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| Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image modifier |
The Verdemusians are split. Aristotle and Belahkay have decided to stay with
Omega as he prepares to send his clones off to fight a war against the Exin
Empire. It’s not even just that everyone else wants to make love, not war.
They also want to keep Verdemus off of the empire’s radar. They went to
great lengths to give them the impression that the planet was destroyed,
with the solar system left soaked in exotic radiation. If the Exins get the
slightest hint that it might still be intact, it could have disastrous
ramifications for Extremus. Aristotle wants to use the power that he
inherited from his father to transport the entire moon from its orbit to the
Goldilocks Corridor. But even if that works, it might lead the enemy to
decide to launch another attack against them, and that would not be good.
Over the course of the last several months, the two factions have lived
separately from each other, with the warriors working on Jaunemus while
everyone else stays on Verdemus. In addition to maintaining the gestational
stasis pods for the clones, they’re developing a lot more infrastructure on
the moon, including weapons manufacturing plants, ground-based artillery,
and who knows what else? Tinaya has separated herself from it both
physically and mentally, as have Spirit and Niobe. Lilac travels back and
forth using the shuttle. Aristotle is her son, and even though she doesn’t
agree with his choices, she’s not going to abandon him. She knows his father
more than anyone here; probably more than anyone in histories. She is,
therefore, the only one qualified to help him succeed in his mission to
transport an entire moon hundreds of light years into the galaxy. If he’s
going to do this—and he is going to do it—he needs to practice with
smaller objects, and shorter distances, first. It’s going to be years before
he’s ready for the big show, and even then, they can’t leave right away. If
he’s anything like Maqsud, the trip will be all but instantaneous. Their
window will not be for another couple of centuries. They’ll need to make use
of those stasis pods for themselves.
Niobe has been pretty depressed lately. Aristotle is like a brother to her,
but she feels that she has to distance herself from him. She’s the least
accepting of his choices out of all of them, and she’s holding that over his
head by cutting him off entirely. Either he comes back into the family, or
he never gets to see his little sister again. He can’t have it both ways.
Tinaya has been trying to be there for her without straying down the path of
trying to get her to change her mind. Lots of people will say that family is
family, and you’re required to love them unconditionally. But this is
neither healthy nor practical. She has to protect her own mental wellbeing,
and if that means breaking ties with someone she feels to be detrimental to
that, then she has to do it. You may be on her side, or you may be on his,
but either way, she has the right to make her demands of him, just as he has
the right to do that for her, should he come up with anything. For the
moment, he appears to be bothered by it too, but he’s committed to his
decision, and has not tried too hard to reach out.
Niobe has mostly been focusing her efforts on the megablock. The way she
sees it, the Omega clones have no choice but to fight this war if they have
nowhere else to live anyway. She wants to make this place as inviting as
possible, so that any would-be deserters actually have the option to live
out their lives in peace on a beautiful planet. She’s been fabricating beds
and other furniture, as well as other synthesizers for a sustainable
lifestyle. None of the clones is even awake at the moment, but once she
receives word from Lilac that this has begun to happen, she’ll be ready to
make her case to them. She doesn’t know what they’re going to say. The
clones are an unpredictable bunch. They aren’t all perfect copies of Omega.
They’re more bred than grown. Each one was programmed to come out slightly
genetically different than the one before, eventually cascading into a
rainbow of diversity that Omega himself could not have predicted. Around 31%
of them are female. The first ones that were found in the pods were the
earliest of models, which was why they were indistinguishable, but the
latter ones look like completely different people. They have names too, but
these were computer generated, because it was too many for Omega to come up
with himself. Niobe is thinking about asking them to choose their own once
they are finally awakened.
“Have you sent the message for me?” Niobe asks as she’s checking the pH
level of the outdoor swimming pool while it’s filling up. The neighborhood
is going to be really nice, so that can’t be anyone’s argument against
making use of it.
“I relayed it. I’ve not yet received a response.” Tinaya requested
permission to begin releasing the clones so they can make their choice about
what they’re going to do with their lives. As the time lag to and from the
moon is only 1.21 seconds, she could have had a somewhat realtime
conversation with them without superluminal communication equipment. The
response delay would have been annoying, but bearable. Still, she chose to
send an email instead in case Omega and Aristotle grew angry at the
suggestion. She doesn’t need that kind of anxiety right now. They can reply
when they’re ready, and hopefully after they calm down from their first
reactions.
“Can’t you just order them to do it?” Niobe asked.
No, she can’t. “Sorry. You know that that would only cause more problems.”
Since no one else was willing to say it, Tinaya had to remind herself that
she is only the ad hoc leader, not a real one. She stepped up when no one
else wanted the job, but they can stop listening to her at any time, and she
can’t punish them for it. Some of them have indeed stopped listening, and
fighting them on it isn’t going to help anything. It will only lead to
deeper hostilities.
Niobe nods. “I know.”
Tinaya’s armband vibrates. She had to switch to this form factor because her
watch’s wristband was irritating her glass skin at the ulnar styloid. After
years of this, she’s still not used to the increased surface area of the
notifications. She flinches, then looks at it. “Speak of the devil.”
“What’s it say?”
Tinaya sighs. “They’re open to discussion, but they have one condition...”
“Lemme guess, I have to be there in person.”
“Yes.”
“This is just an excuse to get me to forgive him. They won’t agree to
anything.”
“You don’t know that,” Tinaya tells her.
“Think about it, what if every clone switches to my side? Even if they let
that happen, they’ll just have to make more clones to replace them. And if
those clones also defect? Where does it end? They need that
army, and they’re not going to let a little thing like me get in the way of
it.”
“So why are you taking this position if you think it’s not going to do any
good?”
“Because if I die on this hill, Aristotle will have to come back to bury me
on it.”
“That’s a really cynical viewpoint, Oboe.”
Niobe shrugs her shoulders, her lips, and her eyebrows. Tinaya has also had
a hard time wrapping her brain around Niobe’s mature mannerisms. Her body is
only twelve years old, but she’s actually lived about seventeen years at
this point. She’s practically an adult, and everyone has to work hard to
remember to treat her as such.
“Are you going to meet with them, or not? I’ll moderate if you agree.”
Niobe thinks about it, but she has little choice in the matter. This is what
she’s been preparing for for a year. “Set it up, please.”
They choose to use the Kamala Khan as neutral ground, orbiting the Lagrange
point one. It makes sense to use the shuttle for this as it originally came
from the Iman Vellani, half of which was designed as a diplomatic vessel for
talks like this one. Fortunately, they don’t need such grand accommodations,
nor some kind of seasoned professional to mediate the negotiations here.
They’re on opposing sides, but they still care about each other. Omega is
speaking on behalf of his side, since it’s his project. Aristotle is there
for support, but he does not have much say in the matter. Spirit is serving
in the same capacity for Niobe. Tinaya is facilitating healthy and
productive communication while Lilac has stepped away from this for fear of
exhibiting a conflict of interest. She has instead returned to her Hock
Watcher duties while Eagan is on board the shuttle to be available to
provide snacks, or whathaveyou. Who knows where Belahkay is right now?
The talks have been going okay, but they’re at a stalemate at the moment.
Omega recognized just as easily as Niobe the slippery slope that could
result in giving the clones a choice. It is also not lost on him that the
entire reason he’s here, and not fast asleep on a Project Stargate
colonization module, is because he made a choice for his own life decades
ago. Yes, he’s trying to make up for it now, but he’s never claimed to
regret this decision. He feels that he’s done a lot of good while he was
working with Team Keshida in the Gatewood Collective, and since coming on
board Extremus. All Niobe asks is that he give the same chance to his own
people. If they all choose not to fight, then it was probably a bad idea in
the first place. Forced conscription is not the hallmark of a democratic or
fair society in the least.
They’re in a short recess for now. Aristotle has asked to speak with Niobe
alone on a personal matter, so they have sealed off the control section,
which is the only private part of the craft besides the
lavatory-slash-airlock. Tinaya is leaning back in her chair, watching Eagan
like a nature photographer waiting for her subject to pounce on its prey.
He’s not going to do anything of the sort. He always stands perfectly still
unless someone calls upon him for something.
“Creepy, isn’t it?” Spirit asks, guessing at why Tinaya is so distracted by
the robot.
“What? Oh, no. I mean, yeah, but...whatever. I was just thinking...”
“Are you feeling...urgeful?” Spirit asks. “Because there’s a subroutine...”
“Jesus, Spirit, no! I’m happily married. I was thinking about a robot army.
They wouldn’t be carbon copies of Eagan, but they also wouldn’t be
self-aware. They could mount an offensive without the risk of any loss of
life.”
“I considered that.” Omega was taking his alone time in the airlock, but has
since returned. “You didn’t think I considered that? I didn’t start making
clones out of some sense of poetic symmetry. I ruled out a robot army during
the initial planning for this operation due to many reasons, but there was
one big, irrefutable one, which is all I needed to decide against it.”
“What might that be?” Spirit questioned.
“The Exins are...well, they’re confused, and they have been indoctrinated.
They’re easily swayed by their leader’s outrageous claims, because he’s
literally the one who created them. They other people,” he says,
using the word as a verb. “All foreigners are bad, and unrelatable. To make
their enemies nothing more than walking machines would only exacerbate this
issue. It may seem like all I want to do is kill, kill, kill, but I would
much rather end the war with only the one battle. I want them to see their
enemies as real people, just like them, who deserve to empathized with, and
understood. It’s much harder to kill a sentient being than to destroy a
toaster. They’ll still do it, but I’m hoping that every time they do, it
gives them pause, and that those pauses eventually add up to them
questioning whether they’re even doing the right thing by fighting at all.
That’s why I don’t want to sacrifice my army to the megablock. If we lose
them, we’ve already lost the war, and in that regard, we’ve lost Earth and
the stellar neighborhood too. I can’t let that happen”
“I can’t speak on that,” Tinaya admits. “I’m the impartial moderator.”
Omega chuckles. “You’re not, and I never expected you to be. Don’t worry,
I’m not going to tattle on you to the Multicultural Interstellar Association
of Space Mediators Association.”
“My asthma?” Spirit quips.
Omega breathes deeply as he’s taking a cup of iced tea from Eagan’s tray,
and looking at the bulkhead to the control room as if he can see right
through the door. “I relent. I’ll start waking them up in groups of 147, and
asking them what they would like to do. But I warn you, I’ll strongly
advocate for them to stay on course. I’ll allow Niobe to be there, but she
will not be allowed to speak unless the fraction of them who choose her ask
to hear from her. If they do—if they exist, and they do, they’ll go off
alone while the rest are returned to their pods to await their training
periods. That is my offer.”
“Don’t tell me,” Tinaya says. “Tell her.”
Omega takes a sip of his tea before spitting it out. “Ugh. What did you put
in that? Ginger?” He sets the cup back down on Eagan’s tray. Anyway, yes,
I’ll tell her when she gets back out. You were right to place us on a break.
I needed time to think.”
When Niobe does come back, they see that she’s been crying, but her body
language doesn’t imply that she’s trying to protect herself from Aristotle.
They seem to have worked out their differences. They return to the table,
and start hashing out the details. The next phase of the project is planned
to take over a year. Every three days, 147 more clones will be awakened from
their gestational pods. The situation will be explained to them, as will
their options. Niobe will be present for each of these meetings, along with
Tinaya, who will be there to make sure that everything remains fair and
honest. They’re not sure how many of them will take them up on the offer, so
they will have to figure out how to adapt as those numbers start to become
apparent. All those who choose to go to war will go back to their stasis
pods until such time as they are revived again to train for their respective
responsibilities. The real question is if any of them on either side will
later change their minds, and what they’ll do about that.
In the meantime, Aristotle is not allowed to set foot on Jaunemus anymore.
He’s allowed to continue to practice his time power, but he’s not to have
anything to do with the war. When the time comes, he can transport the moon
to the Goldilocks Corridor, but must then leave the theatre of war right away.
Niobe will have been in stasis during that time as well so they don’t lose
time together. On the same day that the last group of 147 are awakened,
Aristotle sends a message that he’s ready to begin his final test yet. He
wants to send everyone else back to the Extremus.
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