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  Caya frowned, "Is she up for that?"

  It was a valid concern. Anna was powerful, but that power came with a cost—crippling pain. The episodes weren't just unpleasant for her. If they got bad enough, she lost control of her abilities. The last time that happened she'd wiped out seven square blocks of Aefwal. It was mostly drones I could upload into new bodies, but over one hundred Fallen and a half-dozen Divine off-network had also been killed.

  "Anna can pace herself when cookies aren't involved. If she takes her time she'll be fine," I said.

  That much was true. It was over-exertion of her powers that brought the pain and loss of control. Breaking activities up into more manageable chunks, she could maintain control of her enormous gifts.

  "We need to keep as much land as possible out of Vinci's hands. If the Scholarium and the Fallen won't join us willingly, they still need to join us," Minerva said.

  "You're busy worrying about a war we might not have the resources to win, and you want to get us involved in two other wars?" Mechos said.

  "Vinci already softened the Fallen up and the members of the Scholarium will usually bend the knee when you've got a knife to their throat," Minerva said.

  "Make a move on the Scholarium and Vinci will be eager to play the defender. They're not stupid, they know who has better odds of winning a war. If you force them to pick a side they will," Caya said.

  I said, "I'll falsify some mineral surveys and have them broadcast from scholar networks. If Vinci thinks the Scholarium has something she wants, she might get reckless and we can play the defender again."

  There was little more to contribute and the meeting broke up. My drone walked with Caya back to one of her labs. It was time to test one of my more exciting inventions.

  5

  Five volunteers were naked and resting in vats filled with medical jelly. They were third generation Flawless, none nearly so perfect as Caya, but still largely deserving of the name. Ophelia and any of her agents were kept away from the test in case their aura of accelerated healing interfered with the results.

  "We really should think of a better name," Caya said, holding up a glass cylinder. Inside was a slug-like creature covered in writhing cilia.

  "I like brainworms. You know what they do," Anna said, from where she lounged nearby. This experiment would affect her too, if successful. It had the potential to change everything.

  "They barely go near the brain, and they don't look like worms," Caya said.

  "I'm the empress and I like it," Aya said peevishly. "Are you sure it’s going to be safe?"

  Caya and my drone exchanged looks, we both knew that there was no guarantee of safety in SCIENCE. That was part of what made it so exciting.

  Caya said, "We don't, which is why I want to make it clear to our volunteers that you can still back out."

  One of the male volunteers said, "We know where we rank. We're barely even useful and if this works out, we'll be just about the last people to get them. Give me the worm."

  A woman added, "You're paying us well. We survive, we all get upgrades and promotions."

  It was true. Even the Flawless had their lower caste and all five had inherited the weakest version of Caya's ability. In a society of the perfect, they were the most prone to make mistakes, given the least valuable and mundane jobs.

  I couldn't fix that, but I could see them given other abilities that would actually make them useful.

  Tubes containing worms were lowered down before their mouths. I'd designed the brainworms to be administered orally. It would be easier for mass distribution.

  Anna came over to watch as I clicked open the tubes and the worms fell into their open mouths, writhing and wriggling away.

  Bio-monitors above each vat showed the progress of the worms as they wriggled into the host and positioned themselves at the base of the spinal column, the cilia extending to entwine with the nerves and working a way upward to the brain stem.

  All five volunteers began to convulse violently, limbs twitching and their eyes rolling in their skull as they let out ragged grunts.

  "Nerve integration is on target," I said.

  "Two and five are generating too much feedback," Caya said, staring at a monitor as her fingers tapped at keys.

  "What does that mean?" Anna asked.

  It should be clear even to her that it didn't mean anything good. The twitching was starting to subside in three of the test subjects. It was becoming more violent in the case of two. The medical jelly wouldn't let them do harm to themselves. The spasms were the side-effect, not the threat.

  I was starting to get transmissions from the three where things were going smoothly. Flashes from their visual cortex, the sensation of the medical jelly against their bare flesh.

  The monitor above vat five flashed an ominous red. The worms had been designed to break down if too much feedback was met. That didn't seem to be happening, I administered a toxic injection that the host should survive, but the worm shouldn't.

  The bandwidth with the three successes was growing. I was now getting consistent visual and tactile feeds from all of them. No motor control just yet. I expected that to be one of the last things to come online.

  Subject Two was still little more than an incoherent screech of jumbled data. Their tremors were subsiding, but I still wasn't getting the expected results. The worm was still active. Best not to risk the host, I delivered another injection.

  "The throughput looks even better than expected. How is reception?" Caya asked.

  "Excellent on tactile and visual. I'm still waiting on full synaptic integration," I said.

  It was looking good though. The brainworms had been a long shot, one necessary to succeed for the society I was building to truly function. My drones were effectively immortal, when it was so easy to construct and upload them into a new clone. I could even upload earlier versions of a personality to erase mental trauma. To truly be a uniform society I needed to be able to offer the same to everyone.

  Subject Five was stabilizing while Two's vitals were quickly getting worse. I teleported them to a nearby medlab where I had one of Ophelia's second generation standing by.

  Subject Four was online. Bartholomew, Citizen 15DA2M. With full access to memories, I downloaded a copy of his physical makeup and brain map to the network. I slipped into his flesh. There wasn't much room to move around in the medical jelly. I could curl his fingers and toes. He was responding exactly as one of my manufactured drones. Perfect.

  I slipped out of the host and began construction of a clone at once. In theory, now that they were on the network a generated copy shouldn't need the brainworm—which was a messy concoction.

  If I could upload a valid copy into a functional clone we could simply recycle the original and be rid of the symbiote inside them.

  "Full integration successful on Four," I said.

  "Subject Two is dead," Caya said, "Damn."

  With a rapid healer nearby I hadn't expected that, and until I dissected the corpse I didn't have any answers as to exactly what had happened. I teleported them to a surgical suite and began at once.

  "One and Three are online," I said, running through my tests. Everything looked good, I made their backups at once.

  "How do you feel?" Anna asked One.

  "Weird," One said, the woman who had spoken earlier. She offered a faint smile. "It is odd when she slips inside you. Like being a passenger in your own body. Do you do that often?"

  "It isn't that often. More often you'll feel when she is accessing your senses. It’s like someone is looking over your shoulder," said one of my drones, operating a set of medical monitors.

  My dissection so far wasn't yielding any answers. Which was troubling, because that meant I didn't have a way to prevent the death.

  "Sixty percent success rate. Twenty percent fatality rate. Even if we can't improve on those numbers, I'm satisfied with it," Caya said.

  "I'm not. We can't lose one in five of your people, and I can't imagine t
hey'll be happy with it either," Anna said.

  Four said, "Begging your pardon, Empress, but you're wrong. I've lost half my family in wars the last few years. Give me the chance to keep over half of those who remain alive, I'd take it. They'll take it."

  "We live a long time on our own, but we're not unkillable. Even like this my people will want it," Caya said.

  Anna paced, frowning. "I'm still saying not good enough. Do more testing and get some better numbers, and figure out what went wrong before wide-scale deployment."

  "I'm sure neither of us has any objection to that," Caya said.

  "Cowardice of vision and SCIENCE rarely mix, but we'll try it your way," I said.

  "There are also going to be some people they won't work on regardless. Ophelia or any of her people are too resistant to physical change. The various kinetics physiology is too altered from baseline human," Caya said.

  Unfortunately she was correct. We'd already experimented with some sort of external monitors and found them tremendously disappointing.

  "Will I be able to try again?" Five asked.

  Caya shook her head.

  "No, but I'll see you still get your upgrades. With accelerated healing your already long lifespan will be lengthened even more. You'll live to continue being a failure for a very long time yet," I said.

  For some reason he didn't seem thrilled with that news.

  "What if war breaks out?" Caya asked, directing the question at Anna with a stare.

  Anna closed her eyes and let out a long breath. "If war breaks out, combat personnel can take the risk if they desire. I won't keep something from them that may save their lives, even if it a risk."

  I didn’t know if Anna realized it, but that alone improved our odds of winning a war. I was reluctant to put Flawless in the line of fire, but if I could, given their inherent ability to make the right call there were assignments where they were invaluable.

  As delightful as experimenting could be, it was time to figure out if war really was inevitable. I had to brief Anna on the mission.

  6

  "It is a terrible design," I said.

  Anna had readily agreed for the mission. Getting ready was a simple enough affair, triggering her Bio-armor and grabbing her gear. It was her Bio-armor I was having the issue with.

  "Have you never heard of airflow? I like it," Anna said, as she slipped a utility belt around her waist. It contained a portable multi-tool along with timed detonators and a cookie pouch.

  "The tops of your breasts don't require cooling. I can show you temperature maps to prove it," I said.

  "It isn't like I really need the armor anyways and I'm totally hot this way. Besides, you've never given Hot Stuff crap for how she fights," Anna said.

  "Because she melts the clothes off herself. It isn't a style choice. In fact, she has implored me to make her armor that lasts. I've invested hundreds of hours of research into it."

  Anna shrugged and made a curt gesture. "Discussion ended. I like it like this. Do you have a portable unit?"

  I materialized a portable host for myself in the form of a choker Anna could wear around her neck. It contained a backup and lower-level version of my personality that should be able to hack Vinci's systems even if my connection with Anna got disrupted. It was a device similar to this one that created Amy when Ophelia absorbed her and a Source Orb.

  Anna slipped on the choker and her outfit shifted to go bare-shouldered.

  "You're going to lose an arm that way," I said.

  "You worry too much," Anna said. "I'm ready. Give me a tactical overlay with our next jumps."

  I had Anna traveling in three hundred kilometer hops, the first few within our own territory where it was safe and she could get used to the pace. I marked the first location on her tactical display and Anna shimmered before blinking out of existence.

  I had her materialize in farmland, standing on top of the watchtower of a small settlement. In all directions the fields were a plethora of brilliant colors. The settlement could grow any sort of meat or vegetable it wanted in their growth vats, so instead they were farming raw Bio-matter I used for construction. Crops of fast-growing lichen extended as far as the eye could see coating the ground in a brilliant profusion of colors.

  "What happened to the local vegetation?" Anna asked.

  "There wasn't much to speak of. This was once part of the dead lands and as barren and desolate as your love life. There is hope after all, I may yet be able to create a simple life-form that enjoys clinging to you," I said.

  "While you're at it, you might also want to create an armored computing core that I couldn't punch through," Anna said.

  New Anna could be prickly. At least she wasn't a sociopath. Power crystals affected everyone differently, giving them a different aspect of madness. I'd been designed with mine built in—verbal abrasiveness. As far as I could tell Anna got a mix of arrogance, hedonism, and bad temper.

  "If it ever comes to that I'll put a plate of cookies in your way. Next jump," I said.

  I thought we might as well use the time to take a quick tour or our own facilities, since Anna didn't leave Aefwal much. This time when she materialized it was on the scaffolding surrounding one of the Juggernauts. This one was not near completion, still little more than a shell growing by degrees as hoses carried liquefied Bio-matter to the growth emitters.

  "The Whisper right? I remember finding the name funny on the reports," Anna said.

  I was surprised she knew that. Perhaps weapon reports didn't bore Anna as much as some affairs of governance.

  "It should be the seventh Juggernaut in our fleet when complete. We let the future captain pick the name. I think you remember Bernard," I said.

  "Shifty fellow. Once of your original drones. That was a long time ago," Anna said.

  "Most of the early ones have chosen to retire from military service, but he has really distinguished himself. A cool, tactical mind whatever the situation and unlike some people he understands the value of subtlety," I said.

  Anna stared up at the massive construction. Each of the Juggernauts was almost a quarter of the size of Aefwal.

  "Subtle? I don't think he's going to be sneaking up on anyone in that," Anna said.

  "No, it is too big to hide. But this one is going to have a full squadron of masking shield airships and six specialized stealth infiltration teams," I said.

  It was time for another jump. I triggered an indicator on Anna's display and she made the leap.

  This area was largely undeveloped with jagged mountain peaks and a valley below filled with wildflowers mixed with the occasional beam flower. I'd picked a position high enough that Anna could see Vinci's lands in the distance. A pall of smog filled the air there, the terrain gray and shifting.

  "You're sure they won't see me?" Anna asked.

  "Despite your best efforts to make a spectacle as yourself, as usual, I think you're so unremarkable you'll escape their attention. They have sensors on the border looking for human threats. We're going to get you past those on the next jump. Just warp your electromagnetic signature and you'll be fine," I said.

  This was a bit of a challenge for Anna. Humans didn't quite have the senses to tell when their field was properly aligned. With a visual indicator I provided on her display she could pull it off.

  "Are there really so few people?" Anna asked.

  "We pretty much wiped them out. We think she has less than ten thousand remaining across her whole empire. If you should be unlucky enough to stumble across one of those, they'll see you, but I doubt we have much to worry about," I said.

  Three more jumps and we were inside Vinci's territory. These got more difficult since we couldn't see exactly where we were going. I did my best to make sure they were on building rooftops.

  Below, automated carriers moved raw materials to factories that churned smoke. It was loud—without human ears to be bothered by the sound there was no need for reducing noise.

  "She'd turn the whole of Earth int
o this," Anna said.

  "You have a terrible sense of aesthetics, and she never had one at all. Given her power set this is all probably comforting to her somehow."

  "Why aren't yours like this? I mean, you have your factories filled with acidic air that I still haven't forgiven you for, but mostly things are pretty nice," Anna said.

  "I'm an upgrade core, Anna. It has always been about you and the others. Behind all the SCIENCE is the ambition to make your lives better," I said.

  Another jump. This one overlooking a vast strip mine. Large swathes left the earth bare and opened.

  "That is surprisingly touching, Emma," Anna said, continuing the conversation.

  The next jump would take us to the facility we were aiming for. Massive, but from this distance it still wasn't visible—it was mostly built underground.

  Anna materialized in some sort of underground warehouse. It was pitch-black and I reached out through my interface. There was a local network. I disabled an alert sensor and toggled on the lights.

  Barrels, barrels as far as the eye could see. The room was old, pre-Cataclysm.

  Anna's biological activity was way up. Her accelerated healing had kicked in, meanwhile my remote host was having serious issues. I quickly found what I was looking for in the network. Nuclear waste, a remnant of the old world’s industry buried for all time—until Vinci had gone and dug it up.

  Anna's high-powered healing was holding up despite the bombardment of radiation. The degree of damage my remote was suffering told me that was a rarity. I pulled what I could from the local network. Plans for aerial disbursement missiles.

  Vinci planned to weaponize this stockpile. Field weapons that would be incredibly destructive to organic life, leaving the mechanical almost untouched. A world like that would put her at risk too. Vinci would have to escape the radiation she created herself. However a shelter could be built for her and any people that remained.

  Perhaps this was a defensive weapon ... perhaps. It didn't matter, it wasn't something that we could allow Vinci to have.