SYSTEM CORRUPTORS #24 Second Story "Secret of the Headquarters?" copyright 1997 by Dave Van Domelen [Note to new readers: System Corruptors is an anthology title, not just between issues, but also within an issue. Depending on length, anywhere from one to four stories can appear in a single issue.] You are a being of higher dimensionality, and you are unique. There are others similar to you in many ways...they occupy more than four space-time dimensions, they feed on the energies given off by the emotions of lower beings...but each of you is unique. "Species" is a concept unheard of in your higher dimensions. While some of your peers are limited to feeding on specific emotions, like fear or anger (you use the lower beings' terms for these emotions, feeling an entirely alien set of emotions yourself), you are more versatile. If you felt pride like the cattle, you might be proud of your versatility. You have much to be proud of, too. Others can only extend the barest of feeding structures into the meadow of human minds, often having to act through an existing three-dimensional agent, but you can extrude any part of yourself into any dimension in any shape, a handy skill for trapping prey. You see things like "before" and "after" differently due to the very nature of your existence, but have developed the habit of proceeding through the offerings of a new "pasture" reality in the order of that place's forward flow of causality, much like one of the residents of such a reality might deliberately work from one end of a cob of corn (their words, concepts and food, of course) to the other, despite not being limited to doing so. The more extreme the emotion, the more it satisfies you, and you have found among the "Greeks" near the beginning of the pasture a term which seems to fit your needs as well as any...heroic. Those who are heroic lead extreme lives...they have powerful rages and deep loves, inspire bottomless terror in their foes and limitless joy in their countrymen. You sample these heroes individually, but they move about so much that it is often more effort to feed off them than it is worth. You seek a different part of the pasture to graze in, then. A bit into the "future" as the natives reckon it. Again there are heroes, and again they are too widely scattered and mobile for your tastes, so you decide to lay down a part of yourself into the meadow and bring them to you. A great golden hall appears where none had stood before, and it is a simple matter to convince the local hero-king that he built it with his own efforts. Soon you are full of heroes from all about this land, drinking and telling tales of their adventures, wrestling with each other in comaraderie. And it is good, they feed you well for many of their years. But they grow listless over time. The stories grow dull with repetition, the heroes grow fat and lazy, and the nourishment starts to dry up. You realize that the heroes need something to fight or they become normal men again, but you are not so versatile as to be able to create lifelike creatures of your own substance...so you find a monster in the woods, and inflame it into attacking the soft former heroes, in hopes of adding spice to your meals once more. And it works, but not before most of the "herd" is dead. Next time you will not let things get so bad before acting, you decide. Over the centuries, you modify your harvesting and cultivation tools, efficiently working your way through the pasture. You think your current crop and tools are the best yet. The hall you create for the heroes you dine on is mighty, reaching into the sky and the earth, constantly shifting to accomodate the heroes and luring them ever into your grasp. It has been decades, and few have ever wondered how the hall could exist before the heroes banded together to need it, and this is how you wish it. You hardly even have to incite monsters...or "villains" in the modern parlance...to attack anymore, you have subtler means of ensuring that the heroes continue to go out and do great deeds, recharging their high-running emotions for your benefit. So many are there that you need not feed off any single one by a noticeable amount, you may be able to maintain this crop for quite some time, even by the reckonings of your own experience. Even the existence of some heroes who seem to work counter to the emotions you feed on doesn't make a dent in your rich diet. * * * * Multi-Tasking Man updated the roster, read up on the newsfloods in the Midwest, deleted the accounts of three known spammers via backdoors he had into the ISPs who were careless enough to let spammers live there and checked the current floorplans of the LNHQ. There were a few more rooms than yesterday, and one of the sub-sub-sub-...-sub-basements had disappeared. "Sometimes I wonder about this place," he sighed while reaching into the minifridge for a Mr. Paprika, calling Procrastination Lad to remind him to show up for monitor duty and noting that the sub-etc-basement was back again. "Be it ever so bizarre, there's no place like home, I guess...." ============================================================================= Author's Note: So, is the LNHQ an emotion-vampire from another dimension? Well, even if it is, it's not likely to rock the boat by revealing this fact...why spook the cattle? }->