<h2> </h2>


    Angelique popped into existence seated on an ornately carved wooden chair. In front of her was an expensive-looking desk. It was solid, well-built.


    She looked at her hands. They were holographic; she wasn’t a hapticgram, so she couldn’t interact with anything in the room.


    Angelique wondered why she was there. Was this her new office?


    She looked around the space; it was an oval room. There was a large official-looking emblem on the carpet. A statue of a golden eagle sat on one end of the table.


    If rooms could have a vibe, the vibe of this one was official. It looked and felt like the room of some sort of important person. Maybe this was Ange’s office, she wondered. If it was Ange’s, then she wondered where she’d developed such bad taste.


    She noticed the multiple flags placed around the room. The country flag for Everest. Although they were slightly different from what she remembered. Then it occurred to her: she was in the office of the prime minister of this country.


    That was odd because she wasn’t meant to meet the leaders until she and Ange were merged. She needed all the memories of Ange to get up to speed with what had happened.


    Angelique heard a clicking noise from behind her head. She turned around on her chair to see a large man walk through one of the side doors. He was in a dark-navy suit and a blue tie. He walked in like he knew the place.


    Angelique studied the man. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but his proportions were off—just slightly. He was wider than normal but not fat—simply muscular. He had large wrists as if his bones were thicker than normal. The silhouette of his pants also alluded to his legs being quite wide. He looked shorter too, but he was still taller than her. Then Angelique checked her internal stats, her height programmed to be a good foot shorter than it usually was.


    “Angelique, welcome back,” he said as he strutted in and walked toward the other side of the table. He had a southern drawl to his speech, the kind she remembered from politicians from South Carolina. “Imma get right to it,” he said as he sat down. “You’re here a little earlier than we expected. So we’re not quite ready for you.”


    “I’m a little confused. You are the prime minister?” Angelique asked, feigning ignorance.


    “I’m sorry. Where are my manners?” He reached over to the other side of the table to offer his hand before pulling back. “My name is Callum Overwood. I’m the president of this here country. We’re equals here; you can call me Callum.”


    Angelique went to reach over, and then realized she was a hologram. She looked down at her hands and shrugged. She decided to wave. “Angelique Komene. Lovely to meet you.” Angelique paused for a moment thinking back to what was just said. “The president?”


    On all her worlds, she was the official head of state. The difference between a president and a prime minster was the president was both the head of state and the leader of the government. Whenever those roles were separated, like in countries with a monarchy, or on her worlds, then the leader of the government became a prime minister. Officially he should be a prime minister, unless they’d changed the rules.


    “Well, technically I’m still the prime minister, but that will change shortly.” Callum winked at Angelique in the kind of expression that said, If you know what I mean. “You’re probably wondering why we’re meeting here in this room. And why we haven’t begun the merging yet. Am I right?”


    “Among other things.” Angelique was starting to get a bad feeling about everything. She did not like these kinds of surprises, especially the kind that involved being ambushed by a prime minister with a prepared speech. She was on the back foot though and had to keep playing dumb until she could formulate a plan.


    “We had a little war. So we’ve commandeered all the resources at our disposal in order to rebuild.”


    “And those resources include everything my Ange’s Angel would normally have at her disposal?”


    “You are right on the money. I wanted to debrief you before you get a little alarmed.”


    “Alarmed—” Angelique started to say before circling back to something Callum had said earlier. “A war? With whom?”


    “Oh, just a bit of a civil war. Everything has calmed down now; that was so long ago I barely remember it all.”


    Angelique couldn’t help but think that this was the reason the merging had to happen before having a conversation with the locals on the planet. This was all information she should know already. The Ange version of her should have gone through all of this and known it all already. So why was he telling her all of this? Why had he stopped the merging? Angelique was about to ask that question when another thought entered her mind. “Why has the flag behind you changed? Are you still part of the colony worlds?”


    “How astute of you. They told me you had a great attention to detail. I’m very impressed just seeing it now.” Callum picked up one of the pens on his desk and played with it a little.


    Angelique assumed that was a nervous tick. Then thinking about it some more, she decided it was him pretending to be nervous because, in her experience, people who rose up the ranks to his level weren’t that easy to read. He wouldn’t be showing nerves unless he wanted her to think he was nervous.


    “We still consider ourselves part of the collective.”Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Angelique felt a little relief at that. She was worried she had unwittingly walked into a situation she wasn’t prepared for. As a mandatory part of being one of her colony worlds, all planets had to maintain a standing fleet of spacecraft for her to use in case of emergencies. And they had to have enough fabricators on standby to make any adjustments she needed. “Perfect, I was going to save this for our first official briefing. But I guess I’ll tell you now. We need to implement the Shatterling Protocol.”


    “In reference to the ancient book from Earth? House of Suns?”


    “Correct. I need to send a bunch of copies of myself on a round trip to all the different planets under our umbrella. It’s an emergency.”


    “Well, that’s the thing; we don’t have any of those resources on standby.”


    “What do you mean? That’s a requirement of being one of the colonies.”


    “We rewrote our constitution so that wasn’t part of the requirement.”


    “Well, then you’re not part of the colonies, and I can’t share with you any of the technology we have with us.”


    “Hold on there just a moment, missy. We are still part of your colony of planets. We just haven’t had the time to build all that yet.”


    “Either you’re part of the colony of worlds, in which case you’re required to take seriously the security of all our worlds properly, or you’re not. Which is it, Callum?”


    Callum looked Angelique straight in her eyes. He held her gaze for a long, long time. “You left us for a long time. It’s been generations since you were last here. I didn’t think it was a good use of our limited resources when people needed feeding.”


    Angelique saw something cold in his eyes. She saw someone who wasn’t used to backing down. Someone who was used to getting his way. She also saw something she should be afraid of, as if there was something more he wasn’t telling her about. She decided to see if she could get under his skin, push him to defend his decision, in the hope that he revealed something more. “I left this planet with fabricators that can produce anything you want. You have autonomous ANTs that can be used for any task, like harvesting crops or building anything you need. I fail to understand how you don’t have enough food, let alone resources.”


    “The challenge we face here, is that we don’t have the ability to do that.” Callum picked up a manila folder and handed it to Angelique.


    Angelique looked at the folder; it had the word CONFIDENTIAL in bold red letters over the front of it. She opened it up and looked inside. Inside was a stack of several reports, covering different issues.


    She quickly ramped up her playback speed to digest everything quickly. From her first pass, she wasn’t any the wiser about what had happened on the planet. There was verbiage and a lot of information that contradicted itself. She wasn’t sure where the information came from, but she was almost certain that there were multiple authors.


    The main takeaway was the war had basically sent their production capability back to the Dark Ages. According to the report, if it was to be believed, all the fabricators were sabotaged in the attack.


    “You have working spacecraft,” Angelique said. “I saw ANTs and eleph-ANTs in the cargo bay. Surely you have the ability to re-create everything you need?”


    “Eleph-ANTs are just a replacement for manual labor. What we need are fabricators. And those are pieces of highly specialized, highly complicated machinery. We know how to make them; we just don’t have the industry to produce them.”


    Callum was right; there were billions of different components on the insides of those things. They were probably the most complex pieces of machinery humans had created. A device capable of creating almost anything else—including itself.


    Fabricators came in two variations, one that deconstructed material into fabricator pallets and one that took those pallets and turned them into machinery or objects.


    The lasers inside of them required a special alloy that was next to impossible to produce without specialized equipment. Add to that making the mirrors to the exact measurements, which was again impossible without an industry setup to produce them.


    Even if she gave a caveman detailed instructions on how to build a phone, they wouldn’t be able to produce one because they had no means of producing plastic, metals, or even electricity. The caveman would need to create the means of production before they could make even a makeshift phone.


    Equally, this planet had no particle accelerators and no way to produce antimatter. They didn’t even have the right materials to produce the machines that produced antimatter.


    “I—” Angelique cut herself off before she spoke. She was sure he knew, but she wasn’t going to tell him that she had a fabricator until she understood the situation better. “Tell me about this war. Which side were you on?”


    “I was on the side that won.”


    “What does that mean? Was it you who sabotaged the fabricators?”


    “I know you have a fabricator on your ship.”


    “Which you can’t access without my codes. It won’t work without my approval.”


    “And that is why I’m asking for your approval and not just taking it from you.”


    “Are you a dictator?” Angelique had a disgusted look on her face. “Or do people here get to vote?”


    “Let me be straight with you. You’re going to find out eventually. My side of the war wanted to break away from your colony of worlds. We wanted to start exploring into the galaxy ourselves. We’re having an election in about a month. Once I win, you and I are going have a talk about your fabricator. I’d like to buy it so we can start trade with your people.”


    “Giving technology to another civilization is not something I can make a call on without talking to the other colonies.”


    “You and I both know that’s a lie. Look, I might not have the means to make any more spaceships. But you’re in the cargo bay of one of mine right now. You’re not going anywhere unless I deem it so.”


    Angelique looked directly into Callum’s eyes. Did this man really just threaten her? She wanted to do nothing more than to put him in his place. But she calmed herself a little. “Where’s Ange?”


    Callum stood up to leave. “I’ve already told you too much upsetting news. I suggest you turn off your matrix for a few months. And after the election, let’s talk about how we can work together.”


    “Is it an honest election? Or are you rigging it?”


    Callum stood next to the door with his hand on the door handle. “The election isn’t a farce. We’ve come too far not to win in an honest election.” He turned his head toward Angelique. “But I’m not taking any risks, as this is also a referendum on whether we stay as one of your colonies. So I’m not allowing you to make contact with any of my people until after I’ve won.”


    “I technically still have rights. You can’t keep me from my people.”


    “You’re right. Our current laws say that I can’t hold you against your will. But after I’ve won, I can retrospectively change the rules.”


    Angelique stood up and walked toward Callum. “How long has it been since I last saw this planet? I’ve had a lot of upgrades since I was here last. I’m not trapped in your tin can of </a>a spacecraft.” She smiled a knowing smile. She hadn’t visited this planet since she had seeded it. They were lacking in many of the new technologies developed on the other colonies. Her spacecraft was made out of diamond. She was quietly confident they had no chance in hell of damaging it. “I’m glad we had this little chat. I got to know the real you. I suggest you open up the hangar door on this spaceship. Otherwise you’ll have a giant hole to fill in when I cut through it to dig my way out.” Angelique smiled warmly at Callum. “Oh, that’s right, you don’t have any manufacturing capabilities anymore.” She shrugged and disappeared.</a>


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