The article said that no one really knew what happened, only that dancing nude in the street had sounded like fun and so they did it. Thirty-two people. Public indecency charges were pending.
Steven laughed and tossed the paper onto the counter. Being from a broken home and having been raised by his evil and uncaring aunt, Steven had very few morals. Normally, a nerd like Steven would have had few chances to push against what morals he did have. He had just assumed he would end up working some dead-end job, marry some woman who would go to fat after two kids, and die mostly broke with a bunch of grandkids arguing over his comic book collection.
But now it seemed he had a more promising future. He could run a big company, he could become a senator or even the president. Or he could just get very, very rich and live an easy life surrounded by beautiful woman.
Or maybe he could do all those things.
“Why not?” Steven said out loud.
The guy two seats away down the counter said, “I agree. Why not?”
Steven glanced at him, then around at the diner. The cook, the waitress, and the five other customers were all staring at him, waiting for him to say something, like what he might say might be important.
Creepy. Having this kind of power over everyone around him might just get old. Then Steven laughed and said out loud, “That’s not going to happen.”
Everyone in the restaurant nodded. “You’re right,” the guy said beside him. “That’s not going to happen.”
He glanced at the waitress. “You sure you don’t mind paying for my breakfast?”
She blinked, surprised, then smiled and said, “Not a problem.”
“Thanks,” he said, laughing and heading for the door.
This new power was going to be a lot of fun. But first, he had a lot of planning to do.
That afternoon, Steven went back to his apartment and started to do some research on the Web. He needed to know how others had gained vast wealth and power if he was going to follow in their footsteps. He needed to know their history, and the steps they took to keep the power.
And most of all, he needed to know what they did wrong. If he was going to get as much power as he was hoping to get, he needed to know how others lost theirs.
While running computer searches on different references to power, presidents, Caesars, dictators, and other tyrants throughout history, he came across a Web site that was titled “Checklist for the Aspiring Evil Overlord.”
The site was supposed to be a joke, aimed at all the bad cliche’s Evil Overlords had in fiction, but Steven knew better. The site was a great reference guide to stop those who wouldn’t follow him. Those two in that restaurant clearly haunted him, worried him more than he wanted to let on. And the checklist was filled with rules aimed at stopping those kinds of people.
Steven printed off checklist and studied it carefully over the next few days. Most of the suggestions were things that would matter later in his climb to riches, power, and maybe even world control. He was starting to really think big.
But many of the suggestions in that list would help him on his rise to power. For example,
#28: A bullet to the head shall never be too good for my enemies.
Steven would always keep that firmly in mind, along with #92: I will never fail to keep in mind my strengths and my weaknesses.
Then, after posting the list on the bulletin board in his kitchen, he took out the little slip of paper he had gotten from the fortune cookie and read it one more time.
He needed to see if what he was thinking was right, that he had somehow gotten his powers from these fortune cookies. So he headed back to the Chinese restaurant he and Jane had eaten at the night before.
The employees were amazingly happy to see him as he came through the door, considering that most of them were facing charges for dancing nude and the restaurant was being investigated for spiking the food in some manner. Even with all that, there were still twenty people eating in the place and the moment he spoke to the man behind the front counter, they all stopped and turned to listen.
“I’d love to buy a large bag of your fortune cookies,” Steven said.
“Here, take ours,” one man at a table close by said, offering Steven their cookies. His wife was nodding, looking like a puppy trying to please a master.
“No, thanks,” Steven said, waving the man off. “You two enjoy them.”
Immediately the man and woman dug into the cookies, acting as if they were having small orgasms while crunching on the cookie, paper and all.
The man behind the counter grabbed a large bag that had to have three hundred fortune cookies in it. “This good?”
“That’s perfect,” Steven said. “And it’s very kind of you to give them to me.”
“The honor is ours,” the man said.
Steven laughed as he left. It was getting easier and easier to get everything for free. Whatever was happening with him, he sure loved it. He could get used to everyone waiting for him to talk. After all, that’s what everyone did around those in power.
Back in his apartment, Steven opened the bag, got a glass of milk from the fridge, and cracked into the first cookie. It was the same basic fortune that Jane had gotten the night before.
“You will come into a vast sum of money.”
Steven laughed. “Yeah, that’s going to happen.”
A moment later, before he could even wash down the cookie with a sip of milk, the phone rang. He never did get back to the fortunes that day because his evil old aunt had had a stroke and was in the hospital. He didn’t much like her, but he was the only thing she had. She died before he got there, which didn’t actually upset him. The last thing he would have needed was the old bag hanging on and building up hospital bills.
He spent most of the night dealing with all the details of his aunt’s death, then the rest of the night at Jane’s, making her do things naked that no woman outside of porn films ever really did.
He sure loved his new power.
It was the next morning, after making funeral arrangements and talking to his aunt’s attorney that he came to understand what had happened. His aunt had left him everything, and the old broad had been rich. Millions rich, or so the attorney thought. It was still too early to tell just how much it might be.
Steven laughed all the way back to his apartment. Now he had his stake to get him started toward his plan of world domination. The cookie had been right again.
There was no telling what the next cookie would bring him. He could just keep opening cookies and gaining power.
Today, he would become a truly powerful being.
The bag of fortune cookies and the half-empty glass of old milk were right where he had left them. He dumped out the milk, got himself a fresh glass, then took the first cookie off the top of the bag. He cracked it open, tossed half into his mouth, then read the fortune as he ate, as excited as a kid opening a present on Christmas morning.
But this fortune didn’t seem right and he had to read it twice:
“All special powers that you have been given by fortune cookies will be forever lost.”
Steven tossed the slip away like it was on fire, but it was too late. The feelings of being in control drained away from him like someone had pulled a plug in his shoe.
“No!” he screamed. “That’s not a fortune!”
He slammed the rest of the uneaten cookie into the wall and grabbed another one from the bag, opening it and putting half in his mouth before reading the fortune.
It said the same thing.
And so did the next one and the next one.
He opened a hundred before giving up and sitting down on a stool in disgust.
Someone had planted the entire bag with the same fortune. But who? And why? And who would have known he was going to come back here and open all these?
A moment later the phone rang. It was his aunt’s attorney again, talking some sort of gibberish about taxes and problems with the government and how there wasn’t as much money as there had seemed to be earlier, maybe none at all after all the lawyer fees and hospital costs. Steven just listened in shock, said nothing, then hung up.