Chapter 23: Trouble In Paradise

A goddamned children's game. Of all the things it had to be, why a fucking children's game?!

I had just woken up. Only four months had passed. It was the second quarter of the ninth year of my new life as a traveller. Just over two years since I'd established Starhaven. And we'd just had our first real-death murder.

Over a goddamned children's game.

It was premeditated, and the perpetrator was located only a few hours after the deed. It had been a bit of a stretch to involve the Magus Police in the investigation, but they had been called in due to the fact that sacrificial murder is a potent tool for the unscrupulous necromancer and this possibility -- despite the detector systems not pinging on anything at the time -- needed to be ruled out; and even in the case of a non-necromantic murder the loss of life and intense emotional nature of the deed would create a connection that they could follow with the right equipment -- equipment they'd had the better part of a year of research in developing.

The Host perpetrator upon realizing the jig was up didn't put up much of a fight, though he did admit to confusion as to how quickly he was caught. No one felt particularly inclined to inform him of the fact that the Magus Police very intentionally kept many of their tech developments off of the public mesh network in order to increase their overall efficacy, though that wasn't exactly a secret.

I was staring at Synod-08, Synod-15, and Synod-16. The Judges, collectively. To date they hadn't actually tried any real cases that were more meaningful than resource allocation disputes between minor projects, or heated disputes between individuals who fell too deeply into Acting a particular role. Things that in a society that actually used money, could have been resolved through fines; and largely the remediation was in the form of restricted privileges or extra workshifts. What else were they supposed to do? The League didn't even have prisons. What would have been the point? All cases of mental instability were either diagnosed as incipient rampancy in a Host's Pearl, or else as treatable medical issues. There were a number of edge cases that had been confined to one of the monasteries run by the clothbearers, as it was felt that by going through guided meditation to develop more insight into their souls they might resolve the issues and become stable enough for general life. Many of the best researchers and artists we had came out of this process; though they never lost their 'erratic' nature, the eccentricism helped ensure a diversity of perspective and viewpoint that was an ongoing critical flaw of the Host production process.

I shook my head and focused on the three judges standing before me in the sole courtroom of Starhaven. "Gentlemen. I have reviewed the facts, observed the footage. There is little question at hand. You handled the defense and prosecution sanely. Why have I been awoken for this?"

Synod-08 stepped forward, his hands clasped on the red stole of his judicial robes. "Your Worship. This is a capital case, no two ways about it. The murder was premeditated and the circumstances were nearly unilaterally non-mitigating. In any modernized society, this would be a capital case. And while we appreciate your allowing us to largely self-govern on such interpersonal affairs so long as they are subordinate to your will, this is not a case that we the Judiciary believe should be settled in any manner that is even slightly at question as to the precedent it will establish."

I narrowed my eyes. "And you woke me for this? Could he not merely be kept on ice for the duration?"

Synod-08's posture didn't tremble in the slightest. "We felt that the matter was urgent enough to demand immediate resolution. Better to handle this all in one clean sweeping of the plate, as it were, than to let it linger on."

I rubbed at my right eyesocket -- phantom pains from automail surgery were often a stress response. "Yeah. Okay. Alright -- I can see what you're driving at there. I … what is the general consensus of the Hosts with regards to the capital punishment and termination? I am not meaning to suggest that it should be our first result, but this was someone murdering someone else a week after they lost a goddamned game of hopscotch. And they weren't even still Acting in the same role. That's just … there's no justification for this."

Synod-15 stepped forward now. "The general breakdown of your subject's views as discussed on the datanet are … complex. Many view the notion that a Host might murder another over something so trivial as blatant evidence of undetected rampancy, and as such the perpetrator needs to be either decommissioned or subject to prolonged psychosurgery -- the end result of which is indistinguishable. Many believe that no Host should kill another regardless of the circumstances. Still others favor the notion of indefinite imprisonment in an unnetworked virtualspace; remove the issue without staining our souls with the death. There … there are even a quite vocal minority that believe that by robbing a Host of their life without just provocation, their own life and soul are forfeit and should be … well. The most common phrase is 'fodder for the Maker.' They want you to consume his soul."

I just stared at the trio.

I kept on staring.

My eyes remained locked on the unphased trio. "They. Want. What??"

Synod-16 stepped forward, his body language -- as I'd managed to discern from the months of Acting practice -- seeming to indicate a desire to stand in solidarity with his fellow Judges. "Great Maker. You have stressed frequently enough the hazards that exist in the greater 'dimensional sea'. Is it any wonder that some of us might want a beacon of light to shield us from that threat, even if it comes at the cost of the very souls of those who would forsake their fellows? We do not mean to say that this is a mainstream view, nor do we recommend it; but it is certainly far from what one would call unorthodox. You yourself have encouraged awareness of such hazards and repeatedly forsworn such methods due to their unethical nature -- taking lives merely to gain strength is unacceptable to you. Is gaining strength from lives that must be taken also unethical?"

I didn't even need to think about it. It certainly helped that I'd thought along such lines in the past. "Yes. Yes it is. I will not cross that line. Once you start, the justifications get easier and easier. Prisoners -- be they war criminals, captured soldiers in a time of war, political prisoners, or even the most heinous of perpetrators of crime -- are to never be viewed as resources by any agent of my will. I will not permit it." I pointed a finger at the trio. "And neither will you. Understood?"

The Judiciary as one nodded their heads in silent affirmation. Unless I missed my mark, they at least mildly approved of the decision. "And as to the punishment John Simmons is to receive?"

I sighed. I spoke my next words quietly. "He has one hour to compose his final words, whereupon he will be taken to the safehouse world and after an announced livestream to make them clear, I will incinerate him personally. He is to be comfortably and adequately treated in any manner that is standard care for any member of the League barring the necessary restraints and network controls to prevent his escape or resistance to this outcome in the meantime. In the future, this responsibility and decision will fall upon the local governor of the region in which the crime has been committed. If we are to practice lethal punishment, then the one who has the authority to make that decision must also be the one to live with having looked the punished in the eye in their final moments. Such is my will."

Synod-08 started. "So quickly, Your Worship? No desire for additional appeals or time to consider?"

I just shook my head. "We know the truth in this case without hesitation. The method, the means, the motive, the exact timing -- these are not in the slightest bit of question. I will not prolong the inevitable merely to satiate some sense of justice that does not acknowledge the technological and intellectual capabilities of the people who I rule. Appeals? Technical injunctions? These are processes meant to address the limitations of imperfections in the human equation. You, my Hosts, in no small part thanks to the technologies and magics I have brought to you, have no such limitations. As you said. One clean sweep of the board, and be done with it."

I felt so very tired.

I didn't feel any less tired when Simmons didn't even bother with any last words beyond, "Just get on with it."

One quick burst of my Skrill weapon later, there was a new blasted area in the vicinity of what was once my safehouse. And my Imperial Jovian League had its population reduced by one citizen. I'd looked John in the eyes as I killed him; he didn't flinch or cower. Those eyes were going to stay with me a very, very long time.

I didn't go back to sleep. Even cryogenically, the idea of possibly having dreams about what I'd done didn't settle well with me. Instead, I spent hours meditating on the events leading up to what I'd done. A corner of my mind couldn't get over the fact that killing someone over a children's game was not entirely an inaccurate description of my decision. After all -- founding my own 'empire'? Having subjects who obeyed my orders? Playing at 'god-emperor'? Wasn't that just another form of a children's game? A power fulfillment fantasy? I knew that something like this was going to happen eventually. In many ways I was lucky it hadn't happened earlier. Superior technical capabilities or not, Hosts had the same emotions as any human-derived sophont. They were going to develop petty grudges at some point. Crime was a part of that.

But I couldn't even really claim that I hadn't had the right to judge Simmons. After all -- he'd gone through due process; a trial which was public record and subject to the scrutiny of all of the Hosts. They themselves had come to me, woken me from quiet cold sleep to demand that I judge him. It was as much their will as my own. The King is the Land and the Land is King indeed. I wasn't going to get any closure out of this navel-gazing.

So instead I sought out a summary from The Doctor. Perhaps seeing what advances my people had made in technical developments would help me move past what had happened. This at least would fill my time with the distractions, I supposed. There had to be a great deal of material to go over, I was quite sure. And was there ever.

Standing in the virtualspace sipping on a cup of white tea -- the fact that the virtual constructs we now developed could handle such sensory inputs was wholly the 'fault' of the number of Hosts that had shared their own experiential recollections to the Core, from which these things could be extrapolated -- I awaited The Doctor's arrival. She manifested in the form of a single neon blue line drawing itself up from the floor and expanding like a crystalline tree until it 'popped' into her normal avatar. Clever.

I nodded to her. "So, Doctor. I would apologize for the earlier than scheduled report, but I think the exigent circumstances for the reason behind it are pretty much known to all fifty million of my subjects now. So instead I'll simply state that if the details are perhaps more poorly organized than your normal flawless standard, I shall be quite understanding. That said, please by all means, state the progress you have made."

The Doctor bowed minutely, her hands clasped before her, before she immediately went to a brusque and professional demeanor. Waving one hand before her, a number of semi-transparent two dimensional charts and graphs started to flood the space around us. She called attention to one in particular. "As you can see, sir, the characteristics of this naquadah material you recently acquired are rather remarkable in their behavior and operation. The mineral allotrope of the element has a very interesting relationship with energetic fields that pass through it. Even the most primitive of technical societies could use the material to greatly amplify the thermal and kinetic energies of explosive reactions by more than an order of magnitude."

She waited for me to nod my affirmation that I understood the graph I was looking at. This wasn't new territory for me, but she was clearly establishing a starting point; I was accustomed to this by now. Start in familiar territory, then go on. "The process by which the mineral performs this task has been studied with the various methods of investigation at our disposal. We even took samples to the Dho Na studies installation for further observation under the exotic conditions that our Dho Na effects generation processes would be required for us to create. As a result, and further the results of our utilizing the known and observed graphing curves describing the relationship of various energies to naquadah in the available sample configurations as a decoding target for the genetically encoded information you acquired from Egeria, we managed to develop a fairly robust base for predicting accurately how naquadah would behave in interaction with many of our various existing technological purposes."

I held up my hand to get a chance to speak. "Simplify this. How do we compare to the goa'uld in general at this moment in terms of utilizing naquadah for energy manipulation purposes?"

Synod-02 smiled. "In short-form, I would say that we are at least on parity with the more advanced goa'uld in theoretical terms. We may be able to produce better machinery due to our superior scanning and machining/tooling standards as a result of actually using educated technicians, but there will be many of them who have a deeper understanding of the edge cases of their technology that let them utilize it better than we can. Technical sophistication versus robust experience."

I lowered my hand and smiled somewhat. "Thank you. Carry on."

She cleared her throat. "Yes, quite. One area that still troubles us is the understanding of how naquadah can act in such a manner. Many potential conjectural models were decided upon, but none have yet successfully provided a basis for predicting every observed behavior of the material. In short, the best predictor we have for how the material operates is by acting in a similar manner to dilithium. For many purposes, in fact, dilithium itself could be -- and successfully has been in test cases -- used as a substitute for naquadah, to varying degrees of success. This is not a universally accurate perspective, however, as attempts to utilize both materials in the same reaction chain have to date either resulted in extremely unstable energetic events, or simply cancelled one another out, with the circumstances governing which outcome occurs seeming related to ambient spacetime conditions and fluctuations that we have yet to be able to gain sufficient data to accurately predict." She swiped forward another chart showing the numerous attempts to reproduce to exacting detail the same spacetime conditions for repeat trials -- in some cases even attempting to use Dho-Na propability manipulation to do so -- and the utter lack of results that had come from the process.

"As you can see, Great Maker, our efforts to gain more than a cursory understanding of the relationship between the materials has been entirely unsatisfactory. It has, however, significantly expanded our overall understanding of the nature of naquadah, and as a result we have improved somewhat upon the design and operation of goa'uld derived naquadah reactors." Another chart was swiped into place. "It has also provided us with a research path to a method of synthesizing the material, though I fear due to naquadah actually being a conventional 'element' alchemical transmutation is not a successful method of production. Instead, we have turned to the use of replicator technology for this purpose. The necessary energy levels required for even trace amounts of naquadah production are themselves problematic, as the material will quickly exhibit a high value chain reaction energetic event due to the very energy of the replicators. There has been some success in suppressing the phenomenon through the use of Dho-Na warding effects, but at this time the phenomenon is not viable for widescale production, even considering the functional restrictions on the use of Dho-Na effects in industrial scale. The wards we are able to produce still fail if more than a bare trickle of material is produced. Further research is required for this to become a viable path to mass production; but given the ubiquity within the Stargate 'verse and our ongoing presence there, dedicated research along these lines has not been a primary emphasis of the Thinktanks."

I chuckled -- that was one way to put it. The Stargate 'verse was literally rife with the stuff comparatively speaking. Especially for any society capable of asteroid mining.

The Doctor gave a vanishingly short-lived smile at my reaction before continuing. "Our investigation into the nature of the mineral did, however, provide us with the necessary instructions to convert raw naquadah into liquid naquadah, and as a result we have been able to utilize samples of the material somewhat generously in experimentation for its inclusion in the use various field-effect generation methods. As a result, given the inclusion of the material, we have successfully improved upon the energy yields of many of the various directed energy weapons in our technical arsenal. This notably includes the particle weapon, phase cannon, and Skrill Weapon technologies. As well as our other taelon-derived field effectors, including the interdimensional drive systems."

I immediately looked more closely at the graphs she was pointing to that showed the data involved, excitedly thinking that we had finally unlocked that particular method of FTL transit for general use. The precise details there were less than I'd hoped for. The use of liquid naquadah in the interdimensional effectors would allow them to produce significantly greater conventional thrust -- about a doubling in total thrust value -- and could also as a result increase effective speed while in interdimensional space; but they could not actually produce the necessary interdimensional shift effect itself any easier. Bah.

The Doctor, however, had another surprise in turn for me. "I see that Your Holiness noticed the limitation in the improved taelon ID thrusters. However, Great Maker, I believe this makes for an excellent segue into our next materials examination. Naquadria energy generation."

I started slightly, slightly panicking for a moment at the thought of the Hosts doing experiments with that material before recalling that I'd put a three thousand lightyear minimum distance requirement on any investigation into the subject. Still, the fact that they'd made any progress at all was both alarming and invigorating. "Do tell, Doctor. Do tell."

She nodded and waved yet another graph towards me. "The primary factor in naquadria's significantly favorable profile for energy amplification as compared to the stable variant of naquadah seems to be a direct product of its radioactive nature. It is the same element, but the inclusion of sufficient neutrons to destabilize the underlying atomic core seems to -- for lack of better words to describe it -- allow the material to 'dip further' into whatever extra resource from which it magnifies energetic reactions. In short, sire, you may recall that as a result of our study of the various transdimensional technologies you have acquired for us, we have managed to replicate the Taelon interdimensional-shift effect in limited circumstances. For conventional starship vehicle usage in the manner of their shuttlecraft, however, even with all of the improved understanding we now possess energy density on the scale of matter-antimatter reactions is still required. Naquadria reactors as you may be aware happen to produce energy on that scale, or even higher, and at drastically miniaturized volume compared to the infrastructure necessary to produce those reactions. Reduced enough to fit into a warseed, in fact."

A schematic was now brought to my attention, along with a series of graphs that showed the predicted reliability and safety margins for the model. "So what you're telling me is that although the process requires roughly a minute to charge up, and at best can remain in operation for fifteen minutes before the inherent instabilities in the reaction require reactor shutdown, the warseeds can now sustain interdimensional shift transit without the use of taelon core energy?"

The Doctor nodded her affirmation. "That is exactly what it means, Great Maker."

Well. That was useful. "Wait. going back a little -- you mentioned that the liquid naquadah enhancement increases the potency of general directed energy weapons. Would you please elaborate on that?"

Another chart was brought to the forefront. "Indeed. Depending on the technology in question and exact configuration, the energy yield is increased by between fifty and two hundred percent. The phase cannon technology is only middlingly affected, doubling its total potency. The Skrill Weapons themselves when injected with liquid naquadah are on the lowest end of yield improvements; but that is for the Skrill effector alone. Inclusion of mineralize naquadah in your Skrill Cannon design increases the linear accelerator energy values by tripling their value. Even without the biotic containment, a Skrill Cannon will now have a range of nearly two thousand kilometers. With the biotic containment, the range is estimated at nearly half a lightsecond."

Well. That was a nice little boost.

The Doctor waved away the various charts and graphs. "There have also been improvements in the practical use of antigravity engine designs based on the goa'uld models, and we have even been able to reproduce goa'uld equivalent shielding technology -- in biotechnological format."

Somehow I wasn't surprised at the development of improved defensive technology getting the presumptively necessary level of investigation.

She took a breath to demonstrate she was transiting to another topic. "As you see, sire, we have already made these and a number of other modifications to the Heartseed in anticipation of your future plans and activities. Not the least of which includes focusing the production of our adaptation of the 'hand healing devices' -- sadly as yet still non-biotech -- into the biohull of the Heartseed, with a primary focus on the effects reaching the virtual glass and polarization emitters first, with the regenerative impact propagating from there. In the future once we have managed to reproduce the devices in biotech format these will of course be replaced. But in the meantime the combination of those fixed placement devices along with a small contingent of healing devices produced for operation by biobots will drastically reduce repair times of the Heartseed in necessary conditions … as well as, it is hoped, improve the transreality transit performance of the vessel due to additionally 'supercharging' the energy levels of the organic components of the ship."

It took a small amount of effort to avoid interrupting her at that point and instead let her continue speaking.

Waving yet another grouping of charts and graphs in front of me, she started pointing at various sections and highlighting them with more intense neon lighting to emphasize her points as she made them. "Reproducing the kara'kesh 'hand device' in its entirety is ironically quite simple; the device largely uses conventional materials science as these things go. The kinetic repulsor emitters of the device do play quite nicely with the biotic shockwave, and there is a project underway to reproduce the kinetic pulse with biotech, but it as yet not completed. The goa'uld standard personal shield emitter is also quite simple to reproduce, and this has been integrated into your personal armors and your 'control tank', as well as being fitted into the standard kit of the Magus Police. This trend continues, as you can see, for many of the goa'uld technologies; they are remarkably simplistic for the effects they reproduce."

"This is to be expected of a technology base that was designed to be manufactured by personnel not actually educated in the nature of the devices operated, and as a result of that simplicity in many cases a rapid conversion to biotech -- if only due to our mastery of taelon-derived biotech field emitters -- has been quite effective."

She pointed at a three-dimensional schematic. "One technology that gave us a bit of a challenge and as a result was chosen as a proof of concept due to it being believed to be an appropriate starting-point for further examination of the more exotic parts of goa'uld technology was the so-called 'ring transport system'. As you can see, we can in fact now produce the transports. Many parts were easily replaced with known analogues -- the antigravity propulsion and suspesnion mechanism the rings use to lock themselves into their necessary configuration at target destinations is quite conventional to us, and the ruggedness of the casing was easily supplanted with standard biohull material. However, to date we have no analogous field effectors sufficiently similar to the process that converts matter to an albeit confined energy stream, and as such those must remain mechanical technology. The similarities between the industrial replicators' matter-energy conversion and the ring transport system has, however, allowed us to construct transport rings with far superior containment than the standard goa'uld model due to existing familiarity with some of the underlying concepts -- where the goa'uld model needs five rings, we can make do with two, and can extend them to somewhat greater ranges. And yes, Great Maker, this refined model has been extensively tested on Hosts, live animals and blank sleeve clones of yourself embedded with non-sapient VIs to test neural information integrity. As a minor aside, Your Worship, it has been noted that there is some disorientation in those transited by the rings due to a brief overlapping awareness of both destinations. This seems to be the reasoning behind the flooding of the interior of the ring systems with light, in fact, as our attempt to remove that apparently extraneous system resulted in increased sensory confusion in the test subjects. There was an unfortunate respiratory distress event in one of the test animals when it accidentally inhaled its own vomit. We elected to leave the system in place with a toggle-able control for those cases where the light would be inconvenient for use."

I internally fistpumped at the notion of having actual transporters that didn't invoke that stupid philosophical dilemma over teleportation. And over having actual transporters period. I could finally say 'Beam me up, Scotty!' and have it happen. Okay sure it was petty of me but damnit I needed the victory with the way the day had started for me. Rather than display any of this, I simply waved my hand generously at The Doctor and said, "All in all a remarkable amount of progress given the sheer volume of materials involved. As always, Doctor, you and the Thinktanks display a remarkable amount of competence in advancing the general scientific mastery of the Jovian League, and I am honored by your service."

The Doctor paused, and even faintly blushed at the praise. "As you say, Great Maker."