Coming of Age: Part 1
Chapter 2
Path to getting necessary information without the Overlords discovering.
34 steps. Fortuna tried again.
Path to getting necessary information without the Overlords discovering she knew, or Stormgren being harmed. It was sentimental, but she found she liked the old man, for all he had been used.
164 steps, a few hours.
Fortuna let the Path take over. It would tell her when she needed to listen, and gave her time to straighten her whirling mind.
It wasn't fair. She had already killed one of these things. Then she'd spent her life working for the death of the other. Fortuna was retired, on a beach as she had promised herself, not a puppet to her Paths anymore. It wasn't fair. She couldn't go home. The Tinker device that had brought her here was one way by design, to put her beyond reach of the people she'd used and the people who'd use her again if they could. She wasn't being drawn back into the nightmare, or helping with reconstruction or anything! She was retired, and it wasn't fair!
Step 22: Pay attention
"Your kidnapping was well-reported," she said the words as the Path dictated.
"Ah yes, I was never in any danger."
"With the Overlords watching, it is shocking it happened at all." Surprise wrote itself honestly on her face, as the Path required. There was a pause, a catch in his breath. Once Stormgren had been a consummate politician, but now he was a retired old man, and the old skills were slipping.
"Anyone can be caught by surprise." He was looking at the floor, before his eyes flicked back to her. She spoke before he could change the subject.
"I understand they swapped you from car to car in a tunnel to try to lose the Overlords' surveillance?" She laughed, easing the tension and he joined in.
"They never stood a chance," he said. "With the tracer Karellen had on me..." he chuckled.
"...your location did not match the car." She laughed along with him. The Overlords had needed a tracer. They didn't even have tinkertech levels of remote viewing, and the tunnel would have defeated them. It wasn't much to work with, but it was a start. "It lead to the dissolution of the nation states, didn't it?"
"No," Stormgren said, "but it gets taught that way. Let me put the record straight. The proposal for a one-nation world was already going through. The Overlords had ordered it. Many nations and people objected to the erasing of languages, differences, and culture, so they formed the Freedom League." He sighed. "I had some sympathy with them, but there was a militant wing."
"And that was what kidnapped you?" Contessa, eager student, was all ears.
"Yes. The Overlords stepped in to rescue me after four days." There it was, an odd time delay for the rescue and something he was not saying. The tinker specialists she'd known going up against unpowered humans would have retrieved them in hours. Dragon would have done better.
"That must have taken a lot of courage."
"Actually I spent the time playing poker. Then the Overlords froze my kidnappers in time and I just followed instructions and walked out." The Overlords didn't use tinkertech so far as she had seen, so they had the technology and devices to do that at any time. They had been waiting for something.
"Surely this would have made people fear the Overlords more?" she said. "The Freedom League must have had thousands flocking to join them."
"Actually, the kidnapping of the Secretary General of the United Nations rather destroyed their common support base." Stormgren shrugged it off. "No one wants to think they are a terrorist." She looked down at her pad, checking her shorthand as she scrawled the notes.
"What happened to the leaders? I can't find any records of a trial."
"There wasn't one," Stormgren said, frankly. "The Overlords gathered up the leaders of the Freedom Fighters, let it be known they would be under Overlord surveillance for the rest of their lives and released them. With their leadership neutralised it took away any co-ordination from the movement." Contessa's smile didn't change. If the Freedom League had leaders, no cell structure, and official ways to sign up, it seemed more like a genuine political movement than a terrorist threat. Kidnapping the Secretary of the United Nations had been so convenient for the Overlords that she could have believed it a false flag operation, but it seemed just as likely an agent provocateur could have riled the more extreme wing to action, dangling the aliens' bait before the League in the form of a man who throught he was their friend.
"One more question, Mr Stormgren?" she said. "Do you think the Overlords truly care about humanity?"
"I hope that they do..." he said, sadly. "I would have liked to see them face to face, but..." He trailed off into silence.
"They said fifty years at your last meeting," Contessa said. "Fifty years until they would show what they look like to humanity."
"And the whole world is counting down to it," Stormgren said. "You and your own children might be there."
"I hope so. Do you think they will use a broadcast or a projection?" she pressed. "Or that they will actually come to earth?"
"I hope," he said, wistfully, "I hope that they will come to Earth themselves, and see us face to face. I won't live to see them revealed, but I'd like to think Karellen would put himself level with the people he has been ruling for so long." He paused. "I like to hope that when Karellen comes to earth he will think to visit the grave of an old man who was once a friend. Forgive my sentimentality." The Path required her to ask for one further Path, so she did. The steps were clear, as always. She did not run it. She was not required to, and it would have been needlessly cruel.
"Of course." She reached out, shook his hand. "Thank you for your time."
"It was a pleasure, Miss Fortuna." She stood up, and he guided her to the door. "I look forward to reading your article when it is done."
#
Fortuna got on the bus, travelling far enough away from the house to transfer to a taxi directly to the airport. On the way she composed her article, submitting it to the correspondence course on paper as the next step on her Path. The Path required completing the course to remove herself from a watchlist which took several steps over the following three months. She had plenty of time to plan around it. The hardest part would be living long enough to defeat the Overlords. Aliens that could plan fifty years ahead or more would be difficult to fight. If warned, they could retreat to high orbit beyond her Path's ability to reach.
In the airport, Fortuna stepped into the disabled toilet, closed the door and prayed. She mourned the loss of her retirement and grieved the horrors she had yet to create. Her fists clenched in front of her, mouth moving soundlessly. It was unfair. She had killed an entity, arranged the death of the other. Humanity was supposed to be safe. She had given her life, turned herself into a monster for that cause. Yet somehow, here, on a reality that neither of the Entities were meant to be able to affect, there was another one lurking?
Defeating the last one had cost entire Earths, trillions of people, but if they hadn't the cost would have been all Earths and all humanity. Thousands had died finding a way to fight it, millions had died in the attempt, billions had simply been murdered by the creature. She had given her soul, devoted her entire life to preventing the omnicide as a slave to her Paths. Now Fortuna had to pay that cost again, or the first time had been for nothing. She could do no less. She prayed for all the lives that would be taken, the things she would have to do, and eventually in the silence, she simply prayed.
The first step on the Path was reached. Fortuna stopped crying immediately, but it was Contessa who wiped her face clean and tidied her appearance. There was still an hour before the plane, but there was one more task to complete before she left.
Before she went to the boarding gate, Contessa purchased a fedora.