Short Story: Dr. McMillan, Part II

Yes, you heard me. Read me. Whatever. The second installment of my Dr. McMillan story is complete. This one's a little more verbose than the last one, but I like it just as much. There were some sections that I just could not wrap my mind around, and could not seem to get written properly, but it all sorted itself out in the end. So, without further preamble...the story.
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It had truly begun during one of Dr. McMillan’s less scientific and more occult practices. He reasoned thusly; that all he had experienced in his world had not sufficiently prepared him for advanced levels of villainy. Indeed, it had barely been the equivalent of Intro to Diabolical Works 101. (When he was asleep one night, Dr. McMillan had dreamt that he had a tremendous plan to conquer the world, but he received a failing grade because he had turned it in late and had not prepared a three-sectioned poster-board detailing his idea. Upon waking up, drenched in sweat, Dr. McMillan resolved to stop eating lemon meringue pie after midnight.)

So he had devised a complex scheme whereupon he trawled the Æther, the mists between universes, searching for any guides or treatises on villainy that other worlds might have brought into existence. He had had to bring in an entire team of student wizards to aid him. Dr. McMillan had feared that his evil reputation might have precluded obtaining outside assistance, but the students were remarkably apathetic as to the moral leanings of their employer. Dr. McMillan had thought he had a surge of good luck for once, in getting help so easily.

Later, however, he rued his decision. The students were easy enough to control, provided that he gave them pizza twice a day and signed forms indicating that they were receiving work-study credit for their time, but they did not appeal to Dr. McMillan’s rather formalistic ways. They called him “Max” and left their work areas trashed, grimoires and powdered silver strewn every which way. Also, they had the annoying habit of snickering at him behind his back whenever they thought he couldn’t hear. Dr. McMillan swore that when he was in control of the world, he would take unruly students such as them and suspend them. By their intestines.

He thought he had borne fruit when his spells uncovered a series of instructive films that exhaustively detailed plans of great villainy and evil, but the villains always failed in the end. It was this irritating black-suited fellow who kept foiling them, in between sleeping with beautiful women and ordering martinis, whatever they were, “shaken, not stirred.” Dr. McMillan gnashed his teeth as he watched, seeing the smug smile that the hero always wore and remembering the exact same expression of conceit on the heroes who had demolished his fortress. He was so enraged that he ordered all the film discarded and burned. It was only later that it had occurred to him that he could have perhaps learned from their defeats. And the films had taken four months to retrieve.

Dr. McMillan was temporarily disappointed by this setback, but the creativity incumbent in the films intrigued him. Even more interestingly, they had all apparently originated on one planet. So he ordered his students to focus on that planet, and soon all sorts of things were turning up on his worktable. Dr. McMillan rather liked this planet. The people looked pretty much the same as they did on his world, for one thing. He would not normally have cared about such things, but upon discovering a booklet from a distant world that included such instructions as “Use your fifth pseudopod to activate the next three switches” and “Be certain to secrete a defensive shell of mucus, as retributive attacks will surely come,” he realized the importance of physical similarity.

Also, Dr. McMillan realized that though generally in the works on this planet, the villains ended up losing, they always did so due to one or two crucial flaws that the heroes found and exploited. Dr. McMillan realized that if he could find and eliminate these flaws in his own work, he would be unstoppable. After all, they all failed along mostly the same lines.

He watched film after film, read book after book, and began to catalogue the failing points of the villains he read about and watched. He had assembled quite a list in three weeks’ time, and passed around a copy for all the students to read and comment on. One of them spilled coffee on it, ruining it utterly. Through a haze of rage, Dr. McMillan attempted to access his computer and print out a new copy, but his operating system chose that moment to fail cataclysmically and wipe out his data. And the hard drives he had ordered for backup work arrived the next day.

So great was his dismay that Dr. McMillan retreated into his private study and did not come out for days. The students whispered rumors among each other, claiming he had died, gone insane, or fled in despair. Some even claimed that the incident had spurred him to greater heights of creativity, and he would surely emerge with a plan above all others in genius. Actually, none of this was true. Dr. McMillan was, in fact, suffering from a mild case of ‘flu. He saw illness as a sign of weakness and had been concealing it thus far, and was glad to use the excuse of anger to shut himself up for a while and recover out of the public eye.

When he did emerge, though, Dr. McMillan did have a plan, or at least a strategy. He could not have been the only one to compile such a list, he reasoned. But he did not trust his students, slovenly and lackadaisical as they were, so he conducted an experiment of his own in secret. He searched and he searched for a similar compilation, using what coffee-stained shreds of his own list as he could recover. He searched for nineteen days straight, barely stopping to eat or sleep and only once taking a three-day sabbatical in a nearby spa.

At the end of the ordeal, Dr. McMillan emerged, haggard, tired, hungry, but with nicely exfoliated pores. More importantly, though, he emerged in possession of The List. It was called “The Evil Overlord List” by those who had created it, but in the mind of Dr. McMillan, nothing but italics would do. And, he had to admit to himself, he was not yet an evil overlord. He barely qualified as an underlord.

Perhaps the italics were justified. The List was the single most important document Dr. McMillan had ever seen. Page after page, item after item, hundreds of useful factoids that would surely pave the way to his eventual global domination. Excitable though he was, Dr. McMillan understood that this was the first time that global domination was actually in his grasp; and if not in his grasp, then at least within his reach. If he stretched his arm out really far and stood on his tiptoes. But The List would surely tip the scales.

His first act upon obtaining The List would normally have been to exterminate all of the students with extreme prejudice and probably a great deal of evil cackling, but the principles Dr. McMillan had learned had warned him against such a thing. Number 20, for instance: “Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.” Likely, while he stood giggling like a loon over the ruined bodies of the students, a lone survivor would escape and spread the word, and soon Dr. McMillan would be up to his eyeballs in heroes. No, that much unwanted attention was the last thing he needed. So he quietly gave them all scholarships (“The Dr. McMillan Grant for the Furthering of Extraplanar Understanding”) and sent them on their way.

No more would he fall victim to those ruinous mistakes that had so plagued him and the scores of lesser villains before him. He would win, yes. Dr. McMillan would win. His first victory proved that beyond any doubts.
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There. That's Part II. Part III will be up whenever I feel like it. Next time, he gets down to some serious hero-smashing, let it be known. But these heroes deserve it, trust me. You'll find the details next time.

REPLIES.

Vic: I feel that those parts I paraphrased are best kept between us, you know? And yes, thanks for paying for dinner on top of all else. Though we should both watch our spending. And for the love of Pete, will you stop it about Sanskrit? I'm not taking it. The end. Game over. Never in a trillion years. I love you, but stop.

Mom: I try. And yes, apparently my post was well-received by Kate and appropriately terror-inspiring in the others. At least, this is what I hear. As far as my bad memory, well...I suppose I'll figure out some way around it. With Vic's help, certainly. Being kind is certainly important, and she is. As far as I know, when I hallucinate, my head remains un-tilted. Yes, I know which game that is.

Dad: Thanks. And you'll have to put up with it, I suppose. For the greater good and all that sort of thing.

Kate: Sure.

Stephe: Good to see you on Sunday, man. And I'll hold my line on that heart and soul price until the day I die. At which point my heart will be dead and my soul will be otherwise occupied, so you're out of luck, I guess. Don't even start with me about FSU. I'm sick of hearing about cantaloupe, and now thanks to you I don't want to drink milk anymore. Thanks a lot, you jerk. And I don't feel guilty about spending money on food, I just feel panicked because my money supply is rapidly dwindling with no income in sight.

Kate: You replied more to Stephen than to me, I'll let him handle this.

Farewell for now.