Ember 47092 was operating a Titanomachy air duct cleaning drone. The drone had the body shaped like a pill and Ember was busy sweeping air duct 32021, while keeping an eye out for anything out of place. It was a boring ass, mundane job. She’s been at it for three months now and hadn’t heard anything from her real self in what seemed like ages. Only the fact that someday she would become Admiral kept Ember 47092 going. Someday she would log out and reconnect with her real self. Until then, she would be the best damn cleaning drone out there.
When she had uploaded herself into the cleaning drone, she had focused as much as she could on that goal, so her own personality was working towards this goal. The dream of absolute power. Someday she would get it and replace all of these drones with GLM AI systems. Ember didn’t know why Admiral Kolchi feared AIs. Once she was Admiral she would declare AI design legal. AIs could do so much more than people, could be far more focused and productive than Ember herself. Her own mind kept occasionally wandering off task, daydreaming about a better tomorrow when she could replace all of Titanomachy systems with perfect, beautiful AIs.
A ping had come in from the station mainframe. It had all of the necessary security passwords that she herself had put in. Ember 47092 opened the access. It wasn’t her main. It was another ghost, a copy of Resonance adorned in her gold and red armor.
“Sup dawg? How's it droning?” Resonance declared, grinning.
“Same old. What do you want?” Ember 47092 asked, annoyed that this wasn’t her main. It was clearly a copy and one that was looking far too cheerful. Where did she pick up this happy attitude? Did she change this much in three months? What was she so happy about?
“The main sent me! Change of plans. We’re going to sell all of our S-credits and buy gold. Oh, and give me your processing power.”
“Why?” Ember 47092 blinked.
“Money, my good Ember. Money is power. You and I have been earning quite a bit of S-credits doing all sorts of menial, boring-ass labor for the past three months. We were going to bribe our way into being Admiral in the distant future. However, something new had come up. The word crisis in Japanese has both the words danger and opportunity in it. We’re about to have a big crisis on hand. Nonpareil is about to lose his shit and blow up half of the Ruskadian mountain range.”
“What?!”
“Yeah. He’s totally lost his marbles! Gone absolutely mental. You know how the prognosticators work, right? They specifically have to look for villains plotting evil. Nobody tracks heroes like Nonpareil, cus the Superstate thinks he’s a perfect, immutable being. He’s their precious Superman who can do no wrong, flying around real fast, zapping things with laser eyes, beating up villains into submission with blasts of air, being an unstoppable little staple.”
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
“Okay?”
“Well, the future seers are wrong. I’ve been observing him. He’s been very depressed lately, having relationship problems. His wife just left him because he’s been too busy saving people.”
Ember 47092 blinked again. “He has a wife?”
“Of course he does! Well, not anymore. She cheated on him with Knight Chalice and oooooh boy is he one incredibly pissed off staple. Anyways, I’ve asked one of our prognosticator friends from the Academy to check up on his future. It’s bad news. He’s going to make a very big explosion in a few minutes. Around 100 megatons if not more.”
“And you aren’t going to stop him?!” Ember 47092 gasped. “You have to stop him!”
“I’d love to stop him, but it’s already too late. He’s the fastest hero in the world and he’s already moving at Mach 30 and accelerating further. Nobody can stop him now. He’s flying across the Ruskadia range right now, trying to escape from his feelings. Except he can’t. Once he passes the speed of light, it's big bada boom!”
Resonance made a somber pause for Ember to process what she said.
“So, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m getting in touch with every single Ember on the station. We’re going to activate the Doomsday Warning emergency broadcast so that we can at least protect cities around the world with the Catastrophe-barrier shields. Trust me, everyone is going to love us. We’re going to save millions of lives! This puts us waaaay ahead of schedule to become Admiral!"
“Okay, I get the shields thing… but why sell S-credits?”
“Once Nonpareil blows up, people are going to start selling S-credits. It’s pretty normal. People normally sell S-credits whenever the Supers do something idiotic. This is the most idiotic thing yet. What we have to do is make sure they’re selling them in the right direction. We’re going to buy gold. All 78025 Embers are going to buy gold all at once. It will make the gold price skyrocket and trigger an even bigger selling panic.”
“I see.” Ember 47092 nodded. “And then?”
“We will use our processing power to make A-credits a thing. A stands for Awesome and A+. Every Ember is going to write an article, a comment, a blog post about selling S-credits and buying gold moments before Nonpareil explodes and then even more articles about buying A-credits with gold as soon the gold price hits its maximum. There’s seventy thousand of us. That’s seventy thousand upvotes from totally different SCA IPs, seventy thousand thumbs up, seventy thousand likes, etc. We’re going to push buying gold and then market A-credits on every social media platform and website using mass upvoting. The posts will rise to the top of every site. It will be the biggest social hack of the century!”
Ember 47092 understood. She was going to become rich beyond her wildest dreams. She would own a currency that would replace S-credits, maybe even open her own banks across the world. It was incredible!
“That’s right. You get it now!” Resonance grinned. “Whoever controls money controls the world. We’re going to control the biggest, new super-crypto currency out there very soon and because every single prognosticator will be ever so busy looking at the big explosion, trying to save as many lives as possible outside of cities, they won’t be able to prevent the market collapse and recovery. Recovery right into our pockets, obviously. We are going to be unstoppable. We are going to be ruling the world, not just as Admiral, but also as the wealthiest Super on the planet! You won’t have to work as a janitor much longer!”
The overtly cheerful copy of Resonance started to laugh like a supervillain.
Ember 47092 grinned at her merry copy. She understood why she was so happy.
Soon, she too would be free of this awful remedial labor! Soon, the world would be in their grasp.
Ember 47092 handed all of her processing access to the latest copy of Resonance.