**Action** The Emperors Gloat

Who: The Emperors Who Put The 'Evil' In 'Evil Empire'
Where: The Evil Throne Room
When: Sometime Evil
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"Muhahahahahaha!" Cerebrum chortled, sterotypically, as he entered the evil throne room. "I have some good news to report."
"Our bet on Eight-Legged Gerald came in at 7-1 and now funds our second Empire?" asked Keto, looking up hopefully from his desk.
"Nope, guess again," said Cerebrum.
"Our bet on Eight-Legged Gerald didn't come in at all, but you just had all the other horses executed so that we gathered the prize money anyway?"
"Maybe I should have done that, I'll make a note of it for next time," Cerebrum said, whiping out his notebook and writing it down. "But that's not the good news."
"Then I'm at a loss," muttered Keto, "Especially since I placed that bet. The news...hmm...aha, could it be that Project Placenta is finally nearing completion?"
"That it is. But this is good news concerning the rebels," said Cerebrum, gleefully rubbing his hands together.
"We've found them?" mused Keto, blinking, "Or, and I accept that this is stretching it a bit, they've all spontaneously combusted and their blistered corpses are now lining the streets for our victory parade?"
"Yes to the first, and no to the second, oddly enough, they haven't followed your prescription of ointment. But my good news is actually two bits of good news. First, our clown commandos have put a tracking device in one of them, and we can now pinpoint their exact location and second, following the example of history's greatest dictator before us, I have come up with a method to destroy them."
"I knew that ointment plan was unlikely to bear fruit," cursed Keto, "But I digress...tell me, what is this nefarious method that you've been inspired to?"
"We give tax breaks to the rich, then invade a country that is in no way related to the rebels," explained Cerebrum, waving his fist triumphantly.
Keto stared for a second, stunned into silence. "I knew we were evil," he murmured after a few moments, "But I didn't think we were quite so obscene in our methods! You cannot be telling me that this method has been used before without there being immediate outrage and revolution in the streets, surely!?"
"Not only was it used, but most of the citizens of the country thought it was a brilliant idea. Of course, to pull it off properly, we need to do two things. First, we must say that the country we're invading has weapons of mass destruction, but we can't tell anybody where they are. Second, we must make a clone of the early twenty-first Iraqi information minister to be our PR expert during the invasion."
"We may have some trouble with the clone," admitted Keto, "Somebody thought it would be a bright idea to take one of the cloning machines, then place it inside one of the other cloning machines. We're still trying to work out where the planet vanished to."
"Damn, I hate it when that happens. At least we aren't up to our necks in ferrets like what happened last time."
"Latest results show that we've managed to eradicate half of the Ferret Nebula at last," nodded Keto, "And the rest should be cleared up in the next seven years. However, I don't think it would be a good idea to try and clone the Iraqi information minister. For starters, we don't have any of his DNA. If only there were some poor, hapless soul with an inexplicable ability to rally the public behind them that we could exploit lying dormant in our stasis prison."
"That would certainly be useful," Cerebrum sighed. "But what are the odds of that happening. I mean, coincidences on that scale and of that usefullness only ever happen with any regularity on comedy centered e-mail roleplaying games where the humor is more important than the plot."
"Unfortunately that is true," agreed Keto with a melancholy tone. Brightening up, he said, "On a completely different, unrelated topic, the crew of the ancient spaceship the Red Dwarf have ust been moved to our stasis prison, along with that inexplicably charismatic David Lister whose brain is of just the right type to be cloned and then wiped."
"That is splendid," Cerebrum suddenly snapped his fingers. "Wait a minute, I just had an incredibly cunning plan. A plan so cunning, you could stick a tail on it and call it a fox. Let's clone David Lister, wipe his brain, then program him to be our information minister."
"Excellent!" nodded Keto, steepling his fingers, "And then we declare war on somewhere completely unrelated to the rebel scum, correct?"
"Exactly," at which point Cerebrum suddenly realized something. "Wait a minute, I just remembered. We conquered the entire universe, didn't we?"
"A minor flaw in an otherwise perfect plan," sighed Keto, "Unless we were to declare war on ourselves, I can't see how we can go ahead with this scheme!"
Cerebrum began pacing. An onlooker (before the security system detected him and had guards drag him off to be tortured horribly or be given an ointment treatment. Wait, same thing, my mistake) would note that Cerebrum most likely paced a lot, and usually in the same part of the room, as when he fell into his normal pattern, the only part of his body above the floor was his head.
"What about those intruders from another dimension," Cerebrum said suddenly. "We could declare war on them, and then conquer their universe using their dimension shift technology."
This time it was Keto's turn to click his fingers. "And, after conquering a second universe, we could stage a fake civil war in order to lure the rebel scum out of hiding to side with one or another universe...and then crush them!"
There was a long pause.
"Or we could just take over the universe," continued Keto smoothly.
"Yes, I agree, let's just take over the universe. Occam's spoon and all that," Cerebrum agreed, nodding.
"I believe it was Occam's eraser," said Keto loftily.
"Actually, sirs," put in a helpful but Darwinianly stupid minion, "It was Occam's razor."
The two emperors turned to stare at the hapless fool.
"How can you eat soup with a razor?" inquired Cerebrum, puzzled. "Wouldn't Occam cut his mouth a lot?"
"Perhaps he used a straw," mused Keto, "Though I fear that Occam's straw doesn't ring any bells with me."
"Nor me. It would appear that this minion knows something that we don't." Cerebrum removed a pistol-like object from his belt, flipped a switch, and pulled the trigger. The meson pistol promptly reduced the minion to ashes. "That's illegal, as we all know."
"Regulation 21c," nodded Keto sagely, "Right after 'Believing the Emperors to be Wrong About Anything'. I remember it well. So...are we ready to launch an attack to retrieve the invaders' dimensional jumping technology?"
"Once Project Placenta is complete, we will have everything we need. Let's get Lister in as our information minister right now, so we can test him out, make sure he's up to the job. Let's give him something relatively simple to convince the population first, like that up is down, black is white or we're benevolent."
"Very well," said Keto, and clicked his fingers. Another minion, identical to the previous incarnation of the pile of ashes on the floor, came running in. "Retrieve David Lister from the stasis prison and have him cloned. We wish his mind to be wiped and programmed according to specification set 22...uhh...I think it was 22f. If not, make it 22f, then program his mind according to it. And we want the population to believe..." Keto looked up at Cerebrum expectantly.
"That we're benevolent leaders, and that invading a universe that has nothign to do with the rebels will help stop the rebels," Cerebrum said, as he climbed out of his pacing path.
"Yes. Make them believe that," said Keto, waving a hand. Then, as the minion hurried off to do the evil bidding, he murmured, "If they'll fall for that, they'll fall for anything!"
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A Joint Post Between:
Dr Patrick Cerebrum (An Evil Emperor)
Dr Xavier Keto (An Evil Emperor)
Starring:
Minion #34765 (A Small Pile Of Ash)
Minion #34766 (A Panicked Man)
Eight-Legged Gerald (An Ointment-Enhanced Horse)
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