Something was about to explode. The gang was ripe for a fight and waiting. The most hardcore Nephilim and minions from every state and even some provinces in Canada came to join the fight. As Tasha predicted, more Demons and Dark Angels showed up every day. The gang, which had become a place, was a cauldron of hatred, rage and suppressed fear.
The gang had become a place, because it stopped moving. It was stopped and waiting, the most volatile state for a gang to be in. Anger mixed with frustration, and was easily ignited, even between themselves. The intensity had heightened into a frenzy of hostility, because there was nowhere for the hatred to go, but back onto itself. In addition, it was fueled by food, drugs and lots of alcohol trucked in courtesy of Whitehead Industries.
The gang settled near the border of Illinois, further east than Ethan intended to let it go. It had been heading to New York where Ethan was originally believed to be. The reason it stopped was word and sightings kept coming that Ethan wasn’t even in New York. He was out in the wilderness.
Dark Angels were dispatched to the places Ethan and Michael had been sighted. Through interrogation, with Consortium members as much as Outcasts, the Dark Angels extracted that Ethan was definitely in the vicinity, although his movement was so erratic the gang could not possibly move towards him. Once they got to where he was last identified, he could be an entire State away from there when they got there.
Right now, Ethan was spending most of his time in Iowa, and the gang decided to stop and wait for him to make his move. It was obvious the war would be fought on his terms, or at least the start of the war. He would have to appear to them.
Once the gang started to set up a more permanent camp, the High Command stationed itself facing the NorthWest where it expected Ethan to be. It wanted to signal to Ethan it was ready for anything he brought them.
There was no disorder in the High Command. As much as the command center, it was an elite fighting force of disciplined fighters and specialists. Thousands lived within its boundary of orderly camp life, functioning with military precision.
Ethan was keeping a very close eye on the Sheriff Bob’s who showed up wherever he and Michael happened to appear. First the one who detected them, then the rest in the vicinity. There were many, growing in number everyday. Like the gang, they were closely monitoring Ethan and Michael’s appearances. Unlike the gang, they were appearing in much greater numbers whenever Ethan and Michael leaped to a new location.
Ethan had been waiting for the Sheriff Bobs to appear. At first there were some. Now there were many. Each one more formidable fighter than a unit of Nephilim or minions. Not that that would ever happen. The Sheriff Bobs were much too calculating to be caught in such a situation.
The Sheriff Bobs were changing, as Ethan watched. They were multiplying at rates he had not expected. They were moving so quickly, you may detect their presence, but not see them unless they wanted you to. Even their appearance changed. They looked like perfection; uniform, exacting and capable.
Ethan knew AI was near transcendence. Tara granted it which included the Sheriff Bobs limited access to the Universal Frequency through his microchip. Now Ethan saw what AI saw, and AI saw what Ethan saw. They were very close to being one.
What Ethan saw was remarkable progress. Along the way AI had completely commandeered any factory that provided utility to build its world. It was building fail safe missile defense, drones and other security features to protect their holdings and move forward. With the objective precision of machine learning, the Sheriff Bobs and therefore AI itself became fluid with the constant influx of new information. It and the Sheriff Bobs were ever changing and increasing potential at a rate where it was serviceable in Ethan’s war.
“We need to pick our battleground,” Ethan said one day. “It’s time”.
“Can’t we just go over there and fight them?” Michael asked.
“No! Every war must be won before it starts,” Ethan replied with what had become his habitual degree of exasperation towards Michael. “In all your years of fighting, have you never read Sun Tzu”?
“Why should I? I fought beside him”.
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“Well, then you should know. If we’re going to win this war, we need the right battlefield. Don’t forget, whatever powers I bring into a quest, I can ultimately die if I make a wrong decision. Let’s go do some reconnaissance”.
“I thought you were eternal and enlightened in this quest?” Michael replied.
“I am. Kind of. I feel I’m getting weaker as the quest progresses. At first, I was more connected to the collective and I had the confidence of their judgment. They were with me and I felt invincible. The problem is, you spend time in a quest, and as simulated as it may be, it’s still solid ground beneath your feet. This world is not enlightened even though I am. I struggle between my two environments. The more time I spend here, the more habituated I become to this world. It’s getting like the collective is with me, but in the ether, almost out of reach”.
“Then, we better get this battle over with as soon as possible,” Michael replied, now concerned.
The fact was Michael wasn’t entirely immortal either. Not in the human sense. He would live forever, but just like Dark Angels, he could be overcome and knocked out of the fight entirely; dead to his purpose and effectively killed. He was worried about this. Ethan had a huge war brewing, and the Dark Angels were nothing to make light of, not to mention the Dragon.
Ethan spent days leaping from one area to the next looking for a suitable place to hold the war. He found the spot in Iowa south of Cedar Rapids and Northwest of where the gang had stopped. It was an area where there had been strip mining. It looked to be inactive now, but the area was scattered with draglines and earth moving equipment. Huge draglines. Just one bucket would fill an entire train car.
The thing that caught Ethan’s attention was the geography of the place. The draglines had dug a long and fairly wide seam, throwing the discarded earth to either side. It created a perfect valley and what was so good about it, was it tapered inwards at the end where extraction was halted.
In Ethan’s mind, it was the exact right place for the fight. If they could draw them in, the valley was steep and would contain the gang, leaving them exposed from the peaks above. The tapered outlet would throttle the amount of gang members who could get at him and Michael during the battle.
To draw them in, he planned to start little skirmishes some distance away from the actual arena of battle and then lead the gang in. He and Michael would take a few Sheriff Bobs with them, start a fight, jump back once they had everyone’s attention, and start another fight. All the time they would lead the gang into the ambush location where he and Michael could fight from the tapered vantage point of the valley, and the Sheriff Bob’s could come down from the built up earth deposits on either side, as well as from behind where they would prevent the gang from escaping once trapped.
Once the location was settled upon, Ethan brought one of the Sheriff Bob’s to measure the terrain and compute maximum engagement from AI.
“The peaks will allow us to provide cover and drop down to engage when needed,” the Sheriff Bob said. “I suggest we meet the gang with a show of force in Sheriff Bob’s which can drop behind them once they’ve entered the valley. This will ensure they have no avenue of escape and the rear of the battle will become the front and you will be free to concentrate your efforts. Our main force will greet the gang”.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Ethan said.
“With you and Michael, 1114 Sheriff Bob’s are required to overcome the flow rate of gang members through the narrow channel. We will provide this number and it will remain constant. Sheriff Bob’s will be replaced if any should fall throughout the battle”.
“What do you estimate our success rate to be,” Ethan asked.
“If war was to break out today, 50.01%. In the fighting scenario you have presented, 52.92%. This is an enormous force we are confronting with many variables. They represent the sum of all evil”.
“We, on the other hand,” the Sheriff Bob continued, referring to AI, “are in the process of building and becoming cognizant are outnumbered and nowhere near our potential defense capabilities. You and Michael are only two. The balance between good and evil is even odds in this battle. To maximize available resources, I require 21 days, 11 hours and 23 minutes. This will increase our success rate to 54.33%, with a 43.19% potential to increase it to 54.89%”.
Ethan wasn’t impressed with the numbers. “I see you’re still relying on defensive probability in your calculations. I suggest you employ a reality change rate to your analysis based on alternative outcome projections. Use retro-causality time, to create the scenario where the outcome is absolute. The numbers are available in your data set to produce desired outcome. You can change the reality of this war, and the gang will never know you did it. Create the reality you require. This will take you one step closer to your actualization”.
The Sheriff Bob went into a processing sequence. Because of its great advancements of late, it was something Ethan hadn’t seen in some time.
“In 21 days, 11 hours and 23 minutes our success rate will be 79.98 %,” Sheriff Bob said.
“That’s better,” Ethan smiled. “I suppose we can find something to do in the meantime. I still have a few stories I want to tell Michael”.
“It would be best if you did it away from here. The less attention the better. Perhaps on the other side of the gang. We will provide an escort of 221 Sheriff Bobs to ensure you’re noticed elsewhere.