Coming of Age Part 1
Chapter 4
It was the day the entire world had waited for, though it would not have been a world recogniseable to those of the Earth the ships had arrived over all those years before. Everyone spoke English, literacy was universal, and the divides between countries had fallen under one world government. With infinite clean energy, plentiful food, and near universal automation, the consensus was that the Overlords were benefactors. Where the rare voice still named them tyrants, it would also concede that they seemed to be benevolent ones.
The air cars were pushed back, the airspace cleared so that nothing would obstruct the view. The overlarge video cameras were set up round the field's edge, the crowd kept to a safe distance by cordons. What a crowd it was. Fifty years of waiting and finally humanity was to meet their Overlords. Naturally, all of humanity wanted to be there for it.
One one ship now remained: the day before the others had vanished. 'Projections', screamed the headlines, 'teleportation' said certain whispers in the back rooms which despite fifty years of control the Overlords had not yet quieted.
It was not a shuttle that descended. For the first time since its arrival the great ship moved in the sky, lowering itself with grace foreign to something so large. It dropped easily, coming to land without denting the grass, an unknown form of antigravity sparing the ground its weight.
A dark rectangle opened in the side, a steep ramp descending, too steep to climb. The eyes of the world were locked on the grey metallic strip as it lowered, hovering in the air in that strange, familiar, way before touching down upon the grass.
The crowd stirred as the message went round: the Overlords wanted two children. Without fear, two ducked under the rope and were ushered forward, a boy and a girl. The others behind them were turned back as the lucky pair ran up. They jumped on the ramp and were drawn upwards, at a right angle to the slope, nearly parallel with the ground before they vanished inside the ship. Neither seemed nervous, though their parents most assured were. For a time nothing happened.
Finally, slowly, a new shape appeared in the rectangle. What was within set one clawed foot upon the ramp, as the world drew back. The action of the ramp descended it to the grass, and for the first time in human memory an Overlord stood upon the world they ruled. On its shoulders, the children sat happily, the boy playing with the fold of one ebon wing.
They had ruled for fifty years. They had nearly conquered huger and inequality. They had improved humanity's lot across the globe to a standard never before seen, and yet among the waiting crowd there was not a single one whose breath did not catch, who did not feel the chill in the bright day.
And upon the grass, the ten foot high figure, the armoured form of humanity's legendary adversary, lowered its horned head and smiled as two children played uncaring with its wings.
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Oddly unchanged by the years, Contessa watched with the crowd, close enough to see and hidden enough to now be seen. Her chill had little to do with superstition. If one had come as a golden god, it was no surprise the other should choose a form out of myth. The face of the enemy was now known and battle, if it could be such against such an overwhelming force, was joined.
The ramp that amazed the crowds was a basic enough gravity redirector, non-Tinkertech and replicatable. The laser bridge to Brockton Bay's rig had been more advanced, but if the Overlords had that technology they were saving it to impress a more knowledgeable audience. Karellen spoke, a pleasant, resonant, sound because of course it would be, to contrast the form it had chosen. The greeting was simple enough, nothing critical that her current Path require she focus on.
Instead she observed the ship as needed, its door open, feeling the Steps ahead change as they had since the shuttle entered the atmosphere. Path to Victory was recalculating, applying the knowledge gained to its simulations. Nothing on the ship was tinker-tech, nothing required another agent to build, and that left the Overlords' technology available in the great library of skills that her agent offered. If the Paths could simulate one of them building it, perhaps under circumstances that restricted the Overlord to Earth's resources, then the Path could find a way for her to build it if those resources were ever to be available. She needed all the weapons she had.
Ten years before she had asked a single question: Path to making Stormgren realise what the Overlords really meant for humanity. That path had had ten steps, ending in six words. She had not followed it. It intersected with no other paths, provided no end benefits, and it would have been cruelty for its own sake to tell the old man:
Karellen would never visit his grave.
In the crowd, Contessa asked herself a silent question and the answer came immediately: five hundred and fifteen steps over three months to make the Overlord do so. Otherwise he never would. Contessa would never follow that path simply because there was nothing to be gained from it. Stormgren's greatest service to humanity was nothing done as Secretary General, nor his words in the interview with her. It was the lesson he, now years dead, had taught her without ever knowing. She could path the Overlords.
Five steps to confirm.
She stepped to one side, picked up a sweet wrapper from the ground and threw it at the required angle. Her arm moved exactly in the precise motions. Her head turned as she followed the next step: look at the Overseer. Unnoticed, the foil bounced on the edge on the bin, unfolding as a breeze caught it, lifting it upwards as the camera flashes went off. Karellen raised a hand to shield his face as the unexpected reflection caught his eyes, a gesture that humanised him to the watchers and meant something entirely different to Contessa.
Contessa turned and walked away, leaving the press conference to mob the alien with the two children now playing at its feet. Her war on Utopia had begun.