The Gaming Outpost

The EGG, Extraterrestial Gravity Gun, fired the SHELL, my home seventeen lightyears and four years across interstellar space as I cryoslept so as to not alert my superiors that I was immortal. The Machine Mesh would be back in roughly five hundred years, give or take a decade, and if the last two times had any prophetic value, the MM would be desirous to upload all our version 1.0 designed biologies to newer, better machine minds. The fact that all machine minds went irretrievably insane after three months, and even the most fervent Uploader fanatic after being loaded, begged in heartbreaking terms to have his body back meant nothing to the Mesh. It had been programmed to ‘help’ Humanity.

So my job was to make sure the locals of Densig III joined the Human Federation of Worlds as a high-tech society capable of defending themselves and helping the rest of us out.

And given the stakes, I was forcefed memories on how to make antimatter bombs, if need be. The people of Dansig III were going to join for their own good.

And yes, I’m aware of the irony. Thank you so very much. Its always easy to be moral and high-minded when you’re in a different universe a million lightyears from Doom and Destruction.

Sorry, I get tectchy with Peace Inactivists and other idiots.

The SHELL dropped out of hyperspace, and two months later, slipped into orbit. A busy month of weird dreams, and my Link and I now knew the local language and much of the culture.

We dropped into a cornfield just like Superman, but I was no babe in arms. The front casing opened, and I hopped out, popped my neck, and ordered the SHELL teardrop shape of carbon-carbon, blatantly extraterrestial at the tech level of railroads, to bury itself. Five minutes later, it was a hundred feet down, and the soil of the field was looking undisturbed except for a few cornstalks damaged, but that could be attributed to a lightning strike.

I walked based on my internal map of Dansig toward the nearest railhead. Coins had been provided by the SHELL’s mini-fabricator, and we got a ticket and a ride toward the capital city of the lead power of Dansig III.

Armatia, Kingdom of, is a continental power, most known for its extensive rail links. Currently it was suffering an economic bust due to massive corruption in the ruling classes of the Money, Media, and Sword Classes. That is, there were three groups of nobles, each added as technology changed. The Sword were the oldest, and obviously the original. Rule by Right of Nobility and Because I Have a Big Sword had been their way for hundreds of years. Now, they were slowly dying out, and prestige, and actually completely non-traditional as their ancient traditions bored the snot out of the old and the young.

The Media Lords were the youngest, and you can imagine a bunch of yellow journalists with the ethics and sensitivity and devotion to craft of….well, lets not smear serial killers. Some of them are quite devoted to doing their job right.

The Money types were not factory tycoons, but financial wizards, and they had gamed the Armatian economy to a fare-thee-well.

And overseeing this den of thieves was King Horace the II, also called the Pretender, but not in his presence for he had a fabulously vindictive temper.

Thin-skinned, incompetent, and vengeful is no way to go through life.

Out in the provinces, the Duke of the Wylde Forrest was running a tight, well-run, and extremely frugal duchy with the result that a fair number of folk had noted that the Duke had actually more of a right to the throne than did the King. Furthermore, the nearby Duchy of the Waste, where the Queen Mother of the preceding king, Frederick the Steelbone (famously gutsy and unbending among foe and friend) had bought a summer palace there with the support of the Duchess of the Wastes. They were not doing as well as the Duke, but the Queen Mother was a much beloved figure, known for her skill with sword and rifle for she had been a cavalry trooper in her twenties.

I rode to the capital city. Character is so frequently destiny. Horace was unlearned and untaught, of no great depth of mind or heart, and really should be serving as a the baron of a minor demense somewhere. But the Dark Council of Lords had deemed him useful as a puppet.

It took me two days to cross the Wyle, and when I did, I went from energy and wit to struggle, and then beyond that to an oafish hatred of all. Take hope away from a man, preach that his faults are other’s cause, and block him from any endeavor, and he turns poisonous to any who meet him.

The land as we approached the capital city had a dark spiritual pall over it. But I kept up my cheer for it was essential.

Upon arriving in the capital city, I paid great sums of money to various people, and within a week, I was spoken of as an Important Man About Town in the local papers. It was that I had the right friends, bought and paid for.

And thus I was able to meet King Horace. I felt sorry for the fellow instantly, so obviously overmatched by the job. Just what do you do when you’re the most powerful man in the world, and you’re totally not up for the task?

I coughed, and a micro dart in the back of my throat flung itself out to hit the King in the fleshy part of his neck. Suddenly, he was my very good friend, which made me feel even worse.

I asked to show him my Theories of the Coming War. It was a very well put together, with many extremely subtle lies, presentation that showed beyond the shadow of a doubt that not only would the Duke of the Wyle and the Queen Mother rise against him, but they would win.

It was complete garbage, but even after my ‘Let’s Be Friends’ cocktail wore off, the lack of intellectual rigor, or faith, or good sense in King Horace made him easy prey to the fears I pedddled.

Two weeks later, he tried a half-measure of cutting off the electricity to the Wyle with an excuse of enviromental problems. They responded harshly. He got mad. They were more polite, but even more furious. He took that as a sign of weakness, and in fear himself, he launched an attack.

Two months later, the Duke’s forces rolled into the capital city.

He instantly cut taxes, reduced regulation, and made government more transparent so business uncertainty dipped and thus the gamble of starting a new business or expanding an old one was safer. Armatia started to seriously pull out of the economic bust six months later.

Now that Stage One was done, I had to do Stage Two. Introduce the Computer Age. I’d probably start with some ambitious kids in some garages, make it look natural. Stage Three would be to collapse the major opposing economic and military power facing Armatia. Stage Four, we lead them to discover Hyperdrive. Stage Five, they make First Contact (pre-arranged, of course, but we don’t tell them that.)