Ultimate Power

"To rule is such a sweet feeling," sighed General Kwar, a blissful smile put on his lips.

Taking a break from his daily struggle for power, he was sitting on the unique table of the Welgon Age's tea room, taking a refreshment along with his "friends" (as far as the notion of friendship could go for one who was craving for power every second of his existence) Sarkon the Prophet and Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist.

"The anticipation of a pleasure is sometimes sweeter than the pleasure itself," Sarkon answered with a knowing smile to General Kwar's self-satisfaction.

"You are referring to the prophecies with which you intend to rule the world someday, aren't you?" asked - or rather stated, for Sarkon's numerous and unfulfilled prophecies (but he prophesied all of them would accomplish after his death) were known in the whole Welgon Age - General Kwar, making no effort to hide his amusement.

This contempt was more than Sarkon the Prophet could bear. He took a long breath and said defiantly, "I bet I can beat you in your own field, the gathering of power!"

General Kwar froze into an uneasy stiffness. He was the unchallenged ruler of the Welgon Age, all right, but this was only because none had challenged him until now! This provocation made things different...

"The remembrance of a past pleasure can be sweet, too - the more when one can make the past present," Dr. Qworm intervened with a cunning smile.

"What do you know about power?" asked both General Kwar and Sarkon the prophet haughtily, although a little amazed that Dr. Qworm dared to venture into what they considered as their subject.

Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist only went on smiling cunningly - mysteriously, from the point of view of his two "friends". Of course, they didn't know about the time traveling machine he had built not a long time ago, and he was convinced that this machine gave him a power none of the two others could even imagine!

"I bet," he said after having let Sarkon and Kwar brood for a while in their puzzlement, "that I can beat both of you in your own field, the gathering of power!"

Sarkon the Prophet was surprised, but he expressed his surprise with but a smile to General Kwar's attention. The latter shifted uneasily on his seat. "It seems the whole Welgon Age is conspiring against Me, its Ruler!" he said. But the self-confidence years of supreme authority had provided him with came to his help: he steadied his thoughts, his stare and his bottom and boomed, "But I'll thwart this rebellion! Thus I accept your challenge, and I'll prove you that the most powerful here is Myself, and none else!"

A long silence followed General Kwar's proclamation. He was about to believe that Sarkon the Prophet and Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist had already submitted to his will by the sheer strength of his words and given up the fight before it had even begun, when Sarkon remarked - thus revealing he had only been thinking during this time (and not feeling the words' weight, much to Kwar's disappointment) - "The rules of the challenge seem obvious to me: the one who gathers most power wins. Only the goal is a little indefinite, perhaps, because power is quite a subjective concept, actually... We may well all three succeed in what we do - in gaining power, - and each of us will then claim he has won!"

"What do you suggest?" asked Dr. Qworm, not more impressed by Kwar's speech than Sarkon had been (much to Kwar's disappointment).

"We need a referee," said Sarkon the Prophet.

A silence followed this proposal. Sarkon was about to believe that the sheer strength of his convincing skills was crushing their wills and force them to accept what he said as The Truth - thus already demonstrating his superiority over them - when Dr. Qworm remarked, "But if the notion of power is subjective, the more is a referee who has to judge about this notion! Who will we take to judge us?" Contrarily to Sarkon's expectations, Dr. Qworm didn't seem convinced at all.

"Why, I think it's a good idea!" agreed Kwar, much to Sarkon's relief. At least, he had trapped one of them into his spiritual snare! "We only have to take someone who is objective enough as referee," Kwar went on. "The best would be to ask the Ruler of the Welgon Age himself: Me!"

Sarkon sighed. He had trapped no one. "Don't be silly," he said to Kwar. "You can't participate and be an objective judge at the same time. No, we have to find another one to arbitrate the game..."

At the sound of Sarkon's last word, cookie, the kind harlequin with extraordinary mental powers who liked playing games above everything else, walked in (the Welgon Age wasn't a very large world, indeed). "Are you playing something? May I participate?" he asked, smiling kindly.

General Kwar sighed in exasperation, Dr. Qworm shook his head and covered his eyes with his hands, and Sarkon the Prophet tried to explain, "I am sorry, cookie, but I am afraid this game is nothing for you. Perhaps I employed the word 'game' a little lightheadedly, for it is not truly a game..."

"Why not?" asked cookie, puzzled and disappointed. "Everything should be a game!"

"Well... Because..." Sarkon didn't know what to answer. Why wasn't the run for power a game, after all?

Seeing Sarkon's hesitations, and as neither General Kwar nor Dr. Qworm (who both wanted to avoid having one more opponent) seemed glad to invite him into the strange game they were about to play, cookie the harlequin made a contrite face and was going to walk away when a sudden feeling of remorse gave Sarkon the idea. "After all, we could take cookie as referee for our challenge; this could be his way of participating in it!" he proposed.

"Do you think he'll be objective?" asked Dr. Qworm suspiciously.

"If you want my opinion, I find myself more objective than him!" declared General Kwar haughtily.

Sarkon the Prophet sighed. "cookie isn't exactly objective, but at least he's not partial. Not partial at all. And, what's more important, he's incorruptible. And even if he's a harlequin, I'm sure he will be wise enough to designate the true winner."

"Then, is it all right? Can I be your referee?" asked cookie, full of hope.

Finally, General Kwar and Dr. Qworm hadn't the heart to refuse cookie in the game (perhaps he even adjusted their feelings in this direction with his supernatural mind powers), and they accepted him as referee.

* * *

General Kwar set to work. Two simpletons dared to defy his might? Well, they would soon regret having challenged him! If they didn't believe that he had the Ultimate Power, he would make them feel it!

At first, the thought of purely eliminating Dr. Qworm and Sarkon the Prophet crossed his mind. But then, he realized it would spoil the pleasure of seeing their thwarted faces of losers when the game was over, so he decided to use and raise his power another way.

The first thing he did was to take extremely popular - and populist - political measures: he announced a cutting down of the taxes by half (although the Welgon Age's inhabitants didn't pay anything on their income and fortune - how could they have, anyway? They needed it so little that they had neither of both; moreover, money didn't even exist in the Welgon Age - a reducing of the taxes should always be welcomed, he believed), he favoured the well-being of minorities (a measure which would be all the more popular because there was no majority in the Welgon Age), and he promised a reduction of the military expenses (since he was the only soldier in the whole Welgon Age, this could only mean he would use a little less shoe polish for his boots from time to time). He even worked out a plan to fight against unemployment, but, wisely, he rather chose to let it down: no one worked in the Welgon Age, and he couldn't fight against its whole population!

Thanks to these measures, General Kwar's popularity - hence his power - grew higher than ever, and he couldn't imagine at all how either Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist or Sarkon the Prophet could overtake his position of Most Powerful Character in the Welgon Age.

Unless...

Unless they had the same idea than he had at the beginning! Although he was physically much stronger than both of them, who could know what devious plans their malformed brains had imagined to defeat him? Perhaps they had nothing else in mind when they had challenged him than to surprise him around the corner of a street or even in his sleep and drive a blade between his ribs! he thought, not believing they would try to win the game in such a primitive way. But then, they had perhaps planned that he wouldn't care to protect himself from this side because they knew he would think it to be too stupid, and, in a double-crossing, dispatch him like that anyway!

To prevent this, there was only one thing to do.

With all his might, General Kwar banished violence from the Welgon Age.

* * *

Sarkon the Prophet set to work. He left the tea room for the vaporous mists of the spiritual paths, and there he began to work out the prophecies that would become the thread of the Welgon Age's future.

Unfortunately, nothing of what he prophesied seemed to want to happen during his living. But this didn't disappoint him too much: what was the short-lasting power over the present compared to the eternal grip over the future?

* * *

Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist set to work. He was a man of order, so that with the help of his time traveling machine, he decided to conquer the power over the Welgon Age chronologically. Thus, he would begin with the past.

And it was easy. He could modify everything he wanted without any difficulty. Consequently, the mere possibility of doing what he wanted with the Welgon Age's past gave him the rule over it.

Dr. Qworm rubbed his hands. The next stage would be the taking over of the present.

In order to reach this, the first thing to do was certainly to get rid of this plague of General Kwar, the Welgon Age's current ruler and one of his opponents in the Ultimate Power game.

Unfortunately, there was nothing to do in the present itself: General Kwar was too protected, too popular, and - Dr. Qworm had to admit it - too powerful. His time traveler was of no use, either: it would have been senseless to travel from the present to the present!

Thus, in order to overthrow General Kwar, he would have to modify the present from the past.

He soon became aware that it would be very difficult.

Each time he modified something in the past that should have prevented Kwar's access to power, this one was still at the commands when Dr. Qworm came back to the present. Only how General Kwar had taken the power changed. When the Mad Scientist favored chaos in the past, the military man took the government's head by force; when he favored order and democracy, Kwar was elected. When Dr. Qworm finally tried to lead a putsch himself in the past to prevent Kwar's accession to power - successfully, it seemed at first - and when, back to the present, he read in history books that General Kwar had seized power thanks to this putsch, he was so disheartened and disgusted that he decided to let down the present - General Kwar's present, he had to admit - and to concentrate on the future.

There, everything seemed easy again: he could change things as he wished. But after some modifications, and after he had passed some time there, he noticed something was wrong.

The alterations he made (the suppression of the laws which forbade the kind of experiments he liked and used to do, and the promotion of scientific research in general, among others), as well as all other events of major importance, were always foreseen by a prophecy Sarkon had made during his living. In consequence, people believed Sarkon had induced these changes, and they revered and praised him for his wisdom and power! There were statues of the Prophet in every home, and the Unfinished Religion, the church he had founded, prospered and spread its lack of faith to everyone.

Dr. Qworm, on the other hand, seemed completely forgotten in future history.

Fortunately, he was able to change this state of things - thanks to his time traveler. First, he thought impishly, he would alter things so that they would not accord to Sarkon's prophecies any longer - thus making him lose the power he and his church had gathered in the course of centuries.

After some of his time, though, Dr. Qworm realized that while he changed things, the prophecies changed also, and always so as to match his changes! Sarkon's grip on the future seemed total, he had to admit, and there was nothing he could do.

Thwarted, he left off for the present and the tea room. On the way back, though, he comforted himself in remembering that he ruled the past, and this was already a power greater than any of his opponents could ever reach.

* * *

"You have come back to admit your defeat, I presume?" asked General Kwar with a crooked grin when he, Sarkon the Prophet, Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist and their referee cookie the harlequin were back at the tea room to judge their performances. "For as far as I can see, I'm still the unchallenged Ruler of the Welgon Age!"

"You can't see very far, that's all," commented Dr. Qworm with a grin. "Neither forwards, nor backwards!"

"What do you mean?" asked General Kwar, not understanding.

"I mean that if you think you rule the whole Welgon Age with your petty present might, then your view of power is a little too narrow!" answered Dr. Qworm.

"Petty present might? Do you want me to show what I can do to you with my 'petty present might'?!" exclaimed General Kwar, who was beginning to lose his temper because of this contempt his person wasn't used to - and which he did not understand, for he was aware of no change in his position of ruler. But then, he remembered he had dispatched violence from the Welgon Age, so that he couldn't do much to his opponents anymore, and he forced himself to calm down.

"I have conquered a much greater power," Dr. Qworm went on. "Your rule over the Welgon Age will last only a lifetime - perhaps even less. Mine extends upon a much, much longer period. For, thanks to the time traveler I conceived, I rule the past, the whole past of the Welgon Age, and I am able to shape it as I wish!" He took a deep breath and added, "I'm sure our referee will have no difficulty at all in evaluating my power - and thus, neither will he have any difficulty in designating the winner!"

A silence followed Dr. Qworm's last words. He believed it was because his opponents' breath stuck in their throats so that they were unable to utter a word out of astonishment and respect, and because they hadn't any argument against what he had said, thus making his speech more effective. But actually, it was quite the opposite: Sarkon and Kwar both waited for the silence to be long enough to begin speaking when their opponents' attention and impatience would be at their maximum, so that their speech would be more effective.

Finally, Sarkon the Prophet put an end to this psychopathological interval and began, "Ruling the past is good, but I say ruling the future is better. If, for example, one could choose between having a happy life in the future and having had a happy life in the past, almost everyone would choose to have a happy life in the future. Thus, for most people, the future is far more important than the past. And I not only know what will happen in this future," he took a deep breath, "I even have succeeded in shaping it according to my will. Dr. Qworm will certainly not deny it: I have prophesied that he will appear in the future thanks to his time traveler and try to change it to make my prophecies false, and that he will fail."

Dr. Qworm couldn't deny it, indeed. He had to admit Sarkon's prophecies were devilishly acute.

But now, General Kwar felt it was his turn to speak. "Then, if I understood your babble well, it seems that you, Dr. Qworm, rule the past, and that you, Sarkon the Prophet, rule the future. Well, well... A respectable achievement, and I congratulate both of you for it. Only... I fear that won't make any of you win the game." He took a deep breath and went on, "Who holds the power? The true power? Certainly not the one who ruled once!" he spat at Dr. Qworm. "You rule the past; in consequence, you rule no more!"

"You can't say that! After all, I still rule the past!" Dr. Qworm defended himself.

"Perhaps, but you rule what is no more. A rather useless power, I would say! And you, Sarkon, rule the future... What power does that bring to you now? No, the one who has most power is the one who is ruling. Moreover, the goal of the game was to become the one who has most power, not the one who had or who will have most power!" hammered General Kwar, looking scornfully at his opponents. How could he ever have been afraid of losing against such would-be rulers?

But Sarkon wasn't going to let Kwar win so easily. "You may well rule the present, General Kwar... But you rule something that doesn't exist! The present is squeezed between past and future to such a point that it is reduced to almost nothing! Your power is extremely limited in time - limited to nearly nothing, as I said - and you are nothing more than a ghost ruler. In consequence, the winner should be made out between Dr. Qworm and myself.

"In order to do this, we only have to determine which, between past and future, is more important. We can, for instance, try to find out the lengths of the periods each of us rule. Present, as I have already demonstrated, is by far the shortest, and thus comes in last position. Past, even if it extends upon a long period, is limited in time, too: we know, indeed, the age of our universe - not precisely, of course, but more or less. Thus we know, too, that it has a beginning! Consequently, Dr. Qworm's power is limited in time, from the beginning of our universe to now, while mine, the rule over future, is unlimited: potentially, future has no end! This irrefutable fact should make me the most powerful being in the Welgon Age!"

"What you say may be true now, but even while we speak, past is nagging ground over future," countered Dr. Qworm. "All will be past one day, and then I will rule forever what both of you rule only temporarily. At the end of time, when everything is past, I will rule the whole Welgon Age!"

With this last sentence of Dr. Qworm, the arguing was over: the suspense had lasted long enough for everyone. All eyes turned towards cookie the harlequin, and Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist, General Kwar and Sarkon the Prophet asked him, "So, what is your decision?"

The harlequin smiled kindly, and without hesitating, he said, "I win," and he walked away.

* * *

After cookie's departure, a long and fierce discussion broke out between General Kwar, Sarkon the Prophet and Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist (it even became so intense that Dreitos Qworm died of an apoplectical attack during it). They realized that in choosing cookie as their referee, they had given him the power to decide over them, to decide over the three rulers of the Welgon Age; they had given him the Ultimate Power. In consequence, his decision had been right.

At the end, General Kwar made a last try to invalidate cookie's choice in pointing out that he hadn't the right to win because he hadn't participated in the game as a player, but only as a referee. How could one who hadn't played win?

But he and Sarkon the Prophet finally both admitted that either way, if he had participated as a player, he would have won easily thanks to his stupendous mental abilities, and so they left the tea room and parted without too much regret.