Eight years…
This life as the Creator… And thank god he was the Creator. What better position could he have hoped for to put an end to this strange, quantum immortality?
But his mortality had really reared its ugly head that morning as he stared at himself in the mirror. Grey hair… I’m in my fucking thirties! Yet he had never celebrated his birthday once whilst he had been here. He didn’t even know when his birthday was, what day or time it was on Earth, or even if he was in the same universe as Earth or not. Surely it must be out there somewhere… But it didn’t bear thinking about.
It would only serve to drive him mad. And he didn’t need that right now. At least he wasn’t going bald.
Claric needs to hurry up and sort out this life problem, ASAP!
In any case, sitting around and sulking about it wouldn’t make him any younger, and he had work to do in the GCI. He hurried over to the command room in the complex and tried to keep indoors as much as possible. Neptura’s winter had come, and while it didn’t snow, the cold, thrashing sea winds felt like ice on his skin all the same.
Once in the sombre, dark command room, buzzing with the chatter of clone officers and the beeping of their consoles, he sat upon his throne and let the neural interface transport him into the cybernetic realm in which he was god. He looked down upon the galaxy and his little stellar empire. An array of twinkling stars, appearing like little more than shiny blips below him, along with borders and a series of numbers.
For once, the information he saw did not put him on the edge of having a stress induced stroke.
The various industrial and agricultural zones he had commissioned the previous years had finally finished their construction, and the jobs they provided were finally bearing fruit.
Looking to the state’s resources, he saw:
- Power Units: 218 +41 (Vesperan Standard Monthly Gain)
- Raw Materials: 13 +13
- Food: 733 +15
- Heavy Compounds: 177 +17
- Consumer Goods: 216 +2
- Research Points: +63
- Cohesion: +256
“Yes!” he yelled with joyful glee. He was finally producing enough Consumer Goods for Neptura’s needs, and his Food production had skyrocketed as well despite the continually growing population, which now stood at 38. He had taken a dip in Raw Materials production, but that was because the industrial zones were converting those materials into the Consumer Goods he needed to maintain his workers and soldiers. That could easily be built back up by claiming more systems and harvesting their resources, or with Mining Zones.
His fleet was steadily expanding, too. He had spent the previous years commissioning more ships with his Heavy Compounds. They now had seven corvettes, and he intended to build many more in case of a further reckoning with the Aeluyn Covenant, who had been eerily quiet since their hostile first encounter.
All the while, the jobs his new zones provided were steadily soaking up the unemployed population, putting them into work. When he clicked on Neptura to reveal the planet’s figures, he saw unemployment was now at 3 Populations, whereas it had been at 5 before. Millions and millions of people back into work…
Things were looking up and could only get better from here on out. With the 500 Power Units donated to the state by the Stellar Colony Initiative, he bought a substantial quantity of Raw Materials on the internal market and commissioned the construction of an Urban Zone that would not only provide jobs and housing but also unlock new building slots on Neptura, on which he planned to construct some Manufacturing Facilities. Doing so would further increase Consumer Goods production and hopefully put an end to any deficits in that sector for the foreseeable future.
The people will have their bread, then it will be a matter of building the circuses…
And now, as he used his time dilation and zoomed on ahead into the future, passing the months by in quick seconds, he could finally focus on what his scientists and the people demanded.
A colony. Taking to the stars once more. Expansion.
Marcus clicked on his orbital command center in the Aureon system and commissioned the construction of an Ark Ship for 200 Heavy Compounds, 200 Food, and 200 Consumer Goods.
The first Nepturan Ark Ship. It would be ready in one cycle.
After another month passed swiftly by in the quiet galaxy, Marcus was also delighted to see that the first of his research projects he had begun many years ago was finally completed.
Basic Mining Algorithms.
This gave him a boost in Raw Materials production from all miners in Neptura (occupying the mining jobs) by 20%, along with a further 10% increase of Raw Materials production from his orbital mining facilities all across Nepturan space.
With that research project completed, Marcus was now given multiple other research options to put his now vast, idle network of scientists and researchers to work. These options were:
Advanced Ore Processing - (Unlocks building: Ore Processing Facility) - A building that provides mining jobs, increases the Raw Materials that existing miners produce, provides room for additional mining zones to be constructed on a planet.
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Adaptive Infrastructure Planning - Reduces building Zone construction costs by 10%.
Plasma Shielding Upgrades - Strengthens fleet defences against energy weapons.
Interesting options, and all had their uses. Particularly, he contemplated the plasma shielding upgrades for the fleet, recalling that the Star Elven ships they had fought utilized energy weapons. Though the first option looked appealing to him as well, especially now that he was about to colonize another planet, and his Raw Materials production had taken a dip to cover up the deficits in other parts of the economy.
Eh, we already just scraped by against the Star Elves once, even though we were outnumbered, Marcus thought. And the next time, he resolved to not be outnumbered. Having the option of a new building to construct would prove useful at all times in the future, especially for colonization efforts.
With that in mind, he chose Advanced Ore Processing and let that tick along as he got to his other duties.
The final order of business was the Sarrith system where the curious primitive civilization lived. Before he could build an Orbital Monitoring Post to study the xeno race that inhabited Sarrith 4, he would have to build a command center in the system. He found one of his idle engineering vessels and ordered it to build a command center over the star, Sarrith. It would take it some time to navigate the various hyperlanes they had mapped between their systems before it got there.
It was definitely worth getting to it. While Marcus was not as hawkish or eager for the blood of primitive xenos as his new War Minister, Kestral Varn, he agreed with the general that it would be better they lay claim over the system before some other interstellar empire did in order to prevent any hostile forces weaponizing the population against Neptura.
Deciding that was enough for a day’s (or a year’s) work, he unplugged himself once more before the incessant cybernetic buzzing rattled his brain.
Back in his private chambers, watching the floating hover cars fly back and forth in their organized lanes across the skyline, a horrid sense of loneliness once again bore down on him. If I don’t find a woman in this infernal galaxy soon, I’ll slit my wrists. Oh, how he longed for the company of a woman now. As a king in his own right, he could have any woman he wanted—if there were any! It was the ultimate, cruel joke of this world.
But he would not see a woman today. Instead, he had a meeting with his ex-War Minister.
Marcus couldn’t be bothered to talk to the disgraced clone general, but he was still a ‘Special Advisor’ in an official capacity, and he thought he best see him and check in to prevent any resentment brewing from a potentially powerful political opponent. But in the meantime, he hatched another idea to quell his sense of strange loneliness.
It’s about time I see my Neptura from the ground up, first hand, with my own eyes. As Marcus Dain, not as the Grand Archon.
Dressing down was simple enough. He put on a standard Nepturan Officer’s uniform. A high collared black tunic embroidered with subtle blue patterns, its shoulders subtly adorned with carbon-fibre plating. The trousers were the same colour, and over it, a long grey overcoat with a higher collar and buttons that ran down his torso to shield him from the Nepturan winter. No medals or fancy decorations. Now he was just a simple clone officer, still a rank that would command a degree of respect among the labourers and soldiers but not as important as a general, official, or minister.
Just another face in the crowd, his face already identical to his clones anyway, so the disguise didn’t need much work. That was one advantage of having this clone army, at least.
It was a strange sensation to finally step out into the streets of these clones, not as their god but as one of them. Ironsides had strongly objected to the idea, and the other ministers agreed, citing it as a grave security risk should anything happen to him. The clones were generally loyal and disciplined, but that didn’t mean crime didn’t exist on Neptura. There were always some genetic defects from the vats that produced the odd rebellious or undesirable clone. But as their job was mainly to die for the glory of the Archon, it was generally deemed an acceptable deficiency they could risk.
Marcus insisted all the same. I will not spend this existence locked away in a tower plugged into a computer.
Once dressed, he ascended to the helipad at the top of the residential tower in the command complex. He then entered a Skyhawk that flew him to the Urban Zone where Valen’s private residence was.
Cold, artificial light dotted the city below with blue specs.
Marcus walked through the streets of the urban landscape, where his clone workers walked here and there, having finished their shifts for the day. A more white-collar part of the city as the many clone workers wore fine, smart tunics of white, grey, or black while carrying briefcases or leather satchels. They walked in and out of shops, browsed markets, or headed into neon-lit bars to relax after a long day’s work.
The general architecture of the place he found both interesting and depressing. There was no character to any of it, he found. Imposing, yes, with its monolithic metallic blocks, rows of sharp angled buildings of matte steel, and office blocks with windows that twinkled under the setting sun.
Wide roads, flanked by flickering neon lights of blue, red, or violet, cut across the streets like concrete rivers, while distant hover-rails criss-crossed the skyline.
Even the air had a gasoline-like scent to it, with a tinge of smoke from the exhaust fumes of vehicles and chimneys of the various buildings around him. Overhead, hover cars zipped past in their usual orderly formation. It made him chuckle a little, thinking what a catastrophe flying cars would have been on Earth. People couldn’t even drive properly when they were firmly planted on the ground, let alone flying.
Giant holograms projected patriotic imagery like the Nepturan eagle currently soaring high above in the sky. A bright, radiant blue; unmoving and imposing. Further along, there was even a holographic portrait of Marcus that looked down as though every clone under his gaze was beneath him. Propaganda slogans scrolled below its shoulders in bold, holographic fonts:
LOYALTY IS PURPOSE
PURPOSE IS DUTY
THROUGH ORDER, WE THRIVE
This brought a laugh out of him as he stood alone in the street, staring up at his own face. He thought it was quite ridiculous, in truth. His wheezing and flushing red cheeks attracted a few snarky looks from the clone workers walking by him, but they said nothing.
If only they knew who I truly am… Some delinquent who charred his soul for money and trinkets. Marcus never fought for any purpose or lived for a higher existence. Everything he had done in his life had been for his own selfish desires, forever feeding his own insatiable ego. It made him feel quite stupid, in a way.
They buy into an abstract idea of me, that is all. They could make any clone into the Creator, when he thought of it. How would they ever know? Maybe he was just as dispensable as the rest of them.
As he walked the orderly streets, he watched the clone labourers, their identical faces distinguished only by small deviations such as different hair styles, varying accessories like piercings, or subtle tattoos. Others wore customized utility gear. Interesting silent declarations of individuality in a world clearly designed to suppress it.
Other groups of workers gathered near food dispensaries, chatting about their shifts and the efficiency targets that had or hadn’t been met, or complaining about the cold weather. Others sat quietly on metal benches, drinking from bland, chrome coloured packets as some subdued orchestral music hummed through unseen speakers.
The quiet, immaculately clean streets reminded him a little bit of Japan, in a weird way. He had visited there once, and was impressed with how clean, tidy, and orderly everything was, in stark contrast to his native England.
Despite the immaculate order of it all, a creeping unease gnawed inside him. There’s something… eerily unnatural about all this. A world without chaos or unpredictability. A world without… people.
Everything was too perfect and structured, yet it felt cold, almost lifeless. Like the people around him were nothing more than cogs in a great war machine.
Is this what I rule? he thought. A dark cloud hovered over his mood while he watched a line of identical men queued at a dispensary for their meals, each standing exactly one step behind the other, not a centimeter out of place.
A world of near perfect obedience.