King of All I Survey-Chapter 158: Can Frankenstein’s Monster Create a Doctor?

Ukraine’s President Dovzhenko and I concluded our call as he glanced through the Russian attack plan that we had sent him detailing targets, time of attack and the specific weapons to be used. Once he verified that the information looked accurate at the surface level, he was eager to get off the line and give evacuation orders. I only hoped he would do it subtly so it wouldn’t look like an evacuation to any Russian satellites or informers on the ground. I needed the attack to go forward as planned in order to make my demonstration to President Dovzhenko.

"Joe, how many simulation room holding cells do we have available?" I asked. If we had to intercept a ground attack we’d need a lot of them.

"At present, we have 2732 available cells. I’ve been adding more at a pretty constant rate, I have three fabrication mechs working on it. We’ve been digging down from the main facility on Blue Island. Putting them underground so the trues size of the facility can’t be seen from above."

"Can’t you just make it invisible with the shields anyway?"

"Yes, but there’s always the chance of someone or something just bumping into it. It’s much safer to simply dig into the Earth."

"So how many Russian soldiers are in Ukraine and ready to go in from across the border?"

"We’re going to need more cells."

"How many?"

"It really depends what you mean by ready to go in. In the space of 24 hours, without transporting troops from other regions, Russia could field as many as 640,000 troops including those in support roles." freeωebnovēl.c૦m

I realized I had stopped breathing when the visual reminder in my android’s field of vision display started blinking red. "Joe," I said finally, my head spinning, I need a way to hold whatever troops Russia might send. And I need it now..."

"With every fabrication mech building simulation cells, and optimizing time allotted to creating additional fabrication mechs to make the work faster, it would take us a little over eight days to make that many. That’s if we did it at surface level in existing building space."

"OK, that’s not going to work... Pull all non-urgent fabrication mechs and put them on it, but don’t stop ongoing projects in Guatemala, Colombia, or Mexico. OK, what if you just put them to sleep? Transport them to our existing warehouses, office buildings, whatever secure spaces we have available, lay them out unconscious until we can work through the crisis."

"It’s possible, the issue then becomes the availability of LITV units for transport."

I sighed and shook my head, "Joe, it’s time to take off the kid gloves. We both know you don’t need LITV units to translocate things throughout the universe. For you, it’s a matter of deciding it should be somewhere else. I understand that you have some kind of self-imposed code of conduct requiring regular beings to actually have functioning machinery to accomplish these tasks, even if, in the end, it’s still you performing the actual quantum state changes to make them work. I’m calling bullshit. If you’re helping me, then you’re helping me. I need a way to neutralize and remove potentially hundreds of thousands of soldiers from the field."

There was silence, and I wondered if I had pushed him too far. Would he decide that if that the answer to my ultimatum was that, in that case, he wouldn’t help me at all? Without him, I’d be in pretty serious trouble. I could probably hold on to Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia with the equipment I had, but conquering the world, even stopping the Russian attack on Ukraine, would be almost impossible.

"Joe? Are you there?" A few more seconds ticked by. Damn, I thought to myself. What am I going to do now?

"I’m here..." A wave of relief washed through me. "I can hold them between."

"Between what?"

"Between... between here and now? Between this universe and not his universe. It’s not a concept human language is really equipped to deal with. Perhaps... I can hold them in the space between one moment and the next, but that’s not exactly accurate either. They won’t really exist at all until we replace them in our universe."

I closed my eyes and tried to figure out what he was trying to say, then decided it didn’t matter. "So, whatever you’re saying what you mean is that you can take them off the battlefield without harming them, keep them hidden, and unaware of their surroundings, and then bring them back to anywhere we want, safe and sound?"

"Essentially, yes."

"Yeah, that totally works," I replied. "I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that many, but we have to be prepared for anything."

"I understand." Joe’s voice sounded a little muted, subdued, maybe.

"Joe, is something wrong? Is there something about this you’re not telling me?"

"Yes."

I lifted both eyebrows and shook my head in exasperation, "Well?"

"As you know, my consciousness is effectively imprinted on the fundamental structure of the universe. Everything that exists, therefore is a part of me, a part of who I am. We’ve already discussed the possible issues of sending anything from this universe into another, perhaps a new creation event, maybe another version of me. Cataclysmic disruption of this universe, possibly resetting it to the creation state, there are a number of theoretical, untestable possibilities."

"Wait, we’re not risking blowing up the whole universe if we do this are we?" That would be bad, very bad, I thought to myself.

"No, I wouldn’t do that if that were the case. It’s just that when I send them between, they are removed from this universe, not entering another and causing those potential catastrophic results, but they are being removed from this universe."

"So, then you bring them back when we need them? What’s the big deal?"

"I don’t think you’re listening, King Tim. Since everything in the universe is a part of me, if I remove something from the universe..."

"You removed a part of yourself!" I exclaimed, catching on at last.

"Yes, not just remove it, but separate a small part of me from myself. It is still there, or rather it’s not anywhere and it no longer exists for a brief time, but it... there’s no way to say it. It remains cohesive? Anyway, when I bring the people or matter and energy back into existence in this universe, that part of me comes back too."

"So, problem solved, right? I mean, it’s a tiny piece, it’s not like you’re giving yourself a lobotomy or something, it’s more like cutting a tiny piece of the end of a single hair on your head. So small as to be unnoticeable, right?"

"Yes and no. I will not be diminished by the loss of it, but when it is returned, I think it will remain separate."

I could feel my eyeballs moving from side to side as I tried to imagine what that meant. I ran through the physics equations I thought might approximate a removal of ’stuff’ from the universe... Nope, doesn’t work... Apparently, it was a level beyond even the advanced alien physics and mathematics that made Earth’s prior understanding seem like kindergarten stuff... ok, well maybe fourth grade or something. We were kind of on a path... anyway, back to Joe’s problem. "What does that mean?" I asked, since I clearly couldn’t figure it out myself.

"It means there will be another me. A separate me."

Oh. That could be a problem, but... "It’s still just like a tiny hair clipping, though, right? It won’t be all like self-aware and stuff like a regular person."

"It will be a tiny fraction of my potential and processing power. But maybe you don’t understand how powerful a computing matrix made of literally everything really is. This piece of me that comes back, will be self-aware, it will likely not have meaningful memories, but it may... It will certainly be able to learn."

"Like how much?" I asked, a cold dread creeping up inside me.

"Like more than the entire human race will ever learn..." Joe replied.

"But it’s not like an evil twin, though, right. I mean, it’ll still have all your good morals and stuff..."

"What makes you think I have good morals?" Joe asked. His voice hadn’t changed, but to me it seemed suddenly much more... alien in the sense of being something very different from anything or anyone I knew. How much did I really know about Joe’s feelings or morality or his...anything?"

Maybe about as much as Dr. Frankenstein knew about his monster. Except, would Joe be the Doctor, and I his creation... It was too much for an eight-year-old to contemplate.

"Is there another way?" I asked.

"I can kill them all," he said.

I wasn’t sure what was more frightening: his words or the fact that they sounded an awful lot like one of Mom’s plans...

"No," I replied quickly, "Life is precious, Joe. Let’s not do that."

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