The Man Who Killed the World
PLANET STORIES Short-Short Story
By RAY KING
Groff ruled the world through Fear. Fear of his
awful power ... his twisted, mad brain. For one
day that brain would crack. When it did, the
World would dissolve in cataclysmic Chaos.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
In his little tower, perched at the very peak of the great terracedpile of buildings which was his home and his citadel, Peter Groff satbrooding with hatred. The city, its factories, its vast plowed fields,lay stretched below him. Millions of humans, at play in little games.How he hated them! And they hated him—hated and feared him. It madehim chuckle. For all his life he had worked and schemed and fought tomake himself a power. The richest, most powerful man in the world—hehad attained it. They had called him cruel, in his youth, with hisruthless business methods. He had laughed. Then they had no longerdared call him anything which would anger him. And he had laughed atthat, while he had bought their governments and their armies with hismoney.
He was laughing now as he thought of it. In seventy years he had madethe name Peter Groff a thing at which to tremble. Over all the earth,from the heads of his groveling puppet governments down to the lowliestchild driving a plow in the fields, there was no one who did notsecretly fear Groff, the power of his money, the sound of anger in hisvoice. Here in his citadel his servants trembled—and hated him. It wasfunny, because by their methods they had gotten nothing; and he hadgotten everything.
Alone in his little tower, he sat and brooded. There was little elseto do now, and he enjoyed it—this contemplation of himself and hisachievements. The mirror beside which he sat reflected his image. Hestared at himself. His trusted companion. His face, thin-lipped, wasgrim with its power. His eyes gleamed with it—eyes at which everyoneshivered with fear. The banked rows of his television tuning knobs werewithin reach of his hand. And he decided that it would be amusing tolook and to listen from some of the newscasters' vantage points at whatwas transpiring down in the city streets. He chose one in the factorydistrict, over by the river. They were the people who had least.
The little cathode mirror presently was glowing with the scene hehad selected. It was a tube-lit city arcade, far down by the lowestlevel of the Inter-urban railway. Subterranean shops were along itssides—places where people with the tiniest fraction of money mightspend it for something which wasn't worth having.
And as he stared, from one of the shops a young couple came—adark-haired, slender young man and a girl who was pretty, and who waslaughing. They were poorly dressed. They had nothing. But they werelaughing; and suddenly they were struggling as the young man fastenedupon the girl's dress the bauble he had bought, and then was trying tokiss her for his payment. The scuffle was over in a moment; and Groffheard from his microphone the girl's gasping, murmured words:
"Oh, Jac—I'm so happy—"
Groff stiffened. His thin, lined face was grim as he reached and cutoff the image and the murmuring voice....
Something happened to Peter Grof