“It’s done!”

A middle-aged man wearing a long sleeping gown had instantly stopped splashing his face with the cold water and looked up to greet a blond woman walking slowly toward him.

“You’ve been up all night,” he said in a way of asking for the explanation.

"It's done!" the woman repeated herself, the eyes glowing with the intense excitement. Something inside the tone of those words and the shine in her eyes alerted him to stare better at his wife with eyes wide open, his mind fully now awoken.

He asked. “What is done?”

“We finished.”

“What?”

“What was tried to be done for generations. We have done it! The riddle has been solved.”

The man still seemed not to understand it. “When you say ‘the riddle’ do you mean the riddle of all the riddles?"

“Yes. The Ultimate Code has been written. Everything can be explained. It is so complex… yet so simple.”

“When? When was it finished?”

“Today. I had just tested it. And it works perfectly. Look at that flower there.”

The man looked at the pod that the woman had placed next to the window.

It looked very strange, not only pink. It had so many shades of pink that one almosts felt hypnotized looing at it. “Did you make that?” he asked, suddenly not so sure of anything.

“Yes. Have you seen anything like that before?”

“No,” he said and shook his head, unable to stop staring at it.

“Put your finger on it,” the woman suggested. But as the man moved a step closer and extended his hand, she grabbed him. “No, I was just kidding.” But his hand kept on approaching the flower, so she pulled him harder and raised her voice. “Stop! You will lose it!”

He finally took his eyes off the flower to look at the woman. She padded him gently on the cheek and started to giggle. Then she forked a red strawberry from a nearby breakfast plate and gently placed it on the very top of the flower. It instantly reacted, its previously soft petals becoming suddenly masculine and sharp, almost piranha jaw-like, as it swallowing the strawberry with the ferocity of a starved dire wolf. It took a force of both hands to wrestle the tip of the fork out of its deadly embrace.

The man instinctively rubbed his fingers, as if making sure they were all still there. “I see. And you created this?”

“Yes. Last night. Just a test. And it still lives. So, I'm telling you, it’s working. The next thing I’ll do is an animal. I already have some ideas. So many ideas.”

The man nodded, finally understanding. “So, the code… Is it everything we aspired it to be?”

“More. So much more. All the secrets can now be known. You dream it. And we can make it. Potions to regenerate your failing heart. Make your skin look like a newborn's. Eternal youth. So you, husband, can live forever.”

“You by my side.”

“Yes. Us together. With the power to create new laws of nature, to make a new life, new species, whole worlds, tailored according to our wishes and desires, created and destroyed, at a tip of our fingers.”

“Power of it. Hard to imagine it.”

“Oh, imagine it. Now it’s… unlimited.”

“Commoners will not understand it. They’ll call it magic.”

“They can call it whatever they want to. But it’s ours. And only, only ours.”

“But… alchemists and scientists that created it… They’ll know. And… They may use it themselves, give it away, sell it, or- “

The woman smiled. “I thought about that. They are being dealt with as we speak. Will be put to the light and sword every one of them.” She took a very deep breath, feeling so exuberant as if it was the breath she waited to take for years. “Now it can be done. Now that I am sure it works, we can issue the order to get rid of those pompous old fools. Every one of them.”

“The order ‘You See’?”

“Yes. It’s actually U-C, for Ultimate Code. But if it’s ‘you see’ for you, that is good enough for me, hubby.”

“I see.”

They both chuckled.

“You, my beautify queen, seem to have thought about everything. So, nobody else will know then, huh?”

“No. We alone will hold the Code of Life.”

“Well, for a while we will.”

“I know what you’re thinking. If they constructed it once, they can do it again. New people. Smart people.

“Exactly.

“That’s why, my husband, everyone with the intelligence ratings of over 50 will be put to the sword. In every city, town, village.”

The man frowned. “How many are there?”

“Almost fifty thousand that are currently registered.”

“We won’t be able to kill them all. The ‘You See’ units are not that numerous. Not yet. And I would not trust giving our regulars these kinds of tasks if you know what I mean.”

“I know, you’re so right. But... even if we don't get them all, that is still all right. Those that survive will hide. And we will hunt them. Let them be on a run. How much research can they do if they are constantly on the run?”

That pleased the man, at least a bit. “I’m assuming that is only a start.”

“Of course. Your intelligence rating of 50 will be the one that nobody will be allowed to overpass. We’ll slowly go down the rankings. Everyone will have to register. And those that are over 50, we’ll…”

“It would be a big waste to kill them all.”

“We don’t need to. We can send them to work in the mines or put them in chains to make the juice. We constantly need new people there. Won't have to import more slaves from abroad. You know, people don’t last long in those laboratories.”

“I like that.”

“Nobody will be smarter than you."

“Except you.”

She took her hands and placed them over his cheeks, caressing him gently. “I am you. You know that. The point is that nobody will ever have the resources to… come up with another code again. Not in their lifetimes.”

“That was your plan from the start. That is why you wanted me to create an army of those whose level of loyalty overpassed morality by the factor of five.”

“Yes. And keep them at intelligence sub 10, close to zero as possible. The lower the better.”

“The perfect army.”

“To do what they are told and not ask any questions.”

“When you asked me to do that, I often wondered about that, but now, it all makes perfect sense.”

“I’m glad you see it now. But we won’t stop there.”

“What?”

“Someday, someone might be born whose intelligence is… without equal. Intelligent enough to fake all the tests, hide the truth from us.”

“It’s possible.”

“So… slowly then… we’ll close down schools, forbid the writing and reading. Without a written word or the documents of previous research, nobody would be able to come up with the code from the scratch.”

“Nobody.”

“And, so, nobody will ever be able to challenge us.”

The man sighed and moved toward the window, his gaze suddenly lost to space outside. “People will revolt if you do it all at once. I know these people. I know they will. Riots will follow. And I do not want to be seen as a tyrant, to throw stuff at me whenever we go for a ride like they did to my late grandfather. Remember Raniz the Late? And killing all of them who dare stand against us would only create more who will hate us. So, I really do not want to be hated.”

“Of course not. No, no, no. That is not the plan. We want to be loved, and adored.”

“Yes. I would prefer it that way.”

“Like gods.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s why we will do it one step at a time. First, we’ll divide them again, pit them against each other, give them wars. Then famine and diseases. And then religion who will restore faith and hope, but… We’ll give them a worshiping religion that we can control, the one that will forbid progress. Something fundamentalist. It does not even have to be that original. Make them say and preach how things were better a hundred or more years ago.”

The man chuckled. “They’ll be stupid enough they won’t know better. And they’ll worship us for saving them.”

“Exactly.”

“It’s going to be so easy.”

“And fun.”

“We’ll rule forever.

“And ever.”

They stepped on the veranda, the red-tiled roofs of the town stretching below the fortress’s walls. The green wheat fields were waiving in the dawn’s breeze while the forest-covered hills marked the far horizon. To the right, a slow-flowing and snaking river was already welcoming the first of fishing boats. Its both banks covered in purple Lyda energy flowers, producing its precious juice. The twin golden moons above their heads and long shadows of the down have started to be chased away by the rising orange sun, still meeker enough that it could be pleasantly looked at.

Maybe, the next time it comes out, she’ll make it a shade or two redder. She always liked that color.