King of All I Survey

I don't want to give the impression that I suddenly started viewing Joe as a controlling monster. I didn't. Mostly our relationship was unchanged. It's just that every once in a while, I would have those chilling doubts. Wondering if my thoughts and feelings were really my own and then knowing that Joe knew I wondered about his loyalty and motives… In some ways, knowing he was aware of my doubts about him was the most painful part of it. It felt a little like betraying my friend. But he knows that, too, I thought.

Rafael and Maribel had decided to choose volunteers from Guatemala. Their idea was that people with a common background and common culture would more easily form a cohesive community in the new colony. They wanted to go one step further than that and establish the new colony based on Mayan culture, minus the human sacrifices and warrior culture, of course.

I was unsure if that was the right way to go. The colony would develop on its own and naturally its culture would drift away from the culture of Earth over time. If it started out as distinctly different from mainstream Earth, then the drift would probably be more swift and more profound. In a generation or two, they might have almost nothing in common with the civilization on Earth.

On the other hand, what would the Mayan civilization have become if the Spanish hadn't brought smallpox and screaming horde of genocidal, murdering bastards in steel armor to their lands. They were already pretty close to the civilization in ancient Rome when the Spanish showed up.

I decided to leave it up to the two people I had chosen to lead the colony. I decided that keeping the colony like Earth didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Orangutans and gorillas were certainly not going to establish colonies that mimicked human society, and we'd be dealing with extraterrestrial races potentially much more different than that. E pluribus unum, I thought. We will build one galactic empire out of many different people.

Joe screened people based on the criteria Rafael and Maribel had set up. From those passing the screen, The two colony leaders arranged interviews about a variety of topics of interest to them on the premise of a job interview for setting up a new eco-friendly village in the Guatemalan forests based on the collecting and study of wildlife and plant samples searching for medicinal properties that could be turned into novel medicines. It was a pretty good approximation of what the new colony would be about, I thought.

The prospective colonists were assessed for a variety of skills, knowledge, and the degree to which their family still lived in the Mayan tradition. While academic knowledge such as bio-chemistry was definitely high on the list, a strong extended family willing to move to the village with them counted strongly as well. They gave strong weight to elders who knew the plants of the forests, which were good for adding flavor to stews and which would prevent infection. Subsistence hunters, weavers, storytellers, architects, marketers, and engineers are all sought after. All with a Mayan roots and a family that tried to hold on to the old ways. They don't just choose the one person they want, they choose whole families: elders and their adult children.

Once the people are selected, they get further interviews where they learn that the settlement won't be in Guatemala, but on another world. The pre-screening was good, those selected are entirely on board with starting the eco-friendly research colony based on Mayan family values.

We use what appears to be a conventional LITV, essentially just a big warehouse sized box. It can be used for temporary shelter while the fabricators are building the carbon fiber sheeting for new houses. In reality it is just a carbon fiber shell and Joe uses his control of the universe's very structure to send it to another world.

And just like that, 641 people and an android that thinks it's a person are gone from the Earth. Joe tells me they have arrived on the planet they have chosen to name Ri ja, the K'iche Mayan word for Home. I don't know if that's true until I go to the Status room and look down from the high orbital drone, zooming in on the location of the LITV box.

We set them up with two fabricators and 100 food synthesizers each with limitations preventing advanced weaponry and each tied to a new account with the start-up galactic credits we deposit for them from the Earth account. If they want to use them after those credits run out, they'll have to earn more with products licensed through Earth. They have one, unarmed survey drone to be used for exploring, surveying, and mapping. It's small, but it has arms that can take plants tissue samples and carry them back to the colony, catalogued with collection location and full data about the plant from which they were taken.

We also give them 642 tablet -like devices that can scan a sample of any material to determine its chemical structure then compare it to the licensing database of the Galactic Empire to see what it most resembles or if the same chemical compound already exists under an existing license. Based on the similarities with other items, its possible market value and uses can be estimated. Further research and experimentation will help guide its eventual potential. The tablets are also health scanners, and general knowledge repositories, as well as communicators that can address any other scanner on the planet, or a special direct channel to Joe, that he can forward to me or the monitors at Earth Base. In addition to these abilities, they can perform direct implant teaching to add skills or knowledge lacking in the original colonists to control and receive and interpret data from the survey drone, though access to this is limited to the colony leaders and those to whom they assign that permission. I also send basic planetary defense drones. Three large adaptive laser-equipped drones that will patrol the planet from high orbit, reporting back to Earth Base's status room and under our direct control. They won't stand up to any military or even exploratory craft that enters Ri ja orbit from another civilization, but they could pick off projectiles, missiles, or even members of any landing party that might disembark on Ri ja.

For true defense of the planet, I'm relying on Joe's direct intervention against his former self-imposed guidelines. I worry whether my faith in that defense is misplaced… but I cling to it. I can't see any justification or rational that would benefit Joe to see Earth or the new colony destroyed after actively providing Earth advantages none of the other civilizations in the galaxy have.

I've decided to wait before establishing more colonies to see what mistakes I've made with the first one, so I only have to make them once. My next immediate goals for the colonization and UEC galactic expansion effort are two. First, I need to establish better communication and understanding with the other intelligent species on Earth, so they can eventually have new world colonies where they are the sole dominant species. Second, I want to establish communication and trade agreements with extraterrestrial civilizations that remain uncontacted by the other galactic powers.

I need to make Earth into an economic superpower so big that attacking us would cripple the attacker's own economy.

A third goal enters my mind, and I add it to my priorities. Protecting other planets that might fall victim to the exploitation and razing of the major powers. With Joe's intervention, I could just step in and stop any military aggression. But I don't want to expose our ability to circumvent the use of actual development technology by the direct manipulation of space time, using the intelligence that inhabits it. It would break the fundamental economic truths on which the galactic civilizations are based, and I don't have a way to replace that yet. So, I'll have to use legal tricks to stop attacks and exploitation of newly contacted worlds.

There's a lot going on politically on Earth right now as well. I think it's time to start a more rapid absorption of countries into the UEC, even adding multiples at once. Frankly, it's more than I can handle, but fortunately there's two of me now. I really want to focus on space exploration, so I take that while my duplicate focuses on putting the entire Earth under UEC auspices. It seems like I've done both after the memories are transferred each day, but somehow, the galactic expansion stuff that I'm actually working on seems more present, more immediate, even when I compare memories of it against the Earth politics memories. I know that's by design and it's the opposite for my other self. It seems like that, in itself would cause our personalities to drift apart, but Joe says it won't. I have no choice but to trust him. Not that I wouldn't choose to trust him even if I had other options…