Jean Baptist Emmanuel Zorc, a billionaire industrialist, media tycoon, an avid collector of antiquities and rarities stepped purposefully if a little uneasy out of the comfort of his stretch limo and onto the wet tarmac.
This secondary runaway of the John F. Kennedy International Spaceport was out of order now. But he didn't care. It was pouring cats and dogs outside but he didn't care about the rain either. He owned the limo. He owned the runway. And he owned the JFK International Spaceport in its entirety. He could put up with a bit of rain. It was just rain, after all. Just water. And he couldn't care less he was going to get his coat wet. He could have had another one in a snap of his fingers. He could have a hundred designer coats if he wanted to, right this instance. Only it wasn't what he wanted at all, not anymore.
He marched across the runway, making a straight line towards a cluster of warehouses down the road. He was quickly getting drenched but then again he didn't care, he wouldn't deign to bother himself with something as trivial as an umbrella. He didn't want no stupid umbrellas. What he wanted was inside the warehouse.
Whatever he wanted, he got. Usually. No matter the cost. The problem for him, these days, was not in the cost though but in being able to find what he wanted. There were certain things you couldn't get your hands on even if you had all the money in the world. And he found himself wanting those things, more often than not these days. And, consequently, he had to become an expert in the area of finding them.
A self-made man, he was proud of who he was and where he came from. He built his empire all by himself and he had nobody else to thank for that. He didn't believe in luck. He believed in hard work. He believed that simply having money, for the sake of having money, wasn't a good goal. Working hard for your money, on the other hand, making yourself better in the process, was. Work, he believed, was the very key to happiness. Work was the billionaire's dream, not what the non-billionaires made of it. A) Work hard. B) Work on something important. C) Something that was going to touch people's lives. Dream big! Change the world around you for the better. Change yourself for the better in the process. Bigger, stronger, happier!
Being successful, according to Zorc, meant having achieved things, tangible, countable things. And the very process of achieving those things gave his life purpose. It wasn't what you wanted but how you'd gotten it that constituted the purpose. The journey you had to take to get there. The journey was more important than the point of destination, he believed. And if you invested in that, you'd ultimately get what you wanted. And he was very particular about his investments. His money, his time, and even the amount of space each thought occupied in his head. To control everything that was under his control was his motto. And everything that was not, had no room in his head.
He never cut corners too, never cheated at anything. If he was doing something, he was doing it thoroughly, committing to it a hundred percent. He believed cheating would only cut short your journey. And then there would be no point. Because he wanted the full experience. He played his games fair and thereupon became a great player. Someone to be reckoned with, someone worth hundreds of billions of dollars at this point. He guessed he was doing it right if he amassed so much money, he was onto something. Only the problem was, he was running out of games to play now. He was running out of corners not to cut, out of journeys to take, and challenges not to cheat at.
He'd done it all. It seemed. There were no more mountains left to climb, no more peaks to conquer. Nothing excited him anymore, nothing quenched his thirst for hard work and adventure. Everything was easy. Too easy. And he longed for something unobtainable. And the saddest thing is he was now running out of purpose, and therefore out of happiness. And it didn't feel great. It sucked that after everything he'd been through it came down to this. He was about to witness his own downfall. Though he was not going to submit to it easily.
He was growing desperate now, desperate to find something worth his while. For the longest time, he was looking for it and he couldn't find it, thinking he ran himself into a corner, a dead-end. And he couldn't make peace with that, couldn't figure out why. And what would be the next level in his game, because it seemed he owned everything. Zorc Industries was the single most affluent conglomerate in the world, and if it wasn't for antimonopoly laws, it would have been the only conglomerate. His success was coming at a bitter price to him now. But he was never one to give up on something easily.
The answer to his prayers came suddenly to him, and out of nowhere. The realization that whatever power he thought he had, the money and all, wasn't really power. He was one of the most influential men on the planet, sure. But he was still a man.
That was what was stopping him, he realized. Forestalling him from going to the next level. For a mere man, he achieved everything. But if he wanted more, he needed to become something else.
Not being cognizant of this, he must have been searching for it all his life. No matter how successful he'd become, there was always something missing. He just didn't know what it was before, couldn't put his finger on it. Well, he'd found it now! And he was putting his finger on it. Finally, all the pieces were beginning to fall into place. His eyes were opened suddenly to what was missing. He could see it clearly now. And it was very much worth it.
Inside the warehouse waiting for him were the mangollores, the beastly alien creatures that were commonly referred to as the dog-faced. Mercenaries from space. Galactic outcast. They were the soldiers of fortune, the unscrupulous kind. Their big black eyes were permanently peeled, always on the lookout for the opportunity to cash in on something. Not that they particularly needed money for anything. They just loved the idea of collecting it, cherishing it, worshiping it, as if money was a form of religion. And here they were now simply because Zorc had offered them a ton.
Earth was a dangerous place for them. They were exiled from Earth, long ago, and all the neighboring star systems. They were space gypsies, nomads, species without a home planet, ready to do anything for a paycheck. And even though that lifestyle suited them best, it was considered too marginal by the cultured society. Hence the ban. Yet, they were still here regardless.
They all turned to Zorc when he strode in, the whole rotten lot of them. But he, he was only interested in their leader.
"Acknot!" he called out, the name reverberating across the empty warehouse. As soon as Zorc spotted him, he headed straight for him. They all looked the same to him, unfortunately. Ugly, scary, wretched beasts. But he made himself memorize Acknot's face because with the dog-faced you had no other option but to talk to the leader, with them it just wouldn't go any other way.
As he approached them, he couldn't help but sympathize with them, just a little bit, them being the vagrant trash of the galaxy. He was like that once too, an untouchable among his own people. But it never stopped him from turning tables around, actually going places, making something of himself eventually. So why should it stop them? Them mangollores, they could have achieved greatness too, if only they wanted it, as bad as he did, especially with his help. But they were going to have to help him help them.
Acknot lumbered forward, to the front of the line. In his hands, he was holding a shiny new gun. The label on the gun read Zorc Industries.
"I see you're enjoying the parcel I've sent you," Zorc said, wondering if the weapon he'd given him would have been better off in somebody else's hands. "Tell me now, what happened?"
Acknot gulped first, then said with a noticeable effort, "Ship was destroyed. Mission was accomplished."
Speaking English was torture to him, his species in general, or any other language, for that matter. The mangollores, they rarely talked, even among themselves. They mostly used growling and punching each other for communication. For their tiny little brains, human words presented a problem, just because there were so many of them.
"It's accomplished when I say it's accomplished, my dear horn-headed hard-featured friend," Zorc said, emphatically, not exactly angry but in a very stringent way. "And I am saying that it's not!"
Zorc often yelled at them while talking, yet the dog-faced still growled back at him every time. They took offense at being shouted at. Strings of spittle flew at Zorc from every direction, yet he remained calm. He'd seen worse creatures than this, a lot of them right here in Manhattan.
"Your mission was to find the stones," he explained, in a lower voice. "Do you have the stones, Acknot?"
He was looking at him, though he already knew the answer. Acknot looked back guiltily. No!
"We destroyed pyramid. As instructed. Found no stones," he explained.
They were unaware the stones were taken from the pyramid long before they arrived. Zorc had known. He learned it just before coming here. It was his business to know, after all. Information was the key trade in his industry.
His facial muscles twitched as he looked closely at Acknot.
"Someone…had taken… my stones," he spelled out, composedly, and then getting irate in about 0.1 seconds, spat out at them, "And I want them back!"
"I need to find them. I need you to bring them to me. You understand? You hear me, Acknot?"
He waved his hand in front of his face, meaning to get his full attention however scarce it might have been.
"Bring the stones to me! Or else you won't be getting full payment."
In protest, the dog-faced barked, all they could do. It was only Acknot who remained silent.
"We do half job. We deserve half payment," he said, trying to reason with Zorc. Though Zorc was not big on being reasoned with.
"Half the job my ass!" he spat. "Your job was to bring me the stones. You didn't bring me the stones; you're not getting paid! If you think I'm gonna stand here and listen to your pathetic excuses…You scum of the universe. You, worthless piece of sh…"
Insulted, the dog-faced aimed their weapons at Zorc, all at once, his own weapons. And they weren't kidding with this, he could tell. He made them angry. Real angry. They all needed to calm down.
"It wasn't half the job, it wasn't even a quarter!" trying not to shout, he hissed through his greeted teeth instead. "And do you want to know why, my friend? You want to know why?"
Standing up on his toes, he reached and grabbed Acknot's face. Obediently, Acknot let him. Acknot had big floppy ears and no brain. His big black eyes were looking down at Zorc fixedly. Zorc held his bulging face tight in his face, making sure he wouldn't be able to look away. Though he wouldn't even if he wanted to.
"Because you didn't even blow up the ship right," Zorc seethed, the words oozing out of him painfully.
And then he screamed at him, "There was a survivor!"
Acknot stared blankly at Zorc. This was news to him. Much confusion.