67 - Bored Stormclouds
67 - Bored Stormclouds
Even though I was the one who had set the alarm, it still managed to surprise me as it blasted me with enough volume to obliterate the eardrums of any regular human being.
"WHEN I WAKE UP-!"
"Ah fu-,"
"-WELL I KNOW I'M GONNA BE, I'M GONNA BE THE MAN WHO-,"
Situated as I was, sitting on the pillow pile staring at the inky black of space and its speckling of stars, the time had somehow gotten away from me. I know this because I was startled enough to flail and fall flat onto my face on the ground outside of the pile. There was no one to hear me startled half scream or see me spazzing out but I nevertheless felt embarrassed. Not enough to bother going through the motions of dusting myself off considering that in the possibly soon future I would be switching to a new body of some kind.
I was getting either better or worse all the time and I still didn't know which.
Should a Commander ever put so much effort in to reducing themselves to as close to baseline human as possible? With all the technology at my disposal it seemed to be just something to do. I wasn't like the others, if they even truly existed out there in the multiverse. Were any of the Commanders capable of meeting one another or are we all isolated in our own little pockets of multiverse? Even if they weren't all of our circumstances were all vividly different. God only knows what Drich is by now.
But it was easier, on some level. To not have a billion camera angles, audio from all over the place. Controls of vast machines or fleets or whatever. To be fair I could with a mild bit of effort reconnect myself but spending months of time working on not being a Commander was…nice. For a while. Yeah. It didn't mean that I didn't put the work in when absolutely necessary.
Or when I let myself get distracted enough to somehow miss that the Allies and Soviets were stepping up the war effort to such extents, heh.
But it's fine now. If I absolutely have to intervene, I have a fleet ready. Sure the Sol System was missing a bit of mineral wealth now and Pluto was covered in generators but they were stealthed and my reserves were still quite high.
The fleet, right.
I didn't want to get any fancier than I had to, so I'd gone Independence Day on it. Massive discs with an almost unconscionable amount of guns. Turbolasers, slug throwers with fabricators to continually replace ammo of a caliber that I could really only describe as 'Fucking Big', missile launchers, the works basically. Each one was the sheer breadth of Tokyo in size – mostly because Tokyo was the biggest city on the planet at the moment – and within moments they could obliterate said city. Less than a moment. A single salvo really.
Not that I was going to use them! Just…you know. In case.
Old instincts, I guess. Getting ready to obliterate every hint of any opponent on the planet all at once.
I wasn't…planning on using them. But it was something that I'd sort of just found myself doing. You know like sometimes you go to the kitchen and just make something without even really planning to. An impulse! That's it, that's the word. Yeah. Kind of a fucked up impulse to have, honestly. Fuck man, I need a therapist.
Anyway! None of that is important right now. I have a stealthed death fleet built out of the mineral wealth of the asteroids and some of the moons of this solar system which could, yes, wipe out all life on earth in less than five minutes of sustained bombardment. But that's not important. Because befo- because instead of that, I'm going to see what's what down there.
Reconnecting to my invisible satellite web and…yep.
The Allies are attacking Gibraltar with some Soviets on hand as well, while the Japanese are running around all over the place swallowing up most of Asia and the Pacific Islands. Seems about right. Every single one of the major superpowers are slamming against each other with massive force contributions to various theatres leaving their direct homelands largely unprotected. New York City is pretty empty right now but the main Allied base in Europe is Amsterdam. Futuretech Labs and all that. Hmm. Main source of all of Einstein's technology, them. With vaguely ominous plans for the world at some point or another.
Tokyo on the other hand is actually pretty heavily defended still. Empire does have the second largest military right now it looks like. Soviets beat that out but their troops are kind of crap in some parts.
"Oh hey. There's Yuriko."
And there she was indeed. While the Allies were fighting in Gibraltar, the most powerful psychic on the planet was tossing around an entire Soviet base in Vladivostok. It was pretty impressive, I guess. Though…wait, no, was she the right one? It was getting hard to tell now that my satellites were actually checking around. There were currently fifteen Yuriko Omega's with each displaying pretty powerful abilities. Was one of them right one? It was hard to tell I suppose. They might all be clones. Ah, whatever, I wasn't looking to get in a fight with her or her many clones right now.
Nah…I know what I'm going to do.
Roots. Gotta think about roots, right? As soon as the war ends, I can go back to doing what I want. If it escalates too badly I can shut it down but things seem to be proceeding perfectly fine without me.
After all, the flaps of a butterfly can only change things if the butterfly is flapping and not…doing what I was doing.
Which some might say was doing nothing.
I don't say that. I was doing stuff. I was doing what I wanted, and I wasn't killing anyone. Which was nice, to be honest. It was really, really nice.
No but while everyone is fighting…I suppose I can go and do some stuff on my own, right?
…right.
Clothes. Fancy suit, armor, or…?
====================================================
"Say again?"
The guard was not a warrior of the Imperial Army, but that did not mean he was not vigilant and with training and weapons of his own. In his case it was a simple pistol but considering the one in front of him he was unsure if he would even need that.
"There is a man in a bathrobe and a cup of something staring at the building."
Some kind of billowing loose pants and a baggy shirt could be seen as well for the ragged pink bathrobe itself was not even closed. It was just sort of…there. One of his hand was in the bathrobes pocket while the other held loosely onto the steaming cup. Or was it a mug? He was never sure.
"Well then…remove him. He is causing a disturbance."
"Of course."
He only made a step forward before the stranger looked up at him and waved lazily.
"Hello," he said casually.
"Sir," the guard nodded, "I'm afraid I must ask you to leave. You are disturbing our workers, and it is unsightly for people out on the street to see you standing in front of our establishment."
"Oh," the man nodded slowly, blinking at him once before gazing up at the building again. "Hey, this is Shirada Shipworks, right? Builder of the glorious Imperial Navy, designers of all its wondrous weapons and technologies?"
"…yes?"
"Cool."
Without any further prodding, the man walked away and disappeared into the crowd.
==========================================
"You look tired, man."
Gunther Hansen sighed, rubbing his temples, and looked to his left to the speaker. Normally he would have jumped at the sight of what looked like a homeless person sitting so close to him on the bench. But he was just too tired. He glanced however at the steaming mug offered to him by the homeless man who clearly had no nearby access to any kind of machine to produce something like that.
"What…is that?"
"Hot chocolate."
Gunther blinked.
"Not coffee?"
"Nah, I hate that stuff. Nice suit by the way. You work up there?"
'There' was apparently the Futuretech research facility. Which…was…
"How did you get in here?" Gunther asked, suddenly alarmed as he realized that he was technically within a supposedly secure perimeter. "How- who are you!"
"Hey man, I just wanted to see the famous facility where spectrum and cryo tech is being perfected even as we speak."
"You- security! Security!" Gunther called out, looking for one of the many guards who was supposed to be walking about all over the compound.
But by the time he turned back to the bench, the man was gone.
===================================================
Well that was fun.
Nice to be back in the ship though. I get twitchy when I'm outside for too long I guess. Grabbing food doesn't count because food is safe. Always. Even if it was poisoned I'd be fine because I'm not actually capable of being poisoned.
Although-
Wait.
Hold on.
Woah now. How…
The Allies and Soviets are fleeing Gibraltar. How the- what the fuck?! They're supposed to win there, not lose!
I don't…
Damn it, I was fine with the Allies winning. I was…can I…is it ok if the Empire wins? Neither of the groups are like, strictly evil, right? Except maybe some of the Soviets. Right?
I don't…
I don't know what to do here.
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