Argus
patreon
[Writing Prompt] No one has been able to disobey the crown over your head for the last ten years.
🕑 Added 2019-12-22 21:21:59 +0000 UTC
They say that power corrupts, and ultimate power corrupts ultimately. I’m not sure which “they” said that originally, but I think these days, we all know it’s kind of a lie.
Power doesn’t corrupt. It reveals. It shows the world who you are, truly, when there’s less and less holding you back. It amplifies your self, expounds on what you could be, would be, *should* be. And then, no matter how careful you are, it inflicts you on the world around you. Pushes your opinions, shapes things to your whims.
And not everyone’s whims are decent.
When I was young, I looked in the mirror one day and saw a crown floating over my head. I knew how it had gotten there, though I don’t think I’ll share that; it was a series of increasingly unlikely and risky moves that had ended up with me standing apart from humanity for most of my life. I wouldn’t really wish that on anyone, especially knowing what some people can be like.
The crown itself was blue and ghostly. It was no physical thing, either; no one else could see it, or if they did, they never said anything to me. And if you were to search the whole of Earth, and every monarchy throughout our history, you would never see a crown quite like it.
Black material, no metal anyone had ever forged, shaped into a series of five diamonds that only barely touched the tips of their edges as they orbited my skull. Each plated face had markings on it, or, if I caught it at the right angle, holes. There was always more crown than I remembered, more little details to find, more spaces hidden inside it waiting to come out. It was, ultimately and ultimate, an Authority. The ability to have my words heard, my desires obeyed. My every command made manifest.
At the time, my desire was to date Kimberly Barnes, from two grades above mine. This, I kind of already knew, was a doomed venture. But I didn’t want to just let it go without trying, so I asked her out.
She said no, obviously. And, contrary to what a lot of people might believe about me now, that actually was the end of that. My origin as a tyrant doesn’t actually start with me forcing myself on some unsuspecting high school girl.
No, my origin was much more innocent. See, when I told my friend Kyle, and he started making fun of me, I simply ordered him, “Hey man, don’t mock people for trying.”
And he stopped.
Of course he stopped. I’d given him a command. My crown in the mirror that night was slightly less ethereal. And Kyle never once mocked anyone for trying again, from that moment until the day he died. Though I’m sure he found other things to tease his friends for.
The thing was, I wasn’t that prone to giving people orders. It took a long time for me to realize what the crown was for, and what it let me do. Which, it turned out, was probably for the best. Whether anyone will believe it now, I do think that it was good that it took me so long to know what I was capable of. It gave me time to grow up, to finish school, to go to university and pick up a little more hands on experience with the world and modern philosophies. To become what I would, honestly, consider a good person.
No one in high school is a good person. I’m not saying I was *evil* as a kid, but damn, looking back now, I was a fucking idiot. I wouldn’t trust teenage me with superpowers. I certainly wouldn’t trust anyone else. It’s hard to remember how inexperienced and prone to mistakes we all were when we were younger.
By this point in my life, my crown was a bit bigger than before. Fourteen curved diamond shapes, slowly folding around each other, leaking a thin blue fog out into the world that no one could ever see. I never really knew what my limits were, because every time I thought I’d crossed them, I’d just see another part of the crown in the mirror later that night.
The day that a lot of people remember, the thing no one really ever forgets, though, is the day that I snapped. The day that I looked around at our civilization, failing to even try to be fair or good, and just realized I’d had enough of it. I think, given enough time, everyone has those days. The problem here was that I had something I could do about it.
I had, by this time, fully realized that no one could ever disobey a direct command from me. I’d tried, I’d tried *so hard* to be ethical about it. To word things carefully, to not become the monster I knew I could so easily become. But that day… well, we all have those days. Those days when the world is so blatantly unfair and cruel, and you know it’s someone’s fault. That if someone had just fucking *tried*, so much pain could have never happened.
My anger hadn’t made me think small. I’d taken weeks to force meetings with everyone I needed to. From local TV news broadcasters to programming directors for Netflix. It had taken a while to arrange to be on every screen at once. Though, that said, making the Youtube video had been the easiest part.
It turned out, my power worked through recordings.
“Be good to each other. You know how. Share this message.”
That was it. Three sentences.
I tore our world apart.
I had, in my heart, firmly believed in the power of good. Of kindness and compassion, and ethical behavior. I still do, truly. Even after the destruction that followed.
It started small. “Small”, anyway. The oil companies gutted themselves from the inside out, right along with the auto industry, and basically anything associated with the military industrial complex. Turns out, the one percent *did* know how to be good people, but the transition from draconic hoarders of wealth into people who just want to help happening overnight? That caused some problems. Problems like the collapse of whole industries. Those old money monsters who had created their cruel cages of wealth hadn’t been prepared to open the doors and let the prisoners out. No one had, really.
Then governments started failing. The politicians were talking to each other reasonably, they were making rational decisions and they weren’t taking bribes. And the blackened support network that had kept modern governments propped up just collapsed under them. The power structures that made things ‘work’ in the twistedly functional way they did all died in their beds, halfway through the latest episode of Stranger Things. Those silver tongued monsters who weasled their way into office just weren’t prepared to actually work without the criminal logistics to back them up.
Then, about two hours later, the people who had dodged the message struck back. Small arms fire from paranoid holdouts claimed tens of thousands of lives. Fearful isolation from some who didn’t want to be brainwashed led to dozens of thousands of deaths from starvation or lack of services. The fires of civilization on the way out claimed hundreds of thousands more.
The nukes from Russia, Britain, and Israel claimed *millions*, often of their own people.
That oldest of monsters, our own human fears, clawed us down as the rest of us smothered it to death.
I’d like to tell you that we’re in a time of healing now. That the poison has been bled from humanity, and we are rebuilding. Bringing back a society that’s *better* than we could ever hope to be before. One where everyone is equal, everyone is cared for, and everyone is the heroic self they always knew they could be.
But I don’t know if I can say that.
My crown is two miles tall. It is more solid than the mountains, more real than the air we breathe. Its fractal shapes enthrall those near me, bringing them to kneel at my feet, pledging their loyalty and lives to their new master. Their new owner. And I know that I cannot be a good person forever. I have, always, been immune to my own commands.
It has been ten years since anyone has been able to resist my word. But today, after this last word is written, and after my finger pulls the trigger, I will finally remove the last monster in the world.
So, I give one last request. No more orders. Never another order.
Be good to each other.
Or the next person like me may not be so kind.
