The names of the companies that Aron owned gave everyone that heard them goosebumps. Although some of the people in the room hadn’t heard of a few of them, they had indeed heard of the others, and all of them were very rich and very, very private.Most of them knew of GAIA, Hephaestus, ARES, Icarus, and Asclepius; each of them were tentatively valuated at hundreds of billions of dollars, which was why they were shocked to their core.That was when they came to the realization that the man in front of them or on their tv or phone screens’ net worth was nearing the trillion dollar mark. That would put him firmly in place as the world’s richest man, with the difference between him and the second place more than 800 billion dollars. Billion! With a B!But what absolutely mystified them was that Aron had only become a millionaire less than three years before, meaning that in the short span of three years he had gone from “moderately comfortable” to “money is just a scorecard for the game o
“Father’s been asking why you’re just letting the Morgans control your actions when you could’ve asked him to stop it, or at least have it under control,” Rina asked Aron. They were together in one of his VR mansions, where they spent most nights.“I’m setting the stage and giving them plenty of rope to hang themselves with, so there’s no need for any of that. But I will need your family’s help in a few weeks or months,” Aron explained.“Oh, what do you need?” Rina excitedly asked. It had been a long time since Aron had needed her help for anything, but now he was finally asking for it again.“Eden will be calling an emergency meeting in the UN, and I’ll need America’s vote,” he said.“What’s it going to be about?” she asked. She would need to know what the meeting would be called for in order to convince her father to go with his request. “It’s about forming a united government on earth. We need to be united in case of foreign entities arriving,” he said, then remembered that, in hi
"Mom, Dad, I have a few more people to introduce you to," Aron said.A tall, upright woman dressed in an ARES uniform appeared. "This is Athena, the woman who manages ARES and trains them.Athena bowed and said, {Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Michael.}A burly, handsome man wearing thick denim pants, boots, and a leather apron appeared. "This is Hephaestus, who helps me with manufacturing all the things made in the automated factories," Aron said.Hephaestus nodded at the Michaels.A petite, slender figure that seemed cloaked in shadows was the next to appear. "This is Nyx, she's the one that helps us investigate things and defends us from most of the underhanded things other people try."Nyx beamed a smile and said, {Mr. and Mrs. Michael, I'm so happy to meet you finally!}"And these are Plutus, Asclepius, Hermes, Icarus, Helios, Coeus, and Hygienia. They all help with the companies named after them—well, all except Hygienia. She helps Asclepius and Helios, but her main duty is wast
A week later, the Edenian presidential office announced a press conference, claiming they would reveal something the entire world would definitely need to know.The announcement attracted attention from much of the world; people were curious about what such big news would be. Especially since most of the world saw Eden as the bad guys, thanks to the constant work of the Morgans, the Chinese, and a few organizations that had joined together after suffering tremendous losses thanks to the Hephaestus IP issue and other movements on behalf of the Edenian government. Thus, speculation ran rampant all over the world; people were talking about it around the water coolers at work, on every social media site, every tv news broadcast on every channel, and it had even been discussed in many backrooms. The powerful people that moved behind the scenes were sure they had won and that Eden was about to capitulate, giving in to their every demand in order to repair their reputation on the global stag
“Do you expect the UN to come to a good resolution?” the next reporter asked.“Our hopes are high, since it’s the only way for us to be prepared by the time they arrive”.“When are they going to arrive?” the reporter followed up.“We aren’t sure. Our observation period hasn’t been long enough to determine that, so it depends on whether they’re accelerating, coasting, or decelerating. Flying a spaceship isn’t like driving a car—you accelerate part of the way, then coast part of the way, then decelerate part of the way. If you plan it right, acceleration and deceleration should take the same amount of time, but we don’t have time to get into the more complex physics behind it. Basically, our estimates right now put them arriving around ten years from now at the soonest, and no later than twenty-eight years from now. So we need to get our affairs in order and prepare so we can face them as a united front within the next ten years.” Alexander pointed to the next reporter.“Do you think we
After the many different governments that had space agencies confirmed Eden’s statement, the world tipped over and the discussions moved from Eden being the bad guys to the incoming aliens. It wasn’t that Eden’s reputation had suddenly become better, but rather that the attention span of the populace was limited and the news of aliens completely overtook the more “local” gossip.Over the previous two weeks, people had been comforting themselves by believing that Eden was wrong. After all, what could a nation that had no reputation and no world-renowned experts know, anyway? But the series of announcements by more credible experts had yanked that security blanket away from everyone. Currently, the dam had been broken and the only things preventing complete chaos were riot police and the constant reminders that humanity still had time before the “visitors”, as they were being called, arrived.…….“It really worked,” Aron said as he watched the announcements with a smile on his face, rev
In a barracks on Avalon Island.A red warning light flashed and a siren sounded. It was a call to general assembly, and all of the soldiers in the barracks immediately dropped what they were doing and ran to the armory. There, after they formed up, they waited for instructions and Athena appeared before them in their AR glasses.“One minute eleven seconds,” she began. “I’m disappointed. SOP calls for assembly within 60 seconds of the alert sounding, but you lot,” she gestured, sweeping her arm across in front of her, “thought it was more important to get dressed than to get here!”If they hadn’t been standing at attention, the soldiers in front of Athena would have hung their heads in shame. Theirs was no normal barracks and they were no normal ARES soldiers. This was home to a Reaper battalion, and only the elites among the elites were housed there.“We’ll do better next time, ma’am!” they chorused at the top of their lungs.“If this had been an actual emergency, you would be dead no
Master Sergeant Jason Cordova and the rest of Reaper Team Three were on the side of a mountain atop a sheer cliff. They were overlooking a mountain villa maintained by the Medellin Cartel and had been assigned a mission to either eliminate or coopt the inhabitants and establish a hidden forward operating base in the Andes Mountain Range.It was 8pm, six hours before they would begin their assault.“So these guys are bad guys, right, sarge?” Corporal Justin McCullough asked.“Yep. They peddle poison, enslave locals, and violently murder anyone who dares to interfere with their operations. Only reason they haven’t been brought down yet is because they’re so vicious that everyone’s afraid of pissing them off,” Jason replied. His toes were still twitching, so he appreciated the distraction provided by conversation.“So why ain’t we just, y’know, ‘removing’ ‘em?” the corporal said, using air quotes around “removing” to indicate that he was talking about calling in an airstrike.“Because we