CHAPTER 199: SHOCK, HORROR, DISBELIEF, DENIAL, FEAR

"So we’re agreed?" My duplicate asked.

"Yes, absolutely," I say, "I never really trusted him, but I counted on his self-interest. Which is exactly what we need right now." I grinned.

"Shall I, or did you want to do it?"

"Go ahead, I’m just going to enjoy watching." The adaptive chair leaned back at the beginning of my posture change, reforming itself to give me a comfortable viewing position instead of a more forward discussion posture.

My duplicate smiled mischievously, "Ok, time for a little fun and some business. Joe, put through a connection to Earth Friend, use my kid face and voice for the video connection."

I frowned, it wasn’t his kid face, it was my face, even if I wasn’t using it right at this moment. At least he knew he was the duplicate...

"Acknowledged. Contact accepted to begin in five seconds."

Earth Friend’s face appeared in several viewscreens that popped up around the walls of the observation deck, each one’s position optimized for one of the people in the room, except Joe’s android, since Joe didn’t need anything as crude as a a visual representation to see what Earth Friend’s expression was. Speaking of which, "Joe, can you add subtitles of the emotions represented by his facial expressions during the conversation?"

"Acknowledged, although the expressions may be ’acting’ at times."

I knew that even though the connection to Earth Friend was open and live, Joe would filter out any conversations here except those by my double intended for Earth Friend to hear.

The lines around Earth Friend’s eyes seemed to be drawn further away from the eyes making them look a little bigger. The caption read eagerness, attentiveness.

I smiled, this would be a huge help in learning how to read him in future negotiations, but he must know that anyone he talks to with an AI can do the same... So, he would be ’acting’ or putting our emotional cues he wanted us to see, maybe?

"Hello, Supreme Ruler of the Entire Earth Solar System and Nearby Space, Timothy Aaron Bailey. I’m glad you have reconsidered your position on signing the new Protection Pact."

"I haven’t reconsidered that,’ my duplicate said. The facial expression and the caption changed, but only momentarily. Surprise, confusion, agitation, frustration, then attentiveness, patience. I smiled, the latter must be the face he wants us to see, but the shock at ’me’ denying the protection pact again was too profound to hide entirely and it slipped through for a second, I thought.

"I have, however, reconsidered my title," the duplicate announced.

I grinned. This should be good. I was beginning to like the way this duplicate me thought.

"From now on, you can use my new title: Ultimate Authority of Earth’s Multi-galaxy Empire."

The caption and Earth Friend’s facial expression changed again running through several combinations of shock, incomprehension, disbelief, anger, betrayal, fear. Then it finally settled on denial, apprehension.

"Is that Earth humor or the manifestation of a future aspiration. I think such a title would be seen by some as a sign of naïve ignorance of the limitations of interdimensional transport. Even our most advanced ships have not been able to reach another galaxy. Although the Jupiter refueling station is a key piece of infrastructure for research that might one day lead to the much longer jumps that would be required." He tilted his head sharply to the side.

That was an expression I knew, waiting for a reply.

"Quite the opposite, actually, Earth Friend. We have solved the problem of long interdimensional jumps. We can jump any distance now, even to the far edges of the universe and we don’t even need to accelerate to near light-speed before we jump."

Disbelief, shock, denial, doubt, uncertainty. "Your planet was far behind in physics and mathematics. Even after licensing the correct versions of those sciences, you could not have advanced them that far in so short a time. bravado, doubt, bravado.

"We have a super genius who figured it out, Doctor Ernst Wagner. A brilliant young physicist who was intrigued by the alien concepts and quickly surpassed them."

"Ha! The eight-year-old called me young! Oh...sorry." Wagner put a finger to his lips to indicate he would be quiet. He apparently didn’t know Joe was filtering out extraneous voices and other noise from the comm link.

Doubt, Impassive. "Is that so? How do you know his theory is correct? If you want to send it to me, I can have some advanced technical people check his work."

"No worries. We know he’s right because we built a few and have already made some jumps to other galaxies."

Shock, Impassive. "Perhaps you were mistaken about the location in which you emerged. Send the equations to me and I’ll have them put through proper scientific rigor."

Impassive.

"What if we just demonstrate. Your ship can tell where you are, even if its in another galaxy, right?"

Uncertainty, impassive. "Yes, of course."

"Then, we can just jump you Andromeda for a quick minute. You take your location reading, and we’ll bring you right back."

Opportunity, Impassive. "Yes, that is a good solution, I can return to the Jupiter station if you can have the equipment ready to install there when I arrive. I will be happy to have it installed on my ship to test it for you."

My duplicate laughed out loud, "Earth Friend, we have no need of such primitive applications, I can move your ship from the installations we have made here at Earth Base. I can move any ship, or even an entire planet if I wish, from wherever it is to wherever I want it to be in an instant."

Shock, horror, disbelief, denial, fear, disbelief. "This is not possible."

My duplicate nodded to Joe’s android here in the observation deck. An act that would likely be edited out of the live communication feed to Earth Friend, even as his appearance was being edited to that of my eight-year-old body instead of the form of my age-progressed adult self.

My duplicate smiled confidently, "Please check your current location, Earth Friend. Then scan the fourth planet in the star system in which you find yourself."

Shock, shock, disbelief, shock, fear, opportunity, greed, impassive. "I am in the galaxy you refer to as Andromeda. The fourth planet of this system is radiating communication signals in the radio frequency range. It has dense areas of population and industry. It is inhabited by an intelligent species. I will claim this planet for the Galactic...." Disbelief, confusion, realization, horror, awe.

"The registration attempt has failed. This planet is already claimed under a sealed registration." Confusion "There are no sealed registrations. One cannot claim a planet and hide the identity of the claimant. Yet..." confusion, realization "I have received an access key to allow me to view the claimant." Disbelief, unreadable.

"So you see," my android duplicate continued, "not only can we affect such long jumps through the interdimensional pathways, but we can do it remotely to any ship or object. We have already done extensive exploration of a number of galaxies, identifying and registering inhabited and uninhabited worlds reserving the exclusive right to first contact and first negotiation attempt with the Planetary Registry. We have even infiltrated the Registry system itself to create these hidden, sealed registries that don’t even show up in searches until someone tries to register one of our planets. Even then our identity is hidden as long as we wish it."

Shock, realization, defeat, resignation.

"So you see, Earth Friend. Any weapon or warship approaching Earth or nay of our registered planets or our new human colonies in other stellar systems, will be instantly removed from our territory. While we have a benevolent disposition, you can see that it would be possible to return those armed weapons to the home world of the species who sent them at us. Or any weapon devised by our own super genius scientists. But, in truth, we wouldn’t need to do anything like that since we could just as easily move the enemy home world itself to the deep void of space between the galaxies, leaving it without a sustaining star. And too distant for its own primitive interdimensional transport dives to remove the people to safety."

Horror, fear.

"So, Ultimate Authority of Earth’s Multi-galaxy Empire doesn’t seem so naïve and ignorant after all, does it? Perhaps now you can see why I tricked you into voiding the original agreement and so willingly offered my share of the Jupiter refueling station as payment. Earth will be offering our own protection agreements to all of our newly contacted worlds, and even to those currently contracted by the GU or others. We consider your existing Galactic Union contracts to be void since they were obtained through deception."

Now it was my turn to be surprised. I hadn’t even considered poaching their existing protection clients. My duplicate was a step ahead of me...

"Furthermore, we have established the Universal Earth Concord Intergalactic Trading and Licensing Commission which will issue its own royalty licenses for the products of our new worlds."