Weeks became months as Dolan continued his observations of the others. He knew that attacking them would likely lead to his death, so he had to come up with a plan. The most likely scenarios he’d gone through only had him killing three others before they descended upon him and killed him. It was so frustrating watching them act all nice and friendly with each other. Not only did it piss him off but it left him with no real openings to exploit to tear the group apart.
He’d been hoping that most of them were secretly ‘rule the world’ types rather than ‘save the world’ types, but he appeared to have hit a dead end. None of them wanted to hurt the others, the spirit of cooperation was too hard to break. At least, not without alerting them to his true intentions. If he grew too overt in his questions and overtures, they’d simply find someone else to take over as Time.
The more he got to know them, the more Dolan despised his fellow Book Owners. He stalked almost all of them, trying to get to know them better. The results…surprised him.
Sophia, the chick with the Book of Myth, had tons of potential. She could create anything, really, with the summoned creatures. Instead, she turned her neighborhood into a tiny fantasy world. Everyone on her block led happier lives…but that was it. That was as far as she went with it. Her husband was an office worker named Mark. They’d met in an online forum and he flew to LA and they got married.
When he asked her what she really wanted out of the Quorum, she said:
“I want a world where people don’t have to fantasize about a better future. They’d be living that amazing future.”
Dolan found her incredibly weak. She appeared incapable of functioning without Mark in her life, always frozen in indecision. Despite all of her power, she did nothing for herself. She barely did anything for anyone beyond her personal sphere of daily interaction, either. Very boring, very clingy. Totally lame. Worse, she always had a holier-than-thou, stuck up attitude about her that truly ticked off Dolan.
Sam owned the Book of Transmutation and was the CEO of a Tech Company out of Houston. Like Sophia, Dolan found his use of the Book entirely pedestrian. Sam made robotic prosthetics and real, actual robot assistants for the elderly and needy. Sponsored a Girls for STEM initiative, which was doing..okay. Sam’s biggest contribution to the group was his sense of logic. Every idea ran through Sam first before it was considered for implementation. He’d vetoed Dolan’s idea for artificial wombs and sex-bots to increase populations, which was annoying. It was obvious they would be the next big thing, and he secretly tried implementing it himself but got caught and was chastised for it.
Dolan had shown up at his office and asked him why he was playing along with the Quorum.
“I want a world of advanced technology. Like my sci-fi/cyberpunk movies…but a utopia. We’d create new life, evolve with the advent of new technology.” Sam had replied.
Benny held the Book of Dreams and wanted to help others more than himself. Most of the time, he was sleeping, due to his advanced illness. Dolan couldn’t count the number of times he had to rewind time to save him from some fatal drug interaction or get him to a hospital before he died. It pissed Dolan off, because his disease was CURABLE. EASILY CURABLE. With the help of the other Books of course.
But no, Benny wasn’t INTERESTED in being CURED. NOOOO. Benny wanted to make a REAL cure and not a SHORTCUT. Dolan would grind his teeth whenever he had to save Benny YET AGAIN from a disease he could cure himself of. The Book allowed him to influence the Dreams of others. It was a lot like mind control, honestly. He made sure influential people dreamed of saying yes to whatever proposals the Quorum of 12 came up with. Dolan recognized that power…and also thought the kid was a fucking idiot.
But hey, job security, right?
“I want a world where kids *cough* don’t have to live without ever fulfilling their dreams.” Benny had replied when asked about his goal.
“So we’re Make-A-Wish now, boyo?’ Dolan said.
Benny had rolled his eyes and wheeled himself away.
Ted. What a guy. The owner of the Book of Mind and likely the President of the USA in a few years. He used his Book to influence policy decisions. He was a thirty-something, not yet eligible to run for President. He was going for the Senate this year, and Dolan just KNEW he’d be reversing time to save him from campaign missteps. Very useful, no doubt about it, but the guy had a punchable face.
AGAIN. Like Benny, this issue could EASILY be solved with the Book of, say, Body. But what the fuck did Dolan know, right? Just fucking ask Juanita. However, the moment he brought up the subject of the guy’s horrible face, the room went quiet, like he’d broken a taboo. Well, FUCK THEM.
Dolan had manged to catch Ted on his way to a city council meeting.
“I want a unified world where the people can choose the right leader to follow.” Ted said, walking quickly to discus the city’s future finances.
“Which means you, right?” Dolan smirked.
“It means the right person.” Ted shrugged. “Look, man, if it ain’t me, it’ll be someone who’ll listen to me.”
It would be him, of course. The rest of the Quorum wouldn’t expect any less. Dolan had tried to explain that he should take things seriously because if he lost things would get complicated and he BLEW HIM OFF. Him. Dolan. The guy who was going to have to clean up his mess when he lost.
It was absolutely insane. Benny had an excuse for being an idiot because he was a kid. Ted was a politician.
Trent was the owner of the Book of Beasts and was…kind of a fucking pervert, actually. It wasn’t enough for him to be a huge, sexy anthro lion, he wanted everyone else to be a furry too. Sam wasn’t on his ass like he was with Dolan, mostly because on the side, Trent was repopulating the earth with extinct species. There was also a bee project he was working on with Mary-Anne, reviving flowers and shit. Dolan wasn’t interested in his degeneracy, but out of all of the others, he was actually doing something fun. He’d started a company called Anthro Renovations and was testing it out in his home town.
Dolan actually couldn’t find Trent, but he DID find Anthro Renovations and had to reverse time twice to access the office without someone popping a capsule under his nose and braining him with some kind of stun-gun. Furries here were goddamn militant…which he could respect, actually.
“What are you working towards?” Dolan had asked when he finally reached Trent’s office.
“A world where you can live your fantasies.” Trent had smiled. “Capsule?”
“No.” Dolan had replied and stopped time before the horny lion got any ideas.
Mary-Anne was the easiest to talk to. Painfully boring, very hippy-dippy and New Age, but easy to talk to. She owned the Book of Nature and took her role as Mother Earth a bit too far, honestly. She used her powers to clean the environment, remove toxins from food and the air. Dolan had seen some of her spells and knew she could be doing a lot more for humanity than freeze up the polar icecaps.
He didn’t need to hunter her down to ask her about what she wanted to do. Dolan had literally just come out of the bathroom and she was walking down the hall and started up an incredibly boring conversation about litter.
“So what do you want?” Dolan had asked.
“For?”
“Your goal.”
“I want a world where kids can see the beauty of nature no matter how advanced we get.”
“Right, so you’re interested in, like, Solar-punk or Bio-punk or whatever?”
“What?”
“It’s where people are living in harmony with the environment thanks to high technology.” Dolan had explained.
“Sure, sweetheart.” Mary-Anne had smiled politely and patted his shoulder. “Whatever you say.”
Dolan had decided she was too dumb to live right then and there.
Soo-Jyeong, owner of the Book of Necromancy, had been a soldier who’d served in Iraq. He constantly suffered form PTSD from the hardships he’d seen on the battlefield. Apparently, he could bring people back from the clutches of death, but it was far too much for him to handle. In Dolan’s opinion, he could be replaced by someone with a more even temperament.
There was a certain pride to him that Dolan couldn’t understand. They were moving so slowly on all fronts, fifteen years had been a nice estimate, but not realistic. Dolan had asked him what he wanted out of all of this.
“I want a world where people won’t have to lose family members in wars.” Soo-Jyeong fingered his dog-tags like they were holy pendants.
Aiden was a fatass who owned the Book of Space. He was always looking for unexplored places not yet touched by human hands. And he was consistently disappointed. Aidan did secretly save people from disasters. Basically, he could teleport people if he saw them to another point he could see. People in danger on the news could be whisked to safety with a spell.
He constantly hit on Ashley, who was way over his league, and was constantly shot down.
Ashley, the Book of Arcane, had responded to one of Aidan’s unwanted overtures by suplexing him. Dolan had been impressed. She was otherwise silent and kept to herself. Her Book didn’t have the same raw power to warp reality, so she ended up being the moderator.
“So what are you in this for?” Dolan had asked her quietly after she’d suplexed Aiden.
“To see the world you guys come up with.” She snorted. “Now fuck off.”
Dolan thought she was a huge bitch.
“I, uh, want a world where there’s still unknown things to explore.” Aiden spoke up from the floor.
“Thanks.” Dolan rolled his eyes.
RK Palatine, the albino who owned the Book of Divination, was impossible to find. Juanita was the same. Neither of them would answer his questions, and he had a feeling that neither of them trusted him yet. He’d already decided to kill them both off as fast as possible. Dolan simply couldn’t allow them to know what he was planning.
So, in the end, not a single person had the same answer for what they’d joined the quorum for. It stymied Dolan, as it meant that everyone was fine with the current agenda. Dolan just couldn’t stand it, waiting for the years to go by so that they could slowly, slowly take over the world and reshape it to their design.
It was just all so boring and dull. He was a gambling man at heart and was hoping to have adventures. A battle of life and death. Not meetings and future planning. The only plans he had were the ones where he was the king of reality and everyone else was just a plaything for him to manipulate.
He tried to kill them all several times, though they did not know it.
Benny was a good first target. Lethal injection or a good smothering with a pillow were both very effective on the sickly young man. No matter how he killed him, it was always exciting and frightening to Dolan. Once Benny was sent to his eternal rest, it was merely a matter of making it look natural.
With the Book of Dream in hand, he went after Soo-Jyeong. Using the Book of Dreams, he sent him a feedback loop of all the horrors of war. Three days later, the man had killed himself. Dolan now had the Book of Necromancy.
The problems began after this. Because he had no idea where RK and Juanita lived, he needed to go after the Book of Mind. Ted was a public figure, which meant if he died, everyone would know. The goal was to take out all the Book owners before they figured out he was killing them. Therefore, Ted HAD to be last. Or rather, third to last.
Mary-Anne was fairly isolated, so she died next. A bunch of zombies ate her alive. As she died screaming, Dolan had grabbed her Book. The dead would drag her body back to the grave with them. She would simply disappear.
By now, the others would know that Soo-Jyeong had killed himself and Benny had died. That’s when he started getting calls from the others to reverse time. It was all a problem of time. They lived on other sides of the country. It would take him a good week to kill them all after that, and each day he didn’t reverse time was a day they grew closer to understanding the truth.
Ashley found him two days after he killed Mary-Anne.
Dolan reversed time.
Again and again, Dolan tried hunting them down, killing them in different orders. Ashley, as it turned out, was supremely proficient at figuring out he was behind the murders. RK and Juanita weren’t anywhere in the dream world even when he got Ted’s Book. Everything was all wrong.
Therefore, he came up with his ultimate plan. There was only one time when everyone was gathered in one place: The Quorum.