Winning Peace - Chapter 20 (Patreon)

I was forced from slumber by a sudden rush of neurochemicals that sent my consciousness from a perfect standstill to a hundred kilometers per hour in a single instant. Snapping vertical, I blinked in shock for a moment before accessing my HUD and beginning to look through notifications for what could have possibly triggered the highest-tier alert that I'd-

Ah.

It's time, then.

“Khonsu, crack me a portal to Luna,” I ordered, rising from my bed as the virtual intelligence engaged and opened a blue-rimmed gateway from the Sgt. Pepper to my home on Earth's moon. I stepped through, crossing several hundred million kilometers of distance and more in a single step and making my way to my primary control apparatus. Just before the portal snapped shut, I toggled my private quarters to seal, adding a 'do not disturb' digital note onto the system. Even if it was discovered that I'd left the ship, though, I'd make explanations later.

This was more important.

Taking a deep breath, I slid into my seat and allowed the interface to slide into the newly-revealed socket in the back of my neck in turn.

My world exploded in a riot of color, the cyberbrain interface dramatically widening the available bandwidth and heightening the speed of my processing power.

While I'd been reluctant to truly change anything about my brain itself, for obvious reasons, I'd long-since acknowledged the need for a certain level of cybernetic enhancement. I'd have worried about possible complications from the surgeries and the lack of human test subjects, but I'd installed much more invasive augmentations and replacements in the Last Dogs agents I'd been surreptitiously capturing during the past several months and was monitoring them closely enough to have substantial forewarning of any health problems that could arise.

Additionally, a slowly-growing minority of the space-based population was volunteering for more open trials of the technology.

It wasn't as if I could actually showcase my in-depth and very unethical medical experimentation on earthbound humans. I ostensibly had no way to retrieve or return to Earth after kidnapping them.

That kind of thing would raise more questions and cause more problems than it would answer or solve either.

Regardless of the advances the society I helped create had made in safety and security, there were any number of accidents over the past few years. While traumatic brain injuries were comparatively rare, damage to neurological tissue as a result of exposure to toxic chemicals or oxygen deprivation from insufficient ventilation still occurred from time to time. In the event that regenerative treatments either failed or weren't successful enough to restore those affected, a few cybernetic augmentations had also been handed out to those individuals as well.

That was putting aside those who suffered from workplace and domestic accidents that resulted in amputation, too. They were rare and becoming rarer every year, but they still occurred from time to time and some people opted for a mechanical replacement instead of having a vat-grown clone limb installed.

It was still rare for someone to be as augmented as I was at this point. The neural lace I'd had Heka, my medical VI, install was not, strictly speaking, an alteration to my brain so much as it was an addition to it.

Specifically, it opened up a new world to me.

The world of a true digital existence.

My meat-brain was limited. I didn't dare truly alter it in any substantive way lest I lose the ability to pull technology out of my ass, but the combination of a neural lace and cyberbrain interface allowed my thoughts to expand into an advanced digital space which buffered and transitioned the pure biology of 'me' into the pure electronics of the budding Stellar Neo-Net which was being constructed to support inter-colony communications across the solar system.

Clusters of data and streams of information molded themselves into sensory data I could understand as I began picking out and putting together exactly what I needed.

I caught myself up on the latest efforts of my various artifi-well, virtual intelligences, as they were being called now. The cadre of intelligent programs which lacked a sense of self, but were more than capable of micro and macro-scale management of the various crises which still cycled through the reduced human population.

'Mongolia.'

Submerged as I was in the digital sea, it took a different kind of effort to physically verbalize words in the material world than it did to simply 'talk to myself' here in the digital one.

Orbs of light appeared next to me, each one with different constellations of code, color, and intensity orbiting them. Pulses of raw information made themselves available to me in ways I wasn't ever quite sure how to properly communicate to another human should I ever be asked. I imagined such a task would face the same difficulty as describing color to the blind man or song to the deaf.

It was a new type of sensory input that, although it overlapped with existing senses in a kind of fever-dream synesthesia, there were aspects of it that stood alone and unique. The best analogy I had come up with was to compare the experience to how food had taste, texture, and smell. Although the fusion of all three was an integral combination to eating, each was still their own sense independently as well.

In turn, what I experienced in that moment was as if someone combined proprioception, abstract conceptual understanding, and sight.

I did not so much read or consume the knowledge presented to me by Montu, Set, and Seshat so much as the act of observing it made it become part of what I knew. My intelligences governing warfare, subterfuge, and archival knowledge presented a unified agreement and judgment on the final location of the Last Dog's leader out of the ninety-ninth percentile with the possibility of an error out to one ten-thousandth of one percent.

'More than acceptable to act on.'

I projected intent, an act that combined parts of speaking and writing. The decision-order I pronounced did not so much leave me to travel into the digital ether as the data packet followed a coded course as it duplicated itself from my own existence.

A fraction of a moment later, Khonsu and Ptah transitioned into view. Or, at least, part of them started interacting with me as they reacted to my orders. More data was exchanged with an absent-minded order sent to Anubis and Isis to call up a select few of my fellow Ministers.

In the minutes I knew it would take them to respond, I started directing my various programs to sort through all of the possible solutions for the Bad Guy. While they were doing that, I reallocated more power to the new servers that had just come online on Earth and started crunching the Last Dogs final ciphers from their newly-suborned upper-level operatives.

Now that I'd finally gotten a breather, it didn't matter how uncrackable or perfect this asshat's codes were. My latest generation of servers had just come online, a transformational leap from my old capabilities just a few months ago in capacity, speed, and throughput. Once I'd understood that I was fighting a concerted effort to undo my work, I'd begun to construct something capable of squashing whoever it was like a bug. Once I'd understood exactly who it was I was up against, I'd increased the production speed by triple.

The result had cost tens of thousands of Earth-bound lives while I'd been otherwise occupied, but in a completely amoral cost-benefit evaluation, it was worth it. Especially given I now hoped I could prevent another catastrophe like the Short War from happening.

I had arbitrary amounts of computing power to throw at them now.

'Oh.'

I stared for a few microseconds, the equivalent of minutes as the now-decoded files.

'Fuuuuuuuuck.'

My avatar flexed in a way that could be interpreted as inhaling deeply, the action a carry-over from my biological processes as I released a long string of virulent curses.

My moment of emotional overreaction over, I cued up another VI, Seb, and set him to work in concert with Montu and Seth. Unlike the latter two, Seb wasn't a 'general purpose' program I'd created to deploy out into the wild. Seb was more like the first VI I'd created, back on Earth, before the term had even gained prominence. Isis was a 'personal' program, specifically one that would manage my own private dwelling, the defense thereof, and my personal server farms.

That was, Isis had been charged with the physical defenses. She controlled the electronic locks, the cameras, the emergency defense turrets, blast doors, panic room, life support, and all manner of other appliances and conveniences.

Seb, on the other hand, was my personal VI I'd optimized for cyberwarfare and cybersecurity. I'd named him after the ancient Egyptian god charged with the role of defending the power of the pharaonic kings. While Montu and Seth both had digital capabilities to complement their designs of physical warfare and information-gathering, neither was purpose-built to do what Seb did.

'Reset Permissions. Global Maximum. Confirmation Code: J0\/\\/\Ey-A99le533[)!.'

Seb exploded in a corona of data and began linking with the exterior-facing systems. Truthfully, I'd only created the program as a final line of defense after realizing the technological expertise in the enemy camp. My own systems were designed with a kind of paranoia I had only ever dreamed was possible prior to the apocalypse.

After nearly being taken out by a nuclear strike on the goddamn moon, I had gone a bit overboard. Or, well, recent revelation proved that false, but at the time...

All of my systems were air-gapped, just as a start. I'd looked up some designs on what was left of the Old Web and installed analog mechanical interlocks between separate computers, creating data air locks of sorts. That allowed separate levels of analysis on independent servers for proper security and hygiene. 'Proper' in that a dopy of a bleeding-edge cybersecurity and warfare VI with access to a repository of the entirety of human knowledge on a quantum computer was in level, decrypting and decoding each segment of data and purging it of anything hazardous.

'...but was it enough? How long had they been doing it? When did they start this?'

My systems dinged with a safety alert, indicating that my remaining organic parts were producing adrenaline and attempting to raise my heart rate and blood pressure to dangerous levels. I okayed a suggestion from Heka to inject the mildest form of sedative to calm myself down. It wouldn't affect the neural lace, but giving myself a stroke might. At least I didn't have to worry about the artificial hearts...

Seb's scan started turning up flags, red indicators across every major city on Earth. There were some in space, too, but thankfully far fewer.

'I was too late. He spread the code itself across his various lieutenants. I've been kidnapping them almost weekly! Each one had memorized the relevant part and then fucking destroyed their memory! Goddamn apocalypse cult!'

That was the real problem. Even in tracking down the leader, I'd also had to piece together their network encryption to get through the last level of security. The leader, or leaders I suppose, would have the entire thing, able to access the full program suite that was tucked away in a location even I hadn't been able to find. More than likely, it was being ferried about between low-ranking agents who had no idea of what they were actually holding and bracketed with fakes and duplicates that would be constantly exchanged like some kind of maddening back-alley cup game.

'Thirty-Thirty-three-Thirty-five-'

My artificial hearts dropped into my stomach as the number kept climbing and more intrusions were detected.

'I'd known they were planning something, but I thought it was going to be sabotage or subversion of electronic systems. Possibly damaging what communication infrastructure is left... Maybe using deep-fakes to start civil unrest or start taking things over, but this...'

Half of the Stellar Council's icons lit up.

It was a testament to how fast I was working in this space that I was able to cancel the alerts I'd sent out before the slower peripheral systems were able to communicate them to the council members I'd planned to coordinate with.

They were among the ones infected.

I sighed as Seb finished analyzing the systems I'd set him to.

I was clean. Every single interaction with every single system in my radious came up clean.

'It takes a hell of a mind to come up with something like this. It's foul beyond words, but whoever is living in that tiny camp in Mongolia must truly believe the Last Dogs' rhetoric if they're pursuing this strategy. Cognito-hazards implanted in graphic designs, media, and music... I never thought my workaholic tendencies and nostalgia addiction would save my life.'

It was a memetic contagion that spread from digital media and interconnected systems into the human mind, living rent-free in the back of your thoughts until...

You just snapped, went crazy, and started trying to kill everyone around you and destroy everything you could.

When would it happen?

That depended on which specific factors you'd been exposed to, in which order, and whether or not you ever stopped being exposed to them. With how much the Old Net and congruent surveillance systems had been damaged, if not outright destroyed... I could simulate the elaborate formulas to determine what order people would go insane, but there would be a significant margin of error even with my new capacities.

I stared at the blood-red fifty-seven percent.

My digital avatar turned from Seb's report and ordered a tungsten rod the size of a diesel train engine car to be dropped on the location of the Last Dog's leader.

'I'm beyond sure he's there. Satellite imaging during one of the Dogs' reporting periods confirmed it. There could be more than one of them in that little camp, but that's where the leader or leaders are. I own their network now, too. There can be no doubt.'

Were there innocents in the blast radius? Almost certainly. Would someone notice and raise a stink? I could pass it off as space debris. There were doubtless other problems which would come about as a result of dropping a rod from god, but honestly...

'Level the entire place. Enough innocents have already died and more are going to. This will be just a drop in the bucket.'

~~~

...and that, as they say, is *that.*

Now we're moving into the next phase of the story, so there will be a time skip.  I have two options for where to go with things and will be posting a poll for Patreon supporters to help decide whether there's more material to cover or if you want me to indulge in a larger time skip and move straight to the Mass Effect stuff.

So think about whether you want an intensive teching-up arc of about ten chapters or if you'd rather see the results of what Zeke does in the next few decades from a hindsight perspective.

Normally I'd move forward on my own plan, but it's my understanding that there's a group of people who just want to get to the aliens already and, with the demise of the Last Dogs, we now have options.

Next up will be a Code Geass Quest Update in a day or two.