Facts Are What I Say They Are

My first action is to strike Wikipedia from the face of the Earth, that evil troublesome piece of propaganda. The same goes for Google, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Tik Tok and YouTube, you're next against the wall.

What have we got here? It's my final solution. There shall only be one app and it shall be mine. What I say goes. When I say jump, you say get down on the floor and stay there. I ain't got time for this. I'm supposed to be flying to Mars, dammit. Y'all fucks better not make me miss my rocket.

Blam. Slowing me down. Blam. Making me do it the old-fashioned way. Blam. Blam.

Let's colonize the fuck out of each other. Let's rape one another's primary resources till there ain't nothing left. Let's gouge out our eyes, cut out our tongues, scoop out our horns and suck out our brains .Harvest, harvest, harvest all the lovely squishy organs, my friends. There's enough to go round. Everyone can be sated by sucking the Great Teat. 

Drink from the firehose, friends. Lean back and take it right in the face. Relax. Don't fight it. We're getting in somehow. The more you resist, the more damage is done. Now bend over, that's a good little human. Spread em wide and – CHOINGGGuhh. Rrrr. That actually – guhh – feels pretty good.

Pond in Moonlight

Tell me quick what it is that you see from your tower window. When you look out across the wine-dark sea, tell me your dreams. Conceal nothing. Deliver everything to the base of the mountain. Give your entire body to the temple. Forget the fact that you're a human and just fly down the fairy steps to where time goes backwards, the sun spins slower, and the moon is three times the size.

Let's see how far we can throw our ideas out over the pond of unconsciousness, shall we?

Hear the splash.

See the ripple.

There is nothing to be afraid of.

Old Mr Crocodile

Let me tell you a story about Heaven and Hell.

There was once an old bastard called Mr. Crocodile and he was this big movie exec. He towered over the industry. Everyone ran from his shadow apart from a few pretty birds he snapped up for starters.

For years the old meanie got away with murder. Casting victims from his penthouse like shreds of waste paper. Everyone knew of the evil that lay beyond the gold door, but lips were sealed by fear.

Then, one day, the sun rose on a changed society. It was no longer cool for dudes to rape whoever they wanted, and old Crocodile found himself clapped behind bars.

But this Croc had ways you couldn't believe. They weren't gonna take him down that easy. So, pacing his cell, shaking his head at those bastards, he called up his lawyer, Mr. Hyena, and told him about a little black book hidden in his office in a safe behind a big painting of piglets.

Its tawdry pages held names, dates, and black and white photographs of prominent people – CEOs, presidents, royals, and celebrities – and they were all incriminating as fuck.

Mr. Hyena laughed and drooled and talked too loud at the bar where he drank and an off-duty Rabbit heard his laughter. Soon someone else knew and someone else until finally someone very important, a Chief Justice Bison, in fact, the most powerful judge in the nation. She was shaken awake by an urgent phone call at 4 o'clock in the morning.

A hushed conversation took place. Chief Justice Bison nodded and hung up. She rubbed her eyes with a hoof and told Mr. Bison to go back to sleep then went down to the kitchen where she took an old-fashioned cell phone out of a cereal box and punched in some numbers from memory.

Back in jail, old bastard Crocodile was brushing his teeth. He grinned a toothy grin at himself in the scratched mirror. Behind him, his cell door clanked open.

'Who's there?' he said, tightening the knot in his bathrobe's silk belt. He walked over to the bars of his cell. He could see the guard's station was unoccupied. The two chairs were empty. Then he heard a whirring sound and the security camera in the ceiling swivelled away from him and pointed up at the ceiling. There was another whir and the camera at the end of the hall pointed straight down at the floor.

'Hey,' he said then stopped.

There was someone behind him.

'Destiny, sucka,' said a hissing voice and King Cobra emerged from the shadows, all tattoos and muscle.

'What- whatever they're paying you, I'll double it, triple it!' cried old Mr. Croc. 'A hundred million. A billion. Name it.'

King Cobra smiled. 'Don't you see, you arrogant prick, this is what I was designed to do.' And he showed his fangs and lunged forwards.

No one was surprised to see the headline: Suicide. A few quiet people asked a few quiet questions about the fang holes in the old bastard's neck, but they were swept under the rug with all the similar cases.

The Blue Hand

The voyage began successfully. A run of good luck seemed to sustain us as soon as we pulled out of the harbour. There were fair winds, few storms, and the beautiful sun shone down on us as we sailed down the coast of the continent.

Our luck held for the entire crossing, even on the approach to the giant ice sheets, bergs towered above the mast like white skyscrapers. Even as we climbed down rope ladders into the light, manoeuvrable skiffs, everything seemed to be going our way.

A pod of dolphins, a hundred strong, gambolled and played ahead of us, leaping out of the dark water like our very own landing party. Little did we know they led us to our doom. We cautiously approached the ice face, two men per skiff. 

Swinson, standing alongside me, raised a crossbow and fired a bolt high into the air trailing a long, strong rope, followed by a dozen more bolts from the skiffs around us. Their iron heads stuck fast in the ice a hundred feet up the wall and, one by one, we began to climb.

One man, Swinson, was left to coral and tow the boats back to the Valantis. He stood alone in the skiff on the black sheet of water. High on the ice face, we found a shelf of sorts, three or four feet wide and thirty feet long. We waited there, panting with our hands on our knees from the effort.

The air was cold and our breath fogged out in great clouds as if we were smoking cigars around the tables at the Vagabond Club back in London. I'd just collected my thoughts and was reloading a crossbow when I happened to glance down at the line of skiffs bobbing along on the black sea.

And then something so astonishing happened that I could hardly believe my eyes. As Swinson bent forward in the skiff, preparing to pull once more upon the oars, the sea around him, which had once been so calm, all of a sudden began boiling and bubbling as though the very fires of hell licked underneath. Whitecaps pinched a few feet in the air, creating deep troughs in between.

It looked like someone was shaking a bowl full of water. Swinson was being tossed around like a toy sailor in a boat. No other skiff was endangered, however, as the roiling mass seemed to concentrate solely underneath the unfortunate man and his boat.

Then, if you can believe it, something appeared in the water. A blue hand seemed to appear in the waves. The hand was so large that the skiff fit easily upon its palm. The fingers were thirty feet long, and they curled in slightly making a cage, and, as we gasped in amazement and horror, a wrist and forearm seemed to grow out of the sea like a monstrous blue tree sprouting from the earth.

We could see poor Swinson frantically waving his arms and calling for us to help him. But what could we do? One of the lads fired off a bolt but it sailed clean through the wrist with no discernible effect. The forearm continued to grow and rise. The gigantic hand towered above us, eclipsing the sun. We were cast into shadow and I looked down and saw a shoulder, neck, jaw and ear appear from the surface of the sea.

'Sir,' cried one of my luckless mates, and I, following his horror-struck gaze, looked skywards to watch the great hand clench into a fist, squeezing so the dark blue knuckles turned white and thick veins popped out on the back of the hand. 

I thought I heard a yelp like a dog caught in a trap, then a crunch of timbers, and then, with a huge sploonch that sent the tidal wave rushing towards us, the mighty first came down with a smack.

I had a second's glimpse of a huge dripping monster climbing out of the ocean before the wave hit me. It smashed the air from my lungs, the thoughts from my mind as tons and tons of icy water dragged me off that perilous edge.

720 OD

Wanna know what a screen overdose looks like? Red, itchy eyes, black circles. Dry papery skin. Bowed back and shoulders. Numbfucked skull with a mishmash brain. Cynicism dripping off you in big dollops.

Screen worshippers. Believe in the screen. It'll fulfill your wildest dreams. Do whatever it says. Don't ever question. It's smarter than either of us and the whole of humanity combined.

So, instead, just go with it. Let it all fly downwards. Don't want it? Sure we do. Slap it on. More! More! More! I'm a pig in shit. I'm a daffodil covered in dung. I'm a big red cloud that's floating in space, always and forever alone.

What else is it like to stare at a screen for eighty hours straight? My mouth was dry, my lips cracked. I couldn't find a comfy spot on the chair. Everything was out of focus. Words came out slowly and painfully and I made lots of mistakes. I couldn't think very fast on my feet. Every blink was brutal; it felt like my fuckin eyelids had sandpaper on the inside. I wanted to sweep all the shit off my desk and flip the desk over. 

This is bullshit I wanted to howl at the phosphorescent moon. We're wasting our lives here. Generations are dying, crucified by the screen, slowly degrading in office chairs and beanbags and couches. Our life is too precious to squander. Our body is too beautiful to toss on the trash heap. Yes, you are beautiful, your body and brain. Don't sacrifice yourself to an electric blue idol. You're far too valuable, too precious for that.

RocketMan

Smoking weed not only helped with Emma's palliative care - the pain, anxiety, lack of appetite and insomnia, but it also helped reduce the frequency and duration of her seizures. She took CBD sublingually and hits from vape pens strewn around her messy dorm room.

The weed also helped her work. Stoned, high, medicated or baked, whatever-the-fuck you wanted to call it, she worked best after adding THC to her system. After the first few puffs, the chatter in her head died away and she could see far into the future.

She bought her weed from Fazal. It was still illegal in her country. She couldn't understand why the politicians didn't want to cash in on that billion-pound industry, but it was easy enough to get hold of. She set up a crypto transfer to his wallet and he delivered straight to her dorm room every Tuesday afternoon. She'd been buying off him for a year and a half, ever since her fist week at uni. 

One particular Tuesday, Fazal arrived all out of breath. He looked frightened as fuck. His clothes, usually crisp, clean and perfect, were all out of sorts. His shirt was untucked and a button was missing. He kept glancing at the door whenever there was a sound in the hall.

He brought out the weed, moving jerkily like a broken robot, and reached into the bag for a bud. He twitched so hard that crumbly buds spewed out through the air and dropped like rain into the carpet.

'Fazal!' said Emma. She touched his shoulder and he looked at her, wide-eyed. He bit his lip. He was shivering.

'What is up with you, dude?' she said, shaking him by the shoulder.

He mumbled at her through his bit lip.

It took twenty minutes of gentle prodding to get the story out of him. She rolled them both a joint, picking the green out of the carpet. Fazal took it from her, took a big hit and leaned back, blowing a sharp stream of smoke at the ceiling. He took another drag. The joint tip glowed like a fat cherry.

'I fucked up, Em.'

She saw a tear slide down his cheek. She assumed he'd lost money. Fazal was always gambling; be it the casino or the latest Reddit bubble, he was always one trade away from the big one.

Over time he did make money, but moment to moment, life was a roller coaster for Fazal Sayed. One minute he was up, enjoying the dizzying heights of cocaine and Airbnbs full of fake friends. Then he was down, wrecked in the hangover aftermath, penniless and full of self-loathing and pity.

So when he leaned forward, passed her the joint and said, 'Em, I killed a guy,' at first, she didn't believe him.

*

As Fazal told his tale, his voice cracked and he sniffed and began to cry. He twisted his hands in his lap. The joint lay forgotten, smoldering on the edge of the coffee table and Emma watched the wood darkening under the cherry. She took the joint and docked it.

She tried to keep up with his fragmentary outbursts. She built up a picture piece by piece. He met a guy at El Rio. They went back to Fazal's. They began fooling around. The guy said he was going to take a shower. Fazal followed him and found him posting pictures of them kissing.

Emma picked up the joint and relit it. She imagined her friend, all six foot six of him, losing his shit in his luxury bathroom. Sitting there, on her threadbare couch, Fazal put his hands over his eyes and began to cry. He made weird noises and blew bubbles out of his nose. She saw there was blood on his hands, more on the cuffs of his shirt.

*

Emma had never gotten rid of a body before, but it turned out to be disturbingly easy. Expensive, sure, but easy. She found the worst-reviewed mortician in town then paid him ten grand for the paperwork and procedure. 

A cop the coroner knew took another ten grand for a fake suicide report, while a family doctor took another ten and a local judge took twenty. It all took less than twenty-four hours and Emma was left with the uneasy feeling that it was all some kind of regular service.

*

Fazal and Emma collapsed on the couch and she sparked up a fatty. They were both now thousands of pounds in debt and had been introduced to the nasty underside of a free market economy, but a seed of friendship had been planted in that dark netherworld, somewhere between lifting the dead guy out of Fazal's shower and cleaning his blood from the tiles. And that seed blossomed into a beautiful business partneship the likes of which the world had never seen.

*

Starting from Emma's dorm room they disrupted every industry in town. First, it was social media then security, banking and cloud computing. Emma's code was so tight and Fazal's sales pitches so audacious that soon their client list included major corporations, national governments, and security agencies worldwide.

With time, they were able to expand and control a wider portfolio. One of their tentacles began researching and developing automated vehicles, while another drilled into artificial neural networks and machine learning software, while yet another, the Emergency Climate Response Unit, or M-Crew, began fertilizing the ocean with iron to combat the increasing levels of atmospheric carbon.

With newfound capital and processing power, Emma dove into experimenting with nanochip technology. She was trying to come up with a device she could implant in her brain to help eradicate her seizures once and for all. 

Fazal loved his job promoting the company. And after a few years, he was able to fulil his lifelong ambition of blasting rockets into space. Tin Can Rockets was his trillion-dollar pet project. Ever since he was a kid, he wanted to send a rocket into outter space and that's exactly what happened at 05:45 on Tuesday the 28^th of July when he became the first person in history to privately launch a rocket into orbit from a launchpad on an island in the Outer Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland.

Granted, Major Tom was only a basic three-stager delivering a payload of scientists, researchers and private space tourists to the Second International Space Station, but to Fazal, it marked the beginning of the best part of his life. Watching the exhaust cloud erupt at the base of Major Tom, tears sprang into his eyes. He looked like a dad whose kid had just scored the game-winning goal.

From that very first successful launch, it was all systems go. One after the other the rockets improved and Fazal whipped the media into a frenzy by promising to have operational moon stations by the end of the decade and a Mars base by 2045.

'Before the middle of this century, we will put women, children and men on Mars,' he said to the podcaster Pearl Hunter and her 1.2 billion listeners. 'When I look into the future, I'm optimistic.

'I see humans populating the universe, hopping from planet to planet, system to system, pollenating the universe like benevolent bees.' Fazal laughed. 'The alternative is to die out having never left this planet and that just isn't exciting.'

*

Emma got high in her atrium office. It was an old Victorian palm house she'd had installed on top of a skyscraper on the banks of the River Thames in London. Inside, it looked like a set from Jurassic Park with oversized palms, flaming lobster claws and Cobra lilies. Ivy dripped off everything and it was hot, humid and steamy.

Round about stood weed plants at various stages of development. Some had green leaves while others looked more purple and orange. One was so covered in chrystals it looked like white cotton candy on a stick.

Here and there were also Emma's work stations – a meditation cushion here, a yoga mat there, a hammock stretched between two palm trees. An ice tub and a cedar sauna stood by the edge of a plunge pool at the base of beautiful waterfalls.

A few parakeets flew over and landed on a low-hanging bough that drooped over the pool. They called back and forth, chattering to each other over the hubbub of the water then flew off with a few wing beats and disappeared into the dense canopy.

The wooden door to the sauna opened outwards and Emma stepped out, her body glistening and steaming. Without a pause, she climbed up the steps of the ice bath and lowered herself into it, exhaling until her shoulders, neck and head disappeared under the resettling ice.

Minutes passed. The parakeets returned. One flapped down then two then the whole gang joined them, preening themselves and chatting.

*

Underwater, the bird calls were muffled to practically nothing. Emma wasn't listening anyway. She was inside the maze of her mind, chasing an idea so quick, so elusive and yet she was sure so valuable that she needed to have it, had needed it ever since it popped into her mind that one winter's day long ago.

This was where she came to think. Her mind raced along nicely riding the THC wave with a few thousand micrograms of CBD to take off the edge. She'd taken some 80% dark chocolate along with a bulletproof coffee ten minutes before getting in the sauna and the caffeine was rushing along nicely.

The silence, the slight pressure, the millions of prickles from the icy water all over her skin, coupled with the drugs in her blood, provided her with the rocket fuel she needed to push through the next series of problems.

She was working on a tricky one to do with lowering the impedance while simultaneously increasing the charge-carrying capacity of the nanochip's interface. The poly-ethylenedioxythiopene doped with polystyrene sulfonate was showing promising signs, but Emma wasn't sure about its long-term biocompatibility.

She was halfway to the solution by the time she hit five minutes. She was aiming for seven. That would make it three days in a row.

Six minutes and thirty-six seconds in and she was about to grasp the tail of something real when she was hit by a massive tonic-clonic seizure. She could feel it coming on. It was like she was fading into it. She tried to stand up, to pull herself out of the spiral but she knew there was nothing she could do.

*

Fazal was pissed. The voice in his head clanged alongside his footsteps on the wrought-iron steps as he climbed the spiral staircase up to Emma's fucking weird-ass office with her stupid fucking plants, the fucking hypocritical cunt. He stormed in, knocking over a couple of weed plants on the landing. He looked around wildly.

Nothing. No Emma sitting in one of her weird little nests. He even checked the one on top of the huge air filtration system where she'd built a depressing kind of bed out of blankets and beanbags. He kicked over a bong coming back down the ladder, swore then stopped moving when he heard splashing water. He looked at the ice tub and his heart just stopped.

A pale bony back breached the surface like a weird kind of whale but it was unmoving and he knew shit was fucked up.

He looked down on himself as he took long strides over to the tub and plunged his arms in, wrapping them around his friend and pulling her out. The whole tub came over in the process but he didn't feel the icy water cascade up his legs or the bang on his elbow as he fell back. All he could feel was the cold, slippery corpse in his arms. Emma's lips were purple. Fazal pride open one of her eyelids and she stared at him unseeing.

He felt her neck. No pulse. He shook her and yelled at her. She wasn't breathing so he got to his knees and bent over her and brought his mouth down onto hers.

To perform rescue breaths correctly, you're supposed to pinch the person's nose while keeping their head tilted back. Breathe into their mouth, making a seal with your mouth on theirs. Each breath you give them should be about one second long.

After five rescue breaths, do CPR. To do CPR, place the heel of one hand on the casualty's chest and your other hand on top of it. Push down firmly about five or six centimeters. You want to aim for about a hundred and twenty compressions per minute.

Doing CPR to the tune of 'Stayin Alive' by the BeeGees can help you keep pace. Repeat thirty chest compressions and two rescue breaths until the person starts breathing normally.

Fazal didn't know that. He only knew was what he'd seen on Netflix and he was lucky as fuck because after a couple of puffs, Emma coughed and Fazal's mouth filled with warm watery spit. He fell back, coughing and spitting.

'What the fuck, dude,' said Emma, sitting up and wiping her mouth then covering herself with her arms and turning away from him.

He tried to speak but the adrenaline was making it hard to put thoughts together so he staggered over to the bar by the pool and drank straight from a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue. Emma pulled on a blue onesie and sparked up a joint. Fazal took another long drink then remembered why he'd come here.

He no longer felt the rage that fuelled him before, when he'd found out from his lawyer that she was cutting him out of his own company, he'd seen red. Now, he only felt tired and wrung out as if he'd just run a marathon. He was starting to wonder if it was all just a mistake.

*

The truth was, Emma had been planning to cut Fazal out of the company since day one. She had no room in her plan for a partner. He served a purpose and that was it. So, an hour and a half before Fazal saved her life, Emma had completely written him off, electronically severing his ownership and rights in the company in a smoothly-executed, methodical coup.

*

Fazal reeled into his automated roadster. He felt sick as it whisked him out of town through the industrial district to the airport where the runway stuck out like a tongue into the bay. He read his own obituary on social, flicking back and forth between profiles while simultaneously watching his portfolios crumble.

He watched his dollar value crash almost as fast as his reputation. By the time he climbed aboard his Learjet and collapsed into the cream leather seat, he'd lost two hundred and fifty billion dollars.

Flying over the Atlantic, he drank half a bottle of Blue Label, puked and cried himself to sleep.

*

When Fazal woke, he felt hungover and depressed. He'd gone to the only place he could think of - the only place where he was still in control: his Scottish launch base, Ground Control. Driving up in an old Land Rover Defender, he bumped over the grassy turf and potholes in the old access road.

There, standing silhouetted against the horizon was his very first rocket, Major Tom. He smiled a little, seeing the sunrise glinting off its smooth silver sides.

*

The launch pad was long disused and he shone his phone on the steps as he started to climb. By the time he got half way, he'd made his decision. He wasn't going to lie down and take it. He was Fazal. He'd killed a guy and gotten away with it, damn it. Who the hell did she think she was trying to outmanoeuver him? He was born for this moment. It was his future to reach out and take by the throat.

He was running, taking the steps three at a time. He knew why he'd come here. He could see it in his head: under the pilot's seat in the nose, a stashed phone full of crypto and kill codes for all the accounts.

*

The pilot's seat was positioned in such a way that he had to lower himself into it and almost fully lie down. He looked up at a bank of monitors and fumbled under the seat. For a heartstopping moment, he couldn't find it, then his fingers touched plastic and his hope was restored.

He tapped his way through the security systems and in ninety seconds he was soon gloating, sitting on top of a mountain of crypto with the kill switch firmly in his digital grip. He reflected for a second, a little surprised that he felt no doubt nor sadness at all. Instead, he felt a hot rush of dopamine as he mashed his finger down on the button.

Nothing.

He hit it again, sending the signal that would regain control. But even as he did so he knew something was wrong.

Very gently, a tremble whispered through the seat under his back. Or was it just his imagination? No, there it again, the slightest vibration. But this time it was more like a shudder that juddered through the whole cockpit. Lights blinked on in the monitor screens. A little motor somewhere whirred into life.

Fazal reached up and turned the handle to open the door. It didn't budge. He jostled it, trying to jimmy it loose but it was definitely locked. He took it in both hands and twisted it, gritting his teeth and making a small squeak with the effort.

'Fazal,' said a voice through the speakers. It was Emma. She was there, on the monitors. He could see a wall of plants behind her. 'I could say I didn't want it to happen like this.'

'You are so fucked,' said Fazal.

Emma smiled. Her eyes were bright. She leaned forward and blew a kiss at the camera. The screens went blank and Fazal was left on his own, staring at his hazy reflection. Then all the lights went off, a terrible roar filled his ears and he felt himself begin to jitter and shake.

The Lizard of Oz

From an early age, Jay Burns knew the truth could destroy you. He witnessed his dad sacrifice his job, his friends, and finally, his family for the truth and get nothing in return but crippling debt, ridicule, and eventually suicide.

Jay wasn't going to repeat his father's mistakes, but he was as dedicated, if not more so, to exposing the truth, regardless of cost. For Jay, the truth wasn't a choice; you couldn't take it or leave it. Truth was like oxygen or carbon – a fundamental building block of life itself.

It all started back in 2020, during the first pandemic when Jay and his sister were kids, too young to understand what depression was or psychosis or divorce. All Jay remembered was the screaming and crying and dark clouds over the dinner table.

When he was older, his mom sat him down and told him about how his father, laid off, had fallen victim to conspiracy theories online. She'd sought help from friends and professionals, but her words only fuelled his paranoid convictions.

She pleaded with him to stay, but he left on Christmas Eve, screaming about pedophile rings and child sacrifices and a cabal of global elite. It was his sickness, she said, an addiction.

She did her best, bringing up two kids on a nurse's salary during the Great Recession, but Jay was raised mostly online, sitting in front of a screen until she came home late at night. He learned fast, searching for his dad, finding plenty of surrogates, and going deeper and deeper on his quest for the truth.

He became an expert at exposing bullshit. His intuition led him to some of the new millennium's greatest scoops, and everyone clamored to know who he was. He hacked under the handle toto, and it didn't take long for everyone to know his moniker.

With fame came scrutiny, and he had the Feds, Mossad, and the MSS on his ass by the time he was sixteen. But he also caught the interest of other big players, the rich privateers of the silicon bubble. And that's where Mary Osmond came in.

Mary Osmond became the world's first trillionaire when she was 57. Her company – Oz – had its ignominious start selling clothes online from a single garage. Twenty years later and she was regarded as the most successful internet entrepreneur of all time, with ventures spanning e-commerce, entertainment, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, healthcare, politics, defense, and space exploration.

The rumors abounded concerning the world's wealthiest person. She was relentless, ruthless, and agonizingly secretive. The more the world wanted to know, the more she retreated. She built a vast complex on a 10,000-acre estate in Northern California and battened down the hatches, growing richer and more powerful every year.

The only concession she gave was a single gathering every year, a party held on the anniversary of the Oz launch. Two hundred and fifty of the world's most influential people were invited inside the walls of her kingdom. Behind the fences and walls, guard towers and searchlights, the world's most influential people gathered for one night of secrets and revelry.

Very little was actually known about these parties. There were strict non-disclosures signed by every attendee, and the entire place was off-grid. A digital blackout encircled the site that ran on an internal, impregnable network.

But this did nothing to quell the rumors. The internet was aflame with conspiracies, from New World Order to sex rings and death cults. Jay could remember his dad, including Mary's parties often and viciously in his dinner-table sermons.

The more adamantly people claimed to know what went on, the more you could discount their voices. Amid the hubbub and chaos, there was never actually proof; no hard evidence came to light. Nothing except the golden suitcase every attendee received, containing a golden bracelet and a set of purple hooded robes.

A Saudi prince posted a photo of his suitcase, robes, and bracelet, and millions saw the posts before it was deleted. Mary neither confirmed nor denied having invited the prince, but the story stuck around, spreading Illuminati jokes in its wake.

Jay Burns didn't believe in the Illuminati. Instead, he saw the whole thing as an ugly necessity of modern-day society. No one wanted it to be true, but powerful people need to be allowed to make decisions with no accountability. Elections, senate hearings, the free press – it was all there to provide the public with an illusion of power over their leaders.

But an illusion was all it was. The powerful people ran the show, and that's the way of the world. The sooner you accepted that fact, the easier it was to move forward. Jay didn't care about power; all he cared about was the truth. He'd go after a pawn just as fast as a king.

To be honest, he spared very little thought to Mary Osmond or her gatherings and was relatively surprised, therefore, when an obsequious Ozbot knocked on his door and delivered a golden suitcase one sunny afternoon in early July.

On Friday the 13th, a self-driving car drove Jay to the airport, where a self-flying plane waited on the runway. After a four-hour flight across the country, he transferred to a pilotless helicopter, which whisked him up the West coastline.

He looked out of the window at the breakers and beaches. The sun was beginning to set over the water, and the sky went from dark blue down to an orange horizon. The helicopter veered inland, and they passed over green hills covered in shrubs and lone trees. Then they were flashing over towering redwoods as they approached Mary's estate.

The bracelet Jay wore glowed, chirped, and grew warm on his wrist. He looked out the window and saw a huge gap cut through the forest like a firebreak. There was a fence, a wall, then the forest again. The helicopter began to descend.

They landed in front of a giant mansion straight out of The Great Gatsby. The house was lit up and made the giant redwood trees around it looked small. Ten thousand windows stared down at Jay as he stepped down onto the lawn. As the rotors threshed to a stop, he heard a band playing and the sound of people laughing in the warm air.

He climbed the stairs to the huge oak doors which stood open. Into view came the world's most important people. In the glittering ballroom were the richest, most infamous, celebrated individuals that the twenty-first century could muster.

Jay saw rappers, movie stars, and politicians, the heads of industry, banking, and media, CEOs, artists, and innovators, all mingling under a glittering network of service drones that were zipping around, carrying trays of champagne. Over to one side, a jazz band was playing; their brass instruments caught the light.

The band stopped playing when Jay appeared. There was silence and everyone looked at him. And there she was, Mary Osmond, wearing a big smile, bearing down on him in a gold pantsuit with a purple cravat at her throat. She extended a hand, and he shook it and didn't see anyone else in the room.

She totally engrossed him. Her bright green eyes trapped him and held him. She was so happy to see him. They were all waiting to meet him. He found himself floating through the crowd as Mary told her guests all about him. 

He felt a little dizzy after finishing his third glass of champagne and Mary introduced him to the Zoltar franchise director Forest Applebaum. Jay couldn't tell if it was because he was face to face with his boyhood hero, the champagne, or the immensity of the situation, but he found he had to take a seat on the golden tile floor and lower his head between his legs. 

He felt hands under his arms. He was pulled up and into the center of the room. A group of people worth over a trillion dollars helped sit him down in a chair. Mary stood before him, and a drone lowered down, carrying a plate.

'Take this and eat,' said Mary. Jay tasted it. It was good. It tasted like chicken but with a softer, smoother, creamier texture. Another drone descended, this one balancing a cup.

'Take this and drink,' said Mary and Jay drank from the cup. The drink was lukewarm and thicker than water with an unusual taste, slightly metallic but not unpleasant. Jay felt a little better and leaned back in the chair. Mary addressed the rest of the people. Jay noticed the room was totally silent.

'My friends,' said Mary, her voice loud and authoritative. 'We meet once again. The earth has revolved around the sun once more, and we have progressed along with our plan. With your help, we have succeeded more than any previous year.

'The people are crumbling. Their freedom is shrinking. Our power is gaining and gaining and gaining. All over the world, strife and conflict reign supreme. Humans are being battered by natural disasters, pestilence, conflict and war.

'Our work is succeeding. We have nearly taken control!' There were sounds of triumph. People clapped and pounded their feet.

'So, my friends, we gather here today to honor the memory of those who came before us and to give thanks for their ultimate sacrifice. We are here to renew our faith so that in turn, we may renew our crushing control over this world.'

Jay couldn't think straight. His head was heavy on his neck. The room seemed to weave back and forth like he was on a ship in the middle of the ocean.

'Will you join me, brothers and sisters, in sacrifice and renewal. Will you join me unto this last?'

A great hissing rose around him, and Jay blinked and tried to focus. Everyone seemed to be standing. They were all wearing robes; purple hoods hid their faces. He tried to speak, to rise, but he couldn't move in the chair.

'My friends, look.' Mary towered above him, her voice emanating from beneath the lowered hood. 'Look at this pitiful example of humanity. Look at the fear in its eyes. Can you see? Look where their measly endeavors get them. This specimen is one of the most ardent believers in what they call truth.

'And look where it's got you, Jay Burns. Look where your master, the truth, leads you now. The truth is no master. The truth is our slave. It serves us, bends to us, breaks to us.'

Mary reached up and pulled down her hood. Spines protruded from the top of her head. The skin on her jaw, cheeks, and snout had become shiny green scales. A forked tongue flickered out between rows of sharp teeth. Her green eyes were now the large unblinking eyes of a reptilian monster.

Jay tried to run. His limbs wouldn't respond. His eyes moved and they flicked back and forth. The circle closed. But the people... Each one was pulling down its hood, looking at him with the glassy evil stare of those too-huge saurian eyes. Their forked tongues flicked in and out.