Who is Zalea Zathros?
Before today, if you grabbed a microphone, hit the streets of DC, and asked a dozen people, you'd probably get a dozen answers. Maybe a baker's dozen, if someone wanted to hedge their bets.
You see, there's the Zalea Zathros the authorities want you to know: the amoral mega-genius supercriminal who's been on the loose since last January. The one who kept trying to take over the world, back in the 70's, and was so duplicitous and dangerous that even the Legion didn't want her on board.
(That and she probably would have supplanted and killed The Big Man, for many obvious reasons.)
That's one Zalea Zathros, and -- thanks to the authorities -- probably the best-known one. But there are many others, depending on your point of view. And all of them are equally valid.
There's Zalea Zathros the socialite, who was born into the wealthiest family of Lamia, in Greece. They say she only needed to snap her fingers and every servant in the house would crowd around her, asking how they could make her day just that much better.
There's Zalea Zathros the coldblooded killer, who schemed to do away with her father for her tenth birthday, and kept her mother so out of her mind on tranquilizers that she was effectively running the house. Some say this was self-defense, but there's been no proof to suggest that her patrician father was physically or sexually abusive. It's more likely she just really wanted to be in charge of things.
There's Zalea Zathros the child prodigy, who astounded all of Greece by attaining a dual doctorate in Genetics and Robotics by the time she was twenty. They say that she literally rewrote the book on human genetics in her office at the University of Athens, achieving insights that stunned even people like Dr. Yesterday.
There's Zalea Zathros the robotics savant, who created a self-replicating army of humanoid robots in her spare time, just so she'd have time to work on "important things." Zalea Zathros the cloning pioneer, who created a working, fully-adult copy of herself by the time she was 25. Zalea Zathros the mental engineer, who perfected a working hive-mind at 26, allowing her to simultaneously exist within ten clones at once.
And then there's Zalea Zathros the feminist icon, whose third Doctorate -- in Sociology, at age 27 -- laid out a near-perfect blueprint for a genetically stable world. A planet where women took specially-prepared pills to become pregnant, and produce children that were perfect, 50/50 genetic amalgamations of their lovers and themselves.
A planet where men were useless, and not worthy of further production.
Zalea Zathros the sexual revolutionary, whose book -- One Love with No Limits -- advocated the love of the self as the highest and purest form of spiritual, mental, and physical love. Zalea Zathros the objectivist, who found in Ayn Rand's teachings the perfect philosophical support for her ethical and sexual revolution. Zalea Zathros, who planned to create a floating island paradise for her and her female followers (and all their clones), but never quite got enough people on board.
Zalea Zathros the controversial firebrand, who spent her 30's being both lionized and demonized for her achievements and ideas. Zalea Zathros, who, by the time she was 39, seemed so intent on putting her theories into action that Athens University barred her from the premises, and destroyed her equipment for fear of her doing something "rash and hasty."
Zalea Zathros the science terrorist, who -- on her 40th birthday -- unleashed a genetic plague on AU that targeted only men (and women of inferior genetic stock). Zalea Zathros the super villain, who declared that the "Athens Action" would be the first of many "genetic geldings" until the world was ready to accept her blueprint.
And Zalea Zathros, who was captured by SPYGOD after one of her better, subsequent schemes went awry, and spent the next thirty years locked up in a cell in the Heptagon basement. Shackled and stuffed away, knowing that her original body was gone, and all her clones were likewise dead and burned.
Mostly because he handed her a bag with the ashes, and told her to choke on them.
Thirty years, down there in the dark, stuck in one perfect, seemingly non-aging body. Three meals a day and no news of the outside world. Somehow she maintained her sanity and her resolve. Somehow she persevered.
And then came the day they made the mistake of letting her out, not really realizing that she would find a way to turn the tables and get loose. Sure, they took precautions, but they should have known better than to think she wouldn't see a way past them. And they should have known that, given enough time, she'd come and get revenge.
But no one could have ever expected something like this.
* * *
I'm looking at a live satellite feed from the former state of Israel, right now. Former both because the Imago killed every single person within its borders -- Israeli, Palestinian, or other -- one day, during their occupation, because both sides refused to serve them.
And because it's new owners have given it a new name.
I say "owners," but I really only mean "owner." That would be Zalea Zathros, who has been burning up the airwaves to tell us about what's just happened, there.
When she speaks it's with many voices, from many mouths. This is something she's done before, when broadcasting demands or manifestos to the world. It's distinctly unnerving and yet strangely compelling to watch several Zaleas Zathros speak and move in unison, which is probably why she does it.
This time, it's just outright eerie and wrong.
Eerie because, this time, it's not a multitude of Zaleas doing it. And wrong because of who it is.
You see, when the Imago destroyed Israel (and Palestine, to be fair) they blanketed the entire area with their deadly eyebeams. Anyone who was struck by them was killed automatically, with effects ranging everywhere from a pair of holes burned through them to total destruction -- a process that left a puff of ash-cloud in the shape of a person.
The entirety of Israel and Palestine was reduced to ashes, that night. Ashes so thick that they rolled about like sand in the wind, forming strange, pale dunes in the streets and the fields.
The entirety of Israel and Palestine was reduced to ashes, that night. Ashes so thick that they rolled about like sand in the wind, forming strange, pale dunes in the streets and the fields.
Ashes that, pulverized as they were, still contained enough DNA to do something with -- especially to a mega-genius who solves complex genegineering puzzles while having wild, sweaty, four-way sex with herself.
This is what Zalea Zathros has done, since the end of the Reclamation War. She has brought the entire population of Israel and Palestine back to life -- men, women, and children -- and incorporated them into her hivemind. Over eight million people, give or take a hundred thousand.
And all of them are Zalea Zathros.
What does she want? Autonomy for the Nation of Atlas, as she has rechristened the area. A lack of interference from the Terre Unifee, or any nations that also choose to retain their independence. The ability to do their own thing, in their own way.
And if they attack, or interfere, or cause the Nation of Atlas any problems whatsoever, she will retaliate by killing a thousand members of the population per "unfortunate incident."
This is the twisted genius of the situation. The memories and lives (and maybe the souls) of all the people who died in Israel and Palestine, on that horrible day, are there, within the bodies she's controlling. We know because she let some of them speak, for a time, before resuming control as easily as slipping a hand into a glove.
And so she is both hostage and captor, using the bodies of those she's recreated to carry her consciousness as she goes about creating her perfect world, at last.
It's like something from a comic book: how do you strike at a foe made of people? How do you dislodge her from their minds without killing all those people, all over again?
How do you make this kind of thing right?
I have no !@#$ idea. I can only sit and watch and recoil in horror at what I'm seeing on the screen.
And realize that, after today, there's no denying what Zalea Zathros really is, past all her achievements and atrocities, nicknames and titles.
The most dangerous person alive.
(SPYGOD is listening to Phantom Living (The FIXX) and having a Goldstar Dark Lager )
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