(Paragraph two is mostly recycled from this episode by The Guest set in "Sarah's World," a resurrected, altered universe.)
McMillan Tech Industries CEO Richard McMillan looked down on the town of Lake Point from his twentieth-story penthouse office. Its population was like thousands of bugs to him. Insignificant beings for him to manipulate. Already many of them were within his power. MTI was the biggest employer in town. The government served him, bending its laws for his convenience. But all that power paled to what he would soon have once Reality Branches was activated. He would have Susan again - forever!
Twenty years ago, Susan Orr had been a cheerleader and queen bee in high school, and had graduated with little chance of a good future. Her grades had been good enough only for a junior college, which she'd dropped out of to pursue her dreams of being a model.
Along the way, she ran into corporate rising star Richard. She was his ideal, his equivalent of a muse. Her presence enabled him to take over Lake Point Tech Industries, which he soon renamed after himself. She would have been set for life.
But no, she didn't want to be his trophy. She ran away and somehow ended up in the arms of a mere engineer ... Jon Jennings. That name still enraged Richard after two decades. The head of RTI could never truthfully answer the question, Why him and not me? He couldn't look at his reflection and see his own evil - the reason Susan couldn't stay with him.
Nor could he get rid of the man he hated most. Jennings was the most valuable human asset of LPTI - now RTI. Without Jennings, Reality Branches - Richard's last hope - would fall apart.
Richard had tested the RB prototype and seen glimpses of other worlds, "branches" where he not only still had Susan but even fathered her - no, their - children Sarah and Fred. Jennings was clever enough to help design the pinnacle of human technology, but was too oblivious to figure out what Richard intended to do with it. Typical engineer. All numbers, no soul. How could Susan stand a robot like that when she could have a real man, a conqueror? She would have him soon ... if Jennings did his duty.
His secretary Jessica Simmons, a 22-year-old Susan lookalike, came up to his door. "Samantha and Jon are here."
"Thanks," said Richard. Brace yourself, he thought. Don't let Jennings get to you. You are in control. You own him. And you can dispose of him once you're done with him.
