Hercules, the former Erin Smith, stood about a mile from his just-completed castle, all the better to admire his creation. The castle was like a cross between an ancient Greek castrum and a medieval English castle.

It was several miles to the east of Bear Lake in the Cokeville Meadows National Wildlife Preserve, straddling the border of Idaho to the north and Utah to the south, on top of a small hill surrounded by pine trees. And since no one was around, no one saw the anachronistic castle in the middle of the forest.

It was years after the abortive presidential election that Hercules Smith had tried to engineer. But the government, aided and abetted by Dr. Castellanos and the people of the Aristotle Endowment was able to stop his plans for dominating America (and then the rest of the world). This time, though, Hercules planned to do it all himself instead of through proxies.

The first part of his new plan, though, was to gather new resources and new people, and establish a base of operations. In a few years, he did that and was now surrounded by his new minions. He also operated a small very well-equipped (but not very well-trained) private militia of a thousand men (absolutely no women, as he didn’t think them reliable nor capable) several hundred million in the bank, and his new “fortress of power.” Most of his people found the name ridiculous in its pomposity (but then, Hercules was a very pompous leader), so most just called it “The Fortress.”

Hercules, like Val, was told of what the Endowment was all about after his spontaneous gender change. He then discovered the significance of his Kodikos score – and that he was only one of two Endowment kids that ever got a score as high as eighty-five. And for the rest of his senior year, his change continued. But Dr. Penny (and now Val) knew, the changes were not just a physical change. Soon, the new Erin exhibited… very antisocial behavior (to say the least), and was making life more and more difficult in the Lyceum. Before he could make more trouble, though, the Lyceum’s administration was arranging something, but before they could execute it, Erin ran away and disappeared, along with his fifteen thousand dollar grant money.

It was mostly because of this that the Endowment changed the policies for Troy House. It was their working hypothesis that Erin’s high score contributed to her overall physical changes (he had become a giant of a man, with a physique that looked more like a bodybuilder’s rather than an average man’s) and mental state. Hence, after that experience, the Endowment kept all their highest-scoring students in a separate school so that they could be observed and managed. That became the new Troy House.

No one, however, associated his change of gender to his score nor to his transformation given a gender change couldn’t be caused by any epigenetic mechanism, so far as they knew. Besides, though Dr. Castellanos also had the same eighty-five score, she didn’t change genders when she stabilized. Only when Val changed genders too did Dr. Maia reconsider the idea.

In any case, after that incident, the Endowment, indeed the entire world couldn’t find him anymore. After cleaning out the bank accounts of several of his supporters and contributors, he went underground and established himself as a kind of adviser to several industrial leaders in the Middle East. He couldn’t do much because he needed to keep his identity anonymous to the world, but he was able to raise enough cash to accumulate a large war chest, allowing him to return to America and continue his plans.

Hercules was standing in his Hoplite armor, helmet, Hoplon shield, a Doru spear in his hand, and a Xiphos sword clipped to his waist. He stood a mile or so away from the Fortress. He fancied himself as a reincarnation of a Greek God, and he had been styling himself as such: he learned to speak Greek and immersed himself in Greek mythology. Most of his clothes were styled in authentic ancient Greek, and he had several copies of the armor he was wearing made up, using contemporary military-grade materials.

His Hoplon shield, for example, was made of Lexan overlaid with Kevlar and then overlaid with a thin layer of copper to make it look authentic, yet it was light and fully functional. His, armor, helmet and all the other parts of his… “uniform” were made similar to his Hoplon, so, though they looked authentic ancient Greek, they were as functional and effective as any modern equivalent. Forgetting, of course, that his arms and upper legs were bare and vulnerable.

For his Xiphos, the leaf-shaped blade was made from high-carbon industrial steel, giving it strength and a sharp edge as good as any modern sword. The pommel and guard were authentic as they were made of bronze, like the original swords, and the grip was made from white poplar (per Greek mythology, white poplar was consecrated to Hercules when he defeated the monster Cacus). The flat spearhead and butt-spike of his three-meter-long Doru spear were also made from the same metal as his sword.

The only anachronistic part of his “uniform” were the two Glock 19s that he had in holsters behind his back and underneath the kilt. In any case, it wasn’t seen.

Dressing up like a Hoplite was weird, but then “Hercules” was a weird guy. None of his people brought it up, however. Once, one of the guards made fun of the fact, and Hercules beat him to an inch of his life.

Hercules Smith was clearly obsessed. Knowing the whole theory upon which the Endowment was founded, and having seen the Kodikos Ton Theon and the Golden Theory himself, and knew all that the Endowment has done and all of the information it had accumulated, he knew that all of it was no lie. And his unprecedented eighty-five Kodikos score - there were only two of them in the whole history of the Endowment that ever got that high a score - and the other one rose to become the president and director-general of the Endowment and led the scientific aspects of its operation, Erin-soon-to-be-Hercules convinced himself that he was indeed the first of the coming wave of the new gods. And plus the unprecedented physical changes he underwent, he knew it must be true – he was now taller than Shaquille O'Neal and close to five hundred pounds. He could do squats of a thousand pounds, 1,500-pound deadlifts, and 800-pound bench presses. He could tie a standard 50-cm long, 18-pound crowbar into a knot and almost lift a 3,000-pound subcompact over his head. He could break someone in two without even half-trying. He was also very handsome, but in a brutal kind of way. He truly believed he really was the first of the latter-day gods and could therefore do no wrong. He also styled himself after the ancient Greeks, learned to write and speak Greek, ate Greek food, and wore, as often as he could ancient Greek attire.

The thing was, he was also the most violent and sadistic of psychopaths and believed that what he wanted was preordained. Most of the psychiatrists and doctors of the Endowment, including Dr. Maia and Dr. Penny, thought that his spontaneous sex change and extreme transformation had unbalanced an already shaky psyche with self-esteem issues, and this was what made him the brutal megalomaniac that he was.

The Endowment’s scientists tried to see if there was a pattern, and if the transformation of the only other person that got an eighty-five score like him - Dr. Penny – was also affected in the same way. However - Dr. Penny’s own transformation happened many, many years before Erin, and any psychotic behavior would have surfaced long before. Needless to say, she wasn’t psychotic and she also didn’t have any spontaneous sex change. But it was argued that her transformation was also just as extreme, but in a different and more beneficial way. She was already a looker before transformation and stabilization, but afterward she became one of the most drop-dead gorgeous women anyone in the Endowment had ever seen, and could twist anyone around her little finger without even trying. She was also tall – not as tall as Hercules but pretty tall for a woman at six-three. She could do 600-pound squats, 500-pound deadlifts, and 500-pound bench presses. She wasn’t as powerful as Hercules, but powerful enough. What she could do that Hercules couldn’t do was to run at a sustained 20mph, and with her lithe figure, do any yoga pose and stand on her head for hours. Also, with her substantial… charms, she was able to rise through the ranks of Aristotle and become the chairperson and director general. But it couldn’t be denied that she had the smarts for it and that it was not just the changes. In fact, it was through her efforts that their scientific knowledge expanded in leaps and bounds, and the Endowment was at the precipice of an unprecedented expansion of their operation.

But she had no megalomaniac ambitions nor believed she was some god unlike Hercules – Hercules knew in his heart he was indeed a god. And the entire world was to therefore be at his beck and call.

Hercules did that kind of thing often – dressing up as a Hoplite warrior and walking around the Fortress. When he did something like this, his people breathed a sigh of relief because they had a little bit of respite from his abuse. They called these “their liege’s time out to survey his kingdom.” Of course, never to his face. But it was a bit true: Hercules was actually doing that – surveying his “kingdom,” and dreaming of the day when he would be the king of all the world.

As he stood outside admiring his new castle, one of his people came running up, proffering a smartphone.

“Excellency!” the little man ran up. “You just got a text message from our contact in the Aristotle Endowment!”

“Sou eipa na min me enochleis!” He roared, and then he backhanded the man.

The strength of his slap sent the man sprawling.

“Excellency?” he asked as he rubbed the side of his face. Only a few of them knew how to speak Greek and he wasn’t one of them.

“I said do not bother me!”

“But, Excellency, you said to let you know if this person called…”

Hercules growled, grabbed the phone from the man, and waved him away. He checked the message that his spy in Aristotle sent. The woman sent a text that said she heard that the Endowment had unearthed another student who had a very high Kodikos score, just like him and Dr. Castellanos. The student was in the Chicago school, and that Dr. Castellanos was hiding him (or her). But that was all she knew.

Hercules grew red in anger. “That’s the stupidest report in the world!” he raged. His spy in Athens was just a lab tech and wasn’t the most informed nor the smartest. But Hercules didn’t have anyone else so she would have to do.

“That’s all right, my love,” he texted back, all the while sneering. “You did well. Anything else?”

“Unfortunately not,” she replied. “Castellanos has everything locked down. Only the directors know what’s happening. When can I see you again?”

“I’m sorry, my love,” he said. “I’m very busy,” he lied. “There is still a lot to do to my fortress. As soon as it’s done, I’ll call you.”

“I love you,” the girl texted. With a last deriding laugh, Hercules switched the phone off and threw it away. “That deluded woman is a pain,” he thought. But he had to keep her on the hook until he could find a better snitch.

“That was some news she brought, though,” he thought. “It looks like there will have to be a change of plans.” He started to walk back to the fortress.

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