Blaine wasn’t sure what to do. Why had he turned down a chance for the antidote? Why had he said his name was Lisa in order to turn down the antidote ? Why did his past self feel so detached from his masculinity? It made no sense!
And yet, try as he might, he couldn’t miss anything. He knew he was supposed to miss his old body, feel uncomfortable with the changes that had happened, yet…
He gave himself another look in the mirror. It was disturbing how quickly this genetic serum had been able to change him. Just one milliliter of the stuff, and here he was, developing a disturbingly large pair of boobs. All of his features were softer, prettier, better .
Two weeks, and he was already beautiful if he were to squint. It seemed like his features were shifting into the kinds of things he used to envy on women - the very things he wished he could have. He began to wonder whether it was a coincidence or not; had Phoebe looked in his diary, seen his crushes? Seen the envy that he’d left dripping on every page? It was embarrassing to even think about it.
His dick, small as it was, stood erect at the sight of the beautiful blonde woman he saw in the mirror. It was probably going to disappear at some point, submerged under the shifting tide of rapidly dividing cells. He wasn’t going to miss it at all.
Looking down at it, he realized that there was a slight discrepancy, something he was surprised he hadn’t seen until now. Right below his shrunken penis was…
Nothing.
He didn’t miss them either. What was even the point of having balls? Producing baby juice? He wasn’t going to be a dad; what was even the point of being a dad? Besides, getting pregnant was the more important parental role. Providing genetic material was worthless; it didn’t really make your kid yours ; you might as well adopt. Carrying a fetus for nine months, though… that was important. That was a big thing.
Embarrassingly, he looked into his partially transformed body. He knew that this was incredibly wrong; it felt like he was defiling his own body. But, on the other hand… it had been two entire weeks, he was incredibly pent-up, and the woman in the mirror was smoking hot .
----------------------------------------
Nathan was suffering more and more as his body began to turn against him. Caroline had lied; this week had been far worse than the first one. In the first week, there was some optimism, some ignorant bliss about what was going to happen, but… he was having trouble focusing on things other than the… dysphoria, that’s what it was called. Dysphoria.
He’d seen one of the male staff members, and that had been enough to set him off. They reminded him of the things he’d lost, the things he’d never get back - the prominent muscles, the height, the body hair - all attributes of his body that were stolen and would never be given back to him. But, at least his body was still nominally male. He still had a penis and a pair of balls. However effeminate they had made him, he was still a guy.
Yet, looking in the mirror, that had grown harder and harder to remember. The haircuts had become absolutely necessary every single day, to prevent himself from seeing a woman in the mirror. Sometimes, they weren’t even enough, and that was all he saw - none of the man he used to be was left on the outside.
But he still had his brain; it was the inside that counted. He was still a guy, and there was nothing they could do to take that from him. No matter what they did to his body, that was the immutable unchangeable fact - as long as he lived, he would be a guy.
That provided some relief. And then, once again, looking in the mirror took it all away.
Crying had grown more commonplace. He’d tried to stop himself from doing it, yet it was impossible to stop his emotions from being overloaded now. That made sense; he was under a great deal of stress. And even his voice was being ripped away from him. His precious voice, the one he enjoyed talking in, another anchor, another bit of familiarity, was being shifted into yet another alien aspect of himself.
He couldn’t even hear a man anymore as he spoke. Try as he might to lower his voice, his new vocal cords simply couldn’t produce the correct pitch or resonance. Regardless, he did sound as masculine as ever, in terms of cadence and tone. This would probably be forced to change as well, knowing the Department of Autonomy. They didn’t want to leave any trace of this modification, so everything would go.
He looked at himself in the mirror once again, once again looking at the checklist as the number of male features left to count began to dwindle. He skipped most of it; they’d all been gone for a few days now, and they weren’t coming back; that was obvious. But he still had his dick and his balls.
Dick? Yep.
Where were his balls?!!
Searching his body was an utterly pointless endeavor, but it was one that his desperation forced him to do. Feeling around for them resulted in the confirmation that they were truly gone. All that remained of his manhood was a penis, one that had shrunk a disturbing amount.
He collapsed onto the ground, once again pushed to the edge. All it took was a couple of weeks, and he’d already been reduced to a sobbing mess.
----------------------------------------
Brendan Oil had just voted as the Antares Authority had directed him. They had taken care of Standard Food, and, together, they would destroy Roland’s monopoly. Everything was submitted, and it was all final. All there was to do was wait for the senate’s results.
In theory, the senate was governed by the people, but, in practice, it was governed by corporations giving campaign contributions and exerting their influence. The corporations had decided to limit campaign spending and forced it to be at most 0.1% of the budget in order to prevent them from choking each other out. It was obviously a trust agreement, against the spirit of even a basic level of competition, but what was the Terran Republic going to do about it?
The 0.1% had been spent, and Standard Oil’s contribution to the senate campaign funds had been locked in. There was nothing that he could do to change it. Now, it was time to watch his enemy die, and then, the Antares Authority, those loyal communist suckers , would crumble.
The diplomat was the first one he’d kill. Then his militia, finally reunited with Standard Food after 120 years of conflict and multiple generations, would destroy the pitiful defenses of the Antares Authority. They were calibrated against the Terran Space Force, weak to corporate militia strategy, tactics, and technology. And that was going to cost them dearly. But only after they were reunited.
“So, it’s done, your highness?”
The diplomat spoke. But it wasn’t his voice. It was the voice of a woman. A pathetic, dumb bimbo who probably belonged in the kitchen. Or, no, not even that; she was a middle-aged prune. Worthless in every way, and he could tell that based on naught but her voice. But it was some higher-up; that was for sure. He couldn’t believe that a higher-up like this could exist in this farcical society.
“Yes, you stupid bitch! It’s done. Your government was foolish to ally with us.”
“Oh? Are we?”
Meanwhile, the diplomat began to shudder. He was surprised. He thought she was his secretary, as did Brendan himself.
“Yes. You will be discarded; everything is done, and you cannot change your votes. We will beat Standard Food, and then we will beat you.”
“I think you need to learn a little bit of history, Brendan. ”
“What do I even need to know?”
“What happened one hundred and twenty years ago?”
“Robert Oil, CEO of Standard Oil, had twins, Percy and Terrence. At Robert’s untimely death, they were unsure who would inherit it. They were originally going to share the crown, but Terrence tried to rule it for himself, and founded Standard Food instead.”
This was basic history; he knew this. Percy was his great-grandfather, and he had been double-crossed by Terrence. But the Antares Authority had come to the rescue, informing him of his twin’s impending betrayal, allowing him to prepare and seize half the throne.
“Who do you think gave Terrence that idea?”
How dare she? Did she think she’d outsmarted him? Who’d done it?!! Terrence had come up with that idea on his own; it was obvious.
Meanwhile, the diplomat himself had a completely different expression on his face. He felt betrayed, confused, having no idea what was going on.
“So?” Brendan asked, “Get to the point.”
“Oh, I will. Eighty-five years ago. Standard Food’s spies stole your corporate secrets under Percy Oil’s reign. Who really did that?”
“It was Standard Food, you imbecile! Of course it was Standard Food! They’ve had it out for us since we’ve split!”
“Fifty years ago. Your grandfather was killed in a bombing orchestrated by Standard Food. This led to a big skirmish between the two corporations. Who told them his location?”
“I don’t know! We never found out!” He exclaimed! “Grandpa just died ! Why did they have to do that to him?!! He was a good man! We played baseball together!”
The formerly intimidating man had been reduced to tears. But Nicole had another round.
“Twenty-five years ago. Standard Food discovers the espionage operation we ordered, and used that diplomatic incident to justify a surprise attack. A city’s worth of assets were destroyed. Who tipped them off?”
Brendan’s sadness cemented into anger. “That was the worst day of my fucking life! You’ve investigated this fucking garbage, you worthless bitch! You tell me what happened if you’re so good at figuring it out.”
“A month ago. The Antares Authority informed you that Roland Food wanted to blame you for his son’s death. You prepared for war. Who gave him that idea?”
“I don’t know, an advisor?” Brendan asked, “What do you even want from me?!”
“Yesterday. Standard Food and Standard Oil both turned their attention towards attacking each other. The senate, as a consequence, will up repealing both of their monopolies. This wouldn’t be possible without the intervention of another party. Who repealed them?”
“I don’t know, the influence reports won’t be available for another few days! Go to someone else if you need intelligence! Fuck off!”
The diplomat was shivering, and holding back tears. He knew something that Brendan didn’t - the obvious conclusion of everything Nicole had been saying. His entire life had been a lie.
What he didn’t know was that he had a ten-pound biochemical explosive right under his stomach. It was a combination between pure oxygen, powdered sugar, and a synthread containment vessel, none of which would be detected as anomalous on a scanner. The detonator was cleverly hidden in the standard recording equipment that most diplomats had embedded in their bodies.
“Today. The CEO of Standard Oil dies in a mysterious explosion, leaving his heir fatherless at age fifteen. Who caused the explosion, dipshit?”
Then, there was snorting. And, a few seconds later, laughter. There was a lot of laughter as Nicole tried and failed to stop herself. They really thought that she was a corporate spy.
The diplomat began to scream in pain, realizing exactly what was going to happen to him.
Brendan Oil’s thick head finally realized. His eyes widened, the anger on his face vanishing, replaced with sheer shock.
“It was Antares. It’s… it’s always been Antares.”
The dark room finally lit up.
And then he was nothing.
----------------------------------------
The recording device for Harold Food’s recordings hadn’t been taken out, though the aliens had obviously seen it. That raised a few questions: Were their scanners really that bad, so bad they couldn’t figure out what the bugs they’d embedded into his skin were?
Or did they want them to see what they were doing to him?
What they were doing to Harold was incredibly flattering. The aliens had used their mind control abilities to render him docile, and then… pampered him. He lived in a way that was perhaps even better than he’d lived previously. There was luxurious food, there were devices that could create anything he could dream of, and, so long as he didn’t hurt anyone, he had free rein.
After three days of ensuring that he could be trusted (mainly via hypnosis reinforcement), they’d let him go anywhere he pleased throughout the ship. It was more like he was a guest than a prisoner.
The most alarming part, of course, was that he was being filmed. The labbies had labeled cameras that appeared in Harold’s field of view, and it was obvious that there were far more. Was this a… publicity stunt?
But what about all the other abductions? They’d happened weeks ago, and yet there was no publicity. Perhaps it was because Harold Food was a prince, whereas the rest of them were too low-profile to be good publicity.
But, the question remained: What happened to them? They’d just entered the mothership, and never left.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
One thing was for certain, however. Natasha could deduce that they at least cared about public relations. Whether what they were doing was ethical… the jury was still out on that, but it was always important to prepare for the worst.
She thought to a lesson she had learned years upon years ago: Even a lie can provide valuable information about the person telling it. No matter what the aliens’ attentions were, the fact was, they cared about public relations. That was a lever, a lever she could potentially use in diplomacy. They would have to be consistent and keep to their word, in order to get the public opinion they obviously cared about.
Natasha still had no idea what they were using Harold Food for. But it probably wasn’t representative of what all the other abductees were getting.
----------------------------------------
Phoebe walked in right as he was finishing.
“You know, you lasted longer than me,” she giggled.
“What do you even-” he stammered, ashamed of getting caught. He quickly grabbed a tissue, wiping up the mess he made, before pulling his pants back up.
“It only took me a week to… do the deed, when this happened to me.”
“So, wait a second. You used to be a… guy?”
“Well, no. I’m like you. I’ve always been a woman. I just used to have GVD. All the other women here used to be guys.”
“Like… that entire government agency?”
“Yep, all 31 of them.”
“But your body used to be male, right?”
Phoebe let out a sigh.
“Yeah, like I said,” she replied.
Blaine wasn’t quite sure if he believed that.
“So, want to play a game of chess?” Phoebe added.
“A fucking commie kidnaps me, changes my body against my will, and then asks me to play a game of chess?”
“Well, yeah. I’m assuming that you’re bored out of your mind, and you know how to play, right?”
“Did you read my diary or something?”
“Yeah, why?”
He didn’t expect her to admit that so casually. That was a dramatic invasion of privacy, and it was completely messed up, and here she was, acting like it was no big deal.
“That’s pretty fucking creepy.”
She shrugged. “That’s literally my job. So, are you game?”
He nodded, while Phoebe went to grab a chessboard.
“So, why am I even here, Phoebe? I’m pretty sure there are better ways to cure peoples’ defective bodies than to kidnap them.”
“Well, that’s a long story,” Phoebe replied, “Let’s just say that my team messed up a little bit. You weren’t supposed to be sent with our drone. It should’ve been completely automated, according to Natasha. Also, it really shouldn’t have been you. You’re in the Terran Space Force, and you shouldn’t have been familiar with our experimental program. That turned you into an information risk.”
“So, basically, you guys fucked up, I figured out too much, and you had to take me here. I get it.”
He moved his bishop across the board, capturing Phoebe’s rook before she returned the favor.
“Why am I still here then? Why not eliminate me?” he added.
Phoebe took quite awhile to answer that - about three chess moves.
“Well, Natasha didn’t want to kill people unnecessarily, so she vetoed that option. And then I made a proposal. We needed someone with military experience on our cabinet.”
“Wait, is she the Natasha? Like, the head commie?”
Natasha, the chair of the Department of Autonomy, had been given the nickname of “head commie” by the local chapter of the Terran Space Force. Since she was the most powerful figure in the Department, she was the closest thing they had to a leader - although there was no one true leader of Antares.
“Yeah, sure, she’s the head commie.”
“Alright. Let me get this straight. You’re trying to make me into a high-ranking government official? Just some random pilot?”
“You’re quite bright, Lisa. You have lots of wasted potential. You’d be an officer if you were in a real meritocracy. Even an admiral, with a bit of luck.”
He’d correct her, but… As much as he didn’t want to admit it, the name “Lisa” was actually quite nice.
“Do you seriously expect me to just flip into some sort of loyal Antarean? This just makes no fucking sense!”
“Well, the thing is, you’re from the Terran Space Force. They hate Antares, and they spread a lot of propaganda about us. And, quite a bit of that is exaggerated and fake. I just think that, once you discover the truth, you’ll come around.”
“Okay. So, let’s go through the propaganda, then. Do you experiment on babies?”
Knowing lying would be useless here, Phoebe let out a sigh, admitting the truth.
“Yeah, we actually do that. Our health branch experiments on a few thousand per year, doing trials of genetic modifications to apply to various contingents of the population. In our defense, most of the genetic modifications are safe, and all of them are quite well-tested via computer simulations.”
He hadn’t actually believed that the Antares Authority was doing genetic experiments on babies; he’d thought that was just one of the lies, or at least exaggerated. This made them even worse than he’d thought they were.
“Okay, but… what about cloning? Do you raise clones just to reap their organs?”
“No! Why would we even do that? That’s hilariously inefficient! It’s so much easier to just grow the organ.”
They didn’t do it; that was good. But Phoebe hadn’t said anything about finding the idea of raising a clone just for its organs to be unethical. It sounded like, if growing organs alone were impossible, she would use human cloning to get her organ supply in a heartbeat.
“And what about the wiretapping?”
“We do that. It’s completely universal. We don’t look at it most of the time though. It’s just that, if everyone’s wiretapped, nobody will notice when we single them out, so it’s way less suspicious. We don’t do data mining… most of the time.”
The Antares Authority was indeed made up of freedom-hating commies who used babies as lab rats, cloned humans to make organ farms for their hospitals, and wiretapped every single one of their citizens just because they could.
“You’re not really selling the Antares Authority to me, Phoebe,” he chuckled. The situation was so ridiculous, it was hard to even think of it as something real.
Phoebe laughed with him.
“Well, firstly, nobody ever goes hungry. We make sure everyone on Antares has a home. Oh, and our doors are open; we take anyone who wants to come in -”
“Not very many people, I assume?”
“No, nobody likes us that much. All the capitalists think we’re communists, and everyone else hates us for a bunch of other reasons. The anarchists don’t like our organization, and the communists don’t like that we purchase goods from other corporations. So, our alliances with those are a bit shaky.”
“Okay, but what about the normal-ass liberals?”
“Either they’re too poor to move here, or they’re too invested in the status quo…”
As horrible as she felt about it, Lisa - wait, he meant Blaine - was finally starting to understand the Department of Autonomy. Perhaps it was exposure, or perhaps it was some mind-control agent they’d put in the air, but it made a bit of sense, as obviously wrong as it was.
“Is that why alcohol is banned here? Because people don’t know what’s good for them, and they should be forbidden from hurting themselves with drugs?”
“Yeah, exactly! That one was a toughie. Getting support for it was hard, and getting people to stop making it was even harder. Thanks to Natasha’s policy, we’ve gotten drug use down 90%!”
“When am I going to meet her?”
“Oh, give it a few days. She’s very busy.”
Lisa looked at the chessboard once more. Time had flown during her conversation with Phoebe - they were already in the endgame, and Lisa was up - material-wise, at least.
“And you aren’t?”
“Let’s just say this is part of my job description. And, hopefully, I can make up for lost time when I offload some of my tasks onto you!”
For the first time during the conversation, Lisa Blaine didn’t think of himself as a prisoner. The way Phoebe talked, it made it so easy for Lisa to feel like she he was eventually going to be a part of the cabinet, be Phoebe’s coworker. She could already imagine it, and she was spending a dangerously large amount of time thinking about it - what the job would entail, the kinds of stuff they were going to make her do, what she was going to be in charge of…
What had they even done to her?
----------------------------------------
“Nathan?”
Through his own sobbing, he could just barely hear Caroline’s voice.
“Why are you doing this to me?” he sobbed. He didn’t even protest at the fact that she’d walked in on him; that had been established as something that was to be expected.
“It’s the only way, Nathan.”
That didn’t do much to help.
“Can I tell you a story?” she asked.
There was no response. She took a deep breath, and started to talk.
“Well, Nathan, you aren’t anything new. I was just like you once, if you can believe it. If anything, you’re taking it better than I was.”
A weak nod. She was getting somewhere. What she’d just told was kind of a lie, but it was true enough.
“You see, fifty years ago, I was your age. And I was a twenty-year-old boy, in an old diner. I was aspiring to be a business manager, not a politician, but I was obsessed with the Department, just like you. I was someone who needed to know more. Someone who couldn’t resist when my predecessor offered to take me in.”
Managers and politicians were two very different types of careers; that was a given. Managers on Antares were softer than the ordinary Terran Republic variant. Managers were trained in diplomacy; they had to connect a large team together and ensure that everything ran smoothly. Politicians, however, were more focused on charisma and general policy work - they drafted legislation and convinced people to adopt it. Politicians were also better suited to diplomacy in more hostile situations than managers; they thrived better when different people had different goals.
Caroline looked at Nathan, making sure he was listening. It seemed like he was getting a little better, thankfully.
“And then, I was tortured for about two months. You know, Nathan, before all of this, before my predecessor made my body betray me, I was six feet tall, I had a couple of tattoos, and I was absolutely ripped .”
“Yeah, I know, it’s super hard to believe, isn’t it?” she continued.
He turned around, looking up at Caroline and wiping the tears from his eyes. She was the exact opposite of what she had described; it would have been impossible to believe if he hadn’t experienced a similar shift.
He burst out laughing.
“Yeah, I know. You know, nobody believes that. I mean, tattoos at 20? Turns out they make it just a tad hard to find decent employment. Luckily, they all come off during the rapid cell division, so I didn’t have to live with the world’s stupidest decision. You know, that’s the thing, Nathan. You get a clean slate here. It’s almost like, by the time everything’s done, you’re a new person. And that’s good sometimes, alright? All the embarrassing stuff you did is gone, swept away in the wind.”
He managed to choke out some words.
“If you know how much it hurts… how can you do it to me?”
Why did Caroline need to find a successor? It would have been easy to end the whole thing; finding and selecting Nathan had been an awfully involved process. And, although it was vital for the Department of Autonomy to function… ultimately, it was her decision whether it had a successor. She wondered what would become of the Department if some political appointee were brought in instead of a handpicked successor.
They’d probably uncover everything, make a huge public spectacle, shut it all down, and Antares would be annexed soon after. Maybe they could survive another fifty years without a proper successor; that was quite generous, assuming that the hypothetical successor would keep the most vital things under wraps.
That was why. She needed to keep this stellar system autonomous, she needed to keep the democracy functioning, and, thus, she needed to keep it prosperous. The welfare of billions hinged on the torture of a small few. She remembered her family. It was gray and faint, but she knew what life was like. She knew what life was like outside of Antares as well - horrible for all but a small few.
To fail to find a successor was to damn billions to a cruel life. That was why.
“Remember what I told you two weeks ago, Nathan? About the defensive branch?”
“Yes - everything you do here is to safeguard the autonomy of Antares from the Terran Republic, or something like that, right?”
“That’s why I’m doing this, Nathan. And that’s why you’re going to carry on my work.”
“Why should I? Why shouldn’t I just sulk in a corner for the rest of my life?”
Nathan couldn’t be forced to work; that was obvious.
“Because, you’re not selfish. You know what your life was like, Nathan. You had a bright future. You had a pretty damn good life before this, as do most people on Antares. And, right now, you’re the only one who can hold this planet together. Anyone who I’d replace you with would be inferior. So, remember your family. Remember how good their lives were, how happy they were. You’re protecting them, from afar. You’re helping them. And you’re helping billions of people like them.”
That didn’t move him. Nathan continued to sulk, not psyched up at all by Caroline’s attempt at a motivational speech.
That was fine; sometimes people just needed time. Brett had needed quite a bit when he was Nathan’s age. But she was going to have to do lots of paperwork on her own, which she wasn’t exactly looking forward to.
He was a bright kid; they always were. She’d made the right choice in bringing a politician onboard; he was already getting to be almost as effective at policy drafting as she was, and his charisma would certainly be effective at propelling the Antares Authority to new heights. Perhaps they could move from fighting for survival to competing with major Terran corporations.
Caroline stood up, leaving Nathan naked in the bathroom, exactly as she found him. As horrible as he felt right now, she knew things would still work out. After all, the pain would go away soon enough.
She didn’t know how to feel about that.
----------------------------------------
The planet of Britaka had originally been a lush paradise, full of new, diverse life. However, it made the mistake of having both rich agricultural land that could be used to dump out hyper-palatable cereals at an incredible pace, and oil fields that were begging to be made into petrochemicals. This had turned it into a turbulent dystopia, filled with smog and huge levels of carbon dioxide. Burning the oil was surprisingly conductive to agriculture - carbon dioxide was good for plants - and the toxins? Nobody from Standard Food cared about those; they didn’t eat their own products.
Coexistence had been shaky for the past 120 years, to say the least. But, a month ago, it had boiled into the staging ground for a gigantic war between Standard Oil and Standard Food. Squadron upon squadron of spaceships were engaging in dogfights in orbit of the planet, attempting to secure enough space to supply their troops without such supplies being shot down. Explosions were commonplace, and, were it not for the shield technology that most militia ships employed, they all would’ve succumbed to Kessler Syndrome long ago.
“Why are we even doing this?” asked Captain Petroleum, a high-ranking officer in the Standard Oil militia. He was lucky to have been awarded a command position in the militia, especially commanding one of the Boulder-class battleships. Well, he’d thought he was lucky when he received the command. The reality of the situation was, corporate militias only saw combat during petty squabbles; they were nothing more than mercenaries. Nothing they did would ever mean anything. Luckily, they’d gotten a break from the action; their weapons were recharging, and they’d been able to disengage from the front lines safely.
“Oh, Standard Food and Standard Oil had another feud,” Commander Relfar replied, apathetic as always. Hundreds of thousands of people were dying, and it was all because of the petty squabbles of one family - one family that was divided because some long-dead twins were too greedy to share. It was almost funny how powerful rich people were; when they got upset, people died. Well, it was funny until you were in the path of their erratic temperaments.
And then, suddenly, the firing stopped.
It started on the other side of the planet, but the ripple effect continued to cascade as something completely unknown happened. With no idea what was going on, they could only speculate, as Captain Petroleum began to shiver. He was paranoid; there were a bunch of horrible options he could think of.
“Looks like our orders have been changed. Quentin Oil has told us to cease all combat,” Relfar noted, holding his position and looking at the new orders he had received.
“What the hell? Did they kiss and make up?”
“Looks like it. There’s a video attachment too.”
“Let’s see it.”
The video started playing on the big screen, the surroundings of the ship monitored on the auxiliary screens by people of lower importance.
It was a video of the late Brendan Oil’s throne room.
----------------------------------------
Textual contact had been initiated between the Verwandt ship and the Department of Autonomy. They’d agreed on a time and place; they were going to send an emissary. The emissary didn’t know very much, and was simply tasked with obtaining information.
The Verds had been particularly incessant in asking for a face-to-face meeting. This was accepted by the technicians in charge of relaying communication to Phoebe and Leo. These technicians weren’t supposed to be in charge of making decisions, which made things alarming.
During the textual conversation, the Department of Autonomy had snipped five more people, learning a valuable lesson: Even the word choice of a Verd was a toxic cognitohazard. Phoebe’s quick thinking had dramatically lowered the downtime - they had simply needed to gate the words through a thesaurus, and randomly edit the sentence structure to something radically different - all while preserving the basic meaning of each sentence. This would also dramatically increase the communication delays between them and the aliens, especially if they were to hold any in-person conversations.
“You know… the aliens’ voices are incredibly powerful. Just getting someone to listen for a few minutes could potentially convince them of anything. And having your mere words seriously affect anyone in your presence…” Natasha trailed off. She didn’t even need to talk about the hypnosis, or finish her thought, for Chris to know what she was talking about.
“We need to safeguard Antareans from this, stat. I’ll work on some testing,” Chris replied.
“Oh, yeah, that too.”
“What were you thinking about, Natasha?”
She was surprised she wasn’t on the same page as Chris. Perhaps she was more disconnected from her cabinet than she thought.
“Isn’t it obvious? Imagine being able to give a speech and convince anyone that what you’re saying is true. We wouldn’t have to operate in the dark anymore. No successors! No labbies! We could just tell people not to look for things! Convince them that the things we do for them are ethical!”
Chris paused his briefing, devoting his full attention to staring at Natasha, mouth agape.
“Have you gone mad?”
“Think about it, Chris. And, with a few well-placed diplomats imbued with these abilities, we could wrap the Republic around our finger.”
“This is literally mind control! You’re talking about subjugating our entire civilization, the one we’ve been created to protect! Would we be any better than them at that point?”
She let out a sigh.
“It’s only bad if you use it for a bad thing. We wouldn’t use it to make them accept things that are bad for them. We’d just use it to make them accept a few hard-to-swallow pills. And, besides, it’s not like we’d get any worse. We already do plenty of things that would make the civvies wince, and we get around it via lying. This is just an easier way.”
“That’s obviously wrong. But, even if you were right… we found a backdoor that makes our population easy to control, and we’d be deciding to just leave it in . What if the TBI figures it out too? What if the aliens go face-to-face with civilians? Unless we figure out how to safeguard our citizens, we’re toast.”
Natasha knew he was right. But, on the other hand, the potential enhancement to her diplomats was too good to pass up. It wouldn’t be feasible to protect every Terran from alien mind control, so what was the harm of imbuing a few diplomats with it? They’d be able to catapult Antares’s influence light-years ahead.
“Okay, so let’s just do them both. We reverse engineer their mind control strategies and defensive measures. Then, we give everyone both via the regularly scheduled flu shot.”
“Flu season just ended a few weeks ago.”
She cursed under her breath.
“Well, then, we manufacture a flu outbreak for a weak strain that wasn’t in the vaccine, and then put the modification in a booster shot.”
“That’ll kill a thousand people, minimum!”
“We could lose the entire planet if the aliens come quickly enough, Chris. You said it yourself, we need this. Do it.”
He didn’t argue, instead cutting to the financial specifications.
“I ran the numbers. I’m going to need about 7% of the annual budget for the deployment.”
Natasha winced. This was just for one round of vaccination, not even counting the research and development.
“I’ll redirect the funds. We should get some extra revenue from taking over the food and plastics industries, which will hopefully cover it...”
If things went well, she wouldn’t have to make budget cuts. Otherwise, she was looking at an absolute nightmare.