All hail the Death Architect!

 The best Commander ever!

  Worship Her!

   She is amazing!

The Death Architect gazed at the mica-flecked meteorite walls of her cogitation chamber. She would not impede the prideful boasts of her orbiters. Let the fools revel. They had valid reasons to celebrate, as the military arms of the Torth Empire continued to hammer enemy garrisons on Nuss.

But Torth victories would not last.

She foresaw the future, even if no one else did.

The Death Architect descended from the Megacosm in order to think freely. Her orbiters had become more numerous than the stars beyond her frozen asteroid. Their insipid celebrations went on, wake cycle after wake cycle. How many of them acknowledged that the trio of newly invented weaponized gasses had not actually destroyed the Conqueror or his most powerful minions?

The problem with precognitive visions was their open-endedness. The future did not have a conclusion. Centillions of possibilities were more than anyone, even she, could compute.

But her careful plans had not yielded the predicted, desirable outcome.

She had failed.

The Conqueror was alive and free to continue his schemes. And that was not the worst of it. Ummins and other slave species were not supposed to be able to read minds. If they learned to master telepathy…? Her dreams showed her that the absurdity could become reality.

A future where even animals could read minds was not a future she wanted to live in.

The escape of the Twins had seemed trivial at the time, just an annoyance. But after the Conqueror had expelled all Torth troops from his city, the Death Architect had taken a nap—and she had suffered disturbing dreams.

All future possibilities were now flipped in the Conqueror’s favor.

If the Twins reunited? That was catastrophic. Together, they could introduce a slew of unforeseen ripples into the matrix of future possibilities. They might cause the end of the Megacosm. If they joined the Conqueror, there was a strong possibility that they would help him end Torth civilization.

They should have been killed.

That was obvious in hindsight. Super-geniuses should never be given any leeway, no matter how small. They should have been executed as soon as their military inventions transitioned from the ideation phase to the manufacturing phase.

After a few seconds of deep pondering, the Death Architect concluded that she had, indeed, been wrong to place any trust in her colleagues.

Never mind how smart the Lone Twin was. Never mind how loyally she acted.

It was not the first time the Death Architect had made this grave error.

She used to admire the Upward Governess, in her younger years. She used to look up to the older girl.

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And she had misjudged “Yellow Thomas” as well, dismissing him as a loser. She had failed to even dream of him as formidable, even when he’d rescued the Giant and went renegade. She had not foreseen that he would become the ultimate nemesis of civilization.

She used to esteem both of the Twins. They were older than herself, more knowledgeable, and they had signaled that they valued civilization by working hard to complete new weapons.

Her mistake with the Lone Twin was technically the fourth time she had misjudged a fellow super-genius.

The Death Architect had no choice but to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth. Despite her total rationality—despite her near perfection—she did have a mental weakness.

She wasn’t a very good judge of character.

Well, no more mistakes like that. She would never rely on anyone else again. She must work alone from now on.

Satisfied that she had shored up her own flaw, she shifted her attention to the webwork of future possibilities.

She crawled up one thread and down another. Her perfect trap for the Conqueror was in ruins. Her web was full of rotten crevices and hidden sinkholes.

She attempted to spin fresh ideas. Unfortunately, she had already analyzed the most plausible futures. Every time she managed to think of something new, the possibilities exploded in complexity by a factor of millions. She had to test every one of those, and extrapolate new theories, then test every branch of a branch.

It was all up to her. At least nobody dared question her. At least she was the unchallenged ruler of the Torth Empire.

One branch was interesting.

According to the rare penitents who dared visited the Megacosm, an actual rogue mind controller was hiding in the Conqueror’s city. Stranger Danger. That was how the Conqueror referred to this slippery entity.

Might Stranger Danger become a useful tool?

Whoever it (he) was, he was operating on his own. Her shadowy glimpses revealed that Stranger Danger was a Servant of All, and he seemed loyal to the Empire.

But he was too independent. He was unlikely to take advice. And even if he conceded to obey her? Well. She had that flaw; that inability to judge a person’s character.

She dared not partner with anyone.

Especially someone with that power.

If only she possessed the power to twist minds, herself. She would use it without hesitation or mercy. She would transform her champions into corporeal extensions of herself, and bend them towards the great purpose of saving civilization.

If only she had that power.

She gazed at her own indistinct reflection in the polished wall. Her frail size and her skeletal hoverchair were irrelevant. Only her huge consciousness mattered.

Dark, quiet solitude enabled her thoughts to float, abstracted.

Colored lights beaded the upper molding of her cogitation chamber. The beads had a rhythm, correlating with radiation from the nearest heavenly bodies. Anything that interrupted the spectral patterns would change the beads, which would alert the Death Architect. That was how she knew whenever guests approached her lair.

Lesser minds figured that her light strips were just random prettiness.

Some Torth never forgot that she was a child. Most Torth lacked curiosity.

Really, lesser minds were useless.

People had value only in aggregate, not as individuals. They were like atoms or molecules. Only somebody with a great mind—a ripened super-genius, old enough to have developed a sure sense of self—could be a worthwhile individual.

And even super-geniuses were worthless if they valued emotional incivility over civilization.

Great or small, Torth or not, all sapient beings overvalued their own worth while contributing next to nothing. Other people’s stupid ideas were obstacles in the way of achievement. People in general were too unpredictable to work comfortably with. People were frustratingly independent. If only….

Her breath caught. Her toes twitched as she began to germinate a solution to all her problems.

The root of all problems really was free will.

Every time a person made a choice, the future erupted with a fractal of unfurling possibilities. Each personal decision was yet another twig in an endless forest of brambles. The Death Architect kept trying to scramble and hack her way through those obstacles—other people’s decisions—seeking a route towards a desirable future.

The path was so overgrown, the galaxy so stuffed with people, she could no longer even glimpse a decent future.

What if she simply destroyed the obstacle generators?

Get rid of the brambles. Destroy the whole morass.

It would be difficult, to destroy free will throughout the known universe. It would require brilliance. Elegance. Vast cosmic knowledge. Absolute authority, unchecked by the stupid Majority. Utter freedom. A perfect sense of timing. And ruthless logic, unmarred by primitive qualms.

These were all qualities that she did, indeed, possess.

The Death Architect began a promising new brainstorm.