Winning Peace - Chapter 32 (Patreon)

“Believe what you want, I didn't actually plan it,” I sighed as Sasha and I walked along the streets of Taiyuan, the capital of the human-occupied portion of the planet of Shanxi.

The body Sasha was using eyed me for a long moment, the barest hint of disbelief coating her expression before it faded and she nodded. “I suppose I have no choice but to take your word for it, Z.”

A soft smile graced my lips. It had been a long time since I'd heard that nickname.

I looked around languidly as we walked. Taiyuan was predominantly occupied by humans, as one would believe by virtue of its title. However, there were more rachni and accosians than I'd expected moving about the streets and intermingling. There was still some inherent revulsion in the faces of a few of the bipedal species walking around, but it was subdued. Both the accosian and human governments had agreed that screening applicants for settlement on Shanxi would require special attention to how well they could control instinctual responses to obviously non-human lifeforms.

“The rachni wouldn't have been my first choice for First Contact, anyway,” I replied in a thoughtful tone.

Obviously interested by the admission and curious, Sasha raised an eyebrow as she turned to me. “Really?”

I nodded. “Truthfully, I hadn't decided on whether or not to direct humanity's first contact, or even if I was going to... ah, coax a specific outcome.”

“You seemed pretty adamant that you didn't want to last month,” Sasha pointed out, and I nodded, sighing.

“I don't really know exactly what my position in humanity should be, Sasha. Nor even if I should have one at all,” I admitted candidly. “I've entertained the idea of guiding them more actively when I see them come upon problems, but... at the same time, I don't know if I want that to be my job forever, and they need to grow up sometime, Sasha.”

Sasha hummed. “And you think they don't like you, too.”

“And I think they have mixed opinions on me,” I corrected gently. “Especially the older generations.”

“Which doesn't matter as much as you think,” Sasha stated. “It's twenty-one-seventy, Z. It's been twenty years since you... did what you did. Over half of humans alive today were either too young to remember the change or were born after it.”

It was true, at least from a statistical standpoint. Human population had cratered to, by my best estimate, just under three billion people. In the twenty largely-peaceful years since the last of the Last Dogs had been put down, humanity had rebounded to fill its already-extant niche. My cloning pods had certainly helped, but without throwing ethics completely to the wind, even I couldn't hold a candle to the natural ability of the human species to reproduce.

Luna was carving out a massive honeycomb structure of arcology-habitats under its surface even as similar above-ground structures had already gone up on Earth itself. For all that the storm had largely passed now, people were still scared, still scarred.

The arcologies that I'd designed were beautiful works of art as much as they were homes for hundreds of millions, but more than either of those, they were hardened bunkers with lists of defensive and security features thousands of pages long.

They were places where people could feel safe to raise families.

That, more than anything else, had seen the population skyrocket.

“There are other things I've been working on,” I temporized. “It's not like I haven't been interacting with anyone. You've met my kids, my students.”

“Your kids are some of the worst examples of 'humans' out there, Ezekiel-” She started.

I opened my mouth.

“-and you know I don't mean it that way, so don't even try,” Sasha preempted.

I closed my mouth.

She sighed, shaking her head and stopping briefly for a moment to hold up a few strands of blonde hair. “Not to cede the topic or anything, and I know I told you that you could pick whatever shell you wanted me to pilot today, but... a blond-haired, blue-eyed bombshell, really?”

I looked her over in amusement. Her hair was parted to one side and hung limply without any curl or wave to it, but the sleek vibrancy of the near-gold color gave it a style all its own. The simple understatement of a pair of tight jeans, a white shirt and a black vest over-top that completed the image along with brown calf-height leather boots.

“No one will look at you and think 'Sasha Tuigamala,' the recently-retired former Minister of Science and Technology. Like it or not, you're still a name to conjure with, even around these parts and you did say you wanted a low-visibility date,” I pointed out reasonably.

Crystal-blue orbs rolled in their sockets as she looked pointedly down at her significant chest. “I can't help but feel there's some other reason you went with this design.”

I snorted and grinned. “Well, there's still a lot of pushback about certain kinds of androids, even if they aren't sentient, so I wanted to make sure everyone knew you were at least eighteen.”

Sasha snorted as well, then stopped and looked at me with a narrowed gaze. “I know that tone. This is one of your obscure references, isn't it?”

I shrugged my shoulders and held up my empty hands in a gesture of innocent submission. “Maybe? Who knows?”

She kept up the suspicious glare as I chuckled and felt stress bleed off.

Yeah, I'd needed this.

I waved my girlfriend over to a street vendor and looked over the accosian standing behind the grill thoughtfully. Like many members of his species, he looked startlingly human, though very slightly off. His skin wasn't really skin, for instance, just a very fine pattern of scales made of a material somewhere between the human fingernail in origin and crystalline growth in form. One major difference from humans, though, was in the coloration.

Accosians just didn't have anything approaching near-uniformity of a single 'color' over their 'skin.' Instead, they had a patchwork series of fractal-like designs that were unique to each person. In some ways, it was like wearing your fingerprints as a non-optional fashion statement for humans.

One of the other main differences was their eyes. The iris and pupil were hex-shaped instead of circular and the most common colors were purple and red for their species, though rare instances of an albino-like condition produced a vivid honey-yellow.

“I'd like... hmm, four yelrac sticks, please. And, if you could substitute the carr sauce for some barbeque flavor?” I asked politely.

“Of course,” The stall owner nodded with a smile, then turned to Sasha. “And for you... ah, I believe the term is 'miss?'”

Sasha smiled and nodded. “That's right. I believe this use equates to 'ectalline' in your language?”

The humanoid alien nodded, smiling as he did so and obviously relieved to have gotten the term correct. “Then you are in courtship! I wish you blessings of The Saviors on you both!”

I refrained from twitching, even if my smile grew a bit strained.

Sasha gave me the side-eye, but nodded. “Yes, we are. I take it you only just arrived? Ah, mister...”

“You may call me 'Tex.'” He grinned, showing off a set of non-human teeth that were all flat bricks made to grind. “I have been told that my real name is extremely difficult to pronounce for humans. I am glad my government issued me a translator when I received my travel permit.”

I nodded. “I've heard that accosians have a wider vocal range than humans. It's why I got a few implants specifically for this trip, so I could communicate if the need arose.”

Tex grinned again as he finished packing up my meal and turned back to Sasha for her order. Picking up one of the sticks, not unlike Earth-based kebabs, I drizzled a bit of the brown sauce over them before biting into one. “Mhm, yeah... that's the good stuff.”

Sasha frowned at my food. “I thought accosians didn't like the idea of eating meat?”

Tex frowned at the reminder as he put together another plate of food. “We do not, but the initial shock is wearing off. Many of the sauces and spices you use for those dishes, though, are free of flesh or blood-” Here, the alien looked uncomfortable at the very idea. “-and are surprisingly tasty on our own food. I did some sampling before I finalized the menu last week and thought carrying more human options would help me find more customers.”

“Speaking of which,” I commented, running my entirely superfluous forearm-mounted band over the sensor. “A little extra for being the first accosian we've met as a couple.”

“You are too kind,” Tex replied with another nod. “I wish you all the best during your trip. This settlement may be small, but it is growing very quickly. You are an industrious people. Hopefully by your next visit, I will be running my own store.”

As Sasha and I said our goodbyes and walked off, Sasha raised an eyebrow at me. “Well, at least he didn't ask how you knew exactly what to order if you were tasting their food for the first time, Savior.”

I rolled my eyes. “Please don't. Besides, I'm good at making excuses for things I shouldn't know about. Just ask the assholes we call a government.”

Sasha snorted, shaking her head as she bit into her own food. It looked something like a quesadilla, if instead of meat it was made of a mix of fresh vegetables and a blue-green paste that didn't quite act like cheese, but was close. “Hmm... this is pretty good.”

“Shame he didn't have anything spicy to put on it. Some good salsa makes those sing,” I replied, nodding at her food as I chewed through another stick of alien fruit.

“I'll take it under advisement. Hopefully, we can swing by his shop again before we leave,” Sasha stated.

I nodded, looking around us. The downside of an arcology-based society was that those things took time to build. Taiyuan had only been founded some six months ago by an initial settlement group, so the area looked much more like an antebellum town, even if there were more publicly-available bunkers than most people would have considered reasonable. As Sasha and I approached a building down the street that looked much like a giant ant or termite hive, we happened upon a group of children, what seemed to be preteens, all gathered around a juvenile rachni worker.

Stopping to watch for a moment, it seemed like they were stumbling through the first levels of communication as the kids mimicked poses and adjusted pheromone devices at their waists.

“Look, there's one now!” One of the kids yelled, pointing at...

“Me?” I blinked, raising my own hand to gesture at myself.

All of the kids turned to look where one of them was pointing, then nodded and turned back to the rachni spawnling. “That's one of the fogies! He thinks doing things the old way is better than what we have now! You can tell by his white hair!”

Sasha closed her eyes and stifled laughter as she tried not to choke on her food.

“This is why I stopped teaching in the first place,” I muttered, rubbing at my face as memories of a lifetime ago bubbled up. Raising my voice, I called back to the kids, “Am not! White hair is just cool!”

The kids turned back to me in disbelief. One of them, a child of Asian descent, crossed his arms. “Yeah right! Then what do you think about Dr. Lopez? I heard all the fogies hate him!”

I felt a twitch building up in my right eye and, for once, didn't fight it even as Sasha staggered towards a nearby table in the name of not dropping her half-eaten food. “I think he did what he thought was right. I think he made the world a better place, even if he broke a lot of rules to do it.”

Maybe, in hindsight, I should have broken a few more to figure out how to encode maturity at a genetic level.

The kids exchanged another look, considering my answer as I sighed and approached. “What are you guys trying to do, anyway?”

A girl stepped up and pointed at the rachni. “Stones Upon Stones is on a mission from his queen to make contact with human juveniles and understand social barriers. We thought you were a good example to use because a lot of people who have white hair are trying to pretend they're getting old and talking about how we should go back to how they did things before the war.”

I sighed. “Yeah, fogies are causing problems, but that's because they don't understand who they are.” All of the kids and the rachni looked at me in confusion and I sat down next to them. “Fear is one of the oldest and most powerful human emotions, and that's a good thing because it keeps us alive a lot of times. It tells us what to be worried about. But sometimes people start being afraid for no reason. Or at least, no good reasons. The fogies were born into a world where growing old and dying was something everyone just did-”

“That's stupid, who would want to do that?” A young boy of hispanic descent sniffed.

“To them it wasn't a choice,” I replied tolerantly. “But now, they're not growing old and they're not dying, and that scares some people. Others are happy about it, but for some... it's like if gravity stopped working on a planet all of a sudden. Something that you'd taken for granted all your life and suddenly... it isn't there anymore. Not knowing what happens next scares people.”

“So being scared causes societal dysfunction?” The girl from earlier asked, looking towards the rachni worker. “Stones Upon Stones is lucky, then. He says the hive doesn't feel fear the same way humans do unless the queen is in danger.”

“Fear is a big part of it, but it's made worse when someone says that they can make the fear go away if you do what they say,” I continued explaining. “When someone starts saying that, you need to be careful, because they could say you need to do things that would hurt other people.”

“Like how the fogies want to stop giving people credits to buy food and let people have a free place to live!” A young girl cried, blonde hair and black skin pointing to what was probably a mixed parentage between a set of African and Scandinavian progenitors.

“Kind of like that, yeah,” I nodded. “Even if they think it will make people work harder, it'll also mean that a lot of people become homeless or can't feed themselves or their families anymore. And with the nanofabbers and fusion power, we don't need to worry about resource scarcity, so it doesn't make sense like back when they were young.”

Not that it really did back then, but that's a whole other discussion.

“That's why they hate Dr. Lopez!” The Asian boy cried. “He invented all of those and made it so they won't die like they thought they would! So that's why they don't like him..”

One of the girls snorted and rolled her eyes. “Which is stupid. Dr. Lopez is awesome. He had a secret robot army and beat up the Super-Nazis.”

“And he totally saved the moon from his laser-fortress during the Short War!” Another exulted.

As other 'facts' about me started pouring out, I quietly rose to my feet and walked away. Sasha, still barely containing her laughter, watched as I approached.

I sighed. “Not a goddamn word. Not a single. Goddamn. Word.”

Unfortunately for me, boisterous laughter was not a word.

~~~

...and, yep, just a few hours too late for May. Ah well, it's here now!

This one's a shout out to some of the more normal stuff happening on the ground that Zeke seldom involves himself him these days. However, his new SO is a great excuse to have him rub elbows with the average citizen.

Next chapter will be... something. Not sure. But I'll have it out in a few days. Right now, I'm thinking either Where Your God Is or Nexus Event.

Stay tuned for June's Poll coming up in a bit.