Authors: Greg Fish
Nelson’s eyes shone with cool confidence as he addressed Steve and Christine as if they were part of the Nation. Just as Ace said, the humans would be great allies. It was time to tap this resource. But to Nelson, these two humans weren’t just a resource. They were slowly but surely becoming Children of the Stars and one day, they could be some of the best commanders the Nation had. It would take just a little more practice and a little more time. Yes, these two humans were destined for great things even if they didn’t know it yet.
In his dark chamber, the Reaper toyed with a small glass cube which had an eerie three dimensional scene frozen inside. Towering over a charred, broken landscape were twisting spires lined with dark microchips built to preserve the memories and skills of any sentient being. These spires were connected by a network of thick, metallic wires with strange markings. In this metallic web, dead trees reminiscent of ghosts with clawed, desiccated branches looked as if they waited for someone to get close so they could grab him and tear him apart.
In a clearing somewhere in this city of the dead and synthetically preserved, Ace stood face to face with an alien monster, a hybrid of a Shadow Demon and a Dark God. For added effect, the Reaper added Ace’s distinctive and individual rune marks under the creature’s red, glowing eyes. Had Ace stayed asleep just a little longer, he would’ve seen that the monster also had his chest and ankle runes.
The Reaper placed the cube on a shelf carved into a wall next to an entire library of cubes. As soon as the cube touched the shelf, red tribal markings lit up and floated over it, letting the Reaper know the cube had a dream intended for Ace, designed to be beamed down and projected into his mind during sleep by a special deep space probe.
As he left the chamber to tend to some business, the Reaper kept wondering whether Ace would figure out what the message meant or if he would just dismiss it as a random dream cooked up by his overactive imagination and overstressed mind.
[ chapter _ 018 ]
Just as Nelson predicted, Ace and Dot became media sensations and every global news network and entertainment show wanted to talk to them. The offers came at all hours of the day with booking agents or even show hosts themselves pleading them for an audience. Luckily for them, Ace and Dot were very accommodating. They diligently talked to every host and booking agent and tried to make as many shows as possible. Hanging up their uniforms, they went on the air in trendy human clothes, smiling and joking as if they spent their whole lives in front of the camera.
In private, Ace groaned at the articles and statements of pundits who dueled with each other in their political commentary shows. Unlike their colleagues in entertainment, very few of them were calling on either him or Dot and so the pair continued to loom large on every TV screen on the planet, making sure that eventually the political commentators would be left with no choice but to invite them on their shows in due time.
When Ace wasn’t on television in a black suit and crisp custom fitted shirts that came in charcoal, red, silver and other neutral shades that made him look just a little more human, he was in a lab. He was a soldier for well over a millennium, but he was a scientist first, and it was his scientific background that helped to arm the Nation. Some of the finest scientific minds on Earth spent hours with him, studying the vast repositories of ancient alien knowledge and bizarre otherworldly fossils that showed evolution at work on a cosmic scale on worlds all across the galaxy. Ace explained the mysteries of black holes, strange matter, the functions of gravity, and the strange nature and meaning of the Big Bang.
Scientists hailed the fossils, formulas, documents and designs as stunning breakthroughs that solved ancient scientific mysteries and shed brand new light on the universe around them. Their wildest dream, access to the libraries of alien species hundreds of thousands of years ahead of humans in their scientific achievements, had come true. They even had experts ready and willing to clear up any and all questions for a fairly modest fee, at their beck and call. On the neo-traditionalist front however, the scientific knowledge relayed by Ace was met with vicious hostility. A prominent critic of science, technology, and secularism wrote about them with venom.
“Once more the Darwinist cult tries to fix their crumbling theory with dubious ‘evidence’ for their anti-God propaganda. This time, no longer able to keep their arguments on Earth, they’ve turned to some freak of nature alien with cockamamie theories and fantastic designs he stole hundreds of years ago without proper understanding of what they actually are and who made them.”
Ace, not known for turning the other cheek, immediately wrote a reply to the article, noting that it grossly misinterpreted evolution as well as every other theory in question to create absurd straw-men arguments that had nothing to do with the theories the author bashed.
“The only things I could find in this article,” Ace concluded, “is an endless string of insults and semantic games. He simply imagined something easy to refute and refuted it without paying any attention that what he’s refuting is his own wild imagination rather than the theories currently being considered by science. In all my years -- and that’s a long, long time if you’re keeping count -- I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such willful ignorance of such basic scientific concepts. If famous writers with loyal audiences of millions have such deep gaps in their scientific knowledge, it’s a sign that something is getting lost in the transition from the classroom to the real world.”
The response article only enraged the critic who vehemently insisted that Ace proved him right by not addressing his arguments, conveniently forgetting to note that his arguments had nothing to do with the scientific work he attacked so eagerly. But then again, his faithful fans would never try to read Ace’s counter and he could easily get away with omitting any fact he wanted. Ace wasn’t fazed in the least, knowing that nothing he would say would ever sway the critics who hated him for what he was and by extension, all his work no matter what evidence he could provide.
Meanwhile, Dot became a staple of late night talk shows beloved around the world for their sudden surge of new material. She amazed the public with stories about alien societies, sex and sexuality in the darkest, deepest reaches of the galaxy, and even touched on alien and cyborg religions. Her charming smile and charismatic oddness easily won over the hearts of millions of viewers. Soon she was featured on the covers of virtually all entertainment magazines while tabloids buzzed about her supposedly wild sex life.
With a playful nudge from Nelson and Ace, she even posed for a few men’s magazines, showing off her perfectly sculpted body in the bare minimum of clothing. Her breasts were often covered only with her small hands as she winked from the holographic covers. A notable number of male readers loved her, flooding editors with letters praising them for allowing the whole planet to take a more intimate look at the cute cyborg’s body. Their wives and girlfriends inquired about Ace who allowed just one photo of his bare torso to be featured in entertainment magazines.
“When in Rome, participate in a wild drunken orgy like the Romans do,” he observed with a shrug.
The scar on his stomach immediately reignited an interest in the war with the Rexx. Steve and Christine were joined into the media frenzy, talking about their experiences in the Nation’s military and giving amazing accounts of vicious, bloody interstellar battles, complete with high resolution pictures and clips made by the space probes which helped coordinate the dogfights.
As many predicted, the neo-traditionalists didn’t take what was happening on TV and in the news too well. Accusing Dot of having no morals or decency, they called her a “space slut” for all her risqué magazine covers and her “shameless discussion of sex acts on shows that children could accidentally come across.” They attacked Ace for his half-naked shot as well, labeling him a freakish show-off.
But the most venom was aimed for Steve and Christine. Without mercy, Gene’s attack dogs tore into them with their fangs, accusing them of treason and labeling them false heroes. The pundit who once wrote the now infamous article advocating the deportation of all the progressives into deep space along with the Nation wrote:
“It’s pathetic to see two people who were once proud warriors of our world brainwashed by the alien freaks running around half-naked just to spite us. They’re being let out like trained dogs by the Shadow Nation to convince us that the alien freaks are good people although I don’t think I’d even call them people.”
Even Gene winced when he read this tidbit.
“Isn’t it a little much?” he asked her sternly.
“No,” she replied. “Actually, I’m toning it down.”
“Toning it down? That’s toning it down? Have you ever looked at a dictionary in your life? You just attacked two people who everybody thinks saved Earth from the Rexx! You wanna make the whole damn campaign into a mockery of itself because you need more air time? Is that it? Is that what you want?”
“I’m allowed to attack anyone I want,” she hissed in reply. “You told me to be nasty so deal with it.”
“I told you to be nasty,” fumed Gene, “but not being a total ass! I am not going to defend you next time you get in trouble if you insist on undermining me and Newman with your publicity stunts.”
During a softball interview on a neo-traditionalist talk just a few days later, she challenged Ace to a public debate with another string of insults aimed at Dot, Steve, Christine, and him. Ace politely declined.
“I don’t know,” he said in reply to her challenge. “I took psychology in college but I’m not a licensed psychiatrist with enough experience to handle such an extreme case. I better leave this to the experts.”
But it wasn’t just the neo-traditionalists fuming over the Nation’s popularity and what they said on global TV. Progressive commentators who thought that Ace and Dot would be sympathetic to their party line also got a rude awakening. Instead of advocating the idea that the Nation’s interest in Earth was merely humanitarian, the cyborgs made it clear that the Nation was there simply to conduct business and grow its economy.
“Yes, we are making a profit,” agreed Dot with the progressives who railed on the Nation for supposed profiteering. “But how else do we keep our economy going? Every economy reaches saturation and has to move to new markets to stay afloat. You get technology and in exchange, we get money to make new technology. What’s so wrong about that?”
“Well you’re just propagating the caste system established by an insensitive elite that cares nothing about the working man,” growled a progressive pundit. “We thought you would evolve beyond money and beyond profit mongering, but I guess the working man might as well give up and get shafted by a new class of masters.”
“What caste system are you talking about?” asked Dot with utter confusion and in vain as the radical progressives maintained that the Nation was exploiting the common folk for their greedy gain without any elaboration as to how this was being done.
Tina was concerned, urging progressive commentators to back off the Nation’s mascots. Grey fumed every time he saw those who used to be his staunch defenders in the media urge him to scrap the old trade agreement with the Nation and start a new one. Looking at the plans they advocated, Grey shook his head in horror, knowing full well that these proposals were highway robbery sure to drive the Nation away. His only consolation was the fact that the vast majority of people on Earth liked Ace and Dot and couldn’t possibly care less about what came out of the pundits’ mouths. Magazines with their interviews flew off the shelves. Two movies about the Rexx War from the Nation’s viewpoint were being made and heavily advertised. Talk shows still invited them. For five solid months, they made headlines with no signs of a slowdown. In late May of 3508, political commentators of the highest caliber started calling. They were no longer able to monopolize the public discourse about the Nation and had no choice but to put the cyborgs on TV.
Certain that Ace would be far too inexperienced to handle an assault on the air, a prominent neo-traditionalist pundit invited the cyborg for a half hour show. Ace accepted and soon found himself sitting across from a pastor turned televangelist pitching a book with the rather timid and unassuming title of “Alien Menace: The Alien Plot to Enslave Humanity.” After five minutes of the televangelist’s rants, the toxic host asked Ace if he had anything to say. A cold, hateful grin spread across his lips.
Ace who sat in a sleek metal chair wearing a black suit with a charcoal shirt unceremoniously un-tucked and the buttons on his collar undone, paused for a moment and smirked.
“Well Pastor Lombard,” he said. “It’s an interesting book and I’d like to read it sometime. I’ll look for it in under sci-fi and fantasy.”
“This is a non-fiction book,” corrected Lombard.
“Is that what it says on your copy?” asked Ace. “Can I see that?”
He twisted the thin plastic book in his hands with, looking at something inside before closing it and softly putting it on the glass table.
“Sorry. I didn’t realize it was misfiled,” shrugged Ace.
“Listen Ace, I compiled this book based on many months of very exhaustive research,” seethed Lombard. “If you have a problem, read my twenty five pages of notes and references before you mouth off.”
“I have a better idea,” said Ace and took out a computer the size of a cell phone.
The computer brought up a holographic screen and keyboard. As the stunned pundit and Lombard tried to somehow object, Ace took the book and scanned its contents into the computer. With a beep, an entire rainbow of colors lit up on the holographic screen, mostly dark shades of red and yellow. Ace frowned and shook his head.
“As you might know,” he winked, “scientists today use excellent software to fact check papers. Really amazing stuff. I put in the text I want to fact check and the software goes out to virtual libraries and scans the referenced material so I know whether the article cited in a paper really does contain the information cited.”