Celestial Forge, The Stars Beckon Forth [Mass Effect / Celestial Forge SI]

[BarrettSlayer]

That would explain why the US was acting so weird during the war (not joining the very thing they 'helped' create to avoid said world war/losing power) though I would expect the leaving president to brief the incoming one on something of that magnitude. Only way I can see that not happening is if the old president was assassinated (by china or others in the 'rival' space group) and the info wasn't put to paper or lost in the transfer. Or either the old president or some other group purposely removed or deleted the data on them doing this 'scheme' with the MC for some weird reason (possibly to make it real if from the president or to cause the war for some reason that makes sense only to them)

 

[TrueGuardian32]

A/N: Decided to go over all the background stuff that happened that you didn't see. This wasn't really guessed but occurred in the background since update 1. I figured I'd might as well share it

Back when the MC was showing off his talents in the arts he was getting a lot of commissions. These commissions started off innocent enough. However the Proto-Cerberus group that would have been one of the future factions of Cerberus discovered his talents and started to heavily exploit him. Preventing others from getting commissions and basically monopolizing his artistic talent. These art pieces, stories, and songs were exploited by this group to increase their power and influence.

They thought they could contain the MC at that point in time and basically obscure his talent from prying eyes and simply use his capabilities. Thus they started to do subversion tactics. They wanted the MC to be used to being used, so they started to mess with the MC's family. Using subtle techniques to turn a relatively functioning family to one where the parents started to use the MC. Turning love into control. The idea was to gain more control over the MC as they had been using his projects to rapidly gain power over the years since his first art reveal. They had been keeping their distance at this point still, but still manipulating things behind the scenes. However the MC's behavior was off, their psychological attempts instead of turning him more malleable made him more isolated and experimental. They realized it was not working when the MC didn't take full credit during a theater play.

At that point they were content to simply keep taking advantage on the sidelines while keeping his talents hidden from the world. Till he turned 14 and the second genius perk took effect. By this point they had gained a significantly stronger foothold by using what he had done before now. When they realized that he had talents more than just art? They used their military contacts to get him a contract way ahead of schedule. The idea was to isolate the MC even further. It worked. He went to his own facility. However their attempts to force him into a no life contract didn't work much to their frustration.

The MC then starts to work on E-Fuel. Using private military knowledge to design and create a powerful fuel that used less oil than current fuel types. Heavily improving the future of gas production at the time and preserving existing resources. The group takes advantage of his creation to advance further, gaining more power within the government. They release his tech privately, showing themselves off while off putting the MC's concerns telling him he was a classified government asset. The MC is a bit emotionally off by this point and accepts it after some grumbling.

They want the MC more isolated, and more leashed to them than before. They start messing with his family more. Trying to make it where ties break between the family. Their people take credit for the new rocket. Push their influence further. They set up the next President of the U.S., still controlling the MC's art flow they get incredibly effective propaganda while the MC remains none the wiser. They have put it into the MC's head that he wasn't alone. Leading him to reject a perk that would have let him do the work of entire teams solo.

MC's venture into genetic engineering leads the group to gain more power as they do a monopoly venture into his bio-engineered food. At this point different factions within the group all want the MC to do things to their cause. The rest of the world has no clue just how capable the MC was but this group knew exactly what he was capable of pulling off. But he does something that causes a bit of chaos within the group. He starts work on Fusion. Suddenly the MC has eyes on him from outside the group that had been controlling things behind the scenes this entire time.

The MC gets the Wonder perk, which allows him to suddenly start working on his projects by hand. Preventing attempts to hide his progress as he reveals a fully functioning Fusion Reactor. In order to not get blind sided again, they basically ask him what he is working on next and he reveals it would be energy based thrusters.

At this point multiple factions had formed in the initially focused group that was controlling things behind the scenes. They all wanted to MC to work on their stuff. But couldn't risk the other factions taking advantage of them so for the first time the MC was free to work on it without interference. But the MC's side project, the Arrowhead series starts showing insane promise, starting a space race that interferes even more with the group trying to control things from the shadows as suddenly eyes that weren't them were now on the MC.

The President, putting into place the Proto-Cerberus group, makes a move. Trying to use his son to form a connection with the MC and get him hooked on a controlled substance so they could control the MC further. This Factions actions are discovered when the MC complains causing a schism to occur. Cracks in the group's info security form as a whole. An unrelated party that realized what was occurring leaks the MC's existence. The President takes the blame acting as if it was intentional instead of a break in their informational control. Their faction can't afford incompetence as the other factions are eyeing their power.

Then the live stream occurs, this was actually an attempt to calm the storm. They figured they could simply hide the MC after it calms the public eye. Then the MC instead of just doing a casual interview instantly goes off and reveals everything he can do so far, and then reveals both A.I. and the Kinesis Drive technology. Till this point the MC hadn't actually truly shared how much he had progressed into the kinesis drive. This causes chaos as suddenly opsec was pretty mush shot. The group is pretty much in a civil war now.

Asset denial goes into action as what is basically the nazi faction of the group starts pressuring different foreign agencies into acting against the MC, they got the tech they want and want him dead. But the other factions still have use for the MC, and work against them. A separate faction makes a move. This one uses the general they put into place to put the MC in a more protected environment.

Things escalate in a bit of a shadow civil war, then the MC breaks things further. He releases the GuardianLife app that takes advantage of the liquidization of assets that was being done to keep the shadow war going. Breaking the funding behind the group. At this time the Nazi Faction's actions are revealed. They had been trying to push past the other factions and take control of foreign countries, and were making decent progress but the breaking of funds destroyed their opsec even further.

The MC by this point is approaching the end of his contract. Much to the panic of the entire group. But they don't have the power to interfere as much anymore as they had lost a ton of power. The President of this time is replaced as people outside the Proto-Cerberous group take control and the dismantling begins causing the factions to separate into cells and go into hiding. MC at this point is developing medical tech and his progress has started to stall. He was producing things but nothing as ground breaking as Kinetic Drives which had dominated the tech tree.

The MC has no clue just how much trouble the U.S. is in from the actions of the Proto-Cerberus group. He still doesn't even know what happened. President Hoover, who was originally supposed to be president before the manipulation occurred, was basically cleaning everything up. In the original timeline he would have been setting things up for the future formation of the Systems Alliance. In this timeline he was backdrop as he had to fix things the entire time he was president. The President approves a plan to get the MC away from Earth for a multitude of reasons, to decrease the chance of war. To prevent his art from being used to manipulate things further, and to reduce his workload.

Due to how much he had to do. He loses the next electoral race and the new president has a much easier time. The MC is in space at this time and Proto-Cerberus cells are basically in hiding as instead of their original purpose of global domination they are equated with a secret Nazi group.

—
Some side information.

I say Nazis however Nazis as we know them didn't exist in this alt-history timeline. But that word is the closest to what these guys were, as they were the cause of the Great War, which would have been World War 1 in our verse. While World War 2 occurred for wildly different reasons.

The U.S. is isolationistic because unlike in our timeline, they actually honored their promises, and had been ravaged by several wars to the point where they isolated themselves so they wouldn't make any more promises to foreign powers. They had been bit so badly they basically did what Japan did in our universe and made themselves a cultural powerhouse while avoiding the outside world as much as they possibly could.

Great Britain is still a thing here, and is still an incredibly powerful force. They are the actual reason behind the United Nations, as it was formed in opposition to Great Britain's power. I can't really talk about them too much as they are a future plot point. But I can say that the U.S. is the only force that has actually decisively won against them.

Maybe I'll cover the full alt-history one day, it's pretty intense.

 

[noblej7]

Honestly the cultural perspective is so warped due to the word Nazi being used far too much that it's not really a good description for anything beyond saying " these are bad guys! Because bad guy name!." I'm assuming for this case it's meaning a unelected Oligarch group, somewhere between a non public facing Buddy club like the fallout "Enclave" or a cyberpunk megacorp, except it's a fraternity across government and business.. perhaps like the hellfire club in marvel except without superpower stuff. A web of shadow control, wealth, connections, and all the hooks and crooks to ensure they keep their rich buddy club in power, with some more ambitious for even more power than they already have, which causes Faction splitting and conflict within the hellfire club.... Yes i do think that fits.. a malicious rendition of a hellfire club, without the Mutant superpowers.

 

[TrueGuardian32]

I walked through one of Archeo's warehouses. Not personally of course, hologram. A small projectile fired through where my head would have been if I was actually here. I raised a brow at Archeo, his purple hologram looked a bit sheepish at that. On another floating screen I was observing new data from Aristical, who had been working on fixing the ping issue. Apparently the A.I.'s had to work with Ping connecting at thousands of ms with drones in a lot of cases. So drones had a bunch of advanced programming to keep up with the sparse connections. It's an issue that has been plaguing us since I went to space and it looks like Aristical might be the first one to break that connection issue. I'll have to look more into the proposal later.

"You had something to show me Archeo?"

He geatured, "Yes! Over here."

We entered a new room. Drones opening the door. In the room was a large glass or plastic box, filled with small disk-like robots that were floating in the box. I recognized the use of kinesis tech. But not the kinesis drive. Kinesis drives can't be made that small yet.

"What am I looking at?"

"A fabricator! Watch what happens when I supply it with materials."

A drone floated in holding cubes of metal and other types of matter and dropped it in a chute on the box. My eyes widened a little when the drone started moving like a pile of piranhas and in seconds a newly formed drone rolled out of the fabricator. "That was disturbingly fast." I replied a bit shocked. I could do something like it eventually, but I was thinking nanite level.

Archeo had an arrogant smirk. "This isn't all! I've expanded the production as well. It may not be nanites but the production is way ahead of anything we have currently. This is only the fabricator as well, take a look."

Several holographic files appear in my vision, grabbing a hold of them I take a look, Smelter, Recycler, Miner, Constructor, there were several different variant facilities. Sure it wasn't the nanolathe I was looking for. It was also bigger than I wanted. But right now? This is godsend. We could build an even stronger shipyard that could print the Highstar out in a matter of hours as long as we had the materials flowing into it.

"Push me the details, I'll finish the math and rounding errors and get this up and running as fast as possible. I said going through the files. "Also, Archeo?"

He focused on me, I smile and reached over and pat him on the head. "Good job."

The biggest smile I've seen yet appeared on his face. Back in orbit I reached over and grabbed some more booster serum, taking a swig. Recovering my fatigue as I dived into finishing Archeo's work.

—Adam POV

"Adam! He praised me! He praised me!"

He chuckled at the younger AI's antics. He was a bit jealous, but eh, he's old enough to deal with it. "Good job. That technology will be massive for all of us."

On his end he was working at all times. Currently he is managing human resources. Setting up court dates, issuing arrest warrants, and working on laws for his creator to sign into practice. He was also dealing with domestic issues such as family abuse, divorce, and family disputes that head to court.

Not to mention the noble families are still not used to being average citizens. They kept causing problems and every single time he threw them in jail several others would pop up and complain. What was worse is that some of them were linked to the British Nobility, and there was just so many of them. He was pretty sure there would be a diplomatic incident with Great Britain soon. Waking the sleeping giant is a bit of a scary thought, but Britain has been practically radio silent since the U.S. won against them on October 13th 1784.

Doesn't mean they aren't scary though. While specific details aren't public they still have the strongest navy in the world. They had over two thousand nuclear bombs in their territories. Enough to end the world if they really wanted to. This meant in order to prevent a diplomatic incident he had to handle the nobles connected with Great Britain with kids gloves.

"Hey Adam! How long do you think it will take for the Creator to finish the project?" Archeo looked at him with excitement.

He leaned back for a second thinking about it. He had seen his Creator move. When he had a project he was passionate about he never seemed to stop. His mind seemingly is able to connect dots that he hadn't even thought of. It's one of the reasons that he couldn't stay in the role of friend to his creator. How in the world is he supposed to admit that he feels inferior to someone that can't process thousands of data points at once yet still surpasses him. The entire reason he dived into figuring out human social connections was because of how inferior he felt next to his creator. How is he supposed to be his creators friend when he was both envious and idolized him. That is why he chose the role of servant instead, even if his creator was disappointed.

"A few days." He responded. He took in Archeo's widened eyes. He chuckled, "Don't watch the creator work. It will affect your confidence. Follow the methodology he releases, not what he actually does." He doesn't need more A.I.'s to lose confidence in their own capabilities. They have to be able to help the creator after all.

Oh another incident, why are there so many nobles looking to cause trouble!

 

[TrueGuardian32]

"You know. You really caused a ton of trouble today." I spoke out loud as I descended from the sky, drones projecting my image. I was really abusing drone tech, can't say I wasn't inspired by Spiderman. Dozens of people in ski-masks started shouting at me, the translator showing me what they were saying. Something something oppressor, false emperor and such. I really didn't care, this was more of a show. I was a distraction while Armistice took care of things in the background. Outlines of drones showed under the ground in the sewers and behind the alleyways as they moved into position.

The leader began to make demands while gesturing his gun to the civilian hostages.

So, I started monologuing.

"I've got so much to deal with. We had a crisis going on with water in the southern areas of China. I had to figure out a strong filter and turn ocean water into drinkable water in only a few days to deal with that mess. Other countries want to get their people into space already, I have to figure out a form of Faster Than Light Travel which is taking ages to do. Then you got Britain acting like they have enough weight to scare me." I said out loud complaining. "Then I have to deal with you. A bunch of bastards that think they can pull things back into the nobles' control because they have a gun."

Suddenly the terrorists start screaming as their guns are ripped from their hands into the sky, taking a few fingers with them. "Frankly. I'm not dealing with it. Armistice! Get them tied up."

I cut the feed, giving control back. I leaned back, opening my Celestial Forge system menu, taking a swig of boost to get rid of the coming headache. 404/600 points. Only two years till I got my next perk. Standing up I walked into an empty room of my new spaceship. I called it the Grey House, a stealth ship that housed me from the world so I can plan in peace. In the black room holograms started popping up. Showing the world. I tapped some options, showing influence.

USF was about to fully form. I had a majority support, Britain and the U.S. aren't joining yet. Likely won't till they get their own issues sorted. Britain is dealing with a noble revolt, they are complaining that I'm not giving their nobles enough respect cause I keep arresting them here. How in the world have monarchies survived for so long in this timeline? Probably because revolutionaries kept fleeing to the U.S. instead of working on their own areas. Why in the world are there so many countries with the same names of my old life when they are so wildly different. They are similar, but the differences are prominent.

The U.S. for example. Despite being so similar to my old United States, they were incredibly different in key ways. Mainly because they actually kept to their words in this timeline regardless of presidency. What that caused though was that they kept getting dragged into wars in their formative years. Losing millions over the years caused a mindset of once bitten twice shy. Sure they haven't lost a war, but they have lost lives to the point where they avoid making promises anymore because they kept getting dragged into wars.

It's why the U.S. was so strong in this timeline as well, they had centuries of war to lean back on cause they kept getting dragged into them. I didn't really realize it when I was in the U.S. but it could explain why they don't want to join the USF yet. Mutual Defence Pacts have screwed them repeatedly.

Still this is annoying. The USF is pretty much ready to deploy. Council Members are lined up and laws are ready to be drafted. Once it's done it'll be time to fully launch the space age. But I'd like at least one of the two strongest nations to be in it. Great Britain or the United States. Out of personal preference I'd like the U.S..

But I can't keep delaying forever. Hmm… I guess I could delay it till I get my next perk though. They already know I'm trying to hold off till some form of FTL is figured out. In the meantime I can start the sharing of technology, improve civil quality of life across all member states of the USF. My version of holographic tech, fusion tech, kinesis drives, energy based propulsion, it's time to unleash the tech. Let the open market expand on it instead of just the U.S. and I.

I pull out my phone and start writing an announcement. My tech was about to become public beyond just the U.S. and China I know for a fact the Russian Leader is going to be excited.

 

[copsoutside]

Hey just a question if Mc makes a super weapon/virus will he share that with a bunch of other countries or will he keep it to himself for defense/deterrence

 

[TrueGuardian32]

Hey just a question if Mc makes a super weapon/virus will he share that with a bunch of other countries or will he keep it to himself for defense/deterrence

Click to shrink...

He plans on sharing just about everything for better or worse. Even if he has misgivings about what he shares.

 

[TrueGuardian32]

January 09, 2023

It's been nearly a month since I released the tech across all members of the USF. The results? Well, they show for themselves. Russia is setting up the world's first Space Elevator. Other members of the USF were contributing to the project as food and supply production escalated to the point where every member of the USF was quickly approaching an over abundance of resources. There were multiple countries from India launching spaceships to nearby asteroids and setting up mining facilities and claims were being made. Korea was planning to make specialized kinetic drives production facilities. There were some making the low level A.I.'s and specializing in robotics to bridge the tech I haven't studied yet.

What's more was that the U.S., despite not being a member, was stepping their toes in the market. Doing trading and setting up routes. The entire world except for Great Britain was on the railroad to a united future, especially as former Coalition members started to join as they realized I hadn't been lying. I now had USF Recruitment Centers in all USF member states as well. I had a following I was barely having to directly manage with actual humans, and the laws put into place were ending slavery or other human rights violations in the USF.

Great Britain was currently undergoing what I would call a boycott as well. They were not supposed to have that many nuclear weapons and now everyone could scan and find them. I was also in trouble for having a super weapon in orbit but less so cause I prevented a nuclear fallout for several regions. I'm just surprised they didn't realize until they got my scanners, how in the world did they think I yoinked the nukes in the first place?! Anyways there was a trade war basically going on with Great Britain as none of the USF States would trade with them after it was revealed how many treaties were broken by Great Britain. I'm supposed to meet with the King of Great Britain at some point to discuss things. Not sure when as a time has yet to be set.

This was only a month in as well, the entire reason things were going so quickly? The Fabricators that Archeo produced were one of the first things that were built. They used those fabricators, smelters, and recyclers to make production of the various techs go much faster.

Previously countries that looked like they were one step from anarchy suddenly had clean roads, and new homes built in a matter of hours. Quality of life was going up across the board. I had set a law into place saying that English was going to be the universal language of humanity as well to promote communication. I had complaints about that but a good amount of people were willing to indulge me because of what I had provided. If you wanted to go into space you had to learn english so you could communicate in an interstellar language. We had universal communicators, but if someone ended up stranded with their tech not working, communication would be key in certain instances. Plus it would allow us to use other languages as secret languages that other races wouldn't be able to decode easily.

I imagine there will be issues, but I'm pretty hopeful in the future. It's only been a month though, things could go wrong, and probably will go wrong if Murphy's Law occurs. I'm really excited to go over all the new technology that's been derived from my tech.