Miss Planner wasn't born a ruthless schemer. Once upon a time, she was a happy, innocent little girl who loved playing with her dolls and eating ice cream sandwiches. Before Miss Planner was Miss Planner, she was just Jessica.
Jessica was raised by her grandmother in a house with a large backyard. Her father left before she was born and her mother never bothered to visit, but her grandmother adored her and always told her that she was smart and capable of doing anything she set her mind to. As a child, Jessica loved telling stories and coming up with imaginary worlds. She filled up countless notebooks with doodles of weird little characters and detailed maps of strange lands. All of the adults in Jessica's life thought it was adorable that a little girl could be so creative and dedicated to building her own imaginary realities.
One day in school, Jessica's teacher told her that pollution was destroying the world, and within twenty years the planet wouldn't support human life. Of course, this wasn't true, but nevertheless, the teacher's words had a profound effect on the young Jessica. Her stories began to take on a much darker tone, and their focus shifted from magical creatures like fairies and mermaids to bizarre alien-like creatures that would inherit the world after mankind was gone. From the 'Human Extraterrestrial' to the 'Trash Eaters' to the 'Man Sitting in the Darkness,' Jessica's creations gradually became more and more twisted and terrifying.
Jessica spent most nights curled up under a pile of blankets, writing her stories in an art book full of intricate notations and sketches. It didn't help that the girl's neighbor had a big collection of horror books that further fueled her imagination, or that her kindly old grandmother loved everything she made. Her stories grew to encompass death and destruction, greed and war. She dreamed up terrible disasters, massacres, and cataclysms, all engineered by mysterious villains who controlled everything behind the scenes. In her own mind, it was all part of an amazing storybook adventure. But to the outside observer, these inventions seemed like a grim and depressing vision of what might happen if people didn't learn to be more careful with their environment.
As a teenager, Jessica was more or less completely dominated by her unchecked creative urges. She'd spend entire days locked up in the basement drawing pictures and trying to imagine new ways for disaster to strike. It felt like there were millions of ideas inside her head constantly churning and exploding, so many that she couldn't even process them all at once. She'd sit down and type out a five-hundred word summary of a fantastical situation, then quickly create another one while she waited for the first one to finish printing.
Although she was old enough to know better, in the back of her mind, Jessica still thought the end of humanity was on its way. So she kept dreaming of how it would happen. Would overpopulation reduce life to an undignified struggle for food and resources fought by a vicious race of inhuman scavengers? Would a deadly war bring an unfitting and dramatic end to the miserable collections of buildings we vainly called 'cities?' Would a plague come upon us, or a meteor? Would armies of hostile aliens or monsters come and gobble us all up? If humanity did become extinct, surely nature would find a way to recover and recreate the world, right? Or would there just be silence and stillness?
There was a dark force that lived in the depths of Jessica's mind. It slowly convinced her that humanity deserved to die, that we were nothing more than ignorant animals living only for ourselves. There was no special purpose for our existence. Humans certainly weren't any more special than rats, insects, or monkeys; all obeyed the same natural laws and were all subject to the same dangers and pains. The universe wasn't set up for the weak to survive. It just existed, in all its bleak and terrible glory.
One day, whether by our own ignorance or malice, human civilization would come to ruin. There was no hope and there was nothing anyone could do nothing to change mankind's fate. And even if Jessica could change our future, she wouldn't want to. She pondered endlessly on the question of what would come after people were gone, and she always reached the same answer: a new form of life would arise to take our place, something smarter, something better, something kinder. That belief burned bright and strong in her heart.
It was only after Jessica graduated high school that she realized the truth. Humanity wasn't going away anytime soon. It didn't matter how hard she tried to convince herself otherwise. Society was too big, too complex, and too durable to ever disappear overnight. So Jessica gave up. After a long bout of depression, Jessica went to college and majored in business administration. Her professors told her that she had a knack for numbers, but she didn't believe them.
Then, she got to work, entering society herself as a personal banker at a large chain bank. She had dyed blonde hair with dark roots, and she wore glasses. She didn't have any special powers or capabilities... her job just happened to nicely match her skills. Like most people who work in finance, she found her work insufferably dull, but it paid the bills. Each day she went into the World Alliance Bank dressed up like a little soldier, smiled at her superiors and her co-workers, politely listened to people's financial problems, and then went home.
Jessica wasn't a genius or anything of the sort. In fact, she could barely complete simple math problems without scribbling random pictures and writing nonsense words in the margins. But she excelled at her job because she put a lot of effort into learning what others considered boring and difficult. She loved reading about business strategy, leadership, finance, and marketing. She spent hours every night studying her little books until she felt satisfied that she knew everything they had to teach her.
The young woman fresh out of college still lived at home with her grandmother, but she had her sights set on a much grander future. The next step in her life was to get married and start having babies. She wanted a husband, kids, and a house in the suburbs. These were the most basic requirements for happiness and they were easily within reach. If you made it through your twenties, there was almost no chance that a man wouldn't fall in love with you in the meantime. Of course, she wanted a promotion, too. She was aiming to become the manager of her branch within eight years.
Jessica's life was in perfect balance. All of her decisions were firmly based on cold logic and there were no surprises. She never did something because it was the 'fun' thing to do. Her carefully curated existence fit neatly inside her head and all of the pieces of her life worked together like a well-oiled machine.
Indeed, Jessica was living pretty comfortably. She was working for an excellent employer in a great location; her career ambitions were very attainable and she was making enough money to live the way she liked. Sure, there were some aspects of her life with room for improvement, but they weren't big things. She was happy. That was enough.
