ASH: LL&DD Special "Chore Bored"

Dave Van Domelen dvandom at eyrie.org
Fri Mar 29 12:33:33 PDT 2013


     [The cover shows a small chalk tablet stuck to a refrigerator next to a
few notes secured by a magnet (the only readable note says "Get: Milk, Eggs,
Tow Chain").  The tablet is the start of a chore board, but already looks to
have been erased sloppily several times.]

_____________________________________________________________________________
 Coherent                                                  LL&DD Vignette
 Comics          | ADY | AWFUL    __        __                "Chore Bored"
 Presents an     |__   |__     &  | \ OCTOR | \ EVELOPER   copyright 2013
 ASHistory Tale:                  |_/       |_/            by Andrew Burton
_____________________________________________________________________________

[January, 1997 - Chicago, IL]

     Cameron McKay was a man with a simple life and an excess of wealth.  The
latter was something he had not come by honestly, which he was somewhat
honest about telling people.  Most of it was insider trading, knowing when a
company was going to increase shareholder wealth by virtue of reverse-
espionage: breaking into R&D labs to steal equipment, fixing it as part of a
criminal enterprise, and then giving the schematics back shortly thereafter.
Originality was for super-science types; Cameron was a super-villain, which
meant getting shit done expediently.
     Those sound investments and loose ethics had been promptly reinvested
into his bachelor lifestyle: takeout, microwave dinners, and canned fruit for
deserts meant never having to wash dishes.  New shirts and slacks every month
meant never having to do laundry, except when he had fits of inspiration for
robotic washing machines.  Apartments and warehouses for lairs meant no lawn
to mow, hedges to cut, or...whatever else people with lawns and hedges did
when not installing devious traps underneath them.
     All things considered, it was a nice setup.  It wasn't devoid of
responsibility of course.  Labs didn't clean and repair themselves, or at
least the robots that cleaned and repaired themselves needed to be kept
working.  You certainly couldn't stay a criminal for long without knowing how
to properly cover your tracks, launder assets, disperse funds, etc.
Cameron's accounting apparatus required monthly updates, security patches,
and incorporation paperwork that let his automation interface with financial
firms, and not even going quasi-legal had changed that.  So he had acquired
the discipline needed to keep up with regular responsibilities.
     As he sat at Jennifer's kitchen table, watching her write out chores on
the chalkboard magnetically attached to her refrigerator, he was trying to
figure out the best way to explain that they didn't need to divide up the
household duties.  It wasn't the helping-out part he minded so much as that
he had several years experience at completely circumnavigating that kind of
lifestyle.  Past attempts to dissuade Jennifer from high-maintenance
trappings like the use of glassware at meals usually ended up with her giving
him The Look.  The Look was something Jennifer had honed throughout their
premarital encounters, specifically the times when she was physically
restrained by some complicated ensnarement.  Over time Cameron realized The
Look had meant many things:

     "The tensile strength of this steel won't keep me from punching your
face."

     "I've been fighting robots for the last half hour, and the last thing I
want is to have to listen to your plan."

     "No, we cannot make out while we're waiting for the Dinosaurcerer to
attack."

     "We use glass plates because that's how I was brought up.  You may once
have eaten out of foam boxes and aluminum cans, but now that you're a good
guy, you will abide by the laws of God and man, which include eating in such
a way that forces you to stand at a sink and cleaning up for twenty minutes
while digesting."

     Remembering the last one crumbled any hopes that Cameron might be able
to dissuade Jennifer from such things as washing dishes or mowing the lawn.
With his dreams crushed, Cameron refocused on her writing.  The board was
divided into three vertical columns...CHORE, JENNY, DEEDEE...and beneath the
first column was a list of duties: YARD, DISHES, VACUUMING, LAUNDRY, BILLS,
CAR, COOKING, etc.  Simple enough.
     "Okay," she said upon finishing the chart, "It goes without saying we
can shuffle this around later on, but with you living here now, and the
wedding thing coming up, we need to get some kind of system in place.
So...what do you want to do?  And remember that 'want' is only being used as
a euphemism here for 'hate the least.'"  Cameron didn't really think that
would work again, not after the "Want to help me get the groceries in?"
debacle.
     "The, ah, robots can push the lawnmower," Cameron said.  He studied the
list a bit more.  "I'll do that."
     Jennifer put a check on the board at the axis of CAMERON and YARD.
"Very good," she said.  Continuing on, "As much as it pains me, I'll do the
laundry.  Your auto-washer doesn't do delicate."  Check.  Cameron fondly
recalled the artistically tattered results of the one attempt, and the one
time Jennifer had agreed to model them.  "You already do most of the car
work, so I'll add that for you."  Another check.
     "I can do the cooking," Cameron offered.  If he was going to be forced
to dirty plates by eating off of them, he could at least streamline the
preparation process.  Jennifer's face almost looked pained for a second, as
if torn between replies.
     "Let's share this one," she said.  "I appreciate you having things ready
when I'm working, but...I can cook on the weekends and have leftovers for
lunches.  No need to eat out everyday, you know."  Cameron didn't, but he
wasn't going to argue.  Two checks, one for each of them.
     After a few minutes of checks, it came down to BILLS.
     Jennifer tapped the piece of yellow chalk against her hand for several
seconds before speaking.  "This is actually kind of a bigger subject than
laundry, but probably bears discussing now."  She stepped away from the board
and sat down at the table.  "Once we get married...I mean...mom used to do
all the bills.  Before and after she went to work, she handled hers and dad's
money."  Jennifer cocked her head a bit and wrinkled her nose.  "How do you
want to handle that stuff?"
     This, Cameron knew, was a question that was leading to another question.
Jennifer did the nose-wrinkle look when she wasn't asking what she was
*really* asking.  Better play it cool.  "How do you handle it now?"
     "Now?  I get my check from the museum, which pays most of the bills.
Jack pays me a small consultancy fee for being Lady Lawful, which covers the
rest, mostly the stuff I have to buy while in costume.  The royalties for my
merchandise, from the DSHA, I just put into my savings account," she
explained with a shrug.  While he wouldn't let on how long he'd known,
Cameron knew that Jennifer and her mother actually shared those royalties via
a complex time-dependent sliding scale some DSHA accountant had worked out to
account for the shared intellectual property, etc.  Jennifer wasn't
comfortable taking any of that money, but her mother insisted.  "What about
you?  I mean," she paused, "you get the same consultancy fee from Jack,
but...well, I know you turned over a lot of cash when you made your deal."
     Cameron shrugged.  "It wasn't that much."
     Jennifer squeezed Cameron's hand.  "Deedee, I saw the papers.  You gave
up six figures, easy.  That's more than I make in five years from all
sources."
     "But that was just what I hadn't cleaned up," he said flatly.  "Most of
my money is in the market right now, but I keep a couple of accounts open for
equipment, plus the one Jack setup for me."
     "Couple of accounts?" Jennifer asked.  She went quiet for a second,
slowly increasing and decreasing the pressure with the hand holding
Cameron's.  "I guess I should just ask: how much money do you have?"
     "I guess, uh, a couple of million in cash," he answered.  "The stocks
are a bit more volatile, so I'd need to check my system to know their exact
value."  He leaned his head back and let the the ceiling become his own
chalkboard for a second.  "Five million, I think."
     For a moment, Jennifer gave him The Look, but only a moment.  Then she
looked at the chore board, giving *it* The Look.  After a moment she got up
and erased the check marks for YARDWORK, VACUUMING, DUSTING, LAUNDRY, and a
few others.  When the slots were empty, she looked back at Cameron, her face
far more relaxed than before.
     "We're hiring a maid."

============================================================================

Editor's Note:

     I never really worried too much about some of the details of the DSHA
stipend deal, since most heroes who had to depend on it were at least
semi-public in their ID and didn't bother trying to hold down another job.
And the few who did, well, the DSHA would just borrow a page (and a few dozen
accountants) from the CIA in terms of how agents under cover dealt with
having pay from the cover job and other pay from the agency.  So when Andy
asked me some questions relating to taxes while writing this vignette, I had
to consider those issues.

     Heroic identities are essentially legal entities a la corporations (and
in the 90s were mostly structured as LLCs).  Identification cards exist so
that in-costume heroes can draw upon any resources of their "hero corp", rent
property in-costume (assuming the landlord is willing to risk it), etc.
They're separately taxed, but in almost all cases there's no actual tax bill
and the returns are very confidential.  When a hero wants to draw on this
money in their civilian ID, it can be somewhat tricky, but there's a number
of safe and simple ways to transfer money the other direction (i.e. "donate"
a hundred dollars to a fake charity so that you can use a hero-ID debit card
to buy coffee while out on patrol).

     Mind you, Lady Lawful is an oddball case as superhero financials go.
Most licensing money is dumped into a single fund, drawn from at need (mostly
to fund repairs after super-battles, but also by indigent superheroes).  That
way licensed heroes with minimal merchandising can still draw a stipend if
they have trouble holding down a day job.  But all of this took decades to
evolve, and the original Lady Lawful owned all of her own IP for at least
part of her career.  As a result, she managed to cut a slightly better deal
and she gets a cut of the merchandising even if she doesn't need it.  Lady
Lawful I probably put it in Jenny's college fund at first, and later used it
for things like vacation travel.  Jenny, as noted here, just sort of sits on
it, but after July 6, 1998, Cameron would have added the account to his
automatically managed funds and kept it in trust for...someday.

     Most of the other legacy heroes represented simpler legalities, since
either the government created the original heroes' identities (i.e. Gauntlet)
or the original hero was never savvy enough to consider trademarks during
their careers.  The situation in the Fourth Age has already been established
in-story.

============================================================================

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