You prayed for a son, and the gods, having questionable senses of humor, saw fit to grant you one in the form of a peach the size of wheelbarrow that came floating downriver to wash up next to your front yard.

You’re too young to worry about your old age, really, but you definitely could use someone to take care of you, because you lugged that peach home and cracked it open on the front porch. Inside was a baby, if you like, curled up around the peach pit like a fist around a thumb. Its six legs were glossy black, its body long and striped, its wings iridescent, its hair a rich brown and curly, its face cherubic and placid. It stirred when the air found it, blinked sleepily, and smiled at you, and you were lost: most of all, it had your eyes, your exact eyes, and what sign more could you want?

She’s a quiet child, your son, but clever and adventurous. You’re forever waking to find her crouched protectively on the wall above your bed, your own warm eyes staring lovingly down at you, wings fanning you gently through the night. You feed her your own food, chew it for her, and she clasps her forelegs in thanks before bending her head to the plate. Your son is an indelicate eater. After dinner she sings for you, in a high clear tenor, melodic words you don’t know in a language you don’t recognize.

It’s a quiet life, but a loving one.

“The bitter irony,” Murphy panted, grinning bloodily down at the shredded remains of the former head of Omni Consumer Products. “Killed by your own creation. Did you expect it to save you?”

The suit, somehow still clinging stubbornly to life, made a horrible burbling noise that it took him a few seconds to understand as laughter. “You… still don’t get it. The goal… was never… to build a police officer that would… never malfunction, never take… an innocent life. The goal was to create one… that wouldn’t care… if it did. My death… all of this… you…just a successful proof of… concept.”

“Look around, you jackass. Your prototype is spare parts, your headquarters is in ruins. Omni can’t come back from this.”

More of that horrible burbling. “It… doesn’t matter. We were never the hand, only… the lever. You can’t shoot an… idea, Murphy. They hate us, they hate me, but… they’ll love you. They’ll make you a hero… they’ll make more of you. The world… needs heroes…”

He died still laughing.

It’s a long string of Polish jokes and first the crowd is hostile, then it’s game, then it’s just bored. The hack is impervious to their heckling, but they’re drunk, they’re horny, they’re a steeltown mob trying to blow off steam at the weirdo burlesque bar and grill and there’s only so long they can put up with this nonsense.

They’re long past the point where simply yelling GET OFF THE STAGE is going to move the needle, so a group of more or less sober welders huddle together for a bit and send their most tactful bruiser up onto the stage. Which, normally that’s verboten, but desperate times, desperate measures; the bartender makes an overt show of turning away to wash some dishes.

“Hey, listen,” the hod says, one meaty, heatscarred hand on the sweaty shoulder of the comedian. “We’re all in your corner here, but don’t you think you should wrap it up?” The comedian doesn’t blink, just rolls right into his joke about the lesbian with a hard-on. The hod shakes him slightly, then harder, but nothing; he doesn’t even make eye contact. With a shrug, he scoops him up in his arms, or tries to, but the hack is boneless as an eel, slips through his arms without missing a beat. One of the other welders, drunker than most, hurls a bottle. It embeds itself dead center in his forehead. “Hey,” says the comedian, smiling mildly. “You shouldn’t oughta do that.”

It’s at this point that they discover the doors are all locked, and the bartender and the waitresses are all gone, but of course by then it’s too late.

Two noble houses alike in dignity, which is to say: none.

Look at these dumbasses, pulling knives on each other in the street in front of a cop, and then insulting each other’s virginity when el swine give them the stinkeye. Is this wise? Is it smart? Forget an honest man, Diogenes would starve to death looking for a single Veronese brat with the sense to pour piss out of a boot.

Horny idiots, the lot of them, which would be just about endurable except for the fact that they’ve got more money than god and mostly spend it on booze, caffeine, and an endless supply on knives, daggers, dirks, stilettos, short swords, rapiers, foils, sabres, and epees. One utter maniac has a fucking claymore as tall as he is, it’s a wonder he hasn’t decapitated himself or someone else hauling it around to every pubescent rager in the city.

Consider: William Howard Taft, colonizer, President, Supreme Court Justice, diplomat, reformer, war criminal, and yet most popularly famous for getting stuck in a bathtub, a story neither true nor kind. His political mentor most famous for being a face on a desecrated mountain and a handful of inscrutable references in cartoons now four generations out of date.

Or: Jean-Paul Marat, revolutionary, philosopher, writer, journalist, war criminal, remembered most clearly for his assassination by Charlotte Corday in a bathtub. One of the leading figures of one of the most famous almost-revolutions in the last several centuries, just a dead body slumped over, naked, undignified, moist.

The villains of our parents generations fade into nothing; the villains of their parents are already dust. Professional students of history carry their sins and their virtues in their hearts, or trip into a cross-century romance pursuing them through letters, reports, archival papers, but for most? For us? For the people who live in the long shadow of their legacy? Soap film drifting across the surface of a bath continually draining.