I woke up, but didn't want to move- I was bored, and didn't see anything better to do. Having lived for about twenty-two months with mind control implants in my head, I generally do just what I want. It's not that counterintuitive; when Howard wants me to do something else, either for the moment or on a permanent basis, he'll tell me. Paul was probably awake, too, but neither of us said anything to each other. His head was resting on my arm, and he was certainly as comfortable as I was.

Sarah walked into our room, closing the door behind her. "You two look content.", she said, getting on top of us. Now I was really comfortable. Paul pretended to be asleep, but from his smile we knew he wasn't- one of Sarah's breasts was on his face.

"For the moment, yes.", I replied. "Is Howard going to change that with people to kill or errands for us to run?" My philosophy has become frighteningly close to his- I must do a thing, therefore I shall do it, get it completely and utterly done, make sure there's nothing else I have to do (so I don't get interrupted again), and then go back to doing what I want.

"Nope! He didn't let me kill myself this morning," C'mon Sarah, I don't want to see you die. I'm sure Howard told you you're too valuable to him, but the truth is that I feel the same way. "but he hasn't given any new commands."

"Yeah, that's gotten to me too, Sarah.. he's got infinite power, but he so rarely uses it.", I said.

"Oh, it's like that everywhere, in any of these jobs. If you're to only come when you're needed in a crisis, you're not going to be coming a lot. You're going to be sitting around, or I suppose in your case it's laying around. I know. The duty of a soldier is also his duty: to wait. That Micro is useless without a target."

"You're right. But on a planet with six billion people.."

"Correction, Billy, six billion sheeple. They don't fight him, and if they did, we wouldn't be here talking about it. It's really simple and widely agreed. The more the Dominator has to do anything or even order anything major done, the more instability there is. This organization rejoices at his boredom." That made perfect sense. It is his job to stay in one place, like a cop in a low-crime area. So he's bored- he isn't exactly going to lose vigilance. And he's certainly not going to start nitpicking, looking for things to do, not with this crowd. What he will do is stay at home, lazily waiting, filling his mind and body with whatever he wants, until it's time to strike again. And when he strikes, it sends out a loud, clear message to everyone: 'Why did you make me do that? You know full well what happens when you make me do that...'. Then he goes back to hibernation and no one wakes the bear up for a while again.

"Yeah. But what about you? You had.. what was that?"

"I can't remember how many I've been killing. A couple of hundred."

"What were the old ones, mostly?"

"People who learned too much was the majority, followed by people who wouldn't obey, followed by.. oh, just assorted miscellaneous reasons. So and so had to be dead for this plan to work, so and so would be killed and shown to the media, so and so had to have a heart attack to influence Person B to influence Person C... I'm just going on evidence, I never was told and I don't really care."

"And you spent most of that time waiting."

"Yes, but obviously, not the same kind of waiting. Billy, I had to sit through everything. Just sit. Like I said, a soldier's duty is to wait. And sometimes, I wouldn't get the opportunity at all. I wasted hours and hours and hours, just sitting, sometimes standing, but waiting. And could I unleash power and rip the mark to shreds when it was time? Hell no. It was one bullet, one poke, sometimes poison, a couple of times a needle. Poke N' Dead. All that pent-up energy."

"So boredom is generally universal."

"So boredom is not just generally universal, boredom is something no one is immune to. He has it, you have it, I have it, Paul has it, Jeremy and Joey have it, even our enemies have it. And with a metabolism like ours.."

"You're reminding me of school!" A thing I'd long forgotten about, almost.

"Sorry. But Billy, there is one eternal cure. You're just going to have to find something to do." Some things never change.

In response, I fondled her breasts for five straight minutes before getting up and spending the day as usual. The buzzer went off, but Howard didn't tell me to do anything in response to it.