The Ideal Son-in-Law of a bitch
Once upon a time, there was a man named Gideon Vlas—a balding billionaire with glasses so thick you'd think he was constantly peering into the cosmos. His voice was like warm porridge, and he always wore beige sweaters that revealed absolutely nothing about his true nature. Nobody really knew how he became so rich—something about tax software and a patent on spreadsheet compression—but one day, he was just there: at the head of HeliosCorp, an innocuous-sounding conglomerate that did everything except what the name suggested.
It all started fairly innocently. Or no, not at all. One morning in March 2027, while the birds chirped as if nothing was wrong, a swarm of glimmering drones appeared above the Pacific Ocean. Satellites recorded them releasing tiny amounts of sulfur dioxide and metallic particles into the atmosphere. Gideon called it Project Cumulus Silence. According to him, it was “an elegant climate intervention experiment” meant to counteract global warming. What happened in practice was that the sun disappeared over Western Europe for an entire week. People set their alarms wrong. Plants rebooted their blooming cycles. Solar parks went dark. Gideon appeared on television, calm as ever, baking an apple pie and saying, “It’s merely a light-balancing operation. Science is on my side.” Scientists said nothing. They were either bought, scared, or both.
Not long after that, something strange happened to fruit. Organic peaches, apples, mangoes—they felt different. Smoother. Less alive. Under microscopic inspection, it turned out that all organic fruit had suddenly been coated with a nanofilm—a wafer-thin plastic layer, invisible to the naked eye but palpable to those paying attention. It was allegedly edible, biodegradable, and “good for gut flora.” Gideon, of course, hadn’t asked for permission. He had simply built an infrastructure through clever deals and shell companies that convinced supermarket chains this was “the future of freshness.” No one protested. The film became routine. Anyone who complained was dismissed as being “anti-innovation.”
Then came the Meat Incident. All over the world, fast-food chains began receiving complaints that their burgers tasted “off.” Investigations revealed that Gideon’s food company, Synthetica Eats, had successfully infiltrated tons of plant-based meat into real meat shipments. Invisible. Unannounced. A silent substitution. It tasted exactly the same, but it wasn’t real. It was artificial. A Texan butcher discovered it by accident when he cut open a burger and screamed, “This is tofu with an identity crisis!” The world laughed—but it wasn’t a joke. Gideon responded with a press release saying, “I’m merely accelerating the ethical evolution of consumption.” Synthetica’s stock skyrocketed.
And then came Project BuzzCare. Gideon, now in love with the possibilities of genetics, had commissioned a team of scientists in a former NATO bunker in Finland to engineer a new breed of mosquito. These mosquitoes were genetically modified to deliver microdoses of mRNA vaccines with each bite. No appointments. No warning. No consent. At first, people thought it was a conspiracy theory. Then, people started developing antibodies against diseases they’d never been vaccinated for. The WHO spoke of “an unexplained spread of immunity.” Gideon only smiled during an interview and said, “Health is a human right. I’m democratizing distribution.”
You’d think that by this point, he would definitely be considered a villain. A modern, technocratic Dr. No. But no. Gideon remained… a philanthropist. He donated billions to climate initiatives he himself had made necessary, gave TED talks about “ethical disruption,” and called every catastrophe a “proof of concept.” When critics labeled him a supervillain, he would smile gently and say, “I’m just a systems optimizer. The system was failing long before I arrived.”
And the world? It nodded. And went back to work. Under a gray sun, eating covered fruit, unknowingly biting into synthetic burgers, and getting bitten by well-meaning mosquitoes.
Did it end well? Who’s to say.
Perhaps this was only the beginning.
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