Winning Peace 8:

2141 – Three Years After The 'Short War'

"Everyone knows Kilpatrick is basically a puppet," Evan stated with a lackadaisical wave of his hand.

Rowan shook their head as they put down their tablet. "That's not true. Kilpatrick got voted in. Hell, I voted for him!"

Mateo snorted, "Don't let my dad hear you say that. He threw a fit when I tried to go vote and said it was crazy that they were letting fourteen year olds cast ballots. Had to sneak over to do it while I was on an errand on the other side of Armstrong."

Evan snapped his fingers at the other boy. "Another data point in favor of my hypothesis. Silas Kilpatrick is on record as being totally against eighteen year olds voting ten years ago when he ran for governor of the city. He wanted the age set at twenty-one originally, but now he's suddenly okay with kids like us casting ballots? Totally sus."

"You should stop klepping the man's slang if you think he's part of a conspiratorial shadow government," Rowan stated with a sarcastic bite to their tone. "Besides, that was before the apocalypse. Lots of people changed views on lots of things when that happened. It's not that weird even for a politician, and he gave a good reason, too."

Evan rolled his eyes. "I really don't think the greatest statistical determinator for whether or not you'll vote in the next election being whether or not you voted in the previous election is all that good of a reason. It's kind of crazy, actually. Which is my point. A lot of his positions now are completely counter to what they were before Lopez started endorsing him. There have been some scrapped social media posts being passed around showing how radically he changed."

"So you're basically saying that a super-genius, multi-billionaire, and... whatever else he is, what? Brainwashed a politician?" Mateo's skeptical question was punctuated by a bite of nutrient bar as his eyes trailed to the court beyond the transparent screen before them. One of the players took a massive leap and swung with their stick to cast the ball across the field to a teammate, only to have it intercepted by an opposing player.

Evan hissed as he took in the same play. "Aww, c'mon!" Shaking his head in disgust, he turned back to his friend. "I'm not saying brainwashed, but... like, blackmailed? Or extorted or bribed or something?"

Rowan grimaced as the ball was flung back down the court. "You'd think something like that would get out, though. What was it? 'Three can keep a secret if two are dead?' We're talking about high-level government stuff. There's a reason why serious conspiracies never work, at least not for long. Someone always talks." They snorted suddenly. "These days you're lucky if they don't post their felonies on their social media pages."

Both Evan and Mateo chuckled at that, though all three interrupted their conversation with a roaring cheer as their team finally scored a goal.

"You know, I wasn't totally sold on this? But I think the sport has potential," Mateo nodded as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "They still calling it aerial lacrosse?"

Evan shook his head. "Nah, a bunch of people liked that, but it was just too long and someone memed a snooty corpo with their nose up in the air, so people thought it was kind of pretentious. I think people are just calling it, 'moonball' now."

Rowan scratched at their chin. "Makes sense, I guess. You need lunar gravity to play it, so why not call it moonball?"

"Basically." Evan paused and shook his head. "Anyway, it's not like I'm arguing that Kilpatrick's been replaced with an evil robot duplicate, guys. It's just that something shady's going on."

"It's politics," Rowan shrugged, "something's always shady."

Mateo was visibly less dismissive, soothing Evan's momentary flash of irritation. "Okay, say you're right and there's a backroom deal where Kilpatrick accepted a bunch of Lopez's stances on issues. Just for the sake of argument. One thing I don't get is what kind of bribery or extortion would work. I mean, Lopez basically invalidated all of his own money when we switched over to the energy credit system and implemented his whole UBI-type deal. So, just for the sake of argument, what's he paying the guy off with if you can use your nanofabber credits to make anything you want? The apocalypse basically killed DRM off and Lopez dumped anything commercial-grade into open source as a show of good faith."

Evan sat back and pondered the question. It was a good point. What was Lopez's endgame, here? He creates the nanofabbers, but limits them so they can't make dangerous things. That's fair, no one wants the local nut printing off a railgun or something. People complain that a crazy teenage billionaire shouldn't have that much power, so when elections roll around Lopez throws his hat in for Minister of Science and Technology. That way he has accountability. He's really popular, though, because he basically just solved resource scarcity forever, so he joins a power bloc and starts handing out endorsements, but...

Why not just run for Prime Minister himself?

"Well, if we're doing hypotheticals... not that I believe all of this stuff," Rowan cautioned as they grabbed their drink. "It's a great position to be the power behind the throne. It's effectively overseeing all non-ship space-based infrastructure. Lots of power, but you can always pass the buck to the guy in charge."

"Yeah, sure, but my point is more like..." Mateo made a vague motion with one hand. "Even if it's not bribery and instead it's extortion or blackmail or whatever, wouldn't it have just been easier for him to become some kind of mega-corp? Instead of releasing all of this stuff to the public and getting off a monetary standard, he could have just made his own currency and reinforced artificial scarcity for resources. Even with the kinds of limitations he's put on the nanofabbers, that's the kind of advantage that just lets you win everything forever if you keep it to yourself. So if we're presupposing that he's either part of or the head of a shadowy cabal controlling the Stellar Council, then-"

"-wouldn't he be more powerful if he wasn't in the Council to begin with?" Rowan nodded, pointing at Mateo. "I see where you're going with this. If he's an authoritarian who's trying to consolidate power, then we have to assume that's his basis for making decisions. IE: 'What benefits me the most?'"

"And what he's doing seems to run counter to that foundational assumption," Evan stated, frowning. "So it's not about power, then. Or at least not just about power, because then he wouldn't even be in government at all. I still think something sketchy's going on here, guys. It just doesn't make sense that everything seems to always go his way."

Mateo shrugged and leaned back as the half-time buzzer rang. Staring up at the artificial sky, he rubbed his chin. "You think he's a narcissist?"

His friends both blinked at the sudden change of topic, staring at him silently.

"Just thinking," Mateo shrugged again. "I've been doing some psych courses and... well, if we assume that his motivations and actions are in contradiction with each other then the answer could be a mental or emotional defect. Like how he dropped that weird black and white suit thing he used to wear and started dressing like an actual person. He wanted to be taken seriously after the apocalypse so he changed his image and started adulting so that people would keep admiring him. He could have originally started wearing it to manufacture an image of an eccentric teenage billionaire genius so that people would pay attention to him on his terms."

Rowan made a face. "I'm no psych student, but I think you're trying to find nails for your hammer, here. Anyway! I'm tired of this dreck. Let's talk about literally anything else!"

Evan opened his mouth, a clear objection on his face.

Rowan rounded on him, jabbing a finger his way. "And if you think this is so important, do something political about it! Intern or something. I heard the system even pays you for that because you're learning trade skills. So you'll earn credits doing it."

Evan closed his mouth, considering the challenge for a long moment before nodding. "Alright, maybe I will."

…

I sighed as Silas Kilpatrick stepped into my living room. "I really hope this isn't because you're having more problems."

The Prime Minister of the Stellar Council shook his head. "Ah, no sir, it's not. The systems you've put into place are functioning properly. It's just... well, I've noticed I can't particularly taste bananas anymore."

I blinked, then cocked my head as I pondered the issue. "That's... odd."

The older man waited as I considered the issue.

Finally, I shrugged. "Go ahead and strip your top half, then go lay down on the table in my workshop. I'll take a look under the hood."

"Thank you once again, sir." Kilpatrick stated as he nodded and began doing as I instructed.

I sighed as I moved to gather a disposable change of clothes. Really, this whole thing was simply absurd. If it had been anyone else there wouldn't have been serious complications to my plans. Sure, Kilpatrick wasn't exactly what I wanted in a Prime Minister, but compromise candidates usually weren't. It didn't help that the apocalypse had kicked off a wave of hardline moralizing semi-authoritarians who wanted to preach about moralizing, decadence, societal degradation, and all sorts of irrelevant buzz phrases.

Kilpatrick was someone I could deal with, though. He'd been a small-fish politician who'd inherited a tramp freighter that made supply runs to Mars and back. After he'd lost an election, he'd moved into the black and made a living.

He was a realist, a pragmatist, and a dealmaker.

He didn't have a single political position that wasn't for sale, one way or the other. That might have been disturbing to some people, but it was useful for me. All I'd needed to do was make sure he stayed bought.

Giving him one of the few personal nano-fabrication units I'd created so far and made it clear that he'd be keeping his deals.

Then the idiot had stroked out after nearly overdosing on homemade micro-g cocaine.

Which meant I'd had a choice to make in the months leading up to the election.

I walked into one of my more 'public' workshops where I found the man had already partially-disrobed and was laying down. "Okay, I'm going to disable your optics because you're not going to want to see this. Just relax and let me work."

The man chuckled with a touch of anxiety. "Whatever you say, doc."

I tapped a holographic switch, cutting his sight off, and pulled a cord out from one of the ports in the table before touching it to the skin around his chin. Immediately, the magnetized data cable stuck and diagnostics started up. I simultaneously triggered the ejection mechanism and the entire lower jaw gave a pneumatic hiss as it extended far enough to show the cybernetic attachment points.

Did I mention why he'd lost that election? Yeah, it turned out that he'd fled drug charges. Or at least, that was the rumor I'd dug up. Teach me not to go the extra mile on background checks.

I was half tempted to say I needed to turn off his cybernetic ears just to bitch him out.

"Yeah, some of the sensors are misaligned. I'm going to do a hard reset of the software," I stated instead. "You might feel some numbness, but other than that it will only take a few minutes."

Silas replied via a small nod of his head, probably because his lower jaw and part of his throat were in maintenance mode.

I couldn't conclusively draw a line of evidence between his coke habit and the throat cancer I'd found while installing the cybernetics into the damaged portions of his brain, but...

Well, he had admitted to not getting the cleanest of drugs when his addiction was at its peak.

I sighed.

I'd really hoped to actually set up a dependable, forward-thinking administration as the new government. Taking power for myself wasn't the same thing as taking responsibility, after all. While others only saw the horror of the apocalypse, I was trying to see it as a new beginning. A way to truly understand the costs of flirting with death and the dangers of divisions between people. Despite everything that had happened, I wanted to create something that would bring people together, to compromise and discuss.

Instead, I ended up with a pliable brain-damaged drug addict utterly willing to follow my every command out of fear that I'd pull the plug on him.

As Silas put his clothes back on, I wondered if this was it, if this was my fate.

To be the janitor of the new human society, rather than its ruler... or maybe they aren't so different.

"There's a new bill being submitted," I stated without turning around as my hands busied themselves putting away the more delicate of my tools. "It relates to human cloning. I'm sure you understand that we need to raise the human population, especially here in space. As it stands, we're far below the threshold needed to actually maintain our knowledge and skill base. Even with my new artificial intelligence programs that are being rolled out... we simply need more people."

"I... I understand, sir." Silas stated, audibly swallowing.

"Good. Properly enshrining legal rights should be a priority for this administration," I stated, dictating the future of my species.

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