Sweat dripped from my brow as I waited for a clump of cells suspended in a tank to show the first signs of a heartbeat. The flat line on the monitor jumped into the familiar peak and valley, then pulsed again, and again. My chest felt filled with elation as the beat settled into a regular rhythm. Not wasting any time to admire the miracle of life, I swiveled around to gaze into the Magic Mirror.

Working the quirky and intricate controls, I managed to set the device to show me this house five years in the future. On the screen, a child toddled into my arms and we headed out the door. The sequence followed us to a nearby park, where, apparently, the clone was socializing with the other children. Excellent, I thought. It cannot execute its purpose without charisma to charm the masses.

As I fiddled with the Magic Mirror, the world’s wealthiest and most influential people met in private conference rooms and shadowy, upscale restaurants around the world to discuss current events and ensure everything worked out to their favor. Corruption spread like a plague, but so did something else. Nanobots leaped from hand to hand and came to live and replicate, undetected, in every new host’s brain.

Back on the Magic Mirror, I watched my clone develop. I saw myself reading to it from library books in the evenings. Wonderful, I thought. It cannot realize my plans without role models to follow. In one sequence, I dropped the clone off at an afterschool art class and it came home to show me the painting it made, which we framed and hung in the living room. Perfect, I purred to myself. Even with the instructions I will leave, it will need a creative and resourceful mind to deal with the challenges inevitable to any attempt at world domination.

I gleefully fast-forwarded to watch my plot come to fruition. As the clone entered manhood, girls became a facet of many sequences. I suppose that’s a natural side effect of the characteristics necessary for its role, I told myself. Then, I saw myself embracing the sobbing clone and comforting it after a breakup. As I watched it rest its head on my shoulder, an unexpected tear came to my eye. Wiping it away, I hurried past the following decade or so.

Sitting in a tent surrounded by jungle and dressed in a military uniform, the clone read a letter and clutched it to its chest. My breath caught in my throat. What if he gets hurt?

I immediately admonished myself for personifying it. If it dies at that age, it’ll be too late to make another one. I’ll have to freeze a few embryos and somehow find the resources to raise a few backups along the way.

When the clone returned from its deployment, I saw it stoop to pick up a child while a joyful young woman looked on. This can only be a distraction, I worried. How could I let this happen? Do I die young?

In another sequence, the sight of my aging self dispelled my fear, although at first I did not understand why I, like the clone, stooped to pick up its child and proceeded to play with it, to no apparent end. Frustrated, I turned my attention away from the Magic Mirror back to the clump of cells and its little heartbeat. As warmth spread into my chest, I felt tears running down my face. An invasive thought entered my head. What am I going to name you?

Looking into the Magic Mirror once more, I selected the year my nanobots were set to infect 100% of the upper class. The middle-aged clone didn’t activate them as he was meant to, and greedy minds remained free to do their damage. Strangely, my elderly self didn’t seem to care. Rolling back to the sequences of myself playing with my grandchildren, I wondered how to save my scheme from failure, or if I really even wanted to.

Months later, I moved baby Lex from the tank to the incubator and he screamed his little lungs out, like babies do. Leaning against the glass, I reminded myself that the Magic Mirror only showed me what may be, and that he could still put aside these distractions to become the charismatic, compassionate leader the world needed. However, as I raised him to be that, every sequence the Magic Mirror showed me came to pass. With the birth of my first grandchild, I forgot all about the corruption that had once motivated me to achieve the impossible. I died with Lex, my daughter-in-law, and four beautiful grandchildren by the side of my bed.

Twenty years later, the youngest grandchild stumbled upon the notebooks from her enigmatic grandfather’s youth while helping her parents clean the attic. Hoping to uncover some of the mystery, she eagerly read through them, shock deepening with the turn of every page. Opening the news app on her phone, she watched an all-too-familiar story of everyday greed and corruption unfold and thought to herself, the nanobots are still out there.