Note: I just came up with this on a whim this morning. What do you think? Should I continue on with it?? D*W*Cooper

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The Plot

Chapter 1

Paul woke up with a start.

Something felt different, something that he vaguely remembered feeling a long time ago, but he couldn't place it.

It felt like someone was in his room, and yet he didn't see anyone. He decided to go back to sleep, but he couldn't shake the feeling that someone was there. So he got up and looked around, even kicking aside a pile of clothes that he had left laying on the floor.

I must get to those tomorrow, he thought.

He opened his closet half expecting to see someone, but no one was there. He was alone, and that was just the way he liked it. He had tried marriage, but he'd never make that mistake again.

He looked through the rest of his house, which didn't take long as it was a small one.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

Paul rebuked himself for being so jittery. He didn't have time for such nonsense. Worse, he couldn't afford to be seen as flaky. Too much was riding on his reputation, and he couldn't afford to blow it.

The congressional closed-door hearings had gone well enough he thought, but if those senators knew he had been hearing things in his sleep, they might well have second thoughts regarding his funding. And, he had long ago determined that nothing would get in the way of the funding he needed.

Paul sat down and turned on his television. If he couldn't go to sleep, then he'd see what was on. But nothing interested him. He flipped through all the channels and found nothing. So much was just fluff and nearly everything was intellectually impoverished.

When would mankind realize it's potential? When would the human race grow up?

But the despair he felt at those questions disturbed him. He was getting less and less interested in what normal people did with their lives. His discoveries were opening up a whole new way of looking at things and yet so few people saw what he was seeing. So few understood the potential.

He really wondered if people even cared to improve. They were happy the way they were -- fat and lazy, fed by constant streams of shallow entertainment. It sickened him that people didn't see what poor lives they were leading. It sickened him that nobody cared to do anything about it. It sickened him that so few wanted to even talk about it.

Instead he had been forced to bastardize his discoveries, turning them from their true potential to something the government saw use for -- military use. But he didn't care any longer. If that's what it took to get the funding he needed to continue his work, then so be it.

He simply couldn't continue the work without major funding. His research had reached the big stage that required large amounts of funding for the gigantic scale of machines that were required to go to the next level.

If the government didn't know the real reason he was doing his work -- so much the better. They would get what they wanted for their military, and he would get what he wanted.

They're all fools! That's what they were. Blind ignorant fools who couldn't and likely wouldn't see what could be mankind's greatest achievement ever.

But why did he feel so... so cold then? It seemed like the joy had gone out of his work. He had become obsessed with it -- and it now controlled him.

But so what? What did his happiness really matter anyway? What he was doing would benefit all and wasn't that worth it?

But little did Paul see the eyes that even now glowed behind him as he sat there in front of his blank television. Little did Paul know how long they had waited for this time. Little did he know how they were pushing him on, making subtle changes to his direction, because they had an agenda entirely different from his.

Little did he know that there was no escaping now. Evil does not wait millennia to be lightly thwarted. No, it would get what it wanted this time. It would make sure of it.