A Perfectly Logical Guide to a Superhuman Apocalypse: 39:

A Perfectly Logical Guide to a Superhuman Apocalypse: 39:

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Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by Arksoul

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“Negotiating? Why am going to negotiate? I’m terrible at it.”

“Egress, you’re exceptionally well-travelled and have negotiated terms for your contracts time and time again.” Dammit, I hated when Walker used logic and facts. It’s unfair that she’s freaking good at everything. Spare me some braincells, dammit! You can already toss a skyscraper across the ocean! “I’d like to have you by my side at the proceedings.”

“Parvati’s a better pick. Hell, you have your own super-detective acting as your lieutenant back in Cali. Use her!” After setting up the camp, we took one of the buildings that I ported over. Built by Parvati, it had all the amenities anyone could want on a tropical island. Water supply, air conditioning, insulation, and sound proofing. Alright, the last one was more because we were engaging in diplomatic talks, but it’s still nice. “I hate talking to politicians. They make me feel like I need to become a decent person to balance out their sliminess.”

“Egress…”

“Oh, for the love of—look, I’m not kidding. I don’t like dealing with politicians. This isn’t even about me wanting anything. I just don’t get along with them, so I’ll probably mess up talking to one.” Warlords. Easy. AI. Done. Superhumans who can tear the world in half. No sweat. Dealing with all those people is easy. Politicians, however, live and breathe to lie, cheat, sneak, and steal. They’re professional swindlers who get whole towns, cities, or countries to keep them in power. I’ll be out of my league, and I don’t like fighting at a disadvantage. Hell, I don’t like fighting fair! “Look, Walker, there’s a lot of things I’m willing to do, but engaging in diplomacy with life-long politicians is out of the question.”

With that, I said my piece, and Walker’s shoulders fell and she sighed.

“I had hoped not to do this, but if you won’t join me to tell them your story, then I will have to tell them myself.” I froze. Oh, right. That was a thing. “Indeed, Walker. I want you by my side, because you can tell them from your own mouth what Shin desires and what he has offered you. Is it not better for them to hear it from your mouth than mine, regardless of how high they hold me?”

On one hand, I could avoid talking to politicians and leave them to Walker. Walker was a good-two-shoes to her core, I’d even call her a girl scout if I didn’t know how viscous those rascals were, so I could count her not slandering me. However, that reputation was a double-edged sword. They’ll think that she’s painting me in a good light, which’ll discredit me, and ruin any chance I had of getting anything I wanted out of Japan without going through Walker or Parvati first.

They’ll leverage that to get what they wanted out of me for sure.

On the other hand, if I talk about what happened, I was going to be talking to a politician with more years in politics that I did at living. That’s about as unfair as a debate could get. This guy was going to know all the little tricks and gimmicks, while I was a kid playing around in the sand in comparison. Still, though, I was going to be telling them the truth, and I could use what experience I had to make that clear.

Leaving things up to chance felt gross.

Talking to a politician felt gross.

But, in the end, doing nothing felt like the wrong move.

“Alright, fight. I’ll go up there with you, but I’m only going to be there to tell them what Shin told me and that I didn’t accept the offer. Nothing else.” I tried to set boundaries, but the smile that spawned on Walker’s face told me what I needed to know. She knew that was more difficult that I let on. I had issues with talking and saying too much, especially when I was trying to get myself out of trouble. The one bad part about being able to leave at any time was a lack of prolonged interaction with other people, since I didn’t bother and was never stuck with other people. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, I do. Now, let’s get started on preparing dinner for the talk.”

I sighed in relief at that request.

Finally, something that I understood and could deal with.

Dammit, my stomach’s already turning over from the thought of dealing with the upcoming talk.

…

Once again, Walker was on the grill and preparing steaks for the dinner, but this time I was assisting with various other dishes. I used some appliances that I had lying around to cook rice, steam some veggies, and grabbed some of my more exotic supplies in deep storage to make a few dishes. By exotic supplies, I mean spices and rubs from before the world went to shit, because I had access to fresh ones through Parvati now.

Overall, it was a showcase of soft power and what we could supply to the people of Japan in its current state. We had meat, we had spices, and we had plenty of grains for their population to enjoy. Sure, we didn’t have chefs to cook it all yet, but I felt that would be overkill. Showing off a glut of manpower, to the point we could have specialized chefs, would be too much. These guys wouldn’t want to be seen as lesser powers.

A fact that they made clear, since they brought their own food and some of the submarine’s crew were doing the cooking.

The clone crew.

“Well, that’s one way to solve the population crisis.” Every country did some weird things with their superhuman scientists, if they could get them on their payroll. The US focused on energy generation and agriculture, since they figured they had everything else solved/could just buy weapons that they needed. Money is very much a superpower. “What do you think, Parvati?”

“Cloning genius superhumans seems to be quite the effective move.” Parvati was preparing the vegetables. She’d requested a tandoor and other Indian culinary tools be brought over and I obliged. The scent of all the spices her food had permeated the whole beach. This gynoid version was one of the ones clad in all white clothes in the servant role. Now that I thought about it, Parvati’s various forks were similar to clones, save for the fact that they were interconnected and learned from one another. “It would only take a form of telepathic communication for them to increase in coordinative prowess. However, I doubt that they will be of one mind and multiple bodies as I am.”

“That sounds about right.” Parvati’s various forks, no matter how different their bodies and acted personalities were, were basically the AI at their core. There were additional layers, differences, and objectives for each one, but they all stemmed from the same person… and that person was an AI with immense computational ability and a different perception in time. It could be that the ‘inner’ personality was just too vast to be subsumed by any, comparatively minor changes given by role, physique, and mode. Or, of course, I could just be talking out of my ass about things I had no clue about. “Hey, who do you think wins between the two of you in a competition to build something? A few hundred superhuman genius clones with different minds, or you with one AI super-brain but hundreds of different bodies?”

That seemed to catch the AI off-guard, and it paused for a long time.

“There is not enough data to make a conclusion at this time.” Parvati didn’t seem at all pleased with the conclusion, but I didn’t hesitate to nod with the statement. “That answer sufficed for you?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t it? It’s not like you know everything. Just what you know, even if that’s a lot.” Superhuman intellect didn’t mean omniscience. That’s a whole different superpower. I’m pretty sure that if someone had that, they won’t be advertising it. Or, maybe, they won’t be around after finding a way to live somewhere peacefully. “For example, if I had to face either you or the clones, I’d run away and hide.”

“Despite the fact that you can leverage your power to inflict tremendous amounts of damage on anything you wish?”

“Fighting an AI that knows my weakness, or a superhuman genius that can figure it out, is stupid. I’ll win by avoiding the fight.” Running away isn’t losing. It’s maintaining your mental and physical health. Also, no resources would be lost by running away. Everyone wins without anyone getting hurt. “If you guys kept chasing after me, or if you found my shelter, or started holding people hostages… things would be different.”

With my power, you’d need to corner me someway or somehow, if you wanted me to fight with you. That was severely limited, given all the safehouses that I had and the fact that I could just go anywhere I wanted. Holding me down by filling the environment with energy wasn’t exactly easy and would need me to stay in place, and I learned from the last few times that happened to me.

Not going anywhere without the ability to bust through an energy field and get out.

“I see, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Am I not a potentially evil AI that has hidden designs on humanity?”

“Hey, I’m a squishy human being. I get a pass on being paranoid. You don’t.”

Parvati chuckled and, after a moment, so did I.

I had to admit that I was starting to like the AI.

Which might be one of its plans, so I needed to make a back-up method to getting out a tough spot.

Yeah.

Sometimes, being paranoid sucks.

The payoff when I’m right is always great, though.

…

Parvati, Walker, and myself were at one end of a table full of food, while the Japanese government’s representatives were opposite of us.

Two representatives.

The first was Nori, the ship captain, and the other was a man named Hiro and he looked like he was about to keel over. Hunched back, cane, liverspots on a bald head… but still wearing a suit and with a sharp gaze.

Great.

They pulled out the big guns.

“I feel like he’s dissecting me alive.”

“It’s your imagination, Egress.”

“Wait until we actually start talking, you’ll see I’m right.”

Walker ignored me and continued to smile at our fellows from across the table.

It was a nice dinner. Beneath the stars, on the coast, and surrounded by three housing units. The clones of the superhuman genius/submarine captain guarded their side of the camp, while Parvati had me bring in some nondescript gynoids with military gear. The actual bodies beneath the military gear were deadlier than the gear itself, but that secret was unknown to our guests. Yes, please look at the laser guns and ablative armor. Not the half-machine superbeings that can tear your necks off with their bare hands.

The third housing unit was for gift storage. We brought a few things on our end, to showcase what we can provide to Japan, and they brought their own and kept it in the housing unit. From what I saw, they had a few bits and bobs that were interesting, but what got Parvati’s attention were the semiconductors they brought in vacuum-sealed packaging. If the AI was interested, they brought something nice along, and they wouldn’t have brought it if they couldn’t produce more than they could use.

Anyway, everyone enjoyed the offered food for a bit, making small talk and getting to know one another, until Hiro broached the subject.

“The people of Japan will need much. It is good to know some of our old friends remain in these troubled times.” I wasn’t the best at reading into things, but even I could tell the old man was trying to leverage the alliance that the two countries had before. “The shogunate that has formed in our absence has the people in a tight grip through control over food. We assure you that, with the food you offer to us alone, we can retake our nation and return it to its rightful path.”

Perfect English. Not a single stutter. Said like he was talking about the weather, not like he was declaring his people capable of retaking a whole nation.

Yeah, this was why I didn’t like talking to politicians.

“The United States has changed and is no longer what it once was. Even now, we endeavor to reunite our people from sea to shining sea through diplomacy and as little violence as possible.” I almost broke my neck when I stopped myself from looking straight at Walker. “We look forward to assisting you against the tyrants that hold sway over your nation and resuming diplomatic trade.”

Everything she said was technically true, but she was embellishing things. Anderson’s acceptance of the current situation was fragile at best. If she called for a crusade and ignored diplomatic talks, we’d be forced into a brutal war. Granted, she wouldn’t do that without me stepping in to help Walker so that damage could be mitigated, but that was still the case. Walker, though, was stating things like the US was on the cusp of becoming a world power again.

Who the hell are you?

Parvati nudged me in the side and mouthed for me to stop staring at Walker.

Alright, I’ll stop, but you’re going to be helping me check her for mind control later!

“The tyrants that you speak of are not the sole foes that our nation faces. There are others that seek to replace them.” Oh, here we go. They knew about Shin. Why wouldn’t they? The old man wasn’t exactly subtle about the way he did things. He was a superhuman villain with delusions of grandeur. Being subtle wasn’t his forte. “We received information from our people amongst his that they contacted two individuals of great power and ability. One of whom sits right next to you.”

I felt all eyes on me, so I decided to tell the truth.

“Yeah, I was looking through Japan to see if I could set up some trade with the country, found out about the shogunate, then I was approached by Shin after he figured out my search pattern.” Do I mention the fact that I worked with him a few times? I delivered some nondescript parcels from one place to another for him. I don’t think I need to mention that we have an amicable working relationship. “He sent in a team to find me, then we met, and he offered me a province in exchange for my assistance in putting his ‘resistance’ in place of the shogun.”

I thought that I laid things out as plainly as I could, with as little issues as possible, when I noticed that both the Japanese representatives were staring at me like I’d grown a new head.

I was confused, until Parvati clarified the situation for me with a whisper.

“You told them Shin offered you a whole province in exchange for his help.”

Ah, right.

The supervillain offered me a whole chunk of the nation he was setting out to control in exchange for my help.

Should’ve figured out a way to say that better.