Fossil Fiends

Suits and shined shoes occupied the tent. Oslo Tarkington and Kline Welch sat with their supplies, a tin can of food, and a mission.

“What we do is take all of the oil, coal, and natural gas and dump it into the oceans of the world. We should have a tanker spill or a platform explosion every few seconds, not scandalized decades or years apart. We take all of the different fuels and flood woodlands, icebergs, and of course the seas,” Tarkington measured with a digital scanner.

“Of course. We’ll not only piss off the environmentalist fringe, for liquidating scores of species every few days but also those that want to preserve and protect the fuels. We’ll make world governments feel that anyone whoever fought for fuels or against could be blamed.”

“I don’t think—” Welch began.

“No, you don’t. Now, listen…we’ve got to make these people hate one another,” Tarkington posited.

“They already do!”

“I mean murderous. Blood in the streets, the forests. If these people actually knew what hate is, they would have already done such a deed on such a grand scale as I have said.”

Welch looked flushed. He had a bit of sickness, it appeared.

“No. We’ve got to indicate that we can destroy both sides in one blow. But of course they will have beat us to that destruction. “See,” he leaned in, “all the little factions that have bombed oil refineries or the homes of C-suite types, unlike us, and the countries that have been bombarded and whole generations cleaned out, we got get them to get on board with our plan.”

“Mutually assured destruction?” Welch asked.

Tarkington shrugged. “Ah, something like that.”

“This is crazy!”

“Actually, it’s crude logic. So what if we don’t pick a side? We’re below both groups. When we take into account the number of bodies that we will be able to see drop, the dollars will just tumble in with efficiency.”

Welch stood to exit the tent. “I’m going to continue on with the plan we had originally outlined. That made sense. We had all the world carved up for us without hurting anybody.”

“What makes the grass grow?”

“Don’t hit me with that. Those slogans more or less make sense contextually. They require a bit of a grim sense of humor but within the right bounds of thought, they work. But this is definitely not that. You’re going to have to return to your principles.”

“I never took you for a traitor, Welch,” Tarkington announced. “I never thought I’d see the day where you would have turned on me!”

“It’s not about you.”

“Yes it is!”

“I thought we were a team. I thought we had a window into the future that didn’t entail corpses mounting. I thought we could fight off those bastards with our own panache and style. That’s all we have to do. That was our credo, our motto: ‘Divide in order to unite.’”

“I have forgotten that drivel. It’s not worth the energy. Ha! Did you get that? I said energy. Get it?”

“Hardly. You said you’d never go down this path. We all get down sometimes but this bloody hell. This is the land being painted with plasma. I don’t know what changed your mind but I don’t have to be a part of it.”

Tarkington looked up at Welch standing at the entrance. “Fine. Get out of here. Get the hell away from me! You’re just like those sniveling pieces of shit that never gave me an opportunity. The moment that I come up with a scheme that is a sure shot, you shoot it down. Okay. Take your ass out of here. Go!”

“You’re worse off than I had expected, some autocrat, some two-bit aggressor with shoes cleaner than ours and a megalomania the size of Everest could fulfill your tasks. No, Os’. You’re the champion. You’re the shining example of what a nonprofit, tax-deductible charitable organization is supposed to look like. You’ve got it,” Welch stormed out of the tent.

Tarkington got up. He went to a filing cabinet and opened the drawer. He withdrew a small pouch of snuff and snorted. “My world, my rules,” he said to himself and then ordered a steak dinner and cigars and a salad.