Chapter 33

  A welcoming party greeted Isaac when he reopened the door to Fox Plaza. “Hello there,” Dr. Rousseau announced. He wore the same sinister smile as always, but his face was now marred by a fresh set of scars, each about the size of a mountain lion’s claw. “As good of timing as ever, Isaac. I’m so glad you're here. There’s someone who would very much like to see you. Let’s take a walk. Shall we?” A group of armed security guards around Dr. Rousseau made his question rhetorical.

  The penthouse suite of the Fox Plaza building was palatial. It was easy to see why Ronald Reagan rode out his post-presidency years here. With a 360-degree panorama, Isaac imagined no better place in LA to watch a sunset while sundowning. One of the windows even had a perfect line of sight to Century Plaza Park.

  The penthouse’s current resident, Mr. Lennox, was enjoying the view. He seemed at ease in his surroundings and was pleased to see his newfound company, escorted in by Dr. Rousseau.

  “Isaac, my boy, what a nice surprise!” Mr. Lennox pointed to a seat in front of him where his guest of honor should sit. “How are you? Would you like a beverage? Hot or cold? Is an adrenochrome-infused slurpee more your speed? Ah! But if water is your desire, would you prefer sparkling or still? Don’t worry. Both are fluoride-free.” The man was manic.

  “…”

  “Still then. Good choice, my boy. You mustn’t be without refreshments for tonight’s entertainment,” Mr. Lennox carried on as Dr. Rousseau slipped Isaac’s gun to him before taking a spot at his boss’s side. “Do you mind fetching him a beverage, Liz?”

  Isaac saw Liz appear from his periphery with a water bottle in hand. She offered it to Isaac, who took it mechanically, not knowing what else to do now that he had a front-row seat to the end of humanity.

  Mr. Lennox’s glee was palpable. “You weren’t the only guest not to RSVP tonight, Isaac. I believe you two have met before.”

  Isaac didn’t notice her at first, but there, seated next to him, was Margot Robbie. She was still alive. He nearly jumped out of his seat in shock, but Margot was of a cooler disposition. She didn’t acknowledge Isaac, preferring to stare straight ahead at Mr. Lennox.

  “Any minute now, Tupac will join us, so you have that to look forward to,” Mr. Lennox threatened.

  “…”

  “Cat got your tongue, Isaac?” Mr. Lennox laughed. “Meow!" Mr. Lennox laughed harder. "Relax. Please! The lights haven’t even gone down yet for the main event. We still have plenty of time to conversate before the ushers demand we mind our manners.”

  “Good. Because I have something to say,” Isaac said. Then, he paused dramatically before whining, “Can you just not go through with your plan? Do you really have to turn everyone into zombies? What if you didn’t? What if you put on a different movie? Like Flubber?”

  “Zombies? Is that what you think we’re doing?” Mr. Lennox arched an eyebrow. “The human imagination is a wonder. You’ve been watching too much TV, Isaac. Tsk, tsk.”

  “I watch a lot of TV,” Isaac admitted, “but it was on doctor’s orders.” He looked to Dr. Rousseau.

  Mr. Lennox laughed. “You got me there!”

  “So, if not zombies, then what?” Isaac asked.

  “It’s probably best to think of humans as fleshy, fuckable batteries,” Mr. Lennox explained before being interrupted by Dr. Rousseau, who leaned forward and whispered something into his boss’s ear. “Dr. Rousseau!” Mr. Lennox groaned. “You’re such a killjoy. Don’t you understand that half the fun of being brilliant is telling people about your brilliance? How’s the man supposed to be awed by my many talents unless I explain them?”

  Sufficiently admonished, Dr. Rousseau slunk back a bit, allowing Mr. Lennox to resume. “Imagine that. For being a behavioral scientist, Dr. Rousseau doesn’t know you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Because, Isaac, my other motive for explaining myself to you is that I want you to join us — so where was I?”

  “I’m a battery,” Isaac reminded him.

  “Ah, yes. How much do you know about quantum mechanics and consciousness?”

  “Almost nothing except that it’s like the force from Star Wars.”

  “Solid flick,” Mr. Lennox conceded. “Well, my kind, excuse me — our kind, us Draconi — feed off the force, and humanity, as fate would have it, is one of the largest sources of force in the universe. Which is great. But the real cherry on top is that humans are also easy to domesticate.”

  “Why?” Isaac asked.

  “Because humans like to fight amongst themselves. And they’re so eager to be manipulated!”

  “No, why do we have the most force?”

  “Oh. I don’t know. Why are bananas so full of potassium? They just are. Humans have so much force that we’ve had to restrict their innate abilities, which is what all the fluoride is for, of course.”

  “So what’s so special about the Super Jesus sequel?”

  “I’m glad you asked! It’s the culmination of a plan — my plan — to protect the humans.”

  “What?” Isaac exclaimed in surprise. “You want to protect humans?”

  “Humans and their self-destructive tendencies have gone unchecked for far too long, and the consequences of that death drive are causing a climate crisis and threatening the place you call home. Earth. They’re creating a self-extinction event, and I must stop it.”

  “But I thought you controlled the humans. Isn’t that your fault, then?”

  “Right now, we don’t even control most of them. But that will change by the end of tonight.”

  “Why do you want to defend Earth?”

  “I have to. Could the Draconi move humans off-world and leave Earth to perish? Sure! But I can’t do it, personally. I mean, have you seen the seven moons of Zyklon-B? Of course, you haven’t. Well, I can assure you that a day on Zyklon-B is no day at Zuma Beach!” Mr. Lennox pointed to the view outside the penthouse, where the city's lights glittered in all their splendor from Manhattan Beach to Malibu. As always, the sight dazzled Isaac. “Although some of my colleagues may disagree with me or are apathetic to the prospect, I’m not ready to leave LA yet. There’s nowhere else like it in the universe,” Mr. Lennox let that sink in before adding, “Although I suppose I would be happy to move to planet Kolob, but who can afford the rent?”

  “...”

  “No, we have to fix Earth.” Mr. Lennox was resolute. “Even if it means settling back in Pittsburgh. Even if I have to save humans by using a weapon of mass entertainment to reduce them to a semi-catatonic state so that our coral reefs can rebound and flourish.”

  “So zombies.”

  “No, not zombies. What did I just say? I’m reducing them to a semi-catatonic state.”

  “And you can feed off that?”

  “I’m sorry. I forget how little you know about our kind,” Mr. Lennox said with genuine sympathy. “But you’ll learn soon enough. Strong emotions, like happiness and excitement, or fear and anger, produce more force. That’s true. That’s good eating. The best feedings, however, occur at the moment of death when a force-frenzied soul is unbounded from its body. Remember? You were privy to the last LA library feeding, yes?” Mr. Lennox paused long enough for Isaac to nod. “That was a tasty one. Well, all that pomp and circumstance, the robes, the alter, the chanting, it’s all for show. None of that has any magical significance, but it has a tremendous effect on humans. Nothing gets their force going quite like being the star of their own black mass blood ritual. It really gets the people going. It’s provocative.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Isaac admitted. He looked over to Margot to see if she was equally astounded, but she remained completely motionless, a perfect statue.

  “Few do!” Mr. Lennox smiled. “The good thing about entertainment is that it can also get humans to produce force for harvesting. Think of the adrenaline you feel when you watch the beach scene from Saving Private Ryan, the tears you cry in You’ve Got Mail, or the laughs you have during Schindler’s List. Of course, those movies aren’t real, but the feelings they impart upon the audience are, and so is the force they generate.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “And that really works?”

  “You know the classic grade-school experiment for the little humans about creating electricity with only a potato and water for materials?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, you can do the same thing with a couch potato!” Mr. Lennox chortled, delivering the punch line with a good-natured wink before turning serious. “Unfortunately, not every Draconis wants to go vegetarian, like me. You see, entertainment yields a lower-energy feeding than a black mass murder or a war feeding, which is why my brethren are hesitant to adopt this course of action even though it’s more sustainable for the planet, but I’m going to show them the way. What they don’t understand is that what we’ll lack in raw power, we’ll make up for in numbers.”

  “War feedings? Like between countries?”

  “Yes, war,” Mr. Lennox sighed. “Such ugly business. So brutish and so bad for the environment, wouldn’t you agree? It would be good to rid the world of war, and that’s my goal. I will prove to the Ones Who Know that feedings through entertainment are far better in the long run than our traditional methods.”

  “If the lizards—”

  “Draconi,” Mr. Lennox corrected.

  “Do Draconi only control war and entertainment?”

  “Hmm, well, we each have a different discipline, so there’s a minister of war, a minister for politics — but I repeat myself.” Mr. Lennox winked at his joke, but it flew over Isaac’s head. “A minister of entertainment, headed by yours truly, plus drugs, religion, music, you name it! Basically, anything that can induce excitement or death in a human will have a Draconi minister. But entertainment will render all those other disciplines obsolete. Tonight will represent a paradigm shift in our force-collection process. In fact,” Mr. Lennox continued, “you’re actually on loan to us from the military minister. Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, you got lucky. We saved you. You would have been retired after your little incident with the Afghani spice market, but we needed another lizard-human hybrid after Zee became unreliable. So we wiped your memory of your old identity and then built you back up from scratch, from square one.”

  “So I could write scripts for you?”

  “That’s right, a task you failed to complete.”

  “I’m sorry,” Isaac apologized without knowing why.

  “Don’t be, Isaac. I lay the blame at the feet of Dr. Rousseau, who assured me he’d be able to manage you effectively.” Mr. Lennox glanced at the doctor, who cowered further back from his boss. “Good thing for him that our plans, with a few on-the-fly creative solutions by me, were not foiled by you, the cats, or Anne.”

  “You know about Anne?”

  “Know her? I love her! I’m sure you think of Anne only as some groovy psychic to the stars, yes? Something, something about being benevolent to all of humanity by putting the power of self-determination back into their hands to save themselves, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Hah!” Mr. Lennox yelped. “The nerve on her. Don’t you get it, Isaac? She’s the same as us, feeding off the force.”

  “No!” Isaac protested. Again, he looked over to Margot in an attempt to find any anchor point to reality as his world was slipping, spinning away. Again, she offered nothing but stone-cold silence.

  “Yes! Tell me, how else do you think Anne lived for thousands of years?”

  “A plant-based diet?” Isaac wondered.

  “Hardly. Anne survives by luring the most powerful humans in the world to her, the celebrities, with all the world’s attention on them. She then absorbs their force by performing cheap parlor tricks for them. It’s rather brilliant. As the kids say, game recognizes game. Did I say that right?” Isaac shrugged when Mr. Lennox paused for validation. “Anyway, I have a saying for women like Anne: talent borrows, and genius steals.”

  “What did she steal from you?”

  “You got it wrong, Isaac. I’m the genius for stealing from her. Or am I stealing from her brother or her father? I don’t know. Who can really keep that family straight anyway?”

  “…”

  “Super Jesus, my boy! Anne inspired Super Jesus. Because what is Super Jesus?”

  “A movie?”

  “It’s not a movie, Isaac. It’s a story! Nothing is more impactful on a human than a story. Not friends. Not family. Not even dogs. Stories are everlasting. They’re how humans process information. They’re how they understand themselves, each other, and their world. Sure, stories like the one about the man who hailed from Nantucket can be frivolous, but the most powerful ones are epic. Those are sacred texts.”

  “A sacred text?” Isaac repeated.

  “Yes, a sacred text is a story powerful enough to rouse the spirit and inspire worship and admiration among its audience. Those are as rare as they are powerful. Star Wars was one. Harry Potter another. But I want Super Jesus to top the most powerful story known to man. Do you know what story that is, Isaac?”

  “The ones we tell ourselves?”

  “Heavens, no!”

  “Grey’s Anatomy?”

  “Closer. It's the Bible, obviously. Super Jesus will supplant the Bible. God has been coasting off that one book for thousands of years, but now it’s our turn. We're writing the Bible’s sequel and setting it in America. With Super Jesus, I will remake humans in my design, and the name Xzaylax-Delta will echo through the ages.”

  Xzaylax-Delta! Where had Isaac heard that name before? Wasn’t that the name of Anne’s ex? Isaac grew nauseous. Was that all this was? Was this whole affair of saving the cat and saving the world nothing more than an intergalactic domestic squabble, a lovers’ spat? Damnit, Anne! Mysterious ways indeed! The only mystery that remained was whether Anne was seeking revenge on Xzaylax-Delta or just trying to get his attention.

  Isaac’s head started to hurt. It was the same pain he had experienced the last time Anne had tried to elevate his consciousness. Through squinted eyes, he looked beside him and was surprised to see Margot unaffected. Instead, she remained motionless with her eyes forward toward Mr. Lennox. How could that be? Why wasn’t her baby brain dripping out of her nostrils? Isaac became worried that maybe Margot wasn’t all there, maybe Margot was under the same dark spell Mark was under at the Twin Towers, maybe Margot was already a zombie.

  “Will you help me, Isaac?” Mr. Lennox, er, Xzaylax-Delta, asked.

  "You want me to write the next Bible?" Isaac was incredulous.

  "No, Zee did that for us, but she's gone now. You were supposed to either finish it up or find her so she could finish it, but that didn’t go so swell, did it? So we had to execute a fake Super Jesus death and resurrect him instead. Thanks for that.”

  “I’m sorry,” Isaac apologized again.

  “I don’t blame you, my boy! How many times do I have to say it? You were brought up to speed too fast, and the shoulders that bear that blame belong to Dr. Rousseau and to him alone." Mr. Lennox looked to the doctor, raised Isaac’s gun, and shot Dr. Rousseau between the eyes.

  Dr. Rousseau's body fell into a heap and didn’t move.

  Casually, Mr. Lennox dropped the smoking gun back on the desk with a clatter and returned his attention to Isaac as if nothing had happened, a reaction matched by Margot and Liz, who were equally unfazed. Isaac, however, screamed. When he finally stopped and calmed down, Mr. Lennox continued his sales pitch, "You're an investment, Isaac! Hybrids don’t come cheap, and you're still such a little lizard, practically a hatchling. You still have so much room to grow, and I know you won't disappoint me like he did." Dr. Lennox stood up and walked over to the window that faced Century Park. “You could even make executive producer if you hone your screenwriting.” Mr. Lennox waved Isaac over. “Join me, Isaac. Join me.”

  Before he could get up, Isaac had to take a breath, still winded from the cold-blooded murder he had just witnessed. He was scared. He thought Dr. Rousseau did a pretty bang-up job raising him, all things considered. Isaac knew he wouldn’t last long with Mr. Lennox if everything Dr. Rousseau had accomplished warranted a death sentence. He wrote for Scott Caan’s Hawaii Five-0! Panic overloaded Isaac, but he found strength in Margot Robbie, who hadn’t moved. Her stoicism offered Isaac enough comfort to continue, even if she was probably a zombie.

  Isaac got up. On his way over, he stepped over Dr. Rousseau's cold blood, which was pooling on a designer rug. Huh, Isaac thought. Lizards bleed a most brilliant shade of blue.

  "Aren't you worried about the, uh, author of the Bible?" Isaac asked once he sidled up to Mr. Lennox at the window. “The book might be in the popular domain, but I imagine there must be some sort of celestial copyright law.”

  "Who do you mean? Matthew and Mark and the rest of the gang? Those authors?” Mr. Lennox allowed himself another laugh. “I’m only joking. I know who you mean. The Big Kahuna, Mr. Mom, God, but we're not worried about him, are we? He's been asleep at the wheel since we invaded this dimension. Though I wonder," Mr. Lennox put a finger under his chin to support his thoughts, "maybe that will change. His force intake will be seriously affected once Super Jesus airs and all those prayers go silent. Maybe he’ll get hungry. Wouldn’t that be something? Then you throw in the cats for good measure...”

  "What about the cats?"

  Mr. Lennox gritted his teeth. “Did you ever watch Alien?"

  “Sure.”

  “Well, the xenomorph was the good guy in that movie if you pay close enough attention.”

  “Then who’s the villain?”

  “Jones, the cat. He’s the alien. That’s the real meaning behind the movie.”

  “Then how did cats end up in your movie?”

  “Because I’m not afraid, Isaac. I know that cat power is a tool. And in my hands? In my movies? Now shush.” Mr. Lennox instructed his newest pupil. "And pay close attention because our movie is about to begin.”

  Isaac looked down on Century Plaza Park to where Beyonce was walking off stage to end the warm-up portion of the evening. It was time for the main event. The lights went dark, and Isaac had to hold his breath to keep from hyperventilating, praying that he would see Tupac when the lights returned, but he did not. Instead, standing on stage, illuminated by a single spotlight, was Super Jesus. Isaac trembled, but he didn’t know why. Was it his nerves, or was the crowd’s roar loud enough to shake the entire building?

  Mr. Lennox smiled. “It’s showtime!”