The Brink and Back - Chapter 135 (Patreon)

The council chamber room was huge, far larger than it likely needed to be. With a total of twenty-two occupants, and with no empty chairs, a space that looked like it could hold two hundred and fifty people with their arms outstretched seemed like overkill. Still, it was hard not to appreciate the room, as it was an impressive bit of architecture and clearly meant to send a message.

The ceiling, which was probably around forty feet up, was a huge dome, covered with deep blue stone, or maybe just painted a blue so deep it was almost black. I could see dots of silver spread across the entire curvature, and it didn't take a genius to figure out it represented the night sky. Most of the floor was painted with reddish tans and browns, mimicking the iconic soil of Africa, which was colored red by iron and aluminum oxides. A lighter path led to the area right in front of the council, like a road set on the dirt. 

Then there were the seats, where the councilors were sitting. A raised platform of burnished brass, cut into a semicircle and set along the curve of the room opposite of the entrance. It was tall, the lowest point a good two feet taller than me, which meant all of the councilors would easily be able to look down on anyone coming to see them.

Altogether, it was clear the chamber was meant to mimic a sunrise, or a sunset maybe, with the council being a source of golden light, looking down on those who wished to speak with them. 

The implication was likely on purpose, and while I did not like the part where they were literally above me, looking down on me like I was here to beg for soup, I wasn't nearly shallow enough to make a statement back, though I could almost feel Sable wanting to do just that. 

I could, too, in just a few seconds. A message back to Mary would have various "solutions" delivered by slipspace. I could mock them with a recliner, or meet their sun allegory with a solid silver moon, or just state that I was above them by getting something tall to stand on, enough that I was looking down on them.

Honestly, the recliner concept was the most tempting, but I resisted the urge, since I was here to maintain peace and hopefully make friends, not poke and prod until someone snapped. Besides, by the end of the meeting they would understand just how little their little game meant, if they even realized they were doing it.

Though I did make at least one type of statement when I stole the first words of the meeting.

"Greetings, Councilmen and women," I said, nodding as I looked across the many leaders. "My name is Jackson, and this here is Sable Arcturus. Thank you for agreeing to meet with us." 

"Given the nature of your request, I do not see how we could turn it down," one of the councilors, their seat marked by an Egyptian flag, said. "Your demonstration of power was unlike anything anyone has ever seen." 

"It was unfortunately necessary," I said, not denying the statement. There was no use pretending, after all. "The Megacorporations and the governments they owned had a stranglehold on the planet, with weapons of mass destruction aimed down at the Earth, at their neighbors. The entire planet was a hair's breadth from being wiped clean of all life. All it would have taken was a single weapon going off, and it all would have come tumbling down."

"We would have been fine! We have defenses in place to stop their weak attacks," Another councilor, this one I recognized as being from Nigeria, rather energetically explained. "With the Highrider Confederation backing us, we would have never even needed to participate."

"I think you may be underestimating some of the horrific weapons the megacorps had aimed at you and nearby countries," I responded with a frown. "Some of the biological weapons… well lets just say radiation poisoning from the nukes would have been better than being hit by some of them."

That seemed to get through to most of the councilors, even the Nigerian, who recoiled slightly. Before he spoke up again, the councilor from Kenya, an older greying woman, spoke up. She spoke in Swahili, which was a fascinating language, which Mary translated for me live. 

"Councilor Tinubu, enough. Jackson, we agree that the world had been on the edge of an unwinnable war for far too long," she agreed with a nod. "But why spare Africa? We are armed with more advanced weapons, and our satellites remain. Why spare our weapons while clearing the rest of the worlds?"

"Because I'm hoping you'll give them up voluntarily," I said with a smile, before their translator could start to do their job. "New Zealand has already started handing over their weapons of mass destruction, and we have already destroyed their satellites, with their permission and reimbursement. I had a rather interesting meeting with their Prime Minister, and we have come to a mutually beneficial agreement." 

"You have met with Prime Minister Daniel Karaka?" Another councilor, one of the few white people on the council, asked.

"They agreed to meet immediately after we asked, which we did at the same time our message was delivered to you," I responded, before adding. "I do not begrudge you for taking time to consider the offer. Your government is significantly different, you could not simply make such a choice offhand, you needed to consider and discuss it."

"We do not need-" the Nigerian councilor started, only to get cut off as the Egyptian councilor spoke up.

"I put to motion a twenty-four-hour censure on Councilor Tinubu," They stated. "To silence him before he gets in the way of peaceful, productive talks. Jackson's patience has been proven, testing it further is unwise." 

The motion was quickly passed by nearly seventy-five percent of the group, at which point they stopped voting. For a moment, I thought Councilor Tinubu was going to explode in rage, maybe even try to jump off the brass podium they were all sitting on, but after a long moment he simply stood and stormed out through a door at the back of the council's raised area.

"Apologies for his outburst," the Egyptian councilor said once he was gone, giving me a single nod. "With seventy percent of the vote to censor, we will be able to reach a conclusion on this topic without their influence."

"I appreciate the council's dedication to hearing me out," I said with a nod. "As I was saying, I don't blame you for taking time, your process is more complicated, I recognize it takes time to make things happen." 

"And the council thanks you for your patience," The councilor from the Republic of Zimbabwe said. "I find myself curious about the contents of your conversations. Would you be able to share with us?"

"I showed him just how deep the technological gap goes," I explained. "I showed him, in person, mind you, some of my many technological advancements. Then we talked about what I hoped would happen between our groups, and what one possible future might look like. Since then, my growing team has been working to distribute some of our technology to them, including ways to make those advancements, so that their job economy doesn't suffer.

"What exactly are you looking to share?"

"Cures and treatments for afflictions, treatments for injuries, high-quality food production for cheap, quality-of-life developments like teleport stations, as well as advanced material sciences," I explained. "Creating the teleportation technology will remain proprietary and under my control, unfortunately, but we are more than happy to share its use." 

"And what of your ability to travel through space?" The Kenyan councilor asked, as if their question would stump or surprise me.

"That will also remain under my control, as well as most aspects of my incredible production speed," I answered. "Any starship that uses my tech will be considered a loan, and while I would teach people how to maintain the vast majority of it, my method of FTL is not something I'm willing to share with the public quite yet."

Handing out FTL scared me on two fronts. The first, I was nervous of what would happen in a hundred, or even two hundred years if a group of people just left, found a place to live, and expanded. If it was influenced by the standard level of greed and disregard for human life that had infected the Earth, I was terrified it would either turn into a giant slave camp with a tiny group of people at the top, or turn into a threat down the road when they wanted a bigger slice of my pie, or decided they wanted to take back Earth or something equally stupid.

Was it paranoid? Potentially, but humans really didn't have the best track record when it came to civil war, and with separating colonies working together, and that was without Cyberpunks added taste for violence. I couldn't trust these people to walk down the street without trying to kill or subjugate each other, never mind jumping across the galaxy.

On top of that, my second worry was that I had no idea if we were alone or not.

While I was well aware that I had no real, concrete evidence to say the contrary, my gut told me that taking Earth from the Megacorps, stabilizing it, and starting the healing process was not the only challenge for me out there in the galaxy. Someone had gone out of their way to take me, slap on a power that scaled way too high, and then dropped me in what could technically be considered a very minor hell world. That was not something you did for a quick fix to a single planet, especially since once I had scaled up past the first few hurdles, my only real enemy was time, and even that was just a waiting game. 

Maybe they didn't have control over what I had received from the Tinker of Fiction, and I had just gotten lucky with the order, but even then, they had to have understood how fast I would grow in power. ToF was not something you handed someone to clear out a place like Cyberpunk, it was made for something bigger, something like some sort of alien threat.

Which meant handing over FTL to a bunch of literal Cyberpunks was a good way to start something bad before we had time to prepare. So, until we were ready, and until humanity had regained some of its dignity and respect for life, FTL was on lockdown, along with a long list of weapon tech. 

"That is, unfortunate to learn," the Egyptian councilor admitted. "The ability to travel to new stars has captured the imagination of many of our brothers and sisters in orbit around our planet." 

"I didn't say that traveling to other planets wouldn't be allowed," I corrected. "Just that I would control the way it happens. Trips would have to run through my people and me, and any teleporters between here or there would need to be set up by me."

"I believe we may have gotten off track," the male councilor from the Republic of the Congo pointed out. "What exactly are you expecting in exchange for these supposed miracles?" 

"Within the next few days, I will start systematically dismantling and reassembling the worlds worst megacorps, before forcing the others to fall into line," I explained. "World governments will be scrapped, lines will be redrawn, laws will change. Besides you, New Zealand, and several other smaller places around the world, Earth will be reorganized under my people and myself. You know I can do this, even if I hadn't already proven the superiority of my ground forces as well."

The councilors were silent, and I didn't blame them. I had essentially just declared I was taking over the world, and they knew there wasn't a damn thing they could do about it.

"And while I do this, all I want from you is peace. Cooperation. I want to talk," I continued, emphasizing the last word, letting it fill the chamber before continuing. "I want mutual help. I want to discuss the steps we could take to heal the planet. I want to talk about what your continent needs. I want to talk about what your people need."

"You want to... talk?"

"Yes. But perhaps more than that, I don't want to have to kill you," I added, causing most of them to tense up. "The coming days will be bloody, they will be brutal, and a lot of people are going to get killed, and even more people are going to be hurt. There is nothing I would like more than us to openly, cleanly, honestly cooperate, so that blood does not have to spread here."

The silence was tense, like a piano wire wrapped around each of the councilors' spines and pulled tight. After a moment, before they could respond, I continued, looking each of them in the eye as I scanned the room.

"Prime Minister Daniel Karaka was happy to talk, and we are already working on setting up a stimpak factory in one of their cities, as well as a revitalization project that should restore a massive lake to something clean enough to drink out of, before we start reintroducing fish to it," I explained eagerly. "These are the kind of projects I would like to do all over the world, but in most places I am going to have to kill the old guard and restructure an entire generation in order to do it. So please, help me do that here without violence." 

Once again, silence fell over the large room, and this time it stayed there. No doubt I had said several things they expected me not to, pulling the vague, polite cloth off the obvious threat in the room and promising what they had likely been considering but hadn't confirmed. 

I was making a play to control the world, and they didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of stopping me. There would be no subtlety, no political subterfuge or intrigue.

"As… As I'm sure you can appreciate, this is… well, it's an unprecedented moment," One of the councilors pointed out, clearly still recovering from my statement, trying to figure out what they could say.

"I'm well aware," I said with a nod. "I know this is something that beggars belief. But you've seen a good amount of what we are capable of."

"You said the leader of New Zealand was shown the depths of your technological prowess," The councilor from Egypt said. "Is that offer open to us as well?"

"Of course," I said with a nod. "I could take you to the same places I took him, show you the same things. But you would need to trust me, since we would be leaving this chamber."

"Leave the chamber? Why would we do that?" One of the councilors said, sitting behind a flag I did not recognize. "We would be at your mercy."

"You are at my mercy right now," I pointed out. "But I understand the sentiment. There are some minor things I could demonstrate here, though I would need to bring things in to show them off, and I doubt your security would appreciate me opening tears in reality just to put on a show."

"I will go with you," The councilor from Ethiopia, Councilor Tesfaye, said. "I will go with you… and perhaps record footage, so that the others can witness it through me?" 

"We could do that," I agreed with a nod. "I will still need to bring something here, as the teleportation method we used to arrive has limitations that the other type does not have, but it would only be a single pad."

It took a little debating, but eventually I was "allowed" to repeat the process I had done not too long ago with the Prime Minister. A slipspace tear opened, and a single robot walked through, walking toward and deploying a teleport pad in the center of the chamber. The counselor who volunteered then descended from the raised area, down a hidden set of stairs behind their golden brass construct that the counselors were sitting on. He joined us on the floor, and after we shook hands and made a final agreement, we clipped a camera to his clothes. The camera used quantum entanglement to transfer its information between it and a holographic projector, which we left at the council chambers.

Unfortunately, while I got to spend the majority of an afternoon talking with Prime Minister Karaka, showing off what we were capable of, I got the feeling that the PAA council wouldn't be as up for such a long presentation as the surprisingly easy-to-talk-to New Zealander was. 

So, they got the accelerated tour. 

First, we went to Avalon, where I showed off the fact that we had traveled to an entirely new planet. At first, they reasoned it was some sort of secret location I was hiding with stealth technology, but thankfully a quick trip to a part of the planet that was dark revealed the two moons. After that, I showed them the production city on my personal production planet. At the time, most of the cities were focused on building more cities, converting the planet's dirt to build fifty of them in total.

The one we ended up at, however, just so happened to be where the first Super MAC orbital platform was being constructed. An orbital defense station that was a kilometer and a half long and eight hundred meters wide. We also just so happened to show up when it was launching, several tug ships slowly dragging it up into orbit. With the Lutece particles inside the hull, we could have hauled it up there with a kite and a stiff wind, but the thrusters Samwise temporarily attached to its size looked much more impressive, and got it done at a much more reasonable pace.

I absolutely did not purposely tell Samwise to hold back from launching the station, just in case I needed to make an impression with the council.

Needless to say, an hour later, after spending some time on the station itself, looking down on Avalon from a double-barrel shotgun in space, bigger than Arasaka tower, the councilors finally understood the breadth of exactly what we were capable of. When we returned from our little trip, all of the councilors, including the one who accompanied us, looked pale and haunted, their eyes wide as they tried to digest what exactly I had just shown them. 

As the councilor who had traveled with us made their way back to the brass stage or podium, after some prompting, I had a pair of robots clear up the mess we made, which was just a teleport pad and the projector. When it was gone, and I redirected my attention back to the stand, they were still quiet, occasionally sharing looks, but mostly staring at me. It took nearly a full two minutes for them to finally speak up.

"To confirm… the space station we saw you launch… You said that was a weapons platform?" the Ethiopian councilor asked, continuing when I nodded. "What sort of weapons?" 

"A mixture of kinetic and energy," I explained casually. "The double barrels that run the majority of the station's length are what I call Super MACs. They each fire a four-thousand-ton metal round at around seven percent the speed of light."

"What… what could you possibly need that sort of power for?" The councilor asked, his eyes wide and horrified. "The mass drivers… they don't get even a fraction of that!" 

"Oh, the Super MAC defense stations aren't for fighting human targets, or for targets in atmosphere," I explained, waving away their concern. "Too much power, not nearly enough precision. The fleet in low orbit around Earth doesn't even have the normal MAC cannons. Well, they have smaller kinetic weapons that use magnetic forces, but MAC cannons are their own unique-"

I stopped, Sable poking me in the side, which was enough to break me from my rapidly spiraling explanation. I quickly realized that I was losing my audience to the mounting horror, so I shook my head and waved myself off. 

"That's not important. What matters is that they aren't for threatening or using on human targets, they are defenses against possible dangers in the future."

"Do… do you mean things like aliens?" One councilor asked, as if afraid they might insult me.

"No, I mean possible dangers in the future," I repeated, shaking my head. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, better to have and not need than need and not have."

The group was silent for a while, all of them stuck in their own heads, a lot of their worldview crashing down around them. For a long time, Africa had been one of the big groups, untouchable with the protection of their Highrider brothers and sisters, and I had just shattered that illusion into millions of pieces. I was the top dog now, and I had the tech and resources to prove it. 

After a full minute of near-total silence, one of the councilors stood, leaning heavily on their desk.

"I make the motion to accept Jackson's proposal of open communication, so that we may find common ground and plot the course of Africa's future with a new ally," the Kenyan councilor declared. "All in favor of this motion?" 

The flurry of hands going up completely negated the necessity of a count, but they counted anyway. When they were done, the Kenyan councilor nodded before sitting down.

"The motion passes with near unanimity," the councilor stated. "Very well, Jackson… perhaps we should move to somewhere less… ostentatious, so we can discuss what our new alliance means for both sides, on common, even ground."

"That sounds like an excellent idea."

Very quickly we were guided to a much more reasonable, less lopsided room, where we all sat around a table. Sable showed off a list of potential bits of tech we were willing to share, and after some negotiation, they agreed to a slow decommissioning of their WMDs. They also agreed to an interconnected teleport system placed throughout many of their cities, which would eventually connect to New Zealand and Night City. This would be the first step of weaving a global transportation system that would, hopefully, over time, wash away the borders of the world in a more natural way than me tearing them up.

With any luck, in twenty or forty years, a world government to replace me would happen naturally.

After nearly three hours of conversation, we had a framework for future plans, which I was happy enough with to pass off to other people to further cement. At some point we would have to gather more world leaders, both already in place ones and the ones I appoint later, to put together something more global, under me directly, but for now, this was plenty of progress. 

When we finally left, making the effort to leave the building, wait for the teleport tram to arrive, climb on board, and then let the slipspace portal pull us back, I was exhausted. Even after Sable and I dropped the Doppels, the exhaustion followed me.

"Why is it I could spend more than twenty-four hours straight working on building unheard-of technological advancements, but talking to politicians for three hours is what really leaves me exhausted?" I asked rhetorically, Sable and I making our way through the teleport hub, stepping out into the original mall space. "I feel like I could sleep for days, and still wake up tired from that."

"I'm surprised you lasted as long as you did," she admitted, a teasing smile on her face. "You don't usually suffer fools well."

"They weren't fools," I said, shaking my head and looking around the massive underground mall. "A bit stuck on their power, a bit high on their own self-importance, but they were actually doing a half-decent job of protecting their people and improving their lives. Not perfect, but a hell of a lot better than most other politicians these days. Even the Nigerian Councilor, as much as he was a pain, is beloved by his people for a reason."

"Fair, but the point stands," she said. "You feel like pizza?" 

"I would eat a shoe, but yeah, that sounds good," I said with a nod. "Why don't you give Cassie a call and see if she wants to join us?" 

She smiled, and we made our way through the mall, which was actually not empty. It was a bit shocking, but with our continual growth, the bunker was actually starting to be populated by people, employees ranging from diplomats to advisors, CEOs and assistants, all of whom were helping us orchestrate our plan. In fact, most of them were there preparing for the next step, which was to slowly pull leadership away from the current governments and megacorps. These were the people who would be replacing the criminals currently leading the world.

At this point, we had around four hundred people waiting for the next step, and around a hundred people working directly for us for around Night City. The former numbers would be getting a lot bigger, though plenty of people would likely be leaving the bunker behind to move to their respective areas. 

It was actually a bit crazy to see the mall populated by so many people, considering just how long it had been empty. Noah and Samwise loved that their creation was being tested outside of an emergency scenario, and were both gleefully analyzing the data being provided. I had a feeling the bunkers would be getting upgrades to patch the gaps they had missed in their original construction.

Watching our organization grow so much was a bit mind-boggling, even if I didn't have a lot to do with the process. Most of these people, if not all of them, would be working under Sable and Mary. They would guide them as we started to grow even more rapidly, make huge moves, and prepare for even bigger ones. 

Exciting times, to say the least. 

"Cassie says she is in," Sable said with a smile, looping her arm with mine. "She wants to grab David and the dogs too."

"Do you think…?"

"Yeah, she has a bit of a crush on him," she responded, with a nod and a frown. "David sees her like a little sister, so she will have to grow out of it. Don’t bring it up, that will only make things worse.”

"Mums the word," I said, with a nod. "What pizza place do you want?" 

"I'm feeling Greek style," she said, adjusting our direction slightly.

"Sounds like a plan."