17th November 2017
10:37 GMT
Captain Adam is sitting… On the top of the hyperblaster, which…
Could kill him if it fired with him in that position. From here we can see the swirling hole in the universe being maintained by the hush tube generators.
"I thought that thing made more
noise."
"At
that size it would deafen the dock workers and wake up everyone on the continent." I shrug. "The quiet version is bigger and requires more power, but it can be a
lot more convenient."
The Absolute Dominion begins to accelerate, rising smoothly from its berth and moving towards the portal. Adam feigns taking a deep breath.
"This is okay for me, right?"
"You don't breathe. You don't have orifices. Your metal skin is proof against stellar radiation even if you had biology underneath to be adversely affected by it, which you don't." I sit down next to him just as we pass through the portal. "Your life is about-. No. Sorry. Your life from the moment you were pushed into the quantum realm has become very strange. You can't do a lot of the things you used to and you will.. almost certainly never get them back. Even aside from… Your family-. Well, you were a soldier. I assume you had periods of separation, but you never had entire days of not breathing."
He looks at me askance. "Are you trying to..? What, reassure me?"
"No. It's just…" The bow of the Absolute Dominion emerges from the hush tube, pointing directly at the Earth. Adam's eyes widen slightly. "You got all the
bad bits of this life right at the start, full force. But this… No normal human could do what you're doing right now. No normal human could sit on a starship as it flies through a hush tube into a vacuum and stare down at their planet. No human astronaut has seen this in the way that you are. And… There will be other good parts, too. I… Won't try and tell you that it makes up for everything you've lost, but… They do exist."
"And there's no way for me to become human again?"
"Eh…" I frown. "Maybe? It's not an area of physics most of my species are interested in, but the universe is a big place. Help me out with killing my father and I'll point a few worlds out to you where you might be able to get help. Alternately…" Ah. I don't get the New God feeling from this Hippolyta that I get from Hippolyta 16. I really don't know if they're… Compatible with the Awakening in the way that humans 16 are. "I don't know. There are some things I could try, but again, I don't want to get your hopes up unduly."
"Thank you for being realistic about my chances." He stares at the Earth for a few moments. "This… Do we really need to do this?"
"Define 'need'. I already killed the guy who was going to attack Earth. My father will send someone else for the other parts of the Father Box he left there, but will he do it soon? Could we put him off the idea by just
giving him the Box? Maybe? Could Earth pull itself together well enough to make this unnecessary? Maybe? But I doubt it."
"I knew
my war, the Vietnam War, wasn't going anywhere good. And here we are, invading the Earth because your dad's an asshole. He runs your home planet?"
"Yes."
"Just one planet? You said that you ruled a bunch of planets. I'd have thought you could just out-produce him."
"Apokolips is a completely industrialised super-Earth. Its output is colossal, and he's had a lot longer to build up."
"'Super' as in..?"
"Bigger. Not all small rocky worlds are the same size."
He nods. "I guess I just thought that a species as advanced as yours would have a whole lot more answers. Be.. wiser than we are."
I shake my head. "Technological advancement does not go hand in hand with wisdom. In fact, the opposite might be true. When you can do anything easily, there's no obvious reason to think things through
first. When you can flee from your mistakes, there's no motivation to
confront them."
"Mistakes?"
I nod. "I've made a few. But then again…
Too few to mention."
He chuckles, shaking his head. "I'm sitting on a spaceship and an alien warlord is singing Frank Sinatra. Jesus."
"Never met him." I stand, opening a-
BOOM"
-boom tube to the bridge.
"Frank?"
"Well I didn't meet Jesus
either, but I doubt that he was much of a singer. Come on."
He stands, and in defiance of physics he walks after me, back into the ship.
"Right,
friends, and Hippolyta. Here's what we're going to be doing. We-."
"We will
turn the weapons of this ship upon the planet?"
Subjekt-17 sounds a bit
too excited about the prospect.
"No. That would kill any other Subjekts on Earth. It's important that we only kill the people who need killing. So, Adam, you might not be up to date on modern communications technology, but it's a lot easier to make information widely available to the general population than it was back in your day. Mother Box?"
"Ping."
"I just released-."
"Ping."
"
Mother Box just released every dirty secret of every government on the planet to everyone, and removed everyone's ability to censor any of it. Honestly, given human governments, that's probably just going to overload things, but Mother Box will highlight anything relating to anyone who tries making any sort of public pronouncement. Meanwhile, I'll make a big speech explaining mankind's place in the universe and what I'm doing here. Once
that's done, we're going to acquire the other two parts of Father's Box in case they're sending some sort of signal, and get to work preparing the Earth more generally."
Hippolyta shakes her head. "How can you hope to take control of an entire planet?"
"It's a combination of things. Once I show how vile their existing leaders are and the benefits of joining my empire, I expect that a substantial number of people will volunteer to be ruled by me. I'll pick an area where they're in the clear majority and use that as a base of operations, expanding outwards with minimum force while bringing in my own administrators to make the transition function. Once things are stable, the public trials of literally everyone who used their authority to duck accountability will begin as a reminder why
I'm better, and I'll get to work discovering why Father finds Earth so interesting."
I smile at Captain Adam. "Captain, I realise that you're on the fence about the whole me-taking-over-Earth thing, but that file I showed you about how they did
you over? Tip of the
iceberg. Sometimes, you need to clean house, and
this house is thoroughly rotted through. How good and noble the rules are doesn't matter if the enforcement is heavily biased."
"And… The rights guaranteed by the Constitution will still be there if you win?"
"I'm abolishing the right not to incriminate yourself. That was added to guard against torture which I will
not be authorising, but I intend to make heavy use of involuntary telepathy in the trials. It'll just take too long otherwise. That benefits the innocent as my telepaths can immediately establish their innocence and they don't have to go through months of imprisonment and the stress and expense of the trial itself. I already have a legal framework written up and ready to be put into use."
Physician raises his eyebrows. "And Tibet?"
"Independence from China. I'll be a hands-off constitutional sovereign."
Subjekt-17 glowers. "And killing humans?"
"I'll make you my official executioner. I'll make sure that everyone knows exactly what-"
BOOM!
"-the condemned are being.. killed-"
Luna trots out of the boom tube. "-for.
Luna, darling!"
I walk over to her and lean down to kiss her. She tilts her head back to meet me.
"We thought that We would bear witness to your latest-"
"A-
hah!"
"-bout of foolishness." She turns to Adam. "Doth your silver knight have some comment that he wishes to share?"
"You married a
talking horse?"
I frown at him. "Not every intelligent species in the universe is bipedal, Captain Adam. And
no. I married a
pony."