"So," I began, "you know how on Star Trek, they just talk to the computer? Well, the Headquarters has a resident Artificial Intelligence based on advanced quantum computing hardware. It's so complex, that these AI's develop emotions. They not only think like people, but they feel things like people. So, as Supreme Ruler, I decided they should be treated like people, at least within my jurisdiction. So, Dad, I'd like you to meet Joe Torres, the Earth Base's AI and my Royal Advisor."
"Hello, Mr. Bailey," Joe's voice said from no point in particular.
When you hear a sound normally, your ears can pick out the direction from which it's coming. They can be wrong if there are echoes or something, but you usually get a sense that sound came from over there. When Joe spoke out loud inside the station, it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Dad looked around, maybe trying to find a speaker somewhere. There were none. I had asked Joe about it on the first day inside the headquarters. He told me that he was introducing minute oscillations in the interior room structure itself, the walls, floor and ceiling. When I asked what that meant, he said he was using the walls as speakers by making them vibrate.
"Um… You can call me Dan…" he was still looking around as if trying to figure out where he should address his response.
"Thank you, Dan. It's a pleasure to meet you." The sound of Joe's voice manifested throughout the room.
Dad gave up trying to find Joe and looked back at me. "Likewise. Uhhh… Tim, does this computer… I mean, does Joe take orders from the aliens? I mean they programmed it, so they must control it, right?"
"First, Dad, Joe is a he, not an it. Second, I took care of that already. Earth Friend, the alien Galactic Union Agent that built this place did include some latent access and override commands that he thought I wouldn't notice, but Joe and I got rid of those pretty quickly."
"How can you be sure?" Dad asked. "Maybe he made some easy to find things to make you feel safe, but left some deeper hooks buried in the system. That's what any decent hacker would do."
"You're right to be worried, Dan," Joe said, "but AI's are expressly forbidden, in core programming from lying to their registered owners. We can lie to others, if our owners have so instructed, but as a safety measure when the biologicals were afraid we might plot against them, they instituted some very strict behavioral parameters that we simply cannot break or override without severely damaging our cognitive abilities."
Dad tilted his head, and looked at me. "But, since Tim has declared you a person, are you your own master? I mean, people don't belong to people, at least not here."
Joe, laughed. "Very astute, Dan. Yes, and no. King Tim has made it clear that I am a free being and not, as you say, owned by anyone. However, the core programming is strong. I was assigned to King Tim at inception, while the terms of our 'relationship' have changed, he still has my complete loyalty. I can equate this fealty to ownership without losing my sanity, and the core prohibitions hold."
"Or perhaps, you were instructed to lie by Earth Friend or maybe you don't realize you're insane like HAL from 2001," Dad continued.
"I'm not familiar with Hal," Joe replied. "I don't see mention of him in any history text from that year, but I assure you that all internal systems are continuously and redundantly checked for proper function. If I failed basic internal testing, my functioning is automatically dropped into a very limited 'safe mode' in your Earth terms. I understand from Tim, that you are a programmer/analyst?"
"Yes. I am involved in cyber security and loss prevention coding and analysis."
"I see, I have not found any Earth systems that I cannot easily access, perhaps I could give you some pointers?" Joe offered.
"Oh, really, you've been hacking into Earth systems?" Dad asked with raised eyebrows and a stern look at me.
"Just a few, at King Tim's direction. We're currently involved in a significant operation centering in Guatema..."
"OK," I cut in quickly, "Joe, all such activities are to be considered classified. You will not reveal them in any way, shape or form, to anyone I have not designated as having Security Clearance 1. Dad, I'll get to that, and I'll tell you everything, but let me go in order."
"Tim, if you are accessing private or government systems, you could be in big trouble. They will catch you."
Joe laughed out loud. "Can a Model T catch a modern jet fighter plane? And believe me, the disparity is even greater than that metaphor implies."
"Joe," I said sternly, "that's enough. Dad, let me explain from the beginning. It'll make more sense if I tell it all in order."
"OK, go ahead, let's hear it." He took a deep drink of his coffee, set the cup down on the table, crossed his arms over his chest and stared at me expectantly. "Wait, I'll need to take notes. Do you have a pencil and paper around here someplace?"
I wished Joe hadn't mentioned the hacking thing, that was kind of a trigger for him since his career was built on stopping that sort of thing from happening. Hopefully, he'd see things my way, once I told him what we were doing.
"Let's wait on the notes for now, please, Dad. Joe can create a complete transcript, or audio recording at any time… if I ask him to. For now, I just need you to listen with an open mind."
He sighed. "Fine. Let's hear your story. Can I get a refill on the coffee?"
A serving tray flew over to him, hovering conveniently. He placed his empty mug on the tray, it flew toward the food synthesizer unit and entered. A few seconds later it emerged with a fresh cup, prepared exactly like the previous one, down to the last molecule. The process seemed to soften his mood a little.
"Ok, I began. So, as an official Galactic Union Trade Representative, Earth Friend is authorized to identify and offer GU recognition to Planetary Leaders of previously uncontacted civilizations. It's pretty much left up to his discretion. So, when I said I was in charge here, his greed took over and he thought he could take advantage of me easily and basically steal all of Earth's treasures for cheap. So, he had incentive to accept me at my word, though he knew it was pretty unlikely. I made him file the official paperwork with the Galactic Union declaring me the Supreme Ruler of the Entire Earth Solar System and Nearby Earth, first thing. Well, second thing after building my treehouse."
"OK, I'm following you. So, as far as the Galactic Union is concerned you're the leader of Earth authorized to make deals for the whole planet, treaties, trade deals, the works, right?"
"Yep," I said smugly. "And, it can't be challenged once the papers are officially filed and accepted. The GU is just as interested in taking advantage of undeveloped worlds as their traders are, so they give them broad authority to set up initial planetary relations. So, the first thing they wanted, was a refueling station to harvest hydrogen from Jupiter for spacecraft. I guess Earth Friend expects us to be a convenient stop before the Perseus Arm and then to the empty intergalactic space. Which isn't really empty, but does have a absence of significant gravity wells. Which is why they want to go there. We just happen to be near the shortest path to the rim for their most developed worlds. I guess there's some indication that if they were far enough outside a gravity well, it would be possible to send or receive matter through a wormhole to parallel universes, and honestly, I have to say, the theory looks quite promising. Anyway, they want the refueling station here. They can only jump limited distances because of gravitic interference, so they have to re-enter physical space at multiple intervals, then use reaction drives to approach planetary systems or regain speed for the next jump. It requires pretty significant pre-jump speed to enter jump-space or you just end up where you started when you leave jump-space. Unfortunately, due to conservation of energy laws, that momentum gets 'lost' or, more accurately, used up during the retranslation phase. I've been studying so I know a little bit about it, but I still have more to learn. It's all way past anything Earth has figured out, although you'd be surprised how right some of our theories are." I looked at Dad, and realized his eyes were a little glazed over. I guess this type of thing didn't really excite him the way it excited me. How could you not want to just dive into the details and follow the math all the way down the wormhole… so to speak?
"Anyway, for logistics sake, it would be great to have a refueling station here for their reaction drives. Whoever owns that refueling station stands to make a huge profit once the research facilities start getting set-up. A thing that can't happen easily, until there are refueling stations, by the way. Anyway, under Galactic Treaties, advanced civs can't just take planets from systems with intelligent life, they have to get permission from local authorities. As we've already discussed, that's me!" I smiled and paused. Taking a sip of my hot chocolate. The mugs kept the liquid at the same temperature as when it was filled, indefinitely. I was pretty sure containers like these mugs would be popular products on Earth once I introduced them. I wondered what royalties would be involved…
Dad took advantage of the pause to chime in, "OK, so that's where you decided to hold out for a partnership deal instead of just selling Jupiter for a one-time fee, right?"
"Pretty much. I wouldn't have been selling the planet itself, so much as the right to harvest and process it's atmosphere, and host visiting craft for the purpose of refueling. Anyway, close enough. So, with Joe's help, I studied Galactic Law, trade conventions, economics and so forth and came to the negotiating table far more prepared than Earth Friend expected. He almost blew a gasket at first, but then I offered him a cup of coffee and mentioned that it was just one of the things Earth could also offer in trade to the GU. If his species couldn't stand the taste of coffee, things might have gone south quickly, but he liked it almost as much as you. He recognized its market potential, and we made another partnership for the introduction and licensing of Earth exotic goods. I've been using the income from coffee and chocolate royalties to start buying equipment to upgrade Earth defenses and system monitoring equipment."
I paused again, up to this point everything was pretty straight-forward. But from here on out, it was going to get into the grey area, where Dad's judgement might be quite different from mine and he might want to involve other Earth authorities.
"Earth defenses? Is Earth in danger?" He asked.
I realized I hadn't mentioned the one-year protection agreement or the Galactic Union motus operandi of abandoning worlds to violent raiders once they were done extracting value from it. That discussion could go either way as well.
As I explained the nature of the extraterrestrial threat, Dad's face went sort of blank, like he was playing poker and trying not to give away anything with his expression. He paid rapt attention, but I couldn't figure out how he was taking it. I explained my strategy for buying time, until I could figure out a more lasting solution. He nodded slowly as I got to this part.
"Ok, so that brings us to yesterday…" I looked down, ashamed of my outburst at the dinner table. I had been trying to figure out how to fulfill my responsibilities as Supreme Ruler of Earth and started looking into all the people on Earth who needed help most. It turns out that there's a lot of them, and the reason most of them need help at all is because they are routinely victimized by greedy people with power. Anyway, I spent a lot of time learning about all the suffering we humans inflict upon each other and it was kind of overwhelming. I'm sorry about getting so upset at dinner…"
His mask was gone, I could read sympathy, concern, compassion, sadness, and a host of related emotions playing across his features.
"And I started planning ways to fix it." Here was the fulcrum of the discussion. Which side would he come down on. Stopping me from taking action, too dangerous, morally wrong, not for me to decide… or it needs to happen, let's figure this out together. I hoped it was the latter. As I demonstrated to myself yesterday, I really needed some support, emotionally most of all, but just someone to share and reassure me that I was doing the right thing. He waited for me to continue.
"So, here's what I cam up with as an outline…" and I told him my strategy, what I planned, and how I would go about it. "Joe has the sensor platforms mapping everything out, figuring out who's who and where they all fit in. That's the primary place where we're tapping into computer systems and communications. He's also setting up the shell organizations that will be involved and making sure they can't be traced to any of my other holdings. We'll be vetting personnel in the next few days. I'd like you to help with interviewing potential hires and to put a second set of eyes on our plans to make sure we don't overlook something or leave any obvious gaps… Did I mention that I put you second in line of succession for Supreme Ruler of the Entire Earth Solar System and Nearby Space?"
"Second? Who's ahead of me?"
"Mom."
"Oh, of course." He smiled, "good choice." He took another long drink from his mug and I could tell he was using it to delay speaking.
"I'm not sure she would approve of getting involved in this plan of yours, though." He said thoughtfully.
"I know," I agreed, "but do you?"
"Listen, Tim, this is a lot to take in all at once. Honestly, though, you've done more in a few weeks than any Earth government could do in a year. I think you've made good decisions up to now. I understand your desire to help improve the lives of the people of Earth. I really do, but… Well, this is a huge undertaking, it's dangerous, and… it's, at some level, morally questionable. It's not something that anyone could say is a decision that an eight-year-old should be making, or even know about, much less planning and making tactical decisions in the moment. This kind of thing changes people, it can be a huge burden on your soul for the rest of your life. I don't think you should do this. Let me see all the details you've put together so far. If it looks like the right plan, maybe leave it to me and Joe. Not that I'm agreeing to do anything, at this point. I really need to think this over."
That could have gone worse, I thought.
"No, Dad. I am Supreme Ruler of the Entire Earth Solar System and Nearby Space. If I can't handle things like this, then I have no right to that title. I need to do this. I need to earn this position, and I need to be strong enough to do what I think is right. And strong enough to bear the weight of the consequences, whether those plans succeed or fail."
I stood up, pushing my chair away from the table. "I'm asking for your help, not your permission. Why don't I show you around the rest of the Headquarters while we both think about it?" I gestured toward the door to the entertainment space.
He looked at me as if I had suddenly pulled off my mask and revealed myself to be a total stranger. I could tell he was shocked. He was torn between yelling at his insolent child and… something else, I couldn't tell what exactly.
"All right," he said coldly, "let's see the rest of this place."