‘He’s doing what?’ Eldon asked Johann.

‘Zhang’s placing nuclear warheads along the Afghan border’.

‘No ground troops?’

‘None at all’.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Eldon replied tersely.

‘Why? What’s the big deal?’

‘The ‘big deal’, Eldon replied. ‘Zhang has no intention of fighting the war on my terms. If we invade his first and only response is nuclear war. We’re not ready for nuclear war.’

‘The best laid plans of mice and men,’ Johann replied solemnly.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Eldon replied. He thought for a moment. ‘Well, keep building up troops in Afghanistan, but be careful not to step into his territory. I think we should start something in the South China Sea too. Get an aircraft carrier up close to Hong Kong and make sure there’s some nuclear warheads on it.

‘Son of a bitch!’ Eldon exclaimed once again. He was hoping to get rid most of the world military all in one place. Now he had to recalibrate everything. Not a terrible upset, but it did take away some of the certainty of his success.

Nothing much had really changed though. Everyone was still waiting for something to appear. Dawn was waiting for the Wisdom of the Crowd to appear. Jimmy and Alicia were waiting for the Universal Frequency to appear. Ethan was waiting for his moment to appear. Eldon was waiting for his reactors to get into place and working. In a peculiar way, time had stopped for all of them.

‘What do you think about all this, Ethan?’ Ethan heard Eldon’s voice coming from nowhere in particular.

‘What do you mean?’ Ethan asked.

‘Ah, you know. This war. Our relationship these days. ‘Eldon said causally. ‘You know, this whole dynamic’.

‘You haven’t fought the war yet?’ Ethan asked.

‘Whoops. Did I give something away?’ Eldon asked. ‘No. The war has not been fought yet. You’ve only been my guest for a few months now. Are you losing track of time?’

‘I guess so.’

‘Ah, well, being locked up in a cell will do that to you. You really fell apart there at the beginning. Crying. Bashing your head around with your fists. What was that all about? And then laying there in a fetal position for a month. I didn’t expect you to fall that far down. Just laying there, so scared you wanted to hide in your mother’s womb. I thought you were more of a man than that.’

‘Sorry to disappoint,’ Ethan replied.

‘And now you’re different,’ Eldon went on. ‘Something’s changed. Did you fix yourself, or are you more broken?

‘I’d say a bit of both, Eldon.’

‘Well, that’s good. At least it wasn’t a total waste of time then,’ Eldon quipped, and then after a pause. ‘Do you know why you’re here Ethan?’

‘Yes, of course’.

‘You do?’

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

‘Yes.’

‘Really? I thought I would have to explain this to you. At least the finer details. What’s your version?’

‘I’ve come to find myself Eldon, and then kill you. I am you and you are me. If I die, you die too’.

‘Ah, so I see, you are in fact more broken than you appear to be. I’ll leave you to your dreams and riddles in a minute, but let me give you my version of why you’re here before I go.

'You’re here, Ethan,’ Eldon continued, with a little poison added to his voice. ‘Because this is where I want you to be. Do you understand? I want you to be here to witness my crowning moment when I defeat Zhang and proclaim my regency over the entire world. I want you to see what you could have been a part of. Standing right beside me’.

‘That’s a lie,’ Ethan claimed. ‘You would never tolerate someone capable of challenging you to stand beside you.’

‘No, I suppose I wouldn’t. But I’m still mad at you Ethan. Why would you take up with the resistance?’

‘Who said I did.’

‘There’s no-one else to fight with. You were fighting with someone.’

‘You know, I’ve been thinking.’ Ethan said, ignoring Eldon. ‘You really didn’t need all this StarForce stuff. AI could accomplish the same thing right here on the ground, without all the damage you’ll be causing to the infrastructure you plan to inherit’

‘Can you control AI?’ Eldon replied. ‘Something with a mind of it’s own? Nope, you can’t. I plan to destroy AI as soon as I take control’.

‘I wonder if you can get it all? It’s so integrated, you’ll have to keep some of it. And then there’s all those rebels out there with open source AI. They’ll be knocking on your door. I kind of think you fucked up here Eldon’.

‘Bullshit!’ Eldon extorted, not familiar with criticism. ‘I am taking control of the situation. Science and Technology is destroying civilization, and I am going to destroy it’.

‘Except StarForce, right?’ Ethan asked. ‘You’ll keep that, won’t you?

‘No Eldon, you fucked up,’ Ethan continued. As soon as AI came along, you should have recognized it’s threat and put all your resources towards it. In the end it will be AI that defeats you, and you missed it completely. You can understand the idea of lasers blowing up buildings, but you can’t wrap your mind around a future that takes control out of your hands. That’s the problem when a person can’t see beyond themself. The greater context of the world is missing. You’re kind of like a chimp’.

‘You know, I’ve watched videos of chimpanzees in captivity. Did you know simple magic really messes with their minds. They can’t deal with it when the feather disappears. It’s an assault on their sense of reason. Show them the feather, wave a wand, and it’s gone, and they refuse to believe what they saw. They get very animated and start jumping around. It’s very disturbing to them.

‘That’s what you are Eldon. You can only see what’s in front of you, like bombs and lasers. You’re incapable of understanding the logic that lives in the world around you, and can no longer control. You’ve lost Eldon. You’re lost. You’re a product of a bygone time, and outlived your usefulness’.

Ethan waited for Eldon to respond.

‘Eldon?’ he said.

Eldon was gone.

Ethan shrugged and went back to waiting and observing. A new sound came into his environment. It was a constant, droning buzz with a pitch just high and loud enough to be annoying. It continued day after day. It became so irritating the guards started passing Ethan his food as fast as they could, so as not to hear it.

Ethan waited and observed. The warrior mind in him, did the same thing with the sound as it did with his guilt. It put put the sound in it’s own little place inside his mind, and removed it from his conscious flow of thought. He didn’t want to hear it, so it did not exist.

For weeks more, Ethan continued his daily routine of exercise, meditation and prayer, patiently waiting.

He could tell he was pissing Eldon off. Eldon must have been expecting a better response from his sensory attack on Ethan. Sometimes he’d crank up the loudness for a day or two in hoping to see a reaction to the unbearable conditions he was attempting to create. Ethan did not respond, and eventually Eldon gave up on it, and life continued in solitary confinement with inconsistent lighting, and a droning hum.

One day, during his meditation a faint new sound entered his thoughts. At first he wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, or it was real.

‘Ethan. Ethan Strong. Do you copy? Ethan Strong. Do you copy? Over.’

‘You don’t have to talk into the microphone you idiot. The mic’s for me.’

‘I know that. Do you think I don’t know that? I’m just sitting here talking. I wasn’t talking into the microphone.’

‘Yeah you were...’