Corporal Cuervo lay on the ground, his head in a small crater, as his AI assistant’s augmented reality form continued madly laughing at him. If it weren’t for his NUTS, he would probably have been nothing but ashes and small pools of molten metal with some chunks of solid alloys in it. The temperature readout on his retinal AR display had long passed the 6,000 degree celsius mark and was still climbing, albeit at a continually slowing rate.Soon, the raging fire ran out of fuel, leaving him surrounded by ashes and obscured by smoke. He rolled over and gazed into the smoky air above him and couldn’t help but wonder if anyone else had ever lit Jurassic Planet on fire. For some reason, he doubted it. Effective though the tactic had proven to be, it was still highly embarrassing and the NUTS colonies had only been recently developed. In fact, the active reaper teams were still cycling through in order to have their new tech implanted, and Tekillya’s batch was the first to have the implant

While John’s aide-de-camp was delivering the press briefing on the recent operation, Aron, Nova, and the other AIs were in VR overseeing an important milestone in their unification plan.“And with that, our preparations are complete,” Aron said, then stretched his arms above his head, limbered his neck, and heaved a yawn. Even with his enhanced constitution, going through iteration after iteration of proposed government structures had exhausted him. And that was after they had already gone through a number of think tanks composed of veteran political minds in Lab City to remove inefficiencies and reduce the chances of power grabs and coups. Then, after all of that and before presenting them to Aron, Nova ran them through millions of simulations to spot any remaining flaws and smooth them out.Aron turned to the newest AI and asked, “What do you think of the plan, Gaia?”Gaia was the latest “chief” AI and would take up the responsibility of managing planetary affairs, acting as Aron’s

Through the window of the Edenian helicopter, Alexander saw a large crowd of people who had gathered to protest the unification. Their dissatisfaction was obvious, as was the reason for it; they didn’t want to lose the privileges they thought they had.They thought things like the already failing economy was a privilege, and thanks to being raised on a steady diet of American Exceptionalism propaganda, they somehow believed that theirs was the only country that had the privilege of freedom. Every other country on the planet could only experience a watered-down version of America’s “freedom”, and they would actively reject any evidence that ran contrary to their beliefs.But there was another group of counter-protesters that believed in and supported the unification, as they saw it as the only way to deal with the incoming aliens and the potential threat they would bring with them.“Any large change will always be met with an equal opposition. But there’s always people who will support

Gaia sighed as she realized the amount of work it would take for Aron and her to push the new imperial government into existence, then to acceptance. {How are things on your side?} she asked Panoptes, who was monitoring the internet.{Judging by how things are going, and not counting the explanation Emperor Aron is going to give tomorrow, the number of rebel groups is going to skyrocket. But hopefully, most of them will lose interest in rebellions once we begin the propaganda push.}{But those that remain will be even more dangerous. They’re the problematic ones,} Nyx interjected. She realized that she really needed to focus on recruitment in the very near future, as her nyxians would be completely swamped with work for the next few years.{The recruiting drive should help,} Nova comforted Nyx.Nyx nodded in agreement, a shock of surprise passing through her as she realized that Nova could read her “mind”. The surprise shortly dissipated as she remembered who it was that birthed her a

Aron, deciding that he had said enough about the downsides of democracy, changed tack and began speaking about imperialism.“Just because democracy has its downsides doesn’t mean that imperialism is perfect. No form of government is perfect except on paper, and we can all extoll the ideals we hold and praise them until they shine. But that’ll never negate the inherent downsides in each form of government.“And the main weakness of an imperial system is the exact opposite issue that democracy has: it functions well on a large scale while tending to fail on small scales. After all, when your governmental authority is vested in a single person, you run into issues like lack of time, as well as an overreliance on others to faithfully report things to the emperor since he can’t be in every place at the same time. “But just as its primary weakness is the opposite of democracy, its primary strength is the opposite as well. Imperialism functions best in long-term planning and projects. After