“It took me some time to realize what Martin meant when he said: “There are four types of women. The useless ones, the usable ones, the willing ones, and the ones who use you instead. Avoid the first and the last type, seek the second, and marry the third.”

- Antioch

***Outer Rim***

***Antioch***

I was cuddling with Silith on our throne, an arm draped around her waist. My significant other was munching on some paprika flavoured chips while studying our tactical situation. She had joined me after Fiona and Lisandra decided to engage in activities Silith didn't want to participate in. While crunching down the food, she gave me a social update on the rumoured shopping mall, informing about all the wondrous things people could do there – mainly buying stuff or sitting together for one or the other social occasion.

One could say that she was on fire, multitasking on three different levels.

I was smiling and nodding amiably through all of it, following Martin’s advice on what to do when a woman gets hyped about something I have no interest in.

Then Silith did something surprising.

While eating chips and educating me on the newest social location in the colony, she opened two more connections to me over the network, allowing us to have three separate discussions at once.

‘You know, I am really not happy that we had to leave the newest clutches behind. And even though it's Fiona's, I miss Siegfried. She is on edge ever since we sent him off with the evacuation transport.’

And.

‘I finally decided to invest all the skillpoints I was hoarding up until now. Jill informed me of your recent accomplishments with mind augmentations. And there was also the meeting with the Blue, so I decided to have a few improvements of my own.’

Adding.

‘Do you really think that using such an aggressive strategy is really necessary? What happens if the Cyber and the G.S. decide that it’s better for us to be gone so that we can’t interfere with them anymore?’

And through normal speech.

“Would you like to join us at the shopping mall tomorrow? They even have a theatre and an electronics shop. I guess you would be interested in all the gimmicky stuff they offer there.”

It took me a few precious milliseconds to understand what was happening. To say it in Martin’s words, Silith had opened Pandora’s Box of womankind. Up until now, women were hampered in giving voice to their thoughts and troubles by the fact that they had only one mouth to communicate their thoughts.

In the dark ages, men could flee their female counterparts by going hunting, but the information age had given them the ability to share their social troubles at any given time.

And now, the specimen next to me had gained the ability to reach me anywhere, but also to voice all of it at the same time.

I gather my thoughts and try to answer to the best of my ability.

‘The clutches aren’t just simple eggs. You guys made them real children, which means that they won’t be coming back if something happens to them. Haven’t you employed some of the best teachers and nannies to take care of the brood during our absence? I think Fiona even mentioned that she would put all of them in stasis so that we could take care of them.’

I was firmly against the horrible idea. Let's say that something happens to us during the mission, forcing us to respawn at our safe location, it would take us a year to rejoin with the fleeing civilian transporters. What would be better than to miss the first year of your children’s life? Sadly, I doubt that Fiona sees it my way. She almost assuredly found a way to circumvent my orders regarding the treatment of the royal clutches.

Second.

‘You did? How is your multitasking? I reach my limits when I try to pay full attention to more than twenty different things, like conversations. It gets better when I have access to a power source, but that’s not always the case. Though, I realized that it’s much less taxing if I do things which don’t require active thought. Or… forget that. It would be more accurate to say creative thinking. If I only solve equations or puzzles, I can do much more things at once. In fact, I haven't found a real limit on that.’

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And then regarding the Cyber.

‘It’s correct that our actions seem overly aggressive, and they are. We have to show them that we are committed to this path. Tartarus is one of our largest and strongest colonies, and using it in a direct confrontation isn’t just meant as a military show of power. They need to take us seriously. The last thing we want is for them to back away from a confrontation. Striking deep into G.S. territory is meant to cause an imbalance between their forces. Once the G.S. is off-centre, the Cyber will be forced to attack. The tactical situation will be too good for not taking the chance. It would be a major oversight if they used the chance to retreat instead of attacking with everything they have. We are presenting them with the perfect opportunity to wipe out all G.S. forces.’

And then there is the little thing about the shopping mall.

“No, thanks. As you can see, I am very busy taking care of our advancing forces. The sooner I can react to any change in the situation, the better. Maybe we can do it once this encounter is over? If everything goes according to plan, we should get a few years of breathing room.”

Silith hums and twirls her tail affectionately around mine. “Okay, but once this is over, you will visit the shopping mall with me. It’s really relaxing to stroll around the stores, searching for things which catch your fancy. We could keep chatting and have a nice evening. Just the two of us.”

It sure is. Too bad that my plans include a long-term strategy to deal with the mall. I won't keep spending the evening with myself because the women are too tired to do their duty! “Sure, my dear. Once this thing is over, you will have all the time in the world to show it to me. I'll even give you my opinion on the latest fashion.”

Her eyes light up upon hearing that and she answers another separate discussion. ‘My multitasking doesn’t do well with things which require structured thinking. In a layman’s terms, I focused on augmenting my speech-centre, which means that I am now really good at paying attention to several discussions at once!’

We continue the conversation in this manner, and I try really hard to keep up with Silith’s need for sharing our experiences while paying attention to our forces at the same time. But to be brutally honest, having actual conversations is my weak spot, and so it’s not surprising when Silith looks at me after a few minutes, her expression turning shocked.

“There is smoke coming out of your ears!”

I take that as a good reason to shut down some of the more meaningless conversations. Like stuff that concerns the shopping mall, our current society, or life in general.

“This only shows that my nanotech’s support-features aren’t optimized to be used in this kind of way. When I enhanced myself, I didn’t aim for conversational skills.” And then I have a sudden idea which has the added benefit of getting Silith to spend more time with me! “Though, I must say that I am very impressed with your skill.”

I jump right into my sales pitch. “Right now it’s not a big issue, but as soon as the fighting starts for real, it will become increasingly complicated to coordinate all of our forces, as I expect the battle to stretch out over several lightyears and dozens of solar systems. Our people have the network through which they receive their commands, but at our cores, we are all individuals.”

I gesture at the hologram in front of us, ordering it to display the communication delay of several minutes. “FTL communication is quick, but when lightyears are involved, time becomes an issue. The battle which we are about to engage in might be won or lost by a fleet arriving a few minutes too late where they are needed, simply because the order wasn't given in time.

“The Cyber have a much deeper connection with each other and that’s a big advantage in large-scale battles. It would be a huge help if you could act as my voice, while I concentrate with Martin on tactics and strategy. The two of us already tried several times to control our battlegroups individually, but on this scale, things get messy very quickly. People start asking questions or need clarification, which causes unnecessary delays. You seem to have no trouble with talking to many people at once, so you could act as a buffer between us and the rest of the fleet.”

Silith furrows her eyebrows and studies the map in front of us. “It’s a little much, even for me, but I think that I can do it. As long as you don't ask me where to place our ships, it should be fine. All those individual dots on the map make me wonky in the head. Just try to limit yourself to a thousand commands at a time. Anything above that would be pretty uncomfortable.” She squints her eyes. “We have a little more than twenty-thousand ships? That is pretty much all of our major vessels which can be used for fighting. There is no way that I can keep a connection open with all of them at the same time.”

“A thousand commands!? That would be overkill. Close to micromanaging every unit in our fleet. No. We don’t want to do that. There will be much less to communicate at once, and most of it will be done by information sharing through the network. You only have to jump in when there is something more complicated to communicate. The commanders of each ship have to make some calls on their own, as we assuredly won’t have all the individual sensor information they are seeing. You can really have a thousand conversations at once with your upgrades?”

She forces herself to smile. “Sorry. I thought we were having a pretty relaxed conversation. If it makes you feel better, solving a thousand different math problems would probably make my head explode.”

I sigh in relief. So she isn’t vastly ahead of me, it’s just that she optimized herself for a different task.

“So, how do you intend to do this?” She gestures at the colourful map.

“I am not entirely sure,” I admit. “Maybe over a direct mind-link? It’s quick and lessens the possibility of a misunderstanding. I could confer with others, and give my overall opinion on the situation, while you hand the orders down to the people who need them.”

She nods and leans over, whispering. “That sounds fine to me, but we should probably run a few test-runs with the direct connection. It has been a while since we used a physical connection to share.”

Grinning, I decide that war and death can wait for one hour.