Cities can be built from ashes and madness

@"Viking King"

Calloway

With the young Miss away on extended leave, it seemed as good a time as any to burn bridges and watch the entire thing go up in flames and smoke. She had long since outlived her usefulness anyways and while Calloway could not guarantee that she would not be able to bounce back from this blow, the doctor could at least assure that her assets would be severely crippled. Perhaps she would be able to come back some day but hopefully, that would be very far in the future. It was possible, too, that she might simply grow bored in the meantime and turn her attention elsewhere.

This possibility was a slim one but still had to be considered.

At the moment, the doctor was busy in the company's main control room -the one on Manta Carlos anyways- making sure that everything of importance could be sabotaged or drained and moved well off the grid. Technology was not Calloway's strongest field but after a while of hanging around in this sort of company, it was difficult to not pick something up. It helped, too, to have high enough clearance to know how to shuffle operations around.

The first communications to go dead, for sure, had to be the off world ones. The long distance ones, the ones which defied space and time, also needed to fade into silence. As useful as those were, Calloway saw too many enemies lurking on the other ends of those. Most of the doctor's authority was terrestrial based, and on that distant blue continent life times away. Well, that was of no concern anymore. Calloway had finished all possible business there. Time to move on.

Before any of those ties could be severed, however, first it had to be decided how much damage should be done. While the thought of having nearly unlimited funds was enough to make anybody delirious, Calloway thought that such a thing would only invite trouble. Earth had a limited economy and the presence of too much money would only serve to make everybody suspicious. Yet at the same time, there had to be enough money to sustain the company for a little longer, now that its main branches of income were being pruned.

I wonder how many of these businesses were actually only steps away from being legitimate.

The good ones should to be saved. The bad ones had to disappear. At least, there seemed to be enough employees who cared more about getting a regular paycheck than who they served.

Calloway

There was something soothing about taking apart an economic hydra from the inside out. Maybe it was the knowledge that its manic owner was too far removed from terrestrial operations to be an immediate threat. Or maybe it was because Calloway simply liked destroying things, and this was such a lovely opportunity to capitalize on that trait.

Legitimate, legitimate, probably illegitimate -what's this about possessed stuffed animals? Definitely illegitimate. Illegitimate, legitimate -no, I don't think I want anything to do with that at all. Probably should not enable people to make planetary nukes when they only have one planet anyways.

The doctor stiffened slightly as somebody spoke, having not heard that person enter the room. That was another problem that Calloway had with this organization. They would go ahead and casually cure childhood osteogensis imperfect and then glance at adult cases, shrug, and move on as if there was nothing that they could do. And no, Calloway was not bitter at all about that except for the fact that it would have been nice to gorge out somebody's eyes over the issue. Or eardrums. Stab somebody in the eardrums and see how they liked having substandard hearing.

"Technically, the base overseer would be in charge," Calloway drawled, turning to the person. "If you have a problem, kindly take with him. Although, I make no guarantees about how effective that would be. He is rather indisposed at the moment." Being dead might or might not have had something to do with it. Of course, then there were also necromancers. But really, Calloway would prefer that the offworlders would remain dead. Too many loose ends otherwise.

The doctor studied the man for a moment. "Doctor Leonhart, is it?" Calloway guessed. It would have been impossible -not to mention useless- to remember the faces of all of the company's peons but Calloway had made a point of remembering the ones that the young miss had set aside as being special.

Calloway

"Unfortunately," Calloway drawled, "management is preoccupied with some sort of issue on the frontier." Frontier meaning whichever places not already so deep in the company's pocket that they might as well be sewn in. "It was rather short notice, as you might imagine."

Turning back to the monitors, the doctor continued severing the networks. "Seeing as I've yet to meet anybody who actually is fond of management, I figured that nobody would mind all that much if a number of assets were to change hands." Leonhart certainly seemed indifferent. Though, he had probably been among the employees who had been kept in the dark about the company's actual activities. It was never a good idea to let locals know that their alien overlords had already touched down and had initiated the assimilation process. The cat was probably out of the bag at this point, however.

Glancing at Leonhart as he began speaking to himself, Calloway briefly wondered why the young miss had decided to fill up this branch of the company with people who could potentially take her down. It seemed like such a dangerous game that only a child would think of it.

"I was thinking of going legitimate but legitimacy is boring," the doctor said in an absent tone. "Maybe reform into some sort of pharmaceutical company and keep the more questionable experiments under wraps. Putting out enough miracle cures would probably detract attention from minor mishaps as well."

"If you're going to walk away, now is a good time to do so. Oh, and I suppose that if you have it in your mind to stop me, I'd have to take us both out." Because Calloway had no idea what kind of idiot thought a self destruct button would be a good idea but provided Leonhart cooperated, that would be the next feature to go. Having one of those around was simply inviting trouble.

Calloway

To be frank, Calloway couldn't care less about whether or not Leonhart was some kind of deranged maniac. After all, there were probably plenty of people out there who already thought that Calloway was some kind of deranged maniac. The validity of these claims were utterly irrelevant. As long as it didn't interfere with work, what did those little details matter?

The doctor spared a sharp nod for Leonhart's wise support. It would have been a shame to end so much potential over such a silly reason like human uncertainty. "As long as you maintain a reasonable level of secrecy, I don't believe I would have a problem with any of your activities." Previous experiences, too were in Leonhart's favor. From what Calloway had seen, the Earth siders were always more stable and level headed than offworlders. It was a bit pathetic, considering that most offworlders came from far more technologically advanced societies. It seemed that at some point, natural selection began to work in reverse.

At least their technology was still good, no matter how lacking in sense their creators were -because really, a self destruct button? What kind of science fiction was that taken from? The whole place was saturated in the stuff, devices whose workings wouldn't be discovered until possibly centuries into Earth's future, chemicals and formulas that any self respecting scientist would lie, maim, and murder for. The doctor wondered which ones to "discover" first and how those discoveries could be made to seem plausible.

Or should they wait for a little bit longer? The funds that the company was left with were still more than enough to keep it going for months if not years more. Not forever, and certainly if they were to make any real progress, that would eat up their resources all the more quickly.

Still, at Leonhart's comment, a slow, self satisfied smile stretched across Calloway's face. "I have always wondered what people would do for the chance to have powers of their own," the doctor said. "To be able to gain powers at will. There is a certain continent that I worked in once, where such a thing was relatively commonplace, due to the nature of their magic, and not all that well regulated. The residents there are genetically different from humans but there are enough similarities that some of my research there could be carried over."

Calloway

The redheaded doctor scoffed at the suggestion, not because it was a stupid idea, but because of what they had to work with. "Doctor Leonhart, I assure you that anybody who was actually familiar with the previous administration will already find us to be quite humanitarian in comparison. I doubt that we would have any real issues with convincing people of our, ah, good intentions. The problem would most likely be more with assuring them that their interests are secured."

Mentally, Calloway was already running through all of the necessary safety precautions that they would have to work in. No more disposable workers, sadly. That was the downside of being limited to only one small world. At the very least, the earthsiders were often alluringly capable so that was a benefit which might very well outweigh the loss.

"Oh yes, and I suppose we would have to find a nice division to move all of our espers into. Get some force fields up, eventually. Sniff out the moles. Establish some mode of legitimacy among the remaining workers by virtue of not jumping to brainwashing or mind control as the first solution for everything." People tended to become suspicious of that sort of thing, after all. Whatever happened to normal psychological warfare?

And there goes the sword of Damocles. Calloway smiled in dark satisfaction as the programs for the self destruct function were deleted. Wonderful, now the real work could begin.

"If you have anybody you would like to recommend for something, this would be the time to say so," the redheaded said, focusing full attention on Leonhart now. "If not, I am reasonably certain that my old associates survived the purge."