Lumic (short story)

Lumic was the first short story and eighth release exclusively published on the Cybus website in May 2006 to coincide with the broadcast of Rise of the Cybermen. Written by Tom MacRae (who also scripted the TV stories), it featured the stories' main antagonist John Lumic some time prior to the events of the two-parter.

Summary
John Lumic is interviewed about Cybus Industries, the new Ultimate Upgrade™ project and his own life. Though happy to get the chance to share his creed against mortality and advertise the upcoming new Cybus product, Lumic finds the last few questions about his own self to be banal and facile, especially taking offence to questions about "others in his field" (as he believes himself to be unique). He ends up pressing a button which activates the electrocution feature of the chair in which he had the interviewer, Tom MacRae of The Daily Sketch, sit, benignly "thanking him for his time" after he dies.

Characters

 * John Lumic
 * Tom MacRae

Worldbuilding

 * The interview, named "John Lumic - Some thoughts from our CEO", is on the Cybus Industries website.
 * John Lumic spent his childhood in New Germany and was already a tinkerer as a boy.
 * Lumic developed the Sleep Replacement System and began using it himself some time before he got the idea to incorporate it into "the Upgrade".
 * Groups which criticise Lumic include the Preachers in Great Britain and the Free Information Collectives in New Germany and Czechoslovenia™.
 * Lumic requested a "clean, industrial Art Deco style" for the Ultimate Upgrade™ project.
 * Lumic has ordered multiple assassinations in the past, including a member of his own board of directors and the Prime Minister of the United States of Mexico.
 * Lumic's favourite musicians, when he is "in a Germanic mood", are Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. He also likes Geri Halliwell.
 * He admires "Machiavelli, Hitler and Genghis Khan" as people who "got what they wanted in spite of the little people".
 * Lumic got the BBC abolished, allowing Cybusnet™ to become the sole world information provider.

Continuity

 * John Lumic intends to ask the President of Great Britain to authorise the Ultimate Upgrade™ project to go forward in spite of the Genevan Bio-Convention. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen)