Considering how well the prior interview had turned out Jeremiah couldn't help but agree to this followup session when Ms. Tilby contacted Charlotte's people.

It should be fun! Plus it was a nice change of pace and would give Jeremiah a chance to let people know his near future plans for kicking back and letting someone else run the show.

Though, considering how… Chaotic the last exchange had ended up, this wouldn't be a live event this time. Mostly due to THIS upcoming exchange taking place in one of Wickles Industries more secured facilities, which everyone had moved to after his health had recovered enough to be safely transferred.

After all, he HAD pissed a lot of people off… Better safe than sorry.

As for this being a taped session rather than a live interview, where Ms. Tilby was concerned… Well, hopefully not being on air would make this all less stressful for the poor woman?

After all, Ms. Tilby looked worn down despite how professional she presented herself.

Which, to be fair, was likely due to the recent and chaotic events that were ongoing in the world at the moment.

None of which was Jeremiah's fault.

…Some of which was not Jeremiah's fault. Directly.

Um.

Yeah, now the moment felt a bit awkward. "You alright?"

The woman flinched and forced herself awake! "Eh? YES! Yes, I'm perfectly fine sir!"

Damn, how did a woman that looked that well put together express so much weariness in just a tone? "Should we reschedule this little interview?"

She didn't even blink. "Will that make whatever you say LESS impactful?"

…No. "Probably not."

She nodded. "Then we will continue to record in twenty minutes as scheduled. Any topics you wish me to avoid or gloss over?"

Hmm, that was considerate… But unneeded. "No, everything I'm doing is legal. And the various 'immoral' or 'questionable' actions are both protected according to my lawyers and acted against various people who are, and I quote, 'Bathed in the acids of their own deserved sins' and won't have a political, social, or moral leg to stand on."

Trish Tilby blinked, a bit bleary. "I'm sorry?"

Wow, she seemed REALLY out of it this time. Why did she seem so dazed? "Basically anyone that would get angry at something I'm likely to talk about will be furious ALREADY and there is nothing they can do to slow me down or even stall me, so there's no topic too sensitive to cover."

He waved off her other concerns as he continued. "As for personal information concerns, the only living person's opinion I actually worry about is the young lady organizing all this mess, and she knows anything we might talk about. Any topic covered will be fine."

She nodded, checking her notepad. "I suppose we should wait for my second cameraman to get back from the restroom… Oh well, as this won't be a live recording we can be more relaxed about the interview itself and edit it all together at some later point. Just talk a little bit about anything you wished to cover."

Hmm. Right, best get to it then. "You know those new shows I'm putting on air? My 'Last Chance Showdown' series?"

The woman nodded. "You are referring to 'Last Chance Chef', 'Last Day's Care', and 'Last Home Cherished'? I have summaries of their planned format and know that they've begun shooting…"

Jeremiah grinned! "What did my staff tell you about the reason behind it all? How we chose the participants and whatnot?"

She tilted her head. "I heard it was for charity reasons? I know you've been making waves in the news recently due to a large number of very diverse donations and public investments recently."

Yep! "Basically I was stuck in my recovery room, wrapped up like a mummy and spending my time over the last couple of months busy as a clam in an oyster farm, when I ran into a problem: I was going mad from being cooped up like that."

Ms. Tilby hummed. "I must say you do look healthier, at least?"

He chuckled. "Oh I got great doctors and even better staff, though most of them are honestly befuddled by how I am continuing to recover so quickly. Might even get this cast off months early… But anyway, that's all not the point."

Jeremiah leaned forward in his chair. "I was stuck, forced to do paperwork even if it was for a good cause, and going mad from monotony. It was unacceptable, and mind numbing… So I decided, like I do with many of my more outlandish ideas, to do something a bit spontaneous. Charlotte, if you could?"

His right hand woman directed the maps brough in. "See the colored graphs, Ms. Tilby? I don't suppose you'd care to guess what the coded sections of this map of the country represents."

The woman leaned forward slightly… "Population density maybe? It does seem mostly focused around major cities…"

Well, she wasn't wrong. "This is a chart showing the areas of the nation with the highest poverty rates, although it is also weighted towards areas with the least amount of living assistance and active attempts at correcting the issue."

He tapped the nearest map. "We are finding families that match our show requirements within these areas, and by paying off debt and investing in small spots like restaurants, housing, and retirement homes we will be directly injecting capital into population centers that desperately need ANY sort of attention and care."

Not that it made finding new contestants EASY, even with this. "Obviously we need to weed out those who are not actually in need but are using their 'failing' businesses to launder illegal money, that cropped up once or twice, and one or two restaurants in particular were failing because… Well, they were terrible cooks, had no hygienic standards, and bought subpar ingredients while refusing to throw bad stuff away. Those aren't the sorts of people we are trying to focus on here."

Although it did give a number of interesting cases to the local police in those towns… Even if a few of those departments had to get a bit of a scrub and look through before they'd actually act on the various crimes his people discovered and reported.

Anyway, that was off topic. "Now officially, this is a way for us to stimulate small communities and encourage the grassroots of these places to sprout a little bit."

She raised an eyebrow. "Officially? What about unofficially?"

He grinned like the sneaky old bastard he was! "I get to escape my caregivers a bit while also helping out a few people." He gestured at the different shows. "While I mostly stay on my medicated diet, I'll HAVE to have a bit of a taste during my own cooking competition, yes? And I'll get to travel more than a little while fixing up people's homes and then spend some time ranting with other old bastards about how different the world is in retirement homes, while giving others like myself a bit of a chance to brag to all you whippersnappers before we all keel over."

That caught Ms. Tilby off guard, and despite her weariness couldn't help but smile. "So you plan to be heavily invested in this new series of shows then?"

Ha! "Heavily invested? This is ALL I'm going to be doing from now on!"

She blinked. "I'm sorry?"

Yep! "Why do you think I'm running around NOW trying to get everything in order? I may be slow, but even I can get the hint after dying a half dozen times. Doesn't matter if I'm miraculously growing healthier than I've felt in decades, or that my investments have jumped in value, or any of that… I'm done."

He gestured at his exasperated younger half, Charlotte. "I've raised this one to be a better corporate shark than I've ever been, and she's going to tear this world a new one or two before she's done chewing them all up, you just wait and see, you will!"

Ignoring her huff, he grinned at the reporter. "But ME? I'm out! I'm going to get small mom and pop shops to compete to make me delicious food on global television, I will explore abandoned parts of this nation and restore failing homes, and finally find some old contacts and rivals that are kicking about these retirement homes and brag about what a good job my brat is doing running my empire!"

Charlotte was trying to be stoic as she drew Ms. Tilby's attention, but the blush was there. Heh. "In my opinion, this is what true success feels like: Getting to have a little fun while watching those I care about shining over the chaos."

Ms. Tilby still seemed caught off guard. "So you'll be handing the entire financial empire over to Ms. Clearwater?"

Hmm? "Nah, I'll be handing almost EVERYTHING over to her. My stocks, my personal businesses, my investment portfolios, the whole lot of it. Feel a bit bad about that honestly, I'm dumping even MORE work on her shoulders, but she's been building up a hell of a team that can help her through that headache."

They both ignored Charlotte face palming in the background as the reporter sputtered. "EVERYTHING!?"

Yep! Oh, well technically… "I mean, I've got a few personal accounts and a few facilities worth some change that doesn't fall neatly into the streamlined portfolio I'll be passing over, I'm keeping the stuff like that. It's always annoying to have random accounts and small firms and stuff that are mostly unattached to the overall corporate hierarchy, they mess up the nice round numbers and the income always makes the final tallies a bit frustrating to keep track of, so it's not like I'll be homeless or anything."

He began to ignore the room while considering all that… "Damn, it's like finding an extra orange in your pocket, you always stumble into a few hundred thousand dollars or whatnot left behind here or there. It's why you have to hire people to manage messes like this, otherwise you'll just trip over random investments and such that you set up at two A.M. in the morning for some reason."

Wait, was he wandering off topic? "Point is, 99.99% of my stuff will be trimmed up and nicely tied together for Charlotte to do what she wants with it, and I'll just putter about with the leftovers and run my shows and stuff. Maybe buy a few boats and sail, or get a big bloody hole dug just to see what we can find, or… SOMETHING interesting at least."

Jeremiah couldn't help but shrug. "After all, constructing a town sized playground for orphans or something is at least slightly more challenging than taking even MORE money from the idiots out there in the financial sector. Did I tell you about… Hey Charlotte, can I talk about the racist idiot yet or is that legal case still going on?"

His second hummed in thought. "Please keep it vague, sir."

Meh, fair enough. "Will do. So Ms. Tilby, imagine you are a brilliant genius alright? Not me though, I'm only good at making deals. I'm talking about a guy who can sleep talk while giving a lesson on how to transform a toaster into a supercomputer level of crazy smart here, at least on paper."

Seeing her expression he coughed. "Give me a second, I'm going somewhere with this. Now, as a brilliant man able to make anything and then given almost unlimited funds to do whatever you wished, what would be your FIRST instinct?"

The woman hesitated. "I uh... To cure cancer?"

…Damn. "Good point, I better put that on my todo list. Charlotte?" "Already marked down sir." "Great, thanks dear. Where was I? Right, I left off a bit in my theoretical scenario: Let's ALSO assume you are a greedy racist MORON whenever you AREN'T designing mechanical works of art with impossibly inferior resources! What would you do then?"

Trish Tilby just gave him a look. "I'm sure I don't know, Mr. Winkles."

He nodded. "Well, hypothetically for legal reasons that probably have NOTHING to go with an ongoing legal case or twelve, as a 'genius' man with no oversight and unlimited funding for any dreams or desires… Of COURSE you would make building size murder robots while stealing from a dying old man! Right? RIGHT!? It's only logical!"

The woman blinked. "I'm sorry?"

No blame to her, it was crazy shit to HIM too! "Yep! Steal my money, hypothetically, build massive hyper advanced facilities in secret locations, theoretically, to automatically construct dozens of huge death machines without even finalizing their actual designs! Tons of raw materials wasted on products that got their schematics modified and altered mere MINUTES after construction!"

Jeremiah ignored some odd noises outside the room as he released more of his annoyance about the stupid asshole. "A guy who could single handedly advance science by a dozen decades, who had political power and morons like me single handedly handing over funds and resources and placing him under NO oversight or requirements or restrictions, who designed and developed and MANUFACTURED impossible hardware with impossible abilities!"

And he slumped in his chair. "THAT man stapled pinnacles of humanity into a giant robot shape, planed for it to murder children and others that weren't 'good enough' or 'human enough' or whatever, and then decided he needed to steal even MORE from me just to ensure he could construct a world conquering army of the damn toasters for… Some reason or other."

The room fell into awkward silence. "Uh, Hypothetically. I'm not claiming any of that happened, or that my people are confiscating every damned penny from that pompous over confident racist son of a…" "Sir." "Oops… Uh, was that too much?" "Sir, please feel free to discuss something else."

Welp. And uh… "I'm sorry, I may have lost the plot. What were we talking about?"

Ms. Tilby glanced at her notes. "Something about a city sized playground for children?"

Huh? Hadn't that been a metaphor or an example or something… Whatever, it was still a cool idea. "No, best make it a theme park I think. A giant random play area wouldn't be easy to supervise, better to set up something more structured and staffed. A theme park that focuses on catering to orphans and kids and stuff, not profit or good business sense… Yeah, that could be fun! I'll make that my next project after my shows run for a while. What a wonderful idea, Ms. Tilby! Thank you very much!"

And now she seemed hopelessly lost. "But… But I didn't?" [[Stand down.]]

The almost unheard noise caused the entire room to seem to shudder, and Jeremiah felt EVERYONE shiver for some reason. And now… When had the staff in here left the room? Even the camera man had left at some point?

What was going on!? "What was… Charlotte?"

But she was already armed with a handgun somehow and standing to one side of the door to the room, ready to take down any threat that… [[Everyone stop moving until further orders are given.]]

And the concerned reporter and his Charlotte froze like time had ended.

The door opened, and the second (What?) camera man (When had there been more than one?) walked into the room. "Ms. Clearwater, please [[Stand down]] and [[Move to the side]] if you would, thank you. Ms. Tilby, your role of gaining me access is over, you may [[Sleep]]."

Jeremiah was frozen, immobile, while the horrified reporter suddenly fell unconscious and his own Charlotte was puppeted to stand witness as the stranger (No, he was the second camera man right?) walked in front of his chair. "Mr. Wickles… I am quite displeased by your actions."

Jeremiah Wickles couldn't move. Something was in his brain, and it made this so.

The man, who was suddenly VERY MUCH not the second camera man, began to pace. "Setbacks to my plans are routine. Life can be difficult to manipulate, such that I of course must keep a guiding hand on the actions of my test subjects."

And he towered over old man Wickles, who was defenseless. "But I must admit, it is RARE to have some scrap of nothing accidentally ruin SO MANY PLANS just by not being competent enough to die PROPERLY. You had served your purpose, you had funded the projects that needed to be established, and I had a successor already programmed and trained and raised to properly manage your holdings once we 'retired' your personnel."

Something was in his head, tearing through it. It hurt. "I rarely enjoy leaving my FAR more important work to handle anything that a few small actions could take care of, a few words here or there, a small amount of power applied carefully… But even with my BEST EFFORTS, your mindless chaos has made mitigating the sheer SCALE of the damages nearly entirely pointless!"

The voice wasn't loud, each word and sentence calm and soothing in theory, but it BURNED his mind! The touch of AGONY raked through his head! It HURT!

The stranger suddenly released the torment, and huffed. "But you may feel blessed, test subject. For I have sent this clone to personally rewire your mind and correct all these failings, this madness, from the SOURCE of it all."

Move. Move damn it!

He hummed. "I may even allow your pet over there to be of some use until I tire of her attempts at rebellion, once I'm done setting things right. Or go for a basic mind wipe… After all, the experiments must be brought back into task. And at least have this mess salvaged in some manner, if at all possible."

No… Not… "Char…"

The sound of words actually set him back in surprise. "You resist? Hmm… Perhaps I should also examine your corpse after this for additional study after all. For reasons beyond your ability to survive the prior medical issues, I mean, that was already slated."

The demon in man's form glanced at his watch, and sighed. "But my time is valuable, and crafting an obedient slave can be fairly time consuming… So by the command of Mister Sinister, [[Sleep.]]"

Helpless, Jeremiah Wickles fell asleep.

John Doe woke up.