Author's Note: My thanks, as always, to everyone who has taken the time to read, review, and favorite this tale as it continues rolling along. I truly wish that I had the time (and the energy!) to respond individually to all of you to show my appreciation, but at my age, I do have to prioritize all the things going on in my life (like my husband's biopsy this week; fingers are still crossed while awaiting the results), and so things like regular correspondence fall by the wayside, to my chagrin. So once again, I want all of you to know how much I appreciate the feedback, and your willingness to come along for my strange little rides into fanfic. Now, on with the story!
Chapter Three
Blind Ambition
Koan Rii was no fool. He was many other things: wealthy, powerful, well-educated, brave, handsome, charming — those were his obvious positive traits. He was also ambitious, which for someone who controlled and directed a vast merchant empire was not a bad thing. It kept him always striving for more, and as he was also a generous man, he liked it best when his ambitions profited both himself and his many clients throughout their stellar system. And because he was no fool, he generally had a good sense of what was possible and what was not.
Generally.
For like any mortal creature, Koan Rii also had flaws, though he seldom acknowledged them as such. His impatience, for instance, he saw as a strong drive to keep improving and building his business rather than let it stagnate in mediocrity as some of his competitors would. And what other people called arrogance...! Why, what was arrogant about a man who was honest with himself and others about his abilities, his influence, his wealth? Only fools and cowards held back from doing all they could when opportunity presented itself, and being neither, Koan Rii always seized opportunity with both hands and didn't let go until he'd gotten everything he wanted from it.
Tenacity was certainly a common trait among his people, the Glaupeks, and with excellent reason. Over ten thousand years ago, when the Ayalthans had developed the means to send probes to other worlds to study them more closely but had not yet contacted them directly, Glaupek had been a lush and fertile world of green and blue, possessed of wide, sparkling seas and abundant with life of all kinds. The dominant human inhabitants — tall and strong, with skin ranging from fair to deep bronze and thick hair of various colors, unlike the smaller, slender, blue-skinned, and bald Ayalthans — had already built many civilizations and empires, which rose and collapsed and rose again in an almost cyclical fashion. Shortly after the Ayalthans had begun to observe them, the largest and most powerful of Glaupek's existing empires vied for total control of their world, and the war that had erupted between them had been hideous, so terrible that it very nearly destroyed all life on Glaupek.
But some had survived. A group of people who had opposed the warlike empires and wanted to live in peace saw the dreadful war that was coming, and had prepared for it. After the warring factions had decimated each other and much of the planet, this group, which had gone deep into hiding, came out and began the difficult process of rebuilding their ravaged world, now reduced to a desert of browns and gold. They very nearly failed, as survival alone was barely possible. In the end, though they could not restore their planet to its former abundant fertility and lost much of the scientific knowledge and technology they had once known, they managed to find ways to eke out the means to survive, and begin to rebuild a much more primitive civilization on their harsh new world.
It was at that point that they first met the Ayalthans. The blue people were able to tell that the battle the Glaupeks were fighting to restore their world was ultimately doomed; even though it was marginally habitable, the planet's now arid conditions were so harsh, its people were too vulnerable to its hot and dry conditions. They would all certainly die long before their world could be tamed again. The Ayalthans offered to help them relocate to one of their system's other, more agreeable planets until theirs could be restored by terraforming. The process would take the better part of a century, but in the end, it would give them back their world in all its original lush glory.
But the Glaupek survivors refused to leave, claiming that if they could not find a way to live on their ravaged world and reclaim it, then it was just payment for what their kind had done to it, the planet exacting its price from the people who had destroyed it. So the Ayalthan geneticists stepped in and offered to assist them in strengthening themselves so that they could at least survive the harshness of their world and work to restore it on their own. That was help of a kind which the Glaupeks were willing to accept, and so the work of enhancing their physical attributes began. The original plan was to give the struggling Glaupeks greater strength and stamina and toughness to better tolerate and survive the punishing environs, and in that, they succeeded.
But after that project was completed, nature itself took a hand, further evolving the people in ways that went significantly beyond the original designs of the Ayalthan scientists. The powers the Glaupeks developed over the following centuries not only allowed them to sustain their lives and protect them from all but the most dreadful of cataclysms and certain extremely rare diseases, but gave them additional superhuman abilities to help them fight against the harshness of their now desert world. Even so, they were not immortal; they had weaknesses and a definitely limited lifespan, and they each learned to make the best of the world around them in the time they were given.
During those years, the people of the two worlds became good friends, and trade developed between them. Glaupek was rich in minerals and metals that Ayalthis had in scarce supply, and Ayalthis was extremely fertile, abundant in organic foods and materials and precious water, and far more technologically advanced. The Ayalthans became fascinated by the unexpected powers the Glaupeks soon took for granted, and learned everything they could about how and why they developed and how they worked, while the less scientifically inclined Glaupeks were fascinated by the Ayalthan technology, and the range of devices they had developed that could do things even the almost godlike Glaupeks could not.
Traveling beyond the confines of their own world, for instance, was something they could not do unaided, since powerful and invulnerable though they were in many ways, the Glaupeks still required air to breathe and food to eat, and their muscles needed the opposing presence of gravity to work properly, much more than the comparatively frail looking Ayalthans. Though impervious to heat and cold and impacts that would kill other peoples, if they attempted to fly outside an area of sufficient gravity, their powerful muscles would cease to work; thus, their hearts stopped and their lungs could not take in enough oxygen. Though they were capable of defying it, the Glaupeks could not live without gravity. The Ayalthans, however, knew how to create small fields of artificial gravity, and the ships they had developed to study their own system allowed the Glaupeks to leave their world and survive. In time, they became a great race of merchants, and Koan Rii was but one of a long line of powerful and successful tradesmen.
Most of the Glaupeks were content with the life they had carved out of the shattered remains of their world, and the status they held throughout the system as the providers of all manner of goods and services. But Koan, being intelligent and ambitious and a good friend of the current Ayalthan ambassador — a man who was also a very respected astrophysicist and design engineer, Varaan Thejhan — had other dreams.
"It can't be done," Varaan told his host over a mid-day meal at the Rii estate one fine, if typically hot and sunny, afternoon. As Koan was the current elected head of the Merchant's Council, Glaupek's ruling body, Varaan spent a considerable amount of time with the man, either in various negotiations or discussing matters that would benefit both their worlds, and all their system. They were an odd-looking pair to local eyes, as the blue ambassador was smaller and more slender than Koan's wife, Lethai; the broad-chested, golden-haired merchant's shoulder stood higher than the top of Varaan's big head. But neither man was bothered by this. Varaan was sharp-witted, invariably good-natured, and extremely intelligent, traits Koan appreciated, while Koan was outgoing, generous, and always looking to learn, qualities Varaan liked. What they admired in each other usually more than compensated for their individual failings, so theirs was most often a mutually profitable relationship.
Save for those times when their less sterling qualities came into conflict. Today, the less-than-noble trait in question was the same one: obstinacy. The mulish look on Koan's square-jawed, chiseled-featured face showed it, as did the snap in his blue eyes. "I've heard this same thing for years," he retorted, not angrily but definitely with some irritation over the fact. "And it seems to me that this is nothing more than... I hesitate to say cowardice, but I'd say it's coming perilously close!"
"It's caution, not cowardice," the scientist/ambassador insisted, his tone cheerful but also firm, a pleasant if adamant expression on his longer, more elegant face. There was no irritated spark in his oddly blue-green eyes, but the brightness in them was like the hard glitter of a diamond. "The Interstellar Activities Committee is quite well aware of your ruling council's desire to expand trade routes to the other inhabited and potentially friendly systems we've discovered via our probes and scout ships. But while we can build a ship sufficiently large to carry enough cargo to make the trip possible, it's the engine we have yet to perfect. The kind of subspace hyperdrive we use on the one and two person exploratory vessels is difficult to manufacture, quite hideously expensive in all aspects — which is why we have only the six scout ships — and simply not suitable for moving so much mass. The drive would need to be as big as the ship, and when the mass of the cargo is added, it would need to be even bigger. It becomes a losing proposition very quickly, Koan, you know that. You studied under some of the best of our astrophysical engineers and theorists. Our current form of hyperdrive isn't the right kind to achieve what you want, but we are working on an alternative."
Koan snorted. "At the pace of a hibernating sand snail," he remarked. "Doesn't it bother you at all to know that you have a solution right in your hands, but you're being stopped from using it by over-cautious old men with some high-flown academic, intellectual notions of what constitutes the right time?"
Varaan's shrug was elegant. "No, not really. Yes, the concepts and designs behind the wormhole drive are mine, but because they're mine, I know just how many details need to be completely investigated and perfected before it can be put into actual use. You know how some negotiations can't be hurried without having the entire process collapse and destroy itself. Consider this as a kind of negotiation, one with the laws of physics. All the conditions, large and small, must be met first, or it simply won't work."
"Even the most delicate negotiations have ways to be... encouraged to move more quickly," Koan pointed out most knowledgeably.
Varaan chuckled at the man's sly remark. "Science generally doesn't take well to shortcuts, my friend, and what seem to be loopholes in the laws of nature have a way of coming back and ruining all your hard work if you try to exploit them."
The merchant frowned for a moment, frustrated, then abruptly grinned, his white teeth flashing bright in the strong afternoon sunlight. "Well, you can't blame a person for trying," he laughed. "But seriously, how long do you think it will be before we can begin to plan to open new trade routes to worlds outside this one system?"
The ambassador sighed, his own smile crooked. "I always think it will be sooner than it often turns out to be. So factoring that in, I would have to estimate... another forty or fifty years, by Glaupek's calendar."
Koan's shock was abrupt as his grin. "Forty years? By all that's holy, I'll be an old man by then — and Zan will be older than I am now!"
The mention of the merchant's son, who was just over a month old by Glaupek time, piqued Varaan's interest. "Ah, that's right, you and Lethai were blessed with a little one recently. My wife can't talk of anything else since he was born, you know. We're planning to have a child of our own after my term here as ambassador ends next year, and Ephles wants to be as prepared for motherhood as she can be. She'll have several million questions for Lethai the next time they meet, no doubt."
Koan nodded, accepting the momentary diversion from his target topic. "They've been talking over the comm almost constantly, these last few weeks, but I'm sure there are at least a few thousand questions that haven't been asked, or answered."
Varaan's cheeks purpled faintly in embarrassment. "I'm sorry if she's been a nuisance, but her concern isn't without cause. My brother and his wife are expecting a son by the end of our year, and it seems it won't be an easy term."
The merchant was sympathetic. "I've heard that. She's carrying a... what was it called? Nato—something."
"Natoshi'ana," the blue man provided. "A Great One, some call it. Yes, very few of them ever survive full-term, and most who do die within the first three days. A terribly tragic probability to have hanging over your head during such an important time. But Kyrel is convinced their son will live — and you know, if she's right, it could make a great difference in that time projection. If Mykaal does survive and has particular gifts or even interests in any of the sciences, he could probably take on this project and finish it much more quickly than all of us who've been working on it for years. The Great Ones have always effected some change that profoundly alters the future of our world, and making interstellar travel and commerce possible on a broad scale...! I'd call that a profound change, wouldn't you?"
The possibility brought a different kind of spark to Koan's eyes, one of eager hope. "Yes, I would. If these Great Ones are that talented, would one be able to make such discoveries as a child?"
Varaan considered the question while he sipped his drink, a chilled pale fruit juice imported from Cobin and much loved by the Glaupek. "I couldn't say for certain," he replied at length. "I'm not as familiar with the history of the Natoshi'ana as, say, my wife might be; she's the historian in our family. But from what I do know of them, with proper instruction and guidance, some did achieve remarkable things when they were still quite young, as little as ten or twenty of our years."
The spark in Koan's blue eyes went out like a tiny flame in a wet storm wind. "That's still at least another decade of waiting — if the boy is interested, and if he lives in the first place! Is there nothing that can be done now?"
"Now?" Varaan stroked the narrow black goatee that was his only facial hair, other than his expressive eyebrows. "Obviously, not this very second, and within even as little as ten years, no. Why the hurry? From all my talks with your people, there's no danger of your trading concerns oversaturating our system for at least another hundred years, more likely two. Is competition between your merchant Houses beginning to cause friction?"
The blond head shook after a brief hesitation. "No, but... it's because of Zan. When he was born, I began to evaluate all my assets and holdings, what I would have to pass on to him when my time comes."
The Ayalthan chuckled as he glanced around the lush, well-appointed glassed-in garden that was one of the myriad amenities on Koan's opulent and huge estate. Given Glaupek's harsh and arid climate, such conservatories were incredibly difficult and expensive to maintain, and the Rii estate boasted seven, of which this was the smallest. "I didn't know you were so close to bankruptcy, Koan," he joked. "Or so near to death. Are you expecting that all of this will be gone by the time your one-month-old son reaches adulthood?" A broad wave of his long-fingered hands indicated everything around them and the wealth that had made it possible.
Koan had the good grace to look mildly sheepish. "No, of course not. But is it wrong for a father to want more for his children? What I have won't be exhausted before Zan becomes a man, but I hope to still be alive and healthy then. Will it be enough for me to share with any family he may start, as well as those of the siblings who may come after him? Oh, certainly, in wealth alone, there's more than enough," he amended when Varaan opened his mouth to make that observation. "But by then, new trade won't be as easy to come by. And that is when friction will begin, since ours isn't the only merchant House growing with new children being born. If our history repeats itself and tempers flare when our people begin to believe the only way to ensure the prosperity of their House is to eliminate others, the war that might begin among us may spread beyond Glaupek and destroy the entire system. We nearly turned our own world into a burned out cinder once, and that was before we had these great powers your people and nature gave us to survive here. They could well be the means to the end of all life in this system if we do nothing to prevent it while there is still time."
It was a very reasonable and insightful explanation. It was also only partially true. Koan had no malicious intent, but he knew very well that the situation among his people was nowhere near as dire as he painted it, and that his desires for his son's future was really only a catalyst for his personal ambitions. All his life, Koan had been first: the first child in his family, the first son, even the first grandchild of all his parents' parents, the first member of the House of Rii to study under Ayalthan tutors long and hard enough to earn his mastery in several fields, the first to open trade routes into some of the regions of Batuu where the fear of aliens had kept out anyone not of their world for millennia. He was the first member of his House to be elected to the leadership of the Merchant's Council, the first to have done many other, lesser things that while not important in and of themselves were further proof that Koan was simply the first, the best of all his people.
That was how he viewed matters, and why deep down, he was desperate to be the first merchant of any House on Glaupek to open trade to new markets in a whole new stellar system. He wanted his House to be the biggest and the best so that he would be the first of all his people to have truly earned the title that some clients on the other planets called the most eminent of their kind, a merchant prince.
He had known when Varaan Thejhan became the Ayalthan ambassador to Glaupek almost ten years ago that the man was a highly respected astrophysicist and engineer, and that he had been working on designs for an interstellar drive that would make trade with worlds beyond their system possible. He had done everything possible to make the scientist-inventor's acquaintance, and to cultivate a friendship between them in hopes of encouraging him to allow the House of Rii to be the first Glaupeks to benefit from his work.
Koan had been relatively patient about the whole thing — until Lethai became pregnant, and he suddenly felt the future nipping at his heels. He had no wish to ruin the genuine friendship he had carefully cultivated with Varaan, but when the ambassador had recently announced that he would not seek to have his term as ambassador renewed so that he and his wife could return home next year, the matter shifted from one of importance to one of urgency, in Koan's mind.
From what he had been saying just now, it didn't look as if Varaan was at all inclined to press for faster development of his new drive before he left Glaupek, and when he left, Koan could no longer subtly urge him to do so. That dratted Ayalthan belief in destiny and proper times for all things was simply complicating what Koan considered their already overly cautious nature. But he knew, perhaps better than anyone alive, that fortune favors the bold, and he was determined to be the boldest of all.
Varaan, to his relief, accepted his reasoning about not wanting to risk a repetition of Glaupek's notoriously violent past. "I see your point," the blue man said with an understanding nod. "Discord among your people now, with all of you having such incredible powers, could be quite disastrous. But I haven't seen so much as the earliest signs of trouble yet, so I think it's safe to say that there's still time to finish this project in the proper manner. It would be better to try your patience a bit than to need to start over because we rushed to use the drive before everything was correctly built and thoroughly tested. Losing even one life in an accident due to haste is unacceptable."
Koan had expected that answer, even though he would rather have heard another. He sighed and smiled, wistfully. "Of course it is. Ah, well, you can't blame a man for dreaming, can you?"
Knowing of his friend's ambitious nature, Varaan was sympathetic. "No, of course not! If it'll make you feel any better, I can let you have a look at the complete schematics and the results of all the tests we've run so far. You'll see that we have made excellent progress, just where we stand at this point, and why more testing is needed."
The light came back to the merchant's eyes. "When?" he asked eagerly. "Soon?"
"Not right away," the ambassador chided with a laugh. "I have a full schedule today, and for most of tomorrow. But since you and Lethai are already coming to visit my home tomorrow evening, if our wives will indulge us for a bit, I could show you some of it then."
Koan snorted. "If we bring Zan, they won't even notice if we left the planet. Lethai loves showing him off, and from all their chatter every day, your lady is just as eager to coo over and coddle him."
The large blue-green eyes rolled heavenward in an amused expression of sorely-tried patience. "Him, and any other baby she sees. Ephles is convinced that interacting with babies and their mothers will teach her everything she could possibly need to know before we have one of our own. What I've learned from it is that everyone's experience is unique because every child is unique, but, if it makes her happy..." He spread his hands in surrender, ever the supportive spouse.
The merchant laughed, a great, booming sound as huge as himself. "Always, whatever makes our ladies happy, we must do to have harmony in our homes! And waiting a day shouldn't overtax my patience, I'm sure. Tomorrow, then."
With that settled, they finished their meal and their conversation, turning it to the Council meeting in several days that was the actual reason for their luncheon today. When they were done and he escorted his guest to the entrance of his home to say his farewells, Koan was in an excellent mood, not because their business had gone well (though it had) but because he now had a more solid plan to use toward making his own ambitions a reality.
Varaan was a good man, a good friend, and a superb scientist, but he was still Ayalthan through and through. When they worked alone, the high emotions of the blue people could make them quite impulsive and apt to act on theories or use their inventions before they were perfected, which was why they always worked in teams, to counterbalance one another and thus prevent such errors of haste or excitement. Even though he was continuing his work on the project from afar, Varaan was still very much a part of the project's team. Koan would never get him sufficiently separated from them to change his mind about speeding up the timetable of this new drive's completion — so the merchant had decided, even without seeing it, that what was needed was a demonstration by someone willing to be bold and take risks, to prove that the drive was ready now. He had studied engineering and physics, both theoretical and practical, and unless he simply could not comprehend the designs enough to follow them, he was sure that he could take the schematics and construct his own working version of the new interstellar engine.
Even if it didn't work perfectly, so long as it worked at all it would prove his point: that a thing need not be tested and retested and fine-tuned to absolute perfection in order to be useful. Even with limited ability, something could do considerable good, and the Ayalthans needed to have this shown to them. If what he saw tomorrow was something that he knew he could direct a crew of workers to construct quickly, it would be a simple matter to send Lethai and Zan to pay another visit Varaan's wife during the Council meeting a few days hence. Ephles would dote on the baby, and while she did, Lethai could slip into Varaan's workroom and transmit a copy of his designs back to Koan's private office. And then, with all the training and resources at his command, Koan would certainly need only a few short weeks, maybe a month or two, to prove his point, and to make history.
Yes, he thought with satisfaction, it was always good to be the first.
"Oh, good lord," Roxanne groaned after letting loose a huge gasp that interrupted her blue hero's energetic storytelling. "I have a sinking feeling that I know exactly where this is going! Wayne's father stole the blueprints for something that was still in lab testing phases, he put together his own version of it, used it in an uncontrolled environment, and..." She couldn't bring herself to say it; she was having a hard enough time even thinking it. Even Minion was speechless, wide-eyed and with his toothy mouth agape in a look of utterly horrified shock.
Megamind nodded, an unexpectedly sad rather than gloating response. "And the rest is history — but not the kind he'd planned to make. The drive my uncle and his associates were working on was intended to create a stable but temporary wormhole that could be used as a direct conduit between two points that were huge distances apart, to cross the gap very quickly. It would be like opening a tunnel between here and, say, Alpha Centauri, one big enough to send a dozen aircraft carriers through at once but so short, it would take only a matter of minutes to go into one end of the tunnel and come out again on the other side. The energy needed would be almost entirely for creating the wormhole; by comparison, only a little would be needed to move the mass of the ships through it, and then to collapse the wormhole after the ships were safely through." He paused. "That didn't sound too professorial, did it?"
His wife patted his knee. "Not until you got to 'professorial,' sweetie. Alpha Centauri's one of the bright stars in the winter sky, right?"
"One of the brightest stars visible from Earth," he confirmed, "and among the closest, though it's still more than four light-years away. There are a number of different ways of essentially 'warping' space to send a physical object across interstellar distances in a tremendously shortened period of time, but they all have limitations. Up to that time, the one hyperdrive our scientists had designed to move objects at super-light speeds could only move very small survey ships or unmanned probes because of mass limits, and even then, when the ship or the probe got where it was going, it would take at least several months for the engine to recharge enough to make the return trip."
Being an astute investigative reporter, Roxanne saw the significance at once. "That wouldn't be very useful for a trader, would it? Especially if the ship couldn't carry much in the way of cargo."
The ex-villain fairly glowed with delight at her quickness. "Exactly! That's why Zan's — Wayne's — father was so impatient. He had dreams of building an interstellar merchant empire, and he was ambitious and arrogant enough to believe that not only were my people being cowards by not rushing things as fast as he wanted, but also to believe that he alone had all the abilities of the entire team of highly skilled scientists and engineers who'd been working on the project for years. Fortune may favor the bold, but sometimes, what seems to be bold is just pure pigheaded selfishness."
"And yet Mr. Wayne isn't like that at all," Minion observed as he digested this part of the tale. "He can be a little stubborn and opinionated, but I don't think he's arrogant enough to take a chance like that!"
Megamind shrugged. "Nature versus nurture, I imagine. The Scotts were high-handed and avaricious, but not on the same scale."
Roxanne's sniff rippled the last of the coffee in her cup. "That, and Wayne just isn't as bad as his real father. He's been selfish and pigheaded enough; if he hadn't been, I wouldn't be having that interview with him tomorrow, baring his soul to the world."
She finished her drink and set down the empty cup with a sigh. "And speaking of which, I think that maybe I shouldn't hear any more of Wayne's family's side of this story until after that interview. I want to stay as objective as I can, and that won't be easy if I find out too many things that upset me. I don't want to find myself tempted to ask questions that Wayne couldn't possibly answer. Do you plan to share this with him, too?"
"If it's possible," her husband admitted as he finished his own coffee and grabbed a last pastry from the almost-empty tray before Madeleine and her brainbot helpers moved in to clear away the leftovers and clean the table. "When they recorded the messages and prepared my escape pod, my parents and uncle didn't know that Wayne's parents were going to try to save him, too."
"Really? I — no, wait, don't tell me this now," the reporter said, waving her hands in a common stop, enough, no more! signal. "If I hear too much stuff that Wayne doesn't know, I could seriously mess things up tomorrow, for both him and me. I daresay the network brass wouldn't look too kindly on me if I make a train wreck of my first huge exclusive!"
"I think waiting is a good idea," Minion seconded, "especially since I have to leave for the parade in about half an hour. But sir, is there some reason Mr. Wayne couldn't use this sleep teacher, too? From things that he's told me, he'd love a chance to learn something like this, to fill in all the things he just can't remember from before his arrival on Earth. Unless you think that it's too skewed to make his people and his parents look bad..."
But Megamind dismissed that with a wave of his cheese Danish as they all got up from the table to let the brainbots work, and to go deal with their various morning ablutions (or in Minion's case, a good brushing of his fake fur and a little polishing of his glass dome and metal parts so that he'd look his best as the parade's grand marshal). "No, it's remarkably even-handed and honest, especially considering that it was done mostly by my parents and my uncle, specifically for me. I doubt that he'd be interested in any of the historical things about our planet — though maybe he would, just to find out more about the part of the galaxy we all came from. The problem might be between the Teacher and him. The tingling one feels when it attaches and activates are literally millions of atomic sized neural interfaces making contact with the student's central nervous system to affect a strong direct input connection to the brain. With Wayne's invulnerable skin, it might not work, and until I'm sure it won't damage the Teacher, I'm not inclined to try."
"That's a fair reason to hesitate," Roxanne allowed as they headed down the corridor to the master suite and Minion's rooms. She caught her husband's hand with the last piece of his pastry and pulled it over for a bite before he could finish it off. He pouted for a moment, then his face quirked into a smile as he surrendered the last bit to her. "Will you mind waiting at least until Minion gets back from the parade before telling us more of things that don't involve Wayne, or will that long a wait pop a few gaskets in that big head of yours?"
"I can wait," Megamind promised as he licked the last traces of icing from his long blue fingers. "What you've both said about me maybe needing a little more time to let all of this settle into my mind might be a better idea than just gushing it out all at once." He chuckled ruefully. "Maybe that'll help me quit accidentally blurting things out like a talking textbook, too. And I do have an errand of my own to take care of while Minion's out."
"Does this have something to do with yesterday's call from Warden Alvarez?" the ichthyoid asked.
His ward nodded. Leo Alvarez, the replacement for the now-retired Warden Thurmer, had been one of the few guards Megamind had been able to tolerate during his many years in the Metro City Prison for the Criminally Gifted. Just before Megamind had turned thirty, Alvarez, who'd been only two years older, had gone back to college to study for a degree in criminal justice so that he might work to correct some of what he considered the more egregious failings of the penal system, especially when it came to improving and fixing the programs that were designed to rehabilitate those inmates who could be, or to more safely and humanely hold those who could not.
Even as a villain, Megamind had secretly applauded the man for wanting to try to take on such issues, though he'd had little confidence that it would make any real difference in the long run. But now that Alvarez was the warden for his former home, the blue hero was willing to do what he could to help the man achieve his goals. It was still a little strange to think of the place as under the direction of anyone but Ralph Thurmer, but Alvarez was younger, determined, and still had enough energy to tackle the job head-on.
"He's managed to squeeze some extra funding from the government to at least do a decent job of refurbishing some of the building's outdated systems," Megamind explained between bites of his pastry. "Replace the furnaces, update the video surveillance equipment and computers, overhaul other vital facilities. Phil DeVries suggested that Hal Stewart might improve his slacker attitude if he was moved in with the general population and encouraged to take on an actual job in the workshops, but Warden Alvarez wants to be sure there's no hidden trace of Wayne's DNA still lingering in his body before he gives approval. I'd told Phil back in August that the monitoring system they'd had built for me would warn them if there was any hint of those powers coming back — not possible, really; if it happened spontaneously, it'd also kill him — but Alvarez asked me to run a check on that system to make sure things are working properly. They haven't done that since I left for good — literally — over three years ago."
Roxanne frowned. "Are you going to have to put up with that jerk while you're there?" She didn't need to clarify the identity of said jerk. "He hates your guts, you know."
Megamind dismissed that with an expressive pfffft. "Only because he's an idiot and thinks that I stole you from him, like he ever had a ghost of a chance! No, they know Hal gets more obnoxious than usual whenever he sees me. Phil told the warden to tell him he's getting a sort of time off for good behavior and they're moving him into a normal isolation cell for the day. Frankly, I preferred my special cell, but in regular isolation, he'll get a chance to literally lay in bed all day, so he'll probably love it."
The reporter shuddered. Even though it had been almost three and a half years since Hal had been stripped of the powers that should never have been his and was thrown into prison for the rest of his unnatural life for deliberately decimating the city, Roxanne still had occasional nightmares of that brief but terrible time when he'd attempted to destroy her and all of Metro City, simply because he could.
He'd had no real excuse for it; he'd tried to place the blame for it all on anyone but himself. It was Roxanne's fault for not wanting to be his friend, not his own for treating her like a piece of female flesh he wanted to hit on from the moment he first saw her. It was Megamind's fault for giving him the powers to do what he'd done, never mind that the so-called Evil Overlord had spent months training him to be a selfless hero, not a selfish villain. It was Metro Man's fault for leaving the city high and dry, it was the city's fault for being full of so many stuck up jerks, it was his parents' fault for not giving him everything he wanted when they could barely afford to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, it was his teachers' fault for not making him study when he didn't want to, or for making him study when he didn't want to...
Yes, Hal had an endless list of excuses, some directly contradictory, all somehow rooted in his basic lack of moral character and his unwillingness to make any effort to gain some sense of genuine decency even when opportunities were handed to him on a silver platter. The most effort he'd ever made in his life had been during his training as Titan, and he'd done that mostly because he'd been on a high, playing with all his cool new powers, and because he saw it as the easy way to get things like popularity and a girl he wanted. Oh, Roxanne understood perfectly well why the new warden wanted him to do something useful with his time in prison and not spend it watching TV and dreaming up even more excuses!
But personally, Roxanne wanted the creep out of her nightmares, permanently. She never again wanted to wake up in a cold sweat or screaming because Hal had invaded her dreams in some horrible way, either cutting people she loved into bits with laser vision or tearing them limb from limb with super-strength, or crushing the life out of them with brute force, beating them to a literal pulp while she was bound up with twisted metal and forced to watch. And she especially wanted to lose the awful dream images of what could have happened if he'd decided to take what she wouldn't give him and forced himself on her...
She swallowed thickly, suddenly gluing herself to her husband's side for reassurance as they entered their bedroom. "Say," she wondered, wincing at the faint quaver in her voice, "do you think that the sleep teacher could work in reverse, and take away things already inside a person's head? Things they'd be much happier never seeing or thinking again?"
For a moment, Megamind drew a blank; then, he understood. "I don't know," he admitted, wrapping one arm around her as they continued across the room, tenderly kissing her forehead. "I imagine such a device is possible, based on the same general concepts. But it couldn't get rid of all the nightmares you have about that moron without taking away all your memories of what actually happened back then. It's remembering what did happen that triggers your imagination about things that didn't."
She sighed, leaning even further into his embrace. "I figured you'd say something like that, you've really taken to being a superhero."
He smiled wickedly. "Most of the time. Trust me, if Hal ever tried to hurt you or even think about hurting you, I'd make a temporary comeback as a villain that'd give him all those nightmares you hate, and more."
Now, she smiled, sinfully enjoying this demonstration of his powerful protectiveness toward her. That alone was enough to make her feel a thousand percent better. "Well, I guess if you can learn to live with the real nightmares from your past, I can learn to live with the imaginary ones from mine. Were you wanting me to go with you to the prison?"
He rolled his eyes as he gave her a final hug, then released her as he headed for the bathroom. "Only if you really want to run the risk of accidentally coming face to face with the source of all those nightmares. Is that your idea of a good time?"
Roxanne grimaced. "No. I think I'd rather go back to bed and catch another hour or two of sleep, to be honest."
"A much better idea," he called back as he shrugged out of his robe and disappeared into the bathroom; the sound of the shower running followed soon after.
The reporter thought of joining him for a moment or two, then decided that she'd let him have the shower all to himself for a change. Not that she didn't enjoy sharing it with him, or the pleasure of what frequently followed, but she hadn't been exaggerating about being tired, and her thoughts were still very wound up with as much of the story of the origins of her alien family-through-marriage as she'd heard thus far.
She returned to their bed — which of course had already been neatly made up by the household brainbots while they'd breakfasted; she'd have to apologize to them later for messing up the bed again. She folded back the covers and stretched out on the open sheets before climbing under them. She stared up at the beautifully textured ceiling while she replayed the images her mind had created to accompany this story of the past on worlds across the galaxy, and when one of the three survivors of that time and place returned from his shower, wrapped in a huge pale blue towel, a question came to her lips.
"I presume that whatever your mother and Minion's came up with to help you survive did work," she said when she heard her husband entering the bedroom. "But wasn't the stress impossible to deal with once they realized what might happen to your world — to your entire solar system?"
"Well, not impossible," Megamind corrected while he tried to decide if he should go to the prison in his working outfit or in civvies. "I am alive, after all. But more difficult, yes, it was that. Do you think it would be better if I went to the prison dressed as Megamind, Defender of Metrocity, or as Mykaal Thejhan, semi-private citizen?"
Roxanne didn't even pause to consider before answering. "Private citizen. You're doing this as a favor to Phil and the new warden, not as a regular part of your job as a superhero, and you need to make sure the line is clear. That was a huge part of Wayne's problem, he never even bothered to draw a line. You said your people knew your whole system was in trouble about six months before you were born. How far along was that? I don't know anything about how your people figured days or months or years, or how long it took for a baby to be born."
Her private hero went to his dresser and started rummaging around for suitable civilian clothing. "It's remarkably similar to Earth's," he said while he tried to pick out appropriate casual attire. "That's part of why my parents chose to send me here, because the circadian rhythms of humans and the length of the days and the year are very close to the same. The cumulative differences are why I get those 'crash and burn' days twice a year, it's just my internal clock resetting itself after being a touch out of sync for too long."
"Fascinating," the reporter said, quite honestly. "So is the gestation period the same, too?"
He found a black casual shirt he liked and tossed it onto the bed, followed by a pair of snug black jeans, and socks and briefs, also black. "Not quite. It took about eleven Earth months from conception to birth, and my mother was about halfway through her term when everyone found out what had happened, not two-thirds."
Roxanne sniffed. "Then I think I'm glad we decided not to have kids of our own. I wouldn't want to get things started and then find out that it'd take two months longer to have the baby. I'd probably be like my mother and some of my cousins, and have morning, afternoon, and evening sickness all through the pregnancy to boot. Wear the blue sweater jacket Wayne gave you last Christmas with that," she added after surveying his clothing choices thus far.
The blue nose wrinkled. "That's not exactly my usual style, too conservative," he pointed out.
"I know, that's the point. It's so not your usual style, no one could possibly think you were there on official business. Besides, it's not that bad. Wayne actually managed to pick a style and a color that looks good on you."
Her flattery made him surrender to her wisdom. "I suppose you're right. Better to have them think that I dress like some fashionable nerd when I'm off-duty than to make the mistake of thinking I'm always on. You're very clever, Mrs. Thejhan."
"Thanks." She rolled onto her side to face him while he continued his search through the drawers to find the item she'd suggested. "And speaking of Mrs. Thejhan, I really don't envy your mother. Not because she had such a long pregnancy, that's normal for your people, but because something so horrible came down right while she was trying to keep her stress levels low and her life peaceful, for you."
Megamind paused in his search, and she could hear his soft, sad sigh. "Yes, I know, and I wish I hadn't been such a burden to her at a time like that. She gave up so much for me, just so I'd have a chance to live. I think my uncle deliberately glossed over it in the records, but I suspect she put her own health at serious risk, for me."
Roxanne's eyes widened. "How do you know?"
He was quiet for a bit, then came to sit on the edge of the bed near her. "It was part of a conversation they'd had on the day the vortex was discovered. She'd been arguing with both my father and Minion's parents..."
To be continued...