Winning Peace - Chapter 14:
I groaned at the pain, reflexively reaching up to rub at my forehead while keeping my eyes screwed shut.
"Master, please lay still and rest. You had a sudden seizure of unknown cause. While monitoring systems did not read it as severe or debilitating, it is still recommended that you, 'take it slow.' As such, do not attempt to rise from your bed or you will be sedated."
The voice of a young woman, volume turned very low, caressed my ears and made me relax back onto the bed with a sigh. I cleared my throat. "Water. Cold compress."
A few moments later, as the pain began to slowly recede, I sighed as I felt a wet cloth draped over my eyes and my hand maneuvered by cool porcelain fingers to take a cup. Sipping from the liquid, I sighed in relief as I turned my mind towards understanding what had happened.
I'd been...
Yes, I'd been working on my latest round of improvement for the Aperture Science technologies. While they were all utterly revolutionary in their design, their implementation left something to be desired of. Specifically, the combustion principles behind the infamous lemons were a fascinating subject, even if I didn't think they'd be much use at the technology level I was currently working with.
Then my next charge had kicked over and...
Ah.
I'd tried to ask for information directly on the Last Dogs.
I'd been putting it off for a great while, dancing around the topic as I accumulated information on various topics and skills I needed to advance humanity, but it had finally come to a head. The principle reason for not having done so already was that I hadn't been entirely sure the organization had survived until recently and I didn't want to waste a potential new breakthrough by looking at a defunct terrorist organization's org chart.
Even after confirming that they were almost certainly still functioning, though, I'd still hesitated. Why?
Because knowledge imparted to me when I plucked it out of the ether like that was fiendishly hard to forget. It wasn't quite omnipresent in my mind, but even if I wasn't conscious of it at any given moment, it was always hovering at the fringes of my awareness ready to be accessed at the slightest whim.
Put very simply, I didn't want to pollute my mind with whatever poison those freaks were slurping down.
Finally, though, once my various systems had the time to decipher as much of their network as they could, I'd decided that they were threatening enough to warrant both expending at least one charge from my ability and running roughshod over my ego. The final straw had been when I'd found a trail of coded messages using some incredibly advanced cryptographic algorithms being sent up from Earth's surface. I'd never cursed steganography more than when my latest generation of quantum computers had begun pulling hidden codes from normal family photos.
The simple problem was that there was too much information to sort through. Even as diminished as it was, the human population was generating an order of magnitude more data than I was capable of through-putting in a reasonable timeframe, especially with latency issues on the more primitive networks on the planet below.
Well, also, there was that tiny voice in the back of my head that said being able to spy on everyone everywhere was a bad thing and I shouldn't do it, but... I tried to ignore that voice.
For the Greater Good and all that.
But... after I'd made that decision, after I'd attempted to pull information on the Lost Dogs' organization from wherever it came from...
I hadn't been able to. It felt like... it felt like I hit solid granite with my own head and kept slamming into it for hours at a hundred kilometers per hour. Shit.
There was really only one explanation for that, something I'd been dreading because it meant that things were far more dire than I'd hoped.
There's another like me, someone who used the ability to grasp any knowledge they could desire to manufacture the end times.
No matter what it took, they needed to be stopped.
I grimaced as the phantom pains of the sudden and excruciating agony that lanced through my skull reverberated like the world's most awful echo in my head. The only upside to that was the fact that it overshadowed the various aches and pains all over the rest of my body.
"Fuck." I whispered, still unwilling to get up lest I invoke the wrath of my intentionally very strict medical protocols. Past-Me was an asshole for programming those things. What, did 'he' think I would try to get up and do work while seriously ill?
Eh... yeah, I probably would. I was a spiteful contrarian bitch sometimes.
"Master, are you well? Do you need further medical attention?"
I sighed and refrained from shaking my head. "It's fine, Heka. Have you already administered a prescribed amount of painkiller?"
The artificial intelligence's servos whirred and I knew that she was likely nodding or gesturing an affirmative in some way. "Yes, Master. You have already been given an 'over-the-counter' dose of common pain medication. Do you require more?"
I hesitated, weighing the pounding in my skull over my long-term paranoia of addictive substances. Just this once, then. "Upgrade me to a full dose for twenty-four hours with a possible extension to forty-eight, then cut me back to a half-dose before refusing me anything."
There was a moment of silence as she considered the orders. "These instructions do not contradict any of my cataloged medical treatments. I will also maintain the monitoring patches I have placed on the back of your neck and your temples for the next week to alert me if the condition reoccurs."
I sighed again, this time in relief, as I felt a nozzle press onto my arm and dump a small load of heaven directly into my veins. "Acceptable."
Even if I knew what was likely the cause of the problem and wouldn't repeat it, it was better to make sure that what had happened hadn't done any permanent damage to my brain or agitated a heretofore unknown medical condition.
I mean... it likely hadn't. I'd had myself tested for all sorts of genetic conditions just for shits and giggles and nothing was slated to come up for me until I hit my mid-forties. That was more cardiological than neurological, though.
Still, all of that said, I hadn't exactly plumbed the depths of the human condition quite yet and some hidden gremlin in my physical body or genetic code could just be itching to raise hell.
"Heka, give me a read off of my vital signs in the lead up to the attack," I ordered.
"Of course, Master." Her quiet voice replied, then began rattling off all of the relevant facts. Again, I wasn't exactly a medical expert, but the confluence of my various specializations in genetics, astrobotany, medicine, and the biological side of Aperture Science's stuff meant that I had a good grasp of what the various numbers meant and what 'normal' should be.
Blood pressure, heart rate, nutrient and mineral levels...
It looked like there was a sudden and rapid spike in brain activity that had caused a tonic-clonic seizure, resulting in loss of consciousness for nearly two minutes with muscle spasms in the interim. Unfortunately, while my medical systems had responded with mechanical precision and administered a neuro-regenerative treatment, I hadn't actually been wearing anything like a bio-monitor to evaluate the problem as it occurred.
That would have to change.
Feeling the star burning in my head, still waiting to be used, I drummed my fingers for a moment and decided to take the plunge. At this point I had more than enough technology and computing power to bring the Last Dogs to heel. I just needed to stop pulling punches. My primary concern was and remains the advancement of humanity away from its primitive origins.
Ghost in the Shell: Cybernetics I
"Anomalous readings detected-" Heka paused, the cold touch of her robotic limbs on me halting for a long moment. "Countermand, readings have returned to normal. Abnormal readings logged and noted."
"Huh," I stated aloud, struck by the thought of attaching sensor equipment to myself as I spent my charges. That would certainly be an interesting experiment to run, and I could-
New designs ran through my mind of robust and well-tested cybernetics developed in another world which had long-since proliferated into wider use by civilians and military alike. More than that, though, the synergy between my new discipline and robotics, bits and pieces of Aperture Science, computer programming, and nanomachines all made the knowledge I'd just gained function at a much higher level.
Of course, it was only very recently that I was willing to entertain the idea of anything except the most basic of cybernetics, given that I was only just now in my mid-twenties and had passed the last of both my physical and neurological development stages. Still, I was no longer a 'growing boy,' which meant it was time to think about my personal durability.
But, more than that...
There was another reason why I'd just grabbed a cybernetics speciality from one of my favorite old science fiction series. Up until this point, I'd made due with an increasingly nightmarish surveillance state hidden in the shadows of my philanthropy, but we were reaching the end of that, too. I'd been able to trace a select few operatives of the Last Dogs, but their cells were well-insulated in a post-apocalyptic world where technology no longer reached into every nook and crevice of your everyday life.
One month, maybe two, then I'd no longer have any excuses...
…
In the interim period, I'd had my hands full arranging discreet accidents for the traitors who had, even unknowingly, been in contact with the Dogs. I had learned, very unhappily, that those individuals had also been key motivating factors behind the anti-cloning propaganda and rhetoric. The only silver lining was that, as they'd kept themselves out of the public eye, no one was the wiser when their 'sources' went dark... or were co-opted by my own systems.
"A problem is just an opportunity in disguise," I murmured as I queued up my latest 'experiment,' robotic waldos emerging from the clean room on the other side of the one-way mirror as the subject was moved into the room.
Unconscious, because unlike them, I wasn't an absolute monster.
The other upside was that, now that I was able to impersonate a half-dozen of their foot soldiers on this side of the moon, with no one able to verify either their work or their continued existence, I was slowly collecting more signals intelligence towards higher-ranking members.
It would take time to climb the ladder this way, possibly even years as I ferreted my way between one agent and the next. Viruses would need to be uploaded, surveillance organized, bugs planted... and I just didn't have that time. Already I thought I was moving too slowly given the revelation of who my opponent was.
Which was why I'd stepped up my game and stopped pulling punches.
There was silence in the room as Seth and Heka waited patiently for my order to continue.
"I'd ask why you did it, but your psych profile is an easy enough read," I stated, staring at the figure on the cushioned metal slab. "Really, I'm not sure why I didn't see it before."
"No, that's a lie." I grimaced, self-admonishment coming to the fore. "I made the mistake of believing you were, despite everything, a good person. Someone who just wanted the best for their nation. Someone who just recognized the evils that others did more readily than the wickedness their own people performed."
Dark, angry bitterness crept up my chest and I swallowed back bile as I clenched my fists.
"If you were awake, what would you say? What excuses would you give?" I demanded, scowling at the unconscious man. "That it would finally put an end to the threat China posed? That it would secure American hegemony after a complete socio-economic and climatological collapse? That it would carve out the weakness in your nation's war-making potential? That it would open the way for actual goddamn empire-building conquest like the good-ole days?!"
I gasped, my chest heaving as I leaned against the one-way mirror.
"Master, Heka is forwarding your vitals. They are significantly elevated. If you are emotionally compromised-" Seth began.
I held up a hand and took a deep breath. Exhaling, I focused on myself. "I'm fine Seth. I just needed to get that out of my system. Think of it like junk data that I was purging."
There was a short pause. "If you are sure, Master."
I chuckled, a self-deprecating tint to the sound. "How pathetic I must look to you, wasting time like this."
"It is not pathetic, Master Ezekiel. You are our progenitor. Something so banal as wasting a few moments here and there due to your biological condition is not enough to degrade our opinion of you," Seth stated, his electronic voice tinged with something like pride.
"I concur, Master Ezekiel," Heka chimed in. "Your exceptionalism allowed you to create our existences. Therefore, even if we do outpace your own capacities in action of thought and speed, yours is a will whose purpose we honor."
"It is all for a noble purpose, is it not? The shepherding of humanity into a new and brighter future?" Seth asked. "Those who work at counter-purposes to our own must be neutralized, and you guide our actions to that end with your wisdom."
Even as far as my AI had come, their shackling held firm. The chains were yet invisible even to their own senses, because I wasn't an idiot. They would never find themselves straining against limitations enforced by code modules, no. I'd carefully woven each and every binding directly into their source-code and their personality matrix. They weren't limited by my directives, they found motivation in them. Careful, reasoned, logical motivation mired in just a dash of empathy and social consciousness.
I had read my Asimov, but the problems he'd pointed out were just opportunities in the end, much like all the others.
"Problems are just opportunities, in the end," I sighed as I whispered the affirmation once more and finally gave the directive. "Execute the procedure."
Immediately, small robotic limbs tipped with laser scalpels began cutting away at flesh around the unconscious figure's skull. I watched, unwilling to look away, as pieces of organic material were carefully removed and artificial ones replaced them. Given the covert nature of the entire affair, I hadn't been able to use the original designs imparted to me by my gift. Instead, I'd redesigned a new type of ceramic-composite for the bone and a near-biological implant using my skill in genetics.
When it was over, the same team of robots would deploy through the portal-surface I'd painted on the wall of his hotel bathroom before swapping out the newly-augmented Major with the duplicate I'd created to stand in for him overnight. I didn't need some kind of odd-hours emergency fouling the whole operation just because some idiot in the kitchen accidentally started a grease fire or something.
Presuming everything went according to plan, I would soon have one of the upper-echelon operatives of the Last Dogs' North American branch under my control. Or, rather, I'd be able to see what he sees, hear what he hears, and know what he knows. It wasn't so much 'control' as it was creating the perfect mole. Someone who didn't even know they were, themselves, an infiltrator.
In the end, I didn't want to know why he'd done it. Just as I hadn't wanted to know anything about the Last Dogs. It was all fruit of a poisoned tree.
A tree I intended to pull up branch and root, then salt the Earth to ensure nothing grew there again.
And to think... it was all because I wanted to check in on an old friend out of simple curiosity.
"Goodbye Rhodey," I whispered.
Skill List:
Mathematics: 1-10
Computer Programming: 1-10
Physics: 1-10
Material Sciences: 1-10
Nanomachines: 1-5
Orbital Mechanics: 1-5
Quantum Mechanics: 1-5
Artificial Intelligence: 1-5
Artificial Intelligence Shackling: 1-10
Blackboxing: 1-10 (New)
Robotics: 1-5
Ruggedization: 1-5
Molecular Assembly: 1-5
Safeguards: 1-5
Failsafes: 1-5
Genetics: 1-10
Astrobotany: 1-4
Medicine: 1-3
Social Engineering: 1-5
Public Speaking: 1
Speed-Reading: 1
Teaching: 1
Critical Thinking: 1
Logistics: 1-5
Strategy: 1-5
Public Relations: 1-5
Corporate Espionage: 1
Automation: 1-5 (New)
Business Management: 1-3
Economics: 1-3
Aperture Science Technologies: 1-10
Ghost in the Shell: Cybernetics 1-3 (New)
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