Patrick McLean - How To Succeed in Evil

“I’m glad you enjoyed your role,” says Edwin.

“If I had know being a villain was this much fun, I never would have gone to law school. So now what?”

“We’re going to wait until he is good and dead and then give him to the surgeon. And then, and only then will we warm the brute and see if we can bring him back to life.”

“I think you should just let the bastard suck water and drown,” says Topper.

“Yes, I will take your blood thirst under advisement. You did beautifully by the way.”

“Do you really think so? My aim was a little off with some of the rockets. I’ll get it better next time.”

Edwin doesn’t bother to explain that there will be no next time. A plan that relies on extraordinary acts with less than a 100% chance of success is not a good plan. Edwin is a little disappointed in himself that he couldn’t have come up with a better scheme. He longs for all his machinations to be inexorable rather than spectacular. Edwin does not mean to seize glory, but rather to crush it out of circumstance as an Anaconda kills it’s prey.

Eighteen hours later, the Cromoglodon is thawing on a slab. His head is now circumnavigated by a crown of fresh stitches and attached to high tension power lines. From Edwin’s viewpoint, the stitches make his head look like a grisly baseball. Of course there are neater ways to place implants into a person’s brain, but Edwin hadn’t captured the beast for his looks. He had little trouble convincing the surgeon that speed was more important than aesthetics.

On the panel in front of Edwin are two switches. One switch will activate an automatic defibrillator, which will tickle the Cromoglodon’s heart and bring him back to life. The other switch, will shunt half the city’s power directly into the Cromoglodon’s brain — probably killing him.

This kill switch is to be used only if the electrodes implanted in the Cromoglodon’s brain prove to be ineffective. But for a moment Edwin’s hand wavers between them. Of course, it would be wasteful to destroy such a powerful creature, but all of Edwin’s purposes are cruel. His hand wavers as his demons wrestles with his better angels. The demons win. Edwin closes the switch that restarts the beast’s heart.

As the Cromoglodon’s eyes flutter and his vital signs gain strength, Topper climbs up onto his chest and slaps him across the face. “Rise and Shine!” The Cromoglodon awakes and instantly lunges for Topper. Edwin triggers the implants.

The surgeon who had installed the implants argued that they should be placed in the pain center of the Cromoglodon’s brain, but Edwin had disagreed. He had feared that, brute that he was, the Cromoglodon would be inured to pain. But fear, fear is something unknown to him; something the Cromoglodon was unequipped to deal with. The electricity triggers impossible and unknowable terrors within the Cromoglodon. Tears pour down his face. He attempts to curl up under a table that is half his size.

Edwin leaves the electrodes on for longer than he needs to. As he watches the Cromoglodon writhe on the floor, Edwin has an epiphany. He has been treating people as free and equal beings. Of course these creatures that surround him have the capacity to choose, but all their choices are bad. Edwin had believed that he could teach them, advise them, lead them to a truer path. Tip the scales of the world back to balance with a merest touch. Edwin realizes now that he had been mistaken. He can see now that he has been blinded by a sympathetic conceit. Now his thinking is clear and free from illusion. He quickly reaches the only possible conclusion.

In a time gone mad the only sane thing to do is to take over the world.

With the Cromoglodon cowering in fear, Topper returns to the room. “So, we’re going to use him to get Excelsior. Is that the plan?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then how are we going to get Excelsior? As much as I love that rocket launcher, I don’t think it’s going to be enough. What are we going to use on Excelsior?”

“The law.”

“What?”

Edwin does not take his eyes off the Cromoglodon. “We’re going to sue him.”

“You’re going to sue Excelsior. The Excelsior?”

“Yes. You don’t like the idea?”

“Well, sure, I like the idea. It just doesn’t seem like enough.”

Edwin turns away. “It’s not. But it’s a start.”

So how do you find out that you are being sued? It’s pretty easy to know if you are suing someone. But if you’ve never been sued before, you might not be familiar with what happens. Legally a representative of the court, usually the plaintiff’s attorney, has to present you with a special set of papers called a process. And despite what television drama might have you believe, this is usually a pretty mundane affair. Someone walks up and hands the defendant (or sue-ee if you are not fond of legal jargon) a stack of papers. Usually they say something like, “You’re being sued,” and then they walk off. After that, the person serving the process does not, as a general rule, say anything like, “this is for what you did to Billy,” “I told you we’d get you, you bastard,” or even “Have a nice day.”

But the standard process does not apply when it comes to someone like Excelsior. First of all, how do you find such a man? He does not keep regular office hours. And even if you do manage to locate him at the scene of a disaster or happening, chances are he will fly off before you can get to him. Sure, there is the occasional public speaking event, but security is tight, and there is still the flying off problem. Topper had considered all of these things.

Oh Topper is devil-may-care about a lot of things, but he is a meticulous and exacting lawyer. Because he hates to lose. Worse than anything you have ever hated in your life, he hates to lose. And if he is to stand any chance at all, he must first get Excelsior in the courtroom. So he schemes a scheme. Topper thinks it is marvelous and subtle and on par with Edwin’s best work. It isn’t. But it is good. It is very good.

Excelsior has moved to a hotel on the West Side while a new apartment is being found for him. He spends his time, much as he always does, lazing about and waiting for something to happen. And nothing has happened for several days. Absolutely nothing. He finds it hard to believe, but there has been no world-ending emergency, no alien attack, no earthquake, no sinister plot that required foiling. Another person might be glad, or thankful, or at least remembered that he had recently been upset by not having any time off. But not Excelsior. He’s bored.

He turns on the television. Looking for something. Anything. Anyone to save. He doesn’t have to watch long. A local television channel has pre-empted regular programming with breaking news. Excelsior has no idea how long this emergency has been going on, but they’ve already created a name and a logo. “Bridge to Disaster!” That has to take a news channel at least 10 minutes, right. Undoubtedly there is someone in a corner of the station frantically composing a theme song.

The screen shows helicopter footage of the Turnbuckle bridge. There, in the very middle, an accident has forced a red minivan through the guardrail. The vehicle teeters precipitously on the edge. The only thing holding the car back from an eight hundred foot drop into the water is a badly damaged guy wire.

Excelsior doesn’t think too much of it. C’mon, it’s just one car. He can see several fire trucks and police cars in the background. That’s fine, Excelsior thinks, let the little people handle the light work. But then, just as he is about to change the channel, he sees the driver stick her head out the window. She is beautiful. As she screams hysterically, her blonde hair flies in all directions. The car lurches closer to the edge of the bridge. As the woman points frantically at the back seat of the car Excelsior notices that she’s not wearing a wedding ring. The shot changes to a helicopter camera. There, on extreme zoom, Excelsior can see a child in a car seat.