Baron Dominance's Diary of World Conquest
Chapter Two: Coronation
October 9, 2004

"So, like, why do you want to rule the world, anyway?"

The question came as a surprise. I was in the middle of a completely inane interview with some vacuous blonde woman from E! Her smooth, otherworldly features led me to believe that she was the secret identity of heroine Plastica Fantastic. I'm not exactly sure how I wound up doing interviews with entertainment reporters. I'm pretty sure it was Blockade's doing. Half the time I didn't know where I was going or who was interviewing me until I showed up at some blue and beige Manhattan studio and saw posters of either the evening news team or Julia Roberts, depending on the situation.

Although to be honest, the only difference between many of the questions the entertainment reporters asked and those by news reporters was that the entertainment reporters were smiling.

This woman -- whose real name was allegedly "Sunny" -- had just asked me if I had picked out a color scheme for the coronation, so I wasn't really expecting much. (if you care, it was green and gold. Green was Napoleon's favorite color.) She just blurted it out, like she had forgotten that she was actually going to ask me who my date would be and was struggling for time while she gathered her wits, such as they were.

"Well. If you look back… ," I began, trying to put together a decent answer. "I mean, if you look at the world history you'll see we … and I mean 'we' as in the whole world here, have built great empires under the rule of a singular strong leader. And, I, uh, I think we have suffered by breaking off into all…these…you know…little countries." Here I idiotically mimed tossing confetti for reasons beyond comprehension. "Things like … like the Holocaust! Allowing us all to fragment ourselves into these little countries allows things like the Holocaust to happen." I pointed wildly with this declaration and my eyes widened with discovery, as though I were the first human being to ever invoke the Holocaust in a political discussion. "Israel … Sudan… The Ivory Coast. A lot of our world's problems are due to substandard nation building. I'm going to fix that." I fumbled. I muttered. I stuttered.

"Cool. So what's the deal with your armor? Are you going to wear it at the coronation?"

Fortunately hardly anybody ever saw that interview and nobody really cared. Other interviewers flooded me with a strange mix of questions -- Are you demanding tribute from the nations' leaders? Like expensive presents? Will there be a worldwide income tax? Will people still be able to worship their own gods? Will we all have to learn Italian or French? What will happen to trademark laws? Yes, some business reporter asked me about trademark laws. I tried to pretend to care when I told him that I wasn't planning any major changes to business law at this time.

I realized soon that the media weren't asking me any tough questions because they didn't exactly know what I was going to do with them. A couple of the smarter, more mercenary media masters had already contacted me and promised their loyalty in exchange for tax breaks. I responded that they would promise me their loyalty or I'll have them killed and their bodies stuffed and mounted in the display windows in front of their New York headquarters. They acquiesced immediately, of course. Those people, feeding conflict between people -- between nations -- in order to thrive in the guise of public service, they would not be rewarded with tax breaks.

But let's not get ahead of myself. I hadn't had the official coronation yet in front of the United Nations general assembly. There was still a "save the day at the last moment" possibility in play for some gallant heroes. Amusingly, the Protectors had returned from their alternate dimension, and upon realizing that I had just been named the sovereign supreme of the world, assumed they had come back to the wrong earth and left again. Blockade dismantled their interdimensional teleportation device, by which I mean he broke it into a million little pieces. The Majestic Nine were locked in mortal combat with their evil clones at a warehouse in Chicago. A barrage of missiles from a dozen military helicopters now under my control took care of both problems for good. I did make a note to see if I could find out which villain was responsible for the clones. He or she could prove useful in the future.

The Technosavants realized how difficult it would be to stand against the man who controlled the whole power grid and surrendered without a fight. With a push of a button (well, actually, four buttons, a slider and a few commands punched into a keyboard), I could block all communication between them and the high-tech suits they used to fight. I ordered them onto a space shuttle bound for a small colony the United States had built on Uranus. I considered blowing up the shuttle, but decided against it. I was confident that I actually could take them out easily if they dared return. They were accompanied by all the other little groups and individual heroes who survived my attacks.

I decided not to send Lady Harmony to join her husband in the great hereafter. Literary conventions require that this would be my fatal flaw. I think that by the end of it all I wished that were true. I suppose I was a little soft that, when I arrived at the hospital and saw her nursing her newborn daughter, I lost my nerve. She started crying when she saw me and even tried to work up a sonic attack to defend her child, but she was too weak to have any effect.

I wasn't completely stupid, though. I had Lady Harmony's larynx surgically removed and a small microchip implanted in the child so I could monitor her growth and likely development of powers. I had no intention of entertaining any Shakespearean revenge fantasies.

There were still a few loose ends to wrap up before the coronation. As a gesture of good will, I sent Midnight Thorn and a crew of Dominators to eliminate any of the remaining members of the terrorist cells I once funded. Midnight Thorn was more than willing to oblige.

I rescued Midnight Thorn -- née Fatuma Sisay -- in the early 1980s from the horrors of the Ethiopian Civil War while I was secretly recruiting one of my terrorist cells. I was impressed by her passion and anger and disgust at the world's great nations for failing to come aid them with any substantive passion.

I remember her, striding angrily toward me as I wandered through some unnamed Ethiopian village. Actually, I'm sure it probably had a name but I didn't care. She saw me walking idly through a shabby outdoor camp and assumed the pale white man in the Banana Republic gear was a war profiteer, an assumption that was entirely correct. I wasn't in my armor, though I was certainly well-armed, and I was waiting to meet with the leader of a small rebel group. I didn't bother to learn who they were rebelling against. The gun at my side didn't seem to faze her at all. She had seen and felt enough suffering. She had been sitting in the shade of a tattered green tarp propped up with sticks as a cover from the sun. The tarp was a leftover from a previous doomed visit from Red Cross workers. She had been caring for a sick child, though I didn't notice it at the time and didn't care. She quietly stood up and pushed her way through the crowd that had gathered around me, begging to see if I had brought any rice or wheat. I had not. Once she made it to within arm's reach, she pulled a small, useless knife from her somewhere on her person -- perhaps from the folds of her simple cotton dress. I pulled my gun on her. She practically vibrated with rage.

"Are you here to laugh at our pain, Europe Man?" She snarled in somewhat broken English. "Do you want to sell us guns so we can all get ourselves killed fighting? Do you want us to beg for our survival? Or offer our bodies?" She yanked the neckline of her dress down just a little bit for emphasis. "Will you give us rice if I let you sex me? I don't have any diseases. Or perhaps you should just kill us all so you can look for oil for your stupid machines without our suffering becoming a nuisance! Would you like that?"

I shot her. Only in the shoulder. Only to shut her up. She fell into the dirt screaming and clutching her wound as the other villagers fled. I radioed my Dominator pilot, who had landed our helicopter a safe distance from the village. She finally lost consciousness as he arrived, the manned machine gun poking out of the helicopter's cabin scaring away any villagers who hadn't quite gotten the message.

A Dominator tended to her wounds in the helicopter as we returned to our base at the bottom of a diamond mine in Zaire (now the Congo). It seemed like a brilliant locale to stay deep below the ground and isolated away from our enemies. That was until a confrontation in 1987 with a hero known as Floodgate. Data recovery back then is not what it is today; that little conflict set our plans back a couple of years and cost us a few million dollars.

We patched her up while she was unconscious and left her resting on a cot in our locked medical bay. She finally awoke six hours later and I could have heard her demands for an explanation even if I hadn't wired the whole base with a communications grid. For dramatic impact, I clad myself in my armor before entering the medical bay. I imagined the look on her face when she discovered she was a prisoner of a powerful, dangerous mastermind.

I strode into the medical bay to find her standing flat against a wall, clutching a scalpel she had managed to scavenge from one of the cabinets.

"I trust you are feeling better?" I asked.

"Who the hell are you?" she asked, holding the scalpel out like it was as cross and I a vampire.

"I'm … Baron Dominance."

"Who?"

"Baron Dominance."

"There are still barons? Where is this Domance region? Turkey?"

"No, Baron Dominance." This wasn't quite going as planned. Many of the warlords and faction leaders had at least heard of me. I guess she had more important concerns.

"Your name makes no sense. Why are you dressed like that? Did you steal that armor from a museum?"

"No," I lied. "I am Baron Dominance, heir to Napoleon Bonaparte's empire." She seemed unimpressed.

"Why are you here? Why did you take me? Are you going to kill me?"

"I am recruiting." She raised an eyebrow in confusion and lowered the scalpel just a little bit.

"Me? What would you want of me? I have children who need my help."

"Do they? And what can you do for them?"

"I have food. Sometimes I will sneak into the military camps and steal medicine. I once killed a soldier. He tried to have his way with me. I stabbed him." She glared at me. I'm sure she knew full well that scalpel was no threat to me.

"You are helpless in the face of this war," I said, working myself into what I hoped was an impressive oration. "There are millions like you across the world. And yet the leaders don't care. Not really. They make speeches. They let relief organizations beg people for money for food that ends up being stolen or commandeered by the very folks who torment you. It pleases them to see the Third World suffer. It makes the citizens in their own nations grateful for what they have and complacent against political reform. Your suffering keeps leaders of other nations in power."

"And you wish to take advantage of me in some way. Is that correct?"

I tilted my head to the side and stared at her. She was covered with dirt. Her dress was torn and covered with muck and probably dried vomit. She lived her life in mostly isolation, though she had clearly gotten a fairly good education. And she had immediately understood what had drawn me to her. I wanted her -- on my team, in my inner circle, and in my bed.

"Yes," I said. "I can give you power. You will never be a victim again."

"Power? How much?"

I gestured toward a wall with a hand and let forth a blast of pure plasma energy. It left huge black, bubbling scorch on the wall. It also set off all the security alarms in the base until I informed the Dominators and Dr. Googolplex that everything was fine and to stand down.

After that we negotiated for a few minutes. She agreed to assist me with my plans for world unity at all costs. In return I would give her power, and keep her village in food and medicine for as long as they lived there.

I know, I know -- your eyes rested on "as long as they lived" and just assumed the evil villain had them all killed later. That's why some of us are "villains" and some of us are just psychotic. I wouldn't kill a bunch of innocent villagers for no reason just to gloat over some literal interpretation of a verbal contract.

I didn't need to, anyway. Once the various rebel factions in Ethiopia and Eritrea found out about the supplies, the village was razed and the food and medicine stolen within six months. There were a handful of refugee survivors. I wasn't sure how Fatuma would react, but it ended up securing her devotion to my goal.

Dr. Googolplex and I discussed the best way to give Fatuma power. We decided on exposing her to the magical Fog of Delphi. It would amuse me a little if I were to give everybody on Earth the secret details on how and where this magical remnant of the ancient Greek empire works and laugh at the consequences, but I'll refrain for now. This mysterious fog somehow enhances some aspect of the inner "soul" of one who participates in the appropriate ritual while within it. This change manifests itself as supernatural powers. In Fatuma's case, she developed the ability to toss out magical darts of mysterious dark energy. Those who are struck by them are temporarily paralyzed. And thus she became Midnight Thorn.

And she has been my most loyal of companions, next to Dr. Googolplex. Although I never did get her in my bed, she was probably the only member of my organization who actually concerned herself with my unification goals. Dr. Googolplex was too consumed with his own inventions and most of the other minions who came and went were just interested in a paycheck and/or hurting people. Midnight Thorn hated that I was supporting terrorist groups, because of their divisive influence on small nations. I fundamentally agreed with her, of course, but it was simply a means to an end. I promised her that she would be allowed to dispose of these groups once they have outlived their purpose, a promise which allowed her to internally justify her loyalty to me.

While Midnight Thorn was taking care of all these terrorist groups, Blockade had declared himself to be my personal bodyguard and inexplicably took over the planning of my own coronation.

There is no particularly fascinating story about how Blockade came to work for me. I was recruiting in New York and he heard through a wheelman or a fixer or a bruiser or whatever the nameless thugs tended to nickname themselves at the time. He showed up at the proper back alley at the proper time, his seven foot, 290-pound frame looming over the other thugs, his strange little smile disconcerting everybody around him.

After several years working with him, I still only know a handful of things about him. One: His first name is Joshua. I still don't know his last name. Two: He is completely impervious to all forms of physical harm. Completely. Apparently he was always like this. He's not even sure himself how it happened. Three: He can easily lift and throw a tank. Again, he's not sure where he developed this massive strength. Four: He prefers the company of other men. And five: He is a complete sociopath.

I have come to the conclusion that Blockade actually thinks he's a hero. Actually, that's not quite accurate. Blockade believes that he's the hero of an action movie. Obviously anybody he opposes him must be a villain, because why else would they be trying to stop him? He could actually pass as a hero if you didn't spend much time around him. He's got the chiseled jaw, the blond hair and blue eyes, and the stunningly perfect physique, which he highlights with his red spandex tights and boots.

And then there's the smile. He's always smiling. It makes him seem terribly appealing and polite at first, until you see that same smile on his face when he's got a bank security guard's head in one of his giant fists and he's banging it repeatedly against a vault door.

He's not very bright, but once he gets an idea in his head, it instantly become "reality" for him, despite any evidence otherwise. Midnight Thorn has related to me some of the things Blockade has said (he mistakenly believes that she's his "sidekick"), at turns amused and horrified. Blockade has decided that because I describe myself as an "heir" that means there are "evil forces" out there who have somehow dethroned me. These mysterious men wear expensive Italian suits and speak in Eastern European accents and have spies everywhere. They have a big secret castle in the Alps. And he, of course, is the one who will return me to my rightful position as a ruler.

It's a useful delusion, so naturally I am using it. Unstoppable men are hard to come by. Dr. Googolplex and I were talking about Blockade one day and he casually pointed out to me that in a lot of these action hero movies, the mysterious villain turns out to be the person the hero trusted the most. He and I both fell quiet after that comment, and we immediately turned our attention to developing a contingency plan in the event that Blockade decided on a change of "reality."

It should be obvious to you now that Blockade's damaged mind has been heavily influenced by Hollywood. He's too young to have seen any of the big parades following the end of World War II. He didn't have any memories that would help him visualize what a coronation should be like in 2004. So instead, he turned to America's informal royalty -- celebrities. Suddenly what I visualized mentally as a victory march to the United Nations building in Manhattan had turned into a three-mile red carpet walk. Literally. He had the widths of 42nd Street and United Nations Plaza measured and paved with red carpet. He arranged for post-coronation parties at all the trendiest clubs. With name lists, of course. Several Dominators were drafted as bouncers. He struggled to decide whether Sigourney Weaver was still a big enough celebrity to be invited to the coronation itself, or whether to allow her to walk the red carpet, but then watch the coronation from one of the parties.

Fortunately, I was able to convince Blockade that it would be inappropriate to give away thousands of tickets to the coronation through morning radio show contests.

We settled on Friday afternoon, Eastern time, for the coronation. It allowed me to order the world to essentially come to a halt to watch my rise to power without too serious a disruption in the world economy.

I insisted on traditional European marches as background music for the parade. A battalion of Dominators lined up in formation to precede me to the United Nation. I would walk alone, in my armor, showing my strength as a leader, as Blockade, Dr. Googolplex, and Midnight Thorn walked together a few feet behind me. A smaller contingent of Dominators behind us would deal with anybody who might decide to behave foolishly.

I explained to Blockade for the fifth time why I was not going to ride to the United Nations building waving at the crowd from the back of a red Mustang convertible.

There was a crowd at the march, an awkward, listless, sullen gathering. Nobody waved any flags, which reminded me that I hadn't come up with one yet. They mostly just stood around glaring, while Dominators on the rooftops showered down confetti on us all (of course, they also had high-powered rifles at the ready in the event of … excitement).

"Why did they even come?" I wondered aloud. I'm not an idiot. I wasn't expecting cheering crowds. But the dreadful silence other than the canned marches made my skin crawl. It occurred to me that I hadn't adequately thought this out myself. This was only a victory march for us. So … why is anybody even here? I scanned down 42nd Street with the telescopic lens in my helmet and got my answers. Charter buses full of people were unloading, prodded into position by armed Dominators. Ah. Of course. Blockade could be savvy in his own misguided way.

If there's a sight more soul-crushing than forced cheer, it's forced cheer directed at you.

"Midnight!" I hissed behind me. She trotted up by my side.

"What is it?" she asked.

"What should I do?"

"What?"

"Look at them. I should do something to put them at ease, maybe."

"Such as?"

"I don't know. Should I wave?"

"Wave?"

"Acknowledge them in some way, you know?"

"What do you mean? Something that says, 'Hi, I just conquered forcibly conquered you all and have nuclear missiles aimed at your heads, but there's no need to be so glum.' Something like that?"

"You are such a cynic. You picked up Western attitudes far too easily."

"I don't know what you were expecting. Did you think anybody would want to watch this? Like some sort of tacky tape parade? Sometimes you are as bad as Blockade."

"'Ticker tape.' I think I'm going to wave."

"Then wave."

I waved to the crowd and smiled, which was stupid, because you can't really see my mouth very well under the helmet. It didn't matter. There was no response -- just sullen stares and the tinny strains of "Under the Banner of Victory" as performed apparently by the Hildesheim Volunteer Community Marching Band, if the quality was any indication.

"You could order them to cheer, you know," Midnight Thorn said.

"It wouldn't be the same." I was beginning to sulk. Fatuma shrugged.

"Treat it like a challenge," she said. "Someday this march will be done again. And next time they'll all be cheering."

I sighed.

"You're right." I put a hand on her shoulder. She yelped as a built up static charge shocked her. "Damned carpeting. Sorry. Why did I let Joshua do this?"

If you're reading this, I suspect you already know the contents of my coronation speech and have read all the lengthy analyses that followed. I won't bore you by going over it all again. As the late James Poland, a political columnist for the Village Voice, wrote, "It was a speech so bland of thought and vacant of ideas that we might as well have just elected him." Looking back now, I do feel a little guilt about making him "the late James Poland." I'd say I meant everything that I said, if I had really said anything that meant anything. The speech really wasn't much different from my babbling to "Sunny," except there were bigger words and less stuttering pauses.

But I believed in my heart every bland, empty promise. All except for one: "I know you're probably scared now about what may come next. Let me assure you that someday you will be glad I am here to guide this world to its great destiny." As I flashed a patriarchal, condescending smile over the gathered presidents, chancellors, princes, and generals at the U.N., I had no idea it would be the one line in my twenty minute speech that would actually be true.

Or that I would come to regret it.