The nightmare showed that, no matter what I did to Howard today, I was the real fool here, in a freakish clown costume with a jester's cap on my head, strings on my wrists and ankles, dancing around and being made to perform foolish acts on myself, pie to my own face, weird positions, being pointed at, laughed at, until I just became a smiling, dancing puppet with no mind, my face a painted-on smile on a wooden sphere-

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAGHHHHH!!!" Paul did his normal wakeup-sleep thing and I quickly fell asleep again.

I woke up and went immediately to the computer- I knew how to finish my plan, and the last word went into place. Was I really done? Yes... everything I could possibly think of was there. I have the time-advantage here; Howard will have seconds to make his decisions, whereas I've got all day. Plan-making is like that. "Well, Paul, I'm done.", I said to him. He looked bored and quietly disdainful, as he's had during the couple of hours over the past few days that I've been making this plan, almost certainly because he didn't think it would work but didn't want to just say that. That attitude was out of assumption and ignorance; I hadn't told him anything about it yet.

I quietly opened Sarah's door- she was doing research of some sort- and I silently beckoned her out and into my room, and shut the soundproof door.

"This is about that April Fool's thing, isn't it.", she asked. I nodded. "He's going to remember, you know. If he doesn't remember it in advance, he's definitely going to know it when you start doing something. Prob-"

"I know. That's what I'm counting on.", I interrupted.

She looked at me curiously, and Paul's interest shot up immensely. "All right, plan man, let's hear it.", Sarah said, smiling a bit.

I gave her and Paul exact, complicated instructions, and lots and lots of if-then statements. If Howard does X, do Y, and if he does A, do B, and above all, don't let him find out what's really going on until it's over. I told them what props I was putting into place, and what measures I was taking to make sure this harmless joke was just that.

Paul was laughing his ass off at the end, and Sarah was cackling lightly, but apprehensively, as if she would love the plan to succeed but didn't really think it would. "This is very well-planned. But it still has a considerable chance of not working, Billy. Especially near the beginning. If he even says not to...", she said, trailing off.

"Do you have any improvements?", I replied.

"No. I don't.", she readily admitted. "I just thought you should know."

"I already do. And I seriously think this is going to work."

"I know what my new favorite video's going to be if it does. Make sure you get a close-up! This is going to be great, Billy- this is going to kick some ass!" Paul shouted, grinning and laughing. "But.. this won't piss him off that badly, will it?"

"He'll be pissed, but he invited me to do it. He's not going to do something to me if I do it well." Paul slowly nodded. Howard's intellectual consistency can be counted on.

"Do you already have the stuff?", Sarah asked.

"Ordered it a few days ago, it'll be delivered tonight." I knew what I'd need before I knew exactly how I'd need it. It was unbelievably easy to get quietly, because the Enforcers I get the stuff from never ask questions. I simply say 'I want this, this, and this dropped by silent helicopter on the lawn at this time' and it's done. There is no delivery confirmation, and Howard is never reminded of the incoming stuff. It just shows up.

"Paul, remember..." He held up his hand to get me to stop talking.

"Billy, I won't give him any hints, and he won't ask me anything." I smiled. He'd read my mind. Sarah quietly left the room.

The day passed by fairly uneventfully, as days here go. It's amazing how differently you can see people, even Howard, when you've got something in store for them that they don't know about. I didn't clue him in at all, of course, and he did his usual daily regimen of games, light physical activity, and a mild disagreement between a first and a fourth level Illuminatus which he pretty much solved with a simple "No!"

I set a computer alarm for the night, but didn't need it; my scream came at 2:23 AM and I had set the alarm for 3:15. It took time to replace what I'd need to at the bottom of the elevator, and a bit more time to set up the cameras. After a bit of figuring, I set them to transmit wirelessly, the data going to the mainframe; these logs are for safekeeping. Hey, nice, there's a wireless port on the downstairs mainframe after all- I could put cameras there, not having to worry about transmitting through yards and yards of rock and metal. The more information the better. But I couldn't put a camera in Howard's room, these cameras can't record for themselves (should have got ones that could, silly me), and he might notice it when he wakes up.

So, after I got some more sleep and set the alarm again, Sarah and I patiently waited outside his room, waiting for him to wake up, like actors waiting for their employer to start a private show, waiting for the curtain to rise.

There was a very slight shuffling of blankets- that was our cue. "Sarah, no!", I said, just quiet enough for Howard to barely hear me.

"Dammit, I don't know how you did it but if you mean to-", she said, seemingly annoyed.

"I mean to kill him, it's just that I don't want him getting you!", I replied. "Look, let's wait until Paul either wakes up or dies, then hopefully all three of us can hit him with the sprayers. No way he can dodge it. And how I did it was simple- he said I could use deceit to play a harmless joke, so I deceived the Enforcers into thinking he ordered us gassed and unimplanted at night." I can't hear him, but I know Howard's listening, probably (and hopefully) in utter terror. "It's harmless, isn't it? I mean, not obeying him doesn't make me hurt him." Remembering our lines is the easy part. The hard part might come if Howard comes bursting out that door to attack Sarah... he won't succeed, not before we can tell him what's really going on (it has to be harmless..), but it'll be stressful nonetheless. Of course, causing stress is what this is all about.

"But if it was supposed to be harmless, now-", Sarah started.

"Now we're unimplanted, so what difference does it make?", I asked. Sarah laughed in reply. There's no such thing as telepathy. Nevertheless, I could feel Howard, scared out of his shit, listening against the door like Death itself was walking up to him. We walked back into my soundproof room- he must have turned the intercom on by now. "We can bide our time. I had the Enforcers sabotage the guns and the sub. Everything'll explode on him except the Micro, I didn't want to fuck with that thing."

"What, you just left it there?"

"Sarah, everything here's made of metal, remember? He'll probably go for the shotguns instead, we'd have a harder time dodging. You've waited before, almost two years for this. You're a profess-"

"He's out!", Paul shouted, watching the cameras. "And he's down the elevator. He's got the Micro and.."

"Get a head start, Paul!", I said to him, and he jumped out of the computer chair and headed for the door, opening it and running out. "He's heading.. for the other elevator, like I said!" We rushed, Paul sprinting like crazy to try to keep up, to the outdoor exit of the service elevator, a small, almost invisible thing hidden in a tree grove.

We arrived about a half second before he was there, and we had our spray guns pointed at him. He'd have to go forward to get out; no room to dodge at the sides. He's going to shoot it- yup!

"April Fool!", the Micro shouted in my voice. The look on his face- surprise, disappointment, horror- was worth every bit of trouble it'd been to get it, but we've just started the fun part. Oh fucking yes. Just the fact that he believes that I have him at my mercy instead of the other way around makes this all so very worth it.

"Any last words, Howard?", I asked him angrily, and I could hear the gears in his mind turning, struggling to find the right words.

"Billy, I'm sorry.. please don't kill me. I can get you anything you want, brother. Anything. And you'll never be controlled again." Even if they were born of desperate hope and the result of my trickery, not to last for more than another few seconds, hearing him say those words brought a unique gladness to my heart.

"Not good enough." I would have said that to anything he said, to finish the joke properly if nothing else. "GET HIM!" There really was nowhere to dodge. He tried to crouch, to avoid some of it, and covered up with his arms, but it didn't help. By the time we were done, he was soaked.

And he stood there, utterly stupefied, looking at us like a deer in headlights, wondering why he wasn't dying or hadn't died already.

"Howard, what's today's date?", I asked him, grinning. Realization tore its way across his face and he looked at me with his mouth stark open as he realized exactly what I had done to him, the fake Micro falling from his fingers to the ground. "That was a... the whole thing, just..", he sputtered out, and Paul, Sarah, and I started laughing hysterically. I've seen humorous, I've seen funny, and I've seen hilarious. This was well beyond hilarious. I had him- totally, utterly, had him.

"Billy, I'm sorry, please don't kill me..", I mocked. "Oh, the look on your face! I never thought I'd see it! That was so completely worth it.", I said, laughing again. "And, like you said last year, I'm never going to top that, never. That was fucking incredible. I'm so glad it went all the way. And yes, I did catch it on camera." I pointed behind me to the tiny camera in the tree.

"You still have to do everything I say, Billy?", Howard asked, getting angry.

"Unfortunately, yes.", I replied, still smiling.

He raised his finger in the air, as if to get ready to point it at me with finality. Sarah and Paul were probably worried that he'd do something rash, not permanent- he's not stupid- but enough to make me remember it badly. Howard was probably thinking of such things, enraged as he was. "Do you realize what I can make you do?", he asked, completely pissed off. Oh, yes, Howard, I do indeed. I can think of five things just off the top of my head. I have an imagination too.

I smiled, reached over, and gently patted him on his wet, hairy head, the same as he had done to me a year ago. "Yes, Howard, but you won't do any of it. I know you better than that." His anger dwindled to nothing, and a slight smile replaced it instead.

"Billy.. that was amazing. I didn't have any idea you had something like that in store. I didn't even consider that." If he had even considered it, it wouldn't have worked.

"You really should have, Howard.", Sarah said, rubbing it in a bit. "He can use deceit so he can unimplant himself? Seriously, what kind of tortured-ass logic is that? And you know damn well that if I had a hand in it you simply would have never seen it coming." On that she was exactly right. Knowing Howard for what he is, if I was going to kill him, I would never give him even the beginnings of a chance. His room's walls are metal, and I'm not up for self-damage, so I'd use a grenade launcher and cleave him to bits with shrapnel instead of an extra-wide Micro. Or maybe one of the sprayguns filled with acid, yes.

"Sarah, Paul.. did he command you or not?", he asked them.

"Commanded, but not against my will.", Paul answered, grinning. Just like me, there's some things that he doesn't need to be commanded to do.

Sarah agreed. "What he said. And there were a lot of commands- a lot more than what you saw, for a lot of contingencies. All the weapons were faked." That had been an annoying pain in the ass, carrying those guns around in the middle of the night.

"I had to. It had to be harmless. The Enforcers are replacing them right now." I'd prepared them, too; Howard gets doused, joke's over, put everything back to normal. "And I had to be sure to stand between you and Sarah, in case you freaked and went after her. Now I have a question for you, Howard." And I really, really wanted to know the answer.

"This isn't something you have to worry about me forgiving you for.", he answered. Huh? Oh, that was the question he'd asked me last year.

"No.. that's not it. If by some amazing miracle I really did become unimplanted and lived to tell about it, would you really give me anything I want?"

"Yes." Although I had no way of objectively knowing it, I was absolutely certain that he was telling the truth, and something changed for me. "I'm going to dry off now." He didn't command us to do anything.

When Howard left, Paul looked utterly relieved, as if he'd been barely missed by a truck. "You're right, Billy, he didn't do anything.", he said, as I pulled the camera out of the tree and walked to the one on the lawn. "I thought for sure.."

"Of course he didn't. There's no reason to be scared of him, Paul, and no reason to worry about pissing him off. You already can't do almost anything he doesn't want you to. And since he invited me to do this, he's kicking himself for walking right into a trap he started to set up. Besides, even if he did, that would have been completely worth it anyway. Have you ever seen him like that?"

"No. Never. Billy, you completely just.. made him your fool."

"I know. I'm not going to rub it in too much, though."

"Because he will get pissed.", Paul replied.

The words came out of my mouth naturally, and I had no intention of taking them back. "No, because he's my friend." Paul and Sarah looked a bit shocked, and I smiled a bit, as if to say that no, I haven't gone insane. We walked back into the mansion and I saw Howard rushing out of his room, as if he'd forgotten something important.

"Billy, where was the data going from those?", he asked.

"Wireless, straight to the computer. Once I figured out how, it was the easiest thing to do."

"Just locally, right?" Oh, yes. It would really be embarrassing if other people found out about this, wouldn't it? Howard has a reputation to protect.

"Yeah."

"Good. You can keep it for our records, but I forbid any of you to share it with anyone else." I didn't plan to. "Or even tell anyone about it." I wasn't going to. Howie, this is for me, Sarah, and Paul. This is to remind us that for all your power and intelligence, you can still be made a fool of.

Of course, so can I. "Howard, are you going to play one on me next year?", I asked.

"No. This ends here.", he said, decisively. "You remember what we did after I played that joke on you?"

"You let me try to get you back in fighting games."

"Yes. My turn." Paul sat between us as we tried to kick each other's asses for a while, a futile but entertaining task. I thought he was bored early, but instead he led me back down to the arcade, where we tried to do it some more on the stand-up machines. Paul continued to watch us, curiously and unobtrusively, as we played game after game on various machines, consistently trying to get the upper hand on each other and consistently failing.

"Paul..?", Howard asked.

"I'm not annoying you, am I?", Paul asked in return, willing to go away if Howard wanted it.

"Not in the least. I'm just wondering why.", Howard replied.

"Because Billy said you were his friend.", Paul said, and for a split second I was spooked at his saying it, as if he's given something away. Howard slowly turned to look at me, smiling a bit.

"Billy, were you lying or sarcastic when you said that?"

"No." The moment I said it, he threw his arms around me, silently, and looked into my eyes, and I saw my eyes reflecting off his and in that moment I saw the universe as it will be. Master or servant, it doesn't matter anymore. I'll go to the future with you, Howard.

"C'mon. Let's play.", he said, smiling. There was a four-player racing game in the back, and just looking at it I could tell that it was Illuminati-modified. Paul sat to our left, and Sarah was already in the chair to our right (How'd she get there? She's Sarah, that's how), smiling, her complete silence of note for once because I knew she must have heard and seen everything.

The game was incredible, the cars being made for people with twitch reflexes. Perfect traction with no rubber left behind at three hundred miles an hour, tearing around the levels at maximum speed (I don't know about Sarah and Paul, but neither my nor Howard's gas pedals left the floor, and we never touched the brake) without a care in the world, the seats tilting back and vibrating as we zoomed past everything in our way, to a simultaneous finish with an incredible time. And then we did it again (after Paul finally finished), for every track in the game. There was something I wanted to say, but I let it wait. Something unique was happening, and I didn't want to break it.

We hadn't had breakfast; Howard commanded Sarah to cook it and she did, with noticeably more enthusiasm than usual. She knew something important was going on, and she wanted to make it as pleasant as possible.

We snacked for ten minutes, and I thought. Howard had told me about a year and a half ago that just because he completely controlled me didn't mean we couldn't be friends. I had told him I loved him, which I do- he is my twin brother after all- but I still would have killed him on general principle, given the chance. Now I felt that I was on his side- once and for all, no matter what- even if I wasn't being commanded to be.

Sarah finished and we munched on.. I don't even think normals have a word for exactly what we ate. With an incredible supply of ingredients and long experience, Sarah made something very unique indeed, and we ate lots and lots of bite-sized pieces of it. Sweet.. tangy.. cheesy.. and with a faint trace of pepper. Carefully created food, for carefully created people. Paul ate his fill as well, and if he were forty years older he would almost certainly have eschewed it for the risk of heart disease. "This stuff's delicious, Sarah.", Howard said, and she smiled. He has the most refined taste buds in the world.

Then we rushed into the moving ocean on Illuminated jetskis and once more lost our minds in insane speed, gleefully rushing headlong into tall breakers, with no fear of capsizing or getting slammed by the wind-swept water, Paul following us engineereds as if he were one himself. These jetskis were probably fusion-powered, and I felt like we could have gone all the way to Hawaii at eighty miles per hour, through driving water and any storm, if not for secrecy. As we blasted through and over the rising waves, a dolphin flew in the air above our heads, and splashed down and disappeared. It might or might not have been engineered, but it certainly knew who we were. Laughing, we continued going around the island, until we got bored after a few hours and went back inside.

We still had lots more time- for hours we played games, ran around the island with Fido (who tried to climb trees with us and failed), had every manner of fun possible. This is going to be better in two hundred years when the whole solar system becomes Howie's playground, but it's great now.

Nobody buzzed for Howard that day. I didn't set that up in advance, either, and when I told him that, he was glad. If everyone knows what they're doing, he's not needed.

Eventually the day ran out of light and we ran out of energy. Tired and smiling, Howard sat up from the couch where we played a game that never even reached the normals. "I'm going to bed.", he said.

I finally was going to say what I had on my mind. "One thing first, Howie.", I said.

"Hm?"

"Unless you actually command me to, if you say the wrong words, I'm not going to kill you." The words hung in the air like fog.

"...You can't delude me.", he replied, disbelieving.

"I'm not trying to. It's true. I'd rip these things out of my head instantly given the chance," I said, pressing the bottom palms of my hands and bringing out the precise nails I'd use to do it with, "but I don't want to kill you anymore."

"If Billy doesn't want to, I won't either.", Sarah said, to my surprise.

"You know I won't.", Paul said.

Howard just smiled for a few seconds. "I still can't take them out, anyway. You'd almost certainly die, and I won't let you die." Of course not. We mean too much to him for that. He turned around and walked up the stairs to his room, and we went to bed as well. It was a very active day- I fell asleep almost immediately after hitting the bed.

That night, for the first time, I was able to fight back against the nightmare. I fought hard, with everything I had, but it didn't work- I lost, with the usual screaming result. The implants were still in my head, after all. Our lives continued as they have so far- we had fun, Howard and I dealt with whining idiots (c'mon guys- if I can reconcile my problems with Howard, you can learn to avoid hurting each other's operations), and things went as usual for almost the next month, with me fighting and losing against the nightmare monsters every night.