My mother-in-law is just all-around awful. This can’t be overemphasized, and it’s still as true today as it was back then, though the situation has definitely changed since then. The biggest difference (well, other than the obvious)? Back then, I hadn’t known just how deep the rot truly went, and I can’t think of a better example than that awful dinner.
It was the end of the world, and Margaret Revenel was having a guest over for dinner. Yes, she’d awoken from her afternoon nap to find herself convinced she was dead and her body was rotting, but she figured that was only to her advantage.
Dead people couldn’t get sick, now, could they?
That was one of the reasons she’d invited Rufus over for dinner. Of course, there were others. Margaret rarely invited others over for dinner, mostly because she had a general dislike of human beings. They drank her water, breathed her air, wasted her time, and suffered from endless amounts of needs and problems. The existence of other people meant that the world wasn’t as focused on her as she would have liked it to be, and her misanthropy was a natural consequence of that. Case in point: the last time Margaret left her penthouse suite was several years ago, and then, only because the surgeons weren’t willing to do her coronary artery bypass surgery as a house call.
All things considered, Margaret was taking the end of the world rather well. It did not trouble her like it did the lesser beings. This was because she enjoyed the thought of other people dying en masse, and—most of all—because she was filthy rich. Margaret had never encountered a problem that money couldn’t solve.
Well, within reason.
Margaret’s one and only daughter failed to live up to her expectations, and no amount of money seemed to be able to fix it. Pelbrum had been born wrong; Margaret had wanted a boy instead of a girl. Those slant-eyed scientists over at DAISHU had offered some fancy-pants viral treatment to change Pel’s biological sex while still developing in the womb, but—Angelless heathens that they were—they didn’t realize that messing with the Godhead’s creation like that would damn them to Hell, not that they weren’t already damned to Hell.
Limp-dick nerds, she thought.
“Margaret,” Rufus said, “really… this food must have been blessed. It’s just that good.”
“Tell that to the robot who made it,” Margaret said.
“Have I told you the robot has been getting upset with me lately?” Margaret asked.
Rufus nodded. “Yes, yes, I know.”
Margaret let out a grunt. “I tell you, that soulless hunk of metal is one or two software updates from being an affront to the Godhead.”
Margaret’s dinner guest, Archluminer Rufus Umberridge, was less troublesome than most people. He might not have had Hernichy’s charm, but at least he was eminently useful. Also, he was almost as pious as Mortimer had been, but far less ugly or boring. Unlike Henrichy, Rufus wasn’t a homosexual in hiding, but, unfortunately, the Archluminer’s vow of clerical celibacy meant he wouldn’t do much more than occasionally grope her sensually. Fortunately, Margaret had her young lover to satisfy her. She also had the robot, though, unlike Eyvan, the robot chafed her.
The Archluminer was only several years younger than his hostess. He wore his graying hair in a short, soldierly cut, buzzed thin at the sides of his head, and with a mustache like pine-needles covered in ashen snow. Rufus understood the limitations of modesty, and made a point of proudly wearing the bluejay robe signifying his station whenever possible, such as at dinner with his patron—the sky-blue cope and matching pellegrina, the golden skullcap, the white cassock, and all the rest. He was in good shape for his age, though that was to be expected. Rufus had been in the army before he’d become a clergyman.
Dinner itself was to die for: freshly slaughtered veal, charbroiled to perfection in a wine-based mushroom sauce, with cheddar-infused mashed potatoes; and fried snails dusted in cinnamon, minced pistachios, and saffron; with a side of grilled broccoli and asparagus, drizzled in a zesty lemon butter sauce.
For a corpse, Margaret was rather hungry.
The plates were nearly as white as the table’s virginal silk tablecloth. A pair of white candlesticks were the only warm thing in the cool, sterile, lavender-scented suite, and, for its centerpiece, the table bore a glass vase filled with flowers of many different colors—all fake, with cloth-woven petals dappled with gobs of dried plastic pretending to be dew. Margaret preferred them to real plants. She didn’t want to give her mechanical servants anything that would divert their attention from her and her needs. The double doors behind Rufus led to the living room, whose windows were currently shut, covered by thick, gray blackout curtains.
The food’s lively colors and flavors were out of place at House Revenel. The penthouse suite at the top floor of 1337 Petta Drive was palatial, filled with white walls, marble and funebrial grandeur. The dining room’s frosted glass wall sconces had the form of stylized seashell. They tinted the room in pale grays and foggy blues—the colors of a chilly morning out by the bay. The polished stone corner tables bore samples of Mortimer’s collection of antiques, giving Margaret’s home the feel of a museum that no one dared to visit, and she wouldn’t have had it any other way.
And if House Revenel was like a funeral, then Margaret herself was the corpse in the casket, prettied up by a robot mortician. She sat by the dining room table, in her motorized wheelchair, as usual. The joints of the joystick on the armrest were caked with bits of old food and grease. Sometimes a little bit of the stuff broke off and fell onto the carpeted floor when Margaret used to move her wheelchair around, and then one of the little dog-like robots would come out of the pet-sized wicket door in the kitchen door and vacuum it up.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Of House Revenel’s three servant robots, only one of them was in the dining room: Ferdinand, the red one. He was currently standing up against the wall. The lights, coils, and circuits within his transparent, egg-shaped head had quieted, indicating he was in sleep mode. Ariel was in the kitchen, cleaning up. And Gonzalo… eh, he was probably in Pel’s room again. The yellow robot did this weird thing where he’d just stand in Pel’s room, utterly motionless.
The thing’s probably fucking broken, Margaret thought.
As for Rufus, he sat in the grand seat at the far end of the table—Mortimer’s throne. Margaret’s dead husband would have been livid to see anyone other than him sitting in his 18th century antique, though she liked to think he would have made an exception for one of the higher clergy.
But, Margaret thought, that old bag of bones is dead so he can go fuck himself.
Margaret would be the first to admit that she married Mortimer solely for his money. For his piles and piles of money.
Her husband’s fondness for antiques had always amused her. By the time she met him, he was basically an antique, himself. To her, all that mattered was that they looked good and were worth a lot—and they did, and they were.
Margaret was a woman of simple pleasures; Mortimer, meanwhile, had been a man of no pleasures. He was joyless as burnt toast—burnt, stale, and cold. He never smiled, never laughed, never told jokes, never danced, never sang, never had any fun at all. A damn robot would have made for a better mate than Mortimer Revenel, and Margaret would know, because she’d spent the better part of their marriage secretly fucking their robot servants—even the little ones—not that Prude King Mortimer had ever suspected a thing. That was the other funny thing about Morty. Usually, people like Morty—people completely incapable of showing even a sliver of human warmth or kindness—usually, that sort of person tended to lack a moral compass. But not Mortimer Revenel, no. He lived the life of a Lucent. He never smoked, never drank, never gambled. He didn’t even like taking advantage of tax write-offs; he called it avarice.
He even somehow managed to cuss even less than my faggot of a son-in-law, she though.
To this day, I have not been able to convince Margaret that I was or am anything other than the closeted homosexual she always just assumed I was—but, back to the story.
Thankfully, Margaret had managed to convince Morty to leave the money to her, rather than give it all away to charity like he’d originally intended.
Looking up at the analog clock on the wall, Margaret noted the time. “It’s past sunset now,” she said, stabbing a fork into her butchered baby bovine. “I’m ready for my surprise. Are all the atheists dead yet?” she asked.
Rufus coughed. “Say what now?”
Archluminer Umberridge had arrived earlier that afternoon with news of the Innocents. That was entirely routine—Margaret had been working with Rufus for years—but, this time, he said he’d have a surprise for her by sunset.
And Margaret loved surprises, as long as they were pleasant.
“The pandemic is a bioweapon, right?” she asked. “One of ours?” Chewing her food, she nodded, smiling with anticipation. “Finally, something to put the fear of the Angel into the non-believers.”
“W-What?” Rufus said, sputtering in confusion. He nearly spit out some of the cheddar mashed potatoes.
Margaret scowled. “Wait. Don’t tell me… it isn’t? The surprise isn’t that we’re the ones behind the plague?”
The Archluminer stared at her for a while. “Why would you think that was the surprise?”
Margaret set her silverware down by her plate—antique Polovian porcelain, like every other plate on the table. “Well, when I called DAISHU a couple days ago, they told me it wasn’t their fault. So,” she gyrated her pudgy hand, “when you said you had a surprise for me, I naturally assumed…”
Rufus shook his head. “As far as I know, it’s entirely natural.” He gave her a serious look. “I meant what I said, Margaret. The Last Days have begun.”
Margaret pursed her lips. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”
“Deadly,” Rufus said, with a nod. He brought his hand to cover his mouth as he let out a hacking cough.
Then he speared one of the fried snails on the prongs of his fork.
Margaret fumbled as she reached for the lever on the side of her wheelchair that controlled the angle of her seat. The machinery let out a soft hiss as she straightened the back of the chair, raising it forward. “Shit,” she huffed, scowling once more. She waved her dead arms in frustration. “Well then, what the Hell have I been giving you and the Innocents all that money for?” She leaned forward, thumping her elbow on the silk-covered tabletop. “When the police discovered the compound in the old monastery in the Riscolts, they set us back by years.”
“I know, Margaret, I know,” Rufus said, defensively.
“Then you know I told you I wasn’t gonna accept anything less than spectacular. But how can we have spectacular when they found the nukes?” She slapped the tabletop. “They found the nukes, Rufus!”
Archluminer Umberridge sighed. “You don’t need to tell me twice. I worked myself to the bone getting the right people in the right place, so that when push came to shove, they would look the other way when the Angel’s will went beyond the pale of the petty secular laws they were supposed to make and enforce.”
Margaret had been supporting Archluminer Rufus for the better part of two decades. He owed her his Archluminacy. She’d gotten his predecessor out of the way—Archluminer Wraymond Tuluse. Of course, she probably would have done that, regardless. Tuluse wasn’t just softhearted, he was also a faggot. Had Margaret not bribed Tuluse’s doctor to reveal the Archluminer had been treated for Engoliss’, Henrichy never would have been able to come forward with the news that Wraymond Tuluse had molested drug-zonked children during his days as a priest. (He’d been forced to do it by the Archluminer of Seasweep, otherwise Tuluse and the kids would have been shot dead right then and there, not that Henrichy had mentioned that tasteless detail, thank the Angel.) Tuluse had even gone so far as to establish an adorable little charity for suffers of sexual abuse—whether by the clergy or the laïty. It was as if he still hoped he could make amends and save his soul from Hell. The Archluminer finally hung himself about a week after Henrichy spilled the beans about his child faggotry; the revelation had shuttered his charity; all the donors had pulled out after Tuluse and his charity became pariah. With Tuluse out of the way, a couple of well-placed bribes secured Rufus his ascension to Archluminer of Elpeck. That made Rufus into Lassedite Bishop’s right-hand man, and from his position deep in the heart of the Church, the Archluminer could go about the work of quietly nudging the faith back into the right lane.
“I’d been spending the past few days watching Henrichy chronicle the carnage,” Margaret said. “I was loving every minute of it, because I was thinking I’d finally gotten the results I’ve been paying for. But now, you’re telling me this plague just happened? All on its own? You can’t possibly believe that, can you?”
“Well then, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Margaret,” Rufus said, with more than a hint of sarcasm.
But Tuluse’s downfall and Umberridge’s rise was just one of Margaret’s many philanthropic activities, and it wasn’t even the favorite of her pet projects.
That status went to the Innocents of the Mountain.