Dome War
Grant

‘Wait… Stop. No!’ Lenny screamed as the guards smothered him to carry out the ruling of the woman that was strutting out of the building as if she hadn’t condemned a man to death. It was a struggle of course- one that even escalated to a snappy fist fight until Lenny was ready to compromise. ‘I want to make my last words- I want to make my last words!’ he stammered, his vision red at Chuck, who was meek as a lamb as he came closer to hear what Lenny who probably thought this was what Chuck had staged had to say. The room was almost clear, prompting for Lenny who was now crying to say, ‘Look after him… tell him I’m proud of him and how sorry I am. As for you’, Chuck went into a brief cardiac arrest, ‘When I saw her again it was like not one day had passed. I only wish I could take everything back.’ And with that the guards ran out of patience and took him away. Their final eye contact felt like forever, cursed by a failed plan and Lenny’s monologue of baloney. Chuck was never going to let himself see the end to this excruciating turn of events. The guilt was asphyxiating him as he practically got thrown out of the court room in his hat, shades and fake moustache getup to avoid recognition. He spent the night on the now quiet streets and ate dumpster donuts. He was interrupted the next morning by Susan who said, ‘Clean yourself up. Eon requests your presence.’ They threw him at the back of the van they came with- which Chuck allowed the same way he did the loosening grip of his hand on reality. He was beginning to wonder if he was schizophrenic. ‘When is Lenny’s plug going to be pulled from the socket?’ he thought. ‘When did everything go so wrong?’ he thought. He could not help but imagine how well his life would have been if Lenny hadn’t showed and if Eon didn’t exist. Eon- Lenny’s unspoken dying wish. In that moment Chuck’s purpose was reinvented and not a moment too soon as they had just pulled up in front of Harrison Enterprises. ‘The moment we’ve been waiting for isn’t it?’ Susan said as she opened the van’s back door, allowing the blinding sunlight to flood into Chuck’s teary eyes. He was pulled out by the two henchmen and thrown through the company’s welcoming doors. He heard a voice, one all too familiar say, ‘How accurate did I get your lobby?’ The new CEO of Harrison Enterprises rotated his chair to kill Chuck’s suspense. It was Grant! Chuck gasped. Susan then said, ‘Graduated a cyber-security major at MIT last year and invented the Virtual Headset software.’ Chuck then did the inappropriate, wry gesture of laughing his lungs out and said, ‘Well I would have known that if I hadn’t cut your umbilical cord prematurely now wouldn’t I son?’ Grant answered, ‘Lenny, the version of you that didn’t kill me chose to kill my mom. His decision contradicted yours and down there he became a felon for it. He became a spy- stealing classified records and building tech. He single-handedly turned Dome into a cripple until Eon couldn’t take it. Neither could I.’ A monitor behind him showed a transfer had completed- he had sent Eon to some terminal in Hollow-E and in that same moment Chuck’s watch notified him of Eon being back online. ‘Ah… Eon was based here. Riddle me this; why did he only seem to work when you were on Hollow-E? Last I checked the only thing that worked if its master was off-world was a headset’, Chuck asked although it was obvious at this point. Their locked gazes insinuating they were thinking the same thing. Grant then confirmed, ‘Chuck, Eon is my mimic.’

’Did you think the virtual headset Eon was wearing when he talked to you was a style choice? And what did you think an outlaw like me would be doing with all that spare time? Drawing crayon images of themselves wishing they had a master? One to drown their neediness and their unspoken need for subjugation just like what all the other disgusting, pathetic clones are made for? Did you know if I wasn’t an outlaw- a lower tier than a mimic by the way- I’d probably have to follow the ‘real’ Grant to the bottom of the abyss if that was what he wanted? And that if he decided to eat compost I’d have to too or the Dome tower would kill me and replace me with a more ‘useful’ clone? We invented large scale magnetic levitation and trans-dimensional communication back when the respected surface world people were still staring at the sun. Lenny understood that but instead of standing for our world he chose destroying Dome and simply never coming back to this place where an original idea gets a gun to one’s head to save us. As if not choosing patriotism as a good enough excuse to fix the world that has our people and thousands of other replacement copies of their disposable selves on conveyor belts like GMO pigs was bad enough he wasn’t going to choose me. He told me when I was ten, the same time I pulled wool over Eon’s eyes what happened to mom and left to fulfil his mission. I didn’t care what happened to me- how he left me. Heck, I couldn’t care what was going to happen to me because the outlaw detention centre I was raised in geared all of us into disregarding and hating ourselves not only to make ‘giving us purposes’ when we are old enough for mimicking easier and consensual but for us to never forget our worth… We’re clones made to take some of the places of higher powers worthy of the mantle of humanity when a procedure of fixing their many defects wipes out half of them- the only condition for our freedom. The whole point of the project revolves around your flaws but Dome was too blind to see them and anything that wasn’t the bright lure of cheap thrills. Dome has built an infinite cycle of death because of their failure to see the worth of the people that are the products of their morbid factory just like humans have treated your people. It’s all because of the system.’ A good villain backstory would never be complete without an unasked, impromptu soliloquy and this one had hit hard. Chuck being left speechless was quite angry but still oblivious to what this stoic was planning. He gulped and then said, ‘What do you need the company for? Because only a Neanderthal would think you got me out of the hospital for a couple of drinks.’ ‘Harrison Enterprises has the resources with which I can fully implement Eon- without operating in the dark and with scraps too. Observe’, Grant then flipped a switch on a console, making all the screen displays in the room show aerial footage of different places on Hollow-E and continued, ‘from this company came Dome and basing on the tech in here the apple didn’t fall far.’ He seemed to be using the console to control Eon because with another strike on the console all the headsets of all the citizens of the underground dystopia fell off their faces. Before they grasped the situation they quickly put them back on. ‘See? That is what the surface has done. Dome influenced them into thinking like your nihilistic and megalomaniac consumerists they have started to want it. You are a poison to them… and here comes the antidote!’ In a flash, all the built-in snipers of the tower positioned themselves at a perfect aim on everyone and rained fire! All of them; men, women and children were at the mercy of the Dome Tower and none of them could see it because they were all too busy enjoying the convenience of not having to live their own life behind the headsets.