Davis Bertans knocked on the door of the office with false diffidence, then opened the door just enough to peek his head in. “May I come in?” he asked.
Michael Jordan had been turned away from his desk, reclined in his office chair and looking out the window, but he resumed an upright sitting position and rotated his chair when he heard Davis’ voice. “Of course. I was told that you were interested in meeting with me.”
“Thank you,” Davis said, trying to inject a tone of reverence into his voice that he didn’t feel at all. He took the seat opposite the desk from the Charlotte Hornets’ owner and hoped that his unusually stiff movements, caused by the machinery strapped to his chest, were not noticed. “I’m thinking about requesting a trade. A trade to Charlotte.”
Michael’s eyebrows raised at this comment. “Well, that’s a pleasant surprise. I have to say that I’ve been admiring your shooting for a while. We’ve had a string of shooting bigs fail to pan out, from Cody Zeller to Spencer Hawes to Frank Kaminsky, but you could reverse our fortunes in a big way with your proven skill.”
Davis’ overfilled ego swelled even more at this praise from one of basketball’s greatest ever. His fingers ran across the hidden switch that was in his pocket, but it wasn’t yet time to activate it. “You might not have many wins now, but you’re building the right culture,” he said. “The same can’t be said for the Wizards.”
“I can get Mitch working the phones right away,” Michael said. “You might not even have to go public with your demands.”
“That would be great,” Davis said with a graciousness that sounded very fake to his ears but didn’t seem to cause Michael any alarm. “I don’t want to damage my popularity right when it’s surging. You surely can understand that.”
Michael laughed. He still seemed stunned that a player, any player, would request a trade to his team. “I understand that very well, Davis,” he replied.
“Imagine how much more popular you would have been if you had any kind of respectable three-ball,” Davis said, his formerly lighthearted voice taking a steely edge. “But even with the shortened line, your long-range ability was laughable.”
Michael’s next words were slightly colder, and his smile had faded. “I didn’t need the three. My midrange game was and is unmatched.”
“You know why they call me the Latvian Laser?” Davis asked.
“Because you’re good at shooting threes?” Michael responded, confused that he had to state the obvious answer to the question that Davis had posed.
“Well, yeah, there’s that, but there’s another reason,” Davis said, pulling an odd-looking pair of metallic goggles out from underneath his shirt and putting them over his eyes. A thickly-sheathed cable snaked from the side of his goggles to connect with the humming, lightly vibrating energy generation mechanism that was affixed to his chest. Its invention and construction remained a prouder achievement for Davis than any of his successes in the world of sport. “Here, let me show you.”
“What’s up with the glasses?” Michael asked, staring right into Davis’ eyes to figure out what the purpose of the futuristic eyewear was.
Michael’s intense gaze was his doom. With the flip of a switch, two beams of bright green light erupted from the goggles and instantly incinerated Michael’s eyeballs.
“MY EEEEEEEEYES!” Michael shrieked, falling out of his chair and onto the floor with his hands clutching his face. Melted retinal goop slipped through his fingers onto the carpet. Davis could see single eyelashes floating in the disturbing puddle. While Michael writhed in agony, Davis turned up the power setting on his machine. Now, the previously green lasers burned bright red; when they hit the office’s window, the glass exploded in a shower of dangerous shards. Davis ignored this new danger and directed his deadly gaze at Michael’s cranium.
The effect was instant and devastating. Michael’s skull blew outwards as if it had been blasted by a shotgun, sending bits of bone and brain splashing against the walls and furniture. The gory scene would certainly wreak havoc on the mental health of whatever first responders were unfortunate enough to happen upon it, but no investigator would ever link the death of the basketball legend to Davis and his scientifically-advanced laser death machine.
“I guess now I have to be the GOAT,” Davis said with a chuckle, wiping the bloody flecks off his face.