Primate Typings

From the Desk of the Dictator:

Welcome back from your weekend everyone.

Operation I-Should-Have-Probably-Named-It-But-It-Wasn’t-Part-Of-One-Of-Our-Take-Over-The-World-Plots-So-I-Didn’t was a success with some additional positive, if unexpected, results. We successfully rescued the soul of Henchman 98B-3O (Carl), which we expected, but it looks like it may have resulted in a proper secret origin story for him too.

First, let’s talk about the actual execution of the rescue. Carl’s soul was being held by the dragon statue Granquartz. Our occult department prepared some materials, and I hired the Positronic Ghost to deliver them to since he could complete the job more quietly than anyone currently on staff.

The Positronic Ghost was built by one of the former leaders of Technefarious, Dr. Masivo. The doctor had found that building a sentient computer was easier if the materials used were entirely antimatter. Unfortunately, antimatter has a bad habit of exploding when it actually touches anything on Earth. Masivo addressed that problem by building the entire thing slightly out of phase with the rest of the world. As a result, it could seen and heard and but not touched. In keeping with the theme, he built his computer an antimatter body of a seven-foot tall robotic skeleton dressed in rags. Dr. Masivo had a sense of humor.

I’ve always liked the Positronic Ghost. Sure, his attention span isn’t great, and you have to prod him sometimes to get moving again, but he’s a pleasant (if occasional abstract) conversationalist. I was sorry when he left us to pursue his own projects.

Positronic Ghost snuck Granquartz’s lair and coated the stone eggs in her nest with the dragon semen our occult department had prepared. Now fertilized, the eggs quickened within a couple of days and then hatched. Carl was reborn with his soul now attached to a body of baby dragon statue. The other eggs had also hatched with other souls Granquartz had captured. In the confusion of the dozen or so sudden births, Carl escaped from the Soil Six’s base and flew back to us. Apparently learning to fly with a body made of stone is easier than you might think.

The occult department has reattached Carl’s soul to a clone body but found that they did not have to detach it from the dragon statue. So if you see the clone or the statue walking around, keep in mind that they are both Carl. Given his unusual condition, we’re evaluating him to see what additional training and duties might be suitable for him.

Later in this week, the science department will start their battle robot contest. Be sure you get your filled out elimination brackets to Dr. Ratchetman by Thursday morning to have a chance at winning the betting pool.

I have one quick note on the package exchange program with our enemies, the Golden Web. They haven’t sent us anything back yet, but Frigid noted I should have put a mesmerizing subliminal in the Manimal Betamax tapes I sent the Golden Web. So thanks, Frigid, for the brilliant idea after the fact. I’m going to go be grumpy now.

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.

For those of you wondering how I was going recap the end of last week’s reality rewrite, I’ll say that the solution involved a cartoon animal orgy. Now let us never speak of it again.

Rather than press on with one of our big projects this week, I authorized the recovery of Henchman 98B-3O (Carl). We lost him during our operation against the Soil Six when he was eaten by Granquartz the Magnificent, the giant living stone dragon statue that makes her home in the Six’s base. Normally, we would have just brought Carl back by putting his soul into a clone of his body, but after the battle his soul did not show up in the Technefarious’s soul catchers. Our occult department determined that Granquartz had somehow ensnared Carl’s soul during the fight.

While I was away last month playing with aliens, our wizards figured out a way to extract Carl from Granquartz’s claws. Most of the process could be accomplished using in-house resources, but there a few aspects that needed to be brought in from outside. I took it upon myself to arrange for their acquisition, which means I got to call Bleach into my office and tell him to bring me five gallons of dragon semen. I love being the supervillain in charge.

He succeeded in his mission, but refused to discuss the details after he got back. I thought that was a little odd. I mean dragon semen isn’t as useful as dragon blood, but it is available on the black market. He would have just told me if he bought it, right?

The occult department did their work on the materials Bleach had acquired, and then all that was left to do was to deliver the load. I decided to go with a more subtle approach than our last attack on the Soil Six’s base. Since Quanquartz’s quarters are in the caves in the back of their base and we weren’t trying to steal anything out of it this time, I went with a phase-shifter to sneak in. No one currently on our staff specializes in that power set, but I make it a policy to stay on good term with former Technefarious employees whenever possible. I contacted the Positronic Ghost and he has agreed to make the run for a tidy sum.

There were no henchmen deaths to memorialize this week. Hopefully, that’s a good sign for this operation.

In another news, the Golden Web responded to cremated remains of their agents, the note, and the bomb we sent them the other week. They responded by sending back a fruitcake with a file baked into it. The science and occult departments tell me that it doesn’t seemed to be booby trapped or otherwise stranger than it appears to be. I had it teleported to one of our storage facilities in the asteroid belt to play it safe. I responded to the Golden Web’s puzzling package by sending them a set of pirated copies of the television series Manimal recorded on Betamax tapes. I had the commercials left in.

This week’s recreational activities include the propaganda department screening a marathon of Larry Lemur animated shorts in auditorium A. I won’t be attending.

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, last week’s Operation Big Question certainly ended with mixed results. On the one hand, the real goal of the mission succeeded six times over. On the other hand, when it was done, we had to move our entire base of operations.

As I revealed at the final briefing to all teams involved, retrieving the stone eggs of Granquartz the Magnificent was a cover to prevent leaks of our true goal. Among the Parazlying Field Multiplier darts in every henchman’s ammo load were Teleport Retrieval Energy Needle darts capable of penetrating even Sediment’s rocky hide. After gathering a sample of the flesh of the target through its needle, the darts could teleport a short distance to a nearby Extraction team. Gathering biopsies from the Soil Six, in whose base Granquartz lives, was our real goal. I was hoping to get samples from two of the superheroes and would have been happy with just one. In the end, our crack Assualt and Extraction teams retrieved samples from all six of them, from Ground Shock to Compost. Bonus money will be awarded to all henchmen whose darts delivered the goods.

Our after-action analysis suggests that where things went wrong was in actually succeeding in our cover objective. Yes, Extraction Team Gamma with assistance from Assault Team Y managed to hold off Granquartz, Little Quartz, and Time Sand long enough to get away with one of the dragon’s stone eggs. At that point, we believe Granquartz tracked the egg back to our base while the Soil Six tagged along. From there, only ones in Technefarious that do not know what happened are those of us that had to be cloned back to life. Like the dragon she is a statue of, Granquartz tore through our defenses and smashed our buildings. Between being able to track her egg and the ease with which she wrecked our base, our occult and science departments are revising its theories on how the living dragon statue is put together. Once our real world location was revealed, Faultline of the Six got the ball rolling on siccing the Establishment on us, prompting our evacuation of the site after the Soil Six withdrew. We can field a pretty strong crew, but I’m not going to pretend we can stand up to the Establishment when they have time to assemble.

Despite the disruption of our infrastructure, we had only one permanent loss among our staff. Henchman 98B-3O (Carl) was eaten by Granquartz during the egg theft. Everyone else who got killed had their souls retrieved by the soul catchers, so the occult department speculates that it his was somehow trapped by the dragon statue. Research into how to retrieve his soul is underway. 

To give everyone a chance to settle into their new digs, there are no new special events scheduled for this week.
Have a good week everyone. And remember, the world is already ours – it just doesn’t realize it yet.

Your Leader,

Dr. Photius Callaway

The Killing Man