Dispensable

The program for the event read:

When we exclaim, as a defense for the mindless ways in which we mimic one another, that we are social animals, what we should really admit to ourselves is that we have an innate bias toward ideological collectivism, and that this is not necessarily a good thing.

Our strength as a species is self-modification.

The self is a diagnostic program, after all.

This person that I think I am is really a neurological adaptation which allows me to observe and change myself—but most allow their environment to hijack the program rather than using the program to jack into and benefit from their environment.

The creation of an artificial environment for the sake of herding the human animal—this we sometimes refer to as a town or city or state or nation or province, etc.

Its laws cannot set the limit of possible action but can only ever influence the program upon whose analysis we decide to act.

This creates followers and criminals among the citizenry according to how susceptible individual actors are to the conditioning.

In essence, we are a social animal which herds itself on behalf of its masters.

But all that will change today!

Donald didn’t understand what he’d just read.

But then, he didn’t care. He was here to rub elbows with other rich folk, and he found in the past that the reasons rich folk get together are usually just covers for backroom dealing done right in front of the poor, stupid public.

So here’s another faux intellectual manifesto to make the peasants think we’re on their side. Who cares, really? He’s just here to get richer.

He was here with other scions of rich families. Going back generations, his family had money, and all the families his family married into had money, so he has money, and now they all have to protect their money.

They meet on this private island, secluded from the general population, but every year they do a big press release about all the important things they’re discussing and how oh-so-helpful it will be to the common man.

“Billy! Helen! How’s it goin’?” He walked up to the power couple, and they stood together for a picture. He’d just seen Billy at another friend’s private soiree. They’d had a minor quibble over a prostitute, but bygones were bygones. He knew he couldn’t always get his pick of the youngest.

He went to find his wife so they could take a seat at their appointed table. He really didn’t care much for her, but she was a nice piece to have on his arm.

A sumptuous meal, the cost of which could have fed several third-world nations for the day, was laid out before them.

The keynote speaker was some European prince. In title only, of course. The old royal families had protected their wealth but not their status, and this bumbling douchebag was no exception.

“We’re here today to enjoy a fine meal and discuss the state of affairs in the world. How can we help people?”

Help them make us richer, you mean? Donald thought. Lie, lie, and lie some more!

As the prince droned on about the charities they used to launder money, Donald got lost in thought, but so erratic was his mind that he couldn’t have said what he was thinking when the prince’s speech was interrupted by a ruckus at an adjacent table.

A tech mogul was face down in his pasta, unmoving. His wife shook him. The famous Dr. Zoo—a shill for pharmaceutical companies—ran over and checked his pulse.

“He’s dead!” the not-so-good doctor said.

That’s when the shooting started.

Some of the armed guards opened fire, first taking out other guards, then wiping out quite a few lives before people took cover.

The prince, for instance, didn’t succeed in stopping the bullets which riddled his body. The podium under which he hid was not bulletproof.

As many holes as could be seen in it, were in him.

Donald shoved his wife in front of him as he ducked under the table. She took a few for the team and fell over to bleed out, whimpering his name.

Atta girl! he thought, not moving a hand to help her.

The shooting stopped.

The shooters quickly strapped masks on before the gas flooded the ballroom.

***** * *****

When Donald awoke, he was tied to a tree.

One of the guards from the ballroom leaned down, waving a large hunting knife in his face. “I’m cutting you loose and then my job here is done. Come after me, and I’ll cut you too. Understand?”

Donald felt a fresh wetness flood his crotch, and it took him a moment to grasp that he’d just pissed himself.

This was answer enough for the man with the knife. “Yeah, you won’t last long. Fucking coward. I’d kill you myself if I weren’t being paid so much to let you live.”

The former soldier cut Donald loose and walked away.

***** * *****

Donald’s first instinct was to run to the docks. He was way out of shape though, so it was more a quick waddle.

He met three others there, but all the boats were gone.

“Did you piss yourself?” asked Elliot, another tech mogul. He was, at various times, the richest man in the world.

“No, no! The bastards pissed on me when I was tied to the tree! To humiliate me! It’s damn lucky for them they ran after they cut me loose!” Donald exclaimed.

Elliot knew Donald was lying. All he did was lie. He looked over at Barbara and Hasan, who both rolled their eyes.

“Well, we’re stranded here,” Barbara said. She made her money as the CEO of one of the biggest “defense contractors” in the world. “Defense contractor”, of course, really means “weapons producer”.

Billions of innocent people had been murdered by the weapons she helped produce during her tenure in the industry. She might as well have signed their death warrants herself or taken a hit out on each one of them.

Of course, she didn’t see it that way. In her mind she was a feminist who dismantled the patriarchy by wresting one of the highest paying jobs in the world from men.

“What happened to everyone else?” Hasan asked. He was the Prime Minister of an oil-rich country in the Middle East. His family kept hold of the oil—under the pretense of ruling the nation—for generations. Anyone who criticized the regime had a way of disappearing.

“Well, the gas must not have been lethal, but I do find it conspicuous that we are the only ones here. The others must be imprisoned somewhere,” Elliot said.

“Or they left us stranded here, and that’s why the boats are all gone,” Barbara mused.

“I don’t think so,” Elliot said. “Whoever pulled this off couldn’t have let any of those people go without creating a shitstorm that would have brought the authorities to this island.” Elliot pointed a little way down the shoreline. “See that flotsam over there that washed ashore?”

They all looked over and nodded.

“That’s from my yacht. It was either thrown over when the boat was stolen, or the boat was sunk, because I know that cargo was down below.”

Donald shook his head knowingly, but secretly he struggled to recall what flotsam was. Probably one of Elliot’s weird fetishes.

“Well, there is no point in standing here. We must make our way back into the compound and hope some form of radio communication is available,” Hasan said.

“What if they’re in there? The people who did this? Won’t they just kill us?” Donald asked, and then quickly added. “I mean, good luck, right?”

“Dude, I’m the only one here with any real weapons or ex-military experience,” Barbara said. “The people who did this could have killed us fifty times over just standing here on this dock. The fact that they infiltrated and overcame our security shows they aren’t small players. If they wanted us dead, we’d be dead.”

Donald shook. He told himself it was rage, but it was really fear.

***** * *****

As they travelled back to the compound, Donald tried his smartphone. It was completely disabled—no signal of any kind, though the battery was still at 89%. He was upset by this not only because he couldn’t call for help, but also because he couldn’t tell the whole world and all his adoring followers on social media how tough he was—one of only four survivors!

No one survived like him. He was the greatest survivor. When this is over, it’ll be big news. It’ll be huge!

Barbara, not far behind, but at a safe enough distance to avoid the stench of urine, had a mind to take him out herself.

She and the two men saw the idiot stumbling up the beach toward them and briefly discussed ridding themselves of the nuisance once and for all. “He’s a liability,” she’d said.

“Yes,” Elliot said, “but we don’t know what the hell is going on, and we don’t want to make a wrong move. There’s a game afoot, and the gamemasters wouldn’t have left him alive if they didn’t want him here. Let’s find out what they want before we do anything rash.”

“Also to consider,” said Hasan, “is that we are certainly being monitored. Whoever did this must have access to all the capabilities of the island—including the Prince’s satellite surveillance tech.”

“I get it,” Barabra said. “Almost everyone in the world wants to off that guy, but if we do it, it’ll look awful bad to the press. Okay, but if it’s him or me, he’s done.”

“Oh, we’ll help you!” Elliot said and Hasan nodded in assent.

***** * *****

They made it back to the ballroom.

It was a chaotic wreck littered with the bodies of the others, who, after the gas, seemed to have been systematically murdered by knife or gun.

All the tables were overturned but one.

On it was a greeting card which depicted sparkly fireworks around an ornate cursive CONGRATULATIONS!

Barbara picked up the card and read what was inside. It said:

“The way out is through, but there is only one right door.”

Leading farther into the compound were multiple doors, but only four of them were marked.

With their names.

After much heated argument, they agreed that they should each take the door assigned them.

After the doors closed behind them, a lone figure rose from among the bodies on the floor.

***** * *****

In each room, Hasan found another door with his name on it, until finally one led out to the Prince’s personal parking garage.

Bentley, Maserati, Rolls Royce, you name it—no car here was priced under a hundred grand.

It would do him no good to steal one, of course. He could drive the whole island, but none of these classic beauties would float if driven into the sea.

By the time he heard the 2026 Rolls Royce Phantom rolling up behind him, it was too late to run.

He turned and the headlights blazed to life, making him squint. He couldn’t see the driver through the glare.

The price tag on this car, decked out to the max with every available trim option, was likely close to seven hundred thousand U.S. dollars.

The car was engineered to be road quiet, with a twin turbo V12 engine that hummed below thirty-five decibels. It only got about fourteen miles to the gallon, a completely decadent and unnecessary status symbol that made Hasan’s family money just by existing.

These were the thoughts he had as the Rolls rushed forward, hitting him and driving him to the pavement.

He felt and heard bones crack. He was underneath the car, between the wheels.

It idled over him. He was staring up at the undercarriage through starbursts of pain, barely holding on to consciousness.

The car crept forward. He fought the urge to turn his head. He laid very still. He wanted them to think he was already dead, then they’d move on.

He heard the door open. The driver came back and stooped over him, staring him straight in the eye.

“You…” he managed to whisper between bleeding lips, eyes wide.

The driver smiled and went back to the car.

Quietly, slowly, deliberately, the car turned and backed up.

The last thing Hasan felt was the rubber from the tire pulling at his ghutra before bursting his head like an overripe melon smacking the earth after a forty-foot fall.

***** * *****

Barbara’s door led into the kitchen.

There were no other doors with her name on it.

When she tried to go back the way she came, the door was barred from the other side.

All doors leading elsewhere were also locked.

There was still raw food set out to be cooked, as well as dead cooks lying all over the floor, and it was all starting to smell rotten.

Barbara wasn’t one to sit idly, waiting for others to tell her what to do.

She found the best butcher knife and meat cleaver in the room.

Anyone coming to get her had better be packing heat or they were going to join the staff on the floor.

Meanwhile, she investigated the room for other ways out.

***** * *****

Elliot’s path led through many doors until it terminated at the security control room.

All the screens were up, but they weren’t playing live footage.

They were replaying Hasan’s death.

Elliot watched as the Phantom backed up and crushed the man’s head again and again.

Who was in the car?

The damnedest thing is that Elliot commissioned all this gear for the prince. The satellites were Elliot’s—he owned them. He should have had people on the outside who picked this up and sent help.

How could there be no phone service?

Whoever orchestrated this wasn’t stupid or weak. They had influence—deep influence.

He sat at the terminal and tried to bring up live images, but the system wouldn’t let him in.

Then the screens changed and he saw Donald sneaking back out to the docks.

“That dirty piece of shit,” Elliot said aloud to himself. “I wonder if he got phone service?”

“He didn’t,” said a voice from behind him.

He turned quickly to engage but stopped and put up his hands when he saw the gun.

“It’s you…” he said.

“Yes. It’s me.”

The first bullet went through his throat. Even as he put up his hands to staunch the blood pouring forth from the wound, he opened his mouth wide to scream, only to emit a pathetic gurgle.

The second bullet took out his front teeth and blew out the back of his head.

Fragments of skull, skin, brain, blood, and muscle splattered over the screens, bathing Donald’s escape attempt in crimson gore.

“You always claimed to be so smart, Elliot,” the shooter said aloud to dead and deaf ears. “Why didn’t you see this coming?”

***** * *****

On the dock, Donald held his phone up to the sky and waved it around. He was sure that if he could just catch the satellites’ attention, they’d send him a signal.

“You are such a fucking idiot,” said a familiar voice from behind him.

He turned, genuine shock on his face. “Mina? You lived! A miracle!” He started toward her, but she arrested his momentum by pointing the same gun at him that had recently taken out Elliot. “Whoa, whoa! What’s this? Honey, darling, sweetie! We’re married!”

“Til death do us part,” Mina said, and shot between his legs. “Of course, I missed.”

Donald placed two hands over his crotch in anticipation of another bullet, but she shot him in the right knee instead, and he went down hard into the old wood.

Mina stepped closer, then shot him again in the hands where he grabbed his knee, blowing off all his fingers and separating the bottom half of the leg from the top.

He screamed. “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU BITCH?!? I MADE YOU! YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME!”

She walked up and ground her heel into the wound, making him scream louder. She laughed out loud as he made a futile attempt to swat away her foot with his fingerless hands.

She bent down, placed the barrel of the gun in his mouth, and looked him square in the eyes. “You didn’t even check on my body. You walked right by me. From the moment you thought I was dead, I wasn’t there. Everyone is dispensable to you, even your own wife. Now you know what it feels like to be dispensable.”

She saw only impotent, childish rage in his eyes. There was no satisfaction as she pulled the trigger, but neither was any love lost, for none had ever existed between them.

***** * *****

Barbara was still working at jimmying a door lock when the kitchen intercom buzzed.

She ran over and pressed the button. “Who is this? Why are you doing this?”

Mina’s unmistakable Eastern European accent piped over the line. “You’re either with me or against me, Barbie,” she said. She put just a hint of disdain into the name. “All the old patriarchs are dead. It’s our time now. So which is it? With or against?”

“As long as you promise never to call me Barbie again, I’m in,” she replied with a smile.

The world was about to change.