Patrick McLean - How To Succeed in Evil

“What? You want me to sponsor this abomination?”

Edwin says nothing. Hainer is smart, Edwin knows he will put the pieces together for himself.

“What did you say you were? Some kind of advisor? That has to be the worst advice I’ve ever heard. Associating Psyche with that, that menace? How much negative publicity do you think I can take? You expect me to come out with a line of destruction boots? My customers, the serious athletes and those who aspire to be, would leave me in droves! I’d be out of business in a year. And people would flock to those bastards at Apedis in droves. I don’t even know if droves flock — but they’d leave us — hell, they’d run away from us barefoot. In my 35 years in the business, this is the worst idea I’ve ever heard. You sir, are an idiot.”

Mark lurches violently in his seat. He moves towards the door, but when Edwin raises his hand, Mark stops. Edwin has one last piece of paper. When he turns it over a smile spreads across Mark Hainer’s face. An evil giggle crawls out from the bottom of his bowels. “Oh ho. Ho ho ho, that’s good, that’s very good. Bravo.”

It is the picture of the Cromoglodon tearing apart the tour bus, but this time, blazoned across the middle of the Cromoglodon’s chest are the corporate stripes of Apedis.

“It’s reverse sponsorship,” says Edwin, “You pay me, and I put anyone’s logo you want on the Cromoglodon.”

“No, no, no. That’s the logo I want. That’s the one. How much, and how do I know that it won’t get back to me?”

“All of it. And I can provide complete deniability.”

“All of it? That’s rich. You get me a realistic number and you’ve got a deal. Now seriously, I’ve got to get to this dinner thing.” He snatches the picture of the Cromoglodon wearing his competitor’s logo from Edwin’s hand.

“Can I keep this?”

“If you want, but that may compromise your deniability.”

“You’re right,” Mark says with an air of disappointment. He kisses the picture and hands it back to Edwin.

Having secured one deal, Edwin makes his way across town. He has a similar meeting scheduled with the head of Apedis. There is nothing like a bidding war to add a little realism to a price.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the Heroes of Business World Economic Summit is proud to present a man, well… certainly a man who is more than a man. One who is a hero to us all. The one and only Excelsior!”

A follow-spot illuminates a podium that stands all alone on a bare stage. On the front of the podium is the official logo of the event, an ungainly conglomeration of initials that read HoBWEC. Dramatic music, filled with strings, rolling tympani and augustly muted French horns pours from hidden speakers. On some undetected cue, the spotlight rises. Slowly, the circle of illumination climbs the heavy back curtain. Up, up, up, impossibly up, as if the operator has suffered a stroke and is slowly crumpling to the floor, still clutching the handles, unwilling to loose his grip on the wheel even in the face of certain death.

The light comes to rest on an open hatch in the center of the auditorium’s ceiling. The music swells in crescendo. The crowd sees feet drop into the auditorium. They go wild. The rich and the powerful, men of consequence and accomplishment, are cheering their heads off like little boys. As Excelsior descends, the cheering becomes louder. As if the crowd has suddenly doubled.

Excelsior waves down the applause and cheers. Shaking his head as if to say, No, no, not for me. You shouldn’t. He does not betray how much he hates this kind of thing. How close he was to skipping out on the entire circus. In the dressing room he had argued with Gus. “It’s stupid. Having me fly in through the ceiling. It’s demeaning. It’s like having me jump through a hoop.”

“Ah Bullshit. I can’t even walk down a flight of stairs without my hip going out and you’re bitching about being able to fly? Candy Ass. Just calm down,” said Gus, “Just go out there, make your damn speech, and we’ll get out of here. And whatever you do, let’s not have another Munich.”

Munich. Gus had to bring up Munich. Just couldn’t let it go. It had been another one of these bullshit speaking engagements. Excelsior had done the same fly onto the podium trick, then said a few words that were translated into German. And when it was over they’d put him in a receiving line. He was forced to shake hands with an endless line of dignitaries. That’s when Yarlor the Terrible attacked. Right as he was shaking hands with a fat deputy minister of somewhere or another. At the time, of course, Excelsior had no idea that it was Yarlor. He had just seen a bright blue flash coming at him from a clump of bushes on his left and he’d leapt into flight to avoid being hit.

As the ball of blue energy crackled harmlessly past him, he heard a man screaming in agony. Then the shriek of a woman crying out in terror. “I’m okay. I’m okay,” he called down to reassure the people. Then he realized he was still holding onto the fat man’s arm. But the rest of the fat man was no longer attached. If it had happened away from the event it might not have been so bad. But as Excelsior scanned the area for the source of the blue lightning, the press was making lightning of its own. Cameras flashed and flashed as they captured thousands of images of Excelsior silhouetted against a bright blue sky holding a severed arm in his right hand. It was a public relations disaster.

But Excelsior hadn’t been thinking about public relations. He saw Yarlor fleeing the scene with a 13th century arquebus covered in glowing blue runes. This made Excelsior mad. He dropped the severed arm and swooped down on Yarlor in the blink of an eye. He tackled the villain so hard that Yarlor’s spine broke in two places. He continued the motion of his dive back upward again and hurled Yarlor into the stratosphere. As he did, Excelsior bellowed in rage. Higher and higher Yarlor went, until the tiny speck of him was no longer visible from the ground.

But even as he vented his fury on Yarlor, the arm that Excelsior had ripped out (and subsequently dropped) was returned to its rightful owner in accordance with the law of gravity. Blissfully, or tragically, depending on your view of the human condition, the fat man was knocked unconscious when his own arm hit him in the head.

The cameras caught every minute from every angle. As Excelsior hung there in the sky listening to the squeal of the high-speed film drives, his conscience began to work on him. He had thrown a man to what would certainly be his death. Right now, as surely as the arm had tumbled to Earth, Yarlor was tumbling down from the upper atmosphere. But Excelsior wasn’t a killer.

Gus was the killer. Or the people he directed. Excelsior never asked questions about what had happened to the people and creatures he defeated after he was done with them. The government stepped in and took care of the mess. Once, when Excelsior had asked Gus what had happened to a man who called himself the Blue Streak, Gus had refused to answer. He gave Excelsior a look that chilled him to the bone. Even though Excelsior could burn Gus down with beams of heat from his eyes, it was Excelsior who had to look away. Excelsior never asked again.

But as he thought about Yarlor falling to his death through the open air. Excelsior decided that he didn’t want to be a murderer. Not intentionally anyway. But he wasn’t sure he cared about this two-bit thug and his arcane device. But, if Yarlor landed on somebody’s house in Spain, Excelsior would feel bad about it. And he would never hear the end of it.

So Excelsior flew off into the sky above Munich. As he left he broke the sound barrier. The cataclysmic boom put a fitting end to the incident. He managed to catch Yarlor before he hit the ground. But by then the public relations damage was done.