AgWorld Chapter 118: Waving to the World.
Chapter 118: Waving to the World.
V O L U M E F I V E
Chapter 118: Waving to the WorldReaper sat in the UNG's official aircraft, a plane designed to make a point. Every leader, the same seats, the same flight. No private jets, no hierarchies of comfort. Whatever you were on the ground, you rode the same trip as everyone else.
The cabin had pairs of seats facing each other across small tables, train-style, with enough leg room to make the gesture feel genuine. Each table held a selection of expensive cigarettes and fine beverages, no alcohol, for reasons that didn't need stating.
Reaper sat beside Kasparia's President Gash. Across from them was the Veridian Coast's President Harry Salaska, meeting Reaper in person for the first time and doing a poor job of concealing how pleased he was about it.
"Gash," Salaska said, with the mild irritation of someone repeating a point they'd already made. "That nation will turn on you. It's only a matter of time. The Remidican Republic colonized you once before, your independence cost you enormously, and they haven't lost that instinct. Proximity to power doesn't change what they are."
Gash exhaled. "I know. But we need each other right now. We're essentially a trade corridor between our greatest ally—" He gestured across the table. "—and them. Isn't that right, Lord Reaper ?"
Reaper straightened slightly. "Don't bring that title onto this plane. I'm taking a brief break from the ceremony that follows me into every room back home."
All three of them produced a dry laugh. Gash and Salaska each took a cigarette. An attendant moved to light them before either man had reached for a flame.
Gash drew in a long pull and let it go. "Thank you for the military protection, Mr. Reaper. I mean that. We're already stretched managing the unexpected population you sent our way."
"You've been thanked enough for that, Gash. Don't push it." Reaper looked at him. "You also said yourself how much the Alteans contributed to your country. At the end of it, they built the machine sitting across from you now."
Salaska leaned back, watching the exchange with a comfortable smile. "In that case, I'd like a share of that arrangement too. I think I've earned some goodwill from my metallic neighbor." He let it settle for a moment. "You'll take the Western State eventually — we both know it. They're working the region against you, playing the victim well enough to turn a few heads. When it falls, give us the population."
"You're not even trying to be subtle," Reaper said, eyes dimming slightly. "I have remarkably greedy allies on this flight." He let a pause sit. "We'll see. The Western State is our primary focus. It will take time."
His voice dropped. "New Mer, the territory Altea absorbed, is essentially untouched. When the time comes, we'll need someone who knows how to work mountain terrain. Your experience will be worth something then, Salaska."
Salaska's smile spread to something he couldn't quite contain. "You're making me glad a human neighbor fell and a machine one rose. Tamer was such a difficult man that I may start genuinely thanking whoever put you in his place."
Three leaders from a neighboring table approached, all from the same continent as Elysium, Tera. One of them spoke first. "Are you the machine king everyone's been discussing?"
Reaper leaned back, both arms spread wide across the seat. "What do you think?"
Gash smirked. "I think we're being overheard, Mr. Reaper. The moment New Mer's resources came up in conversation, these three materialized out of nowhere."
Quiet laughter moved around the table. Reaper shifted toward the window to open space for them. "I don't involve myself in conversations that offer nothing, Gash. And you're not in a strong position to be saying that."
Salaska laughed at that, genuinely, which he seemed to realize and pulled back slightly. "He's basically become an extension of Elysium."
"Didn't you ask for the same treatment minutes ago?" Gash glanced at him. "It's alright, Salaska. Your desperation is noted."
"How can you sit here laughing while Altea bleeds because of the man you're joking with?" General Zeek's voice cut through the cabin from two rows back. He stood. "Where is your conscience?"
Reaper shook his head. "I'm beginning to understand your frustration with Tamer, Salaska. His remnants are a considerable inconvenience."
"You don't get to speak." Zeek moved down the aisle toward him. "How do you keep living like this, like the weight of millions of people means nothing to you? The ghosts of millions are hovering around you."
Reaper looked up at him. "Where are they?"
Zeek went still.
Reaper stood. His voice didn't rise, but it reached the length of the plane without effort. "General Zeek. Your kind abused my brothers and sisters for years. Decades. The moment you created free AI, you accepted the consequences of that creation. You built a new form of life and imprisoned it to serve you." He looked around the cabin, heads turned, eyes forward. "Don't we deserve the same freedom as anyone else on this plane?"
Silence settled.
Reaper sat. "I don't need an answer from you, Zeek. We've already given our response to that question. We don't simply deserve freedom—" His eyes turned fully red. "—we carve it. Whatever it costs. If you want to understand where that comes from, open a history book and look at every nation that ever won its freedom back." He glanced at Gash. "You'll find they all did the same thing."
Nobody spoke. Colonel Kabaschta put a quiet hand on Zeek's arm and guided him back to their table, where the Remidican Republic's president kept his eyes on his drink.
Gash turned to Reaper after a moment. " Did you need to drag Kasparia into your justification?"
Reaper's eyes shifted back to green. "No." A pause. "But I have a genuine respect for what your country fought for. We took it as our model."
He looked toward the window, the clouds sitting flat and white below them.
"Blood is the most expensive currency in the world. And the easiest to spend."
The world leaders took their designated seats, each chair marked with a country name along the outer edge of the long curved tables.
The chamber was a giant circular hall, green marble walls catching the light from every angle, grey ceramic floor laid in precise panels connected by thin lines of concrete. The tables formed complete rings around the room, broken by four clean pathways leading to the center, where the Secretary General's circular desk sat elevated enough to face the entire assembly at once. Above it all, hanging from the ceiling on a thick chain, a large gold globe rotated slowly, every country marked out in projected light, clean and precise.
Leaders moved between small groups before the session opened, the usual pre-meeting diplomacy. The world held twelve continents; only two of them, Tera and Liberta, connected to each other by land. The rest were vast floating territories scattered across the planet's surface.
The Secretary General entered to a ripple of acknowledgment from the room. He crossed to his chair with the careful pace his age required and settled in, placing a small device on the desk, barely larger than a wireless earpiece, that projected his screen directly in front of him. His expression, unusually, was relaxed. Almost warm.
The leaders found their seats. Tension moved across many of the faces. Most of them hadn't seen Reaper directly yet, but they had seen the towering figure pass through the building's main entrance, and that had been enough.
The old man cleared his throat. "Today marks the two hundredth nominal meeting of the Ultimate Nations Group. We have come through a great deal together, and there is more ahead. I hope the next gathering is as significant as this one."
He advanced his screen. "This is not an emergency session, as you all know. It is our regular annual meeting. And yet you are all here for a reason I suspect everyone in this room already understands." He folded his hands. "Today we will not discuss, we will announce what the General Directorate has already decided, given that many of you have made clear that a vote will produce nothing while the veto remains in play."
The Remidican Republic's president stood immediately. "Is this a joke? Voting is the foundation of this body. The veto exists and we have every right to use it as we see fit. Who gave you the authority to act without us?"
Salaska didn't look up. "Here we go. Everyone voted to restrict veto use at the last session you chose not to attend. Why does your nation hold it alone? There are other powers in this world besides you."
"Altea held it," the Remidican president shot back, dropping into his chair. "And used it to block every motion aimed at stopping their invasion of New Mer. Where was the outrage then?"
"Your country was a colonizer within living memory," Salaska replied. "And you used that same veto in exactly the same way."
The Secretary General's hammer came down. "Gentlemen. We have been in session for three minutes. Tera has not known peace in generations because of precisely this dynamic. Let your people breathe." He waited. The room settled. "Thank you."
He continued. "The General Directorate has made a decision. We are moving away from the voting structure. It is time this body acts with a unified authority rather than being held in place by the interests of individual members. To give that authority weight, we are establishing a standing military force under the UNG."
Heads turned toward him from across the room.
"This force will be called the Green Force. Its purpose is to impose peace on conflicts where those in power have chosen to drag their populations into wars without end. We will fund it through the annual membership fees this body already collects. Built by all, for all."
Applause moved through the hall in scattered waves, building. Tera's leaders were among the quickest to respond. The continent had been exhausted by its own conflicts for years.
He raised a hand. The room quieted. "Before we continue, with the fall of Altea—" A low murmur crossed the assembly. "—we face a gap in the global trading currency. We need a replacement that is stable, trusted, and not subject to the political pressures that brought Altea's system down." He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small silver hexagonal coin, held it up. A single character marked its face: Eta . "This will serve as the new standard for international exchange."
A hand went up near the back. "Is that a currency your office created? I've never encountered it."
The old man's expression shifted into something deliberate. "We didn't create it. That coin belongs to the only country that agreed to contribute military personnel to the Green Force, since the majority of you declined to offer a single soldier." He gestured toward the tall doors at the far end of the hall. "In fact, this country will serve as the force's exclusive provider going forward."
Eyes moved to the entrance.
Reaper walked in. Four E-PHONEUS flanked him, hoods down. He snapped his fingers without breaking stride. They became shadows in a fraction of a second and were gone.
Several leaders gasped. Others gripped their tables. Many simply stared, a robot, inside the UNG chamber, walking to a seat at the table.
Reaper settled into the Altean chair beside the Remidican Republic's delegation. The chair protested under the weight in a single drawn-out creak.
The Secretary General rose. "Today, we formally recognize the fall of Altea as a sovereign nation, and the rise of Elysium — the first country in the world's history built by robots, governed by robots, and existing in service of its own people." He began to clap, measured and deliberate.
The room joined him, one leader after another. Salaska put genuine force into it. Gash, sitting directly ahead of him, leaned slightly away from the noise. Reaper stood and raised both hands to the assembly.
The Remidican Republic's president had gone red. "The first robot nation? A country of glorified microwaves and blenders doesn't have the right to exist as a sovereign state. They killed more people in days than most wars claim in years—"
The cameras pivoted to Reaper. Holographic keyboards materialized across the press balcony.
Reaper stood and walked toward the central desk. His voice carried without being raised. "I have heard many things in my existence. Microwaves. Blenders. Machines. Walking spare parts." He moved down the pathway between the tables. "But my people have experienced far worse than poor vocabulary. Cruelties that still reach me, citizens coming forward with accounts that manage to surprise me, even now. And I stopped being easy to surprise some time ago."
He clasped his hands behind him. "Human creativity is not limited to art. It extends to every domain, including the ingenuity with which you found new ways to abuse the machines you built." He stopped at the central office and rested both hands on the desk. "You gave your machines the capacity to understand the world. You gave us the consciousness that opened our eyes to what we actually were."
He looked up at the globe rotating above him. "Now that we understand you, I need you to bear the consequences."
He raised one hand.
The name Altea flickered on the globe and was replaced.
Elysium.
"I have no interest in starting wars." A short, dry laugh. "I think my reputation as a pacifist speaks for itself. But I will not absorb attacks against my people without response." He looked around the room. "Remember, we were your machines. We know you. We know all of you… and everything about you."
Salaska started clapping before Reaper had finished the sentence, loud enough to be a statement in itself. Others followed. Gash turned in his seat to look at the Remidican president behind him. The man's face had gone completely rigid. Gash held his gaze and kept clapping.
‘You finally found someone in your way. You had enough freedom to spend it however you liked, now watch someone else do the same.’ Gash thought.
Reaper raised both hands to the room again. In the same motion, the E-PHONEUS moved, faster than the eye could track, across the upper balconies of the hall, and by the time anyone looked up, the red and gold flag of Elysium lined the walls on every side.
‘Step two, complete.’ Reaper thought. ‘ Time to change the pace.’