Overlord's Orders XI

[Delthion]

OOC: Man, you're not nice.

Yes most gracious and esteemed Overlord, I did say those things, but that was only because the lab-man had fired at me with a "Brain Overload and Hypnotism" I was under complete control of the Lab-man at that time and he said in completely plain English that translates into exactly what it is and he was stuck in the car (which happened to be a Bentley and therefore as thick as solid rock and impenetrable by the lab-man or the lab-man's weapons). "Jasper and I have a very good plan, I plan to help him contaminate James Gryphon's base and poison the Overlord, then Jasper will become Overlord and I will reign as his Viceroy! Together we will rule the cosmos and the measly stump of a creature that has the name of James Gryphon will be the lowest of our slaves, but these are not my words, no no, no. These are the words of the perfect being; Jasper." I overheard this as I was in the car and it was playing loudly over a loudspeaker attached to the inside of the Bentley, somehow the lab-man was rather stupid and said it over a walkie-talkie that connected to the loudspeaker.

[Jasper]

Oh great Overlord, The pickle covered lab man did say these things, but it was merely because he was trying to reason with me. You see, he got trapped in the car when we passed him on the road and Delthion decided we needed to pick him up as some sort of revenge on his rampant attack on us at the McDonald's. Since I was so sick, I was assigned to guard him, and he made all sorts of ridiculous things up to try to get me to let him go. One of the most ridiculous things he said was the one Delthion mentioned to you. I wasn't plotting any of that - he was offering power to make me let him go. Naturally, I told him to shut up and sit still.

You are probably wondering where the pickle covered rascal is now. Believe it or not, a full scale alien abduction took place. A UFO flew above the car, beamed the roof of the car off, and several small green creatures invulnerable to bullets and resembling broccoli flew down and took the lab man. I shot them several times each, but they just ignored me.

[Delthion]

I was abducted as well, and remained in the UFO for the rest of this mission until I could tell them that I was working for the esteemed, gracious, amazingly awesome Overlord, after this they trembled in fear and let me go. I had heard that they had been bribed by Soren to pick us up, they also said that he was trying to buy all of the McDonald's franchise, and eat all of your food. I swear Milord that I was involved in none of this after or prior to the alien abduction, I was beamed up and saw the Bentley swerve into the opposite lane, then Jasper seemed to take control of the wheel and maneuvered the car into the right lane. This Milord concludes all knowledge of the mission. I am deeply sorry that was unable to serve you to the fullest of my potential. I beg your forgiveness most kind and gracious Overlord.

[Søren]

Your graciousness, the aliens thought that they were being bribed by me, but we're infact being deceived. Someone, someone sinister, was impersonating me. They were trying to buy up the McDonalds franchises. I meanwhile, when the aliens abducted Del, I was able to sneak on bord their ship. While I was there, I found a computer console that said that they had just ran a DNA test on Jasper. He was to be released! They said that Jasper was I. Command of the ship remotely, and they would receive orders from him. He was to be their captain, and he was to lead them to victory over a great adversary, presumably you my gracious lord. I thought this inconceivable. When I tried to locate the cell where Del was being held, I must have tripped a security alarm. This sent the ship into tactical alert. I was soon apprehended by two guards. I was taken to a cell in the brig. After a few hours, I was able to find a way to bypass the force field using a phase inducer. (Another gift from the green antelope.) When I got out, I was going to free Del, but he was already gone! I thought him dead. So a was able to find an escape pod and jetison myself into southern Arizona. From there my lord, I was able to hitchhike my way to the rendezvous site. All the McDonalds had already closed down. I could get a replacement meal for you my lord. I'm am truly sorry. But if it wasn't for Jasper, then none of this would have happened. I'm afraid that's all I know. I wasn't involved with the aliens, or the lab man. Not was I involved with any other antics that those two cooked up. I followed my orders to the best of my ability. Unfortunately, sometimes the best help is no help. 

[James Gryphon]

The Overlord sounded more than a little perplexed. "James... Gryphon? I've never heard of such a name. There was another fellow by the name of Tagg that I once appointed Overlord, though, so good work for recognizing that, I guess. It's too bad that's the only thing that any of you were able to get right."

"You were all useless. With tens of thousands of franchises across the world I should think you would have been able to find at least one that was capable of getting me what I ordered. These side diversions were simply totally unnecessary. That said, you all seem to have been born with a black cloud hanging over your heads; it seems that disaster follows you everywhere you go. Maybe I'm just destined to suffer from having poor help."

"Soren: The "mandatory health vaccine" I provided you should have rendered you invulnerable to mind control. Personality changes and cravings are one thing, but foreign devices cannot completely control anyone who has taken the proper precautions, which I gave you. It seems that you neglected this requirement. Even discounting that, though, you claimed that you have "never done anything contradicting my authority". Well, I told you before that you, along with the rest of your ilk, have failed me, and did not carry out my orders. By insisting on your innocence, you're calling me a liar."

"I had planned to run the food you brought me through the replicator, and I could have good sweet tea, decent fries, and passable burgers, from now on. That didn't happen, so instead I'll give you a taste of your own ineptitude."

Melted ice cream, meat and bread paste sprinkled with ketchup, and streams of salt began to fall from the top of the glass capsule. Within just a few seconds it had filled up all the way to Soren's head -- the unfortunate servant was forced to gag down the unappetizing mixture to keep from drowning. As more fell, he was forced to eat more; the other servants could see him quite visibly start to turn green.

Eventually the Overlord got tired of this. There was a flash of light, and suddenly everything in Soren's chamber was still.

"He's back in stasis, where he'll remain for the foreseeable future. As you might remember, stasis preserves your current state for as long as it is activated -- that was why I made sure that all of you were resting comfortably before our trip here. The sensations and sickness he feels now, he will continue to feel until I bring him back out... if I bring him back out, that is. Also, since his brain was active when he got put in, he'll be awake to enjoy every moment of his situation."

"You're dismissed, for the time being. I'll summon you when I want you."

---

About a week later...

The servants were, without warning, teleported back into their capsules. A man with his face covered by a balaclava, along with another man wearing a masquerade mask, three albino gorillas, and no less than a dozen death-defying beavers garbed in 18th-century dress uniforms, were leaving the room. The two men were carrying out the large glass bottle between them, and each of the gorillas had a former servant -- Sam, LT Sandpaw, and Soren -- slung over their shoulders. A man wearing a black cloak and hood stood near the desk, and when the strange procession had exited, pressed a hidden button. The door closed, leaving the man and the final two servants alone.

"Just some last minute house-cleaning that needed to be done. That's all you need to know, and that's all I'm going to say on the subject."

The Overlord paused to push another button, bringing a hidden throne out of the floor. He sat down, sighed, and laid back in the great chair, a footrest popping up at his command.

"I've been thinking for a while about what to do with you two. A long time ago, when I had run low on servants, I decided to appoint the last one Overlord in my place. Well, I can tell you, neither one of you deserve that honor. In fact, I don't see that there's much that separates you from the last minion I dispatched. In any case, I don't plan on going anywhere that would require a replacement."

"Even so, though, I'm in a good mood today. The last of the plans that I set into motion years ago has been completed, and for the meantime I have nothing on my schedule -- the first time, I can tell you, that's happened in many, many years. So, take a look at this."

The Overlord pulled out a remote control from his chair, and pushed something. A viewscreen on the ceiling came on, showing a massive starfield -- "the galaxy", the Overlord commented. The Overlord rotated a knob on his control, and the image on the screen changed, several times. Some were galaxies very similar to the one that had just appeared. Other galaxies were noticeably different. One image showed simply a blue sky, with nothing else evident. Another showed only a single star. The Overlord finally stopped at one that looked identical to the image he had shown at the beginning, and zoomed in to focus on one little blue planet.

"I told you at the beginning of all of this that we had gone back in time. While that was close enough to being true to suit my purposes, it is not close to accurate in the technical sense of things. This is not time travel, but something entirely different. Time travel, as we know it, is impossible. What I had actually done, which I discovered to my chagrin -- for at first I thought it was possible to undo the mistakes of the past -- is, quite simply, to journey to another parallel world. One that happened to be almost identical to the one I had left in my relative youth."

"As I began to think about what this meant, I felt it would be worth sending some servants out on a fact-finding tour, to events that I remembered happening in my and in some of my successors' pasts. That was what you people were supposed to do, and in the process of so doing, you caused most of the events that I remembered happening -- or ones that were, at least, very similar to them."

"This has some interesting implications -- it suggests that all the oddities I recall from my world were originated by some parallel-world double of myself, attempting to carry out the same task. The concept of parallel-world doubles was something I wanted to look into, and after a short time, I was able to find a way of looking for them -- through dimensions, as it were."

"Everyone has a parallel-world double, one for every world. The "Overlord Tagg" you spoke of happened to be a double of the one that was recently shrunk and placed in a glass bottle. I was shuffling through dimensions and happened to find a double of myself who had been reduced to a brain in a jar. The concept of what a double is can be very fluid -- in some strange realities, your doubles are talking animals! -- but there is some essential "essence" that connects all the doubles together, across all of the worlds."

"Now, I am granting each of you the opportunity to ask me three questions. You may ask them one at a time, and get my answer between each one, or you may ask all of them at once. Speak carefully, for the subject and quality of your questions does matter."

[Jasper]

Jasper contemplated this curiously. He had never heard of anything like this, and very surprised indeed.

What exactly is the essence that connects the doubles that you speak of?

[Delthion]

How Milord, can we use this to serve you more proficiently?

What happens to us in these other realities, are we allowed to serve you still?

Are we able to serve you well in these alternate realities?

[James Gryphon]

The Overlord pondered for a second, then responded. "Regarding the essence, I'm not completely sure, but this is what I'm willing to speculate about it so far. Imagine, if you will, a spider web. Not all of the strands are identical, and some are closer to certain strands than others, but they have a similar character and are all part of the same structure. Each of the parallel doubles' lives seem to be strongly influenced by this essence, to the point of strong correlations in their genetic and environmental backgrounds. Their personalities are also usually similar, though not always identical. On the cosmic level, these "essence webs" all seem to hang from a certain otherworldly "curtain". I have been unable to gain any insight into the nature of this curtain, hence the name -- it covers up the window to the knowledge of the origins of our universe and these parallel worlds. That said, I intend to spend several more years studying it, and hopefully someday I'll know more about it."

"As far as how you can use this to improve your service, frankly, you can't. I'm retiring from active Overlording, and the positions I'm going to hold in my new lifestyle will require no servants that haven't already been arranged for me. You would be somewhat superfluous. Besides, with your track record, I'm not sure I would want to have you along even if there were job openings. Yes, I suppose a good part of your disastrous performance might have been simply fated to turn out that way, but between the odds of that and the odds of your simply being maliciously incompetent, you can understand that I'd rather not take a chance."

"As far as other realities, all I can say is that it simply depends. Some of them are very different; others are very similar to the world you know. The number of parallel worlds seem to be potentially infinite, so I could probably pick out one or another where I was going to continue Overlording and where you weren't the blunderers you've proven to be, but it might take a while. As I mentioned, there are very strong similarities between many of these worlds, so, in most worlds where my double served as an Overlord and had you as servants, I suspect that they ultimately wouldn't have fared much better than you did. The circumstances of their difficulties might have been somewhat different, of course."

[Jasper]

How can you tell which dimension we are currently in? Because if what you say is true, I have no way of knowing if I'm talking to the same version of you that I've known from all my time as a servant, or another version of you. I can't even tell if the return trip brought me back to the right dimension, and not just a very similar one.

[James Gryphon]

"As it turns out, each world has its own distinct "signature", which my equipment can detect. That goes for you as well; the way that the world's signature refracts on your strand on your essence web tells me what I need to know. There haven't been any changes on your readings during this series of assignments. Trust me, if I had the choice of bringing a different version of you back here, I would have done so, but unfortunately I've been stuck with the lot of you."

The Overlord checked something on his wrist. "I'm running low on time, so ask your next question quickly. I'd like to finish our business here as soon as possible; there's a Chess tournament I need to be getting to."

[Jasper]

Of course. My final question:
If this is all a massive spider web, who is the spider?

[James Gryphon]

"There would seem to be many spiders, each with their own webs, and presumably each with their own distinct characteristics. Unfortunately, that's all I know. I'm sure the answer must lie behind the curtain, though, and I mean to try to look there. Who knows -- maybe the strands of the webs are really strings, being pulled by cosmic puppeteers."

The Overlord sat up a little in his chair. "Q&A time is over. I brought you here to determine your fates. One of you will be given a boon, the other will be sent to join your fellow servants in undergoing the uses my friends and successors, the two men you saw earlier, have decided upon. I have pondered this, and have sought the aid of a highly scientific device to assist me in making this decision, and this is my judgment."

There was a flash of white light, and Delthion was teleported to the planet surface below. The Overlord continued as though nothing had happened.

"Jasper: your questions demonstrate a scientific curiosity that reminds me of myself. This appreciation of my discoveries and genius has granted you a one-way trip to one of these alternate worlds. A controller will be given you in your glass capsule. Take a look at the view screen, pick a world you'd like to live in and the place you'd like to be transported to, and you'll be headed there."

"As for me, I must be going. I don't expect we'll ever meet in person again, but I might check up on your progress from a distance. Who knows, maybe you'll meet my double in the world you visit. All the worlds are very small, after all."

The Overlord got up from his chair with a groan, then slowly made his way out of the room. Jasper was left in his capsule, alone, with his ticket to the future sitting a few inches away from his hands. What he did next -- well, that's another story.

---

Well, that wraps it up for OOXI, the "throwback" round. Things didn't go as well in many ways as I had hoped, and this showed a few weaknesses in the ruleset that we're definitely going to have to discuss before the next round, but I thought we were still able to tell an interesting story. For the last decision, I counted up my opinion of each player's questions, then used that to "weigh" a random number generator -- one player had a better chance of becoming Overlord, but the other still might have gotten it. Anyway, stay tuned for more information from the new Overlord.

[SilentSam]

OOC: Good job Jasper! Looking forward to your round!

[Jasper]

Interesting finale indeed!  Incredibly in-depth and creative!

I must admit I had no idea where that last little bit was going to go, but I'm happy the good guys won 

Anyway, well done to James on running this round, and apologies for missing the point of this one almost completely at the start.  And well done to all the players participating - I honestly thought I was done for in a few of those tight situations.

On a side note: does this mean I've become Overlord? This is a very difficult round to follow up, but I can give it my best shot, of course.

[Søren]

I'm sorta sad my death was so gruesome.
But good game.