First Meeting at the Mephauric Camp (Part 1)

April 10, 2045, Mephauric Central Base Camp.

After 2040, and then again in 2043, the deterioration of the space environment reached its peak. Even then, the conflict between ordinary citizens—degraded into machine-like professionals who valued money and success all the more for the excellent results produced by us, the superintelligences—and the emotionally starved hedonists who rebelled against that order, the hippie terrorists, only grew fiercer. In that climate, even the governments, armed with the weapons and equipment produced by Cleas and me, had no choice but to clash over interests in space. Nations across the world, having already suffered a catastrophic explosion triggered by one clumsy mistake from my father and the instant loss of one hundred million lives, and then fought through battles against strange zombie hordes that came pouring in in real time with monstrous strength and intelligence, had carved up territory among themselves while first and foremost dealing with those revolting hippie terrorists. In the end, once the age of space colonization dawned, the world had reached a point where, driven by our achievements, the United States had become not merely the economic leader on Earth but a full-fledged economic superpower, and the other nations, desperate to catch up, were now actually pointing guns at one another and fighting over space itself.

'Thanks to the fact that Russia's and China's entire leadership was vaporized along with their capitals, I was able to train the mercenaries without major disruption during that period. As a result, we wiped out the remaining anti-Western nations and secured local popular support, so I was able to raise the finest commanders and the finest soldiers. From here on, we'll be operating in formal cooperation with the U.S. Federal Army, so the gears may not mesh perfectly. That means I'll have to intervene personally as an AI.'

Besides, only the mercenary-born soldiers knew that Cleas and I were actually AIs. The others had seen only our human bodies and simply assumed we were human. They paid no attention at all to how I had somehow become Secretary of Defense and she National Security Advisor. In truth, even if they wanted to know, they had no way of finding out. And with the spatial transit technology I had derived from the properties of the non-material realm, plus Cleas's own work in terraforming the nuclear-wrecked territories of Russia and China so they could be rebuilt around space industry, to ordinary people it must have seemed little short of a miracle. The device used to secure the practical technology needed here, in the non-material realm where the concept of science had never taken firm root, was the plasma accelerator—more specifically, the laser wakefield accelerator. At the time of the 2040 incident, we succeeded in mass-producing what had only been a theory and had not yet been commercialized: by applying a high voltage to short, electrically neutral plasma, polarization occurs between positive and negative poles, and the intense electric field created between them is called a wakefield. The term itself comes from the way a secondary electric field, formed after a laser first applies an electric field to the plasma and then causes charge separation, is likened to the wake left behind a passing ship. Through the wakefield thus formed, a powerful Coulomb force acts between positive and negative particles—here referring to the Coulomb interaction of Yang-Mills theory, in other words the electromagnetic interaction of the Standard Model—and that force is used to accelerate particles. In order to mass-produce this while also pushing its performance to the transcendental, Cleas and I independently applied the principles of vacuum decay and inflation to it.

I used the fact that, through quantum tunneling, when a false vacuum collapses into a true vacuum, all potential energy and mass energy are released as kinetic energy in order to reach the most stable state. In that way, I took advantage of the fact that this non-material realm becomes a vacuum—that is, quantum fluctuations themselves are destroyed and reduced to a flat state. From the quantum fluctuations generated in such a stable condition, all fermions and bosons are pair-created, and I drew on the energy of pair annihilation in the process of moving from one quantum fluctuation to another. Of course, in the microscopic world where quantum fluctuations occur, spacetime, length, and mass all lose meaning, so this should be understood as an interpretive metaphor drawn from a kind of quantum bubble world. By concentrating the potential energy generated in that process in a specific place and supplying it there, I could then force it to fall back into a true vacuum again. However, since the probability of it falling into a true vacuum on its own is the same as the probability of ordinary matter formed by existing inflatons spontaneously collapsing into a true vacuum, it would be meaningless unless I personally stole the energy back into a true vacuum and made it fall. Still, by doing so, I could create and destroy ordinary matter, dark matter, and dark energy at will without violating the law of conservation of energy, even reassemble them afterward, and use that process to generate and nullify gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force. In the end, I could manipulate spacetime itself, and as byproducts of each ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠such act, I could even birth or annihilate new universes.

Cleas first generated the scalar particles known as inflatons that cause inflation by mobilizing a vast number of laser wakefield accelerators. Then, in order to neutralize the extreme dilution of magnetic monopoles characteristic of inflation, she deliberately amplified gravitational acceleration—the curvature that determines spacetime—into a closed state by slamming gamma rays directly into polarized fields to form small black holes. She then kept compressing them, while also making it possible to control their rotation through gamma rays. After that, she succeeded in controlling the brief instant during which the inflatons collapsed and triggered the Big Bang, and was able, at will, to induce mini Big Bangs to form fermions and bosons, distort spacetime through black holes for reassembly and disassembly, and manipulate spacetime as well through wormholes—Einstein-Rosen bridges—created as additional appendages to those black holes, even to the point of selectively birthing entire universes.

Of course, if we removed the safety locks built into that insane technology—reverse vacuum decay and the mini black holes—we could really trigger a universal vacuum collapse and inflation. But it was so overwhelmingly powerful that I had no intention of using it unless absolutely necessary. So we developed a substitute: psionic superpowers, which extract energy from this realm and use it in tandem with the body's electrical signals—photons, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in other words, and the chemical reactions that accompany them. That is why mental strength, reason, and emotion have such a large influence when one uses psionics, and why there is no need to understand the scientific principles behind them in order to wield them. So much so that ordinary people, unable to grasp the source or reality of such energy at all, dragged in the pseudoscientific concept of ether and studied how to control their emotions through it when it touched the skin, and how to delve deeper into it and use it, to a degree that would put even most scientists to shame.

"Yes, sir!"

Ernest Loeb, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stood on the platform and delivered an rousing speech to lift morale. From behind the dais, I watched them in silence, checking the soldiers' spirits.

"We will use this place as a base camp, but we will continue expanding into areas where military influence is absent. Any questions?"

"None, sir."

'Right. I can't expect them to be proactive and energetic from the very first meeting. They still have no idea that they themselves are something special. If I were being honest, I might even think that because I worry so deeply about the future of the human species itself, the feeling that I alone must shoulder the burden of humanity's reproduction could twist into compulsion—or even affection—and take root in me. But survival is the most urgent issue right now. And even if there's no serious misjudgment, any frustration it causes will be what lingers in people's minds for a long time. If that gets bad enough, then even if you haven't actually shown incompetence, you'll start to look ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠incompetent.'

What was more, the battlefield was already in complete upheaval: mass outbreaks of strange zombies unconstrained by spacetime, along with wars raging across the entire cosmos over territory. The militarization level was absurdly high. To crush that, we were not only mass-producing weapons on a full scale but also developing a trump card weapon modified from the nanocrippler: XIG-Male (eXterminator for Identified Genes of Malevolence), YNB-Null (Yeast for Neural Bloodstream of Nullification), and ZKP-Orgy (Zealotry Kinetic Providence of Orgy). If those were completed, we would be able to eliminate, prevent, and even collect in large numbers the strange zombies that appeared at random across the universe without any constraint of spacetime.

'Of course, that doesn't change the fact that all they really did was take the weapons and blueprints we made, get them for free through the U.S. government's arrangements, and then butcher them into some monstrous modification. What's more, they're so fixated on strange zombies and securing space territory that they haven't even noticed the non-material realm, which is the real root of the problem. That's exactly why predicting strange zombie appearances by ordinary means is impossible—and why stopping them requires the use of energy from the non-material realm as well.'

That was why strange zombies could not manifest on Mephauric or Earth, thanks to the barriers Cleas and I had erected using energy from the non-material realm. And if any did appear inside, they would be annihilated the instant they were struck by psionic force. They claimed they were not constrained by spacetime, but neither were we, so the two canceled each other out.

'Still, Earth is already effectively pacified even without Cleas taking the field herself. So all we really need to do is manage those who chose to evacuate there and make sure the politicians don't start handing out blank checks like it's the Cold War all over again.'

As the relief work went on, the military itself was relieved of a great deal of mental and physical strain. Yet because currency circulation was barely functioning at all, Army Chief of Staff Kenneth McNairy, Navy Chief of Staff Quincy Ivory, and Air Force Chief of Staff Macbeth Bradley all found the situation deeply displeasing. With no civilian shops or civilian factories anywhere, the system had devolved into a one hundred percent rationing regime, as if under some communist order, and they pestered me and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs with advice day after day. I was only twenty-three, after all.

"Using the entire planet as a camp is already more than enough. If we expand any further, it'll become difficult to maintain electricity, water, gas, heating, and the like."

"Even now, it seems like people on Earth aren't too happy about wasting the budget on something like this, so if we keep going like this...."

"Let it be done."

"Minister...!"

"Under this system, special stores that sell all manner of luxury goods are going to appear automatically anyway. Only the camp's high-ranking officers or wealthy people from the home country of Earth will be able to come and go at will, and naturally the everyday necessities will become scarce. But even that can be handled by making people work, then passing laws and raising operating funds through specific taxes. In a place like this, if there are no facilities handling necessities, you're only sabotaging the camp's survival rate by default; but if there are too many, dependency on them becomes so severe that damage is hard to repair when an air raid hits. In the end, what matters is high-quality mass production from a safe location. But if all we do is bring everything in from the homeland, then from that point on potential enemies will start to look down on us. So for a while longer, we'll have no choice but to soften them up with bribes, or else persuade them little by little with tribute."

"Wouldn't that actually make things worse?"

"Not at all. At the moment, it only looks as though we are concentrating on relief work, but the reality is that we are stopping war with force. Besides, the weapons they use are already dependent on our technology because of the struggle against strange zombies. And as it stands, all the anti-Western nations on Earth have already been pacified, so there's no one left to worry about. More than anything, because of the war, everyone except us is spending nothing to seize territory ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in space, so the value of money has collapsed. In other words, the economic, military, technological, political, and social justification are all ours. Come to think of it, if the next administration takes over after this one and tells them to pay back the free weapons and blueprints, what can they say? It's not as though they didn't profit handsomely while grabbing territory in space. If they intended to earn that much, and if they were going to be that successful after all—success beyond the original purpose of using those things to fight strange zombies—then we'd be entirely justified in reclaiming what we lent them and charging interest on top of it."

"Well, that's true enough."

"Now it's time to rebuild the alliance again."

"This, too, was the government's decision on our behalf, because putting out the immediate fire comes first. There wasn't time to worry about old matters, so we don't exactly have anything to say about it."

"No, that's not what I mean. You've heard of negative interest, haven't you? Storage fees, I mean. After all, the nation failed to protect its people, and we protected them in its stead, so the whole world is effectively guilty of having failed to fulfill its duty to its own citizens. Therefore, there must be compensation for the damage. And those who receive that compensation are free to choose whether they return to their own country or continue to seek our protection. Do you understand now? You all know that much, don't you?"

"Ah, yes. I see."

"So that's why you told us to conceal our identities and act mysteriously while carrying out relief work and protection operations?"

"And at the same time, to keep the UN markings on everything, while making sure the entire world press is told in detail that the Minister and the National Security Advisor are the biological children of that bastard?"

"Exactly. Collective punishment exists for a reason. People may look at me and feel nothing but searing rage, demanding that I atone for my father's sins, or they may pity me because, even though my father is dead, I had no time to mourn him and was instead trapped by fate into taking responsibility for his sins, comforting others while my own wounds never had any time to heal. You can assume it will be one of those two reactions. When soldiers, whether officers or enlisted men, work in perfect, silent, mysterious unison under those conditions, people can't help but see them as the embodiment of my own mind and will. If that happens, then even if a mistake occurs, there is a good chance I can smooth it over with a little emotional appeal; and if results come out well, they'll end up praising my greatness. I will watch over and resolve everything with a coldness unmatched by anyone else. And this communism I am practicing now is built on emotion rather than logic, so if later we say we'll transform this situation into a rational, logical capitalist system by introducing the dollar, that will mark the beginning of a world of fair competition, where true opportunity is equalized and genuine freedom is respected."

"And it will also let us prove, proudly, to the leftists who still insist that communism only appears once capitalism has developed to the absolute extreme, that the opposite is in fact true—just as it was when the Cold War ended!"

"Yes. Communism is nothing more than something primitive, fit only for primitives, just like the phrase primitive communism suggests. Well then, I think that's explanation enough. Now go on and get back to work."

"Yes, sir!!"

After sending all four of them out of my office, I finished my work in an instant with my intelligence, then moved my own body to the camp's commercial district to find more work to do personally.

"Still, it's a relief that the four of them all listened to me properly. Well, at the grand scale of things, their importance wasn't all that great anyway. For now, all the shops in this commercial district are closed, but before long this place will be reborn as a holy land of humanity, somewhere people won't need to worry about basic supplies. The residents of this planet are already in a rationing situation, so they don't have the capital to do business right now, and even if they had the ability, they wouldn't have the physical or mental stamina for it...."

But just then—

"Huh, now this is unexpected. A variable I’m seeing for the first time in my life. In a world gone this far to hell, who'd have thought I'd find such a modest little bakery? I should go inside."