Authors: Greg Fish
Awestruck by the craftsmanship of the image and the story of an empire’s birth, the Dark Gods took the cube to their home world to be guarded by the Reaper’s scythe. At each completed orbit of the gas giant around which their home world spun, the rulers of the Dark Gods, the alpha males known as the Dark Ones, came to worship this holy relic of a time before their species existed.
Having lost their grand legacy of observatories and science labs to the Nation’s war machine, the Dark Ones bowed in silent worship before The Cube, asking the War Demon it depicted for guidance and strength.
[ chapter _ 034 ]
In January of 3509, a holographic TV screen in an ordinary house on Earth was showing a grim vision of the future. It displayed giant, sprawling hyper-cities made of obsidian and chrome cast against a gray sky with ominously dark clouds blotting out the sun. Inside the interconnected spires of a futuristic hyper-city there were cold and sterile assembly lines which were managed by a myriad of robotic arms busily assembling an odd batch of forms out of silver and jet black building blocks.
At first, the things assembled by the robotic arms seemed totally alien and shapeless but as the process went further and further along, the amorphous devices being built in this eerie factory solidified into a batch of robotic toddlers with piercing red and blue eye sockets. The assembled children were scanned by strange machines, obviously as a means of quality control, stamped with a barcode on the base of the spine and imprinted with a serial number on their thighs.
Next, the cybernetic toddlers were packaged into boxes with the stamp of the Nation emblazoned in the center of each side and driven to a hypersonic space plane with triangular wings, ready to take its disturbing cargo into deep space. The voice of a female narrator read the slogan superimposed over this discomforting scene.
“In 3608, this is where your children will come from,” she stated with cold savagery. “Are you ready to meet Serial Number 8879-B?”
The commercial was Newman’s brainchild. Reenergized by his encounter with Mai, he muscled his way onto neo-traditionalist news shows in early November of 3508. It wasn’t easy. Since his defeat in the Council elections, neo-traditionalists were extremely unhappy with him. They blamed him for being far too soft on the Nation and for allowing progressives to steal three seats on the planet’s governing body.
“Unfortunately in politics, one’s mouth is often tied, “ he replied to these criticisms in his first post-election appearance. “Everyone is so afraid to tell it like it is and advisors rush to cut off your mic or to close your mouth. I take responsibility for being too soft after Nelson and other agents of the Nation accused me of negligence. But it’s not too late to make a stand against the Nation and it’s not too late for an emancipated leader like myself to get out there and shine a light on the true nature of these aliens. I don’t have to play the politics game that’s crippling and corrupting the Council anymore. So I’m here for one simple reason. I want to draw a line in the sand and let all those power hungry alien rulers know that we won’t be a vehicle for their schemes and inform the public of the Nation’s deeds and plans.”
His well-timed speech resonated neo-traditionalists angry at their loss at the polls and desperate to convince the rest of the population that the Nation was an immoral, evil, alien scourge on all humanity. Unhinged from his obligation to act like a statesman, Newman was a welcome vehicle for channeling their anger and frustration into the mainstream. Gene, now working with Councilor Anderson, noticed how well Newman’s words resonated through the voter constituency he was trying to reach and offered him a job as a pundit. Newman’s reply was an enthusiastic yes and within weeks he had his own show, a globally syndicated column and an audio cast in which he lashed out at the cyborgs on a daily basis.
Emboldened with his success, he started writing a book and actively working with neo-traditionalist think rovers and advocacy groups tasked with keeping their followers angry. The disturbing ad with robot toddlers being assembled in a factory was one of the most popular ideas at one of the many campaign jam sessions he attended on a regular basis. His fans truly believed that this was a preview of the future the progressive heavy Council would bring about. As this commercial was debated, dissected, posted and reposted on just about every political web site, they flooded message boards and user comment fields with passionate rants about the upcoming demise of humanity at the hands of the Nation and the progressives.
In fantastic parables of good and evil, a protagonist’s first victory would set things right for all foreseeable future. Yet this was not one of those fantastic parables and the Nation was yet to be accepted on a planet that regarded them as aliens. For those who hated the cyborgs’ ability to influence the public with their technology and attitude, the war or words simply couldn’t stop. They would never accept a defeat at the hands of their hated enemies.
Used to hostile treatment, the Nation stuck to what it did best. Its companies deluged the Earth with ever more complex gadgets, some of which bordered on being downright supernatural in their abilities. Their engineers and scientists partnered with visionaries on Earth to bring their wildest dreams to fruition and the first space hubs started taking shape in high orbit above the blue planet. In just a few months these giant structures would send human passengers into deep space. Interstellar vacations and interplanetary homes were drawing closer and closer to reality. In their speeches, the CEOs of the Nation’s top aerospace and construction companies promised to bring the visions of ancient dreamers of over a thousand years prior, to life. It ignored Newman’s ad, thinking that any response could be seen as some sort of validation of its premise.
But the ad couldn’t be stopped. It finally touched off the biggest debate in human history since the 2200s. Progressive pundits while blasting the ad began to wonder when the Nation would offer to turn humans into cyborgs like themselves. Not sell, they pointed out, but offer to make the conversion for anyone who asks and would not be in mortal danger during the procedure.
“If anything, having the Nation sell us such upgrades would be a horrific continuation of the great injustice of the 2400s when 75% of the planet died over two and a half centuries too soon just because an international oligarchy kept age-extending treatments away from the poor,” a progressive writer opined in her column. “It’s also unfair to keep something which would give us an unlimited lifespan exclusive to such a small group of people. I understand that there are tests that need to be done to make sure it’s safe and it works, but we should be doing these tests now and today in preparation of making this happen in the fastest possible time frame.”
Seizing the chance to start the monster of all controversies, Gene and Newman commissioned a scathing article from a prominent neo-traditionalist writer about the pitfalls of progressivism coming out of the shadows with their proposal to the Nation, something with a fiery and religious edge to it to appeal to social arch-traditionalists.
“So here we finally have it,” he obediently posted on his news site. “If you’ve been wondering why all the progressives were such staunch, religious supporters of the cyborgs, now you know. The progressives are sick and tired of being human. They want to look like freaks and knowing that their dark souls are laden with all those sins committed with the typical flagrant disregard for God’s law and nature, they’re trying to cheat fate itself. The cyborgs are not human. They’re brains ripped out of their flesh, pickled in God only knows what, shoved into synthetic bodies, and animated by sinister alien forces. And this is what the progressives want to be.
“As for cheating God’s law, make no mistake. We all have to be subject to the judgment of a higher power at one time or another and the progressives know that by condoning homosexuality, divorce and other perversions of the divine laws, they are not welcome in any life after death other than Hell. Now, they’re finally found a convenient, simple loophole. Not to die. And in true progressive fashion, they’re not just asking for eternal life, they’re demanding it for free and right now. It boggles my mind how anyone with a working brain could support an erroneous and disgusting cause like this.”
“Here we go again folks,” instantly replied the progressives. “As always, you can count on the neo-traditionalist religious fanatics for a scathing smear and denigration of anything they don’t like. You will be hearing this self-righteous junk about God and nature and laws of destiny and the wages of sin and so on and so on over and over. But the bottom line here is that they don’t want anyone who’d like to live past 300 to be able to do it because they personally don’t like it. Yes, that’s right. Gary the Traditionalist thinks that we all should do as he does and die when he dies and if you think otherwise, you’re a sinner who’s only place is to rot in Hell. My, aren’t neo-traditionalists such compassionate creatures? And so logical too.
“Apparently, according to them we just want to be immortal so we can do naughty things. It’s not because we want to keep on living or because we want to advance humanity further and finally be able to live among the stars as we’ve dreamed for the last millennium and a half. No, it’s because we want to say bad things about God during an orgy. Have they heard the word ‘shortsighted?’ Worse yet, do we even have to mention all the cases in which these traditionalists are found doing freaky things with their pants down? Councilor Newts, the new Councilor Newman, was caught hosting drunken orgies for his friends at his mansion with BDSM gear, hookers, and watching a trio of lesbian porn stars having sex. If the traditionalists want to get so moral on us, why don’t they clean up their act first?”
It went back and forth for weeks, pundits arguing about the very definition of the word human and the purpose of life, the meaning of death and whether the cyborgs were even human anymore. The vast majority of these debates quickly degenerated into name calling and insults and much of the world began looking to the Nation to step in and clarify the issue. In the absence of an official reply some began to wonder if the Nation ever meant to make the technology available to the general public. Newman quickly seized this idea and wrote an entire tome of articles predicting that the Nation’s plan is to slowly become Earth’s ruling elite while enslaving the mortals, staying true to his conspiracy theories.
“... hence, they could live like pagan Gods, overseeing the struggle for survival that mortals face with a cruel smile, knowing that these struggles are not applicable to them,” he pontificated. “After all, this is how their creators set up their empire. The apple never falls too far from the tree.”
The Child High Council watched this rapidly unfolding melee on the subject of whether humans should have unlimited life spans with great anxiety. They knew that the question would come up. They had a good clue that there would be a fight over this. They even realized that there would be a debate about what is and isn’t human following the first concrete steps towards planet-wide conversions. But this was far sooner than they expected. They decided to do the only thing they could. Come up with a good excuse and stall.
“Currently, the Nation’s position on human to cyborg conversion is that of caution,” read a formal release in late March. “Before such a program could be put in place, it would require thorough testing and an exhaustive research process. We would first like to make sure that a conversion using current or slightly modified technology is really feasible and safe. Only after it has proven to be effective in laboratory tests would we discuss the logistics, availability and economics of the procedure. So while we appreciate these debates and the desire of many to become cyborgs, the science still has to catch up with the expectation.”
While the statement calmed fears of a chaotic transition destined to alter the future of humanity forever, there was still a hot issue to pursue in the media. Neo-traditionalist pundits wanted to know why anyone would want to sacrifice their native flesh and blood to have a mechanical body. They also continued to pound away at what they called the immorality of such a conversion.
Finally, the political upheaval began to take its toll on business. Buyers were delaying their purchases. Research labs were more and more cautious in what they bought and how much of it, fearing that a major purchase of certain equipment and supplies would invite angry glares and unwelcome publicity from activists. The military began to question whether they should continue arms deals in such a turbulent social climate.
The Nation’s companies started to ask the High Council to step in and work with the Earth’s leaders to calm these concerns. The regulation of trade between planets was their realm, they said, and if trade between planets is being affected by complex political issues, it was up to the High Council to work towards a resolution. Accepting their requests, the High Council went to the Earth’s leaders but to no avail. The Earth’s officials blamed the problem on the media and as a government, they had no right to intervene in such matters. Even the always sympathetic Councilor Grey could offer little to the anxious cyborgs.
“I think you need to appeal to the High Command,” he advised. “Maybe they’ll know what to do or finally make some decisions that they put on hold. I think that what you’re seeing is a kind of massive withdrawal. The public is so used to Ace and Dot and Nelson and the charisma they brought on screen that without them, no one feels sure about what’s going to happen and who they can trust. All they get is a press release or a statement from someone they don’t really know.”
“Well that’s all well and good,” nodded Cynthia, the acting High Council chair in Nelson’s absence, “but they’re a little busy with the whole Dark Gods fate of the galaxy thing about 60,000 light years away. They can’t be here.”