The Secret Lair

I’ve always found my office at the Lair to be a sanctuary of sorts; a place to which I can always retreat when I’m not in the mood to deal with yet another microscopic oddity turned into yet another macroscopic disaster. One might expect, then, that having Overlord Miller—trapped in suspended animation until we can develop a way to reverse the carbon-freezing process—on display in a special, lighted niche in my office would be little more than a bitter reminder of one more in a seemingly endless parade of failures. One might expect that his face, twisted as it is into a grimace of—if not outright agony, then at least severe discomfort—would be an unwanted and unwelcome monument to mismanagement, complete and utter lack of communication, and sheer stultifying incompetence.

In fact, I find it rather soothing.

I’m not going to bother analyzing my feelings on the matter. What should fill me with guilt is instead inexplicably calming. Who would have guessed?

Jay “The Kingfish” Lynn, our Minister of Crackpot Schemes and Unfortunate Synergies may be feeling more than his share of guilt over the whole unfortunate incident. The Kingfish joined me in my office for a little discussion regarding Overlord Miller’s immediate future, among other things.

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When Jay Lynn, the Lair’s Minister of Crackpot Schemes and Unfortunate Synergies, came to me proposal to build a carbon-freezing chamber in the Lair, my initial concern was not the practical application of the technology, nor was I particularly concerned with resource allocation or budgetary considerations; no, I was just thinking of how cool the giant, mechanized claw we’d use to lower stuff into the chamber would sound. VOOOOO-AH! Honestly, once I heard the words “carbon-freezing chamber,” everything else Minister Lynn said pretty much went in one ear and out the other. I approved the project, using my Overlord’s Prerogative to bump the priority and move forward with design and development sans approval from Overlord Miller.

I don’t recall what Minister Lynn planned to freeze, or for what purpose (almost certainly not a Jedi for transport to the Emperor or even a smuggler for transport to a vile gangster) but he was certainly very enthusiastic about the whole thing. Six months later he had a working prototype and I realized I still hadn’t told Overlord Miller about the project. I asked “The Kingfish” to arrange a demonstration for me, after which I’d loop in Overlord Miller, hopefully armed with details about why—other than that wickedly cool mechanical claw; VOOOOO-AH!—we’d built the thing in the first place.

Granted, Minister Lynn’s purview is “Crackpot Schemes and Unfortunate Synergies” for a reason. That alone should have been warning enough, but I suppose I have to take some responsibility for what happened during the demonstration. I wanted to create a certain menacing mood in the lab, so I instructed the techs to turn down the lights, illuminating the lab only with indirect lighting from the chamber itself and the orange glow of the freezing chamber control console. And, yes, it’s entirely my fault that Overlord Miller had still not been informed of the project’s existence. On the other hand, that mechanical claw is LOUD, so it’s really no surprise that nobody heard Overlord Miller enter the lab until it was too late; by the time he’d stumbled into the chamber, there was no way to abort the freezing cycle. Finally, I should point out that Minister Lynn had not disclosed that he had not yet developed an UNfreezing process, so I had no way of knowing that an accidentally-carbon-frozen Overlord would be stuck in suspended animation until such time as our scientists figure out how to reverse the freezing process.

Rest assured that Overlord Miller is alive and well, and that we are doing everything we can to restore him to his former state. For the time being, he is in a special niche in my office, where he will remain—a reminder of the importance of thorough and timely communication—until we can unfreeze him.

Given our track record regarding The Secret Library—not to mention our proclivity for inadvertently altering the time-space continuum—it is entirely possible that we selected Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates for discussion well before the Puritans departed England for the New World. Whether this will have any lasting implications upon the fledgling Massachusetts Bay Colony, only time will tell. In any case, we enclose the aforementioned discussion herein for your examination and (we can only hope) approval. Astute listeners will note that we are joined once again by Madame Overlord Johnson, who is entirely too literate for her own good.

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