Farewell Message

It is perhaps time to bid all of you a fond a farewell, as my work here is almost done.

It may seem like I have not done or said much here on this blog of Rusty’s, but you may rest assured that I have made very good use of the time that has been allotted to me in Rusty’s body.

I have spent much of the last few weeks (the exchange on the oil tanker happened quite some time ago) engaged in the writing and recording of several volumes of work that Rusty will have access to and will have control over. After our next exchange, I will no longer have the ability to provide him with the answers or assistance that I have since my ‘death’. What Rusty decides to do with this information is entirely up to him. Hopefully, he and his allies will come to realize that while my actions and many of my motivations appear to be evil and without remorse, that I have always acted in the best interests of humanity.

I have, however, been able to take care of some necessary business interests during my free time.

Since I am not the writer that Rusty is, I will just provide a brief summary of some of the things that Rusty will find that he has become involved with. It will be up to him to provide a more detailed account of these events, should he choose to do so:

Daniel Bernstein is no more. His betrayal of me and all that I have worked for was very nearly disastrous. Before he died, I did restore his memories to him so that he could try to explain himself. His pleadings were not nearly convincing enough. His body will never be recovered.

The Professor will soon be receiving a rather large envelope containing the account numbers and access codes to a number of my oldest, and largest, bank holdings in Switzerland. The information is encrypted, so Rusty will have to provide the keys to that encryption before the Professor will be able to access those monies. The resources in those accounts will be able to fund the activities of the ORC’s for generations to come.

Ravyn Fyre will also be receiving a package delivered by a special courier. That package will contain the keys and access codes to a vault where I have stored various artifacts, items, and tomes that I had created or have otherwise obtained throughout the millennia. She will be able to ask Rusty for the actual location of that vault. Zenny Al Farhan will be able to examine those items and determine if they will be of any assistance to the ORC cause. Ms. Fyre will have to take the responsibility for safeguarding those items that will be more dangerous than helpful, but I am confident in her ability to do so.

I have left a list of influential people for Rusty of those individuals who I believe to have already been replaced by Doppelgangers or who are in eminent danger of being targeted by them. I have taken the liberty of eliminating a couple of the less obvious ones for Rusty, but given how my style is completely different from his, he will have to deal with the consequences of my ‘interventions’ and figure out how to address the remaining individuals appropriately.

Rusty may also have to deal with the potential negative consequences of the ‘disappearance’ of a small number of urns from some rather prestigious museums and university research centers, especially if I failed to adequately disable all of the appropriate surveillance equipment. Those urns held beings that I don’t feel that Rusty and his allies were adequately prepared to deal with at this time. I have taken them and disposed of them for the time being. I have left Rusty an account of each of those beings in the event that my disposal of them wasn’t as permanent as I would have liked.

Finally, if all goes as I have planned, Rusty will return to the full control of his body and with some memory of the things that I have done with it while in the presence of his daughter. I have one final appointment to keep with Alexa. If she is truly the individual that I believe her to be, then I will be able to move on from this world, finally.

Rusty and his companions have seen glimpses of what she is potentially capable of doing, but I don’t think that they fully realize her importance just yet. The An’girasii will become of aware of her rather soon, which is why I have endowed all that I can into the hands of the ORC’s. Rusty and the ORC’s appear to be her best chance of growing into the catalyst for change that she has the potential to be. If I have succeeded, then in the next thousand years, humans will achieve the kind of transcendent awareness and enlightenment through her teachings that will eliminate the differences between Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus. Instead there will be a new guiding force, more of a philosophy than a religion. It will perhaps be called Alexandrianism. And that will be what the An’girasii will be fighting so hard to prevent, for it is religion and all of its false teachings, false promises, and the excesses of the fundamentalists of each of the world’s major religions that the An’girasii use to prey upon humanity.

In this blog, through Rusty’s eyes, you have seen me as an evil, implacable foe willing to sacrifice innocent people to further my agenda. Much of what you have seen is entirely true. In taking on the foes that I have, in hunting them down as I had to do countless times over the millennia, I have had to do many evil things and sacrifice many innocent people. Finally though, I have a worthy successor, a man who, while deeply flawed, has proven himself capable to facing implacable evil and holding his own. Rusty has taken the tools that I endowed him with and grown into something stronger, yet more curious and more compassionate than I could ever be.

So, I leave you, and the rest of the world, in the hands of a naïve zombie with the powers of a demon but a heart of gold supported by a kooky cast of well-meaning misfits. It is the best I could do in the time allotted to me. I hope it is enough.

Drake