Absolution

by Peter Smith

  Sean understood that a part of the long-term strategic thinking of the General was that by defeating the hostile spires, his alliance could then collaborate with the newly established and freely elected governments of those lands. Once a coalition was in place, they could build up to a point where they could challenge Maria in open battle and win if needed. Failing that, he wanted to at least be too much effort to conquer. It was his hope that with that military and political maneuvering, humanity would be as free as possible in this new world.

  Maria continued, “I wanted nothing more than to sit back, give you people the ability and time to create a lasting peace but as you’ve showed with the deaths of thousands of innocents, all I accomplished was giving you the time to produce the rope that you hung our species with.”

  She took a breath, “My father might have been insane and evil, but he was right about some things, foremost being how tribal we as human beings can be. He used that to destroy mankind, he knew he could manipulate our species against itself and that’s how he ended your civilization,” She looked directly at Kellen and then turned to Trotsky, “And kept your families too weak to challenge him.”

  She placed her hands on the tabletop again, “Well that stops here and now ladies and gentlemen. I have no desire to rule you, but I have even less to see children dead in the streets”. She lifted a hand long enough to flick it toward the table and the room filled with the holographic environment that she had immersed herself in when Sean had found her in the New York Spire.

  The image rotated so everyone could see the small boy, contorted on the ground. Froth at the corners of his mouth, pain tearing his expression apart. His mother laying on the ground behind him, her hand reaching futilely for her child.

  “This doesn’t happen again.”

  “It wouldn’t have happened had you joined forces with us and crushed him from the outset.” General Kellen said.

  Maria let out a small sigh. Her head dipped down as her right hand pinched at the bridge of her nose, “What part of our conversation about the Israelis and Palestinians was difficult for you to comprehend?”

  He sat up preparing to speak when she held a hand up to silence him, “No General, you already expressed yourself when you lied to me about wanting to give peace a chance. The simple fact is this, you both blame the other, use the other’s actions to justify your shit behavior and you perpetuate the cycle of hate and death until nothing is left of either side but broken husks of humanity. I told you that one of you needed to take the risk of being betrayed, of having your offers for a peaceful and productive relationship rebuffed multiple times to generate a sense of trust between both sides. But you didn’t listen to me, neither of you did.”

  She stood back up, “So here’s how this is going to go down ladies and gentlemen. Peace is no longer an option. I’ve decided it’s time to put on my dictator hat for the good of the human race because allowing this shit show,” she motioned to the group of delegates, “To have full freedom simply isn’t working out in the best interest of humanity. Let me make this perfectly clear, you will craft a peace treaty here and now. I will enforce the terms of that treaty on all sides. You can still make your own choices, but the decision to create an environment that leads to children dying isn’t one of them anymore.”

  “And if we refuse?” Trotsky’s aide, Valentina, said as she sat up and glared defiantly at Maria.

  Maria’s eyes narrowed and her mouth opened in disbelief, “What part of this is unclear, I will end your miserable existence. Then I’ll work my way through your ranks until I can find someone who is competent enough to realize which options are available to them and which aren’t.”

  Sean felt his breathing pick up and his pulse quicken. This was a side of his wife he knew existed, but he had never seen before.

  “You wouldn’t dare.” Valentina hissed, “The other spires wouldn’t allow it.”

  Maria let out a restrained laugh and stood up, “Tina, can I call you Tina?” Maria waved the woman’s response away before she gave it, “Doesn’t matter what you want, anyway.”

  Maria rotated the projection so that the boy and his mother were at the other end of the table. Maria’s hand motioned toward the dying family, tears were moistening her eyes, “Tina, I would kill and clone you a thousand times over it meant that those two didn’t have to suffer. If I could prevent them from being removed from this world. Don’t test me.”

  Valentina sat back and Kellen cleared his throat, “So you’re getting rid of all pretense of not being an emperor then?”

  Maria closed her eyes and shook her head, “General, the only choice I’m taking from you is the right to create situations that kill others. If that’s what you think qualifies me as an emperor, then sure, why the hell not, I’m now your emperor. Honestly though, if you think you’ve done a good job of making the world safer for anyone, resign right now.”

  No one spoke, and Sean felt as if the air itself had gone still. Maria spared a glance at him “I don’t do this lightly, I have done everything I can to avoid causing pain or harm.” She looked at Trotsky, “I’ve been willing to turn the other cheek even when my life has been put in jeopardy, but that ends now.”

  She hung her head, and he knew his wife didn’t want to say what she was about to, “Fail to come to an agreement that ends your conflict and prevents future ones and I’ll execute you. Leave this place and ignore the treaty once you’re back in your centers of power and I’ll execute you. Leave this place and try to run and escape me and… well.” She paused and looked at the General.

  “General Kellen I had the good fortune of getting to talk to one of your Force Recon Snipers a year and a half back. He said something that I think applies to all of you right now. Don’t run, you’ll only die tired. That’s fitting for the situation you now find yourselves in. I am the undisputed power on this planet. No one, other than my father, has wielded the military might that I have at my disposal. You had the benefit of me not wanting to be anything like my him and that stayed my hand. But I have accepted that I can perform some acts that he would have and not be him. Do not test me, ladies and gentlemen.”

  She winked out of existence as the holographic projectors deactivated. The room exploded into dozens of voices, all shouting out in shock. General Kellen and his father both turned and looked at him, as the General’s aids and the two Spire members of the Legacy alliance bombarded both men with questions.

  Kellen spoke, barely audible over the roar of background voices, “Did you know about this?”

  Sean shook his head, “No Sir, what I knew I told you when I reported in Berlin.”

  The General regarded him for a moment and Sean could see the options flowing through his mind as he stared at him. Sean’s stomach tightened as he kept his eyes directly forward, focused at a space between both the General and his father. Dad for his part kept a mask over his emotions that Sean couldn’t crack. He had no idea how his father was taking this declaration by his daughter-in-law, but he suspected that he was stressed, pissed or both. His dad could be complex like that.

  Kellen nodded slightly and stood from his seat. Sean desperately wanted to swallow at that moment, to clear the lump that seemed to have bought property in his throat. He had no idea what was coming next. The General moved behind his chair and looked across the entire table, his hands grasping the top of the back of the chair, “Ladies and Gentlemen” He commanded, his voice, while forceful somehow managed to not turn into a shout.

  The voices in the room silenced, one by one, as the General gathered their attention. Within seconds the room was quiet once again, “Mrs. Patterson has placed us into a precarious and restrictive situation.”

  “For you maybe, you’ve been sucking off her tit for years. But my coalition doesn’t rely on Patterson’s handouts, we can stand on our own and we can fight against this tyranny.” Trotsky stated, boldly. The leaders of the Spires that followed him bobbed their heads in agreement, appreciating his tough man bravado.
When they were scared, fools often looked to the man who thumped their chests the hardest.

  Sean’s father let out a small chuckle and he and General Kellen shared a look. The General laughed, shaking his head, “Please try Mr. President, nothing would bring us greater joy than for you to test the waters of Mrs. Patterson’s resolve. We wait with bated breath.”

  James Dawson cleared his throat, “I’ve known Maria her entire life, I don’t believe her capable of cold-blooded murder. Her father, yes, without so much as a fraction of a second hesitation, but Maria, it isn’t in her nature.”

  Sean stood up, “Ladies and gentleman, if I may.” All eyes fell onto him and he felt his stomach drop as each locked onto him.

  “My wife,” He stopped, his mouth suddenly as dry as a desert. When he could speak he started over, “She is like her father in one important way. His motivation for ending the world was to save humanity from itself, to make sure that his daughter had a world that was worth living in. Now we have a son. She was already fearful that this war would spread and disrupt the peace that he had been born into. With the nerve gas attack on Berlin,”Sean looked at President Trotsky.

  “She is now certain that all of you at this table are a direct threat to our son’s future and not just that, but a threat to the safety of the human race. She doesn’t speak in hyperbole. She will follow through with her promises today. If you value your lives, do as she asked and create a lasting peace, or else she will.”

  18

  Maria Patterson

  New York Spire

  Her heart was pounding in her chest as she sat in her office, the gorgeous vista of the forested island stretching before her. She closed her eyes and could hear the roar of the blood through her ears as she focused on her breathing. The urge to vomit rose and faded like the waves of the ocean on the beach. She had experienced so much in such a short time, but never in her life had she ever threatened to kill someone. In less than a few minutes, she had promised to do so to dozens. What shocked her the most was that she meant it.

  A light knocking on the frame of her office door drew her attention. Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked to see her mother standing in the doorway, waiting to be acknowledged. Maria wasn’t sure how long her mother had been standing there, but she knew it hadn’t been seconds.

  “Need to talk about it?”

  Maria looked away. The last thing she wanted to do was to discuss the topic, to face the decision she had made and how it would inevitably change her as a human being. She didn’t like what she had said; she didn’t want to follow through, but she knew she would. That fact scared her. Her feelings changed in that moment. She needed to speak to someone about this, and her mother was a perfect candidate for the task.

  “When did you start listening?”

  Her mother’s head bounced from side to side as if she were weighing something, “About when you declared yourself the Lord High Emperor of the known universe.”

  She shook her head, “Just of Earth.”

  A laugh escaped her mother as she walked into the room, sitting on the corner of the desk, “Everyone has to start somewhere.”

  Maria’s shoulder’s sagged and her eyes focused past the window to the sea of trees, “I’ll do it.”

  Mom nodded her head, “I know.”

  “Does that make me a bad person?”

  “You are definitely asking the wrong person for advice in that area.”

  Maria looked up at her, “Why, because you’re my mother and you can’t be objective with me?”

  Mom shook her head, “No, because I ask myself the same question every morning, every time Alex tells me he loves me and every night when I look across the bed at David while he sleeps.”

  They sat silently until Maria spoke, “How did we get like this?”

  Her mother lit up at that question, “Oh that’s easy, men suck.”

  Maria laughed halfheartedly, “They sure have made this planet into a shit show.”

  Silence reigned again as Maria thought about what her mother had said, “Do you think we’re doing any better?”

  “Honestly, no, but it’s fun to blame other’s for our problems isn’t it.” She said, a weary smile on her face.

  Maria’s virtual vision sprung to life with another message notification from Ambassador Watney, “Crap, I completely forgot to get back to her.” Maria muttered.

  “What is it?” Her mother asked.

  “Nothing, just the Ambassador from the Martian colony has been blowing up my inbox over the last week. I should have gotten back to her by now.”

  Maria accessed her queue and saw a half dozen high priority messages for her. She sighed and selected the most recent one, hoping that it contained a summary of the earlier ones so she wouldn’t have to dedicate too much time to it. While she appreciated the distraction, she understood that she needed to work with Tobor right now to preposition her forces. If the leaders of both sides ended up being less intelligent than she hoped they were, she’d have to act quickly and decisively.

  Maps of the inner solar system sprung up in her vision and she could see the complex mathematics of orbital mechanics scrolling along one side of the image. Displayed before her was an object in proximity to Venus. It was difficult to gauge size, but the estimates were that the object was nearly four hundred meters in length, putting it at a size over what an American Aircraft Carrier had been at the end of the large naval ship era.

  Watney’s tone was tight and quick, “As you can see we quickly lost track of the object once it left the upper atmosphere of Venus. The only reason we could detect it at all and gather some kind of trajectory data was because of the velocity it had when it left the atmosphere of the planet. It disrupted the air in such a way as to let us track it.” She paused.

  “Maria, I hope you get this message soon. We don’t know where it’s heading, but we can be sure where it’s not. It is not on an efficient course to reach Mars, but it is climbing out of the Sun’s gravity well. It’s path, as of the last time we could monitor the object, would put it on a path near that of Earth’s orbit. Whatever it is, if it maintains it’s current speed it will arrive there today.” The message ended.

  “Holy shit” Maria breathed.

  Her mother straightened up at the use of the language, “Mijita, what’s wrong?”

  Maria didn’t respond, instead transferring her entire message queue to her mother and then shifted her perspective to the office holographic projector as she scrolled through the messages from the Ambassador. She opened the first one, sent over a week ago. Observational data from the same telescopes that the Martian colony operated scrolled before them both, only this time there was no object speeding away from Venus.

  “Maria, the towers we spoke about during my visit, one appears to have grown in height and diameter. We still aren’t sure what these structures are for. The team we have monitoring this situation agrees that they are likely being used for terraforming the planet's atmosphere, but this larger tower, it isn’t expelling surface level air into the upper atmosphere. Please respond soon. I’d feel more comfortable if we could begin the design and construction process for the probes we discussed. We need to find out what’s happening on Venus.” Watney said, her voice tense but not nearly as concerned as she had been in the last message she sent.

  Maria skipped to the message in the middle of her queue. Watney’s voice returned, her tone clipped and focused, “We’ve detected large amounts of EM emissions from the surface at the base of the newly constructed tower. It’s growing in output and we believe that we’re detecting the bleed off of from some type of superconductor in its charge phase. Maria, you need to respond. We have to begin our investigation of what your father was doing on Venus.”

  She closed out the projection and stared out the windows again, “What the hell is happening out there?” She asked.

  Her mother looked at her, “Maria, we need to get every telescope and detection system we have tasked to finding that objec
t, whatever it is, it was designed by your father and if Watney is correct, it’s on a path that could bring it here.”

  Maria’s stomach tightened. Tobor had yet to report that it had cornered and destroyed the rogue AI that had been operating clandestinely across the globe and now possibly across the solar system. Maybe this was a part of its plan. It had failed to find her father and was now carrying out some fail-safe task that he had issued to it.

  She accessed her virtual vision and placed all of her assets across the globe on high alert.

  “What the hell was he planning before he died.” She said to herself, but her mother responded.

  “Your father hid a lot from me. I could figure out most of it, but a few things, like his AI minions, I often couldn’t make heads of tails of.”

  Maria looked at her mother, “Could it be a coincidence that this all this started at nearly the same time as the fighting in Europe?”

  “When it comes to your father, nothing is coincidence.” Mother said, shaking her head.

  “I’m going to warn Sean, check in with Tobor and make sure Alex is okay.” Maria said to her mother.

  Her hands flew through the air, and she established a connection with her husband. Within a second it was rejected. She huffed and rolled her eyes. He might think whatever he was doing was important, but he should have learned by now that she was always right. She connected again, only to receive the same response.

  “Why the hell isn’t he answering!” Maria yelled, her frustration and fear mounting. She closed the communications window and opened an alert that had appeared in her vision.

  Her mother looked up from whatever windows she had open in her vision, “Alex is playing with Tobor right now.”

  Maria waved her over to a holographic display, “Tell me what that looks like to you?”

  She studied the data, her eyes squinting as she mentally processed what she was looking at, “It looks like the object launched from Venus transited between the sun and Earth long enough for one of our telescopes to get a view of it blocking the light.”