Of Truth, Sloth, and Everything In Between by noremac9 |  |
The floor wasn't dank. It wasn't polished steel, either.
A nice redwood finish was what he liked, and that's what was there. It was easier
for him to work like that, more relaxed. He was re-strategizing on Project Meri-Dari,
because it had gone far better than was hoped, and now he had plans to use it
for even better purposes. Neopian masses-- so easily manipulated, so easily
led astray from the truth and blindfolded, he thought, yet so hard to subdue.
Sloth sighed. It was that easily manipulated quality that made it so hard for
him to conquer them, but slowly enough, he was doing it. They believed he was
pure evil, a dark overlord with no redeeming qualities. He laughed; far from the
truth, but it was what he wanted, what he led them to believe. So easily manipulated.
"Sir, we received a reply via satellite message
from THE Singular Darigan Agent!" said his personal assistant, a red Grundo
named Katrax, through the intercom by the door to his office.
"Come in," Sloth replied over the machine.
The door opened, and in came the slender Grundo.
He put his report down on the desk and pulled up his custom made chair. Sloth
glanced over the information quickly, and doubly so, because he already knew
what it would say. Or should say, that is; but it did.
"Everything's in order, it would seem," Sloth
mumbled, "I just have to figure out what I want to do with the blasted results
of this situation."
"Sir, I'm sure you'll figure out something,"
his assistant said encouragingly, "you're quite resourceful,"
Sloth sighed. No matter how many times he told
his assistant to treat him like an equal, or at least something like one, he
never listened. It was almost like his assistant believed the junk the propaganda
department churned out, and that he thought he would be thrown in a dungeon,
or devoured by a wild beast, just for looking at him wrong. Sloth was used to
it, but it would be nicer if his assistant would listen, because he saw him
every day, and being called "Sir," all the time, and saying things like "If
you thought it up, I'm sure it'll work," tended to get old.
"Thank you for the report," he smiled, "I'll
call you if I need you,"
"Yes, Sir," his timid assistant said, and left
the room.
Sloth continued to brainstorm his idea for "Project
Meri-Dari", eventually with some results. A plan formed in his mind, one of
distraction, confusion, chaos, and many other such things. Immediately he called
in his lead strategist, whom he would need to round out the square edges with.
Unsurprisingly, the Aisha was at his side merely minutes after his request.
The alien Aisha, Tronvlox II, had a key to his office, and used it without thinking.
Sitting down in a chair next to Sloth, he got the look in his eye he always
got when he knew Sloth was exited-- a look that said "This is going to be fun..."
"What plan have you, Marot'taiq?" he said casually,
using Sloth's real name.
"I just received news that the Singular Darigan
Agent is ready," he replied, handing the Aisha the report, "so everything's
ready. As you know, the Meri-Dari plan went over far better than expected, and
I've been rethinking my original concept, because this could be the REAL chance,
right now, in the next few weeks. Here's what I came up with..." he then handed
the paper over.
Tronvlox looked over both of them, and had there
been a microphone in his mind, you would've heard ticking. Then you would have
heard the slow chugging of a mighty machine starting up, just before it went
zero to eighty in two-point-five. Right after that, no doubt you would've heard
a squealing as the machine mustered all its power, and the pilot yelled "YEEEEE-HHHHAAAAWWW!"
in a wild tone.
"So, do I still get the land of Tyrannia to
govern?" Tron mused as he finished reading with a smirk.
"If this works out as well as it looks like,
you can have Krawk Island for a personal vacation home!" Sloth laughed.
Tron straightened his face-- it was crunch time
now.
"Your plan is good, but I came up with something
better. We can make as many Darigan Agents as we like-- why not cause total
confusion and panic? Then, when the time is ripe, a full scale war, like we've
never unleashed before. I mean the muster of our army, everything we've got.
At the same time, we have several hundred Darigan Agents appear out of nowhere,
and declare the end of all Neopet-kind. Then, the Singular Darigan Agent will
make his assault on Neopia, while the others rally troops. Heck, we could make
it look like one of the many Lord Darigans were commanding YOUR army. The confusion
will be total, especially if each agent gives a different message as to what
is happening," Tron continued, as Sloth admired his genius, "Then, we lock down
the shops as planned. We'll activate all the agreed pets to raid the shops,
and dispose of the goods-- and then it gets good. They'll have to fight the
Merged-Orb Darigan, and that will take most of the strong fighters. Then, they'll
have to contend with the other Lord Darigan, while the shop crisis unfolds.
That's our cue-- a full force invasion then takes place. We give the option
to defect, just like we did with the Meridell war experiment, and we'll get
numerous soldiers from that. I think it's in the bag, Marot'."
Sloth soaked in the sum of what he just said.
His mind was clicking away, weighing options, dissing ideas, and refining techniques.
It looked good. Suddenly, a thought struck him.
"You bribed the incoming message operator again,
didn't you?" Sloth questioned, a smirk now on his face.
"Oh, him? It was hardly a bribe, poor fool,
barely enough for a dinner for two," Tron responded laughing. It impressed Sloth
if he already had a plan ready, rather than making up one on the spot-- but
he really didn't care if Sloth knew.
"Well, enough kidding around, we need to get
this to the full strategical scrutinizing committee. This is far from over,
far from over-- there a probably a million loopholes in our rough draft of a
plan, as well as technical difficulties, and well, you know how it goes..."
Sloth retorted, then dismissed the Aisha and went back to writing, of which
he'd be doing a lot of in the coming few days.
It wasn't ten minutes after that he was done.
Now it was time to continue fleshing out the plan. Immediately he called the
head of his propaganda team, "The Ministry of Free Information", a man named
Jovi. He was one of the very few humans employed by Sloth, because he did his
job well. The man was actually an ex-Neopian Times writer, and he was good.
It took a long time for him to arrive, and Sloth was beginning to get a bit
worried, but Jovi revealed the reason for his absence soon enough.
"Blasted Grundos, don't know where to put their
toes..." was the first thing he said as he entered to room, slightly bruised,
"If I didn't know better, I'd order a Grundo toe with lint side order, just
to prevent one more person from tripping over those clown feet."
Sloth nodded-- he had scared the dung out of
a few Grundos in his time by tripping over them. They were all sure it was the
chopping block for all of them.
"Anyway," he continued, "I'm here."
"I noticed," Sloth said sarcastically, "we need
to do some propaganda brainstorming on how to deal with this new idea, although
it's nowhere near fleshed out."
Jovi sat down. He pulled out his pad, and his
extremely expensive pen. He was ready for some action. Sloth handed him the
report he'd just finished before Jovi got there on what Sloth and Tron had devised.
Jovi wasn't like Tron when he was brainstorming, he was calculated, and not
a wisecrack. He was churning the wheels of his mind, and he wasn't there to
joke around. Jovi was for real.
"Ooh," he whistled to himself, "looks like I'll
be real busy for the next few weeks. Months, even."
"You'll be out of a job if you do it right!
Though, you might be one palace and everything else you could want richer,"
Sloth laughed.
Jovi wasn't amused. He was never amused during
work. Sloth was always so light-hearted, and joking around. Jovi was dry. He
hated Sloth at times like this, because he had things to do, and he was trying
to do one of them.
"Sir," he said, trying to show he meant business,
"I'd really, I'd prefer if you'd stay on track. I mean, I've got a lot of work--"
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry Jovi, I know you like
to be cut and dry during business," Sloth interrupted, "I'm just not like that,
but I'll shut up, because this is important. Very important."
"Thanks," he said without a smile, "now here's
what I'm thinking, or trying to, anyway. We put the spin on it that the Darigan
(though we'd have to call them something else, obviously) was an ancient race
of Korbats, that can be awakened by an evil power-- the Orb. When it happened
to Lord Darigan, the rest of his race awoke, and sought out revenge on all Neopia.
Don't worry about motives, if they'll buy the dung we write about you, they'll
buy the dung about this. Anyway, now they've emerged, led by their now Orb-infused
leader, and shall take 'what they rightfully own'. In the meantime, we make
it look like everyone on the space station perished.
Epidemic, malfunction, sudden air loss-- whatever.
This should remove the fear of our forces from their minds, or at least some
of them. Now here's the propaganda-- we bribe hundreds of people to cause a
pro-VirtuPets rally. They'll say you're the only one who can save them against
such odds. We'll only hire the best writers, and hopefully, they'll be able
to sway a few, if not many Neopians. But this is where it gets interesting--
we actually do it. We come in, defeat the infused-Darigan, all our own clones
of him, and subdue the Draconian forces. No problem. Now we're there, safely
there, and Neopia's ours for the taking. The most difficult part will be actually
getting them to let us down here, and supplying the writers with some argument
to use. But I'll put the whole propaganda team on it right away. I'm thinking,
personally, we need to let one of the Darigan agents take over some place in
Neopia. Mystery island, maybe. Then, after they see what he does to it, and
how miserably treated the inhabitants are, they'll beg us to come save them--
with a little help from our fee lance propaganda writers. But it's going to
be much more complicated then that, as I'd imagine all of this will be."
Sloth tried to digest everything he said. It
was more like a Chomby trying to digest an Attack Fork, then an actual soaking
in of information. He wished Jovi would pause some, or stop for more then a
few seconds. He a Jovi didn't get a long very well, but it was mainly because
of their temperaments, nothing personal. Still, Sloth wished he was more compatible
with the brilliant writer.
"Well..." he floundered, trying to make it look
like he got it all, "have the propaganda team work it over."
Jovi nodded, took his notes, and left Sloth
in peace. Everything seemed perfect, going perfectly well. Of course, things
had been going perfectly well before. Like the Lost Desert... incident. Of course,
that was just Sloth putting forth his feelers, not an all-out war, but it proved
that the Neopian race was something to be reckoned with. He just couldn't afford
all-out war, because Sloth had very real enemies. The empire of Daqko't, who
would wipe him from the face of the universe first chance they got; The Cult
of the Five Ears, an alien Aisha group he once tried to transfer, all expense
paid, from a small, dusty planet to a paradise world called Delonnatha. He just
needed to use the planet for storage, but somehow, by asking them to go to a
paradise world, he'd violated one of their ancient laws, and therefore they
all swore an oath to hunt him down, wherever he was; and of course, the accursed
Laxanian race, who didn't appreciate the attempt he made to demand them to join
him. He had enemies, but what conqueror didn't? Nevertheless, unless he was
one hundred percent sure he could wipe Neopia clean, he wasn't about to spread
himself too thin. But this time, it looked like things were in the bag. This
time it would work. They all had a lot of work ahead of them, and it wasn't
going to be easy, but the work would be worth it.
He just couldn't wait to see the looks on every
Neopian's face as they saw the true Sloth. No black cloak, no evil laughing,
just a laid back guy who happened to be enemies with them. They were so easily
tricked into thinking he was hell-bent on domination for no apparent reason,
and that he had no redeeming qualities. He laughed to himself as he thought
of the lies they believed. That he turned his parents into slugs, tortured captives,
and went to sleep at night thinking with warm fuzzy thoughts on how he would
interrogate that new prisoner every night. He shuddered. He really didn't have
a stomach for that kind of thing, but propaganda's propaganda.
He needed to think very carefully about the
coming events. It was all a spin-off of project Meri-Dari, or as the Neopians
called it, the "Meridell War." The Meri-Dari project itself was a project with
one goal in mind: to see if Neopians would defect to evil for any conceivable
reason. No one on the project anticipated that many would join simply for the
sake of being evil. They thought bribes, plot twists, and enhanced rewards would
all be needed to get Neopians to the side of darkness. While those things certainly
helped, it was mainly the desire to "Be evil!" that caused Darigan to win. Needless
to say, their surprise was enormous. After Darigan won by a whopping amount
of points, Sloth knew his experiment had gone very well. So well, they decided
to make something out of it. And so there he was, determined to conquer Neopia,
a strategy that branched out of an expensive experiment.
Now he just needed to do one more thing, and
he could hit the sack for the night. He could only do so much strategizing in
one day. He pressed the small button that opened the channel to his contacter--
a Pet who could contact anyone in the whole space station, and get them there
ASAP.
"Gromitox, hook me up with the CFO, Mr. Dwan,
please," Sloth ordered via speakerphone.
"Consider it done, sir," the Grundo responded
with an invisible smile.
Minutes later, as Sloth was accustomed to, the
man arrived in his office.
"What financial troubles have you?" Dwan said
as he always did when he was called on at special times-- there was no other
reason he'd be called upon.
"Mm, not so much trouble, just something important.
Have a seat," Sloth said, and pulled up a chair for the man, "A situation has
arisen."
Sloth went through the whole plan, making sure
Dwan knew it was very flexible, and all figures would need much leeway in both
directions. Dwan was unmoved by the plan, and seemed fairly unexcited. Actually,
he was unedited. He saw it much differently then Sloth. For the next few weeks,
he'd be working around the clock, crunching numbers, making estimates, looking
into costs, and many more mundane things. All for a cause that would probably
be abandoned or fail. No, he had no reason to be exited. He made his plan, roughly
estimated countless things, and left. He had lots of work to do, and none of
it involved working with Sloth directly.
That's the interesting thing about working
with genius, thought Sloth, they're all so quirky. Not only that,
but he found many of them just plain hard to work with. But he hired them for
their minds, not their charisma.
Sloth's day was through. And yet, in the mind
of Neopia, he never slept. He was evil. He was pure evil. He couldn't sleep.
Sleep indicated some form of real, normal, humanity, and he couldn't have that.
How easily they believed the countless lies of the propaganda team. How easily
they were manipulated. How easily he played them like an instrument. His new
plan would succeed, and these years of frustration would be done. But in the
back of his mind, something told him the plan would go wrong-- a technical mistake,
a strategically realization, a leak in the intelligence operation. And then
it'd all crash and burn. But Sloth couldn't help think that, because he wasn't
perfect, or perfectly vile. He was just normal, in his fears, doubts, thoughts,
lusts, and wishes. Ambitious-- yes. He was quite ambitious. But not in the least
evil.
Sloth went to sleep with hopes for the new concept.
Sloth slept with dreams-- not of dark creatures
and world domination, but of abstract images, and childhood memories. Sloth
slept like everyone else. Softly.
The End
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