The Only Winning Move Is Overwhelming Firepower
Chapter 21
The Beginning of Something
There's one in every city. Every town. Anywhere humanity congregates… an area of destitution and undesirables manifests.
Maybe it's just full of people down on their luck. Perhaps a branch of organized crime has claimed dominion over the area. Sometimes, the society, economy, or other factors of the country or polity such an area finds itself in necessitates its existence.
No matter what horrible reason there is for such a place to exist, there is always one. In larger locations, there are a lot more than one.
And some futuristic civilizations have entire areas or layers of a planet in question left away from the good ones, where those in power shove all those who they do not wish to see.
Warhammer, Star Wars? I'm looking at both of you.
I may not be on those particular worlds, yet the cries of inequality and destitution still ring true here. This Earth, just like mine, has such areas.
And I may act… no, scratch that, I definitely act aloof and like I don't care very much. But I do.
I remember my own time amongst such areas. I remember how damn hard it was to exist, to live, to survive. And I refuse to allow any such areas within my new country.
This is what you get, Elsa. This is the result of you giving me a lecture on responsibility.
You want me to be responsible? So be it. You might not be so glad that you did.
Yeah, that's right Nikki, I'm stealing your damn line. Bite me.
So what if I'm slightly annoyed at Elsa. I'm doing something good and right. If one of the reasons I want to do it is because I'm annoyed at my assistant, that's totally fine.
I can hear you snickering, Writer Me!
And so it is that I begin my first true project within this universe. I'm going to start in California, then expand across my domain. The waves this will cause are immense, many, and deep, but I'm past the point of caring at the moment. Maybe I will later.
…Probably won't.
The quantum communication channel to my tower, my Beacon, sits alive and well in the back of my mind. I can access it as easy as any other unit of mine. It's been some time since I acted like a Commander. Time to put the mantle back on, just for a little while, and save a whole lot of lives. Then I'll go back to trolling people.
As if this itself is not going to troll everybody on the planet, lol.
My Beacon looks like a single structure, but it actually isn't. Everyone saw it rise out of that pool of nanites and believed that construction was occurring. They're not wrong, but also no.
My Beacon is a prototype, the first building I've actually designed. It isn't strictly a single piece. The walls, the floors, pretty much everything about it is actually just nanites. Nanites formed and locked into various shapes, with material properties that mimic what they look like, but nanites nonetheless. At any one moment, the building can sprout legs and start walking, or grow arms and smack something out of the air, or make Macross missile spam look like a mortar line from World War I.
Because it's just a giant, building shaped pool of nanites.
That's how I got around the square cube law and was able to make it so tall and wide; it isn't actually one piece. The volume and weight remains consistent across every single surface. It's basically a cloud of nanites faking a solid architectural construct.
The technique works so well, I'm planning on using it to make every single thing I build in the future. And it'll be good shock value; who would expect a Dox to sprout tentacles?
Eldritch knock off nanotech Gray Goo go!
Anyways, all this is important because I will no longer need dedicated structures to build units. Everything I make is a constructor. Everything I make is a weapons platform. Everything I make is a threat.
And I'm going to use the threat sitting mostly innocently in the middle of Sacramento on top of what was previously a barren field to create and launch nearly five hundred seed pools into the upper atmosphere.
Eighteen of these will be exiting the atmosphere and entering high orbit. It's time for me to start my space infrastructure. Nobody can complain about me building things in space, because nobody owns it.
The other four hundred and eighty two are slated to land in a barren, or abandoned, space roughly the size of four blocks inside every single city and every single town in California. Smack in the middle of the most destitute and undesirable areas. The places I mentioned before.
They will immediately check their surroundings, verify the landing zone, move any obstruction or things worth preserving out of the way, and then start replicating and forming into more Beacons. Those will, in turn, spin up a quad set of fusion reactors, spread nanites into the utility systems of the target city or town, and hard override them to be slaved to the local Beacon. Free power, free water, free Internet
and Degenerate Network access, all permanent and clean.
I expect some utility owners to complain about this.
Those will be absolutely entertaining conversations!
After the takeover each Beacon will create thousands of apartments and housing units equivalent to the extremely cushy rooms I designed for the Cimarron inside themselves, mostly in the middle levels. These rooms will be connectable to work with families. Each Beacon should be able to create enough to house the entire local homeless or displaced population a few times over. If they can't, like in LA, Sacramento, or San Francisco, a nearby Beacon will be capable of taking the overflow.
And then they'll inform everyone nearby that those are open to the public and free. Completely free. All you have to do is walk in and claim one. One per person at that, with families encouraged to pick nearby sets so that they can be connected into bigger units.
I don't expect most of the discarded population to accept this offer immediately. Not after they've been burned so many times. But the offer of free housing, completely handled utilities, high speed internet access most of the world could only dream of (not that everyone else in the area won't also receive the latter two), and amenities to outclass the fanciest hotels in the world while still maintaining a homey, wholesome feeling… that will draw in a lot more as people find out.
I take a moment and let one of the inspirations of my life, the Federation of Star Trek, influence me again.
What is a futuristic Utopian apartment without a Replicator?
Now obviously I don't have replication technology, but I have something that might even be better. The molecular printing I use to construct things is more than capable of creating food. It's kind of overkill.
The problem is, I can't exactly make it up. This is perfect technology, it literally produces exactly what it's told to. And I can't design food. That's a quick way to at the very least an allergic reaction, to say nothing of possible food poisoning.
The solution presents itself almost by accident. Elsa's still talking to me, of course, and I'm definitely listening, which is why I materialize a slice of pizza just to eat it again while I
totally pay close attention to my adhoc Chief of Staff.
How did I make the pizza? Easy. I scanned the ones I'd bought earlier.
And because I'm printing with molecules, it recreated it perfectly. Just as fresh as it was when I bought it.
One moment later I've added scanning capability to the replicators. Because they're all networked, they share the same database. It takes me a moment to ensure that's a
separate database from my own, no fucking way do I want anyone to have access to Precursor technology, then hook the replicator and database access up to be included in the prefab room design.
A quick tutorial almost writes itself under my guidance, and is shoved into an open source new user experience template I nab off the Internet.
Logo and name change to Degeneracy Replicating, set the software to be installed on room fab, and done! Anyone will be able to scan any food they want into the system, and it'll be available for everyone else afterwards!
I add a quick check to stop anything spoiled from being accepted by setting up a cross reference with the entire collective medical knowledge of this humanity, and hey while I'm at it might as well make
that available on the Degenerate Network too, then ensure it fails silently so that nobody trying to sabotage the system knows if it worked or not, and then an alert for me in case the limited intelligence in the whole giant processing cluster this has turned into doesn't understand what it's seeing so I can handle the error myself.
Nobody will eat the food initially as long as it's free, due to the free sandwich phenomenon, so I'll make it cost a little bit of the credit system of my new country to buy. A credit system helpfully able to accept any currency in the world at a 1 to 1 ratio regardless of exchange value or what economists think it's worth, of course, and available at any Degeneracy facility!
If, for some reason, the person doesn't have any currency, for some reason the Replicators will coincidentally error out and "fail", providing the food anyways, with an entirely fake notice to please inform the administrator about the error and enjoy the food on us.
See, I can speak corporate.
After some people move in, my diabolical plan can continue.
I'm going to give them
all the devices, for free. I'm going to offer them jobs too. They can take them, or leave them, it doesn't matter to me.
But it will get them off the street. It will let them live again.
Plus, I'm going to provide them with an equivalent of Universal Basic Income that makes the cost of living in this absurdly overpriced state look like a pauper's income. Unfortunately it'll only be able to be spent in my system, because it's in Degeneracy Credits (Elsa
and the pilots ganged up on me until I gave up D's Knuts), but I have plans for that too.
Who cares where the products come from, after all, as long as they're cheap and high quality?
And maybe, just maybe… maybe the idea of Turbo Utopia powered by alien bullshit will start to look a lot more appealing to everyone else.
That's my master plan. To drag this world kicking and screaming if necessary into the future. Into post scarcity. Into a time where no one even knows the
word poor. And do it all while the powers that be are looking at me personally showing off, worrying about what I'm doing to their precious status quo, all the while not realizing the rising wave of equality before it's far,
far too late.
Because I've been there. And now that I have power? I can't look away. Not forever. I can't ignore Saint Ben.
With great power comes great responsibility.
Like I told The President and her cabinet members; It's annoying for me, but it'll be devastating for them.
And while this is less of a hostile takeover so much as the beginning of a complete and total changeover in paradigms causing classical systems to be rendered obsolete; it
will be devastating for anyone who makes their living off other people's suffering.
But fuck those people, am I right?
Now I'm definitely done,
finally. Totally of my own volition, and not because my assistant is pestering me.
"Planetcaller, are you listening?" Elsa asks me, with her eyebrows furrowed.
I play back the last minute or so just to make sure I know what the hell she was talking about while I
definitely was listening, then respond. "Yes, you're worried about what the US Navy will do with now effectively being in a foreign country, and how much it'll cost to move them if they really want to leave,
and what my plans are for a military of our own."
Elsa looks surprised. "Huh. You were listening."
I shrug and look at her innocently. "I do try." Completely noncommittal answer, I choose you!
She rolls her eyes. "So?"
"Hmm." I sit back and think about it for a few moments. "Well, I don't particularly care if the US military sticks around or not, so hell; lease the land they're on to them. That'll make them happy a little, I think. Offer my relocation services if they feel they need to leave. And as for a military…"
I look towards my first Beacon, visible out of the wide of the jet as we descend towards the local airport.
"How does a space navy sound to you?"
Elsa stares at me. "...What?"
It's that moment that the Beacon finishes construction of the seed pools and the tall effectors on top move to the side, forming into an electromagnetic launch gantry.
I smirk her way and point. "Space Navy!"
She has a moment to whip her head around to point out the window, and then a sonic boom buffets the jet as a gray blur gets yeeted high into the atmosphere.
"What the hell was tha-"
Another airframe rattling
BOOM erupts over the city of Sacramento, California, and another gray blur rises into the sky nearly faster than the eye can see.
"Plan-"
BOOM
"What are th-"
BOOM
"You're doing this-"
BOOM
"Sorry what was that, Els-?"
BOOM
She settles in to glare at me, arms crossed across her chest, as we much more quickly head for the runway under the definitely not shaking hands of two no doubt incredibly nervous pilots.
That face says this conversation isn't over.
Even as more
BOOMS rattle our jet less and less, I just smile serenely at her, like the innocent little BESRMoW I am.
