It's my tree. Not like the rest of them aren't, but this one in particular is specifically allocated to my personal use. This is my outdoor place of serenity, ever since that whole first-test business and the butchered pig. Unless it's urgent enough to cause weapon fire, I told my Enforcers that I would not be disturbed here. There are only three people who can come up here with me, and even they better watch it.

My mind floated, as I hung upside down, eyeing the clouds beneath me. Were gravity to reverse itself, I would fall.. and fall... and fall straight up. The above ocean, the final frontier. I would just keep going. It's an awe-inspiring thought, even if you and the blood in your head constantly remind yourself where down is. The blood in my head, incidentally, felt like it was just going to slosh around in my skull and dribble out my eyeballs. Slow dreaminess engulfed me and, after a few minutes with leaves near my face and hearing nothing but rolling surf, I lapsed into half-sleep, thinking random thoughts.

'Who am I?' was the first question my brain asked me.. and 'why the hell am I asking that?' was the second. Why did that, of all things, come up first? Sum id quod sum, et id totum est quod sum. I'm the fucking Dominator, that's who I am. I'm the poster boy for the future. I'm immortal. I deal with my problems in systematic ways and I take incredibly little shit from anyone for any length of time. I am very literally the alpha and the omega. People come to me for help and sometimes I do that. I am the closest thing to God that physics, biology, and the power of Illuminated technology a decade ago would allow. And with every passing day, both my power base and my physical form get steadily stronger. To list everything I am would take hours..

A distant splashing sound interrupted my train of thought. I turned my head, looking for the disturbance, I'm not that close to the ocean, what the hell could it be.. then I saw it come out of the water, majestic and sleek, white markings on a black body. Orcinus orca, a killer whale. It came down again with another loud splash. Some others joined it, and they gradually continued to swim away from the island. Strange creatures. For some odd reason, successfully implanting cetaceans is impossible, and although many hypotheses involving the echolocation melon have been thrown around, no one really knows why. It just doesn't work.

'So who are they?', my brain asked gently, and I was tempted to ignore the question entirely... but what did that mean? Did it mean the whales, or something else? Which 'they'? Some parts of my brain tugged at various other parts and I got the impression that I meant my servants. They are servants, and every modern Illuminatus needs them. No Dominator has worked without help of some sort, and even I can't be in two places at the same time. Even with implants, however, the real goal of having servants- as extensions of the self- has not been fulfilled, and probably cannot be truly fulfilled. But we can get damn close. Even though the part of their brains I so frequently bypass wants to kill me when it gets pissed off or depressed (which is often), I still love them all.. and they've saved my ass enough. But I don't have three servants, or fifty Enforcer servants, I have nearly six billion servants. Not all of them are doing my will, but one day they will all be. I don't have any equals now, and I won't have any equals then- no matter what happens. But manipulation only goes so far... if I'm to take greater control over this planet and then jump to others, and get rid of all the useless and self-destructive behaviors of the world's people, then I just need more control, that's all there is to it. More control over them not as the masses, but as servants proper. The eternal dream of the Illuminati happens to be my personal one.

As if on cue, I heard a slight rustling of branches below me. There wasn't any question in my mind who it was and I didn't have to look. In seconds, Billy was by my side on the branch, in the same position, his shoulder inches from mine.

"Howard..", he began, slowly, "I was wondering... what will you do when you have what you want?" He couldn't have picked a better time to ask.

"I'll advance mankind. Everyone will have a purpose to life, everyone will be working for a common goal, to better the planet and take the stars. No more war or famine, no more massive head games, no more useless bickering between private groups that don't know anything, and no more mega-recruitment by the public groups to get more followers and sycophants for their own petty games. No more bullshit, no more illusions, no more wasted lives on things that never existed. I'm just glad we came into existence before nuclear weapons did."

"Yeah, some idiot would push the little red button sooner or later.", he replied. "You mind if I just stay here?"

"Stay, Billy. I like you here." I then put my arm around him, he put his arm gently around me, and we just hung there, silently and upside down, for something longer than fifteen minutes and shorter than an hour. I don't know if I was technically sleeping, or what. Time doesn't usually run away from me like that, either.

"Howie.. what happens if your plan.. doesn't work?", he then asked, in a wondering voice.

"Billy, there is no such thing as failure to an Illuminatus. There is either death, the plan changes, or I keep trying. Since the plan won't change and we're immortal, unless I get my head blown off, the plan will eventually happen."

"God.. everyone implanted... Howard, I have real problems just.. just conceiving that. When I start thinking about it, it goes right into the part of my brain marked 'fantasy', you know?"

"That's because you have no idea of the power we wield. All governments, organizations, beliefs start out small, because while they're small, they don't usually have lots of people pushing against them. Then they come in one fell swoop and make big, loud promises, winning the sheeple over, and then when they're in power, they can do what they want- until, of course, they inevitably get overthrown. We're just there to make sure we control that one, too. But when we, ourselves, come- we'll sweep over everything, because we have everything. Normals don't understand social change very well and they like to think that the way things are, are the way things have always been. We just let them keep believing that. If we do it right there won't be any resistance."

"Yeah... ah hell, you're right, I am thinking like a normal. But.. that's what I've been."

"Culturally, not genetically. This, exactly this, is why you were created. You're to help me with whatever goals or sub-goals I need to perform. And that's what you've been doing.", I finished with a slight smirk, holding him a bit tighter.

"Yeah.. and those goals... will... will.."

"Will what, Billy?"

"Will remove hope, Howard. When you finally succeed.. there will be no more hope." For absolutely no conscious reason I started laughing, not loudly, but in the traditional style of megalomaniacs everywhere, using my echo effect.

"Well, nope, there won't. Not much fear either, and very little anger. No more head games. Just humanity, doing what it should have been doing for the last seven thousand years, instead of circle-jerking with various styles of bullshit. And this planet will be a whole lot better for it."

"So what should humanity have been doing?"

"Expanding my inheritance. I got this solar system. If there's a way to do it, you know damn well what I plan to do."

"That will take.. oh, you really don't care, do you? Fuck, what the fuck am I thinking? I shouldn't care either."

"Heh, heh, heh. Oh, it'll be sweeeet... just have to wait a couple hundred years."

"Yeah.. but you'll be the only one who can.."

"Make his own decisions. Oh, I know. The world only needs one guy like that anyway, and it's not like everyone else won't be a hell of a lot better off."

"Well, won't they just be.. you know, living as slaves?"

"Ha. The Communists tried that. Nothing reduces efficiency like having no purpose. They'll do stuff, they'll just do it slow and wrong. Besides, why the hell would I want to live on a planet like that? No, you just let them know that they're not free, and then you make them happy about it."

"Is that what you're doing to me?"

"Of course! What - you think I wouldn't?", I said with a grin, stating the obvious. Billy started either crying, laughing, or both; I couldn't tell which. I studied him for a few more seconds and it became quite clear that it was a variation of both, laughing but crying without using tears. "It's just harder than if you were a normal."

"Howie.. heh heh.. I still can't think like you."

"Like I said, it takes a very long time. Nine times outta ten, you do though. Don't worry, Billy. In a couple of years no one'll be able to tell us apart without an X-ray."

"And you'll be able to be in two places at once."

"Which is just one of the many benefits."

"Howard, if you list all the benefits, you're probably going to freak me out. Again."

"Oh really? Well let's see now.. two places at once, someone to help with assaults, someone to help plan things.. you can pretend you're me 95% of the time.. assorted other crap I wouldn't want to do myself or by myself.. oh, and Billy, you're someone to talk to, a warm body if nothing else."

"So you really do consider me your friend.."

"Well, of course! Billy, just because I completely control you doesn't mean we can't be friends."

"You know, if anyone would have said that to or near me on or before April 26, 1998, I would have laughed my ass off." I started chuckling. "But, as you've probably guessed, I don't find that funny anymore."

"That's okay. I wasn't really joking."

"I should have figured that.", he said quietly, half-closing his eyes. "Oh, Howie...", he began, but it appeared that either the languages he knew did not have words for the emotion in his head, or he simply did not know how to put words to it. "I love you.." was as close as he could come, holding his arm around me as tight as the implants would let him. And then I understood why he was like that- because he had suffered one of the worst fates in the world; he was enslaved to his own twin. Had we been normals with deep mental rifts and egos that needed petty appeasing, it would have been several times worse than living hell, as I would have certainly tortured and/or needled him straight to death. Fortunately for him, I don't particularly give a fuck about any of that crap because I know who I am, and I don't need anyone- servant, fellow master, or sheeple- to tell me anything about that.

"Billy.. I love you too. You're one of the few people I can actually trust. I know even being here next to me has to be horrible, but.. it's the good life. And like you said, it can always get worse."

"Let's hope it doesn't."

"It won't. I won't let it. I told you, Billy, I won't let anything happen to you. It can get worse, but it won't. And I've got 6,000 Illuminati, basically as many Enforcers as I want, and the resources of a planet to make sure that nothing in my life gets nailed."

"After hearing that, I don't think I'm going to take anyone else's confidence seriously again..." I burst out laughing and we just hung there for a while longer. True to my nature, I went into outside-observer mode and tried to ponder this whole thing from a normal point of view. What are we? Two kids hanging from a tree branch in the middle of nowhere. That brings to mind another thought- were either of us ever really children? Is that even a possible quality to ascribe to an engineered Inheritor/Dominator mostly raised by machines? No parents; few friends; cold, calculated string-pulling; and inhuman, utterly superior physical abilities almost from Day One. He might have been, though. Perhaps the idea of being implanted- or even the pure shock- has taken it away from him and now he's a good deal like me. Of course, none of this is 'good' or 'bad'- sum id quod sum, and everyone in a ten mile radius has advanced (even Paul, mostly) beyond those concepts anyway. And being God hasn't seemed to decrease my pleasure any.

I don't remember coming down from the tree, but I did at some point, as I was lying in bed several hours after that.