B00BKLL1XI EBOK, page 23
When she visited this club before, she let herself dance and catch the eye of the same curious men who saw her risqué pictures in magazines and thought what sex with her would be like. She’d go alone because her shy admirers were afraid of Ace. It wasn’t that Ace was very jealous by nature. If she wanted to experiment outside of their relationship, he would be fine with that. But his claws, fangs and red eyes naturally scared off every male in the vicinity.
She sometimes wondered about whether Ace ever thought about sex with a human female. Plenty of human women liked him for the same features that made other men so cautious. He looked dangerous and mysterious, an irresistible combination to some women. And not to mention the bragging rights would be a big mistake. Just like men competed with each other about the greatness of their conquests with the opposite sex, women also liked to talk about how they bedded an amazing or highly desirable lover. What woman wouldn’t want to be in another catty conversation about sexual adventures and be able to say that she seduced a veteran of interstellar wars, a famous and dangerous alien?
Dot heard these claims already from women she occasionally ran into, overhearing one of them brag about how Ace was smitten with her. She knew that Ace didn’t care for them. He found them fake and hollow, too interested in bragging rights and not at all interested in a person they were trying to seduce. His preference always went to the girl with who he shared his bed for well over a thousand years. From the couch of the VIP lounge, she saw him eye the girls waiving at him or approaching him with fake laziness. These scantily clad dolls wouldn’t get any luck with him tonight and oddly enough, that’s why they had such an interest in him.
They were attracted to the confidence emitted by someone who had over a millennium of experience and already had a constant companion. He was picky and they liked that. Similarly, the men who tried to approach Dot were taken by her invincibility to all of their charms. Nothing ever changed when it came to sex. Men and women both wanted those they couldn’t have, playing a silly mating game with overly elaborate rules.
Either way, neither of them could have sex with humans. That’s a line they didn’t dare cross for all their spirit of adventure, realizing full well that they would give traditionalists unnecessary ammunition to back up their wild claims about the Nation. But they couldn’t help wondering what it would be like and how would a human feel when touching them as they would touch an object of desire.
As they enjoyed the drinks and the music, a woman in a business suit approached them with a smile. Her name was Andrea. She was a manufacturing tycoon who’s fusion reactors powered half the globe and her dealings with the Nation gave her access to advanced reactor and energy grid components. Her company, Fusion GEC, was one of the first human businesses to partner with an extra-solar corporation, the Nation’s dominant defense contractor, Advanced Kinetics. Besides enjoying a very profitable business relationship with the Nation, she also became a friend of Ace and Dot.
She sat down next to them and with another warm smile started a fairly normal conversation. However, the blue-green drink danced in its hemispherical glass as her hands shook with anxiety. Feeling her unsteady hands, she gently put the glass down on a black table shaped to look like an abstract face of a clock.
“So, just wanted to congratulate you and of course, thank you for defending us from another alien invasion,” she said.
“Eh, it’s nothing,” shrugged Ace.
“That’s actually our job,” added Dot. “Just because we’re on TV so much, people started thinking that we’re TV personalities and not soldiers.”
“At any rate guys,” smiled Andrea, “I mean it. Thanks.”
“No problem,” smirked Ace. “So how is the work with Kinetics going for you?”
“Good, good. They’re well ahead of us... obviously... but we’re getting an astonishing amount of information from them about fusion technology. We could modify all of our reactors to put out twice the power they do now and double the grid redundancy.”
“Go for it. Nelson tells me that other energy companies are about to sign up with Kinetics’ competitors. Oh and what about a quantum singularity reactor? Have you guys touched on that at all?”
“Yeah, a few times. But it’s a bit too advanced to build now and a fully completed one is going to cost quite a bit. As long as we have our energy needs are taken care of by fusion, I just don’t see market demand for it.”
“Right, right. Market demand. Forgot about that thing.”
Ace chuckled as he shook his head and took a sip of his drink. Dot nudged him with her elbow.
“Be nice,” she warned him and turned to Andrea. “I’m sure you know how those scientists are. They always want a new toy.”
“Oh, I deal with that all the time,” laughed Andrea. “Ace, what’s that you’re drinking? Something strong?”
“Nah... I can’t drink alcohol.”
“Really? Are you allergic or sensitive?”
“Neither. My body doesn’t absorb alcohol.”
“Well that’s a shame.”
“You get used to it.”
Andrea blushed and took a sip of her drink, promptly putting the glass down before her hand could shake the drink in it again.
“I’m sorry Ace, I keep forgetting that your body is so different.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Andrea grew silent. Unconsciously, she rubbed her hands against each other slowly, in deep thought and clearly very nervous.
“Andrea, are you all right?” asked Dot.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine!” she tried to smile. “I just wanted to ask a question that I’m not really sure how to ask.”
“I speak a few alien languages,” said Ace to be promptly nudged in the lower ribs by Dot’s elbow again.
Andrea took a deep breath.
“Ok, here goes. How can I get a mechanical body?”
Just as she said it, she recoiled as if she expected Ace’s claws to slash her to shreds. Like any person who thinks she crossed the line, her tight, rigid posture was a defense mechanism. Chills shot up and down her spine because she realized what she asked. She was asking to be given immortality.
To her relief, Ace merely scratched his chin in thought and Dot’s face gave no sign of surprise. Finally, Ace replied with a hushed tone which reflected the weight of this discussion.
“Becoming a cyborg is easy,” he said. “All you need to do is get a special drip with nanobots that will change your body and insulate your brain.”
“You feel very odd as it happens,” reflected Dot. “It’s like all the organs in your body start growing cold and you feel tired and dizzy, like you’re slipping away. Your skin starts turning silver in patches, spreading across your body hour by hour. And then, in a few weeks you start feeling energized, revived, almost like you’re reborn.”
“What did you feel Ace?” asked Andrea as she relaxed.
“I didn’t feel anything. I was in a coma. When I woke up, took a good look at myself and realized it was me, I had no idea what really happened until I met the aliens.”
“So it’s basically painless?”
“Yes. Like I said, becoming a cyborg is the easy part. The hard part is being a cyborg, especially on Earth. Sure, we can give you the drip and turn you into a cyborg similar to Dot or Nelson. It’s worked for the Children without any problems. But you would be in a rather, shall we say, sensitive position. On the one hand, you have the right to do whatever you want with your body. But on the other hand, you are a tycoon who got her hands on technology out of reach for mortal souls around you through a business connection. You might face the kind of ridicule that even I can’t imagine and I had Newman’s media hounds call me some pretty nasty things.”
“So are you saying that you wouldn’t help me?” asked Andrea as a chill rand down her spine again.
“I’m not saying that,” protested Ace to her great relief. “Listen, I am the absolutely last person to deny this technology to anyone. I’ve lived longer then some civilizations exist. It would be atrocious for me to keep this technology under wraps. I’m just asking you to consider everything, all the ups and downs.”
“But Ace, I thought about it,” replied Andrea almost crying. “It’s not fair that we have to die. It’s not fair that in the end, everything in my head will be gone, that everything I learned, everything I lived to accomplish will be for nothing when I’m gone.”
“Well I don’t think you can say that,” chimed in Dot. “Someone like you is going to leave a legacy behind, a good deal of knowledge and plenty of things you built and helped build will still be around.”
“Yes, I know that. But... ultimately it’ll be forgotten, just some labeled items in a museum storehouse or stored on some disks in a library. You told me yourself how the catacombs of Abydos are preserving all that’s left of civilizations that used to rule this galaxy.”
“It’s not true immortality,” noted Dot. “You could still be killed, you still have death looming over your head during a war or when an interstellar cataclysm catches you off guard. Granted, as a cyborg, it will take quite a bit to kill you, but...”
“I understand that. I just don’t want to be trapped in one place, in one era. I don’t want to keep wondering what’ll happen in the future. I want to see it with my own eyes. I don’t want to live like I’m on death row, just waiting to die.”
Ace sighed and finished his drink in one gulp. He looked into the blurry reflection of his face in the glass. Putting the glass down with great care, he turned to Andrea.
“Andrea, are you willing to look like me on day?” he asked. “Or Dot? Or Nelson? To have gel instead of skin, polymers for muscles, to have big glowing eyes and sacrifice your own flesh and blood to a microscopic army of machines?”
“Yes,” declared Andrea with resolve.
“Are you willing to join the Nation?”
“Yes. I am.”
“Tell me, do you have family?”
“I don’t have any family left. They’re all gone. It’s just me.”
Ace looked at Dot with a question in his eyes. Dot nodded with a wink and a subdued smile. Without having to say a word, she asked the demon to be gentle.
“Here are the conditions,” announced Ace. “If the population of Earth finds out about this, it’ll cause the kind of chaos that could end up in a war, just like the war between poor nations and rich nations in the last millennium. If we do this, you’ll have to get your successor to run Fusion GEC and retire.”
“And what would I do then?”
“You would live in the territory of the Nation. Take your money, your investments, sell everything else and convert the cash to astros. I’m not sure what the exchange rate is now, I think it’s somewhere in the 4 to 1 range. But with your personal wealth, you could buy yourself a nice planet somewhere scenic and have a nice, big temple, something in the 16,000 square foot range.”
“Temple?”
“Yeah, our homes in space look like ancient temples so we just call them that. It could be a temple if you’d like, but it’s basically just a house.”
“So I have to leave everything behind?”
“Yes.”
“What do I do for a living?”
“You have enough money to just relax. The only thing you need to pay for is food and that’s not expensive anymore thanks to Earth. I think you would be surprised how much time you could spend freely roaming the stars. If you discover something amazing, sell it. If you want to have a standard job, I’m sure Advanced Kinetics would love to hire you since they know you so well.”
Andrea bit her lower lip in thought.
“Is there a time limit on this offer?” she asked.
“None,” replied Dot. “Whenever you want to do it and you think you’re ready. Just remember that you’re not making a change for just a few years or doing something you could take back. Your choice will shape your life for thousands and thousands of years. This isn’t supposed to scare you, just let you understand the scope of your decision.”
“And all this doesn’t mean that you have to part with everything in your life,” added Ace. “If you want to tell your friends about it when you made the decision to go through with it, go for it. Just make sure they keep quiet about this until we’re ready.”
Andrea nodded in reply, looking down at her drink. She had a lot to think about.
[ chapter _ 028 ]
August of 3508 was coming to a close and the general election finally ended the long and difficult media battle which raged for over a year now. It started a few weeks after trade agreements with the Nation were formalized, just as Ace, Dot, Steve and Christine left for the killing fields of the Rexx domain. Through all the smears, insults and verbal confrontations, the politicians once again failed to ignite the public’s admiration and attain the devotion of a normal, typical person.
But this election did arouse the people’s ire thanks to Nelson and his two minute speech on the morning after the battle. Furious voters went to the polls with only one goal. To punish. To distribute what they thought was justice. To cleanse the Council and their local city boards. With a seemingly innocent speech, Nelson directed the people’s anger and watched as the humans carried out their civic duty and turned rage into action. It was the morning after the election and all the numbers were in.
Armed with a plastic sheet, Nelson walked out to the pool of residential tower with his condo. The pool was in the middle of the sprawling private rooftop patio, surrounded by a winding road made of flat, polished stones arranged into a curving lane. Steve and Ace raced in the crystal clear blue water while Christine tanned and Dot sat on the edge of the pool, dipping her bare feet in the water. Deciding to take a risk around the laidback cyborgs, Christine tanned without her top. Dot, who’s silver gel reflected the sun’s rays, glowed in the light, dressed in just her shorts. Ace and Steve donned a pair of swimming trunks. Nelson joined them in shorts and a t-shirt.
“Ok guys! The election results are in!” he announced.
“And who won?” asked Ace, poking his head out of the water.
“More like who lost!” laughed Nelson.
“Newman’s outta there?” smiled Steve.
“That’s right. The Council is now stacked with progressives and their first order of business is ‘to improve relations with our friends, the Shadow Nation and repair any damage the smear campaign lead by ex-Councilor Newman may have caused.’”
“You know, you did get Newman tossed out on a lie,” Christine noted as she stretched out on the lounge.
“Ah well,” cringed Nelson. “You know what they say, an honest politician is like a virgin in a brothel. Even if it’s true, it’s not gonna stay that way for long.”
“Fair enough,” Christine shrugged.
“You know, I’m just glad that I’m not participating in battles of witlessness anymore,” laughed Ace. “Say, you won’t push me out on talk shows after this, right?”
“Uh-huh,” distractedly mumbled Nelson, his attention directed elsewhere.
“Nelson!” growled Dot. “Quit staring at Christine’s boobies and answer the man.”
Laughter erupted in the backyard as everyone except Nelson had their first good laugh of the year. With a slight blush across his nose, he coughed and regained his composure.
“No Ace, don ‘t worry, no more talk shows for you,” he said. “I think we’re pretty much done with that for a while.”
Ace jumped out of the water next to Dot and sat on the edge. His jet black gel also glowed in the sunlight which was reflected off the drops and streams of water that covered his body.
“Pardon me Dot,” he asked mockingly, smirking at Christine. “I would like to ask if you would mind terribly if I stare at your boobies while I sit here?”
“Go right ahead kind sir,” replied Dot puffing out her breasts.
Another bout of laughter rang across the patio, this time with Nelson joining the chorus. The High Councilor shook his head with a sad smirk and he kicked the water at Ace and Dot who instinctively raised their arms. Dot squealed from laugher and Ace grinned evilly.
“I get absolutely no respect from those two,” complained Nelson to the humans. “They just make fun of me whenever they want. I’m a member of the Child ruling body dammit!”
“Are they supposed to be scared of you?” asked Christine.
“Not Ace” frowned Nelson. “Technically he’s my boss.”
“Really?” asked Steve bewildered. “Ace, I thought you weren’t really a member of the High Council, just an adviser.”
“Well, Ace is a member of the High Command,” noted Nelson.
“You don’t say...” Christine perked up and looked at Ace.
“Guilty as charged,” admitted Ace. “I’m the evil High Commander that Newman and his friends were trying to find.”
“So what are you doing here?”
“Staring at Dot’s boobies.”
Dot giggled and lightly pinched him on the arm.
“No, come on now!” urged Christine.
“I’m not going to get much done if I sit around and rely on robot ships and soldiers I never met to do the job. I spend a lot of time with soldiers, a lot of time in my lab, I travel quite a bit and take care of a whole bunch of things. Most of the Command does the same.”
“What is the High Command doing now?” asked Steve.
“Getting our fleet ready.”
“Let me guess, we’re going to fight the Dark Gods.”
“We are,” said Dot. “You could stay if you’d like. I’m sure that Councilor Grey got what he needs out of stationing you with us. The Dark Gods are nothing like the Rexx. It’ll be a pretty rough war.”
“I think we can handle it,” said Christine.
“And I’m sure we can,” seconded Steve.
“You really want to come with us?” asked Nelson incredulously.
Steve got out of the pool and stretched.
“Earth is great and all, but out there, in the stars... That’s where the real adventure is,” he replied. “I’d rather take a risk to have some fun and excitement in life then wallow on Earth in boredom.”
