This is the longest reply I've done yet, so I hope some of you made it all the way to the end! It's also the sequel to another reply I made last week.

Months later, Viola burst into the room, a flurry of snow trailing from outside, and embraced her boyfriend, exclaiming “Steven, I’m pregnant!”

He jumped up, a finger pressed to his lips. After all these months of secrecy, feigning fights until finally Viola “accepted” that her grandfather was “crazy”, they were sunk in a moment of complacency. Viola turned white, mouthing the words oh no.

The couple rushed to pack their basic necessities, but there was no time. The knocks came, demanding and impatient, as Steven was frantically stuffing underwear into a grocery bag.

The same identical biracial men menaced on the doorstep. “Steven, Viola,” they greeted, icicles hanging off every syllable. “We tried to prevent this. Convinced our employers that you would not activate the nanobots, nor would you procreate. Clearly you cannot be trusted to keep your promises. Viola, you’re coming with us.”

She gasped as one of the men grasped her wrist and dragged her toward the sleek black luxury car waiting at the curb. Steven lingered in shock, but not for long.

“Like hell you’re taking her anywhere!” he roared, grabbing the shotgun Viola had insisted on hiding behind the door frame ever since her discovery. He rushed the men, knocking one over as he fumbled under his suit jacket for the pistol holstered there. The man was too slow.

“Drop it.” Steven commanded. Crossing his eyes to see the shotgun barrel an inch from his face, the man complied. Glancing back to his girlfriend, Steven saw the other man on his knees, hands in the air and a revolver poking the back of his head.

“Alright, here’s what you idiots are going to do.” Viola shouted, trying to conceal the shake in her voice. “Drop the guns. Get in the car. Then get back to your slimy boss and tell him the fun’s over. I’ve figured out how to activate the nanobots, Magic Mirror or no Magic Mirror.”

The men did as they were told and slunk back to the car. Steven didn’t lower the shotgun until he watched them slam the doors and speed away from the crazy, gun-wielding couple.

Viola turned to him. “They’ll be back soon, and these peashooters aren’t going to stop them again.”

“Did you actually find out how to activate the nanobots?”

“No”

Steven sighed. “I was afraid of that. Looks like it’s time to pay this Vincent Vega a visit.”

When Viola returned home from her biomedicine class, she could see her boyfriend was feeling down, so she tried to cheer him up by talking about her progress on the Magic Mirror.

“I found an article about Vincent Vega, that new ultra-rich investor. His “computer program” sounds way too accurate to be anything but the Magic Mirror. I think he’s just not sure how to use it to its full effect.”

With a sigh, Steven saw where his girlfriend would end up if she probed too far in this direction.

“You know, love, maybe your grandfather was just crazy. He died back when nanotechnology was in its infancy, and these notebooks are supposedly from way before then. Maybe he wrote them when he was old as a way to entertain himself.”

Disappointment consumed Viola’s face. “Steve, this is Grandpa’s legacy. He was never crazy, he was a genius. You were so on board with this the other day, why don’t you want a part in it now?”

She waited, but Steven could give no answer. He hated himself as she slunk back to the bedroom.

He followed and tapped her on the shoulder. Tears in her eyes, she pushed him back, but he grabbed her wrist and pulled her to the doorway. “What do you want? Just let me be alone without your doubting face around” she cried.

Seeing her boyfriend look like a dog who found a kid in a well, she huffed and put on her shoes and jacket. The couple stepped out onto the road and walked in uncomfortable silence to the busiest road in the neighborhood.

“I’m so sorry to say those things about your grandfather” Steven apologized. “Today, some strange men came by. They might have bugged the house. I think they’re going to… hurt you.” The last words pained him to say.

The silence returned, now more fearful than uncomfortable. They finished their walk and returned to the house.

When they got back to the bedroom, Viola leaned in close, her breath warm on Steven’s ear.

“Listen here, Steve. We’re going to find that Magic Mirror and I’m going to activate the nanobots. Hell, I’ll figure out how to activate them even if we can’t find the stupid thing. But before then, we’re going to do all we can to make sure my genetic key makes it to the next generation.”

“Very well,” he acquiesced.

Later that week, as Steven sat down in his home office to write an article for the local newspaper, he heard a knock at the door. Answering it, he stood face-to-face with two black-suited, shades-wearing men. One was white and the other black, yet Steven had a hard time telling them apart.

“Steven. May we come in?” one asked in a voice as smooth and powerful as a deepwater oil spill. Steven felt compelled to step aside, and when he did the men flowed in to occupy his living room couch.

“We have recently become aware of Viola’s… genetic condition. The woman poses a dire threat to national security.” The man offered no chance for a defense. “The United States government appreciates your cooperation in averting disaster.”

“I haven’t offered any cooperation.” Steven replied, confused.

“We think you’ll want to cooperate, Steven” the man soothed. “We’re doing you a favor by allowing you to keep your girlfriend at all. It would be a shame to take extreme measures to prevent Viola’s condition from spreading. We will ensure her genes do not continue to the next generation, one way or another.”

Steven held the men’s gaze, seeing only his reflection times four.

“Very well,” he acquiesced.

Steven was concerned for his girlfriend when she first told him about her grandfather’s notebooks. She was going on about nanobots, a “Magic Mirror”, and saving the world. Or was it dominating the world? She mentioned both.

“Wow, Viola, that’s a lot to take in” he said. “You’re telling me that your grandfather released a bunch of nanobots and now they live in everyone’s brains, and only your dad can control them?”

She laughed. “Kind of. Grandpa says that the nanobots only live in ‘ruling-class’ brains. He was always a little on the left, but I guess we are all angrier in our twenties. He also says that anyone with a certain sequence in their genome has the key to activating the nanobots, so of course he implanted that sequence in Dad. Doesn’t say exactly how to activate them, though, or what they do. Maybe some kind of mind control.”

Steven thought about the implications. Where do I even begin?

He distracted himself for a moment watching a newscast about some billionaire investor with a computer program that predicted stock prices with laser accuracy.

“Do you think you have the same sequence as your dad?” he asked. Viola shrugged.

“Only one way to find out. I think I need to find the Magic Mirror before I try. It says here that it shows you the future, so I’d like to use it to see what happens if I activate the nanobots. Maybe it can even show me how.”

The image of his girlfriend becoming clairvoyant and puppeteering the most influential people on the planet raised Steven’s eyebrows. It wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever heard, though. “Alright, love, but it sounds like there might be a lot of steps to this process. Do you want to start by finding this Magic Mirror?”

Viola clapped her hands together with a gleeful “Yes!”

This immediately made me think of Mushu.

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.