Peter walked out of his situation room and into a small adjoining bathroom. His head was throbbing. He hadn’t worked this hard ever. Being an android came with some advantages; for one, he never had to sleep. And so he didn’t; he pushed through and kept working, and working, and working. He wanted to sleep though; his mind was crying out for a mental break.
In his diary, he even scheduled a full night’s sleep. Tonight was that night—in a few hours he would be sleeping. No meetings and no dinner plans. Just sleep.
Peter won the election in a landslide, although the real election was held a while back when one by one Peter convinced the people financially backing Callum Overwood to back him instead.
It was one side of politics that Peter enjoyed—although the fact that he was able to pull something like that off left somewhat of a bad taste in his mouth.
In a perfect world, he would have campaigned against Callum and won on merit. He would have won the election because it was the right thing for the planet. But the world wasn’t perfect, and human nature meant the best person didn’t always win. If it was that easy to turn all this world’s leaders against someone they had backed and supported, it would have been just as easy for Callum to do that to him.
The truth was, he won because Callum had no idea what he was dealing with. As soon as Peter arrived at the golf club, he’d gone about gathering support and putting all the dominoes in place. He was able to move quickly while Callum was unaware, so that by the time Callum found out, it was already too late.
It was probably the only way Peter could have won. If Peter had announced he was running in a media conference, Callum’s ego would have never allowed him to stand down. But because Peter did everything behind closed doors, Callum could portray this as all his doing.
There really wasn’t too much to winning everyone over. Angelique was back with a whole lot of new technology. And the planet was screwed without it. They really didn’t have much of a choice. But surprisingly, that wasn’t the point that convinced most people. A lot of the people who owned much of the planet’s manufacturing capability weren’t in favor of changing the status quo. Yes, Angelique had newer tech, but some of that technology would make their businesses redundant. Again, Peter hated that human nature was such that many powerful people couldn’t see the greater good.
The one thing that pulled everyone in line to support him was the concern about splitting the incumbent party’s vote. If the votes were split, it might make the other end of the political spectrum win. Ultimately, that was the one fact that convinced a good chunk of people. It was a sad fact of life that even when the world was in trouble, some people, especially some in power, still only thought about what was in it for them.
After the election, he held a big celebration in honor of Angelique. She gave a very rousing speech. As Peter predicted, Angelique became a uniting figure. She delivered a new fabricator, and then the whole world worked toward unpacking all the new technology she had brought with her.
A five-day holiday occurred soon after, and as Peter had hoped, many of the people who had supported a civil war because it would bring them greater profits saw their companies’ values fall to zero as new inventions made everything they controlled worthless.
The first thing Peter enacted was the creation of more fabricators. He had fabricators churning out fabricators as quickly as they could. And before long they had restored the complete manufacturing capabilities of the planet—the exponential nature of these machines made that all easy. And once the planet had sufficient enough manufacturing capability, he set about constructing ships for Angelique’s use. She wanted to start contacting the other planets.
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He did have an ulterior motive in all of this. He was confident humans were about to go to war with the Atua people. He had no idea how powerful the aliens were; he didn’t know how big their war fleet was. But one thing he was confident about was that the aliens would be back. It might take them several years; it might take them a hundred. But they seemed confident that they didn’t want some small rough civilization traveling around in their backyard.
And in Peter’s mind, the way the Atua treated him and the others was a sign of the way they thought about humans. It reminded him of the way he used to trick his dog, Stella. Stella hated the dog cage—he never wanted to go inside of it. Stella had a sixth sense about it too. Back before Peter was rich enough to pay groomers and vets to visit him, he had to get Stella inside of his little carry kennel to go on a trip. Peter would put treats in a line across the floor, guiding him into the cage. Once Stella was safely inside, Peter would give him a little pat on the head and another treat and then move him into the car.
There was no malice in Peter’s actions. He didn’t feel like he was doing anything wrong. He simply knew that the easiest way to get Stella into the cage was food. He knew from experience that trying to force Stella into the cage was traumatic for both of them and didn’t result in Stella entering his kennel.
Humans throughout history were happy to treat other humans in disgusting ways, especially those different from themselves. Back when humans lived on only one planet, it was common for whole countries to be enslaved or marginalized by a stronger group.
If the Atua people saw humanity as nothing more than pets, then it made sense that they used trickery to get them all back inside of the cage.
Peter was almost confident that there was only one way to make sure humans were treated with respect. He needed to unite all the planets currently controlled by humans. And he needed to coordinate a battle fleet between all of them. Not to fight back, at least not in the beginning. He needed all the planets to come together as one to show strength to the Atua people.
Peter believed strongly that the next time humanity clashed with the Atua, they needed to be equals.
Peter splashed his face with water a few times. He’d been in the bathroom a few minutes now and knew everyone was waiting outside the door. He didn’t need to use the bathroom, so everyone would probably be waiting for him. He washed his face a few more times and walked back into the situation room.
In front of him sat several aides, all with stacks of critical questions to answer or problems to solve. “Okay,” Peter said. “What’s next on the agenda?”
“The Starnet, Prime Minster,” Harry Hiscock said. “Angelique has given the technology the highest level of classification and not released it to the public. She doesn’t want anyone working on the technology.”
“And why not?”
“She’s unsure about the technology used to connect the planets with instant communication. She’s worried it would alert the Atua aliens of all the locations of her colonies. She believes the risk of someone on the planet using the tech against the wishes of everyone else is too high. She doesn’t want anyone on the planet to know about it.”
“Surely we can make it work without letting the rest of the universe know where our other star systems are located.”
“I wouldn’t know, sir,” Harry said. “Knowledge of how it works is above my pay grade.”
“Can you organize a group of engineers onto that problem? I suspect someone will be able to solve it.”
“Well actually, sir,” Niki Wong chimed in. “The security clearance for the tech is such that only Angelique’s Ship knows how to make it.”
Peter sighed. He wasn’t going to get that sleep after all. Angelique was preparing to leave soon, so this couldn’t wait. Peter sent a little text off to his assistant. He asked her to cancel his scheduled sleep; he needed to meet with Angelique tonight. His plan wasn’t going to work unless he convinced Angelique that it was worth the risk connecting all the systems in her colony together. He needed her agreement to make this happen.