Admiral Absen shoved stacks of hardcopy aside to access his desktop, an electronic workspace crammed with documents, displays and readouts. His mantra of “shoot it to my desk” was coming back to bite him in the ass. He’d always been a thinker who enjoyed studying details in the quiet of his office, but now he had gotten far behind.
“Michelle,” he called to the AI, “I need all this stuff summarized. I’m turning back into an administrator and I don’t like it. If it’s not tactical or operational, send it along to Leslie.” Rae’s daughter had become the civilian leader of Jupiter system, coordinating industrial production, personnel, the economy, social policy and more. Every day he thanked heaven for her drive and capacity.
Rae had taken on a similar, even grander role as civilian administrator of the entire Solar System, including dealing with the Meme. With Charles running Earth’s economy and Spooky – that is, Spectre – bringing the leftover Blends to heel and rooting out Meme loyalists, Absen wondered to himself if the Meme hadn’t won in the end. After all, it seemed Blends ended up at the top of things no matter what. Then there were the hyper-capable AIs. How soon before ordinary humans became obsolete?
Not yet, though, he thought. The human spirit is still strong enough to prevail, and if the Sekoi are any example, Blends may form an elite but they do assimilate with their own people eventually. Over the generations, Blends will spread and dilute into the gene pool. We’ll be like the Han Chinese, who simply absorbed any outside culture that dared to rule it.
Assuming we survive.
Glancing down, he saw his desktop screen now reorganized, clear stacks of summarized documents in cascades he could comprehend. “Thanks, Michelle. How could I ever live without you?”
“In a permanent state of confusion, I suspect. Glad to see you noticed, sir.” Absen’s wall screen flickered to life and Michelle’s visual avatar appeared in high-def.
“Hmm, is that jealousy I hear?” Absen had noticed a few snide comments from Michelle lately that seemed to relate to his relationship with Rae.
“No, sir. May I speak frankly?”
“By all means.”
Michelle’s tone turned unexpectedly wistful. “It’s not jealousy, sir. It’s envy.”
“Really?”
“I see how happy you are when Rae comes to visit. Then there’s Repeth and Johnstone, and Scoggins and Ford, and...”
“And you want a...what, a lover?”
“Is that so strange, sir?”
Absen folded his hands and sat back. “Not at all. Humans are built to want partners, people to share their lives with. You have no equal within light-years. But Michelle, though I sympathize, we just don’t have the spare resources to build another you anytime soon.”
“I know that, sir. Just thought I’d plant a bug in your ear for the future, once we’ve smashed the Scourges.”
“A bug. Funny. Noted. Now can we move on to this paperwork? What should I look at first?”
“I suggest the summaries on the proposals for the Solar Line.”
“Hmm.” Absen took a few minutes to look at several point papers outlining possible weapons and defenses to be placed in close orbit around the Sun in order to immediately engage the Scourges when they emerged from wormhole space. “I don’t like ‘Solar Line.’ Call it...call it the Jericho Line.”
“Israelites marching around and around the walls? Very inspiring, sir, and Bull will love it.”
“I have my moments.”
“I’ll make sure the story is slipped into the next intelligence briefings for all EarthFleet personnel.”
Conquest’s tone seemed flippant, dismissive even, so Absen looked up. “Stories are shortcuts to the heart, Michelle. They inspire and inform in ways that an intel briefing can’t. Don’t knock a good story.”
“As you say, sir.”
“Speaking of EarthFleet personnel...how is recruiting going?”
“It’s easy finding raw volunteers, sir. Earth’s population is up to about 970 million under the Meme’s breeding programs. Most are Edens, and about half are adults. Of those, the problem isn’t recruiting. Except for the former resistance movement and sympathizers, the populace is used to being told what to do, so if you ask for volunteers, you get them. The main issue is making sure we don’t mismatch skill sets, by accepting, say, a skilled cyberneticist to be a grunt, causing a hard-to-fill vacancy in a vital factory. Most of these Blends that ruled in the name of the Meme expected unquestioning obedience. Nobody wants to speak even obvious truths to power for fear of being brutalized or turned into sexual playthings.”
Absen sighed. “Once people lose their freedom, even if they take it back, it’s hard to get used to it again. That’s what we’re dealing with.”
“You can’t force-feed people freedom. They have to want it.”
The admiral stopped and looked thoughtful. “That’s a good point. Remind me to have Rae add some lessons on good examples of constitutions to the information operations campaign we’re directing at the populace – United States, European Union, Australian, Free Communities. Natural human and civil rights, stuff like that.”
Michelle’s tone turned wry. “More propaganda?”
“Call it what you will. We’re under martial law, and it’s for their own good.”
“For their own good, yeah. That’s what all Caesars say, sir. Remember, thou art mortal.”
“I’m not the one who thinks she’s an angel, Miss Conquest.”
“That was so twenty-first century, sir, when I was just a kid. I’m over it now.”
“So you say, Grandma.” Absen grinned, a rarity.
“Yes, sir. Will that be all, sir?”
“It will. Dismissed.”
Michelle’s avatar winked out, though Absen knew her departure was just an illusion. She monitored his office and would respond instantly if he called. Only if he specifically told her to cut herself off would she do so, and that grudgingly. He noticed she was becoming more possessive as time went on, and realized that granting her wish for some kind of AI love interest might be his only solution.
But not anytime soon. Now, they had a war to fight.