In a dark room, hidden away in a level of the earth only few know exists, there were six towel-clad men, sitting around a oval table, leaning back against the wall behind them as they sweated profusely from the hellish heat from their lava-powered sauna.
These men had joined together on this day with only one order of business in mind: how best to continue bending humanity to their will.
Generations of these six men had been meeting together in this forbidden lair for hundreds of years, slowly guiding the course of mankind. Their names were known to but a few, their existence was believed by most to be nothing more than myth.
They were referred to in drunken barroom conversations as the Six Jew Bankers, an anti-semitic reference to the belief that these men stemmed from the lineage of Jacob. The truth of their history was far older. Even the men in this room had no true answers as to their organization’s origins or why they had been tasked with their most holy of priorities. In recent years, the group had decided to lean in to their supposed Hebraic heritage, jokingly referring to themselves as Children of Roth, yet another way of obscuring their true nature.
These six men, and their forebears, had directed mankind through every major moment since man’s first appearance on this earth. Although many saw their efforts as nefarious, the reality is that these nameless men wanted nothing more than for mankind to succeed, as through humanity’s successes was how they would profit.
Today was their annual Schvitz ‘n Kibitz, where they would offer up their latest schemes for world domination and receive feedback from each other on how to better those schemes to further the profitability of subjugation. This same annual meeting had led to the American Industrial Revolution, when the representative from North America, still feuding with the representative from Europe over the fairness of the Revolutionary War, had decided to steal the European delegate’s newest plot away from him. The African slave trade was started as a result of the representative from Africa losing their annual game of mahjong. The world was a mere three tiles away from Australia becoming the center of the trade. Of course, the delegation from Australia’s loss a few years later would result in its status as a prison island not long afterward. Some of the most fickle arguments in this archaic sauna had resulted in some of the most tumultuous times in the world’s history.
This day would turn out to be no different, as they all relaxed in the heat and settled in to finally discuss the business they intended to follow through for the coming year.
“Gentlemen,” the representative from Asia began, “as we move into the year 2020, I have great plans. And believe it or not, they all begin with a bat.”
The other five men laughed, assuming their brother from the East had made a joke. The Asian delegate waited for the laughter to abate before continuing.
“I have an idea that is bigger than anything we’ve done in over a hundred years.”
Adam Oster: Unfocused Creative 