We stood on the roof of a tower in a ruined Chicago with cold winds chapping my eight-year-old companion’s cheeks, and fluttering the splintered piles of tar paper that some optimist had brought up here in an attempt to fix the roof of this smashed building.  Before us, the Gem of Brightness, the object of my quest which had been aided by the demigoddess, the Lady of the Lake stood in a cannon-like structure of four stainless steel pipes and a near dozen bits of electrical cable, hydraulic pump pipes, and gel-conveying tubing.  I recognized it, a simple laser comm.  Granted, the first one I’d ever seen had been constructed by pyramidal aliens who walked on three main legs and eighteen minor legs, but physics is physics over most of the Multiverse.  Most, mind you, I’m not going to get into discussing places where the basic rules change. 

This was the grand completion of our quest.  A shining laser beam going into orbit.  I sighed.  Such things happened.  People attaching more significance to some lost artifact than it really deserved.  The child with me, the impetus of my quest still stood there with his face shining, expecting gods and angels to come down and tell him how to gain power among his people so he could save them from their degenerate game-playing amidst the ruins existence.  I wondered how I was going to break it to the brave little fellow, and whether he would try to draw his knife and cut my throat in rejectionist fury.

And then my fingers tingled.  I looked down.  The ends of my fingers were dissolving.  I looked at the boy, and he was coming apart up to his arms, since my internal mechanisms are considerably more complicated than a normal human.

"Matter transport!" I hollered with a laugh, and the boy’s fearful look turned to joy as we followed the laser beam into orbit. In the seconds of transport, I watched over the boy because matterports in worlds with as much magic as this one were…

I reached out my will in the glossy, flashing space to smash into an amorphous creature half-octopus, and half-snail and my mind winced from the contact.  It was a daemon desiring to steal the boy’s body while he was not in contact with it.  For matterports have the accidental side effect of causing astral travelling.  After all, the spirit has to go someplace.

I struck again with my will, made contact, and thought one word.  One of the many names of God–this one meant He Who is Pure, Sane, and Strong.  The daemon screamed and tried to wrench free, but I clung to it in the grip of my fury, and repeated that Word.  The daemon exploded, shredded, tossed into the Abyss where it would take ten thousand years to reintegrate before it bothered another human again.

We reintegrated back into our bodies, I checking my nameless friend over carefully to make sure he was well in body and soul.  He was, and we stood in a circular room with a dome shaped ceiling and recessed lighting.

Now you may wonder why I did not know his name.  I’d asked him in our walk to find the Gem, and he’d told me that knowing of the name made one owe kin-right, and gave one magic powers.  Other peoples of course, have dealt with this by having a Secret True Name, and a Common Name, but my post-apocalyptic gamers were extremely primitive despite their electricity.  I’ve met Stone Age people who were more intellectually sophisticated by an order of magnitude than my companion’s kindred.

Suddenly, a hidden door whooshed open, and a man in a long white robe with front and back panels of square-checked velour, and side panels of something light and thin rushed in.  He stared at us in utter shock, and then without a word spun about and ran out again.

The door shut.

I raised an eyebrow at my companion.  He repeated my gesture with a clear expression on his face–How rude.  His hand rested on his dagger at his right hip.  I did not reach for a weapon since I was confident in my abiltity to cause havoc and mayhem.

Two minutes later, four people, in similar costumes to the last, but these had gold chains of office around their necks from which hung ornate assemblages of gem and metal work.  The leader was a male, which is to be expected human biology being what it is, but one of the lesser three was a severe-looking female.  I knew the leader because he had a star of metal about his ornate assemblage, making his piece of gaudy artwork more ‘all that’ than his companions on the council.

The four trooped in a line to the side of the room, and a burst of hyrdraulics, and joined desks with chairs rose from the seamless floor.  My companion was greatly impressed.  I wasn’t.  I’d seen displays of power that made this look pathetic.

"Welcome to the Solar Democracy Immigration Board.  I would like to congratulate you on your successful endeavour."

The leader had spoke, and as he went on I put a picture together.  Their was hi-tech humanity in the Solar System, and they had seeded Earth with devices to try to cull out the useful members of Earth society for their own use.  I could not exactly blame them, but then again, I could ask a few questions.

"Why don’t you guys go to Earth, and you know, fix the place up?"

The leader tried to ignore me, but ignoring me is like trying to ignore a forest fire.  I strolled up to his desk, and asked my question again in a voice calculated to ring off the walls of the room.

"Its too difficult." The man muttered back, not used to looking up when he was sitting on his throne.  "The people are too unsophisticated, they believe in gods, they …."

He went on an on, coming up with more definitions and words, and all the while I smelled the stink of fear on him.

"Just be honest." I broke in. "You don’t want to help your kindred on Earth because one of you might get a fingernail broken, that about it?"

They whole council paled under my vituperative tone, and the mocking smile on my face.

"I think. I think this immigration will have to be denied."  The leader said as he raised a big red stamp.

And the door opened.

"No." The word was melodius, like a pipe organ, and profoudnly inhuman in origin.   I spun on my heels, stepping out of range on instinct of the council just in case one of them decided to jab me in the neck with a needle, and beheld the Alien.

He had five legs, pincers really, some armor plated chitin that went five feet up to my chest, and then bent horizontal to reach the main stalk of the body.  A single blob on top of the body was covered with a mass of what I judged to be insectile eyes so that he probably had close to fully spherical vision at all times.  And then I realized as he twitched it that his fifth back leg was actually a tail, a stinger, and his arms were ten foot long slithering tentactles made of what looked like something much tougher than bull elephant hide.

I didn’t see a mouth, but when he next spoke, I saw tubes on the side of the main stalk vibrate.  It was a pipe organ.

My companion shrieked, and I touched his mind so that he saw as through a pane of glass.  He calmed.

"Welcome visitors to my solar system." It said.  "I let the human council run things in space and the tribes on the Earth handle themselves, but I am the Overlord."

"Really?" I asked circling back sideways to place myself between this horror and my charge. "How so?"

"Right of conquest." It replied amiably, turning to face me, and not the whey-faced councillors.  I, of course, did not know that it was amiable.  With alien biologies, the human biological cues can lead you wrong.  What sounded to me like good cheer, could actually be pschyotic rage, barely held in check.  But you have to start somewhere.

It said no more, so I turned to the councillors.

"The Outsider came and bombarded us with no warning, we had no choice but to surrender."  Something in the self-serving pity of that voice tweaked my instincts, and I reached out and touched his brain.

In there, I saw that the Lunar Earth League had seen the Outsiders coming for months, but out of a desire not to be ‘provocative’ because ‘any advanced people would naturally want peace’ they had kept their ships grounded.  And when the ten percentile  of c bolides had flown, they had at first claimed that what was happening was not what was happening, and then  when it was truly late in the game, they had claimed that nothing could be done.

Surrender was the only option.  One group survived undamaged and ready for action.

So that was how the Board of Trustees of Lunagrad University became the rulers under a diffident alien of the entire solar system.

And then the leader became aware of my probe, and he thought fiercely at me.

"It was our fault. Our fault. If we hadn’t sent all those nasty stupid TV and holovid shows into space, then the Galactic Patrol would not have sent the Outsider to punish us.  We deserve this."  And then he paused with a lip-smacking satisfaction. "Just like you deserve what comes next."

I wrenched my awareness back to my body, seconds had passed.  And then I lunged psionically at the alien, and splattered my feeble probe against his wall.  It was not only that he was some sort of group mind composed of thousands of interconnected bits in that body, but he was dreadfully old and powerful.

I held my aching head as the Outsider spoke.

"I will take the child and execute it."

I yanked my head up.

"NO!"

"Yes." Snapped the leader of the council. "We have to.  Otherwise…"

"Otherwise, you will be in rebellion, and I will attack your system." The Outsider said.

I shivered, waiting for a path out, and there was none.

"I’m sorry." I said to the Council, "But I cannot stand aside."  And I drew my katana since one doesn’t want to use energy weapons in a space ship.

"You already tried once. Failed." The Outsider said to me, in a tone of merely pointing out an interesting bit of data.

I shrugged, and took a firmer grip on my suddenly slippery sword hilt. "I’ve got a few other tricks up my sleeve." 

"Outsider, please, we will send security troopers to deal with this one.  There is no need to punish us for him."  The leader begged for the right to kill me.  "He is just one, will you slaughter humans for just one?"

"He is not just one." The boy said, and drew his dagger.  He then stood to my left to cover my slightly weaker side.

The council stood silent, and then the Outsider laughed mockingly. "Easily said when influenced."  My control was flung loose, and the boy got a good look straight into madness.

The boy shuddered and then bared his teeth.

"Oh, yes, I like this better. Now my heart is in the fight, and not just my mind."  And he ran forward with his small dagger to strike an armored leg.  I did what I had to do and ran forward as well, outpacing him, and raising my sword to defend the child from an attack while I planned to kick with cybernetic enhanced legs at the alien’s legs.

And then the alien flomphed onto the floor.  All its legs splayed out, and one speared between me and the boy to scratch along the floor.  The stalk head bowed and the voice came crackled and worn.

"Forgive me, please, your Majesty. I am but a disobedient servant."

Fortunately, this was not directed at me.  Not so well that it was directed at the boy.

"Y-you surrender?" He said.

"Yes, Majesty."

"What is that name you call me?"

"King, Majesty.  You are the King of the Solar System and of Earth."

A great hubbub came from the Council, and suddenly I felt a searing rage in the room in the etheric bands.

"You question my right?" The Outside hissed like a steam valve to the Council which was turning various shades of red, purple, white, and green.  I gathered this was pschyotic rage.

They grovelled, they apologized, and he let them live.

But then they asked why.

"He is the first brave Earthling I have met." The Outsider said, and then he spoke of depths of time and space.  Of wars and struggles, and the Great Realization of his people.

"A coward is a threat to everyone about him. It provides a breeding space for all manner of evil.  Nearly full half of the wars engaged in can be traced to cowardice–thus any civilization afflicted with cowardice needed to be tested, and tested until it cured or was destroyed."

"But the Galactic Patrol…" Wailed the leader, and I knew what he had in mind.  A benevolent, strong, ancient force with politics and prescriptions that agreed in almost all points with his own prejudgices.  Never mind how an alien super-tech society that is tens of thousands of years old is going to take its guidance from a professor of theoretics.

But the Outsider was cruel.

"I am the Galactic Patrol."

=======================================

 And thus it was.  The council retained some powers, until we caught them plotting against his Majesty.  They were not willing to fight to defend the solar system, or to defend their own children, but they would fight to defend their own perks and powers.

Sad really.

At least thats how I felt when I dumped them into an airlock sans suit.  The leader kept babbling about how the real Galactic Patrol was going to save them, and in a burst of peaceful lovingness obliterate us all.  I declined to point out the oxymoron there, and just pushed the button.

Over the next couple decades, I helped Earth integrate into galactic society.  I even learned a few psi tricks from the Outsider who at ten thousand years old, and a natural psi of the first order from birth sometimes scared me.

I never agreed with their methods, but I couldn’t disagree enough to go slaughter them either for the almost genocide.  Besides, I was pretty sure, I’d fail.

Finally, I was messing around with using telekinesis to manipulate plasma, and things went sideways in a big way.  So did I, as I left that universe.