Paul was awake, lying in bed, when I woke up. "Good morning, Billy.", he said, smiling. It always makes me happy when he says that. It reminds me of why he's here in the first place, reminds me of how I saved him. It's a welcome antidote to the nightmares. The sun shining through the window was equally happy and bright, but of course that's asking for trouble for an albino. Better just to stay in.

"Good morning, Paul.", I said, realizing immediately my body's needs. "I'm hungry." I put on some black pants and a loose black T-shirt and went downstairs for some food. Howard was going for it at about the same time I was, and Sarah had already cooked it. We feasted and Howard went to read the Real News. It's always struck me as weird how the Illuminati can actually publish something like that and never have it break secrecy. It wouldn't surprise me if the paper decayed fast.

"Hooo...", Howard sighed, reading an article in it. Curious, I looked over his shoulder at it.

Some normal named the Anarch had raided an Illuminated home (a normal did what?!), and the Illuminatus barely escaped with his life, losing a few Enforcers and hitting the self-destruct on his Illuminated equipment. That's got to suck. His forces managed to kill several normals, with a few being left wounded to get interrogated and swiftly killed. So there's someone who's attacking Illuminati.. I find it hard to believe he's actually a normal, but it's confirmed by the normals he left behind..

"So what are you going to do about this guy?", I asked.

"You're being silly. He's not my problem." I was being silly. Howard has people who spend their lives dealing with crap similar to this.

We did indeed not go outside that day. Howard, as usual, had me as his constant companion, even when playing single-player RPGs, where he gave me a few turns and I did the same thing he did. Fido came in- he likely hates sunlight as much as we do- and we tickled his furry back with our feet. After some more games we went down for a swim.

We were in the pool when the buzzer went off. Howard glanced at the clothes I'd taken off- am I going to pretend to be him?- but took his own white pants instead. I got dressed and followed him up the elevator.

To our surprise, the two opposing guys were on the same screen. It was the military-industrial complex; one guy's military, the other guy's industrial, and they had a serious overlap of power. Fortunately, both Illuminati behaved civilly, and looked to Howard for an untangling answer, and Howard said something I wasn't expecting: "This is complicated, damn complicated. I'll have to call you back." He clicked the screen and we worked on it for about a half an hour, looking up this and that, poring over things like normal defense contracts and various names of people. Eventually we did actually solve it and they were both surprised and pleased with the answer. Howard decided to let me do other things and I went back up to my room. Wow, it's late already? He really was with me all day. The time fucking flew...

"Hey, Paul." I closed the door as I entered the room, gently put my hands on his shoulders, and watched him kick the shit out of random Starcraft opponents.

"Hey, Billy. Did you have to pretend you were him?"

"Who says I'm not now?", I said, in Howard's master tone, a subtly more evil and pleasant-sounding voice.

"Dammit, Billy, don't fuck with me like that."

"How can you tell?"

"I can't anymore when you pretend. Both of you know enough about each other to fool me. If I asked the personal stuff, you wouldn't answer, right."

"God dammit Paul, I had a whole thing set up. I was going to tell you basically what you just said, that you can't know which of us is which."

"Not unless you want me to, and Billy, I do know it's you now. Howard never refers to God. Ever." He happens to be right. If Howard is going to use that kind of expression, he always inserts a generic expletive instead of referring to a deity. I haven't heard him do it yet.

"I suppose I could just keep going 'that was part of the illusion' and all that, but that would just piss you off and I'm tired." I flopped down on the bed. Paul obligingly turned down the sounds of music, death, and chaos.

"Billy, don't pretend to be him... please, don't pretend to be him."

"Why not? It's the obvious, isn't it."

"It's the obvious. One of him is fucking bad enough. If Northberg is going to make everyone's kids like him, that's just.. that's just going to be insane."

"It'll shake things up a bit. I don't know how, there's a million things that can happen, but it's going to make the gap a whole lot wider. I think they're going to start becoming more.. it's not really inbred, is it? More.. not integrated, although that could happen too, more.. their own people. Instead of having a people exchange with the normal world.."

"They're going to make them right here. I know. And they're going to do an even better job of totally controlling everyone, and there will be a huge gap between who's elite and who isn't."

"Yeah, welcome to the future."

Paul finished obliterating whatever idiot was on the wrong end of his Hydralisks and his partner's Marines, and laid down beside me. "I just realized, if I walked into school again, right now... I'd just kick so much ass."

"Whose?"

"Everybody's. We'd be in sixth grade, so.. I'd use this database to find where most of them were going to middle school, then I'd just walk in there and say hello to every one of them. If the teachers got in my way, I'd flip em off, and if they kept getting in my way, I'd blow their heads off. And then I'd find that fucking loudmouth jerk- I remember what you did to him-" That would be bruises, a fractured hip, and a concussion. I had very low patience for that asshole, and his pride made him claim it was an accident. "and I'd just take that fucking Micro and I'd ram it up his ass, and then fry his insides like a burrito."

"Damn, now you're starting to talk like Howie."

"Good! Because then, I'd call one of you guys to come in, and then..." We broke up into mad laughter, pondering the possibilities. The entire school would probably be nothing more than a heap of molten rubble by the time we were done, with a ring of SWAT team members' bodies around it. Corpses would litter the wreckage, and people would compare them to Nazi war films. To put it shortly, all hell would break loose.

"Over KILL!", I shouted in my laughter. "Damn, Paul, that is mean."

"Well, of course it's fucking mean! They didn't even do their fucking jobs!"

"No, they didn't do their stated jobs."

"Oh, yeah, yeah, their real jobs, aka making the sheeple bleat the right way. God, that sickens me. I want.. I want to do to them what that fucker Damien did to me."

"Paul, you already know that there ain't no justice. You already got your revenge, feel lucky you could do that. But we are the system now."

"Yeah, and it sucks. But you're right, it could always be worse. I could still be without you or any other friends." He put his arm around me in the hug of the damned and angry. I reciprocated and drifted off to the land of nightmares.