Billy's Requiem
Fucking Billy.
"Well, what do you have to say for yourself?"
It came out more as a demand than anything else. Even with Billy's recent change of heart and decision to be more humane, he still came off like a holier-than-thou dick. Gil thought about the ridiculousness of the situation. How after ten years of living under this Disney-Despot, this Edgelord-Emperor, that he now he fancied himself as enlightened and educated. He wasn't going to rule the world anymore, he was going to save it. It sounded like one of those bullshit RPGs he tried to force on people a few years ago when he was really wrapped up in their stories. A massive global issue that could be solved by a few plucky children. He preached unconditional love and absolute forgiveness. He was their lord and savior. Billy had declared amnesty day to pardon all infractions so that true forgiveness could be bestowed. This was his attempt at re-branding. It didn't matter to Gil, he was tired. He wanted to get it over with.
He regarded Billy with tired eyes. The young man that sat in front of him looked nothing like he imagined. He imagined the would-be king like the heavy-set brat that he had glimpsed on the news almost ten years ago when all this first started, but now Billy was tall, thin, and handsome. He wondered how much of that was due to the Djinn's powers and after seeing half a dozen Hot Pockets boxes littered around the room, he realized that it was all the genie's doing. The Djinn lounged behind the altar. It was a towering behemoth that powered all of Billy's fancies and whims. It had entered a dormant state a few years back after some people began trying to worship it and offer their own supplications to it. It still responded to his master's requests, but now it was almost catatonic to the world. Gil was woken from his daze by the man before him motioning him forward.
Gil stepped forward with an exasperated sigh. Six years has passed since he committed the unforgivable act of killing one of Billy's OCs. The next six years were spent in an alcohol-induced fugue that Gil could remember bits and pieces of. He remembered running, screaming, and drinking surrounded by a world of blood and edginess. His public execution of Conis had resulted in him being branded an enemy of the state, at least in Gil's eyes. Gil managed to remain a fugitive (mainly due to people's indifference and the fact that Billy had completely forgotten he had created Conis within hours of making it) before the floodgates broke.
It was his realization that Gladys would have been seventy years old a few months back that forced Gil to put down the bottle and actually look at the world around him. In the ten years that passed, Gil had forgotten all the small intricacies of her body like her smile, laugh, and frustrated sighs. It was a sobering thought, and Gil sobered up accordingly.
"Have you come here for amnesty, my child?" He spoke those words without a trace of awareness. He didn't think about the fact that Gil had been alive for almost fifty years before Billy had even been born. Billy truly saw himself as a messianic figure and all the people in the world were his children to be guided like sheep.
Fucking Billy.
Gil thought for a moment, he could probably grovel for a moment and beg for forgiveness then walk back out into the world with a clean slate. It would have been easy. He could have absolution and go back to living life without really losing anything in the process. Gil didn't want easy however. "Eat a dick."
There was a brief crack in Billy's facade where the beatific and benevolent ruler temporarily revealed the petulant and self-entitled child underneath that he had always been. Despite being an adult now, Billy had never grown beyond that of a child because no one told him he was wrong. He had never known what it was like to have someone judge them. He was sheltered from anything and everything. The facial expression quickly shifted back to the messianic one as he asked, "If you aren't here to receive pardon and forgiveness for your crime, why are you here? I don't have a lot of time to listen to you air imagined grievances with me, I am busy trying to fix this broken worl-"
"I'm not here to beg for forgiveness. I don't think I've done anything wrong. You're the one who's in the wrong here. I'm here to tell you that you need to stop. You're not helping this world. You are going to kill us all if you keep doing what you're doing."
Billy scoffed, "Why say that? You must remember what the world was like before I was given this burden. You remember people starving and suffering. How can I stop when I have the ability to solve these problems? I have a moral obligation to help my people. It's easy to belittle someone when you're doing nothing yourself. Do you not realize that I have solved problems like world hunger?"
"You didn't solve world hunger. You just made crops grow in size. Sure, a dozen tomatoes can now feed a small village and are the size of a horse, but in order to grow that large, they're sapping the soil of all their nutrients. It's a temporary fix to a massive problem. People may not go to bed hungry tonight, but what happens next harvest or the one after that? Populations are growing and we won't have enough to sustain them all in a couple of years. What then?"
"I'll just wish for more nutrients in the soil. More people require larger foods. Easy fix. More nutrients, larger food. If there's a drought, I'll just summon a storm to end it. I can fix anything with just a few words and a wish."
"What nutrients are needed to grow corn? Do you even know if a country is well-equipped to handle a torrential downpour to grow the crops? Do you realize what you're doing to the ecosystem with a sudden change in their weather patterns? Desert life isn't equipped to handle that. There will be flooding and wash-outs. I don't think you do. You don't know anything about-"
Billy changed the topic, "It's easy to complain in a world free of pain. Did you forget how much people suffered with degrading bodies and debilitating disease? What right do you have to tell me how to do my job?!"
Gil blew out an exhausted sigh. He knew this was coming. There was no way to completely eliminate pain, so instead Billy chose to mask it. A slight adjustment to the receptors in the brain resulted in an increased output of dopamine. The pain was still there, but now there was a pleasant buzz humming throughout your body all the time. Gil constantly felt nauseous like his stomach was about to drop out of his abdomen, he had headaches that felt like barbwire tightening around his brain, and his heart was beating so fast that he thought it would explode. It didn't matter though, with the dopamine, he felt more at ease, despite being incredibly unhealthy. The only thing that kept him moving around was the realization that something was wrong here. The older you got, or the more pain you were in, the higher your dopamine production was. People's lives weren't improved, they were rendered complacent. Billy didn't know about the results of his tinkering with the human body.
"You can't eliminate pain as it's necessary to warn our bodies of danger. Covering it up with a high doesn't help. I've seen people laying in bed all day, too sick to move, and unable to feel the bed sores creeping up their bodies. It sucks getting old and hurting all the time, but that ache and discomfort help prevent us from wearing out our joints by running around and dancing. You're not a doctor, you don't know the side-effects of what you're doing. Have you even seen how some people are acting now? I passed one guy on the way here that was just looking at the sky and laughing. He did that for five minutes before mumbling something incoherent and wandering off. People are acting like fucking loons with all these chemicals raging inside them."
"Maybe you're a masochist, but that doesn't give you the right to try and prevent other people from experiencing a life free of pain. That man was probably so full of life that he couldn't help but laugh at his good fortune. Do you not understand what joy is? How sad is that? You're blinding yourself with nostalgia and think everything was perfect back before I was given this gift-"
"I don't, the world was terrible, but we lived through it and adapt-"
"Do your nostalgia glasses shield you from all the problems that were present in the old world? We're not just talking about famine and suffering, there was also social inequality and racism. I solved that too. There's no more racism, sexism, ageism and everyone is treated equally. Or do you miss that? Do you miss having status over other people just because they were a different race or sex from you? Do you even realize how hard it is to fix so many systemic problems? What right do you have to judge me?"
"You didn't solve racism. Decreeing that people can no longer be racist just resulted in them being racist in a less detectable manner. Employers still don't hire women or minorities, they just justify it with empty bullshit based around their stereotypes but not directly implying them. There are thousands of jobless men and women who aren't hired due to their perceived lack of 'work ethics'. You didn't solve racism, you just changed its name. People are still being treated differently, just other people are using different approaches to disenfranchising them."
"You think this job is easy? So many people are depending on me to rescue them. Do you think you would do better?!" Billy was ranting now and for a brief moment, Gil was worried that he was going to be vaporized on the spot. He had heard of it being done before, but at this point, Gil didn't mind. He had said his piece. Billy had claimed to fix the world, but he had only made it worse. The rapidly shifting climates had devastated populations who were not equipped for heavy rain and almost a third of the population was so whacked out of their gourds that they appeared almost psychotic.
"No, I just thought that you should know what you're doin-"
"You think you can handle all the burdens I face in day-to-day life?! You wouldn't last a day dealing with everything I have to do for you people! You think I want to have to solve each crisis myself?! I wish you had my powers for an hour so you would know what it's like and how difficult it is!"
Billy regretted those words as soon as he said them. The Djinn operated very literally and always required the upmost caution when voicing the phrase, "I wish." The air shifted and the dormant Djinn's eyes lit up in response to Billy's unintentional wish. It happened so quickly that Gil barely had time to suck in a breath before the universe opened up to him in its entirety. In that instant, Gil was omnipotent and omniscient. Gil had Billy's powers for the briefest moment and he knew what had to be done.
Billy began to shout, "Djinn, help me. I demand that you give me back-"
Gil imagined the Djinn dispersing into the air like a dry fart and watched as reality unfolded and acquiesced to his desire. The Djinn opened its eyes for the briefest moment in confusion as its entirety unraveled like a ball of yarn that had been kicked down the stairs. In the blink of an eye, the Djinn was nothing more than particles being carried away by air currents. All the power the Djinn possessed evaporated under its new master's whim, leaving Gil with this momentary ability. In an hour that would be gone. Billy could only watch in horror as his only means of reclaiming his power was disintegrated with a poor choice of words and a thought. Billy's grand experiment crumbled away.
Billy whimpered, "What are you going to do now? Everything I worked for, everything I built, it'll be undone in a few days. Are you proud of yourself? Are you happy with yourself?"
Gil wasn't happy. He saw everything unfolded in front of him and realized how bad it all was. Those things that he brought against Billy were just the tip of the iceberg. He couldn't fix all of problems caused if he lived to be a thousand years. The ecosystem was completed depleted of resources, a third of the population was swallowed up in dopamine-induced psychosis and more were slipping away, even if Billy was a terrible leader, his absence would still create a power vacuum that would result in bloodshed and socioeconomic destabilization. People had grown with Billy being a guiding force in their everyday life and when that disappeared, chaos would swallow them all up. Gil saw everything and he would have wept if he thought it would change anything. It was too late.
Fucking Billy, it's all too late.
Billy sniveled, "I was right wasn't I? I tried to fix it, but it's too broke to fix. It's not my fault that it all ended up like this. It was so much worse when I started. I did the best I could..."
Gil was lost in his thoughts that he didn't even hear Billy's platitudes. He didn't know what to do. He didn't want any of this. He was so tired. He just wanted to rest. He just wanted it all to end. He closed his eyes and wished.
Written by EmpyrealInvective
Content is available under CC BY-SA
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