Divine Artifact in a Scientific World-Chapter 125: Judgement (1)

"What’s your involvement with Damien Macklin and the attempt on Isabella’s life?"

"Shit, you know about that?!" then the agent sighed. "No, of course you know. I planned it. I befriended the little shit and tried to flip him, but the dumbass doesn’t know shit about his family’s underworld activities. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone. Kill Isabella, their successor, and pin it on Damien. That would finally give us the leverage we need to issue search warrants and subpoenas."

"And you thought it was morally acceptable to murder an innocent woman?"

"Innocent, my ass. That family is involved in all kinds of evil shit. Drugs, guns, human trafficking; you name it, they have their fingers in it."

"Oh? And what evidence do you have to prove your claims?"

"That’s just it, I don’t."

"If you don’t have any evidence, then why do you believe they’re into evil shit?!"

"Where there’s smoke, there’s fire! We have circumstantial evidence that suggests they are involved in money laundering and bribery. If we can see that much, they’re into all the rest as well."

Remembering his past encounters with the agent, he was seeing a pattern.

"How on earth did you even graduate the FIS academy?!"

"Oh, um, I almost didn’t. I almost failed the judgement test. Well, I did fail it the first time, but they let me take it again, since I only failed by one point, and I did so well on my other tests."

"Judgement test?"

"Yes, they put you into various simulated scenarios and test your judgement."

Jack had met a few people like agent Jackson in high school.

High IQ, did great on tests, but all the common sense of a wet sock. Convinced they knew how to solve all the world’s problems, even though they didn’t know jack shit about the real world.

Invariably they had well-off parents and lived in their own little bubble, never encountering any real struggles.

After some thought, Jack made up his mind. There was one clean way to solve his problems with Jackson, both the question of who to punish for desecrating his home, and how to prevent future attempts on Isabella’s life. He was going to try to do to agent Jackson what he’d done to Isabella.

The trick was getting the agent to agree to the soul bond.

He’d learned from Jeeves that when using a sapient template as the starting point, it was the template that made the decision.

The template’s memories were synched with the original, but the memories combined in such a way that the person didn’t know if it was their original or their copy that was making the decision.

More importantly, they didn’t know if they were making the decision for their original or for themselves. So, he planed to provide agent Jackson ample incentive to accept the soul bond.

This still left the question of what to do with the agent after he was done with him.

The soul bond was permanent. Except under one condition.

Once the person died, their soul would attach to their sapient template. And something he’d learned from Jeeves, but not told any of the girls, was that, once a soul bonded person died, their sapient template could be deleted! freewebnσvel.cøm

So, while he didn’t like the idea of being soul bonded to agent Jackson, he could get rid of the man completely if he really wanted to. It turned a potentially icky situation into one that was merely annoying.

Remembering that the "wall" item in his template catalog could be made into any shape he wanted, he first create a chair that was attached to the floor.

After commanding the agent to sit in the chair, he used additional wall items to shackle the agent to the chair. He would have to remove the obedience and non-aggression modifications before he could try soul bonding the man.

As soon as he removed his modifications, the agent started twisting in his shackle chair. "What are you doing? Let me go! You’ll pay for this!"

He was certain the man would not accept, but made the offer anyway just so he could learn what happened when a soul bond offer was rejected.

[Soul Bond Rejected: Gerald Jackson]

The response was immediate. He didn’t feel anything, only receiving the message. That, and he learned the agent’s first name.

"What was that?" asked an agitated Gerald.

"Your only chance at survival. Either you accept the soul bond, or I arrange for your untimely demise. Maybe an unfortunate autoerotic asphyxiation accident? Something juicy for the tabloids."

"No, no, you can’t do that! That’s not possible!" cried Gerald, his denial sounding hallow.

Remembering the bit of "black magic" he’d done to Derik, the annoying hotel receptionist, he did the same to Gerald. Then made the soul bond offer again.

[Soul Bond Rejected: Gerald Jackson]

This time, there was a brief pause before Gerald rejected his offer.

"You can’t scare me with your little tricks!" declared a visibly disturbed Gerald, fear in his eyes.

Next, Jack summoned a large piece of PVC pipe, a large thick industrial strength rubber band, some glue, and a templatized copy of Gerald’s necktie.

With some effort, he managed to stretch the rubber band around the PVC pipe. Then he applied some glue to the outside of the rubber band and put the necktie over it, pressing the tie fabric into the glue.

It wasn’t a good bond, but it didn’t need to be. The moment Jack pushed the changes out, the rubber band would appear and immediately snap around Gerald’s neck.

It wouldn’t kill him, but it would send a very clear message. "If I can do this, I can carry out the threat of an embarrassing autoerotic asphyxiation death."

The Gerald in the physical world would not have any memories of the soul bond requests, since it was the sapient template that was making the decision, but he would remember the tacks in his shoe and rubber band around his neck.

However, even if Jack failed to get Gerald to accept the soul bond, he wasn’t worried.

Who would believe Gerald if he tried telling someone? Who would believe him if he claimed that an industrial strength rubber band just magically appeared around his neck? Any sane person would assume he was lying, or had lost his mind.

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