Primate Typings

Pretty crappy afterlife I’m having.

From the Desk of the Dictator:

Welcome back from your weekend, everyone.

If you see a man in a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops wandering around the base today, feel free to ignore him. That will be Aluian, the only one of Lucifer’s soldiers to be readmitted to the hosts of Heaven and my guardian angel. Try not to let him disrupt your routine, but be polite to him. Actually, you can be as rude as you like, although I do recommend not trying to kill him. While I assure you it can be done, destroying a veteran of Hell and Heaven is probably going to annoy somebody. Consider carefully if you want that kind of attention. Not that I would object if you did.

I’m not entirely sure how Aluian got assigned to me. I suspect he may have chosen me on his own, since he doesn’t seem especially dedicated to taking orders. Technically, he serves the One God, a.k.a. God a.k.a. Allah a.k.a. Yahweh. I know much of Technefarious staff is drawn from occidental countries, so I should probably explain that angels have never been exclusively His servants. Before the rise of Christianity and Islam spread His worship beyond the Jews, records exist of the winged servants of the Babylonian gods. Even now, some angels can be found in the service of the many Little Gods of our world. As servants of the One God, His angels have their own internal politics that reflect their disagreements about how mercy, hope, help, and punishment should be meted out.

Aluian doesn’t seem to answer to any of the major factions of angels serving the One God. He also doesn’t do a great job appealing to my better nature, but that may be more my fault than his. The long gaps between our visits are definitely his fault, though. The last time he bugged me was before I had taken over Technefarious but after Dr. Occultomancer had died. That time, he showed up just before I killed a henchman from the occult department who had crossed me. Aluian appeared out of nowhere and demanded that I hold my strike. So I killed the henchman and asked Aluain what was so important about him that I shouldn’t have done that. Turned out that Aluain was more concerned about how killing people was affecting me. That was nice of him, I suppose. But I’d been doing it for a couple of decades by then, and I hadn’t noticed any recent changes.

This time, he just dropped in to catch up. He wanted to see what kind of operation I was running, so that’s why he is wandering around. Technically, he’s a security threat, but he works for people who have their own ways to find out anything sensitive he might stumble across. Ignore him, and he’ll eventually go away on his own.

We’ll be breaking Bleach out of prison this week, so expect the briefing for the mission to be scheduled soon. If any spies working for the good guys are reading these memos, passing that information along to the Establishment for us would make our rescue attempt that much easier. Or will it? Have you guessing now, don’t I? Maybe we aren’t going to rescue Bleach this week. Maybe we aren’t going to help him at all! He does owe me twenty dollars for losing a bet on a Cub’s game.

In Auditorium A tonight, the propaganda department is premiering Film Machine’s documentary: Doctor Crankpot, D.O.C.T.O.R., Technefarious, and you. It’s a history of Technefarious down through the decades. I told Film that his title makes it sound like a puberty film for cyborgs, but he only liked it more after that. Enjoy it anyway. I’ve already seen it, and it’s good.

Have a good week everyone. Remember, the world is already ours – it just doesn’t realize it yet.

Your Leader,

Dr. Photius Callaway
The Killing Man

From the Desk of the Dictator:

Welcome back from your weekend everyone.

Well, my hunt for Pinnacle continues into a second week. My harassment of the criminal establishment of Lowplain has been bloody but has not drawn out the city’s premier superhero to face me. I’ve moved on from attacking criminal enterprises behind closed doors to attacking crime conducted out on the street. It’s been a bad week for the muggers, rapists, and thieves of the city.

I’ve also managed to annoy one of Lowplain’s regular supervillains. The Jugular Juggler was conducting a bank robbery that I stumbled upon. Unfortunately, his henchmen weren’t wearing costumes, so I assumed it was just the usual sort of heist and started sticking sharp objects into them. The unexpected arrival of a throwing knife into my upper arm alerted me to the presence of a fellow costume at the party. The Juggler might be nuts, but he’s actually pretty good at close quarters combat. I trying to avoid pissing off the local supervillains too much this week, so I decided I better only maim him. Still, it took a full fifteen minutes to properly subdue him. For a psycho with no proper superpowers, he’s pretty tough.

By then, the cops had arrived. As you can imagine, they weren’t happy to see either of us. Technically, there were shots fired in our direction before proper warning was given, but I can’t bring myself to file a complaint. If the cops thought what I’m doing to the local criminals was reasonable, they wouldn’t have gone into law enforcement.

The switch to public shenanigans is pleasing the city’s civilian population as much as it’s pissing off the cops. The Technefarious propaganda department tells me the bump in local approval derives from the appeal to their baser instincts combined with how bad Lowplain crime problems normally are. I’ll enjoy the freedom this give me for as long as it lasts, but experience tells me their approval will disappear once I do something to anger or scare them.

While I was busy with Lowplain, I’m told another Photius Callaway from a different dimension stopped by our Technefarious looking for recruits. On his Earth, all the world’s religions had fused into a single monotheism. That’s well within the normal range in differences for this sort of thing, but in this case, Heaven had already conducted its Rapture and turned the Earthly plain over to Hell. Unfortunately for the forces of Hell, that Earth was A) technologically advanced, and B) chock full of superpowered mortals. Since supervillains usually outnumber superheroes, humanity really didn’t suffer that much of a drop in combat power from the Rapture. The devils are getting their asses kicked, but the reduction in Earth’s civilian population has made maintaining the world’s infrastructure a trial. That Photius and the other new leaders of Earth decided to see if they could hire additional henchmen from the parallel supervillain organizations on parallel Earths. I’d like to wish Henchmen 41F-4E (Fly), Henchmen 66F-9R (Lucy), and Henchman 96O-7P (Stan) luck, safety, and profit in their new dimension.

Have a good week everyone. Remember, this Earth is already ours – it just doesn’t realize it yet.

Your Leader,

Dr. Photius Callaway

The Killing Man