Bobby stared at Gareth incredulously, “You want to do WHAT?”

  “Come on, it's not that big of a deal, and it will really help you,” the older man insisted. The two of them were in Bobby’s living room, tossing ideas to and fro about their next steps.

  “Gravedigging is not much of a deal? What about all the sanctity of the dead stuff? How would you feel if we dug up your Grandma?” Bobby reeled off. He had been meaning to think about the morality of his powers when his magic wasn’t making him sociopathic. This was the exact sort of idea he’d been trying to ignore, which in hindsight was pretty naive and short-sighted of himself.

  “Well to answer as you asked, there’s no way you’re going to learn how to raise the dead without being in a location with lots of dead bodies and it would be more pleasant to play with skeletons than rotting cadavers. Plus, I imagine my Grandma would be fine with it; if there’s any of her left in her bones she’d probably be thrilled to move around.”

  Bobby ground his teeth as he tried to think of his reply.

  Gary’s reasoning was pretty sound, but digging up bodies did not sound right, although the information that now filled his head basically demanded it of him. I wish that I’d been given some other form of magical powers, maybe telekinesis or something. That would have been far less morally dubious.

  Bobby relented, “Alright, fine. We’ll go gravedigging, but there aren’t any big graveyards nearby. After all we are where the sea used to be, so we’ll have to go somewhere else.”

  “I agree, we’ll also need to visit multiple places to avoid getting too much of the wrong attention.”

  “Hmm, and we should also buy a largeish vehicle to store the skeletons we reanimate.”

  Wait a minute. Bobby’s face twitched in realisation and the edges of his mouth began curling up. Gary was bought out of his thoughts by the change in expression. “What did I say?” he asked in confusion, before then realising. “No, don’t say it.”

  “Mcgunkin!” Bobby yelled.

  “Yes Master?” The butler-esque minion appeared from the kitchen, holding a tall glass.

  “Pack your bags, we’re going on a ROAD TRIP!”

  Gary buried his face in his hands.

  “Master, here is that smoothie you wanted,” Mcgunkin said. Grinning, Bobby grabbed it and took a big gulp, enjoying the annoyed look on Gary’s face.

  Ever so slowly Bobby’s face soured, before he spat out the smoothie and looked back at Mcgunkin with concern. “Did you remember to clean the blender after you used it to destroy my old phone?”

  +++++

  Five days and one shockingly expensive doctor's visit later, they were ready to go and decked out in their new suits. Bobby had picked up a van cheaply from one of his neighbours in the retirement complex who couldn’t drive anymore, and they had spent a day painting it black and adding the necessities for a long road trip: a small hammock, a portable toilet and all of Bobby’s old camp cooking equipment that he’d inherited from his father. At Gary’s urging they also bought a wheelie bin to put bones in, a bunch of shovels and a large fifty kilogram bag of dog kibbles for the possum so they wouldn’t have to bring it into any more restaurants.

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  The van ran on petrol, which was generally frowned upon in favour of more renewable energy sources. But there was also a lot of it available from the oil companies that had taken advantage of the drained seas to cheaply provide for the dwindling and heavily taxed market. Bobby remembered he needed to check one last thing before they departed.

  He booted up his computer and found his way to the forum where he had posted his question a few days ago. Someone should have replied by now, shouldn’t they? he thought as he typed in the question. He would have to search for it manually as he had posted it anonymously. Although you could log in, the site had no requirement to as part of its privacy declaration, however it would temporarily ban your IP if you were spamming or breaking the rules. AI was really good for that kind of thing these days.

  The page loaded and to his pleasant surprise quite a few people had responded:

  QUESTION:

  Anonymous: A god’s given me mind control powers and a task of global domination, what’s the best way to achieve this within 10 years?

  REPLIES:

  bigTIM69: gotta take over the banks bruh.

  Techn0scrub: What an interesting thought experiment! While I do agree that Tim’s answer has some merit, I would advise being more subtle. Everyone knows the megacorps own the planet, so use your powers to climb their hierarchies, and then enslave or replace their CEO’s with someone you control.

  Anonymous: Reality is a dream, you are waking up.

  Necroturds: Dumb question, no point even thinking about it, human brains are too complex to be controlled.

  Bobby filtered through the comments and felt that Techn0scrub’s answer had the most merit. It was definitely something he should seek to do at some point, but he doubted the megacorps could be easily infiltrated and changed to suit his needs, the massive companies were fueled by the greed of humans and would need to be completely destroyed and replaced. However, what better way was there to destroy something than by doing it from within?

  Bobby wrote the idea on a yellowing pad of paper that was left over from his time at university and shut down his computer before going round the house to check the windows were locked. Luckily, most of them were, the only one that wasn’t was the small window in the bathroom. Then he gifted the basil plant from his kitchen window to Mrs Dapperson and told her he was going to be doing some travelling for a while.

  The old woman grinned toothlessly at him, “Excellent, why when I was younger I trekked over to the drained titanic wreckage. It was an amazing experience, we even found a child's skull buried in the dry silt.”

  Bobby frowned at her last sentence. “Err, that sounds wonderful, I’ll visit it if there’s a road to it.”

  Mrs Dapperson continued, “You’re in luck, there is! Last I heard FruityTECH was trying to purchase the site to turn it into an amusement park. It should take their lawyers a few more years to bankrupt any conservationist organisations in opposition, so go while you have the chance!”

  Bobby thanked the old woman for the suggestion and locked his door, before heading over to the waiting van. Gary was sitting in the driver's seat impatiently tapping his fingers on the cracked leather steering wheel.

  “What took you so long? Get in!” The old man said with an enthusiasm unbefitting of his age.

  “Are we all ready?” Bobby asked as he clambered in and looked in the back. Mcgunkin was lying in the hammock and the possum was sitting in a cardboard box that had been repurposed into a makeshift animal bed.

  “Yup, Yup, Yup,” said Gary, revving the engine and sending them away.

  +++++

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