Anti-Hero

Karl Jak

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It’s me, hi.

I’m the problem.

It’s me.


Karl Jak scowled as he sipped the tea.

“When did I agree to tea?” He asked as he looked around for one of his personal assistants. “I don’t recall agreeing to teatime. Has this not been done before?”

It wasn’t Kevin who responded. Instead, the Not-Kevin lady popped out and gave a faint smile. “You said something about ‘fine, I’ll do it myself’ when you couldn’t get ahold of ‘that damn praying mantis of a woman’ because she was ‘too busy babysitting those people on Cevanti for like months’.” As if the on-point paraphrasing and pantomiming wasn’t enough to sell the validity of the remarks, she spun around her tablet and showed Karl Jak the memo he had dictated to her at some point in the recent past.

“Alternative facts… clearly,” Karl grumbled as he shooed the woman and turned back to the small assortment of military oligarchs, plutocrats, and other assorted ‘crats’ from Cevanti. “Anyway… I think we’ve talked in circles long enough. Our deal is good to go through, is it not?”

“I don’t have an issue with it,” the eldest statesman-slash-soldier man grunted as he fixed his beard and looked to ensure he had no dissent form his retinue. “The … golems you leased us were more than useful in combating the Unmaking, and reports from beyond the Dome grow more positive by the day. It should only be a matter of time before we take a major step toward liberating our World from the pestilence.”

“The Unmaking,” Karl specified. “We call it what it is. Don’t common noun it. It makes it commonplace. As if it’s supposed to be some daily part of our vocabulary.”

King Dulmare bristled slightly at the rebuke. “Nevertheless, none of us are opposed to the terms you outlined.” He looked around. “Is that correct? I do not wish to speak for my peers.”

“The Trade Union agrees with the terms.”

Karl Jak smiled as he took another sip. What was it with these grizzled cyber-tech people and tea?

“When can I expect the first shipments at my installations?”

It was here that the Trade-Baron made his voice known. “The Guild should have the first cargo stocked and shipped by the end of the month. We’re just waiting to ensure that our schedules don’t conflict with Cytokine Industries maintenance of the various ports.”

Aria scowled as she leaned over the table and offered a scowl to her ‘esteemed peer’. “As I mentioned in our last video call, I’ve arranged for all the logistics. All you need to do is have your people there to accept the cargo and transport it through the checkpoints. I trust that won’t be too hard for them.”

Karl, who had already had to navigate the somewhat erratic relationship between Markov’s various factions, took this moment to interject before the pair got locked in a spiraling duet of snarky barbs and fangless threats. “That sounds lovely. My boys in R&D can’t wait.”

“I still wish I knew what you wanted with this stuff, Mr. Jak,” Claudius Dumare muttered. “You’ve never quite enlightened us as to how you benefit from this arrangement.”

The man in the purple suit winked at the man. “A gentleman never tells.”
 

Karl Jak

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Which one was this again?

Kevin frowned as he pulled out his tablet and tried to quick swipe through the collection of nearly identical mugshots. To the untrained eye, it was a parade of Karl Jak selfies, but to Kevin, his keen eye could detect the subtle nuances that were cooked into the majority of the variants.

“Hello, Mr. Jak,” Kevin finally replied as he finished his search and let the tablet computer resumes its dangle from the shoulder strap he’d adopted a few months earlier. “I didn’t know he had assigned you to this portion of the facility.”

Karl rolled his eyes. It was one of Syntech’s worst kept secrets that there was more than one Karl Jak, but the CEO of the company still didn’t enjoy being reminded of that fact. After all, these weren’t so much clones—such a garish and passe concept—but additional vessels for his consciousness. Gone were those rainbow days of needing to rely upon quasi-autonomous ‘help’. Now, that didn’t mean that some of them weren’t unique, but hey, everyone deserves an opportunity to deviate from the norm.

“How may I help you, Kevin?”

“You missed out on the board meeting, Mr. Jak,” Kevin replied.

“Isn’t this why I have a chairperson?”

The PA furrowed his brow. “Yes, but you usually don’t miss the meetings. You usually have someone from your… collection show themselves.”

“I’ve been busy lately,” Karl remarked.

“The project for PS23?”

“The project for PS23.”

“Should I make a note to expect you to miss out on future business meetings, Mr. Jak?”

Karl nodded his head. “Give me a month or so, and I’ll be in a better headspace.”

“You said that last month.”

The man rolled his eyes. “No one likes to have their faults constantly thrown in their face, Kevin. I can’t help it that I’m a workaholic… you know I’m trying to save the cosmos, right?”

“Of course, Mr. Jak,” Kevin remarked without looking up from his tablet, which had started to scrawl a litany of notes and schedule adjustments. “I’ve already called ahead and made the arrangements for your departure to the registration station, Mr. Jak. I found one that was sufficiently off the beaten path, as you requested.”

“Excellent,” Karl replied as he headed for the door. “Do you mind accompanying me, Kevin? It’s a somber walk, so it’ll be nice to do it with a friend.”

The word choice brought a smile to Kevin’s face, and the young man momentarily forgot about the number of calendar events he had lined up for the post-lunch window. “Of course, Mr. Jak, I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

With a smile, Karl gave Kevin a pat on the shoulder as the pair made their way through the facility and discussed a litany of topics, like cantina specials, the upcoming professional development series, and the quarterly reports from the various departments. After a few minutes, they arrived in the little room that housed the teleportation technology that would dispatch them to Nowheres-ville, Erde Nona.

“Come now, Kevin,” Karl laughed as his assistant seemed to pivot. “Can’t quit on me now.”

“Of course, Boss,” the ginger replied with a smile as the two stepped onto the platform and gave the signal to the engineer.
 

Karl Jak

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Karl sighed as he set the plaque on the wall.

Employee of the Month (February) / Kevin

“Goodnight, sweet prince,” the man remarked as he tapped the smiling portrait of the ginger and stepped away from a wall that housed several dozen nearly identical plaques.

As Karl walked away, the PA at his side turned to next blank spot on the wall and grinned from ear to ear.
 
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“What the Hell was that?” came a voice from the far door, noticeably strained with pain. “Kevin dies and… what? All he gets is another plaque on the wall and a cliche?”

“Ah, Toga,” Karl remarked, turning to face the door. And those puffy, red, accusing eyes. “Well… yes. Kevin was never one for a spectacle, after all.”

“Always so serious…” he trails off, musing. Gritting her teeth, Toga steps into the hallway, raising an accusatory finger at the man.

“You’re always like this!” she growls from between gritted teeth. “So cool and above it all! Well, he was my FRIEND!” she finishes in a shout, rushing at Karl and grabbing ahold of his fine felt lapel.

“You…” she begins, shutting her eyes against the tears threatening to blind her. “You! Bring him back! I-I know you can do it! You do it all the time with those losers that fight each other in your games! YOU DID IT FOR ME! Bring him back too!”

Breaking down in sobs, the teenage menace falls to her knees in front of her surrogate father, hands slipping from his tailored suit in her grief. “P-please… Don’t… don’t let him stay dead… It… it hurts too much…”

For a tense moment, it almost feels like Karl is about to say something… but then the moment passes and when next Toga looks up, the CEO of Syntech is already gone, only the trailing end of Charlie’s heel to tell of which direction he had walked off to.
 

Karl Jak

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Karl paused.

When he took a few steps backwards, he almost bowled over Charlie, who had barely the wherewithal to keep track of her surroundings amidst the afternoon's flurry of activity. Why in the hfil should she have to help schedule counseling appointments for her dead predecessor? How was that fair.

"Remember, Toga."

The young woman glanced up at the man who had backed up into her view once again.

"You weren't born into this family. Technically, you just married in, so while I don't want to hit you when you're down, I know our boy a little better," Karl touched a hand to his heart and paused before speaking once more. For a brief moment, it seemed like there was almost a slight crack in Karl's perpetual air of professionalism, but then it was gone.

"Kevin would rather be dead than have to work in the mail room or as a custodian and watch someone else do his dream job. That'd be worse for him than the worst afterlife you could think of."

And with that, Karl left, leaving Charlie to glance one last time at an emotional and mildly irate Toga, who only glared at her with ill-intent.

"Please let me know if you'd like a referral to our psyche department. All grief counseling is free of charge for employees and next of kin," Charlie mumbled as she dipped around the corner.
 
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