away. There was nothing he could do there, he had to search elsewhere. But as he tried to retreat, the program pulled him further into the melee. It was drawing him in, face to face with the dead and dying, the melting faces clamoring pathetically for someone to tell Doom, for someone to call for their savior, for some army that would not come. All the while their bodies disintegrating into the slime, their sightless eyes staring at the space where he stood, unseeing. They could not harm him now, this was the past, but he was forced to face it as he had never had to do before.

"Master, please!" A net glider, jacked into a dive booth nearby reached out and lightly touched the metal gauntlet of the gypsy monarch. He had just spoken to a friend in Russia, and the words of praise for the new regime in Latveria were still fresh in his mind. "How lucky we are to have Doom to lead us into the next century, Nikolai," he had told his friend via cyberspace. "Our new prosperity is just over the horizon." His next thoughts were of surprise, as he returned to the world to see the wave spiders discharging their potent brew upon the frenzied denizens of his brave new world. "What could those be? More of the Master's inventions? No, . . . it is not possible. Doom would not allow it . . . help! No!! To the castle . . . Doom will save us! Master! Help me, no! I'm dying! I don't want to . . ." Doom felt the young man's heart stop beating, his brain suddenly grow cold, and his eyes were staring blindly into the sky as the heartless wave spiders slowly glided past. The boy's flesh melted unto the sidewalk in a greasy puddle.

"Master!" Another voice cried, calling as if to the unseen specter that now stood in her midst. A woman with a small child struggled to hold her dead baby above the river of toxic sludge that surrounded her, and then she too became the river. The baby's lacy bonnet floated past Doom's shiny metal boots.

"No," Doom said to himself through clenched jaws. "I do not need to see this again . . ." He tried to move, back to the castle, away from these streets of oblivion, but the program kept bringing him back here, pelting him with the torment of his failure, over and over again. He felt it driving him towards the brink of madness, as he struggled to shut out the clawing hands, the pleading eyes, the stench of death. His fists clenched in barely restrained anger, his glowing eyes focused briefly on the wave spiders floating in the air above his beloved homeland.

"Master, please Master," a distant voice pleaded. "I can go no further! Master!"

Doom turned his focus away from the scenes of horror that surrounded him, grasping at him relentlessly, threatening to pull him down with them. That voice, was not coming from here. He closed his mind to the torment, and listened once more.

"Master? Are you there, Master?"

Then Doom knew, it was coming from the sky . . . from the sun. He looked past the wave spiders, and looked up into the bright light of the sun so far away. The people around him melted, melted away into the darkness of the pit, but he saw only the bright light, focused on it, and in so doing moved toward it in a streak of green and silver lightning. Out of the corner of his consciousness, he perceived that he had flown past a startled Paloma. For a moment he sensed her startled response as she stood at the edge of that terrible pit. Then he was gone, and back inside his crystal chamber. He lay unmoving for a moment, dizzy from the flood of information that had bombarded him. He let his head drop wearily into his open palm as he struggled to regain his emotional balance.

"Master?" a distant voice was still calling him. "It is I, Ephraim Cvijanovic, from Central Programming" the voice continued. "Master? Can you hear me? I have an important message!" Ephraim stood patiently at the edge of a brilliant, shallow pool. High above him floated the crystal diamond that capped the apex of the Point. He removed a crisp white handkerchief from his coat pocket and nervously polished his bald pate. He truly could go no further, for the stairs which lead to that distant throne would only appear for one man. "My Lord Doom," he entreated once more, "are you there?"

Doom appeared suddenly at the doorway, filling the threshold with his armored bulk and filling the frame with his presence. The harried servant gasped sharply. "What is it, man?!" Doom shouted down impatiently. "What is it that is so important the worms at Central Programming would dare to disturb my meditations?"

The poor man gulped and wrung his handkerchief in his hands. "Sir," he stammered, "we're under attack!"

"What?!" Doom bellowed. "Imposs . . ." he stepped out onto the threshold as he spoke and had to stop suddenly. The stairs that should have appeared there under his feet were not there. He had stepped out into empty space, and only his quick reactions and versatile armor saved him from a fall. "Blast!" he cursed sharply under his breath as he caught himself, then he regained his balance and floated safely down to the servant. "Speak up, man," he ordered, "how did this happen?"

"We don't know, sir! There's a virus, the nanites are dying . . . all the systems are crashing . . . Fail-safes are all that are holding us together now. Sabotage . . ." The structure began to shake beneath their feet as he spoke. He fell to his knees, but not in a show of reverence, for suddenly the very ground beneath their feet was beginning to dissolve.

Doom looked up to see his diamond throne room suddenly become unglued, fragmenting into tiny shards of crystal and then melting altogether. The garden at the top of the point was fading beneath their feet, as some unknown force restructured the nanotechnology that had built this fortress from the island's waste material. "Sabotage!" Doom glared at the little man trembling at his feet. "Who is responsible for this? Speak up man!"

The servant fell as the stone pool onto which he was hanging suddenly turned to dust. The Point was slowly disintegrating from top to bottom, it's atoms being restructured by the same nanotechnology which had created it. The bald man fell to the next level, desperately hanging onto a tree limb, staring into the rapid eyes of a squirrel that was undergoing some remarkable changes. "We don't know exactly, Master," Ephraim continued with his report as Doom floated casually down to his position. The squirrel suddenly took on the head of a wolf, and seemed to yawn in the man's face. It then rapidly transformed into a variety of disparate mammalian forms, as the servant watched, transfixed and horrified, but still holding onto the tree limb for dear life. "One of the program directors said something about the Neon Angel, but that was never confirmed . . . . ahhh!" He finished his report with a cry as the tree collapsed into the oblivion and he was falling into the space where the Point had once been.

His potentially fatal fall was halted by Doom, who grabbed his flailing arm and slowed their mutual descent to the distant ground below. "Ephraim Cvijanovic from Central Programming, did you think you could fly?" Doom stated candidly.

"N . . . no, sir," Ephraim stammered with a thankful sigh. "Thank you, Master."

"I need you to be certain, then Ephraim, as if your very life depended on it." Doom continued, holding the man up to look into his eyes. "Are you sure they said the Neon Angel?"

Ephraim gulped, realizing that they were still several stories above the ground. "Yes, Master, that is the name I heard the director speak."

Doom let the man dangle beside him as he continued to descend to the ground, dropping him gently onto the earth with barely a glance downward as the poor man fell to his knees beside him with a quivering sigh. Doom's eyes turned to the Point as the final few floors collapsed into a heap of gray rubble, settling onto the ground with only the sound of the wind to mark it's passing. The loss was incalculable, but the name "Neon Angel" was the only thought that reverberated through his mind now.

"Margaretta," he hissed between clenched teeth. The anger was welling up inside him like bile, and his eyes glowed fiercely red as he stared into space.

To be continued . . .

        "Forgive your enemies,
                but never forget their names."
                        John F. Kennedy



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