"Stupid!" Darwin said furiously to nobody in general, and to the drunk guy beside him in particular. "How could I have been so stupid?"
The drunk sighed. "Times are tough," he agreed.
"I spent all that time getting those file cabinets out, and all the document boxes, and I waited until it was too late to get the one thing that really mattered!" He leaned forward and hollered, "Hey, bartender! My God, what's it take to get some service around here?"
The drunk sighed. "Times are tough," he agreed.
"Yeah, I can't argue with you there. After the way the union treated me, and then that fiasco of an invasion this morning, I'm not sure how things could be worse. Pretty soon I'll have a Paladin out running around. I mean, sure, that's bad for them, but it's just as bad for me without that damned thesis. Why couldn't they just put it in a file cabinet like anything else? Oh, hi, bartender."
The bartender wiped his hands on his apron. "What can I get for you, mister?"
"Something that'll make me forget what a screw-up I am," Darwin said evenly.
"Oh? What sort of screw-up would that be, sir?" the bartender asked politely.
"Well, I had this evil master plan all set up and ready to go. And it was going to be beautiful," he said, his voice getting slightly dreamy. "I mean, all of my enemies were going down, and their enemies were going down with them! There was going to be nobody left but me, to rule as I please. And wasn't nobody gonna keep me from getting my due. I mean, people been taking me for granted for too long, hear?"
The bartender nodded, pulled down a tall glass, and started pouring things into it. "Go on," he invited.
"And it was going great," said Darwin. "Yeah, a few things went wacky, but hell, it was an invasion, what do you expect? But I'd just looted everything I needed, except one last thing. And, of course, that was the one thing I should've gotten out first, 'cause it was the most important out of everything there. I just figured, hey, it'd be safe for one more trip."
The bartender nodded, and dumped in something from a purple bottle. "And it wasn't?"
Darwin sighed so deeply that his nose touched the bar. "No," came his muffled voice. "Some idiot torched the place." He looked up. "I mean, if they'd just looted the place, it would've been fine, because the damn thing was framed on the wall. Just a couple pieces of paper in a frame, nothing anybody would've stolen. But instead, some damn fool idiot goes and burns the place down! Oh, I could chew nails!"
The bartender, who knew a cue when he heard one, pulled two large nails out from under the bar and dropped them into the drink-in-progress, which started to fizz gently. "And you don't have any idea what was on these pages? No way to reconstruct them?" he asked.
"Well, you'd think I would know," Darwin grumped. "Hell, they were from my graduate thesis, after all." He grinned ruefully. "But I wrote them with a little too much caffeine, and a little too little sleep. I honestly don't remember a single word out of them."
The bartender popped a whole lemon into the drink and watched it dissolve. "With all due respect, sir," he said carefully, "if you wrote them under those circumstances, don't you think they might have been crap?"
"I would've thought so," Darwin agreed. "Except that they gave me Evil Overlord of the Month for it."
"Ah." The bartender nodded, pulled out a can, and sprayed some whipped cream onto the top of the drink. He set the glass in front of Darwin, along with a long-handled silver spoon. "Here you are, sir, a custom-made drink just for your particular brand of screw-up. That'll be 3 gold pieces."
Darwin pulled out three gold coins, slid them across the counter, drank the entire concoction in one gulp, and fell over backwards, stool and all.
The drunk sighed. "Times are tough," he agreed.
The gavel pounded. Herman the Grave, the current Chairman of the Board, rose and said, "This emergency meeting of the Board of Directors of the Evil Overlords' Union will come to order."
The general hubbub in the Great Hall gradually died down.
"First order of business is the fire earlier today in the Human Resources office of our three unions. We will hear from our Treasurer, Mistress Riad."
A tall, black-haired woman rose from the other end of the front table, bowed slightly, and said, "Ladies, gentlemen, and members of the Board. I'll get right down to business. First of all, our assessor has valued the damage at 250,000 gold pieces. We must recoup our losses. The most sensible way to do so is to increase union dues. Since we currently stand at 842 members, that comes to approximately 300 gold pieces per member. I propose that we spread this out over a two-year period, coming to a total of 13 gold pieces in extra dues per member per month."
A murmur ran through the crowd, and Herman the Grave pounded his gavel again. "All in favor of increasing dues by 13 gold pieces per member per month?"
All eight of the people at the table raised their hands. None of the hands in the audience joined them.
"Motion carried. All members' dues will increase by 13 gold pieces each month."
There was a bit of grumbling from the audience. Valkirg jumped to his feet and said, "But they'll go down again at the end of the two years, right?"
More gavel pounding. "The audience will come to order." He paused. "Come to think of it, why do we have an audience? These meetings are generally closed."
Valkirg sputtered. "What? Hey, I'm a card-carrying union member. I have a right to have a say in the things that go on in the union."
Herman the Grave pushed his glasses down and peered down his nose at Valkirg. "Do you own any voting stock?"
"Well, I --"
"I didn't think so. Next item of business?"
Valkirg stood still, fuming, for a moment. Then he picked up his chair and, with a mighty swing of his beefy arms, hurled it toward the table at the front of the room. Audience members gasped and ducked.
Herman the Grave reached his arm out and caught the chair one-handed. He balanced it for a moment, then lowered it to the floor and pushed it back out of the way.
Valkirg turned and stormed out of the meeting hall.
It took several minutes for the room to become quiet again, gavel-pounding notwithstanding. Finally, Mistress Riad was able to continue her presentation.
"Next on the agenda..." She glanced nervously at the audience, and cleared her throat. "Ah, perhaps it should wait until later in the meeting."
"All in favor of tabling Mistress Riad's remaining business until later this meeting?" Hands went up at the table. "Motion carried. Next on the agenda is Bob Jenks, head of the Janitorial Department."
A small, bent man wheeled in a large cart, which contained something upright, rectangular, and covered in a rich velvet dropcloth. "Hiya, all," he said in a cracked voice. "Good to see ya."
The board members stared back at him in stony silence.
"Ah sure, you don't want much to do with us janitors, eh? All you union types. Too high-and-mighty." He shook his head sadly. "I tell ya, if I didn't care so much about doing a good job, I might just up and form a union meself."
This evoked visible discomfort from everyone present -- board and audience alike.
"That's got you thinkin', eh?" Jenks said with a raspy chuckle. "So okay, now I'll show you's what I've done brought in here." He pulled the dropcloth aside to reveal two pages of paper in a wall frame.
"So?" asked Mistress Riad. "What's this all about?"
"Mister Jenks, please explain the significance of your exhibit," said Herman the Grave.
"Oh, sure. I found this in Human Resources after the fire burnt out." He grinned and patted the frame. "I went all out when I did the framing for this one. It's got the titanium frame, the Pyrex glass in the front, and the document-preserving nitrogen atmosphere inside. Took a good two months in the frame shop, but I tell ya, it went right through the fire with nary even a scratch."
"Congratulations on your foresight," said Herman the Grave. "I applaud you."
"Foresight? Hah. Foresight, my left ingrown toenail! It was professional pride, me boy. You tell me something's worth framing, I don't take no two bones about it, I frame it right. Y'all take notice of that, eh?" He cackled again. "You ask me now and then to justify my budget, I just point to things like this. Budget that!"
"Yes, I'm sure," said Mistress Riad disapprovingly.
From the seat next to her, Count von Himmel spoke up. "So what's the significance of this framed item?"
Jenks pointed to a sleek brochure holder that was mounted artistically into the frame along the right side of the frame. "That is the significance, my boy. There was a brochure in that little bracket there. Now it's missing."
"So?" asked von Himmel. "There was a fire, and that brochure would've been right out in the middle of it. It burned away, end of story."
Jenks rolled his eyes. "Honestly, don't you people know anything? The bottom of this document holder is closed, and the top has those little clippy things to keep things from blowing out. This castle gets a mite drafty, y'know, and we couldn't be losing no parts of the exhibit. There would've at least been a little ash in the bottom of the tray, if the brochure had burned in place there, but there warn't none."
Von Himmel shrugged. "Okay, so somebody took it. It's a brochure, that's what it's there for, right?"
Herman the Grave said quietly, "The brochure was called 'Benefits of Becoming a Paladin'."
The entire room was suddenly quiet. Even the audience stopped mid-whisper.
"Oh," said von Himmel.
"However," Herman the Grave went on, "as the framed document explains, the brochure is meant to be used only as part of an evil master plan. It's actually a clever ploy, not to create a new Paladin, but instead to throw one's enemies into confusion and, if done properly, to completely destroy them. Whether one's enemies are Heroes or Evil Overlords, it outlines how best to ensure their downfall."
Mistress Riad frowned. "But isn't that good, then? If the Heroes got hold of that framed document, then we'd all be doomed. So it's just as well that they only made off with the brochure, and not the document. Imagine if the document had been sold to the highest bidder."
"That would certainly be true," said Herman the Grave, "if it weren't for the brochure itself. Unfortunately, the brochure is quite genuine, if a bit cryptic. The threat of having a new Paladin in our midst is very real. If that brochure made its way into the hands of a competent Hero --"
"No camels!" shouted Roderick. "No! No camels!"
The little dark-skinned man jabbered excitedly, eagerly leading Roderick down yet another row of tethered bactrians. The camel stable was so big Roderick was afraid he wouldn't be able to find his way back out without the man to guide him. And the smell was awful.
The little man led the way to a particularly large and smelly camel and slapped it heartily on the side. The camel turned its head and looked balefully at him, then turned back to munching its straw. The man jabbered some more and looked expectantly at Roderick.
"Yes, well, I -- no! I mean, no! No camels! Horses! I need horses!" Roderick held his hands up in front of him, as if clutching reins, and did his best impression of a horse's whinny.
The man's face darkened. He spat at Roderick's feet and stalked away.
"I think you insulted his mother."
Roderick spun wildly around. "Oh, hi, Stan! How'd it go?"
Stan shrugged. "Well, we've got all our supplies, except the food, which Johnson is picking up. Then it's late enough that we'll want to find an inn for the night, and head out in the morning. Once we've found some horses."
"Cool! This expedition is going to go great!" Roderick sighed happily, then blinked and looked at Stan. "Uh, that is, assuming that you know how to get back out of this barn?"
"-- then that Hero could destroy our entire union, and everything we stand for. Whoever has it must be stopped."
"Well," said Count von Himmel, "do we have another copy of the brochure around anywhere?"
Herman the Grave shook his head. "Our color copier has been out of toner for three months now. Speaking of which, we keep paying for replacement toner, and it never arrives. I suspect we may want to investigate that new girl in Purchasing. Especially since she just bought the castle down the road."
Von Himmel looked thoughtful. "I'll volunteer to... question her."
"All in favor?" Hands raised, gavel banged.
"Uh, question," called out somebody from the audience.
Herman the Grave looked up uncertainly. "Yes? What?"
A guard stepped forward. "Hi, all. Just a quick question. So you've got this great plan for how to destroy all your enemies. You've had it for at least two months, right? 'Cause Mister Jenks says that's how long it took to frame it."
"Been on the wall another month after that," rasped Jenks.
"So three months. Well, then... um, why haven't you used it?"
Herman the Grave pushed his glasses down again, and peered down his nose at the guard. "You, Mister --"
"Hank," the guard supplied.
"Hank. How did you get into this meeting? This was supposed to be a closed session. Where are the guards at the doors?"
Hank shrugged. "There were no guards at the doors. That's why I showed up -- I figured hey, emergency session, you might not have any guards lined up yet, so I'd stop by and see if you needed my services."
Herman the Grave pointed his gavel at Hank. "That's an excellent idea, sir. Consider yourself hired. Now clear out this audience."
"That's for the standard bonus for after-the-fact bouncer duty, right?"
"Yes, yes," Herman the Grave said testily. "Now go do it."
"Okay, people! Everybody out!" Hank began rounding up the audience members and shooing them out the doors. There was much noise and grumbling from the audience, but people slowly complied.
Amidst the din, Von Himmel leaned over to Mistress Riad. "You know, that was a good question. Why haven't we used it?"
"Well, three reasons," she said. "First, it's innovative, and as board members and union leaders, we're very wary of such things. We award innovation, just to keep people from getting bored, but after we give out the awards, we pretty much ignore it. Second, if someone destroyed the Heroes Union, then the Evil Overlords' Union would be stuck paying their share of the rent every month. And third -- well, let's face it, if there were no Heroes, there wouldn't be much use for an Evil Overlords' Union in the first place, now would there? It would do terrible things to our stock price."
Von Himmel's eyebrows rose several notches. "I see your points."
The audience, by this time, had been cleared, and the doors clanged shut. "That's done," said Herman the Grave. "Now we need someone to head the initiative to chase down whoever has this brochure. Any volunteers?"
"I'll do it," offered von Himmel.
"All in favor?" Hands, gavel.
"Now, as for this document," said Herman the Grave, pointing his gavel at the frame still on its cart. "I propose that we place it into storage for the time being. Any objections?" There were none. "Very well. Mister Jenks, please place this into the main storage vault." He looked up. "I believe that was all of the business for this meeting."
"I think Mistress Riad had another item," said von Himmel.
"Oh, yes," said Mistress Riad. She glanced at her notes. "I just wanted to let the board know that the insurance company has agreed to reimburse us for the full 250,000 gold pieces' worth of fire damage."
"Excellent," said Herman the Grave. "Any other business? No? Very well, meeting adjourned."
Darwin stumbled blearily out of the bar. The sun was just beginning to set -- he must have been in the bar for several hours. And unconscious for most of it.
He trudged to the carriage, flung open the doors in back, and stumbled over to the bed in the corner. He tried to lie down, but a problem was posed by the large document box that was sitting in the middle of the bed. Sighing, he shoved it off onto the floor, where it tipped over, the lid fell off, and several magazines slid across the floor.
He sat wearily on the side of the bed, picked up one of the magazines, and stared at the front cover in puzzlement. Then he got a sudden idea -- he reached up and turned the lamp on. Now in a well-lit carriage, he looked at the magazine again.
It was one of the back issues of Overlord magazine. The front cover featured a picture of a troll guarding a bridge, with the feature story title -- "Building the Perfect Trollbridge: Maximize your Bridge Investment" -- printed in large text below it. Other articles were listed down the side: "New! Miracle Moat Monster Diet"; "Interview: Sunny the Hun Nun"; "Side Quests: How to Effectively Distract the Heroes."
He stared at the cover, and began idly tapping his finger on that last headline. "That idea," he muttered, "looks familiar." He looked thoughtfully into the distance, thinking back to words he himself had spoken earlier that day: I wrote them with a little too much caffeine, and a little too little sleep...
Abruptly, he rose, dropped the magazine on the mattress, and went out of the carriage and back into the tavern.
A few minutes later, he returned, a 54-ounce Canyon Dew soft drink in one hand, a jumbo-sized travel coffee mug in the other, and settled down for a late night of reading.
Derek stretched when he saw Hank approaching. "Hey, Hank," he said through a half-yawn. "So how'd your day go?"
Hank dropped his sack lunch next to the chair. "Kind of exciting, actually," he said. "I slept through the big invasion this morning -- third shift sucks sometimes. But I did manage to get a gig guarding the emergency Evil Overlords' Union meeting this afternoon. Even got bonus pay for kicking people out of the Hall." He clocked in, then stood back so Derek could clock out. "How was your shift?"
"Eh, pretty dull," Derek said. "You know the drill. The pay's good, but it's boring work. Maddie called in sick today, so I pulled a twelve-hour shift -- been here since noon. Nobody brought a thing down that whole time."
Hank sighed. "How exciting. Ah well -- better than peeling potatoes, I guess. Have a great night."
"Yeah, I'm going upstairs to the Great Hall and get a few beers. See if I can find a little excitement somewhere." Derek grinned, threw his empty lunch bag into the trash bin, and headed out.
The heavy steel door closed automatically behind him. Written on the door in thick black letters were the words "MAIN STORAGE VAULT".
Hank stretched in his chair, rifled through the stack of magazines, and settled back for a long, dull evening.
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