Martin Greenberg - If I Were an Evil Overlord

Evil eats what it kills and sometimes eats what is still alive, even if it’s not really hungry. It always wins or it destroys the game so that no one else can. It works constantly, relentlessly toward its own ends.

Your boss is not evil. You could kill your boss. You cannot destroy evil.

To win, he would need to be evil.

He had no problem with that.

Click.

Gafnar shielded his eyes and looked about the landscape. It was a barren and vile place. No water but the salty sea that had spat him onto this foreign shore. No vegetation but the blackened husks of trees burned long ago, offering no shade, no fruit, no fuel to ease his journey. The land itself was rocky and cracked by drought, a gusty wind tearing the last remnants of topsoil and blasting it into his burning eyes. Other than a few others like himself, the only creatures moving across the face of desolation were the rats. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, of ravenous rats, rampaging toward the fresh meat that had been tossed ashore by the storm and lay quivering in shock. He was that fresh meat, an offering to the rats. But Gafnar did not accept that fate; he did not even hesitate to ponder his fate. He did not wait for the horde to come to him, biting and gnawing. No, he moved toward the foul vermin and began to kill, expending every bit of strength he had left in a frenzy of death to celebrate his own life. Only later did he learn that he could eat the rats, skin their hides, loot their nests for shiny valuables. These benefits were worthwhile, but the killing was essential.

Rule No. 2. Hard Work Is Required to Become the Ultimate Overlord.Most people, he knew, played at life. They skimmed along doing the bare minimum needed to continue on their mediocre existence. They lived to joke and entertain themselves and their friends. They had no purpose, no drive. They didn’t play to win. They played not to lose or, worse yet, just to enjoy the game.

Clint believed such creatures to be beneath the rats. Competition not only fueled society, it fueled the soul. It made life interesting.

No one gives ultimate power to someone else. To do so would be to demonstrate that they didn’t want it, didn’t deserve it, never really had it. Power must be taken. By force, by stealth, by sleight of hand. It is not handed out by derelicts distributing coupons. It does not come as a free prize in a cereal box. It cannot be won by lottery. To obtain ultimate power, you must first have power over someone or something besides yourself. Someone gullible. Someone weak. And then you must increase that power person by person, item by item, place by place, until there is no person, item, or place that is not within your power.

Any humdrum nature video on public television will tell you the lion starts with the weakest of the herd, killing and eating those that are the easiest to bring down and devour. But the baritone narrators seldom note that, as the king of the jungle grows large and strong and hones his skills in the hunt, he may move on to faster game. He may join with others of the pride to stalk and panic an entire herd and send them rampaging over a cliff to their destruction, where they may be eaten at leisure. The lion does not join with others out of altruism or subservience, but to his own advantage. And when the drought comes, he does not hesitate to stalk and kill fiercer creatures, even man.

Most of the others that were not devoured by the rats moved quickly inland, seeking more hospitable environs, but not Gafnar. He feasted on the rats and on the mayhem for as long as he could and then he waited. And when others like him were thrown on the shore by new storms, he quickly moved to kill and devour them before they could get their bearings, before they could begin their journey, before the rats could devour their life force. And only then, when he was strong and fast, did he move on to new hunting grounds, bloody muscle in his fist, veins in his teeth.

Rule No. 3. The Ultimate Overlord Has No Friends.“Now that you’ve made it off the beach, dude, we should connect up,” chirped Jason over the wireless headset Clint was wearing as he made his way through the game. “I’m in the hills to the east. My avatar is called ‘Alexander.’ Jason. Alexander. Get it?”

Clint sneered at his computer screen, shuddering at the banal chatter. “Sure,” he lied, “My avatar is Vrod. Keep an eye out and let me know by e-mail when you see him. My headset is fritzing out on me.”

He knew many people associated with friends as they made their way in the universe, but he could not understand how a true Ultimate Overlord could do so. An Ultimate Overlord poses as a friend to others, but they are never his friends. He chats amiably, sympathizes with their petty complaints, drinks their wine, eats their food, and makes them believe there is a bond of mutual affection and trust. They are a resource to be gathered and husbanded and guarded from thieves in the night and then to be used or consumed or sacrificed to the enemy to gain escape or advantage. They are to be betrayed when it is to his advantage.

And if any one of them should remind him of himself, he is to be betrayed first, before he betrays. The Ultimate Overlord has no friends because all friends may become enemies.

In these more prosperous lands, men gathered together, some for defense, others for attack. Gafnar joined a roving band of attackers and learned their ways and their weaknesses. And then, when it was to his advantage, he slit their throats in the night and took their belongings and moved on.

The process repeated itself, though the betrayals varied. Some allies he killed himself; others he pitted against his enemies or left to fend for themselves when a greater force attacked.

His favorite tactic was to volunteer to act as a roving reserve for any battles. When the fighting started, he would hang back, presumably to be ready to go where most needed, but actually to assess the fighting skills and weapons of both his companions and his foes alike. If the battle went well, he would wade in just before it was over, like Russia declaring war on Japan near the end of WW II, to help finish off the adversary and share in the spoils of victory. If the battle was going poorly, he would slink away and let the attackers wear themselves down killing his erstwhile companions.

He was not stupid. He didn’t tip his hand. He always appeared to be a cooperative companion to his supposed allies. He listened to their advice and learned their ways. He imparted information that would not harm himself. He fought when he needed to fight, but only if he had the advantage.

He let others die to save their friends, to save him.

Rule No. 4. Always Loot the Bodies.Waste not, want not. That’s what his mother had always told him. And she was right. So many people let so much pass them by because of social convention or morality or political correctness. Relationships, opportunities, money on the table.

He had shown he had no problem with hostile takeovers, cutthroat business dealings, holiday firings, pension fund raids. Of course you hit a person when they were down. That was when they were most defenseless. That was when they couldn’t hit back. That was when hitting them meant that they would never get up again.

And then you raided their workforce, you bought up their patents for pennies in bankruptcy. If you were lucky, you could scour the paperwork from their last desperate months and find that they had done something that crossed the line of legality in their efforts to save their business; then it was an anonymous letter to the trustee or the SEC and they spent the rest of their miserable lives fighting to stay out of prison instead of hating you for your success at their expense.