It was starting to dawn on me, with a cold, creeping sense of dread, that this might end up kind of being a real actual job that I had to do. I wasn’t certain. Maybe the first few days were going to be busy. But things were starting to swing towards that interpretation for sure.

  I couldn’t just walk out of Liberation Hall. This wasn’t going to be something where I introduced myself and took attendance and then just left. And I didn’t really think it would be that, but I was sort of hoping that it might be amenable to that kind of modification.

  See, this was going to be our weekly Covenant gathering, and the entire point of them being in this room was not for them to hang out together in these fancy chairs, but specifically to talk to me.

  I was really polishing up my diplomatic language in Liberation Hall. Something about the grandeur of the place brought it out in me. So for example, I was saying things like "what's the best way that I can help you all do your jobs right now?" instead of "Yo what the fuck am I even supposed to be doing here?”

  It was hilarious to imagine how these elite heroes were even processing this moment right now. They’d never had a manager before. Dad was a superhero for decades. He knew the game. He was basically just in charge in a more clean and codified and formal way. But this was like having a manager. Nobody liked that.

  Especially people with egos this big, who had more than earned them.

  During these weekly assemblies of the world‘s greatest heroes, they presented on what work they had been doing since the last time we met, and outlined the goals they were still pursuing, expected timelines, and what additional assistance they may or may not need to carry out their duties. We also discussed the ongoing state of global security, which was usually supposed to come from the Chairman, but this time I was somewhat excusably unprepared, and I hoped that that excuse would last me at least the next 12 times. And, as always, there were more things for me to sign.

  Apparently, there were some things they needed my permission to do. My approval. That was insane because I felt like I needed their permission to use the fucking restroom like it was a public high school when I was around them. For pretty much my entire life up until now, there was only one person who ever had to ask my permission for anything, and I almost always told her yes. I had an Arthurian knight, renowned across the English speaking world for his purity and devotion and heroism, asking me with a baffling amount of what appeared to be genuine respect and deference,

  “Sire, four months have elapsed since the last instance of open violence, but we still have suspicions that there are laboratories that remain unfound. May we continue our investigation into the Null Society?”

  Why the hell would you ask me that? Yes, Sir Galahad, you may.

  I’m sure this will come as a shock to everyone, but most of the shit these heroes were talking about went way over my head and I could just nod along and assume that they were doing what they were supposed to be doing.

  Brother Wave had been monitoring the growth of a colony of possibly extraterrestrial phosphorus-eating plankton in the Gulf of Mexico and speculated that there might be signs of intelligence there, in which case my approval would be necessary to engage in diplomatic relations, and in what capacity, considering this would possibly be a new extraterrestrial civilization. Anton Antichaos, with the assistance of his protégés in the Sonata family — God, they threw the best parties in high school — had taken down a cult of warlocks attempting to summon the greater demon Abbadon. Kid Klaus had been informed of some impossibly convoluted plot involving the hijacking of a particle accelerator that saw a team up of the supervillains Bogeyman, Androxx, M.E.N.A.C.E, Gold Digger, Gold Digger II, Nicht-Nicht, and Manovore, who he defeated by himself (Jesus Christ) though some ended up evading capture. Yan-Jani was just meditating atop her sanctuary in Nepal and “observing the cosmic tides”, and I had no idea if that was her being incredibly lazy or doing the most important possible thing she could be doing. And on it went. I didn’t even really have the capacity to remember all of this. Not like I was ever fully focused in the first place. I'd have taken more stimulants in the morning if I had known this would happen.

  The most urgent development that came up, fresh off the monitors this morning, was the emergence of an apparently recurring nuisance called Sun Wukong. A semi-divine monkey king from Chinese myth who was obsessed with martial arts, Sun Wukong would appear in crowded locations where he knew the world would be watching, this time in Guangzhou, and then deliberately caused chaos until a worthy opponent would agree to fight him and therefore provide him enough amusement that he was willing to leave us alone. He wasn’t killing people or anything, he didn’t seem evil as much as selfish and chaotic, but he was severely halting economic productivity in China's fourth largest city and his pranks had already begun to cause some severe accidents.

  Sun Wukong had been up to no good for a couple of hours now and since he had delivered a monumentally embarrassing smackdown to Chinese hero Red Protector that took less than two minutes, no cape had risen to the occasion. He was very powerful and wouldn’t be satisfied with boxing just any old superhero. My heroes now wanted to go in before any more damage was caused. We had dealt with him before, and it was general consensus that only The Good Neighbor, Kid Klaus, or sometimes Incarnate (unavailable on account of being dead) were capable of satisfying his thirst for combat, but it was guaranteed to waste a significant chunk of their time, considering all of his tricks like disappearing and splitting into clones from his hair.

  According to protocol, the Covenant needed the signed approval of the Chairman in order to enter Chinese territory. I mean yeah? I guess? It sounded like something important was happening there. I almost wanted to say they had my permission to do every single thing they wanted to do ever, but I both knew that wasn’t going to fly and somehow knew better even in my rattled state to say that in a room full of bewildering strangers that included a giant talking whale.

  Wait, was I supposed to talk to the Chinese about this first? Was that the protocol? Who would I talk to? Just call the president of China? Whatever. Probably didn’t matter. It was the Covenant. Anyone should be fine with them hanging around.

  Okay, I wasn’t really fine with them hanging around, like at the moment, but that was because of my own shit. If I were being attacked by some divine martial art arts monkey, I probably would, though. I would very much like the Covenant to be around in that situation.

  Damn, I kind of missed China. When was the last time I’d been? You really just couldn’t get mushu that was even remotely comparable in the States. Would this job give me an excuse to go to China? Like for work? What an insanely stupid question Percy. You would have way more excuses to go to China whenever you wanted if you were still unemployed.

  Yes, I might've been distracting myself. In truth, none of this was as pressing to me as the stolen glances I would throw at Lydia Liberty out of the corner of my eye.

  It was really tripping me out how restrained she was being. How much she was holding back her obvious disdain. And look, I wasn’t completely serious about worrying if she was going to throw me into space. Not completely. She was a consummate professional, and she at least respected my father.

  But I figured she’d be getting a little nasty with me. There were so many subtle and acceptable ways for high status women to get nasty. Even in the most pristine and professional of environments. So I was expecting an exchanging of barbs. I do great with exchanging barbs. Maybe the best in the world. But I don’t do great with silence. With subtlety. With decorum. You could say I thrived the most in environments where I’m seconds away from a drink being thrown in my face

  And I was leaving myself so open to that. A burnt out fuckup who’s liquefied all of his brain cells over the past decade and had to have every aspect of this job explained to him as if he were a child. It was almost too easy. I mean you’d take shots at someone even if you liked them in this circumstance. And God knows she did not like me. And I wasn’t without empathy about this. Could you imagine what an asshole I must look like from her perspective? I almost felt bad she had to breathe the same air as me.

  But instead, it was like I was waiting for a hit that never came. Like an Ari Aster movie where the vibe makes you expect a jump scare every 30 seconds.

  It was clear that she was the logistical backbone of our operations. She maybe should have even been the leader of the Covenant. Oh that was my decision, wasn’t it? Not that I ever would make her the leader. For so many reasons. But if I were theoretically just fully principled about this job, I might.

  Lydia's abilities were not put to use actively in the field the way that others were. She actually couldn't just teleport people around wherever and whenever she wanted. See, whenever a Liberty used their abilities, they were essentially playing Russian Roulette with the very laws of physics, and much worse things than a single bullet could come out of that chamber.

  Much worse things.

  So how did she make herself useful? Well, she could take time to carefully observe the “telluric stability” of a given point before creating a standing portal there. Her portals connected to fixed points where their counterpart had been placed, but could also be shifted to connect to any of her other portals that have been placed across the world. She spent most of her day in the Tower’s control room, just fiddling with the settings on these holes in space-time, like an air traffic controller managing a network of worldwide instant transport for capes to get within striking distance of wherever they needed to be.

  Portals. That remained. Even while she was asleep. Across the entire planet. How were people not kissing her feet? Did they know how fucking insane that was? She could barely do two at once when I last saw her and she was already on track to being the greatest cape of our generation. This wasn’t growth. This was ascension.

  What did it take you to get here? I wondered.

  I hope she has a boyfriend. Oh that would be such a relief. Or a husband. Maybe one that would break my kneecaps and force me to watch him fuck her in front of me.

  No. No. I don’t want that at all.

  Why am I thinking about that? Ew. Fuck. No.

  Something was bothering me this morning about my suddenly explosive relevance and fame. Someone dug up a recipe I had posted online in 2020 for red wine braised short rib and mushroom risotto and it went viral because of the understandable humor of such an important figure in global security having at one point posted a cute little recipe online when he was 23 years old. I get it. By the time dinner rolled around on the East Coast, it was likely that hundreds, if not thousands, of households would be enjoying my risotto recipe for the meme.

  Now, I was proud of that recipe. It was very good. For what it was. But I was a younger man then. My recipe had since changed in subtle but significant ways. I cringed when I saw the version that was floating around. It just wasn’t restaurant quality stuff. Too much salt, no fennel, no shallots, wrong kind of butter. And so for the sake of everyone who would be cooking this tonight, and my own reputation a little bit, I really wanted to correct the record. I really wanted to get ahead of the story and say “Hey guys. Glad everyone’s excited about my risotto recipe. But I just wanted to let you know here is an updated version that I currently use.”

  But here’s the thing. Everyone would get mad at me. Everyone would get mad at me. Because they would look at this clownish unserious decadent boy king who is taking time out of his first day and the most important job in the world to post online about recipes.

  But what was I going to do? I didn’t actually remember where that was posted, so I couldn’t edit it as it appeared on the original website. Furthermore, it was a screenshot of the page that was going viral, so even if I somehow managed to alter the recipe as it appeared on the webpage, most people would still be going by the screenshot. Could I ask Lila to post about this? To say that she knows I’ve since updated the recipe, as my friend, and she is willing to share it with her followers to correct the record? She was pretty famous. But honestly, she might scold me for this too.

  The meeting seemed to reach its natural conclusion after Kaslan was given the go ahead to teleport into China and I very quickly ducked out of Liberation Hall and had Sebi find me the closest room where I could just duck in and take a breather. Also a couple Klonopin, which I had forgotten to take in the excitement of entering Utopia Tower, and a few more big swigs from my flask. But mostly the breather.

  I needed to get out of here. Just for a little. I knew I had a board meeting at some point today and there were several things I technically needed to do eventually, but this place was making my head spin.

  I asked Sebi to pull up my communications and see if I had any important meetings or requests for meetings that would take me outside Utopia Tower or preferably outside of Manhattan entirely so that I could look like I was doing something important at work while also getting the fuck out of here and not having to look at Lydia Liberty.

  Okay, let’s see what we have here.

  I saw just the one.

  Perfect. This would be a nice break and make me look like I was really taking initiative and staying on top of things so that people wouldn’t bother me about what I was doing.

  And it looked like they could make room for me in an hour and a half, so I could get some breakfast and take a short nap ahead of time.

  The flight to Washington D.C. was actually pretty delightful. Gorgeous blue skies, the cinematic view of the Capitol in all its glory beneath me as I broke past the clouds. My stomach was lurching a little bit, but the Unibird had my back and I didn’t even come close to throwing up.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Wait. Him? Did we actually elect him again? Right. Right. I forgot that.

  Okay. Maybe I should’ve planned for this a little bit more. Hoping we can just vibe for a bit.

  I was given a warm greeting in the east wing by our colorful President, several of his advisors, and some staff photographers eager to get a shot of us shaking hands.

  I’d met presidents before, but never when I was the one they were supposed to be paying attention to. They were all eyeing me very carefully. Of course they were. How could you not be nervous around a twenty-eight year old nepo baby fuckup who suddenly inherited one of the most powerful positions on Earth and was now arguably the individual most in charge of defending mankind?

  Well most of them were. He seemed pretty chill about the whole thing, in the unremarkably not-chill way that was his trademark. Just got right into it. I supposed I could respect that?

  “Percy Domino. They call him Mr. Per-cy Domino. Now that’s a guy that likes to party.”

  “That’s me. Good morning, Mr. President.”

  This was not going to be relaxing.

  “We love Utopia. We love the capes. We love Dirk Domino. Good old Dirk Domino. But sometimes, sometimes Utopia is ripping us off. $40 billion for internal urban security this year alone. I’ll tell you what Percy, I almost wanna say: we’re not paying.”

  Let the record show that I came into this meeting intending to be professional and diplomatic.

  “Yeah I don’t think you’re actually going to do that. But feel free to reach out to government relations if you want to break down our contracts item by item. You might find you’re actually getting a pretty good deal, sir.”

  “I’ll tell you what Percy, there’s something important you can do for me that I’m gonna need you to do. I'm going to need you to lift the air embargo over Greater Wallachia. They call it Big Wallachia. Wa-lla-chi-a. Greatest there is. And the air embargo is no good. You gotta lift the embargo. Cause me and Dracula I can tell we’re gonna get along great and he’s been treated very unfairly.”

  Uh.

  “Everyone is saying Mr. President, you gotta live for 200 years. You gotta live for 1000 years. You’d look great with fangs. You gotta start turning into a cloud of bats. Flying bats. You don’t really see clouds of bats anymore now and they never turn into a regular cloud. It’s always clouds of bats. You have to wonder if each bat is them and they have double minds, triple minds now or just a single bat and the other bats are more like their followers or their children. There’s only one way to figure this out. I need to figure it out. I need to be a vampire. Percy Domino, I want to be a vampire.”

  What the fuck?

  Where am I?

  Was I actually still asleep in that empty conference room?

  No I wasn’t. I was very awake and I was having a very real conversation about bats with the President.

  Here’s what he was getting at. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Lord of the Dead, Count Vladimir Tepes Dracula, took advantage of the chaotic power vacuum left in its wake, and the demonic forces he commanded quickly took over the governments of many former Soviet bloc countries, several even willingly bending the knee, forming an unholy state known as Greater Wallachia.

  It was now an incredibly fraught political situation, and debates over whether he should be treated like any other supervillain or respected reluctantly as a legitimately sovereign world leader continued to this day. In the present moment, the NATO bloc and their capes had mostly settled for focusing on containing the spread of undeath within Greater Wallachia’s borders.

  So no. I wasn’t going to reverse decades of carefully balanced geopolitical decision-making because the President wanted to join the ranks of the walking damned. Especially for a guy who once said my sister’s Vanity Fair Oscars afterparty look was “mediocre”.

  “No I’m not gonna fucking do that dude.”

  “Percy Domino, you gotta consider it. You gotta consider it.”

  I’d actually met the Grand Duchess Nikita Dracula once, now that I thought about it, at a World Economic Forum event in 2018.. Charming woman, you’d never be able to tell who her dad was if she didn’t bring it up and had normal teeth and a visible shadow. And no. No I didn’t. Even I’m not that stupid. Give me some credit.

  “Sorry to get political, but do you not think binding your soul to the service of Hell for an eternal life preying on the still-living might alienate your more religious base?”

  Why was I even trying to be reasonable here? Was I a fucking moron? This was exactly the kind of shit we made fun of people for.

  Then for a brief moment his eyes narrowed and he seemed to look at me with terrifying lucidity.

  “Mr. Domino, you’ve got a long way to go. Long as I keep feeding them their slop they don’t give a fuck. Oink oink. That’s what they’d say if they were pigs. They love their slop. That’s the thing about Evangelicals, Mr. Domino. I called their bluff. I called their bluff and I’ll call it again. They worship America, Percy. Not God.”

  “Yeah. Yeah I guess so.”

  Well. That was baffling and a little nauseating and not at all what I was trying to get out of this situation. Killed some time though. And maybe people would be proud of me for getting it out of the way.

  Yeah. He went all the way to another city on the first day of his job. Even drove himself. Let’s not bother him for six more days.

  Now we know Utopia has someone at the wheel who is keeping up with the manifold obligations of the Chairman.

  I very quickly learned that people were not, in fact, proud of me for getting it out of the way.

  There I was, just chilling in the empty conference room Sebi had found for me, bouncing a rubber ball against the wall, catching up on this Chinese webcomic I had been reading about a guy who got reincarnated as his wife’s dog, taking a well deserved break after some hard work, when suddenly I got a barrage of angry texts from Lila.

  Percy why did u meet with the fucking President???

  Isn’t that normal to do? Dad would always do that.

  Not RIGHT AWAY. Like TWO seconds into ur job! That makes it look super important to you

  It’s not though you know I’m not like that

  Omg everyone is watching you

  Are u fucking stupid?

  Look what they’re saying

  Come to my office so I can fucking smack you

  Ok that was harsh don’t report me to HR

  But fr fr fr

  fucked up

  What? This was becoming a real “damned if you don’t, damned if you do” situation. I was just trying to get some fresh air and do something that CEOs did and now it’s like everyone would have rather I just did nothing? Tell me that then. I’d rather do that too!

  I could see what she meant though. When I looked at the headlines. Yeah. This was not good.

  Utopia CEO Percy Domino Sends a Clear Message in Immediate Meeting with President: This is the New America

  It’s Time to Put the ‘Apolitical’ Myth to Rest

  Utopia Chairman Cozies Up To President on First Day of Work, Signaling New Agenda

  The Rightward Turn of America’s Young Men Needs To Be Discussed

  Tapping the Sign: There Are No Good Billionaires

  America’s Unexpected Savior Rises When We Need Him Most

  Domino Heir and New Utopia CEO Just Met With the President. Here’s Why That Should Concern You.

  I literally threw my phone against the wall. Why was the media like this? Why did they have to fucking read into everything? Like in what world can you just determine everything about another person from one action like this? Why was everything that I did being taken so goddamn fucking seriously?

  See, I get why this kind of thing would be funny but honestly, it was touching on something that did piss me off.

  Here’s the thing. You want to insult me? Go ahead. I love that shit. Let’s get into it. Cancel me? Cool, not a real thing and it will not affect my life whatsoever as long as I maintain minimal contact with coastal 19-year-olds.

  But I hated being interpreted like this. Misunderstood. Like all of a sudden, I was Mr. Big Political Guy with serious agendas. Fuck the fuck off.

  I’d literally never voted. Well except for in 2020 when all of the hot girls decided to get into canvassing for some reason. Oh yeah I got some good pussy out of that old man. Respect. Hope he was doing alright. Wait no. I think I just said that I was going to vote for him and then didn’t because I had to be in Cairo that week.

  Anyway. Yeah. I could clean up this mess. I was going to do that. It was clearly stressing my friend out and maybe it wasn’t my fault, but it was my responsibility.

  I was getting a little tired. Need more energy for this.

  Sniff. Sniff.

  Three lines. That would do it. The pleasant burn in my sinuses jolted me right awake.

  Let’s do this.

  I texted Lila.

  Don’t worry babe I’ll fix it.

  Percy?

  Percy what r u doing nowww

  I asked Sebi if any of the journalists who had written articles about my meeting with the President had reached out to Utopia for comment. Indeed, many had. As always, everybody wants to talk to Percy Domino. I felt like the girl with the biggest tits at the dance.

  I decided to go with the New York Times one because I was pretty sure that was the main newspaper these days. They were the ones who wrote the article about how I was ushering in a new era of a politically engaged Utopia. Reporter by the name of Jacob Bowdin. I told her to send them an email saying that I was available and I got a call back within 20 minutes.

  Here we go. Time to correct the record.

  “Hey Mr. Domino. Thanks for getting back to us so quickly and taking the time to talk to me today. How’s everything holding up with you?”

  “Hey Jacob. You can call me Percy. And you know, it’s going. A lot of big things happening. And everyone’s focusing on the most important ones. Great article by the way.”

  “Um. Thank you, Mr.-“

  “Percy.”

  “Percy. Thank you.”

  “Yeah. Correct punctuation. All the sentences in the right order. I’ve been reading a lot of articles actually. I’ve been really enjoying articles. Article city. Just the kind of thing that gets me through the day.”

  “Right. Glad to hear it. Now I just have a couple questions for you and I’ll let you get on with your day.”.

  “Gladly, Jacob.”

  “There’s been a lot of talk about your meeting with the president this morning. A lot of us are confused at the company appearing to take a much more overtly political stance with your new tenure. Would you mind walking us through what motivated that decision?”

  “Why?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Why am I appearing to take a more overtly political stance? Like walk me through that.”

  “Well, you were seen shaking hands with the President, Percy. On your first day of the new job. A lot of people would take that as a signal.”

  “Okay? Are you a lot of people Jacob? Is that a fun little baton pass you’re doing? Like when you say ‘sorry my cousin took my phone’ after you send your crush a risky text in middle school?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I hoped to ask you about it.”

  “Ask away. Open book.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “Sorry. Go ahead Jacob. Busy day.”

  “I understand.”

  “It’s notable that when the world faces so many challenges in the field of local and global security, which your company has been at the forefront of for decades, and a lot of these issues are of a pretty non-partisan nature, you choose to make one of your first moves publicly meeting with a President who is -- to say the least -- a little controversial. What made you decide that this was one of the most pressing things to do in your capacity as CEO and Chairman of Utopia? Is this a signal that you see cooperation with the US government to be an essential factor of your new strategy?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well then why? Why do it? Why even take this call if it’s so inconsequential? Your actions do not suggest that these decisions are as casual as you are suggesting, Percy.”

  “Look I’m not fucking stupid. I know what you people do. I know this game. I’ve been under the microscope my entire adult life. You’re going to try to take what I say out of context to make me look stupid or make me look smart or crazy or daddy or gay icon or whatever fits the story you’re trying to sell. You are editors, you are editors of your agenda and right now I’m sure you’re gonna make me look stupid that’s gonna be your goal. Or like I’m dangerous or something or I’m so disrespectful. And like whatever dude. I’m offering you a direct line to a pretty important source of information. The people maybe deserve to know the news about what’s going on in this company I’m running. Right? Right? But that’s not your goal. That’s not your goal. You’re gonna get clicks or whatever the fuck to try to keep the lights on because your industry has not been financially solvent since fucking 2013. So you’re gonna play the game. But what are you gonna do? Oh no, are you gonna write an article about me? A mean article? I’ve seen how you guys treat my sister. I’ve seen how you guys treat my friends. I don’t care. Look, I met with the president cause it seemed like a responsible thing to do. If the leader of my country wants to talk to me, I’m gonna give him the respect of showing up. Respect that I will note you are not showing me right now. And you take this - you take this small act of dignity and grace when all morning the news has been talking about how irresponsible I am, and you all paint it out to be some kind of political agenda. Like the president was just saying weird shit talking about Dracula, blustering about how he’s gonna stop paying for urban defense. Why are you acting like I sucked him off? He’s not my fucking friend. Sorry I’m important enough that I meet with people sometimes who aren’t my fucking friends.”

  “Well. A lot of people might say that such a friendship wouldn’t be the most surprising thing in the world. There are a lot of similarities, at least superficially, between the two of you. You were born billionaires, have a notably… authentic style of speech, have a history of dating models and actresses, have undergone a rather shocking rise to a prominent position of power-“

  This fucking prick. Oh this stupid fucking prick. He thinks he can play games with me? Let’s play.

  “How’s the view from your apartment in 326 East 42nd Street New York, New York, Jacob?”

  And I hung up.

  Hahahaha.

  Haha.

  That must have spooked him real good.

  Wait.

  No I take that back. Could I take that back?

  I shouldn’t have said that.

  Oh. Oh. That did not go well. I lost track of my agenda a little there.

  Oh no.

  God what a day at work this had been. Better luck tomorrow, we could hope.

  I looked at my watch, interested in the time for the first time in several years.

  Reader, it was 12:47PM.