April Fool's Day, I realized as I woke up. The day Billy gets to play a joke on me. I kind of wish I had forgotten about it; instead, I actually woke up early because of it. Damn. I'd play along with whatever he had in store, for a while at least. It's probably something good.

"Sarah, no!", I heard Billy's voice say outside my door, barely audible.

"Dammit, I don't know how you did it but if you mean to-", Sarah replied, even more inaudible. Interested, I walked up to the door.

"I mean to kill him, it's just that I don't want him getting you!", Billy replied, as I struggled to make out the very faint words. Say what? I was about to step out and ask what he meant but I didn't want to interrupt. Instead, I silently turned on the intercom. "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." WHAT?! "It's harmless, isn't it? I mean, not obeying him doesn't make me hurt him." Oh no. Oh fucking no. My little bit of permission was enough for Billy to do it all- I'm dead because of my idiotic ideas of fairness and friendship, I gave him an inch and he used it to take a mile. Fuck.. now I've either got to get the fuck out of here or kill him instead! "And it was like when I was taken, I didn't even wake up. Then I just did the same to you and Paul. I'm glad we didn't die from that, I just hope Paul gets through it okay." Holy fuck...

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

"Now we're unimplanted, so what difference does it make?" My heart sped up to an incredible rate as I heard Sarah laugh in reply. "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.." That was enough. As they were speaking in normal tones I could tell that they were in Billy's soundproof room, so I immediately jumped out of my room, naked, rushing for the elevator, only shooting a quick look back (Billy's door was still closed, whew) as the elevator took me down to the basement. Well, Billy... this is it. I made a bad decision, but so did you. The walls here might be made of metal, but the trained agents' rather more hidden elevator (Wait, what if I commanded them- no, they wouldn't help half a second against Billy and Sarah..) opens directly to the outside. And, if they managed to get to me before that, with the Micro's wide-beam I could hopefully fry all three of them at once, as well as whatever instant-death chemical they'd be spraying at me. Tears welled in my eyes as I was finally, irrevocably forced to kill my dearest friends for fear of them killing me. But were they ever, really? With the power of the implants I have declared them to be such, and in short order they had actually been that. On the surface, anyway; because I had commanded them not to delude me, none of them has ever been less than honest about their intentions to kill me.

I took the Micro in hand and felt its heft. Ammo- full. Not like this fight will last more than a short burst anyway- I set the beam to widest immediately, and made sure the power was still on full. I rushed to the service elevator at full speed, not letting my depression get to me. This is it, it had to happen. My dearest brother, an enemy of the highest sort, finally free and ready to disintegrate my dominating ass for what my Daddy and I had done to him.

The doors opened silently and I rode up it, ready to sprint the moment it opened. The jet's best- if I can rush inside, hit the button, then jump in the jet and blast out of here like a bat out of hell, I'll be safe. And I'll have to nuke Billy from orbit, possibly- assuming he doesn't escape in the sub the moment he realizes I'm gone...

But none of that was to happen, for as the elevator doors opened in the middle of the forest, Sarah in her ghillie suit, Billy wearing the white Dominator suit, and Paul wearing black (but with the distinctive scars of unimplantation on his forehead) were standing there to greet me, with backpack-loaded sprayers in their hands and angry, vengeance-filled grins on their faces. I fired- as I realized the trigger had actually depressed and I saw no spray coming at me, I knew that in a split instant they'd all be dead and I would still be standing.

"April Fool!", the Micro shouted instead in Billy's voice, and my entire world shattered. I'd been had. He had let me overhear him, and the other weapons were probably okay.. outwitted twice, I was going to die. And yet he did not fire right away, choosing to speak instead.

"Any last words, Howard?", he said in an angry voice, and I knew that I just might have a chance of saving myself, if I chose my words just right...

"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." I saw him shake his head and knew it was over.

"Not good enough.", Billy said. "GET HIM!" Billy was right- there was no way to dodge. The clear wide spray hit me in my arms, my face, my legs. Covered in it, I stopped dodging, waiting until the poison or acid stopped my heart or burned through my skin.

























"Howard," Billy asked as I waited to die, "what's today's date?"

Holy. Fucking. SHIT! My mouth dropped open and I let the fake Micro clatter to the ground as I realized, with a mixture of absolute outrage and total relief, just what had really happened. "That was a... the whole thing, just..", I began, as Billy, Sarah, and Paul started laughing their asses off. I really have been had. Billy's not unimplanted, none of them are- I saw Paul peeling the fake scars off his head as he laughed at my shocked expression and wet body. The spray had been pure dihydrogen monoxide- I'd been hit with what were essentially Illuminated versions of Super Soakers.

"Billy, I'm sorry, please don't kill me..", Billy said, mocking me. "Oh, the look on your face! I never thought I'd see it! That was so completely worth it.", he said, laughing again, as my outrage grew. "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.", he said, gesturing behind him to a tiny object in a tree.

"You still have to do everything I say, Billy?", I asked, some anger in my voice.

"Unfortunately, yes.", he said, still smiling.

I raised my finger in the air, about to point it at him. I was ready to give him a command he'd never forget, something along the lines of what the worst normal parents have done to their children, something to cause him pain, restrict him from everything until I let him do things one by one when I finally said that it was enough. "Do you realize what I can make you do?"

He smiled at me and patted me on the head gently, as I had done to him a year ago. "Yes, Howard, but you won't do any of it. I know you better than that." And he was right. I had invited him to try to trick me, and trick me he had, in an incredibly well thought-out way. If I had any doubts whatsoever about his ability to manipulate, they're gone now. My outrage faded away.

"Billy.. that was amazing. I didn't have any idea you had something like that in store. I didn't even consider that." Why the hell hadn't I? Argh! Hindsight is 20/20, yes, but I really should have caught that! But it's been something I've been fearing for so long that I didn't look past it. Damn. I really am the fucking April Fool this year.

"You really should have, Howard.", Sarah said, mirroring my thoughts. "He can use deceit so he can unimplant himself? Seriously, what kind of tortured-ass logic is that?", she rhetorically asked. "And you know damn well that if I had a hand in it you simply would have never seen it coming." Yup. That would have been Sarah's way of doing it, all right. And Billy would never have really told Sarah not to do it. She would have walked in, set the spray to extremely wide, and sprayed the fuck out of me as she opened the door. It's not an attack I worry about defending against.

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

Paul spoke first. "Commanded, but not against my will.", he said, grinning as I'm sure he had when Billy had told him the plan.

"What he said.", Sarah said, nodding. "And there were a lot of commands- a lot more than what you saw, for a lot of contingencies. All the weapons were faked." Which is Illuminism in action. Make a show of favoring one over others and control them all.

"I had to.", Billy said. "It had to be harmless. The Enforcers are replacing them right now." He hadn't needed to say 'Joke's over'- the cue was certainly them dousing me. "And I had to be sure to stand between you and Sarah, in case you freaked and went after her." Which would have been quite possible. "Now I have a question for you, Howard."

"This isn't something you have to worry about me forgiving you for.", I replied. It was the question I asked him a year ago.

"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." It was truthful, but more than that- in a fundamental way, it was the right answer. "I'm going to dry off now."

I walked back through the front door, relieved, embarrassed.. and humiliated, an emotion I barely recognized, and the humiliation brought back some anger. I barely ever lose, and I hadn't just lost, I had been utterly outwitted. I walked upstairs with a scowl, yanked a towel noisily from its place in the bathroom, and dried off, completely annoyed. There was nothing I was going to do about it, either- after being made a fool of, there were no good options (I won't be a poor sport about this..) but to quietly accept it. Fucking hell, if the other Illuminati got hold of this- Oh shit!

I rushed out of my room and looked down. Billy was walking back in casually, carrying a couple of small cameras.

"Billy, where was the data going from those?"

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

"Just locally, right?"

"Yeah."

"Good. You can keep it for our records, but I forbid any of you to share it with anyone else." Billy nodded, as if he hadn't been planning to anyway. "Or even tell anyone about it." Again, he nodded, as if telling anyone was the furthest thing from his mind.

"Howard, are you going to play one on me next year?", Billy asked.

"No. This ends here." He smiled at me. "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.", I said. Sarah vanished into Sarah-space and Paul sat between us and just watched us play. The action was cathartic, but we fought to draws, as always. After a half hour, we went down to the arcade to stalemate some more, and Paul continued to watch us from a distance, seeing as much of the back of our bodies as the game.

After about another half hour, he was still there, just standing, obviously not trying to intrude but to quietly observe. After another three-round draw, I turned around, casually. "Paul..?"

"I'm not annoying you, am I?"

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

"Because Billy said you were his friend." I turned, slowly, to look at Billy, who was smiling just a bit.

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

"No." There weren't any words. I simply hugged him, tightly, as he meant everything to me. I looked into his eyes and saw the reflection of my own, and between us I saw the fate of everything for an eternity to come. Come to the future with me, Billy.

"C'mon. Let's play.", I said, and we went to a four-player racing game in the back, and we sat in the middle seats, and Paul cheerfully followed us to our left. Sarah was already to our right, smiling ('How'd she get there without us knowing' no longer being a question), and I knew immediately that she must have witnessed everything.

It was Illuminati-quality. Immediately we shot to three hundred miles an hour, with perfect traction. With us being stationary they could never get the feeling of acceleration right, but the seats tilted, and we burned around the digital track like there was no tomorrow, flying around obstacles and each other. For Billy and me it was all gas, all the time, no brakes. We finished side-by-side with a time that no one could ever possibly beat. And we did that for every track in the game, Sarah coming in a few seconds after us and Paul coming in a while after that.

We hadn't had breakfast yet, so I commanded Sarah to make it, and as she did and we snacked on other stuff, I started thinking. For almost two years now I've dealt with the best, worst, and everyone in between the Illuminati has to offer. People who create, with metal, organics, time, Enforcer labor, and extremely advanced science and technology. People who destroy, with guns, agents, and a mission to rid the world of the people we don't want in it. People who control, with manipulation, spying, and servants their main tools. People I praise and people I scorn. People I save and people I kill. Engineereds and normals, masters and servants. People who work together to unify and people who let their petty egos divide. People who look at the future, who grow the seeds of a post-normal world. People who look at the past, sometimes because that's their specific job. Not a single one of those people- with the possible exception of the people who created us- has done anything as fundamentally important when Billy said that I was his friend.

Sarah finished cooking and the bite-sized pieces she served were amazing. In the whole time she's been here- about two years now- I've never tasted anything like this- sweet, tangy, cheesy, a bit peppery-hot. She has practically every ingredient possible to make it with- I knew immediately that no normal has ever eaten one of these. She had, of course, made plenty; three engineereds and a normal have an enormous appetite. "This stuff's delicious, Sarah.", I told her, and she smiled.

Time for more fun; we went out on jetskis and broke through waves at a hundred and thirty kilometers an hour. It was windy, and a bit cloudy, but we didn't care- none of us was about to fall over, not even Paul, whose skill at this was almost engineered. Obviously, we couldn't go very far because of secrecy, but I felt like I could haul ass with them all the way to the Aleutian Islands, weather be damned. A grey figure tore through the waves to our side, flew its finned body over our heads, and landed with a loud splash on the other side. Engineered or not, that Tursiops Truncatus must have known who we were. We laughed- it seemed the right thing to do- and eventually got bored after a few hours and went back inside.

We weren't done, not even close. Games that the normals didn't even finish, we played them. Fido gleefully ran around with us on the island, although he couldn't climb trees. Although I wouldn't do it- I didn't like the last one- I was in the mood to take over another amusement park. Sarah cooked more of those goodies again, and we ate another batch as if we were starving. I can say, as an expert in the area, that even though I was made a fool of earlier, today was the most fun I've ever had, even though I've done things like this before.

Nobody called and I wondered if Billy set up today as uninterruptible as I had a year ago. I asked; nope, he didn't. Good. The less I'm needed, the happier I am.

Eventually it started getting late. "I'm going to bed.", I said.

"One thing first, Howie.", Billy said. From his tone I could tell that he's had it on his mind.

"Hm?"

"Unless you actually command me to, if you say the wrong words, I'm not going to kill you."

Maybe he misunderstood the earlier permission to play one joke.. "...You can't delude me.", I told him.

"I'm not trying to. It's true. I'd rip these things out of my head instantly given the chance," he said, pressing his fingers into his palms and bringing out the small, Sarah-like claws, "but I don't want to kill you anymore." My first feeling was that my overall risk had dropped several orders of magnitude.

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

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

I looked at them and smiled. Enemy Illuminati, traps, assassination attempts, that sort of thing, don't worry me very much anymore. I can fight through that or avoid it. Billy and Sarah no longer wanting to kill me- in approximately two short years- lessened my chances of death considerably. But I couldn't give them what they really wanted, couldn't afford to lose them. Even in the extreme unlikelihood that they did survive, they might leave me, and I can't let them do that. I value them far too much. They're simply too useful, in fun or in life-threatening situations. "I still can't take them out, anyway. You'd almost certainly die, and I won't let you die.", I told them. And then I went to bed, and got a very good night's sleep.

Almost the rest of the month continued as usual. Even my job gets mundane. Even with my twelfth birthday coming up, I feel like a parent, telling all the Illuminated, wrinkled, grey-haired people not to fight over spilled milk or tossed cookies. You may do this, you may not do that. Don't step on each other's toes or I'll step on your heads. I did realize that I (and Billy- he did it half the time, not needing any help from me) was dealing with the rarity- if the Illuminati was truly full of aggressive idiots I'd be solving problems for them constantly, like a normal tech support servant- but it was aggravating anyway.