Dark Fate, Chapter 92 (Patreon)

Chapter 92 – Late Show

I took a deep breath, steadying my nerves. I didn’t want to do this, but there really wasn’t any choice, now. Not after the public way my forces had shown themselves around the world. I didn’t regret that, of course, but it meant that I was going to have to go face to face with something that any sane person dreaded.

I was going to have to talk to the public.

Fortunately, I had the luxury of choosing who I talked to. After all, I could go anywhere in the world, which meant I wasn’t limited to local reporters, or whoever came to me. Actually, since I was based in the asteroid belt, I could reasonably say that it was fairly impossible for any reporters to come to me. And if one did show up on my doorstep, I’d probably want to take the meeting for other reasons.

Well, I decided not to go with any of the actual news networks for this first interview. That would be too ‘normal’, and these were far from normal times. No, I decided that a better use of my time would be go to a source that most people wouldn’t count on as a news program. The fact that it was shooting in New York was just a bonus.

“And our guest tonight, you all know him as the mysterious figure behind the fighters which disabled the alien ship that landed here in Central Park last week. Making his first interview ever, it is the King of Ceres, Zayn Greene!”

I smiled as I stepped out onto the sound stage in my human form, dressed all in black, as normal. There were a few cheers from the crowd, but not many. Most people didn’t know what to make of me, after all.

As I shook the host’s hand, and sat down, he leaned in. For a moment, I was distracted from what he was saying by thinking how right his features looked as a High Elf. Only fitting since he was a major Tolkein fan before the Apocalypse. “So, Your Majesty—”

I shook my head, and said, “Please, Stephen. Call me Zayn. Save the formalities for formal occasions. I’m not Denethor. I don’t need people acting so stiffly around me just to stroke my ego. Formal settings and official events are one thing, because I have to play to the office I claimed, but otherwise, I don’t require people to bow and scrape or any of that bull.”

The host nodded. “So, Zayn, I guess the first question on everyone’s mind is ‘where did you get those X-wings that we saw on Invasion Day, and how can I get one’?”

“Well, the easiest way for anyone to get to pilot one of the Mark 1 Hunter, X-Pattern Starfighters would be to join up with the Ceres Royal Navy, and prove their ability as a pilot. We took some losses in the battle last week, and are looking to expand, beyond that, so we are definitely recruiting.”

“Now, this Ceres Royal Navy. How did you come to control it, or Ceres itself? I mean, the world has gone through a lot of changes, but what allowed you to make yourself King of Ceres?”

“That is a great question, Stephen,” I smiled. “The truth is, I bought my ships and refinery from the System Shop, and, once I started carving out the colony on Ceres, the System acknowledged me as the ruler of the asteroid. Naturally, I wanted a navy to defend myself, so I bought a warship, and had some other ships made at the shipyard I also bought.”

Stephen blinked, obviously a little surprised about that. “So, you did a Pay to Win scheme in real life?”

“Hey, if EA can do it in FIFA, why can’t I do it in real life?”

“Shh! Don’t give them any ideas!”

I laughed at the exaggerated way he said that. “Well, fine. But yes, I bought a few things through the System Shop, which then allowed me to build the torpedo boats and fighters that we used. Thankfully, the build times on those are quick, so I was able to get quite a few before the pirates showed up.”

“So, you were lucky enough to have built a base and recruited people to fly for you, just in time for a pirate fleet to show up?”

“Oh, goodness, no. I was prepared, and had been preparing for something like this since the Apocalypse started.”

“But why would you go through all this expense?”

“Well, that’s complicated, Stephen. I could just shrug it off with a pithy quote, like si vis pacem, para bellum, but that would be insulting to you and your audience. The truth is, I had some advance warning, and I acted on it, to the best of my ability. I wasn’t going to just sit back and let the world burn.”

“Advance warning? Are you saying that you knew the Apocalypse was going to happen? Why didn’t you warn anyone?”

I sighed. “Well, that’s complicated, Stephen. Before the Apocalypse, if someone went up to you and said that everyone would be getting levels and skills and such, all while monsters were going to start spawning across the world? Would you believe them, or would you call for the nice men in white coats to come and take them someplace where they couldn’t hurt anyone?”

“Well, it might be quicker to just let them run for Congress.”

Chuckling, I nodded. “Anyways, I had about eight hours before the Apocalypse started to prepare. Not enough to do much with, but it was enough that I could put things in motion. Knowing how those first few hours would play out allowed me to change things, in my own small way.”

“How did you know what would happen? I mean, getting a warning about the coming apocalypse is one thing, but that? Sounds like you were seeing the future.”

“Not the future, but my past. I knew about the Apocalypse, because I lived through it once, and got sent back. In other words, I got caught in a time loop. I’m told that this is loop four.”

“You’ve been told? Is that the System, then?”

“No, Stephen. See, the first time through, the governments didn’t long survive after the pirates came. They invaded in force, and took over. Of course, people fought back. Warlords fought to throw off the yoke of the invaders. Some died, and some succeeded.

“The first timeline ended when one of those warlords was betrayed by his trusted comrades. There was an explosion, and magic being inscrutable as it is, I and several others got thrown back in time. That second timeline, I struck against the traitors, but they managed to cause another time shift, with us carrying our memories forward. The third timeline ended with Earth enslaved, and another shift, over twenty years after the Apocalypse. The person went back managed to go back far enough to erase the second and third timelines, and people’s memories of them.”

“That’s pretty hard to believe, you know.”

“Well, the proof of it is in how I got the money to start the Kingdom of Ceres.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, it seems that time travel causes bad things to happen with the System. Probably why it is hard to pull off without basically combining two magical nukes and setting them off. The point is, my accounts rolled over, for the most part, from the previous loops. So, I had plenty of money to spend.”

“Are you sure it is a good idea to be talking about this so publicly? I mean, what if someone else does the same thing, and goes back in time? What would happen then?”

I chuckled. “I’m not too worried about that, Stephen. To be able to time travel with any degree of control, you would need to be around level 25 in Tier 4, which is effectively Level 175 if you’re starting from Tier 1, Level 1. By that point, anyone with enough power to roll back time probably has better ways of getting infinite money, and definitely knows the consequences of idly altering the flow of time.”

The host fake scowled, “Damn! There goes my infinite money retirement plan!” We both laughed, and he continued, “So, if you have to be a really high level to time travel in a controlled manner, how did you do it?”

“I did it in the uncontrolled manner. In fact, I wasn’t trying to go back in time at all, the first time. But don’t worry, there’s a really simple way to tell if someone is trying to do uncontrolled time travel experiments.”

“Really? What should we look for? A police box?”

“Hah! Well, if you see a police box in New York, I’d probably start looking for someplace to take shelter until things blew over. But no, out of place police boxes aside, the way you’ll tell if someone is trying to mess with time is by the explosions. It takes a lot of energy to force an accidental time shift, which means that the people who try normally end up blowing themselves up, along with an area at least three city blocks in radius.”

“So, you’re saying I can’t use my neighbor’s garage for this, right?”

“Well, you could, but to actually have a chance of time traveling, you’d need to be at ground zero, so you probably would be dead either way. And, honestly, there are much easier ways of getting back at your neighbor for never returning your tools than trying to do time travel experiments in his garage.” That got a chuckle from the host.

“So, one of the things people have been wondering, ever since Invasion Day, is where you got the pilots for your ships? Did you have any conversations with the military?”

“Actually, the pilots of the fighters and the crews of my torpedo boats were actually professional gamers before the Apocalypse.”

The surprise was evident on the host’s face. “Really, professional gamers?”

“Oh, yes. I thought about trying to find trained pilots, but decided against it.”

“Why so?”

“Well, you have to understand that flying in space is different from flying in atmosphere. And with the technology available through the System, space flight is less like the Apollo missions, and more like a video game. Even in atmosphere, the fighters control more like you’d see in flight simulation games, rather than a military jet aircraft.”

“And that’s why you recruited gamers?”

“Yes, and I went after flight simulator tournament contestants, especially. They have the dogfighting instincts already, and they have a lot less to unlearn than a military pilot would. Plus, snapping up some gamers is a lot less likely to make waves than if I started posting recruitment posters on a local Air Force base. For some reason, I’m pretty sure that Uncle Sam would get really pissy about that, you know?”

“Can’t imagine why,” Stephen said, completely straight-faced. “So, all your people are gamers?”

“No,” I shook my head, “just the pilots and crews of the torpedo boats. I went to different sources to man the mining craft, fabrication facility, shipyard, and my one warship. Suffice to say, the Kingdom of Ceres utilizes any means we can under the System to fill out the spots in our military and industrial base. That being said, now that we’ve ‘unmasked’, I’m happy to say we’re also opening up for immigration.”

“Immigration? You mean this isn’t the mother of all tax dodges?”

“Come on, Stephen. If I wanted to simply dodge taxes, I would just move my money into an off-shore bank under a shell company, like a normal person. I certainly wouldn’t go creating a whole country in the asteroid belt for it!”

“That brings up another question. Why the asteroid belt? I mean, if you can put a colony on Ceres, surely you could have done it a little closer to home?”

“Well, I considered the Moon, or Mars, but I decided against it. There are too many countries with a vested interest in the Moon, for one thing, and if I went and claimed it as my personal fiefdom, then it isn’t inconceivable that someone would get upset enough to launch a couple ICBMs my way to show how irate they are. That’s just poking the bear, you know?

“As for Mars, or its moons, well, there’s a couple reasons I didn’t go there. Mars is just too big for my operation to effectively claim at this time. I’m building up, sure, but Mars is half the size of Earth. Also, with everything going on, I REALLY didn’t want to see if the Doom games were prophetic. I may be good, but I’m not Doom Slayer good!”

“So, what made you go with Ceres, then?”

“Well, our primary industry and source of income for the immediate future will be asteroid mining. Ceres is actually in the asteroid belt, which means having the refineries and manufacturing there makes for a quicker turnaround, than trying to haul loads of ore from the belt all the way to the Moon.

“The Kingdom of Ceres is giving the people of Earth the chance to get their shit together, and join us in the stars. We don’t want to pressure anyone, though, so we decided to give you a bit of a buffer zone, leaving the inner planets to you, while we start exploring and setting up shop on the belt and the outer planets.”

“Fascinating. Unfortunately, I’m being told we’re going to have to cut to a break, but we’ll be back with the King of Ceres, Zayn Greene!”