Main Menu

God, I'm so embarrassed by this. Way back when, while I was still a snotty little dilletante with stars in my eyes, I worked as a stringer for "Seven Minutes" magazine. Seven minutes is how long light takes to go from the sun, our closest "star" (get it?) to Earth. It was a rag, full of fluff pieces on celebrities of all stripes. Lots of pictures of their grand estates for the plebes to drool over. Anyway, I got the assignment to sail out to Parts Unknown and interview the infamous Doktor Zumm. It's so embarrassing to read these now, after so long.

What follows is an excerpt from "Seven Minutes," the interplanetary celebrity magazine (tm), October 2046. - Lara Exquisite

Alistair "Doktor" Zumm is a man of many moods. Thoughtful, artistic, megalomaniacal... Doktor Zumm runs the gamut. In his spacious Grinding Orbital Palace of Doom, now orbiting an unlisted planetoid, he reigns as a philosopher-king unprecendented in the annals of human history. But don't let the Deathcog Sentries and V-Ray Ultra-Cannons posted along the perimeter fool you. On the inside of this "evil lair" is a man moved by the finer things: art, science, music, and smashing his enemies into a fine paste.

"I'm a collector, really," Alistair told us as we entered the main hall of the Palace. "I just love lovely things." Whether it's the Crown Jewels of Botswana or the Twelfth Mona Lisa, Alistair has an eye for beauty.

Inside the grand Kitchens of Dismemberment, we met Alistair's personal chef and bodyguard, Koto Damuin. Koto was with his boss when they took on the Wellspring Trio in the battle over Lake Chad that led to his exile to this distant but luxurious exile. Koto-san had nothing but good things to say about his boss. "He's a good friend first of all," Koto-san said. "I mean, when I missed Jenny Wellspring with my patented Whirling Titanium Meat Cleaver, why, he didn't even fire me. Sure, I spent a few decades mucking the dregs of the Palace dungeons, but it was meant as a learning experience. One I grew from, I'll tell you that."

Into the Spawning Pools we go, then. Alistair assures us there's no danger in wading about with his latest genetic experiments. In fact, I soon find that the Repton Men, while in tadpole form, are demure and gentle creatures, whose appetite for human flesh is quite less pronounced than their reputation belies.

As we're toweling off, I ask Alistair about the exile. He goes quiet for a bit, and then says, "It can't be helped, really. What I did to Earth and her colonies time and time again were terrible crimes, I admit. I've been to hell and back. But I've grown as a person these last 57 years. I've learned to cope with my natural feelings as a homicidal would-be Tyrant of All Existence."

Is he lonely out here, with nothing but his bodyguard-chef, his warped genetic mutants, his legions of automata, and the forgotten thought-records of thousands of kidnapped Tesseract Officers? for company? Are there ever dreams of meeting that special someone? "Well," says Alistair, "if she'll have my Clockwork Men, my Mercurians, and my barely-submerged appetite for mass slaughter, she could just be the one!"

Doktor Zumm: scientist, entrepreneur, architect of evil. A man for the ages.

See also: Tesseract Officers?, Wellspring Trio, Botswana

< Diego Garcia Biointelligence Array | Lexicon 500 DEF | Einstien, Albert >

This is a D entry in the Lexicon of the Lost 500 Years.