Jam followed the young woman with his eager eyes until she fully stepped into the room, which was decorated entirely in navy blue, and walked reluctantly, pale and shivering, over to his friend; then, turning back around, he perceived that Aleku, who had brought in the Eastern European woman a moment earlier, was laughing and blubbering along to her nation’s national anthem while smoking two large cigars at once. The foreigner looked up from the book that she was reading at the younger woman and smirked.

“Well, my dearest friend,” began Jam to Aleku, “you do not seem the least bit worried about what you have done, nor the slightest guilt.”

“I am deeply ashamed of what I have done,” said Aleku.

“Do you, then, wish to tell him the truth about what we have done?”

“I wish to break the silence and expose myself completely!” Aleku shouted, slamming his fists upon the oak table.

“Everything?”

“Oh, yes – I want to expose everything to him.”

“And yet you sit there, smoking cigar after cigar, so much so that now you have graduated to two cigars at once; I thought you were a man of action – a man that gets things done.”

“What can I do? The man won’t listen at all,” said Aleku.

“But is this the right way to do it? Believe me, framing him for a crime would have been much less work and risk than what you have chosen to do. I am not his friend anymore, but you seem hellbent on giving him chances to prove himself. Why?”

“You know why. Besides, I benefit from this arrangement anyway.”

“How?”

“Well,” said Aleku, blowing out thick smoke which then floated out of the window next to him, “first: it’s cheap, wait, no, it’s free – fucking hell.” He coughed and wheezed, and then gave his chest several heard knocks. “Isn’t it interesting that the whole psychological movement came right after industrialisation? Like,” Aleku said thoughtfully, tilting his head back, “these so-called professionals discover a fundamental truth about human existence right after the mass urbanisation of people and alienation from the products of their labour by mass production and mechanisation. They call us sick because we can’t work like a slave and be happy about it. Naturally, such a radical change of production necessitates a change in social relations; yet psychology would label those who cannot adapt as ‘incapable’, as neurologically deficient, and thus they get left behind. Incapable of what? Incapable of living the way humans hadn’t evolved for?”

“Isn’t it interesting,” said Jam, following the black cloud climbing over the windowsill and joining the pure morning air, “that you sound just like the man that you proclaimed over and over is inferior to you. Don’t let him get inside of your mind. He’s a devil, a snake, a cockroach who should be squashed. If I were you, I would take that desert eagle and shoot him right here and right now.”

“Well, that is why I want to eradicate them all from the face of the earth. I do not want them to slow technological progress.”

“How do you plan to achieve that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I’ll get them all hooked into Systemcare and give them the life that they want.”

“And how would that get rid of people like him,” asked Jam, shriveling his face like one of the withered leaves out on the porch.

“If they prefer to live in the System than out in the real world, they’ll have no incentive to interact with it. They won’t bother to seek a mate out in the phenomenal world because they will have all their desires realised in the -”

“And what will you call this separate world?”

“The Noumenal,” he replied.

“The Noumenal wouldn’t be quite right,” interjected Sophia, looking up from her book once again. But then she tilted her head to the side, “Perhaps it could work, though,” she added.

“It will work,” said Aleku, licking his fat, bulbous lips. “I will shoot him on the bed while he’s strapped in if it doesn’t,” he said after a pause.

The young woman suddenly gasped. “You cannot be serious!” she said, covering her mouth with her pale hand. “My dad isn’t a murderer, or I don’t know my dad.”

“Bailey, darling, how was work?” Aleku said, opening the drawer by his knees under the table, which revealed a collection of an array of colourful miniature vodka bottles; he spent a moment labouring over which one he should pick, finally settling on his most expensive bottle, the ‘Billionaire Vodka’; the fact that it was filtered through diamonds and cost $3.7 million per bottle made it taste all the sweeter.

The young woman’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t know why I had to fly back here straight after my shift,” she said, her eyes heavy with tiredness.

“Do you want a shot, my little baby?” he asked, raising a glass to his daughter.

“No, thanks dad, I don’t want to support your drinking habits by engaging in them with you. You know, you should really stop drinking all together. It would be much better for your health.”

“Yes, darling,” said Aleku, before downing his first shot. He started pouring his second when he looked up at the rest of the table. “You guys want some?”

Jam’s greedy eyes lit up, and he nodded his head slowly like a drooling predator, and then turned back to his friend’s daughter. “How old are you?” he asked Bailey directly. “You must be sixteen to drink,” he said, thinking that he was cleverly setting up a joke. He grinned at her.

She simply looked at him with a blank expression, and said, “I am twenty-two,” she replied flatly.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Come,” said Jam, “you should really give me that gun before you harm yourself. I don’t want you to do something stupid -”

“Yes,” said Aleku, after drinking his third shot. “But let me get drunk first.”

“Oh, we’ll be here for a while, then,” groaned Bailey.

“Only twenty-five before I start getting tipsy,” he replied smugly.

“My good friend,” said the crown prosecutor, “you have been drinking for 24 hours straight; I seriously pity your liver. Go, finish that expensive vodka bottle and give me that gun before you shoot yourself instead of our mutual enemy. Do not go ahead with your plan in a state like this because you might make a mistake and give the raging misogynist a reason to distrust you again. If you jeapardise your plan to reeducate this fellow permanently then our agreement is off the table, and I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.”

“Who are you speaking about?” asked Bailey with a confused expression.

Aleku raised his glass, and said, slurring his words, “Here’s to the next evolution of the human race.” Then he crossed his eyebrows, all the while swaying slightly from left to right like the trees outside, and said, with a furious tone, “I-drunk? You dare suggest that I... drunk?” At once he broke out into laughter. “English people... I could drink fifty of these bottles and barely even feel a thing, muahaha.”

Jam raised his eyebrow and smiled. “Yes, yes, drink up,” he thought secretly. “Then I will steal your empire from right under your feet.”

“Is there a man here that you people are plotting against? Honestly, is everyone in this house utterly out of their damn minds?” said Bailey exasperatedly, and she walked quickly to the window and looked out of it, peering straight down below. “Who the hell is that?” she gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. “There’s a man out there!” she said, pointing. “You need to help him; oh, what – no, there’s a man out there!”

“Damn right there is!” rejoiced Aleku, pouring yet another glass, coughing terribly.

“How are you going to get him strapped into the system?” asked Sophia with boredom, her eyes not lifting from the page that she was reading.

“Don’t worry about that, my love,” said Aleku squeakily, his cheeks burning piping hot like firewood. “Just carry on reading... and... be a good girl for papa,” he slurred.

“Stop drinking so much and help that poor man!” shouted Bailey with frustration.

“I’m simply having a drink – or three, if you like; so much for being in good, tolerable company. If one cannot drink without being accused, how can one be happy?”

“Oh no, he’s started philosophising; now you know he’s drunk,” sighed Bailey.

“Philosophy? Bunch of hokey pokeys,” laughed Aleku deliriously, slumping in his chair and drooling.

“You said that you were plotting to put this man under the system. That’s exactly what I came here to ask you about, father.”

“Father?” grunted Aleku, shaking his head randomly as though he was trying to get something to unbalance from the top of his head, “You don’t call me by that title unless you want something.” The businessman narrowed his eyes in suspicion, and asked, “What is it that you want? If it is to get out of your marriage to Casildo, I won’t hear it: I need Kuwait to agree to the US’ arms deal or I’m in for a headache.”

“But father-” Bailey whined, but then lowered her head in defeat and sighed. “No, that isn’t what I came to discuss with you. I’m here for another matter. It’s about a... friend.”

“A friend? Is this ‘friend’ from a rich and prosperous family? If not, do what I’ve told all your sisters to do – get rid of them. If, though, they are rich and prosperous, keep them close. Remember, if you can’t get anything out of somebody that you need they are useless, they are dead weight, and you’ll just drown keeping them around.”

“Yes, you have said that plenty of times. But this is about a guy who’s really struggling to make friends-”

“Oh, one of them, is it? Don’t have anything to do with idiots who cannot socialise in this world. I know I said that we live in an unnatural world, but if one cannot adapt to it then they should die. Simples.”

“There’s goodness in this man,” Bailey said, drawing her hands to her chest, where her heart sat, beating rapidly as she thought of Rod, trying to imagine what he must look like to have such problems finding friendships. “I can feel it,” she said exasperatedly, “I can really feel it.”

“You are imagining things; it is quite easy to do when you do nothing all day,” Aleku said.

“I don’t do ‘nothing’. I help people,” she said.

“Help people? You do nothing of the sort. All you do is listen to people complain about their pathetic lives.”

Bailey grew red and stepped towards her father with fury in her eyes. “You...you are nothing but a... damn you!” she spluttered, white as a burn blister. When Aleku did not say anything, but simply stared out of the window at the swaying trees, she blurted, frustratedly, “No wonder my mum left you!”

Aleku shot out of his chair with a twisted expression, slamming his hands on the table. “Get her name out of your fucking mouth,” he spat hatefully.

Bailey froze, startled and white as a sheet, her mouth hanging open in disbelief. She stood in front of the window, trembling and twitching like a twig.

“She left because she did not want what was best for you,” Aleku said after a moment of silence, his eyes dark and heavy all of a sudden. It was as if a shadow had passed over him. “Now, why don’t you go and do whatever the fuck girls your age do? You have unlimited funds at your disposal. Go play with your sisters.”

“You know that they aren’t my sisters!” blurted Bailey, her bottom lip wobbling.

“Shut your fucking mouth,” warned Aleku, jabbing a finger inches from her face. “I only allow you to ‘work’ that job because it makes me look good to clients; and not because you enjoy it. You hear me? Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Have you ever heard of that? I should have never sent you to university. You’re a good for nothing bum. You don’t know the real world. You’re a disgrace to this family, a stain upon my good name. I wish your mother would have taken you when she fucked off-” he stopped abruptly, saliva coming out between his frightening lips in white torrents.

Bailey stood, tears welling up in her eyes. She turned away and quietly sobbed, and then started towards the door. She glared back over her shoulders at the man she called father, and then, seeing that he was not at all looking her, but instead drowning himself in more vodka, turned back to the door and quickly left the room.

Jam looked at his friend with wide eyes, staring at him for almost a minute. He watched him drink two more shots. He looked over at Sophia, who had not even lifted an eye from her book. “It wasn’t wise for you to treat her like that,” he finally said.

“Why not? She is my daughter.”

“Daughters can quickly become your greatest enemy.”

“Good that I have a whole army of them, then,” snapped Aleku, glaring at his friend. “She’ll come crawling back when she wants more money,” he said. “A ruler must be feared. What did Machiavelli say? ‘It is much safer to be feared than loved...’ I cannot be a good father and a good businessman, much less a husband; believe me, I tried with her mother.”

“There’s still one thing that I do not understand,” Sophia said, “if you knew that Rod came here to steal the system from you for his own personal use...why did you not just offer it him? Instead of setting about with this whole exhausting and risky scheme which involves your daughters?”

“Because he is the type of man to run from opportunity; he is a man who is best motivated by fear. It pays to be a manager: I know how to motivate men. I know Rod better than he knows himself; he is a man who is afraid of his own shadow, afraid of his own potential. And besides, it is a risky business that must be gotten right because it is an unsanctioned human trial, after all.”

“And my role is to oversee the progress of this, ‘trial’, and report back to my superiors back in the Balkans before they agree to purchase a license for this... System.”

“Yes, in exchange for control of the entirety of the NATO once they’ve conquered it.”

“If they conquer it,” said Sophia.

“They will.”

“How do you know?”

“Because my friend here,” said Aleku, turning to look at Jam, “is the man who will make sure my System is used by everyone in the country, and then the entire West will follow suit.”