(section from interview with _Rolling Stone_ magazine, Oct 1995)

RS:What did you want to be when you grew up?

KS:(laughs) Well, before the mess started, I didn't really have any plans. I wanted to be normal, y'know, a schoolteacher or something. Now, I want to be a hunter-gatherer when I grow up.

RS:A hunter-gatherer?

KS:Yeah. Humans are meant to live like that. You get up when you want to, putter around all day, and then go to sleep. You spend an average of five hours a day on acquiring and preparing food, and the rest of one's time is one's own.

There are disadvantages, I admit. The health care is kinda primitive, so if one gets sick either the Shaman can heal one or one dies, and there are a lot of ways to get sick.

The advantages outweigh that, however.

RS:So, when do you think you'll be able to do that?

KS:I don't. It's just what I want to do with my life. However, the Dark Kingdom needs someone trustworthy, and I wouldn't put the job on my worst enemy, so I'm stuck with it.

RS:A number of people claim you are out to conquer the world.

KS:They're right. I don't trust any of the current governments. I don't much trust _any_ government to do right by its own people, let alone the rest of the world. Until that changes, I am going to keep nibbling away, one country at a time.

It will only take a couple hundred years to complete.

RS:A couple hundred years? Isn't that a little long?

KS:It's like boiling a frog - one has to start slowly and let everyone acclimate between each step. The African territories were a little much to take at once, but they were a windfall from the Ethiopian Intervention, and things were too terrible in much of them for me to let things go on as they were.

Besides, one can't rush building a world-spanning anarchy, one has to make sure that by the time it covers the world everyone is ready for it.

RS:World-spanning anarchy?

KS:Exactly. The best government is no government, or rather a government where each individual controls themselves. A monarchy, done right, is almost as good, since anything that doesn't need the government to muck with it doesn't get mucked with.

RS:Like the drug laws.

KS:Yep. Spending billions of dollars a year to drive up prices for people you don't like is just stupid.

If the US doesn't pull its head out of its ass on this, I'll be imposing economic sanctions.

RS:(deep breath) Despite the difference in views, on a number of subjects, between you and the US government, they have allowed you into the Federal prisons to "rehabilitate" the prisoners.

KS:Yes, they have. Under the MET I can offer US citizens the choice to face discipline under the Dark Kingdom Rules. I started with the main federal penitentiaries, since they were the most overcrowded.

I started with the most expensive prisoners, those on death row. Of the forty-five that chose discipline, twelve were not guilty of the crime they were convicted of. Five of those were not guilty of anything that is an offense under the Rules. Three chose death, fifteen chose to take on a Geas, and twenty requested modifications.

In the general prison population, sixty percent were not guilty of anything under the Rules.

Thirty percent of the general prison population requested modification.

Seven percent took on a Geas.

Two and a half percent chose to remain in prison.

And half a percent chose death over modification, a Geas, or remaining in prison. (Swallow, blink)

RS:How many people have undergone disciplinary procedures more than once?

KS:Sixty-five, out of over two million. It is much more effective than prison, both as a deterrent and as a cure.

- log: 2000:thinking. 2000/sept/28:written 2001/jan/19:ed