I would have preferred snorting coke off Rogue's asshole than this, but oh well, the things we do for duty.
It was an honest thought, and therefore one that could never be permitted to approach his face, where a mild and attentive smile had been arranged with the same care as the white carnation in his lapel and the cultivated warmth in those green eyes that newspapers insisted upon describing as merry, luminous, or, whenever the writer had exhausted all restraint, almost supernatural.
And besides Rogue was away on a mission he had assigned her three days earlier, which made the fantasy impractical before one even considered the more immediate difficulty of maintaining a public image while bent over a mirrored table with a former X-Man's bare thighs around his ears. Such were the indignities of an empire.
Around him moved the best humanity had produced during the previous year, or at least those examples he had noticed, approved, and summoned by way of an ivory card bearing his signature. A Kenyan surgeon who had devised a cheaper method of preserving donor organs spoke with a Brazilian footballer who was called El Fenomeno for his skills in the ball if not for his taste in haircuts.
They had come at his summons, every last celebrated creature among them, and the fact stirred a reptilian satisfaction beneath the otherwise cultivated benevolence of Adonai Ezra the visionary. The man the people were seeing now was a construct, a portrait painted in living tissue, and Adonai sometimes wondered whether any original face survived beneath the accumulating layers of varnish. The real Adonai, insofar as such a creature had ever existed, had once imagined himself a Dionysos hellbent to spend his fortune upon narcotics, beautiful women, impossible parties, and a death sufficiently early to preserve him forever at the height of his promise. Then the world had presented itself to him in all its ugliness and the idle prince had found himself burdened with a purpose. Purpose was a vulgar thing and it demanded sobriety.
"Your guests appear pleased with themselves," said an amused voice beside him. "That's either the surest evidence of a successful evening or a warning that one should evacuate the building."
Adonai turned to find three of the evening's crème de la crème standing at his shoulder. Reed Richards, whose recent work on the Richards Unification Theorem had already earned him recognition as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists of his generation, wore the faintly distracted expression of a man whose thoughts habitually outran the present conversation. Beside him stood Stephen Strange, the celebrated neurosurgeon whose revolutionary advances in microsurgical techniques had rapidly established him among the foremost surgeons in the country. Bruce Banner completed the trio, quieter than either of his companions, his groundbreaking research into gamma radiation and high-energy nuclear physics having secured him an invitation on merit alone.
Adonai Ezra had to make a conscious effort not to betray his excitement. Once upon a time these men were heroes whose journeys he had followed with almost childlike fascination. Now they stood scarcely an arm's length away, still years removed from becoming the legends history would remember, but already among the brightest minds of their generation. The Symposium had been conceived as an instrument of soft power, but it served another purpose as well. It gathered extraordinary people beneath one roof, allowing him to meet them before the world truly understood their worth, and perhaps, if fortune proved kind, persuade them to help build the future he envisioned.
"They've been told that their presence represents the summit of human achievement," Adonai replied. "A certain degree of satisfaction seems unavoidable. My staff did remove the mirrors from the dining hall, but I fear vanity has learned to live without them."
Stephen laughed. "You say that while hosting a celebration conceived, financed, and curated by yourself, beneath banners bearing your seal. Hypocrisy can be admirable when it's performed with sufficient elegance, and yours is nearly classical."
"Nearly?" Adonai asked. "I'll have to fire someone."
"You can be proud of yourself Mr. Ezra, what you've achieved today is extraordinary," Bruce said nervously.
"Thank you Dr. Banner," Adonai said. "I am also astonished that so many distinguished people can be gathered beneath one roof without forming committees to explain why nothing can be done."
"That's why you seated the politicians apart from the engineers, I presume," Reed said with a small laugh.
"I seated the politicians near the actors," he replied. "I thought they might enjoy professional company. But it seems you three are engaged in a rather heated discussion."
Reed lifted his glass toward the mingling guests. "Dr. Banner and I were disputing whether the work can ever be separated from the creature who made it, and Dr. Strange has been pretending that being a man of medicine exempts him from the question. Since you have gathered half the civilized world beneath one roof, you may serve as judge. Does the person behind the deed matter after the deed has entered history?"
"I didn't pretend to be exempt," Strange said. "I merely said that a patient rarely asks whether the surgeon who saved his life was kind to waiters. The heart continues beating despite defects of character."
"Patients are notoriously sentimental about survival," Banner said with a faint smile. "I suspect the only people capable of answering such a question with any real detachment are those standing outside the work itself - the audiences. They tend to have greater freedom with their judgments. They may refuse Shakespeare if tomorrow some diligent scholar proves him a wife-beater, a thief, or the secret author of dreadful sonnets addressed to his landlord."
"Shakespeare has survived four centuries of scholars trying to prove he was everyone except Shakespeare," Adonai said. "I suspect he could endure a poor reference from his landlord."
"A clever answer but that wasn't my question," Reed said. "I asked whether the man matters. Let's take Dr. Banner's example of Shakespear. Suppose the plays remain word for word as we know them, every king, fool, ghost, murderer, and lover preserved intact, while the author behind them is revealed as a petty and contemptible soul. Does Hamlet diminish because the hand that wrote him struck a servant? Does beauty inherit the sins of its maker?"
"The work acquires another shadow," Adonai replied, allowing himself a moment before continuing. "Whether that shadow diminishes the work depends upon what one asks art to provide. If you seek moral instruction from the artist's life, then his cruelties become relevant. If you seek truth from the thing he made, the truth may survive him. A vile man may describe mercy beautifully because vice does not prevent recognition, and a saint may produce lifeless art because virtue does not guarantee talent. The play tells us what Shakespeare could see, perhaps what he feared, perhaps what he desired, but it can't furnish a complete inventory of the man who wrote it."
"Then the work stands independent of its author," Reed said triumphantly.
"I wouldn't say independent," Adonai said. "A work enters the world through one mind, but once it has passed into other minds it gathers meanings its creator neither intended nor could control. Shakespeare belongs partly to Shakespeare and partly to every actor who has spoken him. The man matters because there would be no work without him. The work matters because it eventually becomes larger than the man."
"And what if we take someone like …Napoleon as an example?" Reed asked. "Wouldn't Austerlitz survive as a military genius even when one remembers the corpses? The Code survives the vanity of the emperor. Can the deed become larger than its maker there as well, or do consequences bind history more tightly than art?"
Truth be told, Adonai found the conversation faintly surreal. He had expected Reed Richards, Bruce Banner, and Stephen Strange to speak almost exclusively about their areas of expertise. Hearing them debate Shakespeare, Napoleon, and the nature of morality and art instead left him momentarily wrong-footed. Then again, why shouldn't they? They were real men, not comic book characters carefully written around a single defining gimmick. Reality afforded people the luxury of being gloriously inconsistent, curious far beyond their professions, and infinitely more interesting for it.
"Napoleon is a more difficult case because a play doesn't conscript the audience," Adonai said, suddenly finding him interested in the conversation. "Art enters the world by invitation, while power often arrives with artillery. But the same can be said of both. Napoleon's institutions outlived his flaws, his laws crossed frontiers his armies could not hold, and his legend became a republic in which admirers and enemies both claimed citizenship. The Corsican who suffered indigestion, loved praise, feared betrayal, and quarreled with his family has almost vanished. What remains is Napoleon, which is another creature entirely, assembled from battles, paintings, propaganda, and the needs of those who came after him. One man lived. A thousand generations manufactured the emperor."
"So going by your theory," Stephen said as his gaze sharpened. "Every celebrated person eventually becomes what… a collaborative fiction?"
"Every person eventually becomes one," Adonai said. "Fame just enlarges the number of authors. Your friends have one version of you, your enemies another, your lovers several mutually contradictory editions, and posterity takes whatever fragments survive and binds them beneath a title. The private self may be the least influential interpretation of all."
The words were close enough to a confession to feel indecent. They seemed delighted by the argument, and none appeared to perceive that Adonai was not speaking of Shakespeare and Napoleon. He wondered what future biographers would make of him when the private records were opened and the truth became visible.
Would the revelation of speechwriters and image consultants behind the persona of Adonai Ezra diminish the legend, or would it merely explain how legends were made in an age that had industrialized mythology? Augustus had done much the same with Rome, gathering poets and soldiers beneath the serene marble features of one man who claimed to have restored the Republic while quietly burying it. Adonai had to become the Augustus of the twenty-first century. The princeps had worn modesty as armor, called himself first citizen while placing the world beneath his household, and commissioned an image so compelling that two thousand years later schoolchildren still encountered the mask before the blood beneath it.
"Our identities are irrelevant then." Bruce took a drink and regarded him. "If Napoleon the symbol no longer resembles Napoleon the man, then which one altered history?"
"Both," Adonai replied. "The man issued commands, seduced allies and frightened enemies. The symbol continued issuing commands long after the man was buried. People have marched, governed, rebelled, and murdered beneath ideas of Napoleon that the living fellow might scarcely have recognized. A person acts within his lifetime. A persona may act for centuries."
"And which would you prefer to become?" Reed asked him curiously.
"I should prefer to remain myself for as long as the world permits it," he said. "Posterity may commit whatever vandalism it pleases after I am gone."
Their conversation drifted toward the dinner bell, but the question stayed with him as they moved through the hall and strangers turned toward his passage with smiles prepared. Which would he prefer to become?
The answer had been given years ago, the moment he stood before a field strewn with a thousand corpses and found himself retching at the sight. It was there that Adonai the man had made his choice. He wanted Eden upon the earth, and such a dream could never be realized by remaining merely a man. To bend the course of an age toward that future, he would have to become something greater than himself, a shepherd of history whose influence reached far beyond the span of any ordinary life. The smiling young man greeting laureates was a portrait painted over living flesh, every virtuous line selected to embody the age he meant to call into existence. The image was absurd, magnificent, carefully maintained, and useful beyond measure.
If his Eden flourished, would anyone care how much of its architect had been composed by committee, or how often the savior of the age had wished to abandon mankind for narcotics and the warm body of a woman whose glorious thighs could cure depression?
Adonai raised his glass, and the room quieted. For one brief moment he felt the distinction between man and persona dissolve. The affection in the hall was real, the hope was real, and his desire to deserve both became real through the simple fact of being felt. Perhaps that was the secret no philosopher had managed to phrase properly. A mask worn long enough altered the face beneath it. A role performed with sufficient conviction ceased to belong wholly to the theatre.
"My friends," he began, his voice carrying through the hall with effortless warmth. "History has produced many gatherings of powerful people, which is one reason history contains so many regrettable wars. Tonight, I thought we might attempt something slightly more constructive…"
The evening had been an unequivocal success. Rogue and the rest of his inner circle had been deeply skeptical when he first proposed the Symposium, dismissing it as an extravagance whose returns seemed impossible to quantify, but in the end they had trusted his instincts as they usually did. Even the most cynical among them admitted that It, at the very least, strengthened the mystique of Adonai Ezra.
After finally making his way through the horde of journalists, Adonai climbed into his black Rolls-Royce with Alison Blair following close behind, and he had to admit - he loved being famous. The number of beautiful women, both famous and otherwise, who had gone out of their way to speak with him throughout the evening had bordered on the absurd, and more than a few had left him something by which to remember them, hoping to get ahead of the curve. Pop stars and actresses were especially bold, and he had been more than a little tempted to accept their invitations and explore them in all the ways a man might explore a woman.
"That was incredible!" Alison practically squealed the moment the car pulled away from the museum.
"So now you change your tone?" Adonai settled against the leather seat with a victorious grin. "Who was it again who said, and I quote, 'This is never going to work'? Honestly, Alison, after all these years you'd think you'd have learned never to underestimate my frightening genius."
"Don't get too cocky now, big boy," Alison said, rolling her eyes. "You know exactly why I thought it might be a disaster. Inviting a room full of brilliant people who spend most of their lives buried in their own work, many of whom have no media training whatsoever, could easily become either disastrous or unbearably boring. Turns out I was wrong. People actually wanted to hear what everyone else had to say, and I ended up having a surprisingly good time. I still stayed away from the theoretical physicists, though."
"I imagine genuine conversation must be refreshing for someone in your profession," Douglas Ramsey observed from the opposite seat, a faint smile crossing his face. "People speaking with you instead of at you, I mean."
"Easy there, blondie," Alison warned, narrowing her eyes at him. "You're making an awful lot of assumptions. Contrary to popular belief, not every celebrity is a vain, self-absorbed narcissist."
"Oh, undoubtedly," Douglas replied. "I'm sure that once you've excavated through the geological layers of narcissism and desperate hunger for attention, there are probably few genuinely delightful people to be found."
"He got you there, Ali…sorry Dazzler," Tabitha Smith apologized mockingly. "Don't worry though. We all know you're different from those vain, empty celebrities, and we love you despite your courageous struggle against fame."
"That's very sweet of you, Tabitha," Alison said with equal warmth and equal sincerity. "FYI, envy is terrible for the complexion, so I hope you learn to manage it before it turns you into the old witch from Snow White. You already have the temperament."
"You wish," Tabitha said, blowing her a kiss.
Tabitha Smith, eloquently codenamed Boom-Boom, was among the earliest mutants Adonai recruited into his organization. She now worked primarily in his security personnel despite having enough beauty and charisma to have enjoyed a wildly successful career in Hollywood had she been interested in such things. His attention drifted toward the young man sitting beside her, who looked as though he would have preferred almost anywhere else to the back of a luxury car.
"Is that what this is, Doug?" Adonai said with a grin. "Are you secretly jealous of Ali's fame? You know, you only have to ask. I could make you one of the most celebrated software engineers in the world at the drop of a hat. You're one of my Ten Pillars, after all. My very own secret weapon."
He meant every word. Douglas Ramsey was perhaps the single most important reason Adonai had risen so quickly. His mutation allowed him to instinctively understand language in all its forms, from spoken tongues to encryption, source code, and programming languages. The gift was so subtle that Douglas himself had lived for years without realizing he was a mutant until Adonai found and recruited him. For a man carrying countless ideas from the future without the ability to translate most of them into code himself, Douglas's mutation had been nothing short of providential.
"Oh, please don't," Douglas said, visibly appalled. "I enjoy writing software and solving problems. Fame sounds exhausting, and public adoration would be about as useful to me as a smartphone to a cow. I'm perfectly happy staying in the background, thank you very much."
"Pity," Adonai said, though the answer had been exactly what he expected. His expression grew more serious as he turned toward Tabitha. "Any developments?"
"Yes, sir," Tabitha replied, her playful demeanor vanishing almost instantly. "Rogue returned from the mission a little while ago. She brought Maya Hansen with her, just as you instructed, and she's waiting for further orders. Your special guest should also be arriving at the hotel about now. Which one would you like to see first?"
"Perfect." Adonai smiled, clearly pleased. "Tell Rogue that Maya is to be treated gently and afforded every courtesy. She's an honored guest, regardless of how she came into our company. We'll greet our special guest at the hotel first, then we'll head over to see her."
"Can't work wait until tomorrow?" Alison asked, only half joking. "You just hosted what people are probably going to remember as one of the defining events of the decade. I think you've earned a few hours to yourself before throwing yourself into the next scheme."
"Tempting as your concern may be, duty has already arranged the remainder of my evening," Adonai replied, grinning. "You know how difficult I find it to ignore an urgent summons."
Alison studied him for a moment before her eyes narrowed with amused suspicion. "Duty," she repeated. "Is she a brunette?"
"Among other virtues."
The suite occupied the highest inhabited floor of the Élysée and cost more per night than most people earned in a year. Adonai had chosen it for exactly that reason. His guest happened to be the sort of person who found wealth and power irresistible, and he intended to use it to his advantage. He had reserved the entire floor because there was very little point in being obscenely rich if one never allowed oneself the occasional vulgar display of it.
Valentina Allegra de Fontaine had chosen the chair closest to the floor-to-ceiling windows, where the skyline framed her perfectly and anyone entering the suite would be obliged to notice her before the view. She rose as he approached, greeting him with a smile polished enough to convince most people it had come naturally. She was beautiful, somewhere in her thirties, and carried herself with the easy confidence of someone who was beautiful and knew it.
"Good evening, Mrs. de Fontaine," Adonai said as he crossed the room. "I hope I've not kept you waiting."
"Not at all, Mr. Ezra," Valentina replied, offering him her hand. "The view has been generous company, and I have endured far less pleasant delays for far less interesting men. I admit I was surprised by your invitation."
"I'm full of surprises," Adonai said, taking her hand. "And you, Mrs. de Fontaine, have managed to capture my attention."
"Have I?" Her smile widened by the smallest degree as she returned to her seat. "Then I should probably feel flattered. A small-time executive doesn't often attract the notice of the man called the man of the future. I am curious about what I could possibly have done to earn the honor."
Adonai could tell almost immediately that she enjoyed the sound of her own voice. Every word carried the faintly practiced cadence of someone who had spent years refining the art of sounding effortlessly seductive. It might have worked on him at any other time but he didn't invite her for pleasant conversation, and he saw little reason to indulge her performance any longer.
"You should look at the table, Contessa."
The title changed something in her face. Adonai reached inside his jacket and withdrew a sleek silver Motorola RAZR and placed it upon the polished wood between them before laying a heavy manila folder beside it. Valentina glanced down at them, then slowly raised her eyes to his, and the warmth left her expression so quickly that he almost admired it.
"A flip phone," she said. "How charmingly retro for the man of the future. I expected something considerably more dramatic, perhaps a device that reads minds or launches satellites. What exactly am I looking at?"
"It's a recording," Adonai replied. "Press the center button. I suspect you'll find the contents more interesting than the packaging."
Valentina did not move. "You invited me to one of the most expensive suites in Manhattan so that I could listen to an audio file?"
Adonai said nothing and just gestured her to do so. Her gaze shifted once more toward the phone. Valentina leaned forward and placed two fingers upon the phone and pressed the center button.
Static crackled through the tiny speaker before settling into a low hiss. Then a man's voice emerged, and the way Valentina expression changed was a stuff of renaissance masterpieces.
"The Pym data is heavily encrypted," Mitchell Carson's voice said through the speaker. "If Hank finds out I pulled this from the SHIELD archives, we're both finished. You wouldn't be able to get something like this anywhere else in the world, but that's one of the many benefits of joining our organization. Still, be careful how you proceed. Hank Pym is quite temperamental."
"Hank Pym is an old man playing with insects, Mitchell," Valentina's recorded voice answered. "The transfer to your Swiss account has cleared. My people at O.X.E. will have the encryption broken soon enough."
The recording continued for several more seconds before Valentina snapped the phone shut with a sharp click. She did not immediately look at him. Instead she rested the phone carefully upon the table, aligning it elegantly, as though restoring order to one insignificant object might somehow restore it to the evening itself.
"Mitchel Carson," Adonai said idly. "A high ranking shield operative and a man currently in the business of toppling regimes. Playing in the big league, I see, Ms. Fontaine. Hardly fits the image of the small-time executive, now does it?"
"Wiretapping a high-ranking intelligence officer is a federal crime, even for you, Mr. Ezra," she said evenly. "I could have a tactical team inside this suite in forty seconds, and you would spend the rest of your promising life learning how little your money matters inside a federal cage."
"You could," Adonai agreed pleasantly. "But then Nick Fury would begin asking inconvenient questions. He would want to know why Mitchell Carson has been receiving millions of dollars from an offshore account authorized under your signature."
He watched the smallest tightening around her eyes.
"Oh?" he continued softly. "Why the surprised look? Is it because I know that SHIELD exists, that I know you once served within it, or that I know your recent dealings have extended to Hydra as well? I suspect Fury would be interested in the latter the most."
He rested two fingers upon the manila folder and gave it a gentle tap. "You should open it, Contessa. Inside you'll find the bank routing information, authenticated transfer records, transcripts of the recording you've just heard, together with several others of equal interest. Everything has already been organized for the benefit of the recipients."
"Recipients?" she asked.
"In precisely twenty minutes an automated message will be sent to two people unless I instruct it otherwise. The first is Hank Pym. He has withdrawn from public life and seems content to play the eccentric recluse for now, but I would be fascinated to learn whether discovering that a former S.H.I.E.L.D. operative has been purchasing his stolen life's work might persuade the most lethal operative of the Cold War to reconsider retirement.
"The second is Nick Fury. He trusts you, Valentina, or at least he trusts the woman who once worked under him. Once he sees the transfer connecting you to Mitchell Carson, along with evidence that Hydra still exists and that his dear friend has been feeding its black-market operations, I doubt professional affection will buy you much mercy. He will bury you in a SHIELD sub-basement before sunset, and everything you have built so carefully will disappear with you. Your position, your future, your precious O.X.E. project, all of it gone before you have even reached the first rung that truly matters."
Valentina leaned back slowly. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, William Congreve clearly had never seen a woman confronting the prospect that everything she had spent years building could be erased at another's whim. The look she gave him might have frozen Hell itself if it had any real power over him. There was something quietly satisfying about watching a consummate manipulator discover, perhaps for the first time in a very long while, what it felt like to be the one backed into a corner.
"Corporate espionage and threats against a private citizen's livelihood," Valentina murmured as she picked up her scotch and took a small sip. "You've been a busy little bee, haven't you, darling? I suppose this is the part where I tremble, confess that I underestimated you, and ask the terrible young genius what price he demands for mercy."
"Nothing that dramatic, this is an honest to god blackmail," adonai said with rin.
She set the glass down without haste. "You are far too wealthy for this to be about money. So let's spare each other the theatrics. What do you want?"
Adonai was in no hurry to answer and merely observed her for a few seconds. Valentina was a proud creature, full of ambition and drawn to power as naturally as a compass to the north. He had to give her credit, she had maintained almost perfect composure, enough to fool nearly anyone else. Adonai, however, knew too much about her to be deceived. Her biography differed somewhat from the one he remembered from the movies. He certainly did not recall her being a former SHIELD agent who had left to pursue her own ambitions, and her ties to Hydra came as an even greater surprise. From everything he had gathered, however, she was not yet one of them, merely flirting with the possibility. That made her the perfect candidate for what he had in mind.
"I believe we could be useful to one another." Adonai smiled softly. "You're an ambitious woman, Val, but I'm disappointed by your lack of perspective. You're wasting your time making deals with corrupt officials like Carson and doing business with Hydra…a collection of morons and lunatics still pretending the twentieth century never ended. You're risking everything just to collect pieces of other people's technology and build a small company that operates in the shadows when you could be much more. You were made for a far larger game than this."
"What do you want?" she asked.
"What I want is irrelevant at this stage. You should ask yourself what I can give you."
"And what would that be?"
"The United States of America."
The glass stopped halfway to her lips. She searched his face, perhaps looking for the slightest hint that he was joking or simply out of his mind. When she found neither, she began to giggle hysterically.
"Think about it for a moment, Val. What have you actually done with your life? You've spent years moving between SHIELD and Hydra, serving one collection of fools before quietly serving another, convincing yourself that proximity to power is the same thing as possessing it. The Deputy Director's office? The Director of the CIA? Those are little more than middle management in the grand scheme of things. Their authority exists only so long as someone above them chooses to tolerate it.
"You and I both know you were meant for more than that. You have the talent and the willingness to take rein. The unique spark possessed by people who change the course of history, and ours is about to change more profoundly than any before it. The world that is coming will not resemble the one you have spent your career navigating. New technologies will reorder everything until governments themselves struggle to keep pace. During times like these, people will look for someone who will lead them and make their decision for them. As it happens, I have the capital and power to remove every obstacle standing between you and the highest office in the republic. I can make you the first woman elected President of the United States."
The words had an effect on her. Adonai could tell. He watched her expression shift, the defensive anger slowly melting away, replaced by dangerous curiosity and the blinding glow of her own vanity. She tried to look skeptical, acting as though the idea was too absurd to take seriously, but Adonai could see right through the performance. For all her feigned disbelief, it was obvious the suggestion had struck something deep inside her. The more she tried to dismiss it, the more he could tell it appealed to her.
"The Commander in Chief," Valentina said at last, allowing herself a faint smile. "The first woman in the Oval Office. A lovely fairy tale. I can see why the cynical masses find you so irresistible. But you don't have that kind of power, kid. You're a dazzling newcomer playing with forces you can't even begin to comprehend. You think a billionaire can bulldoze centuries of misogyny?! Then think again. The presidency of the United States isn't some trinket a starry-eyed idealist can hand out like candy
"Not today," Adonai said quietly. "I don't have that kind of power yet. But you called me a man of the future earlier, and you spoke truer than you would ever know. Today I have influence. Tomorrow I shall own something much rarer."
"And what would that be?"
"The power to shape public perception." Adonai declared solemnly. "First of all you have to understand what power is. Parliament, intelligence agencies, or the Oval Office. Those are avenues through which power expresses itself, but they are not power in and of themselves. Power belongs to whoever could persuade enough people to accept the same story about themselves and about the world around them. Look at history and you will find this principle ubiquitous. Every age invents a new instrument through which those stories travel. The pulpit shaped kingdoms by determining what men believed to be sacred. Then came the printing press. Newspapers followed, then radio, then cinema, then television - each reordered politics by controlling who could speak, how often they could speak, and how many people would listen. Every invention widened the reach of the narrative, and every statesman who understood the new medium inherited an advantage over those who treated it as a novelty.
"The twentieth century offered more than enough demonstrations. Every serious government invested enormous resources into information with the Nazi being the most effective at it. PR or propaganda, whatever you want to call it, it's the same principle. Do you know why that is? Because people rarely act upon reality itself. They act upon their perception of reality, and perception is easily pliable when enough voices repeat the same story over and over. The weakness of every previous medium is that it speaks to everyone at once. A newspaper prints one edition. A television station broadcasts one program. They throw a net into the sea and accept whatever fish happens to swim into it."
"And yours don't?" she asked.
"My platforms are far more sophisticated. Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and those still waiting to be unveiled will become places where people voluntarily gather every day. They will tell me what they enjoy, what frightens them, whom they love, whom they despise, which articles they read, which ideas they ignore, which friends influence them, and which words compel them to stop scrolling for just one more second. They will surrender all of this willingly without even knowing it."
"You'd have the largest data of human behavior at your finger tip," she said, realizing his point slowly.
"Precisly. An election tells you how people voted. However It cannot tell you why they changed their minds three weeks beforehand. My systems will answer both questions simultaneously. They will become the largest repository of human behavior ever assembled."
Valentina leaned forward. "And you believe that… makes you king?"
"No," He shook his head almost imperceptibly. "It makes me the greatest storyteller the world has ever seen. When the time comes, I'll ensure that millions of individual decisions, each made for reasons that feel entirely personal, gradually converge upon the same destination."
Adonai knew he had her. She was making almost no effort to conceal the exhilaration that the prospect of such power stirred within her, or the intoxicating thought of securing herself a place in the history books.
"And what's the catch, darling?" she asked. "Nobody offers the free world out of simple generosity. Every gift has an invoice attached to it. What do you want?"
"I want an ally," he said calmly. "When you sit in the Oval Office, you'll sign the executive orders I place before you. You will appoint the judges I recommend and surround yourself with the people we agree belong there."
"So that's it. You want a puppet in the Oval Office. I'm afraid I've never been fond of dancing to another person's tune."
"Why not? You're already dancing to SHIELD's and Hydra's tune, and anyone else's who can advance your career. What's one more patron when this one is offering to make you the most powerful woman in the world? We all serve someone, Val. The only question is who. So, what will it be, Madame President?"
He reached into his briefcase and withdrew an unremarkable leather-bound book, placing it gently upon the table. At first glance it appeared almost ordinary, save for a stark white handprint pressed into the center of its cover, perfectly life-sized, as though someone had pressed a powder-covered palm against the leather and left behind a permanent mark.
"Do you want to put your hand in this folder to give your oath and let me build your throne?" Adonai asked calmly. "Or do I press send on this phone and let Hank Pym tear your little world apart before it has the chance to become anything at all?"
Valentina's eyes settled on the manila folder. Her fingers twitched almost imperceptibly, but Adonai knew the decision had already been made. The moment he had offered her the presidency, the negotiation had ceased to be about blackmail. Everything afterward had merely been a ceremony. Ambition had always been her greatest weakness, and she had reached for the promise of power as naturally as a moth sought flame.
Slowly, she extended her hand and placed it firmly upon the book, completely oblivious to the true nature of the book. In the end, that scarcely mattered. What mattered was that she had chosen of her own free will. She had accepted the bargain herself.
"Fine," Valentina said at last. "Call off your digital ghost. You have your puppet. Just make sure you keep your promises and start building that throne, darling. You wouldn't want an enemy with nothing left to lose."
A faint smile crossed Adonai's face. "I knew you were a smart woman."
AN: This chapter was definitely a bit ambitious and probably a little out there with the idea, but I found the concept fascinating and wanted to explore it. I also introduced Reed, Banner, and Stephen. (Dr. Strange was probably the one I was most unsure about, mainly because of the whole "was he already a world-renowned doctor in 2005?" issue, but fuck it. I didn't want to create an OC for it)
By now, Adonai's plans and the general direction of the story should hopefully be clearer. This story is going to lean more toward a modern political drama, with corporate espionage, and a good old-fashioned game of politics.
Valentina de Fontaine was a cool character in Thunderbolts, and I wanted to use her. Her past is pretty vague aside from her having been the head of the CIA, so I borrowed some elements from her comic-book history to fill in the gaps. In the comics, she used to be a Shield agent and was also involved with Hydra as a spy, if I remember correctly.
As always, advanced chapters are available on my Patreon. If you want to read ahead, vote on which story gets updated each week, or simply support my writing so I can focus more on it, you can check it out here: /abeltargaryen?