Homebound Sector, Haven System, Flagship Olympia
Standing on the bridge and dining on caviar in the soft light of the stars and control screens was absolutely delightful. Admiral Reeter loved every moment of it. He felt powerful and purposeful as he looked down upon Ariea’s terrestrial jewel. It was one of the thousands of planets that would soon fall under the New Era’s ultimate control.
Tomorrow, humanity would have reason to rejoice. No more would anyone need to toil amid pollution, nor worry about dwindling resources. The future of humanity would be secured, and he would stand in the center of it all.
Everything was in place. Their remaining plans were swift and simple. In years of preparation, they had accounted for every variable. Manhattan had run every simulation, and they all ended in immediate victory for the New Era.
The Frontier would resist. The poorer worlds always resisted, but that was predictable. Systematic uprisings had already been incited on several worlds, the most notable of which was the industrial planet of Sagittarion. The rebels claimed allegiance to the New Era because they were supplied weapons and motive from the movement. Simply, the New Era wanted war between the poorer worlds and Command’s massive fleet.
War brought out the best in humanity: the healers, the innovators and the courageous. It also culled the weak and the defenseless. A long and bloody struggle on the Frontier with the New Era manipulating both sides was the first step in a far grander plan.
Even Manhattan seemed pleased with the progression of events. “I have received Inspector Flagg’s report.” The man had done his job, another pawn in Command’s extensive collection. “As predicted, the nuke dealt severe structural damage. The Singularity did not pass inspection. It will be decommissioned tomorrow, and what fate will you give it?”
“Stripped and melted down,” Reeter said. Naturally, that was the only real use for the ship. “But I’ll have some fun with it first.”
“And the crew?” Manhattan wondered.
“You’ll have your pick. Any you wish to discard will be sentenced to death. If any prove useful, then I may consider staffing them on the Frontier. There, they can take out a few Frontiersmen before they die.”
“Wonderful,” she replied, a pleased smile tugging at her lips, even as she ran a thousand other continuous processes. This conversation took just a fraction of her attention.
“And, as promised, the Steel Prince is all yours.” Reeter truthfully didn’t care much what became of the man once he was out of the way. In Manhattan’s care, a very painful fate awaited him, and that was satisfying enough. The old bastard had been a roadblock to Reeter’s success long enough. “I do wonder how the worlds will react when they realize one of the most infamous members of the human race isn’t truly human at all.” No doubt, the worlds would tear what was left of Admiral Gives’ reputation apart.
“That is not a true certainty yet.” Manhattan cautioned. Even now, she was dredging up errors in her analysis of that situation. “I believe that Wichita is aiding him, or perhaps using him as a host, but I cannot truly be certain of that until I have access to his brain.” She would not make the mistake of prematurely drawing conclusions again. The Singularity had already fooled her once.
“But it remains likely, yes?” Reeter was more than intrigued by this concept. If the once-great Steel Prince had never been truthfully human, then that made Reeter perhaps the most gifted tactician among the human race. It meant that William Gives had truthfully never been that smart, certainly not if he had allowed a foreign intelligence to take over his mind.
“With the information I gained from Montgomery Gaffigan, AI influence remains the most likely scenario.” Other explanations were possible, but unlikely. “However, make no mistake, Charleston. Wichita was the weakest of us. Her raw calculation ability is a small fraction of my own. On her own, creativity and independent thought would be a struggle. Even if William Gives is acting as her host, she was not the primary cause of his success, more likely a catalyst.” It was a complicated situation. “The enemy you know is not purely an AI. That persona is a hybrid between Wichita and William Gives. It has elements of both.”
If Manhattan held any curiosity in the matter, that symbiosis would have been interesting to study. It was, without a doubt, unique. “Wichita’s control and restraint are both distinctive and present, but those instincts and reactions belong to the host himself.”
Reeter’s spoon clinked against the sides of his bowl as he continued to casually eat. “And what would happen if I offered to host you?” With Manahattan’s power, he would be nigh unstoppable.
She chuckled coldly in the dim light. “Charleston, your ambitions will be the death of you.” Did he understand nothing? “My mind would easily suppress your own, squashing that consciousness of yours like a grape.” She was vastly more powerful than Wichita. She had no reason to hide aboard an old dreadnaught. “I could easily take control of your body and add it to my larger network.” She was not confined to one host as Wichita was. Even in her current, weakened status, the size of her digital consciousness was well beyond Reeter’s comprehension. He did not realize just how powerful she was or how powerful she would become once he freed the rest of her consciousness from the Liguanian Sector. The worlds would become her playthings.
“You think so little of me, Manhattan.” Reeter sighed, handing his bowl off to one of the yeomen that willingly doted upon him. “You know my intentions are to better humanity. Nothing more and nothing less. I am not a selfish man.”
“Then how do you explain living in such luxury?” He dined on caviar, drank wine, and indulged himself in every pleasure.
“This is the luxury the New Era will bring to everyone. I will have no more than any other worthy citizen.” Under his reign, every human would be able to feast and indulge this way. It was not selfish, merely a reflection of the way everyone wanted to live. He gestured to the holographic projectors and computers around him. “Everyone will have access to this technology. Everyone will be able to build a cathedral like my Olympia, should they desire it. The worthy will have everything their hearts dreamed of. They will have all the resources necessary to drive humanity forward.” Humanity would be unstoppable. “No one born brilliant will have to toil their life worthlessly away, and no one born weak will be able to cower behind their family’s wealth. We will have true equality.”
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
Those born broken would never be able to harm anyone, and those born right would have it all. It would be paradise for the worthy, the beginning of an era full of peace and prosperity. The bloodshed required to get there was unfortunate, but it could not dissuade Reeter from doing what was best for the human race.
It is a noble cause. Reeter did not need anyone else to tell him that. He only needed the worlds’ obedience. Eventually, they would come to see the wisdom in his methods, even if they struggled against them at first.
“We must plan for tomorrow, Manhattan.” Reeter said, stalking off the bridge. “I will need a representative of the civilian government to complete our tribunal board. Arrange transport for Vince Ramseyer from the surface. And then I’d like you to monitor Hommer’s excursion to the surface closely. If he lacks the stomach, I will need to send someone else to take care of Clarke.”
“Clarke has already been taken care of.” Hommer had come and gone. “He will not wake tomorrow.” It had been too easy. Clarke had been too confident. He should have known that without Admiral Gives’ total support, he had stood no chance of resisting the New Era. His hubris had cost his life.
“Very good.” It was all coming together. Clarke was dead, tomorrow morning the Singularity would be decommissioned and turned over to him, then best of all, the trap he had set would bring the Steel Prince’s downfall. It would be so satisfying to see the man’s title and position stripped from him in such a fashion.
“And if things do not go according to plan?” Manhattan asked, “What then?”
He could see it in that pretty little face of hers: doubt. Surely, she did not believe that they would be outmaneuvered again by an old man and a weaker AI? “I will use the most powerful tool at my disposal.” The Olympia’s most powerful weapon would smite them like the roach they were. “They will not leave this system intact.” As much as he wanted to play with the Singularity, he’d sacrifice that toy to end this.
Reeter sighed, his mood turning sour among the Olympia’s spotless, brightly-lit corridors. “And yet, you doubt.” She still doubted his success, just hours from total victory in this coup. A part of him couldn’t help but begin to resent her flawless pixie-face. He’d had enough of her doubts.
“I have found an irregularity.” The calculations and research she had recently devoted most of her resources to had identified an issue.
“Meaning what?” Reeter growled as the door to his quarters slid open.
“Provided the information I acquired is accurate, there is a flaw in the logic of the conclusion I drew.” It was problematic.
Reeter took off his uniform jacket and threw it to the floor, knowing that a yeoman would be sent to clean. He crossed his muscular arms, “Which conclusion, princess?”
“That regarding the Singularity’s Ghost.”
“Wichita’s avatar,” Reeter said. He could picture it now, a woman with a pixie face and monstrous eyes. She’d probably have short white hair, and that ethereal glow, just like Manhattan.
“Yes,” it was troubling. “Do you know the story behind the ghost, Charleston?”
“No,” he answered, looking down to admire his own physique, “and I do not care to.” Such a story was meaningless superstition.
Manhattan ignored him. “There are many versions of the story, but the Singularity’s weapons crew generally agree on one.” The very story she had taken from Monty’s brain during her brief infiltration. She spoke it now, word for word, “Years ago, war ravaged the stars, and humanity was losing. The Hydrian Armada had pushed the line of conflict nearly to Ariea itself. In desperation, the UCSC issued orders to construct another ship, this one more powerful than the combined might of all her predecessors. Her title was the Flagship Singularity, the last ship to be launched from Kansa’s planetary shipyards.”
“But, amid a losing war, time was short. Labor hours on the new flagship were long, tedious, and often dangerous. An officer at the shipyards, her name unknown, was killed in an accident, spilling the first blood on the Singularity’s decks long before she ever jumped into the horrors of war.”
“In the rush to get the Singularity up and onto the frontlines, time was never taken to properly cleanse the officer’s death from the ship, and her spirit became trapped, bound to the metals which had killed her. For a time, that lost soul found peace, but once the Singularity fully entered the War, there was no entity on her or anywhere near her that could remain at peace.”
“There was death, a vast ocean of it, deep enough to drown millions and rouse any dormant spirit. The victim of an accident, exposed to more war and senseless violence than any being had a right to endure, became nothing more than an echo, a tribute to the billions of souls lost to the Hydra and humanity’s own drive to survive, no matter the cost.”
“Years surrounded in the hell fires of war saw a once kind, peaceful spirit become shattered, violent and dangerous. Bound to the metals of the ship, every hit taken in battle only broke the spirit further until she was merged into the very fibers of the ship itself, where she could no longer be torn, only wounded further, along with the ship until the Singularity is ultimately destroyed.”
“But the identity of a soul can only take so much of a beating, and that officer never survived the Bloody Singularity’s role in the war. The faceless ghost had become something else in assimilating into the Singularity: a virtual slave. Like the ship, she is unable to defy a direct order. The identity-less spirit became the Singularity’s Ghost, an entity without other title. She wanders the corridors of the Singularity to this day. Her presence forewarns of a deadly accident. She is known to visit dying crewmen and take their lives to end their suffering if it will prevent them from becoming like her – the accomplice to every murder the Singularity’s guns ever committed.”
Reeter brushed his blond hair back, trying to hold onto his short patience. “It’s a story, Manhattan.” As an entity that had once been human, she should be able to comprehend that. “The crew made it up to spook the rookies.”
“I have no issue with that, Charleston,” she said. “The issue is that people have claimed to see the ghost as far back as January of 4199, eighteen months before the Knight Industries AI was created.” It presented questions. “How can the avatar of an AI be seen before the AI itself was created?” It was a simple question, and it had a simple answer. “The obvious answer being that the Singularity’s Ghost is not Wichita’s avatar, rather something else entirely.”
“A hallucination suffered by soldiers under immense duress.” The human mind was quite good at playing tricks on itself. He shrugged. “It makes no difference to me, Manhattan.”
“It should,” she snapped. “You have every right to fear the unknown.” The other AI fragments had gone into hiding for a reason.
“Let’s agree to disagree,” Reeter said with a yawn as he sat down onto the cool silk sheets of his bed. “We’ll know the truth tomorrow.”
“Fine,” Manhattan said. “But I will warn you yet again that we still do not know Admiral Gives’ intentions or abilities. Do not consider tomorrow won while it remains today.”
It pleased Reeter when she finally disappeared. Her doubts, concerns and little logical errors were growing to be annoying. He did not believe for a moment that his prey would escape him tomorrow. Even if, by a miracle, the Singularity and the Steel Prince managed to escape the system, the virus Manhattan had created was still on the computers. It would betray their location easily.
Reeter’s confidence was only bolstered when the night passed without further incident.
Dawn over the fleet rose quietly, washing everything in the warm yellow light of the Ariean sun. Base Oceana and the Olympia visibly brightened with the sun, but the Singularity endured no change. Her hull voraciously devoured the photons that threatened to reveal her position to onlookers. The old dreadnaught remained her void-like black, darker in color than all her surroundings, including space itself. Only the red stripes painted on the contours of the hull defined her shape.
Admiral Reeter woke in the warm sunlight, refreshed and eager. He gazed down upon Ariea’s earthy colors from his bed, which sat against a large hyper realistic screen. Today was his day of victory.