I woke up the next morning with a simple question on my mind. I put on the suit and strode down to Jeremy and Joey.. or, rather, just Jeremy. Hey, it's not like his servant can get lost here.

"G'morning, Jeremy.", I said.

"Oh.. hey, morning, Howard.", he said, noting Joey's absence. "Ehh.. I bet he's upstairs again. Did you want me to do something?"

"Just a question. I haven't asked anyone this before. What standing orders do you keep on Joey?"

"Standing orders?"

"Don't kill you, don't hurt Illuminati, keep secrecy, that stuff."

"None." None? Did he say none? Okay, that was not what I expected! How many others in the Illuminati are like that?! Probably the same amount as Joey's standing orders..

"Wait a second, you mean you haven't told him not to kill you yet?!", I shouted, believing him but not wanting to. I was almost struck mute by the gravity of that. Even the dumbest Illuminatus, hell, even the dumbest sheeple would do that!

"Nope. And I don't plan to.", he said, as if he had some trick up his sleeve.

"Jeremy, have you gone insane.", I said, a statement not a question.

"Nope. Guess again!"

"Okay. Jeremy. Has he tried to kill you yet?"

"No, and it's not going to happen."

"You're living on the wild side." He grinned and made semi-condescending tsk-tsk-tsk noises that I wouldn't tolerate from almost anyone else.

"Maybe. But I don't have to worry about my commands because I so seldom give them and I always leave him room."

"The hell. Okay, no more footsie, what's your secret?"

"The secret is...", he said, pausing for dramatic effect, "there is no secret. It's really quite simple. Come on Howard, your brain is twice mine, you can figure this out, cantcha?", he said in the happy, evilly gleeful tone of voice I'm starting to love him for.

"It's because you're his friend, isn't it."

"Bingo. And he's a happy person, an optimist. And the ultimate bastard when it comes to wiretapping. Hell, I'm surprised he's not in here with us, he is that good." I have similar sentiments about Paul. With the right training, he really could be.

"Well, that isn't a criterion, but I'm starting to feel shortchanged with my own fucking clone!" Although I wouldn't trade Billy for anything, I wish his attitude was a lot more like Joey's. "Jeremy, this is why I like you so much. You don't have much at all by our standards but you make it a lot."

"Oh hell, you have everything and you make it into everything more, not to mention that whole immortality thing. You probably already know, but a lot of the engineereds aren't, the older ones, anyway." Yes, that does make sense, doesn't it- they were created before everything in the regeneration and age-stopping was ironed out.

"Yes, but everything's part of my job." We laughed. "And depending on how many more miracles Northberg can pull out of its ass, that 'immortality thing' may start getting contagious."

"You're talking retrovirus."

"I'm talking retrovirus."

"That would just be sweet. I have no other words for that."

"You're just going to have to wait, like everyone else." The Operator is moving as fast on this as he practically can. I can't speed this up through any power of mine.

He nodded and sighed. "Yeah.. but that's the thing, I can't wait a century or two like you can. That's the thing about people talking to you, Howard... you're immortal, and they know it. They act as Illuminati, they see it from your angle. And they realize that you're going to forget about the conversation entirely in a few hundred years, regardless of how important it was."

"There is that. But there are some things no one can affect."

"Yeah, I wish a lot of things were different." A phrase rarely heard from newly-recruited Illuminati. Jeremy has placed himself into a minority by saying that.

"Like.."

"Like Joey. You know how you've been laying waste to all these stupid Illuminati? Well, how'd they get in there?" Having him ask the question I've always wondered made me smile. "Joey never even got looked at and he's infinitely better than a lot of guys in there now."

"I do what I can to get the best. They'll all be made locally pretty soon anyway." When I say 'made', I mean made, and he knows it.

"Yeah, so there's no point in changing it, and you can't just go back and say 'Okay, I un-recruit you.' And like religion. That has really fucked up... ugh. I've seen it in person, it makes people useless, even as sheep. It's nasty as shit."

"Religion is one of the things a lot of us get antsy around. You know why. Very unpredictable. And since the demographic of serious religion practitioners is more emotionally-oriented than logical.. we manipulate them all the time, but we still say that caution is advised."

"Which makes everything slow."

"Somewhat. Remember, Jeremy, this isn't a nation's federal government. Bureaucracy does not tie things up. Every problem that you have mentioned to me so far has already been debated and thrown around in every sort of forum imaginable, and I can't think of any particularly important topics that haven't."

"So, in other words, if I can think of it, it's already being worked on."

"Essentially."

"Now I understand how you can be bored!"

"Do you have anything else to do, help me get rid of some of it?", I said with a grin.

"I will cream you in Soul Calibur."

"Your ass is mine."

And so we played, and you could have fed his tactics to the nearest mouse, and his entrails to the nearest tiger. After my character got done pissing on the corpse of his (Yes, we do have several bored programmers among us whose seeming goal in life is to de-kiddieize video games.. it must be, because this shit takes time to make) for the fifth time, he turned to me and said, "Howard... I need to tell someone about something."

"That's a very bad need for an Illuminatus to have, Jeremy.", I replied.

"Yes, I know, which is why it's better to tell it to you, because in the end, you don't give a shit."

"Jeremy, even though I have too many people to deal with, I do have some modicum of care for the thoughts of my brethren. Besides, you've made me curious, and no one keeps me curious." That had just the right blend of threat, friendliness, and curiosity.

"All right. When I was eight years old, I was doing homework for those crappy public schools, and Joey was over. The thing is, he lived about a couple of miles away, and so he needed his parents to drive him. I know you can already smell the bad vibes. Remember, this is what normal life is like." I laughed and nodded.

He kept going. "All right, so his dad took him, and you could tell the guy was bored out of his shit. Just by looking at him, I knew that he had just lost a big argument with Joey's mom."

"Just by looking? Is there a normal trademark I don't know about?"

"There's signs. You can tell- the way he looked around, the impatience in his voice, he didn't wanna be there, but it was like someone was forcing him to be there. And who else but his wife?" I laughed regardless of my personal unfamiliarity with the humor.

"All right, keep going."

"Well, his dad had the day off, and we didn't. So his dad was basically wanting to get out of there in a hurry, but he didn't wanna go home and be chewed out, so he went to.. ah, I forget, McDonald's or something. Anyway, my mom, praise God, knew when to leave me right the fuck alone." I nodded. Ugh. That would just suck. Having your every move watched by someone in authority... we the Illuminati, of course, stopped doing that to our servants a long time ago. "So we were alone in my room, I was gonna finish my homework, I sat back down in the chair, and Joey looks over my shoulder and looks at my homework. So when he looks, he's got his hands on my shoulders, and he's basically giving me a massage. And I don't know what he touched, a pressure point or what, but.. but that just felt good." I realized the context of the message, realized how he was saying it, and internally congratulated Jeremy for not showing embarrassment, which is simply not supposed to exist in our organization. Maybe the reason he isn't acting like it is because he isn't feeling any; after all, he is talking to the Uber-Master, who understands everything.

"So he kept his hands just like that the whole time I was doing my homework.. public schools, simple, repetitive shit, done in fifteen minutes. And so I lay on the bed, hands behind my head, staring at the ceiling, thinking about what to do.. and so Joey leans over me and says 'Know what, bud? I would give my motherfucking soul for more time like this and a fuckload less time with my dipshit family.'" I grinned widely at the fact that Joey got exactly the deal he wished for. "Yeah, I know, ironic isn't it. And so I joked that I'd give his soul too, there's some more irony for ya, he laid on the bed next to me and we shot the bull until five minutes later his dad comes up the steps, Joey jumps off the bed in pure reflex as soon as he hears it, his dad drags him home, and I swear to God" Obvious and Highly Unnecessary Wisecrack: 'I'm right here.' "that his dad said, before he left the house, 'you're not queer for him, are you?' That fucking.. hey, wait a second. I should probably just give that fat fuck a little accident right now!" He started to reach up to pull the keyboard back- I grabbed the back of his shirt near the neck area and calmly pulled him back down.

"You know the rules.", I reminded him. There's a personal reason for the guy to die, but no Illuminated one, and Jeremy's only a fifth.

"Yeah, you're right, I'm not allowed to kill him, but there's more I want to do, too. There's instant 'nasty accident', instant 'Kill and Replace', instant 'Feds watching the house' for the political dissidents, but there's no instant 'cause suffering and misery from no perceptible source' button."

I dredged back into memory and pulled out a small list I've seen a while back. "Illuminati are still being trained in doing that and they still need normal human targets to do it to."

"From no perceptible source?"

"Bingo."

He reached out, grabbed the keyboard, and within two minutes had added the asshole's name to the bottom of the 'Undirected Fear and Anxiety' sub-list. Checking the dates I could tell that this thing cycles pretty fast- this asshole will suffer in a month. "Wait.. I should probably tell Joey I'm doing this.", he said, and got up to do that. He cares for his servant so much.. I realized that if Paul's family ever became involved in an Illuminated operation, I'd tell him.

"Hey, Joey. You know that asshole dad of yours?", I heard Jeremy ask from upstairs.

"We were just talking about him!", Joey replied, and I started laughing and so did everyone upstairs. Coincidence happens.

"Well, guess what, I'm only a fifth so I can't kill him, so I added him to a list of people to inflict undirected fear and anxiety on. I can take him off if you really want but-"

"Take him off? Hell no!", Joey replied loudly. "Undirected fear and anxiety is exactly what that bastard deserves!" More laughter from me and everyone else again- I didn't think he had the meanness in him! We all played some games- that six-player beat-em-up was even better with a full house- and then we went around the island, Jeremy and Joey seeing everything there was to see here. I keep forgetting how nice it looks to people who don't live here. We went to a cave, open to ankle-deep water but with lots of dry spots, that I haven't seen since I was seven, and never went inside. It was small, but nice- when I want to go outside but it's too sunny (being in here during a storm would have its own kind of charm, too), I think I'm going to start hanging out here.

"I think I'm going to start relaxing here.", Sarah said, echoing my sentiments.

But shouldn't that be impossible? "And avoid my commands, Sarah?", I asked with a raised eyebrow. She simply pointed to something I'd overlooked- an intercom was built into the rock wall, looking like a part of the cave. Nice. We joked and played in there (note to normals: don't ever get in a splash fight with an engineered, you'll lose embarrassingly and you might not even get the engineered wet) for a good fifteen minutes, then left to do other things. Of course, Jeremy had to leave at some point, and did so in a few hours, waving and smiling with his servant as he got into his helicopter.