Baron Dominance's Diary of World Conquest
Chapter One: Crushing Them Under Your Heel
July 23, 2004

To be honest, I had already prepared for another failure. I had planned meticulously, but then again, I had ever since my first military coup. And yet my defeats have been outnumbering my victories since about 1982.

I think in the end, luck finally went my way. I hate admitting that. But now that I've won and have been named the Supreme Sovereign of Earth, I can no longer comfort myself in the delusions that I have all that much control over things. I suppose that's a paradox or an irony or an oxymoron or something of that nature. I'll have to ask Dr. Googolplex later. I would hate to use the wrong word in public and embarrass myself.

Everything came together in an unexpected success. What is interesting about heroes is that they all live in their own little worlds and dramas and hardly ever notice each other except during the rare times their paths cross. And believe me, you don't ever want to be the villain in the center of such an event. As it turned out, the Protectors had been off on some alternate earth, trying to prevent an invasion of … somebody. It was probably Nazis. It usually is. Sometimes I think we're the only earth where the Nazis didn't win. The Trauma Team was trapped in some magical prison at the bidding of some maniacal mummy king I'll probably have to accommodate at some future date. The Technosavants had filed for bankruptcy after unwisely believing that the dot-com boom would continue to fund their heroics. And the Majestic Nine had been replaced by their evil clones. Again. That seems to happen often with them.

Best of all, my two biggest foes were out of commission. There wasn't an intergalactic war or supernatural virus or anything particularly fascinating. In fact, the reason was surprisingly pedestrian: They were having a baby. Not a year after Lady Harmony and the Blue Blitz had promised to love and cherish each other forever on the floor of the United Nations in front of the world's leaders, they were bringing an adorable, likely superpowered life into the world.

God knows how many times they've thwarted my plans. Actually, I do know: thirty-nine. They've cost me more than $470 billion in destroyed technology -- orbiting satellites, apartment-building-sized robot warriors, massive dreadnaughts that float through the air thanks to antigravity generators. I understand that most of the wreckage has been recycled and used to build community centers or orphanages or what have you. A "symbol" of some sort. I believe the symbol stands for "We can give the middle class a tax cut if we save money by using all this junk to build with and thereby guarantee our re-election."

But I digress. The moment her pregnancy was announced (on the cover of US Weekly, I believe -- how crass), I decided that I would coordinate my next world domination scheme to coincide with her labor. This would likely be my last chance to succeed. The number of costumed dolts zooming through the stratosphere had grown dramatically over the past twenty years. I was an Old Guard villain now. "Oh, it's another one of Baron Dominance's giant robots," they'd mutter. Then they'd chatter about what happened last night on some television show called Big Brother while they dismantled it effortlessly.

When you're an Old Guard villain, though, that means you've had decades to establish your resources. Superheroes are so reactive. In my forty years in this armor, not one hero has ever sought to learn the source of my funding. They show up and we fight. Sometimes I escaped. Sometimes I was arrested and imprisoned. And then the heroes were gone to stop the next megalomaniac.

Through my various sources of income and contacts, I fund more than thirty terrorist cells across the world. They spout a variety of stupid slogans and believe in a number of horrible, awful things. No two of them are the same. In fact, I think a couple of them are fighting each other. I don't really care about their ideologies. All that matters is that they owe me a huge debt and will do my bidding when needed. And they don't know who I am, other than some anonymous benefactor.

Those men would play a major role in my plan -- as a distraction. They would end up dying by the hundreds, which I fully expected. I neglected to tell them that detail. I surreptitiously leaked evidence to a couple of governments that some major terrorist attacks were expected in the next six months. Credible evidence, not just rumors. The world's military and heroic forces remained tense and alert. Fortunately, my funding and research helped the terrorists escape the preemptive efforts to shut them down.

Meanwhile, Dr. Googolplex and I were working on the real assault. I'm rather embarrassed to admit how utterly predictable our plan was, even though we succeeded. We plotted to take control over the world's nuclear weaponry. We're certainly not the first villains to attempt this. Actually, it's not the first time we've attempted this. But attempting to hack into a military computer during peacetime is like trying to rob a police station. The result is generally failure, humiliation, and then incarceration.

Dr. Googolplex is generally referred to by the buzzword-happy media as a "mad scientist." He is occasionally mad, but only when he has nothing to occupy his time. His name refers to the number of calculations that can take place in his head at any given time. I'm sure there's a slight exaggeration going on there, but not as much as you'd think. His mind is a nuclear reactor of constant scientific discovery, and if there is no outlet for his inventions, there's likely to be a meltdown. I almost feel like I'm performing a valuable public service by employing him. I suspect the planet would be a smoking black chunk of charcoal if I didn't keep him busy.

Dr. Googolplex was working on a double-pronged virus attack on my behalf. The primary attack would wreak havoc with the world's communication systems. He had arranged so that the virus would appear as though one of my terrorist groups had created it. And to add to the chaos, the actual group would differ from nation to nation. The "source" of the virus would coincide with the group engaging in terrorist acts in that nation. As a result, the terrorism and the computer virus would be seen (hopefully) as part of the same assault.

But underneath that virus lay the real plan. Dr. Googolplex invented a virus within the original virus that would give us control over every single nuclear warhead in the world. Well, the known warheads anyway. God knows there was probably a bomb sitting in the back of a truck covered with a tarp somewhere in the Middle East. We couldn't account for everything. The initial virus attacks would hopefully prevent military security from picking up the second attack. By the time the military and the world's heroes had uncovered the layers within this plan, we hoped it would be too late.

Still, we took precautions. My most trusted Dominators were set to guard Dr. Googolplex and his underground bunker where our communications center was currently based. Blockade and Night Thorn, the two superpowered associates of mine who weren't currently in prison, would oversee them. Well, Night Thorn would oversee them, and Blockade would punch anybody who wasn't in a Dominator uniform. Blockade wasn't that adept with planning. Or leading. Or managing. Or anything that involved skills other than punching people.

Fortunately, it was easy to determine when to launch the attack. All we had to do was keep our televisions tuned to one of those cable entertainment networks and wait for the news flash that Lady Harmony had been rushed to the hospital. The fateful day came on May 19. We crowded around the television, waiting for some bleach-headed dolt to tell us whether it was a false labor. It was not. Time to swing into action.

I was astounded at how smoothly most of it went. The military forces were split between trying to deal with the terrorist attacks and the mass confusion caused by the communication malfunctions. The bizarrely coordinated terrorist attacks between unrelated forces eventually resulted in a new Doomsday cult forming. They believe that I'm the anti-Christ. The promise of huge rewards lulled the Technosavants back into action trying to figure out the complex virus. I began to worry a little.

Blue Blitz and Lady Harmony weren't aware of the assaults, but there was nothing they could do. Blue Blitz wouldn't leave her side. And I made sure that there weren't any terrorist attacks near D.C., so it would take an effort for him to contribute to the fights. Not that distance mattered too much for the speedster, but it meant he would have to commit.

There were some forces I hadn't considered, but fortunately they didn't present a real problem. The Internationals got involved in fighting some terrorist assault on a German bank. I loathe dealing with them, not because they're a threat to me, but because they always show up clad in costumes that envelop them in the comforting embrace of their own cultural stereotypes. The Eiffel Tower? The Masked Mountie? It was like being attacked by the opening fashion show in the Miss Universe pageant. I was born in Holland, but you don't see me running around calling myself Sir Windmill or dressing up like a tulip. It's an embarrassment. The Internationals managed to put a stop to two of the terrorist cells, which to be blunt, was quite an accomplishment for them.

Less fortunate were the Kid Crusaders, a group of teenage heroes. The believed that their youthful spunk and gumption would help them overcome any evil force on earth. Their gruesome deaths in Mexico City, captured by television cameras, taught us all a valuable lesson: Spunk is not bulletproof. I shuddered just a bit watching them die. I guess I really am Old Guard -- I had never killed a child, not even some hero's idiot sidekick. The newer villains just love to kill kids just to prove that they're evil. It's not even to reach some valuable end. It's just psychotic rage. I don't know why they don't just take it out on their minions like all the normal villains do.

Eventually, Mister Elite (that's not actually how his name is spelled, but I refuse to print words partly with numbers out of principle) of the Technosavants managed to figure out the complexities of the first virus and had realized that there was a secondary virus. He wasn't quite sure what it did yet, but he was sniffing around and it was still twenty minutes until we would have control of all the missile silos.

I mulled whether or not to send Blockade and Night Thorn to take him down, but Dr. Googolplex pointed out that he'd have figured out what was going on by the time my associates had gotten there. And even if he hadn't, the attack would reveal that I was behind this latest scheme before I was prepared to come forward. If they knew what they were dealing with, I'd lose the element of surprise.

Mister Elite did somehow manage to figure out I was behind the viruses about ten minutes before we would lay claim to the world. Somehow, he even tracked down the location of our secret base, even though Dr. Googolplex had the good sense to release the virus from a computer system not at all connected to us. Damned resourceful heroes.

Of course, Mister Elite was all brains and no brawn. He was of no actual threat to us, and he knew that the virus could only be halted by taking out the base. Knowing that I was behind the attacks, he felt that he had no choice but to interrupt Blue Blitz with an emergency phone call and beg him to leave Lady Harmony's side to stop us. Stupidly, he didn't consider the camera crews there to cover the blessed event and we watched the whole conversation unfold on live television.

"He'll come," I told the others, and pressed a small button on a console next to the television. A small beep and hiss indicated that the base's security systems had been armed. I sent Dr. Googolplex to safety -- he's not a man who can play a role in an actual fight -- and strode across the room to grab my helmet and breastplate. The two of them are relics from Napoleon's cavalry. The European conqueror's blood runs in my veins. They add a photogenic old-world touch to the high-tech armor Dr. Googolplex built for me, and of course, ably illustrate my intentions. I slid them on as I do before any battle, wrapped my purple cloak around me, and strode purposefully toward the main hall of the underground complex to await Blue Blitz's arrival. In about eight minutes, control over the world's nuclear armory would be mine.

He arrived about three minutes later. Monitors in our massive central hall allowed me to watch the battle. I hadn't bothered with any of the typical accoutrements I'd typically put in my lairs -- the stunning 19th century French furniture, the many Flemish tapestries I had "liberated" from museums across Europe, the cappuccino machine. This base wasn't meant for the long-term. Either I'd succeed and live in Malmaison, or I'd lose and that would be the end of it. The sounds of the battle burst forth out of the monitors and echoed across the empty hall. I felt strangely lonely, despite the battle taking place a mere 200 meters away.

Blue Blitz took care of the Dominators in less than a minute. I wasn't surprised. They're good at intimidating the citizenry, but are outmatched by just about anybody with even the most useless powers. A few of them were once defeated by a magic dog. Neither Blockade nor Midnight Thorn presented much of a threat. Blockade has never successfully landed a punch on Blue Blitz in all his years in my service. Midnight Thorn's shadow darts have shown much more success, because she controls them with her mind, not her aim, but on this occasion, he tripped her before she could launch a muscle-freezing assault and slammed her head into the floor, knocking her out. He had two minutes left to stop me.

He zipped into the main hall, a heroic figure of blue tights with gold stripes. His face was red with fury. Even if he managed to stop me, he knew that I had done more damage to this world already than I had ever done in the past.

"Stop this madness now, Baron!" he said, predictably enough.

"Or what?" I asked. I didn't even bother to arm the laser blasters in my gauntlets. I knew how this was going to end.

"I'll kill you," he snarled. I remember raising my eyebrows in surprise. But looking back now it was obvious I had crossed a line that I had never crossed before. Hundreds had been killed and I was responsible. There is a point where a hero will decide that death is an acceptable outcome in a fight. And unlike villains, they don't play around at it. After the Sinister Sniper had managed to pick off more than thirty civil rights activists and refused to surrender, his dead body was delivered to the steps of the Supreme Court by the Hammer of Justice. And nobody would ever dare put him on trial. Blue Blitz had reached that point.

"You better hurry, then," I said. I still had not taken any form of offensive or defensive posture. "One minute, thirty-seven seconds."

Blue Blitz began to speed through the hall, zig-zagging to avoid the expected laser blasts that never came. But he began to slow about halfway across the room. By the time he reached me, he stumbled to a stop, wheezing, and slowly toppled over. Blood was leaking from his nose and ears.

I still had not moved a muscle. "You see," I explained, "I know I can't hit you. You're too fast for anything I could throw at you. So I figured, if I want to take down a speedster, the smart thing to do would be to set off the trap before you even arrived. This room is full of a colorless, odorless neurotoxin. Dr. Googolplex invented it. Along with the antidote. Which I have, and you don't.

"You bastard," Blue Blitz wheezed from the steel-plated floor, just before a seizure caused him to spit foam all over himself.

"Would you like to hear my plan for world domination? It's tradition at this point, isn't it?"

It turned out that he wasn't interested because he was dead.

A calm computerized voice alerted me that Dr. Googolplex's virus had succeeded. I told him through the communication system that Blue Blitz had been taken care of and ordered him to meet me in the control center. In a matter of minutes, he shut down the remnants of the original virus, allowing me to contact the United Nations and demand that every nation surrender to me, immediately.

They all declared that they would not be hostage to my "mad schemes." The secretary-general said the armies of the world would unite against me, as would the heroes.

Twenty minutes later, Perth, Australia, was obliterated. After a hurried vote, the nations of the world changed their mind. Mad schemes were suddenly in vogue.