Free The Exploding Detective by John Swartzwelder Page B

the keyboard. Then he
stood up.
    “The software
will take over from here. The computer directs the making of the creature. I
just have to let it know what I want.”
    The entire
process only took a couple of minutes. After the machine signaled that the
operation was complete, a perfect copy of me slid out of the machine and sat
up.
    “Huh?” I said.
    “What?”
I replied.
     

CHAPTER NINE
     
    I was looking at
an exact copy of myself. We stared at each other with our mouths hanging open.
Then we both smiled. Then we both looked worried. I didn’t know what to think.
And I didn’t know what to think either.
    “Say,” I said
slowly, in stereo, “that looks a little like me.”
    “It is you. An
exact duplicate. The only difference is in the weight. He’s mostly foam core,
titanium, and elbow macaroni, with a few simple electric motors to make him
go.” He turned to one of his minions. “Dispose of this.”
    The assistant
chopped the copy of me up with a hatchet, as the copy said things like: “Hey,
what are you doin’?” and “Oh, a wise-guy, eh?” and “Careful with that hatchet,”
then dumped the pieces into a recycling bin. I winced. Even when you know it’s
not you being chopped up, there’s a part of you that’s thinking: bullshit,
that’s me all right.
    “I can see how
you could make a copy of me,” I said, “since you’ve got me here to study. But
how did you make a copy of Napoleon?”
    “I’ll show you
that in a moment. First, let me show you my Unholy Army. I think you’ll love
it.”
    “I know I will.”
    He took me out on
a veranda, pressed a button, and moments later a grand review began.
    For over an hour
troops marched smartly by, turning and saluting Overkill as they passed. None
of them saluted me, but a few of them nodded. The majority of them were the
same type of creature I had encountered in Central City, but there were also
toy soldiers, boxing robots, huge battery powered tanks, a platoon of rather
cross looking stuffed bears, and thousands of wind-up goblins and orcs.
    “You read too
much Tolkien,” I said.
    “You can’t read
too much Tolkien.”
    “That’s what I
meant to say when I spoke.”
    “I’m glad we
agree.”
    “I’m beginning to
think we agree on everything.”
    “Good.”
    I watched a few
thousand more troops parade by, then said: “It looks to me like you’ve already
got more than enough here to take over the world.”
    “That’s what my
accountant keeps saying. But you’re both wrong.”
    “Hey, I might be
wrong about something like that, but an accountant, this kind of thing is his
business.”
    “Shut-up. Both of
you just shut-up. Besides, you forget the name of my operation. Operation
Overkill. It’s important that I have not just enough, not even more than
enough, but too much more than enough. Anything less would not be overkill. See
the semantics and grammar that are involved?”
    “Yeah, of course,
but…”
    “I’ve been
studying super villains of the past. The biggest mistake all of them made was
having just enough of a force to take over the world, but no more. They didn’t
want to appear gauche, I guess. So what happens? Something goes wrong at
substation C, or they lose a handful of men who were supposed to be guarding
something important, or one guy doesn’t show up for work at the volcano, and
their whole operation falls apart. All of a sudden they don’t have enough to
take over the world. And all because they played it too fine.”
    “Stupid
bastards.”
    “Super villains
historically underestimate the world. A world will fight back. You’ve got to
make allowances for that.”
    “And you have.”
    “Yes. That’s why
Operation Overkill can’t fail. My opponents simply have too much to overcome.
It doesn’t matter how many of my men are grabbed from behind by secret agents
and dragged into the bushes. I could have a thousand of my men tied up behind
those bushes on the day of the big attack, and I’d still have