I’m not ready yet.

Yesterday the prognosticator at the blood chapel gave me a new god, Arisia the Mediator. What kind of a terrible name is that for a god? Would anyone feel threatened when you invoke a god like that? No one I’d care to intimidate.

The prognosticator asked me if I wanted to dedicate myself to this new god and said it would help me in the future if I did so. I don’t say yes to everything here in Rehab; I think ready acquiescence would indicate I can never rise to my full level of evil again. I wanted to refuse this ridiculous charge, but with my plans so close to fruition, I didn’t want to give anybody an excuse to overmonitor my actions, so I said, “What the hell,” and let them open a vein to spill my blood into a dish at Arisia’s statue’s feet. She is one of those gods with lots of arms and only two legs. Could be fun in the sack.

I read from the script the prognosticator handed me. “I, Darkblood, hereby dedicate myself to the worship of Arisia and invite the god to feast on my essence, binding her to my will in accordance with our covenant. Arisia, be thou my shield and sword, my victory song, my blood transfusion in times of want. In return I give you my own blood promise; I will sacrifice in your name.”

I give lip service to a lot of gods, but since Krrgoth burned me so badly, I don’t give a lot of credence to any of them. I didn’t know what Arisia was promising me, and I didn’t care. All I cared about was getting through another useless time-wasting activity in Rehab.

I was surprised by a strange feeling after I finished my oath to the goddess, a kind of shudder all through me as though I had planted myself and was growing roots.

Last night I had a series of dreams. I dreamed each kingdom and planet Rusty and I had conquered, watching us from some distant point as we arrived, insinuated, manipulated, blackmailed, bought our way into power and moved up, up, and on, rising on stairs built of those we had destroyed and betrayed. In my dreams I smiled at the evidence of our finesse, how neatly we out-thought our opponents, how deliciously we set plans into motion, watching as each consequence followed each action.

I remembered the Heroes, too, the many who had failed against us (and the punishments we meted out to them) and the few who had succeeded.

From a distance I studied Ruritraya, my retirement country. I saw that I had not trodden down the populace enough. Systems Rusty and I had developed and refined across the years, plans I could script in my sleep-I hadn’t initiated half of them. We had an ideal structure of power, and the one I built on Ruritraya was missing several pillars and could unbalance at any moment. The only wonder was that no Heroes had yet arisen to challenge us.

Rusty was right. My heart wasn’t in the job. I had let him down.

“This is what you have bought with your blood,” whispered the goddess’s voice through the edge of my dream. “Now you must decide which way to go.”

Arisia has to be the least fun goddess I’ve ever dedicated myself to. Another flaw in this stupid Rehab system. Why don’t they choose from the dark pantheon? What’s with these gray, nuanced gods?

I have my list of people who must die so I can continue to enjoy my evil, debauched, and luxurious lifestyle. I’ve devised an appropriate death for each of them. I have my plans and backup plans for escape. I know exactly who to promote to support me when I get back to my palace in Ruritraya, and who to incarcerate, and which dogs to kick. I have a map of my immediate future. Why is the goddess messing with my head?

“You’re focusing too much on the details,” Bossy Susie just said. “What about the big picture? There’s no balance.”

I snarled at her and let my eyes scare her again, but I didn’t stand up this time and intimidate her physically. I wanted until she turned to Bituba, and then I actually looked at my picture.

Odd how text and art can war. When I let my eyes unfocus so I can see the image I’ve been drawing instead of the words I’ve been writing, I see that Susie is right. I sketched some outlines to engage most of the paper, dusted in rancid smog here and there, and then hunkered down and wrote the outlines of a few buildings over in the corner, leaving the wider space without definition. Just now I’m coding in a fountain in the city’s central square. I like the ease of writing water.

Bituba just glanced at the chronometer and then at me. We only have ten minutes left in this session, and after that, who knows when we’ll be together again? I wish I’d never had all those stupid dreams.

I’m going to signal her now.

Everything fell into place, just as I planned it. Bituba and I overpowered our guards, tied up Susie with her own stretchy body stocking, stuffed her mouth with wadded up sketches, and made our way to Rehab’s Node Central, overpowering guards and security measures as we went. We collected our third conspirator, the station ferret, part of companion animal therapy (they apparently didn’t realize that he had been genetically enhanced for intelligence and opposable thumbs; he was instrumental in spying out a blueprint of the station and getting us the guard schedules, also in telling us where the necessary supplies were) and jumped many nodes in rapid succession. Bituba had stashed emergency identity-making supplies on one of the worlds where she’d been overthrown. She had a secret node to a deep dungeon there; she’d guessed that the Hero who succeeded her would never use it. So we kitted up, changed all our identifying marks, and jumped some more.

Bituba wanted to go back to the country she’d been ruling before her mother-in-law did the intervention on her. She was ready to chop off enough heads that she could regain her old power. I’m not sure that’s a good idea, myself. Once a populace has seen you taken down, they often won’t stand for your rising again.

I have lost some of my fire. All those murders I know I need to do? Can’t work up the energy for them. Just now I’m sitting on the balcony of a luxury resort in some winter mountains on an innocuous tourist world, with this piece of paper and a set of colored pens in front of me. The ferret’s a warm coil of furry weasel on my lap. He has a certain musky smell I don’t care for, but I owe him a lot, so I’ll learn to like it. Bituba and I had a custody battle for him; we decided to share, so we have to keep each other apprised of where we are. This is the kind of weak spot I would never have countenanced in my previous incarnation. Anyone who learns about this could bring about both our downfalls.

The picture I’m drawing, even though I no longer need to code my words because I can burn this document myself, is of a forest. Trees lend themselves to code. This is a coniferous needle-bearing forest, so I have the luxury of writing words in sweeps of branching green. For the bark I am reserving the names of all the people I would kill if I were my old self. The list is long enough to make for tall trees.

I plunged into the galactic newstream last night and sought out information about the current state of Ruritraya. Shrike the Impaler is running the country as a regent for Darkblood. A series of political cartoons lampooning some of Rusty’s more ridiculous mannerisms made me nostalgic. One caricature captured his nose by exaggeration in a way that was somehow more true than a photograph.

Just now my pen moved on the page and drew a picture of Rusty the way he looked when he was ten T.S. There were no words in this picture, and it doesn’t fit into my forest; his head floats in a space where I haven’t penned needlesprays. Now I am writing around his face, as if I could enfold it in foliage, make him part of my forest of confusion and revenge.

The ferret churrs and drops from my lap. He has spotted a vole on the edge of the balcony and wants to pursue it.