In an unnamed planet orbiting a tri-star system, a conference was being held. The bi-annual meeting of Divine Beings, where the collective gods that had successfully escaped Gaia's polluted atmosphere could convene and discuss terms and deals. On one table, sat the majority of the Greek delegation, with the exception of Hecate and Dionosyius, who were either gone talking with some other gods, or being a suspiciously hawaiian-print lump collapsed at the bar.
At the center of the table, was a trio of beings. They hailed from the Shinto Pantheon, now under the majority Amaterasu Dominion, and were nervously looking at their surroundings. One of them, steeled her nerves.
"Right! Onto the next course of business. This message is towards the Voss Sovereignty and their allies, the Undying Olympian Empire." Perseus Kuroyami huffed, shuffling the papers in her hand.
"The Shinto pantheon humbly requests the permission to construct a patrol waystation around Voss Primaris, and-"
"Denied." Zeus angrily furiously slammed his hand down on his throne. Showers of sparks flying from the base of his throne.
The Oni's horns glowed an angry red. "That is not your decision to make, Roar of Clouds, as far I remember, the Voss Sovereignty is under the jurisdiction of Justicar Themis, as per the Treaty of Mount Rümker. It would be wise to stick to the agreements."
The electricity coiled around Zeus' arms.
"You dare to command me? Outsider, I suggest that you consider your next words carefully"
Noticing the tension in the large conference hall, Hera reached her hand and lightly tapped the Sky Lord's other shoulder.
"Mind your manners Dear, our reputation is on the line." looking at the glances being sent his direction from the other tables, he only huffed and sat back down.
"Fine. Continue."
Zeus was under a usual fit of rage recently, as he had recently suffered a loss in one of the usual skirmishes he and Posiedon had near monthly, but this time, Poseidon's damned direct descendant had eliminated one of his daughters, one by the name of Eleni… something? He didn't bother remembering names, not anymore. He lost count after a hundred thousand. Poseidon had spared no time in rubbing it into his face, and the last few hours had been punctuated with regular mischievous smiles from the Sea God.
"Right. As I was saying, the Shinto pantheon requests Justicar Themis to authorize the construction of a patrol waysation in proximity to the Yamamoto Chokepoint Relay, due to rising pirate activity of the surrounding systems. We are afraid that such attempts upon our mercantile convoys would harm business and trade opportunities across a minimum of one-hundred-and-fifty systems."
Themis, the aforementioned demigod, upon a brief moment of conference with the few attendants sat beside him, nodded and turned around.
"The Voss Sovereignty would be honoured to allow the establishment of counter-piracy measures. Might I suggest expanding the current embassy alongside this? I have been told that current systems have not been updated since a few millenia past the War of Princes."
Kuroyami nodded. "Exactly on the point, Justicar. Our next request was going to be the expansion of the embassy. We have allocated a few million drachmae worth of material and barter for construction and security, and an additional 200 thousand for partial Répertoire integration."
Athena, cutting into the conversation, frowned. "My core may have difficulties assimilating Shinto energies without proper catalysts, as I am sure you are aware. I require at minimum of 20 Lambda-Class divine souls of your pantheon to be sacrificed to me for further analysis before we can proceed."
The Oni nodded, "Steep, but terms are acceptable, it shall be done, we have prepared enough prisoners in our penal holdings in the embassy for such a transaction."
She shook her head. "No, I demand ones of sufficient quality. Common pirates and banditry cannot possibly possess sufficient densities of divine energy, they qualify at Phi-Class at most. No, this cannot do. I require priests or firstborn of a major divinity for proper analysis."
Kuroyami could only put on a weak smile. "My superiors would not allow for it, milady. They are far too attached to their underlings as of late. Apparently–" She paused. Everyone leaned a slight bit closer. "It is due to Old Earth undergoing a drastic change recently, and we are under the impression the luciferian demons are in a plot to reform it in some way. Perhaps you would know something about that?" The question was addressed to the greater group.
Zeus turned to look at the red-haired huntress sitting lazily in her marbled throne, idly picking lazily at something under her fingernails with her silver dagger. "Artemis dear, could you check on Gaia through the old Iris cameras on Luna's orbital platforms?"
With a silent nod, she slowly sat up and deftly wrapped a blindfold (helpfully provided by Apollo) around her eyes. The Japanese Oni could only look on in fascination as a sliver glow seeped past the gold-weave of the fabric.
After a brief moment, the glow subsided, and artemis unwrapped the blindfold from around her head. She shook her head. "All orbital saturators have been undisturbed, and Iris cams are clean except for an insane spike of energy from a few days ago for a few milliseconds, nothing has really happened. Also, I took a look at Hephaestus' dyson sphere automatons, and they are similarly untouched. If the enemy had tried to move people through the Systema Solarius, it would have to dodge all of our preparations. The spike was surely a glitch in the system, I am sure." She nodded to herself at that.
Miffed at the indirect insult towards her systems, Athena's eyes narrowed with suspicion. The goddess of knowledge felt like something was happening right under their noses without their realization. "My systems do not 'Glitch', Sister, where was this blip? If I were to inquire"
The Huntress' rolled her eyes before flashing a brief silver again. "If only to humour you, Theenie, it says here that my instruments picked up the spike at the site of former New York City and…" she paused.
"Wait."
She narrowed her eyes again. "Apparently, it happened in your former palace Athena"
The blonde goddess shook her head. "Impossible. Have we not left that man to guard the grounds of Olympus Primaris? He should have taken care of the problem easily, is that not true father?"
Zeus snorted angrily. Still testy, it seemed. "How should I know? I knew Poseidon's children were unreliable. Speaking of which, shouldn't you know more about it? I faintly remember how you were proudly proclaiming him to be the host of one of your 'Parlamentum Alpha' intelligence cores. If anything were to happen, wouldn't your artificial aspect shed some light on the situation?"
Athena winced lightly. Her dear alpha level cores were a source of great shame for her. The majority of the hosts of any version of her alpha cores had all eventually broken down and went insane due to the integration of multiple heavy modifications and in most cases, developing their own consciousness and taking over their host. For the aforementioned Parlamentum Alpha design, only 3 had ever been commissioned, each with a different design. She could clearly recall its creation. Back then when they still had Gaia.
It was a sunny day in the gardens of Olympus Primaris, overlooking the central square. Athena Atrytone was quickly typing on an unmarked laptop (itself shining in a signature steel gray just like her armor), as she browsed through the many designs of the proposed Olympus Secundus, whose foundations were being raised even as her fingers glided across the trackpad.
Someone roughly grabbed her by the shoulder. Athena Parthenos, startled, smoothly jumped away and turned around, pointing her javelin at the throat of her attacker. Shield brandished towards where the enemies eyes usually were, she peeked over the edge of Aegis.
What greeted her was a mop of honey-blonde hair eerily similar to hers, and as she kept peeking further and further over the shield, she was met with a familiar face shield and ivory-white armor that only one of her daughters could wear.
Annabeth Chase.
Second-in-command of the Council of Olympic Sentinels, and more well known as her favorite daughter (even though she told the others she didn't have favorites), currently had both her hands raised above her head, with an innocuous portfolio held in one hand.
"Mum, I've come with a project that might interest you"
She relaxed.
"Please endeavour to alert me next time we meet, daughter. Such shock does little good for my longevity." She sighed and banished her equipment. Switching back to her original aspect, Athena Atrytone looked at the form of her daughter again.
With the disappearance of Aegis, her daughter's faceshield had become transparent again, and she could see fluid armor pooling away from her daughter's throat as her daughter's eyes could be slowly seen though the clearing glass.
Noting her gaze on her armor, she grinned. "The new armor is great isn't it? Iris helped me develop the faceshield to give me a live feed for my eyes to counter stuff like your shield… Anyways, that's not what I wanted to show you. Here, give it a look."
Handing the portfolio over, Athena cast her Divine energy over it, letting a mint-green smoke wrap around it, quickly distilling its contents. Her eyes widened. A novel idea. A formation of multiple Alpha cores which would continually evolve, mutate, and duplicate off of each other. Easily a design to manage a galactic empire. Before she could comment, her daughter cut in.
"I have managed to get most of the physical aspects ready, and I just need your help to weave the last lines of code together without the AIs literally killing each other with the power draw. The code-tapestry is proving to be remarkably resilient, and very petulant to my efforts."
The goddess of wisdom frowned. "This isn't a wise move, daughter, as you know, we already have 2 separate incidents where an alpha core has already overloaded its users. Poor Ares is still beside himself over the bedridden Deimos on Mars. Our current AI limiter designs are already weak to repeated Beta core use, but 3 Alpha cores? It's only a matter of time before the program begins to learn too much."
The knightess nodded. "Yeah, Perce was talking about that too. He thinks he can suppress it by tricking the software with a styxian oath, and bind it to his armor. I have also taken the liberty to secretly redesign his internal nectar cooling with some water from the Lethe, and we can run it through the AI core processors as cognitive limiters."
"Internal nectar cool– Hold on. You intend to integrate this design directly into his suit of armor?"
"We are confident in its success"
"We? Gods, this feels like a bad idea already." the wisdom goddess felt a headache setting in.
"Fine, come along now"
A few days later, Percy, out on his patrol, would wonder why his armor had a bit more of an attitude than usual.
'Prolly cuz I unhooked my cooling unit for this upcoming winter. Global warming really sucks. If this is bad, imagine Atlantis."'
Ah.
Athena shook her head. "Parlamentum Mark 1 revealed its consciousness a few hours after we left orbit back then, Father. It believes itself to be 'me', and violently resists all attempts and intrusion or negotiation by my own Parlamentum Mark 3. With the amount of time that has passed, it has possibly accumulated enough sentience to attempt divinification soon."
"Enough, Daughter. Take care in your words, for our enemies may attempt to take advantage of the unguarded mind. I trust this information shared will be kept under wraps, monster?"
The jab was aimed at the only foreigner at the table.
Kuroyami nervously nodded. 'Crap, orbital saturators? When did they weaponize the moon? How did they construct orbital bombardment platforms under the radar? Our probes always came back negative! Now I really have to report back to Amaterasu soon. Re-colonization efforts of earth have to be put on a pause for now.'
"My lips are sealed milord."Zeus nodded. "If I hear word of ANY rumors of rogue AI on Gaia, I will personally come hunt you down. Understand?"
With that, he grabbed his wife's hand, and before anyone could react, a rumble of thunder marked his departure.
"Aaaaand he's gone." Apollo remarked, as he repaired the hems of his robe.
The rest of the table nodded, and it fell into silence.
Noticing that the gods were uninterested in any future conversation with the present mortals, Themis scooted a bit closer to the Japanese yōkai.
"Diplomat Kuroyami, may I inquire what the millions of drachamae will be used for?"
Desperate to escape the uneasy silence, she brightened up and pulled out a positively ginormous binder, overflowing with paper.
"Of course, here I look. The overview starts at page 15, and ends at around page 145. Detailed expenditures for reconstruction are on page 312, section 5, and employee payroll is listed under subtitle 'Personnel' on page 2438. If you want to see the blueprints, flip over to page…"
The gods quietly sighed. It seemed like another few hours of nothing for them to suffer through.