Winning Peace - Chapter 25: (Patreon)

There are a lot of questions newly-interstellar societies need to face.

Some of them are profound and regard the meaning of life and the complexity of your species' development once you leave the embrace of your homeworld. Some are scientific, revolving around the actual issues a group faces in covering the distance between one star and the next regarding your own biological limitations. Others are moral and ethical, when a people must confront underdeveloped ecosystems and primitive species from a position of incredible power to both better and exploit them.

Others? Others are silly.

“We should build the largest ships we can sustainably produce in quantities sufficient for interstellar combat,” Mesonoxian Sky advocated, lighting up one of the speakers as he relayed his opinion, the partial-informorph much preferring inhabiting the digital space rather than the physical. “Regardless of other technologies in play, large warships are a good deterrent.”

Thonis-Heracleion rolled her eyes, all six of them as she absently spun diamond threads into an elaborate pattern with her many arms. “Yes, yes, we all know basically everything boils down to a dick-measuring contest for you, Sky. But in reality, we don't particularly need large ships, war or otherwise. Many of our operational objectives can be accomplished just fine with numerous small ships.”

A cloud of particles crossed the nearest view screens as an irritated hiss of static filled the speakers. A third individual at the table, this one inhabiting a solid unblemished sphere with various appendages floating on a magnetic field around it, pulsed a light for attention, then fed a line of text across another screen.

“I think what Sky was positing was that a number of large intimidating vessels would head off the possibility of military action, rather than prepare for the necessity of it. While I know you're disdainful of base instincts, Thonis-Heracleion, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, as the saying goes.”

The giant cybernetic spider clicked a few metal appendages together in irritation before responding. “You're right, Hex. That's my bad. I just get unusually heated about things I see as low-efficiency solutions.”

“Be that as it may, we've yet to hear from our majestic and omniscient leader on the subject. He was the one to find the alien outpost on Mars.”

While it was hard as ever to decipher tone from pure text, the line resonated with sarcasm to me as I leaned forward with the model I was carefully etching cradled between my fingers. “I assume what sparked this particular disagreement off was someone poking around in my systems and finding the Perucetus Colossus-Class Interstellar Freight Carriers. Now, Hexadecimal Miasma knows better and Thonis-Heracleion isn't the type to do so, which means I'm left with you, Mesonoxian Sky. Care to own up?”

There was a second of static hiss, then a grudging voice spoke up. “Yeah, yeah... in my defense, the designs weren't actually secured all that well.”

“Says the infomorph,” Thonis-Heracleion noted.

“Children,” I reprimanded casually. “I did not help you uplift yourselves past your fleshy limits to argue like primary-school brats. But, no, the fact that I am building ten-kilometer long freight vessels is not exactly a secret I especially want to keep from any of you.”

“The designs note they are freight vessels, but the warship conversion kits are also filed as attached documents. As we have not made first contact with an extant alien species and have no cargo which requires such huge vessels, what is their current purpose, Dr. Lopez?”

The other two, I noted, paid close attention to the question that played across the screen as well. I huffed a laugh. “For now, let's just say that I've found a particularly large and dangerous precursor relic which will need to be moved from its current location to be properly, and safely, studied.”

A few looks were exchanged, inasmuch as they could be with their current bodies.

“Should we be worried?” Mesonoxian Sky asked

“You are the kind of person who plays around with micro-singularities, Dr. Lopez,” Thonis-Heracleion stated. “When you say something is dangerous...”

I rolled my eyes. “While I acknowledge the validity of the point, I've taken every reasonable precaution and then some. However, I will be placing top-level security seals on this project. Which means there will be consequences should any of you attempt to ferret out information on it.”

“Bait our curiosity more, Doctor,” Hexadecimal Miasma entreated, once again sarcastically.

“You'll have to content yourself with your own projects, I'm afraid,” I stated bluntly, my eyes narrowing as I speared each of them with a glare. “I'm quite serious about this. Digging into this project will result in serious losses of privileges and confinement in a bio-morph until such time as I can be sure you've both learned your lesson and aren't contaminated.”

All three of them stilled at that. Over the past several years that I'd been picking the most promising candidates for my transhumanist program, one of the harshest punishments had quickly become booting them back down to 'normie' status.

Thonis-Heracleion had only needed a single reminder of that as after a particularly egregious transgression against a number of bio-conservative forum-goers. Nothing permanent had transpired, but a number of humiliating 'pranks' and system subversions would have set a terrible precedent if I hadn't responded. Temporarily crippling Sarah's link with Anubis had driven the point home.

“No touching the high-security stuff, got it,” Mesonoxian Sky affirmed, a spiral of agitated digital particles. “Not like that's anything new, Doc.”

“Agreed,” Thonis-Heracleion nodded, her form a bit too still at the mention of the previous punishment. “Perhaps we should move on to other subjects now that a warning has been delivered?”

“I second that motion. The development on Mars, specifically. The new arcologies are going up there as well as Australia, aren't they?” Hexadecimal Miasma asked, his sphere twisting about on one axis. Supposedly, he was attempting to create a new series of physical expressions that could be fed into universal translation software based on spin, axis, speed, and movement.

I wished him luck, the adorable weirdo.

“They are. Humanity's recovered a lot in the past decade in terms of infrastructure. Population is recovering well, too. Estimates aren't perfect, but it looks like we're at four and a half billion now,” Thonis-Heracleion added. “And the cloning systems are only accounting for a small portion of that.”

“The small portion that are more technically skilled, intellectually-curious, and progressively-minded,” Hexadecimal Miasma chimed in. “The education systems are working much better in the creche-raised groups as well, despite what the Stellar Council likes to deride as insular communities.”

“They have more than enough reason to be wary of unconventional societies given the Dogs,” I shrugged, pausing in my carving of the small crystal figure to blow away a bit of dust.

“I'm more interested in the ships, personally,” Mesonoxian Sky interjected, then frazzled into a fractal of pixels. “I can't believe they've outlawed private spaceships! What the fuck, man?!”

“It's not a complete ban. Anything under one hundred meters is still able to be personally owned and operated,” Hexadecimal Miasma stated.

“Those are basically glorified shuttles!” Mesonoxian Sky cried, more than a little edge of a whine in his voice. “Just because one dick gets drunk and crashes a ship near Eos Chasma-!”

“It would potentially have killed a half-million people,” Thonis-Heracleion stated, “and did kill more than five dozen when the emergency defense gauss guns fired.”

I mean, I'd tried, but good judgment was more of a societal issue than a biological one. Say what you will about how awesome I'd made humans on an individual level, every society had its bad eggs. It was just a huge mess when a bad egg nepotistically placed an entirely rotten one in charge of a three-hundred meter spaceship.

In the words of my forefathers, 'Oops.'

“Again, the Stellar Council is largely a reactionary body these days. Society largely runs itself, as I intended it to when I set things up this way,” I explained, raising the crystalline horseman to the light and eyeing one of the cuts I'd made. “When something like this happens, their first instinct is generally to make a sweeping dramatic change, and because I built in different requirements for normal civil law codes as opposed to changing the governmental structure...”

“Laws that have actual effects on the world pass more easily, whereas none of the ministers could ever hope to get the kinds of majorities needed to make themselves a dictator,” Thonis-Heracleion nodded. “But isn't this something of an over-correction? I agree that more restrictive licensing and monitoring needs to happen, but can't they just insist on putting a breathalyzer onto the piloting mechanisms or something instead of outlawing private ownership of starships?”

“While I am inclined to agree, it's worth noting that the law is more complex than it would first appear. There are large exceptions for 'renting' large vessels for extended periods of time for newly-emergent corporate interests, pilots are not mandated to be employed by the Stellar Council itself and only require an adjunct, and they did introduce the need for biofeedback to insure the pilot, copilot, and adjunct are all in good health for the ship to be properly operable.”

“Still bogus,” Mesonoxian Sky said, the computer's tone deadpan.

“As much as I hate to agree with Sky,” Thonis-Heracleion noted, “and believe me, I do, I have to agree.”

I hummed, setting the knight chess piece down on the table. “Personally? I don't actually think it's all that bad of an idea. The law could use some structural changes, but I don't believe that ownership of personal starships is actually all that... relevant? Important? Significant? Something like that. To most people. That actual number of individuals this is going to impact is effectively a rounding error, statistically-speaking.”

“But Doctor,” Thonis-Heracleion began urgently. “Aren't you worried about the government overreach these kinds of decision signal?”

“It is going through the courts,” I stated, “and knowing the justices' leanings, I think it will be paired down significantly. Adding onto that, I think I'm going to whisper in some ears and lobby for a rider to be put in place tying enforcement mechanisms to some type of stellar public transit system. Maybe something that makes it so that if the SC shuts down travel to or from a world outside of a quarantine situation or other specific hazards, exemptions start opening up for starship ownership, which then get grandfathered in.”

Mesonoxian Sky hummed through the speakers. “I still don't agree with all this, but that would certainly create incentive to ensure freedom of travel despite the limitations on starship ownership.”

I sighed and leaned back as I looked around the room. “Think of it this way, how about it? When humanity was still planet-bound, was there any kind of widespread social romance about owning your own plane? You get that with cars and boats, but the capacity to do damage with those is, all things considered, fairly small. Private airplane ownership is heavily restricted for the same reason that we never really saw flying cars take off, pardon the pun, back on Earth. They're immense safety hazards, even with modern VI assistance and building materials.”

All three passed around what equated to considering looks to each other.

“I hate that the Doctor kind of has a point,” Hexadecimal Miasma chimed in.

“What about-” Mesonoxian Sky began, only to be interrupted by a chime, to which I sighed deeply. “What was that?”

“It's the Stellar Council's very specific 'Gondor Calls For Aid' chime. It means they want something and can't do it themselves, so let's see...” I accessed the system, read their request, grabbed the program they wanted, loaded it up, and sent it off in a secure link. “There we go, all done.”

“By all done, you mean...” Thonis-Heracleion asked, tilting her cyborg spider head.

“They wanted a response to that thing that happened last month when someone tried to flush the changes I made to the human genome.” I waved a hand negligently. “Bio-regressivist bloc still on Earth who want to revert humanity back to what it was before I made my improvements. They dosed a city's water supply with something that didn't work, but killed a bunch of baseline humans still living in a quarantine ghetto. Also, it gave a couple of people rashes which, you know what? Bravo. That was actually impressive.”

I shrugged at the end and pulled out another chunk of printed crystal, pulling up the elaborate rook image I'd chosen.

I felt the attention of all three focus on me and looked up. “What?”

“And you just... did it? Just now? Some kind of cure?” Mesonoxian sky asked.

I snorted, “Oh god no. No, no... they wouldn't take any sort of retroviral genetic vaccine from me of all people. They learned their lesson last time. If they gave me another chance I might make humans able to survive in the vacuum of space unassisted and then where would we be?”

When it became clear I wasn't going to elaborate without prompting, Hex spun a few times in different directions and asked, “Then what did you do?”

“I sent them a 'genetic lock' that I'd worked up a few years back just in case some genetic revisionists decided to do something stupid and got further than I thought they would. It's basically a two-factor-authentication lock on your genes using artificial protein sequences specifically tailored to an individual. The government gets one code and you get the other, so anyone who gets the bright idea to mutate themselves into... werewolves or something has to run it by a government bureaucrat first.”

“That strictly limits personal freedom in regards to self-determination,” Sky stated, very much not happy with the concept.

“That's entirely true and not something I'm happy about,” I conceded honestly. “But humanity is still rebounding. A decade of peace and quiet isn't enough in many respects, especially after the shocks our species has taken. We are, all of us, close to immortal... and very well may be within the next few years. You're all taking the slow path on the uploading process to make sure nothing goes wrong. Soon enough the rest of humanity will notice the repair mechanisms build into their genetic material and realize that natural death due to aging is a thing of the past.”

Mesonoxian Sky and, to a lesser extent, Thonis-Heracleion relaxed at that. It was part of what each of them, in their own way, considered the ultimate weakness of humanity.

Simply put, the species' inherent frailty.

Hexadecimal Miasma was born of a different mold. Unlike the other two who had been born with special needs conditions, not even truly debilitating ones in this day and age, Hex was an extreme high-end neurodivergent who hated virtually every kind of sensory input the human condition offered. After we'd gotten in contact through a few puzzles I left on various websites and offered his story, I'd asked him what he would do about his condition if he could do anything.

He'd wanted to stick his brain in a life support pod and shove that into a sphere of hyperdense alloy with non-standard sensory inputs. Which, while I didn't truly understand, seemed to work for him. Compared to the other two, he'd just wanted a couple of very specific translation programs tied directly into cybernetics in his gray matter, which had barely been the work of a day.

“If the other two won't say it, then I will. You're correct, Doctor. It's easy to get frustrated with the rest of our species sometimes, but they need time to come to terms with the freedoms your technology offers, and we have time to wait.”

“Speaking of waiting... what about the aliens? When will we be informing everyone they exist?” Thonis-Heracleion asked, then paused. “Well, that the ruins exist, at least? Since we have no idea if they're still around.”

I made a show of thinking the matter over and asking for their input. I'd already been poking the mysterious force for information on alien societies over the past decade and amassed quite a significant pool of it to act on. Granted, I still couldn't seem to pull current information about any of the Citadel races, but I could pull historical, technological, societal, and military organizational knowledge as much as I wanted. I couldn't exactly read their minds or their up to date contingency plans, but I was almost done painting a picture of what the galaxy looked like currently.

It was... interesting.

More specifically, it was not really anywhere close to what I vaguely remembered from my previous life playing the games and reading the stories.

I wasn't too bothered by the changes, though. Nothing I'd discovered so far had set off real alarm bells as of yet and I was still debating on how precisely I would engineer humanity's first contact scenario... or if I'd leave it up to chance and let the dice fall where they might. Realistically, I'd moved on from my birth species in many ways, and both of us seemed the better for it. I had given them the best head-start they would accept and saved them from near-certain obliteration.

Did I owe them more? Would they accept more?

I blinked as a high-priority ping notification echoed throughout my personal network, my three conversation partners stilling abruptly as well.

Chuckling aloud, I was the first to recover. “Well, well, well... it looks like we won't have to worry about disclosure anymore with the readings that probe caught off Charon.”

“What should we do?” Mesonoxian Sky asked, his form a blur of static and pixels. “If we move quickly we could create the illusion it's a false alarm.”

Tempting, but...

Thonis-Heracleion spoke up. “No, Doctor Lopez was correct. We can allow them to react in their own time and manner. We don't need to put our thumb on the scales... yet.”

I smiled and nodded. “We'll see what humanity makes of no longer being alone in the universe.”

Gundam Wing: 1-5 (New)

Robotech: 1-10 (New)

Marvel Stark Tech: 1-7 (New)

Prothean Language: 1-10 (New)

Prothean History: 1-10 (New)

Prothean Society: 1-10 (New)

Prothean Military: 1-10 (New)

Prothean Technology: 1-10 (New)

Asari History: 1-3 (New)

Asari Society: 1-3 (New)

Asari Language: 1-3 (New)

Asari Military: 1-3 (New)

Turian History: 1-3 (New)

Turian Society: 1-3 (New)

Turian Language: 1-3 (New)

Turian Military: 1-3 (New)

Salarian History: 1-3 (New)

Salarian Society: 1-3 (New)

Salarian Language: 1-3 (New)

Salarian Military: 1-3 (New)

Batarian History: 1-3 (New)

Batarian Society: 1-3 (New)

Batarian Language: 1-3 (New)

Batarian Military: 1-3 (New)

~~~

Had to trash some of this. It just wasn't working for me and I needed to rewrite a good page or so of stuff. I think this is better and flows more smoothly. Next chapter of Winning Peace will be a third-party view of the discovery of the Charon relay and the Mars Archive.

I'll have the next chapter out next week, though I'm probably going to dip and do either a chapter of Industrious first or Nexus Event. Likely the former.

At any rate, rock on and stay awesome! Thanks again for all the support!